The Finisher

5

At eight on Sunday morning when the door was unlocked as usual and everyone trooped upstairs and along the street to where the silver van stood at the end, engine humming, Spiro stepped out of line and ran.

Jesus, did he run!

Powered by terror, he dashed up a street he didn’t know in a city two thousand miles from home.

He had been warned he would be crazy to try, but if he didn’t escape now he’d end up like the others, a zombie. You don’t know how well off you are, Spiro, they had said, with a job to go to and a bed to sleep on. Yes, he’d said, a stinking, low-paid, seven-day-a-week job and a mattress on the floor in a poky, windowless room shared with five others. Better than what you left behind, they’d said, which was true. But at least he’d had his freedom then and spoke the language and knew where he was.

Both of his parents had been killed in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, when he was eleven. In shock, he’d been sent with hundreds of others to an orphanage in Tirana. When he was fourteen the law required him to leave and fend for himself. The youth unemployment rate in Albania was about the highest in Europe and there were only part-time labouring jobs to be had, which is a major reason why two-thirds of the population have left the country. For the next fifteen years, Spiro had lived hand-to-mouth, job-to-job, in growing despair. He had been homeless and skint and supposedly in the prime of life when he’d got the offer of free passage to a new life in Britain with steady employment and lodging provided.

Spiro wasn’t daft. He knew this was a racket and meant travelling in a container with ex-prisoners and alcoholics and being classed as an illegal immigrant when he got there. He knew the living conditions would be basic and the work menial and underpaid and he could be deported at any time. Like the others on the trip he had hopes of surviving undercover for long enough to find a way of staying on.

His new existence in England was modern slavery, so deal with it, he had told himself. He expected hardship at the beginning. What he hadn’t foreseen was the psychological effect. The real need to escape was the gnawing realisation that he, too, was becoming a zombie.

After seven or eight weeks of drudgery — he was losing count — he had felt himself falling into the trap of mindless obedience. He was becoming conditioned just as they were, but he had always prided himself on being a thinking man. A few more days of the same numbing routine would do his brain in.

So he made his dash for freedom and sanity.

The gangmaster, the one the workers called the Finisher, didn’t immediately react. His back was turned while he counted twenty-three shambling, half-awake men into the van that transported them to the private recycling plant on the edge of the city. Getting them to squat and squeeze together in the limited space was always a slow process. He would only react when he realised the count stopped at twenty-two.

An all-out, do-or-die sprint.

Spiro was now twenty-nine, stocky, stronger than most of the others. He had once been a passably good runner, but he was out of condition and couldn’t last long at this speed. Even though his legs and back had been toughened by the long hours of standing, picking trash from the belt, the muscles needed for running hadn’t had any use in years. Desperation was driving him. A bullet in the back was a possibility. He didn’t know for certain whether the Finisher was armed. That pig had never produced a gun, never needed to with the wimps he managed, but an enforcer without a weapon is hard to credit.

Hoping to God he had a few seconds in hand, Spiro was going like a bat out of hell and saving nothing for a longer effort. Fear was fuelling him, fear and self-preservation.

From deep in his panic-stricken psyche, the rational part of his brain insisted on being heard. Running flat out, eyeballs bulging, can only get you so far, Spiro. Soon you’ll be unable to go another step. Get a sense of where you are and where this mad dash is taking you.

The block of terraced buildings to his right had ended — he must be on the edge of town. About fifty metres ahead was a row of swaying poplars, and, beyond, more trees filled the landscape and stretched away to a distant hill.

Too distant.

Across the street was a waist-high stone balustrade overlooking some sort of public park with well-kept lawns and paths. His first thought was to climb over and out of sight, but a glance between the bellied pillars told him he’d kill himself because the ground was so far below. Instead, he pressed on, up the street, towards those poplars, willing his aching legs to support him long enough to reach the trees.

The early morning traffic cruised by, most of it facing him, coming into the city. A man out running was nothing remarkable, even a man wearing T-shirt and jeans and moving as jerkily as a seven-legged spider. This was a time of day when fitness freaks took to the streets.

He had come to a stretch where the street narrowed and the long line of the balustrade was interrupted by a four-square stone building that might have been a toll collector’s booth in times past. The door looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years and weeds were growing on the roof. He realised he was about to cross a bridge. Large lanterns on wrought-iron columns and plinths were built into the balustrade.

A glance to his right showed him a broad, silver band of water fringed by trees and — man oh man! — a path along the riverbank about eight metres below street level. The path to freedom. Find a way down there, Spiro, and you might actually make it.

But his stride was shortening with every step and he was hurting. His breath rasped and his thighs had turned to lead. Keep going, he told himself. To stop will be suicidal. Somewhere ahead will be steps or a ramp.

At the far end of the bridge was another booth-like structure matching the first, except for one thing. Where the other had the closed door, this had an open entrance.

A chance to step out of sight and catch his breath — but at serious risk. He’d be trapped here if he was found. He was so spent by this time that he had no choice. He’d collapse if he went any farther.

A gap in the traffic allowed him to hobble across the street for a closer look.

He stepped inside and was elated to discover he was at the top of a spiral staircase, steep, narrow and dark, with grimy paint flaking from the wall, but surely the way down to the river. Boosted by a fresh adrenalin rush, he took a deep breath and started the descent, gripping the handrail, trying to ignore the spasms of different leg muscles in play.

But fortune is fickle.

He was almost at the bottom when he heard the sound he least wanted to hear, the rapid, purposeful slap-slap of rubber on stone above him. He was not alone. He groaned in despair. To have come this far.

He wouldn’t make it now.

He’d be as obvious on the riverbank as in the street he’d just left. In fact, an easier hit, invisible to the passing traffic.

With the Finisher so close behind, what could he do? Stand his ground and fight? No chance. He was a physical wreck. Jump in the river where less of his body would be exposed?

No other choice.

Emerging into daylight, he dashed across the path — and was forced into a split-second adjustment because a large longboat was moored alongside a jetty in the shadow of the bridge. A railed-in ramp and landing stage.

Most of the words meant nothing to him, but the tables with furled parasols on the open deck suggested this was some kind of eating place.

A floating restaurant.

Nobody was aboard this early and a locked gate barred entry to the vessel, so instead of jumping straight into the river, Spiro took a leap and hit the upper deck with a thump like a beer keg striking a cellar floor.

Now what?

There was a cabin below, but no way into it. A tiny foredeck and a poop at the stern end offered no cover at all. In the split-second left, he got out of sight the only way he could. He climbed over the rail on the far side.

This longboat was designed with maximum width for the cabin. All it had along its side for a foothold was, in effect, a rub rail. But there was enough purchase for his feet. By flattening himself against the outer bulkhead of the cabin, he became a far-from-secure limpet attached as much by willpower as muscle and hoping to God he was hidden from view.

He heard the footfalls on the lowest steps of the spiral staircase and then the lighter sound of the shoes on the tarmac footpath. The pursuit paused.

Heart thumping, he waited.

How smart was the Finisher? How keen? How scared? He’d be in deep shit with his superiors if one of his charges escaped. But would he risk leaving the other twenty-two unsupervised for long? The most optimistic hope was that he’d see nothing, give up and go back to the van.

What Spiro heard next crushed that hope. It was almost certainly the crack of gunfire. A shot echoed off the stone walls of the jetty. Then another. And another, as if the firer was discharging at random.

Gulls took to the sky and screamed and circled overhead.

The sound of gunfire is deceptive. Survivors of mass shootings sometimes say they thought at first it was some other sudden noise, like a car backfiring or a firework. This was no car and no firework.

So the arsehole was armed, just as Spiro had feared, and had no qualms about causing injury. Killing, even.

But who was he firing at? Some bystander he’d mistaken for Spiro?

It would be suicidal to check, so Spiro hung on grimly and waited for the shooting to stop. He hadn’t been counting the shots, but the number easily went into double figures. Several more and then silence.

As if he wasn’t in enough trouble, a fresh problem hit him now. Cramp in his left leg, the tell-tale tightening of the muscle before it hardened and locked. The pain at the back of his thigh became excruciating and he had no room to stretch. He tried hanging onto the bulkhead with one hand and massaging his leg with the other and almost fell off.

Change position, he told himself. But how? This was the only possible stance, legs astride and feet bent along the ridge of the rub rail while the upper half of his body was hunched to keep out of sight.

You need to stretch, Spiro.

In the end, the urge to stop the pain topped everything, even the high risk of showing his head and shoulders. He braced and straightened.

For a few insane seconds he stood like a proud man facing the firing squad, resigned to what would happen. Nothing did, except the blissful, merciful inrush of blood to his leg. The spasm eased and he was still alive. With a view of the entire riverbank, he could see no one.

Any confidence was short-lived. The crack of gunfire started again. He ducked and only just hung on to the boat. Steady reports followed at short intervals, as if the shooter was taking aim.

But not at Spiro.

He’d noticed a subtle difference in the sounds. A stone wall about two metres high bordered the path as far as he could see and the firing was going on behind it.

Could it be a shooting range?

He tried to force some sense into the chaos that was his brain. The gunfire was definitely contained behind that wall.

He risked another look above deck. There was still no one in sight, aboard the boat or along the path.

Safe to move? He thought so. Over the rail he climbed and stood stiff-legged for a moment before crossing the deck and lowering himself to the landing stage.

Still alive.

The Finisher must have given up the chase and returned to the van. With the immediate danger past, Spiro could get his thoughts together. The shots from behind the wall continued, but he was no longer concerned. They sounded less menacing now, and he was sure he could hear voices coming from the same place, good-humoured, relaxed voices.

He moved a short distance up the path to where he could look over. Then he understood. Across a freshly mown playing field was a white building emblazoned with the words bath cricket club.

Bath Klub Kriket in Albanian. Spiro understood.

Bat on ball.

He knew little about cricket except that it was a summer game, but he could see for himself the source of the “gunfire.” In the foreground just below the wall were a number of tall, open-ended cages of netting attached to steel frames. Inside the nearest was a man standing on matting, holding a bat and swinging it at a hard, red ball bowled with force by another man. The crack of bat striking ball would have fooled anyone nervous of being shot.

The relief that surged through Spiro was a liberation. For the first time in months, he smiled. He could start getting his life back, making decisions for himself. His mistake had been laughable but was excusable. Plus, he’d learned where he was. Even with his narrow schooling under the former communist regime in Albania, he’d heard of Bath, the spa city in England developed by the Romans and rebuilt by the British into one of the architectural marvels of Europe. Here, surely, would be civilised people who would help him survive.

He watched several balls being struck hard into the netting. The sight of young men out early practising a summer game on a cold morning in winter was itself inspiring. He had no identity here, no passport, no funds, but he would find work for a fair wage, the means to exist and fit in and maybe — one day — join in their sport.

Then a hand clasped his shoulder from behind.

“Te gjeta, Spiro,” said the voice in Albanian.

I found you.