Following the busy morning of Ansell’s archery test, the scuffle, and the retrieval of the arrows from Marcus’ saucepan head, the rest of the day was spent in relative quiet. Ansell withdrew into himself, though Jude had enjoyed following him through the woods as he tracked a young deer. He’d grasped the basics of how to read a track through the forest floor on the way. When they finally crept upon their target, the sun had reached its highest point. It was bubbling orange behind the never-ending sheets of iron clouds, threatening to burst through and provide some warmth.

Jude listened in fascination as Ansell explained about the deer’s muscles and how they would tense up if it startled. This would affect its taste and consistency. Ansell had raised his only smile of the hunt when Jude had expertly skewered the deer through the neck.

They conducted the walk back in silence as Jude wondered if he had caused any offence. Upon their arrival home at the cottage, Ansell had spent time in the kitchen carving the deer into cuts for storage. He prepared a lunch of hare in a hot broth of vegetables from the patch in the yard. They dined separately before Ansell disappeared into the basement for the rest of the afternoon. His muffled voice was tinny and distorted, but Jude could hear him talking now and again, and it took him to wondering who was down there. The padlocks on the trapdoor suggested it was likely some addict suffering a long-drawn-out death. He shuddered at the thought.

He lay in a pile of cushions on the couch, staring through the window at the snow falling in the dying daylight, when Ansell re-emerged. His arms were full with four green bottles, each containing deep red liquid, and his face was once again warm with a friendly glow.

“The house red,” he chirped, as he placed the bottles on the oak dining table on the far side of the room.

“See that?” He pointed at a cabinet to the left of the fireplace. Jude could see through the glass cabinet doors that it displayed an array of fancy antique glasses, the like he hadn’t seen since he was a young boy. His parents would get them out and dust them off for guests on a special occasion, though they’d never trusted him to use one.

“Fetch two wine glasses,” Ansell ordered as he passed through the dining room. “The ones with the long stems,” he called back from the kitchen as an afterthought.

Jude obliged, placing the two glasses on the dining table. A short while later, the intoxicating smells of cooking meat filled the air as Ansell fried cuts of deer in a copper pan. Jude salivated as he watched him drop a lump of duck fat in. The pan sizzled and spat like Trevor’s hot plate. He picked a few sprigs of rosemary from a pot on the windowsill at Ansell’s behest. They went in, too. The smell was born in another world. Jude had no comparisons. His stomach lurched.

He smiled, then sighed and stepped into the living room to set about his next task. Settling at the fireplace, he poured boiling water over the potatoes. The bubbling was peaceful, and Jude found his mind wandering again as he watched them rumble around the pan.

Captain Brunner haunted his subconscious. Jude could see him now, with his sneering pig face. He wanted to lash him to a table. Snatch the pan and douse him in boiling water. Watch his face dissolve, red and puckered, eyes melting to slop, as he suffocated in silent screams. He’d take his fingers next, one by one. Then he’d degrade him and shoot him in the face. See how he liked it.

“Meat is done. It’ll need to rest for a few minutes, mind. How are the potatoes looking?”

Jude snapped from his daydreaming. He pulled out his hunting knife and poked its point into the largest potato, grinning eagerly as it sliced through it with ease. He drained them off in the kitchen, saving a cup of water for the sauce Ansell was making, before sitting himself at the table. His bright and attentive host joined him a short while later. He tugged off his jumper and tossed it to the couch with a sharp exhale and a nod towards the crackling fire.

He clapped his hands and rubbed them together as he sat opposite Jude. “Right, that in the gravy boat is mint sauce. It’s quite sharp, so go easy.”

Before he had finished the sentence, Jude had drowned his venison in the dark green liquid and had his first massive forkful inside his mouth. Ansell was yet to start. He was carefully pouring the red wine into the two glasses Jude set down earlier, and before tasting any of his food, he drained a full glass. He refilled immediately. Jude noted the red liquid threatening to spill as it rested dangerously close to the rim.

“Ah,” he sighed contentedly, “there’s no better drink to go with good meat.”

“This is delicious!” Jude chomped, his cheeks stuffed once again with meat and potatoes. The logs crackling in the fireplace, joined by the scrapes and clangs of cutlery, were the only sounds disturbing the quiet of the cottage for the remainder of the meal, as the two men ate in comfortable silence.

Jude sighed and stretched, coming up for air, lost in blissful comfort once again. He was warm and dry with a meal in front of him that vast parts of the city could only dream of. He shuddered as he thought back to the fried rats he used to eat with the same vigour he was now displaying toward his venison. The rations dished out weekly by the Guard had been even worse – plain oats and some foul pouches of creamy liquid. No, he was a hunter now and would only be eating the finest meat from here on in. He smiled as he gulped his final mouthful of potato and lay back in his chair with a burp.

He would wait politely for Ansell to finish, and then he’d retire to what was fast becoming his favourite place in the world. He glanced over at the cosy couch glowing amber in the firelight, beckoning him over. Then, after a few more glasses of this rich, fruity wine, he would make a move for a hot shower, followed by another blissful night of peace in his new bed.

The guilt hit him again. He looked over the rim of his glass at Ansell, who was now on his third wine. The killer smiled back, calm and genuine.

“Thanks for the meal, Ansell.”

“No, I should thank you. Congratulations on your first successful hunt.”

“Ah well, I used to hunt pigeons every day in the city. But yeah, cheers.” He grinned sheepishly as he continued to assess the man opposite him for cracks he could penetrate with his curiosity.

Ansell drained another glass of wine, quickly filling the glass back up. “Top up?” He thrust the bottle at Jude, who obliged him.

“Thanks.” Jude swallowed, feeling his nerves rising. He was having such a pleasant time he dared not upset Ansell, though his guilt was waging a war on his conscience and he finally submitted to its will.

“When can we go back? I fear this, Ansell – this life you have here. It’s so…so nice, if you know what I mean? I fear if I stay too long I'll never go back.” He gulped down a mouthful of wine. Ansell’s easy smile was still on his face, bidding him to continue. “As much as I like it, I feel guilty. My friends are unavenged. I’m worried about Zuri, how Dawson might be treating her.”

Ansell’s reply was quick and easy. “Just over two weeks from now. We’ll go back, deal with Marcus, and go our separate ways. Happy?”

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“Er, yeah, I guess so,” replied Jude, eyes downcast.

“Damn, here we go. Getting pissy again, are you?” Jude risked a look up to see Ansell smiling. He’d said it in jest.

Ansell sighed. “I get it. You're warm and fed and you feel guilty about your lack of action, but we can’t go back now. We have to let things die down. If I’m…if we’re to capture Marcus, we need to be free to hunt him, without the City Guard interrupting us.”

He swigged some more wine, and punctuated his gulp with a burp. “Then you can do what you want about Brunner and the girl.”

“I thought you might help me with Brunner. He wants your head now, so maybe you finally do have a fight with the Guard?”

Ansell placed his glass down for the first time since the conversation had begun and looked out of the window, lost in thought for a moment, before he replied, “We will see. Perhaps he will have tired of looking for me by the time we go back. It’s bad for what I do having the Guard hunting me.”

Jude weighed up Ansell once more. He seemed to be as calm as ever, as friendly as ever. Perhaps becoming more amicable with every sip of wine.

“What is it that you do, Ansell?”

“I capture, torture, and kill scum. Crocheads. Runners. Dealers. I rid the world of the black scales day by day” – he paused to burp, then continued – “eagerly waiting until something rids the world of me.” He drained his glass and filled it once more. “I started low. Users mostly, they got the brunt of it. Didn’t satiate me. Now I’m working my way up the chain.”

“Seems to me that you go after low-level players. The biggest Croc dealers I know of are Dawson and Arnero.” A slight flash of the eyes almost perturbed Jude, but he was on a roll now. He was getting somewhere; for the first time, Ansell was talking openly to him. “Why don’t you come with me to save Zuri from Dawson? Take him out while we’re at it?”

“Dawson and Arnero sell the Croc. They don’t make it. I want the people at the top. Someone is making it somewhere and giving it to them to sell. I’ve tortured countless Crocheads over the years, literally countless, so I know this to be true. The Conduit is the answer to it all. They are the link between the dealers, the street, and the higher-ups. My trail has led me to Marcus. He is said to know the identity of who I seek.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” replied Jude, tentatively.

“Oh, does it not? Then, please, do explain.” Ansell laughed sarcastically.

“Well, Dawson and Arnero are Shanty Lords. They must be higher up the chain than Marcus, so why would he know who the Conduit is and not them?”

“Trust,” replied Ansell. “By my workings, the Conduit must trust Marcus with their identity and no one else. Why? I’d guess that the Shanty Lords combined might make up a viable threat. But lowly Marcus, no risk there. My theory is that only Marcus knows who the Conduit is, and that’s why it’s taken me years to get this close.”

Jude was trying his best to keep up, the cogs in his brain working double time. “So I reckon Marcus must receive the Croc and move it on to the Shanty Lords for the Conduit, which would tie in with why he’s with Arnero for protection.”

“Very good,” Ansell replied with a smile. “She needs him alive – no Marcus, no Croc. Though, I hope after a few weeks, they’ll have no choice but to send him out.”

Jude scratched at the scraggy stubble on his chin. He could see holes in Ansell’s theory, though he doubted himself as he realised this was the man’s life work. “If you killed all the Shanty Lords across the city, would the Croc not stop? There’d be no one to deal it.”

“Shit,” Ansell mumbled to himself. “Your naïveté knows no bounds.”

Jude’s face was a blank stare.

“I’d relish the chance to kill Dawson, or Arnero, just because of what they are. But if I kill them, someone else just takes their place. I’ve done all this before. I’ve killed countless dealers. Killed two Shanty Lords last year – Big Caesar and that smarmy little bastard calling himself the Governor. Others just slotted neatly into their place.”

“I don’t get it. They’re in charge of the Croc in this district, everyone knows that.”

Ansell sighed and rolled his eyes. “Before Croc, it was smack and crack. That’s heroin and crack cocaine. They were similar but nowhere near as addictive. They were prevalent, but the country continued to run as normal. Not like what we have now. The difference with them was” – he leaned forward in his chair – “they were being made in houses, kitchens, garages, warehouses. Every man and his dog cooked drugs. Not with Croc. The Shanty Lords aren’t cooking it. No one knows how to make it. No one cooks it anywhere, it just…turns up.”

Realisation finally hit home. “So, you’re going for the top? For whoever is making it,” Jude said, hanging on Ansell’s answer.

A menacing glint flashed in his eyes as he stared at Jude for a second, his concentration broken as he raised his empty glass to his lips. Refilling it, he continued, “Marcus will give me the information I seek. Then my pursuit of the top continues. That is my life now, my vendetta, to kill my way to the source. To kill the source. All of my suffering, all of yours – it comes from someone, somewhere. I’m going to find them and make them suffer. Whoever has inflicted so much pain and misery on me will receive it back tenfold. That’s what I am now.”

“And what of the innocents along the way? People using Croc because they have nothing else. Good people who’ve made bad choices. What of them? I want to help them. I always have, but I've never known how.”

“Think of it this way. I don’t kill them, I save them. They suffer for their decisions, as all mankind should. Then I free them of their pain. There’s no coming back for Crocheads, there’s no cure. Only death.”

Jude put his head in his hands. His mind swirled. Maybe it was the wine. Was Ansell…right? There was no cure. He’d never seen anyone beat Croc addiction. And a Crochead’s existence was a dreadful one, sad and bleak and hopeless. Perhaps death was their salvation.

“I don’t know. I guess you’re right in many ways. I just think – what if there’s a one percent chance you could save them, you know? I feel like that should be enough to try.”

Ansell sighed. “Trust me when I say I have killed countless Crocheads. For the vast majority of them, I gave them a choice at the end. A pin of Croc or freedom. How many do you think chose freedom?”

Jude shrugged.

“None. So there’s your answer.”

Jude could feel Ansell’s eyes assaulting his face, checking, scrutinising, as he put down his glass and stood up from his chair.

“Wait. Please, wait a second.” Jude stood and looked him in the eye. “Ever since my dad, I've wanted to do something. I’ve wanted to help, to save addicts…Crocheads, but I didn’t know how. Now I do. I think you might be right. Death is their salvation.”

Ansell nodded. He stepped from the table and stumbled towards the basement hatch. Jude rushed to help him down, but he waved him away.

“There’s one more thing, Ansell.”

“Spit it out,” he slurred.

“Teach me. I want to save them, too. I want to join you. Not as a prisoner, but as a partner.”

Ansell rounded on him and looked him up and down, eyes blurry, a cynical smile on his face. “You have no idea what you’re asking for. Even if you did, you’re not ready. Even if you were, I wouldn’t help you.”

Ansell descended into the basement, slamming the hatch as he went. Jude sunk into the couch and allowed his head to fall back, his eyes locked to the pitted wooden beams above him. He was unperturbed. His mind was clear, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He’d do it alone if he had to.