Hell To Pay (9 page)

Chapter 24

The sound of a shutter creaking as it comes down jolts me awake. Forcing my eyes open, my surroundings come into focus and I realize I’m in a garage. There’s stone cold floor beneath my back.

When I try to pull myself up, I discover I’m trussed up like a damsel in distress in a silent movie, but there’s no railway track or piano music playing, or any sign of Harold Lloyd.

My wrists and ankles have gone numb because the rope they’ve used is too tight. There’s something stuck in my mouth that reeks of oil. How am I going to breathe?

This is not the time to remember the bad asthma attacks I suffered as a kid, where my arms would wave around like windmills, as I struggled to catch a breath only to end up in hospital in an oxygen tent because my reliever wouldn't work.

The boy man from the club stands over me, eyeing me like he’s an extra in
The Hills Have Eyes
. He’s got greasy hair that looks as though he stuck it in a French fryer and a pockmarked face. He can’t be much older than twenty. He’s now dressed in a combat jacket and a peaked baseball cap. Gone is the suit he wore at
The Dollhouse
.

"Uncle Shaun, she’s awake."

His voice sounds like he’s trapped in a door and despite my predicament, I can't help wondering what he’d sound like suspended from a meat hook being repeatedly booted in the balls. Would his voice go even higher, sound as though he was sucking on some helium?

Why am I thinking about those now? Has the lack of oxygen starved my brain?

Shaun appears at Ritchie’s back, eying me dismissively as though I’m the trash his nephew forgot to take out.

‘Put her in the trunk of the car, Ritchie.”

Before I can scramble out the way, Ritchie has hoisted me up in the air and flung me in the trunk of the car. My tailbone scuds against the metal as I land, making me howl underneath the gag as an electric current of pain shoots up my spine.

As the door’s slammed down, plunging me into darkness, I hear Shaun say, "The fishes need feeding."

Panic has its meaty arm clamped around my throat and is squeezing so tight it’s a battle to breathe. They’re going to drown me and nobody will know. One splash and it’ll be all over, as though I never existed.

As the driver turns into Michael Schumacher, I’m tossed about the trunk as we seem to hit every bump, pothole and divot in the road. The gag prevents me from making more than a strangled groan, so I make a note that if I do survive this I’ll be putting in a complaint to the roads department. These roads are a disgrace.

There’s so little air in the trunk, I’m becoming light-headed. When I begin to get sleepy, I don’t fight it… 

"Get out."

The blinding beam of a torch shines in my face, dragging me back to consciousness and interrupting the nice dream I’d been having. We were all sitting around the dinner table at Christmas, gorging ourselves on the roast potatoes Mum always makes from scratch. I could taste them; the way they melted in my mouth and make me reach for more and forget the diet I was always on.

Then that cruel voice hauls me away from the land of roast potatoes and drags me back to reality.

The death march is playing in my head. Is this it? Have I fought all these battles to end up here, drowned in the River Clyde, in with the rats, with no one left to miss me, whilst the man who ordered my parents’ murders got away with it?

Yates repeats his command.

We’re outside now. The sky is inky black and covered in stars. They’re beautiful. Will these be the last stars I ever see?

Yates orders me out to get out again. What is wrong with this guy? He can’t expect me to hop out the trunk, not when I’m all tied up.

After god knows how long in the trunk, my legs and arms have gone to sleep and an electric current of pain has taken residence in my spine. To top it off, I’m still trussed up, a parcel no-one's going to deliver because no matter how much I fidgeted and worked at my binds, I couldn’t free so much as a pinkie. As an escapologist I suck.

The light bulb must have gone on in Shaun’s head, because he grabs me under my arms and half lifts, half drags me out the trunk.

This is my last chance. I need to make a move.

Swinging my legs at him as he lifts me in a move I learnt in yoga, I whack him in the face. They forgot to remove my boots. Rookie mistake.

One of my heels must have caught him across the eyebrow because it’s bleeding. He yelps and drops me. As I lie on the ground, he spits “cow” in my face and raises a clenched fist in a club. I’m glaring up at him when his fist pummels into my jaw and pain like toothache screams through my bones. The force slams me against the concrete and all the fight goes out of me.

All I can do is lie there in a heap, knowing that I’m going to die. Goodbye stars.

Yates is in a hurry to get moving. "Ritchie? Help me get her up. We don’t have much time. The river cops start their shift soon, looking for jumpers."

But, Ritchie doesn’t respond. Someone else does.

Out of the shadows, I catch sight of a figure that I know aint Ritchie. For one thing, this guy is well over six feet tall and a lot more buff. Compared to him, Ritchie’s a scrawny runt.

A voice I’ve never heard before cuts through the darkness that’s only partially broken by the haze of nearby street lighting.

"Tell you what, Uncle Shaun, I’ll be Ritchie."

His voice is jovial.

"Who the fuck are you?" Shaun snarls, as I struggle to get up.

Maybe I can use the diversion to escape. If only I can move.

"I’m the man with the crowbar."

Shaun takes a sharp intake of breath. ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with, pal."

"You’re wrong about that."

There’s that jovial tone again that makes me hope the new man’s on my side because if he isn’t I’m well and truly screwed. Even Jack Bauer couldn’t get out of this one.

That’s the point where my newfound pal, raises the crowbar above his head – the silver cuts across the dark - and wham, he brings it crashing down on Yates’s skull as though he’s slaying a zombie. Yates’s sways, before clattering onto the concrete. At this point, I hope he’s dead.

From the shadows, Mr. Crowbar extends a hand. "Need some help, sweetheart?"

From behind my gag, I snort. Nah, I want to stay here, trussed up like a freaking Christmas turkey in the freezing cold and the dark.

Instead, I nod. Don’t want to get on the wrong side of a stranger because he might end up leaving me here.

Chapter 25

Blinking up at the face of the man who’s just saved me from becoming fish food, I try in vain to place him and fail. I’d remember this face. He has the longest lashes I’ve ever seen. On most guys, they’d come across as too feminine, but he manages to pull it off thanks to a strong brow and boxer’s nose that might have been broken and reset a few times. The lashes might be pure George Clooney, but the rest of him was Sean Bean.

"We need to go now before the two stooges wake up."

Despite what he’s saying, there’s no urgency in his voice. Maybe he wants them to wake up so he can hit them again. The prospect makes me happy; perhaps he can lend me a metal bar.

My relief fades when reality kicks in. I don’t know this man; he could be anybody.

Even after he’s used a knife to cut my arms and legs free, I’m still wary.

Leaning against Yates’s car for support because my head feels as though it’s been in a spin cycle, I assess my options. I’m in the middle of nowhere (I know it’s somewhere along the Clyde, but that’s about it), at night and nobody else is coming. In Glasgow, there’s a constant stream of traffic, but all I can hear is a distant, steady hum. Wherever we were, it’s away from the city center.

I could start walking, but after being tied up in a confined space for so long, I’m a rag doll. There’s no power in my arms and legs, and my muscles have been replaced by rubber. I’m the Flamenco dancer my mum bought in Madrid that I left on the radiator. She ended up with bandy cheese strings legs.

I have no option but to trust this guy. I’m all out of plan Bs.

I let him help me stand, and when he slings a strong arm across my back to help me back to his car, I don’t shrug it off. 

He leads me past a few warehouses over to a black car. He’s planned this. But, how did he know?

The car’s warm as I sink into the seat that has one of those naff fake sheepskin covers, but I can’t heat up and my bones ache.  

He reaches down the side of the driver’s seat and comes up with a flask.

"Here, sweetheart. It’s not exactly roasty toasty, but there’s coffee in it with loads of sugar. Good for the shock. Keep on rubbing your arms and legs to get the circulation back. Might take a while. When the blood does start flowing it will hurt."

He issues his instructions staccato style and I wonder if he might have been in the army.

His concern for my welfare - I catch him watching me a few times and not in a creepy way as he’s driving – makes me decide that I can trust him. If he wanted to do me harm, he’d have made his move by now, or slammed the trunk lid back down and left me to suffocate. Maybe even put on the handbrake and let the car roll into the River Clyde. Goodbye Nancy Kerr. Would anybody even miss me? Michael and the less than marvelous Donna Marie would probably schedule their wedding for the day of my funeral and not care that I was dead. There'd be no John Hannah
Four Weddings
funeral speech for me.

Turning to face him, I focus on his eyes, so he can’t ignore me.

"Who the hell are you and why are you helping me?’ Another thought pops into my mind. “And, how did you find me?"

He says nothing as I drink the coffee that’s as much milk as caffeine. It’s sickly sweet, but for once I forget about the diet and gulp it down because my mouth’s on fire and tastes of sweaty socks. Laurel or Hardy must have had their laundry in the boot; I’d been leaning against something to lessen the impact of all those bumps.

Realizing what my ‘cushion’ might have been, makes me want to scrub myself in Carbolic soap and douse myself in Dettol. Christ, what if it was unwashed underwear? That prospect made me want to throw up.

My rescuer flashes me his pearly whites. His teeth are crooked, but they suit him. 

"I'm Tommy. Shug asked me to keep an eye on you."

He extends a hairy but muscly arm and despite what I’ve been through, I relax. He knows Shug. He must be okay. Shug wouldn't have told him about me otherwise.

"Someone's been eating all the porridge."

Shit.
The words are out my mouth before I can reel them back in. Now I've come across as a tittering schoolgirl.

Underneath the curly black hair, Tommy grins.

"Aye. Big fan of the porridge, me."

My face reddens. "Sorry, I didn't mean."

Can’t assume every one of Shug’s pals is a crook and has been an inmate at one of Her Majesty’s Prisons.

There's that twinkle again that extends to his eyes. They’re the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. They remind me of the sea on a bright summer’s day. Aware that I’m staring, I have to force myself to look away. Don't want my savior to think I'm turning into a stalker.

"No worries," he says. "Bet Shug's phonebook does read like a cast list of
Oz
."

"So, is that how you know Shug? From jail?"

I've been racking my brains and I can't remember my brother mentioning anyone called Tommy but then he didn't exactly hand me his address book to flick through.

To be honest, since I’d left home I hadn’t had much to do with Shug or his life, except for the occasional prison visit. It upset me to see him waste his life. Even when he did something thoughtful, like remembering my birthday and given me a present, it was tainted by the knowledge he’d probably nicked it out of some store. Either that or some poor warehouse security guard had been clobbered over the head so robbers could grab it and sell it onto Shug. Any time he got me anything I’d shove it in a drawer, waiting for the police to come looking for it. Michael used to find that amusing. He’d laugh and say I was his bit of rough.

I wait for Tommy to tell me how he knows Shug, but he doesn't and I'm going to ask him again when he turns the radio on and starts singing along at the top of his voice to a
Radiohead
track. He's not singing the correct words, he's making them up as he goes along and they're all swear words.

Hotel California
comes on and the words are changed to f this and c that. Tommy is a madman.

Despite the fact my hair's plastered to my face, I’ve got rope burns on my ankles and wrists and my jaw's throbbing from where Yates tried to punch a hole in it, I can't stop howling with laughter.

This is surreal. One minute, I'm trapped in the trunk of a car and heading for a watery grave, the next I'm sitting here with a hunky stranger who's shouting out random swear words instead of singing the right lyrics. My life is crazy town. 

"You do know that's not the words, right?"

I’m laughing so hard it’s a struggle to formulate the words.

He blushes to the roots of his hair.

"Aw, sorry, I didn't realize I was doing that. Too used to being in the car myself.”

His expression turns serious. “I met Shug through Narcotics Anonymous.”

This is news to me, I knew Shug dabbled, but not that he had a problem - unless being a magpie was an addiction.

"We hold regular sessions in jail," he explains. "I’ve been clean for ten years, so I lead the sessions."

He absorbs my gaze. "You didn’t know, did you?"

"No."

"Your brother was doing well. He’d been off the stuff for a few months and was on a methadone program. He was planning to go to college when he got out. Get a trade. Make your parents and you proud. That’s what he said."

The color drains from my face. I hadn’t known my brother at all. He was trying to change and I could have helped him. Now it was too late.

Tommy raises his eyebrows. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

My face burns as I turn to look at him, brushing off the hand he places on my shoulder, annoyed with myself because his touch makes me tingle and I want to collapse into his arms and holler like a baby. But, I won’t allow that to happen.

My expression hardens. "There are two things you should know about me, Tommy. If that really is your name, because I don’t know what the truth is any more. One, my name’s Nancy, not sweetheart, doll or darling. I’m nobody’s sweetheart." I pause to give him plenty of time to digest what I've just said. "And two, I’m not a stupid, wee lassie who’ll be dazzled by your charm. I know when I’m being spun a line. Shug never said anything to me about turning his life around. And, he would have told me that when I visited him a few days ago."

We’ve stopped at the traffic lights. There’s an old wino panhandling for change. This would be the perfect time for me to wrench the door open, jump out and start running and keep on running until I was alone. There’s a bar across the road and thanks to late opening, it’s still busy. If he tries anything, there are plenty of witnesses and there's CCTV. 

Tommy wisely keeps his hands to himself.

"Shug wasn’t killed over some petty prison argument. He was set up. It was a prison hit."

He looks straight at me, eyes boring into mine and I know he’s telling the truth.

As I sit there, trying to take in the ramifications of what he’s saying, the lights change and we pull away. My chance of ditching him have gone.

In a way, I’m relieved because I’ve nowhere left to run.

Chapter 26

"But, who’d want to kill him? He was a petty thief, not Tony Soprano."

There’s an edge to my voice. Shug was small fry. He was someone who found it easier drifting his way through life on the rob, instead of doing a decent day’s work. He got off on the thrill of it all. He wasn’t the kind of cold, calculating criminal who made enemies.

Tommy doesn’t so much as blink. "It’s better to think in terms of why and not who. Anybody will kill anybody if the price is right."

"Who put a price on his head, then?"

Tommy looks me straight in the eye. "Shug was looking after a gun for someone. The last time he was busted for burglary he didn’t have time to put it somewhere safe, so he managed to smuggle out a message to your parents asking them to dispose of it."

"My parents…" I’m choking on the words. "They hid a gun for Shug?"

I can’t believe they’d do that. Not my mum and dad, who were as law-abiding as they come. When they got the wrong change at the store, they’d always pipe up and hand it back.

"Afraid so. That’s what signed their death warrant. Who else would a lad in trouble go to, but his mammy and daddy?"

"How do you know about the gun?" I fire out the question, meeting him with a stone cold, hard stare, giving him no time to think.

"Shug confided in me. He knew I wouldn’t tell anyone because of client confidentiality and all that."

"Why go to so much trouble for one gun?"

From what I’d heard there were plenty of guns in Glasgow. Why was this one so damn special?

"This one had been used," says Tommy." Probably in a series of armed robberies. That’s what they do you know. Get some patsy to stash the gun in payment for a debt or in exchange for some favor."

"How do you know all this? Are you a cop?"

I’m joking – no cop I’ve heard of would clock someone over the head with a crowbar – but for a brief second, he looks worried.

"Me? Nah, don’t be daft."

My head’s spinning. If what he's saying is true, Shug was responsible for Mum and Dad’s deaths, for my ordeal. He brought hell to our door.

“What now?”

I’ve got to be practical. Yates will come after me and so will his boss because they’ll think I have the gun. There’s no way he’ll call off the dogs; not when he has so much to lose.

Tommy meets my eyes with a piercing gaze of his own. “We go after the man who owned the gun. The man who ordered his two thugs to do whatever was necessary to get it back. He’s called Sandy McNab.”

Sandy McNab? I knew that name. He was what we called “a local businessman,” but in his case, the term should always have been in quotation marks because that’s how he’d been described by his lawyers the few times he’d landed in court charged with money laundering. Each time he’d been cleared, but there’d been talk of jury tampering and brown paper bags under tables.

Tommy adds: "Unless McNab’s found face down in the River Clyde, we should stick together because he will come after you. You’re a loose end and he seldom leaves loose ends.” He pauses to let his words sink in. “Do you know that woman in the witness protection program who was found drowned in her bath, despite having police protection?"

I do. It'd been all over the papers with suggestions as to why she'd been killed.

"The rumors are she was ratting on McNab. She saw some dodgy business deal going down and she was going to spill."

Damn. This was worse than I thought.

"We can stay at my place," says Tommy. "They don’t know about me. Yet. You’ll be safe there."

My head feels like it’s about to explode. This was a nightmare. But, it was my nightmare.

"You've done your bit. You can just drop me off somewhere. You don't have to be any more involved that you already are."

Even after all that I've heard, I can't expect him to put his neck on the line for me. If he leaves now, McNab might never find out he was the one who took out two of his men and saved me.