4.
Pete and I ran all the way back to the White chapel district, homing at the familiar sight of the St Paul like a pair of trained homing pigeons. We pushed and shoved our ways through the crowds, rushing past streets that became dirtier and sleazier the more we left the better parts of London behind and entered the dark quarters of the poor. We ran, our persecutors angry shouts ringing in our ears, too afraid to stop and look back over our shoulders, fearing that we would lose whatever small lead we might had over those wankers. My lungs stung when I finally caught a glimpse of the cathedral, the peaks of the towers sticking out of the fog, rising above the tattered roofs like a burning beacon of a haven in the middle of a dark stormy sea. We scampered down the last wide street that we had to pass, then turned into a nameless alley, which was an entrance into the maze of intricate alleyways behind. When I crossed the line between dull daylight and became absorbed by the shadows thrown upon us by the buildings, something disturbing slivered into my mind. Another déjà vu I reckon, but it was clear as spring water and for a moment, I wasn't sure if it hadn't already happened, that it wasn't just a memory floating up from the murky puddle of my memory like a dead bloated rat.
My temples pounded, drummed like mad and I heard myself huffing and blowing like a wind broke horse. I faced a damp brick wall. There was this strong sour smell, a smell of vinegar. My legs were useless, and I had to lean onto something, my hand reaching out for the wall for support. Someone was shouting at me, someone standing not far behind. I turned my head real sluggishly and saw it was Pete. His face was a freckled wax mask of fear and panic, and he kept shouting, but all I could pick up was my own name and nothing else. I frowned, confused, and I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand.
It was red.
Blood red.
I looked up at my other hand and saw that I was holding on to something. I raised it up and saw that it was a knife, Swiss army type and large. The taunt but razor sharp blade was pulled out. I stared at I, bewildered. It looked like it had two colours. The cold shiny surface at the base stood out sharply against the crimson, the dripping wine colour at the tip.
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red trickles caught near the rim of the handle. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down, onto the thin fold of skin between my thumb and finger.
My throat made a strange, strangled noise and I tossed the bloody thing onto the ground. I heard footsteps, coming our way. Footsteps and boisterous, angry voices of men. Pete was still shouting at me, and when I turned around to face him again, I finally understood it. I finally knew what he was trying to tell me.
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm, trying to get me running. But it was as if my head was stuffed with wool, as if I had been looking into the bloody sun for too long. Panting like a mutt, I tried to move. I dragged my hand over the wall and left an ugly smear of blood behind.
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!"
The footsteps grew louder, echoing against the cold stones. The men were close behind us. Perhaps they had found us, and they were already in the back of the alley. I tried a few steps, tried to make my legs to run. I saw that my shoes left red prints behind on the stone pebbles.
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!"
"Will, they're coming!"
I blinked, feverishly. Salty drops of sweat stung in my eyes. My lungs were still full of sharp broken pieces. I ran so fast that it felt like my feet only touched the ground with every third or fourth stride, and my mouth tasted of hot metal. I was still running. Pete and I, we were still trying to get away from our persecutors. There was no blood, no knife in my hand. It had all just been in my mind.
We slipped into another alleyway, went halfway through, then took another turn, crossed that one right to the end to gain some distance on our pursuers, then turned right and then immediately left. We were scuttling like rats inside a stinking maze. But it was our maze, our labyrinth of narrow passages and crooked corridors; the rat's territories. We knew what we doing, unlike Walrus face and his righteous company. Finally, Pete and I reached the point that we couldn't run any longer. We stumbled to a stop, looking over our shoulders anxiously while we wheezed like overheated steam engines. We only saw the empty alley stretching out behind us, with it's heaps of garbage piled up in the corners and a starving mutt lying in a doorway, breathing like a bag of heaving bones. A beam of light cut a sharp rectangle shape out of the dark shadows on the ground. It looked just like somebody had dropped a big white coffin right out of the sky.
"Think we lost them." I wheezed. I wanted to lean my back against the wall for a rest but stepped on something slippery hidden away underneath the garbage, and my feet almost went out from under me. I cursed, and kicked the slimy heap, slivers of rotting greens and black mouldy peels went into the air. There was a loud chiming of a bottle rolling over the cobbles. Then I smelled it, rising up from the spoiled yellowy liquid trickling out of a broken flask and overpowering the general stench; the strong sour smell of vinegar.
I leaned forward, my hands resting on knees, staring down at own shadow thrown over the ground, my heart still pounding like it could dislodge itself out of my soddin chest. I thought of what that woman had said to me after I bumped into her and had caught an unintended look into her future. She had said that she was sorry for me, and for the boy. And she had looked at me with that shocked expression in her chestnut eyes, like she had seen something. Just like I did with her. As if she knew.
"Will -"
I heard a loud scream, sharp like the cutting edge of paper. Walrus face had suddenly appeared out of soddin nowhere and had grabbed Pete by his arm. The boy was shouting, pulling away and hitting him wildly with his one free hand turned into a fist. But it was just like David against soddin Goliath, or an eight-year old schoolboy against the headmaster. Walrus face twisted the lad's hand at his back and then used his whole bulky weight to throw him against the wall, pinning him down. He snatched a pair of handcuffs out of his pockets and he secured one end around the lad's wrist while the boy was screaming and struggling underneath him.
"Get off him!" I yelled.
I ran back and gobbed the old copper, my fist cracking bones underneath the leathery skin of his jaw. I swung back my arm to throw another one at him, but he dodged it, and managed to kick me in the side. The impact made me plunge backwards into the garbage. I would have been all right if it wasn't that I landed real badly. When I smacked down between the stinking fish heads and chewed on meat bones, a hot fierce stitch of pain shot into my body. Something sharp and bloody pointy, a broken bottle or a piece of wood I figured, had pierced right through my side like a toothpick sticking into a slice of sausage. Walrus face came up to me. Somewhere from beneath the folds of his coat, he conjured a wooden club. He raised it up high and brought it down violently, flat on my chest. I grunted, the impact knocking all the air out of lungs. His face was a distorted red blur, his moustache a sticky, shivering black crow sitting on his upper lip. It drooped to one side, as if it had a wounded wing, and underneath, that corner of his mouth sagged down and drooled dark red strings of slobber. He shouted. It sounded like he had a belly full of air and only a narrow flute of a throat and each word that managed to escape from his lips were stretched out endlessly.
"Yeee dirteee dog! Yeee dirteee bastard! Yeee busted meeey bloodeeey jaw!!"
I saw how he raised the wooden club up again.
"I'll teeeach yeee to hit an officee!"
He was aiming at my skull. I turned away, arms draped over my head in a moronic attempt to raise some sort of a shield.
"I'll teeeach yeee to mess with meeee! I bloodeeeeey kill Yeeeee! Bloodeeeeey eeeeeeee EEEEEEEE!!!"
A high pitch screech, loud and God-bloody-awful, cutting into my bones like fingernails scraping over a black board. I opened my eyes and saw that Walrus face still stood there with the club raised above the shoulders, swaying on his feet like a giant oak that had been chopped at the base and was about to fall. I scuttled away from underneath, thought he was going to crash into me. Walrus face rocked slowly, his eyes wide as if in shock, but his lips grinning this real moronic grin. Even the busted right side of his mouth was joining in. It looked pained and crazed, and I saw that his teeth were clenched together when his lips peeled away. Then I saw the blood. It gushed out of the side of his neck, spraying a bloody rainbow into the air like a busted drainpipe on high pressure. Walrus face dropped the club. A hand moved up and touched the piece of metal that stuck out of his neck. My eyes caught the sparkling of a blade, and the red, the fierce crimson of fresh aortic blood dripping down the cutting edge and the rust-brown handle. His fingers wrapped around it, and for a moment I thought he might try to pull it out. But then his mouth opened and he produced a slow, gurgling sound. His eyes rolled up to whites and he slumped forward, his massive body limp and heavy as a bag of coal, and clashed into the ground, burying his face into a pile of raunchy vegetables.
It was only after while that I realized that someone else still stood there in front of me. Pete's complexion had turned so white that even the brown- orange freckles on his cheeks looked pale. His hands were shivering like they don't belong to him but to someone bloody ancient. I stared at Pete and I gazed at the dead bloke with his face down in the garbage and his great big moustache dipping in the mash and greens, and up to Pete again, and finally, my slow working brains picked up the clues and was able to put one and the other together. At the side of the dead Walrus's neck where the blood kept gushing out the wound like a soddin spring, I recognized the knife. I remembered giving it to the boy two months ago at his birthday. A real Swiss army chopper. I told him, smirking like an idiot, being oh so bloody content about myself, so proud to impress the lad. And I had taught him, didn't I? I bloody taught him myself exactly what you could do with it. Stick it into a place where the main arteries flow, I told him. Stick it where the most damage could be done with the least of effort. The soft tissues just underneath the ribcage where you would puncture the liver, or the soft spot just above the collarbone where the neck branched off the shoulders. Stab the knife in there and give it a little twist, so the wounds would fully open like a mouth. That would make the blood spill. It would make the blood run like a bloody river.
A stream of crimson ran between the cobbles, a red creek traveling through a bedding of stones, creating a web with in the middle the dead bloke lying there like a big fat ugly spider. The edge of the blood puddle reached my shoes. I scrambled back up, hardly aware of the horrified scream that still managed to escape my choked up throat.
"God - Oh God." Pete muttered. "Oh God Oh God Oh God." Then, with the sort of daft naivety that could only come from a total shutdown of the boy's noggins, he asked frightfully. "Is - is he dead, Will?"
"What do you think?!" I muttered. "Honestly Pete, what do you bloody well THINK?!"
Pete swallowed. His eyes turned all glossy. I walked over to the dead bloke, my feet heavy. I hunched down beside the body. Maybe he wasn't dead yet, I heard myself thinking, my own rationality going down the exact way Pete's was going, which was down the soddin drain. Maybe, I told myself, there was still a heartbeat. Maybe he was still breathing. I looked down at his chest but there wasn't the slightest bit of movement. Maybe he was only breathing really superficially, I kept trying to convince myself, and I carefully put a hand on his neck, at the side where there wasn't a three inch Swiss army knife sticking out, and checked for his pulse.
I couldn't find any.
Of course I couldn't. The man had at least lost two gallons of blood by now.
I really started to hate myself for being so incredibly puddin brained to waste time on trying to find some miraculous signal of life on a bloody corpse.
"What are we going to do now, Will? They're gonna hang us! He's dead Will! He's dead! What are we going to do?"
Pete was rambling, his voice teary and small. It had a bloody whiny drone to it. It was irritating as hell and I wanted to grab the little twat and smack him to make him shut the bloody hell up.
- It's all his fault! - Said an ugly voice inside my head. - He stabbed the soddin copper, bloody murdered him! Well, you better get going, Will! You better get the hell out of here before they catch you with the little brat. The little shit is right about one thing. They're going to scream for blood for this one. That's not just a worthless old hag the little bugger bled dry. That's bloody a copper! Whoever gets caught for the act is going to swing like a dead nest of crows! Better skedaddle right out of here and let the boy take all the blame. It wouldn't be even so far from the truth. He did stab the chopper into ugly Walrus face's neck, didn't he?
He did kill him.
But I couldn't, however the large cowardice part of me was itching to leave Pete behind, let him take all the blame, I couldn't give in to it. That knife, I gave the boy that bloody thing! If it wasn't for me, the only thing he could stab the angry copper with was his blunt little fingers. And who gave him the advice, the encouragement to keep the knife with him and use it? If Pete wasn't trying to stop the copper from fracturing my skull, he wouldn't have done anything. He wouldn't have killed him. A good part of this bloody mess was my fault, my wrong doing, and I had to fix this, however impossible that was.
I had to do something fast because we were running out of time.
I grab hold of the Swiss army knife and tried to pry it out of the dead bloke's neck.
"What are you doing?" Pete asked, watching quite horrified.
"The handle, it has that signed emblem of the bloody blacksmith from which I bought the bloody thing! It would be real easy for the coppers to run that down. We have to get rid of it!"
The blade came out. Blood welled up in a sudden gush and splashed all over my hands. The thick and coppery smell of it caught in my nose, filled my mouth and lungs. It made my head swirl and my stomach turn. I gasped for air, my gullet objecting heavily, so I sprung at my feet and staggered over to the wall, leaning on to it as I tried to catch my breath. Inhaling deeply, the sickly sweet smell of murder was quickly replaced by the sour smell of vinegar, and I remembered that I had broken a whole bottle of the soddin stuff when we first crashed into this alley. The smell also brought back another memory, something that I had forgotten for a moment but was now quickly returning to me like a frightening whisper in the night.
My temples pounded like a mad drum. I faced a damp brick wall, my hands held up at eyelevel with their palms out against the rough surface. Pete was shouting me, and I turned around to face him. The boy opened and closed his mouth frantically, his eyes wide with panic. His words were all distorted, his message completely lost. I was too frightened, too paralysed by what was happening now to be able to listen to him. I knew this was going to happen. I had seen it, - experienced - it. Just minutes before we crashed into this alley.
God, what was going on here?
I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand, saw the blood that was splashed onto it by my attempt to retrieve the murder weapon, and it was as if I was only seeing it for the first time and again for the trillionth of time. I looked down at my other hand. I raised it up and looked at the knife with the same curiosity and the same feeling of fearful recognition. Two colours it had. Part crimson, part glistering metal.
So that's what happened. I thought to myself, and swallowed sickly. That's why I ended up with the knife and the blood on my hands. A cold and heavy thing sunk into me when the fragmented pieces of knowledge finally fell into place like some gruesome sort of puzzle.
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red drips caught in the well at the base. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down the handle, dripped onto the fold of skin between my thumb and finger.
I screamed and I tossed the bloody thing on the ground. Footsteps and voices, I heard them coming; the men who were looking for a couple of little pickpockets and who would find the dead police officer and his two murders instead. Pete was still shouting. I turned around. The blood stuck to my hand like sinful glue.
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm. I dragged my hand over the wall as I pushed myself forward. My blood tainted hand made an ugly smear across the bricks, a blood red bird that was all feathers and no wings.
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!" Pete pleaded.
The footsteps grew louder now. My shoes left red prints behind on the grey stone of the pebbles. I tried to run but it felt like I was wading through a wall of heavy mud. Pete kept yelling. Kept telling me the exact same things he had told me just minutes or eons before.
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"
Maybe this was all just a dream, I thought to myself.
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"
Maybe I would snap out of it any time now to find myself back in the alleyway, running like we were doing now, only the dead Walrus bloke would be still alive then, and Pete and I wouldn't have killed anyone.
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!" The boy cried.
Will, they're coming.
TBC
Pete and I ran all the way back to the White chapel district, homing at the familiar sight of the St Paul like a pair of trained homing pigeons. We pushed and shoved our ways through the crowds, rushing past streets that became dirtier and sleazier the more we left the better parts of London behind and entered the dark quarters of the poor. We ran, our persecutors angry shouts ringing in our ears, too afraid to stop and look back over our shoulders, fearing that we would lose whatever small lead we might had over those wankers. My lungs stung when I finally caught a glimpse of the cathedral, the peaks of the towers sticking out of the fog, rising above the tattered roofs like a burning beacon of a haven in the middle of a dark stormy sea. We scampered down the last wide street that we had to pass, then turned into a nameless alley, which was an entrance into the maze of intricate alleyways behind. When I crossed the line between dull daylight and became absorbed by the shadows thrown upon us by the buildings, something disturbing slivered into my mind. Another déjà vu I reckon, but it was clear as spring water and for a moment, I wasn't sure if it hadn't already happened, that it wasn't just a memory floating up from the murky puddle of my memory like a dead bloated rat.
My temples pounded, drummed like mad and I heard myself huffing and blowing like a wind broke horse. I faced a damp brick wall. There was this strong sour smell, a smell of vinegar. My legs were useless, and I had to lean onto something, my hand reaching out for the wall for support. Someone was shouting at me, someone standing not far behind. I turned my head real sluggishly and saw it was Pete. His face was a freckled wax mask of fear and panic, and he kept shouting, but all I could pick up was my own name and nothing else. I frowned, confused, and I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand.
It was red.
Blood red.
I looked up at my other hand and saw that I was holding on to something. I raised it up and saw that it was a knife, Swiss army type and large. The taunt but razor sharp blade was pulled out. I stared at I, bewildered. It looked like it had two colours. The cold shiny surface at the base stood out sharply against the crimson, the dripping wine colour at the tip.
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red trickles caught near the rim of the handle. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down, onto the thin fold of skin between my thumb and finger.
My throat made a strange, strangled noise and I tossed the bloody thing onto the ground. I heard footsteps, coming our way. Footsteps and boisterous, angry voices of men. Pete was still shouting at me, and when I turned around to face him again, I finally understood it. I finally knew what he was trying to tell me.
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm, trying to get me running. But it was as if my head was stuffed with wool, as if I had been looking into the bloody sun for too long. Panting like a mutt, I tried to move. I dragged my hand over the wall and left an ugly smear of blood behind.
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!"
The footsteps grew louder, echoing against the cold stones. The men were close behind us. Perhaps they had found us, and they were already in the back of the alley. I tried a few steps, tried to make my legs to run. I saw that my shoes left red prints behind on the stone pebbles.
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!"
"Will, they're coming!"
I blinked, feverishly. Salty drops of sweat stung in my eyes. My lungs were still full of sharp broken pieces. I ran so fast that it felt like my feet only touched the ground with every third or fourth stride, and my mouth tasted of hot metal. I was still running. Pete and I, we were still trying to get away from our persecutors. There was no blood, no knife in my hand. It had all just been in my mind.
We slipped into another alleyway, went halfway through, then took another turn, crossed that one right to the end to gain some distance on our pursuers, then turned right and then immediately left. We were scuttling like rats inside a stinking maze. But it was our maze, our labyrinth of narrow passages and crooked corridors; the rat's territories. We knew what we doing, unlike Walrus face and his righteous company. Finally, Pete and I reached the point that we couldn't run any longer. We stumbled to a stop, looking over our shoulders anxiously while we wheezed like overheated steam engines. We only saw the empty alley stretching out behind us, with it's heaps of garbage piled up in the corners and a starving mutt lying in a doorway, breathing like a bag of heaving bones. A beam of light cut a sharp rectangle shape out of the dark shadows on the ground. It looked just like somebody had dropped a big white coffin right out of the sky.
"Think we lost them." I wheezed. I wanted to lean my back against the wall for a rest but stepped on something slippery hidden away underneath the garbage, and my feet almost went out from under me. I cursed, and kicked the slimy heap, slivers of rotting greens and black mouldy peels went into the air. There was a loud chiming of a bottle rolling over the cobbles. Then I smelled it, rising up from the spoiled yellowy liquid trickling out of a broken flask and overpowering the general stench; the strong sour smell of vinegar.
I leaned forward, my hands resting on knees, staring down at own shadow thrown over the ground, my heart still pounding like it could dislodge itself out of my soddin chest. I thought of what that woman had said to me after I bumped into her and had caught an unintended look into her future. She had said that she was sorry for me, and for the boy. And she had looked at me with that shocked expression in her chestnut eyes, like she had seen something. Just like I did with her. As if she knew.
"Will -"
I heard a loud scream, sharp like the cutting edge of paper. Walrus face had suddenly appeared out of soddin nowhere and had grabbed Pete by his arm. The boy was shouting, pulling away and hitting him wildly with his one free hand turned into a fist. But it was just like David against soddin Goliath, or an eight-year old schoolboy against the headmaster. Walrus face twisted the lad's hand at his back and then used his whole bulky weight to throw him against the wall, pinning him down. He snatched a pair of handcuffs out of his pockets and he secured one end around the lad's wrist while the boy was screaming and struggling underneath him.
"Get off him!" I yelled.
I ran back and gobbed the old copper, my fist cracking bones underneath the leathery skin of his jaw. I swung back my arm to throw another one at him, but he dodged it, and managed to kick me in the side. The impact made me plunge backwards into the garbage. I would have been all right if it wasn't that I landed real badly. When I smacked down between the stinking fish heads and chewed on meat bones, a hot fierce stitch of pain shot into my body. Something sharp and bloody pointy, a broken bottle or a piece of wood I figured, had pierced right through my side like a toothpick sticking into a slice of sausage. Walrus face came up to me. Somewhere from beneath the folds of his coat, he conjured a wooden club. He raised it up high and brought it down violently, flat on my chest. I grunted, the impact knocking all the air out of lungs. His face was a distorted red blur, his moustache a sticky, shivering black crow sitting on his upper lip. It drooped to one side, as if it had a wounded wing, and underneath, that corner of his mouth sagged down and drooled dark red strings of slobber. He shouted. It sounded like he had a belly full of air and only a narrow flute of a throat and each word that managed to escape from his lips were stretched out endlessly.
"Yeee dirteee dog! Yeee dirteee bastard! Yeee busted meeey bloodeeey jaw!!"
I saw how he raised the wooden club up again.
"I'll teeeach yeee to hit an officee!"
He was aiming at my skull. I turned away, arms draped over my head in a moronic attempt to raise some sort of a shield.
"I'll teeeach yeee to mess with meeee! I bloodeeeeey kill Yeeeee! Bloodeeeeey eeeeeeee EEEEEEEE!!!"
A high pitch screech, loud and God-bloody-awful, cutting into my bones like fingernails scraping over a black board. I opened my eyes and saw that Walrus face still stood there with the club raised above the shoulders, swaying on his feet like a giant oak that had been chopped at the base and was about to fall. I scuttled away from underneath, thought he was going to crash into me. Walrus face rocked slowly, his eyes wide as if in shock, but his lips grinning this real moronic grin. Even the busted right side of his mouth was joining in. It looked pained and crazed, and I saw that his teeth were clenched together when his lips peeled away. Then I saw the blood. It gushed out of the side of his neck, spraying a bloody rainbow into the air like a busted drainpipe on high pressure. Walrus face dropped the club. A hand moved up and touched the piece of metal that stuck out of his neck. My eyes caught the sparkling of a blade, and the red, the fierce crimson of fresh aortic blood dripping down the cutting edge and the rust-brown handle. His fingers wrapped around it, and for a moment I thought he might try to pull it out. But then his mouth opened and he produced a slow, gurgling sound. His eyes rolled up to whites and he slumped forward, his massive body limp and heavy as a bag of coal, and clashed into the ground, burying his face into a pile of raunchy vegetables.
It was only after while that I realized that someone else still stood there in front of me. Pete's complexion had turned so white that even the brown- orange freckles on his cheeks looked pale. His hands were shivering like they don't belong to him but to someone bloody ancient. I stared at Pete and I gazed at the dead bloke with his face down in the garbage and his great big moustache dipping in the mash and greens, and up to Pete again, and finally, my slow working brains picked up the clues and was able to put one and the other together. At the side of the dead Walrus's neck where the blood kept gushing out the wound like a soddin spring, I recognized the knife. I remembered giving it to the boy two months ago at his birthday. A real Swiss army chopper. I told him, smirking like an idiot, being oh so bloody content about myself, so proud to impress the lad. And I had taught him, didn't I? I bloody taught him myself exactly what you could do with it. Stick it into a place where the main arteries flow, I told him. Stick it where the most damage could be done with the least of effort. The soft tissues just underneath the ribcage where you would puncture the liver, or the soft spot just above the collarbone where the neck branched off the shoulders. Stab the knife in there and give it a little twist, so the wounds would fully open like a mouth. That would make the blood spill. It would make the blood run like a bloody river.
A stream of crimson ran between the cobbles, a red creek traveling through a bedding of stones, creating a web with in the middle the dead bloke lying there like a big fat ugly spider. The edge of the blood puddle reached my shoes. I scrambled back up, hardly aware of the horrified scream that still managed to escape my choked up throat.
"God - Oh God." Pete muttered. "Oh God Oh God Oh God." Then, with the sort of daft naivety that could only come from a total shutdown of the boy's noggins, he asked frightfully. "Is - is he dead, Will?"
"What do you think?!" I muttered. "Honestly Pete, what do you bloody well THINK?!"
Pete swallowed. His eyes turned all glossy. I walked over to the dead bloke, my feet heavy. I hunched down beside the body. Maybe he wasn't dead yet, I heard myself thinking, my own rationality going down the exact way Pete's was going, which was down the soddin drain. Maybe, I told myself, there was still a heartbeat. Maybe he was still breathing. I looked down at his chest but there wasn't the slightest bit of movement. Maybe he was only breathing really superficially, I kept trying to convince myself, and I carefully put a hand on his neck, at the side where there wasn't a three inch Swiss army knife sticking out, and checked for his pulse.
I couldn't find any.
Of course I couldn't. The man had at least lost two gallons of blood by now.
I really started to hate myself for being so incredibly puddin brained to waste time on trying to find some miraculous signal of life on a bloody corpse.
"What are we going to do now, Will? They're gonna hang us! He's dead Will! He's dead! What are we going to do?"
Pete was rambling, his voice teary and small. It had a bloody whiny drone to it. It was irritating as hell and I wanted to grab the little twat and smack him to make him shut the bloody hell up.
- It's all his fault! - Said an ugly voice inside my head. - He stabbed the soddin copper, bloody murdered him! Well, you better get going, Will! You better get the hell out of here before they catch you with the little brat. The little shit is right about one thing. They're going to scream for blood for this one. That's not just a worthless old hag the little bugger bled dry. That's bloody a copper! Whoever gets caught for the act is going to swing like a dead nest of crows! Better skedaddle right out of here and let the boy take all the blame. It wouldn't be even so far from the truth. He did stab the chopper into ugly Walrus face's neck, didn't he?
He did kill him.
But I couldn't, however the large cowardice part of me was itching to leave Pete behind, let him take all the blame, I couldn't give in to it. That knife, I gave the boy that bloody thing! If it wasn't for me, the only thing he could stab the angry copper with was his blunt little fingers. And who gave him the advice, the encouragement to keep the knife with him and use it? If Pete wasn't trying to stop the copper from fracturing my skull, he wouldn't have done anything. He wouldn't have killed him. A good part of this bloody mess was my fault, my wrong doing, and I had to fix this, however impossible that was.
I had to do something fast because we were running out of time.
I grab hold of the Swiss army knife and tried to pry it out of the dead bloke's neck.
"What are you doing?" Pete asked, watching quite horrified.
"The handle, it has that signed emblem of the bloody blacksmith from which I bought the bloody thing! It would be real easy for the coppers to run that down. We have to get rid of it!"
The blade came out. Blood welled up in a sudden gush and splashed all over my hands. The thick and coppery smell of it caught in my nose, filled my mouth and lungs. It made my head swirl and my stomach turn. I gasped for air, my gullet objecting heavily, so I sprung at my feet and staggered over to the wall, leaning on to it as I tried to catch my breath. Inhaling deeply, the sickly sweet smell of murder was quickly replaced by the sour smell of vinegar, and I remembered that I had broken a whole bottle of the soddin stuff when we first crashed into this alley. The smell also brought back another memory, something that I had forgotten for a moment but was now quickly returning to me like a frightening whisper in the night.
My temples pounded like a mad drum. I faced a damp brick wall, my hands held up at eyelevel with their palms out against the rough surface. Pete was shouting me, and I turned around to face him. The boy opened and closed his mouth frantically, his eyes wide with panic. His words were all distorted, his message completely lost. I was too frightened, too paralysed by what was happening now to be able to listen to him. I knew this was going to happen. I had seen it, - experienced - it. Just minutes before we crashed into this alley.
God, what was going on here?
I turned to the brick wall again and looked at the back of my hand, saw the blood that was splashed onto it by my attempt to retrieve the murder weapon, and it was as if I was only seeing it for the first time and again for the trillionth of time. I looked down at my other hand. I raised it up and looked at the knife with the same curiosity and the same feeling of fearful recognition. Two colours it had. Part crimson, part glistering metal.
So that's what happened. I thought to myself, and swallowed sickly. That's why I ended up with the knife and the blood on my hands. A cold and heavy thing sunk into me when the fragmented pieces of knowledge finally fell into place like some gruesome sort of puzzle.
Blood ran down the blade, sticky red drips caught in the well at the base. One stubborn drop flooded from the pocket, and dripped down the handle, dripped onto the fold of skin between my thumb and finger.
I screamed and I tossed the bloody thing on the ground. Footsteps and voices, I heard them coming; the men who were looking for a couple of little pickpockets and who would find the dead police officer and his two murders instead. Pete was still shouting. I turned around. The blood stuck to my hand like sinful glue.
"Will! Please! We have to run! They're coming! They're coming for us!"
Pete grabbed me and tugged on my arm. I dragged my hand over the wall as I pushed myself forward. My blood tainted hand made an ugly smear across the bricks, a blood red bird that was all feathers and no wings.
"We can't get caught like this, Will! Come on!" Pete pleaded.
The footsteps grew louder now. My shoes left red prints behind on the grey stone of the pebbles. I tried to run but it felt like I was wading through a wall of heavy mud. Pete kept yelling. Kept telling me the exact same things he had told me just minutes or eons before.
"Will, come on!! Please! Come on!"
Maybe this was all just a dream, I thought to myself.
"We can't get caught! Not like this!"
Maybe I would snap out of it any time now to find myself back in the alleyway, running like we were doing now, only the dead Walrus bloke would be still alive then, and Pete and I wouldn't have killed anyone.
"They'll hang us, Will. They'll hang us for this!" The boy cried.
Will, they're coming.
TBC