Acts of Violence (28 page)

DeMartino turned
his eyes back to me. I smiled.

‘My guess is the
UPSF is coming after all,’ I said.

He hesitated.
Thought for a few seconds. He was still cool and collected. Just more unsure
than usual.

‘It doesn’t matter.
The data chip is gone. All they’ll find is a lot of dead men and some strippers
saying those men kidnapped them. Do you think my bosses are careless enough to
allow any trails from us to them?’

I knew he was
right. And telling the truth. The off-worlders had been organised from the
start. They wouldn’t allow themselves to be traced by the authorities because
of something as simple as a failed business takeover.

‘So what now?’
DeMartino said again. ‘Detective Lawrence arrests us both and returns to Harem
a hero? Doesn’t seem the place for it, does it? You appear to have come alone,
Detective. Is that because you don’t know who you can trust in your own
precinct? Because so many of those fine officers were in Webster’s pocket, and
now in ours?’

I thought about it.
He’d be right. Lawrence would be alone. No backup. ‘Whom.’

DeMartino ignored
me and turned his head to Lawrence. Turned his body halfway. Trying to give
himself the chance to shoot either one of us. I looked at Lawrence too. His
face gave nothing away. I knew he was calculating his chances of getting us
both to Anshan, or to wherever the UPSF had agreed to meet him, without
DeMartino’s men stopping him. Probably the idea of shooting us both on the spot
was floating around his head too. But he was better than that.

This was a stand
off and it wasn’t going to end well. Especially for me. I had no problem
shooting DeMartino, but I didn’t want to shoot Lawrence. Neither of them, on
the other hand, cared who they shot.

My arm was
beginning to get tired holding the gun out. But the moment of peace didn’t last
long.

DeMartino knew my
eyes would be on Lawrence, because he’d intentionally passed the focus over to
him. After that, all he had to do was wait for the inevitable moment that Lawrence
looked at me. And he did. I would never get to know what decision Lawrence had
come to, but when he reached one, his eyes flicked from the Italian to me.

In that instant,
DeMartino swung his gun to the left. In the time it took, me and Lawrence both
caught on, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t know who fired first. It was just a
couple of seconds of deafening noise and flashing. In the cacophony of gunfire,
I wasn’t sure who fired what. I thought I fired three or four shots into
DeMartino.

The claps of the
gunfire resounded in the metal around us for what seemed like a whole minute. Then
it was just the pattering rain again.

DeMartino was dead.
He lay slumped against the facedown UPSF impostor. His eyes were closed and his
mouth was open. The way he’d fallen had caused his arm to get propped up. His
gun was still raised as though he hadn’t yet realised he was dead.

Lawrence was still
alive. But not for long. At least two of DeMartino’s shots had landed. He lay
on his side in the mud and the blood. Some of it his. His eyes were locked on
me. They slowly moved down to where his gun lay in front of him. Then they
closed.

I stood and
listened to the pattering for a minute. I didn’t know what to feel. Had
everything just changed? Or had nothing changed? I felt the same. The one man
who was determined to put me in prison or the chair was now dead. So was the
one man I’d considered an ally of sorts. Perhaps when the UPSF arrived, I’d
tell them I was helping Lawrence and that would be that. But I couldn’t think
that far ahead. My mind wouldn’t leave this circle of shipping containers.

Eventually I
flicked the safety on the gun, checked the barrel wasn’t too hot, and stuffed
it back in my waistband. Then I stepped over to DeMartino. I stood right where
he seemed to be aiming his gun at me again. I took it out of his hand. Dropped
it in the mud. Then I reached inside his jacket. Pulled out a cigar. In my pocket,
I found the lighter. Maybe I’d quit tomorrow.

I lit the cigar and
took a long drag. Then I looked down at DeMartino. ‘How do you like me now?’

He didn’t answer.

SIXTEEN
| NO PLACE FOR A HERO

There was a sound behind me. I
turned to see Lawrence dragging himself through the mud. Maybe he hadn’t been
hit as badly as I thought. I walked over and tried to help him back against the
container. He shrugged me off weakly with a grunt.

‘Are the UPSF
really coming?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘And I
told ‘em.’ It sounded like he had to force his voice out through blood. ‘Told
‘em you were a killer helping him.’ He looked at DeMartino. Smiled. Tried to
laugh, but it didn’t really happen. ‘They’re gonna fuck you up.’ The laugh made
it out a little better this time.

Even in death he
was going to get me. If I’d been able to think properly a minute ago, perhaps
I’d have remembered that Lawrence would have recorded our conversation. So now
the UPSF had that.

I smiled too. A
laugh was a little beyond my humour though. Lawrence was a hero. He’d got his
man. Me. A killer. He’d got DeMartino. He’d got the UPSF to take notice of
Harem. They were on their way now. They would shut down everything Webster had
been doing. Everything the off-worlders were in the middle of trying to take
over. They’d take a good hard look at the police. Stamp out the corruption. Maybe
Harem had a future after all. Perhaps not bright, but not so dark.

But DeMartino was
right. This was no place for a hero.

‘I’m sorry,’ I
said. He ignored me. It was true though. I was sorry for everything that had
happened. I wasn’t who I was meant to be. The man I’d tried to be. The man I’d
spent the last ten years pretending to myself that I was. And I was sorry that
I’d got Lawrence killed.

I threw the cigar
away. Didn’t like the taste anyway.

It was only then
that I realised I’d lost something. I tried every pocket but all I had was my
gun and the lighter. And an old handkerchief. The datapad was missing. That
was probably why I’d been unable to think any further than the ring of
containers. A part of me must have noticed it was gone earlier. But I’d been
too focused on other things. That part of me knew what happened now. That part
of me could see how this ended.

Lawrence’s
breathing became more laboured. The pattering continued, oblivious to our
imminent death, and uncaring. Behind me, the pattering had a different quality.
More of a tapping.

I turned around. Standing
on the fringe of the torchlight was a girl in a transparent raincoat. It was
going to be either her or the gorilla. She wouldn’t have let me away with it.
Even if DeMartino had been telling the truth, she’d have already passed the
datapad on to the gorilla. I was glad the Italian lied.

The rain tapped out
a smooth rhythm on her plastic-covered shoulders and her flattened, sodden
hair. A beaten, nearly broken angel of vengeance. Her eyes glittered as she
stared me down like I was a mouse and she was a cobra.

Sixteen raised her
revolver. Anchored it with her other hand. Squeezed the trigger.

I felt something
hard hit my back. All of my back. It took a couple of seconds to realise it was
me hitting the shipping container. I couldn’t make sense of it. Then my legs were
suddenly not holding me up properly. I began to slide down until I was sitting
in the mud beside Lawrence. I didn’t know if he was even still alive.

She took a few
steps towards me. Pulled something out of her pocket. It was a black
rectangular device.

‘I took this out of
your pocket earlier,’ she said.

I looked down. Red
was soaking into my coat. I had a bullet hole in my lapel. Forget that. I had a
bullet hole in my chest. Why couldn’t I feel it?

‘Like DeMartino
said: I was there before Webster, so I was pretty sure the whole time. I hoped
I was wrong. You were helping me, after all. But this was my proof.’

She switched the
pad on. Touched the holographic screen. Then dropped it in the mud in front of
me and Lawrence.

‘Thank you for
helping free the girls. Are the others at the train?’

It took a moment
for her words to get through to me. I nodded. Or I thought I had anyway. I
couldn’t feel my head. Or the rain beating against my face.

‘A flyer,’ I said.
I heard the same voice from my own mouth that I’d heard from Lawrence a minute
ago. I couldn’t swallow the blood back down. ‘At the mansion wall.’

Sixteen gave a
small smile. I couldn’t tell what kind of smile it was. Apologetic?
Sympathetic? Grateful? Triumphant?

Then she melted
into the shadows again. ‘Let’s go,’ I heard her say. From the squelching on the
other side of the containers, I guessed there were at least a dozen people with
her. A rumble from a giant throat. They’d be safe.

As the sounds gave
way to the rain again, I looked down at the datapad. When it had detected that
it was lying on a surface, it projected the hologram up. Through whichever of
my eyes was still working, I watched the 3D image of myself and the barmaid.
Listened to the distorted conversation. Heard the words I’d blotted out with
the rest of the early morning. After the pale orange, translucent barmaid had
denied for the third time that she knew anything about Webster’s trafficking
operation, and that she was involved, the little pale orange me lost his
temper. Hit her. He was desperate to get the truth. Didn’t believe that she
wasn’t there to spy on his investigation for Webster.

I didn’t remember
any of it. Only the red in my eyes before. Then the red on my hands after.

The girl smashed a
plate on me, only succeeding in cutting herself. She tried to run for the door
so I shoved her. Harder than I meant to. She hit the wall face first. The
little orange me put his hands on his head. Pulled at his hair in some emotion
I couldn’t remember. Distress and self-loathing most likely. I hated violence
towards women and anyone who perpetrated it.

The girl was badly
hurt and I was desperate and panicking. The recording was good. Detailed. Even
the tears on my orange face were visible. The girl was falling over everything.
I looked like a terrified driver who’d hit an animal on the road and didn’t
know if it should be put out of its misery.

She grabbed a lamp to
hit me with but I hit her hand so the lamp smashed over her own head. She
collapsed. Toppled the armchair.

Then came a minute
of pacing and hitting myself in the head like a psychopath. Then roaring out
the last of my rage and anguish into a pillow. Finally, I lifted her and put
her on the bed. Lay beside her, staring at her for a while. Long enough that
whoever edited the recording sped it up at that point. I kissed her. Told her I
was sorry. Then left.

Maybe I was in
shock when I left. Maybe that’s why I’d gone about my morning normally. Maybe
that was why it didn’t even occur to me when I returned that the cops were
there for me.

The recording
turned itself off.

I didn’t know how
she’d got the broken arm or moved from the bed to the overturned chair.
Probably Sixteen. Perhaps she’d tried to get the girl out of the apartment and
downstairs to DeMartino, but found it too hard. Or maybe realised then that
she’d found the data chip. Maybe the girl wasn’t even dead when I left. I
didn’t check her pulse. I was too out of it. I knew from the recording that I
hadn’t caused most of the damage to her. My bet was that Little Dick had done it
when he found her dead and useless to him. It would be one of them who’d called
the cops, too. Little Dick would like me getting put away for it, but also
needed me free to spill my guts. Sixteen was too good a person to leave Leonne
lying there, dead, alone and with no one to care about it. Probably her.

I couldn’t really
think about it. If I’d still been able to feel anything, I’d have felt sick to
my stomach. Watching that made me realise I belonged in Anshan, strapped to a
table with needles in my arm. Or lying in the mud and the rain with a hole in
my chest.

‘I hope you burn,’
Lawrence mumbled, a few inches from my ear. I knew I would. I wasn’t going to
see Lucy. I was going the other way. What I’d done here tonight wouldn’t change
that.

I couldn’t even
tell if I was breathing. Blood ran in a thick string from my mouth onto my
coat. My head rolled back. I didn’t feel it hit the container.

The rain blurred my
eyes. But, just as I thought my eyesight had gone completely, a distant flash
of thrusters appeared over the container in front of me and shone for two
seconds before they were swallowed up by the clouds.

‘Last thing I
wanted,’ Lawrence said. Whispered, really. ‘Was to die with you.’

He wasn’t. I’d
already died. Ten years ago.

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