‘Myzwik!’ I shouted through the door.
Nothing. No noise from outside.
‘I’ve got her and I’ll k—’
A mobile phone started ringing on the other side of the door. It was Myzwik’s. Slowly, the door handle started turning. I squeezed Sarah in closer to me, one arm locked around her neck, the other out over her shoulder, aiming the gun at the door.
It opened.
Myzwik stood with his gun down by his side and his mobile phone at his ear. His eyes were pale, almost the colour of his skin, and he was growing a beard — jet black — which gave him an odd, alien appearance. A face cut through with light and dark. He didn’t take his eyes off me, even as his mobile phone started up again.
He answered it.
I could hear the faint murmur of someone else on the line, but it was impossible to make out words. Myzwik just listened, staring at me. It was an obvious play: him standing in the doorway, blocking my exit, telling me he didn’t believe I would shoot him. In front of me, Sarah could probably feel my heart thumping against her spine. Maybe I fell short of the man I needed to be. Because the man I needed to be was the one who aimed his gun at Myzwik and put a bullet in his skull before things spiralled even further out of control.
Myzwik nodded at the voice. ‘Yes, he has her.’
‘Put the phone down,’ I said.
He didn’t. The voice continued, a constant barrage of instructions.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Put the phone down.’
This time I spat the words at him with venom, and in Myzwik’s face I saw a flitter of surprise. As if he hadn’t expected it, even from a man determined enough to come right into their nest.
Finally, the voice stopped.
Myzwik flipped the phone shut.
‘What do you want, David?’
‘I want to know what the fuck’s going on here.’
‘Why?’
‘No. You’ve had your turn asking questions. Now it’s my turn.’
‘Turn? We don’t take turns.’
‘Wrong. You’ll answer my questions — and you know why? Because I will kill her if you don’t. If it’s kill or be killed, you better believe I will do it.’
Myzwik glanced at Sarah for the first time, and then back at me. Something was up. A movement in his eyes betrayed him. For a moment, I swore I saw some sadness in his face.
Then he shot Sarah in the chest.
The bullet entered high up, just above her left breast. She jerked back, her blood spitting into my face, and then fell away. In an automatic response, I tried to prevent her hitting the floor, tried to yank her back up towards me, but she folded completely. The transfer of weight was too much and too fast for me to cling on to. I laid her down. When I looked up, Myzwik was almost on top of me, his gun aimed at my head.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Get up,’ he said.
I glanced at Sarah. She was at my feet, clutching her chest, blood pumping out between her fingers. In her eyes some of the light had already disappeared.
‘She’s going to die.’
‘Get to your feet or you’re next.’
I stood. Sarah’s eyes followed mine, but then she seemed to lose focus and her gaze drifted off. I wiped some of her blood from my face.
‘She’ll die here, Stephen,’ I said, trying to reason with him, using his first name as a way to get at his humanity.
But it didn’t work.
‘Then she dies,’ he replied quietly.
I looked down at her. Her life — maybe only twenty years of it — was running out over her hands, down her shirt and into the floorboards. Collecting with all the other blood that had been spilled in this room.
36
We headed down the track, towards the second building. It was an old slate farmhouse with an extension on the back. At the front was a veranda, like the one in the Polaroid of Alex, and a wooden sign, nailed to the inside of the railings. It said LAZARUS. Beyond, grass dropped away to the sea, heather scattered across it, spreading in all directions. Either side, more fields ran like squares on a quilt. A few had been dug up. Spades, pickaxes and garden forks had been left on the hard ground.
A hush settled across the farm as we approached. The only sound came from a set of wind chimes, swinging gently in the breeze coming off the water, and, at the side of the house, the grinding sound of metal against metal as a weathervane turned in the wind. As the wind died down, I looked up to the top of the roof and saw what the weathervane was: an angel.
I stepped up on to the veranda and looked in through the front window. Alex had been in there once to have his picture taken. Frozen for a moment in time. Framed by the window, the wooden railings of the veranda and the blue of the sea and sky. The picture must have been taken right back at the start, when he’d first arrived on the farm. Before the programme. Before whatever came after.
Myzwik pushed me along the veranda.
‘Open the door and go inside,’ he said.
I tried the door. Like Bethany, Lazarus opened into a kitchen. It was small, dark, with all three windows covered in black plastic sheeting. Two doors led from the kitchen. One was closed. The other was open, and I could see into a stark living room with a table in the centre and a single chair pushed underneath. On the walls of the kitchen were picture frames and shelves full of food. Above the cooker was a newspaper cutting. BOY, 10, FOUND FLOATING IN THE THAMES.
The same one I’d seen in the flat in Brixton.
Myzwik flicked the lights on and closed the door. He grabbed my shoulder, pressed his gun into my spine and sat me in a chair at the kitchen table. Behind me I heard him open and close a drawer. The tear of duct tape. He started to wrap it around my chest and legs, securing me to the chair. When he was finished, he threw the duct tape on to the table and stood in front of me. Looked down at me. Touched a finger to one of the bruises on my face. As I jolted away from him, avoiding him, he grabbed my face and moved in.
‘You’re going to die,’ he whispered.
I wriggled free from his grip and stared at him. He held my gaze for a moment, then turned away, removing his mobile phone. He flipped it open and speed-dialled a number.
‘Yeah, it’s me. He’s here.’
He killed the call.
He looked at me. ‘You’re not here to hurt people, David, is that right? You’re here to — what? — liberate?’
I didn’t reply.
He shook his head. ‘You believed you were doing something good. On some kind of crusade. But all you were doing was pissing in the wind.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Do I?’
‘If I was pissing in the wind, two of your friends wouldn’t have driven me to the middle of a forest to execute me.’
His eyes narrowed. Then he moved around to the other side of the table and his expression changed. Softened. I realized why: he could say what he wanted now, because when I left the farm, it would be in a body bag.
‘I don’t think we ever really clicked, Alex and I. A lot of us here tried to help him, but you’ve got to meet in the middle. He didn’t want to do that.’
‘So, where is he?’
Myzwik shrugged. ‘Not here.’
He pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘I’m sure his mother painted a beautiful picture for you. But Alex is a killer. He made mistakes.’ He glanced at the newspaper cutting on the wall, and back at me. ‘When he had nowhere else to turn, we were there for him. Just like we’ve been there for everybody else in this place.’