Cuts Both Ways

by Solomon Carter

  Dan grimaced and raced to the window. He watched as Blunt forced Alma to climb into a black SUV four by four. It looked like a Nissan Qashqai. Ubiquitous, easy to lose in a big town. Qashqais were everywhere. Dan waited, ground his teeth and counted time. He waited until the Qashqai engine started and the vehicle started to turn. As soon as it did, he bolted out into the street. He stopped to watch the car pass him, saw Alma’s silhouette turn his way as it moved off. Dan turned the corner and ran towards his Crossfire. He jumped in and turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. He tried again, but the car stayed dead. “No, no, no,” said Dan. “Don’t you dare do this now.” He turned the key again. A faint click was followed by silence. Nothing. The car was totally dead. Dan recalled the Egomobile’s recent fault and was furious with himself for not getting the work done. But then, this was different. Before the car had spluttered and growled, but right now it was dead as a dodo. It wouldn’t even start. Sabotage…? Sabotage was the only answer. Dan got out of the car and walked around the outside as if he would be able to see the problem. Of course, he saw nothing. He ducked down and looked along the bottom rim of the chassis, but it was dark and he was at a loss. He ran into the office, considering all options, deciding to check his manual.

  Mark groaned, his head still cradled in Joanne’s arms. Gradually, he lifted up and pulled himself away from her and leaned up on the side of his desk. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked down at the blood. “So I got hurt… again… I’d like that to be the last time.”

  Dan walked across with the car manual hanging from his hand. “Where did he go?” said Mark.

  “I don’t know. I tried to follow,” said Dan, “but my damn car won’t even start. I think it’s been sabotaged.”

  “Sabotaged? But you were having problems with it before,” said Joanne.

  “This is different,” said Dan. “I mean it. And that guy will kill her unless we find him and stop him. That’s all he came here for.”

  “Why?” said Mark.

  “The Uber drug ring. The heart of the whole damn network. Alma was there right at the centre of it in Europe. She was sleeping with the guy who started the whole thing, but then she bailed on them – her version of the story is that she never knew what her boyfriend was doing until it was too late. It could be true, or maybe she got cold feet. Either way, the fact is Alma knows too much and they want her gone. Blunt is the man who pulls the trigger for them.”

  “It’s my fault she’s in this mess, isn’t it?” said Joanne.

  “Not necessarily. Your information helped the other guy, not Blunt.”

  “They’re not part of the same team?” said Joanne in confusion.

  “Definitely not,” said Mark. “We saw them go for each other’s throats at The Albany Centre.”

  Dan nodded. “And now I know who our fake client works for. I checked in with our police contacts. Turns out Robert’s description closely matches that of a man believed to be working for one Alex Galvan. A man by the name of Robert Golding.”

  “Robert Golding? He works for Galvan?” said Joanne. The way she said it told Dan the name Galvan meant nothing to her.

  “Galvan was the heir to a local gangster outfit. He was a young guy who was going places once. But he blew it all because he was an arrogant son of a bitch. From what I hear, he’s still not learned any lessons. Now he’s taking on the Uber gang using people like our friend Robert.”

  “Robert’s his real name?” said Mark.

  Dan nodded. “Robert Golding. The police ID’d him recently. And now we’ve got a very big problem. Two in fact. Golding is set to call us anytime to demand a meeting with Alma so he can swap Cripps for Alma’s little black book. With Alma gone, Cripps is screwed.”

  “And so is Alma…” said Mark.

  “Not if we can help it. The only chink of light for us is that Alex Galvan is not the gangster he once was. He’s been scraping the barrel for years now. If he needs Alma’s book bad enough, we might be able to hold off Robert Golding for a time. Finding Alma has to be the priority. But if I’m going to have a chance of catching up with Blunt, I need my car back in action, pronto.”

  “Your car was already in a state, Dan,” said Mark.

  “In a state, yeah, but it still worked. Now the damn thing won’t start at all. Blunt sabotaged it, he must have done. I better call someone, see if I can borrow a car right away.”

  “How is it possible for someone to sabotage a car that quickly?” said Joanne.

  “Quickly?” said Dan. He walked briskly to his desk and picked up his mobile phone. He stared at the screen for a long moment, thinking of Eva. If she had been there, he would have had access to her car and Blunt wouldn’t have been allowed to get away. But there was no time for regret. Alma Poulter was going to die unless he did something. Dan hastened around to his laptop to look up information on some of his old, lesser used business contacts. Getting hold of a car at short notice was going to be a big ask, but it had to be done. Dan was about to sit down on his chair but it was pressed close to the wall. He pulled the chair across and saw a small black bundle slide across the leather surface. His eyes narrowed.

  “I can’t believe he broke in through the back,” said Mark.

  “The bastard climbed right in over the yard wall. I should put some barbed wire up there…” said Dan. He picked up the item from the chair and realised the little black bundle was a tiny black book with a battered cover and creased, curling pages.

  “Do you think Blunt would have had enough time to sabotage your car?” said Joanne.

  “If he knew what he was doing,” said Dan, his voice trailing off.

  Dan ran his fingers across the worn edges of the pages before he flicked them open. His eyes sparked with light and a grim smile broke across his face.

  “Hey, look here! Look at what Alma left behind, hiding on the chair. The very reason for all of this mess…”

  “What is it?” said Mark.

  “Her little book. She never told me what was inside, but I don’t think it’s a list of all her boyfriends. From what I gather, this book contains some very important information relating to the Uber gang.”

  “You think she left it behind by mistake?” said Joanne.

  Dan shook his head. “No way. Alma asked us to save Cripps. The only way it’d be possible to do that would be to have this book for the handover with Robert Golding. That woman is about as friendly as a porcupine, but she’s definitely smart. I really don’t want to see her end up dead at these people’s hands. Think, where can I get a car from, right now? We need to start looking.”

  “Your repair manual won’t help you?” said Joanne.

  “You already know the answer to that,” said Dan.

  “Then before you panic, I think it’d be worth taking one last look at the car, don’t you?”

  “Hey, who’s panicking?” snapped Dan.

  Joanne arched an eyebrow at Dan and he recognised it. It was another thing the girl had learned from Eva.

  “Let’s just look, shall we?” said Joanne.

  Dan flicked through pages of the little black book, and saw the endless stream of names and numbers, a rambling continuous line of jumble in different inks. He narrowed his eyes in thought and saw some of the numbers, though not all, started with zero seven. There were no expiry date slashes or sort code style hyphens. No fraudulent account numbers. He saw his first guess had been wrong… But there were other numbers, too, and place names. French ones, Dutch ones… business transactions maybe. In the right hands it was damning stuff. In the wrong hands, it was a gold mine. Dan stuffed the book into his jacket and followed Joanne out of the door into the cool evening. The evening traffic rushed by as Dan gave the car another once over. He opened the door and jumped inside. He tried the ignition key again, but again there was nothing. He looked out of the window at them.

  “See? It’s stone cold dead.”

  Joanne nodded and folded her arms while Mark leaned down and put his
weight on the car’s bonnet. Under Mark’s weight, the Crossfire’s long bonnet bobbed lower. Mark frowned and looked down, and Joanne followed his eyes. Dan followed their eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “Did you pop the bonnet open when you came out here last time?” said Mark.

  “Pop the bonnet?” said Dan.

  “Did you open it?” said Mark.

  “No,” said Dan.

  “Then why is it open now?” said Mark.

  Dan frowned. “Uh oh,” said Dan. He jumped out of the car and moved to the front. He raised the lid and slid his hand along the inside clasp.. His fingers traced where the catch mechanism was bent out of shape. Dan lowered the bonnet and bent close to the front, so he could look at any evidence of interference. Just at the very edge of the lid, he found a scratch and a misshapen bump where something had been wedged underneath the lid and levered to prise it open. Dan lifted the lid again and his eyes roved across the dark mechanics of the engine. He swiped his phone screen, turned on the torch and swept the bright beam left and right. When he saw the battery, it was obvious. On the left side of the engine, the car battery wires were no longer connected to the battery. They were loose, hanging curled in the air.

  The bastard had probably snipped them… Which meant a costly repair and more time he couldn’t afford.

  But when he looked closer, he realised the wires still were intact. They’d been yanked clean off the battery, but the connectors had survived the trauma.

  “Wait a second,” said Dan. He jogged into the shop and ran into the kitchen where an evening breeze was still rattling the busted back door against a kitchen cupboard. Dan ransacked the cupboards and drawers, tossing the contents out on the lino until he found what he needed. A moment later he was back outside pushing the positive and negative wires back into position on the battery, teasing them with the screwdriver until they were fixed back in place.

  As soon as he was done, he left the bonnet up, jumped into the car and turned the ignition key. The ignition clicked. The engine coughed, then died again. One more try. The ignition clicked, the engine coughed, and then rattled and roared into life. The car protested and growled but for now at least, they were back in action.

  “Yes!” said Dan. “Now who says I can’t fix cars?”

  “I think you did,” said Joanne.

  Dan nodded. “I did, didn’t I? Well who cares. I was wrong.”

  Beneath the rumble of the engine, Dan’s phone started to buzz. He frowned and pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen was bright. Someone was calling, but no caller name had been assigned. The number was unknown. Dan took a moment to think. Then before the call had a chance to ring off, he hit the green button and put the phone to his ear.

  “I called your office.” The voice was soft and rasping. He recognised it immediately. The choice of who to go after had been taken out of his hands. “You didn’t answer.”

  “Robert… I didn’t hear the call. I’ve been a little bit busy,” said Dan.

  “I told you to be ready,” said Robert Golding. “You’d better take this seriously. Where is Alma? I want to talk to her now.”

  “Listen, Robert. You don’t need to talk to Alma anymore. I’ve got what you want. The little book right? The reason for your whole damn charade with the fake missing person case.”

  “You’ve got the book? You’d better not be lying.”

  “I’ve got it. And I can carry out the handover on Alma’s behalf.”

  “Where is she?”

  “That’s our business. Your business is the book. So we can meet up if you like. And I’ll give you the book, no trouble. So long as you tell me what Alex Galvan wants with all this information.”

  “What? Who said anything about Alex Galvan?”

  “Nice try, Robert. You might be an unknown to us, but it turns out the police already know about you.”

  “I don’t work for Galvan. I don’t work for anyone.”

  “And yet you suddenly seem to know who he is. You’re bad at lying, Mr Golding. You can have the book if you tell me what’s really going on.”

  “You don’t make the rules, Bradley. Alma can have Cripps back if you give me that book. You don’t get to make any demands or stipulations.”

  “If you say so,” said Dan. He looked up at Joanne and Mark. “So, then. Where shall we meet for the handover…?

  The moment Dan spoke, his eyes clouded. He thought about Blunt and how Alma was sharp and knew how to survive. Yes, the girl would be playing for time. It was all she had done ever since she walked out on the Uber gang. She had learned how to stay alive by simply waiting, hiding and biding her time. And right now, he guessed the woman would be using the same tactic. In that moment, Dan posed himself a simple question. If he was Alma, how would he have played Blunt for time? He thought about her resources, about what she knew, and one clear answer came to mind almost immediately.

  “Tell you what, Robert – we already know a very safe place we can make the exchange, don’t we. There’s no place quieter than The Albany Centre.”

  The line fell silent for a moment. “You better not be planning something, Bradley. If anything weird happens, make no bones about it, I’ll pull the trigger on Cripps. Don’t misjudge me. I’m not playing around.”

  “I know you’re not, Robert. Because that’s how desperate Alex Galvan is these days… isn’t it?”

  Golding’s hesitation spoke volumes. In the darkness of the Egomobile, Dan narrowed his eyes and smiled. Gotcha.

  “Just bring that book or you’ll have the man’s blood on your hands. Alma won’t like that now, will she?”

  Golding ended the call and the line went dead. Dan dropped the phone into his lap and took a breath.

  “So you’re going back to the Albany?” said Mark.

  “Because that’s where everyone else is going. That’s why.”

  “How do you know?” said Joanne.

  “Because Alma’s smart. She knows this Blunt, right? They have a past. If there’s anyway she can get him back on to her territory, I’m sure she will. Where else does she know in this town? The Albany is all she had. It’s what she knows. And a derelict fortress like that gives the person who knows it their best chance of getting the upper hand.” Dan started to pull the car door closed, but Joanne grabbed the door.

  “Wait, Dan. We’re coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not. These people are psychopaths. They’ve already hurt Mark twice today.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m coming,” said Mark. “I’ve had enough.”

  Mark moved around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. Dan shook his head and gripped the steering wheel. Joanne clambered in after him and was forced to sit on his knees.

  “You know,” said Dan, grinning, his eyes on Mark. “I think I know the real reason why you want to come.”

  Mark looked at him, confused. Joanne slammed the door and gripped the dashboard as the car pulled out and started to rumble down Hamstel Road. “Any excuse for a ride with a girl on your knees, eh? Okay, you can come. But this time I want you to stay out of trouble. Okay?”

  He waited for a hint of agreement to show on their faces. It took a moment to arrive, but as soon as it did, Dan put his foot down and the engine roared. They were on their way. And they would have to hurry…

  Eighteen

  The calls from Dan had come and gone. Eva had tried her best to send a placating text, something to let him know she cared, was glad he was safe, and to tell him that she was okay too. But that was a little harder to demonstrate, because Eva didn’t think she was okay at all. Sitting alongside Lauren in the late Basildon evening, Eva felt like she was beginning to fray at the edges. Lauren seemed on edge, about to be shredded by nerves at any moment, and it was catching. Until recently, Eva had believed herself immune to the woman’s histrionics. All the drama belonged to Lauren and Lauren alone. But with every mention of Jamie Blane, and with every half-hinted reference to the promise Eva had made
, she felt the tension rising in her own body. Tonight they were in Basildon, the epicentre of Lauren’s life these days. But they were miles away from the woman’s swanky penthouse. Instead, they sat at the edge of the A127, inside Eva’s Alfa Romeo, parked at the edge of a hotel complex she had visited several times in recent years, though thankfully not as a paying guest. The job frequently led her to locations of a seedy nature, and this was another prime example. Why a man like Jamie Blane would frequent a hotel like the Perryman, was not immediately clear. Blane was wealthy, successful and engaged in a legal profession, but the kind who usually rented the apartment-style rooms of the Perryman often paid for the night but used them by the hour. Drug dealers, criminals making plans, and hookers who knew that the Perryman would turn a blind eye to their shenanigans were the clientele of choice.

  The rooms resembled the layout of an American motel, or an old-fashioned British holiday camp with their long lines of two-storey chalet apartments. They were built in two pre-fab style blocks which were completely separate from the wooden lodge-styled reception building. The motel-style of the guest rooms meant they were all sealed off from prying eyes, which meant that the hotel guests could invite over their friends, colleagues, companions, gimps or whatever else they needed for the duration of their stay without being witnessed. None of it was officially permitted, but neither could it be prevented. As yet it was still early. Not even eight pm. Which counted as very early by the Perryman’s standards. And whenever Eva and Dan’s work had taken them to this place of concrete and twitching net curtains, the A127 rushing noisily past its rear, she had always felt uneasy. But tonight, Eva felt worse still. After seeing Blane’s work emails, Eva had suggested they try something to make sure they were right about it all.

  Secretly, Eva hoped their visit would yield them something to contradict Lauren’s belief in an impending disaster. Jamie Blane was certainly a scheming, cheating scoundrel, Eva was sure of that, but she wanted to find something which proved the man wasn’t out to kill Lauren. It was a vague hope – the quest for a way out of the promise she had made. A promise that now felt like a trap with Lauren using her own words against her.