Dead Man's Time

even employed code breakers to see if they represented letters or words of a
secret message. But always the same negative result.
    Then he was distracted by a steady
beep-beep-beep
sound.
    The intruder alert system. It warned of anyone approaching the perimeter of his property. He looked up at the bank of CCTV screens on the wall to the right of his desk. And was pleased at what
he saw.
    They were here.
    About time, too.

22
    ‘
Arrivederci
, sunshine,’ the driver said, turning round, showing his face to Ricky Moore for the first time. He looked an old, unkempt git, Moore thought,
sullenly.
    The Apologist hauled Moore out of the rear of the Mercedes as easily as if he were a cardboard cut-out. Then he held him upright in the ankle-deep gravel, in the glare of the floodlighting and
the silence of the night, outside the grand entrance porch of the white mansion.
    They were half a mile down a tree-lined private driveway and three miles from the nearest dwelling. From his knowledge of Sussex Ricky Moore had a vague idea where they were, but he wasn’t
familiar with all the back lanes beyond Lewes. He heard an owl hoot somewhere close. In front of him a burly middle-aged man, with short, gelled hair and a sharp business suit, climbed down from
the driver’s side of the black Range Rover. Something was bulking out the front of the man’s jacket.
    A cooling engine ticked steadily, like a clock. The man in the business suit strode up to the porch. In the darkness and the silence and the total absence of any neighbours, Ricky Moore was
becoming increasingly frightened with every passing second. He had to escape, but how? His brain was all over the place, almost paralyzed with fear. Then he cried out in pain as one of the nerves
in his right arm was agonizingly crushed.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the Apologist said to Moore, escorting him forward, maintaining the excruciating pressure. ‘Really, I am. Believe me. You may find it hard to believe, but I
am sorry, truly.’ He smiled. Most of his teeth needed work. ‘I’m just doing my job.’
    ‘Look,’ Moore said, urgently. ‘I’ll pay you good money to take me back to the pub. A lot of money. I mean it, a lot.’
    The Apologist was a loyal man. He’d been given his nickname in prison for constantly apologizing to everyone, about everything, and he’d liked the name. He hardly ever used his real
name, Augustine Krasniki. Apologizing was his nature; he couldn’t help it. As a small boy, in his native Albania, his mother had blamed him for his father leaving her. She’d blamed him
for everything, and the only way to calm her was to apologize, constantly, day and night. It was even his fault when it rained, so he learned to apologize for that also. Eventually she had put him
into care, for reasons he never understood, but he assumed it must have been his fault. From there he had been moved from foster home to foster home. People felt scared by him, intimidated by the
way he looked – and by his physical strength. It had taken him a while to understand and control his own strength. Once he killed a child’s pet gerbil by stroking it too hard; another
time he crushed a budgerigar to death by accident. Often people screamed in pain when he shook their hand. He tried to remember to be gentle, but his brain did not always work that well.
    When boys had picked on him at school for being so ugly, he had tried – but failed – to control his strength. With one punch he would smash their ribs, or knock all their front teeth
out, every single one of them, like a ten-pin strike! He couldn’t help his temper when other kids taunted him, calling him Boris Karloff, telling him he looked like Frankenstein’s
monster, so he just got used to hitting them and then apologizing after.
    Only one person had ever been kind to him in his life. His boss, Lucas Daly. He gave him money, let him have the flat above the shop in the Lanes, which he guarded fiercely, and had him sit in
on all his drug deals. No one ever messed with Lucas Daly, not after they had taken one look at the Apologist. He was unswervingly loyal to his boss.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the Apologist said to Ricky Moore. ‘I’d like to say yes, really I would. I’d like to say yes and take your money. But I can’t. You’ll
have to trust me on that one.’
    The man in the business suit opened the front door with his key and Ricky Moore, propelled by the grip of the Apologist, stumbled in. The door closed