Authors: Stuart Keane
ELEVEN
In the gloom, it had taken Francisco De Goya about a minute to locate his house.
Pushing his way through a broken fence and some trees wasn’t his habitual method of reaching home. Once he located his dwelling, it had taken him a further three minutes to make his way there unnoticed.
Staying in shadow not only meant staying safe, but it kind of gave him an adrenaline rush. He felt as if he was in the army or taking part in a clandestine night invasion. As the street was empty he managed to use the cover of cars and bushes. Once he was in his backyard he knew he was safe. The tall fence, designed to keep his kid safe, worked wonders in keeping his daughter from wandering out into the path of cars. In the darkness, it provided vital cover.
Sitting on his garden bench, he caught his breath. Being inconspicuous was tiring. Sweat poured off his brow onto his chest and down the back of his neck. He made a mental note to change once he was indoors. He spotted his daughter Sadie’s playhouse across the garden; it was lying on its side. He broke out in a smile. But the smile disappeared when he realised how much he missed his family.
And he realised that if he had been kidnapped, he had no idea of what had happened to them!
No, it’s fine,
he reassured himself.
They will be alive. They’ll be tucked up in bed now, sleeping. They will never hear of what happened to me. I’ll think up some excuse later to explain why I'm late in getting home.
Besides,
he thought,
for the streets to be this empty, it must be knocking on four or five o’clock in the morning. In which case I have been missing for maybe seven hours, five hours spent on that stinking bunk, and the rest getting my bearings and coming home. Maybe it’s later than that
, he wondered,
but who knows? The main thing is that I’m home now.
But you never know
, he calculated warily.
Anyone could be in the house. After all, the door was unlocked, and whoever had kidnapped me had to get to me somehow.
Be careful!
His breathing was more laboured now, Francisco stepped up to his patio doors and pulled the handle. They were open, not an unusual occurrence under the circumstances. For all the flaws in the people he knew as his neighbours, for all their confusions and various foibles, none of them were criminals. The neighbourhood was safe. His family rarely locked their patio door.
The panels rolled along the rollers with a dull roar and he stepped into his home. He shut the sliding doors behind him and locked them.
Things had changed
, he reminded himself.
I’ve just been kidnapped.
He made a mental note to buy some security cameras when he got settled again - and change the locks.
The dining room seemed darker than usual. He knew the decor, the furniture and all the items in the room by heart. They now looked as if someone had thrown dark paint all over them. Goes to show you rarely see the room this early in the morning, he realised, and if he did, he was usually drunk. Note to self:
get a fucking job
.
Turning left, Francisco walked into his lounge slowly. The ‘furniture in darkness’ effect was similar in here, except that there was a window that was spraying light onto the items like a distorted torch beam. The street light directly outside his window was welcome right now. He had never thought that before, usually shutting the curtains to shut it out while he was watching TV. Working his way around the sofa, he headed for the stairs. When he stood at the foot of the staircase he listened. Waiting for a noise of some description, anything, a snore, and, if it had been possible, maybe the sound of a heartbeat.
But all he heard was the fridge humming in the kitchen and his cat-shaped clock ticking away on the wall. Nothing else, nothing more.
He reached the peak of the stairs silently in less than thirty seconds. Then he listened again. He strained his ears for anything. He heard nothing.
Dead silence.
Four doors.
Master bedroom, kid’s room, bathroom and man cave.
All the doors were closed. The hallway was dark because of it. No windows helping him here. The bathroom was on his right, nearest to him. He levered the door with his right hand, his left hand free, and pushed it open. No noise, the hinges were oiled effectively. No window in the bathroom either, he had been told that this was unavoidable, a design fault because the room backed onto another house.
Never mind,
he thought, he could see that the room was unoccupied.
He pulled the door closed and heard the latch lock. Francisco stepped onto the landing and leaned against the wall.
The man cave was next, his private room. This is where he kept his valuables, like his signed sports tee shirts, his collectible figures, his DVD collection and his PC. The door was actually ajar, so he just shoved it and leaned back out of sight, in case there was someone in there. After two minutes he leant in and peered into the room. Nothing of interest here. Just as it normally was, his PC was switched on, the monitor screen off, but he always kept his PC on for updates and downloads. It hummed steadily, making the odd buzzing noise.
Closing the door, he stepped past it towards the other end of his small landing.
Kid’s room next.
No, do yours, it’s nearer
, he thought.
Francisco adjusted himself and gripped the door handle. Sweat was pouring off his brow, he felt it run down his back beneath his vest. He wiped it from his top lip and focused on the handle. Gripping it tightly, he rotated it down and pushed. The door opened and he walked straight in.
The curtain was billowing up into the room from where the window was gaping open. It was as if a white ghost was in the centre of the room, and at first it took Francisco aback. When he realised what it was he smiled to himself.
The bedroom was untouched, it was exactly how he remembered it. The wardrobe and bed were the only furniture of any significance in the room, apart from the bedside tables and a lamp in the corner. The bed was neatly made. No one was here. Francisco walked out of the room, opened his kid’s room and entered. Again, the room was empty, the bed was neatly made and nothing was touched.
The house was empty.
Francisco felt sick.
And light-headed.
They had got his family too.
FUCKING CUNTS!
Francisco felt the rage build up inside him, and didn’t know if giving in to the surge of anger was the right thing to do, for rage can make you sloppy and prone to miscalculation. But he was beyond caring. Kidnapping him was one thing, especially considering he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Kidnapping an innocent woman and child was beyond reprehensible.
He stumbled into his bedroom and perched on the bed. Held his head in his hands and thought he was going to cry. He didn’t, he felt his muscles tighten around his jaw with rage. Pressure built behind his teeth as he forced himself to keep his mouth shut.
Don't scream
.
They win if you do.
He stood up, removed his sweat-soaked top, and threw it against the wall.
Then he opened his wardrobe and shoved his clothes to one side. Kneeling down, he felt around at the bottom of the closet until he found a locked box. The lock was of the combination type, and Francisco dialled in the numbers until it snapped open. Taking it out of the wardrobe, he placed it on the bed.
Pulling the lid open, he pulled off the tissue covering to reveal a nine millimetre Beretta handgun, highly illegal to possess in the UK. He lifted the gun out of its box and looked at the six magazines, each of them filled with nine millimetre parabellum bullets, each magazine holding fourteen rounds. He took all six of them out of the box and laid them on the bed. He then placed the gun down beside them.
No more fucking about!
The problem was, Francisco didn’t know where to start, who to go to, and who had actually captured him. Maybe he should have stayed in his cell. Maybe that was the whole plan. Maybe his pig-headed escape had forced his captors to seek insurance and come and claim his family. Francisco De Goya, desperate and alone, could have unwittingly killed his family. It made him want to cry.
But he didn’t.
He needed a plan.
Francisco glanced across at his bedside table and saw the green glowing numbers of his alarm clock. His eyes took time to adjust to them, he hadn’t been in daylight for hours, but darkness still came as a surprise to his eyes.
His heart sunk fast.
The clock read 21:18.
It was only just gone nine!
But the empty streets?
A motorcycle engine broke his train of thought. The sound tore through the quietness like a tornado, then died and all was silent. Listening intently, the silence was deafening, as if his ears were finely attuned to the smallest noise. For minutes he heard nothing.
Until …Was that leather boots clumping up his garden path?
Francisco De Goya was scared, alone, and he was a wanted man. He slammed one of the magazines into the handle of his gun and racked a round into the chamber.
He was running out of time.
***
Ten minutes were up.
In fact, eighteen minutes were up, the final man had allowed overtime as a reward for his subject’s natural ability to stay hidden. He liked surprises, the challenge of overcoming them as quickly as possible with as little aggravation as he could muster.
Credit where it’s due, on two occasions the subject had ducked out of sight and remained lost for mere seconds. It almost made the man push the panic button and not wait the full ten minutes. Control was his main prerogative though, and he had remained in calm, cool control during the entire eighteen minutes. He had located his subject again and followed him.
The lure of home had been too much, and as he had totally expected, the Choice had headed there, probably looking for his family. Following him around had proved that this had not been the case. What he did admire though, was the fact that his subject remained as cool as he did under pressure. Uncanny!
The gun had thrown him, however. He did not expect a firearm to come into the equation. Well, not from that side of things anyway, and not so early either. But it had.
That one move had cost him two hundred grand in a second.
And another one hundred for his follow-up solution.
The solution had taken twelve seconds, a new record by his own standards. Speaking out loud, he said, “I never fail to impress myself anymore. Three hundred grand in the space of thirty seconds. That's wealth, that's power.”
And ultimate control.
The shit is still going to hit the fan
, he realised,
except that the fan is now going to be spinning faster.
With that thought, he saw Francisco’s front door on the screen in front of him, and witnessed the figure stepping inside.
Game on!
TWELVE
Kathryn Cox wasn’t trapped at all.
As she walked through the apparently doorless opening into the hallway, she felt a vicious knock to her head. It had been caused by the heavy rope ladder that was dangling in the centre of the opening. The blow had caught her off guard, and she could already feel the bump forming on her forehead.
After the initial shock it had taken her a few more minutes to relocate the ladder itself without taking her head off completely. Kathryn climbed up the rungs. She took it slowly, not knowing how high up the ladder reached. Her head had touched the trapdoor above before her hands reached it. With a push she found that the door was hinged at the left side, she forced it upwards until it was upright, and then clanked down with a thud, to leave an open hatch. A few minutes later she was out and free. She found the open trapdoor, reclosed it and sat down to catch her breath.
She imagined her captors dropping her down to the room below before climbing down themselves and picking her up and then dumping her in the cell and leaving her. She imagined them copping a feel of her womanly parts whenever they could, looking at her in her scant clothing. For the first time she noticed she wasn’t wearing her normal clothes. They had dressed her in something different.
When she had gone to bed, she had been wearing her favourite tee shirt and a pair of shorts. She had been clothed because it had been a chilly night, she normally slept naked.
She thanked God she'd been dressed.
However, she was now wearing a plain, tight white tee shirt that clung to her breasts and restricted her arm movement. She was also wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms, but nothing else. Her underwear had been removed and so had her earrings and watch. Her feet were bare. Even her eyeliner she wore to work the previous day had been washed off, and she could smell cheap supermarket-brand soap on her skin. It had caused a slight rash on her neck.
After surveying the area, she realised she was hidden by foliage. She looked around and took in her surroundings. Well, what she could make of them anyway. It looked as if she was in a park, and it seemed to be late evening. The moon was out, casting its glow on everything beneath it. Three dim streetlights lit the way for her to the left. To the right was a vast patch of grass with a muddy puddle in its centre.
White posts stood parallel, with a barely visible white net attached to them. High wire fences surrounded the area, and beyond that she could see the moon shining off the surface of a river. The river seemed to swallow up everything beyond the fence.
How many kids had kicked balls into that river
? She wondered.
She hated kids, reckoned that they grew up all wrong these days, spoilt or misled, which, in turn, led to crime. Society’s youth was all twisted and street crime was at its highest in years. Happy-slapping and cyber bullying seemed to be the norm amongst youth these days.
Damn the parents!
Then she climbed to her feet and waited for several minutes. The cold air stabbed at her skin. She was going to need to find some more clothing. Once she knew she was alone she started to move.
Kathryn walked left, deciding this was her only option, and followed the gravel path. It was poorly lit. Aware of the trees surrounding the path, she kept alert and was ready to bolt if she had to. She was a strong woman, but she was also determined to get out of this shithole. Fighting some aged tramp or heroin-high teenager was not on her agenda for this evening.
She just wanted to get home.
The path ended abruptly at another wire fence, almost as high as the one she had seen previously. A rusted iron gate stood in front of her, its handle missing. She gripped it and pulled. A huge creak shattered the tranquillity around her. The whole situation was eerie. The silence reassured her, though. Reassured her that she was alone. Of course, she was aware that the situation could soon change. The groan of the gate could mean that company was arriving sooner rather than later. Kathryn thought about ducking out of sight. But she didn’t see the point. With this lack of light, she would be hard pressed to find anyone who could actually see her.
Stepping through the gate, her bare feet touched asphalt and she immediately knew she was on a basketball court. Faded white markings were sketched beneath her feet, and she mused that a respray would do them a world of good. Looking up to her left, the moon was backlighting a solitary hoop made of cheap steel and plastic. No net or chain link hung from it. Stolen or torn off? Maybe a slam dunk, maybe some scummy kid needed it for his collection, who knew?
Kathryn walked straight across the court and reached the other side before realizing that there was no high fence over here. The court was open in front of a seating area, with a few picnic tables and benches around.
The tables had holes drilled in them for umbrellas, and weights underneath to hold the umbrellas in place. Despite these, the umbrellas were missing, again, presumably stolen by youths. Or maybe they were not installed in the first place, in anticipation of theft? The benches had mud and dirt scuffs underneath where, for many years, hundreds of people had swung their feet aimlessly. The surrounding grass was dishevelled.
This place needed a hell of a lot of work
, she thought.
Kathryn carried on past the area and emerged in an alley, a wide alley with fences on both sides and a huge stone archway about thirty feet ahead of her. She decided she needed to find somewhere that sold shoes and fast, for her feet were raw from the constant exposure to hard surfaces. Heading for the archway, she saw a solitary blue car parked just to the right of it. Its windows were caved in; glass littered the passenger seat and wires hung out from the stereo compartment. The glove box was open and papers were strewn out all over the place.
A typical break-in: the scum of society strikes again,
she thought.
Kathryn carried on.
Once she was through the archway, she saw a well-lit town centre ahead. It was a stark contrast to the park she had just walked through. To her right was a huge multi-storey car park. It was a concrete structure with no windows, nothing but pillars and floors built to hold tons of automobiles of all shapes and sizes. She saw striped barriers blocking the entrance. She noticed that no vehicles were parked on the ground floor; the place looked desolate and unused.
Further on, to the right, a road led off past a few charity shops, one of which had a full size figurine of a monkey on the pavement outside it. The monkey wore a top hat and a red two-piece vest. It was smiling and holding a banana.
Creepy,
thought Kathryn.
Of all the things to see on a night like this
.
The road itself was empty, and as she looked to the left it led off past a huge theatre, opposite which was a hotel. The theatre was lit up in red, white and yellow. On its sign above the entrance, the letters G, J and O stood alone, the intervening letters missing. Maybe the signwriters hadn’t finished the job?
The hotel sat in darkness, a solitary light illuminated its porch, which was hardly welcoming. Further on, she could make out a crossroads, with traffic lights and islands in the centre of the road. No cars were parked anywhere.
The whole town looked deserted.
She heard no sounds of people chattering, or footsteps or buskers playing or kids screaming or car horns or engines.
She was entirely alone.
Kathryn decided to head off towards the theatre, as it was well-lit and looked to be relatively safe. Carefully, she trod along the sidewalk, watching out for anything sharp that might injure her bare feet. Within a minute she was outside the uninviting hotel, which she noticed was called The Easy Sleep. Leaning forward, she looked through the windows, but no lights were on and no movement was obvious. The place was empty, there was no doubt about it.
What the fuck is going on around here?
The theatre was closer now, its light illuminated the whole street. From this distance, Kathryn could see that the letters above its entrance had gaps around them, and whatever lettering that had been there before had been ripped off. Chunks of miscellaneous glass letters still remained.
The glass doors of the theatre were shattered, one was hanging off its hinges and another lay three feet away in the street, bent in half and buckled at the hinges. The interior of the theatre’s foyer had a plush red carpet and the marble walls were faultless. Green graffiti had been plastered all over the pavement outside the establishment. Six posters, three either side of the main entrance, were all advertising Z-list celebrities posing as fabled pantomime characters. These had all been defaced with obscenities:
BG WAS ‘ERE!
SUCK MY PHAT ONE!
BD + JK 4EVA!
DON'T LIKE MY GRAF? DIAL 01892 EAT MY BALLSACK!
CUNTZ R US!
PANTO IS GAY!
Kathryn couldn’t help but smile at the profanity. Such uneducated words, and in some ways she could almost have felt sorry for the people responsible. The theatre had been defaced so badly, Kathryn hated to look at it, so she turned round.
Behind her was a tall, nondescript building. Its front had a huge head-height wall with a set of steps heading up to a glass door with a card reader beside it. The building had many windows, none of them lit up, apart from one. About three storeys up, one window had light shining from the room within.
There was a person staring out at her.
The face was there for a split second, then it was gone.
Kathryn shivered.
You've got to be shitting me!
Kathryn backed off from the building and headed back to the theatre, and the road leading off from it. She imagined the road made a complete loop back to where the freaky monkey stood on the pavement. She would find out in due course.
The sound of a car’s engine broke the silence, which was not unusual for a night like this, in a town like this. Unless the town was deserted, of course, and in that case, you have to start worrying.
It was a rough noise, that of an engine that had never seen an MOT. She didn’t know much about cars, but she knew a shit engine when she heard one. Her neighbour always liked playing at being a mechanic late at night, and Kathryn was reminded of the many times she had wanted to stave his head in with a shovel. This noise had the same effect on her. It set her teeth on edge, made her want to scream.
A jeep shot into view, from behind the theatre. Heading straight towards her. The road beside the theatre was separate to the main road and was several inches up an incline. A ledge provided a makeshift ramp. The jeep shot across the gap onto Kathryn’s road. It clanked down as its suspension adjusted after its sudden jump from the ramp.
Kathryn was standing in the middle of the deserted road, exposed, unprotected. The vehicle was still about forty feet away, but Kathryn was caught off guard. She didn’t move, didn’t know what to do.
The jeep stopped, straight ahead of her.
The occupants of the jeep saw her.
There were four of them, all male, and all half naked.
The driver wore a mask with metal spikes protruding from its top, and a red bandana round his forehead. His hands were gloved in black and his arms were heavily tattooed. His scrawny torso was also tattooed and he looked as if he was in need of a good meal.
The passenger next to him had long, greasy black hair which plastered to his scalp, despite the wind rushing through it. His face was covered in acne and his left ear was missing. He smiled, displaying decaying teeth and gaps. His bony body was also tattooed.
The two men standing up behind them worried Kathryn more.
One was a huge black man, his body ripped to shreds, perhaps caused by years of steroid overuse. He had a khaki cap on his head with a gold badge on it. He was naked apart from a tiger stripe thong he wore around his bulging genitals.
The other was a huge white guy, Kathryn guessed that he could be Russian, judging by the shape of his nose and the bone structure. There was a huge Russian flag tattooed across his saggy chest. He wasn’t ripped, he looked saggy and hairy, but he must have been at least six and a half feet tall. And probably four feet wide. He had a buzz cut and an eye patch.
Both men carried assault rifles.
Kathryn didn’t know very much about guns, all she knew was from her ex-boyfriend’s knowledge on the subject. He had been heavily into movies, and would always try to impress her with his knowledge. Sometimes he did impress her, at other times she just wanted him to shut up and cuddle her. Rarely did she show her emotion until the day she ended their relationship. She had cried herself to sleep that night. She had been adamant that she wasn’t going to France with a loser like that on her arm.
She was wishing she had listened to his talk about guns now.
An AK-47, or something, she tried to remember.
Was that the name
? It had brown handles. And it looked fucking scary.
And all the men were staring at her, grinning.
Four half-naked psychos were squaring up against one woman.
A strong woman, not a stupid woman, mind.