Mrs Garraway was shaking her head and crying. “The baby—”
“The baby what? The baby fucking what?” But he was pushing her aside. If it was moving, it must mean the child was alive. She said something else but he thought he must have heard wrong; she couldn’t have said that. At the kitchen door though, he saw she was right. Catriona was unconscious but breathing regularly, a peaceful look on her face. For him to scream now might wake her and he didn’t want to do that, not when it would mean she’d see that the baby had been born inside out.
KERWICK SAID, “I love this job.”
“What’s to love, for Christ’s sake?” Trantam leaned into the bend as he steered the Merc left. “And where, for the love of minge, are we?”
A voice from the back seat said: “Saddle up those sirens, children.” Out of the shadow, a head emerged, along with two huge, gloved hands that grasped the front seats. Black collars jutted into the grooves of a face so thin it seemed it must collapse in on itself.
“And can we have flashing lights too, Gleave?” sang Kerwick, clapping his hands. “Can we? Can we?”
“Nipple,” spat Trantam, but he was smiling. He turned to Gleave. “What’s happened?”
Traffic fell away from them as the Merc wailed and strobed through the north London streets. Gleave said, “We have to make a special pick-up. Same kind of shit we usually do, but we’re using a different hand to wipe the mess up with.” Gleave flexed his fingers; his directions were accompanied by the squeal of leather. “We’re on Pandora now. Hang a left into Narcissus. Top of the road, right into Mill Lane. West End Lane is straight ahead.”
Trantam braked hard outside Cumberland Mansions. The three men got out of the car. Gleave rang the bell. A few seconds later, a frantic voice yammered down at them about ambulances and police.
“That’s right, sir,” said Gleave firmly. “We’re from the hospital. Could you let us in, please?”
As the buzzer released the door, Gleave leaned against Trantam as Kerwick disappeared up the stairwell. “There are five flats in this block. Shoot anything that breathes. Shoot anything that doesn’t.”
WILL GOT SO far as to ask where the stretcher was before a great bright flare went off in his head. It took a while to blink it free and when he could see again, he was sitting in a puddle of his own piss on the floor, looking into the silenced muzzle of a gun.
“Congratulations! It’s a… it’s a… sheesh! What is it? Dog food?” Kerwick was pumped, jittery as a candle’s flame. Will saw, through the gap at the kitchen door, his wife being moved. She moved very easily on her slick of blood. He thought, hoped, he heard her moan.
Mrs Garraway was lolling over an arm of the sofa. Someone had used the philtrum between her nose and mouth for target practice. Splinters from her dentures had become embedded in her cheeks on their way out; it seemed as though she was eating herself from within.
“What did she do?” Will asked, his voice thick and sleepy with fear.
Kerwick snorted. “She died, brainiac. Jesus.”
Gleave appeared behind Kerwick, drifting from the kitchen. He didn’t look up as he passed them and stepped into the bathroom. “The mother’s dying. We have to be quick. Kill him and then we have to go,” he said. He turned to Will and smiled. It was almost compassionate, if you could get beyond the wolfish, densely packed teeth and the lack of animation in the eyes. “Godspeed, you nobody cunt,” he said.
CHEKE SPAT TWICE and waited for her eyes to clear. Mucus filled her nose and throat, and burbled wetly in the creaking cavities of her chest. Beyond the blurred limit of her vision, shapes rocked and nodded like restless trees viewed at dark. There were voices too, although she could not yet decode their patterns. It was a painful time and one best suited to introversion. She was barely conversant with the skill of torpor but tried to retreat into it now, seeking shelter in which she could rejuvenate herself at her own pace. The journey had been a shock, both physically and mentally. She wasn’t sure if she had escaped serious injury. She needed torpor to give her time for reflection as well as the chance to heal any injuries.
But they wouldn’t give her the chance. Again the needle sought her armpit, again the injection flooded her with bitter blue panic, the electric juice they’d pumped her with flirting with heart and brain as though it might violently dissolve them like sodium in water.
She flailed backwards, tipping up over an obstacle, landing heavily on her backside.
“What do you want?” she asked, but it came out all wrong, her lips failing to coalesce around the words as she uttered them. Another glut of sputum loosed itself from her lungs. She did not feel good. Someone must have understood her question however, for:
“We need you to find someone. We need you to end someone’s life for us. It’s a job beyond me or my men.”
The light bleeding into her eyes was less painful now, allowing her to make out a tall figure in a black coat, the lapels of which were raised high to his cheekbones. His eyes were hard and grey but surrounded with creases and crinkles that softened him, gave him an avuncular air. “My name is Gleave, by the way. Daniel Gleave. I was sent by friends to collect you.”
Cheke spat again and shivered. She was covered in thin, greyish slime. It was matted in her hair and she could feel it leaking from between her legs. Her brain had no concept of what had gone before a few minutes ago; her earliest memory, it seemed, was of the trauma-thrill of bright light scouring her head and the subsequent creep of form as she perceived figures through foggy, untrained eyes. The fugue that prevented her from dipping beneath the barrier to her memory was not so solid that it had severed her links with any of her abilities. She was, after all, recalling the benefits of torpor. She felt the instinct of attack swooning through her.
The man, Gleave, approached her, and curled a blanket around her shoulders. “I’m sorry for the haste,” he said, in a voice bound up with smells she could not place but which were of comfort to her. “It must have been a shock to the system, to say the least. But we are in great danger and we need your help. There have been unforeseen developments in spheres we thought were long extinct.”
Another voice, clipped, withering, in the background: “Unforeseen by some of us, Gleave. Not all.”
Gleave held the blanket tightly around her and ignored the interruption. She was able to focus on his nails as his fingers made shallow dents in the fabric. Neatly cut nails, with a milky white cuticle, a dull sheen. She felt his fingers warming her skin, little pads of energy. Her pores opened and gulped his proximity, starved for the nourishment that she required to function.
“I need to feed,” she managed, and the man nodded.
“I know.”
He led her through a door into a corridor flanked with plants bearing heavy, waxy leaves. A man’s voice said: “Who the fuck is she?”
“Where is this?” she asked, her voice growing stronger all the time. Her eyes were pulling in shapes much faster now, although their edges bled colour into the air, making everything seem dreamlike and unreal.
“You don’t need to know that just yet,” he soothed. “We’ll get you somewhere safe and then you can rest. You’ve made quite a journey. We don’t want you spoilt in any way.”
The floor they walked on was flooded with soft, red carpet; she couldn’t see her bare feet land, it was so deep. She could smell something rich and dense that made her stomach churn with desire. The man’s hand was gentle but steady upon her arm, staying her, and she fought with the desire to sap him. It would appear that any allies would be hard to find. She didn’t want to alienate the first person to help her.