The Ambitious City (46 page)

Both doors had deadbolts on the inside—for what purpose other than his own, he couldn’t imagine. He locked the far door but left
the door directly in front of her unlocked, then turned to admire his captive.

Her head, encased in its silver bubble, hung forward. In spite of the fact that her feet just reached the floor, her body was limp, held upright only by the bungee attached to her wrists. “That will eventually pull your shoulders out of their sockets, Miss Aziz, but we’re not concerned about such eventualities, are we?”

“Let’s get a look at her, Billie.”

“Okay, admire the view for a second …”

He removed the Glock 17 and holster from her belt and laid them on the table several feet away.

“I wanna see those titties, Billie.”

“Okay, let’s do her.” Billie slid the knife out of its sheath, hoisted the blouse out of Aziz’s trousers and sliced it straight up, sending buttons skidding across the floor.

“Yeah, man. Do the bra too.”

“In time. Let me get the jacket off.” He moved behind her and slit the jacket from the vent to the collar, so it hung in two pieces. Then he did the same to the blouse. He shoved the split sides up each arm and knotted them together above the silver helmet and her shoulders, which were now bare.

“Fantastic skin she has.”

“Whatever. Okay, you ready?”

“Just do it.”

Billie slid the knife between her breasts and popped it forward. The black bra came away and hung loose; Billie reached over and lifted it from each breast.

“Like I said, blackberry nipples … Beauty tits—on the small side, but firm. Lemme touch ’em.”

“Not yet. I’m not done.”

“Oh yeah, the bush … Let’s see it.”

There was a soft groan from under the helmet and Aziz moved
her legs slightly, searching for support, then sagged again into unconsciousness.

“Whoa, that was close.”

“Don’t kid yourself, man. I want this woman awake and looking at me when I open her up.” Billie undid the belt and unzipped the fly on Aziz’s grey trousers, then in one violent move yanked them down till they lay in a clump at her ankles. Aziz’s body bobbed up and down.

“Yeah, man, black panties … So cool against her skin.”

“Keep in mind we’re ridding the world of another Muslim, dude, not falling in love.”

“I’m just saying this is one beautiful A-rab, that’s all.”

The silver helmet rocked back and forth loosely and Aziz groaned again. She tried standing on her legs but they were still rubbery, and the bungee cord made her bounce several times.

“That’s funny—she’s like a jumping jack. Okay, off with the panties, Billie.”

“No more beating about the bush, you mean?”

“Shit, man, you’re so fast with a line.”

Aziz groaned again, but Billie was listening to something else—the creaking of a steel door down the corridor. “He’s here,” he whispered.

“The panties, Billie—rip ’em off.”

“He’s outside,” Billie whispered again. “This is gonna be good. Let’s take off the helmet for her shining moment.” He tore the silver bubble off Aziz’s head, peeled the KT label from the back and slapped it across her mouth before she could call out. She opened her eyes and blinked several times until she could focus.

She studied him wide-eyed. After glancing down at her body, naked but for her panties, she looked at him again, her eyes burning. She snapped her head back and forth and tried to move her feet to kick out, but they were caught in her suit pants. The movement only caused her to bounce up and down again, giving Billie even
more pleasure. He moved about her with the blade in front of him. Resting the cold steel on her cheek, he leaned closer and smiled, then ran the cutting edge between her breasts and down to her navel, where he shoved the point in slightly. Aziz pulled back to avoid it. Billie pushed the knife further, until finally she was forced to relax and came down on the point of the blade. A thin trickle of blood ran down to her panties.

He leaned forward so he could speak softly in her ear. “You happy now, bitch? With my next stroke we’ll see what you’re made of.” He stepped back and drew a line from her right hip across her left breast to the shoulder. “And you’ll get to watch. So will your boyfriend, if he gets here in time.”

With all her strength, Aziz forced herself downward and then pushed up with her legs, using the recoiling bungee to take her higher, and kicked out and struck Dance hard below the knees. It was crude but effective; he stumbled backwards as the door flew open. MacNeice stood in the doorway with his weapon levelled at the middle of Dance’s back.

“Drop the knife, Dance!” MacNeice yelled at him. Billie regained his footing but was at least two feet from striking distance. “For the last time, now—drop it.”

Billie moved swiftly towards Aziz, planting his right foot. MacNeice fired once. The round tore a hole through the backpack’s KT logo, throwing Billie forward. He was still holding the knife as he slammed face first onto the concrete floor.

MacNeice rushed to his side, took the knife from his hand and used it to slash through the bungee. As Aziz fell, he held her upright. He removed the KT label as gently as he could from her mouth. They stayed that way for a moment, her arms still over her head, till she pushed away from him with her hip and held out her hands. He slit the plastic tie. She rubbed her wrists, then leaned down to pull up her pants.

Beside MacNeice, Dance was lying in a growing pool of blood. Deep red rivulets were coursing along the stress cracks in the concrete, and he was coughing and sputtering. Bizarrely, he seemed to be talking to someone.

Aziz shrugged her shoulders several times to loosen them up. Then, pulling her torn clothes around her, she walked unsteadily towards the Glock on the table. “Turn him over, Mac. Please do it.”

MacNeice knew what was going to happen. He bolted the door, suddenly aware that the other door was locked from the inside—Dance had planned it so he’d walk directly into the action. He leaned over and turned Dance onto his back. Incredibly, in spite of the blood spilling from the gaping wound in his chest, Dance was smiling. And he was whispering something, even though he was fast running out of air.

As MacNeice stood up, Aziz approached. Seeing the rage filling her eyes, he stood between her and Dance. “Let me do it, Fiza,” he said. “I can stand the guilt.” He reached for her weapon but she shrugged him off.

Straddling the prone figure, she leaned over till she was face to face with William Dance. “You see me? You see my Muslim face? I’m still here.” His eyes were glassy but he stared up at her. “But you … you are gone, Dance, and soon, I promise you, you will be remembered only as a vile mistake, a pathetic little creature—gone.”

Dance’s eyes changed, beginning to fade as the life flowed out of them. He coughed, and a mixture of blood and spittle spilled over his cheeks. When his mouth closed, the deep red line between his lips made the smile even more obscene. He managed a slow wink. The winking eye struggled to open again, only making it halfway. Aziz pushed off the safety on her weapon and first pointed it at his head, then scanned down the centre of his body. She fired a round into his groin. His body bucked violently.

Aziz stared at his face again. She wasn’t aware of the pounding on the door. MacNeice could hear Williams screaming their names, and he reached over to retrieve her weapon. “It’s over, Fiza. He’s gone.”

“Not yet, he isn’t. Not yet. Look, the smile’s still there.” Without hesitating, Aziz fired another round, into Dance’s mouth, shattering that smile. “No more smiling, William Dance.” Then she handed her weapon to MacNeice, walked unsteadily to the opposite side of the room and leaned against the lockers.

Outside the door they heard someone shout, “Stand back!’ A moment later a battering ram blew the door open, sending the deadbolt cartwheeling to a stop at Dance’s feet. Williams rushed in with his weapon raised. Behind him it seemed as if the whole division was trying to cram through the door. “Get them out of here, Williams. Now!” MacNeice shouted.

After a quick glance at Aziz’s shredded clothing, Williams turned. “Out, out, out—it’s all over. Get out—now!” He pushed, grabbed shoulders and shoved the blue mass back through the doorway. Once he’d cleared the room he turned back and said, “I’ll cover the door. Take your time.” He stomped out and tried to slam the door, but it was hanging loose in its bent metal frame.

The voices outside were loud and agitated, but it seemed extraordinarily quiet in the room. There was only the smell of blood, spreading in a large Rorschach puddle around Dance’s body.

MacNeice tucked Aziz’s Glock into his belt, closed the harness restraining his own weapon and took off his jacket. He put it around Aziz’s shoulders and held her arms gently, then pulled her towards him in a hug. She began shuddering but said nothing.

“We can stay here for as long as you like,” MacNeice murmured, “but I’d rather get you away from this sight, this smell. We’ll wait for EMS in an interview room upstairs.”

“Montile was right,” she said quietly next to his ear, the tremors
in her body subsiding.

“The groin thing?” MacNeice drew away from her and held her face in his hands.

“Yes.” She relaxed into him a little. Fearing she’d collapse, he held her up at the waist.

“Fiza, come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll take you up the back stairs. We’ll get you patched up and do our debriefing with SIU.”

“Okay.” She looked down at the corpse—the eyes, one still half-open, were splattered with blood and finally unseeing.

“Williams,” MacNeice called, “clear that corridor. Give us a path to the back stairs and a clean T-shirt from the weight room.”

“Yes, sir.” They could hear him moving people down the corridor as complaints rose above his voice. Ten seconds or so passed before they heard, “Boss, it’s all yours.”

MacNeice did up two buttons of his suit jacket to cover her chest and put his arm around her. Sidestepping the pool of blood that had finally stopped growing, they left the room.

Williams was waiting for them. “He wired the cars with transponders, boss. The Yamaha was on the other side of the building. No one noticed because he’d painted it black and silver.” Keeping his eyes carefully averted, he held out his arm. “Here’s a T-shirt, Fiz. You’re now an official member of the tug-of-war team.”

“I feel like one,” she said, and managed a smile. “Thank you, Montile. And you were right.”

“About what?”

“It was a mistake to push him. I apologize.”

“Well, as a famous comic once said, all’s well that ends swell.” He led them to the foot of the stairs.

“Who said that?” she asked.

“Me.” Williams did a slight bow. “I’ll be right up with the EMS team.”

—

MacNeice made sure Aziz was settled in the interview room before he went to make coffee. When he returned with two double espressos, she was wearing the tug-of-war T-shirt and had thrown her shredded clothing in the wastebasket.

“Sorry, Fiza, we’ll need those for evidence.”

She grimaced.

“You’re allowed not to think for a little while, but then you need to start thinking again. Fiza, you’ve got to get your head together to talk to SIU.” He put the coffee in front of her and retrieved the clothing from the bin, laying it on a rolling table in the corner of the room. Coming back to stand beside her, he said, “Show me your stomach.”

Aziz tilted back her chair and lifted the T-shirt. The wound was an inch long and deep, but for the moment it had stopped bleeding. Her belly was pulsing rapidly, betraying her pretense of calm. The leaning back and stretching caused a fresh globule to track down the trail of dried blood to her waistband.

“It’s right on the bottom lip of your belly button. It looks like a bad razor-blade cut, which is good—it’s so fine it won’t scar.”

She let the T-shirt fall and eased her chair back onto all four legs. In the corridor they heard people approaching, and Williams appeared in the sidelight window. He opened the door a little. “EMS is here. And”—looking at MacNeice—“two suits for the incident report.” He swung the door wide for the paramedics, stepping aside as they came through.

“Put the suits in the other room. I’ll be with them shortly.” MacNeice swirled the espresso in his cup to capture the crema, then drank it down. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he said to the paramedics. “Fiza, when you go in, just tell them what happened.” He squeezed her shoulder briefly before turning to pick up the torn clothing. “When you’ve finished with your interview—which won’t be long—I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

She nodded. “Okay, boss. Thanks.”

MacNeice smiled and left the room.

Putting on her latex gloves, the solid young attendant with short-cropped blonde hair said, “Detective, would you mind just lying down on the table so we can see that wound?” Her partner, a burly man with red hair, smiling eyes and a Yosemite Sam moustache, squatted on the floor, digging into the large nylon medical bag. He was humming a tune that Aziz liked but couldn’t identify. She lay down on the cool fake wood surface and let her eyes close as the two set to work. Feeling the woman’s hand touch her skin, she opened her eyes and studied the ceiling-mounted fluorescent light, marvelling at the intricacy of the diamond-patterned plastic reflector and how it fractured and dispersed the light from the long, narrow tubes.

She heard the woman say, “Give me four swabs and four alcohol prep pads.” The red-haired man with the cartoon moustache responded, “You got it,” and returned to his humming.

She felt a sharp, hot sting and flinched. “Sorry, Detective,” the woman said. “I forgot to say this would sting a bit. It’s fairly deep.”

She felt a faint tugging as the attendant taped the wound closed, and then the cool sensation of the alcohol pads as she mopped up the dried blood. Aziz realized that she had yet to look at what he’d done to her. Even though it wouldn’t matter anymore to William Dance, she decided not to give him the satisfaction. Instead she closed her eyes again and focused on her breathing. Within seconds—they reported afterwards—she was asleep.

A
ZIZ WAS IN
the passenger seat, looking through the plastic bag of sleep goodies MacNeice had picked up for her after his interview—valerian, melatonin and two small bottles of lavender oil. “Do I do all of these?”