Zero Hour (26 page)

I was reaching for the handle of the first when it opened and light flooded into the hallway.

24

The guy had greasy black hair that reached the collar of his black shirt. His sleeves were rolled up. There was a mug in his hand.

He spotted me and his jaw hardened. With not so much as a shout, he hurled the mug. It missed me but the hot stuff in it didn’t.

I lunged for him, but I was too slow. He was gone, legging it back into the room he’d come out of.

I followed him, crashing past leather sofas and a table. On the table sat an empty plate and a small kitchen knife. He grabbed it. He had a weapon. He turned back towards me. His face was stone.

I spun and tried to dodge the stab but he was too fast. I felt a punch to my buttock. At first there was no pain at all. A split second later, there was a dull throbbing at the site. Then a burning sensation permeated outwards and turned into intense pain. My leg buckled under me. As I crashed to the floor, I vomited. A trainer smashed into the top of my head. A pissed-off voice screamed down at me in a language I didn’t understand.

He kicked out at me again and I jerked back my head. My face slid in my own puke. I brought my arms up to protect my head. The top of my right leg felt like there was a blowtorch playing on it.

He yelled something, either to me or to someone else in the house.

I brought my knees up to protect myself, trying to get into some kind of foetal position, but the pain in my leg prevented me. I had to jerk my right leg out to keep it straight, and curl up the left one as best I could. I got a kick to the stomach for my trouble. Thank fuck they were trainers not boots, but it still hurt. I was going down here.

My left eye was blurred. I tried to wipe it on the side of my arm. He walked around me and kicked me in the back. I took a deep breath. I felt his hands and knees pushing against my back, then his hands digging into my pockets. He dragged the cash out of the front of the jeans and I knew I’d never see it again. I hoped he’d count it - anything to give me some time to recover.

The pressure left my back. I watched as the trainers moved round to face me. He carried on to the door, and closed it to contain us both. The next thing I heard was the bleep of numbers being punched into a mobile phone. He was breathing like a porn star, but when he spoke, his voice was calm.

There was a pause.

I opened my eyes. The tattoos running up his forearms were tribal. They looked like the Pizza Express logo, and were very dark and new. He closed down and the phone went back into his pocket. He walked past me and disappeared to the other side of the room. Then he came back over and I sensed rather than saw him reach out. Pain shot through me. I realized the knife was still sticking into me, and he was sawing it backwards and forwards.

He leant down and shouted words I didn’t understand. He played with the knife some more. All I could do was take the pain.

I gritted my teeth as the knife came out. My right buttock was on fire.

He screamed it down into me, jamming it back in.

He had to push a cushion over my face to muffle my yells.

25

The cushion came off and the kicks rained in.

I curled up. I flexed my leg even though I could feel the blade still stuck in my buttock.

There was nothing I could do. Sometimes you’ve got to accept you’re in the shit and ride it out. He wasn’t going to kill me. He was waiting for someone. I was still in with a chance.

The kicking continued until he finally lost his breath and beads of sweat poured down his face. Then there was silence. I heard window blinds being opened and closed, and the slam of vehicle doors outside. Black Shirt grunted something as he fought for breath. For all I knew he was talking to himself.

The back door rattled. Not once but twice. That was supposed to be my signal to leg it out the front. Black Shirt took a long, hard look at me and decided I wasn’t going anywhere fast. He whipped along the corridor and did the business with the latch.

I heard another voice, deeper, stronger. He didn’t like what he found. He started yelling. A pair of legs edged around the vomit. I saw immaculate jeans over smart brown brogues.

My arms were still protecting my face. The blue rubber gloves were covered with vomit. I lifted my elbow. He, too, had black hair and a dark complexion. He had his hands in the pockets of a short camel-hair coat. He bowed from the waist to try and get some perspective on my face. I smelt a mixture of cologne and cigars.

He straightened up and turned to Black Shirt. His hands swung between me and the pool of sick.

Black Shirt hung his head. It looked like Brogues was his boss, and he’d let him down badly. And, going by the concern on his face, Brogues didn’t dish out that many second chances.

Brogues shouted as hard as he pointed. My body screamed at me in pain, but the longer his rant, the longer I had to recover.

Black Shirt muttered something and tossed him the container of Smarties.

Brogues threw up both his hands. It clattered to the floor. He didn’t want his prints on it. He leant down to me and shouted a question in my ear. I moaned and groaned as if I was out of it on drugs. I wished right now that I was. At least it would dull the pain.

Brogues didn’t bother asking again. He looked up and down the hallway, rubbing the designer stubble on his face and then the back of his head.

He pointed at Black Shirt like an inquisitor, his tone lower, more threatening. I still couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but was pretty sure he was asking him to solve a problem, and that problem was me.

A moment later Brogues decided the time for questions was over. His jaw jutted and he started issuing orders. Black Shirt was looking for a little sympathy and understanding but getting fuck all. Brogues didn’t wait for a reply. His shouts faded down the corridor and I heard my door slam.

26

I waited for Black Shirt to get close. I coughed and snorted the sludge from my nose, trying to make it sound like I was suffering, but in fact trying to get as much oxygen into my lungs as I could.

He picked up a cushion and kicked me. He knelt carefully behind me so his knees weren’t in the puke, and pulled my head back and up. I took a deep breath just as the cushion came down.

Both his hands pushed against my mouth and nose. I gripped his wrists. He grunted with effort. My nose was compressed to breaking point. I knew I could hold my breath for maybe forty-five seconds. I struggled for twenty, and then I let my hands fall from his as he kept pushing. As my right hand dropped I wiped as much puke off it as I could onto my jeans. I jerked my head backwards and forwards to make it look like I was in the final throes of suffocation. I was, but I was also trying to grab another lungful of air while my hand closed round the knife handle.

My chest was going to explode. I could feel my face bloating and burning as I gripped the weapon more tightly. Now was the time. I jerked the knife out of my arse and swung my arm high. I rammed it back down in as wide an arc as I could manage. If it missed him, I risked stabbing myself.

It made contact. He screamed. There was resistance. It didn’t go straight in. I had to force it. The skin finally buckled and the blade sank between the bones.

I didn’t pull it out. I might not get it in again. I pulled it down towards me as hard as I could and twisted my body as he came down on top of me.

I sucked in air. I saw the blade in his neck. There was no blood. It had missed the artery.

I kept digging, twisting and pushing, swung my left knee and came up astride him. The serrations faced the back of his neck. I got my left elbow onto his shoulder, pinning him with as much of my body weight as I could. His face was turned to the right. I twisted the blade until the serrations faced his windpipe and started to saw. The knife wasn’t sharp enough. I had to bring it out and plunge it in again. I kept my arm solid, moving it up and down using the top of my body to get some weight behind it to help it rip through the tissue.

He screamed again. I grabbed the cushion and held it over his face with my free hand as I tried to cut into him.

I forced the cushion down harder. The knife was firm in my hand and my arm was rigid. I rocked and used body weight to move it up and down.

It wasn’t long before he gave up. He had no choice. His body was giving up for him. It wouldn’t be long. I would just have to leave him to die. It wasn’t him I was here for. I now had to grip Brogues.

I lay there, trying to recover. I took deep breaths, snorting and gobbing to clear my nose. Black Shirt was fading fast. The rasping and gurgling noises became fainter and fainter.

I put my hand in his pocket and retrieved the money he’d forgotten to tell his boss about, and then put my trainers back on. I yanked the knife out of his neck and gripped it in my left hand.

Slowly, I opened the door. The hall lights were on. The clink of bottle on glass came from my left, the other end of the hallway. I walked towards it, picking up the mallet on the way.

Brogues started gobbing off as soon I opened the door. I couldn’t see him immediately but I could hear him. He thought I was Black Shirt. He took a swallow of something and walked round the corner towards me when he didn’t get an answer. He had a tall glass of light brown stuff in his hand with ice floating on top. This boy was sharp. He charged towards me. No hesitation; no fear.

I stood still. There was nothing I could do about this. His eyes were locked on mine. He knew exactly what he was going to do when he got to me.

I had to do the same. I tried to focus. I could feel the blood warm and wet on my leg. It was ripping me apart but I had to get into the zone where it all became slow and defined in my head. He was coming to kill me, to do the job that Black Shirt had failed to do.

He finally got his head down. He was going to body-charge me back into the hallway. Once he’d done that, he was going to jump on top of me and finish the job.

I raised the mallet and waited. I concentrated on the back of his head. My whole world was focused on the blurred shape barrelling towards me.

When he was less than half a metre away I swung the mallet down. In the same motion, I twisted my body and dropped like a matador to get more energy behind the hardened rubber.

As my knees bent, he crumpled. His head fell onto my thighs and he came down with me. By the time I hit the floor his head was wedged between my thighs and chest. I checked his pulse. There wasn’t one.

I scrambled to my feet. Keeping the mallet with me, I raced as fast as I could to the first floor. Unlike the hallway below, the rooms were all spotless.

There was no point looking for a weapon. Brogues seemed too switched on to have anything that might compromise him in the house. He didn’t even have an alarm system that could bring the police running if tripped.

I pulled a white satin duvet and the bottom sheet off a bed and staggered back downstairs. I checked Brogues’s pockets for the Passat keys. They were empty. I had to stop and take a breath to calm down. Of course: the bowl by the back door. I wrapped him in the sheet. He wasn’t bleeding, so wouldn’t need anything thicker to soak it up. I turned off the lights, picked up the mallet and tool-box, and left him in the now darkened hallway.

I went outside and retrieved my Bergen. I threw on the padded nylon coat to cover the mess on my jeans and sweatshirt. I climbed into the Passat. It was automatic, top of the range. I turned it round and reversed back in towards the door. I hit a button and the boot clicked open. I did one last scan. The square was in darkness. All the neighbours were in their own perfectly manicured little worlds. Nobody was rushing to investigate.

I couldn’t lift them. I was going to have to lug each one down the steps and load them one at a time.

I wrapped Black Shirt in the duvet and dragged and pulled it towards the back door. I bumped him down the first couple of steps. The second was level with the Passat’s boot. It took all my strength to lift and push him in. I brought down the lid in case someone above me suddenly got curious.

I repeated the process with Brogues, then got behind the wheel and gunned the engine. The Passat rolled towards the gates. I didn’t have a clue how they opened, but I’d find out soon enough.

I drove slowly. Now wasn’t the time to look like I was in a hurry. I travelled twenty metres into the square and turned right into the archway. I stopped about three metres from the gates and they began to open.

I turned left up Noordermarkt. My arse was still sending Mayday signals to my brain, but I was breathing and I’d removed another couple of traffickers from the landscape before they could make a play for Lilian and her mates. Right now, that was all that mattered.

PART SIX

1

I turned left onto Papaverhoek and passed FilmNoord XXX. The window blinds were up and bright blue-and-white rope lights shone their welcome onto the pavement.

I’d used the same route as yesterday from Westerstraat, taking even more care than usual not to become the focus of any attention. I kept the sun visor down even though it was dark. There weren’t as many speed and CCTV cameras here as in the UK, but I wasn’t taking chances.

I passed the German office block and nosy-parked in front of the shutter, exactly as I’d done with the Panda. Headlights off, I climbed out and limped over to the door. The telltales were intact. I went to put the key into the top lock. Pain shot through my buttock as I raised my arm. The congealed blood felt cold on my skin. I’d been sitting on the warm leather of the Passat’s driving seat and now the air was getting to it.

I leant on the door with my left hand as I started on the last lock. My leg spasmed and bile flooded into the back of my throat. My nostrils stung as the puke acid launched another attack.

I wrestled the door open. I wanted this wagon under cover as soon as possible, and then I wanted a brew, a shower, and some first aid.

The footsteps behind me were heavy. I spun round. She emerged from the dark interior of one of the doorless garages and headed straight for me, arm outstretched. She was still in my boots and clothes.