The other member of Handyside’s team on the Brighter Dawn was Frankie Dillon, once upon a time a bent cop who’d taken one bite of the pie too many before the rubber heels ended his career and he went down for four years. He had the morals of a sewer rat, but Handyside recognised that he was useful as he knew how the cops worked and had added a couple of corrupt senior detectives to the payroll. He had nothing that resembled a guilty conscience and didn’t see much difference between his life as the most crooked detective in the North-east and being an out-and-out gangster aside from a better standard of living. Handyside frightened him more than any man he’d ever met, and he knew that his previous life meant that if he fucked up he would die painfully.
The two men on the Brighter Dawn were both as tough as the brass on Tony Blair’s neck and Handyside’s best men for the job he’d given them. His gut had told him that if there was a problem then his money was on the Eyemouth cargo, and the news that a police team had arrived there shortened the odds a long way. Handyside had placed spotters out in Amble and North Shields, and before he’d finished another cigarette the texts and calls had come through from them to say there were no signs of police activity – or, for that matter, rival gangs. He’d already discounted the latter anyway, because the opposition were all dead as far as he knew. The other two boats had made port without a hitch and had unloaded not far from where he stood at the mouth of the great river, so he gave the order.
Hunter took the call then blinked several times as he tried to process the command. Finally he nodded and put the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Dillon and lit up a cigarette as he told him what they had to do. They were sitting on the afterdeck, chain-smoking and gulping coffee to keep themselves alert. They were brick hard, but they both knew that letting down Pete Handyside was not something they wanted to risk. Lung cancer was definitely a preferable option there. Handyside only gave an order once, and it had to be followed to the letter or there were guaranteed consequences. Both men lit up again before getting on with what had to be done. They were about to commit one of the worst crimes the UK had seen in years, outside of terrorist attacks, but they were professional and once they’d accepted the order they put away any doubts and just treated it as another job. Violence was nothing new to them, and by their calculation the victims weren’t worth a fuck. They were wrong.
Hunter stepped onto the dimly lit bridge and tapped Gunderson on the shoulder. ‘Stop the engines, skipper.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he replied. ‘What’s the problem?’
Hunter blew a stream of smoke towards Gunderson’s face to remind him that asking questions was not in his contract, then drove his knee into the fisherman’s balls as hard as he could. He wanted him to concentrate on his pain for the next ten minutes rather than on what was about to happen on the deck of his boat. Gunderson collapsed in a ball of agony and curled up below the steering wheel, gasping at the fire in his lower abdomen before Hunter kicked him in the lower back to give him two seats of pain to keep him on the deck. He pushed the man aside with the base of his shoe then pulled steadily back on the controls until the deafening noise of the diesel engines reduced and the boat slowed to a stop, then drifted round till the light wind kept her on the broadside. She rolled gently without power and seemed peaceful under the starlit sky.
The first job was straightforward although it pained Dillon to weight up perfectly good dope and consign the cargo to the deep. But it had to be done. They already knew they were going to be run over by the filth when they hit port so it was a no-brainer.
Gunderson had hardly moved since the hydrogen bomb had exploded in his goolies. He lay on his side, a trickle of vomit trailing from the corner of his mouth onto the grating on the bridge floor. He didn’t give a monkey’s about the mess and his eyes were squeezed tight as he dealt with the rhythmic throb of pain in his lower body. He was oblivious to sight and sound and nothing else mattered at that moment, which was just as well. Gunderson was a tough and brave fisherman who could deal with most of what life threw at him, but not with what was happening as he lay in the darkness of the bridge. He knew there were women on-board; he’d seen four of them brought onto his boat in the middle of the night in Scheveningen. They’d been taken straight down into the cabin and Hunter had told him that it was off limits to him till they were clear in Eyemouth. He’d heard female voices when he went into the galley to brew up on the way across, but that was all. The only thing he could have remembered was that they were young and in the half-light looked beautiful. What he was sure of, and it had shocked him, was that they were terrified of the men who’d helped Hunter and Dillon bring them on-board. He’d picked up some of their voices and his best guess was that they were Eastern European or Russian, but they all looked like the kind of men who only their mothers could love.
While Gunderson dealt with his groin, Handyside’s men got on with their job. There was a lot to do and then they had to prepare for the reception party waiting for them when they steamed into port.
There was always going to be a difficulty with the first girl, but it was easier than either Hunter or Dillon had expected. The fact that Dillon was sexually aroused by the thought of killing four women meant that only Hunter might have had any reservations, and if he did he was keeping them to himself. He wouldn’t show them to a bent cop in any case. Once a rat detective, always a fucking rat detective as far as he was concerned, and he had no doubt that any signs of dissent would be passed back to Handyside.
The first girl was brought on deck for the first time since they’d boarded in the Netherlands and she looked out into the dark night and sucked in the fresh air. She saw the flashing harbour lights just above the horizon and smiled as she realised they were nearly on land. Even on the calm seas she’d felt sick all the way across with the combination of motion, diesel fumes and unwashed bodies. She’d been apprehensive when they’d brought her up to the deck alone but the sight of the distant shore lights reassured her that at least they could get their feet on dry land again. Her English was okay and she’d been well educated back home in Slovakia.
‘Can I use the toilet, sir?’ She tried to smile at the two Englishmen, who seemed less frightening than the Croatians who’d drugged and kidnapped her near the Slovakian border. Dillon smiled and said, ‘Of course,’ as Hunter came up behind her with the hammer. He didn’t make any mistake and the girl knew nothing about it. The blow took her just behind the ear and penetrated the skull, killing her almost immediately.
‘Christ, Al, that’s how to fucking do it.’ Dillon leered at the sight of the girl twitching on the deck as a plume of red blossomed round her head.
Hunter grabbed Dillon by the throat and held the hammer a couple of feet above the man’s skull. ‘Let’s just make it quick. I’ve got a feeling you might enjoy this sort of thing and let me tell you now that if I see that stupid fucking smile again I’ll put you in the water with them.’ He pushed Dillon away in disgust and tried to blank out what they were doing. It only took them a few minutes to weight the girl and drop her over the side. The second girl went quickly and Hunter prayed that it would all go the same way.
On the bridge Gunderson had hardly moved but the pain had dropped one level and his senses started to search outside his own body. The boat rolled gently on the light south-easterly swell and the timbers creaked and moaned in reaction to the waves. The metal stays tapped against the masts and these were all noises so familiar to sailors that they barely heard them. The first sound that made Gunderson move his thoughts from his groin to the world outside his head was a heavy splash as the second girl was dropped into the water. Handyside’s men had tried to drop the body in as gently as possible to avoid spooking the other women, but on such a quiet night it was difficult to conceal. Gunderson lifted his head an inch from the grating and tried for a moment to compute, but an unexpected spear of heat lanced from his groin up to his neck, and he dropped his head back onto the floor and groaned. The sensation passed and he tried
to steady his breathing.
Dillon scrambled down the companionway leading to the cabin and looked at the two girls who were left. Like caged animals waiting for their turn in the abattoir, they were nervous – events were starting to panic them. Hunter and Dillon were no sailors and hadn’t realised that on a boat drifting in quiet seas anyone below becomes sensitive to sound, which carries from the water like an echo chamber. Two women had gone on deck and the sound of something heavy dropping into the water close to the hull had followed. Dillon read the signs – the wide eyes and the slight recoil when he came into the cabin. If anything, their reaction made him even more aroused and he cursed Hunter, who refused to let him wield the hammer. He promised himself there would be payback as soon as he could blindside the bastard. No matter what he did for Handyside, Hunter always seemed to be top of the pecking order among the troops.
He pointed at the girl nearest to him and grabbed her by the wrist, which just confirmed what the young women were sensing. For reasons they couldn’t understand something had gone wrong and they weren’t even going to be allowed the indignity of being sold as sex slaves.
The girl who Dillon had selected was Ingrid Richter, born in Prague but of German heritage. She was the product of a stable, happy family who cherished her and her younger sister above all else in their lives. A brush with drugs at Zagreb University had brought her into contact with people who had an order for Eastern European females under twenty-five with glossy magazine looks. Rich, deviant businessmen in the West were paying fortunes for a particular kind of woman who could be held discreetly and used whenever and however they liked. As part of the deal the gangs who sold the women promised to dispose of them whenever the men tired of their purchase. It was win-win for the gangs, who would take the girls back and put them straight into the brothels or hire them out as escorts, depending on how much damage they’d suffered at the hands of their previous owners.
But Richter was no ordinary girl: her father and his forefathers were steeped in the military and had fought in European wars down through the ages, sometimes on different sides of the same conflict. Her father had taught her to be self-reliant, and through sport and self-development she’d become a model student. Only a climbing accident had prevented her representing her country in the winter Olympics. Her curiosity with dope had been stupid but she was no worse than the majority of other students who dabbled with new experiences at university. Her problem was that her looks made people stare: at her clear, pale skin and the long, thick black hair surrounding a face that seemed to have been carved into clean, perfect lines. She wasn’t tall but it made no difference, and if anything her broad shoulders and slim, toned body gave her a look that was her own. Above all she was strong, and even when she was drugged and abducted by the traffickers she hadn’t panicked. Instead of fear she’d used her hatred of these men to keep her in control, swearing that when the opportunity came she would seize the moment rather than let them win. She knew enough to work out that even though she had been abducted, she would never be that far from the world she knew – and thus safety. What had happened on the boat was not something she’d bargained for, but she’d already worked out that at the top of the ladders she would have only moments and few options if they were still at sea.
She looked at the man gripping her wrist and let her hate take control. She saw a trickle of saliva on his chin and the way his lips twitched with obvious pleasure. Richter had been part of the university judo team and could tell that this man had no idea how to restrain her properly; she’d already identified his first mistake in believing that their fear was all he would need to deal with the young women on the boat. That was an important mistake, and she had to use any weakness to her limited advantage. She wanted to hurt him badly, but she had no idea who else was at the top of the ladders and she’d already worked out that there was only one possible escape route – into the sea itself. At the very least she would fight rather than be slaughtered like some dumb animal, and if it was the last thing she did she would drive something into this man’s eyes to make sure he never looked at another woman as long as he lived.
Dillon had to let go of her so she could climb up the narrow companionway ladders and into the small galley behind the bridge. On the last step of the ladders she looked round nervously, trying to take in as much information as possible, and she thought she could hear the sound of someone breathing heavily, as if in pain, coming from the direction of the bridge. She believed she had only moments to grasp life or die in the attempt, and her heart raced with adrenalin. Dillon had turned his back for a moment, but she had to wait, knowing there was another man called Al somewhere. He looked tough and smart compared to the man who’d dragged her from the cabin. She already knew that Dillon was an evil little bastard – every time he’d come into the cabin to put food on the table there had been no mistaking what was in his eyes. Someone or the fear of someone was the only thing that had kept him from hurting them before they’d arrived wherever they were going. The men were English so it had to be the UK.
Dillon grabbed her by the upper arm again, digging the points of his fingers into her flesh. That was another mistake and left her enough room for movement when she was ready. He would have to let her go again as he navigated through the narrow galley door and onto the open deck. She saw the glare of the halogen lights illuminating the afterdeck outside but nothing beyond. In microseconds her survival instinct saved another piece of information. She’d sailed many times and knew boats. In darkness and with powerful deck lights on it was difficult to see beyond the arc of the lights and the waters close to the boat, so her first problem was that she had no idea how far she was from land, although the length of time they’d been on-board meant they had to be near enough to their destination. The other issue was that on her own in the chill waters of the North Sea with nothing to guide her she would die anyway. Her stomach trembled and fear weakened her knees for a moment before she remembered that there would be only one brief opportunity to save herself so she could either take it or let these animals steal her young life.
Richter couldn’t have known that no more than fifteen feet from her Eric Gunderson had struggled to his knees, alarmed by the sounds he was starting to analyse. He pulled himself upright and waited till his legs felt like they could take his weight again. He was in near panic and knew that something had gone badly wrong with the original plan.
The young woman stepped out onto the deck and Dillon had to let her go for a moment as they both negotiated the narrow galley door. He turned and faced her square on and his eyes sparkled with the lust he was hardly able to control. She flicked her eyes round the deck space at the back of the galley. There was no sign of the other man, but she knew he was close so her next move had to be right – it would be the difference between living and dying. She’d taken in all she saw around her in an instant and had identified what she needed if she made it into the water. It was time, and what happened in fractions of a second moved through her mind in freeze frames. The battle for her life and what might lie in the future were all wrapped up in a brief struggle with the man who smiled at her and quivered with the excitement of what he thought was about to happen. She snapped her head up to meet his stare, bared her teeth and snarled like a dog just before letting her knees bend, dragging him down slightly through his grip. He didn’t work out in time that she’d pulled him off balance, but her balance was perfect and she moved her weight onto her front foot and propelled herself upwards, bunching the fingers of her free hand with the middle knuckle out to form a hard wedge shape. She drove her balled fist into his throat almost exactly on the point of his Adam’s apple. Dillon dropped in a heap, choking and struggling to cope with the excruciating pain in his neck. He clutched his throat and heaved like a dying man as she grabbed the life belt with the boat’s name from its cradle next to the galley door. In one movement she pulled it free, stepped over Dillon and was at the boat’s rail. She looked round and saw Hunter moving along the side of
the superstructure, no more than three paces from her and holding a half-raised hammer.
‘You fucking bitch.’
For a moment Richter froze, snared by the horror of the man moving towards her, his eyes blazing. She had expended so much energy in her fight to live, but in that moment her courage failed as she watched the man who wanted to kill her close in. Like a startled deer in the headlights she was trapped by her own terror.
Moments change lives, and as Hunter covered those last few steps towards the girl the Brighter Dawn tipped over ten degrees as a gentle swell ran past her. It threw him off balance for a moment and he gripped the handrail to steady himself, but he’d lost his forward momentum. It was enough to break the spell holding Ingrid Richter. She stepped onto the boat’s rail and leapt as far from the Brighter Dawn as she could.
The shock of the cold water sucked the breath from her lungs, but she was in a fight for survival and dragging the lifebelt behind her she swam one-handed, trying to escape the boat’s lights.
Hunter cursed and watched the thrashing figure of the girl fighting for her life. ‘You bitch,’ he yelled. ‘I’ll cut your fucking throat when I get you!’
Shores of Death Page 3
