Country of the Blind (44 page)

Or maybe we just hope that's what happens.

She wished she hadn't read all those
Amnesty
articles about torture. About how they weren't necessarily that interested in information, simply wanted to torture you for its own sake, to break and dehumanise you. How it wouldn't do any good to say she'd tell him anything as he'd probably torture her anyway. She wanted the merciful oblivion. Wanted to leave her body, abdicate her consciousness, half in love with easeful death. She wanted to surrender. Resisting was hard. Surrender was easy. Death was easy. 251

She had been saved from an unknowing end, in a car-crash in Glasgow, and for what? To live another day and a half in fear before the moment came, behind all its heralds, with the fullest complement of pomp and circumstance. There was an irresistibility about it, a demonstration of its power, that it could not be outrun, and that the man who had helped her flee it before was himself now dead, alongside his wife-never-to-be.

But her mind would not release her, the almost inappropriate voice of selfpreservation - a voice that didn't understand its own irrelevance here - still babbling its conjecture amidst the screams of pain and the wailing cacophony of fear.

This man
would
ask her questions, did want to hear what she knew. And when he was satisfied she had no more to tell him, then he would certainly kill her. She had known that when he woke her and gagged her on Parlabane's sofa - she hadn't needed to see him take his mask off in the car to work out it was a one-way trip. And she definitely hadn't needed him to tell her, although she was sure that doing so had been mainly for his own benefit.

"You know why you're here, don't you, Nicole," he said quietly, reasonably, crouching down before her as she bent over, paralysed by his blow, and placing his hands on her knees. "I'll make it quick if you're cooperative. And I think you know now what slow's going to feel like."

If she stayed silent, he'd hurt her. If she talked, she died. Half in love with easeful death.

But only half. The voice told her there was still hope, still a chance. Noone knew she was here, but something could still intervene. It was all going wrong, remember? What she had heard in the car, as she lay pinned on the back seat, the man holding a gun to her head as her face pressed into the upholstery, in his other hand that portable phone, both items now sitting on the desk a few feet behind him. Big problems in. . . Strathgair, was it? And there was the newspaper. People must have seen the newspaper by now. There was still a chance these men would be stopped, somehow, still a chance. But it was a chance she had to be so brave to believe in, when it entailed facing and forcing herself to comprehend the cold, visceral reality of her predicament, without shutting anything out or giving up. She had to think about what was here and now, stay alert and sharp, not oblivious, not absent and numb. She had to keep herself alive. She had to talk, but she couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear or even what he thought he wanted to hear. And she couldn't let him think she was bluffing or lying. But what could she tell him? Trying to consider what to say, trying to weigh up the plausibilities and project the consequences amidst this pain and panic and fear was like trying work out your rate of vertical acceleration as your engineless aeroplane plummets steeply earthward.

252

The man pulled out a long, polished and glinting knife and began tapping it lightly on her thigh.

"Tell me how. . . "

Tbe dead silence of the house outside the bedroom was suddenly shattered by the sound of a doorbell, ringing long, loud and insistently. Her eyes opened wide in startlement. He saw the hope within them, and laughed.

"That'll be Harcourt," he said, ostensibly to the man sitting on the bed, but really to Nicole. "Go let him in. Tell him to get his gear together for the drive. And ask him if he remembered to put that bedding away. If he didn't, the stupid cunt's going straight back there."

The second man got up and left the room.

"Does this make you feel like a real tough guy?" Nicole said, sniffing and staring hatred at him through her puffy eyes. "Were you bullied at school or something? Daddy interfere with you as a small b. . . ?"

He slapped her with the back of his hand; not as hard as he could have, she estimated, but enough to hurt and rattle her jaw-bone.

"Yes," he said with a cold smile. "All those things. Mummy too and the local scoutmaster and the village vicar. If it makes you feel better I'll tell you I can't get it up and that it's really small anyway. So now I've answered your questions, I'd consider it polite if you answered mine."

He pressed the end of the knife into her thigh and drew it along for a few centimetres, opening a shallow cut around which blood quickly began to collect. Nicole sucked in air as the small wound started to sting, then heard herself moan involuntarily as he pulled slightly at the skin either side of it.

"People don't always respond to pain, Nicole," he said, pushing her head back. "But there are other options." He placed the tip of the blade on the skin above the collar of her T-shirt.

"I'll tell you what you want to know," she said, grudged tears dripping from her eyes, swallowing to steady her voice. "I'll cooperate."

"Oh I'm sure you will, but let's not rush it."

He pressed the stiff metal up a little, forcing her head back, and pulled her thighs a few inches apart with his other hand. She looked upwards and closed her eyes, sniffing and unable to stop herself crying. He pushed his hand in further, slowly, until his fingers were almost touching her underwear, and she opened her eyes again, looking anywhere but at this vile thing before her, looking for imaginary escape, looking for a place to hide within herself, eyes scanning the ceiling. . . the walls. . . then the doorway. She swallowed again and looked down, reflexively clamping her thighs back together as his fingers brushed the cotton between her legs.

"It's not a very good time to be doing that," she told him.

"Oh that's all right. As I'm sure you've gathered, I don't mind a bit of blood."

253

[?] [?] [?]

"Is that the car you saw?" asked Parlabane, looking at the wheeled slug in the driveway of the detached, two-storey Victorian villa. The garden was cordoned off from the street and its neighbours by a low wall and high firs at the front, towering, unkempt hedges at the sides. There's one in every upmarket neighbourhood. Place that looks like it was all but burnt down some time in the early Seventies, possibly for insurance, and has passed through a succession of anonymous owners who consistently and conspicuously failed to properly restore it, instead just repairing it to basic, well-it's-still-standing functionality. Consequently it had the reclusive and slightly neglected air of a small convent or seat of some other equally fucked-up religious sect.

"I didn't get the reg, but it was definitely a black Mondeo," Sarah confirmed.

"What are these guys, killer sales reps?" asked Jenny.

"No, just killers," Parlabane stated.

"You want me to get us some back-up? I've got my radio here."

"No, Jenny, I quite definitely
don't
want you to radio for backup. Remember who we're dealing with. You put a call out for assistance at this address and you never know who might hear about it and recognise it. Could have a phone ringing in that house in one minute, letting them know we're coming. They could have Nicole dead and stashed while you and your pals are arsing about trying to get a search warrant. We're on our own."

He released the magazine from the Beretta, racking the barrel to eject the shell he had chambered earlier, then popped the bullet back into the mag. Then he slammed the clip home again. Sarah gestured to Jenny with her head, indicating the gun with a can-you-believe-this-guy roll of the eyes.

"You see a gun here, Detective Dalziel?" he asked.

Jenny covered her eyes, then her ears, then made a zipping motion across her lips. Sarah shook her head. Parlabane leaned over into the back seat for his bag, pulling out ropes, gloves, his lock-picking kit and a small aluminium grappling hook.

"So just how are you planning to do this,
darling
?" Sarah asked acidly.

"I'm going to break in at the back while Jenny causes a distraction at the front. You can ring the bell, flash the badge, say you're looking for a prowler,"

he told Dalziel.

"What," said Jenny, "then you swing from the chandeliers with the girl under your big manly arm, leap over the baddies and ride off into the sunset?

You'll get your fucking head blown off, Scoop. Forget it."

"Well the clock's ticking. You got any better ideas?"

"Yes," she said. "But I'll need your gloves, the knife you took from fumbletrumpet in the boot back there, and an assistant from the audience."

Sarah arched her eyebrows. "You got it."

254

Parlabane shot her a look of grave concern, and almost began the process of opening his mouth.

"Oh don't you
dare
give me any crap about it being dangerous, Jack Parlabane," Sarah snapped. "I was presumably supposed to sit here and knit while you climbed in like Spiderman,
hoping
you walked out alive again later. What's the plan, Jenny?"

Parlabane padded silently off into the shadows, gun in belt and tail between legs. His urgency to get inside before. . . whatever happened to Nicole made an angry partner mingling with his huffiness at being relegated to the sidelines, but he still enjoyed a "that's my girls" moment of satisfaction as he watched Jenny slash the Mondeo's tyres and Sarah smash its windscreen with a dully percussive and surprisingly quiet blow of the policewoman's telescopic baton.

They dusted themselves free of glass fragments then proceeded directly to the front door, where Jenny rang the bell.

After a time, a tall man appeared, well built but just erring on the portly side, dressed uniformly in black but without the balaclava. He pulled the door open and was evidently surprised to see the two women before him, one of them holding up her police identification, the other with her hands behind her back, attention-style.

"Good evening, sir. I'm DS Dalziel and this is DC Jackson. We're sorry to trouble you so late, but at least it seems you weren't in bed, Mr. . . " Jenny scanned the door for a nameplate, but there was none to be found.

"What can I do for you?" he interrupted quickly, in a tone that implied he hoped not much.

"Well, I'm surprised you didn't hear anything, but it was one of your neighbours who called, and luckily we were in the area. It seems someone has been vandalising cars in this street, and unfortunately we suspect your own has been a target. Is this your vehicle in the driveway, here?"

He leaned out on to the porch, looking across to where the Mondeo was slumped like a hamstrung bovine, tyres airless, shattered glass glinting in the gravel round about.

"Fucking
bastard
," he grunted, brushing past them and walking towards the car as if hypnotised.

Sarah whipped out the baton to its full length again and swung it as hard as she could between his legs from behind, both hands, one-wood on a par five, into the wind. Before he could even drop to his knees, Jenny was upon him, forcing his face into the dirt and cuffing his hands behind his back while Sarah patted him down and located the inevitable handgun. 255

"You'd better fucking pray the girl's alive, pal," Jenny warned, as beside them Parlabane strode purposefully into the house, weapon drawn.

"No, that's not what I meant, prick," continued Nicole, as firmly as she could manage. The man looked up into her bloodshot eyes, slightly concerned to see the fear replaced by anger, and more concerned that it was no longer the anger of the victim, but of the avenger.

"Look," she commanded.

He heard a clicking noise to his right, and turned to notice Parlabane in the doorway, gripping a pistol with both hands, aiming straight at his head.

"Drop the knife, arsepiece," he ordered.

The man instead angled the knife so that it lay across Nicole's throat, pressing it against the skin. "Put the gun down, or I'll kill her," he shouted, his gaze locked on Parlabane.

Parlabane, to Nicole's astonishment, rolled his eyes. "Oh
please
," he said witheringly. "Not the old 'knife to the girl's throat, back, back, I've got a hostage' routine."

"I mean it," said the man, eyes flashing, his arrogant, self-satisfied calm now an incongruous memory.

"Listen, baw-hair," resumed Parlabane more firmly. "In five seconds the knife goes
on
that desk or
up
your arse. It's make-your-mind-up time."

The man turned his head a couple of degrees, straining to look at the bureau, eyeing the gun sitting there, just out of reach.

"I don't know who you think you are, mate," he said, trying to sound confident and relaxed, then lunged for the pistol on the desk with his right hand, the movement of his torso taking the left - and more importantly the knife -

a vital few centimetres back from Nicole's neck.

Parlabane changed aim and fired with hardly a blink, bullseyeing' the automatic on the desk and sending it spinning off the veneer and against the wall six feet away. "No you don't," he said quietly.

The man looked at him with incredulous dismay, then back at Nicole as she kicked out with both feet, tipping herself and the chair backwards on to the floor. He threw himself flat on the floor alongside her, Nicole's body and flailing legs between him and Parlabane, then pressed the knife against her throat once more and knelt up. He couldn't use her as a shield, just her life for a standoff.

"Look, you've no idea what you're dealing with," he warned Parlabane.

"These matters don't concern you. I work for powerful people."

"Yeah, you work for Knight and he works for Swan."

Nicole looked up at the man, watching his Adam's apple bob involuntarily at the mention of the names.

256

"You're going to be in a lot of trouble, mate," he said. "I'd put the gun down if I were you. I can see to it that your life becomes a fucking nightmare if you don't. I've got powerful connections."