by Shaun Hutson
In the darkness, and still half-asleep, he was unable to focus immediately on the figures standing around his bed.
All he was aware of was the deathly cold of the gun barrel. For a fleeting second he wondered if he might be dreaming, but this time he had woken into a nightmare.
Connelly blinked myopically, trying to clear his gaze, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He felt his bowels loosen, felt the hairs on his neck and forearms prickle as he saw the face of the first intruder, the one who held the gun.
‘Get up,’ hissed Peter Farrell, stepping back. He kept the gun pointed at Connelly’s head the entire time, the barrel never more than inches from his face. The muzzle seemed to expand, to grow into a vast black tunnel before his eyes.
‘Move,’ Farrell continued, grabbing Connelly by one arm and jerking him towards the door of the bedroom.
The other man picked up the dressing gown lying on the end of the bed and threw it at Connelly. He looked at Farrell as if asking permission to put it on, to cover his nakedness; although, at the moment, decency was the last of his worries. Nevertheless he pulled it on and padded out onto the landing. Farrell kept close by, the gun still held at his head.
‘I told you before I don’t know anything,’ Connelly said quietly, his voice cracking. His mouth felt dry, as if someone had filled it with sand.
Farrell grabbed the back of his hair and yanked his head back, forcing the gun hard against his temple.
‘I didn’t believe you then and I don’t believe you now. I want some fucking answers,’ he hissed.
‘For Christ’s sake ...’
He was cut short by a shove in the back that nearly made him overbalance and fall down the stairs.
He shot out a hand and caught the banister, steadying himself. On shaking legs he began to descend.
Farrell and the other man followed him.
‘Have you been in contact with the woman?’ Farrell wanted to know.
‘Which woman?’
‘Ward’s widow, who do you think?’
‘Why should I have been?’
Farrell drove a foot hard into the base of Connelly’s spine, the impact knocking him off balance. He toppled forward, pitching off the steps. He crashed against the wall then fell, rolled the last few stairs to the hallway.
Farrell was on him in an instant, dragging him upright, the gun held beneath his chin.
‘Have you been in contact with her?’ he repeated.
‘No,’ Connelly said, hurt by the fall. ‘Look, I swear to you, I don’t know anything.’
Farrell pushed the agent’s head back sharply, banging it against the wall with a sickening thud. For a second Connelly thought he was going to pass out, but a hard smack across the face kept him conscious. Farrell grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him towards a closed door leading off the hallway.
‘What are you doing?’ said Connelly, realizing which room he was being shoved towards.
‘Move,’ snapped Farrell.
Connelly was about to push the door when it was opened from the inside and he found a third man there.
Farrell pushed the agent inside and was joined by the other intruder.
All four men stood in the room and Farrell raised the pistol once more so that it was aimed at the agent’s head.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ Connelly babbled timorously.
‘We’re not playing, Connelly,’ Farrell told him and pulled him across the hot and clammy room.
The kitchen was large but the air was warm and dry.
Connelly didn’t know how long the rings of the electric cooker had been on but one of them was almost white-hot.
Forty-Eight
‘No,’ Connelly shouted as he saw the glowing rings and felt their heat.
Farrell took a step towards him and swung the butt of the .45 hard, catching him across the forehead.
The agent went down heavily, a gash on his head weeping blood down the side of his face. He rolled on the floor, moaning, and Farrell nodded to one of his companions.
‘Shut him up,’ he said. The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a long length of what looked like ribbon. He slipped it around Connelly’s chin and tugged it tight across his mouth, gagging him, then he dragged the agent upright. The other man moved over to join them, gripping Connelly’s right arm so that his hand was groping at empty air. Farrell held the gun steady and looked directly at Connelly.
‘I’m only going to ask you these questions once,’ he said, ‘so listen. When I ask you to answer, the gag will be removed. If you attempt to shout for help, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
Connelly nodded, the action making his head ache. Blood had begun to run into the corner of his eye and he blinked to try and clear his vision.
The heat from the cooker was intense and sweat already beaded his forehead and face.
‘Where is the book?’ Farrell said.
The gag was pulled free.
‘I don’t know,’ Connelly said, his eyes filling with tears of terror. ‘I don’t ...’
The gag was pulled tightly back into position.
Farrell nodded.
The man holding Connelly’s arm pushed it forward, forcing it down onto the largest of the electric rings, holding it there.
Searing, excruciating agony ripped through his hand and up his arm until it seemed to engulf his entire body. His scream was muffled by the gag; the sound was like a child shrieking inside a locked room.
As the hand was held on the blazing ring, the stench of burning flesh was clearly noticable in the hot air.
As the hand was finally pulled away, flesh stuck to the ring as if welded there by the heat. Tiny pieces of skin shrivelled and cooked on the red-hot ring and wisps of smoke rose into the air.
Connelly felt himself losing consciousness but he was aware of being slapped hard across the face, even if the pain of the blow was negligible compared to the mind-numbing suffering he felt from his burned hand. Blisters rose immediately, some of them in the shape of the ring. He felt as if his entire arm and hand were ablaze; as if someone had turned a blowtorch on them.
‘Where’s the fucking book?’ Farrell snarled, moving closer. ‘What did Ward do with it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Connelly sobbed, tears mingling with the blood and sweat on his face. There was a dark stain on his dressing gown and he could feel urine running freely down his leg.
‘Tell me,’ Farrell said, glaring at him.
‘He never told me about his work. I swear on my fucking life I don’t know where it is.’ His eyes bulged madly in their sockets, like bloodshot ping-pong balls threatening to burst from his skull. ‘I don’t know anything about the book, I don’t even think he’d started writing it.’
Farrell looked puzzled but merely nodded to his companion.
The gag was tugged back into place, cutting off Connelly’s exhortations for mercy. The muffled scream rose in his throat again as he felt the heat growing more intense, the closer to the blazing rings his hand was pulled.
Three inches.
He would rather died on the spot than endure that pain again.
Two inches.
The man tugged harder, using his immense strength to force Connelly’s hand down towards the large ring.
One inch.
‘Where’s the book?’ Farrell said again.
As his hand was crushed down onto the red-hot ring again, Connelly’s body jerked convulsively and so savagely that the man holding him up was almost knocked off balance, but he stood his ground while his companion pressed down on the limb.
Blisters which had formed the first time now burst, weeping clear fluid onto the burner which hissed like an angry snake. The whole hand turned a deep shade of scarlet, the flesh itself heating up. Connelly, barely conscious now, felt as if his blood was boiling, as if his bones were calcifying under the incredible heat. Pain hit him in one intolerable wave and he blacked out.
The mercy of unconsci
ousness was denied him; as one of the men slapped him while the other threw water from the tap over him, also tugging his hair in an effort to bring him round.
He awoke to screaming pain in his hand, which hung uselessly at his side. The palm and most of his wrist were scorched black, the flesh seared into thick red welts. And again there was that sickly sweet stench of cooked flesh which clogged his nostrils and made him want to vomit. When his head lolled back, his hair was seized and tugged hard.
‘Last chance,’ Farrell said flatly. ‘Where’s the book?’
Connelly was sobbing uncontrollably now.
‘You can’t do this, please stop, Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t know. Oh God,’ he whimpered, tears pouring down his cheeks.
The man holding him tugged his hair and yanked his head back.
‘Ward hadn’t even written the fucking book, I swear to God.’
Farrell pushed his companion aside and grabbed the agent by the throat, almost lifting him off his feet, staring right into his bulging eyes.
‘What do you mean he hadn’t written the book?’ he said.
‘He was still researching it.’
‘He stole it.’
‘Stole what?’ Connelly babbled frantically.
‘He stole the book. He took it from us.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Liar,’ snapped Farrell. He pushed Connelly’s head towards the cooker, determined to push his face against the blistering rings.
‘I don’t know,’ he shrieked, the screams cut off by Farrell’s free hand. The muffled bellows were the only sounds he could make as his face was pushed closer and closer to the glowing rings. He could smell his own burned flesh on them, could see blackened streamers of skin sticking to the metal.
‘Ward stole the book from us,’ Farrell said. ‘Where did he hide it?’
The heat was unbearable. Connelly used every ounce of strength he had to push himself away from the cooker, but Farrell was a powerful man and forced the agent’s face ever closer to the ring. Another two inches and the burning cooker ring would be against his flesh.
‘Tell me where he hid it,’ Farrell urged.
One inch.
‘He doesn’t know,’ said one of the other men, smiling thinly as he watched the agent struggle.
Connelly was fighting as hard as he could but it was useless. The heat made him feel faint; as his face was moved closer, he could actually feel the blistering heat drying his eye.
It was over now.
Farrell suddenly yanked him upright, away from the cooker. As he did he drove a fist hard into Connelly’s face, the impact propelling him across the kitchen. He slammed into a wall, his head snapping back to crack against the plaster, then he fell forward.
‘Bring him,’ Farrell said, nodding towards the door. ‘We’re taking him with us.’
Forty-Nine
At first he thought they’d blinded him.
Martin Connelly was sure that his eyes were open, yet he could see nothing. It took a few seconds after he regained consciousness to realize that he was blindfolded. The cloth had been knotted tightly round his head, cutting into his temples. But the discomfort was mild compared to the pain which engulfed the rest of his body, filling his veins like liquid fire. His head throbbed mightily from the blows he’d received, and the continuous agony of his burned hand made him feel as if the limb was swelling to gigantic proportions. Soon it would simply burst.
Connelly flexed his fingers and toes and felt renewed pain, a feeling of weightlessness. A terrible strain on his shoulders and neck. As if...
He was suspended in mid-air, dangling there like a useless, discarded puppet. He had no idea where he was and no idea how far off the ground he was. It could be two or three inches, it could be several hundred feet. Also, he was suddenly aware of the numbing cold. As a cool breeze swathed his sweat-drenched body he realized they had taken his clothes.
Martin Connelly dangled naked in the air, supported only by two thick pieces of hemp, wound so tightly around his wrists that they chafed the skin raw.
Help me.
He noticed the smell.
A rank, fetid odour clogged his nostrils and reminded him of bad meat. It seemed to be coming closer to him. Perhaps the mad fuckers had hung him in an abattoir. His mind began to race, all the possibilities hurtling through his consciousness. If he was hanging in a slaughterhouse, then might they not choose to use the implements of the slaughterer on him? The cleaver. The butcher’s knife. The skewers.
Connelly felt sick and tried to twist himself free, his legs swinging helplessly beneath him. His ankles were unbound; it made him think he was higher off the ground than he would have liked. Perhaps they reasoned that even if he managed to slip clear of the ropes he would have so far to fall it wouldn’t matter. The agent stopped struggling and hung there, aware of the pain in his wrists and the rasping against his skin, but even more conscious of the massive welts and blisters that covered his throbbing hand.
The silence was unbroken but for his own laboured breathing.
He let out an involuntary groan of pain and desperation.
‘Where is the book, Mr Connelly?’
The voice lanced through the blackness, close to him and below him to the right.
He looked in that direction but the blindfold prevented him from seeing who had spoken.
’Where is it?’
Another voice. This time below to his left.
It was like the first. Slow, deliberate. Slightly mucoid. As if the speaker had a mouthful of phlegm.
‘The book.’
Connelly felt a sudden stab of fear and also of quite irrational embarrassment. The pain seemed to take a back seat momentarily, then he moved his right hand and it came thundering back into his mind.
‘Christopher Ward took it from us, you know that,’ the first voice said. Connelly was aware of that rancid stench growing stronger. It was closer to him now. So close, he could feel breath on his thigh.
On the thigh.
That meant that, unless the one standing to his right was abnormally tall, he couldn’t be suspended more than about six feet off the ground. It was the only crumb of comfort he could salvage from the ordeal. He clung to it.
‘We want to know what Ward did with the book. We want it back,’ the second voice said.
‘We need it back,’ the first voice told him. ‘Where is it?’
Connelly cleared his throat.
‘I swear to you I don’t know what book you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘I know Ward was writing a book, but he hadn’t even started it, he was still doing research.’
‘We don’t care about the book he was going to write,’ the first voice snapped angrily. ‘We want back what is rightfully ours.’
‘He stole it and hid it somewhere. We need to know where so we can recover it,’ the other voice added.
‘Tell me about the book,’ Connelly said, the last vestiges of reason working in his tortured mind. Could he possibly talk his way out of this situation? ‘I may be able to help.’
‘He doesn’t know,’ the first voice said.
‘He’s lying,’ said the second.
‘Ward was his client, he must have known,’ intoned a third voice. A harsh voice that Connelly recognized as belonging to the tall man with the dark, close-cropped hair. ‘He knows where it is,’ Peter Farrell insisted.
‘I don’t know anything about a stolen book,’ Connelly bleated.
‘Then you are no use to us,’ the first voice said.
‘Wait,’ Connelly said, panicking.
There was silence for a second, only his rapid breathing filling the air.
‘His wife knows where the book is,’ Connelly lied. ‘Find her and she’ll lead you to it.’
Would they believe it? Come on, convince them.
He realized that his last chance was to make his captors believe that Donna knew where the book they sought was hidden, whatever it was. If they thought tha
t she knew, they might let him go. To hell with Donna. He had to save himself.
‘Ward told her everything. He would have told her where your book is,’ the agent continued, the lies falling easily from his lips. ‘Find her and you’ll find the book.’
‘You’re lying,’ snapped Farrell. ‘We didn’t find it at Ward’s house.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t keep it there, would he?’ Connelly hoped they couldn’t hear the desperation in his voice. ‘Besides, he owns another place, a cottage in Sussex. It could be there. Look, she’s gone to look for it. His wife is searching for the book because Ward told her he had it. He told her he stole it. It’s her you want, not me. She knows.’
‘Where is this house in Sussex?’ Farrell demanded.
Connelly searched his mind desperately, trying to remember. He almost smiled when he did, quickly imparting the information to them.
‘It could be there but I doubt it. She was going to Ireland to find it. I asked her if she wanted me to go with her but she said no. She said she had to find the book, but that it was a secret between her and Ward. She’s in Ireland now.’
‘She was,’ Farrell corrected him. ‘She was seen near the lodge at Mountpelier yesterday.’
‘I told you,’ Connelly blurted.
‘Shut up,’ hissed Farrell, striking him hard across the stomach.
‘Is this true?’ the first voice asked. ‘She was at the Lodge?’
‘She left on a plane from Dublin last night. She’s being followed,’ Farrell explained.
Merciful fucking Christ, I think I’ve done it. They believe me, Connelly thought as he tried to suck in breath, tasting the rancid atmosphere as thickly as if it were smoke.
‘I told you,’ he said wearily. ‘She knows where it is.’
‘You would betray this woman to save yourself? ’ asked the first voice. A chuckle. It was a sound that made the hair at the back of Connelly’s neck rise. ‘You really have no honour, do you? I like that.’ Another laugh. And another. The whole room seemed to be filled with it. Raucous, insane laughter that drummed in the agent’s ears until he feared he would go deaf.