Ethan Justice: Origins

19: Sunday 25th September, 13:45

EXITING THE LADIES' toilets, Savannah Jones had made up her mind to bolt.

She was a fighter, she had always been a fighter, would always be a fighter. She had realised this at the moment her mind recovered from the temporary shutdown it had experienced in the bathroom.

The stupor had begun, not with the gunshots whistling past her ears and threatening instant death, but with the realisation that she was glad Christos was dead. No, that wasn't true. It was far more than that. For a second she had wanted to scream out with glee, sling on her shoes and to stomp a narrow heel through his unseeing eyeball, covering it with ruptured eye entrails and skewered brain matter. For someone who had never wished anyone dead, not even in jest, this revelation had tipped her over the edge.

When the agents had offered to 'take care of' Christos in return for her assistance, her brighter mood felt justified. She had passed on the responsibility and would never have been witness to the outcome of what 'taking care of' might have meant. Even so, she had realised that there was a part of her surfacing that she neither liked nor knew existed.

Her mother had always told her, 'there are no good or bad people, only shades of grey and mixtures of fortune'. Savannah had always taken this to mean that even the kindest of people could do the evilest of things if put in a set of particular circumstances. Maybe it was true, she really didn't know anymore. She did suspect that her recent exposure to violence was at the root of her lack of empathy at the death of Christos the Greek. If she could remove herself from this influence, she would return to the person that her mother had strived so tenaciously to raise.

The toilets were behind Savannah, opposite the lifts which, with the stairwell, made up the centre of the building. A fire door stood between her and the stairwell and then, before she knew it, the door was behind her and her right foot was on the first stair downwards. A shiver passed through her and she froze. Was she leaving because of her mother and the moral dilemma or was it because of the danger to her life? Or was it because of Smith?

Truthfully, she told herself and so therefore it must have been true: John Smith was not really her type. So what was her type? She had never been a good judge of partner material. All she knew was that she had made poor choices and that she knew enough about Smith to understand he was a continuation of this trend. Why couldn't she get him out of her head?

Savannah's left foot eased down onto the second stair to freedom, her hand gripping the cold metal railing like a separate entity which refused to follow her feet. A plethora of jumbled thoughts exploded in her head rooting her to the spot.

Was freedom just a staircase away?

Out there was a maniac who had already attempted to spread her limbs and organs around the inside of a luxury Mercedes. The danger to her person existed whether she fled or stayed. What if her mother had been wrong? Why shouldn't she take comfort in the bloody death of a man who was literally willing to sell her backside for profit?

Why hadn't Smith wanted her? Maybe he was gay? No she had felt the passion in his kiss and through his jeans. Yet, he had deliberately upset her, hadn't he? Did he already have a girlfriend or was he actively pursuing someone he had feelings for? John Smith, John Smith, John Smith... Why did it keep coming back to John Smith?

Whatever his reason for snubbing her advances, she couldn't fault his chivalry. What had her mother raised anyway? A victim? A coward? An idiot? Her mother's teachings hailed from the Valleys in Wales, where small, close-knit communities rallied around one another. This was modern times in the big city and victims, cowards and idiots were the fodder for London's criminal community. Savannah was no longer the victim, would no longer be prey to the scum that sought to crush her spirit. She shared her mother's spirit and that was gift enough.