by Helen Fields
Inside, he was faced with a deserted area, a staircase to his right and a closed door to his left, with no one else in sight. He tried the door first. Locked. He took a few moments to get his breath.
‘Well, that was a grand-scale fuckfest,’ he said quietly to Tripp, Ava and anyone else from Police Scotland who was listening to his every word. ‘Assume every guard has a handgun as a minimum. Security is impressive. They know what they’re doing. I’m going up.’
He was a few steps up the staircase when some other men were allowed entry, alcohol fumes preceding them. Apparently making up a pre-race trip to the pub wasn’t a stretch of the imagination. Lively wished vaguely that he’d been able to do the same. The feeling of wrongness he’d experienced earlier doubled, then tripled. Laughter and shouting bellowed down the stairs as a door opened then slammed shut again. Someone had thought about soundproofing the staircase from the main building. He didn’t like that at all. That wasn’t just organisation. It was actual competence. Not something he regularly encountered with Edinburgh’s criminals.
At the top of the stairs, he was met by another bouncer type hauling a red-faced, yelling Barney Wheeler out of the viewing gallery, ignoring his protests of innocence. Lively waited for them to pass before presenting himself to the only bouncer left on the upper level. Sliding his hand in his pocket, he prepared to hand over the mobile.
‘No filming, no audio recording,’ he was told. The bouncer body checked him for weapons. ‘Your phone’ll be examined at the end and if we find anything on it, the whole phone gets smashed as does your face, and you’ll be banned.’ The bouncer sounded bored. Presumably the speech had been perfected some time ago, and the thrill of delivering it had passed.
‘Understood,’ Lively said.
The door was opened for him.
‘I get to keep my phone,’ he murmured for Ava’s benefit as he entered, hand covering his mouth. ‘That’s interesting. They must be pretty bloody sure of themselves.’
He walked into a glass-fronted balcony with tiers of seating overlooking the ground floor of the warehouse, not that it was recognisable as such. From above he could see the whole design of the maze, its construction rough but not haphazard. There were dead ends, bridges, tiny gaps that maybe someone could squeeze through but maybe not. Barbed wire was strung casually over the top of barriers that would otherwise have made tempting escape routes. There appeared to be doors every now and again, although from where he sat he could see they led to either dead ends or into walls of spikes. Run in there in a hurry and the result would be a bloodbath. Taking a seat in the third row, he tapped his hearing aid, waiting for the screech of feedback that would follow. They’d agreed silence as far as possible from the police end, but with the capacity to talk to him in the event of an emergency. Right now there was only the faintest electrical hum.
Men were still filing in behind him and filling the gaps left in the seating. Lively counted ten rows, with at least twelve men in each. As many resources as DCI Turner had thrown at it and Lively was starting to wonder if it would be enough. The armed units couldn’t simply machine gun down the stampede of men who were going to spill out of the place when it became clear what was happening. They would take to the fields, abandoning their cars as soon as they realised the entrance to the car park was sealed off. It would be bloody carnage.
‘Wow, there must be a hundred and fifty of us in here. I hadn’t realised it was such a big deal. Scalp sure as fuck knows how to lay on a party,’ he said, aiming it at the man next to him as if mid-conversation. The fact that he was talking to a turned head didn’t matter. It was Tripp who needed the information.
The door to the viewing balcony slammed shut again, this time followed by the sound of locks engaging. So they were locked in. Made sense. They wouldn’t want anyone coming or going during the event, or any of the girls running up to the balcony. Made it easier for MIT – keep most of the rats in one cage. It was the first time all evening he’d thought things might just work out. Then he saw Elenuta’s face looking up at the window. Thin, pale and fragile as she was hauled out in front of the crowd. Suddenly there was a man holding a microphone in a pool of holiday-camp-talent-show lighting.
‘Gentlemen, welcome,’ Scalp said. ‘I’d say ladies too but there aren’t any of those here!’ The audience began to whoop, and Lively got to his feet to blend in with the animals around him. ‘Welcome to the race, under new and improved management.’ Scalp extended the hand not holding a microphone, enjoying the spotlight.
Lively kept his eyes on Elenuta’s face. She should have been back at the flat. She’d done her part, giving him all the information MIT needed.
‘It’s starting,’ he said, no longer afraid that anyone would notice him randomly talking to himself. The last thing on anyone’s mind in that crowd was what he was doing. ‘Tripp, I reckon three minutes. Close off the car park and get everyone in entry positions.’
‘Four women racing tonight. Last time’s winner – don’t say we don’t play fair.’ He pushed the first woman forward. She stumbled, got up, edged away. ‘Then there’s this old bird – don’t write her off yet though. She may have a few tricks up her sleeve. Benefit of experience, and all that.’
Lively recognised the woman from the hallway of the flat the previous evening. She was crying already and shaking, petrified. He looked up at the screens flickering on above the audience, showing close-ups of the women. He’d been wrong earlier. It wasn’t even just competence. It was real professionalism. Someone with a good grasp of technology had been involved in the set-up.
‘Make that one minute,’ Lively said. ‘No delays. They’re about to start.’
‘Contestant number three, who took a razor blade to a client’s balls two days ago!’ Scalp announced, shoving another woman into the light. She spat at him. The audience booed, and yelled.
‘And finally, this little beauty, but we know what other men don’t, isn’t that right, lads? We know that the only good cocky cunt is a dead cocky cunt.’
The crowd went wild. Lively couldn’t hear anything at all. There was no hope of him hearing anything useful Tripp had to tell him. Elenuta stepped forward of her own volition before Scalp could push her. Then Lively saw the men destined to chase her and the others to their deaths enter from the side door, and couldn’t wait any longer.
‘Epic,’ he shouted. ‘This is epic. It’s absolutely epic.’ No one paid him any attention. All eyes were focused below. ‘Epic!’ he bellowed again.
‘And these are the three lucky bastards who get to live out a lifelong fantasy tonight!’ Scalp continued.
Lively put his hands over his ears and tried to drown out the noise around him, waiting for an acknowledgement from Tripp.
Down below, three men positioned themselves in the light, hands raised, fists punching, roaring their own sick self-approval.
Lively heard nothing.
‘It’s absolutely fucking epic!’ he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Epic. Epic!’ He pushed his way to the front through the cheering men, looking down to the door that could only lead out into the hallway and the double-door exit. No sign of any disturbance at all.
He drew out his phone. No bars. He checked his internet connection instead. His data was on, but no search engine was responding to his request for access.
‘Won’t work in here,’ the man next to him yelled.
‘What?’
‘I said it won’t work in here. Nothing does. They’ve got some sort of fucking communications shutdown in here. No signals at all coming in or out. Not that you should try. I saw a bloke try to stream the footage once. They took a crowbar to his skull.’
Lively looked back down to Scalp.
‘… giving them a sixty-second head start. Not that these bitches deserve it, but we don’t want all the good stuff over too soon, do we?’
Another roar from the crowd.
‘Epic,’ Lively shouted again. Nothing. He tried dialling a number, then opened his email.
Everything was dead. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fucking fuck.’
He had to get the doors open one way or another. Sooner or later, they’d figure it out and raid the place anyway, but if that was a minute too late, then some if not all of the women would be dead. Lively staggered to the door, knocking on the glass, trying to attract the bouncers’ attention. Below, he could hear Scalp giving a countdown. They were out of time.
A bouncer turned round. Lively pointed at his chest, fell against the door, his mouth lolling open, and clutched his upper left arm dramatically. The bouncer grabbed his fellow doorman and they got closer to take a look. Lively crashed to the floor as they unlocked the gallery door.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The women ran. Elenuta yelled after them, shouting their names, calling them to her. She’d had too little time to explain properly what they needed to do, and language was a barrier. Grabbing the older woman from her flat, Suzan, by the arm, she pulled her down an alley, chasing after the previous race’s winner who was already well ahead. The countdown was booming in her head but she was waiting for another sound. For the doors to be blown in, for feet to pound through the warehouse, announcing the fact that the police had arrived, and that no one should move. Only she’d been waiting for that a while now, and it hadn’t come. There was no DS Lively to rescue her. Not a sign of a police car in the car park. It was exactly like the video Finlay had shown her. The options were fight or die. She was glad Anika was safe back in the flat. She only wished she was, too. It wasn’t supposed to have come to this. If she’d known just how terrified she would be, she’d never have put herself in the line of fire. Where the hell were the police?
From the corner of her eye, she caught slices of glistening light, raced back, stooped down and picked up the biggest shards of glass she could find on the floor, then took hold of Suzan’s hand again and raced deeper into the maze. Around a corner, she ran head first into the woman who’d spat on Scalp.
‘It’s all right,’ Elenuta said. ‘Stay together.’ She reached down to take hold of the woman’s hand, pushing a piece of lethally sharp glass into it. ‘We fight.’ She pointed at herself, then at both of them. ‘Together, fight.’
The woman took a look at the spike in her hand, nodded slowly, then again faster.
‘Fight,’ she said.
‘Four, three, two, one,’ Elenuta heard Scalp shout. ‘It’s time to hunt for cunt!’
‘Come,’ she shouted at the other two women. ‘Follow.’
They ran into a dead end, turned back the other way and found a bridge over a barrier. From the top, Elenuta could see the drones hovering over the maze, and in the distance two of the three men making their way steadily closer. Three women wouldn’t be enough. Suzan wasn’t going to keep it together. It had to be all four of them or they didn’t stand a chance.
She turned round to check the other direction. There was an alley which led into three other lanes, but which had only one entrance. Plenty of options for backing up if they needed to, but they couldn’t be taken by surprise from behind, or surrounded. Kicking one leg over the side of the bridge, she got her balance, threw the remaining glass down ahead of her and jumped.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘Quick.’
The younger woman didn’t wait to be told again, but Suzan stayed up on the bridge, shaking her head. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough.
‘Jump or die,’ Elenuta said. ‘Jump, we help you.’
Suzan climbed clumsily, falling at the top, coming down hard on one ankle and knocking Elenuta off her feet in the process. There was a scream from a different area of the warehouse.
‘Here!’ Elenuta shouted. ‘Come here, to us!’
She was giving away their position and she knew it, but she wasn’t leaving another woman to die. Their only strength was in standing shoulder to shoulder. Footsteps pounded and there was a crash, another scream, this time pain rather than fear. Then the previous winner’s face appeared around a corner, bloody and torn, a length of barbed wire streaming from her shoulder.
‘Faster!’ Elenuta shouted, her hand outstretched.
She sprinted. Together they retreated to where the passageway offered them a chance of making a stand. They shared out the glass as Elenuta crouched to the hem of her jeans and retrieved the knife. If that was all Lively had to offer her now, then she had to make the best use of it.
The bouncers had argued over Lively for a good minute, before grabbing him under the arms and pulling him out into the corridor then locking the viewing gallery door up again. He lay, maintaining the charade, clutching his chest on the floor.
‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ the first bouncer asked.
‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s fucking started. We’ve got orders. No one in or out until it’s over.’
‘So we’re supposed to let him fucking die?’
‘Are you going to be a pussy over a fucking corpse now? Have you forgotten what we’ll be cleaning up later?’
‘No one knows about the whores. They go missing and no one’s gonna come looking. This bloke looks like he might have a job or a family, or something. He dies and if anyone knows where he is tonight, the police’ll get involved, then Scalp’ll fucking kill us.’
The second bouncer didn’t have an answer to that. Lively took the opportunity.
‘Pills,’ he rasped. ‘In my car. Get me …’ gasping for breath ‘… into the car park …’ letting his head flop back down to the floor.
‘You’re shitting me,’ bouncer two groaned. ‘Why the fuck did this have to happen now?’
‘Just look at him. He was a fucking heart attack waiting to happen.’
In the main warehouse Lively could hear a woman’s screams.
‘Make a decision,’ bouncer two said.
‘Well, we can’t just leave him here. Help me get him down the stairs.’
They got either side of him and lifted him to his feet. Lively made it just believable enough that they struggled with his weight, but not so difficult that they gave up. Between them, they got him to the top of the staircase. A wave of yelling from the audience marked a new level of excitement.
‘Hurry,’ Lively said.
‘What the fuck is going on? Why can’t we hear anything?’ Ava demanded through her earpiece to Tripp.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think he can hear me either,’ Tripp said. ‘We’re getting nothing.’
‘It’s been too long,’ Ava hissed. ‘There’s only one guard left outside. We heard them bolt the doors from within. No other cars have turned up since.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Tripp asked.
‘We’re going in,’ she said. ‘Non-lethal force on the guard outside the door, but it’s got to be fast. Disable him. He doesn’t get to send a message inside.’
‘Got it. All units, prepare to move,’ Tripp ordered.
Ava put her binoculars back to her eyes. Four men dressed in black made their way silently, two from each side of the warehouse, rushing the guard. He put one hand towards his trouser pocket and the other into his jacket. Phone and gun, Ava thought. He wasn’t fast enough. They took him down, gagging and disarming him before he could do more than issue a single shout.
‘Shit,’ Ava said. ‘If anyone heard that they’ll be straight out. Armed units, I want guns on the door. If they come out firing, respond in kind. No hesitation. Now get that door down.’
Wishing her legs were more responsive after lying in the cold dirt, she ran for the door. An army of officers appeared from other bushes and trees. Vehicles screeched into the car park, accompanied by the rhythmic crunch of boots on gravel.
Then the door ram arrived, three officers positioned on either side.
‘Go,’ Ava told them.
They swung their arms back and let loose. The only response was a dull thud. The door showed no sign of giving way.
‘Again,’ Ava said.
The second blow had no more effect.
‘Report,’ she ordered.
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‘Reinforced steel, additional barriers on the inside, double-thickness metal. This door was built to withstand the force we’re applying. I guess they saw this coming.’
‘Just do whatever you have to do to get us in there,’ Ava commanded.
‘All we can do is try the fire exits, although I suspect it’ll be the same story.’
‘Do it,’ Ava said. Tripp appeared at her side.
‘They’ve got to come out sooner or later, ma’am,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t help the women in there right now. Get me the bouncer. If all I’ve got left is announcing our presence, then that’s what we’ll have to do. We’ll negotiate with them. They won’t carry on with the race knowing we’re out here.’
‘They’ll use the women as shields, ma’am,’ Tripp said
‘But they’ll need them alive. If they kill those women, they’ve got no way of making it out and into vehicles. Get it set up, Tripp. Notify all units of the change in plan.’
The metal doors squealed as the internal bolts were disengaged. Twenty officers jumped away. The right-hand door opened, and Lively fell face down into the car park.
‘Now which fucking car’s yours, pal? I’m going to get your bloody pills then you’re on your—’
The bouncer finally got his eyes to focus in the gloom. Ava leapt forward as Lively rolled over and punched the bouncer in the back of the knee. He fell, tree-like onto Lively. Ava grabbed his arms and folded them behind his back as Lively used his own head as a weapon.
‘Door!’ Ava screamed. ‘Don’t let it—’
A shot rang out. The bullet hit the nearest car, taking out the windscreen. Ava gave up on securing the first guard’s hands, leaving Lively to wrestle with him, and ran for the area behind the open door as an officer returned fire. There was momentary silence, then the second guard staggered out of the doorway, hands on his stomach. Ava reached for the door handle. It slipped through her fingers and she threw herself after it, catching the last centimetre before it slammed shut again.
‘Lively, you okay?’ she yelled.