Spares

Two

The guy behind the counter was looking at me strangely, but I went quickly about my business, walking the mart's dusty aisles and picking out what we needed. I got a couple packs of soya bars, powdered milk, cheap food in heataTins – and the biggest jar of Frapan pickles I could see. Every couple of minutes I glanced down the end and saw the guy was still looking at me. Not all the time, but enough. It was beginning to piss me off.

At the exit of the service shaft, I'd given the guys the 170 dollars I owed them. They were pleasantly surprised, said it had been a pleasure doing business with me, and gave me their card for future reference. The main man also said that Mr Amos had sent a message saying that I had a free pass in future. I told them I wouldn't be coming back.

‘Yeah, he said you'd say that,’ the man said.

Which left me with a little under 700 dollars, just about enough for a beaten-up truck and the gas to get us out of the state. After that, who knows what was going to happen? Certainly not me. I was in kind of a bad mood by then; wishing I'd had another drink with Howie, wishing I'd had several more, in fact, and just forgotten about the spares. I've never been good with responsibility. That much at least seemed not to have changed.

All I could sense for the future was the sound of road beneath tyres and the chill of winter evenings in places I didn't know. After so long away from New Richmond I could hardly believe this was it: a quick score, and then scurrying away back into the wilderness. The feeling got so strong that I actually stopped walking, turned and looked back up at the city. Other pedestrians had to pass either side of me, muttering and glaring, and what they saw was a man just standing, staring up at a building, probably with an expression somewhere between love and hate in his eyes.

Halfway back to Mal's I'd stopped at the Minimart, knowing there were things we needed. I expected a fast and joyless shopping experience. I didn't expect to be stared at. I knew my clothes looked ragged, and I've got a couple of scars on my face – but who hasn't, these days? This is a time for scars. It's a feature. The counter man didn't look especially charming himself. He had the slab knuckles of someone who'd grown up fighting, and the flat eyes of a man who could watch bad things and not feel too much about them. He was big in the shoulders but going to seed out front, and his face looked like someone had spent a happy afternoon flattening it out with a spade. The few other customers I'd seen were fumbling for the cheapest brands of alcohol and shambling up to the counter to pay with heaps of small change. Derelicts, in other words, in a store run by an ex-hood where the lino on the floor was yellowed and worn with age and curled up at every join to show the stained concrete underneath.

Maybe I looked too refined.

There was a convex plastic mirror hanging at the end of the aisle, bent in the middle from some past impact and so dirty as to be nearly opaque. It was there to stop people lifting stuff from the dead zone, but I doubt the proprietor could see much more in it than ghosts. As I walked slowly towards the cold goods I caught sight of my battered reflection. I guess I might have looked a little wired, and in certain lights my eyes can look a little weird. I have the Bright Eyes, for a start, though it generally requires a certain kind of slanting light to show, rather than the sickly haze which oozed out the Mart's tired strip lighting.

I knew he could still see me, even though he was wrapping up a bottle for some huge black guy down the end, so I got out my wallet and made a big thing about counting through my cash. ‘I've got money,’ was what I was saying. ‘Don't worry. You'll get paid.’ His big, impassive face showed no sign of having got my message. There was insufficient depth in his eyes to show if he was even looking, or just had his head pointed my way.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. I turned my attention to the stuff in the chest fridge instead.

‘I wouldn't if I were you,’ said a low voice. I didn't straighten, but just swivelled my eyes from side to side. I couldn't see anyone, and it didn't feel as if anyone was behind me. ‘Seriously, I can't advise it,’ the voice added, and I had my hand halfway in my jacket before I realized it was the fridge talking.

‘What?’ I said quietly.

‘Don't buy the cold goods.’

‘Why?’

‘They aren't cold. I've been broken for six months, and he won't get me fixed. Says it's cold enough outside.’

‘You don't agree.’

‘See that cream cheese? Been there a month. Another couple of days and it's going to explode. And he won't clear it up. That stain on the side there is from a yoghurt that went critical a month ago.’

I glanced round to see if the guy was looking, and saw that I was pretty well masked from him by the racks. I leaned on the front of the cooling unit and spoke quietly.

‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘He's a slob,’ the fridge said. ‘That's all she wrote.’

‘Anything else? Like what his problem is?’

‘Look, I'm just a fucking fridge. Don't buy the cold goods is all I'm saying.’

I reached in and grabbed a pot of soft cheese, and then turned away.

‘You'll regret it.’

‘Probably,’ I agreed.

The other side of the aisle had household goods, and I picked up a box of large band-aids and a couple of bars of soap. Then after some thought I picked up some disinfectant and the floor cloth that looked least like it was second-hand, before heading down to pay.

At the counter another random loser was stocking up on the necessities of his life. A pack of cigarettes, a bag of dope and a half bottle of Wild Thyme. Looked like he had a perfect evening ahead of him, but maybe not so good a life. I saw a flicker down by the side of the cash register and glanced to see an ancient eight-inch television. It was hotwired to the insides of a CD ROM player that had lost its casing somewhere down the years. An old porn film flickered and hazed on the screen. The customer kept his eyes on the action while the counter man gave him his change, and then left grinning vaguely at a scene still playing in his head.

Nice one, I thought. Skim a buck off every bonehead who's too busy watching the skin, and each day you've got a little something extra for yourself.

I dumped my goods on the counter, running my eyes over what else he had behind there. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing self-evidently dangerous.

‘Have you got a bag for that?’ I asked as he started to ring in the goods.

‘One dollar.’

‘You're kidding me.’

He shrugged, put his hand on the next item and waited, eyebrows raised but not even looking at me. I got out my wallet and put a one on the counter. I had a way to walk.

‘Your fridge is broken,’ I said, looking away from him, wondering what I was doing, why I was rattling this man's cage.

‘It's cold enough outside.’

‘Thought you'd say that.’ I opened the pot of soft cheese. The grunge inside was covered in half an inch of lurid blue mould. The counter man smiled meaninglessly, eyes dead. Even his lips weren't up to the job. The left side of his mouth barely moved, as if there was some deep damage there.

‘So don't eat it.’

‘Where can I buy some real milk?’

‘It's in the fridge.’

‘I'll pass,’ I said, and he got on with making up the bill. Quiet, tinny grunts came from his TV set, and I added: ‘I'll be checking my change.’

‘Sure you will,’ he said, reaching under the counter to bring up a battered brown paper bag. I put my purchases into it, trying to make sure the heavy stuff went at the bottom, like Henna had taught me to. Sometimes things like that swam up through the years. Then on an afterthought I reached behind me and took down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Actually, it wasn't an afterthought. It had been a first thought and an in-between thought. I'd been trying to make it an ex-thought, but something inside me gave up.

The bill came to nearly sixty dollars. I had no obvious way of getting hold of any more cash, and I couldn't use my ownCard without setting off a large flashing sign saying, ‘Anyone interested in bringing unhappiness into Jack Randall's life will find him right here’. But most of the food was concentrate, and we were going to have to eat wherever we went. Running out of money would simply bring the inevitable on a little sooner. I paid the man, picked up my bag, and made for the door.

‘Lieutenant.’

I froze. It was very dark outside, and I could see flecks of cold rain hitting the cracked glass, cutting lines across it.

‘Don't remember me, do you.’

I turned slowly. The man was still standing behind the counter, arms folded. Something almost like life had crept into his eyes when I wasn't looking.

‘Should I?’

‘You put me away.’

Oh shit, I thought. I briefly considered facing him down, but the look in his eyes killed the idea almost before it was born. He'd made me. I looked away and then back, and in that moment realized that the last five years were apt to blow away to nothing, and that in some sense I'd never been away.

‘I probably had a reason.’

‘Three years. That's a long time.’

‘I'm surprised I don't recall the circumstances.’

‘You never met me. I was just a mule.’

I stared calmly back at him, trying to work out how I was supposed to play this. It was the last thing I needed. The very last thing. We looked at each other for a while and I could hear the blood pumping through the arteries in my head. It stepped up a notch when I realized that I was holding the grocery bag in front of me with both arms. He could have had me in pieces before I got my hand anywhere near my jacket pocket.

‘You've bounced back nicely,’ I said eventually.

‘I took someone's fall, and they looked after me. They still do.’ ‘I'm not The Man any more,’ I said, abruptly. His face changed then, as a broad vicious smile spread slowly across it.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Guess we all heard about that.’

‘You want to say something funny?’ I asked, and his grin dropped. The light went out of his eyes and they went back to looking like two very old coins pressed into dirty white Plasticine. Like so many of his kind his face looked far away and unformed, as if imperfectly glimpsed through a layer of water.

I smiled faintly, nodded, then left. The wind had picked up outside and the rain was turning to sleet. As I stepped out of the store I heard his voice again.

‘Lieutenant,’ he said. I didn't turn round but kept on walking, and the rest of his words were blurred by the sound of the wind and a siren in the distance. ‘Be seeing you.’

When I was round the corner I picked up the pace, swearing dully and repetitively. A quick glance behind showed that no one was following, but that was no consolation. A phone call would be all it took, a phone call from a man so far down the food chain that plankton probably made fun of him behind his back.

All I'd wanted was to sell the RAM and get an hour by myself. It should have been so easy. Most people manage it, just walking around, without bringing grief into their lives. But now we'd been in town less than three hours and trouble was already taking a bead on me. Trouble's always a good shot, and in my case it's got a fucking laser sight. A run-in with an ex-wiseguy and a five thou contract hovering somewhere over my head. Great going, Jack.

Time to get out of town before I slept with God's wife.

The door on the first floor of Mal's building was open, allowing the music from within to really let itself be heard. Two guys were conducting a drug deal in the hall. They glanced quickly at me as I passed, but I shrugged to show I was harmless.

I was wearily trudging up the second flight of stairs, grimly anticipating getting the spares moving again and wondering whether I could impose upon Mal to look after them a little longer while I went to buy a vehicle, when a shot sang through the air past my ear and smashed the shit out of a wall panel behind me.

I dropped to my knees on the stairs, spilling the groceries, fumbling for my gun and trying to work out whether the shot had come from above or below. Another cracking sound and half a yard of banister disappeared, my question answered: the shots were coming from above. My gun finally out, I cranked a shell up into the breach. Footsteps clattered down the stairs and I stepped quickly and quietly back away from them, round the corner – trying to work out what to do, and hoping Mal would hear the shots and come out to help me.

There was a moment of silence, the shooter listening for what I was doing. I poked a foot forward and deliberately pressed a loose board. There was a creak, and then another shot gouged a trail of soggy plaster out of the wall.

I decided what the fuck, ran forward and turned spraying shots upwards as I ran.

Two went wild, another close enough to send the guy back up the stairs. I pressed the advantage, leaping the stairs three at a time, feeling a wavering sight on the back of my neck and brazening it out. I slipped on a wet stair and slid into the wall, saving my life – another shot spanged past and buried itself in the woodwork. I hauled myself up with one hand and turned to see a man leaning over the banister on the next floor, gun already raised, finger tightening. I realized I didn't have time to move or much to lose and just unloaded the gun at him.

The first shot caught his shoulder, sending his wide; the second parked in his lungs and sent him stumbling backwards. I leapt up the stairs still shooting, piling shots into the darkness, the gun jumping and bucking in my hand.

After the seventh shot he was no longer firing. I saved one and ran in a crouch up the remaining stairs, being careful when I turned the corner but opening out on seeing him twisted on the floor against the wall.

When I reached him I kicked the gun out of his hand and yanked his head up. The face was unknown, one eyelid fluttering and his breathing ragged. The body below was a mess which wasn't going to survive. I slapped the guy across the face and leant in close to him.

‘Who sent you?’ He just stared at me, eyes glazing. I slapped his face again to keep him perky. ‘Give me a name.’

‘Fuck you,’ he said eventually. ‘You're dead.’

‘Not yet, I think you'll find, and not nearly so close as you. Who sent you? SafetyNet?’

His lips managed a smile. He said nothing.

‘Last chance,’ I said. He tried to form the words ‘Fuck you,’ but it was too much of an effort. I looked in his eyes, and knew he wasn't going to tell me. I respected that. So I dragged him by the throat to the banister and swung him into the slats as hard as I could. They broke, he went through and tumbled down the stairwell.

His legs hit the banister going down, twisting his fall so his head caught it the next time round. When he landed far below he hit the earth like a bag of wet sticks landing in a shallow pool.

Mal's door looked shut, but when I got up close to it, I saw the panel of the door wasn't quite snug with the jamb. I held my breath, listening, and slid another clip into the gun.

I couldn't hear anything. I debated quiet versus noisy, lost patience and just kicked it in.

The long room. Empty and dark. A pot of noodles tipped over the floor in the foreground, still steaming. Down at the end, spread in front of the window, a body.

I took a step into the room, swung right. Nobody. Walked to Mal's room, the bathroom. No one. Then I ran over to Mal.

One through the temple, one in the mouth, and one to the back of the head.

I lost it for maybe five minutes.

When I got it together again my throat was raw, and I realized I'd been shouting. Mal's body lay still on the floor, not in any way healed or made less dead by my lack of control. Now that I was no longer making noise, I could hear movement in the corridor. I loped to the door and swung it wide.

It was the two men from the floor below, standing at the top of the stairs. Come to see what was going on, to see if there was money to be made from it.

‘Fuck off,’ I suggested. The rat-faced one in front leant against the banister, all cool indifference.

‘Or what, homeboy?’ he said, with a blank-faced smile. I knew the look. You learn it on the day you discover that with most teachers, if you just front them down, they won't be able to do anything. It's a lesson you can take out into the world, into any number of grimy situations. Most people, if you front them hard enough, will not call your bluff.

I am not most people. That's part of my problem.

I jammed my gun into rat-man's forehead hard enough to dent his skull, and spoke very clearly.

‘Or,’ I said, ‘I blow your head all over your friend's face. And then blow his head off. And then go down to your apartment and kill everyone I find until I run out of bullets or you run out of friends.’

He looked at me, eyes wide, and took a step backwards onto the staircase. Then he spat fluently at the floor beside me. He was going, but protocol required some exit line. I felt like ricocheting off the walls, but I waited for it. You've got to let them have their line. It gives them a sense of closure, and the episode finishes for good. If more people let their enemies have the last word the world would be a safer place.

‘Be seeing you,’ he said, eventually.

‘That's getting old,’ I snarled. ‘You're not even the first person this evening to say that. Think of another and e-mail it to me.’

They clattered sullenly down the stairs.

I turned and saw Suej standing in Mal's doorway, her eyes wide and filled with terror.

The others were gone.

I hadn't taken Suej away from anything, simply brought her somewhere worse. I held her close, watching over her shoulder as Mal's blood hardened on the floor, and knew that we weren't going anywhere tonight.

Three

Suej sat in an old and bedraggled armchair in Howie's private office, sipping from a mug of coffee. The smell of it filtered across to me, as I sat in front of Howie's desk and looked at my hands. It reminded me momentarily of Ratchet; a strong, rich coffee aroma, in a place which was secure.

Maybe we should have stayed at the Farm, I was thinking. Maybe this was just one long fuckup, and all that could happen was that it would get worse. I glanced at Suej, and then looked away. I should have been worrying about the spares, but all I could think of was Mal. The things we'd seen, the things we'd done. Right back to The Gap, twenty years ago. All that was gone now, turned into a dream because there was no one alive to share it with.

The guys at the hidden entrance yukked when we arrived, evidently thinking, ‘Mr Howie was right: here's the strange dude again, lurching towards his fate.’ They started trying to charge for Suej, took one look at me and decided it wasn't worth it. Or maybe it was Suej's face that did it, the blank incomprehension and loss. This was the first time in her life David hadn't been within reaching distance, and she looked miserable and alone – almost like a real human being. It was also the first time I realized that I wasn't going to be enough, that being surrogate Daddy only went so far. Exactly the sort of news I needed at that stage.

On the way through New Richmond's tunnels I'd got the bones of what had happened from Suej. Mal had been doling out the first bowls of noodles when he'd thought he heard a noise outside the door. He tried to get the spares into the loft space of his apartment. Only Suej and David had understood; she went up the ladder first, David trying to herd the others towards her. Panic, incomprehension and fast, flashing movement: it must have been just like when we left the Farm, except that I wasn't there and they had to try to cope with it on their own.

Then a knock at the door – hard – a ‘Let me the fuck in’ knock. Mal opened it, gun held behind his back, first turning out the light. Usually a sound tactic – but it just meant that the killer mistook him for me, and blew his lights there and then. As the killer planted another couple in Mal's head, two other guys ran into the apartment. They cracked David and Mr Two across the face and dragged everyone out. Suej watched through a crack in the roof, knowing there was nothing she could do and rightly judging that I'd want her not to get killed. The men fumbled round Mal's apartment and then left, leaving the killer to clean up any stragglers who arrived.

Me, in other words.

It had to be SafetyNet. Somehow they'd tracked us. I didn't know how and it didn't make much difference. The result was the same: Mal got wasted, when it should have been me.

The men who'd done this had to be found, had to be killed, and it was going to be my job. Finally, I had a task I could understand.

When I got back to Howie's bar my plan was simple. Dump Suej, borrow all the bullets Howie had and go fuck somebody up. Though a little rough round the edges, the plan had worked for me. It hadn't for Howie, and he – with Paulie slightly shamefacedly helping – had physically prevented me from going. There would still be, he opined, plenty of people who'd like to whack me for free, and never mind the five thou gig. He didn't know about the spares, and I didn't try to explain any of the history or mention SafetyNet, so he probably just thought I'd gone nonlinear.

But he wouldn't let me go, and he was probably right, and that's why I was sitting in his office and smoking furiously. Howie had people out asking questions for me, against his better judgement. He thought I should just take Suej and get the fuck out of town. I'd refused, and we were waiting for word to come back. In the meantime he sat in his chair opposite me, watching through the one-way mirror as the bar filled up for the small hours session.

Eventually he turned, and looked at me shrewdly for a moment. ‘I've had a better idea,’ he said. ‘I don't think there's any money in Date Cancelling.’

‘You could be right.’ I lit another cigarette and waited, as I had so many times before.

‘So try this. You know how women eat cake?’ I didn't answer, so he filled in for me. ‘Instead of having a normal-sized piece – you know, like a proper slice – they have a tiny sliver. A tiddlywiddly bit. Generally, my research shows, it's about a twenty-degree angle of pie. You know why they do this?’

‘No,’ I said. I knew what he was doing, and was content to play along. He was relaxing me, in his roundabout way. I thought that was okay. I felt I could do with some relaxing.

‘They do it because they think that if they have a piece that small, then in some way it doesn't count. It's too tiny. It slips through the calorie net, like candy you eat in a car. Then they can have another piece a bit later on – less than twenty degrees, of course – and that piece won't count either.’