He spun quickly, only to come face to face with two drunken men who split either side of him and staggered past.
David Peters chuckled at his own foolishness. Who would be watching him?
He turned and headed towards Blackpool town centre, the two drunks ahead of him bouncing off each other as they progressed, crashing into other people, too. A couple to avoid, Peters thought, and set off to town, only a short distance away.
He turned off Talbot Square onto Market Street, thinking he would cut up Birley Street, past the entrance to the multi-storey car park, where he had left his car, then get into one of the pubs on Corporation Street and find a quiet corner with a pint of lager and spend some time contemplating his dreary existence.
Birley Street was maybe seventy metres long. It was a nothing of a street, just a thoroughfare connecting one busy main road to another. A street that took only a matter of seconds to walk along.
The van screeched past Peters and stopped just ahead of him. He thought nothing of it. Just a small box van based on a Vauxhall Astra.
Instead he was thinking, Mm. . my life. . shitty. .
It was about to get even shittier.
He didn’t think about the footsteps behind him. Running.
Nor about the double rear doors of the van being flung open from within. And even if he had thought it through, his conclusion would have been that it was probably a van about to disgorge drunken occupants onto the street. More revellers to add to the thousands already in town.
Except no one emerged from the van.
And the footsteps rushed up behind him.
Then there was the blow to the back of the head which turned his knees to squish. His legs folded underneath him, no longer able to support his weight, and he slumped heavily onto his knees.
His eyes were still open, though. Just briefly he saw a dark shape in the back of the unlit van, but could not make out any features of it.
The pain from the blow to the head, still sending spasms throughout his body, rocked him onto his hands, and his shitty life swirled uncontrollably as he looked down at the cracked pavement, tried to raise his head, focus, concentrate, fight or run.
But then a hood was fitted over his head and drawn tightly around his neck. He was dragged and lifted and he knew he was being bundled head first into the van. His head hit something hard, an inner wheel arch perhaps. His hands were pulled behind his back and then he was punched on the side of his head, hard. . and neither his mind nor his body seemed to work any more. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, then there was nothing.
The sound of approaching footsteps on floorboards — or at least that’s what they sounded like to David Peters.
He went rigid, listening, not breathing, trying to work it all out.
His head hurt still, throbbed. It was sore and there were big, tender swellings on it from the blows he had received.
Bang. That first one from behind had really hurt, made him drop like a sack of shit.
He blinked. Listened. Footsteps. They seemed to be. . above him. Then they stopped. There was a scraping, scuffling sound. Then the footsteps again, retreating, becoming distant. . the sound of a door clattering shut, like a garden gate. Not a house door. Then the metallic click of a latch dropping into place and a bolt being slid shut.
Peters tried to work out what to do.
So far he had been kidnapped and regained consciousness.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he hadn’t made any noise yet, so perhaps the kidnapper believed him to be still unconscious.
Giving him precious time to think.
Why was he here?
Could it be Stella’s husband? Had he discovered their sordid little affair — if it could be called an affair — and was he enraged by it and now wreaking revenge?
Peters thought it unlikely. Stella was convinced he neither knew nor suspected anything. And even if he found out he was unlikely to give a toss, she said, assuring him he was only interested in model railways.
Or had his own wife discovered the affair? Peters thought that was unlikely, too. He covered his tracks well, destroyed receipts, paid cash when he could, didn’t make a regular habit of fucking his shop manager and always used a different location for each meet-up. No, the wife didn’t know.
So who?
He had no money to speak of. A few grand in the bank, a couple of thou secreted in a building society, some cash — literally — stashed in the loft. . not nearly enough to satisfy a ransom demand.
Which was the truly worrying thing.
His assets were minuscule. Certainly not worth anyone kidnapping him for and putting themselves in jeopardy. He was worth next to nothing and even if the shops — which he owned outright — were sold, they wouldn’t really be worth much either. They were both in crappy areas of town.
So no ransom demand.
A squeak of terror formed at the back of his throat.
This was personal.
And making it personal, logically, meant there would not be a pretty outcome to this.
No exchange. No money drop. No freedom.
He had been taken for some other reason.
His mind churned desperately.
Up until the start of the affair with Stella he had led a blameless life. Unspectacular. No cracked pots. Got married. Had kids. Ran a business. Had maybe done a few daft things as a kid, but nothing that bad and such a long time ago.
He was forty-five and innocent.
He inhaled unsteadily. The smell of the hessian sacking. And something else in the molecules he sniffed up his nose. Something familiar, yet difficult to place. . an aroma from the dim distant past.
At once his whole body felt as if it had been instantly frozen, dipped into liquid nitrogen.
And he knew.
The latch clattered. Footsteps approached again.
David Peters’ heart pounded against his sternum.
The footsteps stopped directly above him.
There was a creaking noise as if an old door was being opened, or the lid of a coffin lifted. Peters felt an inrush of air around him. He could sense someone close by, standing over him. There was the sound of breathing.
He swallowed. He had hoped to do it silently, but the swallow became a loud gulp and because of that, it was now obvious he was awake. No more pretending.
The hessian hood was drawn slowly off his head.
He had expected to be blinded by bright lights, but the world his eyes saw was a dark, shadowy place, with a sinister figure standing over him. The figure squatted down onto its haunches as Peters realized where he had been lying. In a cavity of some sort, underneath a trap door, in a space maybe seven feet long, two feet wide and ten inches high, beneath some floorboards.
His heart whammed and crashed. Bitter adrenalin surged into his system and fear creased him.
The figure spoke. ‘Welcome to the chicken shack.’
TWO
Henry Christie opened his eyes at the first low ring of the cordless telephone handset on the cabinet beside his bed. He was on his back, only half asleep, drifting in and out of wakefulness pretty much as per the last seven nights, over which, he claimed, he could probably count on both hands the hours he had slept. Not many. His head twisted to the right — a quick time check of the digital clock, the conditioned response honed by too many years of early morning phone calls and turnouts.
He saw and mentally logged the illuminated display, which read 03:48.
He rolled quietly out of bed, grabbing the phone as he moved, thumbing the ‘Take Call’ button before the third ring. He was up on his bare feet in an instant, phone clasped to his ear, plodding naked into the en suite shower room, closing the door softly behind him and only then speaking.
‘Henry Christie. .’ His voice was nervy as he wondered which of the two matters this could be. He didn’t really want it to be either, but there was slight relief when the voice at the other end announced, ‘Mr Christie, this is Inspector Howard, force control room. .’