Numb: A Dark Thriller (37 page)

61

Riley was sure he was about to pass out – maybe even die – until he saw the car pull up outside.

The sight of it suddenly gave him strength. It gave him the determination to sit up, despite his injuries. It gave him the energy to raise a hand at the man inside the newly-purchased-yet-very-second-hand Renault Clio (a snip at eight hundred quid from a local garage barely ten hours ago) and Riley suddenly found it very easy to smile and let out a laugh as Purvis left a sleeping Wendy safely in the back seat and hurried toward the lock-up. Purvis was laughing also.

Until he got a closer look at Riley.

“Shit, what the hell did he do to you?” he asked, his eyes frozen on the severity of Riley’s injuries.

“Just the bottom half.” Riley raised his ravaged hands. “This is self-inflicted.”

“What...  Riley, Christ, you need help!”

“Just see to Sandra.”

On hearing her name Purvis seemed to snap into action and ran to the wheelchair where Sandra had just about come to. She burst into tears when she saw him, and when he ripped her gag off he kissed her and told her everything was going to be okay and that Wendy was fine. She was out in the car, asleep and so they had to hurry. Then he went to untie her hands.

“Oh, Jesus...”

He looked back at Riley who was crawling over to them in a slick of blood.

“McCabe cut her finger off,” Riley said, calmly. “Let’s get out of here so she can get something for the pain.”

“Yeah, right,” Purvis said and began to undo the tape binding Sandra to the chair. “You need help too. Jesus, Riley, I’ve never seen someone so cut up.”

“The stump is on the floor,” Riley said.

“Stump?”

“Her finger.”

“I’ll get it, Riley,” Purvis said. “We’ll take it. Maybe it can be re-attached.”

“The last thing you want is to go to hospital and have a doctor ask questions,” Riley told him. “Besides, McCabe cauterised the wound. They won’t be able to stitch it back on.”

“Okay, we’ll leave it. Get dressed and we’ll go.”

“No,” Riley said. “Even the tip of a finger will have prints. The police will eventually find this place and run a scan on it. Sandra’s prints might be on record. They probably would’ve taken them when they dusted for prints at the mansion after the explosion. We don’t want anything tying her to this place. I’ll get rid of it.”

He scooped up the piece of flesh and bone and then tried to stand. He could feel every one of his limbs stiffening as he struggled to his feet.

Every step was slow and robotic, his legs seizing up as he headed into the next room. He couldn’t bend his knees much and he wasn’t sure how long they would support his weight. The constant trail of blood under his feet made walking even trickier but with sheer determination he managed to get where he needed. His hands were all but useless now, but he should be able to flush the evidence away down the toilet.

He barely acknowledged Howden’s body hanging over the small bathtub nearby, the plug hole stained red by the blood that had flowed from his opened arteries. Obviously McCabe had his reasons for killing Howden but Riley didn’t care to even work out what they might be. Howden was dead. He was another one that could no longer do anyone any harm and at least Dr Carter wasn’t in here with him. McCabe must have left his body back at the house. It was a small consolation, but at least he would receive a dignified funeral and not half a dozen small and unmarked graves.

Two awkward minutes later and Riley had indeed sent a part of Sandra’s anatomy into the sewers and made it back into the main room. He stopped by his pile of clothes on the workbench and sank to the floor and awkwardly pulled on his trousers and coat. He didn’t bother with anything else – especially his shoes. Not only would they be unable to fit over his swollen bloodied feet but he’d never be able to pull them on and tie the laces the state his fingers were in.

Once dressed, he then collected his wallet from the workbench.

Then his mobile phone.

The last call had ended almost two hours ago, just before the torture had begun and just after McCabe had finished his little confession.

“I can assume it worked,” he asked Purvis.

“Better than I’d hoped,” Purvis said as he finally freed the semi-conscious Sandra and lifted her from the seat. “There was a lot of background noise and I had to put the audio through a filter, but it did the job. I also chopped and edited it to match the visuals I set up. It’s hardly my best work but for the time I had it worked out okay.”

“I never doubted you could do it,” Riley said.

Purvis looked again at Riley’s injuries, most of them hidden under his clothes now, the blood instantly seeping through the fabric.

“And I never doubted you.”

62

Eh?

That was the first thing that popped into McCabe’s head upon entering the sitting room of the old scout’s hall.

He could see no sign of Purvis or the girl – at least not in the flesh. Instead, there they were, voices and all, on the laptop in the centre of the room. What the hell was this? A home movie of Purvis reading Wendy a bedtime story? What the fuck...?

The second shock was the group of men standing behind the laptop, guns pointed at them. There was at least six of them, all big, all mean looking, all wearing suits and eyeing them menacingly, as if to show that they were willing to open fire at a second’s notice should anyone try anything.

Before either he, Turner or Nash could understand the situation, McCabe heard footsteps behind them. He looked over his shoulder in time to see another five or six men enter the room behind them, also carrying weapons and looking just as mean as the ones in front of them.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Nash demanded, the Berretta in his hand suddenly seeming as useful as a peashooter in this situation.

Suddenly the group of men in front of them separated, and there he was - Lenny Dainton himself, suited and booted in his best attire, like this was a planned business meeting and he’d wanted to look his best. Behind Dainton, McCabe could now see someone else, a pathetic looking figure dressed in a dirty, torn suit. He was gagged and strapped to a chair and looked beaten half to death. Finally, through the blood and swollen features, McCabe recognised Shaun Rodgers.

Oh, shit!

McCabe looked at Nash, but Nash just stared at Dainton. Turner then looked at McCabe. He looked confused and nervous... scared.

McCabe then looked at Dainton, and Dainton smiled at him. At
him!
Not at Nash.

Game over,
McCabe thought. He didn’t know how, but somehow, he’d been grassed. The fact that he and Rodgers were in this together had been found out. They’d been set up. This was the end. All over. Full stop. But he didn’t know how to go out with a whimper. Only how to explode.

He raised the Berretta and swung it towards Dainton, thinking that having his brains blown out and his heart and lungs ripped to bits in a hail of bullets was preferable to what Dainton would surely have planned for him later.

Before he could get off a single shot, however, he heard a noise like a surge of electricity, a loud
Zhuuume!
and it instantly felt like his insides had collapsed. All of his muscles tensed and began to spasm. He dropped the gun as his heart seemed to stop for several seconds before going into overdrive. His bladder gave out as he collapsed to the floor. It was then he saw that one of the men behind him had taken him out with a cattle prod. A
fucking cattle prod!
Right in the armpit. Jesus, the pain. He’d rather have taken a bullet between the legs.

“I suggest you two put your weapons down,” Dainton told Nash and Turner as McCabe continued to twitch and dribble and writhe on the floor.

“Fuck you,” Nash snapped, keeping the gun on his mortal enemy. “What are you doing here? Are you in this with Purvis? You two in this together?”

McCabe, his limbs still twitching, saw Nash raise his gun. But he also saw the men behind him place the barrels of their weapons against the backs of both Nash’s and Turner’s heads.

“Go on, fucking kill me,” Nash said, keeping his gun trained on Dainton. “I’ll put one in you first and then at least I’ll die knowing I got the cunt who had my son killed.”

Dainton smiled, showing his sparkling teeth and shook his head.

“Maybe you should see something first.” He casually back away to the laptop and tapped a few buttons. Purvis’s reading of
The Three Little Pigs
disappeared. Then the screen lit up and something else appeared.

McCabe was just getting the feeling back in his limbs but couldn’t find the energy to do much else. He knew instinctively that what was about to be shown would blow the whole thing open. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. Dainton wasn’t going to show a home movie of his Christmas party, was he? No, this was important. This was it, the key to the whole thing, whatever it was...

McCabe tried to shout “No!” but what came out was “
Nwaaah!”
and a string of drool.

Then he saw himself on the screen. It looked like footage from outside Twilight nightclub sometime. Wait, it was the night of the shooting. Just before the shooting in fact. But the soundtrack was new. The talking over the looped footage showing McCabe darting behind the concrete pillar and waiting for the Peugeot was in a familiar voice.

Wait... it was
his
voice!

“...the original plan was to make it look like Dainton had taken out Nash...”

The voice recording repeated three times in time with the lopped footage. After the third time, the footage continued to show the muzzle flashes off-screen and Nash and Michael junior fall to the floor.

Then the footage changed. It looked to be a home-movie of some kind, unsteady and filmed at night. It showed a car, with one man inside and another at the window. The camera zoomed in more and framed both of their faces. The man outside the car was himself - McCabe. The man inside was Rodgers. Shit, that was only last night. They’d been followed. Spied on!

Then the audio kicked in again, and again, McCabe found himself listening to his own voice.

“...me and Rodgers got banged up in the same nick...”

McCabe looked up at the battered man strapped to the chair. Rodgers was crying, his tears mixing with the drying blood staining his face.

“...we became good mates... both realised things would be better with both bosses gone...”

Nash looked down at McCabe. His wild eyes had glossed over. Then he looked back at the screen where Rodgers was handing over the paperwork.

“... when Nash survived the shooting, we had to think of something else... I proposed that we kill Dainton’s nephew... we kill Dainton’s nephew... we kill Dainton’s nephew... I... I... I... proposed that we kill Dainton’s nephew...Rodgers told me about this big deal... said it would be a good place to take Dainton out...”

The screen changed again and split in two. One side showed a picture of the house they were now in. The other showed Purvis, posing for a photograph. He was wearing the same clothes he had been at the motel last night. The picture had only been taken in the last twenty-four hours.

“...when we find Purvis... Nash will get a bullet in the head...next week Dainton and his men will be arrested in a mass raid... by our good friend DS Davison...”

McCabe’s eyes widened with shock as a picture of Davison appeared on the screen. She looked a few years younger and was dressed in uniform. The image had probably been ripped from the Thirnbridge force’s website or something. Her voice then took over from McCabe’s.

“...Don’t hate me...I’m not like Thornton... I’m not in this for the money...I simply want to put Dainton away...”

That was only a couple of hours ago! Davison had spoken those exact words only two hour ago! That sneaky fucker Riley must’ve been hiding a bug up his arse or something. And as for the footage, this was clearly Purvis’s work.

Nash looked down at McCabe again, his face contorted with both shock and rage.

“
Turner’s in on it all... Turner’s in on it all...”

Nash turned to his second man.

“...he was just as fed up with Nash as I was... Turner was actually the one who asked me to contact Rodgers and set everything in motion...”

Turner stared back at Nash. Didn’t know what to say. Behind them, the footage and audio kept playing, repeating words and images, blowing the whole plan wide open.

“You,” Nash said slowly as he stared Turner down. “You... killed Michael.”

Turner shrugged, as if he knew the game was up.

“It wasn’t personal. It was-”

Nash moved before Turner could finish the sentence. He raised the gun, no doubt aiming to put a bullet between his second man’s eyes, but either the drink had rendered him unable to shoot straight or the shock revelations had made him shake. Either way, the bullet tore through Turner’s throat, punching him backwards with such force it looked as though he’d been snapped in half.

As Turner hit the floor, blood jetting from the torn artery, a hideous gargling cry escaping his mouth, Nash turned on Dainton. Aimed the gun.

But the men behind him had already begun to shoot, and at such close range, Nash was probably dead after the first two or three bullets ploughed into his back on their deadly course towards his internal organs. The several after those were probably just to make sure. The one fired into his head as he lay sprawled out on the floor, eyes bulging and glassy, was simply overkill.

McCabe still barely had any control of his body. All he could do was curl up like a frightened child as Dainton closed the laptop and walked up to him, his perfectly shined shoes squeaking with each step.

Nash was dead, his body having leaked at least two thirds of his blood and part of his skull cracked and broken, allowing a small, pink and grey mess to slop out. Turner was writhing on the floor, his hands to his throat. Air was escaping through the hole in his voice-box in a blood-clogged whistle. McCabe guessed that the sound would probably stop in a few seconds or so.

“It looks like it’s just you left,” Dainton told McCabe. Then he looked over his shoulder to Rodgers, helpless in the chair. “Well, and your friend over there.” He looked at Nash’s body and then at Turner, who finally stopped moving after one last, whistling breath. “They got off easily. You and Rodgers won’t.”

As Dainton ordered his men closer, McCabe screamed.