Next thing she knew she was in the back of some sort of vehicle or another, being driven over some rough ground. She squirmed and found she was secured by cord and tape then. When the van slowed right down and started to manoeuvre, reverse, pull forwards, reverse again, she heard doors opening and closing, but could see nothing.
Then the van doors opened.
A light poured in. Cheryl looked up, blinking. The men were not wearing any masks and they looked surprised to see she was awake.
Another round swiftly delivered by the shock baton booted her back into instant oblivion…
Then, much later, she woke on the concrete floor.
Her heart was beating irregularly. Her head was spinning sickeningly, like a bad crack hit. She tensed. There was a noise, a moan behind her.
‘ Spencer?’ she whispered through her dry mouth.
‘ Yuh…’
‘ Oh God, you’re alive… what’re we going to do?’
He did not reply.
‘ I want some reassurances before I start to say anything,’ Colin Hodge announced, finding courage from the alcohol he had consumed before the arrival of Crane and Smith.
‘ Such as?’ Smith asked.
Hodge eyed the two men, thinking he was their equal on every level. A stupid mistake on his part. All three were sitting at the table. Each had a drink in his hand — whisky from the bottle. Hodge looked distrustfully at Crane — the new man on the scene, the man with the connections, and thought, I could take you now, you cunt. You’re nothing, absolutely nothing but a sack of shit, sitting there with your smug expression and your suntan.
Crane’s eyes and features were impassive, giving nothing away.
‘ OK,’ said Hodge, nodding his head, biting his lip. ‘The whole thing is my information, my idea, my job. All you’re going to do is to help me to sort it out. I want fifty per cent — and believe me, that leaves a lot of money for you.’
Smith tried to give the impression he was ruminating on the matter, even though he wasn’t. He and Crane, particularly the latter, were the ones who made the rules and decided who got what.
‘ I think we can live with that,’ Smith said.
‘ That’s good,’ Hodge sniffed. A victory. He glanced quickly at Crane for a reaction, got none. Crane took a minute sip of whisky.
There was silence.
Each man also had a cigarette. In the still atmosphere, the smoke hung languidly just above the level of their heads, swirling gently.
Crane had yet to say anything. He was too busy trying to speculate what the hell he had let himself in for. At that moment he was very unimpressed by Hodge, who he had already labelled as a dangerous jerk. However, he kept his tongue.
Hodge shifted uncomfortably. He said, ‘No details yet, no pack drill.’ With his fingers he wiped the spittle from the corners of his mouth. ‘I want this to proceed at my pace, on my terms. Is that clear to both of you?’
Smith nodded. Crane did not move, other than to flare his nostrils. He was getting more and more irritated by this arsehole by the second.
‘ Right,’ Hodge proceeded. ‘I work for a security firm who collect and deliver money, to and from banks.’
Try as he might, Crane could not stop his eyes closing despairingly. Another bent security guard. They were a liability. Useful to a degree, then… eminently disposable.
‘ There’s a big difference to this firm, though. They do all the normal, two-bit runs all over the place, sometimes carrying a lot of dosh, right. But every so often they do a special run.’ Hodge paused for effect. His eyes played patronisingly over Smith and Crane. ‘Do I have your attention now?’
Crane licked his lips.
Smith urged him on. ‘Yes, you do.’
‘ Good. Every so often — it varies, depending on the circumstances — my company collects money. Untraceable used notes from the banks all across Southern Scotland and Northern England. These notes are delivered to a specialist waste company in the Midlands where under high security, they are incinerated. In fact, I did such a run today.’
‘ Tell us how much you carried,’ Smith said. His eyes betrayed greed and Crane noticed this.
‘ You want to know how much I carried in the back of my van?’ Hodge teased and looked at Crane for the answer.
‘ Yes,’ Crane said, with a rancid smile.
‘ Fifty million pounds — and not one penny of it traceable anywhere.’
Chapter Six
‘ What we do is this: we keep him sweet, we string him along and we milk him of all the information he has to give us. We let him believe he’s got clout and that he’s running the show — because that’s what he wants to believe. We feed him cash, we feed him birds, booze and smack if that’s what turns him on. We con the living shit out of him and then we bury the twat!
‘ See — I’m not having no stinking little security guard trying to tell me what to do,’ Crane went on. ‘No fucking way under God’s sky. We run him. Be doesn’t run us.’ Crane turned to Smith. His eyes were lit by passing fluorescent street-lights as the car moved swiftly northwards through the easy traffic. They were back in the shabby Vauxhall Carlton, having concluded their meeting with Colin Bodge. ‘Is that clear?’
Smith’s face cracked with a smile of pleasure. ‘I take it from that you’re in?’
Crane extended his right hand. Smith shook it and clasped his left over it. ‘I knew you’d be interested. I needed you along. You’ve got all the right contacts for this one.’
‘ And I don’t want to take that little bastard’s word for anything,’ Crane said, referring to Bodge. ‘Do some background on him, make sure he’s not telling us a load of crap. Make sure he’s not a cop or a snout, either. Check everything out, mega-style. Take nothing at face value. I’ve had so-called mates informing on me in the past and I didn’t like it one bit.’
Smith guffawed.
‘ What’s the joke?’
‘ Nah — you’ll see very soon. Something very pertinent to what you’ve just said.’
‘ Stop stringing me along, will you?’ Crane was annoyed.
‘ Hey, Bill, stick with me, eh? It’ll come good. You can trust me.’
‘ Right, sure,’ he said without enthusiasm.
They were driven north to Bispham and on to a small industrial estate. The whole place was dead.
‘ Here we are,’ Smith announced as the car drew to a halt. ‘Lesson time.’
Way above in the ceiling, the strip-lights pinged on. Cheryl blinked. The lights were very bright after the darkness and hurt her eyes. She was extremely cold. Her legs and hands were numb. She saw, at last, what sort of premises she was in — a garage. There were two hydraulic car ramps, over two inspection pits. A car was on one and the ramp was raised high. There was no car on the other ramp nearest to her. Cheryl could see the black, rectangular inspection pit. It reminded her of a newly dug grave.
She heard footsteps and began to sob.
Cheryl and Spencer, both naked, were now seated on plastic chairs, placed side by side. Their feet and wrists were still secured by tape, their arms pulled around the backs of the chairs. Cheryl had wet herself and was sitting in a puddle of her own urine. Spencer had gone one step further in his terror and soiled himself. A tremendous stench wafted from underneath him.
‘ Fifty thousand pounds, that’s what I lost,’ Billy Crane said in a gentle voice — for the tenth time — leaning into Cheryl’s face. He was wearing a pair of overalls.
‘ I’m so sorry,’ she gurgled. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘ Sorry doesn’t cut it, you stupid bitch.’ Though the words were harsh, Crane’s voice remained calm. As a result, he was all the more fearsome. He was playing with them and enjoying it.
He turned his head slowly, rather like Dracula, and cast his eyes to Spencer who quickly looked away and stared down at the oozing shit between his legs. ‘I don’t need to