Time to Pay (25 page)

This morning she had been up before him, bright and cheerful, showering and getting breakfast for them both, before roaring off in her Aston Martin to open the gallery at ten. Gideon had kissed her goodbye with affection, thinking how simple it would be to drift on in this easy-come, easy-go fashion for another twenty years, but as soon as the thought came, he knew that it wasn't enough. Last night in the passionate darkness it had been enough, and even as they lay basking in the afterglow it was enough, but in the morning, facing the new day, there was something missing.

There always was.

Arthur Willis'daughter's pony lived, with several others, in a large, rough-looking, overgrazed field that appeared to double up as a graveyard for used cars and unwanted farm machinery.

Shaking his head in amazement that any animal could live amongst such an array of twisted metal and trailing barbed wire without mortally injuring itself within the first five minutes, Gideon wandered along the row of adjacent semi-derelict buildings, peering through the grimy windowpanes to try and make out something of their original purpose.

The first had sagging double wooden doors facing back down the track, and held, as far as he could see, an old Land Rover, no doubt quietly rusting into oblivion. The next few had half doors, like stables, and he opened one to find it full of mouldering cardboard boxes and plastic crates. Another contained a few opened sacks of horse feed and several bales of hay, which smelled musty, even from a distance. At the far end of the row was a bigger building with a locked door. He couldn't see a lot through the dirty, cobwebby glass, but he got the impression of a largely empty space with a high ceiling and some form of pulley or winch mechanism by one wall.

He turned away, wiping his dusty hands on his jeans. Looking back at the Land Rover, he could see Zebedee's face watching him soulfully through the passenger window.

The field was pretty isolated, situated as it was well back from the road, and the nearest habitation Gideon could see was the back of what looked like a council estate, a couple of hundred yards away to his left, beyond some water meadows.

He glanced at his watch.

Two fifteen. He'd been a little late himself, but Willis was later. So much for his desperation the evening before.

It was cloudy and a cold wind whistled round the deserted outbuildings. Gideon began to feel a little annoyed.

From the description he'd been given over the phone, Gideon guessed that Katy Willis' pony was the rather poorly put together bay that was grazing in the middle of the field, side by side with an equally weedy-looking grey. Beyond watching him from under its shaggy forelock, it showed little interest in Gideon's presence and, looking at the poached ground and pools of muddy water on the other side of the fence, Gideon had no inclination to venture any closer.

He decided to give Arthur Willis ten more minutes, and contemplated fetching his gloves from the car.

It was Zebedee who alerted him to the fact that company had showed up. All of a sudden he started barking furiously, the whole Land Rover rocking with the energy of his efforts.

Gideon walked back along the row of buildings towards the vehicle, where he would get a view of the track.

‘That's enough!' he said sharply to the dog, thumping on the bodywork as he passed. ‘Quiet now!'

Zebedee took not a shred of notice.

He had his back to Gideon and his tail was windmilling as his front paws jumped with each bark.

‘Zeb, be quiet!' Gideon told him again, looking down the empty track. ‘There's no-one there.'

He was wrong.

As he passed the rear of the Land Rover, a figure stepped out from the cover of the end wall to stand in his path. His face nightmarishly distorted by a stocking mask, he was holding what looked like a baseball bat in one gloved hand, and thumping it menacingly into the palm of the other.

He didn't say anything, but then he didn't really have to.

For a moment Gideon froze, immobilised by shock, and in that instant he heard the tiniest sound of a displaced pebble behind him, and two strong arms closed round his torso, trapping his own in a powerful hug that was entirely lacking in affection.

Gathering his wits, Gideon threw his head back forcefully, aiming for his attacker's nose. It was a manoeuvre that had worked well for him once before, but this guy was canny and had his head well out of the way so that he only succeeded in jarring his own neck.

His next effort, that of kicking back sharply at the man's shin, was more successful but rewarded by a fist pummelling into his lower ribs on his right-hand side.

It was like being hit by a battering ram. Gideon was a powerful man himself, and it wasn't the first time he'd been punched, but it was without a doubt the hardest. He grunted as the breath left his lungs and his legs turned instantly to jelly. His attacker grabbed him again, keeping him on his feet.

‘Hold him.' The man with the bat stepped
forward and Gideon raised his head to look at him, trying to make out his features underneath the dark nylon. He'd plainly been set up, but by whom? Just at the moment, though, he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything other than the almost mesmeric thwacking of the satiny blue bat into the leather-gloved palm.

What was intended?

Not my knees!
Gideon thought with a flutter of panic. Almost anything but that . . .

Smack . . . Smack . . . Smack . . .

The man was just a matter of inches away now, and Gideon could smell stale tobacco smoke on his clothes. He stopped and raised the bat until it was rubbing gently against Gideon's face.

Inwardly quaking, Gideon tried to keep his eyes steady on the flattened nose and shadowed eyes of his tormentor's masked face, desperate to maintain his pride, at least.

On the edge of his vision he was very aware of the shiny smooth surface of the bat next to his left eye. Suddenly it lifted a little and then cracked painfully, but not dangerously, against his cheekbone.

Gideon couldn't help flinching, which appeared to amuse the man behind him.

‘Go on. 'It him again!'

His mate, though, had more practical issues on his mind.

‘No. We should get him inside. I don't like it here; we're too exposed.'

‘Awright, well, let's get on with it then. He's a big bloke, I'm not sure how long I can 'old him like this.'

‘You'd fuckin' better!' the other man warned.

To Gideon's surprise, the man in front of him discarded his weapon, dropping it behind him, where it rolled a short way and then stopped. From his jacket pocket he then took out a polythene bag from which he drew a pad of white cloth, and Gideon's nostrils were immediately assailed by a pungent chemical aroma. He began to writhe, guessing what was on the cards.

‘You might enjoy this – the kids seem to,' the man said and, stepping to one side, clamped the hand with the cloth in it over Gideon's mouth and nose.

Gideon made a Herculean effort to break free of his captor, but with his arms imprisoned at his sides his struggles were ineffective, and his attempt to hold his breath was short-lived.

‘Come on, you bastard, breathe!' the man with the cloth muttered, and jabbed his fist into Gideon's stomach. It wasn't a heavy blow but it was enough to make him gasp, and the damage was done.

The first deep inhalation sent his head spinning and brought tears to his eyes. He gagged, coughed, and necessarily inhaled again, feeling the thick spirit-laden air burn down into his lungs, seeming to permeate all his senses and rob him of the power of reasoning.

After several more suffocating lungfuls, the sudden rush of euphoria caught him by surprise, lifting him on a tide of well-being, and his head tipped back, eyes open to the sky. Up there, something was circling: large, dark green – a dragon.

There were two now. Huge, predatory; gliding slowly round and round as they searched for their
prey. He needed to make for cover before they saw him, but though he struggled, he couldn't move.

They weren't dragons, they were aeroplanes – bigger than ocean liners, with cartoon propellers. All those people; where were they going? It puzzled him for a while but then he realised he didn't care. Let them go . . . They were no friends of his. He didn't need them because he was floating; he could fly. Soon he'd be up there with the dragons, riding them out over the sea towards the sunset, where the sky was crimson and gold, and stars burned brightly, calling him on . . .

Gideon's head was a chaos of noise and colour, swirling and shifting like a sandstorm. Slowly the vivid hues separated into blotches that turned darker and receded and he became aware that something was burning into his arms, starting at his wrists and tearing all the way up to his shoulders and back. He felt heavy, like lead; as though the earth was trying to drag him down and swallow him.

The drenching, ice-cold water was a shock that made Gideon's heart miss a beat. It hit him in the face and chest, cascading over his head and down his body in a single deluge, running off his hair and soaking through his clothes.

Gasping, he shook his head and opened his eyes. The water ran in, making him blink rapidly.

He was indoors but the light was very poor, and when he tried to focus on his surroundings everything distorted as if viewed through a fish-eye lens, stretching and pulling both vertically and horizontally as he moved his eyes.

With the return to some sort of consciousness, he found that he was hanging suspended by his wrists, though when he tried to tilt his head back to see what held him, his vision broke up in a haze of dizziness and nausea.

He shut his eyes and groaned, fighting the sickness.

‘'E don't look so happy now, do 'e?' someone observed; the voice indistinct, as though under water. ‘P'raps he'd like another bath . . .'

This time the water hit Gideon from behind but he was ready for it and the shock was diminished. In fact, the wash of cold cleared his spinning head and took the edge off the nausea, so he was able to open his eyes and make some sense of his situation.

The room was lit only by a smallish window in the wall facing him, and an even smaller one, high in the wall to his left. Dusty cobwebs festooned the windows and hung in grey clumps from the rafters, blowing gently in the breeze from the doorway. The ragged-bottomed door stood open a couple of inches, allowing a sliver of light to illuminate the floor, where uneven quarry tiles were visible here and there through the filth. The space was unfurnished, unless one counted a pile of broken wooden pallets stacked against the side wall, and a raised concrete dais supporting the rusting metal wheels and cogs of some kind of winching mechanism.

With a start, Gideon's memory came back. He'd peered into this building from the outside. He'd come to look at a pony – except he hadn't. There had never been a problem with the pony;
it had been an elaborate trap and, unprepared, he'd fallen for it.

What had they used on him? His head was pounding heavily and the remnants of the hallucinations still fogged up his thought processes, making it difficult to separate reality from fantasy . . .

They.

Where were they now?

He turned his head awkwardly between his upstretched arms and came face to masked face with one of the men, not six inches away but only at Gideon's chest level.

‘Boo!' the man said, and laughed, giving Gideon the benefit of his disgustingly bad breath.

Gideon grimaced and turned his head away in revulsion.

The water continued to drip off him and he became aware that he was extremely cold. His jacket had gone, as had his shirt, leaving him in nothing but jeans and a tee shirt. Not exactly adequate for a cold spring day, even had he not just been drenched in freezing water. As a defence mechanism, his body began to shudder.

In front of him, the door swung open and the other man came in. He was also masked and carried a battered red metal box with a spike underneath and a coil of flex attached. He went over to the rusty winch and wedged the box amongst the metalwork, pushing and rocking it to check that it was firmly lodged.

Frowning, Gideon watched as the man then untangled the flex, using a crocodile clip on the end to connect it to a length of silvery wire that hung from above.

It said a lot for his woolly state of mind that Gideon only then recognised the metal box for what it was – an electric fencer unit, such as was used to power stock fencing. He knew from experience that the twelve-volt battery delivered a nasty jolt to any man or beast unwary enough to touch it, and, with a growing foreboding, he followed the silver wire upward with his eyes until he saw where it had been wound round a crossbeam, high in the roof space. His position prevented him from following its course along the beam but it wasn't necessary. Directly above he could see his wrists, bound with orange baling twine and wound about with a coil of the same silver wire. As far as he could see, the baling twine was looped over one of several heavy, S-shaped iron hooks that hung from staples driven into the timber. Gideon thought they looked a little like meat hooks.

At his other extremity he could feel the cold floor with his toes, and it took him a moment or two to comprehend the reason for this. His feet were bare. He had no boots on. His cold-induced shaking grew a stage or two worse.

‘Ah. 'E's twigged it,' the talkative one said. ‘And 'e don't look too 'appy!'

Gideon
wasn't
‘'appy'.

His mind was racing. What did they hope to achieve? Did they intend questioning him? Was that what this was all about?

If it was, he had to wonder just what kind of power pack they'd put in their fencer unit. He had no idea what was legally available, even supposing they stayed within the bounds of legality, which was unlikely, given their record so far. He was
heartily glad that beyond an antiquated light fitting or two that might or might not be defunct, the derelict site seemed to have no mains electricity supply; no sockets.