I take a professional look at Dixon’s face. I would think he has less than a minute left. Shortass has a quick chuckle and speaks to Wide Chest in a friendly tone.
‘Come on, Derek. You’re slipping, mate!’
Wide Chest looks up and gives Shortass a quick matey grin. Then it’s over for Dixon. Wide Chest releases him and he slumps forward, his head resting on his knees. I can see he’s pissed himself.
‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Lovely!’ says Jennison’s mum. She slaps her mask back on and reverses to where Jennison is sitting. The little motor sounds from her wheelchair are actually quite nice to listen to. Jennison lets go of Sara. Sara throws up on the floor. Jennison stands up.
‘Right, boys. Thank you, Derek. Get him out of here. You know where to put him. We’ll have a little meeting tomorrow and decide where to get rid of him. I’m too tired for it tonight. Timmy – go and find his car. Make sure he hasn’t parked on a double yellow or something stupid like that. Make an appointment with Chandler’s. Tell ’em you’ll be there tomorrow with it. Get it crushed right down. I want it the size of an Oxo cube and I want it made into a key ring.’
Shortass laughs. ‘Sure thing, boss.’
I have to admit, I was producing quite a lot of adrenalin during that little show. It seems to have made a difference. I’m feeling a lot more alert now than I was half an hour ago, even though I’m still getting the cold sweats and my mouth feels like I’ve been chewing cat litter.
Wide Chest effortlessly lifts Dixon up onto his shoulders and leaves the room. Jennison tells Shortass to tidy things up before he sorts the car out. He goes out of the room and returns a moment later with some cleaning things from the kitchen. There’s a pool of blood and a puddle of urine where Dixon had been murdered and he gets to work on it quickly and efficiently.
I might get him to clean my flat when this is all over.
Jennison’s mother mops drool and bits of food from her mouth with a tissue. She’s a class act.
31
CORPSE SURFING
Sara is asleep now. I’m still rather worried about the effect that the drug cocktail has had on her. Maybe her constitution isn’t up to it. Either that or she had a different dose or maybe even a different combination of drugs.
I can see Jennison staring at me. I think he suspects that I’m starting to recover. Some of the symptoms of that are hard to hide, like my conversation. It’s hard to keep faking it when you start yapping away, because you can’t remember how fluently you were speaking fifteen minutes earlier.
‘I haven’t decided what to do with you, Beckett,’ he says. ‘Your disposal has to be discreet and explainable, unlike your mate’s there. It’ll be awkward with Isolda around, so I can’t exterminate you quite yet. Like I said, I don’t want to hurt her. She’s been through enough.’
‘That guy Dixon wasn’t my mate. I told you. I had no idea why he was tailing me.’
I’d almost forgotten about Isolda in all the excitement. Is she still having a bath? One thing’s for sure: I’m not going to hang around here to find out what Jennison may or may not have in mind for me. I have one priority and that’s getting Sara out of this hellhole.
As far as I can tell there are only the seven of us here; me, Sara, Isolda, Jennison, Wide Chest, Shortass and Mummy. Wide Chest and Shortass are the biggest threats. One of them just killed a guy with his bare hands right in front of me. How the hell does Jennison get away with doing this sort of shit? The more I start shaking off the effects of the drugs, the more chilling and bizarre it all seems.
Dixon was an intruder on Jennison’s property. Couldn’t he have just called the police? Maybe that’s the last thing he would ever do and that was just Dixon’s bad luck. That has to be the reason. If Dixon was being questioned in a police interview room, God knows what he might say.
The police would want to know why he was there. He might tell them about me. The police might wonder what a private investigator was doing in Jennison’s house. They’d check Jennison out. Dixon might remember that I’d mentioned the name Sara Holt. The police collate intelligence. The names Holt and Jennison might set alarm bells ringing on a computer somewhere, particularly when Sara has been reported missing.
Would Jennison know about this risk? He may not know the specifics but probably suspects. Yes – Dixon was a dead man as soon as he came over that fence.
‘I can see from your expression you’re coming back into the world, Mr Beckett. I’m going to have to store you away again, I’m afraid. I have a lot to deal with tonight. When I see you again, you’ll be ready for a serious man-to-man chat with me and Timmy.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘Neither can Timmy, Mr Beckett, neither can Timmy.’
Shortass comes back into the room, angry as usual. Maybe he’s been talking to Isolda. This must have been a dramatic couple of days for him. I know he wants to kill me but I can’t get enthused about it.
‘Timmy. I want you to take Miss Holt and put her in my bedroom. Put her on my bed. I think she needs to sleep her dosage off. I don’t want her being like a bloody zombie all the time. I want to enjoy myself. I want you to tie her. I want her ankles tied and her wrists tied. I don’t want her to do anything silly and I don’t want her running out of here. Try not to cut off her circulation. I don’t want her having gangrenous hands. I can’t stand that on a woman. When you’ve finished, lock my bedroom door. The key’s on the lintel. Give it to me when you’re done.’
‘Sure, boss.’
Shortass goes over to where Sara is sitting and hoists her off the sofa, hooking his big hands under her armpits. It’s funny to see that she’s actually taller than him. He scoops her up into his arms and carries her out of the room. Jennison watches as they both leave, a stupid smile on his face. Wide Chest returns and gives a thumbs-up sign to Jennison.
I let my mind go blank so I can listen to the noises of the house, in case it gives me a clue as to where Shortass is taking her. I hear him ascending some stairs. I hear his heavy tread directly above me. I hear it move to the right. Then it stops.
Jennison’s mother seems to have nodded off. It’s either that or she’s died from overexcitement after watching a man being throttled at close quarters. I don’t think it’s her age; I think she’s just not right in the head and never was. Jennison himself is looking tired. Not surprising; he’s had a tough, stressful day ordering beatings and murders with interludes of self-pity. He looks at me, then he looks at Wide Chest.
‘Have we still got those good handcuffs? The American ones?’
‘Yeah. I’ll go and get them.’
Wide Chest leaves the room. Jennison grins at me.
‘I reckon if you weren’t so fucked by what we put into you when you got here, I’d be in a pretty dangerous situation being alone with you, wouldn’t I, Sonny Jim.’
‘Yeah. Particularly with your withered arm.’
His eyes deaden again. ‘I’d like to have a long, long chat with you. I reckon it’d be quite interesting. I’d also like to get you alone with just you, me and a cricket bat. I’m very, very upset with you.’
‘But you’re torn, aren’t you,’ I say. ‘You’d like to kill me to get me out of the way and because of what I’ve done to your boys, but you think I have more to tell you and also you don’t want to annoy Isolda. Or may I call her Dolly?’
He doesn’t seem to be listening to me. ‘I want to know where Jackie is. I want him to have a decent Christian burial.’
I can’t stop myself. I laugh out loud. Jennison punches me in the face with a speed and power surprising for a man of his advancing years. That felt like it loosened a tooth and I can taste fresh blood in my mouth. Wide Chest returns with the cuffs.
‘Get him on his feet,’ says Jennison angrily, rubbing his hand.
Wide Chest helps me up to a standing position. I don’t feel as dizzy from getting up as I expected to. I suddenly wonder how they knew to have that reception committee with the syringe ready when we got to t
he house. It didn’t make sense.
Did Isolda say something coded to her father when she rang him from the SUV? Was it something she said to George at the gate? She told him not to work too hard, as if it was a private joke. Perhaps it was that. Hardly matters now.
‘Stick your hands out,’ says Wide Chest. He’s got a pair of American police handcuffs. They look new. Has Jennison got deals going with police forces all over the world to get his gear? He’s just about to put them on my wrists when Jennison stops him.
‘Put them on behind his back, Derek. We know he’s a slippery customer. We don’t want to give him any advantages.’
I turn around so I’m facing away from Wide Chest and feel the cuffs go on. He’s clumsy and pushes too many ratchets in so it’s painful and uncomfortable.
‘That hurts,’ I say.
‘Good,’ says Wide Chest, helpfully.
I hear him use the key to lock them. Well, that’s two advantages that I might have had gone already. In an ideal world, he’s have cuffed my hands in front of me and not used the key. Oh well. I can already feel the numbness starting to kick in on my wrists.
‘You know where to take him,’ says Jennison.
Wide Chest nods, grabs my arm and marches me out of the house. It looks like I’m going to be slung in the dark place again. We walk across the gravel and then into the courtyard. It seems like an age ago I was in this place. Now I’m able to get a good look at it sober, I can’t imagine what sort of purpose it had.
It’s almost the same shape as an oast house, but not quite. Perhaps it was used for storage. Perhaps it was some sort of garage. Hard to tell. The no windows thing is baffling. Maybe Jennison had it converted so he could keep his prisoners in a state of disorientation while they were ripped to the tits on homemade drug cocktails. I hear it’s quite the thing nowadays amongst the Kenwood cognoscenti.
It’s quite a relief to feel the air on my face and I take a few deep breaths while I have the opportunity. Wide Chest’s grip on my arm has slackened a little, but I won’t be fast enough to take advantage of it. Not yet.
‘Don’t you think Timmy’s a little too short and ugly to be going out with Isolda? I mean – she’s beautiful, isn’t she.’
‘Shut up.’
‘I thought you’d be more suitable for her. She goes for guys whose antennae aren’t picking up all the channels.’
He stops and gives me a dead leg. That’s probably the first one I’ve had since being in school. He opens the door to the dark place, shoves me inside and slams it shut. I land heavily on my chest and shoulder. Having the dead leg didn’t help my balance, not to mention being handcuffed.
I stay where I am for a couple of minutes, trying to recover from all of my aches and pains. I do a quick inventory of my body. The most immediately painful thing is the dead leg, but that’ll be gone in about five minutes. After that it’s the pain of the too-tight cuffs on my wrists. The fall exacerbated that pain and I think one of my wrists might be bleeding.
My face is throbbing now; it feels hot, swollen and painful from the miscellaneous punches, kicks and slaps I received at the hands of Jennison, Shortass and Wide Chest. At least Jennison’s mother didn’t have a go – I don’t think I could have stood the humiliation.
I know I’m not a hundred per cent, but I think I’m over most of the immediate, harsh effects of my injection. I’m not hallucinating, I know who I am, I know approximately where I am, I know who all those people were and I know what I have to do. The only problem is, I’m imprisoned, totally helpless and can’t use any of that knowledge to my advantage.
I spin myself around until I’m sitting up and then get myself onto my feet. The pain of the dead leg makes me grimace. I take another deep breath. The blackness in here is still as bad as it was before, so that can’t have been one of the drug side effects. Then I sense something that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s different in here. There’s something not quite right about the atmosphere. I stand completely still, listening, but can’t hear anything.
I try to picture the place in my head. There was the door, which only opened from the outside. When Wide Chest came to get me, there was a noise like sliding metal, which I heard again just now after he shoved me in. That means there’s some sort of bar preventing anyone getting out of here. I don’t think I saw it when I was outside just now, but it must be there.
For a second, earlier on, I saw a loft hatch door, dead in the centre of the room. But it was a couple of feet too high for me to be able to reach it. I can’t stand here doing nothing all day, so I decide to take a walk around. Almost immediately, I’m flat on my face again.
I’ve tripped over something big on the floor. I landed on my chest and collarbone. I grit my teeth as I try to overcome the pain. I can hear my deep breathing, brought on by the shock. I’d like to see myself in a mirror, just to assess the damage.
I sit up and shake my head to clear it. I’m getting sick of this now. I kick in front of me to see what it was I tripped over. My foot makes contact with something soft and I get a chill in my stomach. I kick it again. And again. There’s no doubt that it’s a body.
I spin around, squat down and turn my back on it so I can check it out with my hands. I know it’s almost certainly going to be Dixon, but I have to be sure.
I let my fingers wander up to the face and pat the side where Wide Chest punched him. I find that wide gash straight away, about four inches long and still wet with blood.
I place my fingers on the side of his neck, in case by some miracle he’s not actually dead. There’s no pulse, and he’s still fairly warm, but he’s definitely no longer in the land of the living.
OK. This is just a bit of a joke from Jennison and friends and designed to freak me out, no doubt. I have to think beyond that and see if I can use this to my advantage in some way.
I try to think about what he may have on his person that I can use. There were his car keys, but Shortass took those. What else? He certainly wouldn’t carry any weapons and if he did they’d have been taken from him by now. I wonder what happened to my tactical pen. I think back to my meeting with him, if it can be called that.
It’s going to be very difficult for me to search him comprehensively with these handcuffs on. I try to visualise him as he was this morning. He had a wallet. I made him show me his SIA licence. He took the wallet out of his jacket pocket and his keys fell out. Not his car keys; these were ordinary keys, house keys, with a cork from a wine bottle attached. And there were a few thin grey metal strips next to the keys. Burglar’s tools.
I adjust my position and pat the jacket pocket nearest to me. Nothing. Did Shortass take these keys too? But then I feel something but I can’t work out where it is in the geography of the jacket. Finally I find it. There’s a low inside pocket on the right-hand side and there they are.
I fish them out and feel them carefully, trying to quell the elation I’m experiencing. Two Yale keys, a single mortice lock key, a smaller key and four slim metal strips of varying widths. I try to take one of the thinner ones off the key ring, but it’s too fiddly so I give up.
Even though it’s pitch black in here, I close my eyes to visualise what I’m about to do. I get one of the thinner metal strips in my fingers and feel along its length. It’s about right; maybe two inches long and two tenths of an inch wide. The other keys hanging off it are a bit of a hindrance, but I’ll have to work around that.
I sit up as straight as I can and feel the cuff on the left, giving myself a mental map of all its parts. I didn’t get a good look at it in the house, but it’s a basic design; there’s the moveable single strand with ratchet teeth that fits into the static double strand. When it’s closed on your wrists, there’s a moveable serrated lever inside which locks the ratchet. This lever is moved out of the way when you use the key to open the cuffs.
What I have to do is to move the serrated lever out of the way using my thin metal strip instead of the key, which I don’t have. It’s a pretty sim
ple mechanism to beat, but when you’ve been cuffed behind your back and you’re in total darkness, this is easier said than done.
I have to position my wrist at an insane angle to get the metal strip into the double strand and I can feel the muscles in my hand cramping up.
It takes me six attempts before I get the strip in at the correct angle. I’m aware that my teeth are chattering from all the adrenalin I’m producing. Still, adrenalin is good; it’ll help to counteract the effects of the drugs a little more. That’s my theory, anyway; a biochemist may disagree.
I now have to push the strip into the cuff so that it moves the internal serrated lever out of the way. I push it in a millimetre at a time. I’m afraid to do it any faster in case it bounces its way out or snaps.
Finally, I feel some resistance as the strip meets the first ratchet on the lever. The cramp in my hand is getting worse. I screw my eyes up tightly and concentrate on visualising what’s going on in there. Finally, I’m able to push the strip in as far as it will go and can feel the lever move out of the way. I use my ring finger to tug the single strand and the cuff is off. I take a deep breath.
I bring my hand around to the front and give my freed wrist a quick rub before dealing with the other cuff. This only takes a couple of seconds. I put Dixon’s keys and the cuffs in my pocket and progress to stage two.
It would seem that my only way out of this place is via the loft space. Of course, even if I manage to get up there it may not lead anywhere, but I have to give it a try.
From what I remember it was absolutely central in what seems to be a perfectly square room. Putting my hands out in front of me, I start walking until I reach a wall. I turn around until my back is against the wall and walk in as straight a line as I can manage, counting the number of steps I take until I reach the other side. It’s twenty-eight steps.
Just to make sure, I do the same thing with the other two walls and it’s still twenty-eight steps. Let’s hope each of my steps is about the same length. From the wall to my left, I take fourteen steps, keeping my hand against the wall to avoid drift. Then I turn and take fourteen steps into the theoretical centre of the room and stop. If my calculations are correct, the loft hatch door should be directly above me.
Death is the New Black Page 32