by David Mark
‘Billy? Job done, mate?’
I say nothing. Just listen to the unfamiliar voice.
‘Aye well, when you’re done we’ll need you on the ward. One of the donors is kicking off and the doc can’t get near him. I can’t get down there. Having a ball with our friends right now. If you pass the van, pick me up the secateurs, would you? Cheers, lad.’
He ends the call. I’m left looking at a locked screen. As I begin to put it back in my pocket my fingertip brushes the screen and a message flashes up, saying the print isn’t recognised. I realise, adrenaline surging through me, that it works on fingerprint recognition. Grimacing, hating the feel of the clammy skin, I manoeuvre Billy’s cold fingers and press each in turn to the screen. It flashes into life and I sit grinning madly to myself in the dark.
I should call 999 – I know that. Instead, I call home.
‘Ashcroft residence.’
I know the voice at once. The English detective. The impossibly beautiful, cold-eyed copper who had pressed the note into my hand.
‘This is Ronni!’ I gasp, the words shooting out in a breathless rush. ‘Are you at my house? Of course you are, sorry, sorry. Are they okay? Are the kids okay? I don’t know where I am! They’ve got Mr Roe, and I think they might have Callum and the woman he’s been seeing, and Mr Pope talked about an operation and giving himself another chance, and I just smashed two men to bits with a tin of paint…’
‘Calm down please,’ comes the reply, cool as ice. ‘Yes, the children are well. Yes, I’m at your home. Medical help is on the way for your friend. Now, tell me about Nicholas.’
‘Nicholas? Mr Roe? Yes, he was with me. Callum tasered him! I don’t know what’s happening.’
The line starts to crackle and cut out. I curse. Repeat myself. I want to shake it until she drops out of the receiver and starts being some bloody help.
‘You said the operation was going ahead? Was Nicholas in the vicinity when that was said? Or Kimmy?’
‘Why are you asking this? What’s happening?’
‘Mrs Ashcroft, it’s vitally important that you stay precisely where you are. Take whatever steps you need to remain out of sight and do not be tempted to try and find…’
I’m left staring at a dead phone as the signal drops out. I want to scream, but I swallow it down, and let myself think of the children. Safe. Safe at home, with a police officer. A police officer who knows more than she will tell me, and who tried to buy me off…
I need to get away from here. The knowledge is absolute. The door is open. There must be a way out, wherever the hell they’ve brought me. I recognise the scents of outdoors and know the nearness of home. There is no question of waiting here – waiting in the dark for whatever comes next.
I slip out into the corridor and close the door behind me. I know at once my suspicions were correct. I’m at the castle. At Glenborrodale. I’m in a long, cold corridor lit only by flickering bulbs, moving quickly across a threadbare carpet with a Seventies pattern: loud and ugly and torn to shreds in places where a convoy of equipment has been dragged across its surface.
I run without knowing where I’m going. Run in the only direction I can. Sprint down the corridor past open doors and closed doors and as lights flick to life above me.
All the while, I see my children. See them tied to gurneys. See them being opened up with sharp blades and leering men stuffing cash into their guts as they pull out their intestines like flags from a clown’s pocket.
I reach the top of a staircase. Scurry down the curving stairs, one hand slick on the bannister, feet thundering on the stairs. I catch a glimpse of the dawn: a shaft of sunlight spearing in from a gap in the curtains at the base of the stairs. I know I’ll throw myself through if I have to. Know I’ll do whatever it takes.
And then I hear him. Hear him screaming as if somebody were drilling into his bones.
Callum.
27
‘Warm enough, Mr Roe? Comfy? I can get you a blanket. Man in your condition should take care of himself…’
Roe is strapped to what he takes to be a full-size snooker table. He has been pinned out like Vitruvian man: like a rat ready for dissection. He cannot feel much beyond his knees and wrists so cannot tell whether he is being held in place by bonds or whether something has been driven through his wrists and ankles. He cannot see who speaks to him. The voice comes from somewhere towards the back of the room. It carries no trace of accent. No trace of emotion either.
Nicholas Roe is all too familiar with the different ways that people behave when they sense the nearness of death. Some scream. Others beg. A certain type will adopt a kind of posturing bravado: a refusal to give in to the crippling fear that courses through them. He has met a handful of psychopaths in his life and has always found himself begrudgingly impressed by the absence of fuss they make in times of suffering.
He knows himself to be among their number. He can hold out in the face of pain for a very long time. He endured every conceivable form of suffering when a captive of the criminal syndicate that took him to the place between life and death and who returned him there at their pleasure. He kept his fight for a long time. Never let them think they had destroyed him. He kept his eyes on them as they brought the hammer and chisel down upon his bones. He dredged up every last insult he could think of and spat it in their faces as they went about the business of disassembling him.
But eventually, the will to fight bled out of him. Eventually, he felt the first stirrings of defeat. He experienced a whispered, disloyal urge to beg. To plead. To ask them to stop hurting him, just for a moment. He never acted upon the impulse, but by God he had wanted to.
Here, in the big, red-painted room towards the rear of the castle, he takes comfort in the fact that there is nothing that can be done to him which hasn’t been done before. It is no effort for him to affect an air of bravura. He isn’t afraid.
‘Would it be horribly predictable if I told you to fuck off?’ asks Roe, raising his head and looking down at the bits of himself on display. He’s gladdened to see he has trousers on. His feet are bare. Chest too. He squints into the semi-darkness. Sees the length of flex around his left foot and feels a moment’s relief. Cord, not nails. That had to go down as a win.
‘I fear you’re not happy with the service you’ve paid for,’ says the voice. ‘I should imagine this isn’t your idea of a professional transplant and care service in the relaxing grounds of a luxury private hospital. Would I be right?’
‘You’re here for the bed bath, are you?’ asks Roe. ‘Crack on then, son. Balls could use a wipe.’
‘We find ourselves in something of a quandary, Mr Roe,’ says the voice, and it seems to have altered position. It’s coming from elsewhere in the room now. Roe tries to get a sense of his environment. High ceiling – the scent of stale cigars and spilled whisky; the baize beneath his skin. He’s in the games room, he realises. Still on the peninsula; not far from the loch. He thinks, fleetingly, of Ronni. He allows himself to hope that they left her where she fell. He cannot put any weight behind the fantasy. The big man hit her hard enough to crack a thick skull. He feels a great wave of regret surge within him. He had thought that by being close to her, he could keep her safe in Callum’s absence. It had been a contract of sorts: an unspoken agreement between himself and her husband. He would make sure nobody harmed her or his children, and he wouldn’t pull out of the operation.
‘Quandary, is it?’ growls Roe, licking his lips. ‘Sorry, son, awful big word that. Are you saying you’ve fucked up? Looks like it to me. Looks like you’ve taken my money and knocked me about like a piece of meat, is what it looks like. I’ve paid for a second chance. I’m due a new liver and lung. I’ve taken my meds. I’ve let you take your samples. I’ve kept my mouth shut and done whatever you’ve wanted me to do. And now I’m pinned out like a kite!’
‘It’s not ideal,’ says the voice, ruefully. ‘And if it’s any consolation, this is very much against my judgement.’
; ‘And you are?’
‘Unimportant, for now,’ comes the reply, smoothly. ‘Suffice to say, I am the one who will decide whether you get the service you paid for, or whether it would be best to put a line through your name.’
Roe feels hope unfold like the petals of a rose. There’s still doubt. They might not yet know who he really is. He could still put things right.
‘What have I done wrong?’ asks Roe, raising his head. There’s a stab of pain across his shoulders. He hears a grotesque crackling sound as he tries to catch his breath. Tastes blood.
‘Pope is not an easy person to do business with,’ he says, wistfully. ‘He has whims. Enthusiasms. He can be impulsive. This entire venture is questionable in terms of risk-to-reward ratios. I fancy we are causing ourselves more problems than we are solving. The supply chain that he controls is an obvious asset, but the use of couriers as donors is only going to lead to difficulty in finding new couriers. Word does get around, I’m afraid. And there is something distasteful about the work we will be doing here. I’m not squeamish, but those who become medical professionals surely do so out of a desire to help and heal. I fear for the integrity of the individuals we have been forced to recruit to perform the opposite service.’ A pause, and a long, slow exhalation. Roe smells cigar smoke. His own brand.
‘Are you smoking my cigars?’ he asks, and sucks blood through his teeth. ‘One liberty too far.’
‘I must say, Mr Roe, you are not doing much to help your case.’
‘And what charges am I facing?’
‘Pope thinks you’re a cop. I do not. Others within his employ do not. I don’t wish to be rude, but I cannot see you as anything other than the near-dead specimen who so desperately thrust his money into the hand of our salesman and begged for a new liver and lung. You are a dying man, that much is clear. You don’t wear make-up. There are no affectations. Your teeth really do slip in the gums and your eyes have the look of somebody who sees things that might not be really here. It is my recommendation that we return some of your money, carry out your procedure as requested, and allow you to go about your life without any of the unpleasantness that Pope has requested.’
Roe hears his breath stutter as he tries to breathe in. The man hears it too.
‘Your medical notes say that a transplanted organ could buy you years. Not a lifetime, but years. I have had your background checked and triple-checked and everything I have learned reinforces my believe that you are who you say you are.’
‘But…’
‘The trouble is, though I can see from your demeanour that you are not unfamiliar with high-pressure situations such as these, the man who brought you to see Pope does not have your fortitude.’
Roe closes his eyes. Thinks of Callum Ashcroft. Knows immediately what he has done.
‘He’s told you I’m a cop,’ says Roe, without emotion.
‘He has. He is proving quite a disappointment, all things considered. He is begging for his life, and the life of his pretty wife, even as you and I talk like gentlemen. We have not even had to particularly hurt him. Fear of what we will do has been enough to persuade him to talk.’
‘To say anything you want to hear, you mean,’ spits Roe, temper in his voice. ‘I don’t know him from Adam. His wife runs the guest house I’ve been staying in. Pre-emptive convalescing, getting fit ahead of the op – saying my goodbyes. He turned up last night. Pulled a Taser on me. Next thing I’m in front of a sick man in a wheelchair and a bloke the size of Giant Haystacks is hitting me with his big metal hand! I’ve paid money to you people. I’m dying! What’s he even accusing me of? What am I here for? Who am I chasing?’
There is no reply. For a moment, Roe wonders whether he has been left alone – whether the speaker has slipped out and left him to his own worst imaginings. And then there is movement. A shadow falls across his chest, and he angles his head. Looks up into dark eyes, and gleaming gold teeth.
‘Me,’ says Bishop, softly, in his ear. ‘I think you’re chasing me.’
Roe looks up into the dead man’s face. Gives a quiet little laugh.
‘The lobster pot?’
‘Not a difficult trick to pull off. Nobody sees past the teeth – least of all when the flesh is half eaten away.’
‘I paid you. I did what you asked me. That prick who brought me in would say anything to save his skin…’
‘I realise that. Which is why I’m giving you an opportunity to state your case. Tell me you’re not a copper. I’ll make my recommendations to Pope. He may be agreeable. He is currently being prepared for surgery. He is rather jubilant. I believe he and I will do business together for some considerable time – or at least, as long as it takes to persuade his contacts that they are better served by my other associates. And then, well – I shall have to repossess that which doesn’t belong to him.’
Roe pauses. Swallows, painfully. ‘His heart?’
‘His fucking heart.’
‘And you’d do that, would you? You’d turn on him? Kill him? Put your own South American buddies in control of all the narcotics flooding in to northern Europe…’
‘He will live because I have procured him a heart, Mr Roe. He will die when I take it away.’
Roe sucks his lower lip. ‘Can I have a tug on that cigar?’ he asks.
Bishop smiles. Puts the stub between Roe’s lips and lets him take a long, comforting drag. He breathes out a plume of grey.
‘The woman who was with him. Hard-faced. Kimmy, was it? Who’s she?’
‘According to Mr Ashcroft, she too is a police officer. My colleague is currently questioning her just as I question you.’
‘And the woman. Ronni?’
‘Alas, I fear that by now she will have been disposed of. This isn’t her world. She could not be called upon to keep her own counsel about what we are doing here. Her friend may yet try and tell the authorities that she was ill-used here at the hands of Mr Pope’s rather brutish associates. She cannot be permitted to validate that story, or to give any information that could lead to Mr Pope’s rather sizeable enforcer. I’m sure you see that.’
‘Where?’ asks Roe, quietly. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Physically?’ asks Bishop. ‘An upstairs bedroom, I think. The hotel is getting rather crowded. Our couriers from Guyana are being kept as comfortable as possible ahead of the procedures. The fight has quite gone out of them and they are enjoying the benefits of our hospitality. If they know what awaits them, they haven’t spoken of it aloud.’
‘They’re alive?’
‘Of course. Even now, your new lung inflates and deflates in the chest of a small, dark-skinned man called Ignatio. I hope you will take care of it, should it make its way into you…’
Roe looks up at him. ‘Big mouth, ain’t you?’
‘I feel that you and I have an understanding. We are alone here. If I allow you to go ahead with the operation, you will be in my debt and in my confidence. And if not, you will be dead and no threat of any kind.’
‘There’s a third option,’ says Roe, craning his neck so he can put his face directly in Bishop’s eyeline.
‘And that is?’
‘Third option, is that my colleagues have overheard everything you’ve just said. The third option, is that I’m transmitting this whole conversation back to the team leader with the National Crime Agency.’
Bishop smiles. ‘With what? You have a tracker in your balls?’
Roe returns the grin. Feels the pressure relax in his left hand as the knot he has been clawing at with his long yellow nails gives way as if chewed through by a rat. ‘No, lad,’ he says. ‘It’s just below the skin of my bottom rib.’
‘Fuck off.’ Bishop laughs, but he glances down to Roe’s navel. Considers the wickerwork of scars and half-healed wounds.
Roe closes his hand around a billiard ball. Lurches forward and cracks it, as hard as he can, across Bishop’s cheekbone. It caves in like hard pastry, and he falls backwards with a grunt – slipping onto his back and his
head cracking off the floor with a sickening thud.
Roe looks at the ball in his hand. It’s pink. He grins to himself as he starts unpicking the ties that hold his other hand. Decides, on balance, that when he writes the report, he’ll say it was black. He has a reputation to maintain.
Moments later, he slithers down from the table. He’s in pain everywhere, but that is nothing new. His clothes are in a neat pile at the rear of the room. He retrieves his jacket and searches for the tiny, pill-shaped piece of metal sewn into the seam of the lapel. Presses it hard. Sits down, and catches his breath, as it begins transmitting. Painfully, arthritically, he climbs up on the pool table and fumbles around on the dusty light until he finds the recording device. Voice-activated – the best money can buy. There are a dozen of them scattered around the different wings of the castle. He got lucky the day he decided that the games room should be on the list of locations. He knows enough gangsters to have no doubts that it would be somewhere that bored men might congregate and let their guards down. Then he searches Bishop’s pockets and finds a slim, black mobile phone. He reaches over and pulls down Bishop’s blood-caked eyelid and points his eyeball at the screen. It comes to life. He dials the number without preamble.
When she answers, her voice is a balm for his wounds. He tells her what he has. What he needs. Then he tells her not to delay, and hangs up.
‘See you soon,’ he whispers.
Then he dresses himself and heads for the door. He stops, his hand on the handle. A selection of old-fashioned games and bits of sporting equipment are in a rack by the door. A smile crosses his lips as he picks up the croquet mallet.