Cog in the Machine Read online

  “But… you said you wanted to-” This time, the back of Dunstan’s hand interrupted Dom’s question.

  “I just want to take the three million pounds out of the boot of your car and fuck off.”

  “Take it then, and leave me and Bob alone.”

  “Oh no, Dominic,” the Boss grabbed Dom by the back of his neck, pulling his face in close, whispering his malevolent intentions. “I’m going to throw you and your sugar daddy into the boot and set fire to the car. Maybe I’ll stay for a while and listen to you scream. Or wait a while longer and smell you cook.”

  A rough thrust on the back of his head sent Dom sprawling toward the BMW sheltered under the lean of the hedgerow.

  Dom fell to the ground, but it was deliberate. He tucked a hand into his jacket, reaching for the pistol grip. As he rose from the dry dirt field, he brandished the gun.

  “I don’t fucking think so.” Dom was so out of his depth. He had to try and talk the talk because he knew the Boss could definitely walk the walk.

  “Fuck me, Dominic, where did you find those balls?” the Boss laughed. He cast a glance back at his two surprised henchmen.

  “Let Bob go and… and I won’t shoot.”

  “Fucking hell boys, hold your hands up, we’ve been outsmarted.” The Boss just stared at the man with the trembling gun hand.

  “I mean it!” Dom wasn’t even convinced by himself.

  Walking toward Dom, the Boss opened his mouth and put it around the muzzle of the wavering Glock.

  “Pull it!” the words were just clear enough even with two inches of firearm inside the Boss’s mouth.

  The trigger was squeezed.

  The hammer fell.

  “Boom!” the Boss yelled, freeing the gun from his mouth.

  Dom backed away, confused, still pointing the weapon, pulling the trigger. No bullets. No blood. So very, very fucked.

  “Do you think my inside man would give you a loaded gun?” The Boss pulled his own gun. “Come here. I want you to see me take all that money away from you.”

  The useless gun discarded, Dom walked slowly toward his fate. In his mind, his life could be measured in minutes. Compassion, empathy, forgiveness; these were traits that were left out of the Kevin Dunstan he remembered. And now, more than a decade later, with even more hate, greed and anger at his disposal, Dom didn’t like his chances of talking his way out of this.

  “Come here, boys. It’s pay day.” The Boss marched up to the car.

  Dom was shoved along with the butt of the gun. Every step was a step closer to the end; the end of this trip, the end of this night, the end of this life and probably Bob’s too. His mind was racing faster than any car he’d ever driven.

  They all stood at the rear of the BMW.

  “Open it.” The instruction came with a dig in the back with the gun.

  Dom popped the boot and was casually pushed to one side.

  The lid lifted slowly, automatically, with control. A light came on to illuminate the boot space revealing the six black holdalls.

  The first one was unzipped. Bundles were removed.

  The next was opened. A bundle was pulled out.

  The next – one bundle - two bundles - three bundles - all removed.

  “What the fuck?” The Boss opened all six bags and sunk his big hands into the bottoms, pulling out some bundles from the lower stacks.

  The Boss, his face distorted in rage, grabbed Dom and thrust him at the car.

  “Where the fuck is it?”

  The boot was filled with dozens of bundles - bundles of newspaper bound together to resemble wads of money. Dom was just as stunned. He didn’t have a clue.

  Chapter 53

  “Where’s the fucking money?” The heated beads of spittle sprayed in rage from the Boss’s mouth.

  “I don’t know.” Dom wasn’t lying.

  A swipe of the hand and Dom was eating dirt again.

  “I’m only gonna ask one more time. Where’s the fucking money?”

  “I swear, I don’t know.”

  A kick to the stomach. Dom groaned.

  The Boss gestured toward the van, “Gibbo, bring that old bastard out here.”

  Gibbo walked over to the van and opened the payload door on the side. With both hands, he dragged Bob out onto the dirt. He lifted him to his feet and frogmarched him to the back of the BMW.

  The Boss lifted the cloth sack from Bob’s head, showing the extent of the wounds under the glow of headlights, and pulling his handgun once more. The weapon was pressed against the back of the old man’s head.

  “This is the very last time I’m gonna ask you, Dom. Where’s the money?” The tone was a determined, malevolent whisper.

  Lifting himself from the dirt, Dom’s eyes were transfixed on the gun. “If I knew, I would tell you. I haven’t got it. I swear. Please, please, let him go.”

  “Very well.” The Boss sneered, moving the gun from the back of Bob’s head, “I’ll let him go.”

  A flash. A bang. A scream.

  The Boss had fired a round straight through the old man’s kneecap. Bob had fallen to the dirt scrunching his body into as near to a foetal position as it was possible to with his hands bound behind his back.

  “Why?” Dom’s face contorted in his own helpless rage. “He’s just an old man. Let him go.”

  “I am letting him go,” The Boss pushed the gun downward against Bob’s temple. “He has ten seconds to get out of here. And if he doesn’t, my boys are gonna bury him in this field.”

  “What?” Dom couldn’t wrap his head around why someone could be so cruel to this old man – his old man – the man he never called ‘Dad’ but wished he had.

  “Ten!”

  Bob didn’t move. He couldn’t move.

  “Nine!”

  “Please, don’t do-”

  “Eight!”

  “He’s been shot!”

  “Seven!”

  “Bob for Christ’s sake, try-”

  “Six!”

  “-and move.”

  “Five!”

  Bob flinched, kicking out with his good leg, trying to gain purchase on the loose soil.

  “Four!”

  “Come on, Bob.” Tears raced down Dom’s cheeks as he willed the old man to his feet.

  “Three… two, one!”

  The muzzle flash cast an instantaneous ball of light, flooding into all the shadows and then was extinguished in a heartbeat.

  Dom’s stomach retched again. His eyelids were closed so tightly he feared he would crush his own eyeballs. He knew what to expect but wasn’t prepared for it - the exposed brain matter, the shattered skull, the blood splatter, the dead, still twitching body of the only person to have ever really cared for him since his mother’s death. He didn’t want to open his eyes and see that.

  “It seems he didn’t want to be let go,” Dunstan laughed, looking toward his henchmen for validation. They smirked but that was all.

  Dom wiped the back of his hand across his lips to remove the threadlike vomit hanging from them and slowly opened his eyes. Tentatively he raised his gaze from the dark nothingness of the ground toward where he expected to see the body of Bob. Instead he saw a bullet hole in the soil next to the quivering, pale, sweaty face of his father figure. Bob was still alive.

  “You sick fuck…”

  “Shut it!” A pistol-whip hammered home the instruction.

  The Boss gestured toward the driver. Wade and Gibbo lifted Dom to his feet.

  “If you don’t know where the money is, I bet you know who does.”

  Dom wasn’t listening; his mind was lost in the universe where the gun had been aimed just a few inches to one side.

  “I’ll ask again.” This time the gun was pressed against Dom’s temple. “Who knows where the money is?”

  “I don’t fucking know.” If hatred was a laser, his stare would have cut Dunstan in two. Everything in him wanted to add “Kevin,” just to piss him off. Everything but his broken ribs, at least. The
y stopped him.

  “I bet your boss would know. I bet he’ll tell you where it is.”

  “I don’t think he will. He won’t care because I don’t fucking care.”

  “Oh, you will care. You will go to the man who sent you and ask him for it… all of it.”

  Dom shook his head, almost laughing in his tormentor’s face.

  “Are you stupid? He didn’t trust me with the money in the first place. Why do you think he’s going to give it to me now?”

  The Boss grabbed Dom by the scruff of the neck and thrust him toward the van. Popping the payload door, the Boss revealed his plan B.

  Bound up and hunched up on the dirty bloodstained wooden floor of the payload area was Georgia. A large welt on her right cheek.

  “Because if he doesn’t, I’m going to gut his daughter like a fish. And not before me and my boys have a taste of her sweet flesh.”

  Dom retched again, but like his brain trying to conjure thoughts of escape, there was nothing coming up.

  Chapter 54

  The road was a blur. There were lights, there were cars, there were white lines separating the lanes. Dom saw none of it. He had been thrown back into the car and sent back to get the money.

  This time the money was a ransom.

  As the world rushed past in a mass of headlights and tail-lights, Dom took stock of his life. His ribs throbbed every time he breathed. The side of his jaw felt tight to move and raw to the touch. His stomach ached from all the vomiting. The real pain for him was the vast chasm in his soul where all thoughts of Bob and Georgia should be. The physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional. He had never felt so helpless.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had been driving for. It could have been five minutes or five hours, but he couldn’t have cared less. He had a new objective now and no plan how to action it. Somewhere down the line there had been a double-cross or a lack of trust and Dom didn’t know which part of that Venn diagram he fitted into.

  The voice of the satnav instructed him to take the next slip-road. It was the M32 and the road back into Bristol. Even though the clock blinked 1am, Dom was still heading back to Mach Tech. Ordinarily, there would be no one there. But somehow, he knew that tonight would be the night to catch someone out of hours.

  Sure enough, as he pulled the BMW up to the gates, Dom could see the glow of activity toward the rear of the building. It was where most deliveries arrived and tonight he understood what type of ‘goods in’ would be shipped in during the dead of night.

  The gate was padlocked, but that wasn’t going to deter Dom from getting in. He parked the car next to the gate and climbed up on to the roof, shortening the distance between him and the top edge of the fence, which was covered in barbed wire. Wrapping his jacket around his hands, he was able to swing over the fence and drop to the ground.

  The main corporate entrance to the building was unlocked but the reception was lit only by the emergency lighting that stayed on when the building was empty.

  Scaling the stairs swiftly, he walked directly to Tommy McQuillan’s office.

  He didn’t knock. He just walked in.

  McQuillan was in his usual pose, slumped in his leather high-backed office chair behind his dark wood desk.

  “Dominic?” There was definite surprise in his voice.

  “You weren’t expecting me to return, were you?” For a man in his position, Dom spoke with some confidence.

  “Not at this time of night, I wasn’t.”

  “There was no money in the boot of the car.” It wasn’t asked as a question but it was certainly something that required an answer.

  “I know.” McQuillan was borderline flippant.

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons.” McQuillan stretched his long arms as though the late hour was starting to wear heavily on him, “Firstly, because we needed a decoy. Secondly, I knew we had a mole and I couldn’t really trust you.”

  “But you also sent me out with a gun that didn’t work. How was I supposed to protect myself?”

  “It looks like you didn’t need to. You made it back here, didn’t you?” McQuillan was mastering the casual answers.

  “Looks can be deceiving.” Dom burned his stare into the man behind the desk.

  “Did you get into difficulty?”

  “You fucking people!” Dom screamed. “You think nothing of the collateral damage of your schemes, do you?”

  “You’re a fine one to talk.” Suddenly McQuillan was paying close attention to the tirade from the man before him.

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “The police officer you injured. The reason you were in prison for so long. Surely he was collateral damage in one of your schemes.”

  “And I’ve paid for that,” Dom spat.

  “Do you think PC Longhurst thinks that?”

  To hear the name of the injured man stung Dom’s pride, but it also meant that McQuillan had been digging into the past.

  “Maybe not, but I think about what I did every single day.”

  “The remorse wasn’t enough to keep you out of another car though, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Dom couldn’t argue with that.

  “So,” McQuillan dropped his volume to a nominal level, “why are you here?”

  “Because I was hijacked.”

  “They only got a shitload of old newspapers though, didn’t they?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Why, what else did they get?”

  Dom could barely breathe as his brain started to process how to deliver the news. He was broken on the inside but showing boldness beyond his means on the outside. He knew this was all a game of whose balls were the biggest.

  “Well, what else?” McQuillan was sitting up instead of slouching now.

  “They’ve got Georgia.”

  “WHAT?!” McQuillan was out of his seat and across the room before Dom knew what was happening.

  “They’ve got her, Tommy, they’ve got her.” Dom stood as upright as he could as McQuillan looked down on him. That was hard to do. McQuillan stood six feet eight. There was a reason why he was called the ‘Tall Man.’

  Chapter 55

  If it was a fight, it was one-sided. Dom put up little resistance. McQuillan wasn’t striking at him, merely grappling with him in anger, but there was also despair, or more likely powerlessness.

  The Tall Man was always in control. He had designed his life that way, both the legitimate side and the illicit. In this situation, he had nothing.

  “You evil fucking shit!” It was rage. It was a father’s rage with dire concern for his offspring. “She trusted you and you betrayed her.”

  Dom held his tongue while he defended himself. He felt the man’s pain and understood the distress.

  The commotion had drawn other members of the network to the office. Dom suddenly saw himself surrounded by all of McQuillan’s right-hand men. Richards, Gary and Callum had barged into the room, surprised to see their employer out of his seat, contending with one of their own.

  “Let him go, Tommy.” Richards stepped in to get a handle on what was happening.

  “They’ve got my Georgia.” McQuillan’s face was rage red right down to the whites of his eyes.

  “Who’s got her?”

  “Kevin fucking Dunstan,’ said Dom. ‘Now calling himself ‘The Boss,’ because by all means, he wants what have – including her.”

  “And you let him have her?” There was a lunge from McQuillan coupled with the words, but both were deflected by Richards.

  “You used to drive for the Dunstan. Are you part of this plan? Or are you loyal to us?” Richards was now doing all the talking.

  “No. I’m not a part of the plan but I don’t think I’m one of you, either.” It was an honest answer.

  “Why do you think you’re not one of us?”

  “There was no money in the car and the gun you gave me didn’t work. I think those were details I needed to know.”

  “You w
ere the decoy. And we didn’t think anyone was going to catch you.” Richards skipped over the detail of the gun. “How did they catch you?”

  Dom’s head dropped. The sense of loss oozed from him. There was no way to fake the emotion he was displaying.

  “They kidnapped Bob Deakin, tortured him and sent me the pictures.”

  “Can you prove this?”

  Dom handed over his phone. Richards scrolled through the messages.

  “This proves nothing. I reckon it’s staged.”

  “It’s not fucking staged!” Dom couldn’t hold back his fury. “He’s cooped up in the back of the van with Georgia as we speak. He’s innocent in all of this. He’s been shot. He’s scared. You need to help me get him back too.”

  “I reckon this is bullshit, Tommy. He’s still Dunstan’s guy”

  “Fuck you!” Dom wasn’t done. “Stop wasting time. Dunstan still has Georgia. Either pay the money, or let’s go and get them both back.”

  “Firstly, we only have your word that Dunstan has her. Secondly, you can play the loyal subject while you’re here but what side were you playing on when Dunstan took her. It seems all too convenient that she would go missing when you were on the road.”

  Dom lunged at Richards but was dragged back by Callum and Gary. “She came to stop me doing the job. She knew there was something wrong and tried to warn me.”

  Richards circled the restrained Dom. He seemed to be pondering on the next course of action, whether to believe the driver’s story or beat the truth out of him. His mind was made up.

  “Take him to the Room.”

  “Take me where?” Dom yelled, struggling against the men holding him.

  “You’re going to tell us the truth.” Richards smiled. “One way or another.”

  Chapter 56

  In the dim light, Dom could just make out the fresh drops of blood cast onto the filthy concrete floor. It was his blood. The beating had been severe.

  Gary and Callum had taken it in turns, punching Dom while he was tied to a chair. Each strike was in response to the unsatisfying answers he gave to the line of questioning. The beating had stopped, for now. Somehow it seemed like it was a breather and not the end of the pain.