Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (28 page)

Ray was looking down on himself in the centre of the room, where he sat restrained and motionless. Thorpe and Boyle were hovering around nearby, circling past every so often to check on him. Instinctively, he reached with his left hand and pressed ‘n’, the key bound to ‘say_team: Help! Frozen nowhere guarded by [RED TEAM] Thorpe and [RED TEAM] Boyle’. In the Freeze Tag mod, you needed a team‐
mate to stand next to you for three seconds in order to thaw you out – then you could go looking for some payback. Ray heard loud blasts and looked along the corridor, where a blue female figure was strafe‐
jumping towards him, making Thorpe and Boyle take the pain. Their puny pistols no match for her double shotgun, they both scattered in search of fresh armour and health packs. She stood above Ray, checking all angles for snipers as her proximity initiated the release process, during which they were both at their most vulnerable. He couldn’t see her face, only her back. On the keyboard, he hit ‘X’, bound to his thank‐
you message, to find out her name. ‘Much obliged, [BLUETEAM]?????? m8!’ it read.

There followed the familiar, anticipated crash and tinkle of being unfrozen, which was when Ray awoke and instantly sat up. He enjoyed no moment of semiconscious delirium this time, no gradual remembrance of his waking circumstances. The fucking light was still on for a start, so as soon as he opened his eyes, he could see just how deep in the shit he was still submerged. He looked at his watch. It was after four, meaning he had been out for five hours, more than he usually managed at home these days. It felt like longer; too long, in fact. It felt like he’d slept in and was now running late, with the thing he was late for being the rest of his life.

They’d left him on that chair all day and well into the evening. There’d been no sleep there, no merciful oblivion. Instead it had been like suspended animation, with hours disappearing and individual seconds lasting an unbearable eternity. Every moment was spent wondering what was going to happen next, willing something to happen, something to change, to end this limbo of unknowing; all the while dreading those very same things. He’d tried in vain not to think of Kate and Martin, their names and faces simultaneously giving comfort and torment. He’d wished and he’d fantasised, allowing himself those indulgences as long as he stayed off hope. He wanted to hold them both again. He wanted to escape. He wanted answers. He wanted revenge. He wanted a chaingun, Quad Damage and a shitload of bullets. But he’d probably have settled for dry trousers and a change of underwear.

They had interrogated him, purely an exercise in stomping his psyche, much as the mock execution had been. There certainly didn’t appear to be any other purpose to it, as he didn’t have anything to tell them and they didn’t have much to ask. Ray had posed more questions than they had, though it was a dead heat on who garnered the more information, [RED TEAM] and [BLUETEAM] tied at fuck‐
all.

After letting him almost literally stew in his own juices for another few hours, they came back, though this time Boyle was accompanied not by Thorpe, but by the guy who’d driven the people‐
carrier the previous night. It was hardly a revelation, but at least it narrowed down the theories field, scratching the ‘rival factions, caught in crossfire between’ subcategory.

They untied him but replaced the hood, then ordered him to stand up, which he did on unsteady legs. His feet and calves had gone numb, and while putting weight on them wasn’t actually painful, the sensation was far from pleasant. The thought of what he might be walking towards didn’t help.

Ray was led out of the room and along an L-shaped hallway that turned right after about ten or twelve paces. The floor changed from lino or tiles to wooden boards again. The bag was removed, revealing him to be in a large kitchen, with deep twin sinks and a rusted range that was merely a good clean and a paint‐
job away from being worth a couple of grand. Through the grimy window he could see headlights and hear the noise of the lorry’s engine being revved up. This time, though, he wasn’t getting a lift.

Boyle opened a door, beyond which was darkness. He flipped a switch on the wall outside and illuminated the bare shelves of an old‐
fashioned walk‐
in pantry.

‘Your suite awaits, sir.’

Ray tried to think of a witty comeback, but as the only words bubbling near the surface were ‘fuck fuck cunt cunt bastard wanker prick arsehole knob‐
end’, he decided to keep them to himself, for now. The other goon shoved him inside, before Boyle closed and locked the door. Ray then heard straining and an ungodly screech of metal as they dragged the range in front of the door, presumably in case Ray knew how to pick locks using wooden skelfs. He slumped down to the ground, a thin sheet of lino covering the damp‐
smelling floorboards. High above him, a bare bulb dangled from a grey flex, giving out enough light to induce radiation sickness. He could probably twist it out if he climbed up the empty shelves, but it wasn’t like he was planning to kip down for the night.

Not planning to, but his knackered body had other ideas. He remembered sitting with his back to the door, not lying down, so he must have slumped after losing consciousness. His exhaustion existed on so many levels that merely closing his eyes against the intrusive light had been enough: his brain sussed that there was bugger‐
all reason to be awake at this point and had decided to shut all systems down for a while.

Five hours. Five hours uninterrupted. Even with that pigging light on and the cold damp in his trousers, it had been his best stretch of sleep since Martin came home from the maternity hospital. As a result, he no longer felt so resigned or submissive, and didn’t just feel awake: he felt revived, purposeful, dynamic even. Unfortunately, he was feeling all of those things inside a locked cupboard.

He got to his feet and climbed up on the lowest shelf to survey what might be resting on the higher ones. He found dust, wood shavings, a Biro and the statutory empty paint tin. Even the bloke in The A Team would be struggling to fashion an escape plan out of that lot. Ray stepped down, the floorboards wobbling under the renewed weight and his ankle about five degrees from disaster. Probably rotted through, he reckoned, the thought lighting up the only bulb brighter than the bare effort hanging from the ceiling.

He lifted the sheet of lino and rolled it up, placing it on one of the shelves. The boards below were ancient‐
looking things: warped, loose, soft and decayed. Ray retrieved the paint tin and wedged it open with the Biro, then squeezed the lid between two of the floorboards and stood on it with his heel. One end popped up without struggle, the bent and rusted nails easily pulling free of the damp joist underneath. The boards either side also came up with negligible resistance, and he placed them on shelves out of the way to let the ample light shine into the resulting hole. There was earth about two feet below, leaving a crawlspace just deep enough to get into. He took off his jacket, placing his wallet and housekeys in his trousers’ back pocket, then slithered his way into the gap, hands first.

There were walls at his back and to the left; the kitchen’s underside to his right. That was where he wanted to go, but he had to move forward first to get his entire body through the hole, an endeavour not assisted by the support joist that shaved four or five inches off his overhead clearance. He turned his head sideways and edged forward, his hair and left ear burrowing into the dusty earth. There was a smell that reminded him of hoes and old lawnmowers. He could see nothing, his body blocking all the light behind him. His left arm prodded at the darkness ahead, fumbling in the earth to drag himself forward. Somehow, he got both of his feet down through the space and stretched his legs out behind him, digging his toes into the soil. Light was spilling down around him now, enough to make out a wall just a few feet ahead. He used the extra purchase to pull his head back out from under the joist, then began maneuvering sideways in the direction of the kitchen. The overhead clearance grew as the ground began descending ever more sharply, until he was all but sliding down an incline into the dark. He came to a halt against another wall, from where he was able to look up the short slope at the hole he’d made.

He was in the foundations of the house, in a small chamber enclosed on three sides by walls and on the fourth by the slope. There was enough light to see pipes leading into the kitchen and electrical cables snaking along the subterranean stonework. More importantly, he could also see a square gap in the foundation wall, leading into the next chamber. The gap, just big enough for a man to crawl through, must have been put there to allow plumbers and sparks into where Ray was now – which suggested that the chamber they came from must be accessible from the surface.

Ray crawled into the space, discovering that the slope did not continue on the other side. Instead, the ground fell away completely beneath the gap. He patted the wall below, leaning down as far as his balance allowed, then a little further than his balance allowed. The ground turned out to be only a few inches further down than his reach, but it was a long few inches to fall when you didn’t know that. He belly‐
flopped ungracefully on to the hard stone floor, where he looked up to see salvation in the shape of a cracked, frosted‐
glass window, through which moonlight was dimly shining. The smell like hoes and old lawn‐
mowers turned out to be coming from a hoe and an old lawnmower, among several other derelict gardening implements lining the walls of what was unmistakably a cellar.

Ray took a moment to compose himself and shake the dust from his hair, then held his breath as he tried the doorhandle. It opened amid minor squeakage and major exhalation. Utter negligence on the part of the proprietor, who would have no‐
one to blame but himself if some motivated master‐
criminal made off with his museum‐
piece Qualcast.

The door gave on to a short stairwell, leading to the rear of the house, where weeds and wild grass had smothered the potentially noisy gravel. Ray climbed until his head was at ground level, then flattened himself against the stairs, scanning the area. His car was sitting twenty yards away, to the side of the house. There was a chance the keys would still be in the ignition, it being unlikely his captors were much concerned about passing thieves. The same went for the Rover, for that matter. However, if the keys weren’t in the ignition, the sound of the door opening could be enough to drastically cut his head start for having it away on his toes. He could head for the trees silently right then, but in the debit column for that option was the fact that he had no idea where he was, what lay beyond the trees or how long it would be before the goons came to retrieve him from the pantry and discovered he’d gone.

He stayed still a few more moments, listening for any hint of activity. There was nothing to be heard. All through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a gun‐
toting bampot.

Ray kept tight to the walls as he made his way around the building, picking each step with delicate care to minimise any sound. His own car was nearer, so he approached it first and peered through the window, but the moonlight was insufficient to make out whether there were keys in the ignition. He placed his fingers on the handle and prepared to pull, then decided against it and gently let go. The night was so still and quiet, the sound was bound to carry. If he was going to gamble, better to gamble with the Rover. In fact, it was inarguably the better bet, as it wouldn’t need ten minutes of warming up as protection against stalling, neither of which were conducive to a swift getaway.

Ray made his way stealthily to the larger car and pressed his face to the glass. The Rover was parked at a better angle to catch the moon, but there still wasn’t enough light to see much inside, other than a blinking LED on the stereo. Beyond it was a people carrier, like he had seen the previous night, as well as a van and two Mondeos, each hitched to a trailer‐
mounted speedboat.

Again he placed his fingers on the handle, pulling until he met resistance and gradually applying more pressure. He could feel the mechanism straining nearer and nearer to release, but knew that however gentle that final increment was, what followed would be as percussive as if he’d just given it a good yank. At that moment, he heard a cough and the sound of footsteps inside the house. He immediately flung the door open and dived into the driver’s seat, his right hand reaching and finding keys in the ignition.

‘Thank fuck.’

The engine leapt instantly to life and he spun off up the track, one hand on the wheel and the other fumbling around for the headlights. In his rearview mirror he could see the front door of the house, out of which two figures emerged, almost tripping over one another in their haste. His right hand found the headlights as he changed up and floored the accelerator, the illumination arriving in time to save him from shooting straight across the approaching T-junction and into the field beyond.

He hit the brakes and turned hard right, skidding and slewing from one side to the other before getting the machine back under control. A few seconds later, he glanced in the rearview again and saw his own black Polo make the same turn, which was when he knew he was clean away. They’d grabbed it first because it was nearest and, unburdened by trailers, theoretically faster than any of the other vehicles parked outside the house. Theoretically.

Ray slid the Rover into fourth and put further effortless distance between the cars, allowing himself a little smile as he felt the powerful acceleration and imagined his pursuers’ faces, hobbling along in his Polo. It was the first and only time he was grateful to Div for selling him the useless piece of shit.

Everybody knew someone like Div, a kind of loveable mess whom all your instincts warned you not to trust, but still you couldn’t help doing so; after which you only had yourself to blame.

Actually, that was selling him short. The words ‘Div’ and ‘shambles’ were inextricably synonymous in the minds of anyone who knew him, but the evidence could be contradictory. Here was a guy, for God’s sake, who these days ran a successful business undertaking the flawless, meticulous and precise relocation of entire computer networks, and yet any time they organised a LAN party, Div was the one who would turn up with half his system missing and need to borrow bits from everyone else. And while Div always gave the impression of being chaotically unreliable, it was difficult to remember an occasion when he had genuinely let Ray down (pace the Polo, but technically even that had now been redeemed).