Chapter 18
1220 Words
18
We meet Detective Price in the headlight beams of our cars. Engines still running.
“You okay, Danny?” the detective asks the kid.
“Think so, yeah.”
“Then come on,” Price says. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
The kid steps forward.
I pull him back by the shoulder. “One second,” I say, talking to the detective. “I want guarantees.”
Price seems edgy. He keeps tapping his foot. “Come on, you know I can’t do that,” he says, taking out a cigarette and lighting it.
“I want to know the bastards in blue aren’t gonna be up my arse,” I say.
He blows smoke out of his nostrils and laughs. “I'm not the Chief Constable. And you’re a kidnapper. Not to mention a cop killer.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“You think they give a s**t?” Price says. He takes another drag. “Look, I’m not gonna arrest you.”
“Damn right you’re not.”
“But I can’t promise another copper won’t,” Price continues. “If I were you, I’d hand over the kid right now and get out of here."
“If you want the cop killer, I left him sparked out on the floor of a strip joint in China Town. Big pink sign. You can’t miss it.”
"My job is to protect my witness. Not to round up Russian scum."
I hesitate a moment. Hand stopping the kid from walking. There’s an awkward silence. I look Price in the eye. He looks straight at me and smokes. He knows he’s said too much.
“Look, what are you waiting for?” the kid says, getting impatient. “Detective Price is witness protection. Let me go . . . I wanna go.”
“Shut up and wait here,” I tell him.
I approach the detective. I want to test something. A theory forming in my mind.
Price tenses up. A hand straying up the zip of his jacket. He wants to reach for his gun. As I get close, he drops the cig and goes for it. I snatch his hand out empty. I twist his fingers and plant him against the driver door of the car. I take out his service weapon. Empty the clip and toss the piece away.
I reach inside his jacket pocket and find a phone. It’s locked. Just a bunch of dots. I twist harder on the hand. He cries out in pain.
The kid walks over. “What the f**k are you doing? Let him go.”
“I’ll let you go in a minute. Right off the roof of this car park.”
The kid shuts his trap, but he kicks out at the front bumper of the Mondeo.
“How do I get into your phone?” I ask Price.
“Piss off,” he says.
I twist harder.
He shrieks. “Alright. Just, do make an L.”
“Make a what?”
“An L, you f*****g i***t. You make an L with your thumb.”
“Oh,” I say, unlocking the phone. "I'm a bit s**t with these things." I tap through to his call list.
Boom. I knew it. Copper bullshit always smells stronger.
I put the phone on speaker. I hit the call button. The phone lights up.
“Price?” a dazed-sounding Frogger answers, as if he’s just woken up from a long nap.
I cut off the call before Price can talk. “You can’t have known for sure the killer was Russian,” I say, “unless you were Frogger’s contact. The inside man.”
I let the guy up. He’s not going anywhere. He shakes out his wrist.
“You arranged our way in,” I continue. “And you told Rudenko we were in China Town.”
“You were supposed to be in and out clean,” Price says. “How was I to know Frogger would go nuts?”
“Because it’s Frogger,” I say. “And he’s Lithuanian. Not Russian.”
The kid is furious. He shoves Price back against the car. “So all this time, you’ve been pretending to be some f*****g mate to me. And you were one of them? Why?”
“The universal answer,” Price says, shaking his head. “f**k-ing money.”
The kid flips out. “s**t! So what now?”
“Give me a minute,” I say. “I’m thinking.”
I’m thinking I’m a fly in a spider’s web. The more I fight against it, the more tangled up I get.
“I tell you what he’s gonna do Danny,” Price says. “First he’s gonna hand you over. Then he’s gonna help me get you in the boot of my car.”
“He’s the only one protecting me,” the kid says. “Why would he do that?”
“Because if he doesn’t,” Price says, regaining his swagger, “it means he either goes on the run with you and gets done for kidnapping––”
“And the or?” I say.
“The or is even better. The kid testifies he saw you pull the trigger on the two cops. Double homicide. A man with your record?” Price clicks his tongue. “Ouch.”
“But he didn’t do it,” the kid says. “I’m not gonna testify to that.”
The detective lowers his voice. “You will when we’ve got your f*****g mum tied to a chair soaked in petrol.”
Price lights another cig, as if to make the point. The kid starts yelling and swinging at the detective. I hold him back by the hood.
I know Rudenko. The petrol thing is the least of what they’ll do. And I can see in the kid’s eyes, he’ll bleat on me to save his mum and sister. And when he’s fingered me for those cops, they’ll hire someone like me, but from out of town. And there’ll be a tragic accident involving young Danny here. It’ll be reported on page twenty of the Evening News. Yep, the pair of us will be tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.
“Oh, and Charlie,” Price says. “You want to see your daughter again, don’t you?”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“Don't play as dumb as you look,” Price says.
Shit, he’s really got me.
I pause a moment. I grab a tighter hold of the kid. “Open the boot,” I say to Price.
The kid can’t believe it. “What? What are you doing?”
“Smart move,” Price says, stooping inside the driver door. He releases the boot.
The kid fights like hell, so I scoop him off his feet and carry him kicking and screaming to the rear of the Mondeo.
“You got anything to tie him up with?” I ask Price.
He undoes his tie from around his neck. I lower the kid in the boot. I push his face into the black carpet, muffling his screams.
Price binds the kid's flailing ankles with his tie.
He holds him down while I remove my own tie. I use it to fix his wrists tight behind his back. Price has a pair of handkerchiefs zipped up inside an outside pocket on his jacket.
“You got a sniffle or something?” I ask.
“Comes in handy at crime scenes,” he says, tossing me one of the hankies.
As he scrunches one up into a ball, I twist the other long and thin. Price forces his handkerchief inside the kid’s mouth. He holds it there while I tie mine around the back of the lad’s skinny neck. I make sure it’s fixed secure.
The kid looks up at me. Big eyes full of tears and terror.
I shrug at him. “Sorry kid, if there was any other way—”
Detective Price slams the boot shut. He extends a hand. “No hard feelings.”
I leave him hanging.
Price climbs behind the wheel of the Mondeo. He rolls past me as I walk back to my car. He winds down his window. “I’ll square things with Rudenko. Try and throw my colleagues off your scent.”
It makes me sick, but I thank him. I have to keep the Rudenko mob sweet from now on.
Price winds up his window and accelerates out of the car park.
I’m not far behind. Heading out of town fast, taking a lesser travelled route out of the s**t, where the pigs aren’t checking.
I see the chopper hovering in the distance, travelling in the opposite direction.
There’s no way I can go home, so I decide to head for the airport. Catch an early morning flight. I’m smart enough to always keep my passport on me. You never know when you’re gonna have to skip the country for a while.
Yeah, a nice Spanish break where I’ve got connections. By the time the sun comes up, this’ll all be over.
- Writer
