He had worked diligently with a scrubbing brush to remove the thick layer of limescale that had covered the wall like a grim paint job. It would have been enough for the past few months and Sam didn’t even give the growing mould in the corner of the room a second glance.
He turned on the taps, the water eventually trickling out into a steady stream.
Allowing a few minutes for the water to rise above a temperature that would chill him to the bone, Sam turned to the smeared mirror on the wall. He wiped it with a towel and caught a glimpse of his face. The eyes were soulless, two dark balls of pure vengeance. They sat back in his world-weary face, the handsome smile faded and replaced with a hard jawline covered in stubble. His muscular body was covered in thick, purple blotches, reminders of the brawls he had been in and the increasing punishment he was putting himself through. His nose was sore from the attacker in the second High Rise and adorning his sculpted chest were the two white circles.
The bullet holes from yesteryear.
The end of his career.
Staring back at him like lifeless eyes, Sam ran a finger gently over them, the skin a rough tissue against his fingertip. Lucy had called them his lucky spots as both of them had been a mere inch away from ending his life.
He felt a twinge of pain in his chest, the usual response his heart gave when his mind drifted to his ex-wife. Lucy had been everything he had ever wanted, and she beamed with pride every time he returned home from a tour.
She understood his desire to serve his country, stemming from the military childhood he had but never revisited. Sam knew that his mother’s death at a young age caused him to latch onto his father, who served with distinction in the army until he was killed on his final tour when Sam was just fifteen.
There was never any other choice.
Sam was always going to be a soldier and Lucy understood that every shot he fired from his rifle, every terrorist he eliminated, and every person he saved was what he was born to do.
Then Jamie came along, and he promised he wouldn’t kill anymore.
Two bullets to the chest evicted him from the army.
The want to be with his family kept him from returning.
But that was all taken away on that haunting summer evening, when he crumpled to his knees in Hendon, just outside of the Metropolitan Police College where he was top of his class.
The flashing blue lights.
The shimmering pool of blood.
His wife’s agonised cries of pain.
His dead son.
Fury rocked Sam’s body like a cattle prod and he drove his fist into the mirror, the glass shattering and two shards ripping into the flesh of his battered knuckles. That was why he had mutilated Leon Barnett. To help a man who was as helpless as he had been.
Aaron Hill had no chance of saving his daughter. Not on his own.
That’s why Sam had tortured Leon. It was why he had attacked that gang.
It was why he had raged his one-man war on the entire crime empire that pulsed through the underbelly of London like a heartbeat.
Because he had been helpless.
As he stepped into the bath tub and allowed the steam of the shower to envelope him, he dipped his head under the boiling water.
As it crashed against his face, his mind raced back to one memory over three years before and one name.
Miles Hillock.
Sam had been sat in the car for over fifteen hours. Parked on the side of the street in Edgware, he stared out onto the road. The pavement was lined with shops, a number of low market supply stores and cheap takeaways. The Broadwalk Shopping Centre had long since closed, the employees of JD Sports and Boots shutting up shop and heading up the road to the local pubs.
As the clock ventured closer to midnight, Sam’s focus never shifted.
It was locked upon the small flat above the Dallas Fried Chicken shop. A small, pokey residence, with just enough dark corners for somebody to fade away.
Sam ran a hand through his overgrown hair, the brown locks flopping over his ears. It had been months since he had had a haircut.
Since he had cared.
The hair flopped down the side of his gaunt face, his appetite disappearing the moment he stared into the dead eyes of his son. His eyes, vacant and cried dry, sat back into his pale face which was framed by a scraggily beard.
Sam had stopped shaving when Lucy left.
For the first two months, they had grieved together. Each day melted into the next, the absence of their son weighing heavily on them both. Somehow, hand in hand, they had made it through his funeral, the room a chamber of broken hearts and shattered souls. As the weeks went by, Lucy decided to push forward, honouring the boundless energy of their son by trying to get their life back on track.
Sam just couldn’t do it.
He found himself sat on the floor of his son’s room, thumbing through the books that adorned the neat book case. Tears fell freely as he remembered his son’s love of books, the polar opposite to himself.
His son was a bookworm.
As he tried to digest the words that accompanied the colourful caterpillar before him, he broke down. Time after time.
He could have stopped it.
Sam had spent his entire life as a soldier, protecting the freedom of those under the relentless, oppressive boot of terrorism.
But he couldn’t protect his son.
He had failed in his one duty as a father.
After those two months turned to six, Lucy soon packed her bags, refusing to watch as the man she loved allowed the guilt to swallow him.
