As he hit the M4, he steadily cruised his way along the left-hand lane, obeying the rules of the road for the first time ever. A police traffic stop would be the last thing he needed. For all he knew, the police could be looking for the Astra already. Technically, it was a stolen vehicle. Not so technically, Dom had been responsible for the deaths of two people and indirectly responsible for two others. He had to face facts. He was a fugitive.
In the old Westerns he used to watch as a kid, the fugitives always made for the border – the border of Mexico – to lay low until the heat was off. Just in the distance, beyond the traffic haze on a clear Sunday afternoon, Dom could see the tall concrete pillars of the second Severn Crossing. It was a border. Not as romantic a border as the Mexican border, but a border all the same. And while the police authority could pluck him into custody regardless of which side of the line he stood on, he had to take his chances. If he stayed where he was, he was in danger from the criminal gang who had taken him under their wing.
Running made sense for now, and he would continue to run until it stopped making sense.
*
“Where do you think he’s going?” Gary asked, munching on a Big Mac from the passenger seat.
“I have no idea,” Richards replied, his eyes fixed on the battered blue car a hundred metres ahead.
“He doesn’t have any ties in Wales, does he?” The bread and beef swirling in Gary’s mouth wasn’t helping get his questions across.
“He was in prison in Cardiff, that’s all I know. Now shut up and eat your food.” Richards was in no mood for idle chat. He was in no mood for this low speed pursuit. The only saving grace of this recent endeavour was putting a GPS tracker in one of the bundles of money. In the confusion of the last twenty-four hours, the tracker had been overlooked. But now, finding their target was easy. As long as Dom held on to the money, they would know where he was.
It could be a long journey with an unpredictable destination and a target that was prepared to kill. Richards knew only too well, Dom had nothing left to lose.
Chapter 83
The door clattered open, slamming into the chipped plaster behind, on its last remaining hinge. The Boss had his arms tucked under Wade’s shoulders, carrying the injured man into the rancid house.
Nate came rushing out to see what all the fuss was about, but in truth he knew that only his employer would make so much noise when entering.
“What’s up, Boss?” Nate asked, not really sure if he wanted to hear the answer. He was used to the Boss coming in with his two usual heavies, not one down and one in a sorry state.
“Never you fucking mind,” the Boss snarled. “Help me get him upstairs and I want you to see he gets taken care of.”
The narrow staircase could barely fit the Boss on his own, but with Wade being dragged up a step at a time and Nate lifting the wounded man’s legs, it was a struggle.
They bypassed the first room at the top of the stairs, sounds of frantic sex emanating from behind the filthy curtain of the tiny room. The men moved to the next room. There was no noise here.
Ripping back the curtain, the Boss stepped into the room, dropping Wade onto the stained mattress on the floor, barely missing the skinny girl huddled into the corner. She wasn’t servicing a customer at that moment, so she would be Wade’s nurse until she was needed.
“You.” The Boss pointed at the girl and a moment of recognition flickered across his face, but then he recognised them all, as they were all the same to him. “I want you to take care of him until I get back. Is that understood?”
The wide-eyed girl with the familiar face nodded and started to stroke Wade’s head.
“Good!” He turned to Nate, “I’m gonna go buy some cream and get some bandages. You make sure she looks after him.”
“Ok, Boss.”
The Boss stormed back down the stairs and was gone, slamming the door with a ferocity equal to when he had entered.
“Er… do you know how to treat burns?” Nate asked the girl, looking down at the almost unconscious Wade.
“I need… I need…” the girl mimicked a pair of scissors with her fingers, her English not good enough to know the right word. “To cut off pants.”
Nate rushed out of the room and down to the living room that doubled as the reception and waiting area for the Boss’s personal brothel.
The petite Romanian prostitute gazed down at the man; his skin burned down to the bone on his shins and blistered badly just beyond his knees. There was nothing she could do here except to go through the motions and pretend to know what was needed.
After much clattering and searching, Nate returned to the room with a large pair of scissors. He seemed completely off his stride due to the intrusion and the huge welt on the side of his head. Usually, he was the cold, hard pimp, but now he was the flustered medical assistant to one of his whores.
“Sank you!” she said in mock gratitude, taking them from him. “I need the hot water, and I need the cloths.”
“Cloths?”
“Yes, to wrap the legs.” She shooed him away.
Nate did as he was told.
There was no cutting of material. There was no care or attention. She had had this man in her room before. It was not something she would forget. It was possible to forget what somebody said, and it’s possible to forget what they did, but it’s impossible to forget how they made you feel. This man had been there when she had felt at her most worthless.
She remembered the big man, the man they called ‘Boss,’ pushing her down. She remembered him forcing his way inside her – raping her – to teach her a lesson for not fucking the desperate Toms who came to call while she was having her period. She remembered the other man - the hairy, tattooed man – flipping her over to fuck her doggy style straight afterwards. And she remembered this man – this man who lay wounded before her – she remembered him the most because he flipped her on to her back and choked her while he raped her. The memory brought the feeling of his hands upon her throat once more, the gasping for breath, pleading silently in her head as the words could not escape her lips.
Yes, she remembered him.
He wasn’t so tough now. His hands not so strong, or so threatening.
Padding down his jeans, she pulled a wallet and a mobile phone from his pockets. The wallet had ten crisp twenty pound notes tucked inside. They belonged to her now.
Somewhere in the house, she heard the sound of a kettle rising to the boil before clicking off. It was a motivator for her next move.
She pressed the tip of the scissors into the pit of skin below the henchman’s larynx, thrusting down with all her meagre weight. The man’s eyes snapped open. Hands reached out for the assailant but found nothing. Blood shot from between his lips, pouring out from his mouth, covering his face in a sticky red mess of gore and snot. She didn’t ease up the pressure until she hit bone. The man stopped moving.
Footsteps were on the stairs.
She tugged her weapon from the gaping wound in the dead man’s neck.
There was creaking on the landing.
She stood against the wall.
Nate entered the room, the kettle in one hand, some dirty bed linen in the other. His eyes were on the bloody corpse on the bed, too busy to notice the girl.
He noticed the tip of the scissors enter his right eye. Felt it pop. Felt the raging fire of spilled blood and fluid run from his orbit. So much pain, he didn’t feel the blades hit his chest; or his neck; or his belly. He didn’t feel the repeated stabs into his back, again, and again. Dead men don’t feel pain.
She patted down the dead pimp’s body, finding a wad of notes totalling several hundred pounds. That also belonged to her now.
One freezing shower and change of clothes later, she was gone. Never to return.
Chapter 84
The miles rumbled on. Three lanes of motorway dropped to two then back to three without much rhyme or reason. It had been maybe fourteen years since he had travelled this way. The
road looked much the same as it did all those years ago. The cars were different. There were more large cars than he could remember. It seemed that every brand had a ‘crossover’ - somewhere between a regular car and a 4x4 - and they were everywhere.
Dom couldn’t help but notice them. Everything was overtaking him. Not because the Astra was so old it had lost its guts, but because Dom had noticed something.
While skill behind the wheel was his primary attribute, his observational skills were pretty high too. He wouldn’t have been half as good as a getaway driver if he didn’t see all the potential threats in all directions.
When the M4 reached Port Talbot, the speed dropped to fifty miles per hour for several miles. Dom, following the road signs for the first time in his life, did just that, slowing the car to fifty. However, when the national speed limit signs were reached, he didn’t return to seventy miles per hour but kept trundling along. Every vehicle that had spent the last few miles in his rear-view mirror was now zipping past, freed from the speed constraints.
Every vehicle bar one.
Sitting in the left-hand lane, about a hundred yards behind, was a black BMW. Richards’ black BMW.
It was not paranoia or a guilty conscience. Dom was on the run, from the police and the gangsters, and regardless of how tired and how traumatic his last twenty-four hours had been, he was acutely aware of everything around him.
There was something else he was aware of.
The BMW was less than two years old, had about fifteen thousand miles on the clock, and packed somewhere in the region of four hundred brake horse power under the bonnet. Whereas the Astra had been driven off the forecourt seventeen years ago, had one hundred and fifty six thousand, five hundred and sixty one miles creeping by on the clock, an original horse power of just one hundred, of which Dom felt sure many had bolted from the stables. Plus there was a groan coming from at least one wheel bearing and the engine management light was permanently on.
Outrunning the more powerful car wasn’t an option. As good as he was, he didn’t have all the tools he would have liked to have at his disposal for a getaway. There was only one way to find out.
This trip was a gambit. Everything Dom would do from this day forward would come with a risk. That was the one advantage he had. He had nothing left to lose.
He took the speed of the car back up to the limit and started to make progress through the traffic. It was a Sunday afternoon so there weren’t the normal numbers using the often well-travelled motorway. Dom didn’t want to risk any innocents getting hurt in what was his war. All he wanted was for the roads to change so that he had an advantage. He stood no chance on two lanes of uncongested road, but on a winding country road, maybe he would have the upper hand. It was a big maybe.
Thirty minutes later, two lanes dropped to one and there was no more motorway or dual carriageway, just glorious country roads twisting and turning through hamlets and villages along the way out west.
Dom had been this far down to West Wales a few times, always for a holiday, often with his mother and Bob. The last time he travelled this way was with a girl he’d been seeing. Her name was Audrey and she liked coastal holidays, being from Cornwall herself. As Dom recalled, it hadn’t last long, but then none of his relationships had back then. He would grow bored too easily. That was his weakness. Nothing could stay the same for too long. If it did, it was gone. That went for people too.
He often thought of Audrey; her cheeky smile, shining eyes, and energetic personality. As much as he loved the attention she gave him, she would never have been enough for him. He knew it and she knew it. A dirty weekend in a rural hotel on the cliffs overlooking St George’s Channel was the highlight of their three-month relationship.
Three months was a long relationship for Dom. It took that long for him to realise that something was missing and move on to the next. That was how shallow his life used to be.
He had hoped it would have been different with Georgia. Deep down inside, he knew it would have been. The feeling was different. She was different. She never tried to be the girl that Dom wanted. She was the girl she wanted to be and that was the draw. Strong, feisty and independent. Couple that with those bottomless blue eyes, long jet black hair and her endless legs and she was the one on every possible level.
Dom had waited his whole life to feel that way about someone and as soon as he had, she had been taken away. He had wanted to take this trip with her in the car, chasing memories, not running for his shitty life.
It was a lost dream. A lost chance.
While he had nothing left to lose, he still didn’t want to give the bad guys the satisfaction of winning this one.
The traffic had started to build up on the approach to the last county town before his chosen destination. Haverfordwest was at the centre of Pembrokeshire and while Dom was a city boy at heart, he loved his trips to more rural places, living at a much slower pace for a time. In prison there was only one pace; monotonously steady. Behind the wheel of a hot vehicle, engaged in deeds of illicit intent, the pace was lightning fast.
Dom wanted a snail’s pace for just a little while and the traffic was starting to set the pace. A glance in the rear-view mirror revealed the black BMW sitting in the queue six cars back. That might just be enough.
As the line of vehicles trundled into the main route through the town, Dom created a chance and overtook on a roundabout, skipping off on the third exit and running a red light. He gave the Astra all she had, the engine roaring as the rev counter spiked higher than it ever had before.
Dom looked over his shoulder. The BMW was caught up in the queue. There was no path through.
He knew where he was going. He’d researched his destination from his prison cell some two years ago. This was not how he had planned to go there but now was as good time as ever and he hoped that the ground he had gained would allow him to scrape a plan together once he got where he was going. This would be his last stand. It would be a fitting end.
Chapter 85
“He’s getting away!” Gary yelled, shifting awkwardly in his seat.
“He’s not going anywhere.” Richards waited patiently for the lights to change and the traffic to move.
“Do you think he knows we’re here?”
“The way he just took off, I’d guarantee it.” Richards moved the car into the left-hand lane of the filter system and took the first turn off the roundabout.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Gary asked, firing the words as quickly as he could fire a gun.
Richards gave him a nonchalant glance. “I don’t know, but what I do know is he is running out of road. So just keep your head and we’ll be fine.”
Gary eased back, still animated, especially as the BMW was aimed onto the country roads leaving the town.
Richards gunned the engine, overtaking a dawdling Sunday driver at the edge of the town limit sign, opening up an empty road ahead. As the car crested a hill, he examined the road ahead as far as he could see. About three quarters of a mile of open road lay before them but there was no battered blue Astra to be seen.
“Perhaps he’s pulled off somewhere?” Gary piped up.
Richards reached for his phone, opening the screen to the GPS tracker app he had installed. Pinching the screen to narrow the view while negotiating a bend in the road, Richards could see that the signal was almost three miles ahead and moving fast.
“Maybe he’s switched cars?” Gary was clutching at straws.
“It doesn’t matter. We can just follow the money.”
“What’s more important? Getting him or the money?”
Richards pondered the question before answering. He didn’t mind Gary. Gary was reliable and ruthless but just a tad too paranoid for his liking. Of course, he was heavily into coke, which sharpened those paranoid whisperings. Eventually, Gary would have to go. But not yet.
“We are here for the money. I couldn’t give a shit about Dom Carver. If we find him, we kill him. If we don’t, we dro
p the murder of McQuillan on him and let the police find him.”
“What if they believe him?”
“He’s a convicted criminal. I’m an upstanding member of society. They won’t believe him.”
They were approaching the spot where the signal had last pinged. Another look at the screen showed that the car Dom had been driving had made a left turn and was heading down some narrow lanes off the main road. Richards did the same.
The lanes were not much wider than the car. High hedges obscured the views leaving the only clear line of vision the road ahead. The area was pretty flat so there were no hills from which to gain a vantage point either. This continued for a couple of miles, although it seemed longer.
Risking a look, Richards glanced at the phone screen to see the signal had come to a halt up ahead. He slowed the vehicle down, preparing for some kind of ambush. Guns were drawn.
Eventually there was an opening. A break in the hedgerow revealed what looked like an old military guardhouse, a building no bigger than eight foot square next to the remains of a counterweight barrier. The barrier lay on the ground, no longer blocking entry to what looked like an old Second World War air force base. Not so much a base anymore, more a collection of derelict buildings and hangars with broken concrete paths, and a potholed runway. Weeds had invaded the base and taken control for the most part.
The BMW crawled onto the base, the run-flat tyres hard against the pitted terrain through the centre of the site. The signal pinged that the target was very close. According to the map, it was in a hangar on the right.
“Let’s get in there,” Richards instructed, checking his phone one last time just to be certain. “You go in through the front and I’ll go around the back.”
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