James
We exit through the rear door and out of the glamorous retail area into a dimly lit space.
Perhaps the premises were once a butcher or a delicatessen. An industrial-grade freezer takes up most of the space with just a narrow corridor down the side leading to the stairway.
Just on the off-chance, I pull at the lever-lock door, then tug harder, wrenching it open, but inside is only must and dust and darkness. In one corner, a couple of battered cardboard boxes have seeped their contents over the metal floor. The liquid has long-since dried: a puddled stain, cracked in the centre, curling and peeling at the edges.
We try to climb the stairs quietly, but it’s not easy. The steps are standard, back-of-store issue: aluminium-edged, laid with vinyl, and with a curved dark edge into the corners that says someone mopped over them in that perfunctory way that first makes mud of the dirt, then wipes it around without any risk of actually removing it.
At the top of the stairs, a corridor, the paint old and faded. Naked lightbulbs dangle from the ceiling, doors lead off from one side and the other. At the end of the passage, a window where daylight struggles through curtains, perhaps once cheerfully patterned, but now faded and frayed.
At the first of the doors, Klempner nods me to the handle, standing back, his weapon raised, covering me.
I ease the door open, then recoil at the stench and the cloud of flies billowing out. Klempner flinches as a couple of buzzers fly into his face, but pulls back, nodding us to the doorway opposite.
This one opens to a stock room: shelves and racks, stacked boxes and the smell of new cardboard. Klempner, gun muzzle raised, waits out in the corridor as Michael and I briefly explore inside.
The box contents look like the legitimate stock of any small fashion outfit for the teens. The clothes hanging from the racks too: tightly fitting pants, skimpy tops and sexy underwear. Bright, unsubtle jewellery sits beside scarves and wraps and gloves in white silk or black lace. Film starlet sunglasses are racked beside spiked-heel shoes and black leather boots.
“James…” Michael speaks in a lowered voice, his hand hovering over a shelf where fake nails, varnish, and budget cosmetics are nested beside a large open crate. Inside: dozens of cellophane bags containing wigs…
“James! Michael!” Klempner’s voice is a low hiss as he head-points towards the door at the end of the corridor.
Sure enough, the sound of voices and laughter comes from beyond.
And another voice… One I know only too well.
“Oh, God… No… Please… You want money? My father… He’s rich. He’ll pay…”
A man’s voice… “Shut the fuck up…” The smack of a blow and a cry of pain…
“Keep her quiet…” A female voice… “You want the whole world to hear while you have your fun? Use the fucking tape.”
Klempner eyes me, head tilted, the question in his face.
“I’m fine. Let’s do this.”
We gather at the door, Michael to the fore, poised, Klempner alongside. Klempner holds up three fingers, then counts down silently…
Three…
Two…
One…
And as Michael kicks and shoves, the door bursts open and we barge through…
Four figures standing: one female, three male, gathered around a bed…
… and for a heartbeat, the world stands still…
A tableau…
The room is sparse: old-fashioned sash windows, the paint yellowed, their cords frayed. Rickety wooden chairs sit under a Formica-topped table set against one wall scattered with empty beer cans and a spilling ashtray…
… and against the opposite wall: a metal-framed bed of the type sometimes used in hospitals. A side-table carries a bottle of water, a plastic tumbler and the remains of a takeaway meal. On the other side, a plastic bucket, empty, sits on the floor.
The woman I recognise as Baxter’s companion. Wineglass in hand she stands beside Baxter, himself holding a beer can. And for the first time, I see her naked face: an average face, elaborately made up to make her more than she is.
The second male, a stranger, holds a videocam, poised by the bed.
The third man is Stannis, a patch over one eye where Charlotte glassed him, and a long scar, vividly white, from cheekbone to chin, his mouth puckered red around it…
Unbuckling his belt, he stands over the bed and its occupant, smirking down, enjoying her fear.
And on the bed, taped over her mouth, her wrists bound to the barred headboard…
Georgie…
She’s still clothed, but whimpering and pleading, tears streaking down her face. As we burst in, her eyes wild, she screams…
Then, as she sees me, she makes another, long, drawn-out sound I can’t label. Recognition? Thankfulness? Who knows?
“That her?” shouts Klempner.
And time restarts…
*****
Klempner
“That her?” I yell.
But the question answers itself as I look to James and see the sick fury written on his face. But only for a split second…
… He charges at Stannis, roaring his fury.
Stannis roars back, meeting him. “You bastard! Look what your little ginger bitch did to me.”
Michael lunges for the stranger, then pulls up short as Baxter raises a gun. “Stop right there!”
The stranger backs towards the window and Baxter moves with him. The pistol trembling in his hand, the muzzle swings between me and Michael, but mine is aimed squarely at him.
The female…
She spins, simply dropping her wineglass to shatter on the bare floorboards as she snatches something up from the tabletop: large, face-covering sunglasses: jamming them on her face.
Turning towards us… towards me… there is a suggestion of the whites of eyes behind the lenses. Her ‘hair’ is a short chestnut bob. And as James lunges at Stannis, she grins manically, a feral expression, emphasised by her brightly lipsticked mouth.
I didn’t have James down as a fighter, not the physical kind anyhow, and It’s not as though he’s a heavyset man, but sheer momentum and rage carries him barrelling forward. Head-first, he rams into Stannis at stomach level, knocking the air out of him as the two men crash to the floor, grappling for position.
The woman watches. Her chest rising and falling, she licks her lips, but that mad grin never wavers as she shifts between James and Stannis, me and Baxter.
“Good to meet you at last,” I say. “Julia is it? Julia will do. I don’t think we need formal introductions, do we?”
There’s something unsettling about her expression…
But I don’t have time to think on it…
“Worried, Baxter?” I say. “You should be. Did it seem a clever idea to bait me? It wasn’t all that bright after all, was it? But then, in the pinch, guts win over brains, and I don’t think you’re strong in that area either.”
“You think?” His dismay shifting to a sneer, Baxter swings the muzzle towards the bed, but James is dealing with Stannis: the pair interlocked, each with arms outstretched, each trying to squeeze the air from the other’s throat. James doesn’t see the threat to his daughter.
Michael is breathing heavily… poised…
I grin. “Teaming up with the old squad again, Baxter? Didn’t work out the first time either did it? And Stannis isn’t looking too pretty these days…”
Baxter snarls, but I’m beginning to enjoy myself…
“… I see my daughter did her work properly on him. Not that I’d expect any less of her, chip off the old block that she is.”
The male stranger… heavyset, thuggish looking… hovers by the woman as he looks down my gun barrel, eyes flicking between me and Baxter, but also to her. There’s something… protective… in his stance… One hand hovers around her back, almost but not quite, holding her.
“I don’t know who you are,” I say. “But you’re in bad company here. You have one chance to surrender now.”
The stranger wavers, his jaw going slack, but from ground level, there’s a scream: James planting a kneecap squarely into Stannis’ groin.
Abruptly, he has the upper hand, scrambling to get topmost on his opponent. Straddled over his chest, one hand pinned over Stannis’ throat, his eyes showing white all around, James punches him repeatedly in the face. Although, given the state of Stannis’ face after my Jenny finished him last time, the damage could be an improvement.
Baxter’s gun-barrel is trembling. “Andres, get her out of here,” he yells. Grabbing the woman by the wrist, he pushes her towards the window. “Go! Now. I’ll handle this.”
Julia hangs back, still watching as Andres makes for the window…
Fire escape?
… yanking up from the bottom rail to open it. It slides part of the way, then jams with only perhaps an eighteen-inch opening. Andres curses, trying to force the dilapidated window open more widely but it simply jams tighter.
Baxter glances backwards, flicking his fingers to Julia. “Go! Get away.”
Andres continues his battle with the window, She just stands there, watching until, with a crack and a jolt, the window flings upwards, Andres cursing and sucking at his knuckles.
She laughs. It’s a mad laugh: an insane laugh.
Then, spinning, moving easily, she steps over the sill and out. Andres follows, ducking a little, leaving Baxter, his gun levelled at me and Michael, while James, still straddled over Stannis, beats the living shit out of him.
Baxter grins and swings, his aim again toward Georgie on the bed. Now I get a look at her, the resemblance to her father is obvious: dark-haired, fair-skinned, leanly built. She’ll never have the kind of figure Mitch or Jenny do. And her eyes too, come from James; dark, almost black. But whereas his are white rimmed in fury, hers show only terror.
Stannis sags, his eyes rolling up, then closing. James, his fists balled white, smeared red, kneels upright above the unconscious body then, as his eye follows the line of Baxter’s aim, slowly he stands, lips peeling back from his teeth.
To the sound of a retreating metallic clatter, Baxter backs away, headed for the open window, all the while, his pistol aimed at Georgie.
Tinny footsteps fading to nothing, still facing us, Baxter swings a leg over the sill, almost doubling over as he exits backwards, then at the last moment, the muzzle drops.
From the outside, he shoves the window down. Perversely, it slides perfectly, slamming closed. Standing to one side, protected by brickwork from my line of fire, Baxter smashes at the glass with the butt of his pistol, one pane after another until every one is a shattered mass of glass shards. Then, all goes silent outside save for, once more, retreating metallic footsteps.
“Stand back.” Michael has picked up a chair and is already swinging at the mess of glazing and timber bars.
Hastily I back away. The impact bursts through half the timber bars in a single blow and the chair simply disassembles itself in Michael’s hands, legs and bars and seat dropping to the floor with a clatter.
Using one of the legs as a make-shift club, he demolishes what’s left of the window until there’s a gap large enough to let him out. Then he launches himself through the window and I follow, yelling behind me. “James, stay with your daughter.”
*****