Resolution (The CRIME series), page 26
Darren Knowles.
The kid looks at him. Her eyes are wide, but bright with a coy, sad acumen as she sucks on strands of her hair. — I saw them … but I wish they’d take me out.
— They will, pal, Lennox says, disquieted by the sound of a car parking behind her, and the foggy woe in the girl’s big blue eyes, — they’ve been pretty busy.
— Do they talk about me?
— Yes … I don’t really know Chris, but Darren does mention you, quite a lot, he responds. More lies, but maybe of the sort that serves both parties well. This girl reminds him of so many lost children he’s encountered from dysfunctional homes, forced to grow up too fast, yet militantly clinging to their childhood.
Jemma’s mouth twists into an oval shape, delivering a subverting response undercooked by her brain. — I don’t care what they say about them round here, she doubles down on defiance, — my dad has my name tattooed on his chest!
Lennox spots an opening. — I’ve seen it, pal, it’s a cool bit of ink. Does your gran have any tats?
The girl nods. — On her arm. A silly angel. It’s really old.
— You were saying they said things about your dad and Daz. What do they say? Lennox hears himself whisper, as he shifts the weight in his stiff legs.
He instantly knows it’s an overreach. Jemma looks at him and for the first time sees something she doesn’t like. Something Julie saw. Joanne too. Something Cop. She turns and runs away up the hill.
This emphatic retreat imbues Lennox with a gallows notion that as bad as things are, they are somehow going to get worse. Confirmation is issued when he gets to the Alfa Romeo. It’s parked beside a bunch of green and black dump bins, lined up like stoic squaddies. Barely registers the two men stepping out urgently from behind them until they are all over him. He’s seen them before; one short but chunky, with the busy, minimal lateral motion of a boxer, the other tall with long hair tied in a ponytail. Even though they probably smashed him, and then there was the terrorised Ralph Trench, and he knows they plan to accost him, Lennox perversely wants to laugh at them. — You’re with us, mate, the shorter man suddenly grabs his hair.
That burning of the scalp signals up an old tape and Ray Lennox is immobilised.
Do what you want do what you want do what you want …
Lennox knows that he can’t fight and he can’t run. He feels it in his pocket, the small, sturdy old cassette player.
The tapes.
The confession.
The betrayers.
All of them, like him, seeming to belong to another age.
The street is now deserted, no sign of the retreating Jemma. Ponytail twists his arm up his back, and Lennox is unable to resist anything, to even feel the pain of his physical wounds as they bundle him into the back of a car strategically parked behind his own Alfa Romeo. Boxer pushes his wrists together behind his back. Slips plastic ratcheted ties onto them. Whips his phone, wallet, cassette player and the two C45 tapes out of Lennox’s pockets. — What the fuck is this?
— It’s game over, Lennox muses.
Boxer goes to drop them in a bin, but Ponytail pivots and says, — Nah, pass them here.
The shuffling Boxer nods, handing over the items. Shuts the car door. Comes around the other side and sits next to Lennox. The captive regards the gently vibrating man, looking at his small hands. Then turns to bury his head in the window.
Jock Allardyce … he even went on holiday with us, to Lloret de Mar. With his girlfriend, Jeanette her name was. A brassy cow with her hair piled high. A hostile, strained atmosphere with her and Mum. You saw him, by the side of the pool, touching your mother’s pregnant belly when she was carrying Stuart. No cunt else saw it but you did … it was tender, that’s what hurt you … it was so wrong compared to the gruff, transactional way your parents now spoke to each other. You turned and ran to the bar, ran into Jeanette who was helping your father with the drinks …
As they go through an underpass, Lennox concentrates on controlling his breathing. His skin graft pulsing almost tenderly, in concert with his scalp. Examines his captors. Both men appear physically formidable but maybe not as seasoned as he first thought. He’s written off Boxer as the shrouded force displaying the one-punch knockout power in the dark void of the concrete factory; the constant head movements and shifting of weight between buttocks now suggests nerves. He perhaps lacks the true hard man’s gift: that of stillness. Facial skin smooth and soft, no toughening up through gloved hands making contact. If slick enough to avoid ring punishment, he wouldn’t be doing strong-arm work.
The ponytail guy: Lennox can’t suppress a chuckle bubbling up thinking of him as a heavy. Maybe it’s just ponytail guys, possibly he will pay for this assumption. Like Trench did. Maybe this second time will be with his life. Yes, more likely Ponytail was his cement works assailant. But with his wounds, the pain and stiffness, he knows this speculation is irrelevant. Their captive is a physically broken, hollowed-out shell of a human being. And now he knows why.
It was all a fucking set-up. No coincidences. Jesus fuck … you were doomed right from the start … you were the fucking target, not poor Les …
Now Lennox feels as old and useless as he did young and helpless, back in that tunnel forty years ago. The bounds pinch tightly, but the pain is just another that nags in the distance, like a crowd in a stadium a mile away: clamouring to be heard but too far off to threaten. They drive out of town, towards the industrial estate and Shoreham.
Then it dawns on him, that compensatory thought that makes his soul drunkenly sing in giddy liberation.
You’re fucked. You are done. And you don’t give a toss what happens to you any more. So now you have absolutely nothing to lose.
42
The Slip Road
The captors remain silent, but so does Ray Lennox. Feels this quietude offering him a perverse advantage, sensing their nerves and intimidation at his ease. In his frosty sights: the jolty ADHD specimen next to him, disguising his overwrought condition with the incendiary smoulder of the boxer. Then there is the other man. Despite the risible ponytail, paradoxically menacing in his silence. Proven deadly. Starts thinking about their weak points, how to damage them: eyes, teeth, genitals and kneecaps come to mind. Wonders about them, how they got here. Nobody gets into a car like this unless they’ve lost something. What have they lost? How much more was there they feared losing?
Whatever happens, it is imperative to make them address that question.
Puts his head back, lets out a long, cruel laugh. Savours, from his peripheral vision, the way it freezes the men.
— What’s he on about? Boxer attempts to make light of it, only underlining that he’s spooked.
— Shut it, cunt. Ponytail grins, yet contradicting this controlled nonchalance, his hand on the wheel is white, apart from a dark red rose tattoo.
Lennox’s head smashes into the boxer’s face. His captor turns away just in time, taking the blow on the cheekbone, rather than the nose, as Lennox’s boot flies up towards the back of the head of Ponytail, who blocks the strike with his shoulder, screeching the car to a halt by the side of the road.
Boxer springs into action, firing a series of punches into Lennox, as Ponytail, clutching a black hood, leans across, pulling it over his captive’s head. Plunged into a spinning darkness, neck muscles tearing, Lennox ceases his struggle, but not without a phantom satisfaction that the blows received were a distraction rather than devastating. — You fucking twat, Boxer roars, snapping another cleaner, short punch into his face.
Lennox doesn’t even have time to loathe his own complacency as stars explode and the planets twirl in cartoon torment. His head throbs in the blackness. Pushes steady breaths into his body. A wired silence falls and the car starts again, moving through the darkness.
You walked side by side with Les Brodie, pushing your bikes. The only sound that of wheels turning. Nothing ahead: no light. Then you looked behind you into the same darkness, you had hit that point in the tunnel. You were scared and you asked Les if he was still there. Then, in front of you, a torch clicked on to show you that uplit demonic face; ghoulish and clownish under that beam. Eyes wide and blazing with lust. Mouth tight in lechery.
How could you ever forget it? It was the man of your dreams …
Body literally spasmed by his thoughts. Forces air in through the bottom of the hot hood. Tries not to panic. Attempts to ascertain where they are heading through the twists, bends and lights. Then decides he knows the destination, and relaxes in a peculiarly soothing dread.
This is where you are. You have always been here: right from the start. Long before you saw Cardingworth in that wine bar.
Yes, Raymond. We’re coming for each other. We need to finish this. From that tunnel in Edinburgh to …
— We’re here, Ponytail announces, pulling the car from what feels like the tight turn of a slip road, and through what the double thud of tyres indicates as two sets of sliding, metal security gates, before it halts. — You can make as much noise as you want now!
He feels Boxer getting out, before reaching back in to remove his hood. Even before the light floods in, stinging his eyes, Lennox knows where he is. Again, Boxer, going round the side and opening the door, grabs him by the hair to yank him out the car. This time, as he stands, Lennox leans right into the pain, looking him manically in the eye, smiling, puckering his lips. — C’mon, you fucking noncey lover boy. Give me it. Or do you want it from me, ya fuckin rapist cunt?
— You fucking prick –
— That’s whae you’re working for, and both men are taken aback by the bare-toothed sneer of Ray Lennox, — a fucking paedo noncing child killer!
Boxer’s eyes bulge, now seeming way too large for his tight face. — You dunno what you’re farking on about –
— Did they no mention that, your fucking employers?
— Enough, Ponytail says, talking more to his colleague than Lennox, and the smaller man relinquishes the grip on his hair. Ponytail grabs Lennox by the shoulder and pushes him across the deserted car park.
— You were pretty tasty the last time we met here, has to be said. Lennox looks round at him.
Ponytail betrays no response or emotion, tombstone eyes focused ahead. Yes, he is the real deal. How much does it cost to hire this sort of man to do such things? Lennox lets his eyes sweep the car park; no guards present, just the imposing towers of the abandoned factory looming ahead. And one of those big doors, secured the last time by padlocks, is now open.
You are here.
43
Schoolboy Errors
In the fading light the building appears like somewhere displaced from post-industrial Teeside to West Sussex. An angry, bruised sky looks like it has come off second best in a fight, with anything below fair game as a target for its displaced vengeance. Boxer’s open palms shove Ray Lennox through the door, Ponytail following them. The ground floor is vast and cavernous, and Lennox can see the twisted metal of the collapsed gangway that almost took his life and, he suspects, that of Ponytail behind him. Facing them ahead, like menacing barrels of a giant shotgun, the massive parallel turbines.
They step into the lift. Recalling it from his last visit, Lennox is astonished it’s operational, but it creaks in grudged ascent. Through the gloaming and confusion that besets him he struggles to find his bearings but reckons they’ve come two floors up. As they step out, Boxer chews gum at a furtive speed, as if it might be stolen from his mouth. Lennox notes how this floor is sealed from the open void area by a higher wall, topped with more comprehensive railing. At the other side, surprisingly ornate floor-to-ceiling windows hang defiantly in rotting wooden frames. A generous oak table, weeping for salvage and restoration, dominates the space, four wooden chairs around it. Two huge Belfast sinks run along one wall. Along another, piles of wooden pallets, stacked high and deep, which appear to belong somewhere else. This seems like it was primarily office and boardroom premises.
Pushing him down into one of the chairs, his captors begin securing Lennox by more plastic ratchet grips, feeding them through the others and around the furniture legs. They place his coat on the table, along with the cassette tapes, recorder and his wallet and phone. He can’t believe the anxiety he feels about being so far from his mobile. Sees little point in struggling: sensing the final pieces in the cruel puzzle will now be shown to him.
This is confirmed as Mat Cardingworth, eyes dulled, features slack and sagging, walks in. It’s like he’s drunk heavily but still nowhere near enough. — Phil and Marco looking after you?
Lennox observes both men flinching at Cardingworth’s faux pas in naming them. Takes Marco to be the boxer. Phil is the ponytail: the one who beat up Trench, the silent Balaclava Man who smashed him to the ground right here. Cardingworth seems aware of his schoolboy error too, moving on with haste. — You couldn’t stop, could you? Couldn’t help yourself.
— Correct, Lennox concedes without a shred of restraint, although aware this endorsement is not in his best interests. — It isn’t in my power to do so. Never has been.
Ray Lennox knows this isn’t his cop voice, or his civilian one. It’s his essence crying out, pure and simple. He knows it’s over. The panic is present, it manifests in waves surging over him and retreating abruptly; misery rationed on an internal timer. The inevitability of his demise is a bleak certainty, but is evinced as an intellectual consideration only; not a fibre in his body surrenders. It still says no, like it has all his life. To crossing the line when dark desires gnawed at him. To letting the alcohol and drugs grind him down beyond a point of dissolution he couldn’t get back from. To self-pitying acquiescence when life’s humiliations lashed open old wounds. Principally, though, it said no to closing his eyes.
And through the lens of his defeat, he sees this is no victory for Cardingworth, whose own stare is heavy with regret. This hunch is confirmed, as an opened bottle of red wine Cardingworth holds is lowered onto the battered wooden table, along with a solitary glass. — So, I have to end it. But before I do, I want you to know that you’ve got important parts of your story wrong. You see, it’s my story too, though sadly for both of us, not in the way you believe.
Lennox feels a force inside crashing through him. It tumbles from his chest to his guts. Then seems to burst out of his skin.
The tapes.
His glance goes from them to the table. He only has half the information he needs.
— But before I do, Cardingworth grabs a chair and slides it opposite Lennox, sitting a few feet away from him, — you need to tell me what you’ve done with him, he asks in tones of strained reason, adding, — Chris.
— What? Lennox feels his face break into a smile, this petty compensation igniting his battered soul. — The wee cunt that’s been hanging round my office?
George? Surely not?
— You have to hand him over.
— I don’t have him. Lennox knows for certain that someone else, probably Darren Knowles, is pulling Cardingworth’s strings. But now that someone might have opposition too.
— Well, that’s really unfortunate. Cardingworth’s face warps in ulcerated distress. — His dad will be here soon. Darren has means of getting people to comply with his wishes.
The maddeningly loud buzz of a text as it pops into Lennox’s phone on the desk.
Cardingworth picks it up. Reads it through the cracked screen. Holds it up in front of Lennox’s face. It’s from Stuart, but the phone is locked, so only the opening of the text is visible:
They are saying it wasn’t suicide
with poor old Ralph Trench. They
— Give me the code to open the phone, please, Ray.
— This time, Lennox smiles, — youse cunts actually do have my blessing, his face crumples in a leer, — tae suck ma fuckin cock!
— Open it, Cardingworth hisses through a capped gate of ivory, — or I’ll have them hunt down this Stuart, and every other person on your contacts list, so help me!
Lennox remains silent.
Cardingworth picks up the wallet. Takes out the Hearts season ticket. Looks at the 1874 on the club crest. Then at Lennox. — Surely not … Punches it in, as Lennox feels his heart sink. Cardingworth gapes at him, shaking his head, his shoulders rippling with laughter, as the phone opens up. — Security expert, fuck sake …
Lennox is crushed.
Not so much schoolboy error as retarded error.
But there is no gloat from Cardingworth as he reads the full text. He physically wilts, his shoulders buckling inwards. Struggling for breath, he glances at Phil and Marco. Then he shows Lennox the text, concealing it from the two men, as he regards his captive in wide-eyed horror.
They are saying it wasn’t suicide
with poor old Ralph Trench. They
found him chopped up by his own
sword. Is this Brighton or Niddrie?
Cardingworth again looks to the hired hands. Lowers his voice, whispering in urgent fear at Lennox. — Give me the lad, Ray, they’re not fucking around … Darren … well, he’s one of you lot, a Scot, from travellers who traditionally headed up and down the east coast … and he’s evolved his signature move from the crude origins Mona experienced!
Darren Knowles. Young Chris, a chip off the old block …
Lennox’s brain is sprinkled with hot pepper, but he sucks down some air. — I’m getting old and ugly, just like you. A drop of acid isn’t going to make much difference now, he laughs, his tone light and conversational, as Marco and Phil, tongue brushing his top lip, look over. — If Chris is in the hands of who I think he is, then that silly wee twat is the one to be concerned about. He’s a lot of life left to navigate with the crippling disabilities he’ll inevitably suffer, or maybe not. Perhaps I’m not the only one heading for a painful demise, Lennox mocks, his voice rising, looking directly at Cardingworth.
— It’ll be more fucking painful than you think, he hisses at Lennox, nodding back to indicate the silent henchmen.
