Dead if You Don't

by Peter James

  ‘Not really, it’s not about the money.’

  ‘What do you mean? This is all about the money, that’s why we’re doing it!’

  Mungo shrugged. ‘Yep, well I know it is for you, Alek.’

  ‘And it’s not for you? What is it for you?’

  Mungo was silent, close to tears. ‘I just wanted to see how much they really love me.’

  ‘You’re not talking any sense.’

  ‘They always, like, worshipped my sister.’

  ‘Kayleigh – who died, right?’

  ‘She was – whatever you call it – the apple of my dad’s eye. I never really felt I mattered. Since she died it’s been a shitload worse. Kayleigh, Kayleigh, Kayleigh. Sometimes I feel like they don’t even see me, that I don’t even exist. No one was bothered about me when she died, whether I missed her or not. I’m the brother that got forgotten. They never ask me how I feel about it. You know what I really feel? That they’re upset she died and I’m the one who lived, and that maybe they’d have liked it the other way round. That’s why I’m doing this, to test them, to see if they really do care – you know – like, enough to pay the ransom.’

  ‘So, hang loose.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. You’re going home in a warm car to food and your bed. What am I meant to do?’

  ‘Be a brave soldier!’ Aleksander stood up. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can in the morning. Meantime, I’ll send Valbone back with a stash of food for you, OK?’

  ‘And a torch and some toilet paper.’

  ‘What brand would your precious, tender bum like?’

  ‘Screw you.’

  Mungo sat miserably as his friend, guided by the light of his phone, headed up the staircase.

  Halfway, Aleksander stopped and turned round. ‘Dude, stay cool. Valbone will be back in an hour.’

  ‘Did you even listen to what I just said, Alek?’

  His friend grinned. ‘I did – you’re having a funny five minutes, it’s the weed, you’ll get over it.’

  ‘It’s not a funny five minutes. It’s why I’ve bloody done this.’

  ‘Cool, understood, see you in the morning, dude.’

  ‘Do you have another joint you could leave me?’

  ‘I did, but we just smoked it.’

  As his friend vanished upstairs, the dope having little effect, Mungo stared around. At the guttering candles. The bare walls. The spiders’ webs. He was really scared. This wasn’t working out – how had he ever thought it possibly could? But now they were too deep in.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Maybe he should just go home. But what would that achieve, apart from dumping Alek in the shit for helping him? What a mess.

  What a bloody mess.

  He shivered.

  Then he began to cry.

  56

  Sunday 13 August

  00.00–01.00

  Ylli Prek began to cry. He shivered with cold. He didn’t know what the time was or how long he had been down here in the dimly lit basement room below Mr Dervishi’s house, naked, handcuffed to a hard chair fixed to the floor.

  In front of him was a steel gurney, with a tray of surgical knives and other instruments on a stand beside it. And only inches to his right was a barred door, like in a prison, to the darkened, rank-smelling pool area where Mr Dervishi’s Nile crocodile, Thatcher, lived. Earlier, when the two men had brought him down here, Mr Dervishi had followed, telling him that he would be back later with a doctor who would be cutting limbs off him to feed to Thatcher. He asked Prek to consider what it would be like to watch a crocodile eating his body parts while he was still alive and conscious. Parts that had been surgically removed without an anaesthetic.

  Ylli Prek was petrified. He had crapped himself and wet himself. He sat in the stench of his own excrement and the sour, damp reek of the reptile and its lair. Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him and turned his head.

  ‘How’s your day so far?’ Mr Dervishi asked, approaching him with a half-smoked torpedo in his gloved hand.

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘No? Such a shame,’ Dervishi sounded genuinely sorry.

  On the wristwatch on his boss’s other arm, Prek saw the time. It was just coming up to 1 a.m. Dervishi gave him a look of distaste and wrinkled his nose. ‘What a disgusting smell – were you never potty-trained?’ He puffed on his cigar, exhaled and waved the smoke around with his hand. He glanced at the barred door and the darkness, tinged with a faint green glow, beyond.

  ‘Don’t worry, Thatcher,’ he called out. ‘I will get you a nice piece of meat very soon. Would you like this man’s right or left leg first? Or perhaps all of him at once?’

  He looked down at Prek. ‘Do you know how a crocodile likes to prepare his meal?’

  The man looked petrified.

  ‘He likes to take his meat underwater and keep it there for a while, to tenderize it.’ He smiled. ‘How would you feel as you were dragged beneath the surface by a crocodile? By your leg or arm? And your last thought, as you could no longer hold your breath and began to drown, would be to think about that creature eating you, bit by bit, over the coming weeks. Do you like that thought?’

  ‘Please, Mr Dervishi, please understand that I did what you told me,’ Prek pleaded.

  ‘No, Ylli. I was expecting the stadium to be evacuated and the match abandoned, that was your mission. It didn’t happen. You failed me.’

  ‘No!’ He shook his head in terror. ‘Please, I did what you instructed me. I did. I left the camera there, on the seat. I did. I primed it, I followed your instructions, I don’t understand why it did not explode.’

  Dervishi stared at him. ‘So, it didn’t work out. But I’m a very fair man, Ylli, I’ve come to offer you a deal.’

  ‘Yes? Please. Please, I will do anything.’

  ‘I know that,’ Dervishi replied. Then he smiled. ‘I’m going to turn you from a loser into a hero. Do you like the sound of that?’

  ‘Yes, yes I do, thank you!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not so sure you will be thanking me. But I will be thanking you, I promise you. Does it sound good?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Ylli, there was a great Hollywood film producer called Darryl Zanuck. He won three Academy Awards – Oscars – pretty impressive, right?’

  ‘Oh yes, very.’

  ‘He made The Sound of Music, Jaws and Driving Miss Daisy. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘No, I liked Jaws very much. Very scary.’

  ‘Very scary indeed. You know, I still don’t like to swim in the sea. Do you like to swim in the sea, Ylli? Does it worry you that a shark might eat you when you do?’

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘No?’ Dervishi said. ‘OK, so you’ve never had to worry about being eaten by a shark?’

  ‘No, no, sir.’

  ‘Lucky. Do you consider yourself lucky?’

  ‘No, Mr Dervishi sir, not lucky, not really.’

  ‘Well let me correct you. Ylli, this is your lucky day. Does it make you happy to hear that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dervishi went out of the room and returned holding a large, raw chicken. He opened the barred door and called out into the darkness, ‘Sorry, Thatcher, it is only chicken tonight, not human meat – but who knows what tomorrow will bring, eh?’

  Prek, still shaking with fear, saw the man lay the chicken down at the tiled edge of the pool, retreat and close the door again. Almost instantly, he heard a sudden, deep, thrashing of water. He saw two reptilian claws appear on the tiles, followed by another whoosh of water as the creature lifted itself up and Prek stared into the gaping mouth with its rows of massive, uneven teeth. They clamped over the chicken and, seconds later, with another deep splash, the crocodile was gone.

  ‘I have a proposition to put to you, Ylli. To save your life. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Yes! Yes please.’ Prek was staring, mesmerized, at the darkness beyond the barred door.

  Dervishi took another drag on the shrinki
ng stub of his cigar and tapped some ash off the end. It fell to the floor. ‘Mr Darryl Zanuck was famous for one thing he used to tell people. He used to tell them, Don’t say yes until I stop talking.’

  Ylli Prek said nothing, watching him.

  ‘Do you understand that, Ylli?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to give you a second chance. Are you happy about this?’

  ‘Yes, yes please, I am.’

  ‘Good, so now wait until I have finished talking before you say yes again.’

  57

  Sunday 13 August

  01.00–02.00

  Shortly after 1 a.m., Roy Grace made himself a fresh cup of coffee and went back into the Intel suite, tired but running on adrenaline and caffeine – and pure cussed determination to find Mungo Brown. So far, the helicopter search of the suspect area had produced nothing and it had returned to its base to refuel. There had been no reported sightings of the teenager at Newhaven, where every vehicle had been checked, nor from the French port of Dieppe where the last ferry had docked and a similar check had been carried out.

  He had, with some misgivings, sanctioned Norman Potting’s request to arrest Jorgji Dervishi if necessary. Under normal circumstances it would have been pushing the envelope too far to arrest him simply for being linked to the phone, and passing on a wrong address, but these were not normal circumstances. A boy’s life was at risk and that upped the ante considerably.

  He wrote his reasons down in his Policy Book to cover his back against the inevitable grilling he would get from Cassian Pewe, after Dervishi had got some of his powerful city contacts to throw their weight around. But that was for later. He instructed one of his team, burly DS Kevin Taylor, to liaise with the Duty Inspector at John Street police station on accompanying Grace’s team to Dervishi’s address. Not knowing what they would face at Dervishi’s fortified home, Taylor might need a group of Local Support Team officers to accompany DS Potting and DC Wilde to effect entry. The LST were the specially trained crowd and riot control police, who were also equally specialized at putting in doors and forcing entry. Little fazed them.

  Hall, seated opposite him, holding his phone to his ear and stifling a yawn, suddenly perked up. He put the phone down and called across to him. ‘Boss! That was Dan Salter at Digital Forensics. He’s just heard from the phone company. A phone signal from the texter’s phone was identified by triangulation in our target area made at 12.55 a.m.!’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Grace said.

  ‘It puts it within a three-mile radius of where we are looking – somewhere between the Beddingham roundabout and Newhaven.’

  Immediately, Grace called Oscar-1 and was glad to hear the voice of Inspector Keith Ellis, who had remained on duty. He updated him, and Ellis said he would get the helicopter back over the area as quickly as possible.

  Moments later his phone rang. It was Norman Potting.

  ‘I’ve got the troops ready, chief.’

  ‘Nice work, Norman!’ Grace said, elated. He jumped up and turned to Kevin Hall, opposite him. ‘You in a party mood?’

  ‘Always. Especially on a Saturday night.’

  ‘It’s Sunday morning now – in case you hadn’t noticed. But hey, let’s not split hairs.’

  ‘Never, boss.’

  ‘Rock ’n’ roll!’

  58

  Sunday 13 August

  02.00–03.00

  ‘Boss?’

  Dervishi held his phone to his ear and looked at his clock radio: 2.52 a.m. ‘This had better be good,’ he said, angrily and sleepily.

  Beside him, Mirlinda stirred. ‘All OK?’

  ‘Hold on,’ he said into the phone. He gave his wife a reassuring caress with his good hand, slid out of bed and walked out of the room, naked, holding the phone to his ear. ‘Yes, Dritan?’

  ‘There are police outside the gates, boss. They say if we don’t open the gates they will force entry. We see several police cars and a van. What should I do?’

  ‘Is downstairs to the basement sealed?’

  ‘It is.’

  The basement was soundproofed, and the entrance concealed by a bookshelf that moved across it when the security switch was activated.

  ‘Let them in, and I will go out to greet them.’

  ‘Yes, boss. Is this a good idea?’

  ‘You have a better one?’

  There was silence down the phone.

  He went back into the bedroom, put on his dressing gown and slippers, then closed the door behind him, went downstairs and along the hallway to the front door. As he reached it he heard loud knocking and a shout of ‘POLICE!’

  He opened the door. In front of him he saw the male detective who had been at the house earlier, with the pretty female one standing next to him, and several others behind them.

  ‘Jorgji Dervishi,’ Potting said. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap and obstructing the police . . . You do not need to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Dervishi frowned and gave him a puzzled smile. ‘Detective—?’

  ‘Potting.’

  ‘Detective Potting, I am not in any way trying to obstruct the police. On the contrary, I really wish to help the police in this distressing enquiry.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Potting asked. ‘If I may say so, you’ve been doing a great job so far, giving us a false address for your son.’

  ‘Look, Officer – Detective Potting – I’m as angry as you about this. But my son is now home.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘Yes, an hour ago. I was going to call you in the morning.’

  ‘We need to speak to him urgently.’

  A worried-looking Mirlinda Dervishi, in a dressing gown, came hurrying down the stairs. ‘What’s happening, what’s going on?’

  ‘The officers just wish to speak to Aleksander, my love,’ he replied, and turned back to the policemen. ‘Of course, if it’s important.’ Then he looked at Roy Grace, who was now standing next to DC Wilde. ‘And you are?’ he questioned.

  Grace showed his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Dervishi said.

  Grace said nothing.

  ‘Would you like me to accompany my son or would you prefer to talk to him alone?’

  ‘He’s fourteen?’ Potting said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Potting turned to Mrs Dervishi. ‘Are you willing to act in the role of Appropriate Adult, Mrs Dervishi?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s my son! What do you think? No?’

  ‘Bring him down to us,’ Potting said, and signalled to two of the Local Support Team to accompany Mrs Dervishi up the stairs.

  A few minutes later a tall teenager, barefoot, in jeans and a creased T-shirt, came down the stairs and sat, morosely, at the huge white marble kitchen table. Opposite him were his father, mother, Norman Potting, Velvet Wilde and Roy Grace. Both the patio doors out onto the garden and the entrance to the hall were blocked by police officers.

  Grace turned to Jorgji Dervishi. ‘Two of my officers will accompany you to another room and I’ll speak to you again after I’ve spoken to your son.’

  ‘I want to be there while you speak to him.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir. Is there a room you can wait in?’

  ‘My office,’ he grumbled.

  Grace turned to two members of the LST and addressed them. ‘Mr Dervishi is under arrest. He’s not to use any phones or communicate with anyone.’

  They led him out of the kitchen, swearing loudly in Albanian. Grace turned to the boy.

  ‘Aleksander,’ he said. ‘We are sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night.’ He seemed agitated and Grace noticed his pupils were dilated. He detected a whiff of cannabis.

  ‘I’m cool with that.’

  ‘Where do you go to school, A
leksander?’ Roy Grace asked, watching his eyes closely. They went to the right as he replied.

  ‘Brighton College.’

  ‘And Mungo Brown is there with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Again, his eyes went to the right. From this, Grace knew they would mostly go to the right when he told the truth – and to the left when he lied.

  ‘The reason we are here and need to talk to you so urgently, Aleksander, is that your friend, Mungo, has been kidnapped. You were the last person he was seen with, shortly before the start of the match at the Amex yesterday. According to his father, you were chatting to him, then a few minutes later you had both disappeared. Where did you and Mungo Brown go?’

  His eyes flicked to the left. To construct mode. Constructing a lie, Grace wondered?

  ‘Umm – we – we went to a food stand to get a burger because he was hungry.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have had lunch in his father’s box?’

  ‘He wanted a burger. He said all the people in the box would be boring.’

  ‘You went through the turnstile together to get into the stadium?’

  Again, Aleksander’s eyes flicked to the left. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Mrs Dervishi interrupted. ‘Don’t say anything, we need a lawyer.’

  ‘It’s true, Mum, he wanted a burger!’

  ‘Aleksander,’ Grace said. ‘Your friend Mungo had a season ticket like you. When you go through any entrance to the ground, the ticket is logged. There is no log that Mungo or you went through the turnstiles yesterday. It doesn’t look like he entered the grounds. Are you certain he did?’

  ‘Aleksander!’ his mother cautioned again, more forcibly.

  The boy was quiet for a moment, thinking. ‘I’m trying to remember, no. I – I – maybe we went to a place that was outside the stadium.’

  ‘What did you eat there, Aleksander?’ Grace said calmly and quietly, as if he was talking to his best friend, rather than to a teenager.

  Again, his eyes moved left. ‘Burgers,’ he replied.

  ‘Burgers?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Aleksander, you don’t have to answer me if you’re not happy, but I need to ask if you are remembering clearly. There are no burger stalls outside the stadium. If you want a burger, you have to enter the ground. Do you want to think again back to yesterday, about where you and Mungo went?’