The Administration Series (120 page)

"Give me something else to do," she said.

Now he looked at her. That was the way to get his attention — make a noise like a useful tool.

"Ah, all right." He pointed to the screen on the other desk. "I'll send some records over there. I assume you know how to do the searches."

She sat down and waited while the screen filled, nibbling the last patch of Metallic Midnight Blue from her thumbnail.

Toreth had given up faking unconsciousness when the pain from the position he was in became too much to bear. To his surprise, Jonny hadn't returned immediately. Not that he was complaining. In the dark, he couldn't tell for certain, but he felt bruised from neck to waist, with a few stray hits on his legs which felt as if they'd bruised even through his trousers.

He'd tried it before, but he couldn't help another tug on the cuffs. He hooked the fingers of his left hand round the bolt in the wall and twisted. Nothing. Whoever had put the thing in had done a good job. He pulled harder, until finally his hand slipped and his right wrist slammed into the wall, driving the edge of the cuff into the abused flesh.

"Jesus fucking
Christ
. Fuck, fuck, fuck — "

He bit the words off and waited, breathing hard, for the door to open.

After a minute with no response to the noise, he let himself relax again. Ha. Relax — there was a joke. He concentrated, cataloging his body, trying to find something that didn't ache. His eyelids felt pretty good. His tongue, although he was thirsty as hell. And no one had kicked him in the bollocks yet, although no doubt Jonny would get round to it eventually. There was a cheerful thought.

Another few hours of this, twelve at the most, and Toreth knew he wouldn't be able to stand unaided. After that his chances of getting out on his own were zero.

When the lights came up again, he'd completely lost track of time. For a disorienting moment, he imagined he'd been there all night and it must be Sunday. Surely it couldn't have been that long?

The door opened and Jonny entered, with the dark-haired man who'd spoken to Toreth at his flat. He was speaking to Jonny now, urgently. Toreth caught the tail end of the sentence. " — but no one saw us. No one."

Jonny looked more like he had after their first meeting: flushed and wide-eyed.

"Get him out of here, Chris. Get rid of him." Jonny was obviously trying to keep his voice low, but the high, panicked whisper carried perfectly.

"Sir?" Toreth recognised that tone of voice: an underling's disagreement phrased as a request for clarification.

"You know what I mean. Get
rid
of him."

The man addressed as Chris nodded, still looking reluctant. He waited by the door; Jonny crossed the room to stand in front of Toreth, making a poor stab at composure.

"You're in luck. Change of plan. I have to go somewhere, so you get to die today instead of tomorrow." He smiled, a shadow of his normal arrogant smirk. "Do you feel lucky yet?"

Toreth looked at him with open contempt. He didn't believe a word of it. The gutless fuck was running scared of something. An unlikely surge of optimism pushed the pain back.

"When I&I get hold of you, you little shit," Toreth said clearly, projecting to Chris and anyone beyond the open door, "it's going to take a fuck sight more than a rich daddy and a handful of hired muscle to help you. Looking forward to the re-education, are you?"

Jonny stood for a moment, his eyes sliding away from Toreth's, and then he turned to Chris. "Do it. Kill him," he said, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Then he hurried out of the room, without another glance at Toreth.

Chris spoke to someone outside, then stood in silence, chewing his bottom lip and staring at the floor.

"What's going on?" Toreth asked without much hope of an answer. He didn't need to ask, anyway, not for the general outline. "I hope you realise that if you kill me, you're stepping into deep shit. I&I doesn't appreciate losing employees."

Chris looked up, actually seeing him for a moment.

"Didn't your boss mention?" Toreth said. "I'm a para-investigator."

"Shut the fuck up," Chris said after a moment. "Or you'll be a dead para-investigator, sooner rather than later."

Toreth shut up. There was nothing more he could say, anyway. He hoped a sense of self-preservation would do the rest for him.

If it was going to, it didn't do it straight away. The three other men who'd collected him from his flat came into the room, looking professionally stoic. Chris gestured to him.

"Bring him along," Chris said without enthusiasm, already turning to leave the room.

Perhaps something in his tone made them hesitate. No one moved, and he stopped and glared at them. "Are you fucking deaf? You're not getting paid to stand around — get him to the car. I won't be long. I'm going to discuss bonuses."

Warrick checked his watch. Two minutes later than when he'd last looked. Every minute that passed was a tiny decrease in the odds of seeing Toreth again. Warrick used to know the statistics for corporate kidnap victims by heart, before he'd decided that it was pointless to worry about it.

"I was going to have a party," Sara said, unexpectedly.

Warrick looked up from the computer, startled. She sat at the other desk, staring blankly at the screen where Jon Kemp's credit and purchase records lay open, illegally accessed.

"What?"

"The ring Toreth took back — I told you about it earlier. I was going to sell it and have a party."

"You still can."

She didn't reply, because she didn't need to. Not if he's dead, was what she meant.

"He's going to be fine." Every time he said it to her, he believed it a little less. He wished that she'd go away, back to her own flat, so that he wouldn't feel obliged to keep pretending. Or at least leave him alone in the study for a while. Seeing her there, though, stricken with guilt, he couldn't say it.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him of missed lunch, and he thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone.

"Why don't you get us something to eat?" he suggested. "Take a break from the screen. Make sandwiches. Or there's fresh soup in the fridge."

"I'm not hungry."

"Well, I am."

She hesitated. "What would you like?"

"Banana sandwiches. With plenty of black pepper." Coding food. Comfort food.

She wrinkled her nose. "God, that sounds revolting."

"I like them."

"Okay. Maybe I'll try one as well."

He smiled, knowing it wasn't going to look very convincing. "You'll love them, I promise."

After she left, he turned back to the screen, where the computer was running searches of Kemp's properties, looking for some link to Jonny, for somewhere he may have taken Toreth. An illusion of action, nothing more than killing time.

Amazing how many metaphors used that word, when he thought about it.

Toreth sat in the car in a daze, sick with the relief of being able to lower his arms at last. They'd blindfolded him and recuffed his hands behind his back, and his wrist was still settling slowly back down from agony to manageable pain, but at that exact moment, he didn't care about any of it. It was almost worth the prospect of being shot if he could relax his shoulders until then. The abused muscles ached viciously, but at least it was a different kind of hurt.

The door opened and closed as someone got in. Chris, at a guess. Toreth wondered how the bonus negotiations had gone. He hoped Jonny had told Chris where to stick it, but he very much doubted that he had. Judging from Jonny's expression in the cell, he'd probably pay anything to get rid of Toreth.

A voice from the front of the car asked, "Where are we taking him?"

"The usual place," Chris said. Toreth's hopes rose slightly, because he didn't sound happy. Maybe the bonus wouldn't be big enough after all. "Tell the car to take a long way round."

"What do you — "

"Oh, for God's sake. A long way.
Any
way."

Toreth was tempted to say something. In the end, he decided against making Chris any more annoyed than he already clearly was.

Sara ate her sandwiches in the sitting room, watching the setting sun finger-paint the sky in dabs of neon pinks and reds. Pollution in the atmosphere, as her dad always said when there was a particularly beautiful sunset. Lights were starting to come up across New London. This time yesterday she had been in the bar, laughing at one of Kel's stories, only sparing a minute or two to wonder where Toreth was and who he was fucking. Knowing she'd get all the details at work in the morning. If she'd checked last night, instead of today . . .

All her fault. Her mistakes, all along the way.

Warrick wasn't in the study. She found him in the kitchen, brewing yet another pot of tea. The water was starting to boil, and he stood, apparently watching the steam wisping from the kettle.

"We should've heard by now," she said.

He didn't answer.

"I thought it was going to work," she said bleakly. "I really did."

"It still might."

"We would've heard. It'll be dark soon." She didn't know why that mattered, but it did.

He looked round briefly. The effort it cost him to keep his voice level showed in his set expression.

"Sara, there is no reason to expect to hear anything. A call to us is a connection. An admission. Dangerous. All we can expect is that he turns up or he doesn't."

She knew all that. It wasn't why she'd come to look for him. She'd wanted to ask him something since she'd first thought of it, a couple of hours ago. She hadn't asked then because she already knew the answer.

"What if Jonny finds out we called Kemp?"

"Then there's a chance that he'll kill Toreth." No hesitation — he'd obviously thought about it as well. "Perhaps even if he hadn't planned to do it before."

She stared at him, speechless, hating him for not lying to her.

"That was always the risk." He paused, then added, "It was still a good idea.
Is
a good idea. It isn't time to write it off yet."

She couldn't tell if he meant it, or if he was merely being kind. It didn't matter, anyway. It had been her idea and so, if it went wrong, her fault yet again.

The water was boiling hard now, and the click of the kettle switching off sounded loud.

"We have to call I&I." Sara didn't know why she was asking permission. She should just make the damn call, whatever he said. He'd been the one who had wanted to do it in the first place. "If they start a full-scale search, they can get Justice to help."

Warrick looked up from pouring water into the teapot. "If we do, he's finished. We won't be able to stop everything coming out."

"The sun's setting." The feeling came again that this was important. The last chance.

"Give it another hour. Half an hour."

Then she lost it. "I don't know why you're so keen he keeps his bloody job! You hate it, anyway. I'd have thought you'd be
pleased
if they threw him out."

He turned quickly, slopping tea from the pot onto the floor. "Then you don't — "

Then, before she could register the emotion — anger? fear? — it was gone. Taking a cloth from the sink, he wiped up the tea. "Do whatever you think best," he said coldly, and went back into the study.

She watched him go, thought about the comm.

She'd give it an hour.

The long way round hadn't felt very long. All the time he'd hoped for Jonny to call and tell them to let him go, or for Chris to have a spontaneous attack of intelligence. Neither had happened.

Now he stood on a muddy bank, listening to the river nearby. That's where he'd end up, when they'd done with him. He could also hear a low, muttered discussion, not unlike the ripple of the water. An argument. He knew that he ought to try to listen, to work out what was going wrong and how he could use it. He ought to, but it was taking all his concentration to keep control of the knowledge that, whatever the trouble was, he was probably going to die here. Even if I&I hunted Jon Kemp and all his hired thugs down and nailed them to the wall over it, it wouldn't do him one fucking bit of good because his funeral would be long over. If anyone ever found his body.

Dead and gone and he'd never . . . well, he'd never done a lot of things. Precious little point thinking about all that crap now, and it still might not come to that if he could keep his head.

Concentrate.

He tried to map out his surroundings: river to one side, voices in front and behind, the ground slippery underfoot. The air had a cool, evening feel against his bare skin and a warmth on his right side suggested sunlight. Stink of tidal river in the air. Death and decay.

Chris's voice rose behind him, silencing the others. Sounding worried. "Yes, sir. Yes, I'm listening."

Long pauses between the phrases — he was speaking over a comm. "Yes, I do appreciate that. Thank you, sir." Now he sounded relieved, and there was an answering murmur from the others around him. Relief that they weren't going to have to take the risk of killing him?

"I didn't — no, sir. No. Yes, I can do that, sir, absolutely. I understand. Of course. Thank you, sir."

Then footsteps approached, squelching up behind him.

"Kneel," Chris ordered him.

No way. No way in hell. "Fuck off."

He felt a light touch on his thigh, then sudden, searing pain. Muscles spasmed, pitching him full length. More pain stabbed up his arm as he reflexively tried to bring his hands round to break his fall. As it was, the soft ground cushioned the impact, but left his mouth and nose full of filthy mud.

Lifting his head, he coughed and spat. Shock stick, he thought. Not a high setting, so there wouldn't be any permanent damage. Then he realised how little that mattered. He struggled to his knees, despite the residual spasming in his leg, but he couldn't manage to stand. Bastards.

"Fuck you," he said distinctly, hoping there was an open comm of some kind, so that Jonny could hear him. "Fuck you, you spineless cunt. I should have done the world a fucking favour and killed you when I had the chance."