Blood Men: A Thriller

The dark sky is breaking on the horizon, a purple-colored light bruising the edge of the world. I carry Sam over my shoulder and she’s chilly; I wonder if her blanket is still in Jodie’s car. I walk quietly. I keep waiting for the gunshot that will send hundreds of birds into the sky and Sam jumping out of her skin. I buckle her into the backseat, tucking the blanket in around her and under her chin. I sit in the driver’s seat and wonder what Dad is doing right now, but I don’t go and check. I look at the cell phones, killing time while my father kills time in a different way. I’ve missed a couple of calls from Schroder but I don’t phone him back. I turn them off. I don’t care about anything else now except Sam.

After a couple of minutes an engine revs loudly, then headlights appear as a car races toward us, slightly out of control, as if driven by someone who hasn’t driven a car in twenty years. It swerves past us, then it’s gone, a dust cloud following it.

I turn the key but nothing happens. I try a couple more times but the result is the same. I pop the hood. Dad hasn’t done any damage. All he’s done is tug the leads off the spark plugs. It only takes me a minute to secure them back into place, but it’s all the head start he needs. I pop the boot. The bag of money is gone. The taillights of Dad’s new car have disappeared; he’s getting further away, with a shotgun and a bag full of cash and his desires of the last twenty years no longer suppressed.

I don’t bother chasing him because I’d never catch him, not unless I drove at speeds that would put my daughter’s life at risk. What I said to Dad earlier still stands now—I’m done with it. The police can catch the rest of the men—they surely know by now who they’re looking for. On the chance they haven’t been caught, I can’t go back home and can’t go to my in-laws’. Driving into the police station is an unknown—too many reasons for them to arrest me. By now they want to put me away, if for nothing else than for freeing my father. They’re out there searching for him too. Before I end up in jail I want to at least spend Christmas Day with my daughter.

My head is jumbled up with anger and hate and fear, and I’m so tired that, in the end, the easiest decision is to head to a motel. I find a place modern enough to have been built this year, with a sign out front saying VACANCY. I park outside the office and ring the bell and a couple of minutes later a sleepy man in his fifties appears and helps me out. I pay with cash.

The room is as modern as the surroundings would suggest, but I don’t really take the time to check them out. I carry Sam and put her gently into bed, taking off only her shoes, then I collapse on top of my bed and fall asleep.





chapter fifty-seven


They’re shooting one in four. They found Kelvin Johnson, but the other two bank robbers are in the wind, along with Oliver Church—though news of another body means Church may have been found. Dawn has come and gone and Schroder is dead on his feet. They all are. They all feel like zombies and look like zombies and it’s nights like these that keep divorce lawyers rolling in cash.

The Armed Offenders Unit is long gone now, having packed away its guns and headed for home, all of them still on standby if needed—all of them probably tempted to switch off their phones. Schroder knows that he is. They’ve busted into four houses and for all their efforts they’ve come away with one suspect.

The patrol officers sent to check the slaughterhouse have reported a body, the head of a male so badly damaged that identification was impossible. No sign of anybody else, but a couple of magazines, a small games unit, and a battery-powered lantern suggest whoever was out there had been there most of the night.

It’s a twenty-five-minute drive to the slaughterhouse from his last location. He’s too tired to drive fast, and has the window down so the air can whistle around his face to keep him awake. He makes a couple of calls to get the ball rolling, organizes the forensics techies to come out; long nights for everybody now turning into long mornings too.

The slaughterhouse is an imposing building in the early-morning light. It’s mostly made up of concrete that could probably survive an atomic bomb. There’s a police car parked outside with two officers sitting in it. The air is full of birdsong and the loudest sound is Schroder’s feet across the ground. The officers lead him inside and he keeps yawning on the way. Assuming he ever makes it home, he’s going to sleep for about twenty-four hours, he thinks; but at this stage it’s an assumption he wouldn’t bet his life on.

Oliver Church is surrounded in blood. He thinks it’s Oliver Church. The clothes certainly suggest it’s not Edward Hunter or his father, and he doesn’t see too many other possibilities at this point. Church’s head is twisted to the side with a large indentation in the side of it which has elongated the front of it, so the distance between his left eye and the left side of his mouth is far greater than the right. He looks like he’s fallen from a great height, so much so that for a moment Schroder is reminded of Suction Cup Guy. A piece of rebar with a bloody lump of cement on the end lies next to him. No way of knowing at this point if Church was tortured to give up more information, or tortured for taking Sam Hunter.

“No other cars out there?” Schroder asks.