‘What about Alex?’
He paused for a moment. ‘Andrew and the others, they made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. Alex wasn’t like the other kids we tried to help. He wasn’t wheeled in on a trolley with a needle in his arm. They were treating him differently, how he was meant to be treated. Not the same drugs. Not the same programme. But then that freak didn’t like it, and eventually neither did Andrew. They put Alex on the programme when he shouldn’t have been anywhere near it. They put him on it because they didn’t think he deserved special treatment. He was my fucking son! He deserved special treatment! And when he didn’t respond how they wanted, when he fought back, they put him on that fucking cross! All I’d done for them, all the money I’d put in, and that’s how they repaid me.’
He paused, his eyes moving left and right. Thinking.
‘Andrew used to call me when Mary was out and I listened to his reports about Alex, about what they were doing to him, and I knew it would go wrong. Putting him on the programme just because he spoke to them in the wrong tone of voice? That was a massive misjudgement. But I was powerless to intervene. I knew Alex would fight the drugs, I knew he’d fight the containment. Alex was a fighter.’
He looked at me; thought he saw something in my face.
‘I don’t give a fuck what you think,’ he said.
‘You protected your son by sending him to a place where they’d make him forget about you like you pretended to forget about him. That wasn’t for his sake. You sent him there to protect yourself. All of this has been about you.’
I paused, thought I had him.
But I was wrong.
The smallest of smiles wormed its way across Malcolm’s face, and — very gently — I felt a gun barrel press against the back of my neck. I turned my head an inch to the left. In the window, I could see a reflection. Michael. There was strapping around his thigh where I’d shot him. Mary had been pulled in to him, her fingers wrapped around his arm, her mouth covered by his hand. It was the reason she’d gone quiet.
‘I told you to walk the other way,’ Michael said. ‘I tried to help you. All I want is to go back to helping those in need.’
‘You fucked with the wrong people, David,’ Malcolm said, coming around the sofa. ‘The minute I found out Mary was going to you, I knew it would end in bloodshed.’
I glanced around me. Nothing to pick up. No weapons.
‘You don’t give up secrets worth protecting,’ he said. He moved up close to me. Nose to nose. ‘Not without a fight, anyway. You’ve injured us, killed us and called in the police — but good will always triumph over evil.’
I spat the sweet into his face.
He backed away, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
‘I’m going to enjoy this,’ he said.
Behind me, Mary tried to scream, as if she could see what was coming next — and I felt the gun move a fraction across the back of my head as Michael tried to contain her.
I ducked below the barrel of the gun, dropped my shoulder and made a dash for the kitchen. Michael fired. A bullet fizzed off right, hitting the top of the wall on the far side of the room. The sound was devastatingly loud, ringing in my ears, even as I made for the basement. Behind me, over my shoulder, I could see Michael pushing Mary away. She made a break for it, scrambling across the carpet on her knees and diving for cover behind a sofa.
Malcolm and Michael headed after me.
I took the basement stairs so quickly I almost fell down. The lights were off. I headed for the place Mary and I had been sitting before, and sank back into the darkness.
It was black.
Above me I could hear movement, but not much. The occasional creak. A short whisper. I tried to force my eyes to adjust quicker to the darkness, but it was like trying to force yourself to hear something that wasn’t there. Darkness became shapes. Shapes became movement. I shifted right, my back against the wall, trying to give myself a clearer view of the stairs.
Then the lights came on.
For a moment I was completely disabled, as if I’d been hit in the face with a concrete block. Then, as the white light started to dim, shapes formed again, blurs becoming edges, and I could see them coming down the stairs, Malcolm taking two at a time, Michael limping more slowly behind him.
Malcolm had the gun out in front of him.
I looked around me. About six feet further to my right were the electrics. Next to that, propped against the wall, were the walking sticks I’d seen earlier. They were thin and breakable. Except for one. It was thick, maybe three inches wide, with a hard ball for a handle.
There was a cardboard box close to it, probably four feet deep, with a second box, smaller, on top. I edged to my right, half-crouching, using the cardboard boxes close to me for cover. Briefly, as I passed from one to another, they spotted me. A second shot rang out, hitting the roof close to where I’d been. Plaster fell to the floor like snow.
I got to the electrics box and flipped the front. Rust had eaten into the casing, but the wires looked new. There were a series of switches across the top and a main red lever to the left. I reached down and gripped the walking stick, turning it over so I was holding it at the tip and not by the handle. Then I flipped the red lever.
Everything went black again.
In the darkness, sound became important. I heard shuffling. Frustration. Readjustment. One of them said something quietly, but not quietly enough. It sounded like Malcolm.
I ducked left again, back towards the place I’d been before. In the stillness, I could feel little stabbing pains right inside the cuts on my back, travelling through the torn flesh and up to the surface of the skin. And as my brain registered that, it remembered the pain in the fingers of my left hand too, moving down from the remains of my nails to my knuckles and wrists. A shiver passed through me.
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see one of them, edging towards me without knowing it. Michael. He was nervous, moving tentatively, way out of his depth. The strapping around his leg looked like an amateur job. They hadn’t taken it outside the organization. Someone within it, probably someone with some medical knowledge, had removed the bullet.
I gripped the walking stick as tightly as I could and slid down on to my haunches, using the wall for support. The darkness was as thick as oil. He looked ahead of him, slightly off to my left, where some of the gardening equipment was stacked, then back in the direction he had come. He was still too far away, even with his back turned.
Within seconds, something else caught my eye. On the other side of the electrics box, I could see Malcolm. He was coming around one of the cardboard box pillars, half-covered. The gun was out in front of him. It was difficult to define him, but I could see some of his face and a circle of light in his eyes.
His eyes. He can see you.
I used the wall as a springboard and went for Michael, just as he was turning to face me. A third shot hit the space I’d left, ripping through cardboard and into the garden tools. They clattered to the floor behind me.
I swung the stick into Michael’s knees, and he collapsed on all fours. As his fingers grabbed hold of a piece of wood nearby, I thumped the fat end of the stick into the base of his spine. He howled in pain, and went down on his stomach, flat to the floor, his hand clutching the area I’d hit. His eyelids fluttered and both of his legs twitched.
He was quiet.
I peered around the box, back to where Malcolm had been. He was gone. Only darkness now. If he was gone, he was coming back towards the middle of the room.