Dead if You Don’t

56

Sunday 13 August

00.00–01.00

Ylli Prek began to cry. He shivered with cold. He didn’t know what the time was or how long he had been down here in the dimly lit basement room below Mr Dervishi’s house, naked, handcuffed to a hard chair fixed to the floor.

In front of him was a steel gurney, with a tray of surgical knives and other instruments on a stand beside it. And only inches to his right was a barred door, like in a prison, to the darkened, rank-smelling pool area where Mr Dervishi’s Nile crocodile, Thatcher, lived. Earlier, when the two men had brought him down here, Mr Dervishi had followed, telling him that he would be back later with a doctor who would be cutting limbs off him to feed to Thatcher. He asked Prek to consider what it would be like to watch a crocodile eating his body parts while he was still alive and conscious. Parts that had been surgically removed without an anaesthetic.

Ylli Prek was petrified. He had crapped himself and wet himself. He sat in the stench of his own excrement and the sour, damp reek of the reptile and its lair. Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him and turned his head.

‘How’s your day so far?’ Mr Dervishi asked, approaching him with a half-smoked torpedo in his gloved hand.

‘Not great.’

‘No? Such a shame,’ Dervishi sounded genuinely sorry.

On the wristwatch on his boss’s other arm, Prek saw the time. It was just coming up to 1 a.m. Dervishi gave him a look of distaste and wrinkled his nose. ‘What a disgusting smell — were you never potty-trained?’ He puffed on his cigar, exhaled and waved the smoke around with his hand. He glanced at the barred door and the darkness, tinged with a faint green glow, beyond.

‘Don’t worry, Thatcher,’ he called out. ‘I will get you a nice piece of meat very soon. Would you like this man’s right or left leg first? Or perhaps all of him at once?’

He looked down at Prek. ‘Do you know how a crocodile likes to prepare his meal?’

The man looked petrified.

‘He likes to take his meat underwater and keep it there for a while, to tenderize it.’ He smiled. ‘How would you feel as you were dragged beneath the surface by a crocodile? By your leg or arm? And your last thought, as you could no longer hold your breath and began to drown, would be to think about that creature eating you, bit by bit, over the coming weeks. Do you like that thought?’

‘Please, Mr Dervishi, please understand that I did what you told me,’ Prek pleaded.

‘No, Ylli. I was expecting the stadium to be evacuated and the match abandoned, that was your mission. It didn’t happen. You failed me.’

‘No!’ He shook his head in terror. ‘Please, I did what you instructed me. I did. I left the camera there, on the seat. I did. I primed it, I followed your instructions, I don’t understand why it did not explode.’

Dervishi stared at him. ‘So, it didn’t work out. But I’m a very fair man, Ylli, I’ve come to offer you a deal.’

‘Yes? Please. Please, I will do anything.’

‘I know that,’ Dervishi replied. Then he smiled. ‘I’m going to turn you from a loser into a hero. Do you like the sound of that?’

‘Yes, yes I do, thank you!’

‘Oh, I’m not so sure you will be thanking me. But I will be thanking you, I promise you. Does it sound good?’

‘Yes!’

‘Ylli, there was a great Hollywood film producer called Darryl Zanuck. He won three Academy Awards — Oscars — pretty impressive, right?’

‘Oh yes, very.’

‘He made The Sound of Music, Jaws and Driving Miss Daisy. Not bad, eh?’

‘No, I liked Jaws very much. Very scary.’

‘Very scary indeed. You know, I still don’t like to swim in the sea. Do you like to swim in the sea, Ylli? Does it worry you that a shark might eat you when you do?’

‘I can’t swim.’

‘No?’ Dervishi said. ‘OK, so you’ve never had to worry about being eaten by a shark?’

‘No, no, sir.’

‘Lucky. Do you consider yourself lucky?’

‘No, Mr Dervishi sir, not lucky, not really.’

‘Well let me correct you. Ylli, this is your lucky day. Does it make you happy to hear that?’

‘Yes.’

Dervishi went out of the room and returned holding a large, raw chicken. He opened the barred door and called out into the darkness, ‘Sorry, Thatcher, it is only chicken tonight, not human meat — but who knows what tomorrow will bring, eh?’

Prek, still shaking with fear, saw the man lay the chicken down at the tiled edge of the pool, retreat and close the door again. Almost instantly, he heard a sudden, deep, thrashing of water. He saw two reptilian claws appear on the tiles, followed by another whoosh of water as the creature lifted itself up and Prek stared into the gaping mouth with its rows of massive, uneven teeth. They clamped over the chicken and, seconds later, with another deep splash, the crocodile was gone.

‘I have a proposition to put to you, Ylli. To save your life. How do you feel about that?’

‘Yes! Yes please.’ Prek was staring, mesmerized, at the darkness beyond the barred door.

Dervishi took another drag on the shrinking stub of his cigar and tapped some ash off the end. It fell to the floor. ‘Mr Darryl Zanuck was famous for one thing he used to tell people. He used to tell them, Don’t say yes until I stop talking.’

Ylli Prek said nothing, watching him.

‘Do you understand that, Ylli?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to give you a second chance. Are you happy about this?’

‘Yes, yes please, I am.’

‘Good, so now wait until I have finished talking before you say yes again.’