Nothing left to lose

by Stuart Allison

  Father Charlie looked up at me. ‘Agreed!’ he said.

  It was late afternoon when we got back London. Both Lisa and I were stunned by Sinclair’s revelations. My mind was in a whirl, there was more to it than Sinclair, the empty feeling inside me and the fear of the future was returning. My time investigating the enigma that was Richard Miller had given me a purpose and shielded me from the hopelessness of reality. I had been living in a protected bubble. Now we had reached the end of our journey, it would soon be time for Lisa and me to part. Once we published the story, I would have to return to the existence that I hated and feared, alone. Again the prospect of a solitary life raised its ugly head and there would be no Lisa, no Miller, nothing to shield me. Reality had to be faced. For the first time in weeks the hopelessness of my situation overwhelmed me.

  Working with Lisa had given me focus, it had given me something to live for, now once more I remembered that I had lost everything and there was simply nothing left to lose.

  Lisa looked at me, ‘You okay? You’ve got that thousand yard stare again.’

  ‘Uh? Sorry. Come on, we can’t wait for me to get my act together, we have work to do. We need to get the final drafts of the articles written, you’re off to Prague in a couple of days remember?’

  Despite having a head that felt as if it was stuffed with cotton wool, I managed to retain enough focus to play my part in the writing. By early evening, we had completed our first draft.

  ‘I can’t face rewriting it again today! I can always postpone my flight if we don’t get it all completed tomorrow.’ Lisa stated.

  ‘No you won’t. Until this hits the streets we are in greater danger than ever. In fact it would be better if you went earlier, not delay your flight.

  ‘So this is it Ian, we’ve almost finished?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘It’s strange, you’ve become such a big part of my life, I’m going to miss you. This project has dominated my life for the past few weeks and I feel at a loss now it’s coming to an end.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean, but we both have to return to our real lives. You have James waiting for you and I…well I have to return to whatever my future may be.’

  She regarded me with sympathy. ‘You’ll be alright Ian, I promise. You’ll rebuild your life; it’ll just take a bit of time, that’s all. You’re a strong man, hang in there and it’ll get easier, I promise. It did with Dad and I know it will with you.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. Perhaps if I try to pick up the pieces and persuade the world I’m okay, I might manage to persuade myself.’

  ‘I really appreciate all you’ve done to help me and I’m going to take you out to dinner to thank you, come on.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said putting my words into practice and hiding behind a brave and cheerful façade to mask the emptiness I felt.

  It was still light as we walked to the tube station at Bethnal Green and took the underground up towards Charing Cross. After the problems we had with the tail two days before, I was more vigilant than ever looking for suspicious characters. I notice a tall, well-built young man in a denim jacket who had got on the tube at the same time as we did. As the carriage lurched he lost his balance and grabbed at a pole for support, as he did so the sleeve of his jacket rode up over his wrist to display the same lightening flash tattoo I had seen on the thug in Covent Garden the week before.

  ‘Shit!’ I hissed.

  ‘What?’ Lisa enquired.

  ‘That guy over there…no don’t look…he’s got a Storm 45 tattoo. They must have been staking out all of the Tube stations in the area around your flat hoping to locate us. And they have.’

  ‘You can bet your life he’s summoned the cavalry. What are we going to do?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I can’t see the police believing we’re being threatened by thugs set on to us by one of the highest profile politicians in the country. All we can do is head for the West End and hope that some opportunity to lose him comes up, before his mates arrive.’

  We changed lines on the underground, Lisa deliberately trying to keep to the deeper lines where there would be no mobile phone signal for our tail to summon help. I sat racking my brain for a way we could lose him, but came up blank; Sunday evening in London was not the best time. What we needed was a big football crowd to lose ourselves in, but there were no matches at that time on Sundays in summer. Lisa sat staring out of the window at the station we had reached, a look of concentration on her face. As we exited the tube at Leicester Square and as we travelled to the surface on the escalator, Lisa broke into a grin.

  ‘I’ve got an idea. Follow me.’

  I used the reflection in a shop window to check on our pursuer. Somehow he must have managed to summon help, because he had been joined by two hefty skinheads. Our odds had just got a lot worse. I pointed to the reflection to alert Lisa.

  ‘Oh crap!’ she said. ‘Come on hurry.’

  She led me along the road towards Leicester Square. Our pursuers were closing on us rapidly as we turned into the square. It was crowded, heaving with a throng of mainly young girls thronging round the cinema.

  ‘How did you…? What’s going on?’

  Lisa grinned at me ‘When I saw an advertisement for the movie in the tube, I remembered I had read that the premiere of that latest cult vampire movie was tonight. It was always going to be crowded with teenies trying to catch a glimpse of the star. Not that I blame them, he is cute.’

  ‘I thought you were taken.’

  ‘A girl can look.’ she pouted.

  ‘Yeah, this crowd’s all well and good, but unless find a way to delay them, they’re too close for us to be able to lose them, even in this crowd. I don’t know how were going to manage that, they’re only fifteen yards behind us.’

  ‘Watch and learn.’ Lisa grinned at me again and stalked right up to the nearest policeman on crowd control. I tagged along wondering what she was planning. She surely was not going to enlist the aid of the policeman; we had agreed that they would never believe us.

  ‘Excuse me officer.’

  The constable turned. He was about Lisa’s age, the old adage about policemen looking younger than ever crossed my mind. When he saw Lisa, he suddenly became very helpful. That girl really did have an amazing effect on the men about her.

  ‘Can I help you Miss?’

  ‘Yes, could you tell me, is Panton Street this way?’ Lisa turned and pointed straight at our pursuers, who froze for an instant, then turned around, scattering and trying to blend into the crowd.

  ‘No Miss, it’s over there.’ said the policeman nodding in the opposite direction, right into the thick of the crowd. ‘But you’ll never get through….’ He tailed off as Lisa plunged into the crowd with me in her wake.

  Lisa forced her way into the crowd, the veered to her right, pushing her way through the more thinly packed periphery of the mob. Lisa dragged me out of the crowd and across the road. A quick glance behind showed we were alone. She led me into a big Edwardian fronted hotel on the southern side of the Square. We entered into the plush reception area and crossed into one of the bars. However this was no time for us to have a drink and we exited from the bar into another street that led us away from the Square. Walking so fast we were nearly trotting, we hurried down the street until we reached the Charing Cross Road. At once Lisa flagged down a black cab and we dove in through the rear door. Lisa gave him the address in Bow and we were away out of the reach of our enemies. We remained silent for most of the journey, both of us lost in our thoughts of what might have come to pass had it not been for Lisa’s quick mind.

  ‘We were lucky there.’ said Lisa as she unlocked the door.

  ‘Not lucky, you saved us. Thanks.’

  ‘We are in serious trouble aren’t we?’

  ‘Yeah, big time. You need to get out of the country now, we can’t wait until Tuesday.’

  ‘But what about the article? We haven’t finished.’

  ‘Leave
the draft with me. You phone the paper and tell them we’ve got a sensational third episode; I’ll email a rewrite for you to amend in the Czech Republic and when you’re happy with it you can send it on to the paper. You know where to find me when the payment comes through.’

  ‘Are you sure, I really don’t like the idea of bailing and leaving you in the shit.’

  ‘You needn’t worry, I’ll be picking up some clean clothes from home, and then I’m out of here to places unknown.’ I picked up the laptop and booked Lisa on the first flight from Stansted to Prague the following morning.

  ‘It’s a bit expensive; can’t we get a refund on the other ticket?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Bugger the cost, my credit card can pick up the tab. We’re really out of our depth here and I need you to be safe.’

  ‘Okay, but I’ll pay you back.’

  Exhausted we both went to our separate beds, though neither of us got much sleep.

  Chapter 32

  Early the next day I turned the car northwards up the M11, to drop Lisa at Stansted on my way back to Suffolk. We parted outside the terminal; she kissed my cheek and promised to be in touch soon. Then she was gone, leaving me to return to my wrecked home and wrecked life. The three remaining weeks of the holiday yawned like an eternity before me. I actually looked forward to getting back to school, a sad state of affairs, I thought, when all I had left in my life was my job. I had phoned my friends with whom I intended to seek refuge, but they had not answered, more than likely they were on holiday. I decided to go home and think about my next move. I was sure I would be okay at home for twenty four hours whilst I sorted myself out. It was not as if I had much to lose anyway, even if Sinclair did catch up with me.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to myself, ‘pull yourself together, you can do this, you have to do it.’ But it was so, so hard.

  I drove home in silence, I could not face any music, lyrics about love or loss could have been the final straw. Three quarters of an hour later I pulled the Saab onto the drive of my home. Unlocking the front door, I went in. The clean-up people sent by the insurance had done a good job, but the house seemed rather Spartan, with so much of the damaged furniture having been junked. I made myself a black coffee, as there was no milk and sat down to contemplate my future. Giving up, I went upstairs and lay on the bed. I had slept poorly last night and besides, sleep provided a short escape from my problems.

  I was awakened by an insistent knocking on my front door. I looked out of the bedroom window to see a well-dressed man in his thirties at the door. He was a long way from the thugs who had followed us he night before, he looked more like a Mormon evangelist.

  ‘Hang on; I’ll be there in a minute.’ I called out of the window. I opened the door squinting as the afternoon sun shone in my eyes. The door suddenly exploded inwards sending me reeling. After kicking the door, the man stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  ‘What the fuck do you think ...’ I was cut off as he gripped my throat in his right hand, pinning me to the hall wall.

  ‘You have seriously inconvenienced a friend of mine, Mr West.’ He said in a cultured voice. ‘The article in Sunday’s paper really was a mistake on your part and there will be repercussions for you and Miss Mann, when we find her. Now, the paper said there was going to be a second part next week, I’m here to dissuade you from writing it.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ I croaked through the grip on my throat. ‘The follow up article was emailed last week, there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘How unfortunate!’ He swung me into the corner, turning me and punching me hard over my right kidney. The pain took my breath away, shooting right across my back and dropping me to my knees. A foot pushed me down on to the ground and a shiny, black, hand-made shoe kicked me hard in the ribs, knocking any remaining breath from me. The two agonies, my back and ribs competed for supremacy, leaving me in a state of virtual paralysis, unable to even cry out.

  ‘Well, I suppose if we cannot stop the article, my friend would want to see it in advance, forewarned is forearmed. You must have a copy of the article, where is it?’

  I could not have answered him, if I had wanted to; and I did want to. The pain that I was feeling after only two blows meant that I would have been only too happy to co-operate, rather than have than have the beating continue. My pride made me want to hold out, but common sense screamed at me to give in.

  Unconsciously my eyes flicked to the hall table where I had left the folder that contained the coming Sunday’s article and my notes from the Sinclair journal. My assailant followed my eyes and stretched out his right hand to pick it up. As he did so, his jacket sleeve and the cuff-linked shirt sleeve rode up to display a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a runic lightning flash letter S, with the numbers 4 and 5 in the angles of the S. Storm 45, I had seen that tattoo too often recently for me to mistake it. I looked up from the floor to examine his face more closely. I had seen him before, he was the man I had seen directing the Storm 45 thugs that day in Covent Garden. He leant down towards me.

  ‘We’ll be in contact, Mr West, when my friend has examined these papers. We might be paying you another call, Miss Mann too. Such a pretty girl, Miss Mann, the same as your daughter Lucy in Manchester, my colleagues would so like to meet them…..’

  Leave them alone you bastard!’ I gasped

  ‘So impolite, Mr West, when I have been so courteous.’ Then he kicked me again, by the time the red mist of pain had cleared, he had gone.

  I lay on the floor and gently examined my ribs. They were painful, but I did not think anything was broken, only bruised, but that did not make breathing any easier.

  I lay on the floor for half an hour before I tried to raise myself. I crawled upstairs to the bathroom, where I found some codeine tablets. I sat on the bathroom floor, breathing shallowly, waiting for the tablets to kick in. Once the pain had subsided to mildly excruciating, I pulled myself to my feet and descended the stairs. I was moving like an octogenarian, but at least I was moving. I pulled out my mobile and dialled Lisa’s number. She answered at the second ring.

  ‘Hi Ian, what’s up?’

  ‘You have to stay in Prague, don’t come home, stay with James.’

  ‘What do you mean stay…’

  ‘Listen to me Lisa. I’ve just been paid a visit by Storm 45. Amongst other things, serious threats were made against you and Lucy. You have to stay there until it’s safe.’

  ‘What about you, are you okay?’

  ‘I’ve been better, but I’ll survive.’

  ‘I’m coming home now!’

  ‘No you are not! For Christ’s sake Lisa see sense. I’ve just been given a kicking, from my attacker’s tone of voice, there is something worse planned for you. Stay there where you are safe.’

  Alright Ian, but what about you, I’m not leaving you to face this on your own. Why haven’t you gone into hiding?’

  ‘Things fell through, I’ve got one or two things to see to then I plan to get the hell out of here. I’ll let you know when I’m out of harm’s way.’

  ‘Ian, I’m frightened, be careful, please!’

  ‘I’ll be fine; I’ll see you, kid. I’ll ring you when it’s safe to come home.’

  ‘Do take care. Bye.’

  I had managed to reassure Lisa, but there was no fooling myself, I was frightened too.

  Holding my injured ribs for support, I back upstairs for my wallet. I made a call and conducted some urgent business then I phoned Lucy.

  ‘Hi Dad.’

  ‘Hi Lucy. Do you still have a standing invitation to visit your ‘in-laws’ in Spain?’

  ‘Sure, we’ve had a standing invitation since they retired there last year. Why?’

  ‘I want you to go; now, there’s a flight at seven tonight.’

  ‘Dad, what’s going on? You’re frightening me.’

  ‘Stay frightened. Go to Spain and disappear until I phone you.’

  ‘Stop being so cryptic, Dad, tell me what’s going on?’

/>   ‘You were right about crossing Aylmer and Sinclair being dangerous, the research I have been doing has all blown up in my face and I want you safe until it all blows over.’

  ‘But I’ve still got my dissertation to finish.’

  ‘Take it with you.’

  ‘I don’t have the money to pay for the flight….’

  ‘I bought your ticket a few minutes ago; it’s waiting to be collected from the BA desk at Manchester Airport. Look Lucy, this is no joke, you are in serious danger. I’ve had a visit from a Storm 45 thug, who made explicit mention of you and Lisa; it doesn’t take a genius to work out what they were threatening. I want you safe out of the country. I’ll call you when things have died down. You and Rob are all I have left and I couldn’t cope if anything happened to either of you. Rob is safely out of anyone’s reach and I want you the same. Promise me.’

  ‘Okay Dad. I ring them now and tell them I’m coming.’

  ‘Thanks Lucy. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too Dad, please be careful.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. Bye.’

  ‘I hung up. Now at least the only things that mattered to me were beyond Sinclair’s reach. The next thing would be to find somewhere to hole up until I found a way to extricate myself from this situation with my skin more or less intact.

  I packed some clothes in a case and I winced with the sudden stabbing pain that seared through my injured ribs, as I tried to swing the case up off the bed. With difficulty, I wrestled the case down the stairs and dragged it out through the door. Despite the case not being particularly heavy, it still took both of my hands to wrestle it into the boot of the Saab. The time it took cost me dearly.

  A black BMW with tinted windows screeched to a halt blocking the drive. Two men got out of the passenger side doors and came towards me. One was my assailant from earlier in the day. A little over six feet, with blonde hair cut expensively, a long face out of which peered blue eyes, he wore an expensive Italian suit and the shiny, black, hand-made shoes, with which I was all too familiar. He was accompanied by a character that seemed to be a cross between a Neanderthal and a gorilla. Had he possessed a neck, he would have stood at over six feet tall, but he did not seem to possess one. He was roughly square, with massive shoulders that seemed to be as wide as he was tall. He wore jeans and a tight black tee-shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to fully expose bulging biceps. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull and small piggy eyes peered out from under a mountainous brow ridge. I turned back to the house in a vain attempt to escape. One huge hand caught hold of my arm in a crushing grip and swung me to face the urbane thug who had assaulted me earlier.