Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  I rejoined Nicky outside the cell and slid the bolt home on her door. I felt her hand slip into mine as she led me stealthily up the corridor towards the stairs, but although I could tell how frantic she was to escape I couldn’t let her lead the way. I knew the simplest way out would be the way I had come in, and that she couldn’t know that. At the foot of the staircase I tugged her hand to slow her down, moved past her and led the way up the steps, holding my breath, expecting every moment a creak underfoot that would betray our presence.

  I had left the door at the top of the stairs ajar, and now I pulled it open a little further and listened. I couldn’t hear Dean any more, just what sounded like the guy with the rings having a discussion with the younger guy in some language I didn’t recognize. The double doors of the room they were in hung slightly open.

  I beckoned Nicky to follow me, stepped out into the hall and tiptoed up the corridor to the door I had entered by. That’s when I heard a chair pushed back, and footsteps approaching, and a foreign expression used in a way that sounded very much like “see you later.” I was two-thirds of the way to the second door, and there was no time to turn back.

  I dashed forward, praying my soft footsteps would be lost under those of whoever was coming. I made it to the second door, stepped inside, and pushed it nearly shut just as I heard him emerge from the large room and close the doors behind him. I prayed Nicky had had the presence of mind to step back inside the doorway that led to the cellar stairs.

  She hadn’t.

  I could tell, because the young, dapper guy who had just appeared paused by the room I was hiding in, looked down the corridor towards Nicky and smiled. He was tanned and fit, with eyes so brown they were nearly black, a smart blazer and jewellery that made him look like a talent-show host. He said nothing, but ambled towards her, and I knew I only had seconds before he called out to his big mate with the rings to tell him what he’d found. Maybe I could take both of them, I thought, but I didn’t know how many other men were in the building. I opened my door again and silently stepped out into the corridor behind Talent Show Tony.

  Nicky was staring at him like a rabbit with its leg in a trap would stare at a fox, but in one glimpse I knew that she was standing like that to distract him, because she didn’t even glance past him towards me. Talent Show Tony had raised a finger and was waving it from side to side, like he was about to say, “Ah ah ah, naughty,” when my arm snaked round his neck and my other hand clasped the back of his head. I squeezed his throat, hard, and pushed his head forward. He grabbed at my arm and started to claw at my face, wriggling and thrashing, but I screwed my eyes shut, braced my feet and leaned back. I had so much height on him his own feet barely touched the ground, and I held my own breath while he struggled for his. Stop fighting it, I thought, don’t kick anything, don’t make a bloody sound. He tried all of that, and when he realized I was too strong for him he tried to kick the walls and stamp to summon help, but he’d left it too late. He was too weak, and growing weaker by the second.

  Nicky was watching him, wide-eyed and motionless. I caught her eye, glanced down and jerked my head. She frowned, not comprehending. “Feet!” I hissed. By now Tony’s body had sagged and his head was lolling. I grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him backwards while Nicky seized his ankles and lifted his feet high enough not to drag on the carpet. The three of us staggered along, still trying not to make a noise, but when I reached the side room and backed into the door it flew open and banged on the abandoned trolley. I kept going, dragging the unconscious Tony inside—he seemed to weigh a ton now—while Nicky grabbed the door and shut it, turning the handle so it clicked home almost silently.

  I bent my knees, lowered Tony to the floor on his side, and finally let myself breathe, straining to listen beyond my own gulps for footsteps in the hall or a voice calling for him. We waited like that for ever, it seemed, but no sound came. Just the two of us breathing.

  Shit—it should have been three. I knelt and laid my forefinger on Tony’s carotid. No pulse.

  “Damn,” I murmured. I rolled him over onto his back, laid my left hand on his heart, and braced my right behind it, before Nicky grabbed my shoulder, and shook her head. I couldn’t believe what she seemed to be saying—that she wanted me to let him die? I frowned at her, but her face was set, bleak and merciless. I realized she was right—if I did bring him back, he’d only raise the alarm—but I’d never meant to … I looked up at her again, searching for pity or a spark of compassion, and saw neither.

  The decision had been made; no time now to agonize. I started to go through Tony’s pockets. He was still warm, and I pushed to the back of my mind the thought that he would soon grow cold and rigid. His trouser pockets held a smartphone and a bunch of keys on a ring with a fat plastic fob bearing the Merc logo. Of course—he was the driver of the Merc. It was him who’d thrown that cup out the window after picking up Dean and the bald guy near Sherwood’s office.

  I offered the keys to Nicky—I still hadn’t learned how to drive—and she took them while I checked his other pockets. The wallet in his rear trouser pocket was stuffed with twenty-pound notes and held a European driving licence; I stuffed the notes into my pockets and dropped the empty wallet beside the body. His smartphone was brand-new and top of the line, but pressing the power button revealed it was locked. I kept it anyway. When it rang I’d know they’d started looking for him.

  I turned to the window, flipped up the latch, and eased the pane upwards. Fresh air billowed in, cold and damp. Poking my head out I looked both ways, but saw no one. When I turned to urge Nicky through I saw she had picked up the plastic chair that had been lying in the corner and was wedging it under the door handle. It was a good idea; it would at least slow down the discovery of the body. I’d always admired the way she kept her head under pressure, and seemed to think two steps ahead of everyone else.

  I went first, then helped Nicky clamber out through the window and down; her grip was still strong—she hadn’t been locked up long enough to lose her muscle tone—and immediately led the way towards the front of the building where the cars were parked. The gravel under our feet seemed to crunch more loudly now than when I’d arrived, but I guessed she was deliberately walking with firm, loud strides, rather than wasting time and raising suspicion by trying to sneak across the car park unheard. I followed her, mimicking her brisk but relaxed footsteps. As we approached the Merc she flicked the remote and I heard the locks click open. We both slid inside at the same moment, not even glancing back at the house. She slipped the fat key into a slot on the dashboard—it was one of those all-electronic keys—and turned it. The engine fired up instantly, and she reached for her seatbelt. An electronic chime sounded and I squirmed, looking around for the source—was it an immobilizer or something?—but Nicky just murmured, “Seatbelt, Finn.”

  Sheepishly I pulled my belt across and clicked it home while Nicky found a button on the side of her seat and moved it forward. Power seats are all very well and flash, I decided, but they’re no help when you’re trying to make a snappy getaway. However, Nicky seemed completely unflustered; when she had the seat where she wanted it she adjusted the rear-view mirror, pulled the gear lever back, threw her arm over the back of my seat, looked over her shoulder and reversed out as smartly as if we were leaving the car park of her local supermarket. She slipped the car into drive and moved off, sending up a spray of gravel as we pulled off the forecourt and onto the driveway, but that was pretty much how Talent Show Tony would have taken off. He too would have weaved and swerved like this to dodge the potholes in the gravel—he’d liked to keep his Merc spotless.

  “Are you OK?” Nicky asked me after a few moments. Her eyes flicked between the driveway ahead and the rear-view mirror.

  “Me?”

  “About Tony.”

  “Who’s Tony?”

  “The man you just …” She glanced at me.

  “He was really called Tony?”

  “What?”

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sp; “Never mind,” I said. “Yeah, I’m OK, I think. It was him or us.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Nicky. “He and his friends would have done the same to you if we’d been caught. He was a thug, Finn. Just yesterday he was boasting to me how he’d run down an old couple on his boss’s orders. He actually laughed about it.”

  Old couple? I thought. Winnie and Delroy! My blood ran hot and cold at the same time, and I felt an insane urge to tell Nicky to turn back, so I could revive Tony and kill him again—properly this time, so he’d know what was happening to him and why. Maybe I’d been wrong to kill him, maybe it wasn’t what Winnie would have wanted, but when I searched my conscience all that bothered me was the thought that the others might have discovered Tony’s body already and be closing the gates before we managed to reach them.

  But at the end of the drive the gates lay open as wide as when I’d arrived, and the divided highway beyond was empty and silent in both directions, like in one of those zombie-apocalypse movies. All the same Nicky slowed at the exit and checked for traffic before joining the nearside lane, even indicating before moving smoothly off. Then she floored it, the acceleration pushing me back in my seat, until she hit seventy-five. From that point she eased back on the pedal and held her speed steady, still glancing in her rear-view mirror every few minutes to ensure no one was pursuing.

  “I’m sure this thing can go faster,” I said. Dad had explained to me about back-seat drivers, and I was trying to be tactful.

  “We don’t want to get stopped by the police,” she said.

  “We don’t?”

  “Not until we’re far enough away. Tony said they’d bought every cop for miles.”

  “You think he was telling the truth?”

  “No, but I don’t want to risk it. Oh God, oh God, that place!” Her voice was suddenly shrill and I saw tears in her eyes. “I thought I’d never …” Her knuckles were livid on the wheel, and I realized just how much terror and tension she had been keeping bottled up.

  “Hey, Nicky, it’s OK. You’re safe now. Relatively, anyway.”

  That worked, and she laughed, despite herself. She shook the black thoughts out of her head and took a deep breath.

  “Thank you for coming, Finn. I hoped you would. I can’t believe you actually found me.”

  “It was mostly dumb luck,” I said. “You want to tell me what happened?”

  “They snatched me off the street. Not off the street, from the park near my house. I’d been running, late. I should have avoided that park—it’s always so dark and deserted … I thought they were going to kill me. Rape me first, then kill me.”

  “Who were they? What were they after?”

  Nicky thought for a while. “Honestly, Finn,” she said at last, “the less you know the better.”

  A sign flashed by, way too fast for me to read, but I knew it would be a long time before we hit London, and after all I’d been through on her account I wasn’t going to settle for a pat on the head.

  “Those threatening emails and tweets you’d been getting on your phone,” I said. “They were from Gabriel Bisham, Joan Bisham’s kid. He’s a deeply sick little fuck. It was him who torched that old pub, burned that man alive. He let his dad go to prison for it and was planning to do the same for his mother.”

  Nicky tore her eyes away from the road and the mirror long enough to look at me in disbelief.

  “But I think he was trolling you for kicks—he had no connection to Tony’s crowd.”

  “Finn, how the hell did you …?”

  “And that copper, DS Lovegrove? You were right about him being bent. He’d promised your friend Reverend Zeto he’d screw up the trial evidence, in return for blowjobs in the front seat of his cop car.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You got hold of my client files?”

  “Vora was worried about what had happened to you,” I said. “I was worried about what had happened to my money.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nicky. “They made me do that after they grabbed me. Transfer the client account to the Cayman Islands. I didn’t want to, but then I thought, maybe you’d come looking for me. Asking questions like you did after your dad died.”

  I would have looked for you even if you hadn’t taken the money, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

  “I thought once I’d done that, they’d kill me. Instead they took me to—that place.”

  “What were all those cells for?”

  “They bring in girls from all over Europe. Auction them off on video over the net, like cattle. Some tried to escape while I was there. Tony brought them back …” She made an effort to steady her voice. “I think they’re buried in the grounds somewhere.”

  “Jesus. We have to tell the police.”

  “Not yet. I have to get home, warn Harry, before he pays the ransom.”

  “Ransom? That’s why they were keeping you alive?”

  “They said if he didn’t, they’d hand me over to the boss.”

  “I saw him,” I said. “The big guy with the rings.”

  “That’s Kemal,” said Nicky. “He’s not the boss.”

  “So who is?”

  Nicky checked her rear-view mirror again. “I don’t know his name,” she said finally. “They called him the Turk.”

  The Turk? The new face Sherwood had talked about, and DS McCoy? I fell silent, thinking. Something stank about this. If Harry had been worried sick about his kidnapped wife, but hiding it while he got a ransom together, he deserved an Oscar for his performance. Maybe he’d only been snorting that cocaine to soothe his nerves.

  “Nicky …” I said. “The women who came through that place … did any of them look like you?”

  She frowned. “They brought a girl into my cell, not long after I arrived. To see if she was my height, my build. I never figured out what that was about.”

  “They needed a decoy,” I said. “They gave her your passport and sent her to Paris, so me and the cops would stop searching for you.”

  “But she didn’t look that much like me.”

  “They beat her first. That way the border guards wouldn’t look too closely at her face.”

  “Oh God,” groaned Nicky. “I hope she got away. I mean, properly, so those men can’t find her again.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But that’s not the point. How did they get hold of your British passport?”

  Nicky glanced at me, unwilling to follow where this might be leading. “They must have stolen it.” But her voice was tinged with doubt.

  “Nicky, I know about Harry. About the gambling, and the coke.” By now nothing I said seemed to surprise her.

  “He’s getting help,” said Nicky.

  Harry owed Sherwood money, I thought. Sherwood sold the debt to the Turk, and boasted about it. The Turk cut him open to shut him up. And to frame me, because I knew about Harry.

  “Is he?” I asked. “Getting help?”

  “I told him if he didn’t, I’d talk to Hennessey’s. The bank where he works.”

  Jesus, I thought. That was why the Turk’s people had snatched her.

  “Who knew?” I asked. “Who knew you’d gone running in the park?”

  She shook her head as if that would stop her hearing what I was saying, but I persisted. “How did the Turk know you were going to be there, that night?”

  “Finn, Harry’s my husband. Yeah, we have problems, but he’d never—that’s just insane.” She was staring hard at the road ahead, as if unwilling to meet my eye.

  “But you were going to leave him, weren’t you?” I said. “You were going to stay with your sister.”

  “Susan?” she said, perplexed. “Who told you that?”

  “Susie did,” I said.

  “Susan’s mixed up in this?” She seemed incredulous.

  “She was worried about you,” I said. “She helped me with the files …” I couldn’t believe how my face was suddenly burning, like it wanted to give me away, but Nicky didn’t seem to notice.

  �
�Susan would never have me to stay,” said Nicky. “She hates my guts.”

  It was my turn to look perplexed. “But you’re sisters,” I said. “I mean, half-sisters, but—”

  Her laugh was brief and bitter. “Oh, right,” she said. “You’re an only child, aren’t you?”

  “But you’re so alike,” I said.

  “We didn’t used to be,” said Nicky. “She had surgery, dyed her hair, just so she’d look more like me. I know how screwed up it sounds, but … she hates me and she wants to be me. Everything I’ve ever done for her, she’s resented. Everything I’ve ever had she’s wanted for herself.”

  Including me? I thought.

  “If she was helping you look for me,” said Nicky, “it was probably to make sure I was dead.”

  Suddenly I didn’t know what to believe. I was confused and exhausted and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep.

  We had reached the eastern fringes of London without my even being aware of it, just as the city was starting to stir into life. Buses and commuters were heading in, huge articulated trucks heading out after stocking up the supermarkets. Nicky killed her speed, driving slowly and steadily to avoid drawing any unwelcome attention. The black Merc, I knew, was the sort of flash car that was always getting pulled over by London cops, especially if the man at the wheel was black. Some coppers couldn’t grasp the concept of a black guy driving a motor like this and not being a drug dealer or a car thief …

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “They’ll have fitted a tracker to this car,” I said. “We need to dump it, quick.”