The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  He took the knife and slid it up my left arm from the elbow to halfway up the bicep, leaving a trickle of blood as its razor sharp edge sliced through my skin. I shouted in pain and tried to pull away and he removed the knife, looking at me strangely. ‘You afraid of a little pain? I thought you were stronger than that. Gareth Bell, hero of the hour, disarming Davey and saving Jimmy’s life. If I’d known before that all I had to do was cut you to get the drugs back I wouldn’t have bothered with any of this.’ He waved the knife at the walls as he spoke.

  ‘Why did you drag me out here?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘You made me lose my rag. Now which bit do you think you can live without the most?’ He held up the knife again.

  I tried reasoning with him, not liking the glint that lurked just underneath the surface of his eyes. ‘Look Davey, I’ve told you I can get you the drugs back so there’s no need to start cutting on me, is there? What happens if there’s an accident and you kill me before I get the drugs for you?’

  He paused for a second, thinking. ‘You’ve got a point there. So tell me where the drugs are and then I’ll start playing.’

  I shook my head carefully, not wanting to pass out from the pain.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. I need to go myself or you’ll never find them.’

  Davey laughed his psychotic grating laugh again. ‘Oh, of course I’m going to let you go wandering around out there, because you’ll definitely come back, won’t you?’

  I looked at him as steadily as I could. ‘You’ve still got Jimmy; of course I’ll come back.’

  He paused then, staring into my eyes as if he could read my mind. ‘Okay. I’ll send one of my lads with you, no, two I think, and you can go and get the drugs. You come back here with them and I’ll let your friend go. If you’re good I might even let you go too, as long as we can come to a suitable… business arrangement.’

  ‘I want to see Jimmy first,’ I demanded, ‘make sure he’s still alive and that you’re treating him okay.’

  Davey smiled innocently. ‘Oh don’t worry, he’s in the best of health, I promise. Let’s get you cleaned up and then you can go see him, but no funny stuff or I’ll slit his throat and then yours even if it means I have to tear Brighton apart to find the drugs myself.’

  The evil glint in his eye as he spoke told me that it wouldn’t take much for him to follow through on his promise. My shoulders sagged and I nodded once, hoping that somehow I’d be able to get both myself and Jimmy out of this alive. Looking at the armed madman in front of me though, I had my doubts.

  34

  CLEANING ME up involved another bucket of water being thrown over me before I was hauled up by Davey and one of his goons and dragged stumbling up the stairs and through a door at the top.

  I found myself led into a farmhouse kitchen, a large room with an Aga stove and neat wooden furniture. The work surfaces were littered with rubbish and the place smelled of old food and cigarettes. The large window showed me that it was still night outside with just a hint of dawn showing on the horizon. Before I could get my bearings by taking a good look through the window, I was pulled through another door that led to a hallway and up another flight of stairs. None of the lights were on and we only had torchlight to lead us as we reached the top. I was shoved through another door into a dark room that stank of shit and infection.

  Someone flicked a light on and my eyes watered as the glare hit me. I blinked away the tears and saw a bare floor with a single mattress on it and a huddled form lying still under a blanket. I staggered over with my hands still bound behind me and dropped to my knees next to the figure, recognising Jimmy as I got close. He looked terrible, pale and sickly, and a smell like cheese and rotting meat was emanating from him in waves.

  ‘Untie me and let me check him, please?’

  I felt cold steel against my wrist as my bonds were cut and I immediately threw back the blanket, ignoring the pain in my hands as circulation returned. I gasped when I saw Jimmy’s body; he was naked under the blanket and his back and arms were a mess of half-healed cuts and bruises. They had clearly been beating him regularly, old wounds overlaid by new ones. My temper flared, overriding the fear that had been my constant companion since I had been taken.

  ‘He needs a doctor. What the fuck have you done to him? Jimmy, Jimmy mate, it’s Gareth. Can you hear me?’

  He lay silent and unmoving and I checked his pulse with shaking hands. It took me an age to find it and when I did it was weak and thready, just a flutter of life remaining in his broken body. I pulled the blanket back up and turned to Davey, somehow managing not to throw myself at him. I knew that in the state I was in I would last about two seconds against my captors, and then Jimmy would die.

  ‘You fucking arsehole!’ I raged, clenching my hands into fists, ‘How could you do this to him? What has he done to deserve this?’

  Davey stepped back, knife raised warningly. ‘Don’t blame me; you’re the one who made me do this. If you hadn’t decided to screw around with my business, he’d still be having cute nurses play with his cock. Did you really think that you could step into my world and beat me?’

  He laughed harshly. ‘The sooner you leave and get my drugs the sooner you get back and Jimmy here gets a doctor. We wouldn’t want him to die now, would we? Tie him back up.’

  I bit back an angry retort as my wrists were rebound, not wanting Davey to change his mind about letting me go. Even escorted, I stood a better chance of getting out of this by leaving than I ever could by staying here. ‘Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.’

  ‘That’s better. Just remember though, Ding, that if you try and mess me around, Jimmy dies. I don’t even need to do it myself, I reckon. More than another day and he’ll be dead anyway, and it’ll be your fault. Chop chop.’

  I nearly made a play then and there, despite my wrists being tied, but instead I walked meekly out of the room, clenching my fists so hard that my fingernails gouged my palms. His use of my nickname, Ding, had made me go cold. Only a few people ever called me that. I’d made heroic efforts to make sure that it didn’t get used outside of the office and I think few people even knew it. That meant that Davey’s mole was someone in my own office, someone that Jimmy and I had worked, eaten and got drunk with.

  I was guided downstairs and made to sit at the kitchen table while his goon, a stocky chap in his forties with a ridiculous quiff, went to get a car and another pair of hands to guard me.

  Davey sat opposite me, rolling a cigarette with one hand while the other held the ever-present knife. ‘Now Gareth, I want you to know something just so that you know I’m not mucking about.’

  I looked at the weeping cut on my left arm. He saw the look and smiled.

  ‘That’s right. You know that I’m a man of my word; you have to be in this business. So when I tell you that if you screw me over, not only will Jimmy die but that your dad will as well, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’

  He sat back and lit his rollup, apparently oblivious to my struggle not to leap over the table and kill him. ‘And don’t be thinking that if you kill me it won’t happen. The order is already in place and if they don’t hear from me to cancel it, it’s bye bye Daddy. Clear?’

  I nodded jerkily, angry enough that I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  ‘Good. Ah, the car’s here. Have fun.’ He waved me up with the knife and pushed me out of the door in front of him, heading first into the hall then out of the main door and into a farmyard.

  The whole place was eerily silent and smelled deserted. The place looked run-down from the outside and this clearly hadn’t been a working farm for quite some time. A battered red Nissan Primera sat outside the front door with Quiff driving and another man sitting in the back seat behind the driver.

  I got into the rear passenger seat and wasn’t overly surprised when a bag was pulled over my head. Before they could get the bag over my eyes, I looked up at Davey. ‘I need my warrant card; I won’t be able to get the drugs without it
.’

  He looked at me grimly. ‘You’ll manage; you don’t have a lot of choice.’

  I shook my head, gambling on his lack of computer and technical knowledge. ‘No, really, I can’t get at them without it. It’s got a chip inside it that allows me access to where they’re hidden.’

  Grumbling, he leafed through his pockets, pulling out my mobile phone and keys, then my warrant card. ‘Oh, and I’ll need my keys as well.’

  He threw the warrant card and keys at me, tucking the phone back into his pocket, then slammed the door shut and we drove away. I tried to use my teeth on the cloth, attempting to smooth the folds so that I could see something but in the dark it was hopeless.

  Quiff turned the radio on and it blared loud enough to annoy me, further spoiling any attempts I might have made to listen to the road surfaces as I sought any clue as to where the farmhouse was. The drive lasted for about an hour, and I had been half dozing for some time when the bag was pulled from my head. I blinked and sat up, seeing that we were on the A27 just approaching Brighton.

  ‘Where we going?’ Quiff asked, never taking his eyes from the road.

  ‘My house. You know where that is?’

  ‘Yup.’

  He swung round the roundabout and up Mill Lane onto the flyover and within twenty minutes we were looking for somewhere to park on Wordsworth Street.

  As I climbed out, the sky was lightening perceptibly and I guessed it was around 5.00 a.m. I shivered, the cool breeze stinging the cuts on my face, and headed up the steps to my front door wondering if I really was going to give the drugs back or if I could manage to pull some last minute heroics out of my arse and save the day. I didn’t feel much like a hero though, but I suppose stinking of your own piss will do that to you. Neither of my escorts had said anything about it but they had both opened their windows on the way and Quiff had kept the blowers going full whack.

  The second escort appeared to be a Michael Thewlis clone, even down to the belly and the out-thrust lower jaw, and he prodded me impatiently as I fumbled with the keys. Eventually I got the door open and they shoved me inside, closing the door behind them.

  ‘So where is it?’ Quiff asked impatiently.

  ‘Hang on a second, I need some painkillers if I’m going to do this, I need to remember a lot of numbers for the combination. You’ll need to untie me as well.’

  I was stalling them, but my head really was splitting and just necking a couple of pills might make all the difference between me being able to think my way out of this or just having to go along with their plan instead.

  Thewlis grunted and I took that as assent, walking into the kitchen and carefully staying away from the knife block in case they felt threatened. Quiff untied my hands and I opened the odds-and-ends drawer, pulling out some industrial strength co-dydramol that I had left over from an operation a couple of years before. I ignored the advice on the label and took four, then turned to my captors. ‘Any chance I can take a piss?’

  Quiff stepped forwards, pulling a baton from his belt and racking it out. ‘Stop fucking about and do what you’re here for,’ he demanded, brandishing the baton at me.

  I held up my hands. ‘Easy mate, I’m not trying to cause trouble. I need to get to the cupboard behind you.’ I pointed to the cupboard under the stairs, a plan forming in my mind. I was beginning to realise that no matter what I did, Davey would kill me and Jimmy. He didn’t stand to lose anything by doing it and he had everything to lose if he let us go, so I was frantically working on a plan that would get us out of this in one piece.

  My new friends obediently moved out of the way and I opened the cupboard door, having to get down on my hands and knees to get into the space once the door was removed and placed to one side. I was starting to run out of ideas to stall.

  Somewhere in here I had the golf clubs that I never used anymore. I was toying with the idea of grabbing them and trying to use one to bludgeon Pinky and Perky to death when my eyes settled on my PSU kit bag. Not only did it contain my PSU baton, twenty-seven inches of black hardened rubber, but also I had a spare can of pepper spray that was totally against regulations and indeed illegal for me to own, let alone have at home. Unless I’d taken it into work and put it in my locker?

  I scrabbled around for a few minutes trying to find it, then realised that if it had still been here PSD would have found it when they had searched the place. I dug through the clothing one last time then stuck my hand inside my riot helmet. My hand closed around something small, cylindrical and cold with a lump of plastic at one end and I almost cried with relief as I flicked the safety lid of the pepper spray and wriggled backwards out of the low cupboard.

  ‘Have you got it?’ Quiff asked, leaning over and putting himself in perfect line for what I was about to do.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, twisting to spray him from point blank range.

  The first thing they teach you about pepper spray is that you should never spray someone from less than three feet away as the force of the spray can drill out the eyeball and damage the retina. It appears they were right and Quiff screamed, staggering back against the wall with his baton forgotten as both hands flew to his suddenly bloody eye.

  The second thing they teach you is that pepper spray only affects the person you’re spraying and doesn’t fill the air with fumes. I knew from experience that they were wrong on this one and I was already holding my breath, feeling my eyes tear as I straightened and unleashed a blast at Thewlis who was backing into the kitchen and reaching under his coat.

  The spray hit him on the bridge of the nose and splashed into both eyes, making him blink instinctively for a second before shouting in pain. His hand, however, completed the movement beneath his coat and came out clutching a pistol which he waved in my direction, trying to flick the safety catch off with his thumb.

  I launched myself at him, spray forgotten as adrenaline dumped into my system at the sight of the weapon. We collapsed to the ground together in a heap, the jolt almost enough to jar me loose as pain shot through my damaged body. I grabbed his right wrist in a death-grip, knowing that if he brought the pistol to bear I was dead, while I drove my free hand into his stomach and groin repeatedly as we fought for control of the weapon.

  He was strong, far stronger than me, but my desperation gave me the edge and I banged his hand repeatedly against the wall until his fingers spasmed and dropped the pistol. He tried to curl up in a ball to prevent my fists from striking the sensitive areas I was attacking, but my fury was pouring adrenaline into me and I pinned one of his arms with my knee and began to beat his chest and stomach with my fists, ignoring the yells of pain as his struggles grew weaker.

  He began to fight back again and I redoubled my efforts, but as his guard finally dropped the improbable happened and there was a loud crash and the front door flew open, clearly audible even over the shrieking coming from Quiff. Booted feet pounded down the hallway and I turned in surprise to see Steve Barnett and two other officers, these ones in full riot gear, entering the kitchen. I could hear others in the hallway and suddenly the air was alive with shouts and the crackle of radios as someone called for an ambulance.

  Barnett stopped at the kitchen door, already halfway through the words, ‘Gareth Bell, I’m arresting you for…’ when he stopped and took in the scene in front of him. His eyes widened in amazement, but then he was shoved rudely out of the way as one of the uniformed officers saw the pistol and ran to retrieve it.

  I slumped backwards as the adrenaline left my system, smiling weakly at the PSD officer. ‘Any chance of an ambulance? I’ve been kidnapped, beaten and cut on and I think I know where Jimmy is.’

  35

  BARNETT WASN’T a happy man. He paced up and down in front of the sofa as a paramedic checked out my injuries, politely ignoring the whiff of urine that still clung to me.

  The detective had been all for arresting me still, wanting to ask further questions about my involvement with Davey. Luckily for me, the sergeant with the unifo
rmed officers had pulled rank and insisted that a senior officer be brought to the scene before a decision was made. The sergeant, Peter Goble, had joined the job at the same time as me and in fact had always copied my homework at Ashford, but we took pains to do no more than nod at each other, not wanting Barnett to spot the connection.

  ‘So you’re telling me that you got kidnapped and managed to convince them that you would be able to get the heroin back?’

  I nodded, hoping that the half-lie didn’t sound as weak to everyone else as it did to me. ‘What can I say, they’re criminals. They told me that if I returned the heroin then they would let me and Jimmy go. I knew they wouldn’t but I thought I stood a better chance if I got a couple of them back here.’

  Barnett stopped pacing to look at me. ‘Why did they kidnap you in the first place?’

  I thought furiously for a moment then threw out the first thing I could think of. I hadn’t thought that far ahead and the whole thing felt dangerously close to unravelling before my eyes. ‘Davey seemed to be under the impression that I could get the drugs back that I seized from Edwards after he stabbed me. He chose me because apparently I’m personally responsible for his business going down the pan if those drugs don’t come back. He’s not acting like a rational person would Steve; he’s a psychopath who’s been cornered with no way out. There’s no telling what he’s really thinking.’

  ‘And you say Davey was the one who did all this?’

  I nodded again. ‘Yeah. He told me that it’s also revenge for making him go through the court case. He said that he’s going to kill every officer involved, one by one.’

  Barnett’s gaze could have drilled through rock. ‘So he told you all this, then just let you go? Somehow I doubt you were even kidnapped. This is all a set up!’

  I gestured down at myself angrily. ‘And I let myself get cut to shit and beaten to make it look real? Grow up. Anyway, how did you know I was back?’