by Gary Kittle
‘The skin sample? In a jiffy bag? I heard, sure.’
‘Well, if things don’t go the way I want I’ll need something a lot bigger than a jiffy. Won’t I?’
Was this a test? Dan stared back, determined not to let his feelings show, then realised that not pissing his pants was about as hard as he could manage.
‘You’re expendable to both sides. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Well, when I heard your feet on the stairs I didn’t think it was the cavalry.’
‘But if we get away they’ll want to debrief you. You can give them Gareth’s name, for a start. You can still get out of this alive; so long as you’re smart and not ‘clever’.’
‘You reckon? They know she’s immune. They want her alive. Once that’s achieved its mission accomplished. What happens to me is irrelevant.’
‘But I doubt they want to pay up, if they can avoid it,’ the leader continued. He cocked his head to the side a little and issued a tiny laugh. ‘Was it you in the park?’
Dan didn’t have time to consider which answer would be most damaging, so he guessed. ‘No. A colleague.’
‘But you heard about it, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t go too well from your side, did it?’
Dan licked his lips. ‘At least we didn’t lose the money.’
‘Oh, come on. We both know there was no money in that bag.’
‘Would we have got the girl if there had been?’
The gang leader seemed to consider this question seriously, but made no reply. Dan didn’t know what he was going to say next until the words had already left his mouth.
‘Well they won’t let you touch the money until they have the girl.’
‘Yes and no. Because you will be with her when your ‘cavalry’ finally arrives. And when they see what you’re wearing,’ he added, lifting his shopping bag, ‘they’ll do whatever I tell them to.’
Dan didn’t like the change in his captor’s voice. It had that mocking I-know-something-you-don’t tone that reminded him of school bullies.
‘Devina - that’s her name, by the way - will wear the burqa. It’s traditional where she comes from. But you, my friend,’ he began, pulling out the object hidden in the shopping bag, ‘will have this on.’
He held it up like something that might bite him, allowing Dan to see it from all angles. The leader’s arm tensed with the effort of holding it up. There were eight large rectangular objects that looked like gifts wrapped in brown paper; and a lot of wires running between them.
‘There’s a smaller one for her, by the way. I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to gender, I’m afraid.’
Dan could see a couple of padlocks sewn into the fabric near where the zipper ran. This, then, was what the leader had alluded to, just before the fight broken out: extra insurance.
‘Now do you understand what I want you for?’ he chuckled; and for good effect he dangled the object in Dan’s face. It bumped against his nose and he caught a faint scent of almonds.
Dan’s mouth was too dry to speak. All he could do was nod.
He’d seen these things on documentaries, of course; but this was his first experience of one up close and personal. ‘How did I get here so quickly?’ he wondered. ‘In a few hours I could be redecorating this room.’
Dan let the loose ends of his former restraints run through his fingers and immediately felt a modicum of hope. Footsteps echoed on the stairs again, adding to Dan’s courage.
‘Sit tight, my friend,’ the leader hushed, patting his shoulder.
Alarm bells reverberated around Dan’s skull. If the leader tried to put the suicide vest on him now he would inevitably see the severed rope. He tensed his arms ready to spring at his captor whilst he still had the chance. The door opened and in marched another kidnapper wearing a ski mask.
‘Did you leave your phone downstairs? I heard a mobile ringing somewhere in the kitchen,’ he said.
‘It’s not mine. I’ve switched mine off. They should all be off. I’ve told you lot that more than once,’ he growled.
The new arrival pulled out his mobile from his jeans pocket. ‘Not guilty.’
The leader held out the suicide vest to the new arrival. ‘Stick this on 007 whilst I take a look, will you.’ And out he strode, muttering under his breath.
‘I heard it from the stairs, but by the time I’d got to the kitchen it had stopped,’ the new arrival called after him.
He looked down at Dan. ‘Phew!’ he sighed. ‘That was close.’
Chapter Eighteen
The girl stiffened as soon as she saw who had walked into the room.
That made Fiona feel a lot better. Richard was right: the girl looked tired and she’d lost weight. But wouldn’t anyone, held captive for this long? She wondered what the Government would do to her in the lab. No one knew who she was or that she was here. She had no passport, no papers. They could do anything they wanted and all she could do was beg and scream. Fiona pushed that thought away quickly.
‘Time for another chat,’ Fiona said, closing the door behind her.
The girl just stared at her. That was something that really got under Fiona’s skin, the fact that, aside from screaming, the girl had still not uttered a single word. Was it defiance or disrespect? Either way, Fiona would not have to endure it much longer. She threw a folded burqa over onto the bed.
‘Here. Put this on. You’re leaving. At last.’
The girl looked down at the garment and back up at Fiona. She looked surprised, puzzled. Or was that just another part of the act?
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never worn one.’ Fiona folded her arms and waited.
The girl stood slowly. She wore unwashed jeans and a loose tee-shirt. The girl turned her back and unfastened her jeans; started to pull them down over her hips. Richard would have loved this.
‘No,’ Fiona ordered. ‘Turn so I can see you.’
The girl did as she was told, but her face showed no reaction. She slipped out of the jeans and kicked them aside. Her legs were long and shapely. Fiona would not describe them as athletic exactly, but at least they were as nature had intended. Fiona thought of her own legs, of what they had become in a matter of months, the surface from toe to groin scaled and ridged like an alligator’s. Whatever fiend manufactured this disease had to be a man.
The girl picked up the burqa, intending to put it on.
‘Uh-ha,’ Fiona said, pointing at the girl’s tee-shirt.
Again the girl complied. Fiona stared at her bare rounded shoulders, a shade browner that the rest of her, and the gentle swell of her breasts. Again the girl reached for the burqa.
‘No,’ Fiona took a step forward. ‘Everything.’
The girl stared back, her face expressionless, and simply let the burqa slide through her fingers onto the floor.
‘Pick it up, harlot,’ Fiona’s temper flared.
But the girl just stared. She didn’t try to sit down or turn her back or put her old clothes back on. She just stood there and stared, motionless and silent.
Fiona took a step closer. ‘You know what will happen if you don’t.’
But still there was no reaction.
‘It’s bad today, believe me.’
Fiona slowly lifted the meshed covering from her head, revealing another beneath that had a thin slit showing her eyes and the skin surrounding them. The girl did not flinch, didn’t even break eye contact, so Fiona proceeded to take the face cover off. Her cheeks and remains of her nose were exposed in all their dreadfulness. The girl’s eyes widened a little, but that was the only reaction.
‘God damn you,’ Fiona hissed and took off the stained bandage wrapped round her scalp.
A few strands of hair remained, the overall impression being that someone had tried to treat eczema with an electric sander and bleach. Every few centimetres lurked ugly welts and craters, some of which oozed pus, whilst other looked set to drop off.
Still, the girl was unmoved.
With a shout of rage Fiona tore off the rest of her garments, oblivious of the pain it caused, so that she too stood in just her underwear, her scaly bowed legs rising to a crutch swollen and disfigured by pustulating buboes. From there upward the torso became a mass of conflicting ailments of every size and shade. One raised patch of skin had split open to reveal what looked like melon seeds clustered tightly together, fat and shiny, as if they were about to burst outward. Both shoulders had swollen and turned dark purple, as if with severe bruising. And lingering close to the rotting body was that subtle but gag-inducing odour.
Fiona stepped as close to the girl as she could, and as she did so something yellow dropped from a tumour on her left breast and plopped onto the floor between them.
Now, at last, came a reaction.
But Fiona could only glare in horror as the corners of the girl’s mouth turned upwards. Fiona stepped back. No, it couldn’t be. The girl was actually smiling. And not just smiling, leering at her. Fiona stepped further back, shaking her diseased head in disbelief. In a matter of seconds the girl’s joyful smile was joined by laughter; laughter that seemed to say, ‘I can never look the way you do; any more than you can look like me again!’
‘God damn you! Damn you!’ Fiona screamed; and sweeping up her garments she fled to the sanctuary of the bathroom.
Inside the tiny dirty room her tears came in earnest. Through the closed door she could still hear the girl laughing. There was a cabinet with a mirror for a door over the small basin sink. Catching sight of her disfigured face, Fiona grabbed the knob and ripped the door open, the hinges snapping easily, and flung it at the wall where it crashed in a sprinkling of glass fragments.
Her crying caught suddenly in her throat.
The cabinet was empty but for a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste - and something else.
Fiona reached out for the small cardboard packet and brought it closer to her eyes. It was exactly what she had thought it was the second she’d seen it. The tiny flap was open, and when she looked inside she found one slim foil package, unbroken, with what looked like a ring or coil trapped inside. But the other two foil packages were missing.
She turned her head to glare at the back of the bathroom door, beyond which the laughter continued; her worst fears realised.
Through gritted teeth Fiona Simmons let out a soundless scream and slowly brought both hands, fingers curled over into claws, up towards her cheeks. Slowly but purposefully she raked them down through the decaying flesh, the fingernails disappearing in a mass of blood and putrescent discharge. The floor below became splattered with dropping fluids.
Her voice was a barely audible hissing: ‘You bastard!’
Chapter Nineteen
Trevor Jenkins stared at the wall ahead. It wasn’t even his wall. The colour was Autumn Stroll, apparently.
How frustrating that you couldn’t just build a wall around your country to keep everyone else out, he reflected. Not even the sea could do that job these days, it seemed. And who exactly was ‘everyone else’ anyway? Maybe one day people would become citizens of the world and the concept of states and nations would evaporate. In the meantime, he kept finding little bits of his wife on the sofa.
The phone on his desk buzzed and he picked up the handset immediately. ‘You’re sure?’ He listened for several seconds. ‘Thank you, Jake,’ he said, already reaching into a drawer and pulling out a ringing mobile phone. ‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’
The voice at the end of the phone panted to Jenkins that he didn’t have much time.
‘You’ll be with her at the rendezvous?’ The voice told him yes. ‘Good. And she’s unharmed?’ Jenkins listened. ‘Very good.’
There was a longer burst of words from the mobile, culminating in the raising of Jenkins’ eyebrows.
‘Really? Someone on their side has a sense of irony,’ Jenkins sniffed. ‘But you know which of them will be wearing it? Oh, really,’ Jenkins scowled. ‘That’s not so good.’ He listened again. ‘Has he got a name? Describe him to me.’
As the caller did just that Jenkins closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
‘That’s unfortunate. It’s a pity you couldn’t have told us where you were all this time. It might have kept him out of harm’s way.’ He straightened his tie. ‘But they still don’t suspect you? Good. Then we’re still the ones with the surprise up our sleeves.’
Another question came from the mobile phone.
‘No, no. It doesn’t change anything. They only think it does; which, of course, is to our advantage.’
Jenkins stopped, listened, let a smile colour his face.
‘We’ll transfer the money as they’ve specified. Hmmm? No. Let it go. It’s the taxpayers’ not ours, remember?’ He let his smile broaden. ‘And just when they start to think they’re getting away with it, we’ll swoop.’
The words coming through his mobile phone were louder now, harsher.
‘All that matters is we get the girl into the lab today.’
This time the words coming through the phone were raised.
‘I know, I know. But you’ll be fine, believe me. It’s all arranged. I have someone in the assault team. You won’t know him, but he’ll know you. Just let them arrest you and I’ll get you out in due course. But listen, it might be awhile. I have to make things look convincing, you understand? Just sit tight, say nothing and everything will be fine.’
More shouted words. Jenkins even pulled the phone away from his ear momentarily. ‘Listen. Listen. Just follow my instructions. OK? We’ll talk again when it’s all over.’
He terminated the call. They might get the money back, or at least some of it, if they could ‘persuade’ any surviving kidnappers to co-operate in its recovery. But of course there weren’t going to be any survivors. He had to admire the young man’s resourcefulness. It was only yesterday he was sitting here talking to him and now there he was, a hostage in their safe house. It was a pity he had to die. But then Dan had signed his death warrant the moment he had intercepted that ransom demand. He knew too much for his own good, even if he didn’t recognise it; and that, after all, was the real reason why Jenkins had sent him out on what should have been a wild goose chase.
The end result was still propitious: one less loose end.
Speaking of which, his own insurance strategy looked pretty watertight. But it needed to be. He had files, photos, hard drives, and he had not been coy about making other people know it. The people pulling the strings from above were not the kind of people you ever actually met; not as the people they really were, at any rate. And they didn’t just pull the strings; where necessary they cut them, too. No, if anyone needed to watch their back, Trevor Jenkins realised, it was him; especially if they called his bluff.
He thought about his future and tried not to imagine what his head would look like with a hole in it.
‘This might not be an autumn stroll, after all,’ he told the wall.
Chapter Twenty
With her burqa restored, Fiona charged out of the bathroom and the room beyond without looking at the girl. She knew what kind of expression the girl was wearing. Fiona relocked the door and controlled her breathing. Her oozing cheeks were burning with pain, but that was nothing compared to the pain in her heart.
Did the girl know what Fiona had found in the bathroom cabinet? Had she left it there deliberately? Surely Richard would not have been so careless.
Either way, someone had been at the strawberries, and she couldn’t see Gareth or Jamie being bold enough to go behind Richard’s back. She headed outside via the back door and made her way to what looked like an outside lavatory. She found a long key under a bucket of soil and slipped it into a heavy, encrusted padlock on the door. It turned with a grinding sensation and a second later she was inside, among years of dust and cobwebs. On a high shelf in front of her was a thick glass bottle, complete with glass stopper. She carefully took this down and secreted it under her burqa; after which she re-locked the she
d and replaced the key beneath the bucket.
Richard wasn’t going to any clinic in Switzerland. Why should he when he had someone young, beautiful and unspoilt right under his nose? She knew Richard wouldn’t think twice about betraying Gareth and Jamie.
‘So why not me?’ she asked herself.
But Fiona had no intention of going quietly. She had fathered Richard’s child, whilst all that time tolerating his previous philanderings. He thought she didn’t know, the fool, but Fiona was aware of every single one of them: the girl at the newsagents, Maggie from the football club, that woman who always cut his hair (why not another bloke?). She had tolerated them all because she knew they meant nothing to him, and because they meant nothing he would inevitably come back to her bed when he got bored. But not this time; this time the only thing to come back to was something that looked like it had just been dropped through a meat grinder.
Fiona made her way back inside. The three men would doubtless be leaving soon and she did not want to be ‘accidently’ left behind. The stopper on the glass bottle was wedged down tight. It needed to be, given what was inside.
There’d been a lot of screwing around recently. Screwing over and screwing up, to boot. She entered the kitchen and started searching through her handbag for the strongest painkiller she could find, the one not prescribed by her G.P.
‘From now on it’s me that does the screwing,’ she whispered.
Chapter Twenty-One
An hour later her face still felt wet and warm, but at least the pain was dissipating. As she’d suspected, Fiona found her husband and his two stooges already in the top room, along with the two hostages, each tied to a chair. What she hadn’t expected was what the two hostages were wearing.
‘My God, are they wearing suicide vests?’
‘Yes. They are.’
‘Don’t you think someone will notice?’
‘Only when they come through that door,’ said Richard.