Lessons In Blood

by Quentin Black

  Schwimmer had felt a surge of pride, but that had been secondary to the feeling he had when after walking fifty yards they came across the dead doe. It awakened something primal within him, and he recalled thinking, ‘I killed this’.

  Now here he was, holding his customised crossbow, within his soundproof office, aiming it at a shackled and terrified Philip Norton.

  Schwimmer didn’t shoot right away; he wanted to savour this moment, the moment of ultimate power—to extinguish a life of another. Schwimmer watched with a dizzying fascination as Norton fought the handcuff securing him to the chair with a fury, his screaming sobs bouncing off the walls.

  Norton felt plugged into a generator of fear. It was so overwhelming that he thought he might die from that rather than the arrow that held his focus. Then, after a few moments, he stopped screaming. This was it, his final moments. There was the only thing he had left under his control—he could die screaming, or he could die like a man. He took his focus off the arrow and locked eyes with this evil man.

  Schwimmer tucked the butt of the crossbow in his shoulder and aimed. He waited for the natural pause at the end of his breath.

  The arrow pierced Norton’s heart.

  The exhilaration was tainted as Schwimmer watched the blood waterfall from his victim’s pain-stricken mouth, the wet patch around the groin and finally the eyes still as the life slipped from him.

  He wanted him to die begging.

  Bruce answered Jamie’s call with a, “Good news?”

  He was back in his car just about to start the engine, after briefing and leaving one of the ‘clean up’ teams to attend to the Ben Shaw murder scene.

  “Potentially, a Liam Jackson, a former Army engineer. Passed P Coy. But—”

  “P coy?”

  “Yes, it’s a course—”

  “Oh, P company.”

  “OK. P company. He tried for the SAS. He failed in the jungle for a reason that might prove very interesting to you.”

  “I am all ears.”

  “It reminds me of what Rachel Dawes says to Bruce Wayne before she knows he’s Batman—‘It’s what you do that defines you’. And what you do, is attack women three on one,” said Connor to his captive. The man had a layer of fat that covered the otherwise solid physique. His hair and moustache was a chestnut brown.

  They were in a warehouse in King’s Cross not far from the safehouse. Connor wondered how Bruce had procured this since warehouse space was at a premium around the area. The hostage broke his thoughts,

  “And what you do is beating up men when they have their hands tied.”

  “Well—”

  “Connor no,” said Ciara sternly. “Let’s keep working on him. He’s a pussy anyway—he couldn’t even knock me over.”

  The captive ignored her, looking straight at Connor. “You couldn’t beat me on your best day you prick.”

  Ciara took her vibrating phone out of her pocket and answered it. “Hello. Yes, give me a minute,” she rested the phone against her shoulder and gave Connor a look. “It’s the boss. Please behave.”

  When she left, Connor walked up to the captive and released his hands from the handcuffs. He stepped away from him, and his feet assumed a fighting stance. “Hurry up before she comes back.”

  The man stood rubbing his wrists. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “If you were anything to be worried about, I’d have heard of you.”

  The man walked up to him with his arms forming a boxing guard. When he was around three feet away, he dived in for an explosive rugby tackle. Connor sprawled his legs backwards and caught his opponent in a guillotine choke.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Connor said as his ulna buried itself into the thrashing man’s throat. “Trying that playground trick after all your mouth.”

  The man slumped, and Connor dropped the dead weight before dragging him to his original position. He secured the man’s wrists with the handcuffs.

  The man began to regain consciousness just as Ciara came back in.

  “Been playing nice?” asked Ciara.

  Connor said nothing. Ciara took a few steps towards the nonplussed man and said, “So Liam Jackson. A man should be here shortly with some guys to help loosen your tongue.”

  Jamie pinched his nose as he stared at his computer screen. He was running out of the mental energy to do something productive, and that was bad news. When focused on work, he wasn’t thinking about how he had encouraged his friend Ben Shaw into this life; a venture which had led to his death.

  That Jamie had been in the middle of the Mediterranean on his super yacht when his friend had been beaten to death had thrown him into a bath of guilt.

  He knew that his years at University would have been decidedly more difficult socially if it hadn’t been for the friendship he had struck up with the burly Shaw. Jamie’s English had been more disjointed then, and he had been—as he still was—a geek. Jamie remembered a group of students mocking his accent and clothes at a campus party. Ben had asked Jamie to go to the bars for the beers. When Jamie returned, the group of students were decidedly nicer towards him.

  Bruce had told Jamie that Shaw had been fully aware of what he was getting himself into, but Jamie couldn’t help feel responsible. It wasn’t just the feeling that he was to blame that was assailing him, it was mild despair—Ben Shaw had produced some of the more inventive gadgets that the members of The Project used. Jamie did not know if he was replaceable in a professional sense.

  What had really hurt, was that his friend’s death was for nought—they had managed to cut the upload and delete the audio.

  Jamie had spent the last half an hour aiding Bruce in the break-in of a Pets Store. Relatively simple for someone of Bruce’s skills, but Jamie had disabled the alarms anyway. The store owners would never find any evidence that it had been broken into anyway.

  Bruce arrived at the warehouse and Ciara greeted him.

  “Nasty looking bruises,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Could have been worse.”

  “Aye, learning the hard way is often the best way.”

  “I know I messed up. It won’t happen again,” she said contritely.

  Bruce nodded. He then tilted the box that was under the crook of his arm. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Ciara opened the door. Connor was sat against the wall, and Liam Jackson was on his side looking docile.

  “You’ve done something to him haven’t you?” said Bruce.

  “What makes you say that? He hasn’t got any marks on him.”

  Bruce noticed that Connor didn’t say ‘No I haven’t’ and decided not to pursue it. Instead, he walked up to Jackson with the box still under his arm. “Mr Jackson.”

  The captive looked up at him, and Bruce continued, “I am a reasonable man, and I take very little personally. All I want is the name of your employer. You won’t face any judicial measures, and you’ll live. You will have to be detained until this entire matter reaches its conclusion, but nothing else will happen to you. All I need is a name and information.”

  Bruce watched Jackson eyeing the black box. Within the black casing was a transparent cube with a handle on top.

  “I won’t talk.”

  “Because you’re scared?”

  Jackson didn’t say anything.

  “The thing you have got to decide is whether fear of something that might happen in the future—although it probably won’t as we can fake your death—supersedes a fear of something real and immediate.”

  With that, Bruce gripped the handle of the Perspex box and let the black casing fall away. Liam Jackson immediately scuttled away into the corner, like he was trying to escape through the wall. He began hyperventilating but couldn’t take his eyes off the pair of ten inch, salmon pink Brazilian spiders. The tarantulas had pink hairs on their legs.

  “You see Liam, I found out the reason you failed selection was that you screamed the place down upon finding a spider in your clothing
. Now, it could have only been a black widow or a brown recluse spider in Belize, and since these bad boys,” said Bruce, as he reached into the box and picked out one of the spiders, “are around ten times the size of either of them and eat birds, you have to ask yourself if the fear of releasing your employers name supersedes the fear of me putting this on your face and having it bite you.”

  With that, Bruce began walking towards Jackson, only to make it two steps before Jackson screamed, “Frank Schwimmer, fucking Frank Schwimmer for fucksake.”

  50

  Frank Schwimmer felt a tightness in his chest and butterflies in his stomach. He had sent seven men out, a team of three and a team of four, and only one man had returned.

  The good news was that the audio link to whoever had been attempting to ‘unwrap’ it had been severed and deleted. The bad news was that the men in these teams worked directly for him—there were no middlemen, thus they could point the finger at him under interrogation.

  Philip Norton was dead, and although a professional loss he was replaceable.

  Schwimmer tightened his fists. He had all the money and resources he could ever need, so why couldn’t he stop a tiny black operations unit meddling in his affairs? The teams he had sent to provide surveillance on Bruce McQuillan would lose him at one point or another throughout the day.

  The teams couldn’t get into McQuillan’s apartment to plant ‘evidence’ as the position of the cameras covered all entrances, and they had spotted a Stap 32D antenna, which meant the feed went somewhere else.

  And how one of his teams were prevented in their attempt to pick up the girl, he may never know. Sending people to deal with this problem felt like sending planes over the Bermuda Triangle.

  Schwimmer rubbed his temples.

  Parker had inferred to him that even though he wouldn’t make a move against McQuillan, he wouldn’t be aggressive in pursuing any investigation should anything happen to Bruce McQuillan.

  Schwimmer decided he’d had enough of the subtle approach. He’d put out a kill order and have done with it. And he’d go to the best.

  “Who is he?” Ciara asked Bruce.

  “I haven’t heard of him. I know someone might have. Let’s step outside for a minute. Connor, can you stay here and watch him?”

  “Of course,” Connor answered. Bruce looked at him and at Jackson. Schwimmer’s employee looked like he was going to say something but didn’t. Instead, he exited with Ciara.

  Connor knew Bruce would ask Jamie for an information dump on Schwimmer. He also knew that out of the three he was the only one not known to this apparent monster. If he had been, then the team that came for Ciara would have made a sweep of the apartment looking for him.

  Working out people’s motivations had been a skill he had developed as a young criminal. He remembered watching ‘Carlito’s Way’ and Al Pacino’s character referring to it as ‘angling’—seeing the different angles.

  “Hey,” he called over to Jackson, who looked at him, “do they know about me?”

  “Piss off,” said Jackson.

  Connor stifled his giggles—he was hoping Jackson would say something like that. He didn’t fancy handling a ten-inch tarantula himself, but the image in his head of what was about to happen proved irresistible.

  He leapt forward, scooping up the Perspex box before jumping on top of Jackson, clamping his head between his vice-like knees. Connor’s palm clasped tightly over his victim’s mouth muffling the terror screams. The former marine struggled to control the bucking and thrashing Jackson, so moved lower down onto his chest, and tucked his knees under the armpits. The struggling, kicking and bridging intensified as Connor reached into the box to grip the spider. He almost exploded with laughter as he felt a wetness on the fingers pressing down on his victim’s mouth—Jackson was now shedding tears.

  “What was that? Piss off? Telling me to piss off when the spiders are still in the room you fucking turbo mong. Now, Little Miss Muffet she sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider who sat down beside her. And frightened Miss Muffet away…”

  Connor kept yo-yo-ing the tarantula within an inch of Jackson’s face in time with the lines of the song. He knew the pleasure he was taking from this wasn’t normal. He’d made peace with this side of himself long ago—the side that took unadulterated joy in making bad people suffer. Just as he hated seeing good or innocent people suffer. He had a code—like Dexter—he thought.

  He put the spider back into the box and stood with it. He couldn’t help smiling as Jackson took in huge intakes of air.

  “Now Mr Jackson, do they know about me?”

  “No,” he croaked.

  Tris Dixon felt a small relief as he put the phone down to Connor. He’d be getting his donors, and Schwimmer would be off his back.

  Dixon was watching ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ on the 110” Ultra High Definition Television. He resisted the urge to go any larger as it would subtract from the intimacy of the room—if he wanted to go to the cinema he would. It was the second time he had seen this film, but he couldn’t get into it the same. It was the anticipation—hope—of Schwimmer not looming over his professional and business life.

  Schwimmer had let him know by coded e-mail that this would be the last ‘delivery’ for a while. He also inferred it would be safer if all loose ends were tied up. Dixon was still weighing his options.

  To kill Connor Reed, and the gorgeous blonde he was shacked up with, would be to invite the wrath of the Yorkshireman’s family and friends. The Ryder family, though not once what they were, still had teeth and Louis Allan with his SUG definitely did. Frank Schwimmer did not know who he was using for the prospecting of donors anyway. Dixon could lie and tell him he’d taken care of it. Reed and Louis made him a considerable amount of money too. That was another factor though, if he took care of Louis, his brother would be in his debt and off his headache list.

  He had been forced to admit to himself, that without his brother, he had become a pawn in this game. He’d never got this dirty in his life, and he was as white collar as they come. He remembered the sense of empowerment he had felt putting his brother in his place. But the truth was that, outside of that environment, his brother would have beaten him to a pulp. Adam Lloyd had always been the one who the family’s reputation was built around. Tris just used to balance the books and funnel investments.

  Dixon kicked himself—I could have just gone legitimate.

  This all whirled in his head, and he hadn’t yet thought about what he was going to do. He remembered a saying of his father’s, ‘Stick it in your think box and see if it floats’. What he had meant was that sometimes the solution to a problem came to you when you stopped obsessing about it. Maybe it would come to him in the morning. Dixon switched of the giant television and got up.

  Connor and Bruce stood outside the warehouse door. Ciara kept watch over Jackson. Bruce had heard muffled screams earlier when speaking to Jamie on the phone.

  Bruce studied Connor. He knew he had been having his ‘fun’ with Jackson. Sometimes—all the time—you just had to take the rough with the smooth with people, he thought. Like how possessive, neurotic girlfriends tended to be the most passionate and loyal. Connor was intelligent, audacious, streetwise, charismatic—which always helped in this business,—adept with all types of weaponry including his bare fists, ruthless and never flapped. On top of all that, the real gem was that he had the inbuilt cover of being Greg Ryder’s only son.

  “He’s asked me for the ‘donors’, on Wednesday for some reason he said. Wonder if you still want me to go through with it now we have the main gadgie of the operation?” said Connor.

  “Haven’t heard that term for a while. Didn’t think gadgie was a Yorkshire term.”

  “Not sure where I got it from, to be honest.”

  Bruce thought for a moment, “He’ll want it on Wednesday because I reckon there’s a gap in the shift change of whatever hospital or hospitals he supplies. This will be the window wh
ere they can get the victims in and falsify reports. I still want you to go through with it. I want to know if it’s one hospital or more that’s been taking these people in. But when we do, I want you to restrain yourself—don’t think I don’t know you were tormenting the captive in there—we’ll have to play it cagey.”

  “We’re not letting these scum off with this. I don’t care how posh—”

  “Wheesht—don’t talk to me like I am a cunt who’s buttoned up the back. You have never seen me ‘let people off,’ have you?” Bruce said, his Glaswegian dialect fighting to the fore in anger.

  Connor straightened himself. “No I haven’t, and I apologise. It’s just when I think about what they have done it almost makes me sick with fury.”

  The apology calmed Bruce. “You and me both. Take the team to where ever Dixon wants you. It’s a bird in the hand. I’ll work out a way to skin the billionaire fat cat.”

  “You pronounced ‘cunt’ wrong.”

  51

  Darren O’Reilly slumped in his sofa in his dressing gown trying to summon the will to at least make a cup of coffee. It was a little after half past ten in the morning.

  It had been weeks since he last heard anything. Of course, the Scotsman had told him that this would be the case, in light of the threatening phone call. He had also told him that Henry Costner couldn’t have any more contact with him. O’Reilly agreed, but now he wished he hadn’t—the not knowing was driving him crazy.