Loe raamatut: «Perfect Kill»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

At precisely the same time Bart was coming round from a chemically induced sleep, his mother was waking from a herbal insomnia remedy and wondering why the house was so quiet. It wasn’t a Sunday. On Sundays, Bart neither had college nor work, and occasionally he slept in. Not all that often, but sometimes. Maggie rolled onto her side and rubbed bleary eyes, trying to focus on the small travel clock perched on her bedside table – 9 a.m. She’d overslept. Not that she had anywhere to be in a hurry, but mornings – it was a Wednesday, she realised – were marked with the clanging of crockery, the pouring of cereal, and the sound of the dishwasher being loaded before Bart exited the house. He was a good boy. The sort of boy her friends were rather jealous of. She was conscious of the fact, once in a while moaning about him a little to make it clear that he wasn’t perfect, although secretly she knew he was. She might tell her neighbour that he played his music too loud, or pretend to her weekly library social group that he was forgetful about tidying his room. But Bart was neither loud nor untidy. In fact, he was independent, considerate and helpful. An exception among other twenty-year-old men. (Boys, Maggie thought. Twenty was no age at all. Certainly not mature enough to comprehend all the cruelties the world had to offer.) But then Bart had grown up quickly after his father had been killed serving in Afghanistan. Not in battle. That would have been devastating, of course. The truth had garnered more pity and less admiration from the community. Her husband had choked in the mess hall one night when a fellow officer had cracked a particularly hilarious joke. The steak he’d been chewing was sucked up into his airways where it had stubbornly lodged and refused to move in spite of no end of back-smacking, then a desperate attempt at the Heimlich manoeuvre which had broken ribs but not allowed any oxygen to his lungs. How did you explain that to a fourteen-year-old boy? That his father, who’d been a military man since before Bart was born, had been dispatched not by bomb or bullet, but by a mouthful of protein.

Perhaps Bart was ill, Maggie thought. Or maybe she’d taken too many sleeping tablets and not heard him leave the house. That had happened before. Distracted after a long shift at the call centre, she’d returned home and taken a SleepSaver, eaten dinner, then swallowed another pill without thinking. Such were the perils of tiredness. Living on a military widow’s pension and her wages was too tight for comfort, even with Bart earning a few extra pounds waiting tables on a Saturday.

‘Bart, you all right, love?’ she called, pulling her tatty pink dressing gown over bare shoulders. Bart had bought her a new one for Christmas. It was exquisite. Cream, and so soft it was like one of the really posh cuddly toys you seemed always to find in bookshops, for some inexplicable reason. It was hanging on the back of her bedroom door, and she stroked it every time she entered or exited. But it was too nice to wear. She’d only spill coffee down it, or splash it with the remnants of the previous night’s pasta sauce. The thought of spoiling something so luxurious and thoughtful was enough to keep her in her threadbare robe, at least for another six months or so. She’d start wearing it before Christmas came around, she told herself.

Bart hadn’t replied by the time she’d reached his bedroom door, knocking politely, always mindful that her boy needed his privacy. He’d never brought a girl back for the night, not that Maggie would have minded if they’d been discreet, but Bart conducted his relationships elsewhere. He obviously had girlfriends. He was a good-looking lad, and that wasn’t just the blur of seeing him through mummy-goggles. At six foot he was big enough to stand out but not so tall that he attracted silly comments on the street. His father had been six foot four and once threatened to deck a man who had somehow imagined that no one had ever asked her husband what the weather was like up there. Maggie’s husband – God rest his soul – had been a decent man, but not blessed with looks, all sharp features and eyes closer together than suited the average face. She was the exact opposite. Broad, flat face, wide eyes (wide hips too, and getting wider by the year, she reminded herself). Perhaps their differences had endowed Bart with the sort of symmetrical, well-balanced face that wasn’t exactly attention-grabbing, but with which no one could find a single fault. Great skin, even teeth, good bone structure, and a fair brain. He was in his final year of a business studies college course that he was hoping would offer a career in London. Plenty of work in Edinburgh, Maggie always told him. Or Glasgow, if he wanted to leave home. Anywhere in Scotland. But London was his dream. Always had been. Even that was too distant for her liking, but she knew that letting go was all part of the painful parenting experience.

In the absence of a reply to her knocking, Maggie opened the door slowly, calling his name softly as she put a foot inside. The curtains were open and the bed was made. Nothing surprising there, his lectures started at 9 a.m. every day. He’d have left an hour ago to make sure he was in good time. Bart wasn’t the sort of student who ever turned up late. But he hadn’t woken her up. His normal routine was to wake, shower, have breakfast, clear up the kitchen, and to take her a cup of tea before leaving the house. She in turn would rise later, do the washing, shop and leave something tasty in the slow cooker before going off for her shift, which started at lunchtime and went on until 8 p.m. Telesales was thankless but they hadn’t missed a mortgage payment yet.

It wasn’t the lack of a cup of tea that bothered Maggie. Her son was entitled to forget doing that for her. She counted her blessings on a daily basis for him, with or without his little kindnesses. What she couldn’t understand was why his mobile was still sitting on his bed, charging, exactly where he’d left it the night before when he’d dashed out to grab an extra shift at the restaurant. Another waiter had called in sick. Bart had been offered the hours, and the thought of boosting his savings account was too tempting to refuse. The pay wasn’t great but the tips were, and he always attracted enough customer goodwill to make a night’s work worthwhile. His phone had been running on empty so he’d left it on his bed charging ready for the next morning. Maggie had watched him plug it in as she’d delivered a pile of freshly ironed clothes for him to put away. Those, too, were sitting patiently on the bed for his return.

She squashed the stupid maternal panic that made the stable bedroom floor feel suddenly like quicksand. So her boy hadn’t come home. Perhaps he’d met up with friends and gone for a drink, or had a better offer from a pretty girl. Only normally he’d have called her, however late. Let her know to put the chain on the door. Tell her not to worry. Bart was thoughtful like that. His father had taught him well. Maggie took the stairs carefully, and checked the answerphone on the landline. No message. She didn’t have a mobile. It was just one more bill that she didn’t need. Plastering an optimistic smile on her face, she popped her head through the door of the lounge, all ready to have a good laugh in case he’d had a few too many and slept on the couch. She was fooling no one with the false jollity, least of all herself. Bart wasn’t an excessive drinker. He’d never reached a point where the couch looked like a better option than his own bed. Before she could stop it, her mind began conjuring the ghosts of accidents. Somewhere in there, a misadventure with a steak loomed large. Like father like son. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony? Both of them gone, cause of death unchewed meat.

‘Stop it, you silly woman,’ she scolded herself, wandering into the kitchen to make her own cup of breakfast tea. ‘Your boy’ll be back any minute.’

But the truth that Maggie had felt, in that secret, vile part of the brain no parent ever wanted to hear pipe up, was that her boy wouldn’t be back in a minute. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Because by then, Bartholomew Campbell was already two hundred miles away.

It was the stench that woke him. Something acrid with a heavy undertone of sulphur had filled his sinuses and was threatening to make him gag.

‘Mum?’ His first thought was that she must be ill. That she’d gone down with food poisoning or a virus overnight and been too embarrassed or too thoughtful to have disturbed him. Only he couldn’t remember getting home. And now that he registered the pain in his body, Bart realised he wasn’t in his bed. Or any bed at all.

He sat bolt upright, head swimming, before collapsing back down to the floor. Everything was dark. Not the dark of Scottish nights away from the city camping by a loch. Not even the dark of the private rooms at the back of the night club he occasionally attended with his friends. True dark. Not one star. No bloom of pollution. No crack or spill from beneath a door or the edge of a blind.

‘Hello?’ Bart shouted, braving movement again, sitting up more slowly. That was when he felt a tugging on his leg.

He froze. Something had hold of his left ankle. He breathed hard, twice, three times, tried to get to grips with his fear, then he lost it.

‘Get off me!’ he yelled, wrenching his foot upwards, trying to scrabble away. He hit a wall with his head shortly before his foot locked solid and his hip popped from its socket. The scream he let out was loud enough to wake the entire terrace where he lived. He rolled right, instinct kicking in, and the displaced hip shifted again back into the socket, easing the dreadful pain and allowing him to lean forward to take hold of whatever had his foot.

He didn’t want to extend his hand. There was something about reaching his fingers out into the black void that seemed to be inviting a bite. Like slipping your hand into a murky river in the sort of place where, when animals attacked, the general reaction to the news was: What the hell did the idiot tourist expect? What Bart found was both less and more terrifying. His ankle was bound by a leather strap. There was no bogeyman occupying the darkness with him. Not one that had hold of his leg, anyway. The strap was thick and sturdy, with a chunky metal link sewn through it. At the end of that, he realised miserably, was a chain. What was at the end of the chain, Bart wasn’t sure he was ready to discover yet. So he did what all cautious people would do in a foul pitch-black room, finding themselves inexplicably chained up. He began calling out for help.

His cries went in an arc. He called for help. Stopped, listened. Called out again, this time louder. Stopped, listened. Bart could feel the rumbling below the floor more readily than he could hear the engine, but an engine it unmistakably was. He put his hand down flat. The surface was rough but not cold. Neither wood nor metal. More like the sort of industrial liner that was used to insulate modern houses. He’d seen it being carried in huge sheets into Edinburgh’s ever growing new housing estates. Perhaps he was in a factory then, in a room high above the machinery. That made sense. The low-level growl of metal and the lack of sharp sounds from the outside world. He pressed himself closer to the wall and began yelling afresh.

‘Hello! Anyone! Can anyone hear me? Help. I need help.’ His cries got louder, his voice higher. He banged on the wall first then the floor between phrases, punctuating his cries for assistance. His cries became screams. Bart had never heard himself scream before. It was terrifying. Then he was hammering on the wall and stamping on the floor at the same time as he screamed. Just make noise, he thought. Someone would hear him. Someone would come.

But what if it was the wrong someone?

No, he told himself. Not that. Those thoughts were what would stop him being rescued. If all he had was a short window of time before whoever had chained him up was due to come back, he had to make all the noise he could right now. He took some steadying breaths. Think. The chain on his ankle allowed him limited movement. He walked along the wall as far as he could, tapping as he went, feeling for the edge of a doorway or handle, listening for a place where there might be an exit. Nothing. Then he walked the other way along the wall. Tapping all the time.

A crash at his feet made him leap backwards. He tripped and fell, scrabbling away. The darkness made everything nearer and louder. He’d never considered what a threat the lack of light was before. Everything was alien. His sense of distance and direction had completely gone. As the noise faded, he reached out tentatively, groping the floor for whatever it was he’d hit. His fingers found the bucket a couple of feet away on its side, still rolling gently to and fro. He grabbed the handle and pulled it closer, exploring its edges, neither brave nor stupid enough to put his hand all the way inside. The smell coming from in there was its own unique warning. Human waste was remarkably distinctive. Neither cat, cow, dog nor pig excrement came close to replicating its odour. Bart contemplated what it meant. The bucket’s edge was rough with what could only be rust. Its outside was dry and there was no liquid slopping anywhere. Not recently used then. Yet it was there for a reason.

‘It’s here for me,’ he whispered, not liking the rawness in his throat from all the yelling. He’d lost track of the time he’d spent calling out to apparently absent listeners. He’d be lucky if he could speak at all within the hour.

Setting the bucket down, he took stock. There were two options left. Sit down, huddle, wait it out. Someone had delivered him there, yet he had no idea how that had happened. His new girlfriend, if he could even call her that so early on, had met him in the restaurant as he’d finished his shift, and he’d been about to go back to her place for a while. After that was a steady blank in his memory, but his situation couldn’t be accidental. His captors would be back. If he chose not to simply wait, he could assess the situation, explore his surroundings, try to figure out the state of play. That was a phrase he remembered his father using on his infrequent trips home from active duty. He summoned whatever genetic courage might inhabit his DNA. What he learned was that bravery was a myth.

In the end, fear was a more generous motivator. If Bart waited, things could only get worse. He could think of no earthly reason why anyone would want him. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity by some chancer who thought he was from a wealthy family able to pay a ransom. Maybe it was some sort of bizarre terrorist event. And they were the better options. More likely – much more likely – it was some sick fuck who wanted to rape then kill him. He wasn’t sitting on the floor and waiting for that.

Forcing himself to get to his feet, Bart checked his pockets. His wallet was gone, not that he’d imagined it might still be there. The only item still on him was the photo of his father that he carried everywhere, his dad in full uniform, carrying his baby son in his arms. On the back his father had written the immortal words, ‘Bart, I may not always be by your side, but I will always come back to you. Love Dad xxx.’ He clutched the photo for a moment then shoved it securely into his pocket again. Whatever else he’d lost, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing that too. He felt for the wall, arms stretched out so that only his fingertips were touching it, and tried to measure the space. Four walls, rectangular, maybe twelve foot by twenty. Then he followed the length of chain and found that it was attached to a central metal loop in the floor and secured with a hefty padlock. No discernible door. Five other objects turned up as he searched the floor on his hands and knees. A coarse blanket that reeked of damp and sweat. He bundled it up and kept it close to his chest, as much as a comforter as for warmth. A woman’s shoe, its high heel snapped and hanging half off, lay on its side in a corner. A large container of water that smelled fresh enough. A box of food – packets of crisps, biscuits, and chocolate, he decided from the smell – all junk, nothing fresh, but it would keep him alive for a couple of weeks. The thought that he was supposed to stay alive quelled his immediate panic. The cell was part of his journey, not his final destination. He had time to take stock and prepare for whatever lay ahead. Finally, standing, he bumped into something dangling from the wall, also chained, that squeaked back and forth when he knocked it. Reaching out, he identified its hexagonal shape, felt the chill of glass around its sides, then his fingers found the dial. He turned the metal cog.

Light, enough to barely illuminate a one-metre radius, spilled from the lamp. Bart let out a soft coo. Amazing how such a simple thing could suddenly mean more than all the money in the world, given an appropriate degree of terror. The colours it shed were dappled. A sickly yellow nearer the top from the old bulb, graduating into a dull pink in the middle, then brown at the bottom. Bart stepped closer, letting his eyes adjust. It wasn’t that the glass panes were coloured, he realised. Nor that a special effect had been used on the bulb.

The outside of the glass had been spattered red. He reached out his fingers hesitantly, wanting to know, not wanting to know. The lantern’s panes were bloodied with delicate streaks, settling at the bottom. Different layers. Subtly varied shades. A mixture of very old, crackled blood, like a glaze on an antique vase, then newer congealed blood. A single blob came away on his finger. Congealed but not yet fully hardened.

Bart sank to the floor in the small circle of light, an actor mid-stage in a spotlight with no audience to appreciate the beautiful tragedy being played out. Then he pulled the blanket around himself, and wondered how long both the lamplight – and he – would last.