Early September (ten years before)
Dan felt the pressure on her back disappear and be replaced with pain as she was picked up, bodily heaved off the floor by the seat of her trousers and the scruff of her neck and carried to another pallet across from where Chris Hamilton’s body lay motionless. She was dumped on the floor.
Now, much closer to him, Dan felt a surge of relief that brought tears to her eyes because she was sure she could see Chris’s chest moving; he was alive, at least.
She shuffled round and looked at the men, kneeling upright, tattoos revealed, the Armed Forces apparent in every one of them.
Then she looked at Matt Carson.
He was standing, ignoring her, looking at the men he’d assembled here. He paced toward a man at the end, a man Dan could now see was significantly older than the others.
“How you doing there, Malc?” Carson said, leaning down toward the man’s face. “How’s the breathing? Age isn’t helping is it, making you weak?”
The man Malc said nothing. Was unable to speak.
“D’you remember,” Carson began, “in week two? We’d had a tough first week, and I think we can all honestly agree that I was struggling a bit. I was young, wasn’t I? Only sixteen, and just turned at that. The youngest in the regiment, I’d have been, if I’d been allowed to pass out with my class.”
Carson pulled over a chair; the sound of the legs dragging along the floor echoed around the rafters and bounced off the walls. He unslung the SA-80 rifle that was across his chest and laid it on a crate. Then he sat down in the center of the circle.
“You must remember, Jimbo,” he said, directing the words at another man. “In week two, when I was struggling a bit and I didn’t shower after one of the beasting sessions in the gym. I had to get to the next serial and I didn’t have time, so I turned up still sweating.”
None of the men moved or reacted in any way, and Dan began to watch them carefully, each in turn, watching for small signs of movement to tell her they were still alive.
“So anyway, I remember.” Carson smiled. “I remember when we got back from the parade square. I think it was you who grabbed me first, Jimbo, I think it was you, anyway. You grabbed me from behind, so I wasn’t totally sure, because I didn’t see. Anyways, the one thing I do remember, while you all held me down and two of you nearly took my skin off, scrubbing me with hard brooms, was you, Malc. I don’t know if you knew that I saw you, but I did, you was watching through the glass panel in the door to the showers, watching while they made me bleed.”
Dan saw Malc move, his eyes flicker, and for a moment she felt relieved that he was alive, until she remembered the crime scene where they’d found the last four bodies of the men Carson believed had wronged him. She remembered the blood that ran so far up the walls of Carson’s deserted home that she’d been unable to comprehend what he’d done to the bodies, the carcasses, that he’d left behind; maybe a quick death was the best outcome for these men, unless help came soon, unless help could get into this building before Carson could pull the trigger.
She shifted her weight quietly, aware that Carson’s focus was elsewhere and determined to keep it that way. She felt her hands move a little and wondered how tight he’d pulled the plastic zip-ties around her wrists. She had small hands, had been a nightmare for her sister to truss up when they played as children, and now she started to pull and twist at her bonds.
They were tight, biting into her skin at first, but as she worked at them, aligning her palms and then twisting to work the plastic apart, Dan wondered whether she might be able to get free.
Carson laughed, loud and fake.
“So there I am, sixteen years old, being held down by my mates, ’cuz that’s what you were all supposed to be, bleeding from where the hard brooms literally scratched patches of skin off me, fucking flayed me, and we’re all laughing, aren’t we lads? Weren’t we, Malc? Laughing, ’cuz that’s funny. Then, you remember, Malc? When I cried? Because that’s when things got bad, wasn’t it, Jimbo?”
Carson was looking from one man to another.
Dan heard a sound, a sob, from one of the other men, and she watched as Carson stood up and walked toward him.
“Yeah, like that,” he said, towering over one of the kneeling men. “Well done, Shads, trust you to improve a story with an appropriate soundtrack.”
Carson reached toward the man, who flinched in panic and lost his balance, falling hard onto his side.
Dan saw the man fall, saw how as soon as he was no longer kneeling, he lacked the strength to hold his ankles up far enough behind his back.
The weight of the man’s own feet and legs began to pull on the rope that was tied around his neck, and Dan could hear choking sounds as it slowly strangled him.
“But I know why you’re really crying,” said Carson, squatting beside him. “And it’s appropriate to the story, really, ’cuz I can’t remember who it was that said I ‘couldn’t take it.’ Or who then said that I needed to learn to take it. But I do remember you, Shads, turning the broom around…”
Carson jerked to his feet, dragging the man called Shads to the center of the circle and dropping his body there so that the others could see as he choked under the weight of his own lower legs.
Shads was on his belly and he was fighting hard to keep his knees bent and his heels tucked up close to his back, but he was failing.
Dan worked at the bonds behind her and looked away, for just a second, to see that Chris Hamilton was now awake.
He smiled at her, blinking as he did, and Dan smiled back.
“So, to teach a young lad, at barely sixteen years of age, how to ‘take it,’ you made me take it, didn’t you, Shads?”
The man on the floor continued to gasp and gurgle as his body fought its fatigue and his cold, dead muscles failed him.
“And you, Malc, the man with the duty of care—not that we gave a shit about that back then—you watched, smiling, while they raped me with a broom handle. But then we didn’t use that word back then, neither, did we?”
Carson turned toward Malc, fixed the man with a stare, and then pushed his boot down against the side of Shad’s head, twisting his foot and then increasing the weight as though he were stubbing a cigarette into the ground, as though determined to obliterate it, to force it deep into the earth.
Carson was a big man, heavyset, and Shad’s body went limp, his legs relaxing back and the choking sound ceasing, Carson took a few paces back, two to the left, and bent forward.
“It’s the final moments of the game,” said Carson. “This penalty kick could secure the regimental title. If Carson can place this between the uprights, the trophy is his.”
He moved forward a few paces, drew his leg back, and swung through, his steel-toe-capped boot striking the side of Shad’s head, his skull splitting open with a crack that made Dan gag.
“And it’s good!” shouted Carson, like a television sports commentator. “The title is his! Carson will be a regimental hero now, there’s no question about that.”
Shad’s body was limp.
Carson looked at the men around him.
“Doesn’t look like he could take it, does it?”
Dan looked at them again, thinking back and trying to recognize who the men were.
Carson’s life had been a train wreck. He’d barely lasted three months in the army before he’d been discharged for “self harming.” He was a “cutter,” so his files said, and there were some faded Polaroids showing his arms and torso like a textured tapestry. Within two weeks of leaving the British Army, he’d been in an accident on a moped, which had cost him his left leg.
The details on Carson were sketchy for a while after that.
He’d eventually surfaced on the streets making a living by begging, passing himself off as an injured veteran. He’d been picked up by a charity that supported homeless veterans and told them that he’d lost his leg in Afghanistan. He’d told stories of bravery, both his and others’, and had obtained numerous medals, both campaign medals and some that are only awarded for valor, which he sourced from online stores and proudly displayed on a secondhand blazer gifted to him by an elderly member of the Parachute Regiment, a man who’d been among the first troops to land at Normandy.
The scales were tipped for Matt Carson when, as part of his masquerade as an injured veteran, he attended the armistice parade in central London, marching with the British legion.
He was recognized by a member of his old troop, the first man to die at his hand, Patrick “Paddy” O’Connell. O’Connell had spotted him and denounced him openly. In an open argument he’d faced Carson down in front of many who thought they knew the man, many who thought they’d helped a fellow soldier get back on his feet. Carson had run from the parade, but photographs were taken, and articles in some of the national press over the coming days had meant that there was nowhere he could hide from his lies and deception.
Carson dropped off the grid and his killing spree started.
Dan looked over at Chris.
He smiled again, but weakly.
She watched him look around, taking in the scene, spotting the blood spreading out across the dusty gray stone floor and the faces of the men who’d yet to die. She pulled harder against the bindings on her wrist as she tried to get a hand free. Her skin split and blood started to seep from where the bonds dug in. Dan closed her eyes, wincing at the pain, but the blood was lubricating her hands and she felt the plastic tie slide beneath one of them. She wasn’t free yet, but she might be soon.
Chris Hamilton was watching her. He mouthed something at her and nodded slowly.
It took a second for Dan to realize that he was telling her to be calm.
“Doesn’t look like old Shads can take it at all,” said Carson. “And look at my boots, Malc,” he said, turning back to the old man who’d once been his training sergeant. “They were clean, immaculate, I promise you they were. You said I’d never make it as a soldier, but yet here I am, with all you lot, you professional soldiers on your knees waiting to die. All of you from the beginning, some of you from the end.”
As Dan heard that she looked again at the men and realized who some of them were, other soldiers who’d been in the homeless program with him, those he’d befriended and known, who’d thought him to be the hero he told them all he was.
“You all spout off about loyalty, but you didn’t show me any,” said Carson, his voice beginning to rise, his eyes blinking and face twitching.
A movement caught Dan’s eye.
Over by the window, not the one she’d looked in through, but one near it, she saw a tiny black shape move, then stay still, then it seemed to have gone, or maybe just dropped down to rest on the windowsill. It was no fatter than a pencil, and Dan knew that it had to be a remote viewing device.
Someone was outside looking in, and when they saw the body on the floor, it’d only be a matter of minutes before they’d move in and take Carson out. Eight, now nine dead meant there’d be no appetite to negotiate.
She looked across at Chris, who nodded to acknowledge he’d spotted it, too.
“Loyalty,” said Carson as he scanned the men. Then he reached for his pistol and looked at each in turn, stopping at each one, the pistol held out in front of him, his eye squinting as he paused and took aim.
“I don’t think you should do that, Matthew,” said Chris, his tone light, upbeat, and cordial, jarring with the scene around them and the confusion in his eyes.
Dan looked at him, eyes wide.
“Honestly, I really don’t think you should. Is it okay if I call you Matthew? It’s what your mum must have called you, am I right? Always nice to use people’s proper names.”
Carson turned slowly and looked over at Chris Hamilton.
“I told you that if you talked again, I’d cut your tongue out,” said Carson.
“Yes, but I notice that my colleague over there got some tape on her mouth, and while I agree she’s a talker, it does make me feel like you might want to hear what I have to say, at least on a subconscious level.”
Carson turned fully toward Chris and took a few steps toward him, stopping halfway between Chris and the semicircle of condemned men.
Dan pulled hard at her right hand, the pain excruciating, but the blood and plastic sliding as the bond went as far as her knuckles. She wondered how an assault team would breach this area without allowing Carson to reach his rifle and strafe bullets into them all. Carson was blinking again, twitching, looking agitated and stressed as he stared at Chris Hamilton, as though killing one of his former colleagues had calmed him some but hadn’t lasted.
“Come and talk to me, Matthew,” said Hamilton. “Not like this, come close, so we can’t be heard. I’ve got some things to tell you that I really think might help you, that I really think might save your life, just yours, mind.”
Dan looked at Chris, his voice soothing and slow.
He was smiling at Carson, smiling as though he wasn’t concerned that his hands were bound, that there was a corpse on the floor with its skull cracked open, that the man who’d done it was walking toward him now, an old Browning pistol in one hand and his boots leaving moist red prints on the floor as he traveled.
“Come on, Matthew, talk to me for just a second, what harm can it do? Then you can go back to slaughtering these bastards in any way you think they deserve.”
Chris’s voice was calm and slow, rising slightly at the end, on the word “deserve,” as though he’d just said, “And of course there’ll be cake, you can’t have tea without cake.”
Dan watched, her breathing slowing as Carson approached Chris, as though he were sleepwalking.
“Come and talk to me,” said Chris. “You recognize me, don’t you?”
Carson was near him now, staring down at him.
“Come on, closer. I’ve something to tell you. Something to help you really make them suffer for what they did. And the ones who think they didn’t do anything, they need to suffer, too, because what we allow, what we’re prepared to walk past, is what we condone. We both know that there were those who did, and those who condoned, and they’ll all die today if you’ll just listen to me, and each one of them will deserve what they get.”
Carson was still, looking down.
“I do recognize you,” he said, his voice stilted. “I wasn’t sure it was you.”
“It’s me,” said Chris, “but I need to talk to you privately.”
Carson nodded and knelt, his back to everything else. He leaned in toward Chris and they whispered together.
She looked at the window; the small pencil-like camera was gone. She looked at the huge metal doors, heavy, slow, and hard to breach. She looked at the man in a pool of blood that seemed to have found its shape. Then she looked over at Carson, kneeling, whispering with Chris Hamilton, engrossed.
Carson stood up suddenly. He turned around, looking first at Dan and then in all directions, and then raised his pistol. He roared, a sound that contained no words, and spun around again. He ran for the rifle he’d set down on the pallet and swung it up, pointing it at the men in front of him, readying it to fire.
Dan pulled one last time and felt her right hand slip free as she watched the rifle come up. She leaned forward as hard as she could, stumbled up onto her feet, and launched herself at the back of Matt Carson’s legs.
The sound of the first shot rang out as he stumbled forward.
Dan fell facefirst onto the floor and rolled onto her back, trying to get away but needing to see.
Carson spun toward her, the rifle tracking toward her chest.
She grabbed the second baton from her pocket, an instinctive movement, but she couldn’t grip it properly, the blood on her hands making it impossible to flick out the telescope sections, so she threw it at Carson, making him flinch, making the bullet he fired pull off to the right and hit the wall somewhere behind her.
An explosion sounded behind him that shook the room.
The force of it pushed Dan’s head back against the floor, fireworks exploding in her skull as the room suddenly became lighter and a hole appeared in the wall opposite her.
The hole was immediately filled by men in black suits, faces covered, and in a burst of sound that seemed to last for only a second, before Dan could only hear ringing, she saw holes appear in Matt Carson’s chest. One, two, then a third, as Carson looked at her, confusion replaced by nothing, and toppled over toward her.
He was pulled off her in an instant and the room was filled with bodies.
Weapons were pointed at Carson’s corpse, and others, in the hands of anonymous police, moved into the room to secure it.
“Clear!” someone shouted. The sound echoed, dreamlike.
Then there was more noise and bustle that Dan couldn’t make out as she looked at Carson’s face, relaxed now, unmoving, his eyes staring through her, off into the distance.
Roger Blackett was there now, his lips moving, but no sound making it through the ringing in Dan’s ears. He touched her face, wiping something off, and then called over his shoulder, words that Dan couldn’t make out. He pulled her forward into a sitting position and rubbed her back, though Dan didn’t know why.
Dan felt his hands under her arms as he pulled her to her feet and then began to walk her slowly away from the blood and bodies.
“Danny?” he was saying, the words starting to penetrate.
She turned to look at him as Chris Hamilton came into view, calm and still smiling, as though he’d met them both in the booze aisle of a local supermarket.
“What did you say to him?” said Dan, staring at Chris. “How did he recognize you?”
The corners of Hamilton’s mouth twisted up into a knowing grin.
“He’s never seen me before in his life. Don’t believe anything you hear from a crazy person. I knew they were going to breach quickly. I just tried to keep him talking.”
“It worked,” said Roger, patting Hamilton on the shoulder. “Well done, but I can’t help thinking that Danny saved all of you at the end there.”
Roger and Hamilton looked at each other, the smile fading from Hamilton’s face.
“Considering the past scenes, I doubt he’d have left anyone alive,” said Roger. “You included. Danny saved your life, Chris, saved all of you.”
Hamilton looked at Dan and reached out, patting her on the arm.
“So, you saved my life,” he said, smiling again. “Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be able to pay you back.”