Dead Air (47 page)

The van we came in was a white Astramax and a little part of my brain that doesn’t believe all this is really happening to me thinks, Ah! Of
course
it’s an Astramax; what else? Ahead there are two wire mesh gates and distant ceiling lights forming a grid in a larger space beyond. The air smells dank and filthy like rain-diluted sewage; it feels cold on my sweat-beaded skin.

They drag me to the mesh gates and push them open. We’re on a slight slope. Beyond, the slope disappears into darkness black as night, the darkness of an infinite pit.

Lights come on across the black gulf. The mainbeams of a car, blinding. The blackness is water. We splash into it, raising a smell of something dead and rotten into the air. The water is only a couple of centimetres deep, barely more than a film. The toes of my shoes are dragged through the thin covering over old but still smooth concrete. About fifteen metres in from the shallow ramp we entered from, we get to the place where the car is. It’s a big, dark, modern Bentley. By its offside there is a little island of pallets; about two dozen squares of anaemic yellow-white undressed wood arranged to provide a sort of crude pontoon above the shallow sheet of dark water. The Bentley sits beside the pallet island for all the world like a liner tied up to a quayside.

In the centre of the pallets, a single metal column comes down from the roof. There are two piles of bricks on each side of the column, about sixty centimetres high, bound to the black iron column with thick black insulating tape. A metre away, facing this, there is a single big plain wooden seat, sturdy and armless, the sort of thing you might find at the head of a farmhouse table.

When I see it I try to struggle, but it’s almost comically ineffective. I suspect the two guys holding me don’t even notice. They put me in front of the seat. When I resist being sat in it the one who hit me before whacks me with one fist, crunching into my cheek. I lose it for a moment and when I’m fully aware again I’m already tied and taped into the seat and they’re just finishing taping my feet to the iron column. My heels are resting on the piles of bricks, one on either side of the metal post.

I can’t believe this. My head feels like it’s revolving and somersaulting and vibrating, like it’s a fairground waltzer and my brain’s the single hapless, helpless passenger. When I’m quite secure and unable to move much beyond a twitch - my head is the only part of me I can really control at all - the driver’s door of the Bentley opens and John Merrial gets out. He’s dressed in a black three-piece suit with a high-necked waistcoat. Black gloves. The two guys, one to each side of me, straighten fractionally.

So there goes my last hope. It is him and not Mark Southorne. I am here because of yesterday, because of the message, because of Ceel, and not because of some idiotic points-dodging scam.

Mr Merrial looks small and dark and regretful, as though he isn’t going to enjoy any of this either.

I lose control of my bowels and shit myself. I really can’t help it. I’m a passenger in my own body now and I just sit there and listen and feel and then smell it all happen and I’m astonished how quickly and easily it takes place. Mr Merrial wrinkles his nose. The shit fills my underpants.

Nothing, I think. I’m to be spared nothing.

The guy who hasn’t hit me goes to Merrial and offers him the stuff they’ve taken off me. Merrial takes a large pair of latex gloves from one pocket, puts them on over his black leather gloves and then accepts the big Breitling, hefting it. He smiles. ‘Nice watch.’ He hands it back to the guy. He tries to turn my phone on but of course it’s dead. Then he looks in my wallet, taking out my various credit cards and bits and pieces and inspecting them. He pauses at his own white calling card, the one I’d written on.

From here, because I’m sitting down and so looking from a lower perspective, I can see the back of the card, where I wrote down the code Celia told me over the phone, the code that turns off the burglar alarm in the Merrials’ house. I’ve been sitting here desperately trying to work out what to say and I do have an idea, but it all depends on the fucker not looking at the back of that little white card. If he does, there’s nothing I can think of that might save Celia, let alone me. If he doesn’t, then the slenderest of chances remains.

The moment seems to freeze. In that instant I’m suddenly with Ceel and her absurd entanglement theory. In one universe, Merrial flips the card over in his fingers and sees the alarm code written there. In the other, he just looks at the one already printed side and that’s all.

Maybe I deserve what might happen here. I know I’m not a particularly good person; I’ve lied and I’ve cheated and it’s no consolation that little of it was illegal. It’s not illegal to lie to your best friend, to fuck his wife, to lie to your partner, to cheat on her. Smashing car windows, hitting somebody in the face, smoking dope, burglary; that sort of thing’s illegal and I’ve done all that too, but none of that means very much compared to betraying the people you’re closest to; that’s the stuff really to be ashamed of. So maybe I’d have no real cause to complain if I’m made to suffer here.

But nothing I’ve done deserves the death penalty, or even having my legs broken, does it? I’ve told lies on a small scale but I’ve tried to tell the truth on a larger scale. I’ve tried to be true to what I believe in rather than make as much money as I could have. Doesn’t that count for something? And who the fuck are these people to judge me anyway? I’m a liar and I’m weak and I’m certainly no hero because I’ve filled my fucking pants, but - even sitting here in my own stench, in greasy, sweat-stained two-hard-days’-living clothes - I’m a fucking better man than these vindictive shitheads, for all their crisply ironed shirts.

If only deserving something was all there was to it.

Actually it doesn’t matter a damn. I am in the realm of pure luck here, even if Ceel’s crazy ideas are true (which they just damn well aren’t). So roll the dice; let the universe do the fucking maths.

Merrial slips the card back into my wallet, without looking at the other side. He hands everything back to the man in the overalls, then slowly removes his latex gloves and gives those to the guy, who comes and stands behind my shoulder again.

Merrial says, ‘Take the tape off his mouth, would you, Alex?’

The guy who’s hit me twice so far does that, tearing it off casually. It hurts a bit. I swallow. Cold sweat trickles down my face and into my mouth.

‘Good evening, Kenneth,’ Merrial says.

For a while I just breathe, unwilling to trust myself to come out with anything coherent.

Merrial hoists himself a little and sits on the wing of the Bentley. ‘Well,’ he says with a hint of a smile. ‘Thank you for coming. I expect you’re wondering why I’ve invited you here this evening.’

This is probably meant to be funny. I keep on breathing, not willing to say anything. I stare into his eyes, dark under his brows and the shadows of the small overhead lights. I keep swallowing, trying to get some saliva into my mouth. I look about the place, squint into the Bentley. At least there’s no sign of Celia. Maybe she got away in time. Maybe she’s not been linked to this. Oh, Lord, a straw to grasp at; a still-floating one.

‘Do you like being underground, Kenneth?’ Merrial asks. I don’t think he really wants an answer so I don’t give him one. ‘I do,’ he says, smiling, looking around at the darkness. ‘I don’t know … just makes me feel …’ He stares up. ‘Safe, I suppose.’

I’m a single nerve-firing away from hysterical laughter at this point, at that particular word, but I don’t think that laughing in Mr Merrial’s face right now would be a very good idea at all, and sense prevails. A series of small, horrible, bubbly farts announce my bowels have completed their evolutionary duty and prepared me for fight or flight by getting rid of the excess matter they’d been holding inside my body. Very helpful, I think, sat here, immobile and helpless.

‘Yes,’ Merrial says, looking round too. ‘I like it here. Useful old place, this.’ He gestures down at the floor, where the water has already stopped rippling and gone back to its impression of pure blackness again. ‘Flooding, now.’ He shakes his head, lips pursed. ‘Won’t be able to use it in a year or two.’ He looks at me. ‘Water table, you see, Kenneth. Water table of the whole of London is rising again. It was going down for years; centuries, apparently, while they were taking water out for industry; tanning, breweries, that sort of thing. Now it’s rising again. They have to keep pumps going all the time in the deep tube lines and some multi-storey underground car parks.’ He smiles thinly. ‘You’d think they could use some of it as drinking water instead of flooding nice valleys in the Home Counties, but apparently it’s too polluted. Shame, really, don’t you think?’

‘Mr Merrial,’ I say, voice quivering, ‘I honestly don’t know why—’

Merrial raises one hand to me and looks towards the ramp I was brought down. Lights, and the sound of a big car engine. A Range Rover trundles down the slope. It edges between the opened V of the wire mesh gates and into the water. It comes hissing slowly towards us on small, inky bow-waves, then loops away into the darkness and curves back in again, stopping on the other side of the little pallet-island from the Bentley, a series of miniature wakes rippling and gurgling against the wood beneath us. The Range Rover kills its lights. The air smells of exhaust.

On the far side, the driver’s door opens and Kaj gets out. He comes splashing round, steps up onto the pallets and puts one hand to the passenger door’s handle.

I know it might be her. I know who’s probably going to be there behind the smoked glass. Merrial is watching me intently; I can feel it. I stare at the Range Rover’s door. For as long as I can, I’m going to do what I can to protect her. That might not be very long, but it’s all I can do, the only control over anything I have here. When the door opens and I see it’s Celia, I look surprised, no more. I stare at her, then look round briefly at Merrial.

Ceel appears uninjured. She looks at Merrial, then Kaj, still holding the door open for her. She steps out, wrinkling her nose at the smell. She’s dressed in blue jeans, a thick red shirt and a yellow and black hiking jacket. Hair down, spread. Hiking boots. She looks calmly angry.

‘
What
do you think—?’ she starts to ask Merrial, then she seems to see me properly for the first time. Oh, Jesus, don’t blow it so soon, kid. She frowns at me. ‘That’s … that’s Ken Nott. The DJ.’ She glares accusingly at Merrial. ‘What the hell’s
he
supposed to have done?’ The question ends on what is almost a laugh.

Merrial stays where he is, sitting on the wing of the Bentley. Kaj quietly closes the door of the Range Rover and stands beside Celia with his hands folded over his crotch, bouncer style, eyes flicking about the scene. The two guys who kidnapped me stand still, one at each of my shoulders.

‘Let’s ask him, shall we?’ Merrial said pleasantly. He looks at me. ‘So, Ken, why do you think you’re here?’

‘Mr Merrial,’ I say, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but—’

Merrial shakes his head. ‘Ah, no, Ken. You see you’ve started lying already now, haven’t you?’ He looks genuinely disappointed in me. ‘I thought you were always saying on your show how people had to be truthful, how they had to be truthful even when it hurt, but there you go, you see, the first proper answer we’ve had from you so far and it’s a flat lie, isn’t it?’

‘If, if, if,’ I stammer, for the first time since I was four. I suck in a deep breath. ‘If I’ve done something you don’t like, I’m sorry, Mr Merrial. I really am.’

Merrial shrugs, raising his eyebrows and making a pouting motion with his lower lip. ‘Well, everybody’s sorry when they get caught, Kenneth,’ he says reasonably. ‘But I think you do know why you’re here.’ His voice is quite soft.

Nothing useful I can say at this point, I suspect. I stick to swallowing. The shit is starting to go cold around my backside on the front of the seat I’m tied to. Jesus, I stink. Oh, Celia, I wish you didn’t have to see, smell, experience all this. I wish you’d run, got away, just kept on heading north or anywhere as long as it was away from this man.

‘Kaj?’ Merrial says. ‘You have exhibit A, do you?’

Kaj nods and opens the Range Rover’s rear door.

‘John,’ Celia says. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to be part of it. I want to go home. Now.’ She sounds composed, unflustered, but still distinctly pissed off.

‘I’d like you to stay a while yet, Celia,’ Merrial says.

‘I don’t
want
to stay,’ she says through clenched teeth.

‘I’m sure you don’t,’ Merrial tells her. He swings one foot a couple of times, gently tapping the flank of the Bentley with his heel. ‘But I insist.’

Kaj is holding an opened laptop computer.

Celia narrows her eyes. She takes a breath. ‘There had better,’ she says slowly, ‘be a very good reason for this, John.’ She looks about the place, sparing me a brief, pitying, slightly disgusted look. ‘You’ve kept me away from … this sort of thing until now. I always assumed that was because you knew how I might react if I was brought into contact with it.’ Her gaze snaps back to Merrial. ‘This changes things between us, John,’ she tells him. ‘You can’t go back from this. I hope you realise what you’re doing.’

Merrial just smiles. ‘Show Kenneth the evidence, would you, Kaj?’

The big blond guy holds the laptop open a metre away from me. From this angle, Celia can see the screen too. Kaj presses Return and a big grey-blue window already open on the desktop flickers into life.

Oh shit. If I hadn’t already crapped myself, I would now.

It’s the interior of the Merrials’ house; one of the landings. Daylight. First floor; I can see down the stairwell to the front door and the loo I hid in later. Only the first quarter metre of each door is visible. The alarm controls aren’t visible. There’s me, coming up the stairs in jerky every-few-seconds lo-fi slomo, the sort of thing you see on TV real-life crime programmes when they’re showing a recording of a raid on a bank or building society or a sub-post office. No sound. Looks like the shot is taken from the ceiling.