Silhouette

XLII

Rose and the operatives descend down the hole. They use the cool metal bars protruding from the wall as steps.

The storm drain is fairly large. A dank darkness layered with concrete. Their footsteps echo infinitely around them. It smells of mud and old rising damp. Several officers switch on the torches on their phones.

No one says a word, like they’re all holding their tongues in anticipation of whatever they’re going to find. Rose doesn’t feel like they’re going after something mundane anymore.

Now it holds an added sense of danger, like they're chasing after some prehistoric monster. Some hideousness wearing a man’s face and only found in the darkest bellies of the earth.

***

“Why do people do evil? I’m not in the best position to answer that.” Bifouma turns his shoulders. “This really hurts.” He tilts his head, regards Dave with a half snarl. “Tell me why you do what you do and maybe I’ll have an answer for you.”

Dave doesn't reply.

“Because sometimes we can be blinded by what drives us.”

“I’m not blind.”

“Don’t lie to yourself. You have an abundance of hate in you. That is the only thing that’d make anyone do this. Not just anyone, a policeman who has seen the course of justice severally and knows the rule of law.”

Dave clenches his fist. “There is no rule of law. There is the rule of the powerful and the strong.”

“Ah! There we go. Just what I was saying. Tell me, Detective. When you look in the mirror, do you like what you see?”

“I should be asking you that.”

Bifouma shakes his head. “No, no, no. I killed that part of me a long time ago. When you do what I do there is no room for remorse. Nor any room for regret.”

Dave feels the words dry up in his throat. There are a million things he wants to kill inside of him. Memories he wants to wrap up and keep in boxes. He sees a flash of ankles, Ola terrified and scuttling away from him, the sticky coppery smell of blood.

“There, there,” says Bifouma. He looks up at Dave. “I hit a nerve there, didn’t I? I guess you have to feed your inner beast, kill evildoers in your spare time and pretend to the world you’re just a plain old Pinocchio.”

Dave clenches his jaw. He looks at the gun in his throbbing hand, a dull glowing metal. A weapon of death and destruction. It looks impossibly docile.

He feels a small draft of air caress his neck, something he may have ignored if he wasn’t in an enclosed space underground. He feels ants crawling down his spine, it feels like he is being watched from behind a gun.

He holds his breath. Perhaps he had imagined all of it. Bifouma is silent too, staring at the space behind Dave. The look on his face is delight.

Then Dave hears it. He turns. Echoes of voices and footsteps in the darkness. Sound waves rebounding on the walls, riding every pocket of air.

They are not alone.

Dave feels his insides explode. He takes a deep breath, forces his body to stay calm.

Bifouma laughs. It starts as a chuckle then it grows into a full-blooded display of hysteria. His voice is loud. Impossibly loud.

Dave keeps his calm. His heart doesn’t feel like a part of him. It pounds on the walls, on the floor, in his head.

***

Rose shivers. The storm drain stretches on and on, with the occasional turn. Just an endless path full of police, bright arcs of flashlights and exaggerated shadows.