‘Now, if you’d be so kind . . .’
And Faber reads the message in a hitching voice, filled with fear and phlegm.
‘I’m in a barrel at The Brass Ring. Bleeding real bad. Faber did this . . .’ The lawyer stops, unable to finish.
‘And . . .’
‘Please, Mike. I didn’t do this.’
‘Read the fucking rest of it.’
Faber takes a few deep breaths. ‘It says . . . It says . . .’
Mike can’t wait any longer. ‘It says: If I die, kill the forker. That’s what it says. Kill the forker.’ He laughs. ‘Forker. Predictive text.’
Faber makes a desperate appeal for his life. ‘There’s this guy. On the floor back there. Covered in his own shit, probably. He did this. All of it.’
Mike makes a big show of looking around. ‘Nope. No shit-covered mystery guy. You’re in the dock for this, counsellor.’
‘But he was there. You have to believe me. I’m telling you the truth.’
Mike sighs. ‘This is a whole lotta hoopla for not much there-there.’
I suppose if you’re as powerful as Mike, what you say doesn’t always have to make complete sense, though the hoopla there-there phrase has a ring to it.
‘Open the barrel, lads.’
Two of Mike’s men yank on the lid until one of the teeth gives; the rest relinquish their grip and the barrel yawns open like a lazy crocodile. They pat around in the surface pills for a while until Mike grows impatient for his big moment.
‘Tip it,’ he commands.
‘Don’t. Please.’ Faber is begging. Maybe that should give me some satisfaction, but it doesn’t. Staying alive is all I want out of this.
Mike’s boys put their shoulders into the barrel and it teeters past the point of no return, bouncing and skittering across the floor, spilling out a fan of pills and the corpse of Macey Barrett. He comes to rest at Madden’s feet, pools of blue pills in his eye sockets and mouth.
Faber screams and screams like he’s seeing his own death, which of course he is.
‘Oh, please,’ says Irish Mike in disgust, and suddenly there is a gun in his fist.
Faber holds up his hand to ward off the bullets, but Mike has already pulled the trigger. The bullet takes off Faber’s pointing finger, then continues, barely deflected, into the attorney’s heart.
Faber clutches his chest, a final scream leaking out of him, takes a step backwards on to the spread of pills. His final act is an ignominious pratfall, then he’s dead on the floor.
Mike kneels beside Macey Barrett and is about to touch him, when one of his guys coughs gently.
‘Uh, boss. Trace.’
Mike pulls back his fingers. ‘Yeah. Good. Thanks, Calvin. Always looking out for me.’
He pockets his gun, then gives the room a quick scan, looking for cameras, I’m guessing. I draw back from the freezer porthole and squat under the glass, just breathing and waiting. Deacon is coming around now, muttering to herself, mostly stuff about me, most of it bad.
I peek through the porthole again and the only people in that room are corpses.
I see dead people, jokes Zeb.
Yep. Me too. Far too often.
You had Mike Madden out there and you never asked him about me.
There’s a time and place, Zeb. And that wasn’t it.
I feel a sense of victory that I’m not proud of. My plan was full of holes, but nobody fell into them. Two birds with one bullet. Faber has paid the price for murdering Connie and Irish Mike is no longer on the hunt for Barrett’s killer. Home free.
That’s really great. I’m happy for you.
One thing at a time, Zeb. I still got problems.
One of my problems groans and attempts to sit up. I wedge my forearm under her head and try for a tender smile.
‘Hey, Ronnie. How you doing?’
‘Who the fuck are you? Joey Tribbiani? And what’s that weird look you’re giving me?’
I drop the tender smile. ‘Let’s get you off that trolley, Detective. The bust of your career is outside that door.’
Deacon flaps her palm against the freezer.
‘What? The locked steel door?’
I sit her upright, pulling my jacket tight around her shoulders.
‘Have a little faith, Deacon. It’s a freezer, not Fort Knox.’
There’s a seal around the porthole, which peels off easily once I get a nail underneath it. Most modern freezers have a safety latch on the inside in case anyone gets trapped, but just as Faber said there’s a plate welded over this one.
Still, it’s just a door with a basic lock. A lot less complicated than your average automobile door.
I reach down inside my pants.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
I pull out the slim jim taped to my leg. ‘For your information, I’m gonna jimmy-jang the lock. Thinking ahead, Ronnie. That’s the secret.’
‘Yeah, you’re a regular Nostradamus-seeing-into-the-future-motherfucker.’
This might not be the time to ask for a second date. I think I preferred Detective Ronelle Deacon when she was blue and frozen.
I feed the thin steel band into the door’s innards through the slit vacated by the seal. A good carjacker could pop this door in under a dozen seconds, but it takes me half a minute. I feel the latch cord tugging the steel band and I can’t resist a wink at Ronelle before I yank it open.
‘Show-off,’ she says, but she’s smiling and I think that maybe there’s a future where she’s not trying to kill me. Maybe.
Deacon tries to slap me off, but I carry her out into the kitchen. Freezer steam floods out behind us like London fog.
‘Christ,’ breathes the detective, and I realise that this is probably her first glimpse of carnage. ‘Whose fault is all of this? Ours?’
I prop her on a high-backed stool. ‘Goran was dealing drugs,’ I tell her. ‘She had a scam going with Faber ripping off dealers. Faber murdered my friend too.’ I clasp her shoulders firmly, making steady eye contact. ‘They were always heading towards this. None of it is our fault.’
Deacon does not avert her eyes. ‘I think maybe a lot of it is your fault, Dan. But I don’t know how.’
A siren sounds in the distance. Coming closer.
‘Finally, a concerned citizen,’ says Deacon. ‘I was starting to believe that there weren’t any left.’
Bad timing, I haven’t had time to drill a story into her.
‘Listen, Ronelle. We have shady circumstances here. Very dubious. You have to tell Internal Affairs something they want to hear or both of us will be taking a trip to State.’
Deacon’s brow furrows, cracking the ice on there. ‘I gotta tell the truth, Dan. There’s no other way. I’m still police.’
‘There are bullets from your gun in your partner. Who’s to say that you’re not the bent detective and Goran died trying to take you down? At the very least your career is over for not calling this in last night. At most you get nailed for murder one.’
It makes sense, but will Deacon see it in time? That siren is awfully close.
‘What do you suggest?’
Thank Christ.
‘You got an anonymous tip about Faber on the DeLyne murder, which is true. You came over to find a drug deal in progress. They got the jump on you, shot your partner and locked you in the freezer. You got out and made them pay for shooting a cop.‘
Deacon’s eyebrows go up and snow flutters down her cheeks. ‘What? All of them?’
‘Hey. You’re Ronelle Deacon. You were pissed. I’d believe it.’
Deacon wrings her fingers, getting the blood flowing. ‘Okay, lemme think.’ She wrings for another second. ‘Right, that’s the stupidest bucket-of-pigshit plan that I ever heard. You know how long it’s gonna take IA to tear that into confetti? What? You hate me, McEvoy. Is that it?’
‘Hey, take it easy, Ronelle. I got feelings.’
‘So, Officer Deacon, you bust out of a freezer in your French under things, unarmed, and kill like a
hundred guys. Jesus Christ.’
The sirens are closer; I think I hear tyres squealing. ‘It sounded better when I said it. You’re using mocking voices and stuff.’