The Takers

by Robert Enright

  Rapidly pulling his room apart, he soon found it depressing how little he cared for the material items that cluttered his home. All the pain they’d caused and the laws they’d broken, all for the glamourous life and a stock piling of artefacts he couldn’t give a shit about.

  Leaving now felt so right.

  After stuffing a couple of sets of fresh clothes into his bag, he pulled up the picture frame.

  It was of him and Elmore, back in their high school days. Shirts untucked, ties ridiculously short, gangster poses. They had thought they were so cool but Wiseman had always expected them to grow up, to move on and make something of themselves. He was smart, which was why Elmore kept him around.

  But Elmore wasn’t around anymore.

  He was dead.

  Sam Pope had removed the contents of Elmore’s skull with a well-placed bullet.

  The horror of the previous night suddenly rushed to the forefront of his mind and a wave of nausea crashed over him. His knees buckled, and he dropped the treasured photo, his vision going blurry as he stumbled to the bathroom again, his body arching over the toilet as he dry heaved, wishing more vomit forward.

  He was empty.

  He dryly smiled at how apt that was.

  As Wiseman reached out for the grey towel that hung from the rail affixed to the wall, the room shook as a violent knock echoed through the house. Startled, he fell back against the wall, wrapping his injured hand around his shins and pulling them towards him. A bead of sweat slithered down his neck and his heart raced.

  Was it Pope? Had it changed his mind?

  Was it the police?

  His old crew?

  Taking deep, concentrated breaths, Wiseman remained perfectly still, ignoring the thunderous hammering on his door.

  As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

  The flat went silent.

  Wiseman took a few more moments before he slowly began to push himself forward when the terrifying crash accompanied the door flying from its hinges. He saw it hit the floor of the hallway, a barrage of splinters burst off upwards like fireworks. Heavy footsteps echoed across the hallway and Wiseman began to feel nauseous again.

  The steps drew closer.

  Wanting to remain as silent as possible, Wiseman felt his body betray him.

  The fear rose up in him, manifesting as another bout of vomit, this time a pale-yellow liquid that splashed into the toilet below.

  It drew the intruder to the door.

  As Wiseman tried to calm himself, he looked through watery eyes at the thick, black boots at the threshold pointed in his direction. A voice, weighed down by a thick, European accent, followed. The softness of the words took Wiseman by surprise, as if a child was speaking.

  ‘You like glass of water?’

  Surprised by the offer of kindness, Wiseman helplessly nodded, listening vaguely as the boots trudged back through the flat, a brief clatter in the kitchen and then the water bursting from the tap. He tried to reclaim his bearings, the panic and lack of hydration keeping him grounded. As he rocked back onto his knees, he finally wiped his eyes, just as the intruder reappeared.

  Wiseman felt like he was in a horror film.

  The man filled the entire doorway, his huge frame causing him to arch his neck slightly forward so he didn’t catch his scalp on the frame. The man was a stack of muscle, his arms and chest looked like they were made of stone, even through his jacket.

  It was his face that scared Wiseman most of all.

  The entire left side was hideously scarred, the eye entirely white, useless. It looked like a ping-pong ball stuffed into a rotten peach.

  The man’s hair was cropped, the stubble fading at the charred skin.

  His granite-esque hand shot forward, handing Wiseman a glass of water.

  ‘Here.’ His voice was soft. ‘You drink.’

  Wiseman did as he was told, eagerly chugging the water. He was confused, having no idea who the gigantic stranger was or why he was being kind. Without taking his eyes from the gentle gaze of the giant man, Wiseman cautiously handed back the glass. The man took it.

  In a flash, the large man swung it forward, slamming the glass into the side of Wiseman’s head. The glass shattered, the shards spraying across the bathroom and Wiseman slumped forward, blood trickling from the blow and his thoughts as scattered as the glass.

  He tried to murmur for mercy, but realised it was useless.

  Behind him, the attacker removed his jacket, his giant frame stretching his black T-shirt to its limit.

  It wasn’t the only resolve he was there to test.

  He stepped further into the bathroom, his boots crunching over the shattered glass that covered the floor like a litter box. Wiseman reached his bandaged hand out towards a shard of glass, a useless attempt to protect himself.

  The boot slowly lowered down on his forearm, the edge of the leather touching the band aid.

  Wiseman went rigid with fear.

  ‘My name is Oleg.’ The man’s voice sent a chill down Wiseman’s spine. He spoke with the simplicity of a child. ‘I have to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Please,’ Wiseman sobbed. ‘Please don’t kill me.’

  ‘I will not kill you.’

  Wiseman burst into tears, a mixture of pain and relief at the man’s reassuring words.

  It was short lived after the following seven.

  ‘But I will have to hurt you.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The shrill beeping of a heavy-duty vehicle echoed through the metal walls and caused Jasmine Hill to open her eyes. They were sore, the last two days had been spent in a terrified panic and she couldn’t force another tear from her eyes if she tried.

  She had never known fear before.

  Neither had the three other girls sharing the metal chamber.

  The confines of the metal room were narrow and under furnished, with three rough mattresses thrown lazily onto the unforgiving iron floor. In the far corner, a bucket had been placed, which was now overflowing with human waste and causing a toxic aroma to fill the dark prison. Flittering in and out of sleep, there had been a number of occasions where the smell had invaded Jasmine’s nostrils and caused her to roll to her side and retch at the stench.

  She was weak.

  The other girls were too.

  All of them were in their mid to late teens, with two of them staying deathly silent, rocking back and forth in the dark and resigned to a fate that Jasmine was beginning to realise was worse than death. The only one of the girls to speak back, Hannah, had agreed with her that if they were going to be killed, they wouldn’t have been fed. While that was a generous word for the loaf of bread that was thrown into the room with them, it did make sense.

  They were wanted alive.

  Jasmine pushed herself from the battered mattress and sat with her back against the metal wall. There was the odd sound from the outside world, one which made Jasmine want to bang against the wall and beg for freedom. However, one of the girls that lay a mere two feet from her had done just that.

  Within two minutes, the door had opened, a blinding sheet of light causing them all to turn away. Two gruff men, both with heavy accents and high-vis jackets demanded to know who it was or all of them would be punished.

  The girl bravely raised her hand.

  The man cowardly raised his own.

  Jasmine had shuddered with horror as the fully grown man clobbered the young girl in the face, reducing her mouth to a washing machine filled with blood and loose teeth.

  An hour or so after the brutal beating, the door had opened again, the light dimmed by the emerging twilight and a striking woman with dark hair entered, her accent as thick as the previous attacker’s but with enough allure to bend any man to her will. She calmly introduced herself as Dana, telling the girls that drawing attention to themselves would not be tolerated. She explained that while they were staying with her, they would not be subjected to any further harm as long as they behaved. Jasmine couldn’t believe
the woman’s turn of phrase, as if they’d booked a few nights through Air BnB.

  They had been kidnapped.

  One of them had been beaten.

  She had heard the men who had taken her, referring to her as a ‘high grade’, with one of the boys gloating that she would be passed around more times than a bong at a Reggae party. She had cried, realising that Tyrone, the boy she’d grown fond of at school and who had garnered her attention with his ‘bad boy’ attitude, had tricked her to going to that party in Shepherd’s Bush.

  She was fresh.

  A virgin.

  Tyrone’s boss, a terrifying man called Leon, had congratulated him on bringing her in, telling him that he could join the main crew soon as long as he went through initiation.

  A chloroform laden rag was soon pressed to her face and she never got to hear what that process would be.

  But now, as the outside world roared around them, the four girls sat silently in the metal room, all of them lost.

  All of them helpless.

  Jasmine thought about her dad, how he had tried so hard to connect with her when her mother had died. How he had been overbearing, always calling, and always checking in. It had driven her mad at the time, but now she felt a lump forming in her throat as she longed for her father’s embrace.

  He would keep her safe.

  He had always tried to.

  She recalled heading for the door, rudely telling him that she was going to the party whether he liked it or not. She could see the hurt in his face, the futile attempts to act as both of her parents.

  She sobbed.

  Her tear ducts dry, she felt the salty sting of an absent tear as she pulled her knees towards her, cowering in the dark of a foreign room in an unknown place, with a lifetime of sexual abuse ahead of her.

  She closed her eyes, wishing that somewhere, someone was looking for them.

  Jasmine took a deep breath, fully aware that despite her private pleas of rescue, her situation was nigh on hopeless.

  ‘Wake up.’

  The gruff voice filtered through Leon Barnett’s wooziness, and he slowly began to regain consciousness. As the light burrowed into his eyes, he squinted, his surroundings blurred like a camera out of focus. His head hurt, a throbbing pain roaring like a siren. Fragments of his memory began to whirl around his mind, the blow to his head making it harder to piece them together. Very slowly, clarity began to ease its way into his line of sight, the edges of the furniture becoming clearer.

  He was in a kitchen.

  It was one he had never seen before and one he ventured hadn’t been used properly for a long time. The tiles were plagued with grime, the whiteness faded and smeared with a brown sheen. The sink was a bowel of rust, somehow still attached to pipes that were on the verge of collapse.

  The sharp pain in his head caused him to grit his teeth and he reached his hand to his head. Or at least tried…

  Leon looked down and found his arms strapped to the metal chair, his naked body locked in place. A muscular man with a body covered in tattoos, he was used to being in full control of every situation; his very presence a cause of great fear throughout not just his estate, but most of London.

  Here he was trapped, naked, and vulnerable.

  Behind him he heard the sound of water being poured into a jug, accompanied by a satisfying fizzing noise. He tried desperately to turn his head, to find the source of the voice that had woken him from his fragile state and the man responsible for his abduction.

  ‘Do you have any idea how fucked you are?’ Leon spat, trying his hardest to lace the words with venom. ‘You got any idea what my boys are gonna do to you? To your family?’

  The only response he received was silence, as he heard the man open a plastic wrapper, and then the snap of rubber gloves. Leon felt his heart begin to beat faster, a strange feeling that he never had to feel.

  Fear.

  Swallowing hard, he tried to counteract it.

  ‘This is a bad idea, bruv.’ Leon tried to sound nonchalant as he tried to rack his brain for what had happened. ‘You know who I am, right? What I can do?’

  Again, nothing but more liquid being pumped into a jug, the hissing sound as the contents fizzed filled the awkward silence. A horrible smell began to filter around the room, like an unwelcome fart in an elevator.

  It smelt toxic.

  Leon flexed his considerable bulk, trying to free himself from his restraints. It was no good, the plastic of the cable ties pinched into his dark skin, threatening to draw blood at any moment. Gaffer tape locked his abdomen to the back of the chair and further cable ties secured him by the ankles. A towel had been generously donated to cover his modesty.

  He racked his brain, the memory of one of his skanks bent over while he went to town on her filtered back when he remembered the door bursting open, causing her to scream and him to stumble naked to the floor of his flat. The young drug runner, usually situated out on the steps, got halfway through an apology before a sickening clunk rendered him unconscious. The man who held the gun stepped into the room, aiming it squarely at Leon. The naked woman begged for mercy on the bed as Leon told her to keep quiet.

  The man was white, mid-thirties with a soldier’s physique, the stance of a fighter and, judging by the fact he had gone through roughly eight of his crew to get to him, Leon assumed was a dangerous motherfucker.

  He had marched him out of the flat as naked as the day he was born, stripping him of his masculinity, pride, and fear factor for anyone who was watching.

  They stepped over the unconscious bodies of his crew members.

  The man had stuffed Leon into the boot of a waiting car and as he turned to ask why, Leon saw the man swing the gun and that was it. The next part of his memory was waking up in this room, with no clue of where he was, what the man wanted, or what was going on behind him.

  But Leon felt that fear again.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good.

  As the toxicity began to tickle the back of his throat, Leon coughed violently, the sting in the air causing his eyes to water, the need to rub them almost as unbearable as the chemical aroma wafting around them.

  He shook violently, trying to loosen his grip.

  It was hopeless.

  Panic began to settle in.

  ‘Fuck, man, just let me go, aight?’ he begged, feeling as pathetic as he looked. ‘Please, this shit is burning.’

  At that moment, Sam turned from his makeshift lab table and stepped across the grotty kitchen, hoisting a plastic box from the stained, cracked tiles that zigzagged the floor in no discernible pattern. He walked to the other side of the small table, Leon’s eyes locking onto him with a mixture of resentment and fear.

  It didn’t matter.

  With a casual sigh, he offered Leon a smile before reaching into the box with his gloved hand and pulled out a pair of protective goggles, followed swiftly by a face mask.

  ‘What the fuck is this, bruv?’ Leon pleaded, shunting his body violently in the chair, causing the towel to drop and take away his final modicum of modesty.

  ‘You’re going to tell me where you’ve taken the girls your crew snatched,’ Sam said calmly, looking beyond Leon to the plastic vat sat on the counter. The kitchen was tacked onto a bare living room, one of the few safe houses Sam had acquired over the previous six months. While each criminal hideout was brought down brick by brick, he took a slice of their money to purchase small safe sites around the city for refuge. Each one was stocked with a couple of automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and enough money to disappear. He had no intention of doing so, his war on the organised crime that was rotting the city like an unkempt tooth was just beginning.

  But this small property sat above a back-alley mechanics just outside of Harlesden, where people looked the other way and didn’t come running when people screamed for help.

  Which, judging by the terror on his face, Leon was fully aware of.

  Sam could only smirk as the man tried to c
over his fear with false bravado.

  ‘You’re a dead man, you hear me. My boys will be here soon and they gonna take you apart. Then find your wife or your gal and gonna tear that ass up!’ Leon kissed his teeth, his lip lifting to reveal a gold tooth. Sam allowed the empty threat to sit for a moment, before pulling his mask over his airways and stepping back across the small kitchen, returning quickly with a large container. The container was made of Teflon and inside it, the steam slithered upwards, a cloud of toxic gas. Leon struggled for breath as Sam placed it on the table before speaking through his mask.

  ‘Leon, this here is a vat of strong, hydrochloric acid. It’s incredible what you can pick up from B&Q if you know what you’re looking for. Now a concentrated dose of that, mixed with bleach, makes this an extremely toxic and harmful acid. You would know … you have your crew throw it at people just to get into your inner circle, right?’

  Sam took the silence as Leon’s acceptance of that fact. The tear rolling down his stubble covered cheek was his appreciation of how much trouble he was in. Sam didn’t have time to play games.

  ‘Now I know you arrange to have girls taken and you took one two nights ago. Fifteen, brown hair.’

  ‘I don’t know any young bitch,’ Leon offered meekly. Sam rocked him with a hard right, the impact causing his jaw to shake like a maraca.

  ‘Her name is Jasmine,’ Sam said sternly. ‘Now I don’t have time to mess about here, Leon. So you’re going to tell me where I can find her otherwise I’m going to put you through more pain than you have ever thought possible.’

  Leon looked at the murderous vat of acid before a treacherous moment of machismo filtered through. The pointless display of power from someone used to being in control.

  ‘Fuck you.’ The following ball of saliva he spat in Sam’s direction was the exclamation point. Sam didn’t hesitate. Using a small, Teflon jug with a spout, he carefully dipped the edge into the makeshift tub and pulled it back, his jug heavier.

  He gently trickled it over Leon’s naked thigh.

  As he roared with pain, the skin instantly began to sizzle, the acid burrowing its ferocious path through the protective layers as it tried its best to pass through him. The smell of burning flesh began to overpower the heavy smell of chemicals and Leon shook in agony as the muscle of his leg began to reveal itself, the skin disintegrating like a burnt piece of paper.