Authors: Catherine Forde
‘Quinn Family Eyecare, no less,’ he said. ‘Christ, your dad tells some criminal jokes. No wonder you look so pissed off, stuck behind that desk, babes, hearing patter like that. He sells some vile gear too. Eh, babes?’ Stefan waggled the arms of his specs, blinked over the top of the frame, acting the goof.
‘Look as swotty as the chemical researcher I’m meant to be, don’t I?’ he leaned into the car to ask.
Reading my mind
.
‘Stephen Alan. PhD. University of Strathclyde. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, offering me a handshake which I didn’t accept.
‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugged, opening a clear plastic wallet Len handed him. Apart from the plane ticket which Stefan slipped into his jacket pocket there must have been at least a dozen passports: European. American. Australian … Stefan sifted them, flicking to the photographs on the back, discarding each one by throwing it over his shoulder to where he’d chucked his gloves until there were only two passports left.
‘There’s the Comic Optician himself.’ Stefan leaned on the car door to flash me Dad’s missing passport.
When I tried to grab it from him – ‘You stole that. And you nicked Dad’s VISA too, didn’t you? That time you went into the bedroom. You scummy …’ Stefan just nodded at Len, eyebrows raised.
‘Hey, the bitch is catching on. She’s all yours, but remember…’ Before Stefan turned his back saying something to Len I didn’t understand, he tapped his watch with an impatient finger. One swift cock of his head was enough to direct Len to lunge at me. Seizing my wrists, he whipped me from the car so fast I spun round on my heels, staggering backwards.
When my rear end landed on the metal floor of the
container, the force of my fall clanged like a distress bell.
‘Ooops-a-daisy, clumsy clogs.’
Stefan’s words were only just audible and no more over the reverberation I’d caused. His own footsteps echoed through the container as he walked towards its unlit rear, swallowed in the dark beyond the apron of light from the car headlights.
‘Anyway, I’ll be getting out Len’s way. Goodbye, babes.’ Stefan was sniffing crocodile tears. ‘Was
ever
so sweet while it lasted,’ I heard him mock before a car door slammed and an ignition kicked over and a pair of reverse lights pricked the black recesses of the container. Their zig-zag approach to within a few centimetres of the floor where I sat didn’t distract Len. Hauling me to me feet, he roped my waist then my upper arms to a rusty ring hanging from the container roof. When I was hoisted off the ground till only my toes scuffed the floor and no more, Len gagged me with his scarf again, the effort of tightening it over my mouth making him grunt. Meanwhile, Stefan eased past us in one of those tiny Smart cars. His vision, as he reversed, was fixed, not on me, or Len, but on his
rear-view mirror.
Like I’m not even here.
Just as I was thinking this, the lenses in Stefan’s specs caught a reflection from Len’s parking light. They glinted red and blank on me.
Like there are no eyes behind them. No
windows to the soul
,
I thought, trying to peer past the dark tint.
Plead with all my heart for my life.
But Stefan sat in his car. He watched me. Me and hammer man.
Like he must have been watching us both that day of the attack outside Dad’s shop. When this all started
…
Hammer man takes his time. Humphing items from the boot of his car. Doesn’t say a word. Not a one. Doesn’t look at me either, and here I am: wriggling and straining. Grunting to free myself. My eyes begging at him. At Stefan in the car outside:
Please don’t do this to me. Or my mum. My dad.
A lamp appears first. Weird, I think when I see it. It’s the exact same as one Neil bought Dad three Christmases ago.
Call that a present!
I’d slagged it when Dad unwrapped what’s basically a bulb inside a red plastic cage. Great big long rat’s tail of an extension cable on it.
Now I’m seeing Len’s portable lamp and thinking how, every time Dad uses his, he proclaims it the
Best
present anyone’s ever given me
.
It’s bizarre seeing something that’s innocent and practical and
good
in my dad’s hands being put to use by someone like Len. His
version of Dad’s lamp plugs into the cigarette lighter hole on the dashboard of the car that drove me here. Switched on, a pool of sick yellow brightness floods from it, picking out all these rusty brown suspicious-looking stains on the area of the container floor where I’m tied.
The stains make me think about those girls. The foreign ones Starsky and Hutch showed me: Tortured. Murdered.
Did they die in here too? At Len’s hand? Stefan looking on?
I gulp, looking wildly around this miserable container. That’s when I notice, through the open rear door of the car that brought me here, dozens of black-red bloodstreaks. Mine, these are. From my sliced wrists. Soiling the pale leather upholstery. Can’t help staring at them while Len moves back and forth from me to the boot of the car. He still ignores me, even when I thrash out my dangling legs and manage to kick over a plastic petrol canister he places within range of my size nines. When it falls over – Oh, Mammy-Daddy! Sloshing with fuel – Stefan parps his horn alerting Len who pauses on his way to the boot again. Rights the canister before producing a toolbox.
Coincidentally Dad’s got one of them too. Exact same gunmetal grey colour. Rusty round the base. Pulls out in tiers like a fancy box of chocolates with a hidden layer underneath. Dad keeps old fuses and useless bits of flex and Christmas fairy light spares in the sump of his toolbox. Len has screwtop jars, same as the ones Dad crams with old nails he’ll never use. Len’s jars have pills in them though. Two-tone capsules. Pretty colour combinations: lime and crimson, violet and grey. He has to lift some of the jars out before he can dig down for a bunch of syringes. He picks one, holds it between his teeth while he’s opening the nearest of the lidded compartments at the top of his toolbox. Think it’s the drawer Dad keeps for screwdrivers. Len’s is crammed with glass vials. They tinkle when his fingers disturb them.
I’m thinking what a sweet sound even while I’m panic-gasping behind my gag. Humming through my nose.
Amazing Grace.
Mum’s song. Mum’s prayer. Loud as I can. The noise has no effect whatsoever on Len. His monobrow is a dipped V of concentration. Syringe in hand, he’s drawing the contents of the upturned vial
into its needle. Even when I hum higher, tuneless, desperate, he works away, not a glance in my direction.
Me? When Len holds the filled syringe up to Stefan, and Stefan’s blank-eyed head nods
carry on,
my eyes are bulging out their sockets. Moving in close to me, Len flicks a fingernail against the syringe. Just like they do on
ER
,
Casualty
,
House
. Checking for air bubbles before the needle goes in. I’m bucking at the ring tying me to the container ceiling, every ounce of my strength working to tear my body free. But Len puts a stop to that. Syringe clamped between his teeth again he crushes his side against my ribcage, pinning me to the container wall, his full bulk waiting till I stop fighting.
And the moment I’m still, he presses his hand to the side of my face, twisting my jaw. Out the corner of my eye I see the tip of the needle closing in on my neck. Stefan in the background, making sure Len does what he’s paid for.
Bastard.
Whatever poison’s in that syringe it hits me from the feet up, a rush numbing my knees so fast that by
the time I realise they’re paralysed I’m sagged into Len, head lolling on to his shoulder. Drooling. I’m so drained of voluntary movement that when he steps back from me, my unsupported jaw cracks my collarbone so my teeth pierce my tongue. Ignoring my yelp, Len drops the syringe into the toolbox, closes up the lid then leaves the container. My eyelids, dragging heavier than the dead weight of my roped body, try to track Len’s movements but I can’t turn my head any more. Just hear the sound of the toolbox dropping into a car-boot before it’s closed. Then the grind of metal moving. Slam. One of the container doors has been shut, halving the light beaming in from Stefan’s car. He’s revving its engine as Len returns to where I’m sagged from my rope like a wasted rag doll.
All the time trying to make my mouth work.
Trying to beg:
Please let me go.
But all I can do is watch and follow Len’s hands through a slit in my drugged eyes while he opens the petrol canister. Sloshes its contents freely across the car before discarding the canister at my feet so fuel hits my hair, my clothes, my face. From the dashboard, Len
yanks out the flex of the portable light, plunging my surroundings into virtual darkness.
In the distance of the night, and just for a moment, I hear a duet of sirens before Len’s drowning them out with whistling and pom-pom-pomming.
Same as Dad when he’s reaching the end of a trickly repair job,
I can’t help thinking. And thinking about Dad makes me see him in my mind’s eye: plump and bumbly and harmless, his reading specs – or Mum’s more likely – tipping squinty off his nose while he works.
Am I ever going to see my dad again? Or Mum? Georgina …?
I’m screaming out my dumb, paralysed mouth, the voice in my head as high pitched as those caterwauling sirens I can still hear, so near but yet too far, somewhere out there in a Glasgow night.
What are you doing? Please stop. Please don’t leave me here
, I want to gurgle but Len’s outside the container now, interrupting his job-done whistling to call something to Stefan. Probably
Mission Accomplished.
Whatever, it makes Stefan flat his hand to his horn and his foot to the floor of his car.
Then Stefan and Len are off their mark, the second
door of the container slammed and locked while the burning ball of rags that’s kicked into the container rolls towards me. Flames leap so quickly from it that I can see them dance and grow through the skin of my leaden eyelids and I can smell scorched cloth. Paint melting.
Petrol.
So this is it.
The container swirling with smoke. Any air coming into my nose bitter and foul and thick.
Strangely enough, although I’m panicking, struggling to breathe, knowing that the flames licking the interior of the car, burning away my bloodstains and Len’s fingerprints, are reaching out for me already, part of my brain – probably for the first time in its seventeen years of being wired to me – is clear and racing.
Stefan can’t get away with this.
Won’t
get away with it. I’ve left a trail,
I realise, my thoughts flashing from the email I’d sent Georgina sitting in my Sent box to the bag of clothes in the hospital alley and my Mind Map ready for Uncle Mike on the kitchen table.
And Uncle Mike …
According to Mum’s last text he knows I’m in some kind of bother. Soon as he finds I’m still not home and reads what I’ve left for him, he’ll mobilise Team Operation Marlin.
Marjory. Starsky. Hutch. Top Cops.
And even if they don’t reach me in time, even if I end up like that poor retired security guard, I’ve left enough clues about Stefan, my sugarcoated evil bastard of a sweet-talking guy, for others to follow my trail.
My
trail.
Yeah. Even if Uncle Mike doesn’t reach me in time.
And he will. He must. He’d never let me down
…
Even if Dave Griffen never pulls through to describe who attacked him.
And he will too. He’s on the mend. He’s strong and super fit
…
Even if those sirens that seem to be wailing louder by the second are going elsewhere –
But they’re not. They’re headed this way. They must be. They’re clearer. They’re blaring. They’re outside. Please God. Dear God. I’m sure they are
– I might just have cracked Operation Marlin.
Who’d have thought it? Cloddy Quinn doing something useful for once.
Maybe Marjory was right.
I do have the makings of a good cop.
Note to self: I’ll look into that if I make it through the next five minutes
…When Uncle Super Mike arrives. And I get out of here alive …