Lethal Game, page 21
Joel had so many questions but he couldn’t launch into them. Not there, in that setting, with those cameras on him. Billy seemed to be changing, evolving his methods, and Joel was desperate to probe why with questions. But he couldn’t. All he could do was clarify where they needed to go, repeat his understanding that two people were being held captive and about to become an imminent danger to each other, and then ask what he needed to know to keep the responding officers safe. Anything else would constitute an interview and would be deemed unlawful, any answers instantly inadmissible – or, worse, deemed a breach of process.
What Joel most wanted to ask was why? Still Billy’s motivation was lost on him. There was no real expression on Billy’s face that might give a clue, no joy, no satisfaction or any attempt to boast about how clever he had been, no explanation or justification for any of it. Rather than describing the horror of two people tied up and waiting to fight each other to their death, Billy Easton might as well have been reading the shipping forecast.
Joel had relayed all that he knew to DS Rose and cursed his luck that he couldn’t be part of the police reaction. Instead, he had moved his prisoner into an interview room and posted a jailer at the door until one of his DCs could come down to ensure there were always two to witness anything said. And then they had just sat in silence, waiting for an update on the radio from either DS Rose or the Firearms Sergeant now tasked with leading the response.
Waiting for something to change.
Billy Easton slumped on one of the polished wooden chairs, his weathered face lowered. Joel couldn’t tell if he was looking at someone resigned to what was happening to him, or sad about it. Nothing about his reaction had seemed right. Before Billy was in the frame, Joel had imagined their offender as a gloating, swaggering beast of a man, delighting in mocking the police, leaving clues for them to chase while admiring his own cleverness. That was how Joel had imagined he would catch him: his arrogance and desire to gloat would be his undoing. But Billy Easton was none of those things.
The radio update made Joel flinch. The volume was down low but in the thick silence of that room it was like a firecracker suddenly released. The update was from DS Rose: they had arrived at the location. Joel got up. He needed to listen to this next bit closely and away from the seated prisoner. Billy called after him, urgency in his voice for the first time.
‘If they’ve arrived there’s something you need to know.’ Joel spun back to see Billy removing something from down the front of his trousers. ‘The only place they didn’t search,’ he said like he was offering some sort of explanation. Then there was a flash of something white in his hand and he slid it across the table top. ‘I reckon by now you might know what this means.’
Joel had moved back towards him, ready to deal with whatever he had concealed. Billy hadn’t been subject to a strip-search; a forensic seizure meant changing all of his outer clothing anyway, and there wasn’t time for Joel to wish he had insisted. Instinctively he grabbed Billy by the wrists while his eyes chased after the object on the table. It was a playing card. It had fallen face down but the back was instantly familiar: a cartoonish torso of a welder, a bell in one hand, a lighted welding gun in the other, with Escape! written over his midriff. Joel turned it over to reveal a skull and crossbones symbol drawn in thick black.
The death card.
Everyone loses a life.
Chapter 36
Bradley coughed to clear his throat and felt the familiar sensation of a wire tightening its grip around his waist. The sensation was there with every movement; even when he turned his head he could feel a pull on his torso or a pinch of his skin. Just like when he was secured in that lorry trailer. And that wasn’t the only sensation that was familiar; the constant knot of anxiety was back too, only this time it was worse, because he knew more of what to expect, and he knew only too well the price of failure.
Sat in the back of that trailer he had told himself that it was all a trick, designed to mess with his head. He’d even thought it was one of his mates in that ill-fitting outfit, mates who would know the relevance to him of choosing to dress as a character most of the world knew as The Captor. But any doubt was gone when that recorded message had played out in full and made the link to that game clearer. He knew Escape! He knew it well. And at that point he had known that he was part of a game being played out live.
Even before the message had gone on to tell him what losing meant, he had been able to skip ahead in his mind to the weapons he had seen as small plastic pieces in the game box. Turning a card to claim a baseball bat and a pair of scissors for use in a final showdown was fun at a kitchen table, surrounded by your mates, with cartoon figures and cartoon violence. But pulling a cold, heavy baseball bat from coarse sand, hurriedly stuffing a pair of blunt scissors in your waistband and then peering over at a younger, smaller lad whose trust you have earned, knowing those were your tools to take his life, was a million miles from fun. This was Bradley’s worst nightmare – and it wasn’t done yet. He couldn’t imagine who might want to put him through anything like this, or why.
And yet, when The Captor had pulled that hood away from his head, everything had made sense.
Bradley didn’t know how long it had been since he had been left alone. The sun had been bright, shining directly through the doorway, when the door had last slammed shut, and its light still flared as a strip along the bottom. The previous evening he had watched the light slowly die to be replaced by whispering shadows and a then a faint slash of moonlight standing out from the thick darkness around him. Already, he thought, the light was getting weaker. He hadn’t expected another night to pass, but he hadn’t been given any idea of timescales either.
His limbs had gone numb through the lack of movement and the cold. His mind was racing ahead again, running over and over with worst-case scenarios, always leading to the same result: not seeing his children again. He couldn’t have that, he wouldn’t have that.
He knew a little more about himself now; he knew he could be a killer when it was necessary. Not a skilled killer, but determined. His mind still conjured images of hacking at a neck with blunt scissors until the thing had stopped moving. It was a thing too – Bradley was desperate to think of it like that, not as a human being, not as a man, not as a father, perhaps, like he was. But Alan was a name that wouldn’t leave him, a name that resonated in his mind. He might as well have been shouting it with every blow at the man’s neck.
And that name was still there now – as the wire dug into his midriff, and his legs and arms grew numb with the cold and his throat was coated with dust from the interior of this stubborn stone fort with its solid wooden door. He stared at the door now, knowing that another someone was coming. He would be ready again; he would win again. Someone was going to have to die.
It couldn’t be him.
Lucy’s hand had a slight shake as she gripped the phone tight in her palm. The digital image of roads and fields flexed around a big blue arrow that stayed central as they turned. Their destination appeared briefly as a pulsing dot for her while she held her breath, then it slipped off the screen where they had to drive past to find a way into the large open area of woods and grass.
‘Three minutes,’ she said, her throat tight enough for the tension to wring out her voice.
Sergeant Tristan Hughes was driving their marked 4x4. He had tried to make small talk, telling her how just an hour earlier he had been taking a slow walk around the Bluewater Shopping Centre, his assault rifle across his front, sidearm strapped to his leg, trying to override the intimidation of visible weaponry with smiles and nods at the shoppers. It was a default foot patrol site and he was always delighted to be called away from it. His pleasure increased when Lucy explained what she had: a location given up by an arrested man for two kidnap victims who were believed to have access to an assortment of weapons, and had both been instructed to fight each other to the death if necessary. And a very short window in time to get there.
Sergeant Hughes had insisted on picking her up. There were two vehicles, four armed officers in total, and they would lead the search. During the blue-light run from the motorway services where they had met, Lucy had spent much of the time on Google Earth, trying to work out what challenges the site might offer. Sergeant Hughes needed far more information than she could provide and he had soon stopped asking. The basics were simple enough: the location was Burgoyne Heights, Dover, and there looked to be only one vehicular access point. There had once been a series of forts and pillboxes built for use in World War Two, and the specific location Billy Easton had provided was a single building out on its own in the hills above Dover’s Connaught Park. The aerial shot from Google Earth gave enough of a glimpse through the trees to show a doglegged layout to the building, and a photo found on an Urban Adventure website showed a door in the centre as the only way in. That tallied with what Joel had been told. He had also been told that their victims were somewhere inside.
The moment they arrived at the site for real the terrain changed, the smoothness of the roads giving way to rutted fields and clumps of grass that bucked and rolled the 4x4 until Lucy’s phone was unreadable. It didn’t matter anyway, not now. The red spot marking their destination was directly ahead. She could see a mound of earth with a path worn enough to give a glimpse of something grey, flat-sided and solid. No doubt the local kids played their war games here.
The cars weren’t going to be able to get much further. The last two hundred metres would be on foot. Sergeant Hughes’ door was opened before he even killed the engine. He was quick to remind her to stay where she was until she was called forward; they would clear it first. There was no room for argument and Sergeant Hughes moved straight on to barking orders at his three armed colleagues. They listened as they kitted up, slipping balaclavas and ballistic helmets onto their heads. Their black gloves were the final items. Then they each lifted an assault rifle as their primary weapon and started out in formation, pacing directly towards the worn path.
Chapter 37
They started off at a quick jog. Lucy had been told to stay in the car but the moment they set off she stepped out, leaning on the open car door, watching as the team fanned out in front of her, their rifles all honed on the same point. The ground had a gentle slope and Lucy stepped up into the 4x4 to get higher, her hand resting on its roof as she stood out of the open door. She could now see the top half of the fort – and the central door. She had no doubt the trenches would have been much larger when they were dug; this whole building would have been invisible until you were almost touching its sides. Mature trees had probably added another layer of concealment but now it was surrounded by thick, weathered stumps, probably representing action taken by a council that was paranoid about children falling from the trees and being held responsible. The part of the door she could see looked newer than its surroundings and her first thought was that this too would was a council action – an attempt to keep the kids out. But perhaps it was put in far more recently; perhaps Billy Easton had needed a more solid door? There were fence posts that looked recent, too. Lucy stepped back down onto the springy earth and noted that they stood out on their own, sunk into the ground two at a time, maybe ten metres apart and in five rows between here and the fort door, like airport landing lights. She didn’t know what they could be for. They were too far apart for panels and besides, why just two at a time?
The firearms team passed through the first of the posts. The jangling sound of a bell was almost instant. Lucy’s phone, still on the passenger seat, burst into life at the same time. She could see Joel’s name lit up. It added to her confusion so she ignored it, cutting Joel out of her mind to focus back on that sound. A bell? That meant something in all this, she knew it but couldn’t put her finger on it immediately. The team were still moving away from her, and their approach had slowed a little to a quick walk, their rifles still levelled; they would soon be through the second row of fence posts. The bell sound was instant the moment they did.
And suddenly Lucy knew exactly what it meant.
The feeling at the sound of the first bell was a knot of anxiety that Bradley had to firmly swallow back down before he vomited it up. He lurched forward in the gloom, the wire suddenly slack enough to let him. The door, as solid as it looked, was still bleeding sunlight at the bottom and he fixed on it. His legs were still numb, his hands too, and they flooded with pins and needles, so that he had to scrabble in the dirt to get onto his side and then pull himself up using the side wall. His legs wobbled, his knees threatening to give out at any moment. He managed a step forward, and the movement seemed to force a hacked cough from his dry throat. The pins and needles burned hot, but his feeling was coming back overall and he was able to take another step before the wire caught his middle again. He stood still, his breathing shallow and fast, the adrenaline visible as white spots that flashed and sparked in his eyes in time with the beating in his chest. He shook his head and tried to focus on his breathing. The automatic pistol was still where it had been left, still hooked to the wall. Still out of reach. But he was two steps closer.
The firearms team had thick balaclavas and earpieces for Lucy to try and penetrate as she sprinted forward, bellowing with all her might. But the team were passing through the third set of posts before she even made the first, and a flash of red light caught her eye, projected by a silver metal button pushed into the wood, as another bell sound rang out into the woodland setting.
‘Sensors!’ she bawled. ‘Movement sensors!’ But the team were already coming together, their focus bearing down on the door. And the two posts either side of it.
The movement wasn’t smooth; the wire around Bradley’s waist had a sudden give and he was too anxious, pushing against it too firmly, and as he stepped forward he stumbled. He raised his arms, despite knowing that he was still too far away to reach the weapon.
This was different to before: the bells were coming faster, their timing erratic; this wasn’t a ten-second pattern like the first time. If that meant someone was approaching, they were coming quickly, in a hurry to kill him, to get this over with, throwing away their advantage just like he had been told might happen.
He was ready.
Another jangle of the bell. The wire gave again with the same clunking sound and his feet dragged forward, kicking up the dirt. The light round the door flickered and changed where there was movement behind it, and someone was shouting. It sounded distant but his ears beat with his own pulse and that, with the thickness of the wooden door, made the words indiscernible.
He reached out. The fingertips of his right hand could now brush the butt of the gun. Pushing forward with all he had meant he could get enough pressure on it just to push it away an inch before it fell back onto the metal pins. One more step and he would have it.
The light round the door changed again; now the sun was blocked completely, like there was something immediately on the other side. It was someone; the sound of footsteps merged with the sound of a jangling bell.
The fifth one.
The wire fell slack, his feet moved forward, his right hand took hold of the smooth wood of the butt and his left wrapped round the barrel to yank it off the wall. Daylight exploded in his face to force his eyes shut, his right hand scrabbled for the trigger and all he could do was point the explosion of automatic fire in the direction of the light.
Chapter 38
Lucy skidded, her knees locking in front of her on the loose dirt. Then she was aware she was falling. The gunfire had started the moment the door had been wrenched open, and the first two officers had gone down in front of her, the second pair throwing themselves either side of the door, leaving a gap for her to stare straight through.
At an automatic weapon still flaring from the shadow.
She didn’t know if she had been knocked down. There was no pain. Not at first.
The firing ran out quickly, though the weapon still tutted with mechanical clicks. For a moment that was the only sound. But only for a moment. The two officers who had split in front of her now swung back into the doorway, their own weapons raised, and, with their colleagues at their feet, they returned fire. Lucy still had a perfect view of the man who had moved forward enough for the daylight to touch him, enough that she saw his reaction as the weapons were levelled, his eyes wide as he took in the masked police officers and their assault rifles. He threw his hands out, the spent weapon falling to the ground as the first rounds struck and pushed him backwards. The forces at work were invisible; it was as if the shadow he had come from had reached out to reclaim him. The officers followed him in, their movements now looking jerky as their muzzle flashes added a strobe effect to the horror.
