KILL ME GOODBYE

by A K Reynolds

  ‘You’re right, the streets aren’t safe anymore.’

  We turned onto Rochdale road and drove past the seedy cream stucco-and-brick frontage of the Embassy Club.

  ‘Where is this safe house of yours?’

  ‘Near Boggart Hole Clough.’

  Having walked around the park there a few times, I knew the houses in the vicinity of it ranged from pretty good to dire. I hoped the police had had the good taste to get one of the good houses. I didn’t fancy dire.

  Longford’s mobile phone rang. He pressed a button on the dash and a male voice with a Manchester accent snarled through the speakers of the hands-free set.

  ‘How’s it going with Operation Phoenix, Paul?’

  ‘On schedule. Be there in five.’

  Longford’s caller hung up.

  ‘Operation Phoenix?’

  ‘The codename for our current investigation. My task this morning was to bring you in for a debrief and keep you safe.’

  We turned right up Moston Lane, heading into the maze of streets south of Boggart Hole Clough. The houses here were, for the most part, more run down and grimier than the rest, and the gardens more overgrown. Ninety-nine per cent of them were owned by decent hardworking people. But I knew from a few of my clients that the other one per cent included some pretty shady types.

  We passed a woman with scraped back blonde hair pushing a buggy with a squawking kid into a makeshift shop called Khadim’s Extra Save. On the corner a raddled-looking woman was loitering with two equally raddled-looking men, all three of them skeletal, while a fourth man wearing a wannabe gangster bandana openly dispensed them their fixes. Presumably he’d already pocketed their greasy money and was concluding their shady business deal.

  ‘You ought to put a stop to that kind of thing,’ I said.

  ‘We would, but it’s small time. We let it go on in order to land the big fish.’

  Like hell you do.

  We pulled up outside a detached house with a bay-window done up with greying render and black timber in a mock Tudor style. It had a solid looking front door made of wood, painted dark blue, with a pitched canopy over it covered in a thick layer of bird shit. Next to it was a detached house with steel shutters on the windows and a steel front door as impregnable as the one on Fort Knox. I would’ve assumed it was empty but for the fact that there was a Range-Rover parked on the drive and a bell push next to the door. As I looked on in fascination, a trio of gangbanger types turned off the street onto the drive, walked to the door, and pushed the bell. The door was answered by a shockingly huge shaven-headed individual with a growling Rottweiler on a lead. He held the Rottweiler back, allowing the gangbangers to enter, before slamming the impregnable door. Longford observed me taking in the scene.

  ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,’ he said.

  They were too close for comfort for my liking, but I didn’t argue. We climbed out of his Jaguar and he led me to the house.

  ‘Is it safe to park here?’ I asked, nodding at his car.

  ‘The drug lords all follow the same rule. Never shit on your own doorstep.’

  ‘Oh-kay.’

  He pressed the doorbell button four times, playing, as best he could, the signature notes of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. Ring-ring-ring-riiing!

  The door opened three inches on a thick security chain, revealing an individual who looked like a hoodlum in a suit. He stared down at me from what seemed a great height. He must’ve been about six foot two which made him a foot taller than me. He had a flat nose that had once been hooked and an old scar on his right cheek. The scar was the colour of sour milk which made it stand out against his swarthy skin. Narrowing his brown eyes, he looked first at Longford, then at me, before releasing the chain and opening the door to let us in. I hoped the interior would be more accommodating than the exterior and fortunately it was. The ceiling featured old-style coving and the walls were papered with an expensive regency stripe gold-and-red wallpaper, on which were hung framed black and white photographs of boxers. Among them was one I recognised: it was a picture of the Kray twins during their amateur boxing days.

  The door slammed shut behind me with a loud bang, and that was when, I think, I began to realise I’d made a very big mistake.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Deciding it was best not to show I had reservations, I feigned an interest in the boxing pictures, walking up to one and inspecting it closely. A signature in the bottom right corner informed me it was a photograph of Archie Moore, whoever he was. Archie grinned at me from somewhere in the 1950s, his black hair slicked back with gel, a pencil moustache lending him the raffish air of a roue from an old movie, like a black Terry Thomas with muscles. He looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world, unlike me.

  ‘It’s genuine,’ hoodlum in a suit said with the same Mancunian snarl that was Longford’s trademark way of speaking.

  I turned to face him, noting with dismay the muscles straining at the seams of his pinstripe suit.

  Swallowing hard, I said, ‘What is?’

  ‘The signature on Archie’s photograph.’

  ‘Very impressive. I’m Jo Finnegan, by the way.’

  I extended my sweaty hand. He took it in a grip that could have seen service as a nutcracker.

  ‘I know who you are. I’m DI Travers Doyle. Call me Trav.’

  The fact that Doyle had shaken my hand and identified himself as a policeman made me wonder if I was being paranoid. Yes, the décor was more in keeping with a member of the underworld than Greater Manchester’s finest, but on the other hand, neither Longford nor Doyle had shown any inclination to harm me.

  ‘We better take you to the back of the house,’ Doyle said. ‘It’s less likely you’ll be spotted in one of the back rooms.’

  That made sense, so when he placed his massive hand on the small of my back and steered me down the hall, I didn’t object, even though I found his action both condescending and irritating.

  The hall carpet was so deep and luxurious it seemed to swallow my feet with each step I took.

  A door appeared on our left. Doyle reached out and opened it. ‘In there,’ he said. ‘You’ll be safe there.’

  Then he gave me a mighty push and I staggered to the middle of the room, barely able to keep my footing. The door slammed shut behind me with a dreadful finality and I heard a lock click, followed by a bolt sliding into place.

  ‘Jo, are you listening?’ It was Longford.

  ‘Yes.’ I said, hoping for some morsel of comfort, however insignificant.

  ‘We’re bringing around a specialist to debrief you. It’d be best if you were to tell us all you know right now. If you don’t, the debriefing could end up being rather painful. Not to say terminal.’

  If I’d known anything that might have persuaded them to release me I would’ve sung like the proverbial canary. But I had no idea what they were after.

  It was clear I needed to find out what it was, and fast.

  Knowing what the thing was could save my life. But my current circumstances weren’t ideal for carrying out painstaking research and careful analysis. I was unlikely to experience a eureka moment in this room, in the limited time I had available before the ‘specialist debriefer’ arrived.

  Unlike the hall, the floor of the room I was now in had no carpet. It was bare wood and had a large stain on it in the form of a brown ring with blurred edges, like a bad painting of a doughnut. It bore a horrible resemblance to dried blood. The middle of the doughnut was occupied by a straight-backed wooden chair equipped with straps that were clearly intended to keep the occupant securely fastened in and prevent her from moving much. The chair itself was sturdy and bolted to the bare wooden floor via four steel shoes, one on the bottom of each leg. It sent shivers of dread running down my spine. They quickly migrated to my stomach, making me feel sick as well as scared.

  The only other items in the room were three further, slightly more comforta
ble, chairs which were presumably there for the torturer and his accomplices to rest on, in between bouts of the arduous work of hurting hapless victims.

  It occurred to me that now would be a good time to look around for a means of escape.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Without, it has to be said, a great deal of optimism, I went to the window and inspected the vista outside. Four slavering Rottweilers immediately bounded across what passed for the garden and glared at me, licking their chops as if eager to taste human flash. They seemed to be a popular breed of dog in these parts. The garden had once been a lawn but was now mostly a grey-brown dust bowl littered with unfeasibly large dog turds. It was surrounded by a solid wooden fence at least seven feet high. If I climbed from the window and somehow got across the garden without becoming dog fodder, and ultimately dog turd, I’d never get over that fence. It was far too high, and too smooth, and lacked anything that would give me purchase to climb it.

  Looking around the room, I did a quick inventory of items that could be turned into weapons when the time came to use one. A chair bolted to the floor. Not good. The straps on the chair. They couldn’t be removed from it. Again, not good. What about the other three chairs? They were identical. I picked one up. It was a good weight. Solid. If I hit someone with it, they’d know about it. Trouble was, it was too easily anticipated. If I took a swing at someone with it, they’d easily get out of the way unless I had the element of surprise on my side. And how was I to obtain that precious commodity?

  Hearing voices in the hall, I pressed my ear to the door and listened. It quickly became apparent that Longford was on the telephone to someone.

  ‘Yeah Hench, she’s here now.’

  I was willing to bet that Hench was the expert debriefer. An image formed in my mind of a beefy individual with piggy eyes, yellowing teeth, and spittle dripping from slack jaws. That’s what the sadistic bastard would look like, I reckoned.

  ‘Half-an-hour, you say? Okay. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, too. It has been a while.’

  My hands prickled with adrenaline. I had half an hour in which to escape, and if I didn’t, I’d be tortured, killed, and likely used as dog-meat.

  Longford hung up at that point, I assume, because he stopped talking to Hench and spoke to Doyle instead. ‘Fancy a cup of tea while we’re waiting, Trav?’

  ‘Not half!’

  Un-fucking-believable. The heartless fucking sods were planning to enjoy a cup of tea before cutting off my ears or pulling out my fingernails or electrocuting me via the lips of my vagina or whatever else they were planning on doing to me.

  My heart found an urgent rhythm I hadn’t known it was capable of, a sort of speeded-up salsa, but I didn’t feel like dancing. Instead I spent the next five minutes pointlessly walking around the room and scratching my head. The clock was counting down. Now I only had twenty-five minutes in which to escape. My mouth was dry as the Gobi desert during a draught, my tongue as furry as a Persian cat.

  I peeled off my shirt, which was almost stuck fast owing to the sweat erupting from my pores. If I didn’t get out of here fast, my future would be decidedly short, but sufficiently painful to seem overlong. Draping the shirt over the back of a chair, I picked up one of the other chairs and hurled it at the window. There was an almighty crash as it sailed through in a crystalline shower, sending the Rottweilers scuttling back in disarray. Moments later they returned, jumping up at the glassless window, jaws agape, hoping to somehow take lumps from me. Within seconds they’d realised their mistake as the broken glass scattered across the dust bowl sliced open their paws. They scuttled off in whimpering disarray. In the hall outside my room, Longford and Doyle were in urgent conversation, having heard the window breaking. Hopefully they were under the impression I intended to take my chances with the guard dogs.

  The window was gone, but it’d left a series of impressive-looking delta-shaped shards sticking from the wooden frame. Balling my shirt around my hand, I grabbed the most impressive of them, and worked it loose until it parted company from the frame. It had two edges each about seven, and a third only around three inches long. The point at which the long edges met was menacingly sharp. I placed the shortest edge in the palm of my hand, nestling it in the abundant folds of my rolled-up shirt.

  There was a click as the bolt on the door was released. I ran and took up guard behind the door so I’d be partially hidden from view when the door opened, if only for an instant. An unseen key turned in the lock. My heart danced the supercharged samba. The door opened. I tensed, and taking a deep breath, slid sideways as Doyle came through the doorway, thrusting the point of my makeshift dagger towards his neck, the side of which he’d presented to me. He turned in my direction raising his arm. The dagger pierced the palm of his hand and he quickly retracted it. At the same time his suit jacket draped open, revealing an inviting bulge at stomach level. I plunged the shard in as far as it would go and pulled it out again. His eyes widened and he stuck his hand over the gaping wound I’d just inflicted. It did little to alleviate his suffering. A Niagara of blood cascaded between his fingers hitting the floor with an audible splash.

  Longford, who was just behind him, grabbed Doyle by the collar to drag him out of danger, or perhaps drag him away from the door so he could close it and lock me in again. With my left hand I grabbed Doyle’s hair, pulling his head down, and with my right I lunged at Longford’s eyes with the shard of glass. He stumbled backwards, falling on his backside, pulling Doyle down with him. I sidestepped Doyle and slashed at Longford’s upper body. He protected himself with his hands until I’d cut them to shreds. When he was no longer able or willing to use his hands for this purpose I stuck the shard deep into his belly, pulled it out, stuck it in a second time, and left it there, where it moved up and down in time with his laboured breath. He looked half-dead in his crumpled brown suit with his guts oozing from an open wound and blood spattered all over him, but nevertheless he found the strength to give me a menacing stare and say, ‘Fuck you, Finnegan.’

  ‘You’re dead meat,’ Doyle added.

  For all their aggressive words neither of them posed any threat to me, and it was odds on they’d bleed out soon.

  I frisked them both, taking their mobile phones so they couldn’t alert Hench to the goings on, and I also relieved them of their wallets and Longford’s car keys. I reasoned they wouldn’t have need of these items in hell, so I might as well make use of them. I put my shirt back on without buttoning it up and let myself out of the front door. Doyle and Longford moaned despairingly as I shut it.

  The cold outside air made me shiver. A dog barked and I ran down the path in a panic. More dogs barked. A queue of stick thin junkies lined up outside the door of the neighbouring house stared at me with curiosity. I made it to Longford’s car and dived in. Seconds later, as I was pulling away from the kerb, a top-of-the-range black Range Rover passed me. As it did so, the driver, a middle-aged man with a ponytail of greying hair and a pair of slit-like blue eyes looked at me and curled his thin lips into a scowl. He knew who I was. And I knew who he was. He was Hench, the expert debriefer. The man who’d come to torture me to death.

  Range Rovers are big cars but even so, Hench’s head was scraping the ceiling of his, which gave me an indication of his size. He was a veritable giant who looked to have the sturdy bone-structure of a Neandertal. What he was capable of doing to me with his bare hands didn’t bear thinking about.

  It was time for me to get the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A high-pitched screech came from behind me. Glancing in the rear-view mirror I saw Hench turning his car around in readiness to pursue me, smoke billowing from the tyres. The road before me was long and straight, and further ahead it had cars parked either side of it. Between the two rows of vehicles there was barely enough space for the Jaguar to squeeze through.

  Much as I wanted to ram my foot down on the accelerator and head off at an unfeasible speed, I didn�
�t dare. Some children were playing on the pavement and might emerge from behind a parked car as I was driving past. Hench would have no such inhibitions. He’d be right up my backside before I knew it. Pins and needles of fear burst through the skin of my hands. A river of sweat ran between my breasts as I focused my thoughts and drove at walking pace into the narrow gap.

  By this time, Hench had caught up with me. I caught a glimpse of him in the rear-view mirror. His face was less friendly, if that was possible, than the faces of the four Rottweilers that’d wanted to eat me alive in the back garden of the ‘safe house’. He rammed his hand on the horn. The unexpected noise made me jump. He noticed and laughed, then accelerated and smacked the back of the Jag with his Range Rover as if we were both driving Dodgem cars in a fairground.

  Up ahead a black Audi, a big one, turned from a side street and headed in my direction. It entered the narrow gap I was driving through, ensuring we’d have a head-on collision, and most effectively cutting off my escape route.

  Hench honked his horn. The Audi honked its horn. The Audi driver was obviously out to help Hench get me. I was toast. Something made me want to see Hench’s reaction to this development. When I looked, I wished I hadn’t. An evil grin had split his neanderthal face in two. He had me, and was revelling in the knowledge he’d soon be slicing bits off me with a carving knife, or doing something similarly vile and painful.

  The car in front was fast approaching. It was no more than twenty yards away. Hench was hanging onto my tailgate. To my left, among the row of parked cars blocking my way, a car-sized space appeared. I wrenched the steering-wheel left and stepped on the accelerator. The Jag mounted the pavement. In front of it was a flimsy fence screening off the front-garden of a terraced house. I crashed the car through the fence like it was made of balsa wood and turned a hard right, crushing a bed of roses beneath the wheels. The occupants of the house, two women, one of whom had a buzz-cut, rushed to the window. I gave them an apologetic look. The one with the buzz-cut shook her fist at me. I wouldn’t have fancied my chances against her in a street-fight.