Dying Games (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery Book 6)

by Steve Robinson

  ‘Sorry. I should have expected that.’

  They both looked around, shining their torches across the clearing towards the car. It seemed they were still alone.

  ‘Open it quickly,’ Rudi said. ‘That’s usually best.’

  Tayte stood in the gap and in one swift movement he forced the gate wider. The hinges squealed briefly, and then all was silent again apart from the sound of his own heavy breathing.

  ‘Do you want to go first or second?’ he asked Rudi, shining his torchlight through the archway.

  ‘You’re nearest,’ Rudi said, his lips creasing into a smile. ‘After you.’

  Tayte swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat as he stepped inside. He flicked his torch beam ahead of him, illuminating an ironwork cage in the middle of the room that was partially surrounded by sheet-steel walls. The framework extended up through the top of the structure, above which was the sheave wheel they had seen from outside. He moved closer, to what he imagined was the front of the cage because he could see steel tracks laid into the ground to facilitate the mine carts. The tracks, which once ran from the lift-shaft entrance out of the building, now ran to a brick wall where the opening had been permanently sealed.

  The cage became more open as Tayte drew closer to the front, and there he saw several lift-shaft warning signs and was reminded of the video message. He was aware of Rudi beside him then as he turned to face the cage entrance, lifting his torch as he did so, unsure whether he was about to meet with a life-size Judy doll or nothing at all. What he saw caused his hands to shake and his breath to catch in his chest.

  It was Jean.

  ‘Jean!’

  Tayte dropped his torch and ran to her. Rudi was right there beside him. Jean didn’t stir and Tayte silently prayed she was alive. Her head was tilted forward, there was a gag around her mouth, and her arms and legs were bound to the chair she was sitting on at the back of the cage. The Judy costume and hideous mask were gone in favour of the blue jeans and ankle boots he was used to seeing her wear, and she had on a thick, shabby winter coat that Tayte didn’t think belonged to her. He imagined the Genie must have put it on her to ward off the cold, knowing she would be sitting there for some time.

  ‘Jean!’ Tayte called again. He was close to tears—tears of joy at seeing her again. He gently lifted her head and her eyes slowly opened. He smiled and her eyes closed again. ‘Jean, it’s me. It’s JT. Everything’s going to be okay.’

  ‘She must have been drugged,’ Rudi said. ‘Let’s untie her. We’ll carry her out.’

  Tayte removed Jean’s gag while Rudi began to untie her left arm. Then, as Tayte went to untie her right arm, he froze. ‘Wait! What’s that she’s holding? It looks like a baton of some kind.’

  They looked more closely. There was a polished metal bar protruding from the chair’s right arm. Jean’s hand was wrapped around it, secured to it with duct tape so she couldn’t let go.

  ‘There’s a wire running from it,’ Rudi said.

  Tayte knelt down to get a better look. Beneath Jean’s hand he could see a black cord coming from the end of the metal bar. It ran up inside the coat she was wearing. His breath quickened as he carefully undid the buttons, fearing the worst, imagining that Jean had been strapped with explosives that would go off the second they tried to move her. He carefully undid the last of the buttons and held his breath. Then he slowly lifted the coat open. Beneath it, hanging by a chain around Jean’s neck, was a timer, its glowing green digits counting down the seconds to the deadline he’d been given. It showed they had five hours, forty-two minutes and seven seconds left. Tayte quickly checked Jean over, but he could find nothing other than the timer, the wire, and the steel bar it was connected to.

  ‘I think we’re in luck,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of time to get Jean out of here before this thing reaches zero and sets off whatever the Genie had planned for her.’

  Rudi wasn’t so sure. ‘Why is her hand taped around that bar?’

  Tayte shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s not like she could go anywhere. The chair’s bolted to the floor and to the back of the cage, and Jean’s tied to the chair.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Rudi said. ‘There must be a reason. Why is the bar Jean’s holding connected to the timer?’

  Jean mumbled something then, but she was still half asleep. It was difficult to make out what she said.

  ‘Ti . . . er.’

  ‘What was that?’ Tayte asked. ‘Jean?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Who did this to you, Jean? It was Levant, wasn’t it?’

  Still no response.

  Tayte patted her cheeks, but she was out cold again. ‘Come on,’ he said to Rudi. ‘Let’s finish untying her.’

  They untied the ropes. The only thing keeping Jean in the chair now was the duct tape securing her hand around the bar at the end of the chair’s right arm.

  ‘What now?’ Rudi asked.

  Tayte shook his head, trying to imagine what was going to happen when the timer finished its countdown. ‘The timer must be rigged to set something off wirelessly.’ He studied it again, following the wire out from the hem of the coat to the polished metal bar Jean was holding. ‘Unless the timer causes something to happen to the bar, something that could kill Jean.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. A lethal injection perhaps?’

  Tayte shook his head. ‘That doesn’t fit with the cause of death the Genie plans to replicate here. Jean’s mining ancestor died in a shaft collapse, but I don’t see any explosives.’

  ‘Then I’m at a loss.’

  So was Tayte, but right now all he wanted to do was to get Jean out of there, away from that timer and the metal bar her hand was taped to. ‘We have to undo the tape,’ he said. ‘I don’t see that we have any choice. If we don’t, Jean will still be here when that timer runs out.’

  He began to undo the duct tape and his touch stirred Jean again. She began to rock her head from side to side. ‘Ti . . . er,’ she said again, still shaking her head.

  ‘What is it, Jean? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Tri . . . er,’ she said, and this time her eyes opened. ‘Trigger,’ she added, more coherently this time.

  ‘It’s a trigger?’

  Jean nodded. She was coming around.

  ‘Will something bad happen if you let go of the bar?’ Rudi asked.

  Jean nodded again, more emphatically this time.

  Tayte sighed. ‘That’s just great,’ he said to Rudi. ‘So how do we get her out of here if she can’t let go of the trigger?’

  Half an hour slipped by, during which neither Tayte nor Rudi had managed to come up with a satisfactory solution to the question of how to get Jean out of the lift cage without triggering the timer, and whatever else the Genie had planned.

  ‘One of us could take her place,’ Rudi said, breaking a particularly long period of silence.

  The thought had already crossed Tayte’s mind, and he’d already decided that if anyone was going to do that it would be him, but it was a far from satisfactory option. ‘It doesn’t eliminate the problem.’

  ‘Okay, so maybe you or I could leap clear of the cage just in time. Let go of the trigger and jump.’

  ‘The Genie would have thought about that. Whatever’s going to happen is likely to happen in a split second. The chair is at the back of the cage, and the cage is too deep. I strongly doubt I’d make it out in time.’

  ‘Maybe I could.’

  Tayte shook his head. ‘And maybe you couldn’t. This is all on me, and as I see it, the last thing we need to do is to make a rash decision. We still have plenty of time to think about this.’

  ‘I’m going outside,’ Rudi said, sounding frustrated.

  Alone with Jean, Tayte held her free hand and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m going to get you out of this if it’s the last thing I ever do,’ he told her, smiling as best he could to reassure her that everything was going to be okay.

  Jean’s eyes opened
slowly. ‘JT,’ she said, and now she managed to smile back at him, although he thought it a sad smile.

  Rudi was only gone five minutes. When he came back to the cage he didn’t enter right away. Instead he remained just outside. Through the gaps in the ironwork, Tayte could see him closely inspecting the frame.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Did you find something?’

  Rudi stepped into the cage. ‘Yes I did, and it’s not good. There’s an old ladder rail attached to the building around the back. I used it to climb up on top of the head frame. This lift cage is supported by a steel cable that runs over the wheel above us and down to a winch inside the engine house next to this room. I saw a lot of explosives. There are charges attached to the cable above us in several places. It’s an old cable. I shouldn’t think it would take much force to break it.’

  ‘Can you remove the explosives, or at least disable them?’

  Rudi shook his head. ‘There are wires all over the place and it’s bound to be tamper-proof. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  Tayte slapped the side of the cage, venting frustration. ‘Surely the lift shaft was made secure when they closed this place down.’

  ‘That’s what I was just checking. You’re right. It was. Steel plates were welded between the cage and the frame to prevent it from dropping.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. The Genie cut through the plates with a cordless angle grinder, same way he got through that gate outside.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Tayte shook his head. ‘So we’re in a lift cage that’s going to drop hundreds of feet down into the mine when that timer hits zero, or as soon as Jean lets go of that trigger.’

  They both drew a long, deep breath and held on to it.

  ‘Perhaps now is the time to call for help?’ Rudi said a moment later.

  ‘The police?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. I’m sorry, Jefferson, but the Genie isn’t here. The main thing now is to get Jean to safety. As I see it, we need to remove this chair and carry the whole thing out with her still sitting on it. We don’t have the tools to do it ourselves.’

  Tayte knew Rudi was right. He glanced at the timer. It now showed they had just over five hours left, which was plenty of time to get the help they needed. He took his phone out, turning to Jean as her eyes fluttered open again.

  ‘I’m calling for help,’ he told her, and he was about to do so when Jean began to shake her head again.

  He paused and looked at her quizzically. ‘No?’ he said. ‘You don’t want me to call for help?’

  Jean shook her head again. ‘Watching,’ she said, still slurring her words a little, yet becoming more and more alert by the minute. She raised her free arm, pointing to somewhere higher up behind them.

  Tayte turned around to see what she was pointing to as Rudi flooded the area with torchlight. There was a small CCTV camera fixed high up in the corner of the cage, just like the one Tayte had seen at the marionette shop in Broadstairs.

  ‘The Genie’s watching us,’ Tayte said.

  Suddenly his attention was drawn back to the timer around Jean’s neck as it beeped and the countdown speeded up. It was now counting down so fast that hours were being wiped out in seconds.

  ‘Christ!’ Rudi said. ‘We have to get her out of here!’

  Tayte didn’t think about it. He didn’t have time to. He began to undo the duct tape. ‘Hold her hand around the bar so she can’t let go,’ he called to Rudi.

  Jean protested. The drugs she’d been given were wearing off fast now. ‘No! We’ll die.’

  ‘No, we won’t,’ Tayte assured her. ‘I’m going to take your place.’

  Jean shook her head. ‘Then you’ll die!’ She was almost shouting, borderline hysterical at the idea.

  ‘It’s the only way to get you out of here.’

  Tayte finished undoing the duct tape. Then another beep drew his attention back to the timer. With less than twenty minutes remaining, it began to slow down, settling back into its regular pace with just fifteen minutes to spare. Everyone seemed to let go of the breath they were holding.

  ‘He’s given us more time,’ Tayte said, ‘but he’s made damn sure any help we call on will get here too late to be of any use.’

  Rudi agreed. ‘And it didn’t matter how quickly we solved this puzzle. The Genie’s controlling the timer remotely. He could trigger the charges to go off at any moment.’

  Tayte shuddered to think what might have happened if they had brought the police along with them. He imagined the charges would have been triggered while they were trying to free the chair, sending everyone in the lift cage plummeting to their deaths.

  ‘The Genie is still in control of the game,’ Tayte said under his breath as the timer reached fourteen minutes.

  Rudi, whose hand was still holding Jean’s to the bar so she couldn’t let go, was on his knees taking a closer look at it, as if to see how the trigger worked. He carefully lifted Jean’s fingers, one at a time, to better see the bar beneath them. ‘There are several rubber O-rings going around the bar at intervals. It appears to be some sort of touch sensitive switch, relying on conductivity from the skin. Jean’s hand is completing the circuit.’ He looked up at Tayte. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  ‘Honestly, I would have liked a better outcome,’ Tayte said, managing a slight smile, despite the almost certain probability that once he sat in that chair in Jean’s place, he was going to die. ‘This is what the Genie wants. It’s what he’s wanted since the beginning and from where I’m standing, I don’t see that I have any choice.’

  Tayte heard a sob then. It was Jean, now clearly fully aware of what was going on.

  ‘I can’t let you do it,’ she said. ‘Get as far away from here as you can, both of you. I was told the whole area was rigged to blow up, not just the lift cable.’

  ‘Did you see who’s doing this?’ Tayte asked.

  ‘No, a hood was put over my face whenever anyone came to see me.’

  ‘You must have heard his voice, though. Did he have a French accent?’

  ‘His voice was distorted. I could barely make out what he was saying.’

  Hearing that only compounded Tayte’s belief that Levant was the Genie. Why else would he have felt the need to disguise his voice? It had to be someone Jean would otherwise have recognised.

  ‘Just go, JT!’ Jean said with urgency. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

  Tayte shook his head and smiled at her. ‘It’s okay,’ he said calmly, placing his hand over hers. ‘You have family to go home to. Your son needs you more than you know.’ Slowly, he began to work his fingers on to the bar until his hand was also completing the circuit. ‘Were you well treated?’ he asked, both to satisfy his burning desire to know, and at the same time to take Jean’s mind off what he was doing.

  ‘Yes, given the circumstances I was treated very well. I was kept in a nice room with an en-suite bathroom, and I was well fed. I’ve no idea where I was. I don’t think I’ve been here long. I remember having lunch, then being told I had to be moved because you were coming to save me.’

  As she spoke, Tayte gently but forcibly removed Jean’s hand from the bar, feeling from her resistance to let go that it was against her will to let him die in her place. Jean was sobbing as she stood up. She hugged Tayte hard and continued to cry into his chest. Tayte didn’t want to let her go, but he knew he had to. Time was running out. He stepped back, holding her away from him as Rudi removed the timer from around her neck. Then Rudi placed it around Tayte’s, and Tayte sat in the chair in Jean’s place.

  ‘Très bien!’

  Michel Levant was positively glued to his laptop screen, watching his grand finale unfold with great pleasure via the CCTV camera he’d set up in the lift cage. Other than the glow from the screen, he was in total darkness, sitting in his car close by, from where he had a direct line of sight to the old colliery buildings. He hadn’t been foolish enough to wait there for Tayte to arrive, not knowing who he
might bring with him. Initially, he’d been watching discreetly from the main road, knowing Tayte had to turn off on to the track that led to the former coal mine. If the police had been in tow, Levant would have monitored the proceedings from a safer distance, but then he wouldn’t have been able to use the powerful night-vision binoculars that were hanging from his neck, through which he’d watched Tayte and his friend arrive.

  He toyed excitedly with his Sun King ring, turning it round and round on his finger. Beside his laptop on the passenger seat was another device, a palm-sized black plastic box with a short aerial protruding from the top. The glowing green digits on the remote trigger’s display told Levant that the game would be over in eleven minutes and thirty-one seconds. He could hardly wait.

  ‘Not much time left for Jefferson Tayte now,’ he told himself.

  Looking at his laptop again, he could almost make out the beads of sweat on Tayte’s brow as he sat motionless in the chair. He was the only person in the lift cage who wasn’t in some way animated by the proceedings, and Levant was pleased to see that the injection he’d given Jean Summer had now all but worn off. He wouldn’t have wanted her to miss Tayte’s touching farewell gesture. Equally touching was that Jean was clinging to Tayte’s arm, unable to leave him to his fate. He could imagine the tears in her eyes, and once again he wished the camera had sound so that he could hear the drama as it played out.

  He watched the man who had gone there with Tayte go to Jean and gently encourage her away. He watched Jean bow her head, cupping her face in her hands as she sobbed. Words were exchanged at extraordinary length, Levant thought, given that time was fast running out. Ordinarily, lengthy goodbyes bored Levant to death, but not this time. This was one goodbye he would savour for the rest of his days. He saw the man and Jean turn away then, and suddenly the camera could no longer see them. They had left the lift cage—left Jefferson Tayte to die because he, Michel Levant, had given them no other option.

  He put the remote timer in his pocket and closed his laptop, plunging the car’s interior into total darkness. Then he opened his window, raised his binoculars to his eyes, and watched the gate. He sank lower in his seat as he saw the man bring Jean outside. Even now it was clear that she desperately wanted to return, perhaps to die with her love. Had Levant been a sentimental man, he thought the scene might have brought a tear to his eye. As it was, he just smiled to himself as he continued to watch them head for the car. When he saw it turn around and head back towards the main road, if Levant had been standing he would have given a little jump of joy.