No Hero (2 page)

“But that doesn’t even make any sense, Boss.”

Which is a fair point really. But... “What else have we got at this point?” I ask.

“Sod it,” she says.

We hit the paperwork. And an hour later I’ve got it. Right there in my hands. The devil himself. Hiding right where I knew he’d be.

“Electricity,” I say. “They were all having the electricity put in.” And it feels like electricity, running right through me. An actual bloody break. And it may be a tedious job sometimes, but in moments like this it’s worth it.

“Someone in city planning?” Swann asks.

“Let’s stick with the sites for now,” I say. “Time to make calls. Find out where the electric is being put in, and if there’s nowhere, where the next place is.”

Finding out at eight on a Friday night which construction site is having the electric put in is not the easiest thing in the world. Swann ends up on the phone with a lot of drunk foremen making a lot of wrong assumptions about why an unknown lady might be calling them. One of them kindly offers to put her electric in. Still, the words “Police” and “Department” stop him before he goes too far.

Finally, at ten-thirty, we have it. A growing business park to the east end of Cowley Road. Started putting the wires in on Wednesday.

We stare at each other.

“We should call someone,” Swann says.

She’s right. I know she’s right. But suddenly this is it. This is the moment. I can almost hear the wheels of a car squealing. I can almost hear the synthesizer start to play. The guitar solo begin. This is a chance. To be a man of action. To do something I can be proud of.

“There’s no time,” I say. It feels like an out-of-body experience as I say the words. This is it. “Let’s get the car.”

I’m an idiot. I’m a little man kneeling out in the cold, gripping a baton. No hero.

Swann makes an irritated noise behind me. The pretty blond. And she may not be in a cocktail dress. She may not have a hairstyle two decades out of fashion. But it’s as close as I’m ever going to get. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to heroism. And suddenly that is enough for me to put one foot forward.

I wince as I do it. I wait for the trip-wire’s line of pressure, for the blade, for death.

“What are you waiting for?” Swann is losing patience with me.

Another step. Another. And still nothing. I’m still alive. A fact that brings a small amount of confidence with it. More steps. We’re in.

I sweep my flashlight round in a broad arc. I hold it out wide. No need to advertise the location of my vital organs. The light picks out architecture that’s become familiar—a concrete framework, interior walls sketched out in plumbing and nascent electrical work. Round and round I go. My baton is sweat-slick in my hand.

Nothing. No movement.

I flick my flashlight at the stairs. Swann’s light follows mine. Up we go. One of us on each side of the wall. At the top we go wide. Another sweep. Stepping lightly toward shadowed corners.

Still nothing.

Another flight of steps. Another empty floor. My heart is beating heavy and hard. My breath is shallow. I have to stop from jumping at the shadows I’m making. Swann is steely-eyed, her flashlight gripped like a pistol.

And then... I hold up a hand for Swann to be still. I want to be sure. I close my eyes, try to calm my breathing. And yes. There it is again. I hear it again. A sound from above. Like metal across concrete.

I look at Swann. And she’s heard it too. We move together. Tight and fast. Fourth floor. And the noise is still above us. More definite now. More certain. We move to the steps. A definite clang. Metal on metal.

I pause. Swann, already a step above me, turns, looks at me.

“What?” she mouths.

I’m thinking. My imagination at work again. He’s got someone up there. He’s setting something up. Some part of his ritual. And when he’s disturbed... He will not go gentle into that good night. He’ll resist. And he’s fast and he’s strong. He has to be. Or he has a gun. Probably a gun. And Swann is the obvious target. Take out the girl, make the escape.

No. It shouldn’t go down like that.

“I go first,” I whisper. “You stay down here. If he gets past me, he thinks he’s home free. But you’re here. You get the drop on him if I can’t.”

She hesitates, her face slowly curling up. “Wait...” she says. “I don’t think...”

“Don’t make me pull rank, Sergeant.” That sounded cooler in my head. In the real world it’s just a bit harsh. And I’m still not convinced I should really be in charge of anyone, but I think the irony of that is lost because I really am in charge of people, and Swann’s face just goes sour.

“I think you just did,” she says.

Another noise above us. And I don’t want a fight here, now. I don’t want her to be pissed at me. I don’t want... I don’t want to lose this collar.

So I head up. A man alone. With each step the thunder of my heart grows. With each step I slow, I crouch lower. By the time I get to the top of the stairs my eyes barely make it above the final riser.

The roof’s not been done yet and it’s colder up here, the wind blowing stronger. A few stars manage to shine through the glow of Oxford’s streetlamps. I don’t need the flashlight to see.

Outlined by moonlight, a figure crouches down by a pile of electrical cable. He’s dressed smartly—dark suit, a navy-blue tie that flaps in the wind. There’s an incongruous red toolbox on the ground next to him. His back is to me. I can’t see what he’s doing. But he can’t see me either.

I tighten my grip on the baton. Tighten it further. It feels like either the steel or my knuckles are going to have to give out. My teeth are clamped down so hard I hear a filling creak. I can make out each bump and crevice in the concrete beneath my hand. I hear the rasp my fingertips make as I move them, getting ready to push myself up into a stand. I hear the movement of my ribs as I fill my lungs to shout.

Then—

—where the hell did she come from?

A woman—five foot six, maybe a little shorter, hair loose and flapping; she’s wearing a large, red, flannel shirt, scuffed jeans. Her back is to me as well. She’s moving silently. Walking toward the man in the suit. And she’s got a sword.

A real bloody sword.

It’s about three feet long, the blade shining white in reflected moonlight, curved slightly, balanced lightly in her hand. She lets the tip fall, brush the ground. It scrapes, fires off pale blue sparks.

The man at the wires hears it, stands up fast, turns around, sees her. He takes a few steps, out into the center of the room.

I want to shout, to yell, to move, to do some-bloody-thing. But I stay there crouched, silent, paralyzed. Just waiting for it. Just like the man in the suit waits. And if I could just curse under my breath, some whispered litany of obscenity, if I could just turn away, do anything, if I could just exhale, get rid of this pregnant breath caught bloated inside me... But I just crouch and I just watch.

She’s about a yard from him. A blade’s length away. He stands, both hands held out, but low, loose, already defeated. She still has the blade by her side. They are both as silent as I am.

Then the woman jumps. It’s so fast I barely see it. But she’s abruptly airborne, abruptly up and to the man’s right, twisting in the air, her arm moving, and Jesus, Joseph, Mary, anybody, it’s so fast I can barely make it out, there’s barely even a blur. One moment her arm is still down, and then it’s up. Straight and high. She seems suspended for a moment, everything hanging still. I know what’s going to come next. I just know. But still when it does, oh God, oh Jesus.

She snaps the blade down. Again I miss the motion itself, only see the aftermath, the arm pointed down, the blade red and slick. Part of the man’s skull is in the air, flipping over and over. The tips of his ears tumble down to the ground, like discarded earrings. But there is something else, something more.

White beads burst from the wound, like translucent pearls, like giant fish eggs, each one half an inch across or more. They shimmer and shine, lit by some inner luminescence. They spray out like the seeds blown from a dandelion. And in the center, thrashing in what is left of the man’s head...

My gorge rises. I taste bile.

It is something like a maggot, something like a caterpillar, except it is the breadth and length of my forearm. It’s the same translucent white as the giant pearls sifting down through the air around it. It seems to flicker just as they do. I can see through it, can see the awful sheer wound surrounding it, can see the blood spraying through the space it seems to occupy. It has a mouth like a beak, a dirty yellow color, and all around are tendrils, string-thick tentacles that thrash through the air as its segmented body bucks back and forth, back and forth in what is left of the man’s skull.

Jesus.

I... Jesus... Maybe the victim isn’t the only one losing his mind here.

Still, it’s the sight of that thing, that inhuman, alien thing writhing as the body slumps to the floor, it’s the way it and the pearls simply wink out of existence that finally loosens the breath caught in my chest. I exhale, a great screaming, braying exhalation of fear, and horror, and sheer bloody outrage that such a thing could exist let alone occur before my eyes.

I breathe in but it doesn’t catch, and I whoop out a noisy spray of breath again. The woman looks up. I hear Swann below me. She’s starting to move, but she might as well be on the other side of the world.

I try to stand up. I jerk spastically. I can’t quite bring everything online, can’t quite get my shit together. The woman with the sword crosses the roof. It seems to only take her an instant. Even her speed is terrifying.

I try to look at her face. Some part of me that is autopiloting the role of policeman in these final moments tries to jot down the details. Long bangs, so I can barely see her eyes. Long nose. Long cheeks. Sallow too. An underfed look. The red flannel shirt flaps loosely over a dark green tank top.

And the sword. The brilliant white sword.

And then the tip is gone from sight. All I see is my chest, and red, and the blade sticking from my chest, and red, and that is where the tip is, right in there, right inside of me, and red, and Jesus I never thought I could hurt like this, and red, and red, and black, and red, and black, and black, and black.

An alleyway. Dirt-strewn. Trash-spattered. And I think I must have fallen down, must have landed badly, because everything hurts. My chest hurts. Jesus, it feels like I’m splitting in two, starting right there, right between my ribs. And how did I get here?

Behind me I hear a rustle of movement, like a thousand petticoats all moving out of sync, yet together. And then...

...black

The first thing I’m really aware of, that is really solid and true to me as I come out of the morphine dream, is the beeping. Even before the red vagueness of my closed eyelids. It’s something like an alarm clock. I want it to stop, before it reels me fully out of sleep. I reach for the clock, to flip the damn thing off—

—and then the pain.

My eyes snap open with a gasp, my chest fills with air and the pain comes again, sharper. I go to gasp again but catch myself, the air coming in a thin sucking whistle instead.

“Ow,” I say. “Oh balls, ow.” Not quite up there with Shelley or Yeats, I’ll admit, but honesty is a virtue, as my mum always taught me.

“Ah,” says a woman’s voice I don’t recognize. “Finally.”

The room comes into focus slowly. I want to blink it in faster but I’m afraid that’ll bring the pain back somehow, so I let it come at its own pace.

At first all I see is the shadow of the voice’s owner, then the outline of her, then the dark swathe of her hair contrasting with the whiteness of her skin, and then finally her features.

She is very close to having a pretty face. But there’s a hardness to her that seems reluctant to lapse and let her cross the boundary into simple prettiness. She has a structured look, everything ordered. Her hair is carefully clipped into place. Her suit is straight edges and diagonal lines. Fashionable without being flashy, but without looking comfortable either. She seems a rather severe woman. The sort who’d play a nun in a movie and hit your knuckles with a ruler.

Reflexively I clench my fists to hide the fingers. Then I rather wish I hadn’t because that hurts too.

“Detective Arthur Wallace?” she asks.

I go to answer but it turns out that my mouth is rather dryer than I thought and so my tongue does some ungainly flopping until the woman fetches me a glass of water.

“Yes,” I finally manage, though I suspect she might have forgotten the original question by this point.

“You suffered a punctured lung,” she states without preamble.

“Oh,” I say, and then sit back as the memories pick themselves up off the floor of my mind and organize themselves like some kind of automated jigsaw. Vignettes assemble out of order, slowly taking their place in the whole. I remember the pain. I remember the blade. I remember being stabbed. The whole thing takes me a while, but I’m beginning to suspect I might be a little higher on the morphine than I originally thought.

Finally, I conclude with, “Bollocks.”

The woman clears her throat. “Yes.”

And then, another jigsaw piece floating up out of the miasma. “Swann,” I say. “Sergeant Alison Swann. What happened to her?”

“No need to worry, Detective,” says the woman. “Sergeant Swann went quite unharmed. Your attacker is reported to have jumped off the side of the building.”

“Jumped off... We were... How many stories?”

“Five,” says the woman, “according to Sergeant Swann.” She shrugs. “She lost track of your attacker after that, more concerned with your well-being than making the arrest it seems.”

The arrest... the victim... The victim. I see it again. I see what was in his head. The maggot, worm, thing... I see the impossibility of it all. The reality. I close my eyes.

“Oh shit...” I moan, passing up another opportunity for eloquence.

“Detective Wallace?” The woman sounds concerned, which is decent of her.