by Jim Eldridge
‘OK. Out,’ ordered the Boxer.
Jake sat up. He felt stiff all over from having held his twisted-up position in the back of the car. He opened the car door and got out. They were by a row of lock-up garages, one of which was open. Jake now saw that the other man was, indeed, short and thin. Shorty gestured at Jake.
‘In,’ he said.
The Boxer prodded Jake with the gun, and Jake walked into the garage. Shorty locked the car, then pulled down the garage door. It closed with an ominous click as it locked shut. The garage was lit by two overhead fluorescent lights. The central area was clear to allow a car in, but right now there was just a chair on its own in the middle of the garage.
Jake was reminded of the chair he’d woken up tied to in the timber yard in Holloway Yard. Had that been these same two men? Something told him no; apart from the chloroform, he hadn’t been injured. These two were set on inflicting pain.
Shorty walked Jake to the chair, and began to tie him to it with ropes. The memory of Robert’s body, battered, bruised and bleeding, tied to a chair in his living room, flashed in Jake’s mind.
‘You’re the men who hurt Robert,’ he blurted out.
‘That’s an allegation, that is,’ said Shorty, pulling the ropes tight around Jake’s wrists.
‘He wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know,’ grunted the Boxer.
‘You fractured his skull!’ said Jake angrily. ‘You nearly killed him!’
‘So, if you know that, ask yourself, how much do you want to be hurt?’ asked Shorty, and he looked into Jake’s face and gave a grin that sent a shiver of fear through him. The short man’s smile was evil. The Boxer’s the tough one, but Shorty likes inflicting pain, Jake realised.
When the punch came it was short but hard, smashing into Jake’s face, catching him high on the head and rocking him back, the chair tilting with it. Pain filled Jake’s brain. As the chair rocked forward, Shorty swung his other fist. As it connected, more pain surged through him. This time when the chair tilted, it carried on, and Jake found himself smashing into the concrete floor of the garage. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and he knew he was bleeding from his forehead, when he’d hit the ground hard as he toppled sideways, still tied to the chair.
‘Want me to have a go?’ asked the Boxer.
Jake looked up and saw Shorty shake his head. He was grinning, and Jake knew he was enjoying this.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Anyway, that’s just for starters, to let him know we mean business. Put him back up.’
The Boxer ambled over to Jake, reached under his arms and lifted him and the chair up as if they weighed nothing. He put Jake and the chair back down in the centre of the garage. Jake’s head was throbbing painfully from the punches, and from where he’d fallen. His forehead screamed with pain from grazing it on the concrete, and blood dripped down past his eyes and trickled from between his lips. He wondered if any of his teeth were loose.
Shorty grinned at Jake, then stepped away from him and gestured at the garage walls. Mechanic’s tools of all sorts hung from hooks.
‘When we were at your friend’s house we had to improvise,’ said Shorty, his cheerful tone making Jake feel even sicker to his stomach. ‘But here, we’ve got everything we need: pliers, heavy-duty car batteries and jump leads, claw hammers, screwdrivers.’ He smiled. ‘And the beauty of it is we’re away from the main road, so no one can hear you scream.’
He walked back and stood in front of Jake.
‘So, what’s it to be? You tell us where the book is or we start to take you apart. How much do you reckon you can take before you tell us?’ He turned to the Boxer and asked, ‘How long d’you reckon he’ll hold out? Two fingernails? A broken arm?’ He turned back to Jake, saying, ‘I reckon you’ll talk once we’ve fixed a car battery to a certain very sensitive part of your anatomy and sent a few serious charges through you. The skin burns from the inside, you know. There’s that smell of roasted meat, and then the skin starts smouldering. Sometimes it even bursts into flames. It’s the fat under the skin, so someone told me.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I reckon we’ll start with the car battery.’
With that he walked over to the garage wall and loaded a car battery on to a trolley. He pushed the trolley to the chair. Then he took a pair of jump leads down from the wall. He snapped the metal clips at the end of the two wires as he walked back to Jake. He was smiling the whole time.
I can’t do this, thought Jake. I’ll tell them as soon as they start. It’s not just a few seconds of pain, or even a few minutes, like in a dentist’s chair. This will go on and on, for hours, maybe days, and at the end of it I’ll be dead.
But I can’t let them have the book. It’s our only chance of getting Lauren back.
As Shorty began to connect the jump leads to the battery, Jake felt fear forcing the vomit to rise in his throat and knew he was going to throw up. I have to play for time! he thought. I have to stall them!
‘It’s in my flat!’ he blurted out.
Shorty stopped and looked at him. He looked disappointed.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It’s in my flat,’ Jake repeated.
If I can get them to take me to my flat, I’ve got a chance of getting away from them, he thought. Here, in this torture chamber, I’ve got no chance.
Shorty shook his head.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.
‘I’ll take you there and show you,’ said Jake, his voice desperate.
Shorty and the Boxer exchanged looks.
‘What do you reckon?’ asked Shorty.
The Boxer shrugged.
‘He could be telling the truth,’ he said.
Shorty studied Jake, frowning thoughtfully.
‘You could be lying,’ he mused.
‘It’s in my flat!’ insisted Jake, not knowing what else to say. ‘In a bag on the top of my wardrobe.’
Shorty didn’t move, nor did his thoughtful expression change as he looked at Jake. He knows I’m lying, thought Jake. He’s going to torture me anyway. Finally, Shorty nodded.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and check it out.’ Turning to the Boxer, he said, ‘You stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll phone you when I get to his place.’ Turning back to Jake, he asked: ‘Keys?’
‘In my pocket.’
Shorty rummaged around in Jake’s pocket, and pulled out the two keys.
‘My address is . . .’ began Jake, but Shorty cut him off.
‘We know where you live, stupid. That’s where we started.’ He pocketed the keys, and said warningly to the Boxer, ‘Don’t let him try any funny business. If he does, shoot him in the leg, like you said.’ To Jake, he said menacingly, ‘If the book’s not there, you are in for some very serious pain.’
With that, Shorty went to the garage door, opened it, stepped outside, and slammed it closed again. They heard the car engine start up.
The Boxer took the gun from his pocket and pointed it at Jake.
‘A bullet in the leg is very, very painful,’ he said threateningly. ‘You have been warned.’
Chapter 24
Jake sat, tied to the chair, and watched the Boxer, waiting for any sign that he might have a chance to overpower him. Maybe if he came near enough he could trip him, topple him over, and kick him in the head, knocking him unconscious. But even as he said it to himself, Jake knew it was a fantasy. The Boxer stayed at a distance from Jake, sitting on an upturned crate, the gun held confidently in his big fist, his eyes fixed on Jake the whole time.
Jake had been relieved when he knew that Shorty was going to be the one going to his flat. In his mind, Shorty was the nasty one. He also seemed to be the cleverest of the pair. Left alone with the Boxer, Jake might have a chance. Left alone with Shorty, Jake knew he’d have no chance whatsoever. But the reality of the Boxer being left to guard him was that Jake had no chance of getting away from either of them. All he could do was sit and wait, and think about what would happen when Shorty discovered there was no b
ook.
Jake and the Boxer had been sitting in the same positions for what Jake thought must have been an hour, when the Boxer’s mobile rang.
‘Yes?’ said the Boxer. He listened, then turned to Jake. ‘He says it’s not there.’
‘It is!’ insisted Jake desperately, trying to think his way out of this. ‘It’s on top of the wardrobe in a white plastic shopping bag!’
The Boxer walked towards Jake, the phone in one hand, the gun in the other.
‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said. And he held the phone to Jake’s ear.
‘You lied!’ hissed Shorty’s angry voice. ‘You sent me on a fool’s errand! I’m going to take you apart bit by bit when I get back!’
‘It’s there!’ shouted Jake desperately. ‘I left it there when I got back from Glastonbury!’ He paused, then added in a flash of inspiration: ‘Someone must have taken it.’
‘Who?’ demanded Shorty.
‘Anyone,’ said Jake. ‘Pierce Randall. The Watchers. MI5. Any one of all the people who are after it!’
There was a pause, then Shorty said, ‘I’m going to have another look round. But if it ain’t here, you’re in serious trouble when I get back.’
The phone went dead. The Boxer put it back in his inside pocket.
‘He doesn’t like it when people try to play him for a mug,’ he told Jake menacingly. Then he went back to the crate, and sat down again, his eyes and the gun on Jake.
It seemed all too soon to Jake when they heard the sound of the car pulling up outside and the garage door being lifted up. Shorty walked in, and closed the garage door shut behind him. He walked over to Jake and punched him hard in the face.
‘No one plays me for a sucker and gets away with it!’ He snarled. He punched Jake hard in the face again, and this time Jake felt blood pour down from his nostrils and tasted the salty liquid on his lips.
‘It was there!’ he managed to blurt out through the pain. ‘Where I said it was. Someone must have taken it!’
‘Who?’ demanded Shorty angrily. ‘Who else is after it? We were told if you hadn’t got it, the only others who might know where it was were your pal, Robert George, and that reporter woman, Michelle; so we were to stake them out.’
‘There’s more than that,’ said Jake. ‘There’s all those people I said: Pierce Randall. The Watchers. MI5.’
‘What have MI5 got to do with it?’ asked the Boxer, curious.
‘He’s lying,’ snapped Shorty dismissively.
‘The book’s a government secret,’ said Jake. ‘Ask whoever’s paying you, if you don’t believe me. All of them are looking for the book, and all of them know I’ve got it.’ He spat out a mouthful of blood and looked Shorty directly in the eyes. ‘I thought you must be working for one of them.’
Shorty looked at Jake thoughtfully, and then moved away, taking out his mobile phone as he did so. He called up a number, and when it answered said, ‘It ain’t where he said it was. He reckons someone else took it. He’s given us a few names of other outfits that he says are looking for it and he reckons one of them must have snaffled it.’ Shorty then listened for a while, before answering: ‘He could be lying, or it could be gone. What d’you want us to do?’ He listened a bit more, before saying, ‘OK.’ Then he hung up his phone.
The Boxer looked at Shorty enquiringly.
‘The pigs?’ he asked.
Shorty nodded.
‘Lucky old pigs,’ he said, and grinned.
They untied Jake from the chair, and then tied his wrists together and took him outside, where they dumped him in the back seat of the car. Shorty got behind the wheel, and the Boxer slid into the passenger seat. He showed Jake the gun.
‘Try any funny business and you’ll get a bullet,’ he said. ‘And it won’t be in the leg.’
‘Yes.’ Shorty nodded. ‘For whatever reason, our boss seems to think you might be telling the truth. Which means you’re no use to him any more. So you’re for the chop.’
The way that Shorty said the words in such a casual way made Jake go cold as ice. They’re going to kill me! They’re going to take me somewhere and kill me! But, why not do it here?
Shorty started the car engine and turned to look back at Jake.
‘Just in case you get any fancy thoughts about jumping out, the back doors are fitted with child-proof locks. All very safe.’
They’re hoping I’ll talk, thought Jake. That’s why they’re not killing me straight away. They’re going to drive around and hope I’ll crack and tell them where the book is. I’ve still got a chance.
But Shorty’s next words, as the car moved off along an alleyway to join the main stream of traffic, crushed that hope.
‘In case you think this is just to frighten you into telling us where the book is, you can forget it,’ said Shorty. ‘Our boss believes you. Personally, I don’t. But then, that’s just me. So he says we’re to get rid of you.
‘Now, I expect you’re wondering why we didn’t just kill you back in the garage? Well, the fact is, a dead body has to be disposed of, and that ain’t as simple as people think, especially in a crowded city like London. So we’ve got an arrangement with a friend of ours out in the country who’s got a pig farm. Pigs are great, they’ll eat anything.’
‘Especially if it’s shredded up into small bits,’ added the Boxer.
‘And luckily our friend has got a really big industrial shredder at his farm,’ said Shorty.
‘It shreds Christmas trees.’ He grinned. ‘Guess what it can do to you.’
They are going to kill me, Jake realised. This wasn’t just a bluff. He also realised that even if he had told them where the book was, they would have killed him, anyway. He’d seen their faces, he could identify them.
The car had left the city now and was out in the suburbs, heading towards woodland and open fields. The garage must have been right at the very east end of London, close to Essex.
There has to be a way to stop this happening, thought Jake. I’m going to die, anyway, if I don’t try something. He looked at the road ahead, at the vehicles hurtling towards them on the other side of the road, then past them. No barriers, just fast traffic in two directions. No crash barriers at the sides of the road either, just countryside: woodlands on this side of the road.
Jake fought to keep down the feeling of panic rising in him. Attack them. That’s the only way. Make the car crash. They might kill me as I try, but at least I’ll have a chance. And, if I get killed in the car crash, I’ll take them with me.
He tensed himself, took a deep breath, and suddenly he jerked forward, his tied hands raised up, and then dropped them down over Shorty’s head. He pulled back hard, the rope biting across the front of Shorty’s throat. Taken by surprise, Shorty let go of the steering wheel and reached up to his neck, his hands clawing at the rope as Jake pulled back even harder, choking him.
The Boxer turned, a horrified look on his face, but he was too late.
The whole action had taken barely a second, but already the car was out of control, veering to the left, straight for the trees at the side of the road.
SMASH!!
The car hit a tree head-on, and as it did so the air bags at the front exploded, smothering the two men in the front seats.
Jake ripped his tied hands upwards, tearing them across Shorty’s face.
The impact of the collision had sprung all the car doors open, and Jake scrambled out. He saw that the Boxer’s gun had fallen from his hand and was lying on the ground near the open door. The Boxer was struggling with the air bag, trying to get clear of it.
Jake scooped up the gun and put it against the Boxer’s knee. He didn’t allow himself to think, he just pulled the trigger. The Boxer screamed as the bullet tore into his leg, shattering his knee.
Jake pointed the gun across the Boxer in the direction of Shorty. Shorty didn’t move, but Jake heard him groaning. He was still alive.
I can’t take the chance of him chasing me, thought Jake. If he gets out of
this, he’ll kill me. His finger began to tighten on the trigger, but then he stopped. This will be murder, he thought. I can’t do it.
Instead, Jake thrust his hands into the Boxer’s jacket pocket and pulled out the man’s mobile phone. He was aware of cars pulling to a halt on the road, as other drivers stopped to offer assistance.
Jake ran, heading into the wooded area, pushing the gun and the phone into his pockets as he ran. He didn’t know how deep the wood was. All he knew was that it would give him cover.
Chapter 25
Jake ran through the woods, ducking under low-hanging branches, sharp brambles tearing at his clothes, until he reached a place where there was a rough track and the foliage and undergrowth was clearer. Running was made even more difficult with his hands tied together.
He dropped to the ground, dragging himself into the cover afforded by bushes growing around the base of a large old tree. His heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst. I’ve got to get these ropes off, he told himself. He set to work with his teeth, pulling at the knots, and finally he had separated the rope that tied him enough to wriggle his wrists free.
The gun felt heavy in his pocket. I have to get rid of it, he thought. It’s evidence against me. But if he dumped it here, it would certainly be found once the police started searching these woods. Because that was one thing for sure: the police would search this area once they realised one of the men in the crashed car had been shot. He couldn’t stay here for long.
He pushed himself up from the dry earth and stood, listening. He could hear voices coming from the direction he’d run from. Was it the police already? He broke into a sprint, putting as much distance between him and the scene of the crash as he could. How big was this wood? Where was it? He guessed they had left London from the north-west, and if that was the case that would mean they were somewhere in Essex. Was this Epping Forest? If so, it went on for miles and miles, and he could easily get lost, and be picked up by the police when they began searching.
He heard traffic noises ahead of him, and he stopped. Cautiously, he moved forward, scanning the area ahead of him through the trees. He could see the fronts of houses, and hear the sounds of a road. He kept moving, and saw that he was coming towards what seemed to be a housing estate: neat semi-detached houses and bungalows on the other side of a quiet road bordering the wood.