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The old man saw the glance. ‘Want her? She's yours,' he told Hawke. ‘She's ripe for the punters now.'

‘And clean?'

‘Clean as a bleached drain,' the old man cackled.

Hawke downed his drink and walked over to her, unzipping his trousers.

I
t was the fourth hard slap that brought Flynn out of his unconscious state to one of quarter-consciousness. His head lolled, he drooled, then slurped up some sort of thick gloop from the corner of his mouth that tasted foul.

‘Wake up … c'mon …'

There was another stinging slap across his left cheek that fast-cricked his head sideways. His eyes shot open with ferocity and he leapt forward intending to strangle the man who was assaulting him. A reflex, but useless, action. He could not move. His forearms were taped to the arms of a cane chair and someone behind him had clamped their hands down on to his shoulders, preventing him from doing anything silly.

Nevertheless, the man in front of him jerked back in surprise, ensuring he was out of reach.

Flynn's head pounded. He could feel the throb of swellings happening now, the left side of his face, jaw, temple, skull, all pumping agonizingly, the side that he had been stamped on.

‘You bastards,' he uttered savagely, but slurring the words through his distorted face. ‘Wait till …'

‘Ah, ah, ah.' Another man stepped in front of him, between Flynn and the original guy, who moved out of Flynn's sight.

This man put his forefinger under Flynn's chin and tilted up his head.

It was at this moment Flynn realized he'd only got one good eye, his right. The other was closed tight, swollen, sore. He swallowed again and this time knew he was tasting a cocktail of his own blood and saliva which clogged the back of his throat.

He attempted to focus on the figure in front of him and also try to start working out where he was, what the hell was going on and, more importantly, how to get out of this mess.

For a moment, as his good eye tried to focus, the man tilting his head remained shimmering and vague … the lighting of the location didn't help … the room, or wherever he now was, being poorly lit.

After much blinking and head clearing, Flynn's sight began to tighten up. He looked up at the man's face as its contours and features sharpened, like a camera being focused.

Flynn's cut and swollen bottom lip popped open.

‘You!' he wheezed.

‘Hi, Steve.' The man crouched down in front of Flynn. ‘Surprised to see me?'

‘Only as surprised as seeing a rat in a drain,' Flynn slurred croakily. ‘Jack Hoyle.' He almost laughed.

In his turn, the man – Hoyle – laughed harshly. ‘Long time no see.'

Flynn swore at him using the worst word he could imagine, then demanded, ‘What's going on?'

‘Nice to see you too,' Hoyle said. ‘Actually, to be honest, Steve, not nice, but, that said,' he went on in a conversational tone, ‘you have a lot to thank me for, mate. If it wasn't for me, you'd be dead and dumped by now. I've kept you alive, me, your former partner in the pursuit of crime. Y'see, these people –' and here Hoyle waggled his finger around the room – ‘are not the sort to ask questions. They just kill folk. Occasionally … how should I phrase this?' He pretended to think. ‘They extract information before putting bullets into brains, but in this case –
your
case – they really have all the info they need, so it's just a case of pulling triggers … get my drift?'

Flynn remained uncooperatively silent, his one good eye staring malignly from its socket at Hoyle.

Then he took his eye off Hoyle and tried to make sense of where he was and work out who else was in the room, but they remained out of his line of sight.

Despite the poor lighting, Flynn did notice something – the plastic sheet rolled out across the floor like a carpet.

His eye came back at Hoyle, who went on, ‘So, because I know you and we have a history of sorts—'

‘Thief,' Flynn blurted.

Hoyle continued as if he had not heard the accusation. ‘Because of this—'

‘Wife stealer,' Flynn said.

Hoyle clammed up and grinned. ‘Let's not go there, Steve,' he said patronizingly.

‘You did!'

‘And so did the lovely Faye.' Hoyle shook his head sadly. ‘Bygones.' He waved his hand dismissively. ‘So, as I was saying, because I know you, these nice people have allowed me to ask you one question. If you answer it truthfully and in a way that also makes me believe its veracity, you could live. But if you lie or act like a dick, trust me, Steve, you'll be dead.'

Hoyle's face became deadpan as he regarded Flynn, who glowered back whilst gently and unobtrusively easing and stretching the tape that was wrapped around his wrists, securing him to the chair. Flynn thought it was masking tape, rather than duct or parcel tape, which was good because it was easier to tear.

He moved his backside on the chair, which wasn't the most well-constructed piece of furniture in the world. It felt frail and slightly rickety to Flynn.

‘What's the question?' he growled.

‘Why were you there today? And what was Scott Costain doing on board?'

Not that he was surprised by this, as it only confirmed his suspicion. There could only be one reason for this abduction – Scott Costain.

‘I take it you were on the other boat?'

‘I'm asking the questions, Steve – but yes, I was there at the helm.'

‘OK,' Flynn said, ‘why were you there and why did you shoot at us? Fair question, I believe.'

Hoyle's eyes rolled in their sockets. ‘Flynnie, you won't get another chance, mate. These guys will whack you, and the one you bashed in the bollocks wants to slice yours off like sweetmeats and stuff 'em down your throat.' Hoyle leaned forward. ‘Last chance saloon, Steve.'

One of the other men moved into Flynn's restricted line of sight – the one whose testicles he had tried to kick up into his throat.

Flynn tilted his head. ‘Can you taste your balls, mate?'

The man's face betrayed rage and pain. A gun hung loosely in his hand by his side. He brought it up and held it diagonally across his chest, his eyes ablaze and the message clear.

If Flynn had not known for certain before – and he had, the plastic sheet basically telling him everything – he knew then. In spite of Jack Hoyle's cooing reassurance that he need only speak the truth, it did not really matter what came out of his mouth. He was a dead man.

Flynn flexed his muscles against the masking tape again, trying to work out how many men were in the room.

Two for certain, Hoyle and the guy with upwardly digested balls.

Four men had abducted him – Sore Nuts and one other on the roadside, one in the back of the Mercedes, who could possibly have been Hoyle, and a driver.

That could mean two more were standing silently behind him, guns drawn, all eager to put a bullet in his head.

So it was him – Flynn, strapped to a rickety chair – versus four.

Flynn's mind whirred. Question was, knowing that he was going to die here, wherever ‘here' was, did he go down fighting and try to take others with him – such as his ex-partner, who was clearly walking the left-hand path? Answer: yes.

He tested the bindings again. They had loosened slightly, since masking tape has a very slight elasticity to it.

‘Well, mate?' Hoyle asked. He was still squatting in front of Flynn and, increasingly confident, he leaned forward even further to get some real eye contact, his face only inches away from Flynn's forehead.

If nothing else, before his death Flynn would be able to deliver a blow to Hoyle that was long overdue.

But Flynn didn't want it to stop there, so his first blow had to be hard, fast, accurate and surprising. It had to count, but it also had to give him advantage. All the luck, speed and strength Flynn could muster had to be mashed into one pot. He had to forget his injuries, his bad head, his closed eye, the fact that he was tied to a chair.

He placed his feet flat on the floor, knowing that the plastic sheet would make all this harder for him because good grip would be vital for the moves he had planned. If he slipped he would look more than stupid. He would probably just topple over and end up with a double tap to the forehead and that would be it. He would be rolled up in the sheet and dumped in the mountains without even having discovered what all this crap was about.

He braced himself.

Then, using the balls of his feet, he rocked the chair backwards slightly to gather some momentum and force, then pitched forward and smashed his forehead as hard as possible into the unprotected bridge of Hoyle's nose. Flynn felt the man's septum crumble. His face imploded as the nose broke.

It hurt Flynn, but it hurt Hoyle even more.

He tumbled backwards with a scream, trying to stop the burst of blood like someone trying to stem the flow of water from a fractured mains pipe.

Much as Flynn would have liked to sit back and admire his handiwork – it was the least he owed Jack for all those years of torture, humiliation and anguish – he didn't have time even to think about it.

He carried on with his momentum, doubling forward on to his feet, the chair effectively stuck on him like a shell on a turtle. He swung the chair around, then propelled himself backwards into Mr Sore Balls, attacking him with the four feet of the chair like a lion tamer. Flynn hoped the man's groin was still throbbing enough to slow down his reactions.

Flynn drove him against the wall with two of the chair legs, one in his chest, the other in his lower belly, and once Flynn knew he had him there, he didn't stop, but pushed even harder, feeling the man's skin give and then split as Flynn forced himself backwards. The points of the feet stabbed through and he screamed as they pierced his chest and stomach and then his internal organs and he fought to pull the chair away, but Flynn pushed harder, forcing the two legs deep into the man's body.

He raised his head and saw there was only one other man in the room, who had watched Flynn's sudden explosive action with astonishment that had made him hesitate just a moment too long. This was the second guy who had taken Flynn off the street, the one armed with the cosh. He fumbled for something in his pocket.

Somewhere in the distance, Flynn heard echoing footsteps, running, shouting, other people coming, drawn by the scream of the man Flynn had stabbed with the chair.

He realized he had to take out this third man quickly, otherwise the game was over, and it would not be an easy task as he was bent double with a chair affixed to his back on to which a man's body was skewered, now a dead weight of about fifteen stone that he was unable to shake off.

The adrenalin that had flushed into his system, overriding his injuries and the sluggishness from his alcohol intake, drove him on. With the chair and man still attached, he pounded in an ungainly way towards the third man like a lumbering but deadly bull and with his head low, tensing the muscles in his neck so much they looked like coils of steel wire. He charged into him, crashing the crown of his head into the man's sternum. He kept his head down and continued to drive the man backwards until he, too, was pinned up against the opposite wall, clawing at Flynn, who reared his head back and crashed his skull into his chest again – though only because the weight on his back prevented him from standing upright and head-butting him. Then, contorting, he twisted and smashed his right knee up into the man's unprotected groin, flattening his second pair of testicles that night.

The man screamed.

So Flynn did it again, harder, then backed off as the man doubled over, incapacitated by the pain. Flynn then twisted and jerked, fighting to dislodge the man from the chair legs. The dead man's arms and legs flailed like a Guy Fawkes dummy, although one made of flesh and blood as opposed to paper and straw. With a sickening audible slurp and a gush of blood from the two massive penetrating wounds, he slithered off and hit the floor untidily. Released from that burden, Flynn smashed the chair hard against the wall in an effort to destroy it.

The chair disintegrated and Flynn's arms came free, although they were still attached by the masking tape to the chair arms, as if they were splints.

Using the chair arm still strapped to his forearm like a bat of some sort, he swung his right forearm against the head of the man he'd just chest-butted and double-kneed, who was still doubled over in agony, clutching his balls – a bit of payback for him earlier clubbing Flynn on the back of the head. The man slid face down on to the plastic sheet.

Spinning back and stepping over the other – dead – man who was lying in a spreading pool of almost black, very oxygenated blood, Flynn went back to Jack Hoyle. He was on his hands and knees, his head flopping between his arms with blood flowing freely from his broken nose, still stunned and disoriented by the head-butt.

Flynn tore the chair arms off, ripping the masking tape with his teeth and pulling it off like removing plaster. He threw them down … then another shout from somewhere else in the building told him he had no time for a head to head with his old friend.

Instead he strode up to Hoyle and booted him in the ribs, sending him sprawling across the floor. It was all he had time to do.

He swooped down and picked up the dead man's gun – a semi-automatic pistol of some sort – and went to the door, glancing around and seeing that he was simply in a very bare room without windows, maybe a basement or cellar, he guessed.

He opened the door. Beyond was a fairly wide, long, well-lit hallway or corridor of some sort, two doors to the left, a flight of stairs to the right and dead ahead, at the far end, another door. All the walls were whitewashed and Flynn thought he could well be on the ground floor of a villa. At least he hoped it was the ground floor, whatever type of building it was, because that would make it easier to leave. The stairs on the right gave him the clues he needed.