Grace waited by the alleyway for Harry the Box. He’d agreed to meet her at nine p.m. It hadn’t been difficult to find his details. She’d logged into Janus on her shell and found him easily enough – a few arrests for possession and dealing of soft drugs, enough to create a record. Harry could get his hands on exactly the sort of drug she needed. Of course, it had taken some persuasion to convince him that it was Lottie’s little Gracie from Morgan Street before he agreed to meet her.
Walking through the alleyway the previous night had cracked a wall of ice inside Grace that had hidden so much from her – it was like going back in time. Thankfully, Harry the Box was one of the memories that had thawed. He’d been a friend of Lottie’s, a hangover from the nineties and rave culture. He was known for carrying around a huge weird-looking metal box that played outdated music. He wore a tie-dye T-shirt that read ‘Love the Love’ and sold marijuana and ecstasy. Back in the day, Lottie had described him as a ‘good dealer’ – he didn’t do it for the money. He just wanted to spread a bit of happiness. The local kids threw stones at him.
Grace found it impossible to believe dealers like Harry existed in the present climate. AltCon drinks contained legal soft drugs, but the hardcore stuff that the government considered harmful was peddled by career dealers, people who cynically exploited those with weaknesses and addictions to line their own pockets. Nothing made Grace happier than when they were caught and sent to the eco-camps for a twenty-year stretch. She’d had to deal with so many addicts at Tier Two that she had first-hand insight into the suffering those people caused.
Her phone said five to nine. It was a balmy evening and the street was quiet. The buildings either side of the alley entrance had once been shops but were now converted into flats. Grace smiled at a memory of buying huge bags of sweets there when Lottie was flush and sharing the sugar rush with the gang of kids from the estate, Remy handing them out to the grasping little hands, his tongue between his lips as he concentrated on sharing them out fairly.
You know where to find me.
She smiled to herself, thinking how ironic it was that the key to helping Remy was not in a psychology book or a pristine clinic, but on the streets.
Could she help him? She didn’t remember any evidence of him being a psychopath, but back then she hadn’t known what to look for. As children they’d seen all sorts of behaviour that might have been described as psychopathic, but much of it could have just been survival.
Where are you, Remy?
Grace looked again at her phone. Two minutes to nine. A car drove slowly down the street but didn’t stop. She felt nervous about seeing someone from her past, as though it would let something out of the strongbox that her heart had become, something she wouldn’t be able to put back in. But what choice did she have? Harry had told her on the phone that he could get the very best, strong and unadulterated.
One minute to nine. As she waited, something caught her eye, a scrawl on the bricks, faded with time, almost camouflaged by the rest of the graffiti. She bent over and leaned closer. It was a small square with a triangle drawn roughly on top like a little house. Next to it were numbers. She stared at them, trying to decipher a meaning. A phone number? No… it was a time and date. But what did the shapes signify?
Still pondering, she stood up straight and was startled by a figure standing next to her.
‘Jesus, Gracie, is that you? I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
Harry the Box looked totally different. Gone was his music, the whistles and light-up bangles, the tie-dye T-shirt, the yellow smiley faces and the round glasses with the blue lenses. He looked like a little old man in grey slacks and a brown jumper, colourless glasses, an old-fashioned baseball cap and trainers.
‘Harry, I didn’t recognise you.’ Her heart was still thumping.
‘I could say the same for you. You’re not the Gracie I remember.’ His grin was the same though, one crooked front tooth darker than the rest.
‘No, I’m not.’ She returned his smile. ‘Thanks so much for agreeing to help me.’
Mal watched from his car nearby, through the screen of his shell as he took a few photos. He wondered why Grace would be meeting an old man in a dark alleyway. His eyes flicked to the clock on his dash and he realised if he didn’t get a move on he’d be late again and with the mood Sarge was in, he really couldn’t risk it.
‘Don’t hurt my children!’
Mal couldn’t look at the woman, her last words still ringing around his head as Bizzy pulled out the roll of duct tape and stretched it around her eyes and mouth.
Her husband, tied to the elegantly carved wooden chair identical to the one his wife was tied to, hung his head. He’d already taken a beating. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth onto his burgundy coloured trousers. Bizzy covered his eyes too.
Now that the couple couldn’t see, Mal lowered the gun while Sarge and Bizzy went off to look for the safe. He lifted his mask above his forehead so he could breathe easier.
Hurt her children – what sort of people did she think they were? Mal himself had checked the kids and locked the doors so they couldn’t get out. He didn’t want them to see this. They were only tiny, so he knew they were no threat. Couldn’t even use a phone. They’d probably sleep through the whole thing, he told himself. He prided himself on only ever hurting people who hurt others.
But things were changing. Sarge had compromised Mal’s moral code after he sent him to find the Gunnarsson woman. She hadn’t hurt anyone to his knowledge. But she would be able to do Diros damage because she knew too much. Did that count? And then there had been the woman in the bed…
Mal studied the man. He appeared strong, well built, maybe the same age as Mal, but taller, fitter, better fed. It didn’t seem fair that one man should have so much. But did he deserve this?
The woman began crying louder, the noise wet and muffled through the duct-tape gag. Mal tried to distract himself by imagining that this was his home. He let his eyes travel around the room, taking in everything like a hungry man eyeing a feast, ignoring the husband’s grunting as he wrestled with his restraints.
There was no denying that the ‘big house’, as Diros had referred to it in their plans, was a luxurious home. The carpet was a rich, deep blue. He could feel his feet sinking into it as he moved. The velvet couch wouldn’t have fit into any rooms that Mal had ever lived in. There were actual paintings on the wall, thick with layers of oil that showed the artist’s brushstrokes. Mal couldn’t understand the appeal. He couldn’t even work out what most of them were supposed to be. He preferred the glazed screens that most people had on their walls these days, with images that could be changed with the flick of a switch when you became bored of them.
He still hadn’t told Sarge what he’d found out about Grace. He hadn’t had the chance yet. He’d only just made it in time. Everything was planned meticulously by the clock, but if Mal had left the bar in the middle of her conversation on the phone, he’d have missed the crucial piece of information. She knows Remy Wilson! More than that – she was trying to help him! Sarge was going to flip when he heard that one.
Mal rarely held the power. He was going to enjoy it for a little longer, knowing things that the others didn’t.
Sarge and Bizzy came back into the room again, empty-handed, frustrated.
Mal felt his stomach dip and began to feel sorry for the couple. He didn’t understand why people didn’t just give it up. They had to make it so hard for themselves. But he supposed people like this didn’t reckon on someone like Sarge, who wouldn’t stop until he got what he wanted, nor someone like Bizzy who didn’t mind the use of violence, who revelled in it.
Sarge nodded to Bizzy, who gave the man a sudden, brutal punch in the face.
Mal flinched.
‘Where’s the fucking safe?’ Bizzy yelled. He took a bowie knife from his belt and cut the tape from the man’s mouth, leaving a rivulet of blood on his cheek.
‘We don’t have… a… safe…’
Bizzy punched him again and he groaned.
‘Just tell us where the diamonds are and we’ll go,’ Bizzy said in a mock-pleasant tone.
‘We don’t have anything here. It’s all in the bank…’
Bizzy hit him again and the man’s head dropped.
The woman started crying louder. Mal hated the sound.
Bizzy took the gun from Mal and then flung himself onto the sofa, his legs spread wide, staring at the woman and pointing the gun towards her from his crotch.
Mal’s anxiety about the way this was going was rising, but he had a job to do. He took a small plastic bag out of his pocket that contained the hairs and chewing gum, not much evidence, but he knew it would be enough to convince the police that the Lofthouse brothers had been up to their old tricks again.
Give a dog a bad name his dad used to say.
‘Do you have to sit there?’ he said to Bizzy. ‘What if you leave evidence traces?’
He looked over to Sarge for back-up, but Sarge was poring over a book he’d pulled from the bookcase as though he was standing in a library deciding his next read.
‘You really think you’re a forensic support officer, don’t you?’ said Bizzy.
‘At least I’m not taking any risks,’ Mal replied. ‘If they find something on that sofa…’
Bizzy stood now and came up close to Mal, chest pushed forward. He was a full six inches taller than Mal. ‘The police will find the stuff from the evidence room and jump straight to the conclusion that it was the brothers.’ He jabbed Mal in the chest, hard, and sat back down again. ‘They won’t be looking for anyone else. That’s the bloody point.’
Bizzy didn’t have to be such a prick to him all the time. Mal was about to reply when Sarge said, ‘First edition of The Time Machine.’ He sounded impressed but then dropped it onto a pile of other books on the floor and turned his attention back to the man.
He knelt down in front of him and said very quietly, ‘If you won’t tell me then I’m sure your wife will.’
The man strained against the tape, the veins in his neck bulging. ‘Don’t touch her!’ he yelled, saliva flying from his mouth.
Mal looked from Sarge to Bizzy and back again. His unease grew. Something just didn’t feel right tonight.
‘Biz,’ said Sarge.
As if understanding his unspoken command, Bizzy stood up and moved over to the woman. He tucked the gun into his belt, took out his bowie knife and cut her restraints swiftly. She gave a strange yelp in her throat.
‘I think he’s telling the truth,’ Mal said.
They both ignored him.
With a nasty grin Bizzy sniffed at her hair and then licked her neck. The woman went silent and began visibly trembling. Bizzy dragged her out of the room. The husband began freaking out, screeching, ‘Leave her alone! Leave her alone!’ He thrashed against the chair like a snorting bull.
One swift punch from Sarge’s powerful right hand and the man was unconscious.
‘Sarge,’ Mal began. ‘Aren’t we going to get the goodies and get out? This wasn’t in the plan.’
Sarge turned his back on him and began looking at the paintings as though he was in an art gallery, standing at each one for a few moments before moving around the room to the next.
Minutes later, Mal could hear the woman shouting ‘No! No!’ from the room next door. Bizzy must have taken off her tape. It was not a good sign.
They never usually deviated from the original crime. Had Sarge and Biz agreed this sort of behaviour when he hadn’t been there? When he was running from the Tube station to the office, late as usual?
‘The Lofthouse brothers didn’t do this sort of thing, Sarge,’ he whispered. ‘We can’t change the MO.’
‘Shut up!’ Sarge snapped. ‘I told you not to use any names!’
‘But the brothers never—’
‘According to Biz, they did once.’
Mal shook his head. ‘He told you that so he could get away with it.’
‘What do you care?’ asked Sarge coldly. ‘If you’ve got a problem, speak to him.’ He turned back to the books and continued to pull them out, one at a time, and briefly regard them before dropping them onto the ever-growing pile on the carpet.
Mal made his way into the hall, pulled on his mask and paused before he opened the door to the front room.
The woman lay on her back on the floor, her clothes slashed open, the tape ripped from her face, her mouth a grotesque cave. Bizzy had pulled his trousers down, his buttocks exposed, kneeling over her.
Mal felt a rage building up in him. What would Layla think of this?
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Mal yelled.
Bizzy turned his head towards Mal. ‘What does it look like?’ he said with a laugh.
‘My children,’ the woman said, pleading, as though she sensed Mal would help her.
‘You’re just as bad as the Embers Rapist! What is wrong with you, Bizzy?’
‘Shut the fuck up and get the fuck out.’ He turned back to the woman.
Mal left the room, the sounds of the woman crying about her children ringing in his ears. He stood on the other side of the door feeling weak and pathetic. What if it had been his Layla in there with an animal like Biz? Hadn’t Mal joined the group to get revenge on people exactly like Biz, people who callously took what they wanted and never faced justice?
He thought about the husband in the other room.
He remembered the months and months after Layla’s death, the agony of her loss, the anger and frustration at her attackers, and pressure began building up in him.
Blinded by rage, Mal kicked the door open and with an animalistic roar he launched himself at Bizzy. They both fell across the woman and onto the floor. They grappled for a moment until Bizzy, the stronger of the two, threw Mal off. Mal rolled over and hit a sofa. Bizzy stood up, pulled up his trousers and kicked Mal as he tried to get up.
The impact took his breath away.
‘You fucking little prick. I’m going to kill you!’ Bizzy yelled.
The woman began to move away from them, shuffling to a corner of the room, her hands, still taped together, over her face as the two men threw punches at each other. The force of one of Bizzy’s blows knocked Mal crashing into a glass cabinet, shards showering around him. He regained his foothold and launched himself back at Bizzy, pulling off his mask as they fought.
‘That’s enough!’ shouted Sarge from the doorway.
The two men, grasping each other’s clothes, faces pale and blood-smeared, stood still, breathing heavily.
‘Enough is enough!’
Sarge closed his eyes as if he found the view distasteful.
Mal and Bizzy let go of each other.
‘She’s seen your face,’ Sarge said to Bizzy in a whisper.
The woman was whimpering, her body squeezed up against a wall, her face turned away from the men.
When Sarge opened his eyes again, he said, ‘One of you has to go.’
Fear clenched Mal’s guts. Josh had had to go – another member of Diros who hadn’t made the grade. Josh had ended up in the foundations of a building. A concrete coffin. They had never spoken of him again, but his ghost was a constant reminder.
Sarge stood pointing his finger at them and then began to wave it between the two as if playing a game of eenie-meenie-miney-mo, his eyes dull, emotionless.
Finally, he stopped at Mal. ‘I don’t know if you have the guts for this. Too emotional. It’s interfering with our work. Bizzy, make it look like the husband shot him and then kill the couple.’ He turned towards the door. The woman was whimpering loudly now.
Was that it? After the last few years of brotherhood, their work together, their bond, now Sarge could just turn around and order him dead?
‘Wait! Wait! I know something!’ Mal shouted after him.
Sarge didn’t even stop.
Bizzy pulled the gun from the back of his belt and aimed it in his direction. Mal ducked and ran into the hall after Sarge.
‘You can’t kill me!’ shouted Mal, as Bizzy caught up with him, threw him against a wall and pressed the gun hard into Mal’s face.
Sarge turned around and sneered. ‘Oh yeah? And why’s that?’
‘Because I know how to find Remy Wilson.’