She whirled and an arm came out defensively. Her hand caught him on the side of the face. Not a painful blow, but his balaclava was whipped away like a magician’s cloth.
In that moment, he did something that would haunt his dreams. With his face bared for all to see, he froze with shock. Like a swimmer who’d dived into frigid water, his brain and body locked up.
She tore from his grasp and ran, and he did not follow. Could not. Some way ahead, as he watched but was unable to move, two heroes took her and guided her away, into a shop doorway, and she was lost.
He turned and ran. Back, away. The going was hard, and his heart thumped like never before. Despite the gun still locked in his fist, fear rattled through him. He reached the van and by that time was light-headed. He dragged himself in and slammed the door, and only when it was shut did his breath explode in a noisy rasp.
* * *
‘Think those two cops are okay?’
‘Don’t give a shit,’ Mick said. ‘Get him inside while I check this out.’
But Mick did give a shit. Every criminal in the word could drop dead and the world would rejoice, but the guys in the car were cops, and Mick was a cop. Not enough common ground to warrant buying flowers but he hoped both guys were okay.
He paced outside the warehouse as he scoured the Internet for news of his name. Seabury’s bitch wife had somehow overheard his plan to meet her husband at the church, and no doubt his face had been captured by onlookers, so there was no chance now of coming out of this one unscathed. But it didn’t matter. He would be a ghost soon. Seabury would give up Grafton’s bitch in the next few minutes, prompted by a pair of pliers, and then they would go get her. Then he would sterilise his house and he’d be gone. There was no stopping that, but his plane ticket was now a useless scrap of paper because Seabury’s wife knew enough to burn him. But that didn’t matter, either. There were other ways of getting out of the country. He needed to be at the coast before the news broadcast his face.
The abandoned warehouse had whitewashed windows and gaping holes in the corrugated iron roof where noisy pigeons crowded along the rafters. It was empty apart from a scattering of wooden crates, vast amounts of trash and the remains of components from fairground rides.
Seabury was in a wooden chair in the centre of the littered floor with his hands cuffed behind his back and a second pair of cuffs securing the first to the chair’s backrest. When Mick entered, he heard Brad telling Seabury his only way to survive this was to give up the girl, walk away and keep his mouth shut.
‘I gave him that choice already and he fucked it up,’ Mick said from the doorway, in a deep voice.
He approached Seabury. Dave and Brad stood back. He stood five feet away and folded his arms. The pliers were in his hand, on show, impossible to ignore. He had his cap pulled low, the same one he’d worn when he’d confronted Seabury on the building site.
‘Where’s my wife?’ Seabury asked. His voice didn’t sound scared, although his eyes were. Fear overridden by worry for his loved one. They darted everywhere.
‘She got away, actually. Lucky girl. Right now she’s probably in a hospital, talking to my guys.’ He saw the puzzled look on Seabury’s face and laughed.
‘The police, Seabury, the police.’
Still utter confusion: Seabury hadn’t put two and two together yet. Mick made a big show of flicking off his hat.
The transformation on Seabury’s face was magical to watch. His eyes grew wide. His jaw quivered. He stumbled over whatever line he tried to speak. Mick liked the idea that Seabury had been half-expecting a miraculous rescue by Detective Chief Inspector McDevitt. It made his little reveal that much more beautiful.
‘Don’t abandon all hope yet,’ Mick said.
He had expected Seabury to latch onto this, but he didn’t. Instead, he simply asked ‘Why?’ and Mick realised he was talking about Grafton. He was angry that a nonentity like this fucker had dared to ask. That he believed he held enough importance to expect an answer.
‘Why did I kill that bastard? You don’t get the right to ask that.’ He wanted to smash him, but he didn’t. He took a step back and unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned the top of his shirt.
Seabury looked at the wound, and Mick could see the puzzlement on his face. Mick fingered the old injury. One misshapen right collarbone and a ragged semi-circular scar the size of a baby’s fist.
‘It’s deeper than you think. Even if it wasn’t, people have killed for less,’ Mick said. He tapped the wound with the pliers. ‘I didn’t let them fix it. I wanted the scar. A reminder. Kept me motivated. It’s all I have, apart from a few fucking routines that would make me look like a raving lunatic but keep me fucking sane, ironically.
‘You think it’s overkill. You don’t understand, of course. You’re not meant to. You aren’t part of this. You got involved because you wanted to help a woman. And you’re still alive right now because I’m giving you a chance to help another woman. Your wife this time. You have no idea how many cops are involved in this. They can get to your wife. The moment I give the order. My nightmare continues, day after day, but yours can end right now. I said don’t abandon all hope, right? Because you have a kill switch for this whole sorry fiasco, Seabury. When the shit raining down on you becomes too much, you can go ahead and press that kill switch by telling me where Grafton’s bitch wife is—’
‘I don’t know,’ Karl blurted. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ He struggled in the chair, trying to break either it or the handcuffs. He knew it was futile, because the three men would be upon him before he got to his feet. But he tried, anyway, because a drowning man will clutch even at the smallest straw floating within reach. He succeeded in toppling the chair, but the big detective grabbed him before it could crash down. He was set carefully upright once more. He smelled bacon on the guy, which somehow made this whole thing seem even more wrong. It was a reminder that he was human, that he ate, slept, lived a normal life.
The detective stepped back. ‘Don’t say a word yet. I’ll let that one go because you didn’t know any better. But not another word, because you only get one chance. A woman is going into that very chair you’re in, and you get to pick. Liz Grafton, or Katie Seabury. Do you understand? If you don’t tell me where Grafton’s bitch is, or you lie about it, I’ll send my man to go fetch your wife right now. I’ll rip you apart with these pliers and force-feed you to her. Tell me you understand that so we have no confusion.’
Karl nodded. He looked at Varsity, and a short black man he didn’t know. Both men looked concerned. They didn’t look comfortable with what was happening, which made Karl realise that these two henchmen weren’t as unhinged. But he also realised that concern proved he was a lunatic. Right then he had no doubt that he would not leave this warehouse alive. And that Katie was in grave danger.
‘Good,’ the detective said. ‘So the only word I want to hear from you is a name. Liz, or Katie. The urge to beg must be great, but you need to bite it back. So, calm down and think. You’ve got that ability, because there’s no pain yet, is there? I’m standing back, and nothing’s happened to you yet, the brain isn’t going wild with shock. So, use it to think. Think of your wife. And I don’t mean think of her lonely without you, bringing up that baby alone. I mean think of her in this chair. You slumped beside her, dead. And her being force-fed little torn-up bits of your flesh. You go ahead and take ten seconds to think.’