Whispers Beneath the Pines

by Whispers Beneath the Pines

  Eve had hoped that Mehmet would help and he had. He had jumped between her and the knife.

  Sadik grabbed Mehmet by the arm and helped him up; the knife that Celile had plunged fell from his shoulder to the floor and rested by Eve’s foot. Sadik looked at Eve, bent down and lifted the knife off the floor. Mehmet yelped and left a speckled blood trail on the floor as Sadik helped him hobble over to the bench. Eve stared into the shadows as Sadik laid the knife on the bench, grabbed an old rag from a tin on the bench top and pressed it into Mehmet’s wound. The young man yelped again but took the rag and continued pressing it hard. Sadik once again grabbed Mehmet’s arm and guided him out of the shed and closed the door behind him. He paced over towards the bench and faced the wall as he grabbed his hair.

  *****

  Celile fell to the floor, tears trickled down her cheeks and her sobs filled the room. Her compulsions had once again overtaken her. Seeing her man in a vile stupor over their hostage had broken her. He would lie, he would say he was helping her and her reply would be; what with your pants unzipped. Like Selina, he was only helping, now Eve. That scar damaged woman had nothing on her, she was ordinary, mousy, plain, pale and blotchy but she had so much more. She was loved.

  Guz hadn’t treated her right, Sadik was now abusing her trust and she had stabbed Mehmet, Guz’s only son; she had hurt Guz’s son and Sadik’s nephew. Although Sadik never cared much for his nephew, she still felt that this may be her end too. When they got the money, would they dump her? She was sure Guz knew about their affair based on the little stint with the shoes that he'd pulled at the Villa. She couldn’t forget how he made her feel, he wanted to tarnish her. He knew that Sadik would sense what had happened and he knew Sadik would not do a thing as he was betraying his brother also.

  She gasped between sobs, her mind proposing a million solutions in a few seconds. All the solutions were becoming muddled. The only way out was to leave, they had to go now. Sadik could go with her but if not she was going alone. She would go back to Bursa, back to working farms; she had a bit of money stashed in her flat, enough to get her out of this mess. One thing she was sure of now though was that they could never be caught for what they had done. She hadn’t wanted any of this, Guz organised it, Guz planned it, Guz negotiated the deals, Guz called all the shots but she was calling this one. She wiped her eyes and nose with her hand and stood. Sadik turned and took a couple of steps towards her; she could tell by the way that he looked at her that he didn’t really know her. He was angry with her impulsiveness but he still wanted her enough not to slap her. She reached out her hand to his face; he slapped it down and looked away.

  “Why the hell did you do that,” he said with his shaking hands held up in front of her.

  “I saw you; I didn’t mean to hurt Mehmet. Why Sadik? Why do you betray me?” She wept as Sadik looked at her. She knew that she was nothing to him anymore. “We need to kill her and get out of here. We are all going to die, I know it.”

  “There will be no more killing; she is going off to wherever to be sold to whoever and we are getting money.” Sadik said.

  “Do you think that when The Boss hears what a fuck up this has been that any of us are going anywhere? Really?”

  Sadik looked at her in silence. He looked away in thought and glanced at Eve. Celile looked across at Eve, the broken woman shaking in the corner, blood down her arms and Mehmet’s blood drying up on her legs.

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” He said.

  Celile walked over to the bench and picked up the knife. From her back pocket she pulled out the little photo of Harry before walking over to Eve. She kneeled and held the picture out in front of Eve before placing it on the floor between them both. “At least your son is okay, that’s something to be happy about,” she said. She watched as Eve tried to talk behind the scarf, the woman’s eyes lit up at the sight of the photo, her movements became agitated.

  “What are you doing Celile?” Sadik asked.

  “I’m ending this and we are going or at least I am going. You can chose to come with me or you can stay here and be slaughtered. It’s over Sadik. It’s all over. You can stay and watch or you can go back to the house.” Celile watched as Sadik began to tremble. He walked up to her and placed his hand over the tip of the knife.

  “You kill her I will kill you. Watch her and do nothing else for now. Can I trust you?”

  “Can I trust you?” Celile replied as she edged the knife into Sadik’s hand forcing him to let go.

  He flinched and rubbed his palm. “You can always trust me. What you saw wasn’t what you think. Do you not believe that I want to go away with you from all this and start a new life? I want that more than anything but we have to do this right. Think about my mother out there, she needs me, she needs you. If we run off, both she and Guz are dead. I can’t let them die. So, can you trust me?”

  “I might be able to trust you,” she said as she turned away and stared at Eve, “or I might not.”

  “Please, just leave her be, just a few more minutes and we should hear something. Guz should be here soon, we can get this thing wrapped up. We have two women, a load of documents and belongings. Things are going to be fine,” he said as he cupped her chin and kissed her.

  Celile allowed him to kiss her but didn’t respond. He would have to work hard to regain her total loyalty. “Yes, things will be fine. I will just keep this bitch entertained,” she replied as she then kissed Sadik passionately and hard whist maintaining eye contact with Eve. This was part of the game, she was good enough for her man and that wreck of a woman was nothing, nothing that wouldn’t go away very soon, one way or another.

  Chapter 47

  Kevin steered the car in every direction that the sat-nav indicated he should go. After passing a sign for Goçova and taking a right turn the car trundled down a thinning path. The vehicle chugged and spluttered as a flashing light drew his eyes to the dash. Out of fuel; he would have to stagger the rest of the way on foot. He rolled up against the roadside and allowed the car to merge with the bushes before killing the ignition. He grabbed The Prick's bag from the back seat and filled it with the passports and the gun. As he unplugged and lifted the sat-nav, he opened the car door and grabbed his shot leg with his free hand. He released his leg from the foot well and gave it a stretch. He flinched as he elongated the limb and his finger throbbed from the break; his whole body bled and ached. He stood then opened the back door and pulled out the shovel; his make shift crutch.

  He leaned on the shovel with each step and made his way along the dusty rock lined road. The light from the sat-nav was all he had to see with. After several minutes he had reached the end of the red line, he turned off the sat-nav and placed it in his bag. Under the moonlight he stood before a long drive, at the end of the drive rested a sugar cube house surrounded by what he could only guess to be were fruit trees. On the balcony upstairs a large satellite dish rested beside a string of washing. All the windows were in darkness except for the bottom left window. There was no direct light emerging from the house, only a glimmer of a lamp or maybe a light from another room.

  ‘One step after another,’ he kept repeating in his head. Every time he moved the shovel along, he did it with complete care in order to remain quiet. With every step the hessian bag he carried slapped the side of his good leg, he was thankful that it wasn’t a plastic carrier bag. One scrape of a shovel or a rustle of a bag and they could all come out and take him down. His heart beat faster. What if the address programmed in the sat-nav had been nothing more than a red herring? He could look around only to find some insomniac sat at the table thinking he was under attack when he caught sight of a bleeding man at his window; or there could be a mother nursing a baby that she had struggled to put down to sleep. As he approached the window, he leaned the shovel against the wall, careful not to make a noise. He then leaned in closer for a better look. As he watched he took the gun from the bag and placed the bag down by his feet. All he needed was the gun
for now; he held it down by his side.

  There was a main light on in the front room. He glared across the dark room behind the window. An old woman passed him and hobbled towards the lit up room, Kevin moved to the side where he was almost completely hidden by the window frame. He felt the flaky paint crumble off and stick to his sweaty hair line. He felt his heart rate go up as the old woman turned back and reached for a book that lay on the sideboard before walking back into the room. She turned on a table lamp which then flooded the whole garden with a strip of light. He could now see that the trees were lemon trees, the garden was wild with shrubs and dried out grass everywhere. The woman sat in an orthopaedic style chair before removing two hearing aids and placing them on the coffee table. She placed the book in her lap, put her feet on a foot rest and lay her head back in the chair before closing her eyes and rubbing her temples.

  Behind the woman, Kevin spotted a long shadow on the wall, the shadow moved backwards and then forwards but never to the side so that Kevin could see who it was. The light glinted off the stainless steel corner of the sink. He had to move around the side of the house to get a better look. This had to be where Eve was being held otherwise he would lose her forever. ‘They are coming for her,’ those words repeated themselves over and over again in his head. He left the shovel against the wall and hobbled around the building until he reached the side wall. There was a small rectangular side window ahead. He had to get to the window, get a good look into the kitchen. Now, his worst fear was that he wouldn’t recognise anyone there and that the people in the house were just normal people going about their normal business leaving him with no clues as to where to go next.

  Reaching the window, he leaned against the wall beside it, bent down and tightened the material around his leg that had started to loosen. He clenched his teeth as he pulled the material tighter, it put added stress on his broken finger and his gun shot wound at the same time. The bleeding seemed to have been contained which had to be a good sign, but the pain still throbbed with an angry burning that he felt deep within him. He caught a glint of something coiled on the floor, a little coiled brown shell. He picked it up and placed it in his pocket. He had promised Eve he would help her find some shells for Harry. He paused and wiped his brow, he was going to find Eve and he was finally going to meet little Harry. Turning his head, he peered through the window and recognised the back of Sadik’s head. Kevin swallowed hard, a sickening tremble travelled through his chest and rested in his stomach. He had found them; Eve had to be around somewhere. He held up the gun and watched. Where was she? Where had they taken her?

  Sadik moved to his left revealing a bleeding Mehmet sat on a chair. A first aid kit lay open on the dirty worktop amongst several pots full of plant shoots. The kitchen was sparse containing only a sink, a few damaged cupboards, a table and chairs and a door that probably led to a pantry. Sadik stuck a large plaster over the wound on the top of the young man’s arm and slapped him as he passed him a bloody tee-shirt. Mehmet shrieked as he lifted his arms and pulled the garment over his head. Sadik turned; Kevin jerked back and lay his head against the concrete wall. He heard a chair shuffle against the stone floor. Blood pumped through his body, as he swallowed the dryness caused him to make a click noise. He had to have a look; had they seen him?

  With the gun held out in front of his chest he leaned forward and peeped into the window. He watched as Sadik walked out of the kitchen and into the room where the old woman was sitting. Mehmet had his back to Kevin and was packing away the first aid box and putting it away in the cupboard. On the table lay a gun and a knife, the very weapons they would use on him if he didn’t get hold of them. He rubbed the sweat off his head with his arm and took a deep breath. Mehmet turned; Kevin drew back out of view. He heard a door open, then slam. A few feet away from him, he heard footsteps grinding stones on the path as they travelled. The noise became quieter as the feet got further away. Mehmet was taking a walk in the garden. Kevin struggled on, crouching as he turned the corner. He looked through the kitchen window, in the distance he could see the old woman’s head resting on the back of the chair, Sadik was nowhere to be seen.

  He tried the door handle, it opened. One quiet, painful step at a time he reached the table. He picked up the knife and then put in his pocket, blade upwards. He grabbed the gun and held it in his other hand. He looked out of the main window of the kitchen and saw an outhouse at the back of the garden, a faint light seeped out underneath the door. Eve, she had to be in the outhouse. His heart raced, he could’ve cried, he had to get to the outhouse. That must’ve been where Mehmet had gone. As for his shoulder wound, he had hoped that it was Eve who had done that to him.

  The toilet flushed and footsteps bounded down the stairs. Kevin opened the pantry door and slipped in. With barely any room, he held onto the gun and tried to breathe in to avoid knocking any tins off the shelving that stood all around him. Through the gap in the door he saw Sadik stand and look out of the window as he lit a cigarette. Kevin shifted his body and the pantry door moved a fraction. Sadik’s head twitched as he focused on the window, the room’s reflection filled the window. Kevin’s pulse rate sped up and his hands trembled. Sadik turned his body and walked towards the pantry door.

  Chapter 48

  Kevin watched as Sadik turned to swipe the gun off the table, the gun Kevin was holding in his hand. He watched as the man began muttering to himself and pacing back and forth, glancing in all directions as he moved. Sadik once again looked directly at the door. Kevin withdrew back into the cupboard, surrounding him were jars of what looked like pickled chillies and fruit.

  “So, did my stupid Nephew feel sorry for you Eve and untie you?”

  They did have her. Sadik had just confirmed that Eve was being held by them, here. His shoulders dropped as a tear rolled down his cheek. She was here, alive and now he was going to free her and take her home away from this nightmare. He released the gun chamber of the gun he had secured in the wilderness and dropped out the single bullet before placing the gun amongst the jars of chillies. He then grabbed the new gun firmly and held it tightly with both hands. There was no way they were getting hold of a gun and trapping him again. He was free and he intended to remain just that.

  “Come out and give me the gun Eve. You don’t want to have an accident,” Sadik said as he crept close to the pantry door. “I saw you move the door in the window Eve,” he said as he sniggered.

  Kevin kicked the door hard into the man’s face and stepped out of the cupboard as he held the gun stretched out in front of his chest. Sadik fell to the floor and grabbed hold of his arm.

  “How? When?” Sadik said as he glared up at Kevin.

  “Where is she?” Kevin began to shake as he held the gun. He hobbled closer to Sadik. Sadik didn’t reply. “I said where is she?”

  “Oh, she?” He sniggered. “You know you can’t win the game. There will be several bad asses turning up any time now to take her. If they come for nothing, we all die and that means you too. Oh you think you know how it all works, but you don’t know these people,” he said as his snigger turned into a vacant stare.

  “I don’t care about you or 'these' people. I only care what happens to Eve. The prick you left to clean me up went down easy enough with a bullet through his chest,” Kevin trembled as a stream of sweat travelled down the side of his face. He might have to shoot this man, he knew he might and it was becoming apparent that they would fight to the end. He knew Mehmet was wounded but the woman, Celile. He hadn’t seen her. He watched as the man digested what he had just said.

  “You killed Guz, my brother?”

  “If you mean, did I kill that murderous prick, then yes. I put a bullet through him, the same as what I am going to do to you.” Kevin extended his arm and stared down the barrel.

  “I surrender, please don’t shoot me,” Sadik shouted as he held his hands above his head. He shuffled on his bottom towards the cupboard.

  “Stay where you are,” Kevin yelled as he rele
ased the catch on the gun and pointed it at Sadik’s head.

  “No,” Sadik shouted as he cradled his head and flinched. Kevin gripped the gun and stared down the barrel. He had a clear shot. “No,” the man cried. Tears began to fall down his face as he curled up on the floor into a ball and broke down. “You killed my brother.”

  Kevin trembled as he lowered the gun; he couldn’t shoot. He had to find a way to bind him so that he could investigate further. He shuffled backwards keeping his eye on Sadik the whole time. The old woman lay on her chair with her head back on the rest, mouth open, snoring. He felt a thud to his shot leg; Sadik had shuffled forwards and laid his foot hard into Kevin’s wounded leg. Kevin fell to the floor screaming. 'Don’t let go of the gun,' he thought as they rolled around on the floor. Sadik had managed to climb up on top of Kevin and hold his hands above his head. He fought for the gun, pulling at his fingers. Kevin kicked back and saw the man’s face distort in agony.

  “You killed my brother, I hate you. I hate you,” the man yelled, spit and tears flying everywhere. He brought his elbow down towards Kevin's eye and broke his left glasses lens.

  Kevin then yelped as he felt Sadik’s knee bed into his wound. 'He would not let go of the gun, he would not let go,' he repeated in his head. If he let go, Eve died then the regret of not shooting Sadik when he first had the chance flashed through his mind. Why was he so gutless? One pull of the trigger and his attacker would have been taken down. If Eve died he would blame himself.