Death Trap

by Mitchell, Dreda Say

  Nikki quickly punched in a number. On the fourth ring the line connected.

  ‘It’s Nicola . . .’

  9:07 p.m.

  A full hour after making her call Rio’s cell opened. The same officer who had appeared at the window stood in the doorway. His expression was even more surly than before. She was so tempted to give him a dressing down, infused with every regulation she remembered about how the police should interact with the public – including those housed within the four walls of a cell. So tempted . . .

  ‘I take it I’m free to go.’

  ‘Collect your stuff from the duty sergeant at the main desk.’

  Minutes later, once she’d signed the necessary paperwork and collected her things from the desk sergeant, she allowed herself to turn to the man who had managed to get her out of there.

  Stephen Foster.

  He waited until they were outside before turning to her and saying, ‘Never thought I’d see the day when you’d be calling on me for help.’

  But Rio didn’t have time to talk, only time to check her mobile. Her finger tapped the screen.

  Password.

  Activate screen.

  No ‘safe’ text from Calum.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ the lawyer asked, but she ignored him.

  Rio double-checked the phone. The last ‘safe’ text was at 8:00 p.m. Nothing for 9:00 p.m. Calum never missed a check-in. Something was wrong. She called Calum. The phone rang and rang – six times – before connecting.

  Voicemail.

  Rio started running without thanking Stephen Foster.

  fifty-five

  10:03 p.m.

  When Rio found the security door downstairs leading to Calum’s office on the latch she knew that her gut instinct had been right – something was wrong. She didn’t pause, didn’t let herself think of the grisly scene that might be awaiting her upstairs if the professional killer had finally earned his blood money. Rio flicked the door further back with the tip of her shoe, swallowed a huge intake of air as she pushed inside. Her gaze swept the tunnel of darkness that was the staircase. Empty.

  She took the steps one at a time. A noise came from out of nowhere, behind her. She swung around, keeping her footing balanced. No one there. She realised what the sound was – two people talking, their voices fading into the distance outside. Her chest rippled with the uneven air she was pulling in. She twisted back around, treading on a step that had no business creaking at a time like this.

  Rio held back, waiting to see if there was any reaction from inside to the noise, but it remained eerily quiet. She held back again when she reached the top. Counted – One. Two. Three. – Shoved forwards ready to take on anything and everything that waited in the dark.

  But there was no one there, which didn’t mean that they weren’t concealed, ready to take her down. Cautiously she put one foot slowly in front of the other, towards the room where Nikki should be sleeping. The door was closed when she got there. Rio kicked the door and danced slightly to the side, but still with a view inside the room. No sounds. No one on the mattress. No Nikki.

  This was bad. Really bad.

  She got back into the corridor and picked up her pace as she reached Calum’s office. Rio found it hard to keep the emotions away this time knowing what she might find inside. Someone who she’d once counted as one of her closest friends . . . No, he was so much more to her than that, probably dead because she’d brought a crap load of trouble to his door. Rio ditched the overwhelming feelings as she thrust the door back. Her heart hammered when she saw Calum tied to his chair lying on its side on the floor. She rushed over to him. His mouth was covered with metallic tape.

  He wasn’t moving.

  Please God let him be alive.

  She felt for the pulse in Calum’s neck, sighed with relief when it beat against the pad of her finger. She pulled the tape from his mouth.

  She shook his shoulders gently. ‘Calum, wake up.’

  No movement. She shook him harder – still no response. She slapped his cheek. He moaned. She slapped the other side of his face. He let out a groggy sound.

  The volume in her voice grew. ‘Calum, you have to get up. Now. Nikki’s gone.’

  His head moved, his dark hair clouding around and over his face. She raised her hand again as one of his green eyes popped open. Her hand dropped. She moved around the chair and untied his hands.

  ‘Are you injured?’

  He lay on the ground, both eyes now fully opened. He groaned as he shook his head. ‘Don’t know . . . how they got . . .’ He sucked in much needed oxygen between words.

  ‘What do you mean they?’

  ‘I know you’ve been desperate to get me on my back, but can you help me up?’

  It took Rio less than a minute to right the chair and have him sitting in it. Once he was upright she saw the blood at the back of his head.

  ‘Have you got a towel or something—?’

  ‘Forget that, I’m OK. They must’ve disabled the security system. One of them coshed me on the back of the head—’

  ‘You keep saying they?’

  ‘There were two of them, dressed from head to toe in black, wearing hoodies and scarves over their faces.’

  Confusion pulled Rio’s features. ‘The hitman was working on his own as far as we know—’

  ‘That’s the usual MO, a lone pro who relies on no one but himself.’

  Rio covered her mouth as her mind turned this way and that. If this wasn’t the hitman . . . What the hell was going on here?

  ‘Check the top of the cabinet for a mobile phone,’ Calum said, as he gingerly rubbed his fingers into the blood on the back of his head.

  ‘Nothing here,’ she answered after she checked.

  ‘Bollocks.’ Calum cursed some more. ‘Earlier I found Nikki in the room as I was sleeping. She’d just found out about her boyfriend.’

  This was going from bad to worse.

  ‘She said she was walking around because she was upset and needed to think and like I fool I believed her cock-and-bull story, but I suspect she came in to swipe one of my phones. Check next door.’

  Less than a minute later Rio was back with the mobile. ‘I found it amongst the bedding.’ Rio punched it on and made a noise with disgust when it went straight to the home screen. ‘I thought you were meant to be one of the best security consultants in the business, so why isn’t this locked?’

  Slowly he stood up. ‘It’s one of my back-up phones, so I don’t use it very often.’

  But Rio wasn’t listening as she tapped the phone icon and checked out the recent calls history. The number she found made her breath catch in her throat.

  She gazed over at Calum. ‘This isn’t good if this is what I think it is.’

  ‘Who did she call?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on the way. We need to move now because there might not be much time.’

  11:05 p.m.

  There was no welcoming light on the porch of 20 Beacon House, Peckham, SE15 when Rio and Calum stood outside it this time.

  ‘Let me do all the talking,’ Rio instructed Calum.

  The hallway light came on after Rio pressed the bell. The slap of backless slippers sounded inside, moving towards the door. It didn’t open but Rio felt the eyes that observed her through the peephole.

  ‘Move away from my home,’ the voice inside commanded.

  ‘I can’t do that, Mrs Ibraheem. Nicola Bell is missing and I think that your son, Chiwetel, may have taken her. He was very angry when I saw him at the coroner’s, threatening to kill Nicola.’

  ‘My son would never do something like that—’

  ‘We both know that Chiwetel is involved in all types of rough trade.’

  The accusation pushed the other woman’s voice higher. ‘Go away and leave me alone to grieve for my boy.’

  ‘If you don’t open the door, how are you going to feel when your other son is back behind bars again? And believe me I’m going to make it my business to make
sure that happens if he touches one grain of hair on that girl’s head.’

  Silence. Then a thud as a bolt was pulled back. Finally the door opened. Ade’s mother looked drained, the flesh sagging on her face. She wore a green and white headscarf tied at the back and a caramel coloured dressing coat hugged her body.

  As Rio stepped inside she turned to Calum. ‘Wait for me here.’

  ‘But—’

  Rio quietly closed the door. The other woman stood her ground, not extending a welcome further into her home.

  ‘Nikki phoned here earlier.’

  Mrs Ibraheem’s teeth twisted into her bottom lip. Then, ‘I told her what I’m telling you; stay away, leave me alone. But she was so upset . . . The Quran says ‘‘Allah does not guide the wrongdoers’’, and it would have been wrong of me not to listen to her, so I listened, let her fill me with her words of love for my son.’ Her hand swept up one side of her headscarf. ‘But, Allah forgive me, I know that she is the cause of why I’m going to have to bury my Adeyemi.’

  ‘Did she tell you where she was?’

  ‘I never asked her to, she just told me. I repeated the address to her to make sure I had heard right. And Chiwetel was here—’

  ‘Where do you think he took her?’

  Tears formed in the bottom of her eyes and Rio felt an aching sympathy for her. ‘He’s not a bad boy. He just got so angry when his father left to stay in Nigeria. He felt abandoned . . . I did the best I could.’

  Rio remembered hearing similar words spoken by her own mother to her auntie when her father had left.

  ‘I swear if Nikki is unharmed we won’t bring any charges against your son.’

  The older woman breathed like a weight had been lifted from her head. ‘He part owns a nightclub, about ten minutes from here. It’s called The Delta Club. He works in the basement.’ She took a deep breath before adding, ‘I think the basement is soundproof.’

  fifty-six

  The Hit: Day 6

  Midnight

  ‘No way am I letting you go in there Lone Ranger style,’ Calum told Rio as she stopped the car’s engine on the neighbouring road where the club was located.

  The Delta Club was situated on the border with Peckham and Nunhead, not that far from Nunhead’s Victorian cemetery.

  Rio turned to him. ‘You’re in no fit state if things kick off. And I’m still pissed that you wouldn’t go to the hospital.’

  ‘It isn’t happening, Rio. You go in, I go in.’

  Rio didn’t have time to fight what she knew was a losing battle. ‘We can go through the front, but might not be allowed in by the bouncers. The last thing we need is to alert anyone that we’re here.’

  Calum pulled out his mobile. ‘Let’s see if there are any photos of the interior online which might give us a head start on the layout.’

  He got the Internet running, put in a search for images of the club. Nothing came back. He looked at Rio. ‘No images, which means there’s a strict rule about taking snaps inside. That’s not good; the only places that do that have got something to hide.’ He put his phone away as he carried on speaking. ‘Let’s hope there’s some way we can get in around the side or back.’

  They hit the cooling night and turned into the street where the club was. Calum grabbed Rio’s hand. She tried to pull out of his hold.

  ‘What the effing hell are you doing?’

  He tightened his hand. ‘Let’s appear to be a loving couple.’ Their eyes caught and held. Rio was the first to turn away. ‘That way we’ll look like two people minding our own business.’

  The club didn’t have a neon sign or any other sign, just a group of young people standing outside, smoking and talking. Despite being a two-storey building, it appeared squat: oblong a better description for its shape than the more elegant rectangle. Painted a bland cream, it had two single lights at the front and a blue main door. Two, tall silhouettes stood in position beside the door. But their luck was in; one half of the building was detached.

  ‘The place is probably covered by security cams,’ Calum whispered as they walked past, ‘although sometimes they are just a show of muscle and either no one is keeping an eye on them or they’re not even on. Whatever the situation, we need to be quick.’

  They played the hand-in-hand lovers routine until they got just past the alleyway at the side of the club. As Rio took another step she almost lost her balance when Calum jerked her close to his body and rushed into the narrow passageway. He wrapped his hand over her mouth and yanked her close to his chest as he backed into a wall.

  ‘Quiet.’ His voice was low, intense, blowing into her ear.

  His hand dropped away as Rio did what she knew Calum was doing – her gaze scouted up and around. The environment appeared like it was up for a fight – razor wire stretched across the wall perimeter, brickwork that was broken, scarred and stubborn enough to take more abuse, and a ground that was dirty and hard. The one thing she couldn’t see was . . .

  ‘No cams,’ Calum uttered the words in her head. ‘Maybe this place isn’t as rough and ready as we thought. Let’s find the back door.’

  They found it a few metres down, near a stack of bulging black bags. It was a thick block of rusting steel.

  ‘How are we going to get past this?’ Rio asked.

  ‘Well if there aren’t any cameras, maybe . . .’ Calum didn’t finish the sentence as his hand shot out towards the rusty, metal bar running along the width of the door. He pressed the bar down. Shoved. Click, the door groaned open.

  Rio was the first to step inside. A long corridor with age-old white walls and boxes clumped together at one end. The muffled boom-bass of music playing somewhere on a dance floor vibrated against the walls.

  ‘You go that way and I’ll go down here.’ She pointed to the opposite side of the corridor. ‘Check out any doors that may lead to a way downstairs,’ Rio said, taking charge.

  Rio went left, bypassing a greasy-looking stain on the grey lino floor. She stopped when she came to a door – listened – nothing. She pulled it slowly open and peered inside what looked like a large kitchen. It was clean, tidy but with no evidence of any hidden stairwells. Rio carried on until she reached another door; this one pulled back slightly from its frame. She tucked it back – a cupboard filled with cleaning equipment.

  ‘Think I’ve found it,’ Calum called.

  He was near the end of the corridor on his side standing near another opened door. Rio joined him and peered inside to find a set of wooden stairs leading downwards. A single bulb mounted on the side of the wall lit the way. Calum reached inside his jacket, but Rio snapped her hand around his wrist.

  ‘No hard metal. We need to play this one out carefully. This guy is full of grief, so I think I might be able to talk him down.’

  Calum shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re the boss lady for now, but if things get dicey in there we may have to do this another way.’

  Rio didn’t bother to challenge his words; if Nikki was in a bad way they wouldn’t have a choice. She took the lead as they went downstairs. The air was dank and dusty with a smell that told of a sewer nearby. As they got closer to the basement level there was the echo of sounds. At first, Rio couldn’t grasp what she was hearing, but as she got closer she realised that it was voices. It was hard to make out what was being said. But at any rate, Chiwetel’s mother had been wrong; the basement wasn’t soundproof.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and immediately saw the black door up ahead. Now the voices were clearer and what Rio heard sent a chill through her.

  ‘Don’t play the fool, little girl.’

  ‘I said don’t touch me. Don’t come near me.’

  Both Rio and Calum belted towards the door at the same time. Calum got there first and bashed it open with an almighty shoulder. Rio froze on the threshold. Inside were Chiwetel Ibraheem and another young man. But that’s not what made her stop. It was a long time since she’d been shaken by in-your-face-shock, but she was now at what she saw.<
br />
  Nikki stood in the middle of the room, illuminated directly under the powerful light of the naked bulb above. One of her hands, still wearing lime-green fingerless gloves, held a knife pressed against her throat.

  No one spoke. No one moved. They were the only inhabitants of a subterranean world with its own rules; well, that’s how it felt to Rio. In this investigation she’d faced situations that she was well used to dealing with – murder gruesomely strewn in a domestic setting; being attacked with fists and weapons; a man hanging above drug paraphernalia that had only added more torture to his already tormented life . . . But a sixteen-year-old girl holding a knife to her own throat? Rio wasn’t sure she knew how to deal with that. The one person she had never thought how to protect Nikki from was herself.

  ‘She’s off her head,’ Chiwetel said, his voice breathless and frantic. ‘I only brought her here to talk to her. Just wanted to find out why Ade—?’

  Rio snapped into action. ‘Shut up.’ She didn’t look at him, keeping her gaze pinned to the girl taking centre stage. ‘Nikki you’re worrying me. Please put the knife down.’

  Nikki shifted slightly. The stark light above enhanced her paleness. The haunted and hurt emotions in her grey eyes. What worried Rio the most was that there were no tears in Nikki’s eyes. The girl’s voice was small when she finally spoke. ‘Everyone I know just keeps dying around me, so I thought if I wasn’t here anymore it would all stop.’

  Rio dared to take another step. ‘A few years back someone attacked me. They tied me to a bed and slit my wrists.’ She held up a forearm, twisting it to show one of the scars. ‘It was bloody and hurt so much the pain was ringing throughout my body. But worse than the physical pain was the agony of one of my team being murdered. He was young and I was meant to be looking after him and he died on my watch. I was eaten up with guilt – thought it was all my fault. But I started to realise that putting the blame squarely on me wasn’t going to bring my friend back. And if you do something stupid now the only thing you’re going to do is make more people feel guilty. How’s Ophelia going to feel when she finds out?’