Dark Winter

34

The lock turned, the door opened.

Street-light flooded in.

A silhouette stood on the threshold, a bag in one hand and keys in the other, then took a few steps inside before noticing me.

It spun to run back through the open door. There was no time to think, just do. Bending down and dropping my SD, I ran towards the shape and jumped on its back. My canister hit the back of its skull and I felt a nose through my gloves as our combined momentum carried us both down on to the pavement and into the street.

The head turned. It was a woman. She kicked out, trying to escape. Suzy grabbed one of her legs, trying to drag both of us back into the house. I jumped up and grabbed the other leg as she kicked and bucked, not letting go of the carrier.

The moment we were inside I got my hands round her mouth and collapsed on top of her. She wasn’t coming quietly: she tried to bite me, and drummed her feet against the wall.

Suzy ran back for her SD.

‘No! The door, the door!’

She grabbed her weapon, moved over me and kicked the door closed. We were plunged into semi-darkness as she leant into us. ‘Keep her still, keep her still!’

‘No! She—’

Thud thud thud.

The three-round burst tore off the side of her head, and blood splattered over my respirator lenses. I kicked myself away from the lifeless body. ‘Upstairs!’

Trying to wipe the blood off my lenses, I ran for my SD and started up the stairs. Suzy stayed where she was and covered me. It had definitely gone noisy.

It was a lot darker when I reached the landing. All I could hear was my laboured breathing. The bathroom door was open: it was clear. Two others were closed. Suzy started up behind me as I went through the first one left. The bedroom was clear, no bodies – but there had been. Two cheap nylon sleeping-bags were unrolled on the floor, food wrappers were strewn among gravy-stained plastic trays filled with dog ends. Jeans and shirts lay in a pile. A blanket had been tacked across the window.

Suzy came out of the other room and made her way back downstairs. I glanced in – it was in the same shit state, with another two sleeping-bags – then turned to go and give her a bollocking. It had been outrageously stupid to drop her: she might just have been an illegal, or another source of information if she’d been part of the ASU.

A male voice drifted up towards me, confused, frightened. I heard Suzy respond, calmly but firmly: ‘Stand still, stand still.’

I stumbled and nearly fell down the stairs. Suzy was kneeling in the pool of blood, weapon up, aiming down the hallway. ‘Close the door, now!’

Everything went darker but I could still make out two of them, both white. One was Baldilocks from the Focus.

They stared open-mouthed at the weapons. This was not a good day out. Suzy was straight in there: she grabbed Baldilocks, pulled him over the dead body and into the front room, kicking the backs of his knees to get him down on to the carpet.

I gestured to the other one with my SD. ‘Follow him. On your knees, now.’

I hit the light switch as Suzy passed me on her way back into the hallway, and could hear the rasp of her respirator as she fought to suck air and speak. ‘I’ll check what we’re here for.’

The drawn curtains were cheap and unlined, but they protected us from the real world.

Both men stayed on their knees, heads down at the carpet, their faces contorted in fear rather than pain. My own was cold and clammy, like a dead fish, rivulets of sweat collecting in the chin-piece of my respirator. I heard her throw the front-door bolt and go upstairs.

They were dressed in jeans. Baldilocks had a brown leather bomber jacket like mine; his mate, a tattered old black thing with lapels. Their eyes had shifted, though not towards me: they were too busy looking through the doorway at the blood-soaked corpse. She was very dark-skinned, more Indonesian than Malay, in jeans, trainers and a cheap green nylon jacket. What was left of her face looked university age.

Sweat ran down the long-haired guy’s cheeks and dripped off his chin on to the threadbare flowery carpet. The floorboards creaked above us. We heard the scrape of a chair, then the sound of metal hitting the floor and a glass smashing.

‘Get your coats off. One at a time.’ I kicked Baldilocks and the woman’s blood flicked from my boot on to his leg. ‘You first, Baldy.’

He started to take off his bomber jacket, still on his knees, his eyes never leaving the carpet. When he was half-way, I could see that he was clear – he wasn’t carrying.

Suzy came down and went straight into the kitchen.

‘OK, Baldy, that’s enough. You with the hair, get yours off too, then pull up your T-shirt and show me your guts.’ He did as he was told, unveiling the start of a beer belly. He, too, was unarmed.

‘Now on the floor, both of you. Spread your hands and legs.’

A couple walked past the front of the house, talking and giggling, just feet away.

Suzy came to the door and shook her head, then turned to the dead girl. The carrier-bag rustled as she placed it to one side, then started going through her pockets. I went back to the two live ones. Baldilocks watched as Suzy turned the girl over in her own pool of blood so she could rip through the rear jeans pockets. He looked as though he was about to pass out.

I gave him a kick. ‘Who are you?’

‘Immigration. We’re—’

‘Why are you here?’

‘Just a routine check, that’s all. We saw something going on outside, that’s why we came in. We’re not armed, we’re just doing our job.’ He was flapping big-time.

Both of them had wedding rings – and, no doubt, a nice big mortgage to go with them. I jerked my head at the brown-haired one. ‘You got kids?’

‘Two.’

I nudged Baldilocks. ‘What about you?’

He nodded.

‘How many?’

‘Just the one – she’s two months now.’

‘Well, just do as I say if you want to see them again. Got it?’

They both nodded enthusiastically. I knew they wouldn’t do anything to fuck up their chances of seeing their families again because that was who they were thinking about this very second. ‘You, Baldy, show me your ID. Stay on your front, just use one hand.’

He reached back into his jeans pocket and held out a worn black leather wallet towards me. ‘Open it up and put it on the carpet in front of you.’ He did, and I saw that Russell George was indeed an employee of Her Majesty’s Home Office.

‘Now you.’ The long-haired one turned awkwardly to get a hand inside his jacket and Mr Warren Stacey produced his warrant card or whatever they were called.

Suzy had finished emptying the woman’s pockets and was shoving her stuff into her own, along with the three empty brass cases she’d picked up in the hall.

‘One more time?’

She didn’t even bother to turn and acknowledge: I just heard her feet hitting the staircase again.

Warren was lying flat on his stomach with the right side of his face flat against the carpet, his eyes fixed on my rubber overboots. He raised his head a few inches and the eyes that made contact with mine were very scared. Who wouldn’t have been? But tough shit: if you don’t like the job, don’t take the money.

‘No worries, mate. We’re on the same side, you just don’t know it. But if you fuck up here, we’re going to turn into your worst nightmare. Get it?’

He nodded and his eyes went back to my boots.

‘What about you, Russell?’

He was facing the other way. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’ The back of his smooth head rippled as it moved. ‘I know what you’re wearing. I reckon you’re in the job. We just want to come out of this alive, OK? You’ll get no drama from us.’

Suzy came downstairs and headed for the kitchen.

‘That’s good to hear. Just accept you’re in the shit, OK? It happens to everybody some time. Just do what I say and you’ll get out of here safely. We’re going to tie you up now, and then we’re going to leave. Someone will be here later to release you – it could be an hour, it could be tomorrow. OK, so far?’

Both heads agreed.

‘Good. Do everything they say, and you’ll keep your jobs. But fuck it up, and you might not get to see your kids grow up. The people that we all work for can be nasty bastards sometimes.’

I knelt down, placed the SD beside me, untied my rubber-boot laces, and used them to tie their hands behind their backs and then together. ‘Just hold on, OK? Don’t fuck up.’

I put their IDs into my chest pocket. Warren’s shoulders were bobbing up and down as he fought back the tears, not understanding how lucky he was.

I checked the time by his sporty diving watch. It was just before ten.