Fuck. No! No!
Cable ties bound his wrists to the bedposts.
He lifted his head and looked down. His ankles were bound, too. With jeans at half mast, around his calves, only his briefs covered his dick. Exposed. No fucking protection.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ Almighty!
Barney strained against the bonds. He pulled and twisted and tore, but nothing gave. He tried screaming, but a gag muffled the sound. A gag? His heart pounded. Sweat poured off him and soaked his sheets.
The man moved from Barney’s peripheral vision and his face came into view, unmasked. Unknown, but memorable, and somehow familiar. The man didn’t care if Barney could see his face.
Oh, Jesus fuck. I’m gonna die!
He tried not to look, but he couldn’t close his eyes or turn away. He didn’t want to see but couldn’t help himself.
Dark hair, dark beard, pale green eyes, and a scar on his temple, near his ear. Old, maybe forty, but hard, and good-looking. So fucking handsome, but tough. Expressionless. A face of stone.
A hired killer?
Why me?
One of Alfie’s opponents come to take revenge? The unblinking man leaned close; too close. His breath warmed Barney’s face.
“You, son, are a rank amateur,” he said, speaking normally, not bothering to whisper.
Barney tried to say, “What?” but it came out as a strangled, spit-slobbered garble.
The man seemed to understand.
“Using your own motorbike during the attack was crass stupidity. I expected you to claim it had been stolen, but there it is, parked outside in your front door plain as day. Couldn’t believe it. That rookie mistake’s going to cost you, son. It really is.”
English and softly-spoken, the fucker might as well have been discussing the weather. The man patted Barney’s cheek and stood up. His scarily good-looking face moved away.
Barney tried to swallow, but the gag made it impossible. Spittle pooled in the back of his throat, and he struggled to breathe. He turned his head to the side, trying to take in air. He couldn’t breathe.
He were drowning in his own phlegm!
The bedside lamp snapped on. The light hurt his eyes and glinted on shiny metal. A knife in the man’s right hand, its blade sharp and smooth on one edge, jagged on the other.
A gutting knife!
Something else in the man’s left hand. Small. It looked like a gas canister with a nozzle sticking out the top. Scary shit. Terrifying.
Fuck! What’s that?
Barney lost control of his bladder. Warm piss ran between his legs, pooled around his butt cheeks, and cooled.
The scary fucker twizzled the knife. Steel flashed again. He smiled. Not pleasant.
“Recognise me?”
Barney squealed behind the gag and shook his head.
“You should do, son. I’m Ryan Kaine.”
Who? Ryan Kaine?
Why was that name so familiar? The memory flared, punched Barney in the gut.
The crazy bastard what killed all them people. Oh fuck!
That’s why he recognised the face.
“Ah, I see by your reaction you do recognise the name. Good. It means you know my capabilities. Although I’m happy to demonstrate if you like.”
More piss joined the first flush. Warm then cold. Barney started crying. Whimpering, like a fucking baby. He hated himself.
“Listen carefully, Mortensen. We need to chat. I’m going to remove the gag, but if you try to scream I’ll sever your vocal cords. Then I’ll slice off the tips of your fingers, and you’ll have to write your answers in your own blood—assuming you can write. Your records say you didn’t finish school so I’m not sure.”
He knows I were excluded from school?
“What do you say, Mortensen. Can you write?”
Barney nodded.
“Okay, well done. But forcing you to write your answers in your own blood would be such a waste of time, don’t you think?”
Barney nodded again.
“I’m glad you agree. Keep doing that and we’ll get along fine.”
What about Frankie and Jo-Jo? If he could keep the mad bastard occupied, make some noise, maybe they’d come help him. Barney tried not to look at the doorway. He tried to concentrated on Kaine, but the mad fucker smiled and shook his head.
“No point waiting for a saviour, son. Don’t think your two buddies downstairs are going to come flying up here to the rescue. They’re in no condition to help anyone. Not ever again. Do I make myself clear?”
Barney blinked through the tears. The blade swished and the mad-eyed fucker ripped the tape from his mouth. He spat out the cloth gag—one of his dirty socks—and gulped in huge mouthfuls of air.
Oh God. Thank you, Jesus!
“Who put you up to it?”
“Huh?” Barney said, still panting.
“The Bistro. Who put you up to it? Don’t make me ask again.”
“W-What you … t-talking about?”
“Tut, tut, Mortensen. You haven’t grasped the basic concept here. I ask questions, you answer them. No compromises. Mess that up once more and you’ll begin to understand pain. Okay, one last time.”
He twizzled the blade again.
“Who put you up to it?”
“M-Mr Kaine, I-I can’t tell you that. They’ll kill me.”
Kaine shook his head slowly, almost apologetically. Barney felt his chin dimple and twitch.
“Wrong response, Mortensen. So now comes the pain.”
He moved the point of the blade closer to Barney’s left eye.
Oh, God.
Despite the warning, Barney screamed.
Chapter 17
Saturday 24th October—Early morning
Putney, London
Kaine waved the knife blade in front of Mortensen’s left eye. The coward squealed and tried to pull his head away, but Kaine held it in place, leaning close and braving the man’s foul sleep breath.
“D-Don’t hurt me, please. I’ll tell you everything … all I know, but please don’t hurt me.”
It hadn’t taken much to find his weakness. One flash of the blade and he’d wet himself. Pitiful.
“Didn’t mind hurting two little girls, did you.”
“I-I …”
Kaine lowered the knife and dragged the serrated edge carefully across Mortensen’s throat. Mortensen’s Adam’s apple quivered. From his position on the bed looking up, the biker wouldn’t have been able to tell what Kaine was doing. To Mortensen, it would have felt as though his neck was being sliced open. The power of the mind worked in Kaine’s favour.
He twisted both the metaphorical and the real blade. An honest lie or two would reinforce Kaine’s menace.
“One of those little girls caught a piece of glass in her eye. Might be blinded. What was it you called them? ‘Frizzy-haired little mongrels’, wasn’t it? And the broken window ‘sparkled like Christmas lights’, did they?”
The terror in Mortensen’s eyes multiplied and his whole body shook. Kaine could feel it through the mattress.
“You … you heard me talking?”
Kaine jerked his head towards the bedside table where he’d placed his digital recorder. It stood upright, the LED recording indicator shining brightly in the darkened room.
“Your confession is all on there in digital clarity. It’s amazing what a laser microphone can pick up. I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my car. Just point and click, like one of those garage door openers. Wonderful. Now, where was I?”
Kaine rested the flat of the blade on Mortensen’s right cheek, immediately below the eye. The biker trembled like a man in the middle of a two-day fever.
“Oh, yes. The poor lass will likely never see properly again. Five years old and you threw a breezeblock through her window. And her father’s lying in a coma. What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
“Please don’t hurt me. It weren’t my fault. I were only acting under orders.”
&nbs
p; “Orders? You’re not a soldier, and this isn’t the Nuremburg War Trials.”
“Huh?”
Mortensen’s face creased. He clearly didn’t have a clue what Kaine was talking about. Kaine let it slide. He had no time or inclination to deliver a history lesson.
“How much were you paid?”
Mortensen tried to look away, but Kaine added a little more pressure to the blade and the brick thrower’s head locked into place. “Answer me, damn it! How much?”
“A monkey before. Same again after.”
“One thousand pounds for a little girl’s eyesight?”
He emptied the envelope he’d found on the bedside table, fanned out the notes, and waved them under Mortensen’s nose.
“This it?”
Mortensen closed his eyes.
“Y-Yes.”
“There’s only eight hundred here. Where’s the rest?”
Hesitation.
Kaine added more pressure to the knife blade. Blood trickled down Mortensen’s cheek and into his ear.
“We needed … shopping,” he said, whimpering.
Kaine scoffed. “You mean the six-packs, the bottles of whisky, and the weed downstairs in the lounge?”
Mortensen blinked, struggling to keep his eyes open. Tears and sweat mixed with the blood in his ear. The stench wafting up from the bed were horrible.
“S’right. Shopping.”
Kaine folded the money and stuffed it in his back pocket.
“Don’t mind, do you? No? Good. It’ll help pay for the replacement window.”
Kaine pulled the knife away from the cheek. It left a small cut that would probably scar. He stood and stared down at the pitiful sight for a moment before dragging a dining chair next to the bed. He straddled it and leaned forward against its curved back, making himself comfortable. The vertebrae in his neck cracked as he rotated his head from side to side to loosen his shoulder muscles.
He lifted the knife in one hand and the black canister in the other and studied them, raising and lowering one at a time as though weighing them on a set of balances. Slowly, he lowered the canister. Its time would come a little later.
Mortensen’s gaze flicked from one item to the other, but fixed on the knife as Kaine kept it in sight.
“Now, are you going to keep answering my questions, or do I need to get nasty?”
Mortensen nodded, eyes pleading, eager, desperate to please.
“Y-Yes. Yes.”
“Sorry? You want me to get nasty?”
Mortensen nodded and then shook his head.
“Yes … I mean no.”
“What’s it to be. I need precision.”
“I’ll answer your questions. Honest, just please don’t hurt me no more.”
“Good. Now, I’m going to ask each question once. Lie to me or hesitate, and I’m going to start slicing.”
He took a wrinkled carrot he found in the kitchen and held it up by the fat end for Mortensen to see it easily.
“Imagine this is part of your meat and two veg. Get me?”
Mortensen’s eyes latched onto the drooping carrot.
Slowly, Kane drew the blade across and down. The carrot fell apart, the severed tip dropped onto Mortensen’s belly and rolled slowly onto the sheet. His scrawny stomach rippled as the carrot fell.
“Think of that as your one and only demonstration,” Kaine said, adding a manic chuckle. “Do I have your full attention?”
More tears rolled down Mortensen’s face, and snot ran from his nose. The coward was ready.
“Question one. Who ordered you to attack the restaurant?”
“Alfie. A-Alfred Lovejoy.”
Mortensen threw out the answer without hesitation or reticence. No doubt the truth.
“Next question. Where do I find this Alfie Lovejoy?”
Mortensen gave the address as an upmarket tower block near the Thames. Expensive. It seemed as though the biker moved in rich circles. Kaine didn’t bother trying to take notes, the digital recorder would capture it all nicely.
“Ever been inside the apartment?”
“Yes, I went there earlier tonight to … to make my report.”
“And collect the money?”
“Yes,” he answered and took a stuttering breath.
“Describe it to me in detail. Leave nothing out.”
Kaine listened intently as Mortensen struggled to explain the penthouse suite’s layout. He asked question after question, but the thug’s powers of observation were not far off useless. The only thing he learned of any value was how the entry systems and lifts worked, and how the bodyguard operated the security wand. Either by direct or indirect means, he’d have to augment Mortensen’s sketchy information.
“How long have you been working for him?”
“This were me first official job. A sort of trial.”
“How did you meet him?”
Mortensen’s face creased in pain. Kaine checked the colour of his hands—red, darkening to blue at the fingertips. The cable ties binding his wrists were tight, but not too tight. The thug was suffering, but he’d have to tough it out.
“Keep talking,” Kaine said, using the knife as a razor and shaving a lock of hair from Mortensen’s scalp.
The hair fell across the biker’s face and stuck to the sweat. Mortensen sneezed and the hair slipped southwards.
“So … Alfie and The Tugboat come into my local the other day asking who owns the Kwaka, parked outside. That’s my bike, the Kawasaki.”
Kaine flicked his wrist, and the knife nicked Mortensen’s earlobe. He screeched and jerked his head away. Blood dripped onto the filthy pillow.
“Don’t insult my intelligence, Mortensen. I know what a Kwaka is.”
Kaine wiped the blade on the pillowcase, probably making it dirtier.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Keep going with the story.”
Mortensen’s shaking increased in tempo and depth, but he gathered himself enough to continue.
“So, Alfie turns up asking about the bike and … I tells him it’s mine. Then we goes outside and he gives me the restaurant job.”
“A complete stranger walks into a bar and picks you at random?”
“Nah, it’s like, a well-known place for people to hang out looking for work. No questions asked, y’know? And everyone in the ’hood knows Alfie and nobody’d grass him up ’cause he’s protected and I don’t just mean by the Tugboat. He’s connected, right? Works for people with money and influence.”
“Tugboat?”
“Yeah, that’s what they call Alfie’s minder, the one with the magic wand thing. Ain’t nobody’s seen Alfie without the Tugboat at his side.” Mortensen swallowed and tore his eyes away from the blade long enough to look at Kaine almost for the first time. “Listen, I’m being straight with you, man. Don’t go near the Tugboat. He’s a nut job. Word is he don’t just hurt people to protect Alfie, but ’cause he enjoys it. I once saw him put a guy in hospital for dissing his face tats. Horrible it were. Broke the bugger’s arms and legs with a pool cue. Nearly killed him and laughed while he did it. Horrible, scary laugh it were, too. Like a fucking ghoul.
“Alfie’s tough enough on his own, but don’t go up against the Tugboat without no army.”
Kaine sneered. “Really. That your considered advice?”
“Yeah, it is, and I ain’t kidding. And no one’s never heard Tugboat speak, neither. Might be a dummy, but ain’t nobody’s had the stones to ask him. He’s too fucking scary.”
“I can be scary, too.”
Mortensen’s chin quivered, and he squeezed his eyes closed. Kaine patted him on the cheek and his eyes snapped open. Fear wafted up from the bed on waves of stale sweat.
“Please don’t hurt me no more.”
“I’ve hardly touched you, yet. Only a few more questions left then you can do something for me, if you don’t mind.”
“Anything. I’ll do anything. You only gotta name it.”
>
The fear in his eyes turned to hope.
“Out of professional interest, why did you use your own bike for the job? Why didn’t you steam one?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Yeah, that’s what I said to Alfie, but he told me it didn’t matter ’cause the bizzies wouldn’t be arsed to investigate properly. Alfie said he had the place sewn up and I had a free hand to do whatever I wanted.”
“Well, Alfie Lovejoy was wrong. The Constantine family is under my protection.”
“Who?”
Deep anger flared. The little shit didn’t know or care about who he hurt for his money.
“The owners of the restaurant. They are untouchable. In fact every business left operating on Hardwicke Row is untouchable. Get me?”
“Yeah, yeah. I understand. Want me to spread the word? I’ll let everyone know they’re off limits.”
Mortensen thought he could see a way out when none existed. Desperate hope gave flight to words that tumbled out on a puff of lager-soaked halitosis.
If Kaine hadn’t seen the results of the attack, he might almost have felt sorry for the biker.
Kaine shook his head again. “No, I’ll take care of the warning, you won’t be in a position to warn anyone.”
“Oh, God. Please don’t—”
“You see, I can’t stop thinking about that five year old girl and her comatose father.”
He lowered the knife and rested the tip at a point between Mortensen’s navel and the top of his briefs.
The fear returned. Sweat shone on Mortensen’s face and his whole body shook.
“P-Please don’t.”
His face crumpled and he whimpered, waiting for death.
Kaine felt nothing.
“You see, Mortensen, I can’t trust you not to go blabbing to Lovejoy and his boss. I could gut you like a fish here and now …”
He paused to let option one sink in. Mortensen opened his eyes and strained to see the knife. Kaine slid the blade lower, adding more pressure.
“…but that would be too quick. You deserve to suffer, and that’s why I brought along my little toy.”
Kaine placed the knife next to the recorder and brought up the canister again.
The brief flash of hope in Mortensen’s expression died.
“Wha—”
“What’s this?” Kaine asked, finishing Mortensen’s question. “This is a CO2 injector. A chemo delivery system. A bit like the hypospray Dr McCoy uses on Star Trek. You’ve seen them? Started off as science fiction, but it’s science fact now. Thing is, this device doesn’t only deliver medicine. Ah yes, I can see in your eyes you get where I’m going with this.”
Ryan Kaine Page 15