Riot Act

Twenty-nine

In the end, we didn’t have to look far.

We’d commenced the best search pattern we could manage with just the two of us, moving in a zigzag layout across the waste ground, when a shout rang out.

“Hold it right there!” O’Bryan’s voice rolled across the brickwork and echoed around us like gunfire.

We spun round fast, hearing the crunch of the broken-up masonry under our feet. Automatically, I brought the Glock up in a double-handed grip, heart revving.

O’Bryan was thirty metres away, edging out from behind the rubble with the FN 9mm he’d used to kill Nasir Gadatra gripped clear in his fist.

There was a half-heartbeat pause, then I straightened up slowly, letting the gun drop to my side. What was the point?

Thirty metres is a long shot with a handgun. Don’t believe most of what you see in the movies. The greatest distance I’d fired over with a pistol on the army ranges had been fifteen metres, and most of the time it was half that.

Even so, I’d been good enough to have winged O’Bryan, despite the distance involved. It wasn’t that which stayed my hand, and had Sean lowering the Browning defeatedly.

“Sensible people,” O’Bryan called, close to jeering.

He had Roger in front of him as a shield, holding the boy roughly by the collar of the coat Sean had put him into. If I’d been more familiar with the Glock, I might have risked it even at that range, but I just couldn’t. Until this whole sorry business, I hadn’t even picked up a gun in more than four years, for Christ’s sake.

Roger looked white. There was a smear of blood across his cheekbone which stood out starkly in contrast. He seemed dazed, stumbling over the uneven ground, but at least he was still alive. I was suddenly aware of an overwhelming urge to keep him that way.

O’Bryan shook the boy, as though he was faking it, snapping his head back and forth. I could feel the rage building in the tensing of Sean’s body beside me.

I growled his name under my breath, wasn’t sure the warning had any real effect.

“Let’s see those guns. Nice and slow,” O’Bryan ordered. “Take the magazine out of the pistol, Charlie. That’s it, good girl. No tricks, or the boy’s dead.”

I complied with stiff fingers, thumbing the release and dropping the magazine into my hand with slow and deliberate movements. Only Sean knew the weapon was already cocked, the first round already lying snug in the breech.

I threw the magazine out sideways into the darkness, making a big show of it. But the gun itself I let fall much closer, so that it came to rest only a little way past Sean. I saw his eyes skim over it, and knew at once that he was aware of what I’d done.

O’Bryan made him break the shotgun and pick out the live cartridges, then send the weapon spinning into the rubble. It landed with a dull clatter, kicking up the dirt. Sean did as he was ordered with a rigidness born of a cold, icy anger, needle sharp.

When it was done O’Bryan smiled widely, the light from the fire behind us flaring on the lenses of his glasses. In his grey anorak and his sensible shoes he looked like everyone’s idea of the friendly uncle, or the family vicar. How many people, I wondered, had trusted him. How many kids had he corrupted, and betrayed.

“Why?” I said. I didn’t think about the question. It arrived already spoken. “Why did you do all this?”

If anything, O’Bryan’s smile grew wider. He tut-tutted. “Oh Charlie, so naïve for one so cynical,” he said with mock sadness. “Money, of course. I like money. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it certainly has a healthy cushioning effect against the harsher realities of life.”

“That’s it?” I demanded, filled with a sense of anti-climax, of disbelief. “You’re not trying to tell me that a few nicked video recorders are really worth killing someone for?”

O’Bryan almost snorted. “You really don’t see the big picture, do you, Charlie? The annual turnover from the credit card haul alone is worth killing a dozen punk kids like Nasir Gadatra.”

“There must have been another way to make a decent living,” I said quietly.

“Oh, probably, but why go to all that trouble when I had the perfect means and opportunity handed to me on a plate? These kids are cheap, willing to learn if you give them the right motivation.” O’Bryan was still smiling as though this was all some big joke to him. “Besides, I hate to see things go to waste, get put on the scrap-heap. I suppose that’s why I like my classic cars so much.”

“And what do you think you’ve been doing to kids like Roger by getting them involved in your grand design, if not wasting their lives?” Sean said tightly.

O’Bryan’s smile faded, as though he’d hoped we’d understand his vision, and was disappointed that we obviously did not.

“They were already well on the scrap-heap by the time they got as far as my office,” he said, sharply. “They were never going to be useful members of society, but they did have certain – talents, in other directions.”

He paused, settled himself. “All I did was tap into that latent talent and utilise their existing skills,” he said, as though he was expecting adulation. “In return for that I gave them order, discipline, and a suitable financial reward. I gave them more stability than most of them ever got from their damned families! I care about these kids! Where were you when Roger needed you, hmm?”

“So,” Sean bit out, “where do we go from here?”

“We?” O’Bryan asked with a nasty grin. “Oh, we don’t go anywhere.”

Once he’d got the two of us disarmed, he’d urged Roger forwards, until we were only three or four metres apart.

I could see the sweat rolling down O’Bryan’s temples. Realised that he was as hyped up with the thrill as with the fear. I’d seen that look before, and it terrified me.

In the split second before he moved, it came to me what he was going to do. I had no time to react, to do anything to intervene.

I could only stand beside Sean and watch, horrified, as O’Bryan shifted his grip so he had Roger held firmly across the throat with his forearm. He looked straight at Sean, and he smiled.

Then he shot his brother in the back at point-blank range.

Roger’s body jerked with shock, limbs dancing. He gave a single hiccuping cough, then his eyes rolled upwards leaving only the whites showing, and he went down like a stone.

O’Bryan let go and allowed the boy to drop away from him without a glance, as though he was no more than a carelessly discarded cigarette wrapper. His eyes never left Sean’s taut face, and an expression of savage glee never left his own.

Sean stood locked, immobile. Both of us stared at the slumped figure, desperately searching for some flicker of life. A trickle of breeze ruffled a lock of Roger’s hair. Apart from that, there was nothing.

He’d landed half on his face, one hand stretched out towards us, the fingers curled in the dirt. The smell of cordite hung thick and bitter in the air. The hole in the back of Roger’s jacket, surrounded by scorched powder burns from the cloaked muzzle flash, seemed a damning confirmation.

I glanced at Sean, but could read nothing from the bleakness of his features. Surely the vest should have been enough to save the boy. Did they work at such close distance without the extra plates he’d mentioned?

I looked back towards Roger, but still he hadn’t moved.

“You bastard,” Sean whispered, giving me my answer. I turned my head numbly towards him, saw a cold death in his intentions, and was suddenly so afraid for him, what he might do, that it was like being dropped into a winter sea. “I swear you’ll burn in hell for that.”

“Very probably,” O’Bryan sneered. “But I’ll see you there first.”

The clock stopped. I turned my head back, so slowly it seemed, and watched with a mildly detached kind of interest as O’Bryan started to bring the gun up to fire.

My mind flashed ahead like a data-squirt down a modem line. One course of action came zinging back, almost blinding in its intensity. When I tried to analyse it afterwards it all seemed so cold-bloodedly simple, and so simply cold-blooded, that for a long time any thought of it made me shudder.

As O’Bryan’s hand came up, my feet had already started to stir. I felt the sluggish transfer of my own weight from even spread, across onto my left leg. The rugged sole of my boot twisted a little until it gripped into the dirt. I used that purchase to launch my body sideways.

I could feel my heartbeat slamming out at an accelerated rate. Heard the thunder of it in my ears. The roar of my indrawn breath as it seared down into my lungs.

All the time, I kept my eyes locked on O’Bryan. Watched minutely as the hand holding the FN reached a level attitude. Was acutely aware of the whitening of the skin round his knuckles as he began to take up the pressure on the trigger.

I had no intention of getting to O’Bryan. He was too far away. I achieved my real objective though, completing my reckless leap in front of Sean, arms raised out by my sides as though in surrender.

As I did so, I could sense rather than see Sean start to move, as though I could hear the rasp of air as he used the cover I’d given him to dive for the Glock, with its single loaded round.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the expression that passed across O’Bryan’s face at that point. Fleeting irritation, clearing rapidly as he recognised my intervention as a temporary one. One easily disposed of.

Then he shot me, twice, in the chest.

I saw the muzzle flash lance out as the first of the full-metal-jacket rounds launched from the end of the barrel at three hundred and sixty metres a second. Much too fast for the human ear to register the sound of the discharge. I was already reacting to the initial impact before anyone ever heard it.

I can’t accurately describe what it’s like to be shot while wearing body armour that isn’t fitted with a ceramic plate.

Damned painful is the first thing.

Somehow, I’d expected to be punched backwards. Instead, my body just seemed to absorb the double shock internally, collapsing in on itself like a tower block going down under the delicately-placed charges of the demolition team.

I think I heard someone screaming as I fell.

I don’t remember hitting the ground. I must have done because the next thing I knew I was on my back with an inconvenient half-brick cricking my neck back. Breathing was difficult and hurt like hell. I was gulping in air in short, useless little pants like I’d just gone into labour.

To be honest, to begin with, I’d no idea how badly I’d been hit. I hadn’t any past experience on which to base it. The whole of the front of my chest burned with a dead white heat. My eyesight started to buzz, graining my vision. All I could see was the heavens, cast orange from the distant sodium lights and the cloud-reflected looting fires along the next street.

Then another shot exploded into my awareness. It seemed so much louder than the first two, loud enough to make me twitch which was, I discovered, altogether a deeply bad idea.

From a great distance, I became aware of the sounds of a scuffle. Someone was crying out, in pain and anger. There came the squelchy thuds and grunts of blows landing. The dull, muffled crack of a breaking bone, and a final shrill, whimpering cry.

I listened to the noises like they were the sound effects in a radio play. Half my mind was screaming at me to get up, to join in. The other half told me another minute’s rest wasn’t going to make much difference to the outcome one way or the other.

I started to slide into unconsciousness, the clamour growing further away, as insubstantial as the cries of seagulls circling a plough.

It was only as I slipped beneath the final layer that I heard the fourth and final gunshot.

By then I couldn’t tell if it was real or imaginary. Whichever, it didn’t seem dreadfully important any more. My vision was blackening at the edges like burning paper. The darkness rushed up to meet me and gratefully, like a coward, I gave in to it.

***

“Charlie! Come on, come back to me!”

Gradually I became aware that someone was shaking me. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? I was comfy where I was. Warm and dry.

They shook me again, more roughly this time, and I realised that actually I was freezing, and that damned brick was still under the back of my neck. To cap it all, I felt the first splashes of another burst of rain on my face. Just great.

I opened my eyes slowly and found Sean’s face a few inches from my own. His nose was bloodied and there was a nasty cut over his right eye. It took me several seconds to register that the wetness I’d felt was caused by his tears, running freely down his cheeks and dripping onto me.

I reached up slowly, and wiped one of them away with a grimy thumb. I realised with a sense of small wonder that it was the first time I’d ever seen him cry.

“Christ. Jesus,” he managed at last. His voice cracked. “Suppose he’d gone for a head shot!”

I gave him what passed for a shaky grin. “He’s not good enough, and he wanted to be sure,” I said, struggling to sit up.

The sudden stabbing pain in my chest made me gasp. I looked down and saw two small torn holes in the front of my sweatshirt, no bigger than the end of my finger. It was a sobering moment, but at least I didn’t have a matching pair exiting out of the back.

O’Bryan’s first hit had landed dead centre and, I discovered later, had cracked my sternum. He’d pulled his second, as people do when they’re not used to, and not compensating for, the spent-shell eject mech. That struck about three inches higher up and to my right, and left me with an exotically bruised cleavage, but did no lasting damage.

Sean met my eyes without speaking. As much as he could, one-handed, he helped me ease the sweatshirt off over my head. He yanked open the Velcro straps to release the vest, peeling it away from my body. The inside of the chest section had two inch-deep indentations in the polycarbonate sheet, that corresponded exactly to the bruises I could already feel forming.

The vest itself was ripped and torn, the yellow kevlar inner showing through the holes. As Sean tossed it aside I thought I heard the metallic jingle of the stopped rounds rattling together somewhere in the lining. I made a whimsical mental note to retrieve them. Some souvenir.

Then I looked past him, and my heart lurched at the sight of two still figures lying near me on the ground.

“How’s Roger?”

“He’s OK,” Sean nodded towards the inert form of his brother. “He fainted. He’s probably bust a couple of ribs, but he’ll be fine.”

I swallowed. “And O’Bryan?”

“He’s not so fine.” Sean gave an evil smile and for a moment I thought he’d given in to instinct, and to blind anger. “Don’t worry, he’s not dead – he’s just out cold,” he said.

The relief made me sag. “What happened?”

“I managed to get to the Glock just before O’Bryan realised what I was doing. I think we must have fired at each other at almost exactly the same time.” He flashed me a quick grin. “He missed. I didn’t. Took a nice gouge out of his forearm.” He nodded towards his own injured shoulder. “It levelled the playing field a bit.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “But I heard another shot,” I said, puzzled.

Sean stood up then, seeming very dark and very dangerous. “I said he wouldn’t get away scot-free, Charlie,” he said. “You just told me not to kill him. You didn’t say I couldn’t kneecap him.”

I had no sympathies for O’Bryan, but I winced at the thought of his shattered joint. “Which leg?”

“The right,” Sean told me. He smiled again, a look of ultimate satanic satisfaction, of perfect revenge, but when he spoke his voice was completely calm and matter-of-fact.

“Even if he does get away with this, I’m afraid he’ll have to sell those classic cars he’s so fond of,” he said. “Now he won’t even be able to drive an automatic.”