Hell's Mouth

by BATEMAN, A P

  O’Bryan walked back down the stairs and out into the lounge. He looked at the view and seriously doubted anyone could ever become bored of it. He could hear her behind him. “How long have you lived here…” He didn’t finish the sentence, just felt the dull thud on the back of his neck and a stab of pain run down his spine. He was aware that he was falling forwards and unable to break his fall, but was unconscious before he hit the solid wooden floor.

  24

  His eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. At first it had been pitch black. And then there had been bursts of orange and red. He knew he had been moving, and he knew from the smell of fumes and the sound of the engine and exhausts that he was in the boot of a car. His head had knocked against the bulkhead, and each time the vehicle braked, he was pressed into the back of the rear seats. The glow had come from the brake lights, and uncomfortable though the experience of braking was, he welcomed the dull glow of light they gave from the dark.

  O’Bryan kicked and fought at first. His hands were bound tightly behind his back. He could feel the tape digging into his flesh and the adhesive tugging at the hairs on the back of his wrists. His struggle dislodged part of the trim inside the boot, exposing the rear light cluster. It didn’t let in much light but what little it did, brought a welcome respite.

  There was no telling how long he had been unconscious, but he would have guessed that from first waking in the darkness to the car parking up on what felt like rough ground, was no more than fifteen minutes. He had heard the door slam and then another car door opening and closing. The other car had sped away, some loose gravel hitting the car he was inside. He tried to remain calm, but his nerves were getting away from him. Was that it? Was he parked somewhere so remote that his fate was already sealed? That he would die from asphyxia, thirst or starvation? Which one of the three would kill him first? His subconscious played the odds, although he tried to put the thoughts out of his mind altogether. He thought of his daughter, but to his despair he could not picture her face. He thrust his feet out in rage and kicked more trim away. There was no extra light to be gleaned from it, but it relieved his frustration somewhat.

  After what he estimated to be thirty minutes, the sound of a car approaching was clearly audible. The car manoeuvred on the gravel and the engine died. O’Bryan could hear another vehicle. There were doors opening and closing. Muffled voices, indeterminable from the confines of the boot. This second car drove away again. O’Bryan screamed for help. He was desperate and kicked out at the bulkhead, then changed to thrusting his knees against the boot lid. He changed methods again, getting greater purchase by bracing his left knee against the bulkhead and thrusting out with his right. He continued his cries for help, every breath, every ounce of energy being put into making himself heard.

  There was a sharp bang on the boot lid. Then two more. A man’s voice, deep, but no regional accent. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Nobody can hear you up here!” Three more bangs on the lid.

  O’Bryan’s heart sunk. He had already stopped banging and shouting, his heart was pounding and he fought for breath. The air was stale and felt thick and hot. He knew he was using up oxygen faster than it could get into the confines of the boot.

  “I’m opening the boot,” the voice said. “I have an axe. Try anything and I will stove your head in.” The tone was confident. A man used to giving the orders and getting his own way.

  The boot-lid clicked open and the shaft of light which poured through blinded him. He squinted, struggled to see anything at all as the lid opened more and the man stepped back cautiously. O’Bryan blinked and looked up at the man, having never felt so vulnerable in his life. He was scared, but needed to look at every angle. He needed to find a way, somehow, to avoid the inevitable. He could see Chloe’s face clearly now, as if his daughter had projected herself into his mind and had given him an extra reason to live.

  “Who are you?” he asked. He had to start somewhere.

  “The last person you’re going to see.” The man stepped further back, his hands clutching the axe so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

  “Did you say that to the Elmaleh family?”

  “I said get out.”

  “To them?”

  “To you, dickhead!”

  “So what about them?” O’Bryan asked. He still hadn’t moved.

  “I said a lot.”

  O’Bryan looked at him, took in every detail he could. He had learned this in counter-terrorism. Every detail should be logged; all information was useful. The man was six-two and slim. O’Bryan guessed around eleven stone. He would have a stone and a half or perhaps two stone on him, and that counted if it came down to a struggle. But it didn’t count for much with his hands bound behind his back.

  The man was also smartly dressed. O’Bryan didn’t own suits as smart as this. Not on his salary. There was a plain watch with a leather strap on the man’s left wrist. The watch was extremely thin. So delicate that it looked at odds with the axe. He couldn’t see from this distance, but he guessed at a Patek Philippe. O’Bryan had never seen prices on them in jewellers’ windows, which had always told him they were out of his reach.

  “But you killed them,” O’Bryan said flatly.

  The man nodded. “Now get out.”

  “Why did you kill them?”

  The man shrugged. “Business.”

  “Feel good did it, to take a person’s life?”

  “You tell me.” He smiled. “You know what it’s like. You may say you don’t but we all know. You fooled no one!”

  O’Bryan hesitated. The comment had side-swiped him. He regained composure as best he could. “You killed a family. You killed a mother, a father and three young children…”

  “You killed somebody’s child,” the man smiled. “But it wasn’t just me.”

  “Who else?”

  The man smirked. “No, no, no,” he said quietly. “Get out of the car and kneel down.”

  “Make me,” O’Bryan said defiantly.

  The man shrugged like it was no big deal and swung the axe. He used the back edge and it came crashing down on O’Bryan’s lower right leg. He screamed an agonising wail, stabs of white-hot pain shooting up his leg. He clenched his teeth, realised he had stopped breathing. The pain was excruciating and seemed all the worse for the simple fact he could not reach out and touch it, exacerbated by the tape around his wrists.

  “How’s that for starters?” the man sneered. He spun the axe in his hands, the blade spinning and catching the light. “Now get out, or I’ll start chopping you up where you lay…”

  O’Bryan kicked his legs until he got them over the edge of the boot space and dangling over the rear bumper. He struggled to sit up and the man watched him battle the angle, the boot-lid and the rise of the opening itself. He seemed bored and reached in and pulled him by his collar. He stepped back when O’Bryan was upright. He was breathless, his leg feeling as if it were on fire, yet at the same time, numb and lifeless. He could see a car parked broadside to them. It was a new model Porsche 911 in gleaming gun-metal grey. It went well with the suit and the watch.

  “Stand up and walk to the driver’s door,” the man said. O’Bryan turned around, finding it difficult to put weight on his leg. He realised that the car that had been his prison was his own. That made it seem all the worse somehow. But his thoughts were cast aside when he saw the view in front of him. The front wheels of the Alfa Romeo were just a few feet from the edge of a cliff every bit as sheer and dramatic-looking as Hell’s Mouth. He could see the rollers breaking and hear the crash of the waves on the rocks below. “The surfers call this place Chough’s Haven. They climb down with ropes, or paddle around the point to surf here. But the conditions have to be right. No good today. The wind and tide are all wrong,” the man said. “So nobody will disturb us up here…”

  O’Bryan had been twisting his wrists. Working at the strong tape. He was past hoping he could break free. Perhaps he could damage his skin to leave enough evidence to s
how that his end had been foul play. Again, Chloe’s face came to him. The once cloudy memory of her giving him hope and the fact that he had more to fight for, more to live for than the meagre existence he had been living since losing everything he held dear through drink. His memory seemed to be willing a fight from him.

  The man opened the driver’s door as wide as it would go and stood back. “Get into the car,” he said coldly.

  “It won’t look like an accident,” O’Bryan said.

  “Let me worry about that. The tide is always in here, no beach to submerge. Even at low tide there’s six-feet of water at the base of the cliff. Maybe your car will never be found. Winter is coming and the surfing won’t be great here. Maybe the crabs will have stripped you to the bone by spring…”

  “But perhaps not. Look, my wrists are bound,” O’Bryan paused. “I’m telling you, it won’t look like an accident. Have you even thought this through?”

  “Of course!”

  “You’re not the brains of the outfit, are you…” he stated sardonically. “You’re the monkey. Where’s the organ grinder?”

  “You shut your face!”

  “No gloves,” said O’Bryan. “When you first drove me here, you didn’t have gloves, did you,” he laughed. “So there are second-person prints in and on the car. DNA also. I have an injury not conducive to the crash or fall. They will see the blunt end of that axe head imprinted on my skin and deep bruising in the muscle. It won’t match anything in the cabin of the car. Seriously, who has set you up for this? Who’s the organ grinder to your dumb monkey?”

  The man caught hold of O’Bryan and pushed his face close to his. “I said, shut your face…”

  The man didn’t get to finish his sentence because O’Bryan snapped his head forwards and head-butted him on his nose. The crunch was sickening. The man recoiled backwards, but caught himself on the open door and didn’t fall and nor could he move away. O’Bryan followed with another snap of his head, his forehead hitting the ruined nose again and smashing it flat. Blood and mucous left the wound in a sickly-looking clot and the man fell down onto his knees. O’Bryan checked his balance, steadied himself against the car, then thrust his knee up and under the man’s chin. His head whipped up and he fell back against the door again.

  Whether it was rage, or whether it was his sense of survival – threatened by his hands still being bound – but O’Bryan did not stop kicking. Nor stamping. By the time he regained control, the man was limp and motionless. O’Bryan was heaving for breath and perspiring heavily from his brow. He leaned back against the car, his legs felt like jelly and his right leg throbbed from the pain of the axe head striking him. Adrenalin was catching up with him and it was all he could do to remain upright. He took several deep breaths, so deep that his lungs could not take any more. He exhaled slowly and steadily through his mouth, then inhaled again through his nose. It had a calming, steadying effect. He did this methodically for half a dozen breaths. His heartrate lowered and the feeling of light-headedness from the rush of adrenalin subsided.

  He looked down at the man on the ground. He was pretty sure he was dead. There was no movement from his chest or stomach. O’Bryan couldn’t exactly give him first aid, wasn’t sure he wanted to either. He looked around for the axe. It was behind the car door and just a foot from the cliff edge. The full horror of his fate lay in front of him. A vertical drop of at least three-hundred feet to the surging sea below, with jagged rocks the size of family cars breaking the water’s surface. He felt the effects of vertigo as he stood on one leg and eased the axe back from the edge with his right foot. The pain was almost intolerable. When he was a safe distance from the precipice, he used his heel to drag the axe back through the seagrass and sandy earth.

  Positioning the axe proved difficult, verging on the impossible and he almost abandoned the idea several times. Part of him wanted to simply walk away and find help, but another part, albeit a small but significant part of him, a part his councillor had referred to as the ‘darkness’ wanted more. O’Bryan knew it was there, had battled it all his life. He knew he was a fundamentally good person and wanted to help people who were unable to help themselves. But he also knew, and had become comfortable with the fact, that he could get to his ultimate goal by any means possible.

  He had pressed the back edge of the axe into the ground using one foot to guide the shaft of the axe and another to sink it into the soft, sandy earth. He had then squatted carefully, painfully over the horizontal shaft and dropped down into a sitting position. It had taken three attempts, each time he had got unceremoniously back up and pressed the axe further into the soil. On his fourth attempt the axe remained firmly pressed into the earth. He shuffled backwards, got his hands in place, and started to rub the tape on the blade. As he suspected, the axe was about as sharp as a spoon. The sheer weight of the head, length of the shaft and tapering vee of the blade was what got the job done against stubborn logs. He did not have to fear cutting himself on the blade, but after what seemed like an age, friction finally got the better of the tape and combined with the pressure of his attempt to splay his arms, the bonds finally tore apart.

  26

  Sat at the very edge of the cliff, he watched the sea surge and froth at the bottom of Hell’s Mouth. He could see the seals and seabirds bobbing on the swells behind the breakers. There was a lot of weed draping off the smooth, wet rocks below and the fronds of weed swayed hypnotically with the ebb and flow of the tide. He figured the seals enjoyed protection from people disturbing their habitat, thwarted by the inaccessibility of the steep three-sided cliffs.

  There were no walkers, no sightseers parking up to look into the abyss. There was a single parked car in front of his own, and so far, he had seen no one. He decided to take the chance and stood up. He stretched casually, taking in the area in every direction. Satisfied he was alone for now, he bent down and caught hold of the handle of the axe. Another glance around, and he heaved the axe out into the air in front of him. He watched as it spun end over end and travelled a shallow arc before dropping straight down to the sea. O’Bryan saw an indistinct splash between two breakers and nothing more.

  He watched for a moment longer and found himself staring at the sea, his thoughts concentrating on nothing more than the events on the cliff top less than five miles away. The man had asked him what it felt like to kill someone. And now he knew. But he had known before, and he had known what it was to live with such things.

  You know what it’s like. You may say you don’t but we all know. You fooled no one…

  27

  Seven weeks earlier

  Westminster Bridge, London

  The slash on his shoulder stung like a hundred wasp stings. He could feel the blood running down his back, or maybe it was sweat. Maqsood’s breath was foul, along with his body odour. O’Bryan gripped the man’s wrist like it was a lifeline, which indeed it was. He had the knife in his control. If he let it go, then Maqsood would be more dangerous. And to a certain extent, the blade was plugging the wound until the SCO19 boys got here, and the paramedics would have been called already for the injured civilians, they wouldn’t be too far behind.

  Maqsood was grunting with the effort of resisting O’Bryan forcing him backwards, he had still been chanting his prayer, but O’Bryan had become oblivious to the noise, concentrating only on the knife and keeping him from getting control of it in the fight. Maqsood cannoned into the railings and stopped. The knife travelled deeper into O’Bryan’s stomach and he rode right up against the man. He grimaced, and Maqsood grinned fleetingly, but O’Bryan snapped his head forwards and smashed his forehead into the man’s nose. He wrapped his right arm around him, caught hold of the back of his head and head-butted twice more, pulling the man’s head forwards to increase the force. Maqsood’s eyes watered, and his nose bled as it shattered and crushed, spreading across his face. O’Bryan knew the pain the man would have felt, and keeping his grip on the man’s wrist, his fingers digging into the tendons, his n
ails ripping the flesh, he brought his knee up into the man’s groin. Maqsood let out a gasp of air, wet with mucous and blood, and O’Bryan could hear the shouted commands of the first of the armed police officers as they arrived on the scene. Maqsood pushed O’Bryan, his grip still on the handle of the dagger, and O’Bryan shoved back harder. He felt Maqsood’s foot connect with his groin, and the man gripped him behind his head also. They toppled, the wind tugging at their clothing as they fell.

  O’Bryan had felt the sensation before, many times, diving from ten-metre boards as a teen. Internal organs rising with the fall, a displacement that seemed to last longer than was imaginable for the distance involved. Maqsood screamed, and O’Bryan guessed it was the man’s first time. The knife had come clear and O’Bryan had released his grip on the man as they fell. O’Bryan tucked and turned it into a dive worthy of just one point. It was better than the Pakistani’s though, who hit the water flat on his back. The water was cold, icily so, despite being early-summer, and as O’Bryan made for the surface he could see only a few feet before the gloom became total darkness.

  Maqsood had landed flat and gone shallower. He was clawing at the surface when O’Bryan came up. He was flailing wildly. The current was strong, O’Bryan could feel the drift and noticed the Houses of Parliament passing rapidly by them. He glanced upwards. The Westminster Bridge was no longer above them, it was already fifty-metres distant.