Safe House (31 page)

He tipped his head over on to his shoulder. Watched me as if he was greatly intrigued by my reaction.

I didn’t open my mouth.

‘Well, now’s your big chance,’ he said. ‘I’m going to come over and I’m going to pat you down. I’m going to start at your feet and work my way up. You might think that maybe you should kick me when I’m crouched in front of you. Or stick me with a knife you have hidden away in your sleeve. But that would be a bad idea. It’d be dangerous. You know why?’

I kept my mouth shut.

‘Tell me why,’ he said.

‘The gun,’ I told him.

‘And?’

‘And your bat.’

‘That’s right. A bat can do a lot of damage.’ He gestured towards Rebecca with the thick end. She was standing in the open doorway of the van, covering her pulped eyes from the hard sunlight. She looked beaten and dishevelled and grubby. She looked in dire need of medical care. ‘But a gun?’ Anderson continued. ‘Why, a nine-millimetre round fired at short range is pretty much guaranteed to kill. Maybe not fast. It can be made to kill slow. But it’ll still kill you in the end. Understand?’

I nodded.

‘Good.’ He used the bat to pat the air. ‘Then don’t move. Don’t even breathe, OK?’

He moved as if to take a step towards me but he was interrupted by a loud clatter coming from the van. Rebecca’s hands were open by her sides, her fingers spread. The craft knife bounced on the plywood floor.

‘Well, looky here,’ Anderson said. ‘Good for you, sweetheart.’

He flashed his teeth at her. Then turned the dazzle on me.

‘Anything you want to let go of, partner? What we have here is an official amnesty. Your friend dropped her blade, and I can forgive her for that. So if you have anything you want to show me, you just go ahead and throw it away into the dirt.’

I didn’t speak. Didn’t move. I just watched the guy, trying to ignore the tiny movements of the pistol muzzle I could glimpse out of the corner of my eye.

‘Well, OK,’ Anderson said. He spun the baseball bat in the air. A complete 360. Caught it cleanly in his palm. Passed it over to his left hand. ‘Amnesty over. Change of plan.’

He took a series of sideways steps, crabbing over towards Lukas. He claimed the Beretta for himself and pointed it at me, holding the bat by his side.

‘Go ahead and check him, Lukas.’

Lukas seemed uncertain.

‘Go ahead. Get to it.’

Lukas shook some feeling back into his arms, then advanced towards me. He was favouring his right leg, as if he’d injured his left. There was a marked stiffness to his movements. I guessed that might explain the bloody stain on my jeans.

‘That’s right,’ Anderson told him. ‘I have you covered. Now, start down by his feet. Feel around his ankles. Check his socks.’

Lukas had some difficulty crouching down. He had to use his hands to extend his left leg out in front of him, with the knee joint locked straight. I could understand what Anderson had meant. It was tempting to lash out and kick him full in the face. It would have been easy enough to do. Simple to overpower him. But not with a gun being held on me by a man who seemed very comfortable with a pistol at the end of his arm.

Switching roles had been a sensible move. But there were disadvantages, too.

I stayed still as Lukas worked his way up my legs, patting my calves and my thighs through the flannel material of my jogging trousers. First one leg. Then the other. He seemed embarrassed by the task and concealed his eyes behind his long hair. His movements were jerky and inhibited. I felt sure Anderson would have been a lot more thorough.

Lukas got as far as my waist. Anderson told him to pay particular attention to the elastic of my jogging trousers. He found nothing there, and struggled up to his feet so that he could pat his hands up my torso. The wrench was still hidden inside my sling. My instinct was to clench my arm hard against my chest, but I didn’t want to do anything that would give me away. Lukas worked along the sleeve of my free arm. Then he wrapped his fingers around my folded arm and pinched it, from the wrist to the elbow. His movements were delicate but probing, like a surgeon checking for breaks. I feigned a wince. He reduced the pressure he was applying, then abandoned the task altogether. He took a weighted step backwards and released a long breath, like he’d just inspected a primed bomb and had got away without being blown to pieces.

‘Satisfied?’ Anderson asked him.

Lukas nodded.

‘Good. Then check the girl.’

Rebecca staggered out of the van and swayed woozily in the clearing. Lukas went through the same process, beginning with her ankles and working his way up her body to the ends of her arms. I noticed that he didn’t meet Rebecca’s blackened eyes as he checked her.

‘She clear?’ Anderson asked.

Lukas nodded again. Fitfully this time.

‘Great. Then close up the van and come take this gun.’

Lukas slammed the sliding door shut, then limped back to Anderson and claimed the pistol. There was a soft breeze through the trees, swaying the tall pines and rustling the branches and needles. The sky above them was pale blue and near-cloudless. I could hear birdsong.

‘So, well done guys.’ Anderson sidestepped to my right, closer to the garage door. ‘Just the knife, right? And you dropped it during the amnesty, so that means we’re good. Except we’re not, as it happens. Because I lied about the amnesty.’

He moved fast, whipping the bat back over his shoulder, twisting at the waist and swinging with everything he had. The bat was a swooping blur. It buzzed in the air. I saw his elbows rotate, his wrists extend at the end of the swing. Then I felt the meat of the bat bury itself in the fragile plate of my bad shoulder.

I hadn’t expected it. I hadn’t adjusted my stance or braced for the impact. I was wide open at my most vulnerable point.

The pain was immediate and startling. Fissures of agony exploded across my back. My muscles spasmed. My head jerked back and I screamed and fell to my knees.

There was nothing I could do to smother the pain. I couldn’t clasp my hand to it. I couldn’t reach. My body was canted to the left, almost as if Anderson’s bat had passed right through me and taken a ragged slice of my torso with it. My left arm was dead. Completely busted. If the wrench hadn’t been hidden inside my sling, it would have dropped to the ground for sure.

The pain got worse. It bloomed and mushroomed. My eyes watered. My ears hummed.

Rebecca reached down to me, but I pushed her away. I knew that if anyone touched me the pain would be terrible. I thought of her face. The puffed-up, discoloured mess the bat had made of it. I couldn’t begin to imagine how bad it must have been for her.

‘Get up,’ Anderson barked.

But I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move. I was making a lot of involuntary sounds. Panting and whimpering, drawing fast, shallow breaths.

‘Get up or I’ll hit you again.’

This time, Rebecca didn’t take no for an answer. She ducked down and hooked a hand beneath my good arm and heaved me to my feet. I howled. She held me up. Her strength surprised me. I needed her there. My legs were jelly. I was twisted around to my side, face down, my back turned to Anderson. I must have looked like I was cowering. Maybe I was. All I knew for certain was that I couldn’t straighten up for fear of passing out.

‘That was for the knife,’ Anderson said. ‘You’re a partnership, right? If one of you screws up, one of you has to suffer the consequences. Understand?’

‘Enough,’ Rebecca said. ‘Just tell us what you want.’

‘What I want? OK, I want you to get inside the house. Right now. Lukas, you have the key?’

Lukas fumbled in his pocket. His movements were rushed and anxious. I got the impression he wanted Anderson to hit us again about as much as we did. He circled the bonnet of my van, limping heavily, and approached the front door.

We didn’t hesitate to follow. The last thing I wanted was to be struck again.

Anderson locked the van and then tracked us from behind. He was holding the baseball bat out in front of him like a cattle prod. It was just inches from my skin.

Lukas had some trouble fitting the key in the lock. His hand was shaking. He got it eventually and pushed the door open. Then he hobbled to one side and waved us into the hallway with the gun.

It was gloomy and there was a strong smell of damp I hadn’t noticed before. The carpet was thin and threadbare underfoot. The corridor wasn’t wide enough for two. I went first, at a stoop. Rebecca followed.

‘Go on into the kitchen,’ Anderson said.

Nothing had changed. The wooden table and chairs were still in the middle of the room. The cheaply tiled counters were still empty. The windows were still too low in the wall, and too small to let in sufficient light.

‘Head through into the garage,’ Anderson said.

There was a key fitted in a lock on the internal door. Rebecca turned it, then swung the door open and helped me to shuffle through.

The garage was close to pitch black. I stumbled down the step from the kitchen, wrenching my aching shoulder.

Anderson said, ‘Move forwards. Into the middle.’

We did as we were told. There was a dry click and the fluorescent tubes twitched into life, bouncing light off the vast concrete floor. The garage was almost exactly the same as the last time I’d seen it. The boiler in the corner and the immersion tank alongside it and the tangle of piping surrounding them both. The empty cubicle shelving behind us. The garage door off to our right.

The garage door was the only thing that had changed. A horizontal dent ran across the central portion of it, at about waist height. The skirt of the door had been shunted back by the force of the impact from the van, lifting it an inch away from the floor and revealing a bar of daylight. Now I understood that Anderson wasn’t simply a bad driver. He’d used my van to block off a potential exit.

That only left one way out, and Anderson was about to seal it.

‘Sit tight awhile,’ he said.

Then he yanked the kitchen door closed behind him and I heard the sound of the key turning in the lock.

Chapter Forty-six

Lukas sagged with relief as he set the gun down on the kitchen table. He hadn’t liked holding it. He hadn’t welcomed the sensation of having a weapon in his hand or the thought of what it made him capable of. He’d been terrified of having to shoot. First, because he didn’t trust his aim or his nerve. Second, because he dreaded the reality of what shooting someone would be like. The gore. The guilt. The queasiness of it all.

The baseball bat had been bad enough. Anderson had made him watch while he beat the woman, and now the man, too. Somehow, he’d kept it together, and he was thankful they hadn’t tried to fight back. He hated the idea of what Anderson would have done to them, but more than that, he feared what would have happened to him if they’d overpowered Anderson in some way. He was no fighter. He would have been at their mercy, and who knew what kind of revenge they might have taken?

He stared at the plain white door that separated him from their prisoners. The cheap key protruding from the lock. He’d spent weeks sitting in this dismal kitchen, looking at the exact same door, and now it was all that stood between him and a future he was scared to contemplate. What would Anderson do with the brother? With the female detective? Whatever it turned out to be, Lukas didn’t think it would be good.

‘Go get your laptop,’ Anderson told him. He tossed the baseball bat on to the kitchen table and reached a hand inside his trouser pocket. He removed the purple memory stick and held it between his finger and thumb, like it was an exotic fruit he’d just plucked. ‘Bring it back in here. Let’s see what’s on this thing.’

Lukas turned and hobbled along the corridor and out into the clearing. The pain from his leg wasn’t so bad. Anderson had given him drugs that numbed the feeling in his thigh. His leg felt dull and stiff, and he’d grown used to swinging it from his hip without flexing his knee.

It was silent in the clearing, but he couldn’t ignore the urge to check over his shoulder. He didn’t feel safe here. It wasn’t the woods. It wasn’t the isolation. It was the memory of fleeing the first time. Of the two men who’d arrived in a rush and overpowered Pieter. Of the panic and the confusion and the gunfire. It was the knowledge that if they’d done it once, they could do it again any time they liked.

He didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. And maybe it was better for them to come. Maybe it was better for them to overwhelm Anderson in the same way they’d crushed Pieter. That way, he wouldn’t have to face up to whatever Anderson would make him do. It would be out of his hands.

Lukas limped over to the Land Rover and opened the passenger door.
Your laptop
, Anderson had said. But his computer equipment had been inside the cottage. It had been taken away by whoever had snatched Lena, along with everything else they’d had with them. The laptop he was left with was the one he’d taken from the brother’s home, and it was far less powerful than he was used to. Three years old, at least, and the brother hadn’t bothered to update the software or upgrade the processors. It was about as basic and slow as a modern laptop can get.
Your laptop
. It wasn’t even close to the type of machine he’d choose for himself.

Lukas snatched it from the passenger seat and held it under the crook of his arm. Shuffled towards the cottage. He didn’t look at the white van. He didn’t want to think about the brother and the detective trapped inside the garage.

Anderson had taken a seat at the kitchen table by the time Lukas returned. He was toying with the pistol, aiming it towards the light fitting in the ceiling, squinting along his line of sight.

The memory stick was in the middle of the table, close to the handle of the baseball bat. Lukas scraped back a chair and sat down and flipped up the laptop screen. The hard drive purred and chattered. It was noisy and brash. It was painfully slow. The whirring grew louder and a pale-blue visual appeared. The blue washed across Lukas’s hands in the murky kitchen as he traced his fingertip over the trackpad and clicked on the user icon. The desktop materialised. Lukas pulled the lid off the memory stick and poked it into the USB port. More purring. More chattering.