Broken Skin

58

The phone rang in the living room and everyone jumped. Steel took the latest cigarette from her mouth, and lit the next one in the chain before dropping the dog end onto the carpet with its friends. ‘That’ll be them now.’ So much for five or ten minutes, it’d taken the response team nearly twenty to get here.

Tina nodded. ‘What will they do? The firearms people?’

‘Well,’ Steel blew a long column of smoke at the ceiling, ‘first they’ll try to negotiate. Then they’ll try negotiating some more. And if that fails, they’ll go in for a bit of the old negotiation.’

‘They won’t shoot me?’

‘Only if they have to. It makes a shite heap of paperwork.’

Tina bit her bottom lip, still working away at Rickards’ erection, keeping him on the brink without ever letting him fall over. ‘What if I kill him?’

‘You really, really don’t want to do that. Seriously, it’s a crap idea.’

Ring, ring. Ring, ring …

‘You might want to get that.’

‘You,’ she took her hand off Rickard’s cock long enough to point at Logan, ‘answer it. Tell them I’m not coming out.’

‘You’ve got to some time, Tina. You can’t stay in here forever.’

‘Answer the fucking phone!’ She twisted the knife and Rickards yelped, the slow dribble of blood from his neck turning into a steady trickle.

‘OK! OK, I’m going!’ Logan hurried through into the lounge and grabbed the phone out of its cradle — it was one of those little cordless ones so he carried it back to the kitchen, listening as the negotiator launched into his opening speech about how he was just here to help and nobody needed to get hurt. ‘Yeah, hang on a second, Jim,’ said Logan, stopping the man before he got too far into the whole empathising thing, ‘she’s right here.’ He held the phone out to Tina. She’d have to put the knife down, or stop playing with Rickards. Either would be a result in Logan’s book.

‘I look stupid?’ She asked. ‘You talk to him.’

‘OK. What you want me to say?’

‘I don’t fucking know, do I?’

‘Well … how about we start with what you want? Your demands? What do you want to get out of …’ Logan paused, watching as a single red dot of light blossomed on Tina’s knife arm, then jittered up to the middle of her forehead. Another one joined it, then a third, like tiny neon ladybirds.

‘What?’

‘I …’ He turned to look at the inspector who sighed, took a deep drag on her cigarette, then blew a cloud of smoke into the air between them. Red laser-sight lines glowed like sparkling threads.

‘Time to put the knife down.’

Tina put her lips to Rickards ear, whispered something, opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into the cartilage, tearing her head back and forth till a chunk came free in a spurt of blood. The constable screamed. Someone yelled on the other end of the phone in Logan’s hand. Tina spat out the mouthful of Rickards’ ear, pounding away on his erection. Steel yelled, ‘NO!’ and lunged forwards. Something sizzled past Logan and a small black dot appeared above Tina’s left eye. Perfectly round. Dark.

And then the back of her head exploded.