He was not, as far as I could tell, someone I’d met before. But he could have been. He’d stepped out from behind a trailer and I could barely make him out. What I could see was that he was tall, with a right arm strong enough to hold the weapon steady in one hand at arm’s length. He was wearing what seemed to be jeans and a waist-length leather jacket.
And a baseball hat.
I didn’t move. The night was very cold but suddenly I couldn’t feel it. The man was backed by the blackened brickwork of the Victorian freight depot. He held the weapon steady as he took a step forward, his left foot dragging slightly as he did so.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
It was the second time somebody had asked me that question recently. I still didn’t have much of an answer to it. I was thinking what sort of a chance I’d have if I tried to bluff him out and get the gun off him. Not much.
He didn’t seem upset that I hadn’t answered his question. As he took another step forward his foot dragged again on the wet tarmac.
‘Turn round.’
I didn’t move. Turning round didn’t seem like a wise thing to do. I tried to find some spittle in the back of my throat.
‘Listen,’ I said, trying to sound casual, ‘there’s no need for this …’
‘Shut the fuck up and turn around!’ The voice was angry, nervous, not the sort you want with a finger behind it pressed against a trigger. I decided I may as well do what he said. He was standing far enough away that if I lunged for him he’d just blow my chest apart before I could reach him, and near enough that if I turned and made a pattern he couldn’t easily miss if he wanted to blow a hole in my back.
Slowly, I edged round to the right until he was out of my frame of vision. I moved round some more and focused on the streetlight fifty yards across the road on York Way. I remembered speaking to a prostitute once, standing underneath that very lamppost. Why the fuck wasn’t she there now? Why was there no one on the street at all? My throat was completely dry; I thought about it, but I couldn’t have begged him if I wanted to. I did want to, and I would have if I’d thought it would have done any good. Why the hell not? But it wouldn’t. I wondered if I would hear the shot. I wondered if I would even feel it. My stomach began to lurch, and then to tremble like there was a sparrow stuck in there. I suddenly became aware of an odour, a strong smell of aftershave. I couldn’t tell which type. Through my fear I remember thinking, hey, that doesn’t smell too bad.
I heard the foot scrape again. Then the entire freight depot fell on my head and the streetlight multiplied and spun around my eyes for a dazzling moment until everything was blackness.
When I came to I was inside.
Somehow I could tell this even though a thick canvas bag had been placed over my head and tied tightly round my neck with what I took to be a short length of rope. My hands were tied too, behind my back but not secured to anything. I was on a cold concrete floor. My head rang and I nearly threw up, which would have been a mistake given the bag. I could feel a cut on the back of my head where the butt of his gun had connected. I tried not to move, seeing if I could hear anything before my assailant knew I had woken up. He must have been watching me though and there’s really nothing you can do to prevent the change in your body when you come into consciousness. I heard him stand up and push a steel chair aside violently which shrieked to a halt across the floor and then tipped over. I found myself pushing my feet against the floor, backing away from the sound that was coming towards me.
A hand grabbed my jacket and pulled me up. It then pushed me back and was replaced by two hands which jarred my back against the wall hard, three times in a row. I didn’t resist except to try to keep my head from connecting. On the third time I was winded and started to cough violently. I was released and I kicked out, trying to get lucky where I thought his groin would be. I think I got the side of his leg and received a heavy, steel-capped toe in the ribs for my trouble. I curled up in pain, closing my arms on my sides, expecting more.
I heard the man step back and then take a few steps. There was a metallic sound and then another one much closer to me as the chair was set down and the man sat on it. There was silence for a second.
‘I didn’t think you were too bright. If you try anything else I’ll blow your fucking bollocks off one by one.’
His voice was more controlled now, and mocking. It came to me muffled through the bag and my headache. I thought I caught a trace of North in it, Leeds maybe, from a long time ago. It was a white voice.
‘Now then, Mr Rucker, I’m not very happy with you.’
‘I guessed that.’
’Showing such a terrible photo of me around. It’s a very poor likeness. I don’t look very good at all.’
’You could let me have another one.’
‘No. I’ve decided you’re not going to be handing out any more photos.’
I heard the snap of a shotgun barrel as it was opened and shut again quickly.
‘Not bad what you did to that flash coon Rollo though, I must say. I heard that some dentist somewhere is gonna make a nice few quid out of him. He’d wet his knickers if he knew I had you like this. He’d stick this fucking thing up your arse and you’d die with a smile on your face.’
The chair moved backwards and he came towards me. ‘Me, I’m far more conventional.’
He gripped my jaw and forced the end of the gun barrel hard into my left eye, pushing my head back against the wall.
‘What you know about me, hey?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No?’
‘If I did I wouldn’t be here like this, would I?’
‘Maybe not. Maybe I’d be inside, hey, Rucker?’
‘Maybe.’
‘See, I know your name. Do you know mine?’
‘Yeah, it’s Cliff fucking Richard.’
He put his free hand round my neck, pushing it back and closing his fingers at the same time. I struggled for breath. I tried not to move too much, not knowing how much of a hair he kept his trigger on.
‘It would be so easy,’ he said. ‘No one saw me come here, no one will see me leave.’
‘My answerphone,’ I said. ‘Your voice is on it.’
‘Clever. But it’s not as if it’d make any difference if they did catch hold of me, would it?’
I didn’t answer. He was right. He could kill ten more people and if they caught him for it he’d go away for exactly the same amount of time as if they caught him now.
‘What have the Bill got?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘No one has anything.’
‘Except the picture. You been pretty free with that, haven’t you?’
I didn’t answer that either. I tried to get my hands free without attracting his attention to the fact, but he’d done a pretty good job with them. I felt the grip on my throat relax and his body move back a little. The gun was still in my cheek and he pressed it in harder. I heard an assured click as he pulled the hammer back. I waited. I wouldn’t hear the shot. I wouldn’t feel it either.
We stayed like that for a long minute, the inside of the bag heating up more and more, the silence cut only by my own breathing and the small movements of the thick canvas. I wondered why he didn’t just get it over with.
‘Scared, Rucker?’
I was.
‘Wish you’d stayed at home?’
I did.
‘Wish you’d not gone round getting a bunch of shirts all excited with my pretty picture.’
I wished that too.
‘Well, it’s too fucking late, mate.’
He didn’t say anything for a long time. I stayed in the present, I didn’t think about anything profound. My mind didn’t go anywhere. It turned off. All I could feel was fear, and pain great enough to force a way through it. I felt his hand round my neck again, this time at the back, pulling the rope tighter. I began to choke and I tried to struggle, realizing that he was going to do it that way. No noise. My struggling wasn’t very effective but nevertheless he released the rope a bit, still holding it tight.
‘No more pictures,’ he said. ‘Understand?’ I was surprised. I tried to nod. He pushed the barrel even harder into my face. ‘You’re very lucky,’ he said, in a voice that told me he was shaking his head. ‘Very lucky indeed. I’ve heard you know certain people. If I hadn’t heard that I wouldn’t be telling you this. You’d have your brains splashed against this wall like some piece of modern fucking art.’
The way he was ramming the back of my head against the wall it felt like half my brain was smeared against it as it was. Sal, I thought, bless your cotton sweatpants. But surely she wasn’t enough to stop him, was she? I didn’t know. Right then I didn’t care.
He still had hold of my jaw. He dug his fingers in and I could tell that his face was only a few inches away from mine. The face which had smiled at Edward Morgan, which had fooled a lorry driver, which had stood above the body of a schoolboy before its owner had ground a broken bottle into the remnants of the face it was looking down at. I got the strange sensation that somehow I had been in the state I was in now ever since I had started this case, ever since I had started handing out those pictures. The face was right in front of me but there was something in the way of me seeing it.
His hands relaxed and he moved away.
‘You won’t be lucky twice,’ was all I heard him say. Then the freight depot came down again.
I lay for a long time without trying to move. I had no idea how long I had been out this time but my whole body ached. I was dizzy with the thundering pain which was straining to burst my skull open and this time I did throw up. I gasped for air, finding it difficult to get the pieces of vomit out of my mouth, the thick canvas of the bag being sucked in every time I took a breath. I coughed and retched madly for a bit, panicked that I was going to suffocate, and then I made myself calm down and breathe through my nose. I listened for any sounds other than the ones I was making myself. I couldn’t hear anything other than the slow movement of a car cruising down York Way. I lay still for a second, straining to hear if he was still there, waiting for me to try and get up. The place had an empty feel and I decided he’d left.
I was lying on my front, and I tried to turn over on to my side so that I could hook my hands under my feet. I winced at the pain in my side where he had kicked me and decided that he must have broken a rib or two. I rolled over on to the other side and managed to get my hands in front of me.
I undid the rope around my neck first and pulled the bag over my head, getting vomit in my eyes and in my hair. The air tasted good. I looked into the darkness and then scrunched the bag up and used the outside of it to wipe myself down quickly. I then moved my hands back and forth to create some slack and managed to pick at the many knots enough to be able to pull my left hand out. I loosed the slack on my right hand, threw it aside, and rubbed my wrists with the flats of my palms. Then I looked for a way out. I struggled to stand up, did it too quickly, and threw up again, a heave of bile which sent darts of agony spearing through my ribs. This time it was on the floor in front of me.
There wasn’t much light in the place. I was surrounded by huge shapes which I took to be piles of boxes and container crates. I leant against one, waiting to make sure that I wasn’t going to heave again. My stomach calmed down. I still couldn’t see much. I fumbled around for a light switch without success. I bumped into the chair which the guy had been sitting on and realized that he must have been using a torch. He wouldn’t have wanted any light to show from outside. The bag he’d used on me was heavy-duty canvas and I wouldn’t have been able to tell if he’d been keeping me in broad daylight.
Eventually I found the door and managed to slide it open. I couldn’t stop it making a loud, wrenching noise. I could see a huge, broken padlock hanging off it where he’d broken in. I stepped out cautiously into a courtyard. I was at the back of a building, with a dim security bulb casting deep shadows. I was nervous. I pulled up my sleeve and could just make out that it was now almost five thirty. There was no sign of the sun. I hesitated a second or two but reasoned to myself that if my attacker had wanted to kill me he wouldn’t have waited until I was outside, with room to move, but would have done it when he had me tied up and blindfolded. Nevertheless, I looked cautiously round the corner before moving out into the space at the front of the depot. A sudden throb of pain in my head nearly took my legs away and I had to use the wall for support. Fuck it, a Brownie could have taken me out now if she’d wanted to. I pushed myself off the wall and walked awkwardly into the open space, towards the trailer which the man in the baseball hat had been hiding behind.
The trailer held no more unpleasant surprises for me. I passed it and walked out towards the street. The streetlight was still there but this time there was a girl standing beneath it. I walked towards her, holding my head, and she must have thought I was a drunk the way I was moving.
‘You got any money?’
She was frail and rather old. She wasn’t attractive in any sense I could see. But then again, I wasn’t exactly in the mood, no matter what she looked like. There would be men who were.
‘Did you see a man,’ I asked, pointing behind me, ‘come out of there. Wearing a hat?’
‘Fuck off,’ the girl told me. I was too tired to argue with her.
My car was still where I’d left it. When I got to it I suddenly panicked, worried that he might have gone through my pockets for either my car keys or the money he’d told me to bring. The keys were still there but there was no money of course as I hadn’t taken any with me. I wondered if he’d had a look and been disappointed. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home.
For a second I considered not driving. Two bangs on the head would rule me out as far as any medical expert would have been concerned, but there was no way I’d get a taxi anywhere. I got in and turned the key and nothing happened. I nearly began to cry. I waited and nothing happened again. I was about to stumble out, open the bonnet and take a look when I realized that I was on a slight incline, facing down towards King’s Cross. I put the Mazda in gear, used both hands to release the handbrake and let her move forward. When she had picked up a bit of speed I pulled my foot off the clutch and the engine fired. I drove home very carefully, feeling like someone had installed the most powerful stereo in my car and turned the volume up to maximum. It was all bass, and my head was the only speaker.
I couldn’t think about this. I just wanted to get into bed. As I drove along, pictures and sentences kept surfacing in my brain, but I just focused on the red lights and the road ahead and making sure I used the indicator when I turned right or left. I didn’t want to get stopped. I got home slowly but without any trouble only to find that someone had taken my parking space. I parked in a delivery bay two streets away. I locked the car and walked down Exmouth Market to my flat. It was cold again and I shivered into a tunnel of wind, pulling my coat tight round me. I was tired, and as I got used to the throbbing in my skull my cheekbone began to hurt where the gun had been rammed into it. That pain was sharper and more defined and strangely comforting. The image of my bed was almost too much to bear now and I hurried myself along, holding one hand up to the cut on my cheek. It was wet with blood and I was surprised by that. My bed called to me; the sheets were still twisted round my form, the pillows packed together with a nest for my head. I’d take three Advils, get in, and all this would be a very bad dream.
My outside door was open. It was an inch ajar. Did I forget to lock it? I didn’t think so but then I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to remember a detail like that. I had been in a hurry. But when I looked closer I saw the lock had been forced. There was splintering on both the jamb and the door itself.
I pushed the door open a slice and peered up the stairs. Darkness. My hand moved towards the hall switch but I pulled it away. I listened. Nothing. I couldn’t believe I’d been burgled. Maybe the man in the hat had set it up with some kids as a further warning that he could get to me. Maybe it was a fluke, a bizarre off-chance. What about Lloyd’s goon? I stood, looking up the stairs, holding my breath, trying to figure out what was going on. I was vaguely aware that I was doing it to put off going up there. What if he’d changed his mind? What if he was up in my flat, sitting on my bed with his sawn-off shotgun in his hand? I still didn’t really know why a man who had shown absolutely no compunction in killing at least three other men had let me go. What if he’d decided he didn’t care who I knew?
I pushed the door open some more and stepped into the short, narrow hallway. I tried to remember if any of the stairs creaked at all. I stood at the bottom deciding what to do. Call the police? I didn’t know. He couldn’t have been up there, an idiot could have seen the state the door was in. What if nothing had been taken, what if he’d just done the door, done it himself after leaving me unconscious to show that he knew where I lived and he could break in when he felt like it? I’d look stupid if I called the police. I’d feel stupid.
I put a foot on the bottom stair. It didn’t make any very loud noise and neither did any of the steps above it.
At the top of the stairs I saw that the door to my flat-proper had received the same treatment as the street door, only this door wasn’t ajar but wide open.
I stopped again, peering into the darkness and up the stairs inside the door, which lead up to the studio. Again I couldn’t hear anything. Again I had the same doubts and questions. I was afraid. No rationalization of the circumstances could quench the childish terror in me and my stomach started to flutter once more. I stepped forward and gripped the handrail, preparing myself for another meeting with a murderer, or the kind of mess I had witnessed in a lot of houses but never my own. Furniture everywhere, spray-can graffiti, drawers out, a turd or two among the debris. I walked up the stairs slowly.
I stopped in the doorway.
There wasn’t a murderer in my flat. By the light of the anglepoise lamp by my bed, which I had left on, I could see that no one had ransacked it either. Or taken anything. My flat was exactly the same as I had left it, the drawers in, the furniture upright, and the walls still clear, with only the numbered Salgado print to decorate them. The only thing different was my bed.
On my bed lay a young man. He was naked, on his back. His arms were stretched up behind his head as though begging someone not to shoot him. He was covered in welts, cuts and bruises, and his stomach had been torn open. He had had his penis severed, and it lay on his chest, shrivelled up small, covered in blood like a newborn rat.