‘How long’s this been going on?’
‘A while. A few months now.’ Henderson was about to say something else, but then he heard his wife, who’d finally managed to round up the kids, coming down the stairs. ‘Like I say, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but . . .’ He let the sentence trail off, said his goodbyes and went back inside.
As they reached the car, Bolt looked at his watch. Twenty past eight. A thick bank of black clouds was now forming to the west, and from somewhere in the far distance there came a faint rumble of thunder.
15
We drove through a variety of back roads. I only know this because the driver kept the speed at no more than thirty and made a lot of turnings. During the whole time I remained in the same uncomfortable position, not daring to move. When I tried to speak, wanting to ask these men where they were taking me and where my wife was, I was told by the one sitting next to me to keep my mouth shut. ‘We’ll talk later,’ came the ominous promise.
My mouth and throat felt bone dry. The only thing I’d drunk since three o’clock that afternoon was a glass of water during the police interview. During the last five hours I’d been attacked with a knife, knocked over by a police car, accused of murder, chased by the law, and now kidnapped. It was safe to say that I’d worked up a thirst.
After about half an hour, the car slowed up and stopped. Remarkably, I wasn’t actually that scared. At least these men weren’t actively trying to kill me, which meant they wanted to talk. It gave me an opportunity to put my side of the case and hopefully convince them that I had nothing to do with any of this. As long as I didn’t get a good look at their faces I ought to be all right. That was the theory, anyway.
The driver cut the engine, and the car was suddenly silent. I could hear the two men shuffling about, and then the blanket was pulled from my head and I was told that I could now look. As I sat back up, my eyes already accustomed to the gloom, I saw that they were both wearing black balaclavas. The one sitting next to me was still holding the gun, and it was pointing at my midriff. Outside, darkness had fallen and it had begun to rain.
They got out, and the gunman leaned back in and beckoned for me to follow. I clambered across the seats, pushing the blanket to one side, and stepped out into the open air. The rain felt refreshing on my face. We were in a small, walled parking area with room for about three cars at the back of a dirt-stained and windowless two-storey industrial building. A single flight of metal steps led up to a battered steel door that was the only sign of an entrance. There was a faint smell of old fried food coming from somewhere, and I noticed a line of overflowing dustbins against the wall.
The driver started up the steps and the gunman prodded me with the barrel, indicating that I should follow. I didn’t argue. The driver used a key to open the door and went inside, switching the lights on. Sandwiched between the two men, I was led down a narrow corridor. The smell of fried food was stronger here, and a black binliner, packed high with empty food containers and paper, was propped up outside a door on the right. A second door on the right had a gents toilet sign on it and several holes gouged out near the bottom where it looked like someone had tried to kick it in. There was no noise coming from anywhere, and apart from the smell, the place had a deserted, stale feel to it.
We stopped at a door at the end of the corridor and the driver searched for the right key. I finally risked speaking as he placed it in the lock. ‘I don’t know anything,’ I said. ‘I have no idea why people are chasing me, I promise you.’
The driver opened the door, and a breath of warm, fetid air belched out. He then turned round and, in one rapid movement that was almost a blur, grabbed my shirt at the shoulder with one hand and punched me twice in the face with the other, two savage little jabs that felt more painful than anything I’d suffered that day, mainly because they were so unexpected. I lurched, and my legs wobbled precariously, but he steadied me with a firm hand and kept me upright before swinging me round and flinging me bodily into the airless darkness of the room.
I landed hard on one shoulder blade and rolled several times along the cool concrete floor until I came to a halt, facing the ceiling. The striplights above me came on and I saw I was in a large, windowless room about twenty feet square with old floor-to-ceiling storage shelves stretching round the walls. Most of the shelves were empty but one contained a cluster of five-litre tubs of vegetable oil and a couple of sacks of rice. One of the sacks had split and spilled much of its load on the filth-stained floor.
They came into the room, the driver with a purposeful gait, the gunman following more slowly behind. As I tried to get to my feet, the driver kicked me in the face, knocking me onto my back. I felt blood pour out of my nose and my vision turned fuzzy for a couple of seconds. But I didn’t hang about, immediately rolling myself up into a protective ball as he kicked me again, his shoe striking my forearms as he tried to get me in the face again. The worrying thing was that the beating was being carried out in complete silence, with neither man feeling the need to speak. They were softening me up, breaking down my resistance, and I knew there was no point begging for mercy. I pulled my body into an even tighter ball, eyes clenched shut, as the kicks kept coming.
Then, without warning, I was hauled to my feet and dragged across the room. In front of me was a sturdy wooden chair that had been bolted to the floor. It had a high, straight back and there were looping iron shackles attached to the arms and legs. I started struggling, but a leaden punch to the kidneys, delivered with a studied ease that was almost nonchalant, took the fight completely out of me, and I was unable to resist as the driver forced me into the chair and slammed my head back against the wood, gripping my face painfully in his gloved hand. Without speaking, he used the other hand to secure my wrists with the manacles. I heard them click as they locked.
The driver released his grip, took a step back and backhanded me across the face, catching me perfectly on the fresh stitches, and reopening the wound. Drops of blood splattered onto the floor.
‘Where the fuck is it?’ he demanded.
‘Where’s what?’ I gasped.
‘Don’t fucking play the innocent. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘I don’t. Honestly. I have no idea what the hell it is you want to know.’
He turned to the gunman, who was standing a few feet back, watching events impassively. ‘Blow his fucking kneecap off,’ he said, and moved out of the way.
The gunman strode forward, bringing the gun up from his side and pointing it at my kneecap. I wriggled wildly in the seat, utterly helpless, the fear coursing through me in hot, crippling waves. The gun’s barrel got closer and closer until it was only a foot away. I could hear the gunman’s breathing. His eyes were grey and blank. There was no sympathy in them at all. I turned my head away so I no longer had to look into them.
‘Last chance to tell us where it is,’ said the driver. ‘Otherwise my friend here pulls the trigger.’
‘He’s right, I will,’ said the gunman calmly, ‘and I won’t lose a second’s sleep over it either. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Please. You’re making a mistake.’
‘I’m going to count to five,’ said the driver. ‘One. Two.’
What do you say in that sort of situation? Men are threatening to maim you for life. They will probably kill you after that, and dump your body. You will never see your wife and children again. You are thirsty, you are hungry. You are in pain, and most of all you are confused. Because these men want you to tell them the whereabouts of something, and you have absolutely no idea what it could possibly be.
‘Three. Four.’
I twisted, wriggled, fought against the shackles, craned my neck as far away from the gun as I possibly could, teeth clenched ready for the impact of the bullet that was going to bring hideous pain and a limp for the rest of my days, if indeed I had any days left.
‘Five.’
‘No, please!’ I screamed, my words echoing around the empty
room. ‘Don’t fucking do it!’
‘Are you going to talk?’ asked the driver evenly.
I turned in his direction imploringly, feeling the blood running down my face. When I spoke, the words came out in a series of pants. ‘If you just tell me what it is you think I know the whereabouts of, then I can help you. I’m sure.’
The driver shook his head. ‘You’re fucking us about.’ Then to the gunman: ‘Do it.’
The gunman’s finger tensed on the trigger and this time I met his eye. I was shaking my head, silently begging him. He stared back. Was there doubt there? Did I see a flicker of doubt?
A mobile rang. The tune was different to the phone I’d heard earlier at the university. The one that belonged to the knifeman. This one played ‘Suspicious Minds’ by Elvis Presley. It seemed very apt.
The driver reached into the pocket of his black bomber jacket and answered it, at the same time indicating for the gunman to hold his fire. He turned away with the mobile clutched to his ear. Although I couldn’t hear what he was saying, his tone was respectful, and it was obvious that whoever was on the other end of the line was his superior.
The gunman took a couple of steps back and lowered the weapon to his side, looking away from my gaze. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. My thirst was horrendous, so desperate it made it difficult to speak. It’s hard to explain, but somehow it was even stronger than the fear. I would have given anything – anything – for a glass of water at that moment.
The driver came off the phone and replaced it in his pocket. ‘That was Lench,’ he told his colleague, and there was something close to nervous awe in his voice when he mentioned that name. ‘He’s five minutes away. He told us to leave this one until he gets here.’
He walked up to me, and I flinched as he brought back his hand to strike me. Then, as the hand came forward, he stopped it suddenly a few inches away, enjoying my reaction, and patted me lightly on the cheek, bringing his face so close that I could smell his sour, hot breath. He smiled, and I could see that his teeth were stained and uneven. ‘You’re going to talk now, mate. When Lench gets here you’re going to talk, you’re going to scream, and you’re going to fucking beg like a dog. Because he can get information out of anyone. You’d rather sell your kids to paedophiles than hold out on him.’
‘I can’t tell you anything,’ I said wearily, ‘if I don’t know anything.’
But even as I spoke, I knew the words made no difference. They would torture me until either they got what they wanted or there was nothing left of me to torture. And the problem was, I knew it was going to be the latter.
16
No-one knew him as anything other than Lench, a state of affairs he liked well enough. No-one knew his background either, nor did they enquire. People feared him, and he fed on that fear, enjoying the sense of power it gave him, aware that he was a natural predator in a world overcrowded with prey.
It wasn’t simply his immense bulk that created that reaction, although it was a factor. At six feet four, and with a body made outsized and bulbous through the obsessive lifting of weights, he towered over most men, his rounded shoulders and huge, vein-popping arms giving him a vaguely primitive, ape-like appearance. Yet this was offset by the cruel, probing intelligence in his eyes. When he fixed a person with one of his unyielding stares, it made the recipient feel as if he was looking right into their soul, uncovering and devouring each and every secret. ‘Snake’s eyes’ someone had called them once, when Lench was well out of earshot, and there was some truth in the description. They were very thin and very dark, and the skin of his eyelids hung down over them like cobras’ hoods.
Lench licked his lips with a long fleshy tongue, the tip brushing along the bottom of his nose and leaving a cold trail of saliva. He didn’t see the people in the other cars as he drove through the dark night streets towards his destination, nor those crowding the pavements. They didn’t exist to him. If he looked their way, he saw only blurs through the rain, lit up by the watery glow of the street lights. Only those he hunted took any real shape, became flesh and blood. And tonight, he was hunting.
Lench had killed many times in the thirty-eight years he’d walked the earth. To him, torture and murder were little more than a pastime, a means of gaining pleasure. He knew that in this he was very different to other people, but he rarely thought about the reasons behind his strange, bleak desires, since he could see no point. He was what he was, and nothing was going to change that. Instead, he felt uniquely lucky in that he was paid for his crimes, and was therefore doing a job he loved. The main reason he was trusted by his employer – the only man in the world to whom he felt he owed a debt – was that he was reliable. He was imaginative in his methods, and more importantly, he didn’t make mistakes. If someone had to die, Lench was the person the employer turned to. The necessary instructions would be given, and that would be the end of the employer’s involvement. Lench would make all the arrangements and ensure that the job was carried out, either working alone or with help from his own people. Although on a personal level he always liked to prolong the suffering of his victims, since much of his enjoyment derived from watching them die, he knew that sometimes this wasn’t possible. The key, he felt, to successful killing was making the most of your opportunities.
An old Ford Escort pulled out from the kerb in front of him without indicating, forcing him to brake. The deep, throbbing bass of some crappy hip-hop effort blasted out of the open windows, and he could see figures in the back, heads covered in hoodies, passing a joint between themselves. Arseholes, he thought, imagining for a moment cutting the driver’s throat and hanging him up to bleed, but ultimately not worth bothering with. Lench never took pointless risks. Like many psychopaths, he was a pragmatist at heart, and having been incarcerated once in his life he had no desire to go back.
Tonight, too, there were bigger fish to fry. The employer had a serious problem, one that had to be dealt with decisively. Already things were beginning to get complicated. They’d had to kill Calley prematurely, and out in the open too, and now the new target, the man called Meron, had come dangerously close to slipping out of their grasp, something which couldn’t be allowed to happen. At least not before they’d got their information.
He finished the call to Mantani, one of the two men currently guarding Meron, having told him to do no further harm to their prisoner, and clicked off the phone. Mantani was a reliable operative but, like Lench, he enjoyed inflicting pain and could sometimes get carried away. It was absolutely essential that Meron remained alive, conscious and lucid, so that if he was hiding anything it could be extracted from him. The boot of the Lexus Lench was driving contained a variety of implements designed to do just that. These included a remote-controlled electro-shock stun belt which delivered an eight-second 50,000-volt shock to the person wearing it; a stun baton which could be forcibly inserted into the anus, where a smaller shock could then be applied; a dentist’s drill for use on teeth; and a set of six lethally sharp scalpels, perhaps his most favoured tools, which could be used to jab and pierce the ultra-sensitive nerves beneath the eyes and behind the ears.
Lench was an expert torturer with a great deal of practical experience. No-one had ever held out on him for longer than a matter of minutes. It was a record to be proud of. None had died on him accidentally either, although on several occasions they’d been finished off afterwards, as Meron would be tonight, when there was no further use for him.
He turned off the main road and into the street where the prisoner was being kept. He looked at his watch. It was 8.40 p.m. and raining hard. He was three minutes away. Hopefully, within the hour they’d have everything wrapped up.
17
‘If you’re holding out on us, I’d say so now,’ the gunman told me, his tone that of a man trying to be reasonable.
My head ached, and it was an effort to speak, but for what felt like the hundredth time I told him I wasn’t.
He nodded slowly. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I
believe you.’
‘If he is holding out, he’ll get what’s coming to him,’ said the driver. ‘Lench’ll have him begging like a dog.’ He sounded pleased at this prospect, and I wondered what the bastard had against me.
As I sat there chained to the seat, I was reminded of an old phrase my mother used to mutter whenever an event happened on the news where evil appeared to triumph over good. There are none so unhappy as those who care nothing for their fellow man. And there was some truth in that. You could almost feel sorry for a scumbag like him, so shallow was his life that his greatest joy appeared to come from beating up and doing his utmost to scare the shit out of someone he’d never met before. Almost, but not quite. I wanted to say something defiant that would demonstrate to him that I wasn’t scared. Unfortunately, the only problem was that I was scared. Terrified.
‘Listen, Mantani, I need a word.’ It was the gunman speaking.
Behind the balaclava, the driver’s features contorted with an anger that never seemed to be far from the surface. ‘What are you doing using my fucking name?’
‘It doesn’t matter. He’s finished anyway. He obviously doesn’t know anything, but he’s seen and heard too much, so Lench isn’t going to let him go.’ He motioned towards the door. ‘Come on, it’s important.’
Mantani shook his head, muttered something, but started walking anyway. ‘This better be fucking good.’
‘It is,’ said the gunman, reversing the gun in his hand and smashing the butt across the back of his colleague’s head. The impact was loud in the silence of the room and Mantani fell unsteadily to his knees. With a fluid, dancer’s grace, the gunman karate-kicked him in the kidneys. His victim yelped in pain before toppling over on his side and lying in a similar fetal position to the one I’d been in only a few minutes earlier. The gunman watched him thoughtfully for a couple of seconds, then kicked him in the back of the head with such force that his whole body was shunted across the grimy floor. Finally, Mantani stopped moving and the gunman put the pistol in the back of his jeans and bent down beside him, rifling through his pockets until he found a bunch of keys. Then he jumped back up and made his way over to me.
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