by Shaun Baines
Adrian returned, a bucket of soapy water balanced in his arms. He placed it on the floor and offered up a scrubbing brush.
"That's not for me," Crash said. "You're the maid. Hold on to it until she starts bleeding. I want this place scoured clean."
The colour rose to Adrian's cheeks and he dropped the brush into the bucket. A coronet of water splashed onto the floor.
"Where's the rest?" Crash asked.
Adrian opened his new coat to reveal a leather belt filled with rusting tools. Crash scanned them quickly, licking his lips. "What haven't I posted in a while?"
He selected a pair of gardening secateurs strong enough to snip through bone.
"Wait outside," Crash said to Adrian, "and leave the door open. I want you to hear her screams. It'll be part of your training."
When he returned his gaze to Karin, she'd moved closer to Liz, like he'd guessed she might. Together they would pose a threat, but if Liz was a survivalist of a different breed, Crash needed to show her there was another way.
His hand squeezed the handle of his metal whip. "You're right. No-one ever leaves without my permission. Some people have to die. They become unprofitable, but your parents will never know what became of you. A corpse forces the authorities to get involved. I have a different method of disposal."
"One day, I'll get out. I'll go to the police," Karin said. "I'll tell them everything."
Crash laughed. "Maybe, but they won't believe you. You've probably got a record. You're only here because you were ready to beat a defenceless man. Choo had many qualities. His chief role was in playing the victim."
Adrian lingered in the doorway, his back to the room.
"Choo was bait," Karin said. "You're going to use Adrian the same way."
"Now, you're getting it," Crash said, taking another step toward her.
The chair's bulk was in his way, but he'd move slowly, creep closer until Karin was within striking distance. He didn't care if she ended up infected. He had all the workforce he needed and with Adrian onboard, there were plenty more fish in the sea.
Crash turned to Liz with a smile. "Subdue her."
Liz wiped her mouth. "What?"
"Hold her down," Crash said, "and you're free to go."
"She hates you as much as me," Karin shouted.
"Liz understands who holds the power here," Crash said. "She knows how to play the system."
Karin inched away from Liz, leaving the protection of the chair and exposing herself to Crash. "And now you finally understand as well," he said.
"Liz?" Karin asked.
It was pathetic, Crash thought, like the mewling of an abandoned kitten, but as he watched the dawning realisation on Karin's face, he saw it change again. From fear to red-faced anger. Her nostrils flared and she rushed at him, her hands transformed into claws.
Crash was ready. The motorbike chain twisted like a hurricane. It whipped out, striking her across the chest.
Karin screamed, spinning into the wall. Blood soaked through her pyjamas. The stain was heart shaped until it melted onto her stomach.
As she slid to the floor, Crash grabbed her by the hair, dragging her to the chair. Karin was limp and he lifted her into the seat. As contact was made, the sensation sent a shudder through her body.
Suddenly awake, Karin reigned down fists upon him, some missing, some landing with wrath.
Crash pulled back and struck her in the face. He heard her nose break and blood painted her mouth in red.
Karin bared her teeth and swung another fist. Crash hit her again, harder this time and her eyelids fell like metal shutters.
Quickly, he bound her arms and legs to the chair, grinning at Liz as her face gurned in horror.
Crash unravelled the excess sleeve from his missing arm and ripped it free, using it to clean away some of the blood. He inspected Karin's broken nose. It looked like a piece of chewed gum and he whistled over his teeth.
"Well, I can't cut that off, can I? No parent would recognise that," he said to Liz.
She swayed where she stood, surrounded by the whimpering teenagers. Her skin had drained to white, but Liz hadn't moved and she hadn't fought back. With a little training, Crash thought, she might be an exemplary employee.
He forced his attention back to Karin when he heard her laughing. It was a hacking noise, sending a spray of red from her throat. "Parents?" she asked, attempting to focus on his face.
"I'll need an address, by the way," Crash said, hurling the whip to one side and producing the secateurs. "You'll tell me after the pain. They all do."
But Karin kept laughing. It sounded humourless. "My parents couldn't give a toss about me."
"Oh, I know. It's the reason we select you." Crash removed the shoes from her feet, exposing her pink toes. "I don't need your address. I need their address."
Karin gasped at the cold kiss of the secateurs' blades around her big toe.
"Our latest recruits do have parents, loving parents who are worried about them." Crash paused to point the secateurs at Liz. "I dare say even she has someone who cares enough to pay a ransom, but the rest of you are fodder. All you teenage gangbangers. You're interchangeable."
He jerked his chin toward the two teenagers. "I'm going to send your toe to their parents. It's a side line of sorts. A little extra to line the piggy bank with, but it keeps my business growing."
"You're as messed up as I am," Karin said, anger blazing in her eyes. "What did your parents do to you? They sent you over the edge, mate."
Crash sniffed, lowering the secateurs to her feet. "Brace yourself. This is going to hurt."
Chapter Forty-Five
Where the hell was he, Daniel wondered? He tossed his mobile phone into the passenger seat and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Seconds passed, like the swinging arm of a pendulum. He checked his phone again. Nothing.
"Sod it," he said, jamming his heel into the accelerator. The van shot forward, spraying stones from Five Oaks' gravelled driveway against its walls. It sounded like gunfire, as if his home was under attack.
Daniel ignored it, tearing toward the gates at the end of the drive.
"What the hell?" he asked himself, screaming to a stop.
Framed by wrought iron, Bronson lifted his arm, shielding his face from oncoming stones. His scowl fell and he wandered to the van with a smile.
Daniel puffed out his cheeks and forced his anger to the pit of his stomach. He slowly wound the window down. "I called you five minutes ago."
"I couldn't have got to you in five minutes if I was standing beside you."
"Where have you been?" Daniel asked.
"Checking in."
"Checking in with who?" Daniel didn't want to ask because he could already tell. The sloppy grin. The shine to his eyes. Even the twitch in Bronson's cheek seemed to have relaxed.
"I stopped by the scout hut," Bronson said. "To make sure Sophia was okay."
"Before or after I told you I knew where the Motorheads were."
"Hey, I got here as fast as I could."
The air jetting from Daniel's nostrils whistled an ugly tune. That was that, was it? It was all about Sophia now. Daniel realised too late he had made it easy for Bronson to abandon him. The only thing keeping his friend by his side was the Dayton name, a moniker Daniel had no right to.
"Get in," he said, staring at the dashboard.
Bronson climbed inside, fishing Daniel's phone from under his cheeks. "Did you ever notice the way Sophia – "
"And shut up."
Gripping the steering wheel, Daniel drove hard only to be stopped at the gates by Bear. He was carrying shopping bags in each hand.
"For the love of God," Daniel said, leaning out of his window.
"Do you know where Hannah is?" Bear asked.
Not another one, Daniel thought. "No. Why?"
"I need to speak to her."
"Is it important?"
Bear placed his shopping on the ground. "Kind of."
"Come bac
k to me," Daniel said, "when 'kind of' becomes 'definitely.'"
He tore out of Five Oaks to the screeching of commuters intent on avoiding a crash.
"I never understood Bear," Bronson said, drawing in a breath as they narrowly avoided a head-on collision. "He lost his family. Why is he getting mixed up with us?"
Daniel pictured a family portrait that had once hung in the hallway of Five Oaks. Generations of Daytons standing shoulder to shoulder. It had been painted in oils, which he found surprisingly flammable on the day he torched it.
"You should have spoken to him," Bronson said. "He looked sad."
Daniel didn't need to. He had read what he needed to in Bear's grey skin. Bronson wasn't the only person starting a new chapter in his life.
"Everybody is sad," Daniel said, taking a junction too fast.
He put Bear out of his mind. He tried the same with Bronson, but that was harder to achieve. Instead, Daniel concentrated on getting somewhere fast.
He had to save Karin from harm.
Chapter Forty-Six
She thought she'd be released when it was over, but as the fog of her brain cleared, Karin was still bound to the chair, her own blood mixing with that of its past victims. They too had been betrayed by a man she'd once considered a friend.
When the blades kissed her toe, a white light had flashed in her head. The whimpers of her fellow teenagers fell to nothing. Even Liz vanished. And Karin descended into darkness.
The pain grew worse as consciousness returned. It was an animal gnawing at her foot, never satiated, always hungry. Someone had bandaged her and cleaned the floor of blood while Karin cried for her mam; a woman she claimed was dead.
The pain in Karin's foot stabbed at the pain in her heart.
"I need some drugs," she shouted through the open door.
She waited, but no-one answered.
The teenagers bustled around the warehouse. They didn't speak or whisper as she might have. Their hands were busy and they worked as if understanding the rules without them being endlessly repeated. They were fresh meat with all the energy of the frightened.
Karin spotted Liz hovering in the vicinity of the guards, flashing them a smile or saying something flirtatious to get their attention. A brief conversation would ensue before Liz returned to pretending to work.
"Are you okay?"
Karin blinked, focusing her eyes to see Adrian sloping into the room, his sheepskin coat flapping around his ankles.
"I've brought you something to eat," he said, offering a bowl of soup. "Are you hungry?"
Karin turned her head, swallowing bile.
Adrian tapped the spoon on the side of the bowl. "He said you need to eat."
Her stomach growled. Not from hunger, but from nausea at the thought of following Crash's orders.
"Are you going to do what they say from now on?" Adrian asked in a small voice.
"No," Karin said, spitting the word at her injured foot.
"But you can't win."
The smell of the soup and the tang of her blood soaked bandages mixed to make Karin retch. "Take it away," she said.
"The pain or the soup?" Adrian moved the bowl closer to her face. "They're really angry with you. You've put them behind schedule."
Water seeped into her mouth. Her stomach squirmed. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.
"They're working everyone too hard." Adrian scooped a spoonful of soup and flicked it at Karin. "Because of you."
The soup slid down her chin, its perfume rising up to Karin's nostrils.
"Why didn't you just do what you were told?" Adrian said, throwing another spoonful at her.
"I don't know," Karin answered, choking on a sob.
"Crash says, because we have new workers, we need more guards." Adrian's eyes misted over and he threw the bowl at the wall. "I'm not going home. I have to stay."
"They were never going to let you go," Karin said.
Adrian pulled at his sheepskin coat, the tendons in his neck pinging as he attempted to rent it from his body. "And if I don't do what they say now, I'll go back in the chair. They'll keep cutting me until there's nothing left."
He pulled the dirty bandages from his head, holding them in a quivering fist. In place of his ear was an angry wound tinged green with infection.
"Who cut you?" Karin asked.
"One of the guards," Adrian said. "I had no idea Crash was their leader."
Neither did I, thought Karin. I'm just as foolish as you. "And I didn't have you pegged as a teenage gangbanger, either."
"I wasn't. Not really. I just wanted to be liked."
Outside, the teenagers tugged at the mannequins. They gathered arms and legs, hurling them into the skip before returning for a battered head or charred torso. They too ended up in the skip, but the pile never seemed to diminish. There were always more bodies to be found.
The soup dried on Karin's face. It cracked and irritated her skin. "I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused," she said, "but are you sure you can hit people the way they do? Can you cut them?"
Adrian sobbed, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his new coat. With a deep breath, he turned to the door. "You have to behave from now on," he said. "I don't want to find out what I'm capable of."
He took his station next to the guards, the sleeves of his coat hanging empty at the end of his arms. Karin had met plenty of people like Adrian. His doubts, his fear would be smothered by the false belief he would somehow grow into his new role. But he wouldn't. He'd be swallowed by it, drowned in it. Adrian was in as much trouble now as he'd ever been.
Although the pain in Karin's foot was ebbing, the rope bit into her extremities. She rolled her head around her shoulders and saw the shards of the shattered soup bowl.
They looked sharp enough to cut through anything.
Chapter Forty-Seven
"Better that we do this on our own," Daniel said, taking a roundabout at speed. His ancient van juddered under his demands, but he couldn't slow down. They'd wasted too much time already and people were in danger.
Bronson gripped the dashboard, his cheek twitching in terror. "We don't know how many Motorheads there are."
"Doesn't matter," Daniel said.
And it didn't. Not to him. They'd been led a merry dance by these guys. Discovering the Sheriff's missing son led the orchestra had been bruising to Daniel's ego. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. It was time to pass those bruises on.
"We could be two men against twenty," Bronson continued.
They were heading to another industrial estate, this one in Washington. From what Choo had told them, the Motorheads didn't have a home to call their own. They drifted from warehouse to warehouse, living and working in the same place. It made them difficult to find and harder to trace.
According to Choo, they ran a skeleton crew, much like the Daytons themselves. Unlike the Daytons, their victims were young and easily scared so brute force was rarely needed.
But Bronson didn't appear to be convinced. "I don't trust him," he said. "He could've lied to us."
"You don't trust anyone."
"That's my job, isn't it?" Bronson asked.
Daniel felt his friend's eyes upon him and he narrowly missed clipping another car as he overtook. "We still can't find the Sheriff, though it's going to be a happy day when we do. Viper is missing and Simon's phone goes to voicemail."
"What about Bear?" Bronson asked. "He could have come with us."
"He has to look after Eisha."
"And Hannah?"
"Quiet as the grave," Daniel said, pressing hard on the accelerator.
Bronson winced as they headed toward a crossing pedestrian. "So what you're saying is we're on our own whether we like it or not?"
The pedestrian caught sight of the van and leapt to the safety of the pavement with moments to spare.
"I wouldn't have it any other way," Daniel said.
"What about your Mam?"
The gears squealed in protest as Daniel shi
fted down too quickly. "I'm too old and too cranky to have my mother fight my battles for me."
"No, I mean, where is she?"
They paused at a junction leading into the Saltbird Estate. The roads were empty and it was easy to see why.
Daniel had forgotten about his mother. There'd been a lot going on and Liz had slipped under his radar. He couldn't remember the last time he'd caught her looking for the memory stick. She certainly wasn't spending time with her granddaughter.
"My Mam can look after herself," Daniel said.
"Are you sure?" Bronson asked, scratching his scarred upper lip. "I think she's worried about you."
"She should be." Daniel drove the van into the estate, gawping at what remained of it. It was a graveyard of broken down warehouses, their innards exposed so metal girders appeared as bones. Sunderland City Council had blamed the contractors. The contractors had blamed their suppliers. The suppliers had blamed shoddy EU regulations and the EU no longer cared.
It didn't matter who was to blame, Daniel thought. People had lost their businesses and their jobs. Two women had lost their lives.
"What happened here?" Bronson asked.
"They say it started in a burger van."
The fire had torn through Saltbird Estate on a summer's day. It had been hot before the fire. Daniel remembered the photographs in the Evening Chronicle. The sky had been ocean blue without a single cloud, except for the billowing smoke curling above an orange glow. The substandard building materials had taken like tinder, fuelled by chip fat.
Daniel and Bronson crawled through a road of steel skeletons. Black ash was heaped into mounds and faded blue and white police tape fluttered in the breeze.
They drove to the outer edges of the estate where the damage was less pronounced. Some of the buildings remained standing, though Daniel wouldn't want to hide under them in a storm. Their walls looked like charred fingernails and their roofs were covered in heat blisters.
"It's up here, I think," he said, parking the van behind the scorched shell of a Renault Clio.
Cloak and Dagger Fancy Dress backed on to a disused railway line. Tufts of grass grew between the sleepers flanked by self-seeded trees. Scraps of carrier bags and smashed glass grew within the greenery.