Bad Sons (Booker & Cash Book 1) (30 page)

‘Just because the direction has changed doesn’t mean the commodity has.’

‘But why? Surely French organised crime has far easier and less expensive links with international drug business in mainland Europe than what we think they might have been trying to set up.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said. ‘What if they aren’t involved in organised crime? Maybe they’re new. And if someone is manufacturing in the UK and they don’t want to run the risk of drawing attention to themselves by supplying markets there they could have worked out that if they can get the stuff abroad in quantity and regularly business could be just as good. You don’t shit where you eat, my Nan used to say.’

‘She sounds nice. So what about this rather large logistical development in the theory; the big gaping hole – if there is no safe house linked up to the pipeline, how do they get around that? What do they do, just stand on the beach with buckets and wait for the stuff to float to the surface?’

‘I have no idea,’ she said.

Neither had I.

*

I’m not a big fan of shopping or shopping centres but the lights of Cité Europe were a welcome sight.

It was unseasonably dark by the time we drove under the height restrictors into the car park. The storm clouds that had been massing all afternoon in the Channel like an invading armada had drifted over northern France. The air held a strong promise that the dumping of their payload would not be long in coming. If nothing else, their heavy dark presence combined with the approaching dusk got the sensors in the car park lights excited.

Despite the threat of a heavy and sustained downpour, Jo chose to park in the great outdoor parking area. I learned she had a ‘thing’ about multi-storey car parks, although she didn’t want to explain why. It wasn’t important enough to argue about. We were able to park close enough to the entrance so that even if the heavens did open we wouldn’t have far to run.

The more of France we had put between us and Ambleteuse the greater our individual and combined sense of relief. We had even started engaging in conversation again.

We agreed, yet again, that perhaps it hadn’t been a complete waste of a trip after all and then Jo suggested that as we had only three hours before our scheduled return train we might as well get something to eat and she, for one, would like to take advantage of the duty-free shopping opportunity while she was here. I had relaxed enough to think, despite my shopping-mall aversions, I might prefer what she was suggesting to rushing back to an empty flat, alone. If we kept on agreeing so amicably with everything who knew where it might lead?

As the first heavy dark spots of rain began to pepper the dry concrete, we entered the mall and went looking for something to eat. It was starting to feel like a long day and I hadn’t had anything since breakfast.

Being not particularly busy inside, we had our pick of the eateries. We opted for the first self-service place we came to where the food looked appetising, plentiful and hot.

The change of scene encouraged a change of topic of conversation. It was nice to get away from the reason that had brought us there, if only for dinner.

Jo asked me about life abroad and I questioned her about being a police officer. It was all predictable and unexciting, but not unpleasant.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned through my experiences of the chase it is that when they have an attraction for each other men and women will chatter away enthusiastically on topics  they might ordinarily find yawningly boring. The fact that I was chatting away about teaching English as a foreign language to nine-year-olds who didn’t seem bothered about learning it and making it sound like fun would have been a clear indicator to me about my intentions regarding the woman opposite me. I had to hope that Jo waxing lyrical about being a copper meant something similar.

If I had needed further reinforcement of my own feelings, which I hadn’t, it would have come in the form of me lamely shuffling along in her wake with a smile fixed to my face as she browsed the perfumes and make-up and clothes and anything else that took her fancy. In the end we inevitably arrived at the alcohol and cigarettes outlet and I was able to console myself with a couple of litres of blended whisky and our combined limit of cigarettes.

Time flies when you’re having fun. After a last coffee – my idea, my treat; it was either that or more traipsing the aisles in search of bargains – it was time to go. We had a couple of plastic bags each and so I didn’t have to suffer my inner voice egging me on to reach for her hand as we made a dash for the car, clinking and rustling in the continuing deluge.

Maybe if I hadn’t been trying to protect myself and my purchases from the rain; maybe if I hadn’t been focussed on where I was putting my feet so I didn’t come a cropper and make an arse of myself in the wet; maybe if I’d thought just to have a quick scan of the car park before we left the safety of the building, we wouldn’t have been surprised, defenceless and so easily overpowered by the two men who had been waiting for us to emerge.

***

45

They stepped out of the sheeting rain like they had walked out of another dimension. I saw the man we had spoken to at the museum simply appear behind Jo and then there were arms – thick, hard and unyielding, like mature tree roots – clamping my arms to my side. I dropped my bags and above the noise of the downpour I heard the bottles smash on the concrete. At Jo’s throat I caught a flash of something bright and shiny that hadn’t been there through the day. For a crippling second I thought he was going to open up her neck there and then. Instead, he shouted through the rain and across the car roof to me.

‘If you do not want her death on your conscience, go with him without noise or fuss.’

The rain hammered all of us and kept witnesses away. I blinked it out of my eyes, toyed briefly with the idea of raising my legs up to push off from the car and see where it got me, but then I caught Jo’s wide-eyed terror and the moment was past. The giant already had me on the tips of my toes and heading towards their vehicle.

I hadn’t even registered the vehicle parked up a couple of rows away from Jo’s car. The side door of the panel van was open and he bent me over and pushed me face down to renew my acquaintance with the plywood sheet flooring. He snapped what felt like electrical cable ties on my wrists behind me and heaved me up inside. It was all done with a confident practised swiftness, like someone trussing livestock for market. Jo was pushed in after me and the giant pulled her to him and spun her round for the tying with the nonchalant disregard of a jealous child for another kid’s rag doll.

The side door slid shut with a heavy thump and the three of us were locked into the darkness. It had taken seconds. The feeble little interior light came on and I saw the giant’s arm lowered from the task.

Even in the dim light I could see he was an albino. The body suit he had been wearing when I had registered him that afternoon was gone to reveal snow-white long hair. What skin was not thickly covered by his dense white beard was a livid pink. But it was his eyes, like those of a blind man, that snatched my attention.  He wiped a massive paw across his dripping face while he filled the otherwise empty space with his size and his smell.

I could see no weapon but he didn’t need one. He was one. He looked like he could have smashed our heads together like a couple of last year’s Easter eggs and got the same result.

Another door slammed beyond the dividing bulkhead. The engine started and we were moving.

‘I’m a police officer,’ said Jo.

He just grinned an idiot’s grin. He put his finger to his lips and stared at her with his one good eye. His lazy eye was still looking in my direction. Jo said nothing else.

I looked at her and could see the fury on her face as the rain ran off her plastered scalp. In her world people didn’t do this kind of thing to serving police officers. But we were no longer in that world and when she realised it I thought she might start to look afraid. These men might be responsible – probably were responsible – for at least three deaths already. They killed old women and old men after torturing them and, given that they probably suspected us of knowing plenty about it, they wouldn’t think too hard and long about killing us too. As the van accelerated gently through the night and the rain continued to drum on the roof I had to wonder what they would feel it necessary to do to us before that time came.

‘I’m sorry, Jo,’ I said and received a painful kick from the giant and a look of stunned bewilderment from Jo.

She shook her head at me once. I think she meant me to shut up.

With our hands tied behind our backs and us blind to the twists and turns of the road we rolled and collided with each other and the sides of the vehicle, much to the idiot-giant’s amusement, as the vehicle wound its way through the French countryside. Because I expected we were being taken back to the museum that is the route I interpreted from the movement and duration of our journey.

On one particularly sharp bend, as Jo and I fell into the side of the van, there was a clatter of hard plastic as two registration plates with British numbers on them were dislodged from their hiding place to slide across the floor. They bore the same combination of numbers and letters I had memorised in Dymchurch high street an age ago. They didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already worked out.

The longer the giant studied us the more I came to see something of the mentally retarded, the clinically stupid, on his features and in his amused reaction to our situation. I didn’t know if this should encourage me. On the other hand, perhaps he was just insane or maybe a sociopath. In truth, there was precious little in our predicament to give me confidence in a good outcome.

It seemed we had covered a similar distance to the one we had already done twice that afternoon by the time the vehicle slowed to a stop.

The driver left the engine running and got out of the van. The rain was still heavy but above it I heard something akin to a heavy metal gate’s floor bolt scraping across a concrete surface. He got back in and drove forward a few metres and the process was repeated. We were where they wanted us to be.

The van lurched forward and stayed in first gear. We continued for another handful of seconds before coming to an abrupt halt that sent both Jo and me falling forward on to our faces on the wooden floor, much to the giant’s great delight.

With my hands tied behind me, I landed on my nose and felt the pain and the blood and the stinging in my eyes. The giant was laughing at us. I wanted to put something heavy and metal through his teeth.

I managed to get myself back upright. Jo was still lying down, struggling in her frustration. I felt the blood run into my mouth and spat it out.

The side door slid open and the driver poked his face in. He smiled when he saw me.

‘Pardon.’ He was grinning.

He said something in French to our guard and he crawled out, turned and grabbed hold of Jo. I had to watch helpless as she was dragged across the plywood flooring.

Unwisely, she kicked out and got a slap to the side of her head that I could see in the half-light stunned her senses. She was lifted clear and both the giant and she disappeared.

The driver leaned in once more and spoke to me. ‘Don’t have any stupid ideas. He will break you both like twigs without a thought for it. He is not evil, you understand, just simple, devoted to me and obedient. Unfortunately for you, and anyone else who upsets him or me, he has no concept of morality. This, I think, makes him more dangerous than the alternative, no? Now, out.’

I shuffled over on my backside, pulling myself forward with my legs and feet. When my feet were over the edge he hauled me up and showed me the blade again, in case I’d forgotten what it looked like. At least six inches of clean wide steel serrated on one edge and narrowing to the kind of point that would probably pierce sheet metal without much effort. If there was one thing that scared me more than a hunting knife it was a hunting knife in the hand of someone who was threatening me with it.

He gave me a gentle shove forwards and I heard the van door slide on its runners and thump home. A dim light burned on a pole almost above us. Its watery weakness cast malevolent shadows from the outlines of the armoured vehicles and assorted hardware that decorated the area. 

We were back at the museum. But not the main building. The curved half-cylindrical outline of the roof arching in the darkness and the rain above us put me in mind of an old Nissen hut I used to play table tennis in.

I felt the hand in my back again and I was propelled towards a dark opening in a wall in front of me. As we approached, a light came on inside and it spilled out across the wet concrete, guiding me on.

I stepped over the raised threshold to find myself in what looked like some kind of repair shop; somewhere exhibits were first brought to be tarted-up, brought back to something of their former glory before going on display in the yard or the main building.

There was a long workbench stretching almost the length of the wall to my right. It was littered with bits and pieces of heavy-looking green-painted metal. Near it on the floor was what I thought was part of a gun carriage. The six foot cannon was suspended above the bare concrete floor a couple of feet by an assembly of chains and pulleys. The place smelt of damp and metalwork and oil and the past.