Crossing the Line

by Solomon Carter

  “I screwed up, Eva. But I love you, you know that.”

  “Stop it, Dan. Remorse doesn’t suit you.”

  “I mean it, Eva.”

  “I know.”

  He heard her words trail off, replaced by the sound of her padding footsteps, fading into the darkness. And then every sound was gone, as if it had never even happened, as if he was deluded just like Marka had told him. Urgently, Dan Bradley began to struggle against his bindings as he had never struggled before. Because now, it wasn’t just his own life depending on his escape.

  Six

  Jess was sitting in the brown, olive and grey funk of Starbucks, sipping on a Grande Cappuccino. The foam was so heavily laden with chocolate sprinkles that it looked ready to sink into the coffee, like a chocolate Exxon Valdez oil slick in a coffee cup. Just as the foamy cataclysm looked ready to take place, she took a wooden spatula spoon and lifted a mound of chocolate foam into her mouth. She was sitting in a corner array of brown sofa chairs, the seat opposite her empty. She looked out into the busy street rush, peeking at the newspaper on her lap with fleeting interest. What would Eva think of her? Would Eva ever forgive her for giving in to her fear? Eva said it didn’t matter back in Dagenham, but in the real world it mattered, because in the real world fearful people sucked. That was how life worked. She regretted it. It made her sad, tearfully sad to contemplate their parting moments, and she tried to remember she was of more use to Eva alive and well away from trouble than dead. It was easy to say, but it didn’t fit with how she felt at all right now. The newspaper words wouldn’t even go in. The coffee looked pretty but tasted bad, just as the pastry had tasted bad, but was still gone in seconds without any enjoyment. There was a point when her sadness had changed. It was searing at first – just after Dagenham she despised herself. While she waited at West Ham station, the self-hate was so heavy she thought of throwing herself under the wheels of something heavy and fast. One of those non-stop express jobbies. Something to guarantee a finale. But a second later, moving on past self-pity, she decided on a new destination. And suddenly it all became so very clear. Which was why at five-fifteen pm, Jess sat in a comfortable Starbucks which was not quite as familiar as the one at home. The puffy chair was just like the one she liked at Southend High Street. But this chair belonged to Starbucks Shad Thames. And while she pretended to read the terrible news-less rag called The Daily, she was working out what to do next. The thing was - right now there was nothing much to do except wait.

  As good as Eva was, she needed Jess. Jess was sure of it. Eva had the looks, the charm, and even more steel than Jess had given her credit for, but Eva still needed her. It wasn’t smarts or looks Eva was lacking; it was just the extra balls, and an extra spark of creativity. Jess reckoned whatever was going down, wherever Dan and Eva were now, without her little something extra Eva’s goose would be cooked. And that would be unforgivable for her. Yeah, Eva had all the experience in the world, and she was a good functioning private detective, as was clear from how she had pulled in the cash even while Dan was busy doing porridge and then standing in the breadline at The Refuge. But Jess knew Eva had been right to tell Jess she was going to be an even better private eye than she was. It sounded cocky, which was why she had never expressed it to Eva. It was cocky, after all. But it was true. She sipped her coffee and wondered what scrape Eva was in, while she planned her options and worked out what to do about it. And this was what she had so far. She opened the notebook on her smartphone, and began to finger type out her ideas and knowledge into a list, brainstorming like she had learned from Eva.

  Eva has some weapons, tools.

  It is three hours since I left Eva.

  By now she will be inside The Daily because if she had left, she would have called me.

  She is in the middle of saving Dan or needs help urgently.

  She then wrote:

  What else do I know?

  Gillespie has a stake in this, don’t know what.

  Dan kept out the back, probably in bunker building. Lots of security. No easy way in.

  No easy way out.

  What now?

  Finish coffee. Head for area. Wait for Eva to show up. If no show, try once to get through security and go for the bunker. If not possible, call police.

  It wasn’t the best plan, but in the face of the opposition scaled against her, it was all she had. How could she get through security? Here she would need an Eva style theatrical performance to get through, and Eva had shown her it was easier to fool people than she had ever thought – and if a stiff like Eva could turn into an Am Dram queen, then so could she. Jess wasn’t a quitter. Never, she thought. She had as many resources as Eva up her sleeve, and even more guile and wit, she liked to think. No, the police would be her last resort option, the last of all last resorts when she was close to giving up hope. But that wasn’t going to happen. She was going to prove to Eva she had exactly what it took to keep the business going, and to be the next in line to take the whole business forward. Yep, she liked that idea a lot.

  The Starbucks staff had begun to fuss at the tables around her, to let her know it was time to leave. Pity. She had hoped that up in the big smoke of London Town, the coffee shops stayed open a bit longer than out in the sticks. Not this one, apparently. She took a cue from a tall be-quiffed metrosexual barista smiling benignly while sweeping up the area immediately before her toes, and gulped her cool coffee down. Man, they really were in a hurry round here. Which was fine. It was time to scout the area around The Daily.

  .

  An hour and forty-five minutes passed, and she had scoped the entirety of Queen Elizabeth Street and was back inside a less fussy independent coffee shop willing to make late evening sales. They were still doing a steady trade of Paninis for the kind of people who ate sandwiches for dinner, people who worked and lived to different hours than the rest of us. Many seemed to be shift workers, cleaners, security men and women, as well as guys in shirts, ties and braces, who preferred work to home life and home wife. Jess sat watching the couriers, the delivery men, the tradesmen and the errand boys come and go. Then she watched the cleaning company van do its thing, a lone black guy leave the building and come up to the van, loading it with two vacuum cleaners and enough equipment for a small cleaning army. She didn’t see any other cleaner. Jess might not have noticed this normally, but with time on her hands and her adrenalin levels at Def Con 4, something clicked in her head. She calculated some risks, then she decided it was unlikely the cleaner was one of Marka’s minions. So she took a breath and walked up to the guy, already congratulating herself for using a good old fashioned sense of initiative.

  The guy was a dark-skinned African, and despite looking tired, he seemed very wary as he turned and paused to look at the girl approaching him before closing the van door.

  “Excuse me.”

  “I can’t stop. Sorry. I’m running behind.”

  “You’re a cleaner, not Donald Trump. You can spare ten seconds.”

  “If I waste my time talking, I never will be Donald Trump.”

  He made towards the van door, keys in hand.

  “Have you seen a good-looking lady with red hair this evening, a lady in her thirties?”

  The man stopped, and something in his face changed. He’d seen her. But he was pretending otherwise, and getting in his van.

  “I’m her friend. And this is important.”

  “I’m going now. Your friend is a troublemaker, which means you are too. She’s in there and she’s nothing to do with me. Neither are you.”

  He started the engine and hurriedly pulled the van out into the traffic. “Charmed.” She said after the van’s tail lights shrank away. The evening was closing in and with the high buildings all around, it was getting dark ahead of time in Shad Thames.

  As Jess spoke to the cleaner, a big man with a tattoo on his neck was finishing his second meatball Panini, staring out of the window watching her. He patted his greasy scarred lips with a napkin and swallo
wed the mixture of strong coffee and ragout down his throat. The man took out his phone and dabbed his thumb on it, and pressed the most recent call icon. He pressed it to his ear and kept his eye on Jess.

  “The redhead still hasn’t surfaced. I don’t think they have her yet. The security pattern on the two main floors is unchanged. The boy inside says the Russian was on the move a little while back, but he’s back in his den now, smoking a Cuban or snorting something.”

  “So why bother calling?”

  “The young girl with the big tits and big mouth is back. We haven’t got sight on Red, or the boyfriend. Could be dead. Who knows.”

  “It would be preferable if he was alive just for now.”

  “Yep. What shall we do with big mouth?”

  “We need to keep all our worms on the hook, don’t we?”

  The big man said nothing. What did that mean? What was he supposed to say to that? Bad Boy Brian heard the silence and filled in the gaps.

  “Sometimes we need bait to catch bait. Get her and keep hold of her, right? And no bloody slip ups.”

  “Right you are, Gaffer.”

  Terry didn’t see the point in making life complicated with another kidnap attempt, but none of this was his deal; he was just obeying the big man. Maybe his boss wanted to feed this one to Mad Maggie so he could keep the other for himself. God knows the big mouth probably deserved it, though Terry wouldn’t have minded first dibs at the feisty little filly. But the redhead was the prize. Terry knew she was off-limits, for now. Although she was a bit stuck up, he thought. There was no way a girl with that attitude would ever let Bad Boy Brian near her, and definitely not Mad Maggie. No, the redhead had too much spirit. She was the kind that would rather die than give in to that kind of treatment, which made death a distinct possibility. But first, before any of that, the redhead had another assignment, and she didn’t even know it yet. Terry got up from his stool by the window and walked out to the street. The redhead liked this girl hanging around her for some reason Terry couldn’t fathom. She was the moral type, that redhead. Saving this big-chested blabbermouth’s life would be all the motivation she needed to comply with Brian’s wishes. As long as she got out of The Daily alive. And she would, he’d take bets on it. He’d seen how she had run rings around the opposition in Dagenham. There weren’t many fillies like her. Yes, the odds weren’t good for her, but he liked her style. Even so, Terry wasn’t betting on her surviving the next trap. Jess had her back to Terry as he strolled towards her. She turned around just as she felt the size and shape of the threat behind her, turning into the vast arms of a big smiling man in a shirt and braces with a tattoo on his neck. Terry swamped her in his arms and pretended to nuzzle her with a loving kiss. Meanwhile he pressed something cold and flat against her stomach. “Don’t scream, darling. It would be much safer if you shut that tasty mouth of yours. It would make a nice change.”

  Jess bit her lip and looked into the man’s calm dull threatening eyes. “Lovely to see you again,” he said theatrically, for the public to hear the big dolt’s words of love. In the arm that folded around her waist, he pressed a blade to the soft flesh of her hip. To Jess, it felt as if only the slightest pressure would cut her dress and her skin. More pressure than that, and the blade would sink into the organs beneath. Jess stayed quiet and walked in step with the big man as they moved away from The Daily. To anyone who paid the slightest attention, they looked like two lovers pressed closely together, matching one another’s glances and stride, very much in love.

  Seven

  Getting out of The Daily building once had been risky enough. Doing it twice was simply madness, impossible, but there was no way she could leave Dan there now. If she left him now and came back too late, the whole endeavour would have been in vain – and every death along the way would have been tragically pointless. Now it was by any means necessary. It had to be. The door in front of her had a standard Yale lock, the type most people had on their front doors at home. The lock-pick beadle would be no good - this lock needed a proper key. And the door frame was strong too; she had tried to use brute force in vain, all she got was an aching shoulder and hip for her trouble. She was back to living on her wits. She edged back along the way she came, biding her time, listening to every hint of sound coming from anywhere in the darkness. Most of it came as a dull mechanical hum as the vast printing presses got to work upstairs. The other sound emanated from where Dan was being kept, every cough and movement becoming an exaggerated echo. There was no enemy coming so far, but they would come. She had heard some of the megalomaniac’s blather while positioned around the corner of the narrow L-shaped corridor, her body pressed tight to the ingress of another locked and silent doorway. The lack of light, and the gang’s obvious comfort down here meant their guard was down just when she needed it to be. There was hope. But there was also a nagging feeling. The Traveller guy, the big man in the boiler suit had been handy to have around. But the nagging feeling was twofold – first, was she still considered under their protection - or to put it as Brian Gillespie would have seen it, ownership – which led to the question, for what purpose? Whatever his purpose, it wouldn’t be good. The other thing nagging at the back of her mind came next – what if the big Traveller guy was dead – if so, their protection was well and truly over. Jess was best off out of it. It was clear, so crystal clear now, that this was likely to be a one-way mission. She wasn’t too afraid of the pain of death, but she was curious to find out what lay beyond the pain, and she was afraid of the ending. She didn’t want her life to end now. She didn’t want to miss what was coming in life, and it surprised Eva to find she was imagining Dan’s grinning face being involved in what came next. Somehow. There was no shape to it yet, but it was there, so many half-thwarted feelings sweeping and dancing around the inside of her mind. Her heart was racing as she wondered what it would be like after she survived, to live without this terrible adrenalin. It sounded like bliss. But she couldn’t afford the bliss or the imagining, not now. She needed the adrenalin to help her stay high, alert and ready for what was coming. What was coming? An attack was coming, soon. She needed access to Dan’s cell, and the only ones who had access were the evil-looking ones with the vampire faces and the military-looking Ruskies. The vampire types were merciless and swift killers. But she would do what she had to.

  Off came Eva’s backpack. She swung it round her and unzipped the main section to find the tools. She picked up the sharp chisel and the screwdriver. The matches and methylated spirit were out of the question down here – supposing they were locked in here a long time and they couldn’t get out, smoke inhalation would kill her and everyone else long before the flames did. It was over to the chisel then – the long carpenter’s chisel with a razor sharp edge. No. Not good enough. Too many possible edges could hit them first without much effect. She needed a guarantee - one tool to knock them out of the picture for a while. Out came the pack of kitchen knives, all presented in the packaging, and laid next to each other in a diagonal pattern in their bubble-pack. They were cheap, a home starter set, but they looked as sharp as cutting and chopping blades needed to be. Good enough. She tore open the packaging, and got the big chopping knife in her hand. It was light and the smooth plastic handle big enough to fill her palm. She swished it sword-like through the air once or twice, feeling a little bit corny about herself, but reminding herself it was totally necessary. She put a shorter knife and the bread knife in her jacket pocket, and then slung all the other tools back into her rucksack. Only days before, the only tools she had ever needed were her Alfa, her Olympus Ultra Zoom and her charm. Tonight, it was all about the knife set. My, my, how times changed. She made her way silently to the stairwell that led down from the yard entrance above. The stairwell was straight, concrete and all neat lines, effectively a diagonal tunnel spilling down from above. Around the mouth of the tunnel, at basement level, was the short end of the L-shaped corridor on one end, then the longer corridor which led to and past the door which was bet
ween her and Dan Bradley. She couldn’t hide well here, but there was the darkness. She moved half a foot along the short side of the corridor’s L, and pressed herself into the wall. The darkness wouldn’t conceal her for long, but the element of surprise would count for something. It was all she had, so it had to work. She propped herself against the wall as it would not do to hunker down or even sit on the floor. If she did, the noise of her movements would give the killers enough of a warning to ruin her surprise. Her body ached for comfort. She hadn’t seen rest for days – endless days and nights in a row now. Almost done. Almost there. Just a little longer, just a bit more effort. That was all it would take. It was a mantra she badly needed to come true. She had heard the nutcase Marka tell Dan he didn’t have much time, and she had heard the perverse excitement that said he had the horn for this kill. If anything, the vampire boys were almost worse than Marka. She took breaths, counting a slow even six on breathing in – a nice slow six, and then six on breathing out. It was a technique she’d read about – something to do with stress and raised blood pressure. And if she needed any kind of technique to lower her blood pressure and calm down, it was surely now. She waited. Not far away, Jess was serious under duress.

  I am not a quitter either, Jess told herself. She had worked with Eva for a year, heard enough stories, and seen the evidence of Dan himself, to know whatever their foibles, neither one of them were quitters. She intended to gain the same reputation. But there had been absolutely no choice in going with the tattooed man. He was as big as the incredible hulk, with the kind of muscle that doesn’t ripple because it was covered with a thin layer of insulating fat. The kind of muscle not created with injections or tablets from a gymnasium pusher. It came from a lifestyle of hard work and brutality. His kind of physique - in another time, another place – well, she would have ordered that dish from any menu. But right now, his power inspired only terror. Not because he was a strong man and she was just some poor little girl, no. Mainly it was the knife pressing against her stomach the whole time that did it. Just before he dumped her in the back of his Toyota, she noticed he had managed to cut her dress with the knife and he hadn’t even noticed. Somehow her skin had not even been scratched. The bastard knew how to use a knife well. The big man’s Toyota Hilux was stashed around the back of a Chinese restaurant just off Shad Thames’ beaten track. Steam poured out of the clattering kitchen into the afternoon heat as they fried up the evening’s dishes, and two Chinese guys all in white stood smoking and talking in their sing-song language while they watched Jess being marched to the big man’s car. She looked at the Chinamen with imploring eyes which said ‘help me...’ or ‘call the police…’ and ‘time to do some Jackie Chan,’ but the kitchen staff didn’t react at all unless you counted smoking more deeply and watching intently as a reaction. “All right boys?” said the big man – just to prove they wouldn’t help her, and they nodded back calmly. Then he opened the back door – and shoved her into place like a dog owner stashing his mutt after a walk in the woods. A second before he did so, he looked at her with a grandly disconcerting smile.