Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

The cop nodded. ‘Tell your old man to keep fighting the good fight.’

‘I will.’

‘Have a good night, gentlemen.’

The cop stepped back.

Slater lowered the SIG.

King breathed out.

Slater inched forward, then rolled, then accelerated as soon as they were past the roadblock.

Not hard enough to draw attention.

King waited until they were out of sight, until the blue and red had attenuated back into night.

Then he said, ‘Four minutes.’

Slater floored it.

69

The nicotine hit put Icke on top of the world.

No more waiting, he decided.

He pitched forward in the seat, and it groaned under his weight. The noise startled Elsa. She’d been half-asleep, her eyes drooping as she reached the limits for constant stress and started fading. Now her blue eyes came alive. She was underweight, malnourished despite their best efforts to feed her, and the blonde hair that usually flowed was damp and knotted, but they’d clean her up and pump her full of nutrients before they shipped her off with the other two.

The other two.

Usually it’d be girls, but the buyer had requested boys. He still wanted Elsa for his closest employees to take advantage of, but the two fourteen-year-old lads in Icke’s possession were far from the norm. They were the little brothers of two of Armando Gates’ gangbanger enforcers. Icke figured he was doing them a favour. They might live longer overseas, in better conditions, instead of being indoctrinated into Calle 18 and inevitably killed by a rival gang. But in the end it was no factor, because they’d meet the same fate eventually.

We all end up in the same place, he thought.

Only a matter of time.

Elsa was the first to speak. ‘I already told you, Alastair. Please. I already said I’ll tell you anything.’

‘But you’re going to lie to me,’ he said. ‘You’re going to pretend you don’t know. Gloria’s on her way to ask you some questions, you know that, right?’

She nodded, a lump in her throat.

He said, ‘She thinks I’m an idiot. She thinks I can’t get it out of you. I don’t like that attitude very much. So, Elsa, you’re going to tell me what you told your mother before she went away, or I’m going to hurt you.’

‘Nothing,’ Elsa said. Her voice cracked. ‘I swear! Only that I was hanging out at Wan’s — that’s it. I never mentioned you or Gloria.’

‘Elsa, Elsa, Elsa,’ Icke tutted. ‘Why would Gloria tell me otherwise?’

She sobbed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I trust her slightly more than I trust you,’ he said, ‘but it’s closer than you think.’

Elsa didn’t say anything.

‘Don’t do that,’ Icke said. ‘Don’t go quiet.’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘The truth.’

‘I’m telling you the truth.’

The nicotine rush blurred with Icke’s anger. It all snowballed. His blood pressure went right up. Colour flushed his cheeks.

He thought, Maybe Kerr’s right. She has a way with words, for sure. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’m not as smart as I think.

But where Kerr was smart, he was ruthless.

So that’s what he turned to.

He wrenched a desk drawer open and came out with a big revolver. Elsa saw it and screamed and pressed herself against the radiator, like that would help. Icke levered himself out of the chair, which took some work. His knees had been bad for years and the gut that flopped over his belt only served to throw him more off-balance. Not to mention the head spins. He waddled out from behind the desk, went over and pressed the gun against Elsa’s temple, right above her ear.

This time she didn’t scream.

This time she just went quiet and pale. Her hands shook. Her shoulders heaved.

Silent terror.

He said, ‘It doesn’t have to go this way. What does your mother know?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Wrong answer.’

She thought he was going to do it. He could see it on her face. She thought she was about to die.

Maybe she was.

The anger and the head rush weren’t even anymore. It was fifty-fifty when he’d got up, but now the rage was taking over, making it closer to eighty-twenty. He was competent everywhere, but somehow he couldn’t get it out of her. Even worse, Elsa would tell Kerr what he’d done. How he’d threatened her, held a gun to her head, and still told him nothing.

Good cop, bad cop.

He didn’t mind being bad cop.

He did mind if he failed.

He thought, What’s it matter what Josefine knows anyway? She’s in a cell. She’ll be labelled delusional. She’ll be forgotten like all the hushed-up witnesses in the past were forgotten.

Anger trumped it all. It trumped the overseas buyers, it trumped logic, it trumped reason. Instinct told him to kill her, for the example alone.

He went to pull.

Depressed his finger and felt the pressure on the trigger.

It never got old.

The greatest feeling on earth.

The power of it…

Something stopped him.

Kerr’s reminder.

I can do that routine you like.

Right there in the office, I can rock your world.

If she showed up to Elsa’s corpse she might not be so inclined.

He could make her do it by force, but he’d prefer if it was voluntary.

He didn’t take the gun away from Elsa’s head, but he didn’t shoot her either.

He thought it over.

Then something that rivalled a train horn shattered the silence.

70

Fabian shivered.

He was cold, scared and confused.

Then again, he didn’t know what any of those things meant anymore. He’d been cold, scared and confused for months, ever since two strange white men had picked him up from school and brought him here. Since then he’d been a prisoner, and the days and nights had passed so relentlessly and incessantly that he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been cold, scared and confused. The air-conditioner in the wall pumped without mercy, and the only way to know that time was passing was the increasing squalor of their conditions.

The mattresses got dirtier. The toilet bolted to the floor in the corner got grimier. The washbasin collected muck. The walls started flaking, mostly from Fabian picking at them with a jagged nail because there was literally nothing else to do.

If he didn’t