by Nick Oldham
‘Well, tell you what, Steve, I’ll make that better, for a while anyway.’
Tasker nodded past Flynn’s shoulder. A hooded man came into view on the right with a syringe in his hand, which he plunged into Flynn’s right thigh, thrusting the plunger down with his thumb, then withdrew the needle.
‘Just a gram of the hard stuff, because I’m caring like that and I need you to concentrate for just a little while longer.’
Almost instantly the pain from the gunshot wound started to ebb and Flynn looked down at his leg and was horrified by the sight of his blood-saturated jeans.
‘I just wanted to make sure you were fully incapacitated, Steve, because I know you’re a real handful if not. Too tough for your own boots.’
Flynn was feeling a warm glow inside now and his shivering ceased. He guessed morphine.
‘You’ve been rumbled,’ he managed to say. His voice sounded like stone being grated. ‘Faking your death.’
‘My little ruse?’ He laughed, shrugged and pulled a face. ‘To be honest, it only needed to last for as long as I stepped out of prison, then it didn’t matter. I’m surprised it’s taken so long, actually, but that just shows how incompetent the police are.’
‘They’ll be here very soon,’ Flynn said.
‘But they don’t know where “here” is, do they, Steve Flynn?’
‘It’s like all the drugs trade,’ Digson said. ‘Like all big business – very complicated.’ He interlocked his fingers. ‘Lots of connections, lots of subsidiaries, lots of people in chains of command, and the thing is this – by arresting me and some others, you lot seem to think that you’ve got the top of the pile. Nah.’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘Nowhere near, and not only that, it’s not even a dent, not even a dent. What’s fucking eight million when we’re talking billions? Nothing. That said, the big players are abroad and untouchable, so you’d never get to them anyway, even if I told you who they are. Pointless.’
‘Maybe you should get to the point,’ Rik Dean said, getting restless.
‘The point is this: ever since Brian Tasker was sent to prison he has still been operating his business from his cell. This latest bust you’ve made is just the tip of the iceberg of the hundreds more that you’ve missed, and I was unfortunate enough to get caught. Happens. Name of the game. Done the crime, do the time … or less time than necessary.’
‘OK, all very interesting, and I would like to chat about it in detail. Talking about which, you give me the detail of where Tasker is right now and you’ll get your deal … at the moment, all the rest is marginal.’
‘Clearly I know he is out of jail, has been for about three months. He’s been pulling various deals together, one of which was the one I was involved in, which also involves a lot of very nasty people from central Europe. But he’s the boss man.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Probably much closer than you think.’
Tasker leaned towards Flynn.
‘Do you know something, Steve? People are queuing up to kill you, but I’m right up there at the front.’ He showed Flynn the gun with the strange sights affixed to it that had puzzled him. ‘What do you think?’
Flynn said nothing.
Tasker raised the weapon and pointed it at Flynn’s face. It was then Flynn realized it wasn’t a telescopic sight but a digital video recorder shaped rather like a mini Maglite torch. Tasker drew a breath, then exhaled. He stroked the gun. ‘You’re probably wondering who else could possibly be interested in your death … does the family name Bashkim mean anything to you?’
It did – and jolted Flynn. It was the surname of the Albanian family who ran the crime gang he and Santiago had effectively destroyed and who had tried to kill Santiago and Jerry Tope by means of a car bomb – and failed.
‘They would love to see you dead, and these guys’ – Tasker pointed to the two men standing behind Flynn, the ones who had brought him here after killing Jimmy Blue and his family – ‘are both related to Aleksander Bashkim, who is now unfortunately dead, because of you. I am now in business with them. Prison, that wonderful melting pot of culture, criminality and bad men, brought us together. But there is another fucking irony here, Steve … the first consignment of drugs we brought in has been seized by the cops in an operation led by – would you believe it? – Craig Alford, RIP.’
Flynn simply stared at him, tensing his wrists and ankles, trying to loosen the tape. ‘Good,’ he said.
‘The other irony,’ Tasker said as though he had not heard Flynn, ‘is that he was on my kill list anyway, as were you and some others … and do you know why you are on my list? Because you destroyed my family. Yes, you.’
‘I may have said this before … you’re fucking barmy.’
Tasker crashed the gun against Flynn’s head.
The first of the four TV screens flickered to life in front of Flynn. He was back to being woozy again; Tasker had pistol-whipped him mercilessly before recovering his composure.
‘You need to watch this, Steve … then you can start to think about what it’s like to lose a family.’
Flynn could hardly keep his head upright but tried to look at the TV screen through the streams of blood flowing from his scalp.
‘I call this the killer-cam,’ Tasker said chattily. The screen came properly to life and Flynn now saw the reason for the cameras affixed to the handguns. The image of Craig Alford’s terrified face filled the screen as the gun circled around behind him. At the same time Alford’s family could be seen lying dead on the floor of the living room beyond. The gun was then at the back of Alford’s head. It was fired and recoiled as Alford was shot in the back of the head. His head pitched out of view, but then the gun followed him down and another round was put into it.
‘Clearly these are the edited highlights, Steve.’
The same sequence began again on the screen and Flynn realized it must be on a repeating loop.
He kept control of his breathing, working out just how he was going to kill Tasker.
The next TV screen came alive.
‘These people are really very good at killing,’ Tasker said. ‘You know, the Bashkim family, another family you basically destroyed, Steve. You’re good at that, aren’t you? Still, I’ll bet you’re wondering why you’re still breathing … I’ll come to that.’
Flynn recognized the location instantly. Preston Docks, close to the Halfords motor spares store. In the distance a figure leaned on the railings, obviously deep in thought. It was Jerry Tope.
Flynn’s fists bunched tightly as the camera on the barrel of the gun recorded the silent approach of the killer, like a character in an Xbox video game, until the moment the gun was raised to the back of Tope’s head and fired.
The sequence started again so now two TV screens were showing brutal, real life deaths, again and again.
‘That’s enough,’ Flynn said as the third screen came on.
‘No it isn’t, Steve, not nearly enough. I want to torture you mentally – at least for a while – just like you have tortured me over the years, how you made me kill my own family, my son, my baby, and then afterwards in court, how you humiliated me, laughed at me, not forgetting that you also assaulted me. This is why you are still alive, for the moment.’
The third screen showed Dave Carver’s death at the nursing home from the viewpoint of a gun barrel, plus the death of the innocent nurse. Flynn saw the dementia sufferer’s moment of sudden clarity and how the former DS had tried so courageously to tackle the shooter. Flynn saw a good man die for no reason at all.
The sequence went on to a loop, started repeating itself. Now three TVs were showing death after death after death.
‘I take it these are the brave guys who did all your dirty work?’ Flynn asked scornfully, nodding his head at the two men who had killed Jimmy Blue and his family, standing sullenly behind him.
‘Yes, aren’t they grand? Guess what their surname is? Yes, you got it … Bashkim! And they work for me now … these two and
another one. Very good at killing.’ Tasker smiled at Flynn. ‘The question is, do we watch the murder of Jimmy Blue, which I have not had any chance to edit yet, or move on to the live feed? As you’ve already witnessed that, I think we’ll go live right now to our correspondent in the Canary Islands, because I’m eager to see this one.’
Tasker pointed a remote control unit at the TV.
Flynn saw the image and recoiled in horror. It showed a close-up of Maria Santiago’s face, brutally injured, eyes swollen, blood caked on her cheeks. Then the camera drew slowly back and framed her sitting on a chair in a room Flynn instantly recognized. Her head fell forward.
‘Do we know her?’ Tasker laughed gleefully. ‘Yes, we do … it’s your lady friend and she’s sitting in your apartment in, where is it, Gran Canaria?’
Flynn’s breathing became shallow and rage crawled through him like a virus.
Santiago looked badly injured. She was tied to one of the dining chairs, but her right leg jutted out at an unnatural angle. A hooded man came into view and stood behind her, grabbing her hair, holding her head upright.
Suddenly Flynn wanted to vomit again. ‘You bastard,’ he said.
Tasker leaned in front of him, putting his face just inches in front of Flynn’s. ‘This is what you made me do,’ he said.
‘Funny how you seem to be controlled by other people,’ Flynn said, ‘how they make you do things.’
‘Yeah, funny, that.’
‘Nothing is ever your fault, is it?’
‘No, you’re right, it isn’t.’ Tasker stood upright and said, ‘You have made me do this.’ He pulled out a mobile phone and typed a text, then held the phone in front of Flynn’s eyes so he could see the words. ‘DO IT’.
Tasker pressed ‘send’.
A few moments later the man holding Santiago’s hair let it go. Her head flopped loosely down as the man took out a mobile phone from his pocket and obviously read the text Tasker had just sent. The man nodded and made an OK gesture with his thumbs.
‘Now we’ll see something, unless he bottles out … but he won’t, he’s a Bashkim … he loves his job.’
The man stepped out of shot, then reappeared a moment later. He took hold of Santiago’s hair and yanked her head upright, tilting it slightly backwards, exposing her neck. His right hand then came into shot and in it was a huge panga, an African machete. He placed the blade across Santiago’s throat.
‘Jesus, no,’ Flynn said. ‘What the fuck do you want, what can I give you?’
‘Want? Give me?’ Tasker sneered. ‘Just everything I had that you took away.’
The man drew back the huge knife, angled his torso slightly to the right and the blade sliced through the air into Santiago’s exposed throat.
It took four slashing cuts, the last one being the toughest. The man had to work through the gristle and bone of Santiago’s spine before her head came free. He lifted it and danced towards the camera with it jiggling in his hand until her face was right up against the lens and out of focus.
Then the screen went blank just as the cellar door burst open and a stream of armed police officers, weapons drawn, crashed through and swarmed down the cellar steps, screaming orders, fanning out in a well-practised manoeuvre.
Tasker and the hooded men instantly dropped the guns they were holding and fell down on to their knees with their hands raised as arrest teams surged through and pinned the three of them to the ground and cuffed them.
All through this Tasker’s eyes stayed locked into Flynn’s, a grin of triumph on his face, until he was finally pulled to his feet and frogmarched away by two officers.
Steve Flynn started to cry.
‘You need to go to hospital,’ Rik Dean was telling Flynn, who was sitting in the back of an ambulance, being treated by paramedics.
They were parked outside Fat Billy’s pub in Blackpool surrounded by a mass of emergency vehicles from all the services.
‘I know,’ Flynn said mutedly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Dean said.
‘Well,’ Flynn said, ‘problem is, you can’t account for madness coupled with intelligence … a lethal combination.’
‘He’ll never see the light of day again.’
‘And that makes me feel better?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Have they taken him in yet?’
‘Not yet, he’s still in the back of a van.’
‘Let me see him, Rik.’
‘No chance … you can’t be trusted. Let’s put him back into the system. That’s what he deserves.’
‘No he doesn’t.’ Flynn shook his head vehemently.
‘I can’t let you see him and that’s final, Steve, you know that.’
Tasker was alone in the steel cage in the back of the section van. He was still handcuffed and sat there waiting to be taken into the custody office at Blackpool police station. There was some kind of delay and he’d been told he would have to wait a while longer.
The back door of the van opened and the inner steel cage was unlocked.
‘About time,’ Tasker said irritably. He started to stand up but a big hand shoved him backwards against the bulkhead, where he slithered down on to his backside.
Steve Flynn clambered into the back of the van and closed both sets of doors behind him.
Flynn was still drenched in his own blood and even though the paramedics had tidied him up a little he made a terrifying sight. He fought through the agony that consumed his body, from his head down to the bullet wound in his leg.
From his sitting position, Tasker sneered at him. ‘I knew you’d come, just didn’t know when.’
‘Better sooner rather than later,’ Flynn said. It took all his remaining strength to haul Tasker back on to a bench and then sit alongside him. Tasker did not resist, even when Flynn slid his right arm around his neck and said, ‘I want you to know you made me do this.’
Tasker’s neck broke with the most satisfying crack Flynn had ever heard in his life.
