Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set

by Tony Hutchinson

  Sam face was weary but she smiled.

  ‘At times I have no idea how your mind works,’ she said, meaning it. ‘We’ve just had a huge breakthrough and you’re moaning about PFIs and paint.’

  ‘It’s called sleep deprivation,’ Ed smiled back. ‘It’s gone nine and we’ve been here since two this morning. I’m probably hallucinating.’

  John Elgin knew his heart-throb days were over, but he still had a way with women; at least he did by the time he was on his fifth pint and the girl he was talking to was willing to have sex for money.

  After last night’s disaster in Pussycats he should have walked away. His inner voice was screaming ‘beer in, brains out’ but he never moved.

  She was medium height, early twenties, ink-black hair cut in a bob; bright red lipstick mesmerising when she spoke, all brown eyes and white teeth when she listened.

  He asked the usual and got the same back. She called herself Tara, had a boyfriend but it was nothing serious, went to university to do history but dropped out when she got homesick. Elgin guessed some of it might even be true.

  He ordered another Peroni and bought her a gin and tonic. He paid on his card then instantly regretted it. More ammunition for his wife when she demanded to see the statement.

  Harry tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Listen, I’m just popping out to give our Dean a hand with something. Won’t take too long.’

  He handed Elgin a key. ‘For the flat. It’s empty. Feel free. If the key’s not behind the bar when I get back I’ll know you’re still up there. Take as long as you like.’

  ‘That’s good of him,’ Tara said, as Harry strode to the front door. ‘I’ll just pop to the loo.’

  Elgin turned his head, put the fresh pint to his lips, and gazed at her slim legs perform a solo waltz between the little round tables. He knew he should leave, just walk out there and then, but black leather mini-skirts and stilettos always seemed to vaporise the what-he-should-do warnings.

  He gulped the lager, put his foot on the brass rail, and waited. He’d deal with any fallout later.

  Elgin watched the toilet door swing open and watched her walk towards him, fresh lipstick lighting a smile straight from a toothpaste advert. His eyes travelled down her body as she got closer, his thoughts moving on rapidly from dental hygiene and make-up.

  Outside he ushered her to the external door, glanced behind him as he slid the long key in the lock, and pushed the handle down when it clicked open. He stepped over the threshold, pulling Tara inside, and locked the door behind them. He made sure he was watching as she climbed the stairs.

  A huge wall-mounted TV dominated the sitting room. On the coffee table was a laptop, its screen split into four separate views - the car park, the till behind the bar, and the front and rear of the big open plan bar.

  Elgin sat on the red leather settee and stared at the screen. Tara flopped next to him and rubbed the inside of his thigh. He eased her hand away, sat forward, and stared at the image on the top left, a 7 Series BMW with189 GBH as a personalised plate. GBH. Billy Skinner’s car, the prick. But who was in the front seats? And why were they here?

  Elgin wanted to zoom in but didn’t know how and was worried he would lose the picture altogether.

  ‘What is it?’ Tara asked him but he said nothing, just stared at the screen.

  A moment later he watched the car doors open. The driver was too tall for short-arse Skinner. His psycho eldest son? Maybe. The driver walked to the boot, opened it, and looked inside.

  Elgin scrolled through his contacts. He didn’t have Harry’s mobile.

  ‘Should we go out?’ Tara sat forward.

  ‘And do what exactly?’ Elgin snapped. ‘Just sit tight.’

  His eyes flicked across the laptop’s split screen. There was nothing unusual on any of the other cameras.

  Where were Harry and Dean?

  A second man joined the driver at the boot. Elgin was convinced now the driver was Mat Skinner. The two men bent forward, reached inside, and when they straightened each held what looked like a pick-axe handle in their right hands, dangling by their leg.

  They speed-marched across the car park and pushed open the door to the bar.

  ‘That’s Mat Skinner,’ Tara said. ‘Fucking creep.’

  Elgin’s eyes darted to the two inside cameras.

  Mat was through the door first, the pick-axe in both hands and raised above his head. Elgin watched the screen as men and women scrambled to get out of the way. Mat strode behind the bar, while the other man stood guard by the door; nobody was leaving and nobody was coming in. The barmaid cowered in the corner but knew better than to argue or phone for help.

  Elgin didn’t need sound. His imagination heard the glass exploding as Mat swung the pick-axe repeatedly at the bottles, glass flying everywhere as the stock was wiped out in a series of savage blows, the pick-axe moving at a speed a baseball pro would have admired.

  Less than two minutes later Mat Skinner marched out, his accomplice following.

  Elgin switched his gaze back to the car park camera and watched them throw their pick-axe handles into the boot and drive off.

  His eyes flicked back to the now deserted bar. A bomb scare couldn’t have cleared the place as fast. The barmaid had her mobile in her hand.

  ‘Now what?’ Tara said.

  ‘Give it ten minutes.’ Elgin told her. ‘If Harry’s not back, we’re out of here…and how do you know Mat Skinner so well?’

  Hans opened his gleaming black gloss front door. He was expecting Julius. What he got was a punch in the mouth by a full-size gorilla.

  Falling backwards over the hall table, he was aware of hands spinning him around and shoving him downwards. His stomach and face crashed into the Victorian ceramic floor tiles and a knee dropped onto his back. His arms were grabbed and cuffed. Dragged to his feet, breathless, nose dripping with blood, two gorillas grabbed his collar and dragged him backwards out of the house, his heels scraping along the floor.

  No more than thirty seconds after he opened the door, Hans van Dijk was hauled into the back of a van where a gorilla dropped onto his chest.

  He had no idea what was happening. If he had signed up in a moment of madness to sample Special Forces training at the sharp end it might have made some sense. It was too violent to be some sort of prank and too slick for a parent acting the vigilante.

  ‘What the hell?’ he shouted.

  Another punch to the face was followed by a local accent that sounded like it had been practising pure aggression for years. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  He lay in silence, concentrating on keeping his bladder intact and his churning bowels at bay. Ten minutes later he was bundled into a large disused building, a factory of some sort.

  Julius was hanging upside down, his feet bound by rope tied to a metal girder.

  ‘Hans,’ he screamed, ‘Hans, help.’

  He started to swing like Harry Houdini trying to escape from a straitjacket.

  ‘What do they want?’ Hans shouted. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  He was pushed to the floor, feet bound in thick hemp rope and then yanked skyward towards the beam.

  A gorilla approached.

  ‘The boys are safe now,’ the voice was cold. ‘No more five-a-side games, not with you lot anyway.’

  Hans van Dijk could feel the blood rushing to his head, Julius still struggling close by.

  Behind them they heard a voice, jovial and light.

  ‘Alright lads? How’s it going?’

  They kicked their legs against the rope and shook their shoulders, breathing hard as they twisted themselves in vain to see who had asked the question.

  They both thought they recognised the voice. Their brains just couldn’t process it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was almost 9.30pm as Sam pulled onto her drive, locked the Audi and walked into the house.

  What a day.

  The lights and the heating were on but that was down to electric timers
not a human touch.

  She asked Alexa, her Amazon Echo friend that had been delivered a week ago, to play the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. It was an album that she and Tristram often played through the cockpit speakers when they chartered a yacht.

  Too tired to eat, too tired to sleep, she went to the wine chiller and picked out a bottle of white: Chateau Montelena, a Californian Chardonnay.

  She had first come across it when she watched the movie Bottle Shock starring Alan Rickman and now it was a favourite. The wine had been victorious in the 1976 Judgement of Paris, beating some famous Burgundian Chardonnays in a blind tasting.

  She took off her shoes, put her coat over the door, and popped the cork, pouring generously into a large Riedel glass. Then she sat at the kitchen island and burst into tears.

  Her head dropped, her forehead clammy against the cool of the granite, and her sobs drowned out Brian Wilson’s finest hour. Salty tears ran into the corner of her mouth, reminding her of the sea, of blue skies and snapping sails, of Tristram suntanned and smiling and alive.

  Her stomach tightened, her cheeks tingled.

  Get a grip Sam.

  She lifted her head and looked around. Everything perfect, nothing out of place, everywhere as smart and stylish as a show-house but without a soul. She sipped the wine, a hint of ripe lemon on her tongue.

  This should be her sanctuary. It shouldn’t be somewhere she dreaded, a dead space that gave her nothing that mattered.

  ‘Alexa, play Mr. Candyman by Sammy Davis Junior.’

  The Beach Boys had been a bad choice. God might or might not know what she was doing without Tristram. Sam knew all too well.

  ‘Fucking yachts,’ she said to herself.

  She downed the wine and poured some more.

  Was this it now? Years of loneliness stretching out in front of her? Nothing more than the latest gizmo for company. She rubbed her eyes.

  Sam Parker. Another lonely Jayne Culley in waiting but please God without the dementia.

  John Elgin walked into the now empty bar, the barmaid mopping at a mixture of broken glass and liquid. ‘Did you get hold of Harry?’

  ‘I tried his mobile and Dean’s,’ she said without pausing the swishing motion of the mop. ‘Both went straight to voicemail.’

  Tara was leaning against the bar. Elgin noticed she was as far away from the door as possible. Sensible girl.

  ‘Was anything said?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ the barmaid told him. ‘That crazy bastard just walked in and started smashing everything up. Never said a word. Harry’s going to go ballistic.’

  She walked downstairs into the cellar, returned with a bottle of gin and a couple of tonics. She found three unbroken spirit glasses on the tables, abandoned by customers in their rush to leave, washed them and poured three large measures.

  Tara downed hers in one and slid the glass back towards the barmaid.

  ‘Did you know them?’ Elgin asked.

  ‘Mat Skinner smashed the place up. I don’t know who the other one was.’

  ‘Geoff Mekins,’ Tara said. ‘Another dick.’

  Elgin looked at her. ‘You never told me how you knew Mat.’

  Tara glanced at the barmaid.

  ‘I’d tell him fuck all,’ she said, pouring another shot for Tara.

  ‘Me and a few girls deliver packages for them,’ Tara shrugged. ‘It’s how I know Harry.’

  The door opened and Billy Skinner walked in. Luke was behind. ‘What the fuck just happened here?’

  Silence.

  John Elgin broke it. ‘Your Mat.’

  ‘So the word was right,’ Skinner’s eyes moved around the devastation. ‘An associate from the old days rang me. Did our Mat say anything?’

  ‘Ask her,’ Elgin said, pointing at the barmaid. ‘We weren’t here.’

  Skinner looked instead at Tara then turned back to Elgin, shaking his head.

  ‘You must have a cock like a teenager.’

  Skinner moved his gaze to the barmaid. ‘Well?’

  ‘He never said a word. Just walked in, came behind the bar and smashed it up with a baseball bat or something. His mate stood at the door.’

  ‘Who was he with?’ Skinner’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘We think it was Geoff Mekins,’ Elgin told him.

  Skinner said nothing, the uneasy silence stretching until he spoke again.

  ‘Give Harry my apologies. Our Mat wasn’t doing this under my instructions.’

  Skinner took out a roll of twenties and threw them on the bar.

  ‘That should replace the stock and pay for the damages and leave a little left over. Tell Harry I’ll deal with it.’

  The Skinners walked out.

  ‘Are you two in a rush to get away?’ the barmaid asked once the three of them were alone. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  Elgin looked at Tara. ‘We can wait until Harry gets back can’t we love? We’ve got two glasses and a bottle.’

  ‘And a load of cash,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Elgin was serious. ‘Billy Skinner will know exactly how much is in that stash.’

  He turned to the barmaid. ‘Yeah you get yourself away sweetheart. We’ll wait for Harry.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Julius said. ‘You!’

  He had barely got the words out before Adam karate kicked Hans in the ribs, taking his breath in a rush, Hans’ face twisted in pain.

  ‘That’s for asking me to watch kiddie porn and wank,’ Adam yelled.

  Hans whimpered like a wounded dog as the rope swung back and forth.

  Julius’ voice was quiet, trembling: ‘Adam. For God’s sake, what’s happening here?’

  ‘A kiddie fiddler’s court, that’s what happening.’

  Two metres away Hans was swinging more slowly.

  ‘I told you not to trust him,’ the whimper now a wild growl. ‘I fucking told you.’

  Adam kicked him again. A crack, like a popgun at the fair, echoed around the abattoir. ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  Hans had no alternative. He couldn’t breathe let alone speak. At least one rib had gone.

  Adam bent down and looked into Julius’ upside down eyes. ‘You see Julius, someone I know and like...’

  ‘Please stop this Adam.’ He started to sob. ‘I’ve got a family…they’ll be worried…they’ll report me missing.’

  Adam slapped him across the face. ‘You should have thought about your family before you started interfering with other people’s.’

  Adam straightened up. ‘Now where was I? That’s right. So it transpires that my friend knows you had a 12-year-old perform a sex act on you.’

  Adam pointed at Hans who was groaning quietly. ‘Him as well.’

  He returned his eyes to Julius, now hanging limp and silent.

  ‘Nothing can put right what you’ve done,’ Adam told him. ‘My friend couldn’t possibly let animals like you just walk away. What would people think?’

  A gorilla handed Adam a cigarette.

  ‘You know my friend has always had a thing about religion. Not the actual beliefs themselves, more why men follow them, die for them even.’

  He started pacing back and forward in between the captives.

  ‘What made young noblemen leave England and all their privilege for the Crusades? What makes a Jihadist strap a bomb to their chest and blow themselves up?’

  He stopped next to Julius. ‘Funny thing religion.’

  He gave him a gentle push and started pacing again.

  ‘Anyway, about my friend,’ Adam said. ‘You might say he is firm but fair. Even though he knew what you two were, he insisted as always on proof.’

  Adam shoved Hans as he passed, both bound men moving now almost gracefully like pendulums in an obscene clock.

  ‘My job was to get that proof.’

  Hans finally spoke, his words shaking between shallow breaths.

  ‘You’ve got your proof,’ he said slowly. ‘What happens now? This has already gone too fa
r.’

  ‘Patience Hans,’ Adam told him, and pushed both men gently again.

  ‘Getting the proof was easy. I knew who you were, Julius. The boy pointed you out. I just sat in the park and hoped you’d approach me.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Hans grunted.

  ‘And the bonus was you introduced me to Hans, a perfect match for his other attacker, right down to those ridiculous red trousers.’

  He flicked away the cigarette.

  ‘My name’s not even Adam and I can’t play tennis to save my life.’

  He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction, a simple plan perfectly executed.

  ‘So about religion,’ he stood before them. ‘The police will get a tip-off. They’ll come to this place and they will find you, find you prepared Halal so to speak.’

  Adam took out a knife, grabbed Hans’ scalp and slit his throat.

  He turned as Julius began to scream.

  ‘Someone had to go first.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Saturday 13th December

  ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ the taller of the two said, snipping the wire fence surrounding the compound, ‘and my hands are bloody freezing.’

  They’d chosen 4am specifically. Patrolling cops were hopefully having a cup of tea somewhere warm, preferably the station five miles away, and the mobile security guard had done his last drive-past ten minutes ago.

  Dark clothing, ski masks and gloves helped them blend into the blackness of the open field, the sky heavy with low cloud above them. The problems would start on the other side of the fence with the floodlights blazing.

  ‘We need to run like we are twenty again, confuse anyone watching the CCTV tomorrow,’ the tall one said, pulling at the newly-cut hole in the mesh fence. ‘On three…’

  They sprinted towards the storage unit, pressed their backs against the yellow roller-shutters, and dropped their hands to their knees, bending forward to gulp in air.