No Way Out: an edge of your seat crime thriller

by DC Brockwell

  Nasreen kept her eyes closed, expecting to feel a sudden sharp pain in her breast.

  The door burst open behind her.

  “Drop the knife, bitch, I mean it! If you hurt her, I’ll shoot you in your face, do you understand?”

  Nasreen opened her eyes to find Beatrice Harrison backing away.

  She still had the knife in her hand.

  Beatrice slowly bent over and placed it on the floor.

  Nasreen had never felt such relief before. Another hour or so, maybe less, and she’d have been dead. From what she could tell, Beatrice enjoyed – no, relished – torturing people, so it probably would have taken even longer. No matter how long it took, however, the outcome would have been the same.

  “I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone,” she said as Steven untied her wrists. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she heard him say as her hands became free.

  She quickly put them to work untying her ankles.

  She stood and turned to Steven, who had his back to the door.

  “Get over in that corner, now!” Steven barked at Beatrice.

  Nasreen watched as Beatrice walked over to the corner of the room, to the left of the door. She herself remained facing the door, feeling her cheek pumping blood down her face and neck.

  “That’s a really bad gash – we’ve got to get you to A&E,” said Steven, his gun by his side. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’m fine. We need to get these people out of here.”

  A figure appeared in the doorway.

  A white-shirted man raised a pistol.

  “Steven, behind you!”

  The two gunshots happened so fast, she didn’t have time to react; she stood there as the white-shirted man shot Steven in the belly and Steven returned fire, shooting White Shirt in the chest.

  White Shirt’s gun slid across the floor, landing near Beatrice.

  Nasreen saw Beatrice staring down at the gun.

  As the owner of the bunker bent down to pick up the weapon, Nasreen instinctively rushed her, colliding with Beatrice and sending her back against the wall with a loud thud.

  A red haze of rage engulfed her as she headbutted the redhead before punching her in the stomach, then in the face. She rained down blow after blow on the evil woman, pummelling her face as she fell to the ground, and by the time Nasreen stopped, she’d knocked out four of Beatrice’s pearly whites.

  With her chest heaving, as she tried to regain her composure, Nasreen suddenly felt her body get lifted from the floor as the redhead kicked her off before crawling towards the gun.

  Still on her arse, Nasreen didn’t have time to get up and get to the gun before Beatrice had it in her hand…

  65

  Steven couldn’t feel his legs. He’d seen the women fighting and he knew he had to get to his gun before it was too late.

  It was easier said than done. After he’d been shot, his gun had fallen from his grip and had slid to the back of the room; how it had managed to end up there, he didn’t know.

  He instinctively crawled over to retrieve it.

  Picking it up, he raised the gun with as much effort as he could muster and fired it three times, just as Beatrice raised hers. The first shot struck her in her left breast; the second struck her in the chest; and the third hit her centrally in the forehead. The third bullet had both an entry and exit wound, spraying brain matter over the wall…

  The deafening sound of the three gunshots left Nasreen’s ears ringing.

  She couldn’t believe it – she thought she was dead! She’d seen the smile on Beatrice’s face as she’d raised the gun, had thought for sure it was the end for her.

  But now it was over.

  Beatrice and the guards were dead!

  She rushed over to Steven, going to his aid. Fortunately, the gunshot wound wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought; he’d been hit in the side, not in the belly. However, his face was pale and he was sweating profusely.

  “We’ve got to get you help,” she said, holding her hand over the wound.

  “Call for ambulances, it’s more important than staying here with me,” Steven said through grimaces.

  “Haven’t you got your earpiece?”

  “I threw it away,” he replied, in pain. “Find a phone.”

  She rushed out of the room, running along the corridor until she came to an open door. It looked like an office inside, and she could see a landline phone on the desk. As she picked it up, she dialled 999.

  Having rung for help, she went back out into the corridor.

  Five heavily armed policemen entered, all wearing bulletproof coveralls, helmets, and cameras. They were carrying Heckler and Koch MP5s.

  “I need help down here!” Nasreen cried, asking the armed policemen to help Steven.

  Back inside the torture room, Nasreen bent down and searched Beatrice’s dead body, finding a set of keys in her jeans pocket, each one numbered. Two of the keys looked like they might open the cell doors, so Nasreen took them and open the twenty doors – one by one – each time hoping to see Danny’s face.

  Her heart sank when she realised she’d opened the last one and still hadn’t found him. Where could he be? Could they have killed him already? Was she too late? Had Walter Gebhardt meant it when he’d told her Danny was dead?

  “Detective, you’ve still got four more doors down here,” one of the armed police officers pointed out.

  She looked back at the corridor as the abductees came out of their cells. Ambulance workers were busy dealing with them on an individual basis, and while it was a chaotic scene, it was a delightful one too. She’d helped free these people from a life of sexual slavery and eventual death at the hands of some of the most evil people she’d ever come across. She had done a good thing.

  Focusing back on her task, Nasreen took the key and opened the first door on the separate wing. It was empty. The second room was the one Steven was being aided in. She turned the key in the third door and opened it.

  “Danny!” she yelled in delight, before observing his broken body, hanging from the ceiling by his wrists. His torso was one big bruise and his mouth was swollen, as were both eyes. He could just about see out of one of them. “I’ve been looking for you for so long!”

  He said something indecipherable, and then he broke down in floods of tears.

  Nasreen lifted him so that his wrists weren’t bearing his weight anymore and hugged him tight for what felt like an eternity…

  It was five to twelve when Lennox watched Franks get out of the unmarked police car. He was still cuffed in the back seat, and he didn’t know where they were – except in a dimly lit multi-storey car park. Another unmarked police car had parked next to this one.

  He watched as the Assistant Commissioner approached the other car, and after a man with white hair got out, the two men stood there chatting for a couple of minutes. Then Lennox watched as the Commissioner got back in again and turned to speak to him.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you, Garvey. It’s more of a deal actually.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Rothstein’s a problem for us now. We can’t arrest him – not with how much he knows about our project – so I need you to kill him for me. In return I’ll let you go, never to set foot in this country again. I’ll pay for a one-way ticket back to Jamaica. How does that sound?”

  “Tempting, Commissioner, but I’ve got a better idea.”

  “Go on, I’m all ears.”

  “How about I take care of your Rothstein problem tonight, and you give me the contract to import, with my uncle as the supplier… He’s good, and the product’s good too.”

  The Commissioner turned around and sighed.

  Lennox didn’t think that was a good sign. “It’s a good deal,” he insisted. “My uncle’s a good man to do business with. He doesn’t sell shit.”

  “I’m not sure I can sell it, but I’ll try.”

  Lennox watched as the Commissioner got o
ut of the car, closed the door, and got onto his mobile. He talked animatedly for a few minutes before he got back in and turned to face him again. “Well? What’s the verdict?”

  “You’ve got a deal. If you take care of Rothstein, you’ll be our go-to guy in a couple of months, when the project starts.”

  “And what about my uncle?”

  “Your uncle will be our go-to supplier.”

  Lennox waited for the Commissioner to unlock his door and uncuff him, and to his surprise, the senior policeman even gave him a pistol to carry out Rothstein’s execution with, as well as the keys to the unmarked police car.

  Before the Commissioner left in the other car, he made Lennox promise to phone him the minute Rothstein was out of the way, informing him that they’d meet up afterwards at a place of the Commissioner’s choosing…

  66

  Two Days Later

  Tuesday, 20th February

  Nasreen looked at her angry scar, at her cheek stitched together, and sighed. The stitches looked awful, but she’d been told by the surgeon that, over time, the scar would fade to a dull red, which wasn’t much in the way of consolation. She would always sport this hideous reminder of her time spent in the company of Beatrice Harrison.

  Nasreen was enjoying spending time at home with Mina, who kept staring at her scar. When she’d gone to collect her daughter after her ordeal, she’d had to hide the scar as much as she could. After all, her mother-in-law had practically wept when she’d seen it, and if an adult wept, how could she expect a child not to?

  After the siege at the Harrison farm, once Nasreen had climbed the stairs and had emerged outside, she’d been confronted by a dozen reporters, who were all keen to get her story in their papers. After much consideration, she’d decided to give exclusivity to Wanda West with the Daily Telegraph; she needed the media support to help get her job back.

  The IOPC were still going ahead with their investigation, but that day’s papers were full of support for her, even the papers she hadn’t given an interview to. They’d all come out in support for the detective who had gone above and beyond the call of duty to break a sex slave network of unprecedented size and scale.

  One newspaper had worked out that the Harrisons, under Rothstein’s guidance, were probably responsible for the abductions of over a hundred and fifty sex workers over a sixteen-year period, and at least a hundred and thirty murders, given that there were only nineteen abductees saved.

  It was such a huge story for the tabloids, and the manhunt for William Rothstein was well under way – he’d made it to the top of the Most Wanted list in the United Kingdom.

  Nasreen dressed after showering. She was going to visit Steven Dyer in hospital later on, for the first time since he’d saved her life – twice.

  He’d undergone major surgery in the early hours of the previous morning to pull out the bullet, and thankfully the surgery had been successful.

  Nasreen had soon been informed by the nurses that he’d be available for visitors later that day. Before she went to visit Steven though, she had to visit Danny, who unfortunately hadn’t fared as well as Steven.

  Danny was in a psychiatric hospital, being treated for severe PTSD. Once he’d started crying on Nasreen’s shoulder, he’d not stopped; he was so deeply traumatised that the paramedics had had to sedate him to get him to the hospital.

  She could only imagine the kind of trauma he’d gone through, as there was no way of knowing what that bitch, Beatrice Harrison, had made him do. If it wasn’t bad enough forcing him to have sex with people he didn’t want to, the bitch had tortured him too.

  The physical results of the torture would heal far faster than the mental anguish caused by it. She only hoped he’d be able to recover some day.

  After changing, she went down to the kitchen and made herself some breakfast. She’d already fed Mina and taken her to school, having to brave the reporters outside her house in order to do so. They were vultures, the lot of them, out there to pick at her bones, but at least she knew they wouldn’t be there forever; they’d eventually get bored, finding a newer story to claw into. She didn’t have much respect for journalists.

  When she’d finished her breakfast and had washed up, Nasreen grabbed her car keys, bag, and leather jacket, and headed for the front door.

  She took a deep breath before opening it and was immediately confronted by a wave of questions as she made her way through the throng of news-hungry writers, eventually getting to her car.

  She didn’t say a word; she unlocked her car and got in…

  Lennox had waited for Rothstein to emerge from his isolated log cabin for over twelve hours, and while he hadn’t seen him, he knew his ex-boss would be inside – it was the only place Rothstein could go to escape the police, as only Rothstein, Beattie, and Lennox knew of the cabin’s existence, hidden deep in the Welsh forest.

  He was cold and hungry. More than that, he was eager to conclude his business with his former boss. Now that Beattie was dead – an unfortunate by-product of Lennox’s confession to the police – Rothstein wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He couldn’t escape via plane or boat; his face was too well known after two days of intense media coverage.

  Having found a row of thick bushes to hide behind, Lennox was watching the front door of the cabin, waiting for Rothstein to show himself. It was dark in the forest, and as the lights were on, every now and then Lennox saw Rothstein’s silhouette in the windows.

  Crouching down and peering through holes in the branches, he finally saw his former boss open the door and step out onto the porch. He was carrying a suitcase.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Lennox stomped out between the bushes until he was in full view of Rothstein, his gun down by his side.

  It took Rothstein a moment to see him, but when he did, his face dropped.

  “Lenny?”

  “What? You weren’t expecting me, boss?” Adding the boss on the end was a nice touch, he thought. It was the way he’d said it; it resonated with disgust. “You thought I was in prison, didn’t you?”

  “Hey, Lenny, I didn’t have anything to do with you getting nicked, you have to believe me. It was just bad luck.”

  Lennox nodded, as though he believed him. “Yeah, sure, just bad luck. A bit like this then,” he added, raising his arm, the pistol aimed at Rothstein’s chest.

  “Hey, put that down,” Rothstein said quietly. “We can talk like adults, can’t we?”

  “You heard about Beattie? I suppose that was just bad luck too, huh?”

  “I tried everything I could to warn her to get out of there. She was my only daughter, damn it, my only child.”

  Lennox thought Rothstein’s voice sounded strained – he’d even say choked, if he didn’t know any better. Rothstein had always been a good actor, and Lennox didn’t believe for one moment that he loved Beattie. He didn’t believe a narcissist like Rothstein could ever love anyone, except himself.

  “She should never have been involved in any of that,” Lennox said. “You were supposed to protect her from the vile things you do, not make her a part of it.”

  “I know, I know, I was a crap dad, but I did love her, more than anything.”

  Lennox felt a chill cut right through him. He took two steps forwards, gripped the handle of the gun tight and squeezed the trigger three times.

  The first shot made a hole in Rothstein’s shoulder, the second hit him centre mass in the chest, and the third in the stomach.

  Hearing Rothstein gasping for breath on the porch, Lennox walked up to his fallen bloody body and looked down at the man’s wide begging eyes. He couldn’t speak; his throat was filling up with blood.

  “Say hi to Beattie for me, in hell,” he said, pointing the gun at Rothstein’s forehead and pulling the trigger.

  Once the deed was done, Lennox reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. Then, after wiping the handle of the gun and the trigger, he threw it on the porch next to Rothstein’s corpse.
<
br />   Feeling a little relief that Rothstein was no more, Lennox pulled out his mobile and checked the reception. He only had one bar, but he hoped it would be enough. He dialled.

  “It’s me. It’s done.”

  Assistant Commissioner Franks told him where and when to meet him, then Lennox made a second call to Barkley.

  As Lennox trusted Franks about as far as he could throw him, he wanted Barkley to remain hidden; he had a feeling he would need him close by…

  67

  Nasreen held Danny’s hand and smiled.

  “I knew you’d find me.” Danny spoke as best he could.

  The psychiatric nurse had warned Nasreen that Danny might be drowsy and unresponsive as he was currently dosed up on sedatives; it was the only way to prevent him from going into shock, not surprising, given the trauma he’d been through. Nasreen thought about all the pain he’d endured throughout his imprisonment; no one should ever be subjected to that level of torture, ever.

  “It was the only thing that gave me hope,” he added.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, her eyes welling up.

  “Is she dead?”

  Nasreen frowned. “Who? Beatrice? Oh yes, very. She won’t be hurting anyone anymore. All you need to do now is concentrate on recovering. No one’s going to hurt you again, I promise.”

  Her voice had come out hoarse, and she suddenly felt a lump in her throat.

  Although their relationship had ended badly, she felt so much love for Danny. He had his flaws, as did everyone, but deep down he was a good man. And more than love, she felt protective of him.

  “Did she give you that?” he asked, pointing at her scar.

  Nasreen put her fingers on her cheek. “This? It’ll heal in time, so don’t you worry about me, yeah? I can take care of myself. The main thing is you’re safe, so stop thinking about her and focus on getting better, okay?”