“You should be saying thanks, not looking at me like I’m Jack the Ripper,” said the big man, with the stereotypical Irish lilt of the lampooned Traveller community. He leered at her, she was used to it, but not while held captive. The brute shoved his shoulder at her and she flinched, pulling back into the shade of the vast boot space.
“If it weren’t for me, you and the redhead would be red smudges on that road in Dagenham by now.”
“What do you want, a gold star? You just kidnapped me and cut my bloody dress.”
“You don’t realise, do you? It’s another favour. The way you’re going, you’ll owe me a drink or ten.”
“You work for the Gypsy King. None of this is a favour. What do you want?”
“Ah. Now that’s for me to know, and you to find out.”
He moved at her again, his hand dipping into a pocket and pulling out a little medical brown plastic bottle of liquid. She pressed herself backwards against the screen that divided the boot from the cab of the Toyota. Now he produced a small clutch of café napkins, sloshed the liquid over them, and put the lid back on.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, miss. I prefer girls who say yes. Mostly I prefer girls who can be quiet at least fifty per cent of the time. Which makes you as safe as houses, sweetheart.”
“Piece of shit!”
He grabbed her leg and pulled her towards himself with a quick, easy yank of his arm belying her weight and resistance. She kicked at him, but he swept her leg aside. She tried to cover her face, guessing what was coming, and he snatched her hand away, slapping the other away before it could block the passage of the napkins to her mouth. He pressed the napkins over her face. She struggled, but it was useless. She looked him in the eye as hers lost their glare. “Sweet dreams, big mouth.” The last thing she saw was the Chinese men, smoking, laughing and exchanging a few words of amusement. Then the world faded out.
Eva found the counting to six thing worked surprisingly well. She was calmer, more measured in her thinking, which was quite surprising considering what she was about to do with a four-pound knife set. Great value, she mused. Then came the sounds just up beyond the stairwell, and counting to six went straight out the window. It was time to live in the moment - or die. It was all about survival. The sound of the machines flooded the corridor above from the open door, and as it shut, the machinery was gone, and the sound of voices took its place. They were accented voices – she picked them out, Germanic and Russian. They were speaking in English – why, she wondered. But then it was clear. They were instructions, a measured flow of information, repeated and checked back for clarity’s sake. It was a Russian delivery, and a Germanic repeat-back. “You soften him up some more. You can go further this time, but nothing fatal. Not yet. You can cut him, that’s fine, but no organs or arteries. You can hit him - feel free to do that, but don’t knock him out cold in case he doesn’t wake up. Mr Marka insists on inflicting the final blows himself. Are we clear?”
A German voice repeated the instructions back and laughed, theatrically. The Russian was clearly not impressed. “This isn’t a joke. Are we clear? On all counts?” The laughter ended promptly.
“Your boss wants us to tenderise the meat for him.”
“He’s your boss as well, arsehole. You are being paid to do a job. Don’t you dare fuck it up. Understand?”
There was silence… and then the machine noise invaded the space up above for some ten seconds before it was eclipsed again. Now she heard quietly angry, resentful chatter, in German, she guessed. Footsteps now, moving brisk and calm, echoing in the concrete corridor. The Germans were coming. Resentful, bitter chatter, then now some laughter, like a private joke at the Russian’s expense. Eva held a knife in either shaking hand. She reminded herself that from now on she had no choice; it was kill or be killed. No choice at all. They pressed against the door, still talking and the lock clicked open. One deep breath in. The door opened outward, folding back against her, shrouding Eva more in darkness. Not good, not good at all. As the first man withdrew from the doorway and the door began to fold back the taller man came through, Eva moved. No choice or he would see her. No choice as she drove the paring knife into the shorter, uglier man’s shoulder, deep into his back. He screamed and became rigid, but the blade was already out and she repeated the move below the man’s other shoulder blade. No choice. Eva’s face was a mask of concentration. She was in the moment. She stabbed without rage or emotion, but because it had to be done. Black blood welled up around the second wound, and the shorter man buckled and toppled forwards, wheezing, groaning. His back was now coated with a glistening puddle spreading across his jacket. The tall man was on high alert, ready. The shorter man folded to the ground to reveal the taller man, his sparkling eyes staring into hers, measuring the threat. The door finally shut tight. He looked down the corridor beyond them, checking Dan hadn’t got out. He saw the knives in her hands, wielded like two short swords. He saw a wild woman with war paint blood across her face, beneath two bright animal eyes. She was feral, a killer. The tall man was a paid warrior, an assassin, a man with ambitions and emotions and a wily character. The type who could be the last man standing after Armageddon. Life and death was a professional matter in this set up, and murder was nothing personal. He grabbed at the door. Eva was surprised, reading this as weakness on his part. Cowardice. She felt a surge of power run through her body, up through her chest and into her brain. She was alive –confident. For the first time in a long time she had the upper hand.
The man on the floor was gasping. No choice at all. “So you are a killer, are you?” said the remaining man, a new strategy forming. She read it for what it was, he was trying to destabilise her, to intimidate her. Eva’s confidence was riding high, but the man was a pro. She scanned his face and figure. The man was tall and thin, the spit of the killer at Albany Park, Southend. It was him. This was the assassin, the outsource guy. One man down, one to go. He had a lined face, and she thought he would look pale even in daylight. His face was grainy too, powdery, even, and his staring eyes were turned up at the edges, not from any racial type, just from the way his face was made. He was animalistic, wolf-like, only without the hair.
“I can kill,” she said. She would think about it later, much later. But right now it was a fact.
“Can you live with it?” he asked, with a flicker of mockery on his lips. His hands were unmoving, one near the door handle, one loose in the air, hesitating.
“You live with it… you killed one of my friends.”
“Which one was your friend?”
“This isn’t a conversation here. You’re going to kill Dan. You’ve tortured him. Which makes you the sickest kind of bastard I ever met in my life. So how do you live with that?”
“The money helps.”
“Money isn’t helping him, is it?” She said, gesturing towards the Joe on the floor with a minute flick of her wrist.
“Collateral damage. We killed your friend. You’ve killed mine. Even, yes?”
“He’s not dead. He can hear you, you sick bastard.”
“In two minutes, he will be dead. Look what you’ve done to him.”
She stared at the tall man’s powdery face, his dark eyes unreadable. Like a stare-out competition. No choice, she repeated in her mind, over and over. No choice whatsoever. And right there, was when her mind did it, betrayed her and dropped her eyes for a fraction of time to look at what she had done to the figure on the floor. He was dying. She knew she should never have looked down. The tall man slapped her face, sending her back against the wall. If the man on the floor wasn’t blocking his way, it would have been over. The obstacle bought a fraction of time. The tall man dipped a hand in his jacket, sneering, and his hand drew back out. No time. No choice. She threw herself at him, with the paring knife out and threw her weight behind it and plunged it into his moving arm. The knife tore through garments and flesh, she dragged it down hard, kept on cutting throu
gh the front of his jacket too, and cutting into the front of his chest, though not deep, before the knife fell to join the mess on the floor. The man roared in pain, his arm limp - he smashed his other hand over the wound and blood poured through his fingers. He glowered at her, in pain. And she saw the fear sparkling in his wolfish eyes.
“They will come soon, and you will be killed. Both of you.” He said with a ring of vengeance in his voice.
“By then, you could have bled to death, don’t you think?”
“Bitch!” He moved at her, futile, weapon-less, the black metal he had pulled from his jacket was in the mess of bloody flesh and clothes on the floor. The small man was no longer moving. The tall man was coming at her. No choice at all. She swung the big chopping knife, the kind which dices onions in seconds, and she brought it down into the man’s fist, through his fingers, it plunged into centre mass of his hand. The cheap knife was so sharp it wanted to cut that fist in two. She felt a sudden twinge of queasiness and snapped the knife away. The man was howling now, both hands useless.
She had survived, for now.
“Bitch.”
“I don’t want you dead. I want you to let Dan out of that room.”
“I won’t help you. Go to hell.”
“You first, Herr Flick. You’ve booked ahead.” She waved her knife at him. The man backed away, knowing he was beaten.
“Come on, Flick, you’re losing blood. We don’t want to hang around.”
“You’ve destroyed my hands. I can’t help you.”
“Get me the keys. No excuses, I don’t care how much it hurts you. Throw all your weapons down, every single one, and then give me every key you’ve got. And your wallet.”
“My wallet?”
“A girl’s gotta live.”
“I can’t use my hands at all.”
“You should know by now I don’t like excuses.”
The man groaned and did what she said with his bloody fist, pulling keys out with his finger and thumb. He tossed several sets of keys to her, including one with a car key fob on it. He began to drop knives, a small gun and a hammer on the floor.
“The gun. Is it easy to use?”
“Piss off.”
“Tell me, or I’ll just practice on you.”
“Guns are not difficult instruments, yes?”
“Is it loaded?”
He nodded.
“Does it have a safety?”
He nodded head. “It’s a Glock 32. You said you wouldn’t kill me.”
“That’s right. I won’t. Where’s the safety?”
There was hesitation. He licked his lip and then gestured a limp hand at her. “On the left side.”
Eva looked and nodded. The gun was heavy and looked longer than it should have been. But it was warm and comfortable in her hand.
“Move your friend over there into the dark.” She pointed the knife at the short part of the L-shaped corridor. The man nodded. He struggled and moved his partner, dragging him one armed as best he could just out of the line with the door.
“Now what?”
“You come with me.”
She stepped down quickly and grabbed all the keys and the gun then snapped upwards and aimed it at him, at his body, guessing her aim would be more likely to hit there if she needed to. Bigger target. “You go first.” She gestured down the corridor towards Dan’s cell. The man looked very ill by now, his eyes sagging from the blood loss. “Quick now!” He nodded and moved on.
“Which key is it?”
“The brass key, with the black plastic cover. Not that set, the other set. Look.”
She tossed two other sets onto the floor when she found a brassy Yale key with a black plastic clip-on cover to mark it out from the rest. A few of the others had colours on too. “Do any of these open other rooms here.”
He nodded. “But this key will release your Daniel.”
“He’s not called Daniel. He’s called Dan.”
The man looked bewildered, his sallow complexion growing paler by the second with sweat dripping down his forehead. “Sit down.” The man nodded and fell to the ground whilst trying to squat on the floor.
She made sure her eyes were on him the whole time. His face was grey, a sheen of sweat glossing over his skin. He wasn’t out of the picture just yet, but he was close. She didn’t risk knocking him out or wounding him any further, as she knew she could finish him off easily now.
The key slid in the lock and the latch clicked. She opened the heavy door and it swung open pouring timid light into the blackness of the long, dank room. At the back of the room were two vast grey metal blocks, each with a circular dome on one end which contained a turbine. They were vaguely similar to parts of the machines upstairs. In the middle distance, she saw a heap of food mess strewn across the floor from one side. And behind it was the shape of a man, barely visible. He shuffled forward on his haunches.
“Eva… You did it.”
“Yeah.” She said with disbelief in her own voice. “I did it.”
“I wasn’t one hundred percent sure you would. I didn’t deserve it.”
“Shut up, Dan. You can grovel later. We’re not free yet.”
She took a step forward and immediately stopped when she saw his face. She saw the mass of contusions, of dark stains, of lines cut by razors and even more violent rips. There were bruises beneath his blackened eyes and where the skin had ruptured on the corners of his gaunt face. His nose was swollen and broken. His neck had welts on it, inflated striped bruises up and down it. And his once pale shirt had become dark and sodden with a tie-dye pattern of dirt and his own blood. His arms were tied back behind his back and there was grime around his mouth. His eyes faintly glinted with life, but he was even less the man she remembered than when this started. In his voice, yes, he was the same. In his eyes, yes, but the face was gone. He was now a mere shadow of the man he used to be. She said nothing to give away her shock and pity, but she felt the warm push of tears bursting through her eyes down across her face. The moment she felt the tears come, she retreated away from him so he wouldn’t notice her expression.
“Have you got much strength?” she said, looking away. “Can you move?”
“If you untie me, yes. I’m itching to get out of here.”
She hid her tears, moved past his shoulder and knelt down beside him. There were plastic cable ties on his wrists. She saw the cauterized stump where his small finger had been cut away. She blinked her eyes shut, took the top end of her chopping knife firmly in her fingers, and dragged the blade through the plastic cable tie. The plastic gave and snapped open straight away. Dan groaned as he was suddenly able to bring his arms forward to their rightful position. His arms and shoulders ached. He shunted forward, to roll up to use the momentum to help him stand. It didn’t work, so Eva helped him up. He tottered on his feet and she steadied him. She didn’t engage his gaze as she said. “Dan, even if it hurts, you need to be able to move. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Look at me.”
She didn’t look at him.
“Look at me.” She no longer had a choice and she looked at him - square in the eyes - trying to avoid looking at the skin and scars around them. “You can’t look at me, can you? I must look like a pound of mincemeat, right?”
Eva managed a grim smile. “You must be really hurting, Dan.”
“Nothing that half a bottle of whisky couldn’t help.”
Lies. But she liked him for it. He’d always been the same. “We better go right now. They’ll be coming soon.”
Dan nodded and stumbled along slowly at first, but his steps were already becoming steadier by the time he reached the doorway, his legs unfurling like new butterfly wings, his back straightening and his muscles screaming out in pain. The pain woke him up out of his daze and gave steel to his groggy consciousness; he was almost ready to fight. No, not ready to fight, but ready to resist and defy them as much as he could. They passed the tall man in the doorway, sitting upright against the conc
rete wall of the corridor. He was barely conscious. His arms looking as though they belonged to a ragdoll, stained in scarlet.
“Help me…” he whispered.
“Help you, Didi? I’d like to. After all you did at Liverpool and everything, but look what you did to my face.”
Eva ignored Dan’s comments. “If we can get to reception quickly, I’ll tell them to get help. Now, what is the safest route?”
Crossing the Line Page 9