by Paul Finch
In front of those two, almost the same height as McCracken, but the same breadth as McCracken and Shallicker put together, was Benny B, grim-faced and silent as they rode.
Pentecost turned to Spicer. ‘You know what to do.’
Spicer nodded and disappeared.
Pentecost got up from his chair and walked slowly into the boardroom, where he stopped and waited – with his own tie loose, his hands in his trouser pockets. It was not his normal look, either. But then these were not normal times.
Outside in the penthouse lobby, Spicer and two assistants stood by the lift doors. All non-security staff – barmen, waitresses, chambermaids and the like – had been given a half-day, so the threesome were alone. They waited loose-limbed and with pistols drawn, watching the red light above the doors, as the car ascended from floor to floor. In truth, they weren’t expecting that Benny B would need any additional muscle, as he seemed to have things well in hand. But just in case, here they were.
With a ping, the lift arrived.
The double doors slid open – and Benny B was in their faces, features white, glasses askew, head crooked to one side by the Walther P22 jammed into his right ear.
‘Drop ’em!’ McCracken ordered, coming out behind him, pushing Benny’s bulk forward as a human shield. ‘Do it now or Benny gets it. You know I’m not kidding.’
Spicer and his oppos were stumped. Especially when they saw that Shallicker was carrying an Uzi submachine gun and levelling it at them over the security chief’s shoulder. One burst and he’d take them all down. Of the four men left behind in the lift, it seemed that only two, the two in the middle, were Benny B’s. The two on the outside, who now that they weren’t being viewed through a grainy TV monitor, were clearly McCracken’s, clutched pistols against their guts.
‘You can live or die, Spicer,’ McCracken said in a voice that brooked no discussion. ‘Your call. But if it’s the latter, Benny dies first.’
Spicer and his sidekicks gazed past the great, quivering lump of uselessness that was Benny Bartholomew into Frank McCracken’s cold eye and they didn’t need to hear what had happened at the safehouse to know that no further assistance was coming.
Later on, they’d be told how it went down. Namely, that as Benny and his boys, who’d been led to the isolated cottage with remarkable ease by Mick Shallicker, went smashing through its front door, other doors – stable blocks, barns and the like – had opened behind them, and Frank’s men had come out blazing. The ones at the back had fallen immediately, leaving those not caught in that first fusillade to unhesitatingly surrender. As for Benny, who’d now entered the cottage, he’d barely had time to react to the shooting behind him when he’d found two pump shotguns levelled on him by a pair of likely lads on the nearby staircase. When McCracken had casually emerged from the living room, he was unarmed. But it didn’t matter – it was already over.
‘What sickens me to the pit of my stomach,’ McCracken now said, as the stand-off in the penthouse continued, ‘is that our inner sanctum has been penetrated so easily. What do you think Bill’s going to say, Spicer, that we got this far? And it’s not just us. There’s another seven or eight of my lads waiting to come up.’
As he spoke, the lift doors closed, and the elevator commenced its descent.
Spicer and his men backed away, dumbstruck. Spicer’s eyes were drawn constantly to the black hole at the end of the Uzi. In truth, he didn’t care about Benny B. The guy was ballast, a makeweight, a passenger from Wild Bill’s early days. But that bloody submachine gun would tear all three of them apart, and the bloke on the other end of it, Mick Shallicker, who was grinning like an overlarge devil, looked like he couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.
‘But I’m actually prepared to make a deal with you, Spicey, old mate,’ McCracken said, now stepping around Benny’s bulk, still keeping the pistol in his ear but, perhaps to show trust, presenting himself as a clear target. ‘I want to start from scratch. I want to make everything right again with minimum trouble. That’s why I’ve been talking on the phone all the way here from Cheshire. That’s why I’ve called another emergency meeting. That’s why the entire board of directors are on their way here as we speak. And I want you to be at that meeting too, Spicer.’
Spicer’s face registered surprise.
‘Yeah, I know,’ McCracken said. ‘You’re just a grunt, aren’t you? Your job is to keep your mouth shut and to soldier. Well, not any more … maybe. You guys hand your pieces over, and everything won’t just be okay, it could actually be better than okay.’
It wasn’t a difficult decision. One by one, Spicer and his men offered their firearms. McCracken took them, passing them to his own men.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Where’s Bill?’
‘In the boardroom,’ Spicer replied. ‘Waiting for you.’
‘Excellent.’ McCracken slid his Walther back into his shoulder-holster and straightened his jacket. ‘All the rest of you … go through into the bar. Relax, get yourself a drink, make friends again. Just like me and Wild Bill are going to.’
Chapter 45
‘Well, well,’ Ivana whispered into Lucy’s ear. ‘If it isn’t the agent of all our misfortunes.’
Unable to draw breath, Lucy clawed at the wire, but couldn’t get so much as her little finger underneath it. She was walked backward, so hurriedly that she almost tripped, and then turned roughly around, so that the rest of the room lay before her. It was near enough empty, apart from an old school chair with the cardboard cylinder depicting the bulldog lying on top of it, and in one corner a pair of large and solid plastic drums. These latter were streaked down their sides with a gummy brown residue and had a pair of heavy stone slabs, clearly pried up from the floor, laid over the tops of them as improvised lids. The stink was still unbearable, the walls and ceiling coated with a foul, slimy clag.
With a weird, whickering giggle, Alyssa Torgau emerged from the shadows. She was pale-faced, with sweat-soaked hair and cheeks streaked by mascara, but her eyes glinted with a new, crazy kind of glee. She reached into the cradle and switched off the iPhone, finally silencing the wailing child.
‘Like the baby trick? That’s how we lured that raggedy old slut with the cats.’
Lucy still couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. The strength was seeping out of her, her knees threatening to buckle as her hands dropped to her sides. But the pressure of the ligature, though intense, had slackened a little. They weren’t trying to kill her – not yet.
‘We didn’t lure her down to this very room, you understand.’ Alyssa walked towards the two drums, pulling on a pair of heavy-duty plastic gauntlets. ‘Just caved her bonce in with a brick and left her in a derelict house. She’ll get found eventually, but no one’ll care. Just like they never cared about all the homeless ones Dad practised on when he was young. We have to have a bit of variation, you see. Like the meathead from the gym. They’ll never find him, but if they ever do, it won’t be connected. You see, there are lots of reasons for disposing of people, and lots of reasons for doing them all differently. That said –’ she patted the nearest of the stone lids ‘– most of them need to disappear … which is why most of them end up down here.’
With a big effort, she pushed the lid away, dropping it to the floor, where it landed with a crash. The stink intensified. Lucy gagged, her eyes watering.
‘I know … horrible, isn’t it?’ Alyssa said. ‘You want to get a whiff of it when it’s fresh … and unpolluted.’
‘Enough gabble,’ Ivana said. ‘I take it she’s alone?’
‘Seems to be,’ Alyssa replied. ‘There’s no one else outside.’
Ivana tut-tutted. ‘Flying solo again, DC Clayburn? Something tells me you lot do a lot of work off the clock. Very unwise tonight.’
‘Just about the biggest mistake you ever made.’ Alyssa produced something from behind her back. Through Lucy’s blurred vision, it looked like a thick plastic pint-glass, the sort supplied at outdoor wedding events. Grinning, the girl dip
ped it into the open drum and, when she lifted it out again, it was filled with a brown, soup-like liquor, which fizzled and hissed as she carried it over, holding it at arm’s length.
‘You’ve heard it said that whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger,’ she said. ‘Well, this stuff’s a bit different. In this case, whatever doesn’t kill you … turns you into an unrecognisable monstrosity. Not that you’ll see it. Those pretty green eyes won’t last a second.’ She raised the beaker to Lucy’s face. ‘They’ll melt like sugar cubes …’
‘Hang on, no,’ Ivana said, jerking Lucy backward. ‘We can’t just waste this stuff.’
Alyssa pulled a face. ‘We can get more.’
‘Yeah, but not straight away. Dad arranged all that. But even then, it was expensive. That’s why he didn’t let us use it on the dogs. Don’t worry, we’ll get some more, but until then we conserve what we’ve got.’
‘But she needs to suffer!’ Alyssa said this with feeling; she all but spat it.
‘She’ll suffer.’ Ivana twisted the tourniquet, not once but twice, cutting off Lucy’s air supply again. Lucy clawed at the wire, barely able to gag.
‘Wait!’ Alyssa shouted. ‘Memento first.’
She moved to a shoulder-high stone shelf, which already looked to be cluttered with bits and pieces: among numerous other items, Lucy saw false teeth, a medal with a faded ribbon, an old-fashioned hearing aid. Alyssa carefully placed the beaker down among them, and then returned and violently searched Lucy’s jacket pockets. Almost immediately, she found the wallet containing her warrant card. She flipped it open and showed it to her sister. ‘Her pig ID.’
‘That’ll do nicely,’ Ivana said.
Alyssa went back to the shelf and made room among the other oddments. The fumes were visibly affecting her: she coughed, her face gleaming with sweat, her eyes running, though it mainly served to make her triumphant grin seem all the more deranged.
‘What do you think of this stuff, DC Clayburn?’ She held things up one by one. ‘An old guy’s hearing aid. The Cat Lady’s false teeth.’ There was even a pair of colourful running shoes. ‘Don’t need to tell you who these belonged to. UltraBoost, too. Would’ve been a shocking waste putting those in the acid.’ She folded Lucy’s wallet backwards, so that it would stand open on the warrant card, and then placed it directly alongside another that was very similar to it. ‘Matching pair, eh? You and that young rookie you sent ahead of you. Looks like we got ourselves a couple of Category As tonight … without getting a kicking in the process.’
‘We’re doing you a favour, showing you all this,’ Ivana whispered into Lucy’s ear. ‘We’re letting you know that at least there’ll be something left to remember you both by.’
Lucy struggled, only for her captor to twist and tighten the tourniquet. Lucy’s eyes goggled, her tongue lolling.
‘No – you – don’t,’ Ivana chuckled. ‘I know it hurts, but that’s the whole point.’
Alyssa, meanwhile, had moved to the nearest of the two drums and, holding a cloth to her mouth with one hand, now held a thick plastic rod in the other and was using it to stir the contents.
‘This stuff’s viscous,’ she complained. ‘It’s more like sludge.’
‘It’s ready for pouring,’ Ivana replied. ‘Try the other one.’
Alyssa moved to the second drum and, with a huge effort, dislodged its stone lid. Again, the chemical reek filling the air intensified. Lucy felt her eyes stinging.
Alyssa coughed all the more. ‘Yeah, this is better …’
With Ivana distracted, her grip on the tourniquet lessened slightly, and Lucy could drag some air into her lungs. Revived, she didn’t try to yank the ligature loose now, but rent at her own clothes, searching for anything she could.
‘If you don’t quit that, we’ll put you in there while you’re still alive!’ Ivana snarled, lugging her backward and twisting the wire several times, forcing Lucy down into a painful squat, and bracing her there by jamming a knee into her spine. ‘You little bitch! We should do that anyway!’
Over by the second drum, Alyssa tittered as she stirred the brew, though her proximity to a much fresher supply of fluorosulfuric acid was having a real effect on her now. She was blinking repeatedly and coughing hard despite the cloth she’d clamped to her mouth.
‘How would you like that, detective?’ Ivana hissed. ‘A chemical grave … ouch!’
She hadn’t noticed that Lucy had sneaked something from her jacket pocket, flipped off its lid and jammed it backward into the fleshy part of her thigh.
Ivana jumped back from her victim, allowing the ligature to loosen, peering in disbelief at the syringe hanging from just above her knee. Lucy, though groggy with pain and asphyxiation, stuck her fingers under the wire and tore it over her head, before falling forward on hands and knees and scampering away like an exhausted animal.
Behind her, Ivana’s cry of shock and outrage became a roar of bestial anger.
‘Fucking bitch! What’ve you stuck me with?’
Lucy swayed to her feet. A few yards away in the corner, Alyssa hadn’t yet realised what had happened. She was too busy coughing and spluttering and dabbing her eyes with the cloth. But Ivana was coming fast from behind, so Lucy tottered sideways, blundering against the shelf where the trophies were kept. She spun around to fend off an attack. And just in time, because Ivana, having yanked a brutal-looking knife from her webbing, now charged, howling. The girl didn’t know that she’d been shot full of heroin, but it was taking effect rapidly. She stumbled suddenly, losing balance. Lucy threw herself aside and Ivana crashed chin-first onto the shelf – just where the beaker of acid was balanced.
It flew against the wall, bounced back and drenched her face and hair.
Lucy could only back away in morbid fascination. She was still unsteady, her throat aching abominably, but for a couple of seconds the fate of Ivana Torgau was the whole of her world. She’d dropped to the floor instantly, and now writhed and screamed, flopping over and over. Was this due to the heroin overdose, or the corrosive substance by which her features were already dissolving into a gluey red/green mask?
‘Vana?’ a confused voice said.
Lucy backed away all the more, as Alyssa, eyes streaming, mouth covered in phlegm, came staggering across the room.
‘Ivana!’ Her confusion gave way to utter horror as Ivana, or what remained of her, came to rest on her back, jerking spasmodically, ragged breaths wheezing from a mouth that was little more now than a melting, frothing hole.
Lucy had seen enough. She lurched for the nearest door. Instinctively, Alyssa whirled after her, snarling as she pulled something from her harness. As Lucy closed the door behind her, there was a monstrous detonation and a massive hole punched through the middle of it. The strength of desperation flooded her limbs as she threw herself blindly along a dark, brick passage. She had no idea where she was going. She turned a corner, just as the door behind her crashed open and Alyssa stood silhouetted in the crimson light, aiming the gun with both hands. With a boom and a flash, a fountain of dirt and brick-dust exploded from the wall close to the point where Lucy had just been.
‘You cop bitch!’ the crazed girl shrieked.
Huffing for breath, sweat whipping off her, Lucy mounted a steep flight of stone stairs. Ten treads up, she rounded a switchback corner and mounted another flight, and at the top of that another flight, and then another.
‘Oh God,’ she whimpered, weary beyond belief.
Alyssa came racing up after her. She fired a third shot, and a fourth. They were wild, uncoordinated, the heavy slugs careening from wall to wall in the tight stairwell. Lucy could only keep going. But she was hurt and her energy flagging, and her nemesis was pursuing with the strength of the insane.
Just over two hundred yards off, Sister Cassie jolted awake in the front passenger seat of a small car. It was not a happy waking. She had the shakes again and was damp with the sweat of withdrawal, and at first, she was too stupefied to realise
where she was or why.
But then she recognised the interior of the vehicle, and saw the tall iron gates ajar just in front. Then, the noise that had woken her sounded again – a distant booming of gunfire.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ she breathed.
Reluctantly, because it was always so much easier when you were tired and strung out to simply sit there and vegetate, she opened the passenger door and slithered through. Once she was outside, she had to lean against the car.
Gradually, the memories of that day came back to her.
Yes, it was easier to do nothing, but there was one thing Sister Cassie had never divested herself of, even through all these years of hardship and sadness, and that was a sense of duty to her fellow men.
She heard it again: the booming reports of a gun.
‘Get help,’ she said, working her way around the front of the Jimny to the driving door. ‘That’s it. Go and get help.’
She clambered in behind the wheel. The key still hung from the ignition. She turned it, and the car came to life.
‘Go and get help …’
But from where? Who would listen to her? And how long would it take?
More shots thundered.
She tried to make sense of the controls in front of her. Could she even drive this car? She hadn’t driven for years, and it looked very different from the vehicle she’d learned in.
She placed her hands on the wheel and depressed the clutch, pushing it into gear.
What had Lucy done when driving?
Sister Cassie threw her mind back, and she remembered. She’d seen everything.
But what would Lucy do now?
One thing was sure, the ex-nun knew. She wouldn’t run away.
Chapter 46
There was a door at the top of the stairs, but it was locked. Only by a single bolt, but this was stiff. Lucy struggled with it frantically as feet clattered up the penultimate flight behind her. The bolt came free, she yanked the door open and hurled herself out – and with a thunderous bang, another round was discharged, the top left corner of the door exploding.