by Shaun Hutson
“Sorry,” gasped Thompson, his eyes screwed shut.
Sorry. Is that it? Was that the sum total of his redemption? He’s scared. The same as your father was scared when they attacked him.
She pushed the barrel harder against Thompson’s head.
“Finish it, Ronni,” Holland whispered.
“They killed your father,” Fuller reminded her.
Justice.
She squeezed the trigger.
RONNI WASN’T SURE who screamed the loudest.
Her own yell of rage and frustration was matched by Thompson’s caterwaul of terror.
The two sounds melted into one for fleeting seconds, reverberating off the walls of the basement.
She wondered where the roar of the gun was.
Wondered why most of Thompson’s head wasn’t splattered across the back wall.
She dropped the gun.
It fell to the floor and was hastily retrieved by Fuller.
Ronni stared at the weapon as if it was a venomous serpent.
She stepped back, as if emerging from some monstrous nightmare into the light of reason.
You would have killed that kid.
Fuller was looking at her.
She was aware of the other eyes pinning her in unblinking stares.
You would have killed him.
She began to tremble uncontrollably.
“You see how easy it is?” Fuller said.
“Why didn’t the gun go off?” she demanded.
“Because it’s empty.” He flipped out the cylinder and spun it.
“It’s been empty from the beginning. The bullet I put back in has no primer. It can’t be fired. Only three of these bullets are live.” He held them up on the palm of his hand.
“So none of us could have killed them?” Holland enquired.
Fuller shook his head.
“It was a game,” he said sardonically, tugging at Thompson’s hair.
“Like the games they were playing with us.”
“And now it’s over, Jack,” Ronni said.
“We’ve got to call the police.”
“Thirty seconds ago you were prepared to kill one of them. Now you want to save them?”
“This has gone too far.”
“You didn’t know that bullet was a dud when you pulled the trigger, Ronni. You would have killed him.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t. I’m going to call the police. We’ve got their names. We’ve heard them confess. The police will be able to do something now.”
“They’ll do nothing.”
“They’ve got to be told.” Ronni turned towards the stairs, but Harry Holland blocked her path.
“Harry,” she murmured.
“Let me pass.”
“What are the police going to say when they arrive, Ronni?” Fuller wanted to know.
“What are they going to say when they find out you held a gun to this boy’s head and pulled the trigger?”
Ronni looked at the older man incredulously.
“What are you saying?” she demanded.
“That your fingerprints are on the gun too, just like the rest of us.”
“Are you threatening me, Jack?”
“Just pointing out the facts as the police will see them. These kids have been in this basement for nearly two days. Do you think the police are going to believe you knew nothing about that? You’re in charge here.”
Ronni looked at the other residents.
“Jack’s right,” said Donald Tanner.
“What happens if I do call the police? Are you going to kill me? Where are you going to stop?”
“Call the police and see what happens,” Fuller said challengingly.
Again Ronni regarded the other faces.
“Do you all think the same way as Jack?”
“Yes,” Errington told her.
“They have to be punished,” Helen Kennedy mused.
“What they’ve done is wrong,” said Eva Cole.
“Not just to us, but to your father too, Ronni.”
“Do you think so little of him that you’d let these bastards walk free?” Errington snapped, jabbing an accusatory finger in the direction of the three captives.
“They wouldn’t be the ones the police punished,” Harry Holland reminded her.
“You said that yourself. It would be us.”
“And you, Ronni,” Fuller reminded her.
“You held the gun. You were prepared to use it. You knew we had them prisoner down here. That makes you an accessory. There are seven of us prepared to testify to that if we have to.”
“This is insane,” she said quietly.
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Help us,” Fuller said.
To do what? Torture and kill three kids?”
“The kids who attacked your father,” snarled Holland.
“The kids who murdered my Janice. Who made our lives hell.”
“And what do you think Gordon will do when he finds out they’re down here?”
“It’s up to you to make sure he doesn’t,” Fuller told her.
Ronni shook her head almost imperceptibly.
“You’re no better than them.” She sighed, gesturing towards the captive youths, “Neither are you, Ronni. You would have killed them all if you could,” said Fuller.
“And you know it. Now you help us. If the police find them here, then we’ll all be arrested, but I promise you, we’ll take you with us.”
She looked into his eyes and saw the anger there.
“Go HOME, GORDON.”
Faulkner looked at Ronni and ran a hand through his hair.
“I said I was tired, I didn’t say I wanted to go home,” he told her.
“I know that. I’m telling you to go.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in no fit state to do a day’s work.”
“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. These last two nights ...” The sentence trailed off.
“Gordon, I’m not angry. I’m telling you to go home for your own sake and for mine. You’re no good to me the state you’re in. I might as well be alone here.”
“What about the nights?”
“Everything’ll be OK.”
“How can you be sure?”
Because the kids who were terrorizing the place are tied up in the basement.
“We haven’t had any trouble for a while, have we?”
Faulkner sipped his coffee and watched the steam rising.
“You look like shit,” he told Ronni, smiling.
Thanks.”
“You look tired.”
“I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
I was down in the basement holding a gun to the head of one of the lads who put my father in a coma.
“I slept like a log again. I needed a Vitamin B shot to wake me up, not an alarm clock.” He grinned.
Ronni attempted a smile, but it was hard work.
Keep up the facade. As you were told.
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning, I promise you,” Faulkner said.
She shook her head.
“I’ll call you when I need you, Gordon,” Ronni told him.
“How much looking after do the residents need anyway?”
They’re capable of capturing and torturing three kids, aren’t they?
He regarded her over the rim of his mug and nodded.
“If you’re sure,” he murmured.
“I’m sure.”
He finished his coffee, got to his feet and left.
Ronni listened to his footsteps echoing away down the corridor.
She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her father’s wedding ring.
The one that had been ripped from his finger after he’d been beaten senseless.
For interminable seconds she gazed at it. She studied every scratch, every subtle change of colour the gold displayed. It was more shiny in some parts than others.
She remembered how her father used to turn it on his finger.
Before he was put in a coma.
Thoughts and images tumbled through her mind.
The captive kids.
Her father lying in that sterile hospital room.
The marks on the kids’ bodies.
The gun.
Even thinking about it made her shudder.
Gun.
How; the hell had ]ack Fuller kept it so well hidden for all these years?
She remembered how it had felt in her grip. How much she’d wanted to pull the trigger.
Don’t like those thoughts, do you?
How easy it would have been to end the life of the one responsible for putting her father in hospital.
She closed her eyes.
Tried to push those thoughts aside.
They didn’t belong. Or did they?
She slipped the ring back into her pocket and got to her feet.
There was something she had to do.
THE BASEMENT WAS in darkness.
Despite the fact that it was only late afternoon, the subterranean room had no natural light to brighten it, its one small window having been painted over.
Ronni stood at the top of the stairs, her hand poised over the bank of light switches.
She could hear low breathing.
The stench was there too; fetid and even stronger than the previous night.
She glanced behind her, checking that none of the residents were around, then hurriedly closed the door and slapped on the lights. The fluorescents buzzed into life and Ronni began to descend.
The three youngsters were in virtually the same positions as she’d last seen them.
What did you expect?
Thompson’s head was lolling on his chest and his eyes were closed.
So too were Brown’s.
Ronni wondered if they were asleep; exhausted by their ordeal and seeking oblivion as their only escape.
Only Donna looked up and Ronni saw the fear in her red-rimmed eyes. She bore little resemblance to the young girl she’d seen in the pub toilet that night; then, she’d smelled of expensive perfume. Now she stank of something else altogether.
Ronni studied the cuts and bruises on her body. The worst were around her wrists and ankles where the rope had first chafed, then chewed into the flesh.
As she moved closer, she heard a low rumbling and realized it was Donna’s stomach.
As far as she knew, the trio of youngsters had been given neither food nor drink during their captivity.
Let them starve.
She looked at them, surprised at the vehemence of her thoughts.
Why surprised? They did almost kill your father.
Ronni moved towards Donna and gently eased the tape away from her mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said quietly.
Donna tried to swallow but couldn’t. Ronni could see how cracked and dry her lips were.
“What do you want?” Donna asked.
“I want to know what’s been happening.”
“What does it look like? You heard them last night. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”
“Perhaps they should. Perhaps that’s what you deserve. Do you think my father deserved to be beaten almost to death?”
“We didn’t know he was your father.”
“It doesn’t matter whose father it was. You broke into an old man’s house, tried to rob him, then attacked him.”
“It was Carl’s idea.” She inclined her head towards Thompson.
“You still did it though, didn’t you? You didn’t have to go along with him. You didn’t have to join in.”
Donna regarded her balefully.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Ronni sucked in a sour breath.
“Are you going to let them kill us?” Donna persisted.
“Would you blame me if I did?”
Brown raised his head and glanced across at her.
Most of the lower half of his body was spattered with his own excrement. He was sitting in it, and there was more beneath the chair.
The stench was vile. He looked utterly degraded; little more than an animal.
One of the cuts on his ankle had already begun to turn septic. The steady dribble of urine down his leg had infected the wound.
Ronni leant across and removed his gag.
He licked his lips and sucked in several deep, racking breaths. He coughed, the spasms almost causing him to overbalance. Finally he hawked loudly and spat some dark-coloured phlegm onto the floor.
Ronni could hear the breath rasping in his lungs.
“Please, can I have a drink?” he said weakly.
“Later,” she told him.
“After we’ve talked.”
She reached over and pulled the tape from Thompson’s mouth too.
The stinging pain stirred him from his stupor.
He jerked his head around and glared at Ronni.
“They’ll kill you too if you don’t help them,” Donna said.
“No they won’t,” Ronni informed her.
Are you sure?
“If they’re going to kill us they won’t want you around as a witness, will they?” Donna continued.
“They’re not going to kill you.”
“And you’re going to stop them?” Thompson said disdainfully.
“They’ve got a gun in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I’d noticed.”
“If you let us go, we’ll never come back here again,” Brown told her.
Ronni smiled, bitterly.
“If you won’t let us go, then just call the police,” Donna said.
“I’d rather be arrested than kept here.”
“She can’t call the police,” Thompson said quietly, his eyes never leaving Ronni.
“Like that old cunt said last night, she’s an accessory now. Aren’t you?”
Ronni met his gaze and held it.
There was defiance in those bloodshot eyes.
Perhaps you should have blown the little bastard’s head off.
Ronni pulled her father’s wedding ring from her pocket and held it before Thompson.
“Why did you take it?” she wanted to know.
“There was nothing else worth having.”
“Why did you keep it?”
“I don’t know. I just put it in my pocket and forgot about it.”
“What were you going to do with it?”
“Sell it. I might have got a few quid for it.”
‘1 should let them kill you. All of you.”
“No, please,” Donna blurted.
“Why not? Who’s going to know? Who’d think of looking for you here?”
“Someone’ll come for us,” Thompson said flatly.
“Our friends know we’re here.”
“You’ve been here for nearly three days. Don’t you think they’d have come by now?” She shook her head.
“You’ll never get out. Not without my help.”
From the top of the stairs behind her, Ronni heard footsteps. She turned slowly.
Jack Fuller stood there impassively.
“WHY DO YOU want to help them, Ronni?”
His voice echoed through the basement.
He slowly descended the stairs, Harry Holland and Helen Kennedy close behind him.
“Helen saw you come down here,” Fuller informed her.
“What did you want?”
“I wanted to speak to them myself,” Ronni explained.
“You already know all there is to know,” said Fuller.
“You know what they’ve done here. You know what they did to your father. What did you expect them to tell you?”
At the top of the stairs, Holland shut the door and stood sentinel there.
“It would have just been more lies, Ronni,” Helen insisted.
Fuller crossed to each of the youngsters in turn and pressed the tape back into place across their mouths.
/> Helen took Ronni’s arm and pulled her gently towards the stairs.
“Come on,” she said quietly.
“The others are waiting,” Fuller told her. He followed them up the stairs, then snapped off the lights.
Behind her, Ronni could hear the sounds of muted weeping.
Harry Holland closed the basement door and locked it.
Ronni pulled away from Helen’s surprisingly firm grip and stood before the three residents.
“This has got to end,” she said angrily.
“It will,” Fuller said.
“When they’ve been punished.”
“Then for Christ’s sake get it over with,” snapped Ronni.
“Kill them and have done with it. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“And what do you want, Ronni?” Holland asked.
“To let them go? They’d be back here in a day or two and it would all begin again. We’ve got the chance to stop them once and for all.”
“Harry’s right,” Helen added.
“They killed my Janice,” Holland insisted.
“They took the only thing in the world that I cared about from me. I won’t let you help them.”
“I thought you were on our side, Ronni,” Fuller said.
“It isn’t a question of sides,” she snapped.
“No, you’re right. It’s about justice,” Holland told her.
“Justice for my Janice, for your father, for all of us.”
“Whatever you’re going to do to them, I want no part of it,” Ronni said.
“You’ve got no choice,” Fuller muttered threateningly.
“And you’re not walking away from here. I told you before, you’re as much a part of this as we are. You’ll stay here until it’s over.”
Ronni held his gaze.
“If we have to Ronni, we’ll treat you like them,” Fuller snapped.
“You’ll be locked in. Tied up if necessary. Drugged if it’s unavoidable.”
Ronni shook her head.
“Jack, what’s happened to you?” she whispered.
“And you, Helen? Harry? All of you?”
George Errington stepped from the day room.
“You’re either with us or against us, Ronni,” he said, peering over the top of his glasses.
“They deserve everything they get, Veronica,” Barbara Eustace added.
“And when you’ve finished with them,” Ronni murmured.
“Am I next? If I won’t help you, will you kill me?”
The silence was deafening.
IT WAS RINGING, but there was no answer.
Andy Porter waited a moment, then pressed down the cradle and jabbed
