Third Strike

CHAPTER 10

“Okay, people, we’re faced with a bit of a dilemma,” I said cheerfully. “What do we do with you two?”

I glanced from a subdued Don to his sullen companion and smiled. They were both lying on their sides on the cold painted floor of the garage, well away from my father’s dark green Jaguar XK8 and the dust cover that hid my laid-up Fire-Blade, tucked away behind it.

Sean had bound them efficiently, so their wrists and ankles were bent back behind them and taped together. I’d been tied like that during Resistance to Interrogation exercises during Selection and I knew it was bloody uncomfortable for anything longer than a few minutes at a time. I reckoned they’d probably been like that now for more than an hour.

Sean had also added a nasty refinement. Several bands of the reinforced tape went from their feet and looped up round their necks, so if they relaxed they ran the risk of asphyxiating themselves. Blondie seemed to be coping with this better than Don, who had clearly chosen muscle bulk over flexibility and was starting to suffer for it.

He hadn’t been looking too good to start with. I don’t know what methods Sean had employed in his attempts to get information out of the pair of them, but Don’s skin had now taken on the color and texture of a melted candle.

Sean had also used Steri-Strips to put Blondie’s nose back together, and had affixed a dressing to the wound in her leg using more duct tape around her thigh, but I daresay he hadn’t been particularly gentle with any of it.

“You’re obviously aware that we can’t let you loose,” I said. “Just as you know we’re not going to turn you over to the police. So, what choices do we have?”

I crouched and made eye contact with Blondie. Of the two of them, she seemed to be the leader and I knew that if she folded Don would follow.

“From here, we’re about forty-five minutes from a place called Saddleworth Moor,” I said, still conversational. “Out in the Pennine hills. It’s very … isolated.” I let my voice harden. “During the 1960s, a couple called Ian Brady and Myra Hindley abducted a number of young children, raped and murdered them, then buried the bodies out on the moor. Some of those bodies,” I continued placidly, “have never been found.”

Sean’s timing was perfect. He walked in at that moment, having just raided my mother’s toolshed. In his right hand he held a garden spade. He let the steel blade drop to the concrete floor with a ringing clatter that made both of our prisoners flinch. His face wore a cold, featureless mask that offered no hint of mercy.

“We’re all set,” he said, leaning on the handle of the spade. “And we don’t have much time.”

I turned back, to see Blondie’s fearful gaze jump from Sean to me. Don closed his eyes briefly, as though he might have been praying.

“The alternative,” I said to them, “is that we take you up to a friend of mine, who will keep you incommunicado for a while—as long as it takes—and then release you unharmed. For that, we need some level of cooperation. It’s up to you.” I made a show of checking my watch. “You’ve got, oh, around three minutes to make up your minds.”

I rose, nodding curtly to Sean, and we walked out. I noted that he made sure to grate the spade on the ground with each stride, just to drive the point home.

We halted just outside the garage door, leaving it open slightly so we could keep a surreptitious eye on them.

“What exactly did you do to Don?” I asked quietly.

Do you really want to know?

I shook my head as though he’d spoken out loud. “No, on second thoughts, don’t answer that. Will they cooperate?”

He shrugged. “I would, given that kind of a choice—and so chillingly delivered.” He tilted his head and regarded me with studious eyes, an almost mocking smile on his lips. “You play the psycho very well, Charlie.”

“Thank you—I think,” I said. “I learned from a master.”

At that moment, my mother came out of the front door and hurried across the gravel towards us. She saw the spade in Sean’s hands and her face blenched white.

“Oh, you haven’t … ?”

“No, we haven’t,” I said, moving forwards to meet her and registering the way Sean casually shifted to block her view into the garage. “We’ve given them some options, that’s all, and they’re talking them over.”

“Oh,” she repeated, more blankly this time. “Well, er, I’m just packing some things, but I’m not sure what to take. How cold is it in New York at the moment? And how long am I likely to be away? I have a lot of responsibilities that can’t just be dropped at the last minute, you know,” she added in a peevish tone that lasted until she asked, suddenly more forlorn, “And … what do I tell people?”

“Tell them your husband’s been taken ill,” I said, starting to run out of patience. “He’s a doctor, for heaven’s sake. Hospitals are full of sick people. Tell them he caught something. Or tell them he got knocked down by a bus crossing the road and broke his ankle.”

“But that’s simply not true.”

Give me strength! “Okay. How about you tell them he broke it falling down the stairs during a police raid on a Brooklyn brothel? That closer to the truth for you?”

She gave me a hurt look and scurried back into the house without reply. I turned and found Sean watching me, expressionless.

“What?” I said, but he only shook his head and pushed the garage door open again.

As they heard our footsteps approaching, both Blondie and Don squirmed round to try and see us coming, as though that would somehow make a difference.

“Okay,” Sean said to them, his voice even and pleasant, but that of a stone-cold killer nevertheless. “Decision time. What’s it to be?”

They chose internment over interment. Of course they did. We folded the Shogun’s rear seats flat and slid them in like coffins into a hearse, on a sheet of folded heavy-duty plastic from the greenhouse. They lay flat on their backs, side by side. We secured their hands and feet with more duct tape so they posed no risk to us, and covered them with a picnic blanket my mother insisted on providing. She thought comfort—we thought concealment.

I made a phone call and got the promise of help I needed. Then Sean and I drove them north. About an hour and a half up the M6 motorway, over the high-level bridge at Thelwall, and into Lancashire. Back to my old stamping ground.

Aware of our audience, we didn’t talk much on the drive up. At one point Blondie’s muffled voice demanded we stop so she could use the rest room. Classic hostage technique—get your captors to do you small favors. I wasn’t buying.

“It’s not much further,” I told her. “You’ll have to wait.”

“And what if I can’t wait?”

“That’s up to you—only you might want to bear in mind that this isn’t our vehicle, so we don’t really care what happens to it,” I said blandly. “Whereas you might not have a change of underwear for a while.”

She fell silent for the remainder of the journey.

Sean left the motorway at the north Lancaster exit, drove up the Lune Valley and then struck out along the winding back roads towards Wray. Eventually, at my direction, he turned off the main road and the Shogun clambered easily up a potholed farm track. At the top was a scruffy yard with an old stone barn at one side and a couple of dead pickup trucks fighting a losing battle with the weeds in front.

We passed through a set of stone gateposts, one of which was cracked clean in half, and drew to a halt. A moment later, the barn door opened and a big man with shaggy hair and a scarred face stepped out and glared at us, even though he’d known full well we were coming. At his heels was a mammoth rottweiler bitch. The dog appeared to be glaring, too.

I opened the door and climbed out. As soon as he recognized us for certain, the man broke into a grin that revealed several gold teeth.

“Charlie!” he said. “How are ya, girl?”

“Good, thanks, Gleet,” I said, shaking the oil-ingrained hand he offered. “You remember Sean?”

“Course I do, mate,” Gleet said, a certain amount of respect in his voice. He clicked his fingers dismissively to the dog who, with one last, longing look in our direction, turned and disappeared back into the barn. Gleet jerked his head towards the Shogun. “You got these two bodies you want storing, then?”

“Yeah,” Sean said, opening up the rear door. “Don’t take any chances with either of them.”

“No worries. Got a space cleared out at the back of one of the old pig sheds. They’ll be safe as houses back there and they’ll not get out across the field past that lot with their fingers intact, I can tell you.” He gave an almost delicate shudder. “Vicious little buggers, pigs.”

Gleet might live on a farm, but the day-to-day running was handled by his morose sister. He spent his time building beautiful custom motorcycles out in the barn, which was how I’d first come into contact with him.

His sister appeared now, a stocky masculine woman, silent and scowling, in a baggy flower-print dress over Wellington boots, and a knitted hat with a frayed hole in the crown.

Between us, we hauled our cargo out of the Shogun and untied their feet so they could walk. Don thought about making some kind of a play at that point, but his restricted circulation wasn’t up to it. Gleet’s sister manhandled him across the yard and through a galvanized metal field gate with all the careless skill of a woman who’s spent the last forty years dealing with bolshy cattle.

The free-range pigs were a new addition since my last visit to Gleet’s place, and they hadn’t done much for the landscape. Pigs like to dig, and the ground we staggered across was ankle-deep in muddy ruts, like the Somme after particularly heavy bombardment.

The pigs looked happy, though—and big, too. And intelligent in a sly, cunning kind of way, as if they knew full well they had the upper hand out here and they couldn’t wait for you to miss a step so they could prove it. They stopped wallowing and tunneling long enough to watch our halting progress across the field, past their corrugated iron arks to a dilapidated wooden shed.

Close up, the shed was a lot more solid than it had first appeared, with a shiny new padlock on the door. Inside, it stank of its last occupants, to the extent it made your eyes water. Blondie’s face showed her disgust.

“This isn’t over,” she said, her voice flat and buzzing slightly from the busted nose. “This isn’t anywhere close to being over.”

“Any time you feel up to a rematch,” I said, meeting her gaze, “you let me know.”

Her lips twisted into a grimace that might have doubled as a smile. “You have no idea, do you,” she said, “who you’re dealing with?”

“Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us?” Sean said. He gestured to the pigs, who’d edged nearer like they were hoping to pick up gossip. “Might make all the difference to the company you keep.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Blondie said, closing down. “I think they’re probably better than yours.”

Gleet’s sister gave her a shove backwards and bolted the door to their temporary cell behind the pair of them. It was only then I let the bravado fade from my face.

“Don’t worry, they’ll be fine,” Gleet said. “May and me’ll look after them.”

I realized with some surprise that I’d never known his sister’s name before. I turned to her and, aware of the listening ears, asked casually, “Are you still handy with that crossbow of yours?”

“Don’t need to be no more,” May said darkly, with the faintest glimmer of a twinkle in her dull gray eyes. “Them daft buggers at t’local council gave me my shotgun license back.”