Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (31 page)

"Oh, fuck off. I've been involved too, it's not like I'm getting off scot-free."

"Yeah, but we can say I made you. I kidnapped you, I've been forcing you to do things."

"No way. I'm sticking with you. We might get to share a cell."

"It's

prison
. It's not some cosy honeymoon suite. We'd probably end up opposite sides of the country, anyway, they wouldn't put us in the same place."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Don't point guns at me no more, I've gone off it."

"You're okay, though. You can leg it. You should go. Hotwire a car or something, or just
run
, just get out before they get here, okay? I'll cover up for you, I'll-"

"Hey,

Lindsay?"

"What?"

"You can take your heroic little speech in both hands and you know where you can shove it?"

"...Up my arse?"

"Bingo. Sideways. I ain't going nowhere."

"Oh god," Lindsay moans, "oh god, oh Christ, oh no, I can't die, your

248

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

grammar's still appalling."

"You fucking snob, shut it. Here, sit up a bit." He shuffles back against the wall and tries to guide Lindsay's head to rest on his legs, but the blood won't stop and the jolt of the movement makes him cry out.
Not
scream, he's
not
screaming like a girl, not yet, but fucking hell, he thinks, it's not going to be long before he is.

"Ow ow ow, don't, don't!"

"Sorry! Shit. Come on, you have to. I think. Ain't you meant to keep bleeding injuries higher than your heart? Did I make that up?"

"It's practically on my heart anyway,
don't touch me
!"

"Since when's your heart been on your shoulder? C'mon, do as
you're
told for once."

He holds his hand against the concrete for a moment to cool it, then presses it to Lindsay's sweating forehead until his palm's warm and swaps hands to do it again. It's all in silence, except their breathing and the quiet sounds of shifting and cursing from the security guard over near the door. Lindsay feels like his heart's beating through the hole in his shoulder, as if the impacts shook him up like a snowglobe and moved his organs around to places they don't belong.

"Shouldn't I... put pressure on it or something?" Valentine says, uncertainly. "Try and stop the bleeding? I dunno how it works, did it go right through or... fuck," he concludes, in a tiny, scared voice. "Tell me what to do."

"I don't know."

"You

always
know."

"I don't know." It's true. His brain feels full of fog.

That's when they hear the police sirens.

Valentine says fuck again, and they just listen, frozen into place like mantelpiece ornaments. The noise is faint and far away, for now, but far away is 249

C H A P T E R 2 2

still far too close and Lindsay feels sick again. Almost being caught is only a thrill when you've got half a chance of getting away. Stuck down here bleeding out on the concrete floor, he just wants to throw up.

"Come on," Valentine says, trying to sound urgent and determined but there's a wobble in his voice that just makes him sound very young. "Ain't like you've been shot in the
brain
or nothing, pull yourself together, let's just nick a car and get out of here, yeah?"

The nearest car's right over the other side of the car park. Might as well be on Pluto.

"Will you just go, please?"

"This martyr thing's getting well old. I ain't telling you again. If you ain't going,
I
ain't going."

"You'll do as you're told."

"Oh yeah, and how're you gonna make me, state you're in now? Just shut up. I'm staying, alright?"

It's not okay. Nothing about this shit is okay. He shuts up all the same, closes his eyes, shivers when Valentine's cooled hand moves back to his forehead.

"Please don't die."

The kid sounds terrified. Lindsay manages a tiny little twitch of a smile, although it's not even remotely funny. "Better than getting locked up for the rest of time."

"I don't want either."

"Take a car, then. Get out."

"No. I ain't a coward, I'm staying."

"I want you to go."

"I'll fucking kill you myself if you don't pack it in. I'm
staying
."

250

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

"Okay,

okay."

Lindsay's got his eyes closed, watching the brilliant dancing spots like a kaleidoscope. He can hear the metallic clicks of the kid fiddling with his revolver.

"You could've brought a different gun."

"Never thought we'd have to use it, there wasn't meant to be anybody here."

"Did you bring stuff to reload?"

"No. What for?"

"One bullet left."

"And?"

"Are you really dying?" Valentine asks, quietly. He slips his hand from Lindsay's forehead, back to stroke again through his hair. "Or
are
you a drama queen? Seriously? Cos I'm having that last bullet, if you're dying."

Now he wants to laugh, because everything's so ridiculous and soapy and out of control, and he
would
laugh if it wasn't taking all his concentration just to breathe, just to stay conscious.

"We need another bullet," he says, and he's not sure whether he's joking.

"I'm not going to prison."

Valentine snaps the cylinder closed and puts the gun down on the floor next to Lindsay. "What about him over there? I can nick his, he don't need it, I shot through his hand."

"Lies. You couldn't hit the side of a double-decker at point-blank range."

"Fuck off. Hand
and
foot. Maybe I'm a natural."

"You were aiming for his head, weren't you?"

"Well... yeah. But still. How you doing over there?" he adds, raising his voice loud enough to carry.

251

C H A P T E R 2 2

"Get fucked," the security guard says weakly.

"Yeah... bit difficult, that, since you shot him in the chest, you cunt,"

Valentine yells back. "Ain't sure he's in the mood." He struggles to his feet.

Lindsay doesn't bother trying to stop him.

"What are you doing?"

"Sorting him out."

"He'll

shoot

you."

"Nah, his gun's too far away, he won't reach it in time. Don't die, I'll be back in a sec."

Lindsay's heard people getting their heads kicked in before. It's somehow different. The angle of it, maybe. He's never been sprawled on the floor bleeding out of two bullet holes. The concrete's making things echo weirdly, and his ears feel full of cotton wool.

"Did you kill him?" he asks, when Valentine comes back over, looking smug and twirling a gun.

"Nah. He'll wake up in a bit. I know how to knock people out when they're down."

"You little thug."

"Not really. Learnt the hard way off our estate. How're you doing?"

Shrugging's a bad idea. He screws his face up until the pain subsides slightly. He's
not
dying, he knows he's not. He's pretty sure he's not, anyway.

He's not even bleeding that much any more, he's not shot through the liver or through the lung – he could go insane from the pain, but it's not going to kill him. He thinks.

"Alive," he concludes, with a half-hearted kind of smile. Valentine mirrors it and sits back down.

"Yeah." He fiddles with the guns for a bit, sliding them around on the ground and putting them into vaguely crude positions like a child making Ken go

252

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

down on Barbie, then he clears his throat and speaks without looking up. "What are we gonna do, then?"

"I don't want to go to prison."

"Me

neither."

"You'll probably get off."

"Or I might get locked in a padded room with a nice long-sleeved jumper, when I say I'm on your side."

"Or

that."

"Either way I ain't gonna be allowed to be with you if we get nicked."

"No. Not for a long time."

"Mm."

"So..."

It hangs between them like exhaled smoke for a little while. Neither of them speaks, like they don't want to dispel the cloud just yet.

As if on cue, the sound of the siren cuts out.

Abruptly, Valentine says, "If we're doing it, then, we should do it soon."

"Yeah."

He doesn't mean yes, he means no no no no
no
, but what choice is there?

The coppers would probably do the job gladly, if they came in and found them still armed, but he doesn't want to give them the satisfaction.

"It's a bit too Thelma and Louise, this," he says, and Valentine looks at him for a second then laughs like nothing's wrong, like they're back in the house on the hill by the sea watching the sun set and the wind throw the trees around.

"You've

actually

seen
Thelma and Louise?"

"Not on purpose."

"Yeah, right. You fancy Brad Pitt like everybody else in the world."

253

C H A P T E R 2 2

"Oh,

please."

He wonders whether the kid's scared. He doesn't seem scared any more.

Lindsay's terrified – but not of dying, more of fucking up and shooting wrong and ending up a dribbling wreck hooked to machines. He's never been afraid of dying. He's afraid of boredom, and four walls and iron bars and padlocks. He's always been baffled by those guys on death row who fight so hard to spend the rest of forever in a little room. He could lose his mind, thinking about tiny cells and ugly uniforms and scuffed yard markings. It was always the plan, to make this choice if it came to it. He just never expected to have
company
on his ride to hell.

"You want me to shoot you?" Valentine says, and Lindsay closes his eyes and reaches out with his hand. The kid winds their fingers together and squeezes lightly. "Or can you do it yourself?"

"Aren't

you

afraid?"

"Are

you?"

"A bit," Lindsay admits. Valentine shifts from sitting cross-legged to lying beside him, and brings their hands to his mouth so he can kiss Lindsay's bloody fingers. They leave a red smear on his lips, Lindsay sees when he opens his eyes again, and he's not sure whether the kid notices.

"I ain't scared. Not really. I mean... to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die."

"Oh, fuck off."

"What!"

"I do not want the last song I ever hear to be fucking
Morrissey
."

"Yeah, it's the Smiths, actually."

"What, there's a difference?"

"Oh, Lindsay. And you call
me
a philistine."

"You thought Ingrid Bergman directed The Seventh Seal."

254

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

"That's the one where thingy out The Matrix plays Twister with the Grim Reaper, yeah?"

"That's Bill and Ted."

"Oh. I liked that."

"Surprise,

surprise."

Valentine leans over to kiss him, suddenly. He puts his hand on Lindsay's injured shoulder, and Lindsay makes a strangled sound of pain but it's lost in the kid's mouth, drawn in by his tongue and swallowed away like a secret.

The barrel of the guard's pistol is pushing up gently under his chin when Valentine moves away.

"Here?" he says, and he's shaking a little bit. "Forehead? Temple? Tell me what to do, I dunno what I'm doing."

"Not yet," Lindsay says, and the kid puts the gun down at once.

"Not much time. Second thoughts?"

"No. I know. I want to. Just, not yet. A minute."

"Okay." He presses his face against Lindsay's neck, breathing in hot snuffly breaths against the skin there. Lindsay wishes he had the energy to do something, take some active part in this weird awkward half-embrace, but he hasn't, he can only lie there and let his five senses do their jobs all on their own without any input from him. Sweat, blood, hitching breaths, the damp puff of air against his neck, thudding pain and thudding heartbeats and the cold concrete floor and the silence where the siren was, and then Valentine speaks again, quiet and resigned and curling a bit of Lindsay's hair gently around his finger.

"What'd we do? If we had forever?"

"What?"

"Like Bonnie said. What'd you do if some miracle happened and we could walk outta here tomorrow morning and start all over again clean? No record, and nobody after us?"

255

C H A P T E R 2 2

"What

would

you
do?"

"Lindsay. I asked first."

"I wouldn't change a thing," he says, and it's only when the words are out there he realises they're true. "I mean, I'd probably give
this
job a miss, if I knew how it'd end up. The rest, though..." He trails off and tries to smile. "The rest's been okay. You?"

"We could go straight," the kid says, after a few seconds of thought.

"What? You're chucking me, seconds before death?"

"Ha ha ha. The
other
kinda straight, smartarse. We could move somewhere nobody knows us. Your place in France. Change our names. I'd be...

Jones. You could be Smith. I'd work for you. I mean, properly. Like,
legally
. We could be normal."

"Seriously?"

"Fucking hell, no, I'd be bored out my fucking skull, can you imagine?"

He

can
imagine. He can see it like a film – Valentine wandering round the tiny town dwarfed by the Pyrénées, panicking because there's no MTV and no Topshop and no motorways to speed down, no Chinese chippy, no Blockbuster, not to mention the fact that everybody speaks a language he can't and goats and chickens wander round the streets like they're people.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Lindsay says, and bites back his smile. "I'm ready, if you are."

"Sure?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"If

you

are."

"I'm

ready."

"Me

too."

256

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

"You want me to do it?"

"Can you hold the gun?"

"Probably

not."

"Then shut up." He's shaking. Lindsay covers the kid's hand with his own until he's calmer and almost steady. "Right. Let's do it."