Roach rose up from the bed and swung his legs over the side. He felt a stabbing pain at the side of his head which he teased away with his fingers.
“Well?” Morris asked from behind him.
“Well, what?”
“Are you in or not?”
“I don’t harm little fucking kids,” Roach said. “She’s seven for fuck’s sake.”
“We don’t need to harm a hair on her head,” Morris assured. “They’ll pay up immediately, she’s an only child and her father’s loaded.”
Roach contemplated this. He turned to look into Morris’s eyes, then at the smiling face of Lisa Price on the front of the newspaper. “I think you’re fucking crazy and it’s a risky idea, but I’ve worked with you for a long time and you always manage to pull through,” the two men locked glances. “I’m in,” he declared.
“Excellent,” Morris breathed with a wide grin, “We’re meeting Linders tomorrow for the gear. Now we need to check out the school again, catch them in time for their dinner break, we’ll see if we can spy her running around. Then we can head across to the safe house and see what we need to do to make that place secure.”
38
Howard Price jabbed boredly at the remote control. The satellite service he paid a small fortune for each month offered over five-hundred channels, the law of averages maintained he should be enticed into at least a few of them, but he couldn’t find anything that sparked his interest.
He cycled through with increasing contempt: daytime chat shows, repeats of daytime chat shows; entertainment news, sports news, local news; old sitcoms, new sitcoms, foreign sitcoms; music videos, music quizzes; matinee movies, theatrical movies, melodramatic movies.
Everything that graced his screen was greeted with distaste. He wasn’t one for watching television, occasionally he would sit down on a night time with a drink and watch a few hours to relax before bed, but daytime TV was a different story altogether.
Finding a showing of ‘
The Great Escape’
he dropped the remote control and threw his head back on the soft sofa cushions.
“You looked bored dear,” Elizabeth stood in the open doorway to the living room.
“I am,” Howard admitted. “I don’t know how you manage to live like this. It’s so
dull
. How do you keep yourself occupied?”
She raised an eyebrow at him and then thought against commenting. “I work around the house,” she replied with a smile. She had just left the confines of the kitchen where only an hour before she and Howard had sat down to dinner.
Howard nodded with little enthusiasm. “I’m starting to wish I’d never taken this holiday.”
“You needed the break,” Elizabeth reminded him sternly. “You took the holiday for your health
and
for your family.”
Howard nodded again, still not convinced.
“I know you love spending time with Lisa and I know you’ve tried your best to make sure you spend every free minute you have with her, but lately your free minutes have dried up.” She sat down next to her husband.
“You’re right.”
“I know I am,” she said. “The stress is killing you. You need the rest, no matter how bored you are.”
Howard grumbled a discontented sigh and then nodded acceptingly. He had recently been for a check-up with his doctor concerning intense and regular migraines. His doctor had suggested he take time off work -- after Elizabeth had already insisted he do so -- after further tests had shown signs of high blood pressure, which, along with the migraines, were put down to high levels of stress and tension.
Elizabeth snuggled into him and he wrapped his arm over her shoulders.
He knew the break would do him a great deal of good, and he adored spending time with his family, but he stressed over every minute that he wasn’t at the office, worried that his business would collapse without him.
Glancing up at a large grandfather clock -- passed onto him by three generations; it would eventually don Lisa’s first house when the time came -- Howard smiled as the minute hand notched onto twelve and the clock rang out a polished chime to mark 13:00.
Lisa would be home soon, and his day would brighten up.
39
Roach left the driving to Morris, he was tired and his energy had been sapped, whilst Morris seemed to be full of it. As he raced along a dual-carriage way Roach regarded him wearily. He was smiling broadly -- he could almost see the glint in his eye, the eagerness, the compassion. Roach knew that his partner really wanted the kidnapping to go through and he also knew that Darren Morris usually got what he wanted.
The thought of kidnapping had initially hit him with concern; it was a risky thing to do, but when he mulled the idea over he reasoned that it couldn’t be riskier then the jobs they were doing for Sanders.
He had livened up to the idea. He could see the hurdles involved but couldn’t see himself and Morris tripping over them. It was just a matter of common sense, confidence, a lack of morals and a ruthless attitude -- the payout would set them both up for life.
“Here it is,” Morris said through curled lips.
The car slowed down and rolled alongside the curb. Lady Victoria’s school protruded from the dull afternoon skyline and the Ford halted by the side of the curb.
The road was -- as Morris had described -- very close to the play area. The school itself was set further back, along with a small staff parking area. The road on which the car parked was lined with large houses on one side and a fence on the other. The fence was tall, over ten feet, but this prison touch was merely a precaution to keep the children from wondering out onto the road -- which had a mere 15 MPH speed limit.
There were over fifty children -- all young girls -- in the grassed play area beyond the gate. Some were standing around talking to friends; some were playing ball games -- others swung, slid and climbed on the recreational equipment.
The children themselves were at least fifty yards from the fence and in clear view. In the middle of the fence stood a large gate, slightly ajar and flexible in the wind. A thick chain dangled from its handle, waiting to be tied and secured.
“The gate stays open as far as I can gather,” Morris said.
“You’ve only staked the place out for one morning,” Roach reminded him. “How would you know?”
“The parents were walking their kids through it,” Morris said matter-of-factly. “Then they gathered inside talking amongst themselves whilst the kids waited round the back somewhere,” he recounted. “You’d think a place like this would be a bit more secure.”
They both watched the children playing, their eyes scouring the faces for the blonde haired girl from the paper.
“Or maybe that rich fuck should have sent his kid to a better school,” Morris remarked. “It’s not like he hasn’t got the money.”
“Who cares,” Roach said lightly. “It makes it easier for us.”
“True.”
They both watched on in silence, before Roach asked what had been lingering on both their minds.
“So, what are we going to set the ransom at?”
Lisa Price giggled loudly as her friend kicked the plastic football into the air, sending it spinning across the playground. She moved to receive it and continue their game but the wind took hold of the hollow object and it spun wildly away.
She giggled again and chased after it, her school blazer flapping behind her. The ball hit the fence and rolled slowly along the metal perimeter.
She slowed her run to a walk and bent down to pick up the ball. A silver car, parked outside of the school, caught her eye as she picked up the colourful object. She could see two men in the front of the car; they were talking to one another.
One of the men turned and returned Lisa’s stare. She couldn’t make out his features due to the sunlight glaring on the windscreen, but she knew he was smiling at her.
She happily smiled back at him, picked up the ball and ran back to her friend.
40
The pause screen on the large television glittered and flicked through highlights from an action packed football game; below it a games console roared softly over the football chants and Indie music.
Johnny Phillips sat with his back against the leather sofa, his eyes half watching the scenes on the screen. He held a wireless controller in his hand which hung loosely by his side.
They had decided against doing anything -- choosing to relax in front of the computer and watch some television. They had eaten well at lunchtime, both of them filling their empty stomachs, still fresh with alcohol from the night before, before going back to the house.
He took a small sip from a can of lager. It was only his second can and he didn’t plan to have many more, he was drinking to shake away the boredom.
The sound of a flushing toilet flooded the football soundtrack and within seconds a lock clicked, a door opened and closed and the door leading to the living room followed the same procedure.
“You took your time,” he said to the welcomed intruder.
“I couldn’t fucking piss,” Richards said, still zipping up his pants. “I just stood there for a few minutes waiting for it to come. Then when it did come, fuck!” he gestured, sucking air in through his teeth. “It didn’t half burn.”
Phillips laughed over the top of his lager can, shooting small bubbles of froth into the air.
“You’re probably dehydrated.”
“No shit,” Richards slumped onto the other side of the sofa. “That’s my first piss today, it was fucking orange,” he explained, much to the amusement of his friend. “I had to stop halfway through and take a hold of the door handle, the fucking burning was killing me. The longer I went, the more it burned, just my luck I had a fucking bladder full.”
“It happens to the best of us.”
“Come on then” he said, picking up the second controller which had been left on the arm of the sofa. “Let’s get back to the game”
The pause screen, with its nauseating music and graphical highlights, dropped away and a football game ensued.
“I can’t believe you’re drinking again,” Richards said with his eyes on the screen.
“Some of us can handle our ale.”
“I aint that bad,” he said defensively. “I just drunk too much last night. It’s playing fucking hell with my guts, yet I’ve got the munchies. It hurts when I piss and I’m dehydrated yet I can’t even
force
water down my throat. Lager always fucking does this to me.”
“Stop complaining, maybe your body is trying to tell you something.”
“That alcohol is bad for me and I shouldn’t be drinking?” he suggested.
“No. That you’re a pussy and you can’t handle your drink.”
41
To Roach, Darren Morris looked more than prepared for the proposed kidnapping. After hanging around the school until the children retired back to their classes, the pair of assassins had departed; happy in the knowledge that they could snatch the girl without any problems.
They had driven around the area a few times and found that, on this particular day, it was reasonably empty. Due to the quick access to the many linked roads they knew it would be easy for them to leave the scene quickly afterwards. Although, racing away didn’t seem necessary as they noticed that no teachers or guardians were on patrol in the playground; the only possible witnesses to the crime would be the children themselves, but when they finally told and convinced an elder of what they had seen, the kidnappers would be long gone whether they raced away or not.
After leaving the area Morris drove to a hardware store to buy a kit for child proofing car doors. He had also collected a vast amount of other items from different stores as not to arouse suspicion.
He bought thin wire rope in abundance, three tumbler locks and a large roll of duct tape and string from one small high street shop, and a set of solid steel padlocks and metal chains from another.
Then they headed for the safe house, unsurprised when they found it to be in an even more dilapidated state than on their previous visit.
It was a stone’s throw from a small park -- which had seen better days -- and further back from a small council estate which looked like it was still recovering from the blitz.
It was the land that life forgot. The town itself had less than one hundred residents, most of which lived on the council estate. Near the park, passed a burnt-out bus shelter, were the only shops in the area: a small
Co-op
, a fish and chip shop and a newsagents. The windows on all of them were either boarded up or completely shattered.
Morris steered the car through the busted, broken shops as he traversed his way to the flat block which stood on the horizon like a Picasso painting on Opium.
It was completely isolated. There had once been a small playground nearby, but that was now littered with beer bottles and drug paraphernalia. Even the parking area was in tatters -- covered in broken glass, weed-stricken paving slabs and empty beer bottles.
They passed only four other cars, two of which were wheel less and propped up on bricks. Morris steered the car in-between the two that were still mobile and immediately they clambered out of the vehicle.
It was a ghost town. The four story building in front of them looked deserted, over a dozen windows decorated the outside of the building, only two of which weren’t boarded up.
“Want me to wait by the car?” Roach offered.
“No need,” Morris said. “We won’t be long.”
Within minutes they found a suitable flat. On entering the building they were greeted by silence, occasionally they heard giggling and stomping from the two top floor flats, but nothing to signify the existence of active life. The two flats on the second floor and the two on the third floor were empty; the doors were missing from three of them. The insides of one looked like it had recently been the victim of a small fire whilst the other was filled with hypodermic needles and blankets.
They left the top floor alone as it seemed to be used more than the rest. The second flat on the bottom floor was where they sought their refuge, the key factor being that the front door was still intact.
They entered with suspicion but found no one. The flat had been used by squatters and druggies -- needles, burnt foil and empty bottles festered in every crevice, and all the furniture had been stolen except for a set of old wooden chairs and a scruffy mattress -- but there was no indication of recent activity.