No Peace For The Wicked

Chapter 38

Riley listened intently for sounds of movement downstairs. She desperately needed to know where McManus was, but the constant noise of machinery from the building site next door drowned out all noise within the house.

She rolled over on the bed and edged her body round until she could feel the plastic lighters behind her. The pain from the bindings was intense, and she knew she had to do something before her hands lost all sense of feeling.

She grasped one of the lighters and twisted it until she could put her thumb against the flint-wheel. The first two tries were useless — her fingers were practically numb and her thumb kept slipping off the wheel. She gripped harder and tried again. This time she felt the heat as the flame caught, but instantly burned her fingers and dropped the lighter.

She picked it up and tried again, but the bindings were so tight there was no room to direct the flame against the plastic for long enough to burn through. She dropped it to the bed and lay back, sweating furiously, her breathing coming in short gasps.

She rolled over on her side and wiped her face against the pillow, and felt the corner of the tape catch on the fabric. With renewed energy, she rubbed harder, gradually feeling the tape coming unstuck.

Then the machinery was switched off.

The silence was stunning. It was as if she had been struck stone deaf, every sound in the world cut off by the throw of a switch.

She waited, not daring to move in case McManus came up to check on her.

When there was no sound from downstairs, she rolled over. Every instinct told her she hadn’t long left. McManus sober was bad enough; drunk and resentful he was unpredictable and lethal. She had to do something now. She used her knee to move some of the paper rubbish on the bed to see what lay beneath.

Even more rubbish; some socks, two or three different kinds of cheap cufflinks, packets of condoms, several ball-point pens, batteries and other assorted junk. Even a set of large, gaudily-coloured nail clippers bearing a motif of Malaga. Bignell, it seemed, had been averse to throwing anything away.

Nail clippers. She twisted round and scrabbled for them, opening the lever-arm first time. She wiggled the cutting jaws onto a strand of the plastic line and forced the lever down; there was no time for finesse, but the last thing she could afford to do was drop the clippers off the bed. The noise would be enough to alert McManus, drunk as he was.

She felt the jaws cut through the line. Jesus — thank God for quality crap, she thought gratefully, promising to buy a dozen pairs if she ever got out of here. She twisted her hands, hoping the binding would part, but there was no movement. She moved the jaws again, clamping them over another strand. Hand shut and- damn… slipped… She tried again and this time heard a snick as the jaws closed and felt the plastic part. She gripped the clippers tightly and twisted and pulled with desperate strength in an attempt to force the bindings to slide loose. This time there was the slightest give, and she began to rub her hands back and forth, trying to spread the sweat over her wrists and make them as slick as possible.

There was a faint crunch outside the bedroom door, and Riley had just enough time to lay back and cover the clippers before the door was flung open and McManus was standing there, red-eyed, his handgun by his side. He looked angry and lost, and it was obvious he had continued drinking. In his other hand he carried a telephone receiver, the broken wire trailing along the floor.

He swayed slightly as he approached the bed, an aura of alcohol surrounding him. He bent down and forced her off the bed to her feet. “Come on,” he grunted. “It’s siesta time and you’re going sleepies.” He turned towards the door and dragged Riley behind him, losing one of her shoes in the process.

“Where are you taking me?” she mouthed, the sounds distorted behind the gag. As they reached the top of the stairs she tried to hook her foot round a metal banister upright, but McManus tugged her after him like a rag doll.

She bumped down the stairs on her knees and was slammed against the wall at the bottom. McManus pushed the barrel of his gun into the side of her face and leaned his weight against her, his face less than two inches from hers.

“It’s not your lucky day, is it?” he breathed, his eyes wild and staring. “Not your lucky day at all.” He let go of her and threw the broken telephone receiver to one side. “Spanish crap fell to bits. Still, won’t need it no more.”

“What’s happened?” Riley asked, trying to delay him. This time her words came out more clearly, although at first McManus seemed not to notice.

He tugged her towards the back door. “Happened? Shit’s happened, that’s what.”

“What kind of shit?” Keep him talking.

“I’ve just heard the boss has gone and died on me. How about that? And now I’ve got nowhere to go. Bloody rich, that. After all these fucking years, too, the old bitch!” He slammed his gun against a mirror on the wall, shattering the glass. Blood dripped from his hand where he’d been cut, but he seemed oblivious to it.

He dragged her out into the sunlight, the sudden brightness painful to her eyes, the heat intense and stifling, even after the foetid bedroom.

Facing them across the courtyard was a makeshift plasterboard wall. Beyond it Riley saw a towering crane and the skeletal structure of the new building where, until a few minutes ago, men had been working. Now there wasn’t a sound.

McManus dragged her over to the wall and slammed her against it, jarring her teeth. Dust fell around her, stinging her eyes and gritty on her tongue. Her mouth was now so dry she couldn’t have called out even if she’d wanted to.

McManus reached up and tugged at the top of one of the boards with his free hand, grunting with the effort until it sagged and fell to one side with a dry, rasping sound.

He pushed Riley through the gap and stood looking around for a moment, his great head swaying from side to side. Then he grunted and propelled her towards a small square of posts and planks at one corner of the development. Above the posts hung a large metal chute with a cut-away mouth, shiny and battered with use. A cement lorry stood close by.

As they neared the planks, Riley could see they guarded a deep shaft lined with boards and sprouting rusty metal rods thick as a man’s thumb. It was the foundations of one of the main support pillars for the building.

McManus peered over the edge and grinned drunkenly. “Long way down, I reckon,” he taunted her. “You any good at diving?”

He began to pull the nearest planks aside and Riley struggled furiously as she realised what he was about to do. McManus seemed unaware, intent only on clearing any obstacles. She waited until he bent over to clear the lip, then twisted her body until she was side on to him. With every ounce of her strength, she stabbed her leg out and downwards, the side of her shoe connecting with the outside of his knee.

Even on a man of McManus’s solid build it was a weak point. There was a crunch as his knee gave way, and he roared with pain and anger and fell sideways, his flailing hand grabbing hold of her clothing and dragging her down with him. He grunted and swore, launching himself onto his knees over her, his eyes blazing with a fierce light and spittle spraying from his mouth.

“Bitch!” he shouted, and grasped her shoulders ready to flip her over the lip of the shaft. As his hands fastened on her, Riley remembered her father telling her that one thing no man ever expected a woman to do when defending herself was to use her head. Scratch, yes, Scream, even — and kick. But never the head.

“In your dreams, you pig!” she screamed and, as McManus pulled her towards him, she launched herself forward, using his own strength against him.

As her head slammed into his face she felt his breath against her skin and heard a crunch as his nose took the full power of the blow. His hands released their grip and he fell back with a roar of pain, blood spraying down his front.

Riley scrambled away from him, looking for a way out from the building site. Somewhere nearby a car stopped in the street and doors slammed. Police?

McManus staggered upright and lifted his gun, spittle and blood dripping from his face, a look of shock and outrage twisting his features. She kicked again, this time at a pile of cement powder at her feet, trying to scoop it up into his eyes.

“McManus!” A man’s voice shouted from behind her.

There was a blur of movement as somebody ran past her, and she heard a loud slap of something hard against flesh. Then she was grabbed around the waist and dragged away through the gap in the wall, away from what was happening at the lip of the shaft.

The last image she had was of two figures; the huge McManus teetering on the edge of the hole, his arms scrabbling for a hold on thin air; and another man, slightly smaller and slimmer, standing before him. Then came then sound of a blow and McManus seemed to dance backwards before plunging silently out of sight. The other figure began turning away, his face set and hard.

John Mitcheson.

Riley sagged against whoever was holding her and looked up to see Frank Palmer smiling grimly. “Palmer, you idle bastard,” she muttered, fighting the urge to throw up. “I thought you were supposed to be protecting me.”

“Yeah, right,” Palmer retorted calmly. “Try telling McManus that.”