Page 19

Nineteen

Tuesday 5pm

Murphy was standing by the door to the cafe and Charlie went to join him. The sunshine from earlier had changed to cloudy skies, and it was heavily shaded in the alley as they walked back to the street, Charlie sharing what he’d learned from Evan. The end of the alley was blocked by a brown delivery van with a couple of big guys moving boxes. As Charlie stepped to go round the back of the van, he felt himself lifted off his feet by heavily muscled arms grabbing his own. Shock stopped him for a breath then he opened his mouth to yell. Something jabbed into his side, and a big hand in a leather glove covered his mouth and nose. Charlie thrashed, looking around wildly for Brody Murphy. But Murphy had disappeared as if he had never been there.

“Keep quiet, asshole,” a voice said. Charlie had no choice but to comply because he couldn’t breathe. He was half thrown into the back of the van, managing to land on his knees and opening his mouth to yell again. But it was too late. The door was closed and the van was moving. He moved to bang on the side of the van, but the man in the leather gloves moved faster and hit him in the stomach. Charlie fell back against a pile of cardboard and gasped for breath. The pain was as bad as when he’d been shot.

“I said, be quiet,”

All Charlie could do was attempt to drag air into his lungs and wait for the pain to pass. When he looked up, still wheezing, he saw the second man holding a handgun very steadily, pointed directly at him. The van was an empty metal box with windows in the roof, but not in the sides, and no indication of what it might be used to deliver.

“What’s going on?” Charlie stammered.

“What part of shut the fuck up are you not understanding?” the man with the gun growled.

Charlie knew if he was going to get out of this, he needed all his strength. Another blow from leather-gloves-man would make things worse. He kept quiet. The two men said nothing and their watch on him never wavered. They wore jeans, sweatshirts and baseball caps with heavy boots. Both were short and broad with plenty of obvious muscle — they had picked him up as if he weighed nothing. They could have been brothers, both white men with dark curly hair and goatees and Charlie thought they still seemed more like a pair of delivery drivers than the thugs they were. There was a panel dividing the front and back of the van so Charlie had no idea who was driving. But he would remember these two faces — if he got the chance.

The van moved steadily, stopping and starting, turning corners, and occasionally speeding up, though not much. Charlie heard the New York traffic all around them: horns, blasts of music and the ubiquitous sirens. A few minutes into the drive, outside noises lessened, and a few minutes after that, stopped altogether.

The back door opened and the man with gun gestured for Charlie to move. This would be his chance to get away. Except these guys had done this before. As Charlie stepped toward the door, leather-gloves-man grabbed his arm with fingers like a mechanical grabber and the other man jabbed the gun into Charlie’s kidneys. They exited the van, Charlie stumbling, keeping his balance with difficulty. They were in the middle of a construction site on an almost empty flattened-rubble car park next to a block of temporary offices and containers. What Charlie guessed was a concrete mixing plant stood next to a high wooden fence. More high fencing cut them off from the street. Traffic thundered on an elevated street almost overhead. The smell of diesel fumes and construction dust filled the air.

A door in the site offices opened and a man of Charlie’s height with a substantial gut appeared.

“This him? I was expecting something a bit more impressive, gotta say.”

This from a man who looked like a garden gnome and supported Donald Trump.

Charlie recognised Andrew Dwyer from the photographs in Sabrina Sully’s home. “Don’t bother to speak, Mr Rees,” Dwyer said. “What I’ve got to say won’t take long and then we can all get on with our day.”

Charlie stood and said nothing.

“My nephew Kaylan was a much-misunderstood young man. He was murdered by someone who came to kill your dyke friend. You are in no position to try to tarnish his reputation, not with your history. I don’t like your sort, Mr Rees. You’re away from home and you’ve got no friends here. Fuck off and forget about Kaylan. I don’t want to see your face or hear your name again. Okay?”

Charlie said nothing, which was apparently the wrong thing to do. He got another jab in the kidneys from the man with the gun. But they hadn’t brought him here to kill him, just to warn him off. Relief and confidence washed over him like water.

“I’m a British police officer, Mr Dwyer,” he began. Dwyer took a step forward and hit Charlie across the face so hard that he rocked back on his heels, only staying upright because of leather-gloves-man’s grip on his arm.

“I know what you are,” he said and hit Charlie again. Charlie felt blood in his mouth, and the sharpness of pain inside his cheek. “Don’t make me change my mind about letting you go.” He nodded at the two thugs and went back into the office.

Charlie was unceremoniously bundled back into the van. The door closed and the van started to move. They drove for what could have been about ten minutes, though Charlie’s head was spinning so badly that he had little sense of time. The van stopped and the door opened. Leather-gloves-man pulled Charlie to the door and pushed. The impact with the pavement was brutal, jarring every bone in his body. The ground scraped his hands and knees like it was made of rough sandpaper. He bit his cheek and felt his mouth fill with blood again. Charlie could do nothing but watch as the door closed and the van drove off. There was no numberplate. Charlie was getting tired of the whole no-numberplate thing.

Then it started to rain.