She peered across. There was one light, set into the deck, illuminating the bridge. Everything else was in shadow, and there was no movement that couldn’t be explained by the rain and the rocking of the river. Here, leaning out over the water, the rain sounded different. It hit the river with a constant hiss, as if large machinery were operating nearby.
The gap between the thigh-high wall enclosing the staircase and the edge of the platform was a couple of yards at most.
Which wasn’t much. A distance she’d not think twice about jumping most days of the week; but most days of the week it wasn’t raining, she wasn’t pissed, there wasn’t a cold deep river down below. But he couldn’t have gone anywhere else. He had to be on that platform, behind that hut, crouched in the shadow of that crane or winch—stop overthinking it; make the bloody jump. She stepped up onto the wall, made the beginner’s error of looking down, and it might have all been over in that same second if some survival instinct hadn’t kicked in, the kind that decided she might as well jump as step back onto the nice safe stairs. Maybe not a survival instinct, then. Maybe her internal idiot. Either way, she jumped, and for half a moment was a statistic waiting to happen, and then landed on the platform, its wooden decking solid as a road, but twice as slippery. She went down on her hands and knees, and had to grab one of the crane’s metal joists to haul herself up. Some of the shapes took solid form: crates and buckets and a toolbox, some metal poles and an industrial-sized bobbin wrapped with cable. And then there was movement from behind the toilet-sized cabin; it might have been a shadow flung from the far bank of the river, except shadows didn’t assemble themselves into solid human shapes. The vanishing man stepped out of the dark and unvanished.
“You’re under arrest,” she told him.
He punched her in the face.
Or would have done; she leaned sideways and his fist missed her by a whisker, but she slipped and went down again anyway. Her coat, she thought—her coat was going to be such a mess. Partly because she’d just landed on her back in an oily puddle. But mostly because her hand had just found her Service weapon—Devon’s Service weapon—and as she pulled it from her shoulder holster it snagged on her coat’s lining, so the shot she fired tore a nasty hole parallel to its middle button. She didn’t hit him—hadn’t intended to—but she stopped him in his tracks.
“I should have fucking mentioned,” she said. “Stop or I shoot.”
And suddenly there were bees everywhere, a swarm of bright red bees dancing around her; around the vanishing man too, who looked down at her with quite a charming grin. He raised his hands above his head, though kept his eyes on Emma rather than raise them to the bridge where the nasty squad had gathered, their laser-sighted guns trained on the pair of them. A metallic voice was suggesting she drop her weapon
Some of which went on her coat.
Shirley said, “Like fuck I don’t. Right now, it’s all I want to do.”
She was still holding the gun; Patrice was still chained to the radiator. JK Coe was leaning against the wall, which seemed to be his preferred location. Because, it occurred to her, standing like that, nobody could come up behind him.
But someone could come up behind her, and did.
Catherine said, “Shirley, Marcus is dead. Nothing can change that. And if you kill this man now, it will haunt you forever.”
“I’ve killed men before.”
“While they were chained to a radiator?”
She didn’t reply.
“This is different,” Catherine explained.
Shirley thought: I can handle different. What she couldn’t handle was the thought of this man walking around a world he’d ejected Marcus from.
She raised the gun and levelled it at Patrice, who watched her without changing expression.
But the gun felt heavy in her hand.
Catherine said, “Shirley. Please. If you kill him like this, you might never sleep again.”
“Sleep’s overrated.”
“Take it from me, it’s really not. Sometimes it’s the only thing that can get you out of bed in the morning. The knowledge that you can get back into it come night.”
“He was my friend.”
“He was mine too. He was a good man. And he wouldn’t want you to do this.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
JK Coe said, “She’s right.”
“What?”
“Marcus wouldn’t want you to kill him.”
“How would you know?”
“Psych Eval. Remember?”
The gun felt so very very heavy.
“Marcus thought you were a prick,” she told him.
“He was your friend, not mine.”
Catherine said, “Shirley. This isn’t an op. It would be an execution.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will.”
It felt like the heaviest thing she’d ever held in her hand.
