The Deal (The Fallen Angel Series Book 1)

by S C Cunningham

  Eight floors up, the stunning, exclusive apartment overlooked the much-coveted Brighton Beach. The holiday town’s usual cheerful atmosphere had been interrupted by a flock of seagulls screeching abnormally loud, as if crying for attention, as they circled overhead.

  “They’re a little over the top, aren’t they?” questioned Amy, staring up into the sky, watching the larger than usual, thug-like gulls as they bombarded the building.

  Jack ignored her, lost in thought.

  “What’s going on with them Jack? They’re enormous. What do they feed them on in this part of the world? Steroids?”

  “Who?” muttered Jack.

  “The seagulls. Look at them. There are zillions of them, with a serious attitude problem. And for some reason, they’re concentrating on this building.”

  Jack looked skyward to see an angry Mike Tyson of-a-bird leave the circling flock, fly directly up high into the clear blue sky, turn and dive bomb the balcony from a great height, its powerful wings tucked tight into its side, its spearhead beak aimed sure and true at the ground near Jack’s feet. As it plummeted towards the concrete, at the last minute, it swerved off, screaming abuse into Jack’s ear.

  “What the hell? Jeez!” Jack instinctively ducked out of the way. The bird couldn’t hurt him, but it felt dangerously close. “They’re a bit feisty, aren’t they?”

  “They’re trying to get our attention. Something’s going on here. At least we know we’re in the right place.” She surveyed the apartment.

  Its wide balcony circled the length and breadth of the building. It had been adapted to form a synthetic running track that ran the circumference of the block. Amy wondered how long a lap would take. For the man who has everything, an Olympic standard athletic track.

  “He’s a doctor, right?” she asked.

  “Yep, so his file says.” Jack walked from one French window to the next, looking in each room. The apartment seemed empty.

  “How can he afford something like this?” Amy peered through windows into the exquisite pristine living area, of state-of-the-art luxury.

  White marble floors, white leather furniture, white-framed mirrors, white stone sculptures…everything was white. Even the paintings were white backdrops with a slight wash of pale grey shadows, outlining the form of male and female naked bodies. Something you would find in an art gallery.

  “It’s a little clinical, like a show house. It doesn’t look like anyone lives here, or if they do, they’ve got serious cleanliness issues.”

  “Let’s go around to the back,” barked Jack, irritable. He didn’t want to be there, and the kamikaze fighter birds were seriously pissing him off.

  “OK, Mister Grumpy, but please cheer up. This is going to be our last job for a while. Let’s enjoy it.”

  “I’m not grumpy. I’m thinking.”

  “Yeah, well, what’eves, I’m gonna miss you.”

  She trundled after him as he followed the balcony around a corner and strode the length of its side, his long legs making her run to keep up.

  Each windowed wall showed one minimalist white room after another. Kitchen, dining room, three bedrooms, four bathrooms, laundry room, gymnasium, pool room, cinema. They walked the whole circuit. The apartment seemed empty. A pristine white world, unlived in, bleached, soulless, and empty.

  Jack tapped his ear.

  “Pyke, you sure you’ve given us the right address?” He stepped in through the glass wall leading to the swimming pool. “There’s no one here, except for a bunch of suicidal birds on acid. It’s totally empty.”

  “What birds?” questioned Pyke, confused. “Women? Is it a drugs den?”

  “No, the feathered kind, seagulls.”

  “Seagulls?”

  “Yes, seagulls.”

  “Seagulls?”

  “YES FUCKING SEAGULLS!” Shouted Jack, losing his patience. “The kind you find at the beach, SEA…GULLS, for fuck’s sake. Pyke, the place is empty.”

  “OK, OK,” soothed Pyke, understanding why Jack would be hacked off. Amy’s leaving could break him. “I’ll check. Give me a minute.”

  Pyke could be heard tapping screens, talking to himself. “Now, what have we here?”

  Amy trotted along behind Jack, trying to keep up, as he walked out of the pool house, and marched through the centre of the building; passing through walls, furniture, and cupboards, searching the apartment from the inside.

  They scanned each room as they passed through. Nothing; no noise, no sign of life, nothing out of place.

  Jack stopped in the central reception area by a lift entrance. A Bentley car key fob sat on a lobby side table.

  “Yep, that’s the right address.” Pyke’s voice echoed in their ears, confirming the mission.

  “What kind of car does he have?”

  “A few. His fav at the moment is a new Bentley.”

  “He’s here.”

  Amy looked to the lift, then looked to the ground.

  “Pyke, what’s on the floor below? Is it his?” she asked.

  Reading each other’s minds, Jack and Amy nodded to each other and let their bodies slip down through the marble flooring into the apartment below.

  The difference in atmosphere and surroundings shocked them.

  The lower floor’s temperature felt three or four degrees cooler, cold. Raven black paint coloured every surface. Smoky grey lighting barely illuminated a maze of narrow corridors, each littered with sinister doorways, all closed, bolted on the outside.

  “Who owns the next few floors, Pyke?” pressed Jack, impatient.

  “Hold on. I’m searching council documents. It seems the same chap does,” muttered Pyke. “Yep, he owns the whole building. It’s let out as luxury apartments. I’ll check the architect’s plans and see what’s happening on the other floors.”

  Jack and Amy stepped through a wall into a small, cramped, dark, boxy room. Amy caught her breath. A young girl lay spread out, chained to all four corners of a bed. Her naked body, stretched star-shaped across a grubby excrement-stained mattress, was covered in bruises, small cuts, and what looked like cigarette burns. Amy cupped her hand over her mouth, blocking the stale stench of bodily fluids.

  A red cloth protruded from the girl’s mouth, gagged. Her head lolled, eyes rolling in a drug-induced stupor. The room was empty but for the bed and a trolley of gleaming hospital instruments. Various blades lay soldier-like in a row, prepped and ready for use. A black lampshade hung over a dull ceiling lightbulb, giving the room a cold, grey light.

  Jack stepped through the wall into the next room, the same image sickening them, but this time a naked, beaten, teenage boy lay strapped out on his front. Amy followed cautiously; again, she cupped her hand over her mouth.

  “What is this place?” she managed to say, stunned.

  Anger building, Jack ignored her and pushed through the wall into the next room, and the next, with Amy traipsing unwillingly behind him. A different person occupied each room, all drugged, all naked, all with cut marks on their bodies.

  The final two larger rooms housed hospital beds. Four beds lined each wall with patients wired up to machines and solution bags. Barely alive, their bodies deathly still and heavily bandaged, exhibited missing body parts: limbs, eyes, ears. Some were scalped, red skull tissue oozing from gauze dressings.

  Amy felt sick, dreading what they would find in the next room. Jack, anger building, kept on walking.

  “Right,” Pyke’s voice chimed in their ears. “The apartments on floors one through five are rented out mainly to wealthy bankers, finance boys, or celebrities. Floors six and seven are empty, and floor eight is his. He wanted two floors below him to be empty for privacy and for noise reasons. I guess if you can afford it, why not?”

  “Privacy and noise reduction is not what he’s using it for,” barked Jack.

  He looked to his feet, then up at Amy.

  “Are you ready for the sixth floor?”

  “Are we capable of vomiting?”

  “I
don’t know, but we’re about to find out.”

  They held hands and fell through the floor together. The contrast again shocked them. They entered an enormous, brightly lit, open warehouse stretching the length and breadth of the block.

  No windows offered light from the outside, just bright overhead lighting, white exterior walls, shiny white plastic flooring, glistening chrome shelving, and fittings. Large expanses of thick plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling, partitioning off chunks of floor space. A compact white metal box construction sat in the middle of the room, housing the lift.

  Each space showcased its own workplace function, and could see through the plastic walls into the next.

  “Jesus, you could fit a couple of small planes in here,” muttered Jack.

  They stood in the middle of the room and turned in circles, not knowing where to start. They split up and walked in opposite directions through the plastic sheeting, Jack towards a bright light at the southern, seafront end of the floor, Amy toward the back of the room.

  Jack traipsed through a storage area lined with glistening chrome fridges, then a packaging area with stacks of plastic containers, bubble wrap, boxes, and tape. He stepped into a kitchen area with enormous melting pots and a pizza-like fire oven, large enough to take a body.

  He kept moving through to an open shower area with piles of neatly folded white towels and surgical scrubs, then to a holding area lined with hospital trolleys. Picking up speed, he passed through the final plastic sheet where strong natural light dazed his eyes.

  He strode into a large, bright, spectacular room with a panoramic view of the sea. He held his arm up to his face to shield his eyes from the sunlight. Through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows he gazed out at a very private, magnificent view of the English Channel. No one could look in through the carefully angled windows, apart from a passing helicopter. But Jack assumed the glass had been adapted to see out, but not in.

  Jack stood in the middle, spinning around, taking it all in. He clicked his ear.

  “Pyke, what did you say he did for a living?”

  “A Doctor, Diomedes Buchannan, Dio to his friends. Very good by all accounts, a generous philanthropist and celebrity hag. He has places in London, LA, New York, Durban, Warsaw, and Manila, and is a member of the old boy networks in the City.”

  “Who called this in?”

  “Got a report from a reliable contact in the Polish Unit. Said we need to visit this guy. Why? What have you found?”

  “You may want to take a look at this.”

  “Gawd, I get nervous when you say that, Jack. Tuning in to you is always a nightmare.”

  Pyke clicked his camera on.

  “Fuck, what is it?”

  “It’s an operating theatre, except he’s not saving lives. It appears he’s torturing, raping, collecting body parts, killing them, and melting the evidence.”

  Jack walked around the operating table situated in the middle of the windowed wall. He looked up to see cameras hanging from the ceiling. “I’m guessing he’s recording it and making snuff movies.”

  The lift door chimed open. Jack turned to see a tall, dark, elegant male in hospital scrubs exit the lift. He clicked a switch panel on the wall and classical music filled the air. He walked away from Jack to the back of the apartment.

  Amy entered the room, walking past him as she joined Jack.

  “Is that him,” she asked, nodding towards the male.

  Pyke replied, “Yes, that’s our landlord.”

  “Well, I’ve checked the north end of the floor. He has cages back there, imprisoning people. They’ve all been sedated. They’re alive, but out of it. There’s also a film editing suite and a storage unit with a collection of glass bottles displaying body parts: eyes, fingers, tongues, hearts, feet, genitals, brains, kidneys, foetuses, intestines…it’s like a science museum. I haven’t gotten sick…yet.”

  Amy couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “What the fuck is all this?”

  “He’s operating on them. This is his operating theatre,” snarled Jack, hands on his hips, surveying the room. “A great view, not something you get on the NHS.”

  A squeaking sound came from behind them. They turned to see Dio pushing a naked teenage boy strapped in a wheelchair. The skinny, malnourished youth’s head slump to one side as his wild eyes jerked from left to right, taking in his surroundings. Conscious at some level, he’d not only been trapped in the chair, he’d been trapped in his own body, unable to move, unable to shout for help.

  “It’s some sort of date rape drug,” suggested Pyke. “They know what’s happening but can’t react. This poor boy is panicking inside, unable to call out or move.”

  The Doctor effortlessly lifted the boy’s light, emaciated body onto the operating table. He slowly straightened the limbs in readiness for an operation; tilted the head back, flattened the legs and tucked skinny arms against his skeletal hips.

  “A lot of refugees, East Europeans, Africans, and Asians are going missing once they hit our shores. This may be where some of them end up,” said Pyke. “They are easy pickings because no one knows who or where they are. No one asks any questions if they go missing. Families assume they are in hiding, avoiding authorities.”

  “OK, so, what do you want us to do? We need cops up here, pronto, before this boy gets cut up. I’d like to burn the whole lot down, but there are victims locked up in rooms on the seventh floor. Can we vacate the building, including those on the first five floors?”

  “No, Jack.”

  “Fuck it. Let’s just torch the place,”

  “No, no, no…Jack…now calm down,” Pyke said, using his soothing voice. “Step back from destruction mode, mate. We need as much evidence as possible for this to succeed in court. No drama here today, Jack, OK? No fires…OK?”

  Silence.

  “OK? Are you with me, Jack?”

  Jack reluctantly nodded his head. He would love nothing more than to burn the rotten hellhole to the ground. He and Amy could get the innocent, tortured, dying victims out.

  “Can you tell if there is anyone else involved? Is he working alone?” asked Pyke.

  “We haven’t seen anyone else. There seems to be a playroom on the seventh floor: beds, sofas, hot tub, the kind of place to hold a sex party. It would fit twenty or thirty people. There may be a lot of forensics to source in there,” replied Amy, keeping an eye on Jack as he walked in slow circles around Dio and the boy.

  “Have you per chance seen a girl with pink hair, nose piercings, about 25 years old? She’s called Alice,” asked Pyke, holding his breath.

  “Nope. You asked about her before. Still not found her then?” Jack mumbled. “When can we start on this wanker?”

  “Yes, actually,” interrupted Amy, “there was a girl with pink hair in one of the rooms. She’s chained to a bed, barely alive. Why? Do you know her?”

  “Sort of,” sighed Pyke with relief. “I’ve been looking for her.”

  The Doctor started to wash the boy’s body, carefully stroking and cleaning every orifice, humming to the sounds of Mozart as he performed his ritual.

  Amy walked over to a tray of utensils and eyed the scalpels.

  “Well, he can’t operate if he’s cut his hand or something, can he?” She circled the methodically arranged tray, looking at Jack. “That would buy us time.”

  Jack nodded and turned away from the table, taking Pyke’s eye view with him. He walked towards the lift to keep Pyke preoccupied.

  “You can only access the place by lift. There will be passcodes for each floor. If you’re going to put in an anonymous call, Pyke, you’ll need to give them the info. Otherwise, it will take them an age to work out how to get in.”

  “Jack, Amy…don’t kill him.” Pyke’s command crossed their ears with an emphatic tone. “We need him to be put under pressure and grass on any others he works with. With any luck, he’ll expose international abusers. My guess is he is small game in a bigger picture. He won’t want to carry the
blame himself. He’ll bring others down with him. I’ll give the heads-up to the London MET, the US, the Polish, African, and Pilipino Units. Don’t let him have access to his laptop, mobile phones, or computers. If he senses he’s in trouble, he may trigger something and wipe them, OK, Jack?” asked Pyke. “Jack…Jack, are you listening? No drama, no burning the place down, OK? Just give us time to do this properly, Jack.”

  Jack stayed silent, his muscles tightening and throbbing. The man was a bastard.

  “Did you hear me, Jack?” Pyke’s persistence did little to engage Jack’s cooperation. “No killing, no damaging evidence; we’re on to a very big fish in a very big pond here, Jack…Jack?” Pyke screeched loudly in Jack’s ear, turning up the volume.

  “Yeah, OK, OK,” Jack said, wincing in pain. “I get you. You crack on with the calling it in, and we’ll protect the crime scene.”

  Pyke clicked off.

  Jack turned to Amy.

  “Well, possibly a major VIP abuse gang. Not bad for your last assignment,” he smiled weakly.

  They stood arms crossed, watching Dio as he finished cleaning the young body. The boy’s eyes scanned the room, powerless, trying to work out what would happen next.

  Amy walked to the table, leant down, and whispered in the boy’s ear.

  “Don’t worry. It’s gonna be OK.”

  The boy tried in vain to whip his head around. He thought he’d heard something, but no one was there.

  Dio stepped over to his surgical trolley and eyed the gleaming array of scalpels, deciding which one to choose. His cock leapt with excitement. He lay his hand on it and gave an encouraging tug. He was so bloody horny.

  “I love my life,” he whispered to the scalpels. “Now which one of you is gonna be responsible for taking one with me?”

  He picked up the largest one and held it to the window, taking a closer look at its blade; the sun shimmered on its gleaming metal.

  “Ahhh…you will do, perfect.”

  “What a cock,” ranted Amy, shaking her head. “Come on, Pyke.”

  Dio, happy with his choice, let his eyes wander to take in the beautiful blue sky and passionate sea glistening behind the scalpel. He stopped and stared at the view for which he’d paid so dearly. His little piece of heaven.