Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [38]
Creed turned back to the living room, suddenly very tired. He put the safety back on his handgun and holstered it. Behind him the front door of the apartment splintered open but he didn’t even bother looking up.
He sat down on the leather sofa again, feeling a thousand years old. It was as if someone had thrown a switch cutting off all his energy. He felt like he might never move again. His knee ached. Creed stared at the table that had saved his life. He could see a deformed tiny mass of dark metal in the glass. It was the bullet, lodged in the block, at the centre of an intricate system of cracks. It looked like a photograph from a physics text illustrating stress in transparent materials.
The room was filling up with New York City police and other personnel as well – three men and a woman wearing black IDEA uniforms, baseball caps and sunglasses. Creed realized absently that IDEA had probably been the ones the Mayan had seen from the window. There were always problems of communication when more than one law enforcement agency worked on the same arrest.
Chavez had told him nothing about IDEA involvement, but then Creed doubted if he had known anything about it himself until a moment ago.
Now a female paramedic in green overalls was crouching beside the Mayan brother who was still in the process of dying, trying to rig some life‐support on him even though she knew it was useless. The other brother was already being zipped into a bag.
The hooker was standing with her back against the wall, staring at Creed, her eyes so flat and blank with shock that they looked like black buttons. A uniformed cop was pointing an assault rifle at her. The cop looked young enough to be her son.
‘It’s okay, let her go,’ said Creed. ‘We don’t need her.’ The cop lowered his gun and the hooker was instantly in motion, bolting for the door.
The police and the IDEA men parted to let her go and she was out the door, into the hallway and gone from his life forever.
Creed watched her go; he felt something but he wasn’t sure quite what. Relief, perhaps.
Miss Winterhill, the other player in the drug deal, was nowhere in sight. Creed had lost track of her after the second gunshot. Subconsciously he must have decided she was no threat and dismissed her from his attention. Now he went through into the long narrow galley kitchen and found her there, talking to the senior IDEA officer. They were drinking freshly squeezed orange juice taken from the Mayan’s refrigerator and chatting away in a relaxed manner like old friends.
‘What’s the story?’
They both stared at Creed as if to reprimand him for the rudeness of his interruption. ‘That’s my prisoner you’re talking to,’ said Creed, barging past them to the fridge and helping himself to a glass of the juice.
He turned and locked eyes with the IDEA officer. He was tall, a white kid with dreadlocks. Creed didn’t get any feedback from him because the guy was wearing sunglasses.
‘You’re going to hand her over to me,’ said Creed. Actually he was by no means sure of the protocol. The place was crawling with IDEA men and it might turn out to be their bust instead of his. But it did no harm to try and get them off balance, assert dominance.
‘Forget it,’ said a familiar voice from the direction of the living room. Creed turned and saw Eddie Chavez, his sector chief, standing there looking twice as fat as usual and very uncomfortable in standard issue body armour.
‘The International Drug Enforcement Agency is now officially in charge of this operation, Creed.’ Eddie at least had the good grace to look ashamed.
‘So what? She isn’t going anywhere until I say so,’ said Creed. He wasn’t going to let go that easily. ‘I want to run a computer check on her. The name is Winterhill.’
‘Actually it’s Summerfield. Bernice Summerfield,’ said the woman.
‘Summerfield, Winterhill. Very cute,’ said Creed. He took a sip of the orange juice and that was a had mistake. It was like chilled battery acid burning his stomach. He wondered vaguely if there was something he could mix it with. Maybe that vodka bottle the