Revenge

by James Patterson

  ‘And if it’s locked?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘We fully expect it to be locked, mate,’ replied Gurney, ‘that’s why we’ve got an enforcer in the van.’

  ‘An enforcer?’

  ‘A sort of battering ram that the police use,’ explained Bennett. ‘They call it the big key.’

  ‘And once we’re inside?’

  Bennett and Gurney exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Shelley.

  ‘We don’t know the layout of the place,’ said Bennett, ‘and as you know, it’s not exactly desirable to make a night-time incursion into unmapped territory.’

  ‘But fuck it – it’s just an office building,’ sneered Gurney. He hitched up the combat trousers he wore, then he cleared his sinuses. ‘We don’t expect any opposition,’ he added, leaving Shelley in no doubt that he considered this a terrible shame.

  ‘Well, what do you expect?’ asked Shelley.

  Gurney shrugged. ‘Girls. Computers. Cameras. That kind of thing. Maybe a bouncer. We’ve got baseball bats in the van.’

  Baseball bats. Great.

  ‘We should be keeping a watch on this place,’ said Shelley. ‘How do we even know they’re still using it? If we’re right and Emma killed herself in there then the most sensible thing for them to do would be to pack up before the cops show an interest.’

  Bennett was nodding. ‘We think they’re continuing as normal.’

  Shelley looked at him. Getting it now. ‘Drake insisting you go ahead tonight, is he?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Shelley, seeing that he had no choice. ‘The girls are left unharmed. Any guys are scared off and sent packing with no serious harm done, is that clear?’

  ‘You don’t have to convince me of that,’ said Bennett, who if anything looked relieved.

  It struck Shelley that revenge was a burden. You carried it yourself. But you made others carry it too.

  CHAPTER 25

  IT WAS APPROACHING eleven when Drake appeared. Shelley, who’d been trying to relax in his bedroom, received a text message to tell him they were due to proceed, and he’d pulled on his balaclava and made his way downstairs to find the others congregated outside, the van idling close by with its rear doors open.

  The night was good and dark, the moon barely making its presence felt. The cold froze their breath into clouds that hung in the air, as though held in place by an icy calm that turned the sound of their footsteps into gunfire. There was nobody around to hear but even so, they spoke in a whisper, even Drake, who had arrived from London, disappeared inside and then returned wearing black jeans and a black hoodie like the others, accepting the balaclava handed to him by Gurney.

  ‘Are we ready?’ asked Bennett, and although he said ‘we’ it was to Drake that he addressed the question.

  ‘It’s not too late to call it off, Guy,’ said Shelley. And he was pleased to see Bennett nodding in agreement. Less pleased to see Drake’s fists clench. The older man’s eyes were at once vacant and aflame. Shelley recognised the look of a man on a mission when he saw it.

  Sure enough, the go was given and they clambered into the van: Gurney driving, Bennett shotgun, Shelley and Drake in the back. They sat on pull-down seats on springs, settling in for what during the daytime would be a long journey from Berkshire to the south of London, but at just after 11 p.m. would take them little over an hour.

  There were no windows in the van, which only increased Shelley’s sense of being cocooned with Drake, who sat opposite with a look that was weary, doughy and hangdog, but determined. Once again Shelley became aware of Drake’s grief and how it had calcified into something far more poisonous.

  ‘Guy,’ said Shelley over the throb of the engine. Drake looked sharply at him. ‘I meant what I said. You can still stop this.’

  It was gloomy in the back of the van and Shelley wasn’t sure if he read correctly the look that flitted across Drake’s face. It looked like contempt. Maybe even something worse.

  ‘Do what, Shelley? You think I should chicken out of smashing a few computers, do you? I thought you had more gumption, man. I thought there was a bit more to you than that. Maybe I misjudged you, eh?’

  ‘Did Susie? Did Emma?’

  ‘How would I know? This much I can say. If not for Susie you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You should be grateful she cares. She just wants to protect you. We both do.’

  Drake looked away, unwilling to accept the truth. ‘She hangs on to you, Shelley. You know that? She thinks of you as some kind of lucky charm. But you’re not, are you? You’re just an old soldier, like them two turkeys up front. Just trying to make a bit of cash out of fellas like me. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? With them two there, Susie hardly gives them the time of day. But you,’ he pointed for emphasis, ‘you’re some kind of talisman for her. You know why?’

  Shelley shook his head. He found he was holding his breath, unsure if he wanted to hear what was coming next.

  ‘Because of what you did, saving them from the kidnap. She practically idolises you. So did our Emma. You were their hero, Shelley, you know that?’

  Again Shelley shook his head, feeling a mix of relief and fresh hurt.

  ‘Oh yeah. You were. And what do you know? On the day she killed herself she called you. Emma rang you. She didn’t ring us, did you know that? She didn’t bother to call her parents before she put that gun in her mouth. Just you.

  ‘That makes you important to Susie. That Emma was reaching out to you then. That’s what she called it, “reaching out”. But that’s Susie for you, wanting to find the good, always looking for that positive angle.

  ‘Me, I just feel hurt. I wanted to know why Emma needed to hear the voice of some bloke who was her bodyguard fourteen bloody years ago – fourteen bloody years – and not the voice of her own father.’

  In the dim light Shelley saw the tears of rage and frustration plotting a course down Drake’s cheeks, but he couldn’t find words of support or condolence. Instead he said, ‘Why did she call me?’

  Drake sniffed, embarrassed by his tears, wiping them away. ‘You what?’

  ‘You’re dead right. What was she doing calling me?’

  ‘Like I say, because she had you on a pedestal, didn’t she? You were her knight in shining bleedin’ armour.’

  ‘Really?’ said Shelley. To his own ears he sounded as though he were playing devil’s advocate, but as he spoke it began to sound more plausible. ‘How much did she talk about me?’

  ‘She cried for a bloody week, mate, when you left,’ said Drake bitterly, but Shelley pushed on.

  ‘No, I mean, over the years – how much did she talk about me?’

  ‘Susie often—’

  ‘Not Susie – Emma.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Drake’s jowls shook. ‘Every now and then, I suppose.’

  ‘So not much, in other words.’ He leaned forward with a fizz of sudden realisation. ‘It doesn’t really make any sense, does it, her calling me? Maybe to you and me fourteen years seems like yesterday, but she was only ten at the time of the kidnap attempt. By the time she was thirteen, ten years old would have seemed like a lifetime ago. It’s not false modesty, I’m sure she thought fondly of me. But enough to make me the one she called on the day she decided to kill herself ? It doesn’t quite make sense to me.’

  He didn’t mention the gun that only had one bullet in it. He didn’t wonder aloud why if Emma was a smack addict she didn’t use smack to end her own life.

  But those questions were still lodged in his head, not planning on going anywhere soon.

  ‘She loved you, Guy,’ he said, and saw Drake bite his lip. ‘She did. She properly loved you and she loved Susie, and if she was going to kill herself – if she needed someone to talk to, it would have been you.’

  ‘So why wasn’t it?’

  ‘Think about it …’

  ‘Stop pissing about and say what you’ve got
to say.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Shelley, ‘maybe she wasn’t going to kill herself.’

  ‘But she did – there’s film of her doing it.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Shelley shook his head with frustration, ‘but there’s more than one way to skin a cat, know what I mean? Or … I don’t know, maybe she didn’t plan to.’ He was thinking now, the idea taking hold. ‘Maybe she discovered something – something that she wanted to tell someone, and that someone was me – and then she killed herself.’

  Drake was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Shelley wondered what was least painful: the idea that your daughter took her own life, or that someone did it for her? Either way, it was better to know the truth. Wasn’t that what Guy himself had said?

  They were close to Docklands now. Had to be. Perhaps Drake realised the same. He reached down behind his feet and picked up his baseball bat, winding his gloved fingers around the handle.

  ‘Guy,’ he said, trying to draw him out of his reverie. ‘Listen, mate, listen to me, right. Where we’re going – there may be someone there who knows something about Emma’s death. There might be a way of getting answers. Guy?’

  No reply from Drake.

  The van slowed and the engine noise changed as Gurney hit the brake and downshifted.

  ‘We just need to change our approach here. We might be able to discover what happened to Emma … Guy?’

  Drake looked at Shelley, a haunting, heartbreaking intensity in his stare. ‘I couldn’t help myself, Shelley,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean? Couldn’t help yourself do what?’

  ‘I watched the film of her. I watched her do it. You’re sitting there talking about what, and how, and maybe this and maybe that. It doesn’t fucking matter. None of it. Because I watched her sit in that slutty room and put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger. So you say, “Oh, Guy, we might be able to find out what happened to her”? I know what happened to her. That’s what happened to her. And now they’re going to pay.’

  CHAPTER 26

  THEY PASSED THROUGH tunnels. The sound of the van changed as they negotiated roundabouts.

  Word came back. ‘We’re approaching the building,’ called Bennett, ‘you might want to put on those balaclavas. Gurney will park close to a side door, just as we discussed. Let’s assume we need to use the big key.’ It lay at Drake and Shelley’s feet. The words ‘knock knock’ had been painted on it in white. ‘Leave that to Gurney.’

  The driver chuckled. ‘I’m an old hand at it.’

  ‘Remember what we said,’ warned Shelley, telling the whole van but keeping a close eye on Drake, unnerved by what he’d just heard. ‘Nobody gets hurt. Damage is limited to computers and cameras.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Bennett, and as Shelley rolled down his balaclava, adjusted the eye holes, watching Drake do the same, he wondered if he should be concerned that neither Drake nor Gurney had replied.

  And then they arrived.

  Shelley heard the sound of the front doors opening, boots hitting the tarmac of the car park. Then the back doors were flung wide and a masked Gurney reached in for the big key. A security light had flared on, sodium dazzle picking them out, but otherwise there was no sign of alarm, no cameras fixed to walls peering down on them as they crowded around the doorway.

  To one side stood Drake, holding his bat, hefting it like a proper slugger, fingers anxious on the grip. Shelley tried to find his eyes to send signals: Calm, Guy, calm, but Drake was watching Gurney, who was lifting the big key, ready to slam it into the door. Close by, as though deliberately positioned in order to keep their employer safe from harm, was Bennett.

  And now the big key swung back, a medieval battering ram in miniature, Gurney grunting as it came forward and smashed into the door with an almighty wallop. If those inside hadn’t known of their presence, they did now. And if they didn’t know now, they soon would. Gurney did it again.

  Bang! The door splintered.

  Bang! Third time lucky. The lock separated and Gurney shouldered the door open, bursting into the building with a warrior cry.

  Earlier, they’d used the words ‘shock and awe’. ‘Noise,’ they said. ‘Make lots of it,’ the idea being to terrify the occupants, even those who were innocent. So it proved as Bennett raced inside with Drake and Gurney not far behind, the three of them making so much ruckus that at least it relieved Shelley of any obligation to do the same.

  And now they were in a corridor, rooms on either side. Ahead of Shelley, Gurney kicked open a door, waved his bat, screaming, ‘Get out, get out, get out!’ – a demented mantra as he battered the door frame side to side with the bat, like a quartermaster calling dinner with a gong, adding to the sudden, horrifying cacophony.

  To the workers in the cam studio it must have seemed as if the world was ending. Wearing just a bra and panties, dark circles under her eyes and her face pale, the first girl came pelting out of the room. She ducked past Gurney as though terrified he was about to use the bat on her, and then, at the sight of Shelley, screamed again and stumbled cowering against the wall.

  He reached to her. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘You’ll freeze out there. Get some clothes, get your stuff.’

  From ahead came the crunch of Gurney laying waste to equipment and the girl flinched again, but said, ‘Really?’ in an uncertain voice. Polish, he thought.

  ‘Yeah, really. I won’t hurt you.’

  His eyes flicked to further up the passage where Gurney was kicking open another door and charging inside – get out, get out, scream, bish, bash, bosh – ‘I won’t let him hurt you, either,’ he said more loudly, over the din of cameras being smashed and screaming.

  There was no sign of either Drake or Bennett save for a door swinging open at the far end of the hallway. Gurney had moved on to a third room, wielding the bat like Jack Nicholson with his axe in The Shining. Further up, two more doors were flung open and women appeared, adding to the noise with shouts of surprise, fear, anger, defiance.

  Shelley yelled at Gurney, ‘Oi, let them get their stuff, all right?’ receiving a look in return that was impossible to decipher under the balaclava.

  Still trying to impose authority on a situation that had been careering out of control virtually from the moment they arrived, Shelley moved forward, glanced into a room and saw the first girl he’d encountered pulling her things from the floor, dancing as she dragged on a pair of jeans. He saw the smashed camera. A laptop almost staved in half. Another woman dashed past with a bundle of clothes in her arms. He counted five altogether, the last of them past him now. Gurney like a wild man at the other end of the building, the bat flailing.

  And then from somewhere up the corridor came a terrible wail – the unmistakable sound of a man in pain. In the next moment Shelley reached the end door – marked with the word ‘Offices’ – just as smoke started to billow from the doorway.

  CHAPTER 27

  AND NOW IT became clear just how fucked up things were. The office area was already on fire, and scrambling into the passageway in a bid to escape was a young guy with long hair, blood streaming down his face from a cut above his forehead, mouth already swollen. A terrified man. Rubber legs. Pinballing from one side of the corridor to the other. A man desperate to avoid not just the fire, but further beatings as well.

  Behind him came Drake, bellowing insults, chasing the guy into the hallway with his bat held two-handed as if he were on first base. He looked up and saw Shelley, but if the sight gave him pause for thought then he didn’t show it, still screaming at the terrified employee who’d half fallen, half dropped to his hands and knees, trying to crawl away from further attack.

  ‘Get on your feet, now,’ ordered Drake, raising the bat and, before Shelley could stop him, bringing it down hard on the small of the man’s back.

  ‘Christ, you’ll break his spine!’ shouted Shelley. He lunged to grab the weapon, to wrest it from Drake’s hands.

  ‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ Drake snapped back at him, in n
o way letting go of the bat, acting like a kid with a new toy.

  Shelley looked up and saw orange patterns dancing on the walls. More smoke. He realised he didn’t have time to play gimme-the-bat with Drake and let it go. ‘Just get out of here, both of you,’ he commanded and went in search of Bennett, stepping over the kid, through the doorway and into the heat.

  Now he was in a small reception area, complete with low table, potted plant and a framed photograph of a beach in the Maldives. There were two office doors, both open, one of which had smoke pouring from it.

  Pummelled by heat, he knew there was no chance of fighting the fire. Escape was the only option now, damage limitation the new objective.

  Bennett stood in the reception area. Motionless, he stared vacantly at flames as they began to curl out of the office, like orange fingers gripping the door frame, his bat dangling from his hand, only just registering Shelley’s arrival.

  ‘He went bananas!’ he yelled.

  Shelley could imagine. He’d seen Drake in the van. But he also knew that Drake had planned this all along. In order for the fire to get so hot so quickly he had to have had an accelerant, probably hidden in his hoodie.

  Shelley grabbed Bennett. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ he bawled over the roar of the fire.

  ‘This was not supposed to happen.’

  ‘But it has happened,’ snapped Shelley. ‘Now we deal with it. Leave the fire, come on.’

  Bennett nodded, shook off the torpor, and Shelley thanked God he’d pulled himself together. A temporary blip; it happened. Dealing with it was what counted, and credit to Bennett, that’s what he did.

  Meantime, Shelley had Drake and the worker guy to worry about. He wheeled, ran down the corridor, putting the fire at his back. His mind raced. His one objective now was to stop Guy Drake before he did any more harm.

  He was too late. As Shelley burst out of the door, the sight that greeted him was Drake with his feet planted wide apart and his bat raised – then arcing down and into the prone body of the young bloke.