The Wrong Man (35 page)

Bishop kept to the right as he advanced across the cluttered floor space. The building was unusually quiet. Older structures
usually made a few noises, but he guessed these warehouses had been built to last. Apart from him, there was just stillness
and silence. When he reached the pair of wooden sliding doors, he switched off the
flashlight and waited, listening. Still
no sound. But under the doors he noticed a faint residue of light creeping in. He was on the right track.

He gripped the handle on the left door and gently slid it open until he had enough space to fit through. On the other side
was a stairway landing, partly illuminated by light from the floor below. To his left, more
steps led upwards into darkness.
Bishop went over and aimed the flashlight into the wide stairwell. The smell of damp wood and old faeces hit him, but he saw
nothing but concrete until the next turn. No sounds, either. Not even from rodents trying to escape the light. He switched
the flashlight off and pocketed it, then crossed to the other steps. The ones leading down.
Holding his gun in both hands,
he descended.

At the bottom, he looked through the opening into the rooms beyond.

He was seeing the room from the reverse angle of the movie clip, but he was definitely looking at the same three rooms. The
same walls with the large entranceways separated them, allowing him to see right to the end a hundred yards
away. Three grime-covered
fluorescent fixtures along the central beam provided light.

Jenna sat just to the right of a pair of huge double doors at the end. Next to her was a table containing knives of different
shapes and lengths. She was still bound to a chair and her head was slumped forward. Her shirt had been ripped from her body
and her left
arm was covered in blood. There were dark stains on the floor all around her. From this distance, Bishop couldn’t
tell if she was breathing or not.

Every part of him wanted to run over and check, but she’d been left
alone for a reason. Which meant Danny was still here somewhere, waiting for him. He needed to secure the area before he did
anything else.

Directly in front of him was the figure he’d seen in the video. Still in the same foetal position. He couldn’t see the face,
but it was clearly female. She was wearing shapeless jogging pants and a filthy, baggy, hooded sweatshirt. But it was the
second figure lying nestled against the right wall twenty feet away that got his attention. That one was male.

Bishop checked the girl first. With his gun covering the man, he crouched at her side and placed his fingers beneath her ear.
She was all skin and bone, so there was no problem locating her pulse, which was slow, but regular. He looked down at her
profile. Late twenties, possibly, with prominent cheekbones, filthy long brown hair and body odour bad enough
to make him
breathe through his mouth. Yet she seemed quite pretty, or could have been if she’d given up the drugs. He noticed two recently
used condoms near her feet, as well as a disposable syringe that looked new. He shook her shoulder, but got no response. She
felt like a dead weight.

He got to his feet and approached the man. He was wearing
a thick overcoat and lying on his side, right hand tucked into his
pocket. Bishop used a foot to push him onto his back. He looked the same age as the girl. He had blond shoulder-length hair
and good, symmetrical features. The hair looked as though it had been washed recently. And apart from a nasty bruise above
the right cheek, his face showed none of the wear and tear
of someone who lived on the streets. That overcoat didn’t look
like a cheap make, either.

Keeping a foot on the man’s right elbow, Bishop crouched and placed the gun barrel against his forehead. He raised the man’s
eyelids. The rapid eye movement indicated unconsciousness, but Bishop knew that that could be faked easily enough.

He slammed
the side of the gun into the guy’s right temple. The man groaned and his head slumped to the left, bleeding a little
from the wound. Bishop checked the eyes again and got the same results, although his breathing was now a lot louder. Bishop
looked down, pulled the man’s hand from his coat pocket and reached inside to see what he’d been holding.

And pulled
out a hunting knife. An expensive one by the looks of it. Japanese or Korean and used for skinning game. The curved
blade had blood on it. A lot of blood.

Taking the knife with him, Bishop approached the entranceway to the second room and peered round the wall. Seeing it was empty,
he crossed to the next opening, looked round and saw only Jenna. Still
in the same position.

But this time, he could see her chest rising and falling. She was alive.

He jogged towards her, listening out for movement from behind and keeping an eye on the doors ahead. As he got closer, he
saw that Danny had only started. A two-inch-long section of her upper right arm had been stripped away, exposing the defined
bicep
muscle. The length of skin was still attached and hung down, swaying with each exhalation. He gently touched her cheek.
She had a large, red bruise just below her left eye. He guessed Danny must have knocked her out when he heard Bishop break
in.

There wasn’t as much blood as he’d first thought, but enough had run down her arm to create a pool on the floor.
Glancing
at Jenna’s bare feet he saw the burnt skin around her toes and the medicinal plasters, but the electrical wires had been removed.
He also noticed that each chair leg had a metal hinge that had been bolted to the floor, and wondered how many others had
suffered slow, painful deaths in its arms.

He gently lifted the hanging piece of skin until
it covered as much of the wound as possible, and held it there for a few
seconds until he felt sure the blood would help it stay in position. Then he used the hunting knife to cut at the thick cords
binding her right arm to the chair. Jenna began to stir and her eyes opened to slits when he was halfway through. They focused
on Bishop and she whispered, ‘You came.’

‘I said I would.’

Then he watched Jenna’s eyes become circles and she screamed ‘
No!
’ and that awful body odour filled the air again.

The girl.
It was the goddamn girl all along
.

Bishop tried to turn, but a bony knee jammed into his back and the gun fell from his grasp as he dropped to the floor. Still
gripping the knife,
he began to rise but another agonizing stomach muscle spasm hit him and he dropped to his knees. He gasped
for breath and something knocked against his wrist and he saw the knife fall onto Jenna’s lap.

Then he saw Danny’s clenched fists on either side of his face. There was a length of electrical wire between them, stretched
taut.

And
then the wire was at his throat.

Bishop instinctively brought his right hand up and managed to get his two end fingers between the wire and his larynx before
it tightened. Immediately, Danny began twisting while dragging him back along the floor. Blood spurted from both digits and
ran down his forearm as the pressure increased. He tried slamming his right elbow into
the weight at his back. Each time,
Danny avoided the blow without loosening her grip.

After about twenty feet, Bishop fell on his side and Danny wrapped a leg around his waist and came down with him. He could
already feel the wire start to cut into his neck near the Adam’s apple. Where was her strength coming from? The scrawny bitch
was half his
size. Less than half.

In the struggle, he thought he heard shouting, but couldn’t make out the words. Had to be Jenna. He knew it wasn’t coming
from Danny. He figured she was a mute. The only noise she made was something that resembled hissing as she squeezed the life
from him. As if she was excited, like this was a turn-on for her.

Bishop reached down to his ankle holster with his left hand. But Danny kept punching his elbow away with her knee until he
was forced to give up. He scanned the floor for something else he could use. Anything. But there was nothing except some ancient
batteries and old cardboard and newspapers. But his Beretta should be nearby. He’d gotten part of his foot on it when he was
being dragged, and it had come at least part of the way. He was sure of it. So where the hell was it? Unable to move his head,
he used his legs and free arm to manoeuvre his body so it faced the table. And there it was. On the floor just a few feet
away. He dragged himself towards it with the world on his back, but the moment it came within reach a boot came into view
and kicked it away.

The wire was cutting into his neck now and he felt blood running into his shirt under the jacket. It was getting harder to
take in air and
his breath came out in rasps. He reached his free arm around but she skittered over him like a spider. He couldn’t get near.
Any time he veered off and went for his ankle, she knocked his arm away
with her knee before he could make contact.

Forget the direct approach then
.

Bishop dragged himself back towards the table and she wriggled around on top of him, her right knee pressing into his side.
The pressure didn’t let up at all. The more exertion he put into surviving, the more she got off on it. His trapped left arm
was completely wet
now as it dragged underneath him and he knew he was leaving a trail of blood across the floor.

Another foot. Then one more. He was past halfway. Momentarily, he thought of Jenna. He hadn’t heard her in a while and he
couldn’t see her chair. It was just out of his vision. He moved another foot. And another. And there, in front of his face,
half covered by
some scrap paper, was a metallic object. An acupuncture needle. Three inches long with a thin steel handle.
His fingers closed around it and he stopped crawling.

Danny began rubbing her body against him in a grotesque parody of ecstasy. Bishop felt her knee dig deeper into his side as
she tightened her grip on the wire. He’d stopped trying to take in oxygen.
No point now. His vision had deteriorated to the
point where he could barely see the floor an inch from his face. Everything was turning grey. His only lifeline was the small
amount of air still remaining in his lungs. Gripping the needle in his fist, he brought his arm back to rest against Danny’s
leg, his closed fist on her knee. She didn’t bother trying to move it
out of the way. Bishop guessed she relished the extra
contact with her victims during their final throes.

Relying on feel alone, his forefinger located the lower part of the vastus lateralis muscle, just above her knee. All muscles
were sensitive, but he knew that particular one was in a league of its own. Just ask any sportsman. Utilizing his last vestige
of strength, Bishop raised his fist as high as it would go. Then he plunged the needle into the muscle all the way up to the
handle.

The pressure against his neck was gone and the weight on his back fell away. Bishop rolled over and coughed as he filled his
empty lungs with oxygen. He used his unharmed hand to pull the garrotte out of the groove
in his neck and raised his injured
fingers to stem the blood.
He’d lost the top of his little finger, but his ring finger was still there, but only just. He turned to Danny. She sat on
the floor next to the table, her right leg stretched out before her. She was slowly pulling the needle out of her knee with
both hands, her face a picture of agony.

‘That’s what real pain feels like,’ he said. ‘How do you like it?’

Behind her, Bishop could see Jenna cutting at the cords binding her feet with Danny’s Japanese knife. Still coughing, he reached
down and pulled his own knife free from its ankle holster. It was time to end this right now. As he rose to his knees, he
watched Danny throw the needle away before glancing
down at her side. She picked up something off the floor.

His gun.

With her left hand clamped around her knee, she pointed the Beretta at Bishop’s groin. And the smile she gave him was one
of the most beautiful he’d ever seen.

Jenna suddenly launched herself from the chair. She leapt on Danny and plunged the hunting knife deep into
the girl’s back,
between the shoulder blades. Danny’s smile turned into a grimace and she dropped the gun and fell forward.

‘
Die, you sick bitch
,’ Jenna screamed as she got to her feet. She reached for another knife on the table.

Bishop moved closer and picked up his gun. ‘No, Jenna,’ he said as he pulled the knife out of the woman’s back and
threw it
under the table. Danny’s sweatshirt was already drenched in her blood. ‘Turn away.’

Jenna looked at him. Her arm continued to bleed and her body was bruised and battered, but she didn’t look scared or in pain.
She looked almost wild. He couldn’t blame her.

‘This isn’t my first time,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want it to be yours,
either. Turn away.’

Jenna opened her mouth and then paused. Slowly she turned, dropping the knife. She leaned against the table and Bishop saw
her shoulders shaking.

Bishop rolled Danny onto her back. The floor turned red beneath her and she looked up into his eyes. Her mouth was parted
and her teeth were covered in blood. Her eyes met his and
she smiled at him again.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, and snapped her neck.

Leaning against the table, Bishop watched Jenna reach into the jacket he’d given her and tear a long strip from the inner
lining. She began wrapping the material around what remained of his two end fingers before extending it around the width of
his hand.

He hadn’t been feeling too hot since Saturday, and he felt
even worse now. But it was worth it. Jenna was worth it. He watched
her working on him and smiled. The relief he felt at finding her in one piece far outweighed the physical pain, and would
be enough to keep him going for a while yet. With Jenna safe, that was all he cared about now. Just staying on his feet a
little longer. He still had things to do.

As she secured the ends of the strip tightly with a knot, Bishop noticed she never once looked at Danny’s body lying a few
feet away. Although she did occasionally glance towards the double doors. Bishop had already checked the room beyond and found
the girl he’d seen in the video. Danny had cut the poor girl’s throat and propped her next to the grate covering the elevator
shaft. Then she must have planted the knife on the boyfriend and taken the girl’s place.

‘This time you
do
need a doctor,’ Jenna said, inspecting the bandage. ‘But what do I know, right?’ She studied the black strip of cloth around
his neck and he felt her fingers gently touch the wound underneath. They came away clean. She frowned, then leaned forward
and kissed him on the lips. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said and touched her face. He kissed her again. Longer this time. The feel of her lips on his worked
better than any balm and he didn’t want it to stop. But he broke away finally and then crouched next to the corpse, checking
the pockets. ‘Can you remember if Thorpe said anything about where
he was meeting his buyers?’

‘No.’ She paused. ‘But I was out of it most of the time.’

He found Danny’s cell phone and stood up. Handed it to Jenna. ‘Here, use this. Your brother and Luke had their own lead to
follow,
so their nerves are probably shot to hell by now. You’re in Cortlandt Alley, by the way.’

Jenna took the phone, keyed
in a number and put it to her ear. A second later, she said, ‘Ali, it’s Jenna. I’m okay. I’m safe.’
She smiled and Bishop heard a yell at the other end. ‘I know, I know, I’ll explain it all when you get here,’ she said, and
gave the location. ‘I need to call the police now . . . Right . . . Don’t be long.’ She handed the phone back to Bishop and said,
‘Ali promised to
name his firstborn after you. I am calling the police, aren’t I?’

‘The moment I leave here,’ he said, and scrolled through the phone’s menu until he got to the message inbox. ‘Tell them everything
that happened and remember,
I
stabbed her with the knife. You never touched her.’

‘But it was self-defence.’

‘We both know that, but the
wound in her back will open up questions you don’t need. Just lay it at my door, Jenna. Believe
me, with what they already got on me, it won’t make any difference.’

Bishop smiled at the phone. Danny hadn’t gotten around to deleting her messages. He saw the most recent communication had
been sent less than an hour ago and opened it up.
Exchange at 0500. BH.
Meet me 0400
.

BH. He should have known. Brennan’s house. You set up an exchange, you want the territory to be a place you know like the
back of your hand. And the house certainly qualified as that. For both of them. He checked his watch. 00.51. That gave him
plenty of time.
Okay, Thorpe
, he thought.
I’ll meet you there, but you won’t like it
. He deleted the message
and gave the phone back to Jenna.

She brought her hand to his cheek. ‘Once I tell them what’s happened, they’ll have to know it wasn’t you.’

He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not about me any more.’

‘What do you mean?’

He dismissed the question with a shake of his head. ‘You’ll be okay on your own until Ali gets here?’

She waved a hand at the table. ‘I’m pretty handy with these now.’

Bishop smiled and nodded towards the back room. ‘There’s a guy back there who’ll probably need stitches because of me.’

‘I think the freak can take the blame for that one, don’t you?’ She shook her head and said, ‘How the hell does anyone get
like that?’

He looked
down at the body and shook his head. ‘Some people are just wired wrong from birth.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

He had begun walking towards the double doors that led back to the alley when she said, ‘James . . .’

Bishop turned back. The expression on Jenna’s face could have been interpreted in any number of ways. He chose one and said,
‘I know.’

Then he opened the door and left.