Remote control, p.22
Remote Control, page 22
I could smell the fucker. He’d been drinking; there was alcohol on his breath. He reeked of aftershave and cigarettes.
He was sitting astride me with his knees on my shoulders and the pistol stuck in my mouth. He still had his left hand around Kelly’s hair and had pulled her onto the floor; he was tugging her from side to side like a rag doll, either for the sheer hell of it, or perhaps just to keep her screaming and make me more compliant.
All I could hear was scream, scream, scream; ‘Don’t fuck with me!’; scream, scream, scream; ‘Don’t fuck with me! Think you’re a fucking hard guy, do you, think you’re a fucking tough guy, huh?’
Not good. I knew what they did to ‘hard guys’. McGear once got an informer into a flat in the Divis estate for questioning; his kneecaps were drilled with a Black & Decker, he was burned by an electric fire, then electrocuted in the bath. He managed to jump out of a window naked, but broke his back. They dragged him back into the lift and shot him.
I felt as if I was drunk. I was aware of what was happening, but it was taking too long for the message to reach my brain.
Then the software started to kick in. I tried to see if the hammer was back on the pistol, but all I could still see was bubbles of red light in front of my eyes and starbursts of white. All I could make out was a blur of screaming and ranting from him, ‘You bastard! I’m gonna fuck you up! Who are you?’ and the screaming from Kelly. It was total confusion.
I tried again to focus my eyes and this time it worked – and I could see the position of the hammer.
The hammer was back. It was a 9-milly. But what about the safety catch? It was off.
There was nothing I could do. He’d got his finger on the trigger; if I struggled, I was dead, whether he intended it or not.
He said, ‘You think you’re fucking hard? Do you? Do you? We’ll soon see who is the hard man.’ Then he jumped his weight up and down to crush my chest, forcing the pistol harder into my mouth.
To add to the confusion, Kelly was still screaming with terror and pain. I didn’t have a clue what was expected of me; all I knew was that I had a pistol stuck in my gob and this guy was in charge.
He started to regain his composure. The pistol was still shoved hard into my mouth, but he was beginning to ease himself to his feet. He did it by putting weight on the pistol and hand and then against my face, and, as the pistol turned in my mouth, it twisted painfully up against my cheek and teeth, scraping them with the foresight. And all the time he kept a grip on Kelly’s hair, pulling her round all over the place.
He moved back, keeping the pistol aimed at my chest.
‘Get back up on your knees!’
‘All right, mate, OK. You got me, OK.’
As I moved I saw the fire extinguisher that had taken me down. The skin at the back of my head was split open. There was blood oozing out all over the place and matting all the way down the back of my head. There was fuck all I could do; you just can’t stop capillary bleeding.
I got back on my knees, my arse up in the air again so I wasn’t resting on the back of my feet, and I was looking at him, trying to sort myself out. He started to walk backwards towards the office and kept the weapon pointing at me.
‘Come on, hard man, on your knees.’
I got the hint he wanted me to follow him.
By now Kelly was in shit state. There was a small trail of my blood being wiped along the floor. Kelly must have been kneeling in it before she was moved. She had her hands on his wrist, trying to support herself. She kept on tripping up, walking on her knees, trying to pick herself up, as if she was getting dragged behind a horse. All he was interested in was moving backwards with the weapon pointing at me.
He said, ‘Stay where you are!’ and then shuffled backwards past the door to the large office.
I was trying to compose myself; I knew I didn’t have long to live unless I took some action.
‘In there!’
I started to shuffle in.
‘Walk!’
I got up and walked into the room, my back still towards him. I walked slowly towards the coffee table and was just about to move off to the side to go round it when he said, ‘Stop! Turn round!’
I did as I was told. It was an unusual command because, normally, you want the person you’re holding to face away from you so they don’t know what’s going on. If you can’t see, it’s difficult to react.
As I turned I saw Kelly sitting on the leather swivel chair that had now been dragged to the left of the desk. He was standing behind her. He still had his left hand wrapped around her hair and was pulling her back onto the seat and pointing the 9-milly at me.
The top half of a semi-automatic, the part of the weapon on which the fore and rear sights are mounted, is called the topslide. It moves back when you’ve fired to eject the empty case, then picks up a round on its return. If it’s moved back by as little as an eighth of an inch, the weapon can’t fire, which means that, if you’re quick enough, you can shove your hand hard onto the front of the muzzle, push the topslide back, and the trigger won’t work – as long as you can keep it there. It’s got to be really quick, really aggressive, but I had nothing to lose.
Nothing seemed to be happening; there was a lull. Was he trying to make a decision about what to do? It was less than twenty seconds, but it seemed like for ever.
Kelly kept crying and whimpering; there were friction burns on her knees where she had been dragged earlier on. With his left hand he hoiked her upright and said, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ And just as he did that we stopped having eye-to-eye contact and I knew it was time.
I leaped forward, shouting at the top of my voice to disorient him, got my right hand and pushed it as hard as I could against the muzzle, pressing down on the topslide so it moved back maybe half an inch.
He shouted a loud, drawn-out ‘Fuck!’ half in anger, half in pain.
I got hold of his wrist, pulled it towards me and pushed away with my right hand against the topslide. He tried, but it was too late for him; it didn’t fire. I needed to grip my hand around the muzzle now to keep the topslide back.
As this was happening I was pushing towards the wall – just push, push, push; he still had hold of Kelly, and she was being dragged around, screaming at the top of her voice. I shut her out of my mind, keeping my eyes on the pistol, my body bent down, pushing and pushing. I felt the air leave his body as he hit the wall. Kelly was getting in the way and I was stepping on her, he was stepping on her and she was screaming out in pain. He must have decided he needed two hands to sort me out because, the next thing I knew, Kelly was running.
I started to head-butt in earnest. I was hitting him with my head, I was hitting him with my nose, with the side of my face. My nose was hurting and bleeding as much as his must have been, but I just kept on butting, butting and butting, trying to do as much damage to him as possible and, at the same time, keeping him against the wall.
He was screaming, ‘You fucker! You fucker! You fucker! You’re dead!’
And I was doing exactly the same back, screaming, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck! Fuck!’
I still had him pushed right against the wall. As I butted him, his teeth cut into my face, opening up my forehead and just below my eye. You don’t notice pain when the adrenalin is pumping. I head-butted him again and again; it wasn’t going to do him much lasting damage, but that was the best I could do at the moment. My hands were on the weapon and I was shouting all sorts of shit at the top of my voice to scare him and, even more, to keep me psyched up.
As his head came down, I bit the first thing that came into range. I felt my teeth on the taut skin of his cheek. There was that initial resistance and then my teeth broke into what felt like warm squid and I was ripping his face open. He screamed out even louder, but I was focused totally on what I was doing; all other thoughts went out of the window as I bit, gouged and did whatever damage I could.
My teeth sank in and in. He squealed like a pig. I had a mouthful of his cheek and was ripping and tearing. I saw terror in his eyes.
By now there was blood all over the two of us. I could taste the iron tang of it and my whole face was drenched from the cuts on my face and his, all getting mixed in with our sweat. Trying to clear my mouth, I choked some of it up into the back of my nose.
All the time, I was twisting the weapon away from me and trying to keep the topslide back. He was still pretty switched on and was squeezing the trigger, but fuck all was happening – for now. His other hand was pulling at my fingers, trying to prise them off the weapon. As long as I kept my hand gripped around that topslide, I’d be all right. I kept on pushing and pushing, keeping him up against something firm so I could lean against him, because all I wanted to do was move that pistol around.
I was still biting and gnawing. I’d gone through the first part of his cheek and kept on going. I felt my teeth on his face bones; it gave me the same feeling as the gun metal did before. By now I was biting the top of his eyelid, I was biting his nose, everywhere I was ripping through the skin onto the bone of his jaw and skull.
I was running out of breath because the adrenalin was leaving me, and pushing him against the wall had taken a lot of physical strength out of me. Then I started to choke, and I realized I had some of his skin at the back of my throat. I could hear air being sucked into the hole in his cheek as he was breathing; I could hear my own throat rattling, blocked by chunks of his skin.
I was fighting him by feel not by sight. Our blood was burning into my eyes. Everything was blurred. I didn’t know where Kelly was, and at this stage I didn’t care. I couldn’t help her until I’d helped myself.
I was still trying to get the pistol in to him somewhere. I didn’t care where it went; it could go into his leg, into his stomach, I didn’t give a fuck, so long as I could start shooting him.
His screams increased as my finger wrapped around his on the trigger.
I turned it round, let go of the topslide and squeezed.
The first two missed, but I kept on firing. I moved it round again and got him in the hip and then the thigh. He went down.
Everything stopped. The sudden silence was absolutely deafening.
After two or three seconds I could hear Kelly’s screams resounding off the walls. At least she was still in the building. She sounded as though she was throwing a fit. All I could hear was a high-pitched continuous scream. I was too fucked to do anything about it. I was too busy trying to cough up his skin.
I’d find her later. I pulled myself up. I was in pain. The back of my neck felt as though it could no longer hold my head.
He writhed on the ground, bleeding and begging, ‘Don’t kill me, man! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!’
I got hold of the pistol and did to him as he had done to me, jumping astride him, ramming it deep into his mouth.
For several seconds I just sat there trying to catch my breath. McGear’s body might be dying, but his eyes were alive.
‘Why did you kill the family?’ I said, pulling the pistol from his mouth so he could speak. ‘Tell me and you’ll live.’
He was looking at me as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what.
‘Just tell me why. I need to know.’
‘I don’t know what the fuck you mean.’
I looked into his eyes and knew he was telling the truth.
‘What is on that computer?’
There was no slow reaction this time. His lip curled and he said, ‘Fuck you.’
I jammed the weapon back into his mouth and said quietly, firmly, almost sort of fatherly, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’
I looked back into his eyes. No point carrying this on. He wouldn’t say anything. He was too good for that.
Fuck it. I pulled the trigger.
26
I TOOK A deep breath and wiped away the blood that had splattered onto my eyes when he took the round. I tried to regain some form of composure. Stop, just take that couple of seconds, take another deep breath and try to work out what the fuck to do next.
The shots would have been heard and reported – or I had to plan as if they were. I could still hear Kelly screaming in the distance somewhere.
First priority was the equipment. I pushed myself up off his chest and staggered back into the small office. I ripped the cable and mains lead from the PC, took the sniffer software out of the floppy drive and put it in my top pocket. I packed everything in the bag and moved back into the large office.
I went over to McGear. He looked like Kelly when she was sleeping, except this starfish had a face like a pizza and a large exit wound in the back of his head, oozing grey stuff onto the office carpet.
I picked up the bag, slung it over my left shoulder and moved into the corridor to pick up my pistol. I had to find Kelly. Easy, I just had to follow the screams.
She was fighting with the fire-escape door, the back of her coat marked with blood – probably mine from when McGear took me down. She was right up against the door trying to manipulate the handle, but in such a state that her fingers couldn’t do it. She was jumping from foot to foot, screaming and beating her fists against the door in frustration and terror. I came up behind her, got hold of her arm and shook her.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’
It wasn’t the right thing to do. She was hysterical.
I looked into her eyes under the tears and said, ‘Look, people are trying to kill you. Do you understand that? Do you want to die?’
She tried to shake me off. I put my hand over her mouth and listened to her blocked-up nose fighting for oxygen. I got her face right up against mine. ‘These people are trying to kill you. Stop crying, do you understand me? Stop crying.’
She went quiet and limp and I let go of her. ‘Give me your hand, Kelly.’
It was like holding lettuce. I said, ‘Be quiet and just listen to me. You’ve got to listen to me, OK?’ I was looking at her eyes and nodding away.
She just stared through me, tears still running down her cheeks, but trying to hold back.
I pushed the fire-exit bar and cold, damp air hit my face. I couldn’t see anything, but that might be because my night vision was fucked. I dragged Kelly by the hand and the clunks of our footsteps echoed down the metal stairs. I didn’t care about the noise; we’d made enough already.
Running towards the fence, I slipped on the mud. When she saw me fall, Kelly let out a cry and burst into tears again. I shook her and told her to shut up.
As we got to the fence I could already hear sirens on the highway. I had to assume they were coming for us. After a moment I could hear more noise coming from the car park area.
‘Wait here!’
I climbed up the chain link fence with the equipment, dropped it over the other side and jumped. They were getting closer, but I couldn’t see them yet. Kelly was looking at me from the other side of the fence, bobbing up and down, hands on the wire.
‘Nick … Nick … Please, I want to come with you!’
I didn’t even look where I was digging. My eyes were fixed on the gap between the two buildings. Coming from my right to left, flashing blue lights on the highway lit up the sky.
Kelly’s whimpers turned to sobs.
I said, ‘We’ll be all right, we’ll be all right. Just stay where you are. Look at me! Look at me!’ I got eye-to-eye. ‘Stay where you are!’
The lights and noise were now on Ball Street. I got hold of my documents and put them in my pocket.
All the vehicles had stopped, their sirens dying. The blue lights were still flashing, reflecting on Kelly’s face that was wet with tears.
I looked at her through the chain link and whispered, ‘Kelly! Kelly!’
She was in a daze of fear.
‘Kelly, follow me now. Do you understand? Come on!’
I started moving along the fence. She was whining and wanting her mummy. She sounded more and more desperate. I said, ‘You’ve got to keep up, Kelly, you’ve got to keep up. Come on!’
I was moving fast and she slipped and fell into the mud. I wasn’t there to pick her up this time. She lay there sobbing. ‘I want to go home, I want to go home. Please take me home.’
By now there were three police cars on target. We weren’t even 200 metres away yet. Very soon they would start using their searchlights and ping us.
‘Get up, Kelly, get up!’
The target now seemed surrounded by a haze of blue and red lights. Torchlights were jerking in the darkness at the rear.
We carried on until we got level with the alleyway. The sound of sirens filled the night.
I climbed over the fence, the bag nearly landing on top of her as I let it fall. I grabbed her right hand with my left and started towards the alley.
I needed to find a car that was parked in shadow and of the right age to have no alarms.
We emerged from the alley and turned left, following a line of parked cars. I found an early-Nineties Chevy. I put down the bag and ordered Kelly, ‘Sit by this.’
I opened the bag and got out the picks. Minutes later I was in. I wired up the ignition and the engine fired. The digital clock said 03:33.
I let the engine run and put the windscreen wipers and heater on full blast to clear the morning dew. I got hold of Kelly and the bag and threw them both in the back. ‘Lie down, Kelly, go to sleep.’ No argument from her on the lying down. She might have trouble sleeping, though. Perhaps for the rest of her life.
I drove to the road and turned left, nice and slow. After just a quarter of a mile I spotted flashing lights coming towards me. I got out my pistol and put it under my right thigh. There was no way I was going to let the fuckers take us.
I shouted back at Kelly, ‘Stay down, do not get up, do you understand?’
There was no reply.
‘Kelly?’
I got a weak ‘Yes.’
If I had to kill these policemen it would be unfortunate, but at the end of the day this was the sort of thing they got paid for. I made my plan. If they stopped me I’d wait until one or both came within range. The pistol was where my hand would naturally go and I’d draw down on them.
