The truck rammed the first car in the convoy, spinning it a hundred and eighty degrees so its bonnet slammed into the front of the car behind. In this second car Theo’s teeth crunched into the top of his skull, before his whole body slammed down and forward, neck and chest bouncing hard against the seat belt, cutting bone-deep before the car bounced back on its suspension, momentum knocked from its wheels. An instant later, the third and final car scraped across its boot as the driver turned hard to avoid a collision, and outside someone opened fire. Hands pushed Theo’s head down, holding him by the back of the neck. The driver opened the door, ducking behind its shelter to shoot at the lorry in front, while behind, another scream of brakes announced the arrival of a van adorned with images of swirling flowers and summer leaves, stolen from a florist’s. Something was thrown that burst open with a smoke-roaring bang, filling the inside of the car with an acrid stench, clawing at the back of Theo’s throat, then the back doors of the florist’s van opened and three men in balaclavas scrambled out into the street, one with a rifle, two with handguns, firing fast and wild at the convoy.
The driver of Theo’s car fell hard, without a sound, didn’t seem to understand that he’d been hit or why he couldn’t move. The rear windscreen popped and cracked, buckled at another scattering of shots across the reinforced glass. The car in front tried to reverse, rolled a few inches into the wall of the lorry skewed across its way, bumped back, tried again, couldn’t get momentum, bumped again before another man, face hidden behind motorbike helmet and mask, leaned out of the passenger window of the lorry and shot out the back wheels of the car in a pop-bang of rubber and gas.
Somewhere against the din Theo heard swearing, cursing, frightened men who’d trained for this but actually the training was only four hours long, cost-saving they called it cost-fucking-saving and now there are these fuckers with actual fucking guns and
A man screamed and fell, and kept on screaming, clutching at his stomach, he’d probably never screamed like that in his entire life, he thought maybe he could keep the sound in and he couldn’t, being silent was so much worse and this wasn’t even a choice thing, it wasn’t choice it was just
Then someone in the car, someone who intended to survive, put a gun against the back of Theo’s head and roared, “I’ll fucking kill him! You want him, I’ll kill him!”
Slowly, popper-pop-pop, the gunfire went out.
Sense returned, slow, spinning through the boil of blood and adrenaline that blurred Theo’s sight. He became aware that someone was trying to push him out of the car, and it was awkward. He had to do a sideways shuffle, realised he was still wearing his seat belt, struggled to find the buckle even as the man hissed, “Move, move!” seemingly oblivious to the strap that held him in place. He didn’t seem able to press the button hard enough, earning a knock across the back of the head that bounced his eyes in his skull. When he managed to unclasp the belt, he found the driver’s seat pushed back so far he couldn’t really get his knees into the space, had to twist and wriggle to swing his legs out of the open door, feet slipping on blood as he touched tarmac. At his back, the man with the gun, a security guard, petrified, full of bravado, on the verge of crying, also struggled to move, tried to manoeuvre his body out of the car while keeping the gun pressed into the base of Theo’s neck. It was, Theo decided, a very inelegant way of doing business, a terrible way to die, half in and out of a car, too dumb for a dignified exit.
A shove in the small of the spine propelled him forward, catching on the half-open door for balance, pulling himself up in a sudden stiff uncoiling. The man at his back unwound fast, pressing the gun into Theo’s spine, pulling him back and close with his other arm across his throat and bottom of his face, arching his back. It occurred to Theo that if he pulled the trigger, the bullet would probably pass straight through the back of his throat and out the other side, shooting the man who held him in the arm. The thought was almost funny.
“I’ll kill him!” the man gabbled, trying to achieve something like a defiant roar and failing at the last. “It’s him you want!”
This idea struck Theo as absurd; even more stupid to be shot by a man who thought he mattered. And yet the gunfire had stopped, and now there was just silence and blood on the tarmac.
Men in balaclavas hovered around the sides of the lorry in front. More figures moved around the floral van behind. Of those who’d been in the cars, the survivors hid behind doors and peered out from bullet-pocked chassis, not sure where to point their guns or who was in charge. A single car alarm wailed behind the lorry, set off by the rattle and roar. Somewhere far away, a helicopter chuggered, and a curtain twitched in a window, a light turned on and then quickly turned off again.
They were on a bridge. It hadn’t struck Theo until that moment. The lorry sealed off one end, the floral van the other. The bridge was short, with a red-brick wall on either side, and not wide enough for two-lane traffic. Below was a canal, black water turned stiff and matt with a thin sheet of ice. Low houses all around, yellow brick and dark windows, the street lights sparse off-pink lining the cracked towpath. He tried to work out where he was, and guessed somewhere in north-west London. He felt the gun against his skull and wondered if Dani had died with Lucy’s name on her lips and if he should try to go for the same effect, and what good that would do.
And on the bridge no one moved, waiting for time to resume its stately course.
Then a man stepped forward from behind the lorry, face hidden behind a dust mask and a baseball cap, and said, “Just give us Miller. No one else has to die.”
His face was hidden, but his voice was familiar, and now Theo laughed.
He laughed, a choking halfway sound that couldn’t work out what it wanted to be, and his head rolled back and his shoulders bunched up, and he gasped and chuckled with a gun at his head, and only Markse seemed to be undisturbed by this behaviour.
For a moment all things hung in balance at the centre of the universe.
And at the centre of the universe Corn walks towards Nottingham, the shame burning in his heart. He ran from Newton Bridge when the bulldozers came and called out for Bea, Bea, Bea my love my life I love you I never told you I love you I love you you know it I know you know it I’ll revenge you I’ll find you Bea I’ll find you alive not dead and
And at the centre of the universe
the ones who picked up a gun because it was a job to do to keep their family happy and safe
the ones who pulled the trigger because there was no way out except this
the ones sleeping, now roused, who in the light of day will say “this thing I saw” and
at the centre of the universe Neila turns over uneasily in her bunk, the Hector moored a half-mile or so from a bridge where now blood runs into the water and
at the centre of the universe Heidi takes Lucy’s hand and whispers, “I’ll make sure you’re all right,” but Lucy pulls away because she doesn’t understand and anyway, all people are good for are lies and
at the centre of the universe a man who’s only been in the job for a few days, who was told to ride with a convoy and didn’t ask any questions, and who now realises that he’s going to die on a bridge above a canal, reaches slowly under the seat of the car he’s been riding in, and finds the half-open box where they keep extra ammo and a few other things besides, and his fingers, in fumbling, close around the shape of a grenade.
He isn’t sure what he’s going to do with it.
He doesn’t know why he’s here.
He didn’t realise his job would wind up like this. It wasn’t something he ever really planned on.