Field of Blood

Downstairs they ran out into the street and found a passerby lying in the road, shocked and speechless, bleeding from the leg. The DI shouted into the radio that Griffiths had at least one gun, someone thought they saw a rifle as well, send someone with a gun right now, get the army, anyone, because the bugger was firing into the street. They could still hear shooting in the house.

Griffiths fired a last shot from his rifle into the hallway before ru

He felt higher than he ever had in his life, like stealing cars times ten. He was a lifelong criminal and knew the score. The police wouldn’t let him live after this. He wouldn’t have to face the consequences. It would be like before, when he robbed or got chased, but he wouldn’t ever go to jail again.

Ecstatic that this was his final day he ran faster, stumbling on the uneven ground, acutely sensitive to the wind pushing his hair off his face, the warm, damp breeze on his skin. His shirt flapped loose around his body, feet landed on damp turf, and his own, lonely heart thumped hard in his chest. The high walls dropped away and he was in a bright residential street. The sudden sun frightened him, so he raised his rifle and fired three times. He could see figures ru

He breathed, felt the sun prickle at the sweat on his brow, heard his breath suck in, push out. His hand was sweating on the steel of the gun barrel. Streets away a car stopped too quickly. He wanted to be alone, but when he was alone he got confused. He needed an audience to be brave in front of. He was too excited to drive, too heated up. He needed a drink.

It was a small pub with an unassuming exterior, painted black, with red trim on the high windows. Inside, two old men sat at separate tables. One was reading a paper, keeping up the pretense that a quarter gill of whisky at half ten in the morning was a casual enjoyment. The other old man stared straight ahead, dead-eyed, dreading the last of his glass.

The day gleamed through the windows, but the sunlight didn’t temper the gloom. The pub was peaceful, a contemplative pocket of calm reflection. Behind the bar was the charge hand, a well-built ex-boxer named Co

“I’ll kill the first man that moves,” shouted Griffiths. The two old men froze, the newspaper reader holding his glass still to his mouth. “I’ve shot four policemen this morning.”

Griffiths stood up on the foot rail and grabbed a chubby bottle of brandy from behind the bar, uncorking it and drinking from the neck. It tasted peppery and exciting. Griffiths saw himself standing there, taking what he wanted, and felt like giggling. Instead he swung his shotgun vertical, fired into the ceiling, and a burst of plaster hit the floor. The man with the newspaper twitched forward to put his glass down and Griffiths spun around and fired the rifle. The dead man slumped forward, a ribbon of red fluttering from his neck to the black floor.

“You bastard,” whispered Co

Unable to contain his anger anymore, Co

“Out! Get out of my fucking pub!” Co

He just had time to take a deep breath and convince himself not to chase the guy into the street when three shots ripped through the open door, one of them tearing the sleeve off his shirt. Co

“Arsehole!”

But Griffiths had run off, lifting the two unwieldy guns up high to shoulder height as he legged it around the corner. He was out of sight, but Co

Around the corner, a long-distance lorry driver who had parked to consult a map of Glasgow heard a series of bangs. He looked up to see what appeared to be a small, hatless Mexican bandit ru

The man fell out of the lorry and Griffiths swung himself up into the cab, started the engine, and sped off, leaving Co

Griffiths managed two miles. His last ever turn was into the center of a Springburn cul-de-sac. He stopped the engine and pulled on the hand brake. A packet of Woodbine cigarettes was sitting under a yellowed newspaper on the dashboard. He sat back in the seat and lit one with a match, watching the entrance to the cul-de-sac in the nearside mirror. He couldn’t back out; he was convinced that the police were right behind him. He waited, smoking his cigarette and watching. They didn’t come.

Sure that they were waiting around the corner, he slowly opened the driver’s-side door and dropped the yellow newspaper onto the ground, expecting a police bullet to hit it. Nothing happened. The paper fell into the road with a soft thud. The summer wind flicked through the crispy pages. Griffiths reasoned that he must be in a blind spot. He stepped out tentatively, holding his guns across his chest. His footing slipped as he stepped down from the high cab and he landed heavily on his heel, feeling slightly foolish for the very last time.

Resting his guns on his hips, he stepped away from the cab. He pointed the guns at a streetlight, at an already broken tenement window, at the entrance to the road. He was scaring the locals, the coppers, making the law wait for him for once, standing like the cowboys did in the movies.

There was no one there. The unarmed police had kept too much of a distance and had lost him. The street Griffiths was in was derelict; the tenements were damp and rat infested. James Griffiths’s last living moments in the soft summer air were pissed away, like his life, posing for an audience that wasn’t watching.

Over and beyond the surrounding tenements he could hear children laughing and screaming, enjoying the summer holidays. A magpie flew over his head, a beautiful flash of turquoise on its broad, black wing, and Griffiths suddenly felt profoundly sad to be leaving. It had been a poor excuse for a life. A surge of self-pity prompted him to run, and he bolted for the farthest tenement, ru