Hold Still – Tim Adler #3: A Psychological Thriller

by Tim Adler

  "They don't care. These are hungry people. The worst. It used to be the Italians, then the Russians. Now it's the Albanians. Listen, I want you to promise me something. I want you to escape if you get the slightest chance. Promise me that. Okay?"

  "What about you?"

  "They don't know who I am. I'll take my chances."

  The diesel engine started up, wobbling the van slightly. The vehicle lurched out of the parking space, throwing the two of them together.

  "Where do you think they're taking us?"

  "I guess to meet the big boss, Zogaj, the one I was telling you about. The Albanians control all the prostitution in Soho."

  They swayed together, and she tried to imagine the route they were taking. They turned right onto Fulham Palace Road and left at the roundabout, so they must be heading east towards the West End. They turned right, then left, and then seemingly turned in on themselves, so she gave up trying after that.

  They rode on. Metal dug into her back and she shifted position, trying to get comfortable. Strangely enough, she thought the opposite to Priest: she felt relieved that she'd been blindfolded. If they were blindfolding her, that meant they didn't want to be identified, and if they didn't want to be identified, it meant they didn't plan to kill them. At the same time, she knew she was grasping at straws.

  "I wish I could put my arm around you," Priest said. "Tell you everything's going to be okay."

  The van banged them about. "What you said about your wife being murdered. That was a lie as well."

  "I'm divorced. I've got a three-year-old girl." The van bumped over something and Kate was thrown sideways.

  "How did the divorce happen?"

  "It was my fault. It's the usual story. I was spending more time at work and Kelly felt ignored. We moved to the country so she could be with her horse. One day I was on my way to catch the Eurostar when I realised I'd forgotten my passport. I had a sense something was wrong as I got to the house. Anyway, I let myself in and went upstairs, and that's when I heard them. She was having it off with a local taxi driver."

  "I'm sorry. Are they still together?"

  "No. He was married as well. He just fancied a bit on the side. She thought he was going to leave his wife, so now she's left with nothing. She's got our baby, Kristin, though."

  "Couldn't you get back together? For the sake of your daughter?"

  "You can't go backwards. I don't think even she understands why she did it."

  They lapsed into silence, each of them alone with their thoughts. They must be in the West End by now, and Kate wondered what meeting Mr Big would be like. The van jostled them as it downshifted. She was desperate for sleep but her mind was churning – she kept asking herself, why me, why me? She saw the knife pressing down on Charles Lazenby's cheek, the flesh turning white as his skin was about to break; her fingers trailing along the spiky cannabis fronds; and Phuong's cold and filthy bedroom. Oh, Paul, you should have told me you were up to your neck in it. Together we could have found a way out.

  Eventually Kate whispered, "What makes you think they're taking Phuong up north?"

  "It's what they usually do if the police know who they are. Give her a new name. I told the hospital who she was, so she's in the system. That's one of our frustrations. There's not much cooperation between regions."

  Kate quietened her voice even more. "They're going to be angry when they open up the computer. I deleted the wedding folder. There's nothing there."

  "You did what?"

  "Don't worry. I saved the photo we were looking at. The one with the names and addresses. It's on the phone memory card. I need you to get it out for me. In case they search us. We need to keep it somewhere safer."

  "Where is it now?"

  "In the back of my jeans pocket. I want you to put it down my knickers."

  "If they find it, then we're both dead. They'll torture me to find out what I know and then they'll get rid of us. Without the data, at least we can pretend to know nothing. The data's incriminating. We need to keep it hidden."

  "First you need to unbutton my jeans."

  Kate shifted up and Priest's fingers struggled with her top metal button. He tugged the zipper down. Next she turned around and felt his fingers delicately lifting out the memory card. Careful, don't drop it. They were both dead if it fell on the floor. Kate tried turning around so Priest could slip it into her underwear, but it was too difficult.

  "Here. It'll be easier if we both stand up."

  They stood swaying as Priest tried to find her unbuttoned trousers. This was like a perverse game of pin the tail on the donkey, but there was nothing erotic about it. Kate guided him towards her knickers and felt his fingers brush her pubic hair. The memory card was now tucked safely inside her panties. The thought occurred to Kate that they might want to strip search her, and she pictured herself trembling, trying to cover herself in her modesty. After that…

  Suddenly the van braked sharply and they were both thrown forward. Kate righted herself and she and Priest sat down quickly before the van doors opened. Flashback. Being caught with a boy in the hot, damp interior of a bike shed. Pressing her back against a dank, cobwebby wall as a teacher peered in. She bent over to cover her undone jeans. Would they notice? The Albanians were coming for them, climbing into the back of the van, and she wondered where they'd brought them to – an abattoir with hanging carcasses, or a strip club with cavorting dancers, where Mr Big waited in a camel coat? One of the men hauled her up and she stood uncertainly, wondering what was happening now. She felt Teardrop's knife hacking through the knotted cord binding her wrists.

  Her pillowcase was pulled off and she breathed in the sharp night air. Beyond the open van doors was a dark cobbled side street that she recognised immediately. This was the street where Paul had his office.

  One of the thugs led her out while the other climbed up. "I don't understand," Kate began. Please, God, somebody notice us. This was a London street that hundreds of people walked down every day. "Open the door," Teardrop said. Now she understood why he had untied her: he needed to get into the building. Her wrists felt sore from the cord, and she shook them to try to get the blood flowing. Furtively, she zipped her jeans back up, trying to dawdle. The longer they spent out on the street, the better their chance of being spotted. How many CCTV cameras were there in London? Her numb fingers tapped the door entry code, and the street entrance unlocked softly.

  Paul's company was on the third floor. Teardrop unzipped the back pack he was wearing and handed Kate her lanyard with her keys on it. He nodded for her to unlock the office door.

  The tell-tale warning beeps sounded, and Kate's heart lifted for a moment until Teardrop quickly unarmed the alarm. She didn't have time to question how he knew the disarming code because he roughly shoved her forward. Now she knew where they were going: the server farm: one petabyte of data, every Google search, financial record and credit card transaction of thousands of people. A digital brain that remembered everything you had ever said or done. A skein of other people's memories. Nothing was ever forgotten. Paul once told her that the data it contained was worth millions if it was sold on the market, to advertising companies, credit rating agencies, direct mail outfits.

  The server farm had been her husband's pride and joy. He had even helped design it. Paul had specified that the servers be protected by the highest security and cooled by the latest green technology. "Really, it's just about moving air around," he had told her. Instead of rattly air-conditioning units bolted onto the side of the building, his data farm sucked in air and scrubbed it through a series of filters. "Just like a hospital operating theatre," he had said, beaming.

  Whatever was on the other side of the bulletproof window lay in pitch black, except for tiny LEDs like dozens of cat's eyes. The lanyard also held Kate's swipe card, and she yanked it through the reader. Next, she placed her finger inside the fingerprint scanner. The light turned green once she had been positively identified, and the door clicked open.

&
nbsp; The lights came on the moment they stepped into the room. It was so clean. Paul was right – it was like being in a hospital. The only sound was the shrieking hum of the servers. "So here we are," Kate said. "What are you going to do?"

  Teardrop slung off his backpack and laid it on the ground. Unzipping it, he pulled out an ugly brown-paper brick slapped together with a crude metal box. There was a clock face embedded in the grey steel and a simple on/off switch. It looked so much like a bomb that he might as well have brought out a cannonball with a fuse sticking out of it. Kate wanted to laugh, the way you do at a funeral. Unfolding his clasp knife, Teardrop secured the bomb to the wall using duct tape. He flicked the switch. So he was planning to destroy the evidence – all that money laundering they'd forced Paul into, what and how much was paid to whom – incinerated the moment the timer counted down to zero.

  "Come, we go now."

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  Kate sat down and crossed her legs. Her voice sounded close to normal, but when she looked down, her hands were shaking.

  "Are you fucking crazy? We leave now."

  "Why should I? You've taken my husband from me, the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. You've destroyed everything we worked for. What is there left for me?"

  "Shut up. I fucking kill you." He was an electric wire of hate, always twitching, moving. He just couldn't keep still.

  "Are you the one who killed my husband? Was it you who threw him off the balcony?"

  "Unlock door or I swear I cut your finger off."

  "It doesn't work that way. The finger has to have blood in it. It's called vein recognition ID. My husband designed it that way."

  Kate tried to look smug. She was enjoying this new, contrary role. Instead, Teardrop grabbed her wrists and pulled her up. She resisted, her Converse trainers slipping and sliding on the floor. They tussled as the thug edged her hand towards the fingerprint reader. He grabbed her little finger and started bending it backwards. The pain was excruciating. Any moment her little finger would snap. "Okay, okay," Kate whimpered, letting her index finger be guided into the Perspex hood.

  Less than three minutes later they were back in the van, and the thugs left her pillowcase off this time. The four of them sat opposite each other. Priest and Phuong still had their hoods on, while the baby-faced thug kept an eye on Kate.

  "They've planted a bomb in Paul's office. They're going to blow up the server room," she said.

  "Destroying the evidence," Priest said.

  "Whatever they were using looked professional. It wasn't a bag of flour in a rucksack."

  "I told you, a lot of these gangs trade dope for weapons. They're easier to sell. Extremists either use them for bank jobs or they end up in the Middle East. It's a dirty business."

  The little thug sat there with a faint smile on his lips; Kate wasn't sure how much he understood of what they were saying. The thought occurred to her that everything they had done had been caught on CCTV, and that Teardrop hadn't cared about being spotted. Wherever they were going, she realised, they weren't coming back.

  They must have been in the van for another hour before they stopped again. The back doors opened and Teardrop climbed up. He snatched the pillowcase off Priest's head, pulled him to his feet and dragged him outside, down onto the asphalt. At least he could see where he was going now. The little one jerked his head, indicating that Kate should follow him.

  Her legs felt stiff as she jumped down, looking all around her. They were in a reservoir car park. There were dinghies moored beside a clubhouse, and some of the bigger boats were covered up for winter. The tocking of rigging against their aluminium masts sounded like wind chimes.

  Kate realised she knew the place. She and Paul had come cycling here one Saturday afternoon, renting bikes from the closed hut in the distance. It was somewhere off the M25 heading towards Kent, she knew that. The reservoir was on the other side of the hillock of stones they were facing – she remembered the uppermost spire of a church rising from the middle of the water. They'd had to flood a village to build the reservoir, and people said you could still hear the dreamy tolling of the church bell beneath the water. Teardrop dragged Priest up to the water's edge and forced him to kneel. He put the gun to Priest's head. Kate's mouth went dry with fear.

  "Who fuck are you?" he said.

  "I told you. I'm just a neighbour."

  "You fucking lie to me."

  He grabbed the back of Priest's head and pushed him down. Kate couldn't see properly, but she knew the Albanian was drowning him. "Who the fuck are you?" Teardrop must have pulled Priest up again because she could hear him coughing. She had a hollowing sense of what they were going to do to them: they would shoot Priest and haul his body into one of those boats before tipping him overboard. Nobody would find him in the reservoir. Teardrop shouted at Priest again and pushed his head back down. This time he held him under for longer.

  "Stop. STOP," she heard herself shouting. "He's with the police."

  Teardrop reacted as if he'd just been scolded. Priest was coughing and retching on his haunches as Teardrop slid back down the stones.

  "What you say?"

  "He's a policeman. He works for Europol. They know all about you."

  "Fuck."

  Teardrop ran his hand over the iron filings of his hair. Then he raced back up the stones and asked Priest if this was true. Whatever Priest said was lost in the wind. Teardrop was clearly agitated and he started pacing, making another call on his mobile phone. He gesticulated and spoke in Albanian. He reminded Kate of a caged animal, and in a funny way, this unexpected turn of events made him even more dangerous. Kate glanced at his accomplice with his wraparound sunglasses: in profile he looked like Mr Punch. No emotion there. A moony psychopath, the sort who when he was a child took a magnifying glass to insects to watch them burn.

  Priest was hauled to his feet again and pushed down the hill. "Have you got a towel?" Priest coughed as Teardrop shoved him forward. The top half of his body was completely wet through and Kate thought she saw blood running down the side of his face.

  The Albanians herded them back into the van, except this time both their pillowcases were left on the floor. Phuong was still sitting there with a pillowcase over her head. Both of them shuffled onto the wooden shelf, huddling for warmth, as Mr Punch sat down opposite with the gun resting on his thigh. The doors slammed. Mr Punch leaned across and touched Kate's cheek. "So soft," he said. Then he sat back and giggled.

  Thursday

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The stink of petrol in the back of the van was nauseating. "So where is Zogaj?" Priest asked. Mr Punch just shook his head. Kate couldn't decide whether he was simple or he just didn't understand English. "Ooh, Zogaj," Priest mimicked, pretending to shiver. Still no reaction.

  "I don't think he speaks English," Kate said. "The man they're taking us to. What do you know about him?"

  Priest lowered his voice. "Not much. He blipped on our radar when a nasty turf war broke out between gangsters in Tirana. They were fighting over who ran illegal file-sharing sites. They use them as a way to get credit card details. A few years ago, a rival gang was herded into a garage and shotgunned to death, an Albanian version of the St Valentine's Day Massacre.

  "They say the Greeks were poets and the Albanians were pirates. Zogaj's family started out smuggling booze over the mountains, then graduated to selling arms to the Kosovans during the war. The Albanians and the Kosovans are really the same people. When the war ended, they began selling marijuana to the Italian Mafia in exchange for weapons. The weapons they sell on to Isis and other terrorist groups: Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, they don't care.

  "Albanian police are terrified of him. They sent an agent under cover to infiltrate his gang. Zogaj knew there was a mole, he just didn't know who. So he invited three of his men to his castle. According to an eyewitness, Zogaj moved down the line, hitting each of them in the back of the head with a baseball bat until one of them confessed. Our man
was so terrified, he told the truth. Zogaj shot him, buried him, dug him back up again and then dissolved him in acid." He grimaced. "Sorry, you did ask."

  Kate imagined the terrified policeman screwing his face tight to stop the sleet of bone and blood and watery stuff from seeping into his mouth, then opening his eyes, only to realise he was next.

  "But two of them were innocent."

  "They were just collateral damage."

  "Jesus." Kate paused. "John, I'm really frightened."

  "It's going to be all right. Look, he's not daft. He doesn't want a copper's blood on his hands. They only kill each other. And we've got a bargaining chip." He looked meaningfully down at her crotch, where she could feel the memory card. He glanced at Mr Punch, who was still smiling as they swayed along.

  The cold made it difficult to think straight, and it was all too much to process. Despite herself, Kate could feel her eyelids growing heavy. By now it must have been three or four o'clock in the morning, and her brain was crying out for rest. She tried getting comfortable and leaned against Priest before closing her eyes.

  The van doors banged open, and beyond them she could see the grey lunar dawn as the landscape revealed itself. She must have fallen asleep, just for a moment. Teardrop climbed up into the van, and through the open doors Kate could see a car transporter parked up alongside them. They were in a petrol station she recognised as being on the M25. The Albanian picked the dirty pillowcases up off the floor and turned to them. "Not again," said Priest. Teardrop pulled the case over Kate's head and the world went dark.

  She could hear Priest shuffle towards the back of the van and then jump down. Hands got hold of Kate and lifted her up, guiding her towards what she figured were the van doors. "Step here," said Teardrop. Her trainer felt for the lip of the van and she jumped down. Hands released her and Teardrop said, "You. Come." Priest's words about escaping if she ever got the chance came back to her. Here she was, standing in a petrol station forecourt with a pillowcase over her head. If she ran, somebody would help her, somebody would see what was going on. There wouldn't be another chance.