Action pulse pounding ta.., p.35
action pulse pounding tales vo, page 35
Thompson took her over to the bank of live camera footage. “Which booth were you in?”
“Eight.”
Thompson punched a couple of buttons and started re-winding. “Him?”
“Yeah.”
Harry sat in the confines of the hired car, watching the people entering and exiting the club. After seeing the birthmark on the lap-dancer's behind he'd seen all he needed to. She'd said her name was Savannah; Harry knew her real name, Alice Henley. He thumbed through the contacts on his phone. He couldn't manage a greeting, the voice of the other end got in first. “Hey, glad you called, got some great news on the Shale's case.” Billy's familiar voice bled through the speaker.
Harry kept his eyes on the club's entrance. “What?”
“It's not a snuff movie, just some cheap effects with the throat cutting, she's alive and well and about to get some more cock in another film.”
“That's good, I think.” It was good that the girl wasn't in some shallow grave or roadside ditch.
“How're you getting on?” asked Billy.
“I've found Alice Henley.”
“You sure it's her?”
“Birthmark just where her mother had said she'd have one.” The only photograph he had of Alice was over ten years old and it shared nothing in common with the woman who called herself Alice Cotton-slash-Savannah.
“Nice. So what're you gonna do now?”
“I passed over a note for her.” Harry knew that it wasn't the most tactful way to let her know that something sinister from her past was hunting her down, at least with a note she could read it and it could sink in, then if she wanted his help she could call his number, or if she wanted to see him then he'd be sat in his car outside the club until closing.
“And if the note doesn't find its way to her, or she ignores it, then what?”
“If she ignores it, that's her call, she's not a kid any more, but if it looks like the note never made it to her then I'll just have to do a face-to-face.”
“Keep me up to date.”
“Yeah, will do.” He watched a couple of the doormen talking, one of them pointed towards him. “Look, I've gotta go, looks like the note made it to her, there's some interest in me.” Harry didn't wait for a reply; he ended the call and started to roll down the window as one of the doormen started across the road towards his car.
“You the one that left the note for, Savannah?” He looked the atypical hard bouncer, all shoulders and neck, with a shaved head puckered with scars.
Harry nodded.
“She wants a word with you.”
Now that was what Harry wanted to hear. He got out of the car, locked it up and followed the bouncer back across the road. They jumped the queue and Harry found himself back in amongst the noise and the bodies. He followed where the bouncer led. Out through a door, down a corridor and into a large storage room.
There wasn't much in the room apart from himself, three hefty-sized men and a small rattish man with slick-lips and no sign of Alice. Harry chided himself; he should have seen this coming. The wet-mouthed man pointed to a wooden chair in the centre of the room. “Sit.” His voice sounded an octave too high to belong to someone who should be heeded without question.
“Where's, Alice?” Harry felt a hand on his back, which shifted to a shove, forcing him deeper into the room and closer to the chair. Harry turned around slowly. The menace that had pushed him was wearing a well practised dark scowl, it probably worked on some pissed up little runt that got a bit handsy with the dancers but it did nothing to make Harry's legs go shaky. Harry was just kissing the six-foot-one mark and there wasn't much in the way of bulk about his body, most referred to his build as spindly, others regarded him as rangy and raw-boned topped off with a wiry strength. He decided for the moment to take the path of least resistance and sat down to give the ratty-man his full and undivided attention.
The ratty-man asked. “Why'd you write the note?”
“You must have read it, pretty much self-explanatory.” That remark earned him a cuff to the back of his head. Harry spun in his chair to see one of the goons looking pleased with himself. Ratty-man spoke again, drawing Harry's attention back. “So, you're not even trying to deny it, talk about being only half the hat.”
Harry shook his head. He'd had dealings with paper gangsters before. They'd own a club, or two, and have hired hoodlums to get the dirty deeds done and then play king of the castle. “All I want to know is where Alice is.”
Ratty-man let free a much-faked laugh. “What, so you can, and I quote, 'chop you up like the filthy cunt that you are, no one leaves the Foundation of the Kingdom's rise.' Doesn't exactly read like a love letter now does it?”
Harry blinked; pretty sure he hadn't written anything even remotely resembling that. “I didn't write that.”
“You just said you did not a moment ago.”
“I wrote a note, but that wasn't it.”
Ratty-man shrugged. “Doesn't matter a fuck. I don't like my girls threatened or harmed. And when someone comes along who wishes to do either, then I like to send a message out to any other misfits who might have the same kind of daft ideas.”
Harry didn't want to hear any more diatribe, he hadn't the luxury of time, not after hearing what had been in the other note for Alice. “Whatever, just tell me where Alice is, I don't have the time to sit here explaining.” Harry made to stand up but found a set on hands on his shoulders forcing him back down. Playtime was over, now it was time to do some schooling. He hadn't expected to be beaten in getting to Miss Henley first. It had been a massive job just tracking her down to where she worked; there'd been layer and layer of false identities along the way to thwart all who might attempt to track her down. Harry had been doing the job too long, knew all the tricks that folks used to stay a ghost and had managed to catch up, nothing was going to make him come second. Harry reached up and grabbed the hands that held him in place. He thrust those hands outwards with a quick and unexpected release of strength. The owner of those hands found himself quickly off balance and his head came face first to meet with the top of Harry's head. There was a crunch as the bridge of the man's nose concertinaed and Harry felt a rush of warm blood flood around and about the hairs on his head. Harry released the hands, stood, grabbing the chair as he did and swung it upside the nearest bouncer's skull. The bouncer pulled a few funny faces before the lights in his eyes went out and he crumpled to the floor. Without missing a beat Harry closed up the space between himself and the final bundle of biceps, knee'd him square in the balls, grabbed the man by his ears as he started to double over, helped him on his way south and collided his knee into the bloke’s face. Harry pushed the fellow over, but it wasn't necessary as the man was completely oblivious to which way was even up. Harry spun to confront Ratty-man who was the only one not unconscious or holding an injury. “I'm asking just once, where is she?”
Ratty Man looked to his men, then back to the man who had sparked them all out, managing through his shock to find some words. “I had her driven home whilst she got some stuff together to leave town for a bit.”
Harry slammed shut the door and was already speeding up to thirty miles per hour before his seatbelt had even finished doing its clickety-click. He'd gotten the address from the ratty-man whose name he now knew to be Thompson. He'd thrown it into the sat-nav and reckoned if he stuck to the speed limit he would get there in about twenty minutes, so he ignored the law and gunned it. Thompson had given him both Alice's and the driver's mobile phone numbers. He tried both, splitting his concentration three ways, the road, the sat-nav and the phone in his hand. Both of the phones rung out, Harry knew that was a bad, bad sign and put his foot down a little harder on the go pedal.
It was shy on eight full minutes when he screeched to a halt outside of the three-storey townhouse that had been converted into flats. Alice lived in flat 2; he thumbed the button and counted to ten. At the count of ten he had received no answer so he ran his hand over all six buttons and told the first person that answered through the intercom that he was the police and without being asked anything else he was buzzed in. The door to flat 2 was wide open. He looked up the stairs to see some curious faces peering over the bannisters, all of them rubber-necking. Harry pulled out his wallet, flipped it open and shut it just as quick and hoped that action was enough. He ventured over the threshold and heard a groan coming from a room at the end of the hallway. It sounded weak, but masculine. Harry stopped at the first door and peeked around the doorjamb to see a tidy and unoccupied lounge. He continued on, straining to shut out the man's moans so he could hear anything else from the flat. Harry dipped his head into the next room. It was small, neat and empty; he also noticed there wasn't a single toothbrush in the holder above the basin. The next room turned out to be the bedroom, there was nothing neat about it. A suitcase lay open on the bed, it's contents of clothes looking half consumed and half puked out at the same time. She must have been throwing together whatever belongings she cared about as quickly as she could. Harry mused that it hadn't been quick enough. He backed out of the bedroom and walked the rest of the hallway knowing what he would find in the kitchen The groaning was coming from the driver who was slumped on the floor in the far corner, a trail of slick blood telling tales of where he had been shot to where he had crawled to. The driver had been over at the counter pouring a scotch, more than likely whilst Alice was gathering up her stuff. The bottle now lay on its side having bled out just like the driver was doing. Noolan, or one of his cronies must have been hiding out, caught the driver off-guard and plugged him. The gun had to have had a silencer, reckoned Harry, seeing as there wasn't anything other than nosiness from the rest of the tenants. The driver's eyes were closed; he was holding his stomach like he had a bellyache. It was only his mouth that moved, the machine within broken and only offering up moans and groans, his dying body's audio reflex, nothing more, or less. The man had clown-mouth where the blood had bubbled up and over the dam of his lips. Harry grabbed a fresh dishtowel from the rail and went down on his haunches before the man who was working through the Cheyne-Stokes' pattern. He pulled the man's non-responsive hands away, slipped the towel to his gut and then replaced the hands back. It was a pathetic gesture, but one that Harry couldn't help but make. He stood up, he had things to do. He looked at his hands that were now slick with crimson and decided to head to the sink to rinse the stains away. Three steps from the sink, he turned to the sound of silence. The uneven exhales and inhales had frozen, death had come and silenced the driver's world. Harry was about to embark on the final step to the sink when the quiet was broken by, “Hey, officer, someone's slashing the fuck outta your tyres!”
Harry abandoned his ablutions and left the kitchen at full pelt. He hadn't expected the bastards to still have been about, otherwise he wouldn't have taken his time. Leaving her flat he felt the eyes of the rubberneckers still there, gandering away. He ran out the cruddy foyer and down the garden path. He was too late; all he saw was a white transit van spinning its wheels. Sense told him he had no chance of catching it, his personal self-esteem told him he had a good chance if he started getting his legs on the go right that moment and not a second later. He passed by his car, it was going nowhere, two flat tyres and a cheap knife sticking out of a third, the fourth would have been too no doubt if one of those nosy fucker's hadn't done the only decent thing of the night. He managed to catch it up, but only as much as to grab at the handle of the back door before it got away from him. The door had been locked, stayed locked and grew small very quickly as the van powered on to the end of the road. He spun around, the other tenants of the flats had emptied out on to the road and were watching, no doubt the best thing they'd seen since Jeremy Kyle that morning. He heard a put-put-put, turned and saw a pizza scooter pulling up on the other side of the road. He made towards the lad who was busy trying to free a dustbin-lid sized pizza from the warm-satchel on the back of his pretend-hog when a more throaty, proper engine made a racket that wrecked the quiet of the night. The car made a noisy halt at the kerb. The door burst open and a figure got out with movements that announced urgency. Harry took in the man and took a step back, blinking, not understanding what sort of practical joke his brain was playing on him. The man that was heading up the path towards Alice's building was the spitting image, a proper carbon copy of the man that was dead inside from lead poisoning.
The doppelgänger saw the blood on Harry's hands and knew instinctively that he was somehow a part of the night's tragic comedy of errors. “My brother?” was all the man said as he made to move past Harry.
Harry placed a hand on the man's chest, letting amazement disperse and the severity of the drama take hold. “He's dead.” The brutal truth was what was needed, Harry knew it, though it didn't help much.
The man grabbed Harry's hand and pushed it to one-side, his only purpose now seemed to be entering the property and finding it all to be true. Harry called after the man. “He's dead, and the men that did it, the cowards, they're getting away. Right as we speak, they are drifting through post-codes.” That made the man stop, stare up at the house; he was but three steps away from being inside and closer to his dead twin. He turned around; there was wetness in his stare and ferocity in the set of his mouth. “Are you sure he's dead?”
“I've seen enough of it to know it.”
The man started back to the car, his steps morphing from earnest strides to nigh on a sprint. Harry took to the hoof after him and made a move for the passenger's door.
“Where the fuck do you think you're going?” asked the man.
“You even know what you’re chasing, vehicle, or man?”
“Get in.”
Harry opened the door and dipped inside the vehicle.
Harry barely got the door shut before the driver got some heat pissing its way through the engine like wildfire. The driver turned to Harry. “Which direction?” There was a junction a little ways up. Harry had seen the van take a right. He told him and the man took that corner like tread on a tyre was something infinitesimal. He had the engine earning its keep, switching with skill up the gears and handling the road like he'd tamed it himself. Half a minute of traffic dodging and law breaking and they saw the white van up ahead, a good few lengths of car away. Though it was night the driver knew how far to keep back so as not to become something suspicious in another man's rear-view mirror.
Harry couldn't help but state some of the obvious, even though the bloke was showing more than a passing proficiency. “Ease up, don't want them to know we're this close to them.”
“I've not got my hazards on, nor am I beeping the fucking horn. This is my car, this is my chase, this is my...revenge.”
“And they've got a woman in the back of that van, who, just like you hasn't asked for any of this shit to happen.”
The driver took some deep breaths and kept any retorts from spilling from his head.
“Thompson didn't tell me much, just that my brother might be needing some help and that one of the girls from his club was involved. Care to tell me some more?”
So Harry started to share his knowledge on Evan Noolan. The driver nodded in all the right places and kept his own council until Harry had finished. The driver shook his head. “Think he's planning on killing the girl?”
“I think it's pretty much a given, she's the reason they lost their messiah.”
“That part of it isn't my war, but I'll help you get her back, then I will do my own thing.”
Harry looked at the man, his face looked as though it was carved from stone. Harry himself had known violence and death in abundance and this man's features had been chiselled over the years by destruction and Harry knew that there was nothing, no words that would alter the course of what was in the man's mind. “You got a name? I'm Harry.”
“Not one that you need to know.”
“Fair enough.” Harry didn't bother trying to make any more conversation. He just watched the roads that they were taking, wondering where the van was heading. He cottoned on as they made their way through the heart of Lancaster. He broke the silence with. “I think I know where they're heading.”
“Where?”
Harry chastised himself. He should have guessed a good few miles back. The van was en route to Heysham, the van was heading back to the place that had born the madman and tailored his diseased mind. It made sense, the family farm back on that small island, the place that Noolan knew best. “He's going to the ferry, Noolan's going home.”
“You sure?”
“Certain.”
The driver started tooling about with the sat-nav. The woman's voice kicked in and the driver eased off the speed. No need to get made if they had a destination.
“Gonna need your name if you’re wanting to get on this boat.”
The driver mulled it over. “Ernest Jones, don't ever fucking call me Ernie, or Ernest.”
Harry used his phone to book them two tickets and the car onto the ferry. He shook his head as the final carriage fee was displayed on his phone. “They should be calling themselves the Steam Racket.”
The driver ignored the attempt at humour and asked. “What's security like at the port?”
“Same as anywhere I guess, probably have a sniffer dog doing laps of the car deck, anything like that in the car?”
“No, but there's two shotguns and a couple of nine millimetres in a hold-all in the boot, think they'll sniff them out?”
“Doubt it.”
“Good. You figured out a plan?”
“I figure I've got about thirty miles to think of one, something else has been bothering me.”
“What?”
“How Noolan and his mental cases caught up with her the same time as I did.”
“You found her, what's so surprising that they did?”
“Yeah, something just isn't sitting right.”
They joined the queue of cars waiting to board the ferry; it was pretty much bumper to bumper considering that it was half-two in the morning. Harry could see the van up ahead, a good two dozen hunks of wheeled metal were idling in-between. The driver turned, looked at Harry. “Looks like the thirty miles is up, we just going to start breaking shit when we get on the boat?”
