The Sudden Dark

Twenty-One

'There. Stop.'

We were all still. Rusty came inside before he reached back and shut the front door without breaking a single strand of authority.

I came carefully to Maddie's side; Wayne came out of the back room and joined our formation. In the dark of the barroom, I could see a faint tremble break at Maddie's lip.

'Good to see you again, Rusty,' I said, even as if it felt my voice had no weight. 'We didn't really get a chance to get acquainted the last time, did we?'

Rusty's pallored eyebrows raised, pale-coloured and hardly visible at all against his skin. 'That's good, cop. Play funny. We're all gonna be nice and funny right now, aren't we?'

'Sure we are, Rusty. I'm guessing you found the kid, then. Better job than I did. Where was he?'

He laughed a little. 'You just got to learn how to think outside the square, mate. He was at the flat, alright, but I got there first. See, I found out about the kid and Clive's missus in that little rented room ages ago, before all this shit. So I rented the one next door to keep an ear on them—figured there'd be some money in it if I recorded something and sold it off to them instead of snitching to Clive.'

Maddie's face went darker, and her eyes burned a deeper rage, but I kept from wincing. I played a kind and captive audience for him. 'So you checked the flat first after the shooting and just took Kit next door to hold onto him,' I said. 'And it was you that tipped Clive about it, then—twisted the situation to get him to wait there for us, and for me to deliver Maddie to you. Then you just popped over when the time was right.'

I thought a moment, which Rusty was enjoying. 'And I wouldn't be surprised,' I added, 'if you stowed Maddie at the shed so I would find her and you could follow us to lead you back over here. Smart.'

'Thanks, mate. It was something I learned in prison, how to hang back and keep a cool head while everyone's busy running around trying to kill each other like a pack of rats. You survive that way.'

'And what about Kit? Is he still alive?'

'Fuck, mate. So many bloody questions, it's like a game show. Now I ask the questions: the money's here, isn't it?'

To my surprise, it was Wayne who said, 'Yeah. In the back.'

I looked sharp at him, but he only returned two steely eyes and a broken look of exasperation back at me.

'That's good,' Rusty said. He came forward; the three of us stepped back.

'Just let him have it,' Wayne said to us. 'If he has the money, he can let Kit go.'

'If he has the money,' I clarified, 'he's free to kill Kit to get rid of anyone still standing in his way. Including us.'

'Shut the fuck up,' Rusty barked. We all stopped. 'You.'

He raised the gun at Wayne.

'Go get it, all of it, and get back out here. If you're not back in under a minute and with a million dollars, they get holes in their heads before your brother.'

Wayne heaved a breath, and turned slowly to go back through the door. I heard him rip off a bin bag, bellow it open, and kneel down on the hardwood floor to begin hoarding out the stacks of cash from the safe.

As he was, and as Maddie and I played hostages again, I was looking at Rusty, and especially at the gun he had in his hand—a blue steel nine-millimetre semi-automatic, the same as he had the day we met in Frank Sumner's house.

'That gun,' I said, raising both his and Maddie's eyes. 'That's Kit's, isn't it?'

He didn't smile. 'No,' he said. 'It's mine now. Actually, it was Frank's—he gave it to the kid to kill me. Funny how it ended up that the kid killed him with it, huh?'

I nodded. It was funny. 'So you took his gun when you grabbed him at the flat, right? You held it on me at Frank's house, you killed Clive with it, and now you'll use it to kill us and Kit, is that right?'

Rusty's prideful look slowly faded; instead, he became suspicious. 'What the fuck does it matter?'

In spite of myself, I smiled a little. 'Never mind. It doesn't.' I shook my head. 'All just details. I learned to keep track of details, even if they're not important.'

Rusty was locked at me, a hard expression on him now. 'None of those details are gonna matter in a couple minutes,' he said.

Our staring contest was broken when he heard Wayne arrive back at the door with the rustle of a heavy trash bag weighting in his hands.

Rusty grew his grave smile again. 'Alright. Slow. Come here and give it to me slow.'

Wayne came slowly through the door, onto the floor, coming close behind us.

It all came at once, at the same time that the bag dropped from Wayne's hands and made a crash on the ground. I spun to see only a glimpse of what happened in that moment—a gun was in Wayne's hand instead, and it fired.

I spun again: Rusty was hit, but I couldn't tell where. He shocked back, but still had his arm up and out enough to return a blast.

Wayne was hit in the shoulder and was immediately on the ground, his hidden gun along with him, crashing into the money spilling across the floor.

Rusty was clenching himself back upright. I didn't think; I took the split moment I had and barrelled forward to tackle Rusty center-weight. We went down together and tumbled into a mass of fury. Rusty was bleeding hard—I couldn't tell from where—but he still had enough strength to kick me off with a heavy knee-blow to the ribs. I went winded, clutched my empty chest, and tried to regain my senses.

I looked up and could see that Rusty was starting back up from the ground. Then he wasn't anymore. His coiled, angered, wrecked expression was replaced with a burst of blind blood and flesh. He was down with no resistance.

It was Maddie, across the room, holding Wayne's gun, and able to make a single shot that tore through Rusty's broad skull like a pellet through paper.

I managed myself back onto my feet and rushed back as the gun fell from Maddie's limp fingers. I snapped her back to attention and brought her down to Wayne, who was writhing, breathing blood, clutching a hole in his left shoulder.

I took her fragile hands and pressed them hard onto the swell of Wayne's damaged tissue.

'Keep them pressed,' I said. 'Do not let go.'

I don't know if she heard me, but it didn't matter. She kept herself as dead weight on Wayne, whose eyes were bursting in pain but still had signs of life. For some reason that I don't know why, it was only then in the middle of the chaos that I could see the scene; really see it—the scatter of a million dollars that a gang had all fought and died for; two smoking guns alongside it; a man with no face and another fighting a bullet that had torn through his shoulder tendons; Maddie, alive; me, alive.

Then I looked up and found the first of the day-drinkers that had wandered to the door of Wayne's pub for its opening time discover the scene themselves, before they rushed away to call the police.