‘Well, say hello, then,’ he said, nice and calm, like a party host introducing two strangers.
Karl understood, right then. Mick had brought them to this grave, not the open one. To meet someone after all.
* * *
The car is on its roof, lying diagonally across a high kerb. It flipped twice, losing a backdoor and the boot lid, and every inch of metal is warped and buckled, like tinfoil scrunched up and then straightened out again. The front end is bent around a tree like lobster claws. The tree and the kerb did the job of compressing the interior of the car into almost nothing.
There is space, though. The passenger door is a twisted mess, the window frame down to barely a slat. But there is space. Mick presses himself up against the smashed side of the car, and a jagged shard of metal, forked, like a lightning bolt, pierces his flesh in two spots, one below and one above the collarbone.
He’s already seen that the driver’s side is a waste of time. The window is more accessible, but Wendy’s head is smashed by the roof, which looks like an inverted mountain range, and her neck bent too far, much too far, and sharp metal has dislocated her jaw so that it is at forty-five degrees. No hope. Dead. He can only hope it happened instantly.
The hundreds of obsessive hours he spent in the gym are now regretted as his thick upper arm fills the gap.
‘No, please don’t!’ he screams, his right arm outstretched, reaching ahead, but short, too short by inches, or miles, because either way he can’t stop this.
The pain in his chest is excruciating, and blood flows. His fingers fall short still.
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’
His fingers continue forward.
‘Please!’
Three feet away, a pair of eyes stare blankly back at him, devoid of emotion. He grabs the jacket in desperation, takes a vice-like fistful.
The bolt pushes deeper into his skin. An inch, and then another inch. The pain throbs throughout his chest like an electrical charge.
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ he moans.
Deeper still. The blood starts to flow, mixing with more blood on the floor. The metal between the jagged forks hits the flesh over his collarbone, and movement is checked.
‘Please, Tim!’
And there is a massive jerk, all shoulder muscle, and Mick screams as the bolt pushes deeper, bending and then snapping his collarbone, and the prongs force themselves further in, and the blood gushes out of his chest and soaks his clothing.
But his fingers manage vital extra inches because the bone isn’t an obstacle. They slip over ripped, slick flesh. The chest is destroyed, but surgeons can fix that. The heart is still alive. The ribcage is busted open by a great wedge of steel, but the heart is right there, untouched, and it beats still.
‘Tim, I promise, okay?’ he screams. ‘I promise I’ll save you.’
His fingers lock onto a rib. He pulls. At first, nothing. Tim is not held by a seatbelt, but his legs are crushed. There’s an engine where they should be. He’s jammed between the seat and the dashboard. The roof is caught on Tim’s head. Compressed from all sides. The biceps contract, and something’s got to lose this battle. At first, Mick is pulled closer, and the metal sinking into his chest goes deeper, but there’s no more pain than before. His body’s got the message – serious shit is happening to you – and there’s no need for overkill.
‘Come on, you fucking cunt!’
But he pulls again, and this time Tim moves. A trapped arm freed, and now there’s space for the torso to shift. His head is tugged back by the roof as his body leans towards Mick, and now he’s not looking at his father, but upwards, high into Heaven. Just a few inches of movement, but enough. And just in time. The heart stops beating a moment before his fingers close into a fist that rhythmically thumps the shattered sternum to keep the muscle working.
‘There, Tim, there, see, Daddy keeps his promises.’
* * *
The newspapers had opened up Mick McDevitt’s life in an attempt to find out what had turned him into a killer. The last few years had seen an almost fifty per cent rise in stress-related sickness among police officers. Job cuts, overtime bans, and complicated shift patterns, as well as an increasing belief that the public felt let down. If that could make a cop sick, or turn to suicide, then surely it could throw a guy’s morals out of whack.
‘Routines, that’s all I’ve got left,’ Mick said. ‘I missed a lot of my son’s life because I was hunting people like your fucking husband at all hours. But I always got home, and I always looked after him. If some animal like your man hadn’t slaughtered an innocent person, I always tried to make him breakfast if I was there in the morning. If some fucking gangster like Grafton had me out all night, I always made Tim’s bed when I came in. And if I got the call that another poor bastard had been cut down by someone like your fucking husband, I always said goodbye when I went out. Except for one night when he went out to celebrate finishing school. It’s a full-time job, hunting bastards like Ronald Grafton, and I was in the files, and I didn’t hear Tim leave.’
A bike crash as a lowly constable fresh into the Metropolitan Police had been mentioned in the press, too. Frontal lobe trauma could mess up a chap’s head. The papers proved it with quotes ripped from medical journals and statements from a plethora of doctors.
‘Last thing I said to him: “This is for you”. An hour earlier, when I changed some of his loose coins for a ￡20 note to spend that night. “This is for you.” Not “I love you”. And then he’s gone. And I never got the chance to say that again, did I? The one time I never said it, and it was the most important time of all. Then I get the call from my ex-wife. It’s her turn with him. But she’s let him go out clubbing. His friends have called her. Tim’s taken a drug. A new thing on the streets, very popular. Buzz, it’s called. But Tim’s not having a buzz, no. He’s having a bad reaction. I stand on the street. Waiting. She’s bringing him home. I see their car coming down the road, fast. And then Tim… Tim has a bad, bad reaction to the drug. Attacks his mother while she’s driving.’
And the car crash deaths of his ex-wife and sixteen-year-old child, the papers made a big deal of that, of course. A good way to screw up a logical head. But McDevitt had been back at work within weeks. A little antisocial, a little more reserved, sleeping less, suffering from headaches and intense muscles spasms. But otherwise unaffected, at least externally. Not like he lost a loving spouse and a baby, that was how some of his more scathing colleagues viewed it. Immune to the heartache of losing loved ones because of his job, said other, more seasoned murder detectives. And no third party was ever blamed. The police never traced the man who sold Timothy McDevitt the drug.
‘I searched his room. I tore it apart, looking for more drugs, looking for a clue. But there was nothing. Tim could have got the Buzz off anyone, anytime. None of his friends had seen him buy it. I could have hit out at dealers in that club, but how would I know if I got the right one? I had no one to blame, and there was nothing I could do. Unless I burned the whole world to ashes, I could miss the bastard who sold my boy that filth.’
Staring at the ground, Mick continued. ‘But I couldn’t sleep at night, tormented by my thoughts. Did I turn my boy to drugs? Did I not see the signs? Was it all my fault for not being at home more, for not keeping him on the right track? Was I the only one to blame all along?’
His eyes refocussed on his prey. And he grinned.