Coffin Dodgers

by Gary Marshall

  There are two possible locations for the bug: under the table on the sun deck, or just above the glass doors that separate the deck from the boat's dining area.

  "It's swings and roundabouts," Dave says. "Table's less likely to be spotted, but it's further away from the doors -- so if they go inside, the audio's going to be very quiet. We'll get a lot of ambient noise too. It's not the end of the world, but it's going to be a hassle cleaning it up." He points towards the sliding doors. "Up there is a bit more exposed, but you'll get better sound whether they're inside or out. I think that's the best place."

  "Go for it," I say. "Need a hand?"

  "No, it's magnetic." There's a small thud. "That's it."

  "Is it on?"

  "Yep."

  "It doesn't have any power lights or anything like that, does it?"

  "Nope. Bugs tend to be a bit more discreet than that."

  "Cool." I survey the marina again. No sign of any activity. "You should really try one of these chairs, you know. See how the other half lives. They probably cost more than our apartments."

  Dave sinks into the chair next to me and lets out a low groan. "My buttocks," he says, "are in Heaven."

  We slouch for a few minutes, imagining that we're billionaires.

  "I've got a good feeling about this," I tell Dave.

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. I think we're right. They're going to meet here tomorrow night, and when they do we'll get a recording of it."

  "What if they talk in code, or something?"

  "I don't think they will. They're meeting here because nobody can listen in." I wave at the other boats. "Even somebody in the next boat won't be able to hear them. So I think they'll just talk. And that means we can nail the bastards."

  "Think the police will do something if we get them the audio?"

  "I hope so. If not, we could go to the papers or something."

  Something metallic clicks next to my right ear.

  "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you," a voice says.

  Dave and I are sitting on stiff-backed dining chairs in the Zen Arcade's dining room. Two men in suits are watching us, pistols in their hands. One of them is the tough guy I saw at the drive-through. Floyd. The other one looks like somebody's crammed a mountain into some clothes. He's got the V-shaped body of a body builder, a face pockmarked like the moon and an expression that suggests he'd like nothing better than to rip our arms off.

  Adam Everett is sitting at the head of the table. He's in the same kind of clothes I saw him in before, a dark blue T-shirt with blue Levi's and white running shoes. His hair seems more white than grey, and from this distance he looks tired rather than slim: there are dark circles under his eyes, his face is sallow and his cheekbones are visible, stretching his lightly tanned skin.

  "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost," he says. "Are you familiar with that saying?"

  Dave and I shake our heads.

  "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. And so on," he says. "It's about details, thinking about every angle, checking everything and then checking again. Which, of course, is something you didn't do."

  He smiles like a shark. "I'm sure you're kicking yourselves."

  We are, but we don't say anything.

  "Nobody cares about details any more," Everett says. I get the distinct impression that this is a pet subject of his. "Everyone's in too much of a hurry. Things get missed. Corners get cut. And what happens then?" He spreads his hands wide to indicate Dave and I. "Things fall apart."

  Everett gets up from the table and paces around the dining area. "If I were you I'd have checked the car park. Did you?"

  I shake my head.

  Everett makes the sort of face my dad used to make when I came home drunk and underage. "Of course you didn't. If you had, you wouldn't be here. You probably didn't even find out what kind of car I have." He can see the answer in our faces. "Details," he sighs.

  Everett walks to the window and stares out of it for a long minute. We have enough sense to stay quiet.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong," he says, still staring out of the window. "You've somehow discovered that there's going to be a meeting tomorrow night, and you've decided to use a bug to listen to that meeting. Am I right so far?"

  He turns to us and we nod.

  "Presumably you've had a bug in Robert Hannah's office for some time."

  We nod again.

  "Same bug? Different one?"

  We consider staying silent, but the man-mountain takes a step towards us.

  "Same one," I say.

  Everett nods. "I'll take a look at it in a minute," he says. "So you've been listening to Hannah. Learn anything interesting?"

  The man-mountain looks as if he's planning to eat us. I'm beginning to realise that Everett isn't going to offer us a lift home.

  "We know what you're doing," I say.

  "Do you, now?" The shark smile again. "And what's that?"

  "You're making money from murder."

  Everett throws back his head and laughs. "Money? Do you really think I need money? I bought this boat for pocket change." He laughs again. "Money!"

  "Why else would you be doing it?"

  "Is this the bit where I tell you everything, you overpower my associates and bring me to justice?" Everett smirks. "Good luck with that." Floyd and the giant laugh obsequiously.

  "So, tell me. What were you planning to do with the results of your bug?"

  "Take it to the police, and the press."

  "Really? That's very interesting. You do know that the chief of detectives has, shall we say, availed himself of our help? You didn't? Oh, that's a shame. I do hate to be the bearer of bad news." Everett leans back. "Still, there's always the newspaper. I don't suppose you bothered to check who owns it, did you?"

  "No."

  Everett turns to his henchmen. "See? Nobody cares about the details any more." He turns his attention back to us. "It's not really your day, is it?"

  We don't answer.

  Everett stares at me for a long time.

  "What's your name?"

  "Matt."

  "And your last name?"

  "Johnson."

  "Matt Johnson. Where do I know that from?" He turns towards Floyd. "Was he --"

  "The one Otto messed up," Floyd says.

  "Ah, of course," Everett says. "Nothing personal, Matt. It's just business."

  "You tried to kill me!"

  "I wouldn't put it quite like that."

  "How would you put it?"

  "Let me tell you a story," he says.

  I give him a look that could burn through steel, but Everett doesn't even notice.

  "A few years ago, I realised that I had more money than I could ever possibly spend," he says. "So I decided to do something with it. I paid for new equipment in hospitals. I bankrolled charities. I invested in businesses that needed a helping hand, and bailed out businesses that were trying to survive. That money has helped thousands of people. Thousands. And then I found out that I needed some help myself."

  Everett's eyes are locked on mine. "It turns out that I was born with a heart defect, a ticking time bomb in my chest. Best case scenario? A few months. Worst? Weeks. They put me on the transplant list, but they weren't hopeful. Do you know how many heart transplants Mercy does in a year? Twelve. In the whole country? Two thousand. People on the waiting list? Four thousand, five thousand. Most of them die on the waiting list. Too many old people. Not enough donors. Money can do almost anything, but it can't make donors magically appear."

  Everett continues. "At the time, I played a lot of poker. I'm not very good at it, but that doesn't matter. I can afford to lose. Anyway, one night I was playing with some people, and afterwards we talked about this and that. I'd been to see my specialist again that day, and he gave me the same answer as always: cross your fingers and hope something comes up. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, and I ended up getting very drunk with Robert Hannah. And between the
two of us, we came up with an idea. At first I thought it was crazy, but the more I considered it the more I realised that it made perfect sense."

  "You decided to kill people."

  "Not at all. We just decided to give Mother Nature a helping hand. Young people do dangerous things. They drive too fast. They take drugs. They drink too much. They take unnecessary risks. They pollute their bodies with junk food and alcohol. They've been given the gift of life, and all they do is try to destroy it. They're killing themselves anyway. All we're doing is ensuring the right ones do it at the right time."

  "You're crazy."

  "Really? What if you could travel back in time and kill Adolf Hitler? With one bullet, you could save millions of lives. Tens of millions. Would that be worth it?"

  Everett doesn't wait for an answer. "Every day, we lose people the world simply can't afford to lose. Climate engineers. Cancer researchers. Genetic engineers working on dementia, and Parkinson's, and on ways to feed the hungry. All those skills, all that talent, all that potential, gone forever. What a waste. We can do something about it."

  "And make a lot of money in the process."

  "It's not about money," Everett spits. "It's about seeing the bigger picture. Look at you. What have you achieved? What are you likely to achieve? Nothing. If you die, your friends are sad and the world keeps spinning. But if someone dies on the brink of a scientific breakthrough, that's a tragedy. Their work could save thousands, maybe millions of lives. Instead of wasting your life, you could play a part in making that happen."

  "You can call it what you want. It's still murder."

  "It's a noble sacrifice. They're dying so that millions more may live."

  Dave finds his voice. "You're a loonball, mate."

  Everett's face looks like thunder. I think it's a good idea to distract him. "If it's not about money, does that mean you do this for free?" I ask.

  "Of course not. There are certain --" Everett glances at Floyd -- "expenses."

  "And if the person can't cover the expenses?"

  "Then we can't help them."

  "I thought it was about saving lives? That doesn't sound very noble to me."

  Everett's face is flushed. "You're all the same. Too stupid to see what's staring you right in the face." He turns to Floyd. "Go and get the bug."

  The man-mountain covers us with his gun while Floyd opens the doors and retrieves the bug. He doesn't say a word, but his face makes it clear that he'd just love us to try and escape. Floyd returns with the bug and hands it to Everett, who throws it on the floor and grinds it to pieces under the heel of his shoe.

  "This has taken up enough of my time," he says, nodding to Floyd. "Go."

  He shakes his head as Floyd and the other guy march us onto the deck. I notice that they're both wearing gloves.

  We walk down the steps to the lower deck. "I'll make this nice and simple for you," Floyd says. "You walk to the gate, and we'll walk behind you. When you get to the gate, you stop. If you do anything at all, we'll shoot you. Understand?"

  We both nod.

  "Move."

  Dave and I step onto the pontoon and start walking, Floyd and the man-mountain at our heels. We don't try to make a run for it. There's nowhere for us to go.

  As instructed, we get to the gate and stop. "When I open this, you're going to walk into the car park until you reach that van." Floyd points at a nondescript white panel van. He swipes his card and the lock beeps. "Go."

  We walk to the van, passing the Dentmobile on the way. I know Amy sees us, but she pretends to be checking her make-up in the car's vanity mirror. We keep walking.

  When we get to the van, Floyd opens the back doors. "In." We get in. The back of the van is empty other than a tatty old carpet and a pair of work boots. There's nothing we could use as a weapon, or to help us escape.

  "Phones," Floyd says, his hand outstretched. We hand over our mobiles. He gives them a quick glance and then slams the doors shut. Floyd and his partner climb into the front and start the engine, Floyd throwing our phones at his feet. A solid-looking metal grille separates the cabin from the rest of the van.

  "Lie down on the floor. No noise, no movement, no nothing," Floyd says. "Okay?"

  Dave and I do as we're told. The van lurches backwards out of the parking space and the man-mountain changes gear with a crunch. The van jerks forward and we hear the thunk of the central locking engaging.

  As the van picks up speed, Dave and I look at one another. We both know what the other one's thinking: we're completely and utterly screwed. Wherever Floyd is taking us, it isn't for ice cream.

  I'm beginning to wonder whether Floyd's plan is to let the van bash us to death. The metal floor wouldn't be comfortable if the van were stationary, but on the move it's an instrument of torture. Every lump and bump in the road smashes us into the floor, and when the van hits a pothole -- which it appears to do far too often -- it's like being punched by a heavyweight boxer.

  We've been driving for about fifteen minutes, and I can tell we're heading away from the town: if we were in a built-up area we'd be stopping for traffic lights and crossings, but the van hasn't slowed down once since we set off. It's pretty obvious that wherever we're going, nobody's going to find us in a hurry.

  So much for my good feeling.

  Two things happen at once. There's a loud noise from the side of the van, and we're thrown into the wall as the vehicle slews across the road. The giant wrestles with the wheel, bouncing us off the walls, and eventually brings the van to a halt. When he jumps out, the whole van rocks on its springs.

  He's back in less than a minute. "Tyre," he says to Floyd.

  Floyd sighs, then turns to look at us. "If either of you makes the slightest noise, I'm going to shoot you both right here," he says. We nod and he gets out of the van.

  Floyd and the other guy rattle around under the van until they find a jack and remove the spare wheel, and they lift the van in a symphony of metallic clinks and expletives. I catch Dave's eye and whisper. "I think they're going to kill us."

  Dave looks as scared as I feel.

  The van shakes as the wheel comes off, and there's a thump as Floyd or the other guy drops it onto the ground. Then we hear another sound: tyres on gravel. Someone's pulled up. We lie utterly still and silent, listening to the sound of footsteps crunching towards the van.

  "Having trouble, gentlemen?" says a voice.

  "Flat tyre." It's Floyd.

  "Got everything you need?"

  "Yes, officer. Thanks."

  I look at Dave. He's thinking what I'm thinking. Police! We could make some noise and get his attention.

  "Okay. Have a nice day now."

  "Thanks."

  The police officer's footsteps start to recede. There's a blast of static and a voice speaking quickly, but it's too far away. And then the footsteps grow louder.

  "I think I'm going to need to see some ID," the policeman says.

  There's a pause, and then the sound of gunshots. Lots of gunshots. It sounds like they're coming from all around us.

  Two holes appear in the wall of the van, just above us. We press ourselves against the floor, trying to make ourselves as small as possible.

  The shooting stops as quickly as it starts. At first, everything's quiet. Then we hear the sound of footsteps heading away from the van. They get quieter and quieter, then there's the roar of an engine and the sound of tyres spinning on stones.

  And then, nothing.

  Dave and I wait for another sound, but nothing comes. Very slowly, we get to our feet. Nobody shoots us. We step slowly to the front of the van and peer out of the windscreen. A bullet has left a spider's web of cracks in the passenger side corner, but we can still see out of it. Not that there's anything to see. The van appears to be in a lay-by of some kind, but all we can see from the windscreen and the side windows is dust and dirt.

  We step to the back of the van and try the door. It's still locked. We try kicking at the doors, but while the metal sk
in buckles the frames don't budge. We're not getting out that way.

  We go back to the grille and look for ways of taking it down: butterfly screws, or clips, or something like that. Nothing. The grille is welded in place. We try shaking it, and pushing it, and kicking at it, but nothing short of bolt cutters is going to get us through it.

  We slump against the van walls, Dave on one side and me on the other. "Is it me, or are things even worse than they were before?" Dave asks. I try to think of something reassuring, something positive, but the words don't come.

  To add insult to injury, Dave's phone starts to ring. After seven rings, it stops. The only sound is our breathing.

  It's getting dark. We're in the middle of nowhere, nobody knows where we are, we're locked in a van and we've got nothing to eat or drink. Other than that, everything's just brilliant. We try to keep our spirits up by arguing which one of us we should cook and eat first -- I say Dave, because there's not as much meat on me; he says me, because his fat reserves mean I'll starve long before him anyway -- but we keep coming back to our predicament. Dave's right, we're even more screwed than we were before.

  "So what do you think happened?"

  "I think the cop was suspicious about something, he came back, and they shot him."

  "So the car noise, that was them driving away?"

  "I think so, yeah."

  "Wouldn't they have shot us first? We know who they are."

  "Maybe they panicked. I don't know. Does it matter?"

  "Not really."

  We sit in silence and watch the world go black.

  Despite everything -- the fear, the cold, the unyielding metal floor -- we eventually fall asleep. It's not a good sleep, and unfamiliar animal noises keep waking us up, but by the early hours of the morning we're so tired that even Dave's snoring doesn't wake me up for long.

  It's still night when I wake up in a panic. Something's tearing at the doors of the van. Bright lights stream through the windows, and I can hear engines. Lots of engines.

  The back doors scream and buckle, and something tears them from their hinges. Somebody's pointing a gun at me, and someone else is shining a high-powered torch in my eyes.