VALUES

Part Eight

21.00

The Shadow Gallery, nine o'clock.

On the never-ending jukebox, the eternal symphony of chaos and violence and anarchy, UFO are singing 'Lights Out London.' Deep long shadows and pits of darkness consume its cavernous depths. Dust gathers steadily over the precious ancient artefacts.

He reaches calmly for a blade, testing its edge with one gloved finger.

The symphony was building to a crescendo now, all the instruments drawing together for that final coda.

It was time for the conductor to make himself known.

21.15

Terry Pitt sat on the sofa, half-reading a tattered old paperback. The Party had been quick to destroy much of the country's literature, leaving nothing but these racial thrillers and romances between good Nordic couples. It wasn't a great story – just tedious propaganda, really, what you'd expect these days – but it was almost serving its purpose.

Putting Pitt's mind off Richard Irons.

Behind him the front door swung open. A light turned on in the hallway. There came the sound of rustling, the removal of shoes, the sound of a coat falling on a hook. The living room door sliding open.

"Oh," Mandy said. "Wasn't expecting to find you home now."

"I'm clear," Pitt responded, not turning around. "Schedules free for now."

"Did you find the sausages?"

"Yes thank you."

Mandy silently crossed into the kitchen and turned the kettle on.

Pitt sighed. He almost remembered the days before the war, back when she'd come in and hug him and give him a peck on the cheek. Then they'd watch TV or have sex or do anything at all they could in what little time they had.

These days they just had no energy. None at all.

He went back to his book and tried to stop thinking about Irons.

21.30

The Finger-Wagon rumbled loudly through a back street of London, beneath flickering lamp-posts and past crumbling, graffiti-smeared fences. Up front the driver, a young and rather nervous rookie, kept his eyes on the road. Occasionally they'd pass an old abandoned car or some other debris and he'd have to swerve around it. It was just another edge on his already heightened nerveousness.

He didn't trust that man in the back. And rightfully so.

Mikey sat opposite Irons, silent and wishing he was somewhere else. It was late, he had the kids and the wife waiting at home with the dinner on the table. Soon as he'd finished up withthis he'd head home.

But he was edgy about Irons. There was something about his edginess, about the way in which he kept scratching at his chest. The way his eyes kept darting around the wagon. He'd snapped once before. He could do it again.

He kept one finger on his gun, just in case. Just in case.

He was wondering about the bangers he'd have as soon as he got in when it all happened. And it happened fast.

Irons bent over suddenly with a harsh cry, clutching at his chest and screaming "Cramp! Ah, god!"

The Fingerman beside him bent down and grabbed him by the scruff of his collar, attempting to yank him back. Before Mikey could even reach for his shooter, Irons had withdrawn a jagged metal rod from his shirt and had shoved it hard into the guard's throat.

As Mikey reached for his gun, and as the guard's blood shoot up in a high-powered jet, splattering against the roof of the wagon, Irons had shoved a hand into the guard's holster and yanked out his gun. The guard clutched at his throat, blood streaming through his fingers, and slumped to the side.

Mikey got one shot off, and it left a neat hole in the roof. Irons retaliated with three, blowing out Mikey's chest and sending the Fingerman slumping dead to the floor.

Up front the rookie swerved the wagon up on to a verge, smashing through a wooden fence. The wagon flipped and hurtled all of its occupants around like socks in a washing machine. Then it slid gradually down into a grassy crevice before bursting into flames.

Irons lay in the back, on his side. The corpse of the late Mikey had landed on his knee, pinning him into a corner. Blood streaked the walls of the stricken carriage and dented steel and shattered glass invited deadly lacerations. He already had one – a deep gash across his forehead, dribbling blood down his face.

Shoving the gun into his trousers, Irons fumbled Mikey's keys out of his pocket and kicked open the door. He climbed up, lifting himself along the edge of the wagon's interior, before dropping down on to the grass and into the cool night air.

As he ran for the road the van exploded, a vast fireball in the night sky. Hunks of flaming steel and rubber rained down on to the road, casting a white glow on the damp tarmac. Irons collapsed to his knees, a wall of heat and tiny shards of shrapnel hitting his back.

I'm free, he thought maniacally. Free at last.

Behind him the Fingermen burned, and Richard Irons fled out into the night.

Free, he thought, and giggled madly. Free at last.

21.40

From the safety of a shadowed rooftop, he watches with eager eyes, and gently rubs a finger along the blade.

It's all about patience and timing, he thought with a smile. Of course, the smile was always there – but now he felt the smile beneath it, a cold smile, but a genuine smile nonetheless.

It had been a simple case of swinging down on to the front of the van, forcing the Fingerman to swerve. Conducting, keeping all the players flowing.

And the final crescendo was drawing closer.

22.00

Terry Pitt was almost nodding off when he got the brainwave.

Mandy had gone up to bed without saying another word, not even a goodnight. He hadn't regretted it. There were no more regrets.

Instead he'd returned to the tedious pages of his book and had made a cup of coffee. The coffee went down like bitter mud, but it did the trick and he gradually felt the haze of fatigue lifting.

Then he'd began to slip off again, his mind moving in a thousand other directions, thinking about life and bills and taxes and government, when the final piece fell into place, just like that. Something one of the Fingermen told him before his meeting with Irons.

"Go a little easy on him… his wife's left him. As if everything else that's happened today isn't bad enough, you know? Not for his sake, mind… he's snapped once. He can do it again."

And then it clicked neatly into place.

His wife. That was the missing link. The final piece in the game, the piece waiting with Irons in check.

"I'll teach you the value of human life one day, Mr Irons…"

And it all seemed so horribly simple, so meticulously planned, and so inescapably flawless. This had all been his game-plan from the start – the deaths of the Fingermen, the rose, sending Harry Linderman insane, his arrest at the hands of the Finger.

Then, Pitt thought, it's painfully obvious where I fit into this, isn't it?

I'm his salvation.

He grabbed his coat and his car keys, slipped into his shoes.

It was only when he'd gotten to the car that he realised he had forgotten his gun.

22.30

Richard Irons wandered across a forgotten park in an abandoned area of the city. Blood streamed from his head wound and left small splatters on the grass. A few high-rise flats stood in the background, bathed in complete darkness. They looked like eerie grinning totem poles to Irons, watching him move with smiling eyes.

"Sod you!" he screamed out into the darkness and the trees and the bushes. "You think you scare me, you jumped-up bogeyman? You think you're some sort of superman, do you? Hey? Well, laugh it up now! I'll show you the value of human life. And we'll see just how much you value it, you murdering son of a bitch!"

He fired a shot out into the darkness and was greeted with nothing but silent echoes.

Unfazed, he carried on walking into the night.

23.00

Terry Pitt's reliable Ford Escort found the remains of the Finger-wagon at eleven o'clock. The car's headlights flashed on the jagged remains of the fence, looking like wooden teeth. Beyond them the wagon smouldered gently in its final resting place, a dirt-strewn grass crevice. The air was thick with the stench of smoke and petrol and something like overdone pork.

A smell that would have been very familiar to Richard Irons.

Pitt opened the Escort door and stumbled carefully down the crevice, clutching an old electric torch. He peered in to the mashed-in front. One burnt-out corpse, now barely recognizable. However, his hat had survived with nothing but a few singed edges, and sat on the seat. Not Irons.

He cautiously clambered to the top of the crevice and peered down through the open back door.

Two more charcoaled corpses, little more than blackened husks now. No chance of recognising them.

With a sigh Pitt backed off from the wreckage and began to walk back to the car. Surely that couldn't have been it, could it? Had the masked man finally arrived to take his revenge, and was this it? It didn't seem to fit.

And when you considered that everything that had happened that day had been as meticulously orchestrated as a scene in a movie, it made even less sense.

He slumped on the bonnet of the Escort and reached for a cigarette.

It was then that he got his answer, handed to him as neatly as everything else had been. Pitt had always thought that there were no such thing as coincidences – there was only careful planning, and patience.

And theatricality.

This was as theatrical as they come. A trail of tiny splatters of blood, leading off west. West, he thought, and fear socked home in his chest when he realised what lay to the West.

Camberwell.

He climbed back into his car and followed them.

23.20

Almost home now, Irons thought, and smirked. All the way he'd been thinking about what he'd do that lying, backstabbing cow. He'd use the gun, that was for sure. Only he wouldn't be merciful. He'd save it till last. And then he'd shoot her where she'd really feel it – the groin, the kneecaps, the breast. Maybe even put a little dummy-cross on every bullet so it shredded her internal organs and really put her through the wringer.

She'd soon regret the day she ever crossed Richard Irons.

Beneath the small heath on which he stood, Camberwell stretched away, rows of neat semi-detached houses and cold, unfriendly orange lights. Twenty-four hours ago, this place would have meant very different things to him – home, warmth, comfort. Love, even.

Now it meant something else entirely. Now it meant victory.

He began to walk down the heath when he heard a cry.

"Wait!" an exasperated voice cried. "Richard, wait!"

Irons calmly reached for his gun, and then began to lower it. Running out of the shadows was the Nose agent, Pitt. He looked a mess – scruffy hair, fatigued, ragged clothes.

"Wait, Richard!" Pitt said, panting. "You have to stop! Don't you see what's happening here? We're all being toyed with! Whatever you're about to do, Richard, you must stop! Or you'll die!"

Irons frowned, and wordlessly reached for his gun.

"No!" Pitt cried. "No, listen to me, please! Don't you see what's happening? The man in the mask, the man from Room Five, promised you he'd show you the value of human life. And he's doing it now! You've had your lesson, don't you see? Same as he had. He put you through his experience, and then he broke you out, and now he's testing you."

The words seemed to fall silent on Iron's ears. The detective may well have been talking in a fog. All he wanted now was blood, and revenge, to cool the heat searing through his shattered mind.

"He's…" Pitt choked. "It's your wife. He set it all up, everything. Turned your wife against you. The lives of your family – those are the values you must learn! God, he's probably watching you now! Turn around! Drop the gun!"

Irons shook his head sadly. "No," he said. "No, too late."

"It's not!" Pitt almost screamed. "Just drop it! That's why I'm here! I'm your salvation, Irons! I'm your last hope! Please, just drop it!"

Irons stared at the gun for what seemed like forever. He held it closely. Thought about its weight, thought about its size. The detective looked on hopefully.

Finally he whispered, "Too late. Damage done."

And he raised the gun, and he shot Terry Pitt three times.

Pitt slumped forward on to his hands and knees, choking and clutching athis chest. He seemed about to say something else when his limbs gave away and he slumped to the floor, lying dead in the grass.

Irons thought the expression on his face was something like relief.

And then he walked on into the night.

23.45

Jean Irons checks the back door one more time.

She's been checking it at every five minutes for the past hour, testing the lock, checking that every window in the house is shut. It's the first time she's been in the house alone for many years. She didn't know if she'd sleep that night. She didn't know if she liked this house any more.

With a sigh, and clutching half a glass of wine, she wanders back into the living room.

And then she hears the shattering of glass.

Fear freezes up in her throat, her heart flares up painfully. She sucks in deep, desperate breaths, as if they were to be her last.

"Dear god," she whispers, and is about to break into a run when manly hands shoot out of the shadows and grab her, throwing her to the floor. A foot comes down hard on the side of her head, pain exploding in the right half of her face. Stars spin wildly through her head. Hands yank her, throw her upwards. Arms wrap themselves tightly round her throat.

"Hello again, darling," Richard Irons hisses into her ear, his hot breath tickling her face. "Remember me?"

"Richard, please…" Jean sobs.

Irons spins her around and slaps her hard with the back of his hand, chipping a tooth and sending a stream of blood flowing down her quaking throat. He grabs her before she can fall and yanks her close to his face.

"You're going to really bloody wish you hadn't messed with me," Irons snarls, holding her arms in an almost loving gesture.

He throws his wife to the floor. Her head slams against the edge of the couch as it falls and she cries out, pain pounding out from the wound. Slowly Richard begins to remove his belt. Brown leather, she thinks madly. Christmas present, two years ago.

"Going to be screaming my bloody name for forgiveness," Irons says, wrapping the belt round his hand like snake. "But you ain't going to get any. This is for keeps, you two-faced little bitch."

She begins to sob helplessly, hating herself for it, wishing she could at least stand up to him and resist. Tears stream painfully down her swollen face and mingle with the blood.

"Daddy?"

Ted, she thinks suddenly. Oh no, Ted, no, dear god…

"Daddy, stop!" Ted cries, running down the stairs.

The boy leaps at Richard, grabbing at the belt with his tiny hands. A look of mad rage flashes across Richard's face and he flings the boy hard across the room, where he hits his back against a sofa and passes out.

"NO!" Jean screams, leaping to her feet. "You leave my son alone, you bastard…"

He swings the belt down like a whip and it catches her hard across her chest, leaving a painful fire-streak. She falls backwards, where he looms over her like a demon.

"Big mistake," he says, shaking his head. "Real big mistake."

He brings the belt down once again, an agonising strip across her back. She cries out again and this time breaks into helpless tears. Going to die, she thinks. Going to die here. Ted, I'm so sorry, this is all my fault, all of it…

"See?" Richard yells, in some wild delirium. "This is what I think of your value of life! This! I think the only life with any bloody value is my own! Come on out, then! Show yourself!"

No sound comes back but Jean's helpless sobs.

"Well, watch this, then…" Irons says, and swings the belt back for one more swing.

It never quite gets all the way. It freezes halfway though its swing, some unseen hands in the kitchen clutching the other end.

For one horrible second Jean sees the manic joy in Richard's eyes collapse into the hopeless fear she'd seen in him all day, but this time it's worse than ever. Now he looks as though he's looked into the mouth of hell itself.

And suddenly hands rush out from behind him and he vanishes into the shadow of the kitchen.

He doesn't scream.

00.00

Jean Irons slowly stands up, on legs like jelly, and walks in a haze into the kitchen.

Richard hadn't had the chance to scream. A single blade sticks neatly out of his chest, pointing an accusing finger at her. A puddle of blood spreads steadily beneath him. Straight in the heart. Behind him the window lies open, the blinds billowing softly in the silent night air.

She knows what she has to do.

She reaches for the knife, and walks back into the living room, and calls the Nose.