The Takers

by Robert Enright

They were heroes.

  It angered her that some people were using that label for Sam Pope. Ex-forces or not, criminals or not, the man was taking the law into his own hands.

  He was not a hero. He was a criminal.

  And she needed to stop him.

  As her thoughts drifted to slapping a pair of cuffs around Pope’s wrists, she nearly collided with the stern sister who had come to an abrupt halt. She turned, her weary face etched in a wrinkly smile as she nodded towards the open door before them. The room was well lit, with one of the blue curtains pulled out from the wall, containing the bed within. Through the gap, Singh caught a glimpse of a Nike trainer.

  ‘He’s in there.’ Sister Conway shook her head. ‘Poor soul. They really did a number on him.’

  She nodded to Singh and stepped away, marching back towards the nurse’s station and an undoubted mountain of paperwork.

  Singh could relate.

  With a deep sigh, she stepped into the room and pulled back the curtain. Sister Conway wasn’t lying. Resting on the bed was the young man she’d seen at the High Rise.

  Sean Wiseman.

  Although he had been the right-hand man to one of the most ambitious criminals in London, Singh had never gotten a sense of evil from the boy. He was intelligent, too intelligent to be running drugs on an estate, but he had been able to help his childhood friend ascend through the criminal ranks. Wiseman, despite his frailties, had drastically improved Elmore Riggs’s criminal operation and put a lot of drugs into a lot of desperate hands.

  As she thought about Riggs now being off the street due to a bullet through the skull, she refused to credit Pope with making the streets safer. Likewise, as her eyes scanned the brutal, purple swelling around the eyes of Wiseman, she held little sympathy for the pain he was in.

  ‘Mr Wiseman, it’s Detective Inspector Amara Singh from the Metropolitan Police.’ She noticed his head turn. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The young man nodded. Singh had been informed by her colleagues that he had been found in the bathroom of his flat when a neighbour noticed his door open. His already injured hand had been mutilated with a screwdriver, the metal tip had been driven into the bullet wound Sam Pope had drilled through it a few nights earlier. The hand lay in a new cast which hung in a sling, the attacker breaking his arm in two places. Both of Wiseman’s eyes were swollen shut, evidence of pummelling fists battering him black and blue. One of his cheekbones was cracked. The opposite eye socket shattered.

  The boy wept quietly on the bed, his lifestyle finally catching up with him.

  ‘I know you must be very scared right now and we are here to help you, okay? I’m the head of a task force set up specifically to stop Sam Pope.’ Singh spoke assertively. ‘You’re safe now.’

  Wiseman murmured but Singh couldn’t understand it. Two of the young man’s teeth were missing. Three separate scars crossed his lips. Singh continued.

  ‘You were in the High Rise the night Sam Pope attacked, weren’t you? One of my team interviewed you about Sam Pope using you as live bait so he could escape. Is that correct?’

  Wiseman smacked his tongue against his broken lips and stirred and Singh lifted a glass of water from the bed stand and lifted it towards him. He feebly sipped and then fell back to the blood encrusted pillow.

  ‘I interviewed Aaron Hill earlier today, who was also found at the High Rise that night. If there is any information you can give me about why Sam Pope is helping him or what they are planning to do, just remember you are safe. Pope cannot get you in here.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Wiseman finally croaked.

  ‘What was that?’ Singh said, stepping closer, head cocked.

  ‘Pope … didn’t … do this,’ Wiseman spluttered, the pain of every word hurting his battered jaw.

  ‘He can’t hurt you now,’ Singh reassured. ‘We have eyewitnesses saying they saw him and another man at your estate.’

  ‘He is helping him.’ Wiseman struggled, trying to sit up. ‘Pope is helping that man. His kid is missing.’

  ‘Aaron Hill?’

  ‘I think so. My head’s a little fuzzy,’ Wiseman hissed in pain. ‘They need to find someone from that gang. I told them where to go.’

  ‘You sent Pope to Leon Barnett?’ Singh spat accusingly. ‘Do you know that he tortured him to the point that he had his arm amputated?’

  ‘The fuck I care. The man was a monster.’

  ‘Pope is a monster!’ Singh yelled, realising her personal need to catch him was living dangerously close to the fore. ‘He kills your best friend, leaves you to die, and tortures a man.’

  ‘Pope saved me,’ Wiseman interjected. ‘He got me out of that building without a bullet in my head. The man who did this to me wasn’t English. He had a strong accent, Russian, Polish, Ukraine … something like that. You should be looking for him.’

  ‘Why? Because he beat up a scum bag drug dealer? Isn’t that what Sam Pope does?’

  Wiseman smirked and then winced in pain.

  ‘You’re right, I am a scum bag. I’ve done bad things to make bad people richer and I’ve paid the price. But Sam Pope isn’t doing this for himself. He’s doing it to find a young girl who only has a slim chance because he is out there.’

  Singh stepped forward, her face a few inches away from the battered remains of Wiseman’s.

  ‘We will find Jasmine Hill, because we are damn good at our jobs. And I will personally bring Pope in myself.’ Singh stepped back, looking at the brutal beating the young man had taken. ‘Why are you protecting Pope, anyway?’

  Wiseman turned his head away from her, surprising a tear that was struggling to make it through the broken remains of his eyes.

  ‘Because he didn’t turn his back on me. He tried to get me out of it.’

  Wiseman thought about the card Sam had given him, the idea of a safe haven, a sanctuary that may be able to save him. Pull him back from the life he had always feared, that had finally caught up to him. The pain was agonising, his face was a battered mess and he was doubtful he would ever have a functioning hand again. Singh didn’t care, he knew that. Neither did the Met. He was just another criminal who had received a well-earned comeuppance.

  But Sam Pope, despite his extreme measures, had given Wiseman the opportunity to step away. Had offered to help him.

  Had cared.

  Now, as the pain of his injuries threatened to overwhelm him and the angry Detective berated him, he refused to accept that Sam Pope was a danger to anyone other than criminals. He was far from a hero, but at least Sam Pope was doing things for the right reasons.

  Unimpressed, Singh turned on her heel and stomped away from the brutalised young man, marching back down the corridor towards the elevator. She grunted a goodbye to the sister, who returned in kind.

  They were both busy, the weight of expectation that rested upon their shoulders made them kindred spirits. As the elevator door pinged open and Singh stepped inside, she thought back to her grandfather, his words pushing her to do what she needed to.

  Catch Sam Pope.

  At all costs.

  As the rain collided against the steel door of his garage, Aaron Hill took a deep breath. Sat in the driver’s seat of the hired car, he still had his fingers gripped around the wheel. His knuckles were white and a blister was threatening to form on the palms of his hands.

  He felt sick.

  Desperation had taken a hold of him, the anger of being so impotent. Sam Pope had dragged a naked gang leader into the boot of his car and got in, demanding he drive immediately. Aaron had panicked, stalled the car and had felt his breath quicken. Behind them, a gang of locals was gathering, all of them angry that a white man had stormed their estate and beaten the living hell out of a group of youths.

  Things would turn even uglier very quickly.

  Eventually, he had gotten the car started and pulled away, just as a brick had crashed against the rear window, cracking the glass into a tremendous pattern. They had sped through the busy streets until
Sam finally got him to pull over, demanding he take deep breaths. Shaking, Sam had told him to get out, that he would take the car and handle it from there. Aaron, fear threatening to choke him, obliged, stepping out into the rainy streets of Sudbury and walked aimlessly away. Sam assured him he would see him tomorrow; that he would find out where his daughter was and get her back.

  That had been nearly twenty-four hours ago. Since then, he had been visited by DI Singh and passively threatened as an accomplice.

  He didn’t care.

  All he cared about was getting his daughter back.

  Anger jolted through his body once more and he took another deep breath. Seeing those photos earlier had lit a fuse and with Sam nowhere to be seen, Aaron had let it explode within him. He knew he was in too deep. He had known that when he approached the estate on his own, passing the discarded police crime scene tape that had been mockingly tossed to the ground. The same group of boys had been huddled around the door, a slight look of trepidation in their stance after yesterday’s humbling.

  As Aaron had approached, one of them had stepped forward, just as they had done to Sam Pope the day before.

  This time, however, they were not greeted by extensive hand to hand skills and a highly trained soldier on a mission. They were confronted by a desperate father who had seen red, and the oncoming youth was greeted with a gun barrel.

  Aaron screamed at him to get on the ground, which the young man did instantly. Before the rest of the gang could hightail it, Aaron screamed at them to stop, marching through the rain, the gun pointed at them and his heart beating like a pneumatic drill. They stopped and he approached, demanding they remove their hoods. As the third member of the gang did, Aaron felt the flame reach the end of the fuse and he lunged forward, cracking Tyrone Clark with the handle of the gun. As he dropped to the ground, the rest of the gang ran in any direction they could, racing as far away as they could from the mad man with the gun.

  Aaron, still seething, reached down and slid his hands under the lifeless arms of Tyrone and for the second day in succession, passers-by witnessed a man dump a gang member into the boot of a car and speed off.

  Now, as he sat in his garage, a moment of calm wrestled control of his body and the gravity of what he had done hit him.

  Aaron pushed open the door of the hire car, ignoring the collision with the wall of his garage, hunched over and vomited onto the concrete below. As he emptied his stomach, he fell to his knees, catching himself with his outstretched arms before he plummeted into the pile of puke. The sour smell attacked his nostrils and he pushed himself back, falling back against the wall and tried to calm himself down.

  In the boot of the car was a teenage boy, beaten and kidnapped.

  That wasn’t what worried him.

  What worried him, was what he intended to do.

  Chapter Twenty

  It had been a frustratingly busy Monday, with the monthly board meeting overrunning by an hour due to the HR Director’s insistence on a new sickness absence policy, but Paul Etheridge was still smiling. As he approached the gated border at the end of the private road he lived on, he slowed his Porsche 911 Carrera GTS to a stop. Leaning out of the window, he held out his fob to the receiver, triggering a loud groan as the metal gates began to slide open. The weather was relentless, the winter paying the country back for a hot summer and it upset him that he couldn’t roll the roof back and feel the wind rush through his hair.

  He chuckled at the thought, especially as the final strands of his hair had abandoned him long before his forty-second birthday.

  As the gate slid wide enough for him to move forward, he felt his blazer pocket rumble against his chest. His work phone was always on and constantly buzzing even though he had a PA. As the founder of BlackOut Software, he was in demand. The revolutionary data security software had made waves in the last five years, a pet project he had undertaken when he left the army. As a computer whiz, he was never cut out as a soldier, but his sharp intellect and ability to navigate systems had made him a useful weapon. As he pressed down on the clutch to shift gear, he felt a sharp pain, the remnants of the shattered leg he had suffered all those years ago. It was what had spurred him on to make such a success of his life, knowing that he tumbled down a mountain side into a terrorist out post and only the sharp shooting and pinpoint accuracy of his friend had saved his life.

  Sam Pope.

  His life had flashed before his eyes but was returned to him thanks to his friend.

  Paul Etheridge was given the gift of life and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it ever again.

  As he glided down the road, passing opulent houses that celebrated money, he thought back to those cold nights under the stars, discussing their tactics as they marched to the border of Sudan with blood-thirsty intentions and cut-throat orders. It was a world away from the multi-million-pound company he had founded and the grandiose lifestyle that his second wife had been attracted to. Kayleigh was twenty years his junior and an aspiring model and although he was hardly the Elephant Man, Etheridge knew it wasn’t his shiny bald head and slightly tubby stomach she was attracted to.

  As he pulled onto the immaculate driveway, he parked his Porsche next to the pristine Range Rover that he used as his ‘weekend car’ and he chortled.

  The papers were saying that Sam Pope was waging war on the London underworld, murdering criminals and shutting down their supply lines. In the same papers, they were lauding Etheridge as an entrepreneur and his six-bedroom mansion, forty-six miles out of London in the picturesque Farnham was testament to that.

  Life took people down some strange paths.

  Whatever path he was led down, considering the man had saved his life, there was no way that Etheridge would ever see Sam Pope as anything other than a hero. With a deep sigh, he pushed open the door of his car and gingerly pushed himself from it, his leg stiffening, the bones creaking as the cold wrapped around his long-standing injury like a python. The large house was a brilliant white, with floor to ceiling windows across the entire front of the house. Kayleigh appreciated the modern décor, but Etheridge was sure she wanted them simply to boast. To show off their leather corner sofa and matching recliner chairs. The marble fire place, the open kitchen with stainless-steel work tops.

  It was all extravagant.

  All a world away from the gravel paths he had trudged with his fellow soldiers, backpacks full and guns loaded.

  As his expensive, Italian shoes navigated around the puddles forming on the driveway, he looked across at the Kayleigh’s Aston Martin Vanquish, its custom paint job a brilliant yellow.

  What startled him most was the hooded man leaning against it.

  Etheridge dropped his satchel, the documents fanning out into the water and rapidly decreasing in importance.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Evening, Paul. Long time.’ Sam Pope flashed him a welcoming smile as he pushed himself off of the bonnet, his drenched hood stuck to his head, and his leather jacket soaked through. Etheridge stood still, the shock rooting him to the ground. Eventually, he reached out and took Sam’s outstretched hand and smiled, blinking a couple of times.

  ‘Jesus. It has been. Come in, you must be freezing.’

  Etheridge scurried towards the front door, his limp visible to Sam who absorbed details like a sponge. Just as the memory stayed with Etheridge and spurred him to make the most of his life, Sam had never forgotten that moment in the northern planes of Sudan, watching his good friend tumble to a likely death. Sam had acted instinctively, rushing to the edge and whipping his rifle to his eye, discharging three bullets in quick succession that ripped through the skulls of the approaching enemy.

  He had saved Etheridge’s life.

  It was a selfless act, but one he knew carried an unwritten debt.

  As he stepped in through the grand front door, he slowly lowered his hood and looked around. The welcoming hallway was white, with a black, tiled floor. A large piece of art adorned the wall, a bizarre structure of
colour that Sam speculated was incredibly expensive. The hallway led on to the spacious living room, the large sofa the centrepiece that faced the magnificent fire place. A TV the size of Sam’s bedroom wall stood on a white stand, the shelves filled with video game consoles and TV provider boxes. The far wall was also a floor to ceiling window, offering a view of a garden ravaged by the power of winter. Empty flower beds framed a vast, well-trimmed lawn that Sam would confidently bet his entire life savings hadn’t been cut by Etheridge.

  The man lived a life of luxury.

  He was the head of a multi-million-pound company and was making money hand over fist. He wasn’t going to mow his own lawn.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Etheridge offered, walking through the archway to the right and into the pristine kitchen Sam had seen through the window. ‘Beer? Gin?’

  ‘Water is fine,’ Sam responded as he followed.

  ‘You sure?’

  Sam nodded. Etheridge reached out and tugged at a huge handle, the gigantic fridge opening and bathing him in a halogen glow. He pulled out a bottle of mineral water and a bottle of Peroni, pinging the lid off on the bottle opener affixed to the metal door. He handed the bottle to Sam.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘It’s bad luck to cheers with water.’ Etheridge smirked, taking a swig. ‘It’s good to see you, Sam.’

  ‘You too, Paul. You’ve got a lovely house.’

  ‘Meh, the wife loves it. It’s a little big for just the two of us but it’s unlikely we’ll have anyone else joining us anytime soon.’

  Sam detected the noticeable disappointment in his friend’s voice and decided to side step that avenue of conversation. Some parts of a marriage are best kept behind closed doors.

  ‘Fucking awful what happened to Theo.’ Etheridge took another sip, leaning against the metal counter. ‘We missed you at the funeral.’

  ‘I was there,’ Sam said proudly.

  ‘Well you were always able to blend into the surroundings. It’s what made you so damn good.’ Etheridge finished the bottle and quickly replenished it with another. He looked embarrassed as he sipped it, worried that Sam would disapprove of a man who had everything clearly needing alcohol to get by. Sam didn’t pass any judgment.