Killing for the Company

that he’d dumped on the floor by the bunk. He squinted at his chunky watch, its hands and face still vaguely luminous. Quarter to twelve. Who the fuck was calling him at this time of night?

Luke hauled his arse out of bed and fumbled in the darkness, pulling his phone from his pocket and shielding his eyes slightly from the brightness of its screen. The phone continued to vibrate in his hand as he looked down to check the caller’s number.

His brow furrowed. ‘What the fuck…?’ he muttered.

He shook his head. His eyes were playing tricks on him. They had to be. Either that or he was still dreaming.

Luke took another look at the phone.

He wasn’t dreaming.

He wasn’t mistaken.

But what he was seeing was impossible, because the caller was dead. Burned to a cinder in a house fire years ago. Luke had been to the memorial service in a little Hereford church; he’d offered his condolences to the parents of the deceased; he’d shed his own private tears at the passing of a good friend.

More than a good friend. The man he owed his life to.

No wonder, then, that he felt he was staring into the eyes of a ghost. Because how was it possible — how in the hell was it possible — that the phone in his hand should be displaying the words ‘freeman, chet’?

NINETEEN

Little Harry was fast asleep. He looked angelic with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling softly. Suze couldn’t imagine, though, as she sat on an upturned milk crate gazing at him, what kind of angel would find itself in a place like this.

The disused factory they called home was as cavernous as a cathedral and as cold. Most of the windows — high up in the brick walls — were broken, and nobody had bothered to sweep up the shards of glass on the concrete floor. During the daytime the windows let in a watery grey light. But at night it was black. There was no electricity here.

The squat never slept. There were always people awake, no matter what the time of night. It was cold out, and most of the other squatters gathered round a brazier in the middle of the building, burning rubbish that they’d gathered during the day, and sharing spliffs. The air smelt of damp, smoke and skunk, but both Suze and Harry were used to that by now.

They kept themselves to themselves. Suze had found them a little corner of the factory that had perhaps once been a manager’s office. It no longer had a door, and the walls were in a poor state, but it afforded them some privacy. There had been squats in the past where they’d had a room to themselves, with a window and a bed. Not here. Harry lay on a mattress of old clothes, covered by a thin blanket. But he never seemed to feel the cold.

‘Fancy a toke, gorgeous?’

Suze looked round to see a figure standing in the doorway, the glowing dot of a joint between his fingers. She couldn’t make out his features, but she knew well enough who he was. He said he was called Danny, but Suze knew that nobody gave their real names in places like this. His black hair was braided into tight dreadlocks, his lower face was covered in a wispy beard and his body reeked of dope and dirt. Get him when he was stoned — and that was every night — and he’d tell you he was an eco-warrior, or an anarchist, or a trustafarian. In truth, Suze knew, he was just a waster, pissing his life up the wall like everyone else she’d met in squats.

Like her.

‘No thanks, Danny,’ she said. It paid to stay on good terms with your housemates — they could be volatile, and you didn’t want them against you — but all Suze really wanted was to be left alone. Especially tonight.

Danny didn’t move.

‘I’m going to get some kip now, Danny,’ she said with a hint of steel in her voice.

‘Suit yourself, love,’ Danny muttered. He disappeared back into the factory.

Suze gave it a couple of moments before checking nobody was nearby. She peered round the doorway of their makeshift bedroom to see nine or ten silhouettes congregated around the brazier. There was nobody in her immediate vicinity, so she hurried back to where Harry was lying.

Her worldly goods were stowed in a single bag. A change of clothes for herself and her son; some antibiotics she’d cadged from a mobile drop-in centre intended for junkies, just in case either of them needed some — registering with a doctor was out of the question, after all; a story book, written for children younger than Harry, from which she had intended to start teaching him to read. But there was never time for that. There was only time for the business of survival.

And at the bottom of the bag, hidden away where nobody could find it, a wallet.

It was in a bad state. The leather was cracked and worn, and some of the stitching inside had come loose. There were credit cards, but they had long since expired and Suze could never have used them anyway. On the back of each card, fading now, was a scrawled signature. Sometimes, in her lowest moments — and there were plenty of those — Suze stared at that signature and remembered the hand that had written it. She remembered the way the calloused fingers had felt on her skin. She remembered the urgent look its owner had given her when he pressed the wallet into her hands.

Stay anonymous. Stay dark.

She’d done what Chet had told her and she’d stayed alive. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was perhaps better than none at all.

And now she was going to do the one thing that she knew he’d tell her not to. Tucked inside the wallet, difficult to find if you didn’t know it was there, was a SIM card. Suze had never done anything with it. She’d barely even dared remove it from its hiding place, as if just by looking at it she might endanger herself. She’d certainly never risked fitting it inside the handset of a mobile phone.

She placed the card in the palm of her hand and stared at it for a moment.

Suze didn’t even know if it would work. Removing her own pay-as-you-go mobile from her pocket, she slid the back off and took out the card, before replacing it with Chet’s old one. She found herself holding her breath, her hands trembling a little, as she switched the phone on. Would this SIM card work? If Chet had been on a contract, it would have been deactivated long ago. But if it was pay-as-you-go, maybe…

It took a few seconds to crank up. A glowing screen, but blank. No information. Suze closed her eyes in disappointment.

‘Thought you were hitting the sack, gorgeous.’

She spun round to see Danny. He wasn’t in the door frame this time, but had stepped inside the room. His voice was different. A little more high-pitched. A little slower. Stoned.

‘For God’s sake, Danny,’ she snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’

Danny was silent for a moment. But then he took a couple of steps towards her. ‘No need to talk like that, darling,’ he said in a strange, sing-song kind of voice. She could hear him breathing deeply.

Suze stood up, and as she did so she felt his fingertips reach out and brush her cheek.

She didn’t hesitate. The years had taught her that if she didn’t take care of herself, nobody else would. She grabbed his wrist and yanked it away from her, then quickly pulled a flick knife from inside her jacket. The light from the screen of her phone glinted against the blade and Danny staggered back when he saw it. ‘Fuckin’ hell, love. Take it easy, hey?’

‘Get out!’

Suze listened to Danny’s echoing footsteps as he hurried back to the brazier. She tried to calm herself with several deep breaths and sat back down on the crate.

Her heart stopped.

The screen on the phone was still glowing in the dark, but it was no longer blank. A single word: Vodafone. And above it, four bars of service. Suze swallowed hard and reached for the handset. Her fingers still trembling, she accessed the SIM’s contacts. Slowly, she scrolled through.

The names were all unfamiliar, but then why should she recognise them? She’d only known Chet for a matter