by Jim Reeves
Joe went to the window to check the street. There was still no sign of the Jaguar. He ran up the stairs to the gallery sleeping area and dug into the drawer containing his underpants. He smiled, the Magnum was still there. Nobody had felt inclined to rifle through his underwear. Joe slipped the holster over his shoulder. He fastened the strap then pushed the gun into the holster. He took a dark zip-up jacket from the small wardrobe, pulled it on and hurried down the stairs to check the street again. Still all clear.
Pete’s eyes were following him now. He strained hard, trying to get free, but the tape was doing its job well. He gave up the struggle as Joe approached him. Joe knelt down and went through Pete’s pockets. He found a wallet containing several twenty pound notes. He pocketed the money and the wallet separately and smiled at Pete. He found a mobile phone in another pocket.
‘That might come in handy,’ he told Pete and he pushed it into his pocket.
Now he had a real problem. He had to get Pete out of his flat without being seen. The apartments were largely occupied by people who enjoyed the nearby club scene. Many of the residents would, most likely, be out on the town right now, but not all of them. Joe couldn’t be sure who.
Joe chewed over the problem with Pete watching him now. He would have to carry Pete but he thought he could probably manage that. After the traumas of the last few days, that seemed like a pretty minor undertaking. The problem was how to do it without attracting attention. If he left the building by the front door he might run into somebody passing by. It would be hard to explain why he was carrying a Chinaman heavily bound in tape.
There weren’t many options and there wasn’t much time. Joe wanted to be out of the apartment before Vince returned.
He made his decision and ran back up the stairs to the gallery, returning with two blankets. He walked through to the entrance hall and looked out along the corridor. There were eighteen apartment doors along the corridor. Ten on the street side, eight other doors facing them. The lift doors and stairs were midway along the corridor facing the street side.
Joe ran, no time for caution now, and pressed the button to call the lift. Then he hurried back to his apartment and into the room where Pete lay on the floor. He grabbed the two blankets and threw them over his shoulder. He pushed the second roll of brown tape into his pocket then he lifted Pete by his lapels and hoisted him, with a great effort, onto his feet. Pete wobbled and Joe could see the pain in his eyes as he steadied him. He leaned forward and let Pete fall across his right shoulder. Pete was smaller than Joe but it took a real effort for Joe to lift his feet off the floor. Joe turned and tottered towards the front door.
Once outside, he pulled the door closed so that it appeared normal. The bell rang to signal the arrival of the lift. It was time to go for broke. If any of the apartment doors opened now, even Joe might be lost for a believable story. Pete struggled and kicked inside the tape, causing Joe to veer unsteadily from side to side as he staggered along. Right on cue, the lift door opened as Joe arrived in front of it.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Joe reared away from the lift. A towering, wild eyed man stood face to face with him. His lips and overcoat were flecked with something dubious and his breath was rancid. He stepped out of the lift and leaned all over Joe, grabbing him by his lapels and forcing him backwards across the corridor.
‘You bastard,’ the man roared.
Joe jerked away, trying to free himself but his assailant hung on grimly with tears running down his face. ‘She dumped me,’ the man wailed disbelievingly. ‘She fucking dumped me.’ His loud voice echoed mournfully down the corridor.
Joe, dodging to avoid a shower of spittle, finally broke free, staggered backwards and fell, thudding against the door of the apartment facing the lift, dropping Pete as he fell. The man stood well over six feet tall and weighed probably two hundred and fifty pounds. He wore an army great coat and a wild expression. He stared unseeingly ahead and shook his head disbelievingly as he stood snarling and swaying in front of Joe. Pete lay on the floor next to Joe, rolling from side to side, straining hard against the tape that held him. His feet were hitting the apartment door as he struggled to free himself. The wild man was Gerry Harper, another of the residents of the building who had a well-known penchant for good whisky and bad women. A combination that had got him into many an embarrassing scrape. A big ebullient Irishman, he was great company when sober. Unfortunately, his social skills deteriorated rapidly after a few drinks. It was not unknown for him to return home in a paralytic state after a tour of the local bars and clubs, although this was a little early, even by his standards. At least he hadn’t got company. It was his frequent habit to bring a lady friend back for the night. Thank God the lady had dumped him on this occasion. Harper sank, sobbing, to his knees then fell onto all fours and started heaving violently. He seemed completely unaware of Joe and Pete sprawled in front of him.
Joe rolled out of the line of fire of the threatened vomit and got to his feet. He could hear muffled voices from inside the apartment facing the lift. Someone was coming to the door. He grabbed the blankets with one hand and Pete’s collar with the other and dragged him past Harper and into the lift. Joe heard doors opening further along the corridor as people came out to investigate the cause of the commotion just as Pete’s feet disappeared into the lift. One wall of the lift had been sprayed with vomit that was now running down to form a puddle on the floor. Joe stayed clear of it, pressed the button for the basement and sagged against the back of the lift, breathing heavily. Somebody unlocked the apartment door facing the lift as Gerry Harper finally vomited heavily onto the carpet. The lift door closed, mercifully, a split second before the apartment door opened.
‘What the hell?’ somebody shouted. The raised voices faded as the lift descended. Despite his dubious situation, Joe rocked with stifled mirth as he pictured the chaotic scene he had left behind. He wasn’t worried about Gerry Harper bumping into him. He always suffered total amnesia after his heavy drinking sessions.
The lift stopped with a jolt and the door opened. Joe grabbed Pete again and dragged him out of the lift into the dimly lit basement. He considered jamming the lift door open, but that would only confirm the route he had taken if anybody decided to follow. Instead, he pressed each button for the four floors above. That would delay any pursuers long enough for him to get out of the building.
He steadied himself against the wall, grabbed Pete by his lapels and once again, heaved him to his feet and hoisted him onto his shoulder. He tucked the blankets under his arm. Pete had given up the struggle and was silent now. Joe’s rasping breath echoed round the walls. Carrying somebody this way was a lot harder than it looked when somebody did it in the movies.
The floor, walls and ceiling of the basement were concrete. The walls were covered in heavy cables and pipes. The place hummed from the sound of the air conditioning that was housed behind a heavy door facing the lift. Several skips stood under rubbish chutes for use by the apartments above. Joe had considered pushing Pete down the chute in his kitchen but he didn’t want to lose sight of him and he wasn’t sure which skip he would land in, so he had rejected that idea. The basement was deserted as Joe had guessed it would be at that time in the evening. He staggered towards the exit door. The door was locked from the outside but a bar across the inside would release the lock. Joe leaned on the bar with his spare hand and pushed the door open.
An alarm screeched loudly as Joe stepped outside into a yard at the side of the apartment building.
‘Shit,’ Joe groaned. He hadn’t considered that there might be an alarm on the door.
Chapter 37
A sloping ramp led up to the street only a few yards from the steps across the street that led down to the canal were Joe had hidden earlier. It was too late to turn back. Ignoring the alarm, Joe tottered up the ramp towards the street, leaning on the wall for support as he went. He looked up and down the street, gasping for breath. It was deserted. Nobody had reacted to the alarm yet. Still no Jag
uar car was in sight, thank Christ. Joe crossed the street and scurried, half crouching towards the steps. As he stepped off the street he dumped Pete heavily on the concrete landing at the top of the steps and crouched down in the darkness, breathing heavily. Pete bucked and rolled over in pain. His breath whistled through the tape around his mouth. He looked at Joe with hate filled eyes as he lay on his side.
‘Guess that’s me off your Christmas card list,’ Joe said with a smile.
Joe lifted Pete to a sitting position, pushed him against the wall and threw a blanket over him to cover the tape around his arms and legs.
Across the street the alarm was still screaming. After a couple of minutes a stocky middle aged man in shirt sleeves walked up the ramp alongside the apartment building and glared up and down the street. It was Len, one of the security men for the building. He looked seriously irritated. Joe sat next to Pete and sank back into the shadows.
‘Must have interrupted him watching one of the soaps,’ Joe whispered.
After a few seconds of a, none-too-thorough, security check, Len turned and went back down the ramp. The alarm stopped a minute later and peace resumed.
‘Now he’s got to clean the puke up in the lift,’ Joe muttered. ‘Perk of the job.’
Joe checked the street. Still no sign of Vince. He pulled the Magnum from the holster and held it inches from Pete’s startled eyes. ‘I’m going to take the tape off your mouth,’ he whispered. ‘One word or sound from you and I’ll blow your head off. You got that?’
Pete nodded, eyes locked on the Magnum.
Joe peeled the tape from around Pete’s head, screwed it into tight ball and hurled it in the direction of the canal below. Then he took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them on the concrete before pulling the second blanket round himself. He saw Pete quietly wrestling and straining against the tape and jabbed hard him in the ribs with the Magnum.
‘Quit,’ he said tersely. Pete stopped his struggling and delivered a venomous glare that had death sentence written all over it.
They sat huddled in silence for nearly two hours. Several people used the steps from the canal on their way home. Joe even recognized one or two of his near-neighbours but he bowed his head into the blanket and they passed by with hardly a glance. A few people added to the coins already on the concrete. Usually pound coins although one guy only managed a fifty pence piece.
‘Tight arse,’ muttered Joe as he watched him cross the street.
The blanket gave little protection. The chill from the cold concrete landing seeped through him and Joe grew colder and stiffer as time dragged slowly by. He glanced at Pete. He was staring ahead, looking almost trance-like. Apparently content to bide his time until an opportunity presented itself. Joe shuddered at the thought and started to wonder what he would do with Pete if Vince didn’t turn up. He wasn’t going to take him back up to his apartment. That was for sure. Apart from the physical effort, he would be pushing his luck if he tried to use the front entrance. Pretty hard to explain, if he ran into anybody. Then there was the fact he wasn’t exactly enamoured with Pete. They had got off to a pretty bad start and their relationship was going rapidly downhill. Pete’s intentions, if he ever got free, were pretty clear.
Joe stared down at the canal, free of traffic, passive and brown in the cold night, slapping gently against the side of the towpath. It would be an easy solution to just lower Pete gently into the water. Pete would almost certainly drown. Problem solved. Nobody would connect Joe and Pete apart from George Bishop and Vince, and they were next on Joe’s agenda for the evening. It occurred to Joe that his finger prints were probably all over the brown tape. His prints weren’t on held record anywhere, but who knows what might happen in the future. Joe wondered if he could really go through with it. He wasn’t sure he could but he couldn’t think of any other workable idea.
He was still wrestling with the problem when he heard a car approaching. It was almost three in the morning. He threw the blanket to one side and, keeping low, eased sideways and looked up the street. The Jaguar came to a halt across the street from the entrance to the apartment building.
Joe felt his heart thumping. He turned back to Pete, pulled the roll of brown tape from his pocket and quickly wrapped tape around Pete’s mouth.
‘Don’t move,’ he warned, pointing the Magnum in Pete’s direction.
He looked again at the Jaguar, waiting for Vince’s next move when Pete’s mobile phone suddenly rang. Joe jumped backwards into the shelter of the low wall and grabbed frantically for the phone in his pocket. He was afraid that Vince might hear the phone ringing from down the street.
He got the phone out of his pocket at the fifth ring and held it under his jacket to muffle the sound. He looked at the display and saw Vince’s name. He watched the phone as it rang another couple of times then pressed the answer button and held the phone to his ear. He heard Vince’s voice.
‘Pete. Pete, you there? Pete?’
Joe didn’t answer for a few seconds, then with a smile in his voice he whispered, ‘He’s kind of tied up right now.’ He ended the call, and was about to hurl the phone towards the canal when he thought better of it. He switched the phone off and pushed it back into his pocket. He smiled at Pete. ‘Hope you don’t mind me using your phone.’
He eased across the concrete landing to look up the street at the Jaguar. There was a delay of several seconds before Vince threw the car door open and hurried towards the apartment entrance. Joe noticed that Vince typed the security code into the keypad by the main door.
‘Wonder where he got that bit of info,’ Joe muttered.
Obviously, Len, or one of his mates had taken a back-hander.
As soon as Vince disappeared into the building, Joe turned and grabbed Pete by his collar, dragged him into the street on his backside and along the pavement towards the Jaguar. The blankets were left strewn on the pavement as Joe made laboured progress through the cold night.
Finally, they were in the shadow of the Jaguar and out of sight if Vince came back out of the building. Joe sank to his knees gasping for breath after his efforts. His lungs were raw and his breath was whistling in his throat. He had to quieten his breathing before Vince returned. He hawked and spat phlegm into the gutter. Pete was lying next to him, watching, waiting for his next move. Joe checked to see if the brown tape had been damaged by the frantic haul up the street. It had stretched slightly but not enough to worry about. Either way, Joe couldn’t do anything about it right then.
Gradually, Joe’s breathing slowed. He tried the car door. It was locked but that was no big problem. Surely Vince would be back soon. It wouldn’t take him long to discover that the apartment was empty.
Suddenly, Pete starting bucking violently. He rolled from side to side banging the side of the car, making as much noise as he could. Joe pointed the gun at his head but he continued kicking, maybe guessing that Joe wouldn’t shoot. He was right but if Vince returned now things could get very messy. Joe grimaced. He didn’t like what he was going to do. He rolled Pete onto his side, raised the gun high then hit him hard behind the ear with the butt. Pete stopped kicking and lay still on the pavement. Joe leaned against the car door and looked up and down the street. All was quiet apart from his breathing.
Seconds later, Joe heard the door across the street crash open. Running footsteps signalled Vince’s return. Joe crouched down, gripped the handle of the rear passenger door with his left hand and held the Magnum ready in his right hand.
Vince opened the driver’s door. As soon as his weight settled on the driver’s seat, Joe opened the rear door, slid across the seat and touched Vince’s neck with the muzzle of the Magnum. Vince turned his head and Joe withdrew the gun slightly to let him get a look at it.
‘Pleased to see me?’ Joe smiled.
Vince didn’t answer. He just looked at the gun and then looked at Joe. He was obviously weighing up the chances, considering every possible option. Could he make a move? Could he not? Would Joe u
se the gun? Would he not? What were the chances? Joe guessed that Vince’s brain hadn’t seen this much action in a long time. He half expected to see smoke coming out of his ears.
Joe touched the gun against the back of Vince’s head again. ‘Be a shame to spill your brains on this nice upholstery.’
‘What do you want?’ Vince finally spoke.
‘I want us to take a little ride,’ Joe said, ‘but we’ve got company.’
Vince raised his eyebrows.
‘Get out,’ Joe said. ‘Very slowly.’
Joe slid across the seat so that he was directly behind Vince. They both got out of the car with Joe keeping the gun close to Vince’s head the whole time. When they were out of the car Joe backed away, still aiming the gun at Vince’s head.
‘This way,’ he beckoned.
Vince followed Joe around the car until he saw Pete lying on the pavement. He was still unconscious.
‘Open the boot,’ Joe ordered.
Vince opened the boot as instructed and stared silently at Joe.
‘Put him in,’ Joe said indicating with the gun.
Joe backed away warily as Vince bent down to pick Pete up. Vince was moving ponderously, still weighing every option. Joe was sure that Pete would be considered expendable if Vince could use him in some way. Vince dropped Pete effortlessly into the boot and stared at Joe.
‘Close it,’ ordered Joe.
Vince slammed the boot.
‘Ok, turn around and get back in the car,’ Joe said.
Joe moved closer again with the gun close to Vince’s head as they both eased back inside the Jaguar, Joe still in the rear. They closed their doors and Vince looked around at Joe. Joe smiled and touched Vince’s neck with the gun. ‘Take me to your leader,’ he whispered.