Dead if You Don’t

2

Friday 11 August

The twenty-one-year-old strapped to the steel table, in the windowless basement room, was pleading beneath the blinding white lights. But the sound of the Kinks, ‘Mr Pleasant’, turned up loud on a constant loop, drowned his voice out — not that anyone could hear beyond this dank, soundproof room with its rank smell and the open-barred door to the darkened pool area beyond it where, it was rumoured, Mr Dervishi’s crocodile lived. Ryan Brent did not believe any of this could actually be happening, could actually be real.

But his tormentor, Gentian Llupa, did. A handsome twenty-three-year-old, with close-cropped, gelled brown hair and a serious, concerned expression, Llupa’s one worry was that Ryan might die too soon. Before the one thousand cuts he had been instructed to administer, for the benefit of the camera, could be completed.

‘Mr Pleasant is good

Mr Pleasant is kind

Mr Pleasant’s okay...

Hey, hey

How are you today?’

Echoing the words, Gentian looked down at his victim. ‘So how are you today?’ Then he added, ‘How’s your day so far?’ It was his boss, Mr Dervishi’s, favourite expression and he liked it, too. All of Mr Dervishi’s close team used it, as a kind of code. Mr Dervishi instilled good manners and a code of behaviour in all his employees.

His boss was extremely particular. He would want to examine every incision on the naked young man’s body. Each one that he was about to make with the Stanley knife’s freshly inserted blade, as a lesson to the youth. Each cut would be anatomically correct. One thousand lessons. Starting with the ankle tendons, to make running away impossible. Not that escaping had ever been an option for him.

So many tendons in the human body! That was one of the things he had learned back in his home country of Kosovo as a medical student, before meeting Mr Dervishi and being offered more money than he could dream of to continue his studies in England. Although, currently, Mr Dervishi kept him too busy to resume his studies.

He was going to be working from a colour chart showing the tendons of the human body beneath the skin, which he had Blu-tacked to the wall beside the table. It was really there for Ryan Brent’s benefit, to give him an anatomy lesson. Gentian very politely told him in which order he would be proceeding. He had a ball of cloth ready to stuff into Brent’s mouth if he screamed too loudly, although Mr Dervishi did not want him doing that, he liked to hear his victim’s screams. He liked to show his collection of videos of what had happened to those who crossed him, to other employees. It was his way of ensuring loyalty.

Tendon after tendon.

‘People say Mr Pleasant is good

Mr Pleasant is kind...’

‘Please, please!’ his victim screamed. ‘I will pay the money back. I’ll pay it all back. Please!’

‘No,’ Gentian said. ‘You will never be able to. And besides, I do not like people who steal money from the man who gives me a new life. Especially not people who do that and sleep with his mistress as well.’

‘I didn’t know. Honest! I didn’t know. Please don’t! I’m a fellow human, like you, mate. Oh God, please let me go. What kind of a monster are you?’

‘Probably the worst kind!’ Gentian smiled. ‘That’s not good for you to know that, is it? You see, I am both the worst kind and the best kind. I am honest and I am loyal. I do what I’m told. I could make things very much worse for you, but I don’t because I’m just like the guy in this song. I’m Mr Pleasant!’

As Gentian picked up the cutter, he announced the count, loud and clear, for his victim’s benefit. In order to be pleasant. ‘Number one!’ he said and peered at the chart. ‘Quite a long way to go, eh? How’s your brand-new limousine?’

‘My what?’

‘It’s just a line in the song, don’t worry about it.’