Heavy Duty Attitude (21 page)

Eventually I heard voices and felt the rocking of the suspension as people climbed into the van. Someone got into the back and the door was slammed behind them from the outside as the engine started.

I stiffened as I felt a pricking at my neck and prayed that the van didn’t jolt over a kerb or anything as I heard Scroat’s voice.

 

‘You’re to keep quiet while we take a little ride. One wrong move out of you before we get to where we’re going and I’ll stick you. You understand?’ I grunted my acknowledgement and nodded as far as I was able with the point of his knife pressed against my jugular.

 

Then to my intense and blessed relief the knife disappeared again as the van lurched forward.

The kicking had been just as a matter of principle I guess as much as anything else, but given what I’d just witnessed I thought I was relatively lucky to be alive.

We drove for what seemed like forever before I felt a familiar lurching sensation as suddenly we swung off the road and headed down a ramp.

I felt Scroat’s hand grab my leg as he used his knife to hack apart the tape binding my ankles, then the bang of the van door echoed around the underground car park and arms reached in to pull me roughly to my feet and shove me forward out onto the ground and into a stinking lift.

We were back at the same place. It had to be, I thought with a sudden unexpected surge of hope, as the lift began to whine and clatter upwards. I might, just might, get out of this alive after all.

 

They frogmarched me down a corridor and then I heard them knocking at a door which opened with a fusillade of rattling bolts.

A hand in the small of my back gave me a sudden shove through, which sent me sprawling helplessly onto the floor, my arms still pinioned behind me as I tripped over the bar of the inner cage doorframe.

As I lay there braced for another kicking I heard Wibble’s voice. ‘You complete twat,’ he spat in exasperation, ‘You just couldn’t stay away could you?’

*

Someone ripped the gaffa tape from across my mouth, but then with a tearing noise more gaffa tape went on. They had grabbed one of the wooden chairs from out of the kitchen and I was quickly strapped to it. It meant my kidneys weren’t as easy to get at but still gave them plenty of scope from the front.

‘So what did Danny tell you?’ Wibble demanded.
Fuck it! That was a shock. Where the hell had they got that from. ‘What? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t piss me about,’ he said, ‘Danny, the kid, he called you earlier this evening. He rang you and you arranged to meet him at a café. Ring any bells?’

There wasn’t much I could do but nod.

 

‘Good, now we’re getting somewhere. You see,’ he said, ‘we know, so let me ask you again, what did he tell you?’

 

They only wanted to know one thing really as Wibble’s reasonable voice pointed out from off to one side as Scroat and one of his guys went to work.

And that was how I had found out what was going on and where. I’m no hero.
I soon told them all about Danny and everything he’d said.
And then it stopped.

‘So what are you gonna do now?’ I mumbled as I got my breath back but I didn’t get an answer.

 

‘I’d keep your mouth shut if I was you,’ said Wibble’s voice from somewhere behind me.

Mentally I shut my eyes and gave thanks that I had actually sat down and sewn the support flash on. If it wasn’t for that, and the way it said I was under Wibble’s protection, I knew that chances were I would be dead by now. Anyone else caught spying on The Brethren like that, Charlie would just have knifed them there and then in the yard. Without Wibble’s patch I would simply have disappeared, with cans of old oil spilt over any blood on the ground and the rest of me probably crushed into a compacted car and sent off on its way to be smelted down in a furnace.

*
‘Did you get his phone?’ Wibble asked.
‘His phone?’
‘Yeah, his mobile. Did he have it on him? Did you get it?’
Toad shrugged. ‘Dunno, I didn’t look.’
This seemed to exasperate Wibble, ‘Well look now willya?’

From behind, Scroat hauled me suddenly to my feet, the chair coming with me, and tipping me forwards, my arms screaming in their sockets as he forced me up bodily and then held me bent double while Toad gave me the once over, slapping at my pockets before thrusting his hand inside my jacket to pull out what he’d found, discarding whatever else came out with it on the floor. No one seemed to mind him littering.

‘Bingo!’ he announced.

 

‘Great,’ said Wibble, ‘give it to me.’

*
Holding my phone, Wibble turned to interview me.

‘Is anyone expecting to hear from you?’ he asked looking up from where he was turning it on. ‘Is there any time you’ve set up to check in or make a call?’

I shook my head, ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Who’s going to miss you if they don’t hear from you for a few days?’

‘A few days?’ I started, ‘What’s going on here? How long is this going to take?’

 

‘I don’t know,’ he said calmly as my phone bing bonged cheerfully into life. ‘It’s not all up to me. But less than a week I’d guess now.’

 

Deftly he called up my contacts list and scrolled down it checking the names until he found the one he wanted.

‘You’re going to call your office,’ he instructed, ‘Tell them you’re not going to be in for a while. And don’t fuck us about. You know what’ll happen if you do, don’t you?’

I nodded weakly.
‘Because we’ll know you know. Not immediately perhaps, but we’ll know, soon enough if you’ve shit on us, and I can promise you one thing if you do…’

‘What’s that?’
‘That you’ll fucking regret it for the rest of your life…’
‘However long that is,’ laughed Scroat.
‘OK?’ he said.
‘OK,’ I confirmed.
‘Right then,’ he said. ‘Editor? That the one?’
‘Yes.’
‘His direct line?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘It’s a Friday night, is he going to be there?’

‘Yes of course he will, they’ll still be putting the Saturday paper to bed so he’ll be there for a while yet.’

 

‘OK then. Quiet you lot,’ he shushed the other bikers.

‘Now then,’ he said turning back to me and bringing the phone up between us, ‘after I’ve pressed dial you’re going to tell him that you’re going to be away from the office for a while, a few days, maybe a week. You’ve got a big new lead on a big new story. Serious shit, linked to the current biker thing. You’re going to follow it up but it means you’re going to have to disappear for a while. Will he buy that?’

‘Buy it?’
‘Will he believe it? Is it something that you’ve done before?’ ‘Well it’s not usual but…’
‘But..?’

‘Well it’s not completely out of the question, I mean it’s… I have done it once or twice before…’

‘Good…’
‘But he won’t like it,’ Wibble started to say but I overrode him. ‘… And he will be worried.’
‘How worried?’

‘He’ll want to know I’m alright, that I know what I’m doing, that I’m going to be OK.’

‘Fair enough, but will he believe you?’ he insisted.
‘Yeah, in the end, if I’m convincing enough.’
Wibble grinned at me.
‘Well then mate, let’s just hope you’re a good actor, for your sake.’

And reaching over so the phone was upturned in front of my face, Wibble pushed the green call button, and then switched to speaker as we stood in the tension of the room listening to the far away brrr brrr buzz of the ring tone.

The call went much the way I’d expected it to. I tried to control the nerves in my voice. Not easy when your arms are gaffa-taped to your sides, a certifiable psycho like Scroat’s arm is around your head and his knife at your throat, and Wibble’s face is staring silently and warningly into your own as you try to argue convincingly with your sceptical editor that yes, I do know what I’m doing, and no, I can’t tell you what all this is about just yet, or when I would actually be back; although at least those last parts weren’t the lies the rest were.

‘So make sure you keep in touch,’ my editor instructed.
My eyes locked with Wibble’s. His face was expressionless.
‘Yeah, OK,’ I said.
‘I want a call every day,’ he continued.
‘Well…’ I started.

‘Don’t shit with me Iain, you know the rules. You want to go off piste on this? Well, OK, I can authorise that, but you do it my way or not at all. Is that clear? I want to hear from you every day, you understand? No exceptions or I’m pulling you out, story or no sodding story, you understand?’

Wibble nodded.
‘OK boss,’ I said, ‘you’ve got it. Every day, like clockwork.’

‘Right then. You’ve got a week, and then I want you back in the office; and Iain…’

 

‘Yes?’

 

‘You’d better have a fucking good story when you do; otherwise you will be in the deepest shit you’ll ever have seen in your life.’

If only he fucking knew. Even Wibble smiled at that one.
‘Yes boss, see you in a week,’ I said and shut my eyes.

‘Righto,’ he said, signing off, and with a click, Wibble snapped shut the phone, killing the line.

I held my breath. This was it I thought, I could feel the edge of Scroat’s blade chafing against my jugular and I had just bought them a week’s head start on the cops on getting rid of my body and sorting out their alibis. I swallowed hard, imagining the burning hot sensation of the hunting knife slitting my throat.

But there was nothing.

Then there was a sardonic clap from Toad and almost like a physical sensation I could feel the tension ease in the room. ‘Give that man a fucking Oscar.’

I opened my eyes again. Wibble was still standing across from me, calmly pocketing my phone in his cut’s breast pocket.

 

‘So then,’ he asked in a business like way, ‘will he call the cops?’ I shook my head as much as I dared with what felt like a short sword pressed against it, ‘No, why should he?’

‘Well I don’t know do I?’ he said, ‘There wasn’t any shit in there was there now? No secret codewords or crap? Nothing that you should have said to confirm to him that you were OK?’

It would have been a good idea I thought regretfully, but it wasn’t something that I’d ever arranged with my editor.

‘No, I’m a reporter for fuck’s sake, not Jason Bourne.’
‘Ain’t that the fucking truth?’ snorted Toad.

‘Is there anyone else you need to call to make sure no one reports you missing?’ Wibble continued, ‘Girlfriend? Mum, Dad? Mates?’ ‘Boyfriend?’ suggested Scroat from behind me.

 

‘Oh shut up,’ said Wibble matter of factly, ‘he ain’t got one of those.’

He seemed very sure. But then I knew he would be. He’d been having me tailed and investigated long enough so I guess he knew most things about me.

‘No, no one.’

‘Well right then,’ Wibble said, nodding his head as if to acknowledge that he was as satisfied as he could be about the point for the moment and stepping back away from me.

I froze and instinctively screwed my eyes shut as time slowed to a standstill. Scroat’s grip was tight around my head. Pinioned as I was I couldn’t really move but even so I bucked in the chair, trying desperately to twist myself, my body, my head, and most of all, my achingly exposed neck away from the razor sharp hunting steel burning against my skin. There was a mewling noise in the room which it took me a while to realise was coming from me. I was convinced as I strained against the binding tapes, half wrenching the chair off the floor in my struggle to break free from the vice like grip from behind me.

This.
Was.
It.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake shut up will you?’ Wibble’s voice cut through the madness, ‘And you, let him go, we don’t need that yet.’

And as if by a miracle, all of a sudden the pressure was released and my head fell forwards. There was no arm twisting it off the top of my neck and there was no knife pressed against my flesh. At Wibble’s command, Scroat had just let go of me and let me and the chair drop to the floor again. For a moment all I could do was throw back my head and gasp for sweet, sweet breath again. Even in this flat that stank of damp, dead fags and old beer spills on the carpets.

‘So what now?’ asked Toad.

Wibble looked thoughtful for a moment, as though he was mentally calculating the odds and implications of a few courses of action, working through the scenarios to see which would work out best.

‘I think I need to make another call first,’ he concluded, reaching back into his cut’s pocket, ‘so make sure he stays quiet will you?’

He flipped open my phone again and once more rapidly flicked his way through my contact list as Toad tore another strip off the roll of gaffa tape they’d used and with Scroat crunching my jaw shut from behind with his forearm, he expertly stuck it across my mouth.

Then with a couple of stabs of his thumb Wibble selected and dialled, turning to face me as he held my phone to his ear and waited for an answer.

‘Hi.’
I couldn’t hear who it was he was talking to or what they were saying. ‘Yeah it’s me.
‘Yeah, of course it’s his phone. Surprised?
‘Well it was bound to happen sometime wasn’t it?
‘I’m looking at him right now.
‘Yeah, that’s the place.
‘No. Bit worse for wear but he’s OK.
‘Scroat and young Charlie did a number on him. But he’ll live.

‘Yeah well, for a while anyway. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask, you’ve not heard anything about him have you?

‘No?
‘No alerts, none of that sort of shit? No notices he’s missing?

‘OK then, check it out, but do it discreetly. Don’t want to set alarm bells off unnecessarily. And keep an ear out. If anything comes up I want to know about it sharpish.

‘Yeah, call me on this phone, but only once you’ve done it. Yeah it needs to come off now.

 

‘Right. But that’s not what I called up to talk about. Not the main thing anyway…

‘No.
‘That other thing we talked about? You remember?
‘Yeah?
‘Well, I’m just calling to let you know that we’re on.

‘Just sit back and watch your TV. It’s all you fucking ever do anyway. You’ll find out.

‘Yeah right.
‘OK, I’ll wait for your call.
‘Like I said, this number, right?

‘Yes of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t would I? Just make sure it’s clean from now on OK?

‘No it ain’t going anywhere either.
‘OK then. See you.

‘What a dickhead!’ he added, after he’d hung up, as he stuck my phone away again in his pocket.

And while they weren’t the questions at the absolute top of my list, not in comparison with how the fuck I was going to get myself out of this and what the hell Wibble was doing keeping me around while whatever was about to go down happened, even then I did have to wonder.