The Dungeon & Christmas With the Executioner

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Whatever else it meant, Tom understood it meant danger. He turned. The two men closed in, crossing the street.

  Tom ran.

  As he passed the back doors of the van, they opened and two more men emerged. Tom moaned, dodged to the side and, head down, put all his effort into sprinting, his big boots smacking hard onto the pavement. He heard the others pursuing him. His sudden break caused confusion, the two men from the park tangling with those coming out of the van. It bought him a little time. Not much, though. They ran faster than him. Tom's only chance lay in reaching the main road. An orange glow promised working lampposts ahead. Even this late, there would be cars, taxis, people. Witnesses.

  Fifteen yards from the turning, Tom knew they wouldn't catch him in time. Safe soon. Call Debbie. She would help. Debbie said call her day or night if he needed her. Well, he needed her now.

  The last car at the top of the street was a dark German SUV, parked on double yellows. Half a second after Tom noticed a shape sitting behind the steering wheel, the door opened, and a smartly dressed middle-aged man stepped out, extending a hand towards Tom.

  Not a hand. A gun. And the man who held it was the man who killed Mum and Dad. Tom was twelve years old again, looking at a gun, knowing he would never get to drive a car, drink a beer, or see a girl naked. He screamed and put his arms up to his head, cradling his own skull as if trying to protect it, then dropping to the hard, cold pavement, where he curled up, moaning, crying, snot mixing with drool as it puddled under his face.

  He hardly registered the many pairs of hands that took hold of his shoulders and feet, picked him up like one of the bigger boxes on the warehouse pallets, walked him back to the van, and threw him inside.

  The doors slammed, and the engine roared. He rolled across the space, hitting the other side as the van U-turned and accelerated back up the street.

  The dark inside the van gave him hope, and Tom tried to say the Boy's name. "B… b… mm… b." Even if he could have settled his scattered, terrified thoughts for long enough to speak, even if he had managed to say the words, Tom knew the bitter, horrifying truth.

  Bedlam Boy had gone. Tom was on his own.

  Chapter Eight

  Winter watched the van from the monitor on his study desk. Locked inside, tied up, was little Tom Lewis, if it was really him. Still very much alive. Calling himself, and Winter shook his head in disbelief when he first heard it, Tom Brown. What kind of idiot kept the same first name in the witness protection programme?

  And there was the rub. According to the paperwork and his fellow-workers, Tom Lewis really was an idiot, a classic idiot, the 'somewhere there's a village missing an idiot' variety of idiot. One or two sandwiches short of a picnic. Not the sharpest tool in the box. Lights on, but no one at home. Well, someone was at home, but that someone was an idiot. In short, the man cable-tied and moaning as Winter's men dragged him out of the van and marched him to the dungeon had, as the liberal elite would no doubt call it, learning difficulties.

  Actually, Winter mused, the politically correct term was apt in this instance. Tom Lewis hadn't yet learned the consequences of crossing Robert Winter. But that omission could be remedied.

  He pushed the intercom. "Penny."

  "Sir?"

  "Show Strickland straight in when he comes up. A pot of Darjeeling for me. Double espresso for my guest."

  While he waited, Winter switched the view on the monitor to the dungeon. The tattooed gang leader didn't look happy under the harsh lights; pacing and mumbling, biting his nails. For someone who styled himself a stone-cold killer afraid of no one, it only took twenty-four hours of captivity to turn him into a whimpering child scuttling into the far corner every time the door opened. Amazing how quickly, and effectively, a permanently lit room broke someone. Disrupting the sleep-cycle softened a subject up. Almost as effective as removing fingers and toes, though not as much fun.

  Winter propped the study door open. Expecting Strickland to knock would have been disrespectful. If Strickland walked in without knocking, that, too, would have been a problem. The showing of respect in violent criminal organisations was, Winter mused, as useless and frustrating as knowing which fork to use for pâté. If you were supposed to use a bloody fork at all. The only significant difference being that making an error in dining etiquette might provoke a raised eyebrow, whereas not asking after the daughter of one of the Glasgow Italian bosses resulted in your courier being sent back in little pieces.

  Strickland walked in, stuck out his hand for a brief, firm handshake with two seconds of eye contact, then sat down opposite his old boss.

  "Good to see you, John," Winter lied.

  "You, too, Robert. You're looking well," came the insincere response.

  In the army, John Strickland topped an unofficial sniper leaderboard. He showed a rare talent for killing. His job options back in Britain proved limited.

  Organised crime was not short of violent men and women. The trade attracted certain rage-fuelled dissenters who, if they didn't end up in prison first, joined organisations like Winter's hoping to channel their anger into a lucrative career. Such individuals didn't rise far. They were the rank and file. Foot soldiers.

  The leaders controlled their less socially acceptable urges. Winter's greatest strength was self-awareness. He enjoyed violence. Killing another human being—mostly vicariously these days—thrilled him to the core in a way nothing else could. But his self-control was iron-hard, and his predilections never influenced business decisions. Hence his rise to the top.

  John Strickland was a different beast. He killed people for money, never for pleasure. As far as anyone knew, that was. He never, ever, talked about his work. Strickland joined Winter's organisation in the early days, when they were doing little more than shifting dope, crack, and MDMA in the clubs at weekends, plus running a few girls on the estates. Winter expected problems, noting how Strickland didn't fit in with the others, always quiet and undemonstrative. Only a few years younger than Winter. But Strickland was good. A tangle with a Romanian crew who accused them of straying into their territory—which was true—proved just how good.

  The Romanians turned up at one of Winter's houses with enough heavies to send a message. When Strickland heard the door being kicked in, he didn't join the rush to confront the threat, instead taking his Beretta 9000 from its shoulder holster and screwing on a silencer. He used a Beretta type D, the model without a safety. Strickland subscribed to the samurai idea that, if a sword is drawn, it should not be replaced until it has tasted blood. He didn't point guns at people to scare them. He did it to shoot them. When the first Romanian burst into the front room, rushing its sole occupant with a blood and hair-matted hammer, Strickland shot him in his left knee. He stepped over the screaming man into the hall. Twenty-seven seconds later, Strickland had left a trail of five corpses—one in the hall, two in the kitchen, and another two in the upstairs bedrooms. He found the last Romanian in the bathroom as he ran out of bullets. What happened next had passed into legend.

  "Here, hold this." Strickland held out the Beretta. The Romanian, who was gripping a young prostitute by the neck and forcing her head into the toilet bowl, took the proffered weapon with his free hand, confused. Strickland pulled out a knife, slashed his throat, took his gun back, and washed his hands while the man bled out on the floor beside him, the girl sobbing in the corner.

  The Romanian with the ruined knee survived to tell his tale. They didn't stand in the way of Winter's planned expansion after that.

  Winter's rapid rise owed much to his executioner. Without Strickland, he might not have been ready to move into the top division when the opportunity presented itself. When Rhoda Ilích came to him with her proposition.

  After a decade during which Winter expanded the human trafficking side of the business to become the market leader, Strickland asked to be released. He had no interest in putting together his own crew. He just wanted to widen his net of potential employers. Even Winter couldn't keep an
assassin busy week in, week out. The unspoken element of their severance deal was that Strickland wouldn't accept the inevitable job with Winter as the target.

  Penny brought in the drinks. Winter didn't believe in small talk.

  "You took him too easily. You sure it's him?"

  Strickland shrugged. "It's been twenty years, and he's supposed to be dead. He's the right age - early thirties. He has a mass of scarring on his skull. An old bullet wound fits."

  "It does." Winter sipped his tea. "So he's faking the learning difficulties?"

  Unlike Tariq, waiting in Winter's dungeon, Strickland recognised a rhetorical question when he heard one.

  "Well, then." Winter put his teacup down and stood up. "Let's make sure. I don't want to waste my time having the wrong man tortured."

  Two of Winter's crew manned the dungeon's anteroom. The soundproof chamber beyond boasted security cameras, mics and speakers. Most visitors to the dungeon died there. Those who survived were transformed by their stay. Sometimes a politician, government official, or police officer in a pivotal position resisted joining Winter's payroll. Persuasion was employed. A few days in the dungeon worked wonders. If they were intractable, Winter took a spouse, a parent, or—ideally—a child. It required little actual violence to change someone's mind then.

  "Open the door, Christopher. How is Rachel? And the boys? They must be at school by now." Winter liked to remind his retinue he cared about their lives.

  Christopher, fit, capable, and with a temper rarely aimed at his wife since Winter trained him as a torturer, stood by the door.

  "Yes sir. All doing well, thank you, sir."

  The second guard pressed the button on the mic. "Turn around and stand against the far wall." On the monitor, Tariq jumped to comply.

  "Thank you, David. Still running?"

  "Training for an ultra marathon, sir."

  "Good for you."

  Christopher held his thumb against the panel, and the door clicked open. He drew his weapon before entering. "Clear."

  Winter and Strickland walked in. The man standing against the wall trembled. "Turn around."

  Winter had read the reports of Tariq's conversations with Christopher and David. He had answered their questions in full. They only needed to beat him the first time, after which he was deeply helpful. He even admitted to liking the twenty-four-hours-a-day lighting. When he woke up at home in the dark, he often imagined the psycho on the bus was hiding in his room. Amazing how quickly some people broke.

  "Hello, Tariq. I want you to help me."

  Tariq's eyes flicked to Winter, then across to Strickland. "Yeah. Yeah, fine. What do you want? Look, man, I want to help you. Wanna go home, that's all."

  "Of course you do. I'm going to bring someone in. I'd like you to tell me if you recognise him. Then you can go."

  "That's it? That's what you want? Yeah, sure. Yeah." Surely the kid realised he was never going home. Winter had noted this self-delusion in the face of death before. More evidence of the chasm separating men like him and Strickland from the common herd. Lying to one's self was a flaw no leader should countenance.

  "Thank you." Winter nodded through the open door at David, who left his desk, returning with Penny a minute later. They brought a man built like a wrestler, hunched over, humming tunelessly behind a hood. His wrists were so thick there was only a spare inch of plastic where the cable ties were pulled taut.

  Penny guided the prisoner inside. Tariq looked him over.

  "This him? This the guy you want me to check out?"

  "Yes," said Winter. "And I want the truth."

  "Yeah. Yeah. The truth. I swear."

  "Good."

  Winter nodded at Penny, and she removed the hood. As much as Winter wanted to inspect the man who might have killed Marty, Tay, and Rhoda, he didn't take his eyes off Tariq. Only a fellow-psychopath or sociopath might be able to conceal a reaction under such duress.

  Tariq, who took a tentative step forward when the hood came off, now retreated, scrabbling back to the wall, his breath coming in gasps.

  "Fuck! That's him. Oh, shit, no, oh shit. You've got a piece, right? You need to shoot this crazy fucker, shoot him. Right now. I'm not kidding, man, he's not even human, I don't know what he is, but he's not human."

  Tariq was as scared as anyone Winter had ever seen.

  "Where do you know him from, Tariq?"

  "The bus, the bus. Come on, shoot him, kill him, for fuck's sake, please, please, oh thank god…"

  Strickland had taken out his gun. Tariq pointed at the prisoner. "Make sure he's dead, man, make really sure, I'm not kidding, he's—"

  Tariq stopped talking when Strickland shot him twice in the heart and once in the head.

  Winter put a hand on Penny's arm. "Have that cleared away. And make our new guest uncomfortable. Let's give him twenty-four hours."

  Winter studied the man who had, apparently, survived being shot in the head, then—twenty years to the day after his family were killed—popped up out of nowhere to murder Marty, Tay, and Rhoda. Tom had gasped when Strickland shot Tariq and now crouched against the wall crying, streaks of snot hanging in front of his lips as he whimpered with fear.

  No one was that good an actor. Who the hell was this guy?

  Chapter Nine

  The music was the loudest thing ever.

  Tom didn't want to wake up, but the bad men wouldn't let him sleep. Not properly. They watched him. They saw when he laid down, and when he closed his eyes. They waited until then to turn on the music.

  He didn't recognise all the songs, but words came into his mind when they played, the beat pulsing through his skull even when he clasped both hands tight over his ears and hummed.

  Iron Maiden. AC/DC. Black Sabbath. The names meant nothing to Tom—but he was used to that. Sometimes, passing a shelf in a library or bookshop, a sentence popped into his head and he pretended he could read again. Fantastic Mr Fox, Danny, The Champion of the World, Howl's Moving Castle, Harry Potter… these combinations of words conjured an unnameable joy in Tom. But the words didn't pop into his head if he tried too hard. He shuffled between shelves until a title transported him or someone asked him if he needed any help and he fled.

  The words he thought of when they played the loud music didn't transport him, they left him here in the grey room where they shot a man yesterday. Or the day before. With no windows and the lights always on, Tom wasn't sure.

  The blood left a stain. Wood shavings soaked up most of the fluids, but enough seeped through to make a dark map. Older stains dried around a covered drain in one corner. The floor wasn't flat, so the fluid ran in that direction. Rooms with floors like this were usually showers or toilets. Wet rooms. This was a different wet.

  There was no toilet here at all. When Tom asked, the taller man laughed and pointed at the drain, then a bucket. "Piss here, shit there." He laughed as if he'd told a joke, but he never showed Tom the actual toilet, even after he'd banged on the door to ask, so he used the bucket. They hadn't emptied it yet, and he held his nose while eating the cheese sandwich they threw in.

  When he fell asleep, they woke him with the music. They wouldn't turn it off until Tom stood up to prove he was awake. The cycle repeated: Tom lay down, closed his eyes: BAM! LOUD LOUD MUSIC! He rolled into a kneeling position, covering his ears, and stood up. The music stopped. He walked around, stumbling, tired, sat down, slumping, lay down, eyes heavy: BAM! MORE LOUD MUSIC! Tom remembered the name now: Heavy Metal. He never wondered what that meant before. Maybe because when you needed sleep it felt like someone climbing into your ears with big metal drums and gongs and hitting them with shovels. Or the music was solid, hard, and heavy, like a hod full of bricks falling on your head.

  After ten hours, a day, or a week, one man brought a wooden chair while the taller one pointed the taser at him. Tom knew the name now. The first time the man pointed the taser, Tom thought the man wanted him to take it. When he tried, the man pressed a button and wires shot out. They cl
awed at Tom, getting into his skin, burning him inside over and over and over until his head banged on the concrete floor. Now Tom kept away, and when the taller man said sit down, he sat, while the other man tied his arms and legs to the chair, pulling the plastic too tight.

  The tall man stayed in front, the shorter man stood behind Tom. A voice came from a speaker on the ceiling.

  "Hello, Tom. That's your name, isn't it?"

  Tom nodded. The voice sounded familiar. Not the one who shot the gun and killed the tattooed man. The one who had watched him do it. Tom knew he had heard that voice, and seen that man, before, but the memory was hidden. The locked doors in his mind were there when Tom woke up in hospital as a child. He didn't want to discover what lay behind them, and he had stayed away so long, the paths leading there were overgrown, tangled, lost.

  "Good. Now, your bank card says your name is Tom Brown, but that's not really your surname, correct?"

  Tom was confused. Debbie Capelli said Brown was his name now. She said he would get used to Tom Brown, but he never did. Tom remembered his real name. He didn't want to forget. His name was all he had left of his family. So he tried not to say his surname at all.

  "Tell me your real name, Tom."

  Mrs Capelli—Debbie, she told him to call her Debbie—would be upset if he said Lewis. He should use his new name: Tom Brown. Debbie said the name kept him safe.

  "Before you changed it."

  "Mm, mm." Tom shook his head. He had promised Mrs Capelli. Debbie.

  "Christopher," said the voice from the speaker. Was he trying to guess Tom's second name? Christopher wasn't right. Not even close. A shadow loomed overhead, a dark object flitted in front of his eyes, something coiled around his neck. The shorter man's knee pushed hard between Tom's shoulders, but that pain meant nothing compared to gasping for air and not getting any. No air got into his throat. Pinpricks of light buzzed as the edges of his vision darkened. An irresistible pressure commenced, reaching inside Tom's skull and was squeezing his brain, squeezing and squeezing until his teeth hummed and the bones behind his eyes ached, and the room wasn't there any more because there was no room and no men and nothing around his neck and—