The Qadesh Club

by David Lashmar

  “That’s a chance I’ll take,” deep down Ernie suspected that there was some truth in what Morton said but as a dedicated police officer he had to believe that once the truth came out this club would have its actions curtailed even if only for a while but in that brief moment of time it was up to the law and those whose job it was to enforce it to track them down and stop them again. It was a never-ending battle but in the end justice would prevail.

  “First things first, supercop. We need to get out of here. Fast! As soon as they realise that something’s up his backup will be up here.”

  “What about these two?” Ernie was trying to think on his feet in an unfamiliar situation.

  “Tie them up and leave them here. They’re buddies will find them.”

  “And how do we get out of here? If you're right!” Ernie was still sceptical about there being others outside.

  “Well, let’s hope I'm wrong in which case we don't have a problem but I'll put money on it that there are at least two men sitting in a car outside. Where’s your car?” he asked sharply.

  “Downstairs in the car park. Why?” answered Ernie.

  “They don't know you're here but they know I'm probably around that’s why they asked if anyone else was here. We’ll use your car.”

  Ernie and Francesca fetched the car while Morton carried Kim down the stairs. Francesca stayed in the back with the drug-induced semi-conscious Kim while Ernie drove casually away from the gates.

  Chapter 33

  The police cars approached the isolated farm silently. Their lack of flashing lights and noisy sirens only serving to heighten the adrenalin and expectation of the officers present. Police vehicles blocked the lane at either end leading to the farm as dog handlers and colleagues formed a continuous line of sight around the farmyard cutting off any hope of escaping across the fields.

  Only when he was absolutely confident that everyone was in place and the chances of no one slipping through their fingers did the officer in charge give the order to enter the premises.

  Suddenly, there was a cacophony of noise and activity as doors were smashed in as the farmhouse and the barn were entered at exactly the same time giving any occupants very little time to react. Having been given detailed directions on where the secret door to the lower level of the barn was, officers raced across to it and piled down the stairs calling out as they went.

  On reaching the bass of the wooden stairs they split up into very well practised and organised pairs kicking open doors as they came upon them.

  Constable Sam Pollack and his partner Geoff McCarthy kicked open an innocuous looking wooden door and charged into the room shouting that they had found him but their voices trailed into silence at the sight that met them.

  A young girl was tied to the bed. At first neither of them realised just how young! Her head was hanging off the end of the bed with her neck at an unnatural angle as the naked man with the mop of almost pure white hair was in the throes of ecstasy as he ejaculated deep into her throat!

  Pollack reacted first charging across the small room and grabbing the pervert by the throat literally dragged him off the girl and propelling across the room so fast that there was a dull thud as the back of his head cracked against the wall. “You sick fuck!” his loud yell alerted the other officers and soon the room was filling up with his colleagues.

  Meanwhile McCarthy knelt at the girl’s side. He gently stroked her forehead, “It's okay, sweetheart, we’re here!” But things were not okay and he did not need any medical diplomas to know that. “Medic! Get me a medic, now!” he shouted. In his time as a police officer he had seen many things but this was something else. Her legs had been tied and probably dislocated at the hips and lay back like a frog on a dissecting table. Her slender body was covered in bloody cuts and weal marks. On the floor beside the bed was a length of electrical flex still glistening in places with her blood. He checked for a pulse, which, unbeknown to him, had stopped beating almost an hour before!

  He starred at the lifeless body of the young girl and then at the well-known face of the man being held by Pollack. Something inside him snapped and he flew across the room at Montgomery his right fist landing squarely on his jaw. Reluctantly, some of his fellow officers restrained him as the rest looked silently at the dead girl on the bed.

  ******

  Justino Mendoza waited hesitantly outside the hotel door before building up enough courage to knock. His first knock was hardly a tap and was not heard by anybody within the room so he banged louder with the side of his hand and this time the door opened.

  An olive skinned face appeared round the door his moustache glistening as sweat droplets run down his forehead. His dark eyes bore into Mendoza questionably. He could see from the man's attire that he was not hotel staff and his attitude changed immediately from being cooperative to outright aggressive. “What do you want?” he asked arrogantly in heavily accented English.

  Mendoza looked at him for several seconds as the sounds of laughter and the obvious sounds of someone having sex wafted through the open door from the room. He pushed roughly past the man and followed the direction of the sound. Lying across the bed was a blonde girl sandwiched between two more Arab men while another sat on the end of the bed holding his wife's head head between his legs as she sucked on his cock as another was fucking her from behind.

  The sweaty Arab that opened the door stepped forward quickly reaching out and grabbing hold of the arm of the stranger who had just forcibly entered the room and for probably the first time in his life Justino Mendoza acted like a real man. He kicked out at the man's genitals bringing him to the floor and before any of the others could react he turned on the one fucking his wife and kicked him as hard as he could in the face knocking him back to the ground.

  “Justino!” A humiliated Rosa Mendoza was as surprised as she was relieved to see her husband. She did not want him to see her like this. The man sitting on the end of the bed jumped up knocking her onto her back her legs flaying apart as she fell. “Justino!” she repeated as tears flowed from her eyes.

  For a split second a terrible thought entered his head. Was she enjoying being used as a whore? She certainly was not offering any resistance and from what he had seen she was not being forced into anything and then the thought disappeared as quickly as it come. “Get dressed!” he ordered. The other men hurriedly got to their feet, “Stay the fuck away, or else!” he squared up to them, his slight frame no real match for any of them and to his surprise and relief they did.

  ******

  The car sped out of London heading south with no particular destination until eventually Francesca, worried about Kim, insisted that they find somewhere to stop.

  Originally a coach house it still retained its old days charm and character. Surrounded by its substantial gardens on three sides and the car park at the front, which only just about had enough cramped parking spaces for its guests, it offered sanctuary at least for one night.

  The owner, a balding, fat man in his late fifties eyed them suspiciously as they signed in for two separate rooms. Over the years he had got used to couples booking in and using his establishment for their sordid illicit weekends and rendezvous but these particular couples struck him as odd and not just because they had no luggage!

  The en-suite rooms, twelve in all, were comfortable and basic but gave them the chance to rest. After a light meal provided by the owners wife they settled down for the night.

  At least, three of them did. Ernie, ever the gentleman, elected to sleep in the only chair in the room and left the bed to Francesca. His restless sleep interrupted by his conscience at his predicament.

  Morton catnapped. It was something that his body had got used to over the years. Whenever he was in danger or needed to stay awake for long periods he had developed the ability to get by on just ten or fifteen minutes sleep at a time before being ready to go again for several hours before another catnap was required.

  They met for breakfast in the very small
dining room. “Have you seen the headlines?” Ernie enquired as he and Francesca joined Morton for breakfast. He dropped a paper on the table in front of him.

  “How’s Kim?” asked Francesca anxiously.

  “She's fine. Yeah, I've seen the news,” Morton nodded at the television as he answered. The main headline on all the news channels was about last night’s raid on an illegal brothel where MP Robert Montgomery was caught defiling the body of an under aged, young dead girl of Oriental extraction.

  “Bastard!” both men looked instantly at Francesca surprised at the venom of her verbal outburst. “That sick….he deserves to be locked up!” she was finding it hard to hide her emotions.

  “He'll get what he deserves,” Ernie was as sick as anyone else in the country was about the news but not surprised. As a long serving police officer nothing really surprised him anymore, “the courts will make a public example of him.”

  “Yeah, of course they will,” scorned Morton, “he won’t even make it to court! Someone will take care of him before he starts talking!”

  “He’s in a police cell. No-one will get to him except the interrogating officers and his solicitor.”

  Morton looked disbelievingly at him before turning back to his fried breakfast slowly shaking his head, “he'll be dead before the end of the day!”

  Francesca could feel another disagreement between the two looming and quickly changed the subject as they both had very strong opposing views about the law and how it was applied. “What are we going to do?”

  “We go to the police. Now Montgomery’s been arrested and it's out in public this… club, for want of a better description, will fold.”

  “We wait!” Morton's words sounded final.

  “For what? It's over. We’re safe!” countered Ernie.

  “We wait. If he's still alive in the morning then we play it your way.”

  Francesca stared at her coffee thinking. She wanted this to end and go to the police station with the evidence that they had but a part of her warned her to listen to Morton, after all this was his world and if anyone knew what would happen next it would logically be him. “Maybe we could wait just one more day,” her voice was soft as though she did not want Ernie to hear her in case he thought that she was siding against him with his enemy, “the extra day would do Kim some good as well.” It was a weak excuse but it was all she could think of.

  **********

  Disgraced MP Montgomery commits suicide. The headlines were all over the television and screamed from the front pages of all the late papers published in the early evening. If his arrest the previous night had been the main topic of conversation throughout homes and workplaces through the day this had overtaken it. News hounds from both the written and broadcast media were busy chasing anyone who had anything to do with the disgraced MP from friends and colleagues to his cleaning lady and the obscure who claimed that they knew him from chance meetings.

  “Good guess or inside knowledge?” probed Ernie.

  “Logic. He knows too much. He might not have names and places but he`s used the club several times so that makes him a liability.”

  “It could have been a genuine suicide, you know.” Ernie was trying his hardest not to admit that Morton was right.

  “Yeah, okay!” he sounded cynical, “You believe what you want but since when has it been possible to kill yourself inside a police cell? Prison... maybe but a police cell?”

  Ernie sighed hating the fact that he was right, “So now what?”

  “I don`t know!” He was not used to being hunted. He was usually the hunter. “I guess that we put the girls somewhere safe and go after them.”

  “Go after them! Have you ever heard of the law? You know, that process that you have spent your entire adult life breaking. Let the appropriate authorities do their job. I’m going to do what I should have done last night.”

  “Your funeral, pal. You do what you want to do and I’ll take care of Kim and me. Drop us off in town on your way and we'll disappear.” He made his way down to the reception to inform them that they were leaving as a young couple were booking in. The man was in his mid to late thirties and fairly well built while she was a lot younger, probably in her early twenties, he guessed, but there was something about them that struck him as odd. Detail was one of the things that had kept him alive and out of serious injury over the years and now it was second nature for him to closely watch everyone around him and gauge them without judging them.

  The seemed very remote from each other, the intimate touch and smile were missing, never making eye contact, small talk or chatter that he would have expected from a couple spending the night together. He guessed that neither of them was married especially as there were no wedding rings and after signing in they carried their own small bags and that was something else that struck him; how small her overnight bag was. They walked away in silence to their room.

  An inbuilt alarm bell went off in Morton's head. Instinct told him that something was not right. He left the reception area and casually strolled outside and looked around. Apart from Davenport's car and the three cars that were there when they arrived last night three new cars were in the small car park. One, he assumed, had to belong to the young couple just booked in. Another was empty but the third had someone sitting in it behind the steering wheel.

  Morton walked through the car park towards the road. Two of the three newcomers, a white four door Vauxhall Astra with its occupant and a dark blue Renault had elected to park opposite Davenport's car while the third, a red Ford, was parked next to theirs. As he walked past the front of the Ford he nonchalantly run his hand across the front of the bonnet. He casually carried on walking past the cars into the gardens.

  He rounded the corner of the hotel that led into the rear garden. At the very back near a well-maintained flowerbed sat two men. Neither of them was speaking but both watched him intently as he strode leisurely along the path making his way to the French doors that led into the small dining room.

  He took the stairs two at a time getting back to the room as quickly as he could. Kim was sitting up in bed with Francesca sitting on the chair next to her talking. The bruising was beginning to show around her swollen face but even that was not able to hide her natural beauty. “They’re here!” he announced calmly.

  “Who are?” Francesca felt her chest tighten as she waited for the answer.

  “Soldiers! There are three new cars in the car park, two strange men sitting out the back in the garden and a very unloving couple just booked in! They’re soldiers! Trust me!”

  “Don’t be so absurd!” Ernie scorned. He was standing by the window overlooking the rear garden. He was convinced that Morton's melodramatic statement was meant to frighten Francesca and coerce her into doing what he wanted. “How could anyone know where we are?”

  “You’re a copper. Do you have the ability to trace people’s credit cards?” his tone was a mixture of question and exasperation.

  At first Ernie did not realise where this was going, “Of course.” The penny still had not dropped.

  “How did you pay for this room?” Morton only ever used cash. It was untraceable.

  Slowly Ernie realised what he was getting at, “Forget it. You can't just trace a card. You need authorisation and …” He stared unbelievingly at his former foe.

  “I told you, they have friends in high places. Your card was traced!”

  “Impossible!” Ernie shook his head violently refusing to believe it.

  “What if it's really them?” Francesca sounded as frightened as she looked at the possibility.

  Ernie shook his head, “Never! Can't be!” he refused to succumb to this wild fantasy as he saw it.

  “Tell you what. You go for a drive and see if you’re followed. I'll keep the girls here. If you're not back in an hour we're out of here.”

  The military gent answered one of the two mobile phones that were permanently on his person, “Yes,” he said curtly.

  “Targets ac
quired, Sir.”

  “You have your orders. Contact me when the mission is complete!”

  Chapter 34

  Thanos sat in his office chair at home smug in the knowledge that his problem was being taken care of. He pressed the loudspeaker button on his desk phone and hit the redial button again and waited as the mobile phone he was calling just rung. Where the fuck is that arsehole! He slammed the phone back into its cradle angrily. His patience with his new lieutenant was wearing very thin. He pondered on the possible outcome of last nights meeting but a gut feeling told him all he needed to know.

  He would have liked to dismiss any thoughts of his partner from his memory but he could not until he knew for sure that he was taken care of. The club was sending someone to sort it out for him and that should have been enough to put his twisted mind at rest but until he saw the body for himself he knew that he would never really be at peace. All he could do for now was to sit tight and wait.

  Ernie left the hotel car park and turned left heading into town. He deliberately drove slowly keeping an eye on his rear view mirror. He had not travelled more than a hundred feet when he saw the white car pull out of the hotel car park and follow him. Shit! He thought. The possibility that Morton was right about the soldiers in the hotel also gave credence to his assumption that Montgomery would be killed inside a police cell.

  As a senior police officer he was used to taking charge in a situation and, along with advice from colleagues, would make vital decisions but this was a new experience for him. He could not go to the authorities because he did not know whom to trust and his only ally was a man that he despised. He was trapped in the twilight world that he had devoted his working life to destroying.