Skewered

by Jones, Benedict J

“We were going to take the Eurostar to Brussels and then drive down to Spain. I’ve got friends down by Malaga.”

  “So she’s got a hundred grand and a day’s start?”

  “She’s got the day’s start but she’s got another thirty gees as well.”

  His face went double-decker red as he spoke.

  “Your money?”

  “Life savings, my retirement fund. Back to square one unless I can get it back. What’s the other thing you want me to do, Charlie?”

  “We’ll talk about that after, Maz. We’ve got this to do first. If we don’t get Dev Singh back I reckon Jimmy Khan’ll make sure you go down for a five stretch at least.”

  As we headed down to the car Mazza got busy on his phone running down the number plate.

  Twenty-one

  Dev Singh heard the door open and waited for his hood to be removed, waited to see the light once more. He heard laboured breathing and someone slumped down next to him. He waited and listened and then the hood was pulled from his head. Stanton was sat next to Dev on the mattress. He didn’t remove the gag from Dev’s mouth.

  “You’re not going home.”

  Questions bounced about in Dev’s skull; what had happened? Where was the money? What was going to happen to him? Stanton leant over and tore the duct tape from his prisoner’s mouth.

  “Your family mustn’t love you as much as you thought. There wasn’t any money, they sent a man to try and jump me instead.”

  Dev was shaking his head. Stanton punched him in the mouth and Dev’s head banged back against the wall.

  “Do I look like I’m making this up? If I’d got my money you’d be gone by now.”

  “Why?” asked Dev. “Why would they do that? It’s only money, my money.”

  Stanton shook his head as though commiserating with Dev.

  “All I know is I’ve got a busted knee and no money.”

  Stanton looked at Dev’s swelling lips.

  “I didn’t mean that, man. But you know I’m gonna have to do something? Maybe your family haven’t been taking me seriously – you know what I’m saying?”

  Dev did.

  “I’m sure something went wrong. Let me telephone them and I’ll get you your money.”

  Stanton stayed silent. He lifted a pair of bolt cutters and put them in front of Dev. What little colour was left in Dev Singh drained away at the sight of the cutters laid on the mattress.

  “No! No! You don’t have to do this!”

  Stanton used the wall to get up.

  “Yes, I do.”

  He smiled as he picked up the cutters and the tic returned making his left eye flutter like a trapped butterfly. He grabbed Dev’s hand. The chained man began to flail around. Stanton used the heavy cutters like a club and smashed Dev across the head until he stopped struggling. Once he was still Stanton clipped off the pinky and ring fingers from Dev’s left hand and then crouching low so that his breath touched the other man’s skin he took his left ear as well. It came off easier than Stanton had thought and he stood unsteadily on one leg staring at the severed article. He didn’t bother with the gag or the hood, he just left Dev where he lay and began to limp to the door.

  “Pills... Need more... Pills.”

  “Careful, man, you sounding like a fiend.”

  Stanton checked the time on his phone; Mook had been gone for more than three hours – he wouldn’t be coming back.

  “No more pills.”

  Stanton tossed the bolt cutters and the parts of Dev he had taken out into the hall before stumbling after them and locking the door.

  Twenty-two

  The phone call came after me and Mazza had been rolling through south east London for close on half an hour. He answered the phone said “Yes” then “Cheers” then killed the call.

  “You got the address?”

  I asked taking a mouthful of the brandy out of the bottle I had grabbed from an offie near Mazza’s flat. He nodded at me. I pointed ahead and took another swig. He didn’t tell me where we going and I didn’t ask. I just watched through the window as we drove past the Imperial War Museum with its green dome and then up to Blackfriars. We drove along Southwark Street and then turned into Borough market. Finally we rolled to a stop on the other side of the market.

  “So the car’s registered here?”

  “Yes, Gatehouse estate. Registered keeper is Eamon Macy, seventeen.”

  Mazza gestured out through the windscreen.

  “Number sixty four.”

  Number sixty four was a small terraced house in a square of similar homes.

  “The car’s not about. You reckon he’s in there?” asked Mazza.

  I just shrugged and took the lottery wrap out of my pocket.

  “Why me, Maz?”

  “Why you what?”

  “How comes you and Jaz thought I’d make a good fall guy?”

  Mazza looked away.

  “Come on, Charlie, we don’t need to go through all this.”

  “Actually, yeah, we do.”

  I took a pinch of the cocaine like snuff.

  “I really want to know, what made you think you could fuck with me like this?”

  He sighed.

  “I heard where you were working. A couple of the lads I drink with in the Gregorian had seen you. Everyone knew you’d come down in the world, were hitting that again.”

  He nodded his head at the brandy bottle.

  “They mentioned you a week before Jaz came along. You were there in my mind and I thought, why not? Nothing personal, Charlie.”

  “Not personal, no? I nearly got my hand cut off!”

  He wouldn’t look at me and I just sighed. A woman walked out of the house; mid-forties with a face that made her look a decade older, she had that defeated look you see, like once she had something and now it was gone. She didn’t even look at us parked up across the way from her house and trudged off, head down.

  “You reckon Singh’s in there then?”

  “Only one way to find out. You stay here, beep the horn twice if anything happens.”

  “Don’t be a dummy, Charlie, I’ll come in with you.”

  He popped the glove box and took out an ASP, an extendable police baton. My mind went back to him slipping the pepper spray into my pocket before the drop. He might have been a cunt but Mazza hadn’t wanted me to get hurt – he had just wanted Jaz, not even the money really, just her. I could feel the big man’s pain.

  “Come on then. You go and knock at the front and I’ll nip round the back. Anyone answers you keep them busy and I’ll see what’s happening inside.”

  He nodded at me. We got out of the car and I checked the hammer was still inside my coat. Mazza let me start around the block before he moved towards the house.

  I guessed which garden belonged to the house and looked at the wall and then at my hand. Shit. I tried the gate, locked of course, and tried to scramble up the wall and gain a purchase with my good hand. It took longer than it should have and I could hear Mazza knocking at the front when I got to the back door. I waited. No one stirred to answer the door. I gave it another minute. Mazza had stopped knocking. When there still wasn’t any movement in the house I took out the hammer and shattered the glass panel at the bottom of the back door. If someone was in the house they’d probably heard me. I climbed through the gap, trying to avoid the bigger shards of glass that dotted the floor like a carpet of crystal. I went straight to the front door and let Mazza in. I looked in the living room as I passed and it was as empty as the kitchen.

  “Anything?” he asked in a whisper.

  I shook my head and headed for the stairs. We crept up to the first floor and checked it room by room. The first bedroom and the bathroom were empty but as we moved to the last door I heard a noise. Mazza drew his baton and I gripped the hammer more tightly. I gestured Mazza on and he booted the door open. A kid, who looked about fifteen, lay on his stomach on a single bed. There was blood on the back of his shorts and more on the covers. His eyes wer
e wide and he looked set to burst with tears.

  “You Eamon Macy?”

  He nodded his head real quick and jerky at me.

  “You know why we’re here?”

  He nodded again, just once but as jerky as the first. He was scared stiffer than a twelve hour corpse.

  “About Stanton...”

  Who the hell was Stanton? I thought and then voiced my question.

  “Who?”

  “It was his idea, he wanted to take the man, said we’d all get paid off it.”

  I looked at the blood on the boys shorts.

  “He do that?”

  The boy nodded and buried his face in his pillow. I turned to Mazza.

  “Looks like I’ve found the machete boy then.”

  Mazza moved past me and grabbed the kid. In one fluid move he flipped Eamon Macy onto his back – the kid screamed.

  “What’s this Stanton’s full name and where is Dev Singh?”

  I should have stepped in but I didn’t. I sat down on the floor and took another hit of the chang. The kid mumbled something and I heard the sound of a slap, then another.

  “Alright, alright, his name’s Stanton Williams. They’re over in a flat on the Rockingham.”

  I looked up at Mazza, the Rockingham Estate was only a fifteen minute drive. “Number twenty eight, Newall House.”

  “Who’s in there with him?” I asked thinking of the man mountain that had met me in The Hobgoblin.

  “Mook and Stanton’s girl.”

  “Mook a big fucker, looks like he bench presses cars?”

  Eamon nodded and Mazza questioned me with his eyes. I shook my head. Mazza had let go and the boy rolled back over onto his stomach. Fresh blood dotted the bed sheet.

  “You need to get that stitched up, mate. You want us to call you an ambulance?” The boy shook his head.

  “I’ll do it myself.”

  “You decide to call Stanton and let him know we’re coming and I’ll be back.”

  Mazza slammed the baton down on the pillow next to the kid’s head.

  “He ain’t gonna call anyone, Maz. Stanton sliced his arse cheeks up like a cheap pizza. Ain’t no love left there is there, Eamon?”

  The boy shook his head and I left it at that.

  “Let’s go.” I said to Mazza and we went.

  Twenty-three

  So here we are sat outside the address Eamon had given us, me jacked up on brandy and coke and Mazza looking nervous.

  How did I let things get to this? I’m sitting in a car, with a half bottle of cheap brandy in one hand and a lottery wrap of chang in the other – I alternate, swig and sniff. Even through the painkillers and the powder I’ve been self-medicating with I can feel the stitches holding together the torn flesh beneath the bandage wrapped around my left hand. At least the pain in my hand is distracting me from the knot that has swelled up on the side of my head. I take another look at the hammer wrapped in a carrier bag on the passenger seat and I start psyching myself up to use it. I glance at Mazza sitting next to me, his breathing sounding like an asthma attack waiting to happen.

  “And you’re sure you can’t get hold of a piece?” I ask him for the third time.

  I’m repeating myself but I can’t help it – I think that my coke has been chopped with speed. Still it’s keeping me moving and I can’t feel my hand.

  He shakes his head and I go back to watching the main door of the block of flats opposite the car. I take another toot of the Colombian courage and I feel it drip at the back of my throat and start to believe that I can really do this. The door to the flats opens and a guy in a tracksuit steps out and jogs off. The door’s slow to close and I’m out the car and crossing the road before its halfway shut. Mazza is just behind me. I catch the door and let the carrier bag slip off the hammer. Game time now and all I can do as I start to climb the stairs, with Mazza at my back, is wonder where it all got so twisted.

  “So how big was this bloke?”

  Mazza asks; he’s sweaty and breathing hard after our run up the stairs.

  “Forget it.” I say and gesture for him to step in next to the door.

  I knock and look through the peephole. I wait until I see a silhouette and then I wait some more until I reckon that they’re right in front of the door. Then I back up and boot the door as hard as I can. Pain sparks in my knee but the door gives and hits whoever was behind it throwing them to the floor. They’ve got to their knees as I move through the door. I can’t see much in the dark hallway but I can make out the figure’s head so I kick it hard enough to bounce it off the wall and feel a surge of happiness at the sound it makes – something like throwing an orange at the floor. Then I move into the flat leaving Mazza to deal with whoever I’ve dropped.

  I see one of the doors has a padlock on it and I’m guessing we’re in the right place.

  “Get off me, I’m only fourteen!”

  “Course you are, love.”

  I look back and see that Mazza has got a little rat of a girl by the hair. I step into the living room and look around; a cigarette lies smoking in the ashtray and I can see a stained machete on the floor next to a pair of bolt cutters that have what looks like blood on the blades.

  “Where’s Stanton?” I shout at the girl.

  She looks away until Mazza bounces her head off the wall.

  “Answer the man.”

  “Cunt! He had to go out, he had to post something...”

  She looks down at the floor with a half-smile on her lips.

  “Phone Jimmy.”

  I say to Mazza and then I move to the padlocked door.

  One good whack with the hammer deals with the lock. Dev Singh is sitting on a blood stained mattress, the room stinks of piss, shit and the coppery scent of spilt blood. A chain runs from a collar around his neck to a bolt in the wall. He looks up at me and I see the bloody hole where his ear used to be.

  “Jesus... We’re here to take you home, Mr Singh”

  He looks at me for a moment like I’m a figment of his imagination and then bursts into tears. I remember the bolt cutters in the front room and head back in there. As I come out Mazza pushes the girl past me and forces her into a chair.

  “Sit!”

  He looks to me.

  “Khan is on his way. He didn’t sound too happy to hear from me, Charlie.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll sort that.”

  I go back into the bedroom and cut Dev Singh free. When I walk in with the bolt cutters he skitters back across the room like a dog whose owner has laid the strap on him too many times. As I help him up I notice he’s missing two fingers.

  “I left the brandy in the car. You sit here and I’ll see if they’ve got something in the kitchen.”

  He nods and stays where he is.

  The kitchen is pretty bare except for the dirt. I wouldn’t eat in there if you paid me. I check the fridge and find a couple of beers but nothing to take the edge off the pain that Singh must be feeling. I look at the stuff that is lying on the table; a jiffy bag, some stamps, two fingers and an ear in a plastic baggie. My body moves slower than my brain and it isn’t till I hear the creak of a door that I turn. A light skinned kid is coming out from under the sink, kitchen knife in hand. He’s half up out of his crouch when I hit him. The hammer hits him in the jaw and knocks him sideways. I’m guessing he lost teeth. He slams into the fridge but when I close in he nearly catches me with a slash of the knife. I step back and we square off. The little bastard is smiling, his teeth pink with blood.

  “How’s the hand?”

  “How’s the knee? You’re done, Stanton, finished. You’re nothing, you’re over. You’re nothing, Big Time yeah?”

  I laugh.

  He screams in response and tries to rush me. I lash out at his wrist and hear the crack of bone before the clatter of the knife on the floor. He tries to hobble back but I hit him in the knee with the hammer and watch him drop like spit from a tower block. I can see there’s still some fight in him so I bring
the hammer down again on his knee and watch him dance in pain across the kitchen floor.

  I drag Stanton into the front room and tell Mazza to watch him. Then I go back to Singh.

  “We got two of them.”

  He nods and I see that he has picked up the bolt cutters.

  “Who sent you? My wife?”

  “In a way your daughter did.”

  Something moves across his eyes but I can’t read it. I don’t know what had passed between Dev and his daughter or if there was any truth in what she had told Mazza but I thought it best to leave it at that.

  We sit in the front room looking at the kidnappers until there is a knock at the door. I look into the hallway and see Jimmy Khan along with three other Asian men. Big men, built like wrestlers and dressed all in black. I nod to him.

  “These the boys from the Met?”

  He hears in my voice that I know they’re not coppers and he smiles at me.

  “No, some other friends of mine.”

  I nod.

  “You and Toshak about finished here?”

  “Kind of. He went after Jaz to try and get the money back.”

  Khan doesn’t look like he believes me then I don’t really care.

  “And you still owe me fifteen hundred.”

  “What?”

  “That was the arrangement. I’ve held up my end.”

  He looks at me for a moment and then laughs.

  “You’ll get it, Charlie. Get Toshak out of here before I do something I won’t regret.”

  I go back into the front room.

  “Come on, Maz. We’re going.”

  The big man doesn’t say a word, just puts the baton away and comes over to me. The three Asian men have bound Stanton and the girl’s hands with duct tape. Dev Singh is unsteady on his feet but I watch as he puts the bolt cutters and an iron in a bag. Stanton’s eyes are wide and shiny, his left eye flickering like he’s got something in it. For a moment he looks like a little kid who knows he is about to get strapped by his dad and I wonder how old he actually is. My mind goes back to the job I did for MacGregor - seems like signing death warrants is the order of the day again. I don’t want to see anymore so I let Mazza pull me to the front door, out of the flat and down the stairs.