by Jake Cross
Nate rubbed his face hard.
‘Maybe he really is shacked up with his bit on the side,’ Toni said, but didn’t sound convinced herself. ‘Bad guy or dead guy? You know the guy, so what do you think?’
‘Carl was always a ladies’ man, but he went home to his wife every night. Every time, as far as I know. But the guy left the company two years ago, so I have no idea what’s going on in his life. But my gut says… dead man.’
‘Why now? It’s been four years since Ryback’s place got smashed up. Why wait so long for revenge?’
Nate already had a theory on that one. ‘Agar. Maybe Ryback wanted to take us all down at the same time, make sure nobody escaped. But Agar was missing. Until recently, when he got arrested in America and suddenly his name surfaced. Now Ryback knew where all five of us were, and he let his dogs off the leash.’
There was a noise outside. Toni’s eyes jerked to the door. But then someone laughed outside and she relaxed.
‘We can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘We have to go soon, Nate.’
‘But where?’
‘Ryback. We’ve got Ryback now.’ She looked at the clock. ‘We need to steal a car. Now.’
‘Where from?’
She looked at him as if he had said something stupid. ‘This is a holiday place. People will be at the restaurants and bars and things. Their cars won’t be. They’ll be parked outside empty caravans, in the dark.’
‘We can’t drag this guy around out there.’
‘No, you stay here with him. I’ll go steal a car and bring it back here.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll go.’
She looked surprised by this. And suspicious. ‘Can you hot-wire a car?’
‘No. But I can’t fight like you, so if I stay here and this guy gets free…’ Nate considered himself pretty tasty with his fists. He’d done mixed martial arts in the army. He’d been in fights at college. He didn’t fear the hitman, not after all he’d been through in the past two days. He trusted himself to handle the guy if he broke his bonds. But what he didn’t trust was Toni to come back for him. She was not here as his friend or helper. She was driven by revenge and now she had a name to chase, and he thought she might abandon him and push on alone if she got a car.
What she said next surprised him. ‘You’re not going to just drive away when you get one, right? We’re in this together. You need me.’ Said as a statement, but her tone said she feared this fact might be no such thing any longer. It said she needed him.
‘I’ll come back, Toni. Partners.’
She came close and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Nate, I won’t trick you again. I promise. That was the last time.’
He searched her eyes. They showed genuine remorse – but for what?
‘This place is just a hideaway,’ she said. ‘I knew that the moment I saw the key. This guy needed a place that he could return to if something went wrong, like a base of operations. Where Ryback’s men could get hold of him. When he didn’t turn up at the warehouse in Enfield, they would want to find him. That means coming here.’
Realisation swept in. He slapped her arm away. He was shocked. She had played her own game again, and again had suckered him into unwittingly going along with it. It explained all the clock-watching. ‘You didn’t come here for clues, did you? You came here to wait for these people to turn up? Led me into the lion’s den, basically?’
‘Yes, and I’m sorry. I was fully prepared to end it here. But now we have Ryback’s name. He’s top of the ladder so won’t be coming here, but we can go to him. But we don’t have long. Ryback’s men would wait until they know their hitman’s not coming, then they’ll probably come here. I figured we might have five hours in total since we snatched him. That time will soon be up. We need that car now.’
Strangely, he was not angry this time. Last time her trickery had resulted in his being been drugged and kidnapped and fearing for his life, so rage had been a quite normal response. All he felt now was a sense of discomfiture because he hadn’t been smart enough to work out a plan of his own. A sense of busted pride because he knew that none of the breakthroughs they’d had had been his doing. He was a sheep to her shepherd. Without her, he’d either be shitting his pants in a police cell or starving to death in a sewer. If alive at all.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll kick your ass later,’ he joked.
That wiped the worry from her face, even found a smile. She tossed him the key to the caravan. ‘Get a pen and I’ll show you how to steal a car without hot-wiring it. Oh, and a coin.’
Most people here are from all over Britain and their own cities will have their own headlines.
He hid his face at first, by keeping to the shadows and yawning and scratching his nose and pretending to spot something on the ground or in the night sky. But trying to stay invisible would prove impossible once he got to the entertainment complex. Bright lights, dozens of people.
Most people here have been cooped up here for days and won’t have seen the news. News is bad and they’re here for good times.
So he gave up the deception and walked with his head held high and a confident stride, like he belonged here. Like a regular holidaymaker out to sample the nightlife.
This is Kent, not London. My story is of little interest to those outside London.
His internal sermon seemed to work. Or was the simple fact that he’d bumped shoulders with dozens of people so far and nobody had yelled for the cops? Whatever. The fear flaked away like dead skin.
In the centre of the complex was a semi-circle of buildings that included a restaurant bar called Lagoon Surf, which had a seating deck and a long garden that sloped down to a boating lake adorned with small trees bearing coloured lanterns. He aimed there.
Inside, it was bustling. Nate entered and went to the bar. To avoid seeming out of place he ordered a drink. A cool glass of beer would have comforted him like a good friend, but would become an enemy if things turned bad and he needed sharp reflexes. So, a coke. There was a TV above the bar, and he expected it at any moment to flash up his face, and for the barman to dive over the counter and wrestle him to the ground. But the TV stayed on a football game. The barman stayed behind the counter and took his cash.
He swivelled his bar stool so he could watch the room, and looked for a suitable victim.
The hitman said, ‘Let me go now and I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Be wise, girl. My people know where I am. I should have called in when I had you. I didn’t, and that was a long time ago. They won’t just forget about me.’
She was on the sofa, watching the TV, but with the sound off so she could hear the slightest sounds – namely those of a guy trying to break his bonds. ‘Shut up. You’re killing the quiet mood.’
‘I don’t know how many will come to rescue me, but you can’t take them all down. Not even a superwoman like you. Last chance.’
She looked at him. At the back of his head. He no longer strained to turn his head to watch her. That and his tone suggested he no longer feared her. At first she assumed this was because Nate had gone and he was now alone with a woman. But that couldn’t be – it was this very woman, not Nate, who had taken him down and caused him pain. Something else…
She got up. He heard the floor creak as she approached, but still he didn’t turn his head.
She reached over his shoulder, past his face, hoping to scare him. But he didn’t flinch. Not even when she picked up the butter knife that she’d laid on the counter two feet in front of his face. She brought it slowly backward, and to his throat, and put the blade there just lightly enough to let him feel the cold metal.
‘If they kick in the door in the next five seconds, you might have a chance,’ she said. ‘If they bring a needle and thread and a blood pack, and the nearest hospital’s in their satnav. Shall we count down?’
Now he lost it, his breathing suddenly becoming loud and ragged. But over the noise of his lungs
sucking in air, they both heard the sound of a car pulling up outside, opposite side to the door.
‘Maybe that’s them now,’ she said, seeing the clock, noting that Nate had used up his hour and three extra minutes. She fought the urge to slice the guy’s throat. ‘Five, four…’
‘It’s them,’ the hitman said. ‘Last chance. Untie me before they come in, and I’ll see that you don’t get hurt.’
She heard a car door click quietly shut. She gripped the knife hard, and now the urge to open him up was so uncontrollable that she knew she had to kill him, just had to. Some void would remain in her being forever if she didn’t. The rotten part of her brain could not be denied.
She dropped the knife into his lap and clamped her hand over his mouth, cutting away his air. He started to buck and thrash, but the hand stayed solidly in place, and there was no air to find. The rotten part of her brain could not be denied.
Footsteps now behind her, beyond the door, on the steps outside. The hand squeezed tighter. The rotten part of her brain could not be denied, but it could be obstructed. She knew that Nate would be inside and wrestling her away from the hitman long before the point where his oxygen-starved brain suffered irreversible damage.
The door opened. Sensing a lost cause, the rotten part of her threw her free hand around the hitman’s neck in a desperate attempt to end this in the next few seconds. And knowing it was a lost cause, she let out a long yell of rage as all her strength was redirected into her vice-like hands.
Fourth vodka gone, Dutch courage coursing through his veins, Nate spotted the clock again. One hour and ten minutes gone! He turned away from the bar and the barman he’d been chatting to about football. Time to do this. He surveyed the room. Couples and families and singles and groups of young men and women, all having a great time because they had closed off their world to the bad news and bad people out there. His eyes settled on a pair of young women eating ice cream in a booth. At least they wouldn’t punch in his head if they realised what he was doing.
He stopped by their table, holding out his key fob.
‘Hi, sorry, but either of you girls know what this Q is?’
He showed them the fob, and they both leaned close to look. On the paper inside the glass fob there was a big letter Q. One girl shook her head, but looked at her friend. Who pulled her own key out from her handbag. Her key had no Q written on it. He thanked them and left. No good. He had caught sight of a train timetable inside one girl’s bag.
A drunken guy on his own came next, but Nate stopped himself halfway through his question. Nobody came to a caravan park alone, but he was in the bar alone, which probably meant a partner back at the caravan. Dud.
A pair of young men pulled their key out a minute later, and from the set dangled car keys. No good.
Nate went out into the garden, fearful that he was becoming suspicious by approaching so many people. He was thinking about giving up when he spotted a pair of middle-aged couples at a table garden table.
The two men and two women looked up as he approached, his head down, staring at his key fob. He stopped by them and said, ‘Anyone know what this Q is?’
The two men regarded him with a touch of hostility, as if fearful of all strangers, or annoyed that he was intruding on their quiet time. But the two women, in charge of the keys, pulled theirs out. Both scrutinised them and announced that they didn’t know, because theirs didn’t have a Q. One set of keys was vast, containing maybe every key the couple needed, including car keys. The other was simply like Nate’s: just the key for a caravan.
Nate leaned close to both sets. The single key’s fob said ‘Sunrise 88’ on it. Neither had a Q, of course. Toni had written the one on Nate’s.
‘Just mine then. I’ll ask the staff.’
They forgot him and he moved on. Eight minutes later he was outside a caravan parked near a fenced zone housing large wheeled bins. Next to the caravan was a Ford Kuga. He broke the flimsy door lock of number 88, Sunrise zone, and rushed inside. Using the screen light from Toni’s phone, he began his search. It was over in seconds. A set of keys sat on the worktop, right near the sink. He snatched them up and left the caravan and unlocked the Kuga. And felt a buzz. His first stolen car, and he’d done it as a middle-aged man.
She woke to see a handsome blond man in denim standing in front of her, arms crossed, like he’d been waiting for her to wake up. She was on the sofa, hands tied behind her back, feet tied together. Behind the blond man was a bigger white guy with a Hitler moustache and a bald head. A guy employed for his mean look as much as his power. And the hitman was untied. He was lounging on the chair he’d been tied in, using a handheld mirror to check out the damage Toni had done to his face.
Her head hurt at the back. She knew she’d been whacked from behind. She cursed her foolishness. Keeping her back to the door as it opened! ‘What’s this?’ she said to the blond man. ‘I told you I escaped from…’
She stopped, aware that the hitman could expose her lie. Probably already had. Foolish girl.
‘We know you’re with Nate,’ the blond guy said. ‘What I want to know is how? You were supposed to kill him, and now you’re on his side. I love a good story. Tell me.’
The way he took centre stage filled in the gaps. She felt her anger rising. ‘You’re Lazar.’
‘That’s me. So, why are you suddenly bosom buddies?’
He unfolded his arms and she noticed a knuckleduster on his right hand. But he didn’t need to threaten her for this answer. She wanted to give it. ‘Damar.’
Realisation on his face. ‘Ah. You found him. You went back to the warehouse. Right. Like a little lost puppy returning home. Well, Damar, he fucked up, didn’t he? Both of you. You especially, by siding with a guy who should be dead.’
‘And he got his throat cut just for that? Did you do it?’
‘That’s black ops stuff. I’m management.’ He almost looked upset by the idea that she thought of him as a simple thug.
‘I don’t care if it was you who cut his throat. I’m still going to cut yours.’
‘If only you knew.’ He stepped closer and squatted in front of her. ‘Do it. Do it right now.’
A macho show for his colleagues. Or maybe he simply liked to taunt the defenceless. But he was careful to keep the distance between them a good three feet. Out of her instant range. Maybe he had heard from Damar all about her vicious streak. Maybe he was just the very cautious type. To get to him, she would have to stand and launch herself because her feet were tied. She could propel herself head first into his face, shattering his nose. But the three feet gap would give him half a second or so to avoid whatever came his way. She took a sliver of comfort from knowing that his caution highlighted his understanding that she should not be underestimated.
‘I can’t. I’m tied up, and there’s three of you. Later. Definitely later.’
His caution, or machismo, jumped on this chance for a break, and he stood and backed away. ‘Can’t wait. Now, Nathan was supposed to be gone no more than an hour. He’s half an hour late already. We’ll wait, of course, in case he stopped for a burger. But in case he’s gone elsewhere, where would that be?’
So, he knew about their plan. The hitman, who had overheard enough of their chatter to connect some dots and work out their plan. And blabbed it like a schoolboy grass. She must have been out a while. Long enough for the hitman and Lazar to have a nice chinwag.
And his question was a good one. Where the hell was Nate? She worried that he had decided to leave her here. Better than killing her, she supposed. She knew he still carried extreme resentment towards her – his brother was dead and he himself wearing physical reminders of her attempt to kill him. That resentment would bubble to the surface once the mental adrenaline of this nightmare had dissipated. So, it was quite likely that he had found a car and run out on her to hunt down Ryback alone. She couldn’t expect loyalty.
‘The police, maybe,’ she said.
Just then, Lazar’s mobile rang.
He answered with, ‘Tell me good news.’
So, it wasn’t just Lazar and the bald guy who’d come. There was at least one guy outside somewhere, watching. Which was the right tactic. Bad to have all your guys in one place.
‘There’s a car coming,’ she heard a tinny male voice say on speakerphone. The Hitler guy pulled out a roll of gaffer tape.
Lazar smiled. ‘I guess Nathan’s finished his burger.’
Nate had driven the car onto the road and stopped to check the glovebox. Paperwork, a half-empty box of tampons, a pair of earphones, and, wrapped in a plastic supermarket bag, a mobile phone. It was a cheap Nokia, twenty quid tops, with big rubber keys. The battery was held against the screen by an elastic band. He slotted the battery home, let the phone power up, and had a quick look to make sure it had credit. It did: a nice, neat £5. It had just three numbers in the phonebook: mobile number of a guy called Dan, a home number beginning in 0161, and a place called Fettlers Autos. And no calls or texts sent or received. An emergency phone, Nate guessed. Probably unused, saved for occasions when the owner found herself broken down and without the use of her main mobile. Which, apparently, had never happened.
So, the phone could not be traced and would never be linked to him. Handy.
Nate returned to Seagull Wings and worked his way to the back, and slowly towards Starfish. His eyes were everywhere, looking for something untoward. But nothing leaped out. Everything seemed normal. He approached the caravan. As he drew alongside, he flicked a glance out of the passenger window. The curtains were closed over the big back window still, and they were too thick to allow him to see movement beyond. The door of the neighbours’ caravan was shut now, kid gone, nothing happening. All quiet and peaceful, just what you’d want from a place like this. Nothing that should have spooked him. But he drove past and took a turn and increased speed, and got the hell out of there. His heart was racing. Because the coin was on the step.
