Mike nodded. ‘I will. And make sure you take care of Aunt May and Smiler.’
Brother David squeezed Mike’s hand. When he finally let go, Mike looked at the still form of Aunt May, covered in wires and tubes, all doing for her what she should be doing for herself. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, her skin was scraped where she’d slid down the wall and Mike gently touched the spot. Then, with a quick glance at Smiler, and a nod at Brother David, he turned and walked out of the room.
Smiler was at his heels as Mike went into the assassin's room. Reaching the bed, Mike grabbed the man’s face and twisted it towards him. The man moaned, and his uncovered eye opened. He stared at Mike for a moment then, realising who had his jaw in a death-like grip, his eye filled with fear.
‘Right, you bastard. Tell me who put you up to this, or I’ll rip your fucking head off.’
Although he had been expecting something along those lines, Smiler still gulped at the sheer ferociousness in Mike’s voice, and stepped back.
‘Tell me!’ Mike shook the man’s head as hard as a terrier would shake a rat.
‘I…I don’t know,’ he practically screamed. ‘It was a phone call.’
Mike laughed. ‘Get many calls like that, do you?’
‘A few.’
‘Liar, fucking liar… Tell me who owns you. And that’s the operative word, isn’t it? Truth is, they think of you as highly as they think of us, and we both know how much that is. Wise up, bastard, and tell me, or I swear to God you’ll never get out of this room alive. You’re nothing but a useless piece of fucking scum that the world will be better off without, you and your friggin' parasite masters, and whoever allies with them. So tell me. Because, trust me, I’ll drag it out of you one way or another. Now. Tell me now.’ Mike was practically nose to nose with him and screaming in his face.
The shadow that crossed over the man’s one good eye told Mike he was close to the bone. ‘Fucking tell me!’ He shook the man’s head again.
But the assassin’s eye still said no as he stared defiantly at Mike.
Mike let go of the man's jaw, and transferred his grip to his throat. He squeezed until the muscles stood out on his arm. The man’s face grew red, but still he held that stubborn stare.
‘No, Mike.’ Smiler stepped forward and put his hand on Mike’s arm. ‘Don’t.’
But Mike shook him off. As his grip tightened, the man’s face lost the red and took on a purple hue.
‘Please, Mike,’ Smiler begged, his hand latching back on and tightening around Mike’s arm. ‘Don’t do it… It will make you worse than them.’
Mike squeezed harder. Then, after a moment, Smiler’s words seemed to sink in and his grip relaxed slightly. The man sucked in some much-needed air as he struggled to sit up.
Arms folded across his chest, legs planted firmly apart, Mike watched him struggle. When he was fully upright, Mike leaned forward. ‘Well?’
‘Fuck off,’ came the mumbled reply.
‘Something original, please.’ Using as much force as he could, Mike backhanded him. The man's head swung to the right, the stitches in his mouth burst open and blood spewed from his mouth.
After a minute the man smirked, a cruel sarcastic edge to his mouth. Slowly he shook his head. He massaged his throat with his right hand, ran his left across his mouth, and flicked the blood in Mike’s direction. For a brief moment, Smiler almost wished he’d let Mike strangle him.
‘Do you honestly think anything you can do would be worse than they can?’ he said, spitting out blood.
‘Tell me.’
‘Have you any idea what they will do if they find out I even told you the fucking time of day?’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
‘Is that the best you can come out with?’ Mike raised his fist and slammed it into his mouth.
Spitting out more blood, the man said, ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re marked. Dead man walking. There’s plenty looking for you… And as for that bitch,' he spat the last word out with more blood, ‘she is going to suffer, believe me. Slowly!’
Guessing that he meant Shelly, Mike grabbed him by the throat. ’Like this, you mean?’ Slowly he squeezed again.
Smiler’s eyes flicked from one to the other. Leaning over the bed, he begged, ‘Just tell him, please, or he’ll kill you. Please, mister, tell him what he wants to know.’
For a moment the fear came back to the man’s face. Then, as if finally giving up, his whole body slumped against the pillows. ‘Either way, I’m as dead as you are. Once they find out I failed. There are no second chances.’ Resigned to his fate, he slowly closed his eyes. Unlike Mike, he truly knew the full extent of what he was up against.
Mike looked at Smiler and, with a twitch of his head towards the door, mouthed silently, 'Outside.'
Smiler moved quickly. The look on Mike’s face gave him no other options.
Watching Smiler walk past the window, Mike waited until he was certain he was gone before grabbing the thin bed sheet. Quickly, he tore it into strips while the man watched with mounting horror. Mike grabbed the man's hands and tied them in front of him, then stuffed a wad of the sheet into his bleeding mouth and tied it in place with one of the strips before spinning him over onto his stomach. Unbuckling his belt, and using all of his strength, Mike lashed him nine times, making each lash count. Despite the rag in his mouth, the man still managed to moan loudly after each lash. When Mike was finally finished, he flung him onto his back. The man’s feet beat a quick tattoo on the bed in a failed attempt to ease the pain.
Mike tore the bloody gag out of his mouth. ‘Like that, did you, eh? Well, that’s what the people you work for do to young women, and men, only they don’t use a single belt. They use a cat o' nine tails. Each tail rips into their flesh, gouging holes in their bodies. Nine times they do this. Picture it! And you, bastard, aren’t even bleeding. I’ve seen the body of one young women who was so terrified she actually bled to death through the pores in her skin!’
The man blinked. His back was on fire, but through it all he knew he had got off lightly. He started to talk then, and suddenly couldn’t stop. In ten minutes Mike found out just about everything he needed to know, and more. He had the feeling that the man had used him to offset his guilt, a chance to buy his way into Dave’s heaven.
‘Doubt that’s ever gonna happen, bastard!’ he muttered on his way to the door.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shelly stepped down from the cab. Feeling rather foolish, she thanked the driver for the lift. Gotta stop thinking everybody’s out to get me! God, all he did was accidentally brush my hand. But then, after all that’s happened, especially this last week, no one could blame me for being friggin’ paranoid.
‘It was my pleasure, love,’ the driver said with a smile. ‘Hope you get where you’re going safely. Take care. Bye now!’ He waved as he pulled away.
Shelly nodded and waved back. When he’d gone, she looked around. He’d said that the train station was at the bottom of this narrow back street, so with no time to waste she headed off in that direction. ‘Gotta be a bank somewhere near the station,’ she muttered.
The street was totally empty, apart from a black mongrel dog pissing up someone's back gate. I feel the same, she thought, as she passed. Who the hell paints their back gate pink?
Knowing she was letting her mind wander to stop herself from going mad, she concentrated on her plan.
She had to draw all of her savings out. She didn’t have a lot, but six hundred quid would tide her over for a short time. She knew that it would be traced-that’s what she wanted, figuring that they would think she was heading for London, when in reality she was going anywhere but there.
She would buy a ticket to London on her card, then pay cash for a ticket to where she really was heading, hoping against hope that it would put them off the trail. It was a plan, of sorts. Actually, the only plan she had.
At the end of the road, she stepped into a totally
different world. Having never visited Manchester before, she was surprised to find a vibrant, busy city with wall to wall people, even this early on a morning. Spotting Oxford Road Station over to her left, she scanned the rest of the road. Nothing suspicious going on, no loiterers. The dog padded past her as if she didn’t even exist. Just looks like an ordinary day with ordinary folk going about their business.
Deciding to turn left, she walked on for a few minutes and spotted a bank just opening. OK, she thought, so far so good.
Nearly tripping over a shopping trolley wheeled by an old woman in a red coat, she apologised and hurried into the bank. Even though it was the old woman’s fault, Shelly didn’t want her making a fuss and drawing attention to them. The small queue quickly evaporated, and Shelly was looking at a bald middle-aged man in short sleeves and a black waistcoat that was far too tight.
After a few minutes, he squinted at her, then at the form she’d handed him, then back at the screen. After he’d done this twice, he shoved the form back through the space in the window and said,
‘Sorry, no funds.’
‘What? No, you’re wrong, there’s plenty in there to cover it. Well, enough anyhow. Please try again.’
Shrugging, he tried again, then looked at her and shook his head.
Shelly’s heart sank. Plan A buggered before lift off, she thought. Turning away from him, her heart fluttering wildly, she headed for the door.
She held onto her tears, wanting to cry, wanting to scream her frustration to the world. How could she ever have thought that she could outwit them in any way? They were way ahead of her. She knew that every corner she turned would be blocked. The hundred or so quid she had on her wouldn’t last long. Feeling pretty desperate, she started thinking she should just give up and let them do whatever they were going to do to her. Better now than after the God knows how many hours of anxiety she had to face.
Feeling a bit shaky, and guessing rightly that her blood sugar was dropping rapidly, she went into the first café she came to and ordered a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake. Half an hour later, after going through numerous mind changes, she finally realised that there really was nothing else she could do but go for it, whatever happened. Better to try, at least, than just friggin' give up and fade away.
If I’m gonna die, might as well go down fighting the bastards!
Her resolve strengthened, she left the coffee shop and headed along the street to a chemist. After buying hair dye and a pair of scissors, she booked into a cheap hotel for the night. She was shown to her room by an old man wearing a blue and red striped hoodie. He huffed and puffed up the two flights of stairs, hauling himself up by the rail. By the time they reached her room, his face was as red as the stripes on his shirt. Taking the key from his outstretched hand, she thanked him. Out of breath, he could only nod in reply. She watched as, without looking back, he began the slow journey down the stairs.
Once inside, she quickly locked the door behind her. Looking round, she was surprised to see the place was reasonably tidy. The pale blue sheets were clean, and the room smelled fresh enough, as if everything had just been polished. The carpet wasn’t sticky and looked like it had just been hoovered.
Could have been worse, she thought, moving to the window. Hiding behind the yellow flowered curtain, she moved the cream net covering the window and peeped up and down the street. Heaving a sigh of relief after five minutes of scanning the road in both directions, and seeing no one taking any interest in the hotel, she went into the tiny bathroom. Taking the scissors from her bag, she started to chop her long black hair.
Shelly remembered how she’d wanted to be a hairdresser, and how she had trained for all of three months before she got well sick of it and decided her true vocation was to be a reporter for a big newspaper.
‘That’s what got me into this friggin' mess,’ she muttered, watching her hair mount up in the sink. She kept on cutting until she had a really short urchin style. Running her fingers through, she spiked it up slightly on top and was pleased with the result.
Tomorrow, when I’m blonde, even the Brothers Grim won’t recognise me, she thought, as she watched the last strands of hair swirl and disappear down the plug-hole.
She dyed her hair, and left it on longer than it stated on the box. Going from black to blonde could be tricky. A friend of hers had once woken her up at six in the morning, begging for help because her hair had gone bright green.
A couple of hour later, satisfied with the results of her hair, she was watching the small TV. But her mind couldn’t settle. After another of her frequent trips to the window, she again lay down on the bed. Slowly her lids drooped and in moments she was asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Danny Wilson lay sprawled across his settee, last night's untouched TV dinner still lying on the floor next to a cold bowl of tomato soup. He had one hand behind his head and the other holding onto his ribs, which seemed to be getting worse by the hour. After x-rays, they had told him at the hospital that his ribs weren’t actually broken, just severely bruised.
‘To hell with what they say,’ he groaned. Again he wondered just what the hell he’d ever done to deserve everything that had happened over the last few weeks. He gently rubbed his hand over the worst spot. ‘The bastards seem fairly broken to me.'
In a semi-doze a few minutes later, he was suddenly wide awake when he heard a heavy banging on the door. ‘What the----?’ he muttered, struggling to sit up. ‘ Keep yer fucking hair on, I’m coming,’ he yelled, as the banging was repeated over and over.
‘For fuck’s sake, this better be good.’
He opened the door. It took all of his strength to stop it from banging into him and crushing him against the wall, as Shelly’s brothers burst in.
‘Ha’way, man!’ Danny yelled at the two men. ‘What do you think you're doing, yer thick pair of twats?’
‘Where is she?’ Gary, thickset, and built like a heavyweight boxer, yelled in his face.
‘Not you lot again, for fuck’s sake,’ Danny muttered. For a moment, he was thrown - it was a repeat performance of a few days ago, when the Brothers Grim, as Shelly called them, had just barged in and taken over.
‘What did you say?’ Gary demanded, while Shelly’s other brother, Liam, taller and much thinner, stepped forward, about to try, as usual, to placate him. Gary brushed him off before he had a chance to say anything, and glared at Danny.
‘Nothing,’ Danny sighed, turning from the door and thinking, no need to ask them in, seeing as the cheeky bastards are already in the flaming house.
Followed by Gary and Liam, who closed the door behind him, Danny hobbled along to the sitting room and eased himself down on to the settee. ‘I’m guessing this is about Shelly.’
‘Taking the piss, or what? Of course it’s about our Shelly. We’ve been to the hospital, and she’s gone walkabout again.’
‘Nowt to do with me.’
‘Yeah, that’s what you said the last time.’
‘That’s true, and look what sort of fucking mess I ended up in! So forgive me if I say I’ve fucking well had enough. Piss off, why don’t you?’
‘We need to know where she is. You know fine well she’s a diabetic. She needs her meds.’
‘Yeah, well-like I already said, it’s nowt to do with me. I for one don’t fucking want to know where she is any more. I couldn’t care less if I never see her again. And she’s got her stuff, I dropped it off last night. Got it? Now get out.’
’If I find out you’re lying----’
‘Just fucking see yourselves out, will yer?’ Refusing to move, Danny stared stubbornly at the fireplace. He didn’t even want to give them the time of day. He’d had more than enough, and still had not come to terms with the events of the last week, when a very good friend had been savagely murdered.
He’d been questioned relentlessly by the coppers from hell, more than once. Locked up in a drugs den and forced to work for the sick bastards filling little plastic bags with lit
tle yellow pills.
Had the shit kicked out of me.
More than once an’ all.
No fucking more.
If Shelly wants to get herself killed, chasing those friggin' loonies, that’s up to her.
Gary glared at Danny, while Liam tried to ease him towards the door. ‘Come on, you heard him.’
Danny still stared at the fire, oblivious to Shelly’s brothers. Where is she now? he thought.
Why the hell couldn’t she just stay put in the bloody hospital? There’s a funeral to go to in a few days' time-has she forgotten her best friend is dead, murdered by those bastards?
But that’s Shelly all over, selfish to the core. Evan could really do with seeing her.
Not that I want to, ever again.
But in his mind the words didn’t quite ring true.
He’d already decided through a sleepless night that yes, he still loved her, even after everything she’d done. But there was nothing he could do to help her, not in the condition he was in. It even hurt to breathe, for Christ’s sake.
He heard the front door slam and shuddered. Pulling a blanket over his head, he groaned. It was all he could do to keep the tears away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Standing outside the hospital, Mike took in great gulps of air as he tried not to be sick again. He wiped his mouth, tasting the bitterness, and sighed. What he had just done went right against everything he believed in. He was no stranger to violence, having used it on more than one occasion, but only when absolutely necessary - mostly in the defence of himself or others.
He told himself that this time he had done what had to be done. It was more than necessary, there were too many lives at stake. But his conscience niggled at him. The man had been helpless.
‘And so is the whole world. No one is safe anywhere,’ he muttered angrily, stepping away from the wall and moving off in the direction of the car park. He shook himself, and made a promise not to beat himself up any more. What had to be done, would be done. He had no choice.
Holy Island Trilogy 02 - Nowhere Man Page 7