THORN IN MY SIDE
Thorn In My Side
SHEILA QUIGLEY
Burgess Books
First published in 2010 by Burgess Books
Copyright © Sheila Quigley 2010
All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means without written permission from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in connection with a review for insertion in a newspaper, magazine, website or broadcast.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design by
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For Heather Cawte, one of the best editors in the business, and for Aarron Forrest – thanks for the hands.
DEDICATION
For Michael Quigley
PROLOGUE
FRANCE 2007
'Non.'
One word of defiance. Spoken quietly but with an unbreakable finality. The French word for 'no' winged around the room, bounced off the walls and echoed in the heads of those gathered there. A thick, cloying silence descended as fear took hold of their hearts and quickly spread.
Every face turned to the front.
The man known simply as The Leader stared at the youth. His face flushed from red to purple with anger. He turned to those gathered there. 'Get out,' he yelled. He spun back round to the youth. 'Not you.' He put up his hand to stop the young man from leaving. Behind him the room emptied.
Knowing he’d said the wrong thing, the youth froze, his heart pounding in his chest. But what had been asked of him was impossible.
Two others stayed behind, both of them over six foot with steroid- hyped bodies rippling with each movement. One, of obvious Chinese descent, smiled a predator smile, while the Caucasian’s face showed no emotion at all. He stared in front of him like a well-bred fighting machine awaiting instructions.
'You dare to defy me?' The Leader, tall, thin, with long flowing black hair, asked with more than a touch of amazement in his voice.
Quivering, the youth hung his head, not daring to answer. The Leader snatched a bamboo stick off the table and poked the silent youth hard in his stomach, punctuating each word with a vicious thrust. 'You will do as I say… Answer me.'
Sticking to his native tongue, the youth muttered quietly but stubbornly, 'Absolument pas.'
'You dare to tell me “absolutely not'? You dare to say those words to me?' He had spoken quietly, amazed that this skinny, stupid, ugly peasant had the nerve to defy him.
His next words though, spoken to the two heavies, were loud and very clear. 'A lesson needs to be taught here, so that others may not catch the fever he so obviously possesses.'
He glowered once more at the youth before striding to the corner of the room, where he stood with his hands clenched in front of him, his eyes unblinking and a sarcastic curve on his mouth.
The Caucasian guard grabbed the youth from behind. Quickly he stripped him, his thin cotton shift like so much tissue paper in the huge guard’s hands. A moment later he hauled him naked to the centre of the room. The captive, beyond terror, had barely struggled. His will sapped, knowing his fate, he gave up. Not even a sob escaped from his dry lips.
His wrists were tied above his head to a large thick wooden pole, where a metal ring had been fitted for this purpose. Then the Chinese guard tied his feet to another set of metal loops concreted in to the floor. His face pressed tight against the wood, splinters already digging into his cheek and drawing tiny spots of blood, the trembling youth did not see the huge wooden-handled whip the Chinese guard had taken from a cupboard, set flush in the wall at the right-hand side of the room.
He felt the first lash though, felt his flesh being ripped from his body in nine different places, and screamed for mercy.
His tormenter looked across at The Leader. He was the only one who could give clemency, the guards would only do what he told them. The youth’s pleas fell on deaf ears.
Leaving the wall, his hands still positioned in front of him, The Leader moved up to the wooden post, circling it once, sniffing at the youth’s ravaged back, before suddenly grabbing the youth by his scalp and savagely yanking his head back. His face close to the captive he said, 'No one defies me, peasant boy. You are a cancer that I will eliminate.'
Slowly he shook his head at the guard. 'Finish it.'
The second lash, criss-crossing the first, brought more agonising screams as blood ran down the young man’s back and legs before pooling on the floor.
Thirty-eight times he was lashed, with a whip that had nine tails. Each time the whip landed, the tips found an unspoiled piece of flesh.
It took the youth two days to die. During his time of dying he had hours to reflect on the reason why he was here. His biggest regret was the pain his mother and the rest of his family would go through when she found out what had happened to him. Every minute of the forty-eight hours was taken up with prayer, prayer that begged God for her not to see his body.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
LONDON
2008
It was the wrong side of midnight, the wrong city, and Detective Inspector Mike Yorke was pissed off. Bad idea to leave the car at home this morning, he thought, as his feet swam in a pair of shoes he would have sworn were a good fit this morning. His dark hair was plastered to his head and hanging over his eyes. He pushed it off his forehead so he could see where he was.
'Yeah, right street,' he muttered.
Mike had been in London for a few months now and still he mixed the back streets up, they all looked the same to him. He quickened his pace and could hear his feet squelching in his shoes. Shit! Eighty-five bloody quid down the drain. He reached the steps to his flat. He was halfway up when he raised his head and saw the bundle of rags lying at his door.
'What the…?'
Angry that someone had dumped the rags on his doorstep he reached them and lashed out with a hard kick. A moment later he cringed when his foot was met with a solid resistance. With a bad feeling in his gut he bent over and quickly yanked at a damp moth- eaten blanket, dragging it down to the next step.
The security lamp, lazy since the day it had been installed, finally decided it was time to go to work, exposing not a bundle of rags as Mike had first thought, but the body of a child. And the dampness on the blanket was not just rain. It was blood, blood that was still flowing from the large gaping slashes in the kid’s wrists.
'Jesus Christ!' Shocked, Mike jumped back. Whipping his phone out he dialled for an ambulance. Phone still in his hand, he opened the door and stepped over the kid. Inside he took the stairs three at a time. Reaching the airing cupboard, he shoved the phone into his pocket, grabbed a sheet and a blanket, and hurried back outside.
He placed the kid in the recovery position, tore the sheet into strips, and quickly wrapped them round the bleeding wrists, noticing how deep the cuts were. He recoiled for a moment when he saw just how many healed scars were already on the thin arms, each vicious groove an obvious attempt at death.
To preserve what little body heat the kid had left, Mike covered him with the blanket, and got as close as he could by lying down next to him. Resting his left arm over the boy, he snuggled in as tight as he could, the bitter cold stone steps digging into his side.
Is it a him? Mike wondered.
Leaning over, he studied the pale face, then winced when he saw the deep slash marks on each corner of the kid’s lips, marks that created a permanent false smile, a heinous parody
of a circus clown.
'Jesus!' Overwhelmed with pity, Mike shook his head. The scars looked fully healed and had obviously been there for some time. Why the hell would a kid do this to himself? He sighed, unable to tear his eyes from the terrible ruin of the kid's face.
He heard the sound of an ambulance in the distance and prayed it was the one he’d called for. Sirens were two a penny in London. It made Durham where he lived and Newcastle, where he worked seem pretty quiet in contrast. A friend who had lived here for ten years had told him that soon he would be able to block them out. He figured he was getting there, but tonight there would be no chance of sleep until he found out the story behind this poor kid.
Gently he covered the boy’s head with the blanket. It was a boy, he was convinced of that, although how old is the poor little sod? He shook his head. Rough guess, he could be anywhere from ten to fourteen, fifteen at a push.
A few minutes later the ambulance lit the street up with its flashing lights. 'Thank God,' Mike muttered, as he put his cheek next to the boy’s lips. For a moment Mike’s heart sank. There was nothing. With an overwhelming sadness, he was about to pull away when he felt a gentle caress of air against his skin. Heaving a sigh of relief he rocked back on his heels, convinced he’d done everything he could for this poor forgotten piece of humanity.
The ambulance pulled in close to them, and quickly the paramedics got the boy into it. While they worked on him, Mike took the opportunity to get out of his sodden clothes and changed into a pair of black jeans and a white T-shirt. Dumping the dead suede shoes into the bin as he passed, he went to the cupboard and found a pair of trainers.
'Amazing!' he muttered. He’d searched for the same elusive pair for over a week with no success. Shaking his head, he grabbed his car keys and hurried outside.
Running to the ambulance, he was about to hop on board when he spotted his neighbour from the flat below among the small crowd that had gathered, all of them wondering what had gone on in this quiet little back street where nothing ever happened. Where you bump into a neighbour after a couple of years and wonder when he got those lines on his face.
'Catch you tomorrow,' Mike said to the tall, bald man. He had moved into the basement flat the week after Mike had taken up residence. Keith Stotter was a friendly American from Atlanta. They had shared a few pints at the local pub and often put the world to rights when walking Keith’s dog.
'OK,' Stotter said, as he gave a small wave.
They arrived at the hospital with the sirens full on. Quickly the boy was taken out of the ambulance and rushed into Casualty. Watching the trolley being pushed away, Mike looked up and noticed the ward sister staring sadly at the kid. She lifted her head and Mike caught her eye.
Walking over, he introduced himself, explained he was the one who had found the boy, and said, 'You seem to know him?'
She sighed, then smiled sadly, her chubby cheeks dimpling. The smile stopped short of her blue eyes just before it faded. 'Yes, I know him, just about everyone in here knows Smiler… Would you like a coffee?'
'No thanks.' Mike said. Coffee wired him up to the ceiling, and by the time he got home he would need some shuteye.
The sister ushered him into her tiny office, offering him one of two seats, then said over her shoulder as she headed back out the door, 'Won’t be a mo.'
Mike looked around the small space, the usual office paraphernalia scattered around -- a pile of clip boards on the desk, an assortment of pens, posters on the wall proclaiming to the world the perils of sharing needles and unprotected sex. Not that anyone seems to take any notice of them, Mike was thinking, as the sister came back in carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a cream bun in the other.
Knocking the door shut with her hip, she put the coffee and the bun on the table and sat down. 'Smiler…' She fell quiet for a moment as if choosing her words. Taking a sip of coffee, she looked at Mike and sadly shook her head. 'Smiler is the most damaged person I have ever met, and trust me, we get some damn sad cases through these doors… He was abused from early infancy. His alcoholic drug- addicted mother...' She shrugged. 'That’s if you can call her a mother. I certainly wouldn’t.'
Mike froze. Doors slammed shut in his head as her voice droned on. He tuned back in a few minutes later as she was saying, 'What she did to that boy was unforgivable. He’s been sectioned more than once for his own good. He either escapes or behaves for the recommended period of time, then he’s back on the streets again selling himself to feed his habit.'
Mike tutted. 'So where’s the mother now? Any other family?'
'No one. His mother’s been dead seven years, an overdose. Smiler’s been on the streets ever since… She... She…' The nurse shuddered, looked up from her coffee, met Mike’s eyes and paused a moment before saying, 'She had been dead for weeks before anyone found her.'
Frowning, Mike asked, 'So how old is he?'
'Seventeen.'
'Good God! So the kid’s been on his own since he was ten years old?'
'He’s had whatever becomes available. Half a dozen council homes, ran away from them all. As for foster care…' She shrugged. 'There’s not many out there with a heart big enough to take on the likes of Smiler, especially when they see his face.' She shook her head sadly. 'It sort of turns them off.'
Slowly Mike nodded. He could well understand why.
She held her hands up in a helpless gesture. 'The shame of it is, when he’s stable he’s such a likeable kid, not a mean bone in his body. He’ll do anything for you.'
'So you, er...' Mike frowned. 'You said she’d been dead for weeks?'
'Sadly, yes. It was summer, a hot spell. They were living in a caravan. It was the smell that alerted people. I shudder to think what state she was in. I was on holiday at the time.'
Grimacing at the thought of a ten-year-old sharing a home with a dead body for all those weeks, Mike went on, 'How the hell was it left so long?'
'From what I’ve been told, she never came out of the caravan from the day she went in until the day she was carried out. Smiler wouldn’t open up to anyone. From what we could gather he’d spent his days in the library, and his nights on the street selling himself for food.'
'Jesus Christ!' Mike rapped the chair arm with his fingers, and the sister could see the anger in his eyes.
Perhaps, she thought, it’s a good thing the nasty old cow’s already dead.
'So how’s he managed to eat since then?'
Sighing, she went on, 'The poor soul still begs. Not much else he can do, is there? In the beginning, after his mother died, he used the only way he knew to make money… He stopped selling himself when he was about thirteen, after a pretty nasty character gave him a hell of a beating. Someone found him in a dustbin, got him here just in time. He’d been in the bin for over forty-eight hours. We patched him up, a few broken ribs and a broken arm. It was the pneumonia that nearly saw him off.' She shook her head, her eyes in the past seeing Smiler’s broken and bruised body.
'Jesus,' Mike muttered, more to himself than to the sister.
She nodded, 'Yes… You could actually see the footprints on his back and chest.'
Mike’s voice was rough when he asked, 'Anyone pay for it?'
Looking Mike in the eye and understanding what he meant, she said, 'Not that I know of.'
Inside Mike was seething. Whenever he heard of abused kids, it made him want to reach out and crush with his bare hands whatever depraved creature -- he could never bring himself to call them human -- had perpetuated the crime.
'OK…It’s obvious why he’s nicknamed Smiler, so what’s his real name?'
She shrugged. 'No one really knows. The night he was rescued from the bin he was hand-cuffed.' She paused for a moment, then said angrily, 'The handcuffs were woven from a thorn bush.'
'What?'
'Yes, painful indeed.' She bit her lip, and sighed before going on. 'The wounds became infected. We reckon it was some sort of ritual that he’d refused to go along with.'
Becoming more angry the more he heard, Mike clenched his fists. For a moment he stared at the floor. When he lifted his head, the sister went on. 'For administration reasons, because he was not expected to live, the clown who was on duty that night gave Smiler the surname of Thorn.'
'A bit insensitive.'
She shrugged. 'Computers, they have to have a surname and a forename. That’s why a lot of babies who are found in the winter get Winter for a surname, and so on… But Smiler is all he’ll answer to. And trust me, he doesn’t do a hell of a lot of smiling.'
Used to the brutality of the depraved, it still never ceased to upset Mike when he heard tales of such horror. He was about to ask more when the door opened and a doctor looked round. Mike and the sister both looked at him, the same question burning behind their eyes.
He smiled. 'He’s going to make it.' He turned his head to Mike. 'Well done -- you got him here just in time.'
Mike smiled his relief. 'Oh, great.'
Smiling back, the doctor nodded at the sister, and closed the door.
CHAPTER TWO
It was Thursday, the last Thursday that Mike would be spending in London. After nearly three months working undercover, tonight should see everything finally sorted. The last meeting had been a pure waste of time, along with the previous two. He felt like he was being led down the garden path, big time.
Mike had found out nothing he didn’t already know. For the last couple of years the list of missing people, mostly teenagers, had grown out of all proportion, and lately most of the missing seemed to be connected to the A1 corridor from London to Berwick-on-Tweed.
In a typical year, over two hundred thousand people go missing in the UK alone. Quite a lot turn up, mostly teenagers, who have run off in a huff. But lately the volume, and where they were missing from, had the police totally perplexed. Not one teenager from the towns and cities up the corridor had ever been seen again.
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