Rules of Honour (33 page)

‘Those are the last lies you’ll ever utter about my father,’ he growled.

‘Charles Peterson was a sick monster who beat and raped little girls. You do understand that, don’t you? You know what kind of monster you’ve sanctified?’

Her captor let out a wordless growl.

Suddenly Yukiko felt weightless, and it took a moment to realise that she’d been lifted bodily from the seat. By the time understanding struck she was already on her back and unable to avoid the kick aimed at her body. The boot slammed her in the gut, forcing the wind from her lungs.

‘Hey, for Christ’s sake! Take it easy, will ya? We need her alive.’

A second set of feet descended the stairs, accompanied by the pecking of a walking stick on each alternate step.

‘We don’t need her. All we need is that they believe she’s still alive,’ her tormentor snapped.

‘They might ask for proof,’ Sean Chaney pointed out.

‘Then I’ll send them her lying tongue gift-wrapped in a fucking box!’

‘Don’t ruin this now, buddy. We’re close to winning this battle. But if you lose it with the old girl . . .’ Chaney leaned close to her. ‘Kicking her like that, she’ll be dead in no time.’

‘She’s tougher than she looks. I already pistol whipped the old bitch once and she survived.’

‘Trust me. She won’t last long like this.’

While Yukiko was still gagging, her abdominal muscles clenching in response to the kick, she was snatched up by her feet and dragged across the floor.

‘So give me a hand here, goddamnit,’ her abuser said.

Both men must have held her then, because she had the impression of more than one set of hands lifting her back to her feet. She was thrust against an upright pole this time. One of her captors jammed a forearm across her chest, holding her secure.

‘I can’t . . . breathe . . .’ Yukiko wheezed.

The pressure went from her chest, but it wasn’t a token gesture of pity. It was so the man could press both hands against her shoulders. Something slithered down over Yukiko’s head, coiling at the nape of her neck. While she was still trying to make sense of the new sensation an arm was shoved behind her back. The rope between her shoulder blades parted with a deft cut of a knife. Her hands dropped but didn’t part, and she realised that, though the rope that cinched her hands to her throat had been severed, she was not free. Still, her position was not as untenable as before; at least she had some freedom of movement in her upper body. It made breathing much easier, but now each exhalation came as a soft pant.

‘Don’t move.’ The order came from Chaney. His voice was gentle. Was there a hint of remorse in the man? Something that she could play on, use to her advantage?

The sack was yanked off. In reaction Yukiko screwed her eyelids tight, expecting to be blinded by a sudden invasion of light, but when she opened them again she found she was still in darkness. She blinked around, unable to make out anything in the gloom that hung over them all. It took a few more seconds before her eyes began to adapt to her surroundings, and now she could make out faint lamplight creeping down the stairs from the room above. She was standing against an upright beam that supported sagging rafters. Overhead the ceiling was missing many of its original planks and bars of yellow light cut inside the cellar at oblique angles. They fell across Sean Chaney’s features as he faced her, making the big man look like he was wearing camouflage paint. One beam reflected in Chaney’s right eye, making it soulless, pitiless, and Yukiko realised there was no hint of mercy she could depend on from the brute. Her resolve wasn’t aided when Chaney nodded upwards and Yukiko followed his direction and saw the rope suspended from the rafter above: the same rope that had been dropped over her head a few moments ago. Even as she realised what her captors intended, the murderer yanked the other end of the rope, pulling it taut and ravelling in the length noosed round her throat. Yukiko went up on her tiptoes. She gasped. But then she could breathe once more. She settled on her heels.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t hang you yet,’ said Peterson’s son. ‘There’s something else to do first.’

The man was to her left, swathed in deep shadow. She could not make out his features, but she caught a glint of something metallic. He was holding aloft something Yukiko believed was the knife he’d cut her rope with earlier. Or more likely it was a gun. His father had been shot during his hanging, the bullet fired by her husband. She thought that the son intended replaying Andrew’s original part in the hanging. But she was wrong. She felt liquid spray on to her chest, droplets of it splashing under her jaw. Only when he passed the item through one of those bars of light did she fully understand what he intended. He was holding a can of barbecue lighter fuel and was squeezing its entire contents on to Yukiko’s clothing. He was playing the part of Bruce Tennant.

Despite her previous resolve to meet death bravely, Yukiko flinched.

‘What’s wrong?’ He gave the can another squeeze, sending a ribbon of fuel over Yukiko’s legs. ‘You don’t want this circle to end the way it began? You chose to burn my father, so why’s it so wrong if I do the same to you?’

Yukiko flinched again. Not at his words but at the memory of the flames and smoke billowing from the cellar at abandoned Rohwer. In nightmares she had often pictured the torture, the intense agony that Charles Peterson must have endured. In reality she had not paid witness to his demise, because she had stayed in the car with Rose. But in her dreams she watched the flaming, kicking torch-like figure jerking at the end of a chain, as if she’d been in the cellar with the others. In the nightmares the face eaten away by flame had always been hers. She had always believed those images had been conjured by guilt, as she sought to come to terms with her part in Peterson’s slaying. Now she believed otherwise: they had not been a vision born of empathy for the man’s suffering but a portent of her own death.

‘Don’t . . . do . . . this . . .’ There was a hint of pleading in her voice, and it grated in her own ears.

The murderer took out a cigarette lighter. He rasped a thumb over the wheel and it sparked brightly in the dark. He rasped the wheel again and a guttering flame stood an inch tall. He held the can of fuel in his other hand, aimed at Yukiko’s face so that when next he squeezed it the ribbon of ignited fuel would engulf her like napalm.

‘Don’t.’ Yukiko imagined her face in flames, the flesh melting horribly, peeling from her skull in charred ribbons. It wasn’t something she would allow. ‘Don’t do this. If you’re going to kill me, then kill me, but
not like this
.’

Her captors shared a look. They nodded simultaneously. Yukiko screwed her face tight, as if that would save her the agony. She stood there, stoically, with only the slightest shiver of her body betraying her terror. ‘So be it. If you’re going to do it, then do it!’

‘Oh, sorry, Yukiko. I’m confused. Are you saying this isn’t how you’d like things to end?’ Her would-be killer grinned, his teeth now flashing in the glow of the flame. He cast down the fuel can and allowed the flame to gutter out. ‘You don’t want that? Good, because neither do I.’

Yukiko shuddered out a breath.

She relaxed her features slowly, setting her gaze on her tormentor as he moved into a beam of lamplight.

‘By the time I’m finished with you,’ he said, taking out his knife,‘you’ll wish you had taken the easy way out.’

Yukiko saw his face clearly for the first time, and more than the blade in his hand – or the continued threat of immolation – it was his features that sent a flutter of dread through her heart.

Chapter 38

Over the past few years I’d been inside the Ringtons’ house on dozens of occasions. I couldn’t equate the smouldering heap of timbers with the neat home that Yukiko and Andrew always kept. Fire crews were on the scene. They had fought to contain the fire, but all their valiant attempts were for nothing. The house was burned to the foundations, and all that remained were charred heaps unrecognisable as the furniture that once decorated the rooms, and the stubs of the walls that once contained them. Even the stone chimneystack had fallen, brought down when the roof collapsed. It was as if someone had taken a painting of the neighbourhood and dropped a splash of ink on the canvas, obliterating the once beautiful space where the house stood. I had to shake the image, unreal as it seemed: this was not oil on canvas but a real place. Those people who once lived there were also real. People I’d grown to love as much as I did my own flesh and blood.

As I observed firefighters sift among the wreckage, seeking out hotspots to dampen down, I felt as if one of those hidden embers had lodged in my heart. I would not allow it to be smothered, because I wanted it to flare into being and fuel me in the hours to come. Since this started I’d concerned myself with avoiding the notice of the police, but that caution had hindered me. Now it was a case of the law be damned. This was a personal attack on my loved ones and no one would stand in my way as I avenged it.

I looked at my friend, and my rage must have been nothing in comparison to his.

Rink stood as solid as a granite boulder next to me. He hadn’t moved in some time as he too surveyed the wreckage of his family home. I wondered what memories he had of the place, but at the same time knew that was not how his mind was working. He was not thinking of the material worth of the place, but of the spiritual. More than the fact his mother had been snatched from her home, this was where his father had died, and the burning of the place was the ultimate insult to his memory.

Bridget Lanaghan had not recovered from the knock on her head before the paramedics arrived. Thankfully she was only unconscious, and the medics were able to stabilise her and reassured us that the prognosis for a full recovery was good. My greatest regret was that she had not been able to tell us anything before the ambulance left, but I’d live with it. Better that she was looked after, and brought back to health than I encourage her to speak while so poorly. Others could answer my questions.

There were still a number of neighbours moving in the distance, beyond the cordon set up by the fire trucks and their unravelled hoses. I looked for the dog walker. I hoped he could tell us more about what he had witnessed. He had seen Yukiko and Bridget Lanaghan together, but he said that the fire was already underway by then and that Yukiko had asked him to call the emergency services. But had he been walking his dog before that? Had he seen any others near the house, a vehicle of some kind? I wanted confirmation that Markus Colby was responsible for this . . . or was it someone else? I could not see the man with the dog. Perhaps another neighbour had seen something. I was about to move away from Rink’s side, to go ask, and did not expect the verification that came next.

Beyond where we’d abandoned Andrew’s car, there was another. It was familiar to me.

The lights from the fire trucks danced across the car’s windshield, but I could make out the form of a man inside.

That spark in my heart flared.

I touched Rink on his elbow.

‘The sand-coloured car is back,’ I said.

That was all the motivation either of us needed. We headed for the car, despite the presence of so many witnesses around us. As we approached, the driver started the vehicle and completed a reverse U-turn in the roadway. He did not speed off, but waited until we were back in Andrew’s car and also made the turn. Then he led us away. There was no urgency to get away, no attempt to lose us: he wanted us to follow.

Finally, a few blocks away, he pulled into the forecourt of a vehicle repair shop that was closed for the night.

He got out the car, leaning on the open door as he checked around. There was no one about, only the occasional car passing on the street. He’d have been better off doing this where there were plenty of others.

Rink and I approached him. It was the bruiser that Rink had knocked out in Parnell’s apartment at Hayes Tower. He knew he wasn’t a physical match for either of us. He flicked back the tail of his jacket to show the gun on his hip as he stepped into the open. We didn’t bother showing ours.

‘What are Chaney’s terms?’ Rink demanded.

There was no need for preamble. It was apparent what had happened back at the house. Our warning that Chaney leave town had fallen on deaf ears and the bastard had gone through with yet another tit-for-tat attack. Why he’d chosen to snatch Yukiko was out of character though. It didn’t surprise me when the man spoke next.

‘Your mother for Parnell and Faulks.’

‘What the hell does Chaney want them for?’ Rink demanded.

‘He doesn’t. His new friend does.’

It didn’t take any thinking about. It was obvious who Chaney’s new buddy was.

‘So it’s true then? Shit does stick to shit.’

I smiled at Rink’s summation.

‘When and where?’ Rink went on.

The big guy had been holding something in his opposite hand, concealed behind the open car door. For a millisecond I thought he was going to haul out another gun and force us into his car, but that wasn’t it. He threw a folded map on the floor at Rink’s feet. Rink didn’t bend to retrieve it.

‘Two hours.’ The man nodded down at the folded map. ‘X marks the spot, as they say. Be there with Parnell and Faulks and you get your mother back. No cops. No weapons. The first sign of either and your mom dies. Understood?’