Target

by Simon Kernick

But I couldn't keep staring at Ramon's blank, dead face either. Its utter lifelessness was tearing me apart.

  Slowly, very slowly, I turned my head. Is this it? I kept asking myself. The end of my life? A lonely, bloody death in a cramped little flat miles away from the people I loved. I didn't want to die. God, I didn't want to die.

  He stood between me and the bedroom door, blocking any possibility of escape – the grotesque-looking Irishman with the saucer eyes and the malignant smile permanently etched on the rack-tight skin of his face. He had one of his hands behind his back, while in the other he held the photo I kept by my bed of Yvonne, Chloe and me, taken in the garden a few weeks after we'd arrived in France, shortly before Chloe's second birthday, in the days when we were still full of optimism. Before everything went wrong.

  It hadn't taken him long to find out where I lived, then.

  'I asked you a question, Mr Fallon,' he said, his voice quiet and calm. 'Who's Chloe?'

  He brought the hand round from behind his back, and I saw he was holding the stiletto he'd tried to cut my throat with the previous night, except this time it was stained with Ramon's blood. He tapped the tip of the blade against the photo. 'Is it her?' He turned the frame round so I could see it properly, rubbing the blade along the image of Chloe's innocent, smiling face.

  'She's my daughter,' I said, my voice barely a croak.

  'You don't want her to end up like your friend, do you?'

  'No.'

  'Good. Then you'll do exactly what I say.' He dropped the photo on to the carpet, and took a step towards me.

  'You didn't have to kill him,' I whispered. 'He was nothing to do with this.'

  'I know, but I enjoyed it.' He paused, taking pleasure in my fear, the pale saucer eyes lighting up with a childlike glee. 'Fear's a strange instinct, isn't it? It's supposedly there for self-preservation, yet right now it's preventing you from doing the one thing that will most obviously preserve your life – running.'

  I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. He was right.

  'Fear can make you weak and useless, but if you know how to control and channel it, it can be used to your advantage. I have that ability. I've always had it. But your problem right now is that you don't. Instead, your fear's going to make you do exactly as you're told.' He took another step forward so he was standing above me. I became aware of the scent of expensive aftershave. 'And what you're going to do now is drink this.' He produced a hipflask from the pocket of the raincoat he was wearing and threw it in my lap. 'Go on, drink.'

  I picked it up but made no move to put it to my lips. Instead, I focused on the bloodstained blade only a few feet from my face. For the first time a real sense of anger began to overcome my fear. I couldn't believe this bastard had casually executed Ramon. And now he was threatening to do the same to my precious daughter, the one person in this world I would die to protect.

  Some primal instinct kicked in. Remembering the way I'd caught him off guard the previous night, I leapt to my feet with a yell, blanking out the danger as I grabbed for his knife hand and lunged forward with the hipflask, using it as a makeshift club to slam into his face.

  He moved aside easily and slapped the flask out of my hand, then drove a foot squarely into my groin.

  I felt a searing pain travel up into my belly and the fight went out of me instantly. As I began to fall to my knees a gloved hand grabbed me by the throat and I was slammed back into the wall, stumbling over Ramon's corpse in the process. 'Don't fuck me about,' he hissed, and a split second later I felt the blade as he pushed it against my cheek.

  For a second the room was silent, then he brought his face very close to mine. For the first time I noticed jagged patches of scar tissue round his chin that the plastic surgery had failed to get rid of entirely, and that he was wearing blusher to try to conceal them.

  He ran the top of the blade along my cheek and into the pit just below my eye, pushing it against my eyeball. All the time his grip on my throat tightened, and I found it almost impossible to breathe.

  'I once cut a man's face off with this knife,' he whispered gently, his breath warm on my skin. 'I started here.' He pushed the blade in harder and I began to moan, not daring to move a millimetre. 'And I sliced all the way down.' He slowly traced a line down my jawline to my chin. 'And when I'd finished, I had a fillet. Then I did the other side. His wife was watching at the time. I informed her that if she didn't tell me the whereabouts of her son – a man who owed a client of mine a very large sum of money – then I'd use a skillet to fry her husband's cheeks, and feed them to her. But she was strong-willed, as women so often are, so she ended up eating well that night. It was only when it was her turn to provide the meat that she relented and gave him up.' He let out a low chuckle, moving the blade down so that it was against my throat, revelling in my fear. 'I tell you this so you understand what I'm capable of if you lie to me.'

  'I understand,' I whispered. All my anger had dissolved now and terror was back in the ascendant. 'I won't tell anyone, I swear it.'

  'It's a little bit too late for that now, isn't it? You've already been blabbing to the police, telling them about what you thought you saw last night. Who else have you told?'

  How the hell did he know that? Had he been following me somehow?

  I knew immediately I couldn't betray Dom, but still I hesitated before answering, 'No one,' trying to look as confident in the lie as possible.

  He spotted the hesitation. The whip-thin mouth curled up at either end in a knowing smile. 'I don't think you're taking me very seriously, are you, Mr Fallon?' he asked, placing an exaggerated emphasis on my name, driving home the fact that he was the one in control. 'Even though I've just executed your friend. I could cut you into little pieces right now, but you're lucky. Killing you might draw unwanted attention, what with the fact that you've been blabbing to the police, so for the moment it's easier to keep you alive. But if you keep bullshitting me, I might decide that it's easier just to be rid of you.'

  I swallowed, the movement painful under the knife blade.

  'I asked you a question: who else have you told? Answer it, cunt.'

  'No one,' I whispered, meeting his intense stare, willing him to believe me.

  He moved away suddenly, causing me to sway and almost fall, but I stayed where I was against the wall as he picked up the hipflask and thrust it into my hand again. 'You have exactly one minute to drink the contents of this bottle,' he announced calmly, moving the knife back and forth in front of my face. 'If you spill any, or hesitate at all for any reason, I'll begin to remove pieces of flesh.' He glanced at his watch. 'Starting now.'

  I unscrewed the cap and caught the sickly scent of Scotch, a drink I'd despised since throwing up on it at a party aged sixteen. I took a deep breath and gulped a mouthful down, grimacing against the fiery taste. Visions of my own disfigurement danced across my mind, and my hands shook as I forced down more, thinking that if I had to suffer then I may as well be drunk. I wanted to throw up, but ignored the feeling and carried on. It's amazing what the threat of serious, life-altering violence can make you do. I even began to get used to the sour, fiery taste as I steadily emptied the flask. And all the time he stood watching me, the same calm, matter-of-fact expression on his face, and all the time I feared him completely because I knew that when he spoke of cutting pieces off me he was telling the absolute truth.

  The room began to spin as I let the empty flask fall to the floor, and I worked hard to steady myself.

  'Phone the police officer you dealt with,' he ordered, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the mobile phone I'd left in my jacket at Jenny's place. 'Tell her that you've been depressed lately and drinking too much, and that you made the story of the kidnapping up, and are sorry to have wasted her time. Say anything else and you'll be dead before you finish the sentence. Understand?'

  I fumbled round in my pocket for Tina Boyd's business card, then dialled her number. She didn't answer, and after about ten rings the number went to mess
age. I then said exactly what he'd told me to say, slurring out the words, still having difficulty standing up straight, before flicking the phone shut.

  'So now you keep quiet, get on with your life, and never mention the girl's name again. That way, you and your family stay alive.'

  I made no move to resist as he grabbed me by the hair and swung me round so I was facing the wall. The bile rose in my throat and I had to work hard to swallow it down.

  'If you ever see me again,' he whispered, coming close to my ear, 'it means that it's your time to die. To lose every experience you ever had. For ever. Just like poor Ramon.'

  And then he slammed me face first into the wall and the whole room exploded in pain and darkness.

  Fifteen

  Islington CID was bedlam when Tina turned up for duty that night. There'd been a serious stabbing incident that afternoon after two groups of kids from rival schools had clashed outside a fried chicken takeaway on the Holloway Road, leaving a fifteen-year-old in intensive care with life-threatening injuries. Most of her day-shift colleagues were still there, trying to collate the numerous witness statements and trawl through the CCTV tapes, and she was immediately roped in to help, only just finding the time to arrange a courier to get the USB stick containing the camera footage from Jenny's apartment over to Matt Turner at the FSS. She'd spoken to him earlier for the first time since visiting him in hospital over a year earlier, and though he really didn't owe her any favours, he'd told her he'd look at it straight away.

  It was almost three hours before the place emptied and Tina was left on her own with a pile of paperwork, finally able to collect her thoughts. It had been a pretty awful day. To be reminded of the existence of Paul Wise and the fact that he was free and living it up in the Med after what he'd done to the man she'd once loved was bad enough, but she'd never have been reminded of it if it hadn't been for Rob Fallon. Not only had he sent her on a wild goose chase, wasting her time, but just to put the icing on the cake he'd also ruined her day's sleep. When she picked up his drunken voice-mail message she'd come close to throwing her phone against the nearest wall, such was her frustration. As if drinking heavily lately was some kind of excuse. Tina drank too heavily on occasion too, and had done so ever since Wise had had her lover murdered, but she made sure she kept it under control. She would never allow herself to get to the stage where she blurred fantasy with reality.

  She'd had a drink that night, something she never normally did before shifts. A large glass of red before she left her flat, gulped down, and two cigarettes in succession. It was a stupid move, and she'd cleaned her teeth twice to cover any smell. Another thing to blame that prick Fallon for. She felt like charging him with wasting police time but, to be honest, it wasn't worth the paperwork.

  'No point crying over spilt milk, girl,' she said aloud, lighting a cigarette at her desk, against all the rules. She took a long drag and put her feet up on the pile of statements next to her PC, feeling rebellious. That lazy sod Hunsdon was still off sick, meaning once again she was all alone. It was, she thought bleakly, the story of her life.

  Her phone rang. If it was Fallon again she decided she'd give him a real earful, but it wasn't. It was Matt Turner.

  'Christ, you're working late,' Tina said, blowing a line of smoke towards the ceiling.

  'How about you? Anything happening on the old night shift?'

  'The usual. Murder, robbery and mayhem. Don't tell me you've managed to have a look at that stick already.'

  'I certainly have.'

  'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to waste your time. The whole thing was a hoax. I should have told you earlier.'

  'Really? That's odd.'

  'Why?'

  'Because the footage you gave me has been tampered with.'

  Tina removed her feet from the desk and sat up in her seat, frowning. 'Are you sure?'

  'Course I'm sure. It wasn't even a very good job. It was just spliced and thirty seconds were taken out. I managed to retrieve it as well.'

  'And what did it show?'

  'A man and a woman coming up to the front door.'

  'Describe them.'

  'The man was an IC1, early thirties, with dark curly hair. She was late twenties, blonde, and very attractive if I may say so.'

  Rob Fallon and Jenny Brakspear. So something had happened. Tina felt a stab of excitement. 'Thanks, Matt,' she said. 'You've been a great help.'

  'So, it wasn't a hoax?'

  'I don't know yet. I'll keep you posted.' She rang off and stubbed out her cigarette, wide awake suddenly.

  Straight away, she did what Mike Bolt had suggested when she'd talked to him earlier that afternoon. She logged on to the PNC database and fed in the details of the man most likely to have doctored the CCTV footage.

  Forty-seven-year-old John Lionel Gentleman, the doorman at Jenny's apartment building, had eight separate convictions, mainly theft-related, and stretching back twenty years. Definitely the kind of man who could be bought.

  The question that was really interesting Tina now was, if Gentleman was bought, who had done the buying?

  Sixteen

  I wasn't sure how long I was unconscious for. It could have been a few minutes, more likely it was an hour or two. It was impossible to tell because when I did finally open my eyes and clamber slowly to my knees, I was still quite drunk. My head felt like lead, and when I touched my forehead there was a big painful lump there. I looked round, waiting patiently while the room came into focus. There was no sign of Ramon. Nor any sign that he'd even been there.

  I got to my feet and staggered into the bathroom and over to the toilet, experiencing a wave of nausea. I fell to my knees and threw the whisky up into the bowl in violent spasms, staying in that position for a long time, head bowed, taking deep, painful breaths.

  Finally, I staggered back into the bedroom, trying hard not to picture Ramon sitting there lifeless, and lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, knowing that I was incredibly lucky to be alive. Twice now I'd come within a hair's breadth of death, and twice I'd been given another chance to carry on. I knew that I should simply accept that this was a battle I'd lost and do what that callous saucer-eyed bastard had told me to do, because it was clear that he wouldn't hesitate to kill me if it came to it, not to mention my family.

  I'm the type of person who avoids confrontation. I've always preferred the quiet life. Maybe that's why I gave up the frenetic pace of the City and tried my luck as a writer. But I also have a strong sense of justice. I know that it's essential that people do the right thing, because if we neglect that basic tenet, then society collapses. Some people say that in the UK we've started doing it already: crossing the street to avoid the kids hanging around outside the shop, refusing to intervene to stop rowdy behaviour. I've done it myself. I once saw a school kid about twelve years old being mugged by a group of older kids. They were making him empty out his pockets and one of them looked like he had a knife. The kid seemed terrified. He looked over towards me, trying to get my attention, but I turned away and kept walking. I did phone the police, but only once I'd got round the corner where the muggers couldn't see me.

  I'd hated myself for that. Truly hated myself. I remember Yvonne asking me if anything was wrong that evening, and I was too ashamed to tell her about what had happened, because I knew that however much she might understand my actions, she'd be ashamed of me too. And if I did nothing now, I knew I would never be able to live with the guilt. It was as simple as that.

  For some reason, Jenny Brakspear had been snatched as part of a conspiracy (and whatever Tina Boyd had claimed, it was a conspiracy) involving a total of three people, the kidnappers and the doorman – four, if Jenny's father was in on it too. And if they'd gone to that much trouble to take her, and to cover up their crime, then there was a very important reason behind their actions. Which meant that, unlike Ramon, there was a possibility Jenny was still alive.

  Things were different now, though. The people who'd snatched Jenny had shown me how
utterly brutal they were. And how well organized. They'd found me with no trouble at all, and they knew that I'd talked to the police, which meant that if I continued on the path I'd chosen I was going to have to be a lot more careful in my approach. I also needed to make sure that no one else close to me got hurt. Yvonne and Chloe were OK for the next two weeks at least because they were away in Sweden, but Dom might not be.

  I drank a glass of water, then called him on the mobile. I had to make sure he was safe, and the only way I could do that was if I stopped him worrying about Jenny.

  He was out at dinner with clients, but excused himself so he could take the call. Taking a deep breath, I told him that I'd been drinking very heavily the previous night, that I'd been on medication for depression, and that my imagination had ended up playing tricks on me because I'd heard from Jenny this evening and she was fine.

  At first, Dom was furious with me, not only for causing him a night of needless worry but also for getting drunk when I was on prescribed drugs. Eventually, though, he became more sympathetic, asking me how long I'd been depressed for and whether I was getting counselling. Keen to get him off the phone, I answered his questions as best I could, and he told me that we'd get together when he got back and try to sort out my problems. 'You've got to put the past behind you, Rob. Yvonne's gone. Think of the future and don't piss your life away.' I promised him I wouldn't and he signed off by saying that unless I pulled myself together I'd end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Utterly unaware how close that had already come to being a reality.

  But at least he'd bought the story.

  Now that I'd got rid of the only person who'd actually believed me, I was effectively on my own, and as I was an investment analyst turned writer, not a detective, this meant I needed some expert help.

  I was still thinking what I was going to do about this when the landline started ringing. I sat up suddenly and my vision blacked out temporarily, taking several seconds to return. Still feeling pretty awful, I looked at my watch for the first time since Ramon had been killed, surprised to see that it was almost half past midnight. I reached for the receiver.