Live Fire (18 page)

He went upstairs to shower, then changed into a polo shirt and chinos. He had just taken a bottle of Kingfisher beer from the fridge when the doorbell rang. A console in the hallway allowed him to view the images from the CCTV cameras that covered the front and rear of the property. The delivery boy was at the gates, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and, behind him, the 50cc moped with a red back carrier that had the name of the restaurant on it. Montgomery buzzed him in and went to open the front door.

He was a teenage Bangladeshi, the nephew of the owner. He was a nice enough lad but Montgomery knew from experience that he was careless so he checked the order carefully, then gave him thirty pounds and told him to keep the change. The boy hurried back to the gate and Montgomery closed the door. He pressed the button on the console to open the gate again, then went through to the kitchen, humming quietly to himself. He switched on the extractor fan above the oven and laid out the foil cartons on the kitchen table. ‘Lovely,’ he whispered, and sipped his Kingfisher. His wife hated the beer almost as much as she hated the food. Generally he followed her lead and drank either wine or sherry, but beer was the only possible accompaniment to Indian food, and ideally it had to be Kingfisher or Cobra. He poured it into a pint glass. His mouth was watering and he thought, for the thousandth time, that a good Indian meal was, more often than not, more satisfying than sex – certainly the sort of sex he’d been getting in recent years. The doorbell rang again and he frowned. He went to the console in the hallway. The delivery boy was back. He opened the front door. The boy was standing on the doorstep, the baseball cap low on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Montgomery. ‘Didn’t I give you enough?’

The boy looked up and Montgomery frowned. It wasn’t the Bangladeshi. This boy was dark-skinned but he was older than the delivery boy and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. Montgomery wondered why he was wearing them at night, then looked over the boy’s shoulder and saw that the motorcycle had gone. He opened his mouth to speak but the boy punched him in the sternum, knocking the wind from his lungs. He staggered back, gasping for breath, his chest on fire. The glass of beer dropped to the floor and shattered into a dozen shards, beer splashing over his legs. Two more men appeared, in hooded sweatshirts and dark glasses. They grabbed Montgomery by each arm and pulled him down the hallway. His bare feet scrabbled for balance.

The man in the baseball cap slammed the door and pulled a carving knife from the pocket of his jacket. He pointed it at Montgomery’s face. ‘Just chill and you’ll be fine,’ he said. He had a north of England accent, Montgomery realised.

‘My wallet’s in my pocket,’ said Montgomery. ‘My watch is on the bedside table. It’s a Rolex. The only money in the house is in the desk in my study. There’s about two hundred pounds. Just take it and go.’

‘We are not thieves,’ said the man with the knife. ‘We have not come here to steal from you.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to shut the fuck up and do as you’re told,’ said the man. He used his left hand to pull a bundle of material from his anorak pocket. He shook it out – a cloth bag – then pulled it down over Montgomery’s head.

‘I can’t breathe,’ said Montgomery.

‘Hit him,’ said someone. The voice was muffled through the hood.

‘What?’ said Montgomery. ‘What did you say?’

‘Hit him!’ repeated the voice, louder this time.

Montgomery opened his mouth to speak but something slammed against the side of his head and everything went black.

Sweat dripped down Shepherd’s back and he wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. He’d parked down a side road where he had a decent view of the entrance to the car park of the gym frequented by the Moore brothers and their crew. On his back he had a small rucksack containing his gym gear and a towel. He had been waiting at the side of the road on his rented Harley Davidson Sportster motorcycle for the past half an hour. The Moores and their crew were regulars at the gym and Andy Yates and Davie Black usually turned up on motorbikes. Shepherd had rented his from a shop close to Jimmy Sharpe’s hotel, paying cash for three months. He wasn’t a fan of motorcycles and generally preferred four wheels to two, but the bike would give him a reason to talk to Yates or Black.

Shepherd had spent the morning moving into the villa and stocking up with provisions from a local supermarket. Now it was just after three o’clock. He planned to give it another fifteen minutes and if the crew hadn’t turned up he’d go into the gym on his own. He hadn’t exercised since he’d arrived in Thailand and he could feel his body tightening up. He’d considered swimming in the villa’s pool but the sun was too fierce during the day for him to be in the water for an hour or two. As he wiped his forehead again, he heard the sound of two powerful motorcycles in the distance. He started his engine.

As he put the bike in gear he saw Yates and Black pull into the car park. Yates was on a customised Harley Fat Boy chopper with handlebars that curved high into the air and a low-slung seat, while Black had a 1500cc V-twin Suzuki Intruder. Neither men was wearing a helmet. Shepherd headed after them and parked next to Black’s Suzuki. He took off his helmet. ‘Nice bikes,’ said Shepherd. He pointed at the customised Harley. ‘Haven’t seen many of those in Pattaya.’

‘Had it hand-built in California and shipped over,’ said Yates. ‘Davie here bought his in from Japan.’ He nodded at Shepherd’s bike. ‘Rental?’

‘Yeah, I left mine in England. Not sure whether to bring it over or buy here.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘John Westlake.’

‘Davie,’ said Black, shaking his hand. ‘Davie Black.’

‘Andy,’ said Yates, also shaking his hand. ‘Most guys here call me Chopper.’

‘Because of your bike or because of your . . .’ Shepherd gestured at the man’s groin.

Yates laughed. ‘Bit of both,’ he said. He looked at Shepherd. ‘Didn’t I see you kicking the hell out of some guy last night?’

‘Might have done,’ said Shepherd. ‘Some Scottish geezer was getting lippy with the bird I was with. Next thing I know he’s trying to bottle me.’

‘You sorted him out, though, gave him a right good hiding.’

‘Nothing he didn’t deserve,’ said Shepherd.

Yates nodded at the gym. ‘Are you going inside?’

‘Yeah, I used to run to keep fit but it’s too bloody hot here so I thought I’d give the gym a try.’ The three men walked in together. Yates and Black went to the changing rooms while Shepherd filled in an application form. By the time Shepherd had changed, yates and Black were in the weights area. Black was lying on his back lifting and Yates was watching him. Shepherd nodded at them and went over to a row of treadmills. He set one to a five per cent incline, jogged for five minutes as a warm-up, then ran at full pelt for half an hour. He preferred to run outside, ideally with a rucksack full of bricks on his back to build stamina. Treadmills always reminded him of hamsters on exercise wheels, a lot of effort to go nowhere.

Two young girls in skin-tight leotards and Lycra shorts were jogging on adjacent machines, watching a Thai soap opera on an overhead TV screen. They smiled at him as he walked by and he smiled back. The Thailand Tourist Authority liked to describe the country as ‘The Land of Smiles’ and it was an accurate description. The Thais did smile a lot, but he had no way of telling if they meant it or not.

Yates and Black were still in the weights area, sitting on benches and working on their biceps. Shepherd went to them and draped his towel over a bench. ‘All right, lads?’ he said.

They nodded and carried on with their reps. Shepherd rarely trained with free weights. He had no interest in building muscle mass and found weight training boring, but it was the sort of activity that men like Ricky Knight thrived on, especially when they had spent time inside. He went over to a rack and picked up a five-kilo bar, sat down on a bench opposite them and began working on his right arm. ‘How easy was it to bring your bikes over?’ he asked Yates.

‘Cost you a couple of grand to ship it over, and there’s an import tax, plus you’ll probably have to grease a few palms at the port but it’s no big deal,’ said Yates. ‘Are you gonna be here for a while, then?’

‘Foreseeable future,’ said Shepherd. ‘What about you guys? How long have you been in Pattaya?’

‘Couple of years,’ said Black. He switched his weights from the right arm to the left.

‘Did you buy a place?’ asked Shepherd.

‘Yeah,’ said Yates. ‘What about you?’

‘Just rented a villa but I think I’ll probably buy. It’s my first time here so I’m still feeling my way.’

‘You’ve got to be careful because
farangs
can’t own land, but there’s ways around it,’ Black told him.

‘
Farangs
?’

‘That’s what they call foreigners. We’re all
farangs
. Apartments are okay, but not land.’

‘Yeah, I was talking to the estate agent that got me my place. Dominic Windsor. He said as much.’

‘You know Dom, do you?’ said Yates. He stood up, clenched and unclenched his hands, then flexed his shoulders.

‘Just given him one and a half million baht in rent,’ said Shepherd. ‘Three months. Nice place, owned by some guy in Singapore.’

Yates laughed. ‘Oh, you’re the newbie he was talking about.’

‘What?’

‘You were robbed,’ said Black.

Shepherd stopped lifting his weight. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Half a million a month, you’re paying? He’s been pushing it at four hundred thousand for the last six months. He showed it to a friend of ours a few years ago, couldn’t shift it then and it was a lot cheaper than half a million.’

‘Bastard,’ said Shepherd, with venom.

‘Nah, he’s just making a living,’ said Yates. ‘
Caveat emptor
, right? It’s not his fault you’re a newbie.’

‘I’ll break his sodding legs,’ said Shepherd. He transferred the weight to his other arm and began pumping.

‘He’s all right, is Dom,’ said Black. ‘How long have you been in Thailand?’

‘A few days,’ said Shepherd.

‘This is your first time and you’re thinking of settling down? Bit sudden, that.’

‘I needed a change. The wife caught me screwing a neighbour and set her lawyer on me. I figured she’d have a hard job finding me out here.’ It was a weak story, but that was what Shepherd needed. If the John Westlake legend was full of holes it wouldn’t take them long to see through it.

‘You’ll do plenty of shagging out here,’ laughed Yates. ‘You tried out the local talent yet?’

‘Not really,’ said Shepherd. ‘Truth be told, I’m still a bit jet-lagged.’

‘Come out with the guys tonight,’ said Yates.

‘The guys?’

‘Me and a few mates. We’ll be out on the town having a few beers. You’ll normally find us in Angelwitch or Living Dolls down on Walking Street.’

‘Yeah, I’ll swing by. I could do with some tips on the way it works out here.’ Shepherd stood up and took the weight to the rack.

Yates grinned. ‘There’s one golden rule out here,’ he said. ‘Cash is king. If you’ve got the money, you can do pretty much what the hell you want.’

‘Sounds like my kind of town,’ said Shepherd.

Simon Montgomery blinked as the hood was ripped from his head. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked, trying to inject some authority into his voice.

Bradshaw ignored the question. He was standing between al-Sayed and Chaudhry and all three men were wearing camouflage fatigues and black leather boots, with red and white checked scarves tied around their necks. The only furniture in the room was the chair that Montgomery was sitting on. His arms were still tied behind his back. Bradshaw nodded at al-Sayed, who went behind Montgomery and used a pair of scissors to cut the tape from around his wrists.

As Montgomery massaged his tingling fingers, Bradshaw tossed him an orange jumpsuit. ‘Put that on,’ he said.

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ said Montgomery, standing up.

Al-Sayed punched his head and Montgomery staggered sideways. Chaudhry rushed forward and slapped him across the face. Bradshaw held up his hand. ‘Enough!’ he said.

Montgomery put a hand to the wall to steady himself. There was blood on his lips. Bradshaw pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his fatigues and gave it to him. ‘You’re bleeding,’ Bradshaw said.

Montgomery dabbed at his lip. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

Bradshaw took the handkerchief back. ‘Please put the overalls on, Mr Montgomery. If you refuse, we will dress you forcibly.’ He picked up the jumpsuit and put it on the back of the chair. ‘That would be embarrassing for you and probably painful.’

‘What is it you want?’ asked Montgomery.

‘I want you to put on that jumpsuit. I shall count to ten, and if you’re not wearing it by the time I’ve finished . . .’

Montgomery stared at the jumpsuit. ‘What sort of people are you?’ he said.

‘One,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Two. Three.’

Montgomery took off his chinos and polo shirt and slowly pulled on the jumpsuit. ‘I don’t know what you expect to achieve by doing this,’ he said.

‘That’s not your problem,’ said Bradshaw. Al-Sayed tossed Montgomery’s clothes into the corner of the room.

‘I’m a High Court judge. The police will hunt you down no matter where you go.’

‘Let me worry about that,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Now, please zip up the jumpsuit.’ Montgomery did as he was told, then al-Sayed retied the judge’s hands behind his back.

‘Is it a ransom you want?’ asked Montgomery. ‘Is this about money? I have money, in the bank. If your demands are reasonable there’ll be no problem getting it to you.’

‘This isn’t about money,’ said Bradshaw.

‘What, then?’ asked Montgomery. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I want you to be quiet,’ said Bradshaw. ‘Are you a religious man?’

The question seemed to take Montgomery by surprise. ‘Am I what?’

‘Do you follow any religion?’

‘As much as anyone,’ said Montgomery. ‘I’m Church of England.’

Bradshaw sneered at him. ‘You’re a
kafir
and you’ll burn in Hell, but if it gives you any comfort I suggest you commune with your God. Now kneel down.’