Ruthless Girl: An absolutely gripping, gritty crime thriller

by Emma Tallon

  Without another word, Freddie grabbed Jim’s bloodied hand again, throwing the cloth stemming the blood to one side and grasping the next finger.

  Jim began to fight against his captors once more, but again it was no use. Freddie pressed the blade down hard and the sickening crunch of bone being broken was drowned out by Jim’s screams. As the second finger dropped, Freddie picked the blood-soaked cloth back up off the floor and pressed it back down, his expression never changing. Jim’s screams dulled to heaving sobs as he could no longer contain them.

  ‘Your third, and honestly your most stupid, mistake,’ Freddie continued in a deadly tone, ‘was coming back here and trying to blackmail my mum.’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘That was a big mistake. I mean, did you really think that we wouldn’t find out? What do you take us for? You know who we are. You know also that stealing from her would be stealing directly from us. And that in itself is something we would never allow. Bigger men than you have tried to steal from us and failed. I don’t know what made you think you could get away with it. Do you, Paul?’

  Paul shook his head. ‘It’s beyond me, Fred.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jim sobbed, spittle and snot mixing with the tears now running freely down his face. ‘Please, I’m sorry…’

  ‘You’re sorry? I don’t think you are, Jim. Not really. I think you’re just a fucking coward saying anything he thinks might help him now that he’s been caught out. I think that’s what you’ve done your whole life. But it’s far too late for that,’ Freddie said.

  Walking away, Freddie began stripping off his clothes, dropping them one by one into a plastic bag next to the trestle table. Paul yanked Jim’s arm back behind him and with deft fingers tied it back up with the other one. Jim cried out as he was moved, half from the pain and half in surprise. What was happening? Were they stopping?

  Freddie undid a bottle of water as he stood stripped down to his underwear and poured it over his hands to wash away the blood. He stared at Jim, his expression unreadable, as he reached into a gym bag and pulled on some sweats.

  Making sure Jim’s hands were once again secure, Paul joined Freddie and mirrored the same process. Freddie held the bag open for the last piece of Paul’s clothing then dropped it into an old metal drum before lighting a match and letting that drop in after it. After a few seconds the flames began to grow and took hold, licking the sides of the drum as they devoured the contents.

  A few beads of sweat formed on Jim’s forehead, as the throbbing pain of his lost fingers began to get worse. He closed his eyes, praying to whatever god might listen to put a stop to whatever the Tylers had in store for him next. But even as he thought this, he knew it was no use. Nobody knew he was here. The only person who might question where he was eventually was Sophia, and as far as she was aware Freddie was dead. Even if she did somehow put two and two together, she’d never find the barn and by then it would be far too late anyway. Jim knew when his cards were up. There would be no escaping from this one.

  For a moment he wished that he’d just left London when he’d got out after his murder stretch. He wished that he’d just forgiven Mollie and Richard for what had happened all those years ago. He shook his head in self-pity. He should have just left the past in the past and moved on. Revenge never worked out how it was supposed to.

  ‘We have some business to attend to,’ Freddie said, rousing Jim from his thoughts. ‘You’re going to stay here for a few hours. It’s getting dark out, so the rats should be out to play soon. And they love the smell of blood.’ He smirked coldly. ‘So, bleed away. And when I come back, you’re going to find out what the punishment is for your third and biggest mistake. I’ll leave you guessing for now.’

  Freddie hadn’t wanted to put a pause on things this way, but then he hadn’t planned on having two such pressing issues to deal with in one night. Sammy’s body still lay in the office and it needed to be moved. Sarah had come up with a plan, but it involved waiting until dark to get him out. At the time, torturing and disposing of Jim hadn’t been on Freddie’s to-do list. But perhaps this had ended up working to their advantage, he reasoned eventually. Leaving him to suffer these initial wounds and to worry about what was coming next would cause him much more pain than if Freddie killed him quickly. And after all the other man had done, Freddie wanted to cause him pain. A lot of pain.

  Rubbing his head, Freddie felt the weight of what he was about to do push down on him. He was about to go and move his best friend’s body. Sammy’s body. Sammy was gone. It still didn’t feel real. It still didn’t make sense.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Paul. ‘There’s a lot to do.’

  Jim watched them walk out together, the feeling of dread intensifying as the barn fell into heavy silence. Leaning to one side he rolled his arm slightly, trying to ease the agonising pain in his hand. It was the worst pain he had ever felt, shooting all the way up to his elbow. He cried out as the small movements he was making made it worse. Tears filled his eyes and spilled over in fear and self-pity and he began to shake. Hours, they said they were going to leave him here. Hours of this pain lay ahead of him before they came back and finished him off. And he was under no illusion that this wasn’t the plan. If he was lucky, all he could hope for was that they finished him off quickly and spared him any further torture.

  But as his eyes slid across the barn to the selection of tools they had left on the trestle table, his hope swiftly faded.

  Forty-Eight

  The club was in darkness, a sign on the door stating that there had been a water leak and that the club would be closed until this had been resolved. As a precaution, Freddie knew, Sarah had broken a small pipe in the ladies’ bathroom and allowed it to flood over half of the flooring before turning off the mains. It was no issue, it was only the flooring which would be damaged and this was easily replaceable. Paul had found it a tad extreme, but Freddie understood that it was a necessary precaution. If ever anyone did come snooping around trying to find a connection between Sammy’s death and them, they needed to make sure their stories were watertight.

  In stark contrast to the eerily silent club, the office was a hive of activity. Freddie and Paul walked in with heavy hearts and grim expressions. Sammy had been moved and now lay on the ground wrapped neatly in several layers of plastic sheeting. Freddie closed his eyes and looked away, unable to stop the stab of guilt and pain that pierced his heart. If he hadn’t asked Sammy to look at those plans – if he had just waited to show him the next day – he’d still be here. Who had done this? Why had they done this? The questions swam around and around in his mind until he could barely take it any longer. He rubbed his forehead.

  The desk had been removed and burned earlier in the day by Dean and Simon, who now sat to one side of the room waiting for everyone to leave before they took up the bloodstained carpet and laid the new one that Simon had waiting outside in his van. They looked drawn and pale and were silent for once, as the weight of what had happened sat as heavily on them as everyone else in the room.

  Bill shone a hand-held UV light on the bookcase nearest the desk. He paused as he found what he was looking for, then reached into the bucket full of industrial-strength cleaning products next to him and selected one. He didn’t look round as he began to scrub, his jaw set tightly as he continued his methodical in-depth clean-down. Freddie didn’t take this as a slight. He knew Bill, like the rest of them, was finding it hard to contain his feelings. It was easier sometimes, just not to interact with people whilst processing something like this.

  Sarah was dressed in dark sweats and a hoody like the brothers, ready to go with them to move Sammy. She had organised everything and overseen everyone whilst Freddie and Paul had been busy dealing with Jim. Freddie’s first instinct had been to leave Bill in charge, but it was Sarah’s plan they were carrying out, so it had made sense to do things this way.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Sarah asked, her tone quiet and slightly less abrasive than usual. She knew how much Sammy had meant to Fr
eddie. To all of them.

  ‘Yeah,’ Freddie said, clearing his throat. He wasn’t ready, not at all. He would never be ready to do this. But there was little choice.

  ‘Freddie?’ Simon piped up from the corner of the room.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘We don’t know who did this yet or how they got in here or even how they knew he was here… Do we need to assume we’re all targets?’

  It was a good question, one Freddie had been pondering all day. ‘I wish I knew. Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘I think we all need to assume that for now, until we know more. Keep yourselves safe, keep one eye over your shoulders. And stay tooled up,’ he added.

  Simon and Dean exchanged a look. Freddie had always urged them not to carry weapons unless for a specific reason and to hide them somewhere outside their homes. There had been many a clever criminal who’d got away with murder, only to be sent down for possession of an illegal weapon. It was a rookie error to be caught out that way. If Freddie was warning them to stay armed, that meant he was worried. And that was something no one was used to.

  ‘Look, whoever the fucker is who did this, we’re going to find them,’ Freddie said, his voice hard. ‘And we’re going to bury them. Sarah’s going to work this on the quiet. So don’t worry. Just be careful.’

  Simon nodded. Bill paused what he was doing and gave the plastic sheeting that was wrapped around Sammy one long last stare. As he pulled his eyes away, his gaze met Freddie’s. The raw misery he saw in Bill’s eyes was echoed in his heart and as they broke eye contact again Freddie had to swallow hard to dislodge the lump of grief in his throat.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered to Paul.

  Gently, the brothers picked Sammy up, taking one end each awkwardly. The plastic was bound securely by thick tape but Sammy’s body had turned rigid with rigor mortis whilst he was still seated at the desk, sprawled forward, and so he was curled over, almost in a foetal position. Without a word, they carefully walked down through the club with Sammy’s body and out to the car which was right by the back door. Sarah darted ahead and opened the boot for them, checking the alleyway was still deserted. They slipped Sammy in and Paul winced as the body shifted forward with a dull thud, then they got in and drove off, Sarah following behind in another car.

  Driving through the back streets away from the club, Freddie glanced in his rear-view mirror. Sarah was following at a distance. At the next set of traffic lights she would overtake them and lead them to the place she had discussed with them earlier in the day. Freddie gripped the steering wheel tightly in an attempt to stop his hands from shaking, but it didn’t work. Having a body in the boot wasn’t what was causing him to shake. He wasn’t nervous, he’d done this kind of thing more often than he cared to remember. But this was Sammy. It just didn’t feel right.

  Freddie’s gaze flickered sideways at Paul. His brother’s expression was a mixture of sadness and anger. This was something he understood. He felt the same. As if feeling his brother’s gaze on him, Paul shook his head and began to talk.

  ‘Who the fuck was it, Freddie?’

  ‘I really don’t know, mate.’ Freddie let Sarah’s car pass them and then hung back so that they were not too close in convoy.

  ‘I mean, it’s Sammy, for fuck’s sake,’ Paul continued. ‘Sammy had no beef with anyone.’

  ‘That we know of,’ Freddie interjected. As sure as he was too that Sammy had no real enemies, he couldn’t rule out the possibility.

  Paul tutted and brushed this off. ‘We knew everything, Fred. Aside from the odd pissed-off customer at the bookies, Sammy didn’t have anyone who would want to cause him harm.’

  Freddie’s thoughts moved back to Bill’s suggestion that it could have been a robbery gone wrong. ‘We don’t know what’s happened yet. When we’re done tonight Sarah’s going to go over the footage again.’

  ‘I still can’t believe he turned off the cameras,’ Paul said, shaking his head.

  ‘Well, that is what it is,’ Freddie answered. They had found the main security system turned off when they arrived, but this made sense. Sammy had been dressed like a cat burglar to go and spy on Sophia for Freddie later that night. Whenever they were dressed for an illicit occasion or were ferrying goods they’d rather not be caught on camera with going through the club, they often turned them off on the way in.

  Freddie still had a closed-circuit CCTV camera in the office, though this had not proved to be much assistance. He’d played the footage back earlier that day, hoping to find out who it was, but their faces never came into view. Whoever it was, they’d stopped at the door, aimed and shot. All he could see was the hand holding the gun and a partial section of their black-clad arm for a second before it disappeared again. There wasn’t much information to gain from that. The only thing they had ascertained was that Sammy had never seen it coming. Freddie was thankful for this small mercy. At least their friend had not suffered in any way.

  Paul sat brooding as Freddie drove, the anger building up inside him like steam inside a pressure cooker. The pain of losing Sammy was eating away at him. How could he not be on this Earth, walking, breathing, just being, any more? He couldn’t remember a time in their lives when Sammy had not been by their side. Every single week, day in, day out, he was there. But now he suddenly wasn’t. As it all overwhelmed him Paul growled and lashed out, punching the glove compartment of the car with force. He pulled his fist back and punched, over and over, roaring in anger at the unfairness of the world.

  The plastic underneath the clean-cut leather cracked and the clasp broke under the onslaught. As it dropped, Paul smashed his fist down onto the open door of the compartment and it snapped off, falling to the floor.

  Freddie drove on in silence as Paul let it all out. The glove compartment didn’t matter. It was just a car. That could be fixed. What couldn’t be fixed was their family. Suddenly, all the members of their family who had died for the sake of the firm flashed through his mind and Freddie felt old.

  And suddenly, he wasn’t sure what really even mattered any more.

  Forty-Nine

  Sarah pulled over on the side of the short dead-end road backing onto the edge of Hampstead Heath and got out of the car. She looked up at the clear sky and nodded to herself. There was enough moonlight to see what they were doing, but not so much that it would illuminate them to anyone looking down from the main road. She knew of this secluded little road from a case she had worked on years before. The body of a young girl had been found just a few feet in from the walkway into the heath. The killer had obviously known the area well, as he’d managed to keep off any cameras nearby and he obviously knew that this small bit of road was not overlooked. Large houses stood on either side but the road was flanked by tall trees, blocking the view from the windows, and whilst both sides had CCTV, they were trained to view only inside the treeline, not beyond. She had never found the culprit and the case had turned cold. Something that still didn’t sit right with her to this day.

  Freddie pulled up behind her and she walked over as the brothers got out of the car with grim expressions. ‘I’ll scope it out and be back in two secs – wait here,’ she ordered.

  Shoving her hands down into the large front pocket of her hoody where all the things she’d brought to set the scene jangled around together, she marched into the thick treeline. Just beyond, there was a wide clearing. She peered up and down and squinted, double-checking no one was hiding in the distance. When she was satisfied that they were alone, she jogged back.

  ‘Quickly, come on,’ she urged.

  As Freddie and Paul pulled Sammy out of the boot, Sarah’s heart leaped into her mouth and her pulse began to race. She looked around once more at the trees either side of them. Earlier today she had double-checked that nothing had changed since the last time she’d been down here, but what if she had missed something? What if someone suddenly appeared? Sweat began to form on the back of her neck and she wiped it away, trying not to panic. Freddie and Paul were moving as fast as they
could towards the trees with Sammy between them. She glanced back towards the main road. What if someone drove up the road and saw them? What if a police patrol car drove up here? Catching her breath, she turned and ran after the brothers, trying to get a hold of herself. She had been working with the Tylers for a long time now, had committed numerous illegal acts to help protect them and cover their tracks. But this was the first time she had ever had to do something like this and the risk factor of what they were doing was high at best.

  They broke through the trees into the clearing and Sarah pushed ahead, leading them down the shadowy edge of the treeline towards a larger copse of trees. They covered the ground quickly, none of them wanting to be here any longer than was necessary. Under the cover of the trees, away from the beaten track, Sarah felt slightly better. She breathed out slowly into the night air and turned to Freddie, but as she did so she noticed a pinprick of light bobbing up and down in the distance.

  ‘Get down!’ she hissed, her heart jumping up into her mouth. Someone was coming this way. She crouched behind a large fern, ignoring the sharp stone that stabbed at her leg.