The Deadly Game (16 page)

Chapter 23

A gun was pushed into his face, the barrel pressing painfully into his cheek.

‘Any funny business and you get a bullet in the leg,’ said the man. ‘We need you alive, but that don’t mean we can’t hurt you. Understood?’

Jake forced a nod. He felt sick.

The man sitting in the back of the car next to Jake lowered the gun and rested it on Jake’s leg, pointing at his knee. He was broad-shouldered, the hand that held the gun big and powerful. Jake’s head was still throbbing from the punch. From the force of the punch, and the man’s bent and flattened nose and the scars around his eyes, Jake guessed he’d once been a boxer. He still had the power to hit hard.

The man in front of the car at the steering wheel was shorter and thinner. Not that Jake could see much of him, but he guessed that from the man’s thin neck, and the way he sat low in the driver’s seat.

‘Put your head down,’ ordered the Boxer.

‘What?’ asked Jake.

‘Put your head down, face forward,’ the man snapped, and he poked the end of the barrel of the gun warningly into the side of Jake’s leg.

They don’t want me to know where I’m going, thought Jake. He put his head down, twisting in the back seat so it touched his knees. The big fist that held the gun was now right by his eyes.

‘What do you want?’ asked Jake. ‘I haven’t got anything.’

‘The book,’ said the man with the gun. ‘The one you found at . . .’ He frowned. ‘Where was it?’

‘Glastonbury,’ said the man at the front.

‘Yeah. Glastonbury,’ grunted the Boxer.

‘I haven’t got it,’ said Jake.

‘Then that’s a pity,’ said the driver. ‘Because we’re going to have to hurt you until you tell us where it is.’

After what seemed an eternity, the car finally stopped. Jake heard the driver’s door open, and footsteps, and another door opening.

‘OK. Out,’ ordered the Boxer.

Jake sat up. He felt stiff all over from having held his twisted-up position in the back of the car. He opened the car door and got out. They were by a row of lock-up garages, one of which was open. Jake now saw that the other man was, indeed, short and thin. Shorty gestured at Jake.

‘In,’ he said.

The Boxer prodded Jake with the gun, and Jake walked into the garage. Shorty locked the car, then pulled down the garage door. It closed with an ominous click as it locked shut. The garage was lit by two overhead fluorescent lights. The central area was clear to allow a car in, but right now there was just a chair on its own in the middle of the garage.

Jake was reminded of the chair he’d woken up tied to in the timber yard in Holloway Yard. Had that been these same two men? Something told him no; apart from the chloroform, he hadn’t been injured. These two were set on inflicting pain.

Shorty walked Jake to the chair, and began to tie him to it with ropes. The memory of Robert’s body, battered, bruised and bleeding, tied to a chair in his living room, flashed in Jake’s mind.

‘You’re the men who hurt Robert,’ he blurted out.

‘That’s an allegation, that is,’ said Shorty, pulling the ropes tight around Jake’s wrists.

‘He wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know,’ grunted the Boxer.

‘You fractured his skull!’ said Jake angrily. ‘You nearly killed him!’

‘So, if you know that, ask yourself, how much do you want to be hurt?’ asked Shorty, and he looked into Jake’s face and gave a grin that sent a shiver of fear through him. The short man’s smile was evil. The Boxer’s the tough one, but Shorty likes inflicting pain, Jake realised.

When the punch came it was short but hard, smashing into Jake’s face, catching him high on the head and rocking him back, the chair tilting with it. Pain filled Jake’s brain. As the chair rocked forward, Shorty swung his other fist. As it connected, more pain surged through him. This time when the chair tilted, it carried on, and Jake found himself smashing into the concrete floor of the garage. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and he knew he was bleeding from his forehead, when he’d hit the ground hard as he toppled sideways, still tied to the chair.

‘Want me to have a go?’ asked the Boxer.

Jake looked up and saw Shorty shake his head. He was grinning, and Jake knew he was enjoying this.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Anyway, that’s just for starters, to let him know we mean business. Put him back up.’

The Boxer ambled over to Jake, reached under his arms and lifted him and the chair up as if they weighed nothing. He put Jake and the chair back down in the centre of the garage. Jake’s head was throbbing painfully from the punches, and from where he’d fallen. His forehead screamed with pain from grazing it on the concrete, and blood dripped down past his eyes and trickled from between his lips. He wondered if any of his teeth were loose.

Shorty grinned at Jake, then stepped away from him and gestured at the garage walls. Mechanic’s tools of all sorts hung from hooks.

‘When we were at your friend’s house we had to improvise,’ said Shorty, his cheerful tone making Jake feel even sicker to his stomach. ‘But here, we’ve got everything we need: pliers, heavy-duty car batteries and jump leads, claw hammers, screwdrivers.’ He smiled. ‘And the beauty of it is we’re away from the main road, so no one can hear you scream.’

He walked back and stood in front of Jake.

‘So, what’s it to be? You tell us where the book is or we start to take you apart. How much do you reckon you can take before you tell us?’ He turned to the Boxer and asked, ‘How long d’you reckon he’ll hold out? Two fingernails? A broken arm?’ He turned back to Jake, saying, ‘I reckon you’ll talk once we’ve fixed a car battery to a certain very sensitive part of your anatomy and sent a few serious charges through you. The skin burns from the inside, you know. There’s that smell of roasted meat, and then the skin starts smouldering. Sometimes it even bursts into flames. It’s the fat under the skin, so someone told me.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I reckon we’ll start with the car battery.’

With that he walked over to the garage wall and loaded a car battery on to a trolley. He pushed the trolley to the chair. Then he took a pair of jump leads down from the wall. He snapped the metal clips at the end of the two wires as he walked back to Jake. He was smiling the whole time.

I can’t do this, thought Jake. I’ll tell them as soon as they start. It’s not just a few seconds of pain, or even a few minutes, like in a dentist’s chair. This will go on and on, for hours, maybe days, and at the end of it I’ll be dead.

But I can’t let them have the book. It’s our only chance of getting Lauren back.

As Shorty began to connect the jump leads to the battery, Jake felt fear forcing the vomit to rise in his throat and knew he was going to throw up. I have to play for time! he thought. I have to stall them!

‘It’s in my flat!’ he blurted out.

Shorty stopped and looked at him. He looked disappointed.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘It’s in my flat,’ Jake repeated.

If I can get them to take me to my flat, I’ve got a chance of getting away from them, he thought. Here, in this torture chamber, I’ve got no chance.

Shorty shook his head.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.

‘I’ll take you there and show you,’ said Jake, his voice desperate.

Shorty and the Boxer exchanged looks.

‘What do you reckon?’ asked Shorty.

The Boxer shrugged.

‘He could be telling the truth,’ he said.

Shorty studied Jake, frowning thoughtfully.

‘You could be lying,’ he mused.

‘It’s in my flat!’ insisted Jake, not knowing what else to say. ‘In a bag on the top of my wardrobe.’

Shorty didn’t move, nor did his thoughtful expression change as he looked at Jake. He knows I’m lying, thought Jake. He’s going to torture me anyway. Finally, Shorty nodded.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and check it out.’ Turning to the Boxer, he said, ‘You stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll phone you when I get to his place.’ Turning back to Jake, he asked: ‘Keys?’

‘In my pocket.’

Shorty rummaged around in Jake’s pocket, and pulled out the two keys.

‘My address is . . .’ began Jake, but Shorty cut him off.

‘We know where you live, stupid. That’s where we started.’ He pocketed the keys, and said warningly to the Boxer, ‘Don’t let him try any funny business. If he does, shoot him in the leg, like you said.’ To Jake, he said menacingly, ‘If the book’s not there, you are in for some very serious pain.’

With that, Shorty went to the garage door, opened it, stepped outside, and slammed it closed again. They heard the car engine start up.

The Boxer took the gun from his pocket and pointed it at Jake.

‘A bullet in the leg is very, very painful,’ he said threateningly. ‘You have been warned.’

Chapter 24

Jake sat, tied to the chair, and watched the Boxer, waiting for any sign that he might have a chance to overpower him. Maybe if he came near enough he could trip him, topple him over, and kick him in the head, knocking him unconscious. But even as he said it to himself, Jake knew it was a fantasy. The Boxer stayed at a distance from Jake, sitting on an upturned crate, the gun held confidently in his big fist, his eyes fixed on Jake the whole time.

Jake had been relieved when he knew that Shorty was going to be the one going to his flat. In his mind, Shorty was the nasty one. He also seemed to be the cleverest of the pair. Left alone with the Boxer, Jake might have a chance. Left alone with Shorty, Jake knew he’d have no chance whatsoever. But the reality of the Boxer being left to guard him was that Jake had no chance of getting away from either of them. All he could do was sit and wait, and think about what would happen when Shorty discovered there was no book.

Jake and the Boxer had been sitting in the same positions for what Jake thought must have been an hour, when the Boxer’s mobile rang.

‘Yes?’ said the Boxer. He listened, then turned to Jake. ‘He says it’s not there.’

‘It is!’ insisted Jake desperately, trying to think his way out of this. ‘It’s on top of the wardrobe in a white plastic shopping bag!’

The Boxer walked towards Jake, the phone in one hand, the gun in the other.

‘He wants to talk to you,’ he said. And he held the phone to Jake’s ear.

‘You lied!’ hissed Shorty’s angry voice. ‘You sent me on a fool’s errand! I’m going to take you apart bit by bit when I get back!’

‘It’s there!’ shouted Jake desperately. ‘I left it there when I got back from Glastonbury!’ He paused, then added in a flash of inspiration: ‘Someone must have taken it.’

‘Who?’ demanded Shorty.

‘Anyone,’ said Jake. ‘Pierce Randall. The Watchers. MI5. Any one of all the people who are after it!’

There was a pause, then Shorty said, ‘I’m going to have another look round. But if it ain’t here, you’re in serious trouble when I get back.’

The phone went dead. The Boxer put it back in his inside pocket.

‘He doesn’t like it when people try to play him for a mug,’ he told Jake menacingly. Then he went back to the crate, and sat down again, his eyes and the gun on Jake.

It seemed all too soon to Jake when they heard the sound of the car pulling up outside and the garage door being lifted up. Shorty walked in, and closed the garage door shut behind him. He walked over to Jake and punched him hard in the face.

‘No one plays me for a sucker and gets away with it!’ He snarled. He punched Jake hard in the face again, and this time Jake felt blood pour down from his nostrils and tasted the salty liquid on his lips.

‘It was there!’ he managed to blurt out through the pain. ‘Where I said it was. Someone must have taken it!’

‘Who?’ demanded Shorty angrily. ‘Who else is after it? We were told if you hadn’t got it, the only others who might know where it was were your pal, Robert George, and that reporter woman, Michelle; so we were to stake them out.’

‘There’s more than that,’ said Jake. ‘There’s all those people I said: Pierce Randall. The Watchers. MI5.’

‘What have MI5 got to do with it?’ asked the Boxer, curious.

‘He’s lying,’ snapped Shorty dismissively.

‘The book’s a government secret,’ said Jake. ‘Ask whoever’s paying you, if you don’t believe me. All of them are looking for the book, and all of them know I’ve got it.’ He spat out a mouthful of blood and looked Shorty directly in the eyes. ‘I thought you must be working for one of them.’

Shorty looked at Jake thoughtfully, and then moved away, taking out his mobile phone as he did so. He called up a number, and when it answered said, ‘It ain’t where he said it was. He reckons someone else took it. He’s given us a few names of other outfits that he says are looking for it and he reckons one of them must have snaffled it.’ Shorty then listened for a while, before answering: ‘He could be lying, or it could be gone. What d’you want us to do?’ He listened a bit more, before saying, ‘OK.’ Then he hung up his phone.

The Boxer looked at Shorty enquiringly.

‘The pigs?’ he asked.

Shorty nodded.

‘Lucky old pigs,’ he said, and grinned.