Slow Burn (2010)

by Conrad Jones

  The message instructed him to head for `The Dream`. He indicated left and pulled off the motorway. In the distance, he could see a huge black mound silhouetted against the yellow glow of streetlight pollution. The lights of the industrial town of St. Helens illuminated the night sky; the black mound, which blotted them out for miles, was the slagheap of a long defunct coalmine. When the mines closed, the council spent fortunes planting grasses and trees. They built footpaths and tried to make them more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The site of Sutton Manor colliery had been transformed into acres of parkland, crisscrossed by wide footpaths, all leading to a huge sculpture, called `The Dream`. The Dream is a white, twenty metres high sculpture of a woman`s head. A huge bust situated on top of the old mine. It can be seen from miles around, and it`s sited next to the M62 motorway, where it is seen by over a million drivers every year. It had become a landmark.

  Ashwan had seen it a thousand times in the daylight, towering above the tree line. At night it looked eerie, the huge white face seemed to hang in mid air, like a giant ghost. He looked in his rear view mirror, trying to make out if his men were close behind. There were three sets of headlights, but he had no way of knowing if they were his backup or other motorists heading for the nearby town, and the sprawling housing estates that surround it. He forwarded the text message to Malik`s phone, as he pulled into a car park which serviced the site. The car park was unlit, and deserted. The mobile beeped again.

  GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW AND TAKE THE RIGHT HAND PATH TO THE TOP. IF YOU TOUCH THE KEYPAD ONCE MORE MAMOOD DIES

  “Shit,” he muttered. They were watching, and they knew that he had forwarded the message, or were they bluffing, and assuming that he would be sending the directions to his backup? Whatever, he couldn’t take the risk. Ashwan put the phone on the dashboard, opened the door and climbed out. He flicked the driver`s seat forward and grabbed the case of money. A car drove by slowly on the main road but Ashwan didn’t wait to see who was driving. There was no way any of his men could enter the car park without being spotted. It was too dark and secluded. Ash thought it was ideal; good planning by the men that held his son. He grabbed the phone, slammed the door closed and ran toward the path. A metal sheep gate gave access from the car park and it clanged loudly in the darkness as he stumbled through it in the driving rain. He looked up at the giant head. It loomed out of the darkness, at least a half mile away up a steep path, which wound its way through bushes and trees to the top. The path disappeared in the inky blackness just yards from the entrance where the streetlights could not penetrate. Ash looked behind him briefly, before sprinting into the night; his only thought was to get Mamood back home safely.

  David Bernstein watched Ashwan Pindar running up the path toward the statue. His progress was slow, hampered by the dark and the rain. He appeared as a green human shaped blob through his night-sights. David had used such surveillance equipment many times before in the Holy city, Jerusalem, watching for suicide bombers crossing the Jewish borders. He had chosen `The Dream` as the ideal site to separate Ashwan from his men. There was no doubt that heavily armed men were following him. Taking them out of the equation was vital, if they were to take Malik Shah`s money and drugs from him, and remain unscathed and anonymous. This was only the beginning. The statue was sited in an elevated position, with panoramic views of every direction. If Aswan had backup, he could see them coming a mile away. The only access from the road network was from the west, where Ashwan had parked. A six-lane motorway protects the south entrance to the park. The north and west approaches were open farmland, which stretched for miles, with no vehicle access. He waited until Ashwan was half way up the hill, and then he called Nick on a closed coms unit.

  “He`s on the way, no sign of any backup yet.” The coms unit clicked twice, a sign that the message was understood.

  He scanned the path again. Ash was five minutes from the statue when David heard tyres screeching He turned west to face the car park. A BMW stopped opposite the entrance, closely followed by a black Range Rover. Both vehicles were full of men. A third vehicle double-parked next to them, and the sound of raised voices drifted through the night to him. He couldn’t hear what was being said, as the sound of motorway traffic drowned out the words. Articulated lorries roared by every few minutes. The lateness of the hour meant the traffic had thinned to a minimum. It was obvious that Malik Shah was debating whether to follow Ashwan Pindar into the park, risking ambush, or scaring the kidnappers away. The convoy was stationary for long minutes as the gangsters discussed their options.

  One of the men leaped from the Range Rover and ran into the car park, stooping low to lower the risk of being hit by a hidden gunman. He checked that the Porsche was empty and then ran onto the sheep-gate. A quick reconnaissance of the park beyond it told him all he needed to know. Their choice was not an easy one. The old colliery was miles wide, wooded and pitch black. There were three different pathways, which split and forked dozens of times as they crossed the parkland. Ashwan had entered the park alone, while Malik Shah and his cronies waited for a text message that never arrived. They`d lost sight of him and the money, and there was nothing that they could do about it.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  The Dream

  Ashwan Pindar was out of breath and soaked to the skin as he reached the summit of the old slagheap. The rain was pelting down, running in rivulets over his head and into his eyes. His cosmetic hair gel was dissolving into the rainwater and making his eyes sting. He stopped as he turned a bend on the path, and the giant white head towered above him in a clearing ahead. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but he couldn’t see anything unusual. The mobile phone beeped in his pocket. He took it out and covered it with his fingers to stop it getting wet. The message on the screen made his heart sink, and he screamed in frustration.

  “You fucking bastards!” The words carried across the old pit before being soaked up in the motorway noise.

  TAKE THE MIDDLE PATH DOWN THE HILL TOWARD THE EAST. OPPOSITE TO THE WAY YOU CAME. 1 MILE ON THERE IS A STILE LEADING INTO THE FARMLAND. CLIMB OVER IT. YOU HAVE 15 MINUTES. TOUCH THE PHONE PAD AND MAMOOD DIES.

  The thought of dragging the suitcase another mile was gut wrenching. He was exhausted, wet through and freezing cold. His breaths were coming in short gasps as he looked at his wristwatch. Ash knew that Mamood was in mortal danger because of his business dealings, especially because of his connections to Malik Shah, or so he thought. He looked at the giant face once more and then ran across the clearing toward the opposite path. He noticed a dark rectangular shape at the bottom of the statue. It stood out against the white head. Ash thought nothing of it as he pulled his coat tightly around him and set off down the hill.

  David Bernstein heard Ashwan cursing, and so did Malik Shah and his men. It carried down the hill on the wind. They stopped talking and looked up the hill toward the giant statue. David heard raised voices, and there was a flurry of activity. Someone was shouting orders and three men leapt from the BMW. Malik Shah was the driver, and he remained in the car, as did his passenger. The Range Rover and a Ford of some kind, wheel spinned into the car park. They screeched to a halt either side of Ashwan`s Porsche, and men poured out of the vehicles as they came to a halt. Malik Shah and his passenger drove away from the scene as the men split into three groups and started up the hill toward the statue. David Bernstein smiled to himself as he slipped into the undergrowth and climbed down the slope toward the motorway.

  Dipak Pindar sprinted ahead of the group. He was twenty-two years old, fit and ambitious. His family were originally from Pakistan, three generations before, and he wanted to be a permanent member of Malik Shah`s organisation. He was keen to impress at every opportunity he could. Dipak put his head down and ran as fast as he could. He wanted to be the first to arrive at the statue. His imagination was working overtime, and images of rescuing his cousin Ashwan Pindar, killing the kidnappers and recovering the ransom money were playing through his mind. Malik Shah would offer
him a fulltime position for sure. He covered the half mile in just over five minutes. The others were way behind him.

  Dipak turned the last corner and the tree line parted to reveal a wide oval clearing. At the centre, the twenty-metre high head dominated the area. The smooth white surface seemed to glow in the darkness, reflecting the lights from the distant passing traffic. He crouched as he reached the clearing and looked deep into the shadows of the trees that surrounded it. Nothing moved.

  “Ash,” he whispered. Rain trickled down his back.

  “Ashwan!” he called a bit louder. There was nothing moving.

  Dipak could hear the rest of the men nearing the clearing. He scanned the area again and his eyes were drawn to a dark oblong shape at the base of the statue. Whatever it was, it shouldn’t be there. It looked out of place. He darted from the cover of the trees and ran across the clearing to the base of the `Dream`. The colossal head dwarfed him as he neared it. As he reached the base, the rectangle took another shape; it looked like the suitcase that Ashwan had used to carry the money. The money hadn’t been picked up yet. Maybe the kidnappers got cold feet, or maybe Ash had struggled with them and frightened them away. The other option was that the kidnappers were still there, watching and waiting. He knelt next to the suitcase and tipped it onto its side, so that he could unzip it. If he could confirm with Malik Shah that he had recovered the money, then he`d be made a part of the team sooner than he had hoped for. As the suitcase tipped, a vial of mercury became horizontal, making a connection between an electronic charge, and a detonator. The case exploded. The blast ripped Dipak`s limbs from his torso, and his body was blown thirty yards away into the trees.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  MAMOOD

  Ashwan stumbled down the hill in the pouring rain. The wind was blowing toward him driving the rain into his face, and his clothes were soaked to the skin. He shivered against the cold, only the thought that his son was out here somewhere kept him going. The suitcase felt like a dead weight, the further he dragged it, the heavier it felt. Malik had fitted a tracker in the lining, so that they could follow the kidnappers after the handover. It was an obvious move, but Malik was insistent. He was beginning to think that he had missed the stile, when the shape of a dry stonewall appeared from the darkness. Ashwan followed it to the left as the slope ran that way, and fifty yards on, he found the stile. There was a wooden signpost pointing across the farmland, declaring it a public footpath. He felt like crying as he climbed over the stile, dragging the battered suitcase behind him. The field was freshly ploughed, and grassed around the perimeter. He could just about make out a narrow path of flattened grass, running toward the motorway, to the right. The phone beeped in his pocket.

  BENEATH THE STILE IS A HAVERSACK. TRANSFER THE MONEY AND DRUGS INTO IT. FOLLOW THE PATH TO THE RIGHT, THEN FOLLOW THE MOTORWAY UNTIL YOU REACH THE RAILWAY BRIDGE. TOUCH THE KEYPAD AND HE DIES. YOU HAVE TWENTY MINUTES.

  “Fuck! Fuck!,” Ashwan kicked the suitcase and stubbed his toes painfully in the process. He looked up the hill toward the statue, wishing that Malik and his men would come and help him. He thought about Mamood, and it spurred him on. There was a reason he was here, and that was to save his son`s life. He reached beneath the wooden stile and found a black plastic bin liner. Stuffed inside was the haversack. Ashwan unzipped the suitcase, grabbing bundles of used notes and stuffing them into the rucksack. Then he grabbed the cocaine from the holdall. Malik`s tracker would be rendered useless by the switch. The rain hammered down on his back all the time he worked at repacking the ransom. Within minutes, the money was transferred. He placed his arms through the straps and pushed them over his shoulders. The rucksack sat snugly against his shoulder blades, and it was almost a relief not to be dragging the suitcase behind him. He was about to set off when a blinding flash of light dazzled him. The sound wave hit him milliseconds after. He looked up at the hill, and the sound of men wailing in agony drifted through the night.

  “Fucking hell!” Ashwan whispered to himself. He stared at the giant head as he set off running toward the motorway. A half a mile ahead of him, a constant stream of traffic roared past in either direction. Ash could see a steep embankment leading up to the road, and he assumed that the footpath would run parallel to it. The noise became louder as he neared the motorway, but he was sure that he could hear sporadic bursts of automatic gunfire in the distance. Whatever had happened near the `Dream`, he was convinced that Malik and his men were not coming. He was alone. Whoever had Mamood was completely in charge of the situation, despite Malik`s superior firepower. They`d picked the perfect spot to separate the money from his escort. Ashwan could only guess that the explosion he had witnessed was a booby-trap, designed to deter anyone from following him further. The rain became a downpour as he set off across the farmland.

  Twenty minutes on Ash saw the field was angling down away from the motorway. To his right hand side the six lanes of traffic climbed away from the fields as they spanned a canal and a railway track. To his left were miles of agricultural land. He walked forward until he reached the perimeter fence, which marked the junction of the famer`s land, and the railway embankment that carved through it. Ash climbed between two strands of barbed wire, catching the rucksack as he stumbled through. He tripped and fell into the long wet grass, cursing the rain and the darkness. His breath was coming in deep bursts as he climbed up on his feet. The motorway was deafening above him, and he could see the dull train tracks below him, disappearing miles away into the darkness. The embankment opposite separated the railway and the canal. He couldn’t see the water, nor were there any narrow-boats moored nearby. The mobile vibrated in his pocket.

  CLIMB BENEATH THE BRIDGE. WAIT ON THE LEDGE NEXT TO THE CENTRE STANCHION. TOUCH THE PHONE AND HE DIES.

  “Fuck you!” Ash whispered. He peered into the night and looked at the embankment to his right. There was a steep concrete wall, supported by the stanchion that held up the arch. He headed along the embankment to the point where it met the bridge structure. From the distance, he could hear another noise, different to the engine noises on the motorway. Ash paid no heed to it as he looked for the ledge. He ducked low as he walked beneath the bridge, and escaping the rain was a relief. The darkness was different there, and his eyes struggled to adjust to it. Above him, a concrete beam spanned the railway, but it was smooth. There were no lips or ledges on it. Ash wondered if there was anyone lurking the blackness that engulfed him. Was his son nearby, tied up and gagged, cold and frightened? He moved deeper beneath the bridge as the traffic roared overhead. Progress was difficult as the huge concrete slab that he was edging along was set at such a steep angle. One wrong footstep and he would be tumbling toward the rails at high speed. He wasn’t convinced that he could climb back up the slab if he were to fall.

  Ashwan reached the centre of the bridge supports, and he could see a ledge about two feet wide. He stepped onto it where it met the embankment, and began to sidestep his way beneath the structure. His progress was steady, and he looked down. He was directly above the rail tracks. The distant engine noise was becoming louder by the minute. He looked to the east and he could see the lights of an approaching diesel tractor unit. The engine noise was booming, louder and louder as it neared. Ashwan couldn’t understand why the train carriages that it pulled were in darkness. He could see the train behind the engine, yet it was black. The train seemed to be moving in slow motion, sluggish and certainly in no rush to keep to a timetable. The mobile phone beeped and vibrated. He reached for it and looked at the screen.

  DROP THE BAG ONTO THE FIFTH CARRIAGE. TOUCH THE PHONE AND HE DIES

  “What about Mamood?” Ashwan shouted in the darkness. His voice was lost as the diesel locomotive trundled toward the bridge. As he stared at the train, he could see that the carriages were open and piled high with a black substance. “Coal? The train is full of coal.”

  Ash laughed nervously in the dark. His mind raced through his options at a million miles an hour. The engine roared
beneath him and his mouth and nostrils filled with fumes.

  “Where is my son?” he screamed into the night. The second wagon went by. If he dropped the money then it was irretrievable, and the kidnappers hadn`t told him where Mamood was. If he didn’t drop the money then his son would be killed, he had no doubt about that. The third wagon full of coal roared beneath him. He slipped the rucksack off, and lowered it toward the train. “Where is my son?” Ash shouted as he dropped the bag of money onto the fifth wagon. It disappeared from his sight in a second, and he was left alone in the darkness as the train rattled on into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  Lana Pindar

  Lana twisted her wedding band and turned off the flat screen television with its remote. The wind and rain hammered at the bedroom window. The howling wind intensified the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that she felt. Mamood was missing and Ashwan was out there trying to find him. The death of his business partners was still sinking in to her already befuddled mind. They had known each other since their school days, and stayed together through their adult lives, with Malik as the lynch pin. The police arrived at her front door looking for Ashwan yesterday morning. They had an arrest warrant, but they wouldn’t tell her why they wanted to talk to him. She told them he had gone away for a few days. She didn’t know why she lied, but she did. She knew that he was with Malik, that`s where he always was. Ashwan was the only hope she had of getting her son back alive, and he was no use to her in a police cell.