Out Of The Red

by David Bradwell

  Within a moment my door was being opened.

  “Both of you, out,” said the man with the gun in heavily accented English. “Get in the car.”

  We didn’t have an option. We got out of my Honda and into the back of the waiting Mercedes.

  Another man in the front reached back and passed us two fairly industrial-looking blindfolds.

  “Put these on. We’re going on a journey,” he said.

  I looked at Danny. Danny looked at me. Then we both looked at the man with the gun, who was about to get in beside us. We did as we were told. Danny held my hand again, but fear was beginning to completely overwhelm me.

  47

  DS Amy Cranston made her way to the police canteen and ordered a tuna salad with Diet Coke. She took her tray and found a deserted table on the far side of the room, overlooking the car park. She welcomed the solitude, and didn’t want to be disturbed. It was a rare quiet moment, and she wasn’t sure when she’d next have one of those.

  After she’d finished her lunch she took her mobile phone from her bag, deciding, reluctantly, that it was time to take it off silent. She looked at the screen and was shocked to see twenty-six missed calls. Swearing, she tapped in the number for her voice mail. She listened to the messages in mounting horror. By the third, she was already out of the canteen and running down the corridor towards her office, aware that her career might be about to end.

  * * *

  I had no idea where we were when the car stopped, but the journey, at a guess, had taken about forty-five minutes. Maybe more, it was impossible to tell. Eventually, though, after we’d appeared to leave the road and travelled over some rough kind of waste ground, the engine was killed and the door was opened. I felt somebody reaching for me, dragging me out of the car.

  Somebody took my arms and forced them roughly behind my back. I felt something being used to tie my wrists together, far tighter than necessary, digging into the flesh.

  I was then grabbed by the arm, and dragged away from the car. I stumbled trying to keep up, but something sharp and hard poked me in the side of the ribs. I suspected it was the gun barrel.

  A few moments later I heard a giant grinding sound, which I took to be some kind of roller-shutter door. Once it stopped, the blindfold was taken off and I had the chance to take in my surroundings.

  The first thing I noticed was Danny, standing beside me. That was something at least. But beside him stood the man with the gun, and he was still pointing it at us. We were indoors. My eyes quickly began to adjust to the semi-darkness, possibly thanks to the blindfold. Talk about small mercies.

  It looked like a giant abandoned warehouse, with faint light coming in from filthy skylights high in the roof above. If I hadn’t been so terrified I’d have been sizing it up as a location for a photoshoot. No wonder these kinds of places always end up in TV dramas. The Mercedes was parked inside the warehouse, along with a Ford Transit minibus and two other cars.

  “Good afternoon, Danny,” said a voice to my right. “And to you, Anna.”

  A figure emerged from the gloom. It was Samuel Elmhirst-Banks.

  “I guess this means I’ve rescinded the job offer.” He laughed, but I was struggling to see any humour in the situation. “I’m so glad you decided to join us.”

  And then I saw Holly, standing beside him.

  “Holly!” I shouted, but she just ignored me. At least she had the decency to look to the ground.

  “Can you tell us what’s going on?” asked Danny. “I’m assuming this isn’t a social visit.”

  He sounded a lot braver than I felt, even though I thought I could detect a slight tremor in his voice.

  “It will be my pleasure. But first I must introduce you to a friend of mine.”

  He beckoned us forward, past one of the cars. Two chairs sat side-by-side, facing a third. And in the third, tied down so he wasn’t going anywhere, was Graham March.

  “Take a seat,” said the politician. “I think you might enjoy the show.”

  We did as we were told. It’s not easy to argue when a man’s pointing a gun at you. Our arms were still behind our backs, so it was particularly uncomfortable, and then made worse as further cable ties attached our wrists to the chairs.

  I’d never seen March looking quite like this before. He looked terrified, and much smaller than normal, his eyes pleading with us. A pool of something I took to be urine was on the floor beneath him.

  “Graham has an apology to make to both of you,” said Seb.

  March’s eyes hardened. He muttered something.

  “What was that?”

  “I said fuck off, you Tory twat.”

  That was brave. But then equally looked a bit foolish as Seb’s fist connected with his midriff. March bent forward as much as his ties would allow him, coughing and gasping for air.

  “I can see this is going to get interesting,” Seb continued. “Mikołaj, show us the girl.”

  The sight that greeted me next is not one I’ll ever forget. I couldn’t quite believe the brutality. A young girl, stripped naked, body red raw from the severest of beatings, was dragged towards us, trying to walk but stumbling, heels dragging across the cold concrete floor. Her hair was matted, her face covered in blood, her lips split and her eyes half closed.

  “This is Aurelia,” Seb continued. I heard Danny gasp. “This is what happens when someone meets with a journalist without our permission.”

  “Bastards,” said Danny. I thought I was going to throw up.

  She was dragged away again. Seb continued.

  “As you can see, we take things like that very seriously. But Graham here took things one stage further, didn’t you Graham?”

  March didn’t speak. Seb punched him hard on the side of the face. There was a sickening crack.

  “Okay, he seems to have lost his voice. I’ll tell you what he did. He not only met with a journalist, specifically you, Danny, but then he briefed you about our whole arrangement, just so he could save his own skin.”

  “What?” said Danny, voice rising. “March didn’t say anything about it.”

  Seb just laughed.

  “Really? And you expect me to believe that?”

  “He didn’t! I’ve been investigating but he didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Ah, if only I could believe you, but sadly, I know that you’re lying to me. And unfortunately for you, you’re about to see what happens when people do that.”

  “But he fucking didn’t.”

  “Danny, do yourself a favour and shut up, can you? I know he did because we’ve watched him meet you. And then we paid a little visit to his house and we came across the folders in which he’d written everything down for you. Luckily Mrs March was out at the time so she didn’t have to be a witness, although, if you ask me, she’s already suffered enough.”

  Seb picked up a baseball bat and walked back across to March. He swung it hard and brought it down viciously on his knees. There was another sickening crack, and March screamed in pain. This time I did throw up.

  48

  REPORTS were coming in of an incident close to Euston station. A white Honda Prelude had been found abandoned. The damage to its two rear tyres was consistent with the reports of gunfire. Witnesses had reported the two occupants of the car being driven off in a black Mercedes, although nobody had seen the number plate.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” said Amy, banging her fist on the dashboard as Anil sped through the city streets, siren blazing, heading in the direction of Eversholt Street.

  By the time their car arrived, two other squad cars were already at the scene and the door to the parlour had been kicked off its hinges.

  “Anything?” she said to a colleague who was emerging from the basement.

  He shook his head.

  She grabbed her radio and asked for an update from a similar team who were performing a simultaneous raid on the Albermarle Casino and Gentleman’s Club.

  “Nothing, just a cleaner but she doesn’t even seem to s
peak English.”

  “Fuck!”

  She radioed back to the control room.

  “Can you get CCTV?” she asked. “We want to follow a black Mercedes car, no idea of the reg, leaving Eversholt Street sometime around 1300. We need to know where it is. And it’s fucking urgent.”

  “We’ll see what can we do, but it’s not going to be quick.”

  “What now, boss?” asked DC Jachuck, who was still standing beside her.

  “We think. That’s all we can fucking do.”

  * * *

  Luckily most of the vomit missed my jacket, although the aroma and bitter taste didn’t do much to improve the ambience of my surroundings. Not that anybody seemed to care. All attention was on Graham March, who was starting to look like he was in significant pain.

  “You see, I’ve known Graham a very long time,” Seb continued. “Obviously I’ve always known he was a two-faced bastard and couldn’t be trusted, but I hadn’t realised just how far into the gutter he’d descended. He used to try to pretend he was my friend, although I knew he was only ever doing that in the pursuit of self-interest.”

  He took the baseball bat again, and swiped it hard and fast onto March’s left arm. I wasn’t sure if the noise I heard was the arm itself snapping or the ribs underneath. Either way March cried out again. Danny tried to wriggle free of his chair and received a punch in the face from the gunman for his troubles.

  “Seb, please,” I heard myself say. “Can we please stop this?”

  “Stop? I’ve barely started.”

  The baseball bat connected again. I thought March must be close to losing consciousness. A patch of blood was growing ever larger on his shirt.

  “I mean in fairness, he did introduce me to Mikołaj and Jacqueline. And I have to say the quality of the merchandise is really quite excellent.” I looked up at the minibus. I suddenly realised what it was doing there. “But I thought he was doing it for the simple motive of a quick profit. Not because he was trying to save his own miserable career.”

  There was another giant crack as the bat connected with March’s ankles. He screamed out in pain. Still conscious then. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  “Anything to say, Graham?”

  March could barely speak, but from what I could hear it definitely sounded like another “fuck you”. Another punch to the midriff followed, with similar results.

  “What happens now?” I asked, but then almost immediately wished I hadn’t.

  “Graham needs to be shown the error of his ways,” said Seb. “That’s the first priority. And believe me, when I’ve finished with him I know Mikołaj quite fancies a turn. Jacqui will be along in an hour or so, and I’m sure she’d like a quiet word also. And after that I’m afraid we just need to perform a bit of a clean-up.”

  There was a momentary respite as Seb’s phone started ringing. He answered the call.

  “Yes, he’s with me now... No, he won’t be going anywhere... Of course. I will. Yes, hold on... I’ll just check. One moment.”

  He walked away, towards a door at the back of the warehouse, opened it and disappeared from view. I thought I caught a glimpse of a young girl sitting on the floor, looking terrified. So that was where they were keeping them.

  “Anna, I’m so sorry,” said Danny, but got another fist in the face for his troubles.

  “Shut the fuck up,” said the gunman.

  “Go gently, Tomasz,” said the guy Seb had referred to as Mikołaj. He’d been standing watching proceedings since dragging Aurelia back off to a corner. “We want him to enjoy his turn when it comes.”

  I felt utterly powerless and helpless. I’d gone beyond fear, out through the far side of panic, and was bordering on a kind of silent hysteria, in which the horror was so great my mind was in danger of closing down completely. There were so many things that I didn’t understand, and yet equally I understood everything completely.

  I understood what March had been trying to achieve, even if it had backfired badly, and I understood how it must have looked, even though it was completely wrong. I understood Holly’s involvement and her devotion to her father, and I even understood why we’d been dragged into it and were now facing apparent execution. But what I couldn’t understand was what kind of warped madness could make one human being want to do this to another. What kind of animal could drag innocent girls to England from a foreign country only to exploit them and abuse them, either just for money and greed, or to gratify their own abhorrent perversions. What kind of mental sickness gave licence to this kind of abject cruelty and torture. What sort of freak would actually seem to be enjoying dishing out this kind of punishment to another living person, made of the same fundamental atoms and presumably sharing mutual ancestry, if we went back far enough to Adam and Eve. Not that anything I’d seen was doing anything at all to shake my deeply entrenched distrust of all organised religions. What kind of god would give one of his people this kind of power to inflict such pain on one of his others?

  My mind was brought firmly back to the present by the return of Seb.

  “That was Jacqui on the phone,” he said. “I told her not to rush. We can continue our discussion.”

  He picked up the baseball bat again, and swung it backwards, looking like he was going for the most vicious blow yet. And then there was a bang. It very much looked like his head exploded.

  Seb dropped to the floor, the baseball bat rolling away in my direction, not that I could reach it given the fact that I’d lost the use of my arms. Tomasz the gunman and Mikołaj both dived for cover, but not quite in time. Holly started running. There was another bang and Mikołaj took the hit. He screamed and fell. Another bang and a cloud of concrete dust flew into the air where the bullet missed him and connected with the floor. The next bullet did the trick, though. He slumped forwards, motionless. Tomasz had dived behind the car and was now returning fire, but I had no idea what he was aiming at. I couldn’t tell where the shooting was coming from. There was the sound of glass shattering as a bullet ripped through the car windscreen, and then more as the side window exploded. I thought I heard somebody running. I turned to look, but couldn’t see anyone. But then the bangs seemed to be coming from a new direction. Tomasz turned and fired back too. I’m sure I felt the rush of a bullet millimetres from my face.

  There was a momentary pause. And then another window shattered on the car, this time from the other side. I could see Tomasz look round, stunned, then try to get out of the way of this new attack, throwing himself towards the front of the car.

  In the distance, I could hear sirens and it sounded like they were getting closer. Inside, though, there was another round of gunfire. Tomasz stood up to return a shot, but it proved to be a fatal mistake. Two bullets in quick succession ripped into him. His body contorted and fell to the floor. The sirens were getting louder and louder.

  And then, out of the darkness strode a new figure, dressed all in black. It was somebody I didn’t think I’d ever see again.

  “Jesus, how many times do I have to save you two?” said Clare. She smiled. And then she was gone.

  49

  WITHIN seconds a police van had smashed through the roller shutter and the place was swarming with armed police. Paramedics rushed to March and cut through his bindings. He was lowered onto a stretcher and taken to an ambulance as swiftly as you can carry an eighteen-stone man. More paramedics attended to Aurelia although she seemed a comparative lightweight.

  Danny and I were released from our chairs. The police burst through to the rear office. There was lots of shouting. Lots of weapons, but thankfully no more shooting. A paramedic tried to wrap me in a blanket, but I just wanted to hug Danny so he wrapped it round both of us. A few minutes later Holly emerged from the back room, wrists handcuffed, a big black-clad policeman on either side. And then a group of terrified-looking girls followed, maybe twelve in total, perhaps fifteen, all escorted away. I had no idea what the future held for them, but whatever it was, it’d be a damn sigh
t better than the misery they’d been so close to walking into.

  I just hugged Danny for all I was worth. He hugged me back. The cuts to his face looked nasty. A paramedic started work, cleaning the wounds, and applying dressings. And in among all of this there was absolutely no sign of Clare. She’d vaporised just as quickly as she’d appeared. Back to her secret world, wherever that may be. I owed her so much. I just wanted the chance to say thank you, but equally I knew that this time I really might never see her again.

  I looked to Danny.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for ever doubting her.”

  “We’ve all done that,” he replied.

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone I assume.”

  I started to cry. Tears of relief, but also a reaction to all of the horror I’d witnessed. And, of course, also for Clare. She’d made a new world for herself but something told me it wasn’t without regret. And I cried for her as I wanted her to be happy too.

  Danny hugged me again and then let go and took a step backwards.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “It’s just you.”

  “What about me?”

  “In all the excitement I’d forgotten that you puked. I can’t believe you actually did that.”

  I punched him on his shoulder. It was only a gentle tap, really, but I’d forgotten about the bullet wound. Some things never change.

  * * *

  Amy came over to talk to us.

  “We’re going to need statements. Again,” she said, arms folded. I couldn’t work out if she was pleased that it was all over or pissed off with the amount of trouble we’d been at the centre of over the last few days.

  Behind her, the clean-up was underway. Bodies were being covered up. The area was being cordoned off with police crime scene tape. A photographer seemed to be taking endless pictures, which made me wonder what had happened to my lovely Nikon F4 and whether I’d ever see it again. And my car for that matter.