A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) (27 page)

For a second I couldn’t breathe and I was sure I was dying.

It wasn’t so bad actually. The dying I mean.

Although I very much missed Claire and Fred.

Then the man was kneeling on my stomach and slamming his gun into the side of my face. Not hard but over and over again.

I tried to get my hands up to protect myself but I couldn’t, my arms just refused to move. As he hit me I could swear he was singing low, as though to himself, something about a girl’s knickers and how you could see them if you wanted to pay.

I woke up puking into a canvas bag over my head in a moving vehicle. I couldn’t remember getting knocked out. Which is normal, you never remember getting knocked out.

My head ached and my nose and mouth were full of the stench of vomit. Not to mention the fact that I was dizzy, nauseous and my legs and crotch were damp. Which meant I had pissed myself.

A cultured voice pierced my pain. “Mr. Haaviko? I assume you’re awake?”

I tried to say yes but wasn’t sure what actually came out. However, the man seemed to understand. “That’s good.”

The car or whatever turned a corner and the voice went on, “That’s very good. Now. If you behave everything will be fine.”

The car turned another corner and accelerated and a radio came on, a police band radio full of panic and confusion. “If you do not behave I will cut the tendons behind your ankles and knees. Then things will get really bad. Do you understand?”

The police radio made sense; sometimes bad guys used them to keep track of cops.

“Yeshh.” I could not feel my hands or my arms and I seemed to be unable to move my feet as well, oh well.

“Excellent. Your understanding and acceptance of this whole situation is very edifying.”

He shut up and I got to listen to the radio and it wasn’t good. My concentration was bad and I knew I was concussed but I could still make out some key words and numbers.

“Status 1—status 3.” That meant cops were available and had arrived. There were lots of those. Something big must be going on.

The language codes came back to me very slowly indeed but they came back. I had memorized hundreds of them over the years and they were hard-wired in. By reflex I had memorized the codes before I came to the city.

A very calm, professional voice said ,“Listen please. We have code 2705. We have code 9902. We have code 9906.” That meant offensive weapon and violence and a mental condition.

The words didn’t make sense to me and then they fitted in.

A different voice came on. “We’ve got
D
4
G
and she’s definitely
DOA
.” That meant multiple gunshot wounds and one dead lady.

“10-33.” Officer needs help. My brain was starting to work, which was nice.

“10-75. 10-75. 10-75. Looking for the latest 10-75. Folks, keep your eyes open.” 10-75 was a police hater, a classic. Oh God, I started to throw up again when the car hit something and bounced.

“Code 3.” A hot response, an emergency response. I must have passed out again because there was a blank space, then a voice speaking in plain English.

“We have one officer down and one missing. We are looking for Officer Morgan. We believe he has been kidnapped. He is a white male, twnty-eight, six foot four inches high, 240 pounds. The situation is extremely serious. His partner is dead—shot and stabbed multiple times. We believe there are multiple assailants. Extreme caution is required.”

My head started to clear again and the police radio was turned off and a regular station came on. “And this just in, a police officer was ambushed and murdered this morning. Her partner was kidnapped at the same time. Police are looking for the officer who is described as a young Caucasian male. Anyone with any information is requested to contact the police immediately. However, the perpetrators are armed and extremely dangerous and are not to be approached under any circumstances.”

The radio turned off and the cultured voice spoke again. “We will be home soon. If you behave good things will happen. There may even be cake. We should have no troubles with the police; they’re very busy and should be for a long time. They get so stirred up when one of their own goes missing, don’t they?”

The car went down a decline, quite far down in fact and then it levelled out and the car stopped.

“And here we are! Home again, home again, happy is the sailor home from the sea!”

T
he engine turned off and a door opened. Then it closed and then another door opened and something caught my legs and then I was moving.

And whoever was doing it was grunting and panting like it was hard work.

Then I was falling and slamming into concrete and I was out again. When I became conscious again I was on something that rattled and rolled.

“… and you, sir, are quite ridiculously fat. I don’t know what Clarice saw in you! However, it is nothing we cannot deal with.”

I heard rattling and then an electric engine started and we were going up. Strange smells managed to cut through the vomit in the bag on my head. Smells of chemicals and something musty I’d never smelled before.

“And here we are. Your home away from home so to speak. For as long as you choose to spend here.”

Something touched my hands and then they were in front of me and then above me but I could still barely feel them. There was the sound of a smaller engine and I was moving upright, pulled by something implacable, and the pain from my chest was incredible and for a second I couldn’t feel my head hurt.

Then the bag was off my head and I could sort of see except for the blood and vomit caked onto my face. The man in front of me looked curious and unremarkable and slightly, vaguely familiar.

If I had seen him I had immediately forgotten him.

His nose wrinkled in a strangely delicate motion. “Phew. You stink, sir.”

He fumbled at his feet and came up with a plastic squeeze bottle and a rag. In his other hand he held a short knife, about three inches long and very broad, made out of what looked to be black glass, all carefully chipped to sharpness along the edges. He held the knife to my throat and started to clean my face with the rag.

“In case you’re wondering, you were shot with a teakwood round from the shotgun barrel of my pistol. A .63 inch diameter eight-inch length of good quality teak. Quite expensive and imported from Annan, or whatever they call it now. It’s kind of like getting hit with a small car, I imagine.”

The black glass knife, the casual kidnapping, the level of violence dealt to the police as a distraction, the insanity in the actions of the man in front of me.

The Shy Man.

It had to be.

The man reached up and mopped my face with cold water. “It’s based on a lovely idea the British Army used against rioting anarchist yellow communist niggers in Hong Kong in the late 60’s. 1960’s, that is. In the 1860’s they would have used real lead, which would have stopped a lot of problems dead.”

He twisted my face to the side to check his handiwork. “Of course, in Hong Kong they fired the teak rounds into the street and bounced them up into their targets.”

He patted my cheek once and twice softly and then a third time hard. “But you’re a big tough guy and I didn’t have time for that.”

After he had cleaned me for awhile he took his jacket off and put it somewhere behind him. I still wasn’t focussing very well but I could see a holster on a belt around his waist. And in the holster was a huge walnut-handled pistol.

“Are you looking at my gun?”

He said it almost coquettishly.

“Yes. It’s a nice gun.”

“You like it? It’s a LeMat revolver, circa 1856. Black powder and brass cap design.”

The Shy Man grinned sweetly like he was talking about his new car. My brain was working a little. The black powder meant it was an antique and therefore fell between any kind of gun control rules and regulations. It also meant that the Shy Man could make his own ammunition; hell, he could even make his own black powder if he wanted. It wasn’t hard to do—just charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre.

He held the gun up where I could see it, a big, heavy,
forward-pointing design with an octagonal barrel about a foot long and a short, fat barrel under that. The hammer was huge and the butt was slightly rounded and came with a place to attach a lanyard to make it hard to lose the damn thing.

“It holds nine shots plus the shotgun and I can cast my own lead balls from child’s soldiers that I buy at antique swaps. The bigger barrel underneath is a shotgun. It was designed by a French-descended doctor in New Orleans during the American Civil War; despite that it’s quite a good gun. This particular one was built in Birmingham, England and was supposed to be shipped to the Dixies but it never happened. A very elegant device, not at all like those crude Remingtons and Colts or those ridiculously déclassé modern guns.”

“It’s very nice.”

“If you’re good I’ll blow your brains out with it. It will be quite an honour. Okay?”

I could only nod weakly. Then the knife came up again and he started to cut off my clothes. With smooth, slick motions he cut my clothes into ribbons and let the ribbons fall to the ground. He wasn’t that careful and lots of blood flowed as well.

Then the Shy Man left and I closed my eyes and tried to focus through the pain.

After awhile my eyes went into focus and I could see a wooden wall across the way from me. There were words written in flowing script a foot high, words in gold-coloured paint in a language I didn’t understand. It looked like Arabic but I wasn’t sure. Under the artistry were words in old-style English calligraphy about the same size:

“In the narrow passage there will be no brother, no friend.”

Then the rest of the room slid into my perception. It was over thirty feet long and narrow, about ten feet, with a fifteen-foot-high ceiling. Holding the ceiling in place were multiple six by six inch square wooden posts running from the floor to the ceiling. Everything I could see was wooden, walls made up of planks and panels, and there was dust everywhere. And there were strong smells, all sorts of them, chemicals and moist dirt and a kind of musk and animal smell. Acid smells and oil smells and electrical smells. Up against the far wall were low piles of something dark and hairy. My eyes focussed more and I saw that the floor was made of splintered old wooden planks and that the light was dim and seemed natural.

The best time to escape from any situation is right after you’re captured. That’s when you’re the most alert and the least damaged. That’s what the rules say, but I looked above me to check the situation and sighed. It’s hard to escape when your hands are tied together with chains and ropes and are hung from an electric winch so your toes just barely touch the floor. It’s also hard to escape when your ribs are bruised and probably broken. I looked down to check my chest out and found a dinner-plate-sized bruise, purple and angry, in the middle.

I figured I was probably concussed and in shock and I thought about that and listened to sounds of echoes and the hum of electrics and then I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

That’s another rule of bad guys: if you can’t do anything else, sleep and recover energy. And with practice you can sleep standing up, although I do not recommend it.

T
he Shy Man woke me up by throwing a bucket of cold water on me and singing out, “Here I come with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!”

I didn’t react and he took another rag and dried my face. “I have to move you. If I leave you like this for too long your shoulders will separate and that’s bad. But I don’t want to have any shit from you either. For that reason I will be putting these ear muffs on.”

He held them in front of me and they were big state-of-the-art muffs used by shooters. “And I will be covering your eyes with duct tape as well. You will move in the direction I indicate and stop when I tap you. If you fail I will cut you up a very great deal. Do you understand?”

“Yesh.” I tried to act groggier than I felt and he put the muffs on, sealed my eyes and stuffed a gag into my mouth before lowering me to the ground with the engine. When I was unhooked he let me get to my feet at my own speed and then pushed me to the side until I hit one of the posts.

I had been in some pretty bad situations before but I had never felt more alone and helpless.

With more force he made me turn around until the post was at my back and raise my hands. Something cold went around my chest and was tightened. Then something around my waist and knees and ankles. Finally my hands were brought down and separated.

I couldn’t feel either of them and he massaged them until I screamed and then forced them around the back of the post where something else cold went onto my wrists and secured them.

Then the Shy Man went away and I was alone in the absolute dark of my very own skull.

And I guess time passed.

Most of my eyebrows left when the Shy Man tore the tape off my eyes and I screamed into my gag. In front of me the man took a clunky-looking tape recorder from his jacket pocket, examined it and put it carefully in a corner out of my view. Then he cut my gag free and pulled the muffs from my ears and I took a deep breath and coughed.

The noise awoke a young man bound with broad strips of blue fibre tape over a railing in front of me. His arms and legs looked lumpy and I realized they had been broken. I could only imagine the amount of pain he was in.

I stared at the young man. He wore a blue uniform and his hat was on the floor. He still had his gun in his holster and he began to yell into another piece of tape across his mouth.

From where I was I could see lettering on the wall, industrial script that read “Lots A-G, mink and fox—commercial farm.” Then I started to recognize some of the smells as the musky, dusty smells of furs, but old ones.

Between me and the cop a ladder led down onto a dim warehouse floor and we seemed to be in a loft overlooking everything. From where I was I could see that the dim light was coming through dusty narrow windows in the walls and ceilings. Down on the warehouse floor was a long, battered station wagon with a sign on the side that read “Antiques and Marvels.”