With no power in the premises it was pointless to investigate the computer, so we first turned our attention to the filing cabinet. This looked promising as there was so much jammed into the drawers they would not shut properly, never mind lock.
‘We’ll be here for a week,’ Patrick muttered, rifling through the stuff in the top drawer. He hefted out a whole armful of files and loose sheets of paper and dumped them on the desk, sweeping all the rubbish already on it on to the floor. ‘See what you can find. Did you bring spare torch batteries?’
I had.
I went through it all, initially carefully but then more quickly. None of the paperwork before me appeared to refer to the club at all but to a fashion shop in the city, in Union Street, with letters, bills and so forth dating as far back as thirty years. I did not recognize the name of it. Further down the pile were even older photocopied documents and correspondence that referred to another business in Trowbridge, a town fairly close by.
‘Just junk,’ I said. ‘Nothing to do with anything here.’
‘Same here,’ Patrick grunted, working on the second of the three drawers. ‘I reckon they inherited this thing with the building.’
‘What’s behind it?’
‘I’ll have a look in a minute.’
Concealed by the filing cabinet was a wall safe. It was open, the door just pushed to, the interior empty.
Wasting no time, we went back to the desk. The middle and two top side drawers were locked but yielded to the skeleton keys and a strong wrist. The former contained several A4 files, the top ones of which appeared to refer to the club but only to drinks and other similar orders from suppliers.
‘Ah,’ Patrick exclaimed quietly, having flipped though the last of them. ‘Staff rotas, salary records and other stuff.’ He removed all the papers from the file, folded them in half lengthways and handed them to me without further comment. Routine, this; I stuffed them into the back of the waistbands of my tracksuit and knickers, and pulled my top down to cover them.
The other top drawers contained a small amount of drugs, at a guess cocaine, a loaded Colt revolver and ammunition for it. Those lower down held a muddle of rubbish, pornographic magazines and chocolate bars, one deep bottom drawer jammed with spirits bottles, some half-full, some empty and one obviously having been spilt, the smell of booze penetrating even the room’s resident stench for a moment.
One could describe this as a collection reflecting a misspent life, I thought.
This conclusion was further enhanced when the first cupboard we looked in was found to contain a jumble of costumes, bondage gear and whips. We exchanged glances and I giggled. There is a daft and irresponsible part of me that always makes me want to laugh in such otherwise nerve-racking circumstances.
‘If they’re running a brothel here, where is it?’ he wondered.
‘Somewhere on the other side of this other cupboard?’ I suggested.
I could not really tell in the gloom away from the torch beams but had an idea I was then given a look that commented generally on the freakishness of authors’ imaginations. So it was gratifying when, after the lock was forced and it broke, we discovered that we had before us yet another doorway.
‘If anyone’s living here …’ I murmured.
This door was alarmed, Patrick’s gizmo beeping excitedly, and proved to have an electronic lock connected to it as there was a series of clicks and clunks and the door swung very slightly in our direction. I did not have to be told to stand to one side as Patrick opened it as wide as the outer cupboard door permitted, he on the other. Regrettably, I wanted to giggle a lot more, a legacy of watching Hammer House of Horror-style movies when I was younger, picturing a stone-dead Kev toppling like a wardrobe through the opening.
Mister I-know-your-every-foible’s gaze was on me, a thousand-watt stare, in fact. I bit my lower lip hard and then noticed a sheen of sweat on his face.
There was some kind of dim illumination within and when we cautiously entered we saw that it was coming from a side room where the door was ajar. The rest of the doors in a short corridor were closed and there were three stairs with a door at the top at the other end of it. The flooding did not appear to have penetrated this far, perhaps because we had had to step up to go through the cupboard. Surely, now we were somewhere to the rear of the main room of the night club.
This was not Narnia.
Patrick was bow-taut; we had entered a potential death-trap with any number of hidden and sophisticated surveillance gadgets watching our every move. And here, we could assume, there was a separate electrical network which might power a security system in the rest of the building. It seemed inconceivable that a mobster like Hamsworth would not thus protect himself.
The fact that Patrick’s reactions are a lot faster than mine was then forcefully demonstrated when the door at the end of the corridor was flung open and a powerful flashlamp was beamed directly on us. He went for the only option and shot it out, then dived to the floor, taking me with him. In the next few moments when men burst through the doors on either side he scrambled the short distance along the floor and shot out the lamp in the side room too. The men – several of them – shouted obscenities while kicking around on the floor, trying to find us. One boot made painful contact with my side and another must have been grabbed by Patrick as the owner was precipitantly upended, hitting his head hard on the wall by the sound of it.
‘Get hold of him!’ someone yelled, perhaps whoever had been holding the flashlamp, as the voice did not come from immediately nearby.
Someone else tripped over me and thumped down on to the floor, and I took the opportunity to do a swift crawl between various legs in the opposite direction, back towards the cupboard entrance. One of my feet was grabbed and hauled rapidly backwards. Praying fervently that it wasn’t Patrick I kicked out with the other, high-ish, and my shoe crunched into what felt like a face and nose. There was a yell of pain. Offering thanks – wrong voice – I scuttled off on all fours, only to cannon into the side of the wall in the dark, seeing stars. At that moment an overhead light was switched on and I immediately rolled over and pulled the Smith and Wesson from my pocket.
They had Patrick on the floor: four, no five, of the most bottom-clenchingly ghastly yobs I had ever had the misfortune to come upon. One of them kicked Patrick in the chest but he managed to squirm over on to his face.
‘Drop the gun or he’s dead!’ shouted one of the men. He and another man were holding guns to Patrick’s head.
‘Kill the bastard!’ Patrick shouted to me.
They kicked him again, several times.
I bent down and put the revolver on the floor. The risk of trying to disable them both and failing was too great. And the light was poor, the same strange red illumination we had seen the first time we had come here.
The one who had spoken came over to me.
Snake eyes. This was Hamsworth, and he was gazing at me with scorn.
‘I expected something tougher-looking,’ he said with a smile that was quite brave considering the number of bad teeth it displayed. ‘But you’re quite a girl.’
‘You’re all under arrest,’ I told him.
He laughed out loud, turned to his henchmen and they obediently guffawed as well. Then he said, ‘Surely you don’t expect us to take any notice of that.’
‘No, not at all,’ I replied. ‘It just means that a charge of resisting arrest gets added to the final tally. Not that it will make much difference with several murders at the top of the list.’
He looked far older than his criminal records would suggest. In a word, raddled, his face pock-marked and, even in the strange light, an unhealthy putty colour. His eyes had a yellow tinge and were really reptilian; I was almost expecting his tongue to be forked and flick in and out of his mouth like a snake’s.
‘Who then, duckie?’ he mocked. ‘Do tell.’
‘Benny Cooper, for a start.’ Could I kick this man where it hurt most, grab the gun from the floor where
the moron had left it and shoot the other openly armed mobster before he killed Patrick? Each of the unsavoury quartet, one trying to staunch a nosebleed with a bloodstained handkerchief, had a foot on Patrick as though he was a big-game trophy.
‘Oh, no. Very, very sadly, Cooper was killed by a copper,’ Hamsworth drawled.
‘How about Bob Downton, then?’
‘The little shit who ran a coffee bar with the Chinese woman in London? SOCA has been busy. Nah, wrong again. He got mixed up with some very nasty folk – I do know them, mind – and thought he could keep some of the proceeds for himself.’ He glanced around quickly to check on what was going on behind him – not enough time for me to do anything. ‘You know what you read sometimes in the papers? “Their mutilated bodies were found on waste ground?” Well, duckie, that’s what’s going to happen to you. Right now. But we’re going to have a little fun first, aren’t we, boys?’ Again he turned and there was general sniggering.
I risked everything and gave him a violent shove while he wasn’t looking at me, followed him down, scooped up the Smith and Wesson and fired it, fairly high. The bullet found a target and one of the men went down like a skittle. Then, the wrist of the hand holding the gun received a blow from somewhere to the rear of me and a couple of arms like steel bars grasped me and hoisted me into the air as though I was made of feathers. The gun dropped from utterly numbed fingers. It felt as though my arm was broken.
‘Good old Kev!’ one of the men roared.
I was dumped back on my feet but still restrained so tightly I could hardly breathe. Hamsworth had already picked himself up and now came over. I braced myself.
‘We want you in fairly good condition or you won’t be able to play, will you?’ he grated, visibly controlling the urge to lash out. ‘Now listen, duckie, the length of time your screwing-mate here takes to die depends on your being a good girl.’ He regarded the group. ‘Get him up.’ Turning back to me, he added, ‘It’s a pity you are going to die really, because you won’t be able to remember that Raptor was better than even a so-called top-class cop outfit.’
I forced myself to eye Patrick with clinical detachment, having realized with a shock that he was not well and might have been far more badly hurt when he and James were attacked than everyone had thought.
Hamsworth jerked his head at Kev and I was forced-marched towards the nearest doorway on the right and literally tossed within. I landed half-on, half-off something soft, an unmade bed I saw when the light was switched on.
‘No, get rid of him before you draw lots,’ Hamsworth said.
The door slammed.
TWELVE
Several truths jumped into my mind. I was sure that whatever happened next they would kill us, Hamsworth raping me last so he would have the added pleasure of killing me. Although I was still in possession of my mobile phone there was no time to call for help. My right arm was still just about useless.
Desperately, I cast about the room. There was an old wooden sash window but it was immovable. The only other item of furniture was a dilapidated cupboard – empty, I discovered. A curtained-off hanging space that contained a few flimsy garments, an ironing board, an iron and a few other bits and pieces was in a corner next to a washbasin.
Someone who must have won first turn, Nosebleed, burst into the room and kicked it shut. By great good fortune he placed himself perfectly for a kick in the groin and as he folded up I hit him, left-handed, as hard as I could with the iron, getting him on the nape of the neck.
I supplied a few graphic sound effects, screams and shrieks of, ‘Get your filthy hands off me!’ to cover the sound of him thundering to the floor and then jumped on to the bed, bounced around quite a few times, screamed again, jumped off and turned out the light.
To produce the sound of heavy breathing was no bother at all.
Half a lifetime went by while I tried to work out the odds. I was fairly sure I had shot one of them in the shoulder so he could reasonably be regarded as one less. Another was unconscious, or at least I prayed he was, a yard or so away from me. That left three counting Kev, plus Hamsworth.
Finally, the door opened a crack. ‘Shane, you gone to sleep in there? We let you have first go because she buggered up your hooter but reckon you’ve had long enough and we’re all coming in for our share. The boss is getting impatient.’
Another little eternity went by, during which time I hid behind the door. What the hell had they done to, and with, Patrick?
There was no more time to think; the door was flung open and two of them jostled in, laughing and making pig-sty noises. The time-honoured shove caught the last off-balance and he cannoned into the man in front of him. I did not wait to see any more, threw the iron in their general direction, provoking a howl of pain, ran out and slammed the door, leaving them in the dark.
Unbelievably, the Smith and Wesson had been kicked into a corner in the corridor. I had only seconds to get to it before everyone reacted. The first reaction took me completely by surprise – Kev hurtling, sideways, out of the room where the light had been on, bouncing off the wall and reeling back in again only to re-emerge in the same fashion, followed by Patrick. He gave the man a cracking blow to the jaw that must have rendered him unconscious before he hit the floor.
‘Thank God you’re OK … Hamsworth’s mobile rang,’ Patrick gasped, heading in my direction. ‘He’s gone outside to get a signal. Go, I’m done … can’t shoot ’em all.’
I asked no questions and we headed back the way we had come, with me firing a warning shot, still left-handed, down the corridor as I heard the bedroom, or rather brothel room, door open.
‘Where’s your Glock?’ I asked as we crossed the office.
‘Got it,’ Patrick grunted.
Once outside – there was no sign of Hamsworth – it became obvious that he had suffered further punishment when he practically collapsed, leaning against a wall.
I got him away for a short distance, knowing it was not far enough, and then called an ambulance and the police – in that order.
The tally was, like Carrick, two cracked ribs, one having been on the mend from the previous attack but re-damaged, and internal bruising. Also, like James, there was some sign of infection, source unknown, again in connection with the first attack as he had a temperature. I railed against the nursing staff in A and E for not examining him when he went there with James on the first occasion but then apologized as it was different staff.
By the time the police had arrived – not very promptly according to someone interviewed on local radio who lived nearby, heard shooting and also dialled 999 – the whole building was deserted. The premises were searched and a quantity of drugs and weapons were found – some of which, of course, Patrick and I already knew about. A call was put out to local hospitals requesting information about any men treated for bullet wounds, broken noses or possible concussion. Next day, the place was boarded up pending enquiries into it having been an illegal brothel, and descriptions had been put out of the men we had come across. As far as we were concerned this, and my spending a little time at Manvers Street helping to create a photofit image of Hamsworth, were the only positive developments.
Patrick was at home, seething at what he regarded as his failure to protect me and for ‘messing up on the job’, quote, in general.
‘You’re not admitting that one of them did rape you to save me from feeling worse, are you?’ he said, not for the first time.
I knelt at his side and kissed his cheek as he sprawled, up to the hilt with antibiotics like the DCI, on the sofa. ‘No, absolutely not.’
‘When I heard you screaming …’ Head back, he closed his eyes.
I have a good line in screams.
‘And your arm?’ he went on to ask.
‘Just bruised.’ Assuming all shades of black and blue under the sleeve of my top, actually. ‘Constructive thinking,’ I encouraged. I was refusing to allow the nightmares of Hamsworth, crawling, scaley, lizard-fashion, pursuing me through
an endless darkened building, to get to me.
‘They got away,’ said Patrick bitterly.
‘And they’d broken through into that part of the building they weren’t supposed to be in, through that door they came through, so they could hide away in part of the upper floors. We weren’t to know that and nor, obviously, was Lynn.’
‘And I’m no nearer to helping James.’
‘You’re not being constructive.’
‘No, but we almost had the man in our hands!’
I went away to make some coffee and when I returned Vicky was on the sofa with him, having given him her new teddy bear to cuddle. She and Justin had been told that ‘Daddy has hurt his chest so you mustn’t jump on him,’ the two older ones using their eyes but being assured that there was nothing to worry about.
‘Very good medicine, this,’ Patrick said, smiling down at his little daughter.
Further results on samples taken during the post-mortem on Cooper showed that he had eaten very well shortly before his death, having consumed oysters, steak and asparagus. He had probably enjoyed fine wines with his meal as well, as he would have been twice over the legal limit had he driven his car.
‘Which means that Carrick, feeling ill, took him out to dinner just before he killed him,’ Patrick, still not feeling well, said.
DI Campbell, who had just imparted this information to us, was already regretting having asked us ‘to attend’ the nick in connection with our nocturnal visit to Jingles and clearly hating the fact that Patrick was armed, although he was probably ignorant of the existence of the Smith and Wesson. Patrick, who had duly handed over the staff records and other information we had found – having copied them to peruse later – had brushed off his reservations about our activities. He had gone on to tell him that he had his orders to arrest Hamsworth and as the local police were attaching no importance to his mission then he would act alone. I did not mind being omitted from this remark as Campbell appeared to attach little importance to my input either and, anyway, there was a head-to-head man thing going on here, into which Patrick would not want to drag me.
Dark Side Page 15
