‘I’m serious,’ Aleksander said. ‘Plan A is dead. There’s been a fuck-up of some kind.’
Mungo took back the joint and toked again. ‘So, un-fuck it up.’
‘I will — but it means going home.’
‘Shit, you’re not leaving me here, alone?’
‘Hey, stay cool, dude! You’ve got plenty of rats and spiders down here to keep you company!’
‘That’s not funny. And it’s not our plan. And I’m cold and I’m still hungry. I’ve got the munchies. Do you have any chocolate?’
‘You ate it. I’ll bring some tomorrow.’
‘Alek, you are not serious, you are not leaving me alone here. No way. No which way. You’re not losing your fucking nerve, are you? Come on, we’re in this together.’ There was panic in Mungo’s voice. He picked up the roll of duct tape they’d used earlier for the photograph, stared at it, then put it back on the floor. ‘Look, we — we send them another text. Give my father one hour to send the money or I die.’
‘Dude, you are not thinking straight. First your dad has to set up a Bitcoin account. Then you have to have an account that can’t be traced for the Bitcoins to be deposited in.’
Mungo stared at him. ‘Your guys — your dad’s bodyguards, right? — Valbone and Dritan — I thought they had it sorted — like, we’re giving them a generous cut. I thought they had an account that couldn’t be traced, right?’
‘Don’t worry, they’re good dudes, I’ve known them since I was just a little kid. They hate my dad, they think he’s a brutal asshole. They’re with us, one thousand per cent. It’s happening — might just take a bit longer than we planned.’
‘How much longer?’
‘I’ll find out.’
‘I need something more to eat. I can’t believe you didn’t bring anything else.’
‘One spliff and you turn into, like, a Dyson, dude!’ Aleksander said. ‘You’ve eaten six chocolate bars. On top of a Big Mac and fries and two doughnuts.’ His watch suddenly lit up with a message and he looked at it. ‘I gotta go, Valbone’s here.’
‘You are so not going, Alek.’
‘Trust me, I’ll be back in the morning. And I’ve got to charge my phone, I’m almost out of juice.’
‘What about my phone? Why did the morons take it from me?’
‘So you couldn’t be tracked, dumbo!’
‘Don’t leave me, Alek, I’m scared. I can’t stay here alone.’
‘Just remember why you’re doing this, OK? You wanted to piss your dad off, get back at him, get some money from him. Right?’
‘Not really, it’s not about the money.’
‘What do you mean? This is all about the money, that’s why we’re doing it!’
Mungo shrugged. ‘Yep, well I know it is for you, Alek.’
‘And it’s not for you? What is it for you?’
Mungo was silent, close to tears. ‘I just wanted to see how much they really love me.’
‘You’re not talking any sense.’
‘They always, like, worshipped my sister.’
‘Kayleigh — who died, right?’
‘She was — whatever you call it — the apple of my dad’s eye. I never really felt I mattered. Since she died it’s been a shitload worse. Kayleigh, Kayleigh, Kayleigh. Sometimes I feel like they don’t even see me, that I don’t even exist. No one was bothered about me when she died, whether I missed her or not. I’m the brother that got forgotten. They never ask me how I feel about it. You know what I really feel? That they’re upset she died and I’m the one who lived, and that maybe they’d have liked it the other way round. That’s why I’m doing this, to test them, to see if they really do care — you know — like, enough to pay the ransom.’
‘So, hang loose.’
‘Easy for you to say. You’re going home in a warm car to food and your bed. What am I meant to do?’
‘Be a brave soldier!’ Aleksander stood up. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can in the morning. Meantime, I’ll send Valbone back with a stash of food for you, OK?’
‘And a torch and some toilet paper.’
‘What brand would your precious, tender bum like?’
‘Screw you.’
Mungo sat miserably as his friend, guided by the light of his phone, headed up the staircase.
Halfway, Aleksander stopped and turned round. ‘Dude, stay cool. Valbone will be back in an hour.’
‘Did you even listen to what I just said, Alek?’
His friend grinned. ‘I did — you’re having a funny five minutes, it’s the weed, you’ll get over it.’
‘It’s not a funny five minutes. It’s why I’ve bloody done this.’
‘Cool, understood, see you in the morning, dude.’
‘Do you have another joint you could leave me?’
‘I did, but we just smoked it.’
As his friend vanished upstairs, the dope having little effect, Mungo stared around. At the guttering candles. The bare walls. The spiders’ webs. He was really scared. This wasn’t working out — how had he ever thought it possibly could? But now they were too deep in.
Shit.
Shit.
Maybe he should just go home. But what would that achieve, apart from dumping Alek in the shit for helping him? What a mess.
What a bloody mess.
He shivered.
Then he began to cry.
56
Sunday 13 August
00.00–01.00
Ylli Prek began to cry. He shivered with cold. He didn’t know what the time was or how long he had been down here in the dimly lit basement room below Mr Dervishi’s house, naked, handcuffed to a hard chair fixed to the floor.
In front of him was a steel gurney, with a tray of surgical knives and other instruments on a stand beside it. And only inches to his right was a barred door, like in a prison, to the darkened, rank-smelling pool area where Mr Dervishi’s Nile crocodile, Thatcher, lived. Earlier, when the two men had brought him down here, Mr Dervishi had followed, telling him that he would be back later with a doctor who would be cutting limbs off him to feed to Thatcher. He asked Prek to consider what it would be like to watch a crocodile eating his body parts while he was still alive and conscious. Parts that had been surgically removed without an anaesthetic.
Ylli Prek was petrified. He had crapped himself and wet himself. He sat in the stench of his own excrement and the sour, damp reek of the reptile and its lair. Suddenly he heard footsteps behind him and turned his head.
‘How’s your day so far?’ Mr Dervishi asked, approaching him with a half-smoked torpedo in his gloved hand.
‘Not great.’
‘No? Such a shame,’ Dervishi sounded genuinely sorry.
On the wristwatch on his boss’s other arm, Prek saw the time. It was just coming up to 1 a.m. Dervishi gave him a look of distaste and wrinkled his nose. ‘What a disgusting smell — were you never potty-trained?’ He puffed on his cigar, exhaled and waved the smoke around with his hand. He glanced at the barred door and the darkness, tinged with a faint green glow, beyond.
‘Don’t worry, Thatcher,’ he called out. ‘I will get you a nice piece of meat very soon. Would you like this man’s right or left leg first? Or perhaps all of him at once?’
He looked down at Prek. ‘Do you know how a crocodile likes to prepare his meal?’
The man looked petrified.