The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  I could see through a gap in the front of the coat covering my head that the prisoners were being loaded in. As the last one was placed on a seat, I heard Kev calling someone from outside. The officer at the back door looked around at the prisoners. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, no trouble from you lot, right?’

  They all ignored him and the door slammed shut. ‘What the fuck we gonna do?’ one of them whispered.

  ‘Listen. They think we work for Davey and that we’ve got this Jimmy bloke. We keep it like that. If they find out we’re down here looking to do Davey, they’ll start asking a load more questions we really don’t want to answer.’

  ‘Like what?’ the first voice asked.

  ‘Well if they find out he owes us for the drugs, they’ll probably try and stick us with dealing as well. Keep your mouths shut until we get solicitors, not even names. Okay?’

  My heart sank. Not only did they not know where Jimmy was, they were after Davey instead of working for him, so they couldn’t even let anything slip by accident. Suddenly all the knife attacks on the dealers clicked into place. They must have been cutting on people to find out where Davey was so that they could find him and kill him. I wondered if they knew how close they had come to him the previous day.

  I stood up suddenly, making them all jump, and opened the door of the van without a word.

  ‘Oi,’ I heard one of them call, but I ignored him as I stepped back out into the sunlight.

  ‘Well?’ Kev asked, standing just outside.

  I shook my head. ‘They don’t work for Davey; they were looking to do him over for a drug debt. Looks like our plan worked a little too well.’

  ‘Maybe it did, but the trouble is we’ve spent all day chasing these guys while Jimmy is God only knows where. Still, at least they’re off the streets.’

  Our part in it done, we headed back to the car and Kev drove us back to the station. I felt like pounding my fist against the dashboard in frustration as I thought about the time we’d wasted. I had no choice now but to go and face Davey and somehow convince him to give me Jimmy back in one piece.

  32

  ONCE WE had finished the log for the follow, Kev made us all leave on time, wanting us to be fresh to start searching tomorrow. I was secretly relieved as I thought I might have had to meet Davey on work time. I headed home and sank onto the sofa, intending to watch the telly and get an hour’s sleep so that I would have a clear head for my meeting tonight.

  I woke with a jolt, seeing the light begin to fade outside and swore as I glanced at my watch. It was already quarter past six and if I didn’t get my arse in gear I was going to be late for the meet. I didn’t have time to shower so I just pulled on a clean t-shirt and headed out, catching a bus into town. I didn’t want to take the car as not only was parking a problem, but also if I was still being followed it would be harder to give my pursuers the slip.

  Worry still gnawed at me regarding how much PSD knew. Surely if they knew about my theft of the drugs I would already be inside? It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t have time to think about it properly as I made my way through town, swapping buses regularly to make sure I wasn’t being followed and blessing my warrant card for the free travel it allowed.

  Forty minutes later I was sat in a booth at the back of Rikitiks, nursing a double Talisker, one of my favourite single malts. The bar itself was fairly dingy, with one way in or out at the front if you didn’t count the fire exits. I was admiring the somewhat surreal painting of Ollie Reed and approaching the bottom of my drink when two men walked past me, making me look up.

  Sure enough one of them was Davey, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. The other was a man I didn’t recognise, a huge lump of muscle with a crew cut and a nasty leer. ‘Thanks John, take a seat over there,’ Davey said to his companion as he sat opposite me. The muscle gave me one final leer before doing as he was told and sitting on the far side of the bar, far enough away not to overhear, but close enough get involved quickly if I started causing trouble. The barman raised the music and electronica pumped out loud enough to make my teeth rattle.

  Davey looked at me and smiled, the expression making him look more rodent-like. ‘So, Gareth – you don’t mind if I call you Gareth do you?’

  ‘Call me what the fuck you like, just give me Jimmy back in one piece!’

  He held up his hands as if warding off a blow. ‘Hey now, not so hasty. There’s a few things I want to make sure of first. Lift your top.’

  I looked at him, surprised. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Er, bugs, Officer?’ he asked in a condescending tone.

  I sighed and obliged, lifting my t-shirt to show that I wasn’t wired. I still could have been, technology had obviously moved on a lot since last time he saw a cop show, but if he didn’t know that, I wasn’t going to disabuse him.

  ‘Right,’ he continued, casting constant looks around the bar as he spoke, ‘I suppose you want to know what this little meeting is all about?’

  I drained the rest of my drink in a single swallow, keeping my hand on the glass in case I needed to use it as a weapon.

  ‘Let me guess. I give you your stuff back and you give me Jimmy back, and then we all go away happy, right?’

  He laughed, an unpleasant grating sound that rubbed my already jangling nerves raw. ‘You really don’t know a lot about the art of conversation, do you Gareth? You’re as bad as your brother, you really are!’

  I sat up straight as he mentioned my brother, my hand tightening on the whisky glass. Davey saw the motion and grinned again, showing crooked teeth. ‘You didn’t know that I knew Jake, did you? I sold him his first ten bag of brown. I thought it was really sad when he sold me your mum’s jewellery for skag.’

  He watched me carefully as I absorbed what he was telling me. He was deliberately trying to provoke me but I refused to let myself be drawn in. I clenched my teeth to stop myself from saying anything I’d regret later. ‘Just tell me what you want and then we’re done.’

  He leaned back, obviously enjoying my reaction. ‘Well, you see, before you wrecked one of my flats today, I was just going to ask for the drugs back, and then you and your mate Jimmy could have had a touching reunion. But seeing as you’ve caused me all sorts of trouble I’m going to have to ask for a favour as well my gear. I want you to get into your police computers and get rid of all the stuff you’ve got on me and my lads, as well as every other dealer in Brighton, just to make sure it doesn’t lead back to me. That shouldn’t be too hard for a bright lad like you, should it?’

  I laughed in astonishment. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! Do you have any idea how hard that would be? I’d have to find a way into the servers, find the information, then erase it from the database and destroy any backed-up copies. Even if I had a PhD in computing that would take me weeks to do!’

  He shook his head, waggling an admonishing finger at me. ‘I don’t think so. One of my lads tells me that all the police computers are linked, so if you can get into one you can get into them all. Stop trying to be smart with me.’

  I wondered how someone so good at running a business, even if it was selling heroin, could be so stupid about computers. ‘Have you ever heard of access levels? Even if I worked for tech support, I still wouldn’t have the access necessary to do what you want. I. Can’t. Do. It. Can I be any more specific? Just accept your drugs for Jimmy and then we’re done.’

  Davey sighed and leaned back, pulling a mobile phone out of his trouser pocket. ‘Well, if you won’t do it, I’ll have to try a different tack. Are you sure you won’t help me?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not won’t, can’t. Not that I would if I could.’

  He tapped a number into his phone from memory then began speaking to someone on the other end. ‘Yeah, it’s me. I’m having a bit of a problem. Yeah. Okay, now you remember Jake, the copper’s brother? Yeah, that’s right, the one who ran off to Bristol. You remember where his dad lives…’

  The words were barely out of his mouth
when I swung the whisky glass, shattering it against his temple hard enough that he flew sideways out of the seat and landed on the floor. His muscle bounded across the bar towards me, leaping his boss and literally hurling himself on me WWF style.

  I couldn’t move out of the way in the booth as the table had me hemmed in, so I turned on my side and brought both feet up, just managing to tuck them in tight as the bruiser sprawled over me with his meaty hands searching for a grip on my face. I pushed backwards, letting both feet fly. My adversary shot backwards towards the table he had come from, smacking into it and disappearing over the top.

  I slid myself out and glanced down at Davey, whose face was a mask of blood as he lay there clutching his head with one hand while the other grasped for something in his pocket. Not wanting to hang around and find out what he was looking for I ran towards the front of the bar, only to collapse in a heap as something hard and heavy hit me in the legs.

  I dropped like a stone, banging my head on a nearby table and half turned to see my legs tangled in a chair that the now triumphant-looking John had thrown. I tried to stand up again as he lumbered towards me, but my bruised legs and pounding head were enough to slow me and I was pinned to the floor before I could get my legs under me. John lay there on top of me, bellowing over the music, which a scared-looking barman kept turning up between keeping a watch on the front door. Obviously he was under Davey’s sway as much as everyone else in this bloody town seemed to be.

  I tried to flip my aggressor onto his back, but he was too heavy and I couldn’t get the leverage without using my ankles to wrap around his. One try convinced me that the pain would probably knock me out. After a few moments Davey appeared, staggering as if drunk with an extendable baton clutched in his right hand, his left still holding his temple where the glass had smashed. Blood poured down his face and dripped onto his shirt and his eyes were blazing as though he was about to kill me. Which, I thought, he probably was.

  He leaned in close, holding himself up against a table for support. Not even bothering to use the baton, he instead began hurling kicks into my unprotected face. By the third kick my face felt as if it had split from forehead to chin and my right cheek felt slippery and warm. I screamed with the pain, but there was no release and the boot kept coming back, again and again until unconsciousness reached out to claim me.

  33

  I WOKE up with a start, the sudden movement making my whole head flare up with pain. I couldn’t work out where I was and I tried to roll into a sitting position, only to find myself unable to move my arms or legs. I tried to open my eyes, then realised that they were already open and that I had some kind of sack over my head, scraping my already raw face and making me want to scream with the pain as I accidentally rolled onto my front.

  All that came out was a strangled grunt and I realised that whoever had done this to me had placed a gag in my mouth so tightly that it was stuck to my parched tongue, preventing me from making any kind of loud noise. My tongue itself seemed about twelve sizes too big for my mouth and my need for a drink was only exceeded by my need to urinate. I could taste and smell old blood but had no choice but to lie there waiting for someone to free me.

  As all of my other senses were useless I tried listening, trying to work out where I was. I couldn’t hear anything other than my own breathing, except the occasional creak that told me I was in some kind of wooden building. It felt like there was quite a bit of space around me but I couldn’t tell for sure, trussed as I was. I tried making as much noise as I could but after a few minutes I almost choked on what little spit I could produce chewing on my gag, leaving me dangerously close to panicking as I tried to get my breathing under control.

  A long while later I heard what sounded like a car engine, then a door slamming followed by approaching footsteps. Another creak and a gust of air hit me, only half felt through the material over my head, followed by a burst of laughter. ‘Look, he’s gone and pissed himself,’ a coarse male voice said and I felt embarrassment burn through me.

  Another voice answered the first, younger but no less coarse. ‘I’m not touching him without gloves on, he’s soaked.’

  ‘Look, we’ve got to get him to the farmhouse and we haven’t got much time. We’ve got to be back in town by midnight.’

  I felt rough hands grab me, avoiding my urine-stained front as I was hauled upright, the pain in my arms, legs and head making me cry with strangled grunts. I must have passed out from the pain because the next thing I remember is having water thrown in my face and a painfully bright light being pointed at me.

  ‘Stick him in the corner,’ a familiar voice said as I frantically licked the water off my face, realising that both gag and mask had been removed.

  I was grabbed and hauled from my position against the wall, instead being wedged into a corner where the wall and floor were both cold enough to make me shiver. It smelled musty in here but it was clearly a different room. The other had felt like a barn, this felt more like a cellar.

  I heard footsteps recede and a door close and slowly became aware of a flickering light as my eyes adjusted and focused. Sitting next to the lantern was Davey, looking angry and battered with a large bandage over his left temple and an evil glint in his eye. ‘Thought you were clever, didn’t you? Thought you could have one over on me and get away with it. Well now you’re in the shit and being a copper won’t save you.’

  He shifted position and I saw that we were indeed in a cellar, with a set of rickety wooden steps leading up into the gloom and a plain wooden door some way behind where Davey sat on a packing crate. Odds and ends were stacked against the walls, looking like the detritus gained from years of living in the same place.

  ‘I’ll make it easy for you, just for the sake of ‘speediency. I need those drugs back before midnight day after tomorrow, which gives you just a bit over forty-eight hours to tell me where you hid them. A lot can happen to someone in that amount of time.’

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t force any words out past my oversized tongue. Davey noticed but left it a moment, clearly enjoying my distress, before he opened a bottle of water and allowed me a few small sips. ‘More,’ I gasped, desperate and not caring if he was enjoying it.

  ‘Oh no, not until you give me what I want.’

  I began to shake my head and then stopped as pain wracked my whole upper body. ‘And you’re just going to let me go after I tell you, after you’ve done this? Yeah right!’

  He laughed and dragged his packing crate over so that he was sitting within arm’s reach.

  ‘Oh no mate, I’m afraid you’re for it. I can’t let you go after this, but if you want your mate Jimmy to survive you’ll tell me where the gear is. You see, your little stunt in the park, playing the hero and getting yourself stabbed, well that fucked me, see? I haven’t got anything left to sell and if I don’t get something soon my business will go down the pan. And if my business goes down I may as well take a couple of coppers with me. I’ve always wanted to kill a copper.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ I gasped as my tongue began to dry up again.

  He smiled at me and leaned forwards, producing a knife from inside his jacket. He waved the blade backwards and forwards slowly in front of my eyes, making sure I could see it clearly.

  ‘You know the great thing about knives?’ he asked in a conversational tone.

  I just stared at him, too hurt and scared to do more than that as the blade drew ever closer to my face on each pass.

  ‘Well the thing is, they don’t make any noise and you can draw the pain out for as long as you want.’ As he finished speaking, the blade darted in, piercing my left cheek and making me cry out with pain.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, that was just a little prick,’ he said scornfully. ‘My dad used to give me worse for just talking back to him. Stealing now, he would have taken a strip of flesh for that.’

  As if to demonstrate, he stood and lifted his bloodstained shirt, showing a flat stomach that had little squares of scar
tissue rather like a human chessboard. ‘He never caught me, these were just warnings when he couldn’t find anyone else to blame. I was never stupid enough to actually steal from him.’

  He sat again and I tried to shrink away as he brought the knife close to my chest. ‘Now don’t go running away, I’ve hardly started,’ he laughed. In that laugh I heard barely suppressed madness and an involuntary whimper escaped my lips.

  His head snapped up as if tasting my fear and he grinned at me as the knife slid up and down my chest, almost caressing me in a manner that made me want to vomit. His spare hand leaned over and gripped my chin, forcing my head round to look at him.

  ‘Of course, with a dad like mine it was hard to do anything right, but you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You and your perfect family. I had a psychologist see me once, in prison, and he said that my violent urges weren’t my fault. He said that what my dad did to me made me angry and the only way I could let the anger out was to hurt people.’

  He leaned back and fumbled for a cigarette with his spare hand, lighting it from the lantern but never taking the knife away from me. ‘I had to agree, so I took his pencil and stuck it in his eye. I didn’t get any more head doctors coming to see me after that.’

  What made this monologue worse was that I knew he was telling the truth. He had been charged with GBH with intent while in prison for assaulting a doctor, only no one ever knew what was said between them to make him snap. Apparently that came under patient / doctor privilege even after the doctor was half blinded.

  ‘Look, I’ll get you your drugs back, just don’t do this. Do you know what’ll happen to you for killing a copper?’

  He laughed his grating laugh again. ‘Oh they’ll never catch me; you can be sure of that. I’ve got a whole load of people in London that will say that I was at parties all this weekend, and some of them are even judges and lawyers. So it’s just you and me, a nice little cosy evening getting to know each other.’