The Wrong Man

by Jason Dean

  It was weird, though. Thorpe expected to feel a sense of relief, elation or something at the successful culmination of three years’ work, but at the moment all he felt was casual indifference.

  But perhaps it was a little too early for victory runs. After all, he didn’t actually have the money yet, did he? He still had to arrange the handover with Sayyid, his al-Qaeda contact, and that was a meeting he wasn’t going to take lightly. Like him, whoever showed up would want to part with as little money as possible and Thorpe had to prepare for a multitude of potential double-cross scenarios. He shouldn’t ever forget the kind of animals he was dealing with.

  At least the location for the exchange would be up to him. That was something. Maybe the most important thing. And, of course, Danny would be there to cover his back once the woman was taken care of.

  Thorpe took out his phone and keyed in the number. When the call was picked up on the third ring he said, ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Martin, my friend,’ the familiar voice said. ‘And using another number, as is your wont. I have been waiting. Are we to do business?’

  ‘That we are. I’ve got it with me now and it’s everything I promised. One of the sealed items actually places our friend at the scene of one of the murders.’

  A moment’s silence at the other end. ‘I see. I have to admit I had my doubts, but you have done as you said, Martin. I am most impressed. So can I assume you have decided upon a location for the handover?’

  Thorpe put a smile in his voice and said, ‘That I have, my friend.’ He relayed the details and asked, ‘That good for you?’

  ‘Since I have never set foot there,’ Sayyid said, ‘that remains to be seen. But it is acceptable. What time shall we meet?’

  ‘Five a.m. And one more thing.’

  ‘Yes, my friend?’

  ‘I don’t expect a one-on-one, but if I see more than four people at the site, I’m outta there and you can add another twenty per cent to the price.’

  ‘It shall be as you say, Martin. Don’t worry. I will be in touch if there is a delay for any reason.’

  ‘I never worry,’ Thorpe said and ended the call.

  Then he keyed in a brief message, located Danny’s number and sent it across. Almost there, he thought. By daybreak he’d be a man with money to burn and a future without limits.

  With a satisfied grin on his face, Thorpe started the engine and began driving towards it.

  NINETY

  Move, Bishop thought. I want the index finger to move. I want it to start tapping against the cloth of my pants. I order you to override the effects of the drug and move.

  It didn’t. He would have seen it at the lower reaches of his vision if it had, but he saw only stillness.

  Bishop knew almost nothing about paralyzing agents, but he figured when mobility returned it would reach the extremities first. So he continued to concentrate all his energies on the index finger of his right hand in an effort to speed up the process. Just like he’d been doing for the past eight minutes since Thorpe left.

  He kept trying. Again and again. Refusing to give in to the drug. Each time he pictured the action in his fuddled mind and each time he willed the muscles to obey him. It was his body and the mind controlled every aspect of it, just as it would do now. You belong to me, he thought. You’re a part of me. Start tapping against the material. Do it now. Show me . . .

  This time, the forefinger twitched.

  He willed it to do it again and it did. He also felt a sensation in the fingertip as it touched the cotton. He kept tapping out a rhythm that he imagined matched his heartbeat.

  Next came the thumb. Follow the finger’s lead, he thought. It’s easy. I want to feel the plastic of the syringe against the skin. Tap, tap, tap. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

  There was no movement. He concentrated harder, visualizing it. He kept the image at the forefront of his mind. Nothing else existed. Only the thumb as it tapped. Seconds passed. Then minutes. And for every second he pictured his thumb tapping. And soon Bishop realized he wasn’t just picturing it. It was actually moving in unison with the index finger. Tap, tap, tap. He could feel it. He still felt dead everywhere else, but that didn’t matter. Things were starting to move in the areas that counted.

  Patiently, he went through the same painstaking process for each of the other three fingers. Each one responded quicker than the one before it, until eventually he had the use of all five. That would have to be enough. He’d already used up fifteen valuable minutes.

  Bishop used his thumb to slowly pull the thin hypodermic the rest of the way from his pocket. There. Next, he clamped the syringe between his index and middle fingers, using the thumb to hold it in place. He then used the last two fingers to drag his hand and forearm over his leg until the needle was pointed towards the left inner thigh. Then he carefully pressed the syringe against the material of his combats until he sensed the needle penetrate the cotton.

  Now came the tricky part. Since his legs were totally numb, he’d have to stab inwards with as much force as four fingers and a thumb allowed and trust he’d pierced the skin.

  Visualizing the action in his mind, Bishop tightened his grip, took two deep breaths, and on the third pushed and drove the hypo towards his leg with all the strength he could muster.

  Of course, he felt nothing.

  But as he relaxed his hold on the hypo it was clear it had penetrated something. The syringe was jutting out at an angle. He had to assume he’d done it. If he’d misjudged, he’d be here for another forty-five minutes and Jenna would be beyond help.

  Bishop pressed his thumb down on the plunger until it was empty.

  And he waited. And tried to recall how long it took to produce results. Inside, when he’d been admitted to the infirmary with food poisoning, he’d seen three guards come in carrying a big white lifer who looked dead already. The prison physician had injected the drug into his arm and it seemed as though the con had regained consciousness immediately, but Bishop knew that couldn’t be right. So he played the whole scene through in his head at double speed to make sure and nodded to himself when it finished. It had been about two minutes. Maybe less.

  It took Bishop a moment to realize what he’d just done. He nodded again. And smiled.

  He pressed one hand against the concrete floor and slowly got to his feet, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms as he rose. Relishing the sensation. Everything seemed to be working just fine. His head was a lot clearer, too.

  He went over to pick up his Beretta from the worktable and checked the magazine. Still full. He placed it in his pocket and checked on Price. The older man’s face was ashen, but when Bishop checked his pulse he found a beat. Faint, but it was there. The guy was a bull. He left Price and jogged up the stairs and through the shop floor until he reached the vintage payphone. Upon hearing the dial tone, he dialled 911, gave the details of Price’s injury and the address and hung up.

  Then he ran down the hallway to the front door. And once he was outside he kept running.

  NINETY-ONE

  Danny Costa inserted the acupuncture needle into the fleshy part of Jenna’s left thumb and watched as the visibly throbbing veins in the girl’s temples gradually ebbed away to nothing. The woman audibly exhaled at the relief from the pain.

  Hedison, or Thorpe, had been correct when he’d said pain was limitless, but it was also true that pain without respite was pointless. Too much and the body started to accept it as the norm, gradually acclimatizing itself to the new status quo and so diluting the desired effect. No, much better to offer up some relief at unexpected moments to remind the body of what it was missing. That way the subsequent physical distress could be appreciated all the more.

  So let her enjoy this quiet moment before things took a turn for the worse. And they would get much worse very soon. Jenna had been sneaking glances at the knives laid out on the table more and more in the last few minutes. Especially the one purposely placed apart from the others: a Japanese h
unting knife with a razor-sharp, three-inch-long, curved, stainless steel blade. Perfect for skinning animals. And not just animals.

  This Jenna really was very beautiful, and the mental image of the knife cutting into that perfect brown skin and peeling it away from the muscle membranes caused Costa to shiver. She’d speak soon enough. She’d beg and she’d scream. They always did.

  Choices, choices. What to do? The second message sent ten minutes ago had ensured there was no rush, but Costa had learned from Thorpe the necessity of preparing for all eventualities. And Bishop had proved annoyingly capable. With Thorpe admitting earlier that he had no specific plans to kill Bishop, that meant there was always a chance, however slight, that he might show up here.

  Well, there were ways to prepare for that. But the tempting sight of Jenna helpless in the chair was fast overriding all sense of caution. After all, there were numerous warehouses running the length of this alley. What were the chances of Bishop actually picking out this one?

  Thinking about it, not much chance at all.

  So, after extracting the needle from Jenna’s hand and throwing it on the floor, Costa walked over to the table and picked up the hunting knife.

  And smiled.

  NINETY-TWO

  Bishop had covered the two miles between East 2nd Street and Cortlandt in less than ten minutes, but it was only as he drove slowly down the sparsely lit alley that he realized the enormity of his problem. It was lined with nothing but warehouses. Most were four or five storeys and they all looked pretty much the same.

  He figured that since Danny was inside with Jenna, he was looking for a door with no padlocks on the exterior. So far, he’d spotted two possibles, but that wasn’t good enough. He needed to narrow it down to one. And fast.

  He stopped the vehicle and looked out at the darkness ahead. He thought back to that movie clip. All he’d seen were three filthy ground floor rooms in a derelict warehouse. That wasn’t much help. At this hour all the warehouses looked abandoned.

  Bishop leaned forward with his arms over the wheel, tapping his fingers against the plastic. He allowed himself to think about Jenna, but tried to ignore her pain and rage. Instead he concentrated on her words. She hadn’t spoken until the end of the clip, when she screamed You goddamn freak dog. Which was kind of a weird thing to say. Why not just ‘freak’? It was simple and got the point across.

  And then he remembered that brief moment of hesitation just before the abuse, when she saw Danny recording her. Like she’d just spotted an opportunity she could use.

  He sat back and thought of the two doors he’d passed without padlocks. They’d been pretty standard doors with graffiti all over them.

  Freak dog.

  He put the vehicle in gear and moved slowly forward, examining the doors on each side. He reached the White Street intersection and waited for the late night traffic to thin before driving straight across to the second section of the alley. He continued crawling, checking each side. As he passed a brown metal door on his left, he noticed it had no padlocks and tapped the brakes.

  The steel shutters that covered the delivery entrance were covered in more street art. Most of it amateur stuff, but a cartoon near the bottom stood out. It was a headshot of a well-known beagle wearing a pair of headphones. Next to it was a yellow speech balloon. Inside, the lettering read MC Freakdog.

  Good girl, Jenna. Bishop backed the car up and pulled in close to the neighbouring warehouse. He pulled out his Beretta and opened the car door. The warehouse he wanted was a five-storey building, with a door at each level to allow access to the exterior fire stairs. The doors above had padlocks on, meaning they wouldn’t be of much use in an emergency.

  But if the place was abandoned, that wouldn’t matter.

  On the second floor level a fire ladder was fixed to the exterior. It looked pretty old and rusty but definitely usable. He got back in the Honda and moved it forward. Placing the Beretta in one of the windbreaker’s pockets, he went to the trunk, pulled out a tyre iron and tucked it in his waistband. Then he climbed onto the Honda’s roof.

  He took a deep breath in preparation for the discomfort to come and then jumped. He grabbed hold of the lowest rung and pulled himself up. The pain in his abdomen was worse than he’d anticipated and air hissed through his teeth as he clenched his stomach muscles. Using only his arms he pulled himself up to the next rung, and then the next, concentrating only on what was before him until his foot finally touched the bottom rung. Then he kept climbing.

  When he made it to the top, he rolled onto the latticework landing and took a few breaths before he got to his feet. Set into the wall in front of him was a metal door with a sliding bolt. It was secured with a rusting padlock. Bishop took out the tyre iron, inserted it into the semicircular bar of the padlock and yanked down. There was the sound of metal scraping against metal and then the lock snapped open. Bishop left the tyre iron on the landing and pulled his Beretta and flashlight out. Then he slid the bolt across.

  Inside it was dark and silent. There was an old decaying smell, but nothing fresh and Bishop took a slight comfort from that. Holding the door open, he flicked the Maglite on and saw a long, cavernous room that stretched back a hundred and fifty yards. At his immediate left, directly in line with the shuttered doors down below, was a disused freight elevator shaft. In the far wall, he could see a set of windowless double doors.

  He had the flashlight in his right hand. The Beretta in his left. He criss-crossed them into the Harries position, aimed them at the double doors and entered the building.

  NINETY-THREE

  Bishop kept to the right as he advanced across the cluttered floor space. The building was unusually quiet. Older structures usually made a few noises, but he guessed these warehouses had been built to last. Apart from him, there was just stillness and silence. When he reached the pair of wooden sliding doors, he switched off the flashlight and waited, listening. Still no sound. But under the doors he noticed a faint residue of light creeping in. He was on the right track.

  He gripped the handle on the left door and gently slid it open until he had enough space to fit through. On the other side was a stairway landing, partly illuminated by light from the floor below. To his left, more steps led upwards into darkness. Bishop went over and aimed the flashlight into the wide stairwell. The smell of damp wood and old faeces hit him, but he saw nothing but concrete until the next turn. No sounds, either. Not even from rodents trying to escape the light. He switched the flashlight off and pocketed it, then crossed to the other steps. The ones leading down. Holding his gun in both hands, he descended.

  At the bottom, he looked through the opening into the rooms beyond.

  He was seeing the room from the reverse angle of the movie clip, but he was definitely looking at the same three rooms. The same walls with the large entranceways separated them, allowing him to see right to the end a hundred yards away. Three grime-covered fluorescent fixtures along the central beam provided light.

  Jenna sat just to the right of a pair of huge double doors at the end. Next to her was a table containing knives of different shapes and lengths. She was still bound to a chair and her head was slumped forward. Her shirt had been ripped from her body and her left arm was covered in blood. There were dark stains on the floor all around her. From this distance, Bishop couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.

  Every part of him wanted to run over and check, but she’d been left alone for a reason. Which meant Danny was still here somewhere, waiting for him. He needed to secure the area before he did anything else.

  Directly in front of him was the figure he’d seen in the video. Still in the same foetal position. He couldn’t see the face, but it was clearly female. She was wearing shapeless jogging pants and a filthy, baggy, hooded sweatshirt. But it was the second figure lying nestled against the right wall twenty feet away that got his attention. That one was male.

  Bishop checked the girl first. With his gun covering the man, he crouched at her s
ide and placed his fingers beneath her ear. She was all skin and bone, so there was no problem locating her pulse, which was slow, but regular. He looked down at her profile. Late twenties, possibly, with prominent cheekbones, filthy long brown hair and body odour bad enough to make him breathe through his mouth. Yet she seemed quite pretty, or could have been if she’d given up the drugs. He noticed two recently used condoms near her feet, as well as a disposable syringe that looked new. He shook her shoulder, but got no response. She felt like a dead weight.

  He got to his feet and approached the man. He was wearing a thick overcoat and lying on his side, right hand tucked into his pocket. Bishop used a foot to push him onto his back. He looked the same age as the girl. He had blond shoulder-length hair and good, symmetrical features. The hair looked as though it had been washed recently. And apart from a nasty bruise above the right cheek, his face showed none of the wear and tear of someone who lived on the streets. That overcoat didn’t look like a cheap make, either.

  Keeping a foot on the man’s right elbow, Bishop crouched and placed the gun barrel against his forehead. He raised the man’s eyelids. The rapid eye movement indicated unconsciousness, but Bishop knew that that could be faked easily enough.

  He slammed the side of the gun into the guy’s right temple. The man groaned and his head slumped to the left, bleeding a little from the wound. Bishop checked the eyes again and got the same results, although his breathing was now a lot louder. Bishop looked down, pulled the man’s hand from his coat pocket and reached inside to see what he’d been holding.