The Sudden Dark

Twenty-Two

By the strictest virtue of police conduct, I don't believe that I technically fled the scene. I told Maddie to stay and inform the paramedics that Wayne had a nine-millimetre wound in his shoulder, with possible soft tissue damage in his collarbone, as well as to tell the receiving officers the story of the shooting in complete truthfulness. My own name included.

Meanwhile, I didn't have a minute to spare. I was outside and driving back to the block of flats, with only hardly enough attention breaking at my determination to wipe away a spread of Rusty's dried blood that had sprayed at my face.

I went quick up the outside stairs, my chest heaving, my brain beating at my skull. The door at the end was cordoned with police tape, as the final resting place of Clive Reed. Then there was the door next to it.

I knocked briefly, but I didn't wait. I burst it open with the little remaining strength of my aching muscles to find a dark room lit with dry slits of light bleeding through blinds. They were falling across the slim figure of a young man tied against a wooden chair in the center of the room. 

I might have even thought he was dead, if not for the dim gleam of his eyes that rolled as I came over and cut his restraints loose.

'Who are you?' he said simply, a quiet tremble in his vacant voice.

'My name is Max Hendricks,' I said.

'Oh.'

'Come on, Kit. Let's get out of here.'

'Okay.'

I helped him up and out of the room, across the balcony, down the stairs, into my car. He had a tall and lanky frame that walked as if it was being held up by a tensing of marionette strings that were about to snap. There were dull blue bruises that were coloured across the porcelain skin of his youthful face; the face of a delicate glass figurine that had been dropped and kicked and scuffed and cracked. But not broken.

He didn't say much as I started the car and turned it around. It was almost four o'clock. Then he said, as he was looking out the window, 'Where's Rusty?'

'He's dead. Your brother was shot, but I think he'll be alright.'

His voice quivered. 'Maddie?'

'Alive as well. And so is the money—it'll be going to the police.'

He turned his head and looked at me with stale grey eyes. 'What money?' he said.

I almost smiled. 'Sorry, I forgot you don't know about that. Don't worry about it.'

'Okay. Are you taking me to the police?'

'Kind of. I have one thing to take care of first.'

Kit shook his head. 'I don't care anymore,' he said, and slumped back against the door. 'I'm going back to prison. I'll get life. I'll die in there, or once I get out. It doesn't fucking matter. None of it.'

'What, for killing Frank? You think that shithead is worth a life sentence?'

There was a sound that caught in his throat. 'To the police it is,' he said. 'That's what you're arresting me for, isn't it? For Frank?'

'I'm not arresting you. I'm protecting you. And I'm not police. Think of it like this—there are three people in the world who know you shot Frank Sumner: you, me, and your brother. But you did it with a gun that's now in the cold, dead hand of an ex-con maniac who has one other verified murder with the same weapon. As far as the cops will be concerned, all of this will wrap up the investigation in a nice, clean bow. No eyewitness can say definitively that it wasn't Rusty who came into the pub that day and shot Frank. Especially not your brother, the prime witness of that episode, now that he has a clear-cut way to exonerate you by passing the blame.'