Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (40 page)

Gemma felt the grip on her arms relax a little. She looked across at Steve. He ignored her.

‘Apparently you thought this man was being held here against his will,’ said Fayed indicating Steve. ‘Does it look like that to you?’

Gemma said nothing.

‘Tell me. Does it?’

He let the silence answer as Steve completed his shaving, splashed his face with water, wiped it with the towel and then applied some cologne. The scent of it reached Gemma: it was the exotic fragrance she’d smelled on him in her bed.

‘So now I get it,’ said Fayed. His smile made his eyes look even colder. ‘You’re the ex-girlfriend.’ He stepped back, glancing across at Steve. ‘I’ve gotta say Lorraine’s a great improvement, mate.’

Gemma tightened her jaw and throat, determined not to let her heartbreak show. ‘I’m not here as this man’s ex-girlfriend,’ she said in as tough a voice as she could muster. ‘I’m here as part of an operation to bust you, Fayed. You’ve got no show at all.’

Gemma stared at Steve. As if reading her thoughts he turned to her. ‘I don’t live in your world anymore, Gemma,’ Steve said in a flat voice. ‘That world never did a damn thing for me.’

The grip on her arms became sharp as Fayed jerked his head and the bodyguard practically lifted Gemma out of the room and down the corridor, pushing her towards another doorway. Gemma struggled but it was useless. She could hear Steve’s footsteps behind them.

‘You know,’ said Fayed with the same cool display of contempt as before, ‘you’ve really made things very difficult for yourself. And for me. Those threats to call the police in here are quite distressing for me and my family. If they do come here, they’ll find nothing. I have interests in Indonesia who own houses where a woman like you can be put to work. For a while, at least. White women tend to age quickly in the tropics. Especially if they have a drug habit.’

‘No!’ said Gemma. ‘We had a deal. I called the police operation off.’

‘Shut up, bitch.’

‘You
bastards
!’Gemma screamed at them all, seething with helplessness.

Fayed gestured. ‘Medication for the lady, please. She’s getting overexcited.’

Gemma saw the largest bodyguard pull out a plastic packet. She stared harder. It was a loaded fit.

‘Give her a good whack,’ said Fayed. ‘Knock her out till I decide what’s the best thing to do with the interfering little moll.’

Her eyes pleaded with Steve’s impassive stare as she struggled against her captors.

‘You’re going to pay for this!’ she screamed. ‘People like you think you can get away with murder.’

She was lifted bodily, crushed in the hostile embrace of the bodyguard, thrown into a windowless room just like one of the sacks that covered the floor. Still held in the same vice-like grip, Gemma could only watch while a tourniquet was applied to her arm and a brimming syringe held up before her. Please let the Naltrexone work, she prayed, as the man approached her, his face as impassive as fate. She shuddered as the needle stung its way into her arm. Something surged through her, a dark, alien energy. She felt her knees wobble and had only a glimpse of the stacked shelves as she fell and the light went out. The door was slammed shut, she heard it being locked and then she was left in the darkness.

Gemma lay there, stunned by everything that had happened in the last few minutes. She rolled over onto her stomach and cried. Steve was lost. Instead of just visiting the realms of hell, as the job required, bringing back the information he’d been entrusted with, he’d made the decision to take out citizenship.

She couldn’t tell if the terrifying imbalance she was experiencing was because of emotional or drug overload. She stumbled around in the dark, feeling her way with her hands. She fell heavily over something and lay there a moment, overwhelmed by grief, anger and fear. She pulled herself up until she was half-lying, half-sitting across some of the sacks she’d noticed before the light went out. She waited, trying to determine how she felt, whether she was about to be whirled away on heroin’s outrageous ecstasy, or knocked out by sheer emotional pain. She became aware that the sacks she was sitting on seemed to contain some lumpy material but she couldn’t work out what it was, although it smelled strangely familiar. She felt her way to a clear piece of floor and sat down, shivering, wishing she’d worn warmer clothes. She wondered if there was a camera in here and if so whether it was one of the mysterious murky rooms she and Mike had already seen in the van. Would he recognise her human shape in the coloured blobs on his screen? She scrambled to her feet at sounds from the corridor. Running footsteps and shouts outside. The door suddenly rattled and Gemma dived to the floor and sprawled there, eyes closed, as the door opened. Voices yelled orders.

‘Get rid of her!’ Fayed’s yell pierced the melee. ‘Lock her up with the aura.’

Gemma shuddered at the words. What did he mean? Was ‘aura’ the code name of some death-ray? Being sealed up reminded her of ancient pharoahs, or desiccated vestal virgins mummified in tombs. She tried to control her breathing so that she might pass as unconscious. Breathing in deep also served to calm her. I’m supposed to be stupified, she thought. And it’s not far wrong. She was aware of someone coming in, nudging her body with a toe, then half-carrying, half-dragging her out of the room.

Gemma fluttered her eyelids to see. One of Fayed’s bodyguards was hauling her along towards the door, behind which Gemma knew snakes writhed. It took every ounce of willpower for her not to scream and struggle. She could at least hope that the door of that room would remain unlocked so she could escape. She stayed floppy, a posture made more realistic by the relief that surged through her as they passed the door to the snake room. Now the bodyguard hauled her out of the corridor and into the underground car park. The man let her slide to the ground and she heard the sound of a door being unlocked. He opened a doorway concealed in a recess in the bedrock and unnoticed by Gemma until now, near the workshop area. But before she’d finished working out how to dive sideways and roll towards the workshop area, the man had shoved her through the half-opened door and slammed it shut again.

All was silent. Despite the fact that they were underground in winter, the air here seemed sticky and humid. She groped around the walls to find she was in some sort of cellar carved out of rock. A repulsive stench filled her nostrils: the odour of rotting meat, made even more disgusting by the sickly warmth of her prison.

For a few moments she sat huddled against the wall, trying to make sense of her surroundings. Something moved in the murkiness, reminding Gemma again of the huge looming shape she’d seen on Mike’s screen. Her mouth went dry and this time she knew it wasn’t Naltrexone or heroin. It was terror.
There is something in here with me,
she realised. Despite the shock and pain of Steve’s cruel rejection and betrayal, her survival instincts sounded a desperate alarm. She froze, straining to see in the dark, to listen in the surrounding stillness. Nothing moved or made any sound and the stink was overwhelming.
I’ve got to get out of here
, a panicky inner voice screamed. Gemma recalled the areas covered by Fayed’s surveillance. This room had been shrouded in darkness, though a murky shape moved in it, like the backdrop to a nightmare. Despite her fear she seized on this thought. If 
we
couldn’t see what was in here when Mike had it up on his screen, then
I
can’t be seen either, she thought. Fayed’s system can’t pick me up on the security monitors. Hope allayed her tension. I’ve got a chance of getting out of here, she realised. Carefully, she tried the door. It was locked. She felt around in her pockets for something, some weapon, some tool. But she knew Fayed’s locks would be sophisticated and her skills were far from advanced.

Her attention was diverted by a series of loud noises from above. Angie, is that you? Are you in? Gemma prayed. Then she went cold when she remembered that Steve was now an enemy. She quietened the confusing emotions this knowledge caused by listening intently to the growing uproar. The crashing sounds in the building around her were growing to a crescendo of thudding footsteps and shouting. Beyond the door that locked her in, she could hear cars revving up. Then the noises stopped. In the silence that followed Gemma jumped as she heard a terrible sound, a guttural coughing, coming from somewhere in the cellar. She froze. For a second, she imagined a huge carnivore, a powerful tiger, five times her weight and size. ‘
Lock her up with the aura
’, she’d heard Fayed yell. But he hadn’t been referring to a death-ray. Gemma recalled Fayed’s logo, the stylised golden lizard, and the name of his company, ‘Oradoro’. And it didn’t mean anything like El Dorado, the city of gold, she now realised. It meant ‘golden ora’ and the
ora
, she knew, was the huge carnivorous monitor lizard of Indonesia, the komodo dragon.

Gemma stared blindly into the darkness, rigid with terror, imagining the sudden pounce of the enormous reptile, being knocked to the floor, torn open. Oh God, she thought. I’ve got to get out of here.

She jumped to hear a sound behind her. The door was being unlocked. She spun around. A man stood outside the partly opened door and in the dim light behind him, Gemma could see it was Steve. She pressed back against the wall. My God, she thought, he’s come to kill me. I’m the only witness to his treason. Desperately, she tried to press herself further away from the entrance. Steve peered into the cellar, his eyes still unaccustomed to the dark, and Gemma stayed motionless. He hadn’t seen her.

‘Gemma,’ he called. ‘It’s me. Come on.’

She shrank back further into the gloom, wishing there were more recesses to hide her.

‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get out of here.’ His eyes suddenly focused and she realised he’d seen her, flattened though she was against the projecting rock face.

‘Why?’ Gemma’s voice was a whispered scream. ‘What are you planning next?’

‘Gemma,
come on
! You’ve got to get out.’

‘So you can betray me again? Shoot me this time? With me out of the way, you can just go back to Ian Lovelock and your job. Tell them some bullshit, maybe even get decorated. You treacherous, two-faced bastard!’

‘Just come on!’ he yelled, lurching forward to grab her, ‘or we’re both dead. There’s a glass screen in here that operates just like in the banks,’ he said. ‘If it goes down and you’re still in here, you’ll die. Come
out
!’

‘Bullshit!’ she said, ducking backwards and avoiding his grasp.

Steve cursed and half-came into the cellar, his hand out, attempting to drag her out by force.

She fought with him. ‘I’ll take my chances with the reptiles,’ she said furiously. ‘They’d be more trustworthy than you.’

Gemma stopped struggling and measured up the distance. If she could get to the exit, she could still get out of this situation. There was another growl behind her and she twisted round, still held fast in Steve’s grip. It was too dark to make out anything in detail but her peripheral vision alerted her to movement somewhere in the murky darkness. She twisted back to face Steve, unable to see his features in the gloom.

‘Fayed’s sent you to deal with me, hasn’t he?’ she said. ‘You’re here to kill me. Otherwise why hasn’t anyone noticed that this door’s open?’

‘Christ, Gemma. There’s a full-scale joint raid happening up there. Fayed’s got other things on his mind just now,’ said Steve.

Gemma strained to listen. It now sounded as if all hell had broken loose. The entire building, right down to its footings and bedrock was throbbing with ground reverberation as the staccato chop of helicopters sounded. The bastard’s telling the truth about that, at least, she thought. This sounds big. Must be Federal, State and everything else.

‘Come on, woman. It’s like the fall of Saigon upstairs. Hurry while we can still get out of here alive.’

Gemma barely heard him. ‘I called off that raid because Fayed said he’d kill you.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I came in here to get you out. I risked my life for you,’ she said in a whisper.

‘Don’t waste it then,’ he said, ‘on being completely fucking stupid.’

She was irresolute.

‘If you don’t believe me, turn around,’ said Steve. ‘I’ve been trying not to stir it up, but take a look behind you.’

Gemma stood facing him. ‘No way am I going to make it easier for you,’ she said, barely able to speak for the tears. ‘If you’re going to shoot me, do it while I’m facing you.’

She saw his flank drop and his hand move towards his jacket. Gemma dived to the ground, rolling away, uselessly closing her eyes against the bullet. It didn’t come immediately. She opened her eyes to see that Steve was standing holding a powerful torch ahead of him so that light shone into the recesses of the sandstone area in which she’d been imprisoned. She was surprised to see no weapon. She followed the beam of light as Steve moved it around. For a few seconds, she couldn’t see anything except the reflections from the glass wall ahead that sealed off half the area in which she now stood. Adjusting to her focus, her vision penetrated the reflecting wall. Something moved in the darkness behind the glass.

‘Oh my God!’ she screamed. ‘What is that?’

Lumbering towards her, tongue flickering, was a monster, jaws dripping, saurian eyes refocusing in the sudden light.

Gemma slowly backed away, no longer caring about the danger that Steve posed. The dragon raised its lowered
head and stood right up against the partition, towering horridly above her. If that glass screen suddenly dropped, thought Gemma .
 
.
 
.

‘Now will you get out?’ said Steve, jumping forward and grabbing her arm. ‘Or do you want to be eaten alive by the time the cops break through?’

He jerked her backwards and the two of them stumbled out into the corridor, Steve slamming the door shut. Gemma huddled against the wall, feeling sick to her stomach.

‘I had to play along with them,’ said Steve. ‘Fayed never trusted me. If I’d shown the slightest sort of interest in you, we’d both be dead, sweetheart. I had to let him think I was happy to go onto his payroll, that I only wanted to save my own skin.’

‘And so you were!’ Gemma screamed. ‘Don’t you dare sweetheart
me
,
you arsehole!’ She leaned back against the wall. Screaming at Steve had taken the last of her diminishing energy.

‘You were brilliant,’ he said. ‘Because of you, I’m armed and dangerous.’ He patted the Glock. ‘But how are
you
feeling, after that jab?’

She felt groggy, weak from fright and the pharmaceuticals were fighting it out in her system. Then she remembered the closed circuit cameras. She looked up and, sure enough, there it was, a little hooded camera watching the corridor, sending back all the details of her escape and Steve’s actions to Fayed’s central control room. In a minute the place would be crawling with his stooges and she’d be dead. This time, there would be no reprieve.

‘They’ll be watching this,’ she said, indicating the camera. ‘You’re stuffed, you treacherous, double-dealing prick.’

As Steve looked up, Gemma gathered her remaining strength, knocked him off balance and barged past him, back into the underground parking area and the workshop. Around her, the building was exploding like a war zone. Voices shrieked incomprehensible orders upstairs. Shouts from the street were drowned by a crushing noise. Gemma could hear the labouring tracks of an earthmover outside. The metal roller door bulged from the pressure. She realised now why the cars she’d heard starting up earlier had stopped. There was nowhere for them to go, except straight into the arms of the waiting Special Operation officers. At least Steve was telling the truth about this; Fayed and his people sure had other things on their minds.

Ducking between the parked cars, she searched for a safe hideout. She could hear Steve calling her, her name echoing around the car park, punctuated by the crash of metal and the screaming and shouting from upstairs. Now a deafening noise shook the car park area and the whole building trembled. Gemma spun round, trying to work out what was happening. The earthmover had given up on its attempts to move the roller door and now seemed to be battering the very walls of the building. She saw Steve weaving his way through the cars, calling to her. Another mighty crash and great cracks appeared in the wall near the staircase, zig-zagging as she watched. Another surge of gears from the earthmover and the first of the bricks near the frame of the roller door started crumbling. She saw Steve crawling towards her.

‘Gemma!’ he yelled through the din.

‘Piss off!’ she shouted. ‘Get out of here and start running now. There’ll be a hole in that wall any minute.’

‘Will you listen to me?’ he yelled.

‘The whole place is going to be overrun with the people you’ve sold out,’ she yelled back at him. ‘I’m giving you one chance to get away.’ She tightened her throat against the tears she could feel. Go away, tears, she ordered.

‘Gems,’ he pleaded. ‘Will you see reason? I set this raid up, for Chrissakes.’ He pushed his dark hair back from his eyes in a gesture that once used to make her heart stop. ‘How do you think the guys out there knew to come here now? They’re acting on information received. Received from
me
!’

‘You lying bastard!’ she shouted. ‘This is
my
raid. With Ian Lovelock and Angie. I told Mike to send live video feed!’

‘We haven’t got time to argue,’ he said, making a move towards her.

‘Steve,’ she warned, ‘don’t touch me. I never want you to touch me again. If you run now, you can get lost in the confusion. Get your cheating arse out of the country. Do it now. Because I swear I’ll do everything in my power to haul you in once I’m out of here.’

Steve continued to stand in front of her, hands helplessly beside him, palms out-turned, beseeching. A frightful sound made her look around. Huge cracks appeared in several of the wide pillars supporting the centre of the car park area. Smaller cracks radiated from the larger rifts. The damage was spreading fast, no longer confined to the side of the building being charged by the bulldozer.

‘Where am I supposed to run to?’ Steve bellowed. ‘The whole joint is collapsing!’

Ahead of Gemma, one of the large central pillars seemed to tremble. She pivoted round. This is crazy, she thought. A hole punched in a downstairs wall can’t do this sort of damage. What the hell’s going on? For a wild moment she even wondered if an earthquake could be happening simultaneously with the raid. And Steve was right: there was nowhere to go.

The roller door buckled and sagged, bending under the weight of walls that could no longer support themselves. She stopped thinking about Steve, her only thoughts now on survival. Raised voices and racing footsteps alerted her to the arrival of people down the cement staircase. Steve dropped out of sight and Gemma did the same. But she wasn’t quite fast enough. One of the two leading bodyguards saw Gemma and raised his weapon, taking aim on the run. She jumped with fright when the Glock fired nearby. The first bodyguard fell. Good shot, Steve, she thought, in spite of everything. The second man disappeared from sight as the sound of the shot reverberated around the disintegrating car park. Maybe he got both of them, she thought. More likely he’s dived for cover.

She glimpsed the heavy figure of George Fayed turning the corner of the stairs as she ducked back into her hiding spot. Further shots rang out. The roof started to fall, small chunks crashing around her from the rippling ceiling. I don’t want to be buried in here, she prayed, scrambling along the ground. She started crawling away, using the cars as cover, aiming for the collapsing wall near the roller door. Behind the tumbling brickwork, she could see bright light.

This was no earthquake, Gemma realised. The building had been structurally damaged. She remembered Angie telling her how the first floor had been opened out in a continuous space for a wedding reception. And you do that, Gemma thought, by removing the weight-bearing pillars. A thousand people jumping around at the party would have further weakened the structure, and now a D12 battering at the walls and garage door is the last straw.

Fayed’s fortress is coming down like the walls of Jericho.

She scrambled past another parked car, making her way to the roller door. Maybe I’ll be able to hack my way out, she thought, looking around for an implement. But she knew she wouldn’t have the strength. I’m going to die down here, she thought, crushed to death in a drug lord’s fortress.

She was aware of more brilliant light and lifted her head cautiously. Someone with oxy gear was cutting through the metal door. Had the raiding party realised the imminent collapse of the building and now changed their mode of entry? Please don’t fall down on me now, she pleaded. It was then she noticed George Fayed edging his way towards the workshop, a 9 mm Browning double-action automatic in his hand. She saw Steve crouched underneath a car near the workshop and as she watched, he positioned himself at the end of the vehicle, closer to the workshop’s entrance as Fayed circled the area, wild-eyed, sweeping his gun before him. More of the screeching, blinding oxy light now showed as the torch cut through the steel garage door. In a few moments, Gemma realised, there’d be a hole big enough for entry. That’s if the whole building doesn’t fall down first and crush us all to death. Almost as she thought this, several more chunks of concrete fell from the ceiling, crashing through the windscreen of the car she was beside. I want to be out of here, she prayed, back home with my Taxi cat, licking my wounds, safe in my nest.

The shocking sound of further gunfire in a closed space startled her into red alert. She peered out. What she saw both took her breath away and made her heart start to question her judgment of the man who now had George Fayed pinned down, kicking and cursing, on the oily ground near the workshop. Steve had straddled Fayed and was trying to secure his firing arm, still free and dangerously equipped with the Browning automatic. The Glock was nowhere to be seen.

‘Steve!’ she screamed, scuttling like a crab towards the struggling pair. The frightening whine and skid of ricochet a nanosecond after a bullet shot, made her swing round to see the second bodyguard coming for them, firing as he weaved between the cars. He disappeared, then jumped out to take aim. Gemma dived between two cars. Steve had all the trouble he needed trying to control the powerful and desperate drug lord. She would deal with his offsider. A piece of concrete the size of a small fridge crashed almost on the exact spot she’d just vacated. She peered around it, trying to pinpoint Fayed’s bodyguard. The blaze and glare of the oxy-cutting and the sound of the building above her folding in on itself, distracted her for a second and in that moment, the bodyguard was suddenly in front of Steve, blocking Gemma’s view. She saw the Glock lying on the ground out of Steve’s reach.
He’s going to kill Steve,
she thought. Without thinking, she grabbed the gun and fired it directly at the bodyguard. Down he went, and an arc of blood painted the cracking pillar nearby as he knocked Steve down, then rolled to a standstill. Gemma executed the best combat roll of her life, flipping right side up with the Glock in her hand again. Steve bellowed something which Gemma couldn’t understand. Fayed scrambled to his feet while Steve, stunned, tried to regain control of his adversary. She swung the weapon at Fayed.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said. Gemma slowly lowered the Glock. Fayed’s Browning was now just inches away from Steve’s face. ‘You’re going to get me out of here!’ he said to Steve. He kicked him. ‘Dirty’—kick—‘lying’—kick—‘copper
bastard
’—double kick.

Gemma could hardly bear to watch.

‘Stop it!’ she yelled uselessly. Fayed didn’t bother turning towards her when he spoke. ‘We’re getting out of here—you and me. Get in the car. Your bitch girlfriend can negotiate with the police.
Now
!’

Fayed had slowly stooped until he’d picked up the other automatic dropped by his dead bodyguard. The sight of the Browning’s square profile so close to Steve’s half-closed eyes was horrible. One of the Browning twins was trained on Gemma as she froze midstep. ‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll get you out of here.’

Another shout from Fayed and she started moving towards the roller door.

A terrible ripping sound made Gemma turn her head to see the staircase down which Fayed and his now dead bodyguards had run start to buckle, folding in on itself as the corner around which it turned started to collapse. The treble crash of glass smashing accompanied clouds of choking cement dust. Tiny stones stung Gemma’s face.

‘Get me out of here now or your boyfriend’s dead!’ Fayed shrieked through the dust.

Gemma stumbled round fallen debris, past the cracking pillars towards the roller door. Three sides of the square had now been cut in the door and the torch was just starting to eat its firey way through the fourth side of the armoured steel. She flinched as another chunk of ceiling fell down, revealing the underlying criss-crossed steel reinforcements.

Through the dust, Gemma saw something move. At first she thought it was one of the bodyguards, recovering from his wounds. But then she realised that the large, low-moving shape darting among the debris was not human. It was the huge, dinosaur-like reptile, its drooling head swinging fast from side to side, long tongue flicking, rearing up against a pillar. She turned and ran and was about to yell a warning, but the sound of the oxy-grinder rendered her voice useless. And yet a terrible scream penetrated even that. Gemma swung around. A huge torpedo-like weapon struck Fayed, smashing him to the ground. She couldn’t comprehend what was happening. She was aware of Steve rolling to one side, away from the flailing arm that held one of the Brownings. Then he vanished in the gloom. Another frightful shriek, cut off by a choking gurgle, was the last sound George Fayed ever made. Transfixed with horror, she screamed as something loomed up out of the dust and grabbed her. It was Steve. Gemma couldn’t believe her eyes. Despite the imminent collapse of the building around it, the beast continued to disembowel George Fayed, shaking the body from side to side, entrails and shredded flesh flying in ribbons.

‘C’mon,’ Steve shouted. ‘We’re getting out of here!’

In the midst of all the carnage and filth, the din of the oxy gear, the crash of falling masonry, Gemma was aware of the heavy scent of his cologne. Then it all came together in a sickening crescendo—the heavy fragrance, ribbons, shredding, her attacker. Out of the confusion, she tried to grasp something, some insight. Then the roof fell in.

•

Heather Pike’s was the first face that swam into view as Gemma woke up. She looked around, taking in her surroundings: pastel shades, hospital bed, drip posts nearby, and a huge arrangement of late roses in a vase near the black screen of a television. Gemma struggled to get up.

‘It’s okay,’ said Heather. ‘You’re okay, and so is Steve. Mostly. The surgeon just cleaned you up and I think you should stay in for observation. We don’t know how hard you hit your head.’

A young nurse hurried into the room. ‘Your sister’s on her way,’ she said.

Gemma took a deep breath. ‘What happened?’

‘The building you were in collapsed. You and Steve were pulled out. Others weren’t so lucky.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you remember it?’ Heather asked.