To Fight For by Phillip Hunter Page A

threw him into the back and fell behind the wheel.
    â€˜What are you doing to him?’
    The woman moved a hand to try and hold me. I pushed her aside and slammed the door. Then she was by the window. I started the car, put it into first and let my foot slowly off the clutch. There was a tearing, wrenching sound. The car shuddered and stalled. I tried again. The woman opened the door.
    â€˜I said, what are you doing to him?’
    â€˜Hospital,’ I said.
    That stopped her for a moment. I pulled the door shut and locked it. I put it in gear again, let the clutch out, punched the accelerator and tore loose, half a ton of metal scraping behind us. I saw the flashing lights round the corner as I pulled out. It was the ambulance. If it’d been the law, they’d have come after me, and caught me.
    The car was fucked. The steering wheel was loose in my hands, the car going too far left, then way over right as I corrected it.
    I heard the kid moan.
    I didn’t know where I was. I was just driving away from the crash scene, through more residential streets where the houses all looked alike, and then onto another main road, past shops and pubs. People were looking at the car as we went past. It must’ve been a sight.
    â€˜I know who you are,’ the boy said, hoarsely. ‘I know what you did.’
    I saw a building site and swung around and rolled in past the temporary fencing. It was a housing development, half done with skeletons of buildings along a rough road. I didn’t see anyone working, no vehicles parked. I pulled into one of the brick shells.
    I got out the car and opened the back door. He kicked at me, opened the other door and tried to scramble free. I grabbed his foot and hauled him out. He hit the dusty ground face first. The wind was out of him. I checked him for weapons and found a phone, which was locked.
    I rolled him over. He focused on me, swung a fist at my leg then coughed and rolled back over and spat dry, dusty spittle mixed with blood.
    â€˜Who’d you work for?’ I said, when he’d finished retching.
    He breathed heavily and looked at me sideways.
    â€˜No one.’
    I kicked him in the ribs, not hard, just enough to wake him up. His face crunched in pain.
    â€˜NO ONE.’
    â€˜How did you find me then?’
    â€˜I followed you from my mum’s.’
    I didn’t know what that meant. I couldn’t work it out.
    â€˜My name’s Marriot,’ he said.
    Now I remembered Green had told me Marriot had a son. Somehow, it hadn’t sunk in, hadn’t seemed real. I suppose I would’ve had to think of Marriot as a father, as a normal person and not as the dying animal I’d left him, blood pouring from his gut as he’d tried to crawl away from me.
    Now I understood why this kid was such a lousy tail, why he was such a fucking lousy killer, missing a sitting duck, missing a mountain. Still, he’d almost wiped me out. I was getting old, dumber by the hour.
    I tried to think of something to say. I said, ‘Uh.’
    He pulled himself up to his knees, resting on the palms of his hands. He waited there.
    â€˜Well?’ he said to the dust. ‘You going to kill me now?’
    It was a good question. I thought about it for a couple of seconds, but the will wasn’t there.
    â€˜No,’ I said.
    He stood slowly, keeping his eyes on me all the time. When he was upright, he was no higher than my chest. I could’ve killed him with one blow. I probably should’ve done. It was stupid to let him go, wasn’t it?
    The thing is, I just didn’t care about him. He was nothing to me, just some nuisance. Sure, he wanted to murder me, and I cared about someone trying to kill me, but now that he was there, below my chin, I just wanted him to go away. That he wanted to avenge his father didn’t bother me. It should’ve done. It would’ve, once.
    Maybe, too, I understood what he was after. I’d killed his