Only the Dead by Ben Sanders

again, you are going to be so sorry.’ His voice whistled softly on the S’s. And then he’d spun Sean round by the collar of his shirt and shoved him out through the door and gut-punched him hard enough to leave him breathless and aching. Then he’d dropped down on his haunches beside him and run a big palm over his chin stubble, said that if Sean ever breathed a word that he’d been hit, Derren was going to use the mower to chop off his little finger. So Sean swore it would be their little secret. And when Carole, the foster lady, came by to check up on him, he stayed true to his word .
    Sean remembers it. He remembers Carole, who he quite liked, and he remembers wanting to explain himself to Derren at the time he’d been caught. But innocent curiosity hadn’t seemed much of an excuse to defuse that kind of outrage. He imagines the wife is probably experiencing much the same issue right now. He hears a slap and a thud and the wife’s crying again. Their bedroom door has come off the latch, openabout two inches, a thin band of lamplight escaping, but the thought of sneaking a peep makes his bladder feel limp .
    He could use the phone. The only telephone is in Derren’s study, but Sean knows how to use it. It’s a rotary dial, big as a cinderblock, colour of old bone. He knows 111 is about the quickest number you could hope to dial. He thinks that’s why 111 was chosen to report emergencies because it’s quick to ring on that sort of phone. A neat consolation prize in the sort of situation that would justify dialling it .
    He hears the slap-thud again. He makes up his mind. Derren’s study is at the end of the corridor. He’ll have to pass the bedroom to get there. The phone’s on a desk. He can picture it sitting there, a gleaming and untended portal to a place where people are calm and caring. It’s a quick sprint down a short corridor. It’s a dash across a small room. It’s a scramble across a desk. It’s seconds’ worth of finger work. Nothing .
    Do it .
    He runs. He passes Derren’s bedroom door. He senses his own shadow blot the stripe of light across the carpet. He’s in the study. He’s at the desk. The handset’s heavier than it looks. He cranks the dial, and it purrs back home. He turns it a second time .
    The handset clatters on the desktop as he’s grabbed from behind. He’s lifted and dropped from a great height. The weightless rush of momentary freefall, before he strikes the ground with a crash, and the impact leaves him motionless. He sees Derren step across him, weird and gangly from this low angle, and reach across the desk. He dabs the cradle a couple of times before replacing the handset. He doesn’t say anything. He reaches down and grips Sean by the ankle and pulls him out of the room, and Sean knows he’s in trouble .

TWELVE
    T UESDAY , 14 F EBRUARY , 6.18 A.M .
    H ale had ignored advice and left the gun loaded, propped against the wall beside the headboard. Rowe’s evening visit had put him on edge. He wanted backup close by.
    He showered and dressed and went through to the living room. The ceiling fan was still spinning from the day before. Outside on the deck a pigeon toddled, then rose in a snapping flurry. About him the detritus of a lonely evening: a single unwashed plate, an inside-out Economist . A congregation of empty beer bottles atop a side table. The cardboard LP sleeve of Patti Smith’s Horses .
    He sat down on the couch. Alan Rowe’s file awaited him, fat and well thumbed. Charlotte Rowe’s pulped face greeted him at page one. He slipped it free and left it face down on the seat beside him. He flicked through. Paperclipped news articles gave general detail: January third, two armed men robbed an amateur South Auckland cage fighting ring. The club was in a boxing gym off Everitt Road, Otara. Ten dollar entry, the ticket office a caravan parked beside the front door.
    The area was low socioeconomic. Crime stats flourished and wealth didn’t. Cage fight fans