The Fall of Winter
Page 8
The traffic light turned green. With a hiss of air brakes, the driver drove on, now officially leaving French territory. He joined a queue of trucks.
After forty minutes of sitting still, driving ten yards, and stopping again, a skinny man in a yellow jacket waved him onto the train. Eurostar freight trains were a series of flatbed trucks with scaffolding. Once his engine was off, he followed the other truckers to a bus which took them to the passenger train, and the 'driver's club car', a fancy name for their carriage. He found a seat near the back and pretended to be texting. Not that many of his fellow drivers were chatty. A few shouted greetings across the carriage, but most kept to themselves.
The trip to Folkestone took thirty-five minutes. The driver was the fifth lorry in line to leave the Eurostar. He checked his watch. He'd kept it on British time. Nearly nine p.m. Dark, cold, wet. Welcome home.
The phone stuck on his dashboard picked up the UK signal almost immediately, and his satnav showed the route as he pulled on to the M20. Twelve miles to the rendezvous point.
Eighteen minutes later, after taking the first Ashford junction, he pulled into a bus stop. Two men climbed up and joined him in the cab. One black, one white, both—the driver suspected—armed. They wore the kind of puffa jackets it was easy to conceal a weapon beneath. The driver selected first gear, and the truck pulled away from the kerb with a throaty rumble.
"I'll direct you," said the nearest man. "Any trouble? Extra checks, anything like that?"
The driver shook his head.
His passengers smelled of cigarette smoke. "Cargo behaving?"
"Haven't heard a peep out of them," the driver replied. For a second, he nearly laughed again, but he caught it this time.
"Good stuff. Go straight on at roundabouts unless I tell you otherwise."
The driver did as instructed, steering the long vehicle through the outskirts of Ashford. He wondered who decided which product appeared on the documents. Were tins of anchovies a common choice?
The two men started talking.
"I still reckon it's bollocks. No way one guy could do that. You ever meet Winter's crew?"
"No."
"They were the nastiest, most brutallest bunch of bastards I ever saw. Wouldn't think twice about killing you if you looked at 'em funny, know what I mean?"
"Brutallest? Don't think that's a word."
"Oh well, I humbly beg your pardon, professor. Now piss off."
"But, K, listen, Georgie said he saw him. For real."
"Georgie? The grass?"
"Yeah. He saw the pictures from Winter's house. Police say it was one guy. One guy."
"Yeah. Right."
"I'm telling you, K. He saw the photo of Strickland's body. This guy slit Strickland's throat. And you wanna know what Georgie said they found on Winter's desk?"
"Now you're talking shite. Winter was a ghost, Jordan. No trace of him, wherever he'd been. He'd never have left anything lying around."
"I know. That's not what I'm saying. So do you want me to tell you what they found on his desk or not?"
"Go on, then, you're dying to tell me."
"A note. It said Bedlam Boy is coming."
The man on the far side—K—started laughing. The driver thought it might be safe to join in, but they both gave him a look, so he shut up.
The nearest one pointed at the road ahead. "Next roundabout, take a right. Third set of lights, go left."
K spoke more quietly after that. The driver was glad of his excellent hearing.
"Don't start on that shit. You read too much, and you watch too many shit films. The devil's not real, you know. Neither is Batman. And there isn't some tooled-up lunatic picking off people."
"But crews are disappearing. Bodies keep showing up."
"What did you expect with Winter gone? It's a turf war. No need to put the shits up yourself with this vigilante bullshit."
"I'm just saying, some of the Dagenham boys said they heard the Bedlam Boy singing the night Westy drowned."
"You what? You don't half talk a load of bollocks considering all them books you read. They heard the Bedlam Boy singing? Will you bloody listen to yourself? I suppose he did a little dance, too, did he? He's not real, Jordan. We've got enough on our plate without you going all Scooby Doo on me. Oi! Take a left here."
The driver braked harder than he would have liked and took a side road into an industrial estate.
"Third warehouse. Go round the back."
The rest of the estate was lit by a series of security lights, but the third warehouse and its car park remained dark as the driver pulled up in front of a pair of large sliding doors.
The two men got out. K opened a heavy padlock and removed a chain, then they took a handle each and pulled the doors apart. They waved the driver through and he drove the lorry into the darkness. When he turned the engine off, the doors closed behind with a deep metallic clank.
Fluorescent tubes hanging from steel girders high above crackled and flickered, revealing an empty concrete floor and not much else. Tyre marks suggested recent use.
The driver got down from the cab. Jordan and K waited at the rear of the lorry.
"C'mon. We need to check the cargo against the manifest."
The driver produced the key to the rear doors. K indicated he should unlock them. Both men unzipped their jackets, revealing holstered handguns.
"Hope there were no mistakes at your end," said K. "We lost a whole cargo once because some dozy twat forgot air holes. Last mistake he ever made, you get me?"
"I get you," said the driver. He opened the doors wide, pinning them back against the sides of the arctic. Only then did he look inside. Thirty scared, miserable faces stared back. They sat on packing cases; men, women, and children. Vietnamese or Thai, he guessed. The cases boasted Premium Anchovy Fillets. Another laugh threatened to bubble up. He backed away.
K and Jordan took his place at the back of the lorry.
"Anyone speak English?" called Jordan. One of the blank, drawn faces—a woman near the doors—nodded, and said something to the others. She had a fresh cut on her leg. The driver remembered the sudden left turn he'd made.
"Good. Tell the rest of 'em this. You made it to Britain, but you're not safe yet. Not unless you do as we say. In about half an hour, a coach will be here to pick you up. It will take you to a hotel where you can clean up and get some sleep, then someone will tell you about your new jobs. Okay?"
"Okay," said the woman, eyeing the butt of the gun nestling in Jordan's shoulder holster.
The speech was bullshit. By the expression on the woman's face, she suspected the same. If she knew what Jordan and K's bosses planned for them, the driver imagined she would probably rather be shot now.
K conferred with Jordan as the woman translated what she'd been told. "Half an hour? We're early, aren't we? Reckon we've got forty minutes or so."
"No. Look, you know what happened in November. We keep them here in the lorry. All of them. And we shoot anyone who tries anything."
"Oh, come on. None of these poor bastards are tooled up. They're all shitting their pants. I'm just saying, she's tasty, we've got a bit of time, and I'd just like to show her where the toilet is, in case she needs to go, know what I mean?"
"Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm just saying it's not a great idea. Besides, if you remember, it's my bloody turn."
"I don't think so. Don't forget who's in charge. I get first choice. Maybe, if you're lucky, I'll…"
K stopped talking. Jordan tensed beside him. "What?" said K. "What is it?"
The miserable human cargo inside the lorry, exhausted, hungry, and terrified, weren't looking at the two armed men. They were all staring at something behind their captors.
The two men turned around. The driver had taken off his baseball cap. He'd taken off his long hair and beard. One side of his bald head was a mass of scars. He was holding two sharpened hunting knives, one in each hand, and he was laughing.
"Who fancies a sing-son
g?"
Author’s Note
I admit it - I’ve loved writing like this, telling you about Tom Lewis’s revenge in six hard-hitting, pacy episodes. It’s a different way of telling a story, and early feedback suggests readers like it too.
I’m already fleshing out Season Two - six new episodes, following Bedlam Boy as he’s thrown into an unfamiliar environment to face fresh challenges and new dangers.
I can’t wait…
If you haven’t signed up for your free Bedlam Boy story yet (and the occasional email from me), you can find it here: The Las Vegas Driving Lesson
Please leave a review if you can - it makes a big difference. If you want to get in touch, I have a website imaginatively named after myself, and I can be found in the usual social media places. I don’t post photos of my dinner there, I promise.
Thanks for reading,
Ian
Norwich, July 2020
Books by Ian W. Sainsbury
Thriller
Bedlam Boy 1
Bedlam Boy 2
Bedlam Boy 3
Psychological Thriller
The Picture On The Fridge (Winner of the 2019 Kindle Storyteller Award)
Science Fiction
The World Walker (The World Walker 1)
The Unmaking Engine (The World Walker 2)
The Seventeenth Year (The World Walker 3)
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker 4)
Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero 1)
Halfheroes (Halfhero 2)
The Last Of The First (Halfhero 3)
Fantasy
The Blurred Lands