Cog in the Machine

by Nigel Shinner

  Nudging against the chair, Dom tried to work on the cable ties holding his hands together against the tubular steel frame behind him. A tug in the wrong direction instantly tightened the bonds.

  His eyes darted back and forth. Scouring the floor for something, anything, he could use to breaks his bonds. But his eyes kept finding dried blood from previous occupants of the room; their identities and fate unknown.

  Dom was determined that he would not spend his last moments bleeding out at some other fucker’s hand. He hadn’t survived twelve years inside to go out like that.

  He shuffled the chair around to get a better view of the rest of the room. Other than Dom and the chair, there was nothing else in it.

  He gazed into the gloomy corners, willing there to be a knife or blade of some kind. Nothing but dust and dirt neatly swept to the sides. There was almost another sense of loss. A loss of hope. Dom couldn’t and wouldn’t die here, he was determined, but that belief was fading fast as the minutes ticked by. He was still no closer to escape. Soon the feeling of despair would overwhelm him, subduing the very last of his resilience.

  Taking a deep breath, he could feel the air shift one of his teeth. He probed his tongue around his mouth and felt a molar move more than was comfortable. That was damage he could feel. He dared not think of the damage he couldn’t see.

  As the overwhelming sense of his captivity started to escalate in the depths of his weary mind, something caught his eye. Protruding from a small pile of swept dirt was a screw head. Dom shuffled toward it. Tapping at it with his foot he discovered it wasn’t just the head. Three inches of pristine bronzed thread gleamed in the murky glow from the grubby lightbulb.

  In silence, he kicked at the screw, trying to move it into the centre of the floor. It was impossible to control. He managed to get the steel fastening away from the wall and into enough space for him to execute the next part of his plan. The part that would hurt.

  Manoeuvring the chair so the screw was on the floor behind him, he hoped for the best. Launching himself backward, Dom fell to the ground, still attached to the chair by the cable ties. Maybe he would miraculously break his bonds under the force of the fall.

  No. His bad luck was holding. Instead, he hit his head, stunning himself briefly.

  There was no time to worry about the harm he was doing to himself in his bid to escape. It was the harm that was likely to be inflicted upon him by McQuillan’s henchmen that was the concern.

  Fingers traced the dusty floor blindly, seeking out the item which might hold salvation.

  Reaching – stretching – touching.

  The door burst open. Gary and Callum walked into the room, lifting Dom, complete with chair, upright once more. Callum threw a punch, just because he could. The loose molar flew across the room, pinging off a wall before dropping to the floor.

  “Try to escape and you’ll be losing more than your teeth,” Callum sneered, closing the door behind them.

  Dom shook his head to clear it from the punch. He gazed down at the solitary bloodstained tooth on the floor. It was the only thing on the floor.

  Pinched between forefinger and thumb, he could feel the regular pattern of the screw’s thread. He prayed that he wouldn’t drop it.

  Chapter 57

  The cool morning air was refreshing, not calming. The clock had just crawled past 3am and the tension was starting to leak from the Boss’ pores. What was taking so long?

  “I think your boyfriend has abandoned you.” Usually the Boss would revel in such information, and in passing it on to a disappointed party. The disappointment was all his. His side plan hadn’t come off. They had been parked on waste ground not far from the Mach Tech building waiting for the call. It wasn’t coming.

  “There’s still time.” Georgia’s face was hopeful, without conviction. Hopeful with some concern for the injured old man huddled in the far corner of the van.

  “Maybe we should kill a little time.” The sneer on his face required no explanation as he looked down at the woman tethered up in the back of the grubby Transit van.

  Georgia’s expression changed from hopeful to fearful in an instant but she still had access to her defiant streak.

  “You know,” she said with a tremble in her voice. “I had a boyfriend who slapped me when I dumped him.”

  “You aren’t dumping me and I ain’t gonna slap you,” the Boss explained.

  “The thing is, I never told my dad about the slap but a week later that boyfriend had his face caved in and both his legs broken.”

  The Boss pulled a cigarette from the crumpled packet tucked into his jeans. He struck his lighter and took a long first drag. His body language demonstrated he was not impressed by the veiled threat from The Tall Man’s daughter.

  “I won’t be worrying about what your daddy is going to do to me – I got my own people for that kind of work and they’ll break your daddy’s legs before he breaks mine.”

  Georgia decided she’d better shut her mouth for now. Provocation had not been her intention.

  The Boss wandered away from the van toward a bush, cigarette still smoking away in the corner of his mouth. He unzipped his fly and relieved himself against the foliage, steam rising in the chill of the dark. With an empty bladder he felt more able to commit the next violation. Life meant nothing to him. People meant nothing to him. Other human beings were either there for his pleasure or his benefit. Anything else was an inconvenience or a threat. The woman in the back of the van had made a threat, a valid one, but there was still a benefit to be had.

  He headed back toward the van, discarding his half-smoked butt as he went.

  “Gibbo – Wade.” He called to his waiting henchmen who had remained sitting in the cab for the duration of their time on the waste ground. “I’m bored again. The entertainment is in the back. Make sure you hold her arms and legs until I’m inside.”

  All the men entered the van through the rear doors.

  Georgia kicked out, kicking herself along the floor and into the corner behind the driver’s seat, next to the broken body of Bob Deakin, trying to make her figure as small as possible, willing it to shrink and fall through the cracks in the rusty vehicle. It was a pipe dream.

  Hands grabbed at her, grabbed at her clothes. Leggings were ripped from her. Pale skin glowed in the dim light. Panties were next. Rough fingers pawed at the delicate flesh. The horror had begun.

  The Boss tugged down his jeans, yanked down his underwear and crawled on his knees toward his target. She struggled. She was restrained. He could smell her. He was that close. He felt the touch of her warm thighs against his own as he took position between them.

  Lubrication would be required.

  He spat into his hand. Slapping his saliva into the folds of her most intimate area, he prepared to take his consolation prize for waiting so long. He lowered himself onto her.

  From the depths of his crumpled jeans, a phone rang. He cursed, lifting himself up, reaching down into a pocket. The screen glowed with Dom’s name.

  “What fucking kept you?”

  It was not the voice he expected.

  Chapter 58

  There had been some clear conversation about the next move, and there had been some mumbled conversation about an unknown subject. Now there was silence. Whoever had been involved in the discussion had now moved away from the door and, Dom hoped, away from the room completely.

  As soon as the screw had been in his grasp he had started working to free himself. Painstaking slow short movements with the thread pressed against the thick cable ties eventually weakened the plastic. Dom prised his hands apart.

  The last thing he wanted to do was to turn the door handle and alert a silent sentry to his bid for freedom. Dropping to the floor, he pressed his face against the cold concrete floor. The hard surface was almost comforting against his bruised face. The view under the door was no help. He could barely see more than a few inches of floor out there. If there was somebody guarding him, he would need them to
make a sound. He waited. In his head, he counted to thirty. There was no sound right outside the door. He could, however, hear noise from the other side of the warehouse. That was where he hoped everyone would be.

  He decided to go for it and slowly twisted the door handle. Nothing happened. It was locked, but more crucially, nobody had been alerted. Picking locks, while not one of his criminal skills, was something he knew couldn’t be achieved with a three-inch screw. He would have to find another way out.

  The room was no more than a ten by ten storage room. The external wall was made from breeze blocks. The other three, including the one with the door, were all plasterboard panels. Escape would be easy enough to do but it wouldn’t be quiet.

  Looking up, Dom noticed there was the same suspended ceiling as there was in most of the other rooms.

  He stood on the chair, careful not to make it screech against the floor, and lifted one of the panels. There was only one way to go. The external wall was a no-go, and two of the walls would put him into the warehouse and into full view of whoever was making the noise. He would have to get into the room next door and pray for an unlocked door.

  Carefully moving the chair, he climbed up and pushed up a panel. The plasterboard extended into the crawlspace by a good ten inches or so, leaving a gap only big enough for an arm to pass through. It was time to be brave.

  In the limited space above the suspended ceiling, Dom prised back on the top of the panel. The plasterboard broke, increasing the gap. There was a second panel just beyond and Dom decided pushing might be a better option. The panel snapped with a satisfying crack.

  Within seconds Dom had scrambled into the crawlspace and down into the other room. His ribs screamed in pain yet he was silent, stifling the groan he so wanted to yell out loud.

  It was a similar-sized room with a door on the other side. He placed an ear against the door. No sound. He turned the handle. The door opened.

  He craned his head around the door. He was still in the warehouse, about twenty or so feet from the door of the beating room, just out of the eye-line of whoever was working at the far end of the cavernous building. There was still no way out of the building without the risk of encountering McQuillan’s heavies.

  Dom closed the door behind him and sprinted from his corner towards the racking.

  The racking was full of pallets of various goods and was great for cover. He figured that if he could make it to the goods entrance or the dispatch bay he could make it out of the building. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  The source of the noise he had been hearing was the unloading of a shipping container. It was not unusual for containers to be unloaded on a daily basis, but they were never emptied in the early hours of the morning, or at least not to Dom’s knowledge.

  Two men in hi-vis vests worked with a forklift operator at the sunken loading bay, where the only part of the delivery vehicle that could be seen was the container itself. The rest of the wagon was in the specially lowered bay just below ground level.

  As Dom approached the open end of the building, he spotted both Gary and Callum with their backs to him. Tucked into the waistband of Gary’s work trousers was a handgun. Dom needed to get a weapon. Ideally, this time, one with bullets in.

  Suddenly Callum turned around.

  Dom dropped behind a large generator box, praying he hadn’t been seen.

  The young warehouse man started to walk toward the racking. Dom held his breath.

  Had he been seen? Had he been heard?

  The footsteps grew closer.

  And closer.

  Then they pulled level with Dom’s not so safe hiding place.

  Chapter 59

  The voice on the end of the phone had made a threat and given instructions. The Boss didn’t take too kindly to threats but he did want to get paid for returning the girl. The voice, which he didn’t recognise, stated she had to be unharmed. The Boss glanced back at the sobbing. Frightened young woman and thought that she looked unharmed enough to him. If he had had his way, she’d have been violated in all ways imaginable.

  The Boss wouldn’t say where they were parked up. That would have been a stupid idea. The Tall Man’s faithful would have tooled up, turned up and bled the Boss and his men slowly. In fact the Boss was wondering how he would be able to fend off any future retribution. He had some ideas about it but in the criminal world nothing was clear cut and nobody could be trusted. He would need a bit of security.

  This was now the real waiting game. He was also speculating about what had happened to Dom. Was the driver still in with McQuillan’s mob or had he been made an example of. If his old getaway driver had come to a violent end, then so be it. It would be one less loose end to tie up.

  “W-when are you going to let us go?” The piteous question came from the payload bay.

  The Boss turned around in his seat, his eyes still dancing with lustful intention at the helpless woman.

  “When I get paid.”

  “What if…” There was a long moment before another word fell from her lips. “What if he…”

  “If he doesn’t pay,” the Boss cut her off, “we are going to have our fun. Film it. And send it to daddy. Then I’m going to sell you to some Romanian traffickers I know. You’ll bring a good price, even though you’re a bit older than they like.”

  That statement ended any further questions. Georgia returned to her wretched sobbing again.

  To him, the sobbing was the sound of glory. Causing other people pain was a sadistic bonus. One he revelled in. Regardless of how the day finished, he knew that she would be changed, forever. He smiled.

  Then, as a new thought struck him, he turned his attention to the hardware hidden in the glovebox.

  It felt heavy in his grip. There was a definite sense of the power he was wielding. Maybe someone would have to feel that power, just to make his point clear. First he would need to strengthen his position. He reached for his phone, deciding how best to gain an advantage.

  Chapter 60

  The approaching footsteps continued past where he had taken refuge. There was no direct lighting in the racking, just the main lights from the warehouse open areas that filtered through the steel framework. In the early hours, before the sun had started to rise, the skylights, usually providing so much of the illumination, were nothing more than black slabs of glass. That made the racking a perfect hiding place.

  Once the footsteps had left the aisle, Dom crept through the gaps in the stock, moving across the warehouse completely unseen. He had only gone a few aisles when he heard new footsteps. This time they were running.

  It was Callum again.

  “He’s escaped!” the young warehouseman yelled at his fellow henchman.

  Dom realised that his perfect hiding place was blown. He decided to head for the fire exits at the far end of the building. They had been his first thought for escape but he had ruled them out based on the fact that an alarm would be triggered when he’d opened them. Now, with news of his escape spreading, they seemed like the quickest way out.

  With the limited energy he had, Dom ran toward the back end of the building. He thought he should have had a head start on his captors, but he was wrong.

  As soon as he had broken free from the cover of the racking he heard more footsteps heading his way. Dom didn’t have the will to run. He was broken and beaten and more than eight hours had passed since he last ate. What reserves he did have were ignited under the fire of adrenalin rushing through his aching limbs.

  A gunshot rang out. The sound was amplified within the cathedral of the commercial building. Dom didn’t see where the bullet went but he felt it puncture the air in his vicinity. He ducked behind some pallets filled with boxed lawnmowers. While cardboard boxes were not known for their bulletproof qualities, an engine block from a petrol mower could be enough to deflect a random bullet. If he was lucky.

  Sidling along the line of pallets, he could hear voices in all corners of the building. Everyone had now been alerted
to the situation and Dom had spent too much time already stuck in the warehouse. All he wanted to do was try and get back to Georgia and Bob, to help them get away from Dunstan and his cronies.

  Through the gaps in the pallet wall, he could see Callum searching in the rear corner, near to the beating room. On the other side, Dom could see Gary stalking around some other stock pallets. Dom had to make a rapid decision. Either go through the highly-trained, ex-military Gary, or go through the novice would-be gangster Callum. The choice was clear.

  Dom edged closer to the younger, less experienced henchman. There was still too much ground to cover. The large area between the lawnmowers and the nearest fire exit had absolutely no cover whatsoever, and all that stood between Dom and freedom was a trigger-happy young man.

  As he approached the last row of pallets and the last of his cover, Dom noticed the diesel forklift truck parked in the empty space. He could see the key in the ignition and the machine pointing toward the corner he was heading for.

  With the last reserves of his energy, Dom ran for the forklift. He managed to start the engine before Callum noticed he had broken cover. Dom floored it. The vehicle was only capable of about 15 mph but it was quicker than Dom could run just then.

  A bullet whizzed past Dom’s head as the youngster fired wildly. Another pinged off the forklift carriage.

  Dom lifted the forks and ducked behind them, steering directly toward the source of the gunfire.

  Another gunshot.

  Then another.

  Dom kept his head down but raised it just enough to jerk the wheel toward his aggressor. Flesh and blood was no match for four tonnes of commercial vehicle. The left-hand fork punctured the young man’s ribcage, bone shattering like old dry twigs. A scream had started but was swiftly extinguished as the four-inch wide steel prong stole the air from the gangster’s lungs. In a spray of blood and spittle, Callum’s final breath was exhaled through the gaping hole in his chest.

  Dom backed up and jumped from the forklift, grabbed for the handgun dropped by the dead man and quickly got back on. He then rammed the forklift through the closed fire exit door out into the cool morning air to freedom.