Cog in the Machine Read online

  “I’m not buying anything, so you can clear off!” she ordered. Her voice grated as if she’d smoked forty a day and drank whiskey for decades.

  “Mrs Winter?”

  “Yes, but what are you selling?”

  “Nothing. I’m Dominic Carver. Bob Deakin rented the room for me.” He kept his pitch light and friendly.

  “Oh, sorry.” A scrawny toothless smile appeared on the hundred-and-fifty year-old face. “You’re Bob’s nephew. You’ve been living abroad, haven’t you?”

  Dom just nodded and smiled. He wished Bob had let him in on the cover story. Clearly, Mrs Winter would have been none too pleased to know she had a jailbird living with her.

  As Dom stepped into the dank hallway, he couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the stench of cigarette smoke, with a subtle hint of boiling laundry. It was as though he’d not only stepped into a house but a different dimension too.

  “Come this way.” She beckoned him and took the lead down to the below-ground floor flat. Shuffling in a threadbare pair of mule slippers, Mrs Winter turned to Dom and handed him a set of keys. She explained each one in more detail than was absolutely necessary but he didn’t interrupt her landlady patter.

  There was a lockable door at the bottom of the dimly lit staircase, but it wasn’t locked at the moment. The aged woman turned the handle forcibly and the door creaked open.

  Dom was half expecting an antique chair and bed, illuminated by a single candle, with an old bowl and jug combination for his daily ‘ablutions.’

  To his surprise, the rooms were in a significantly more modern state than the rest of the house. Not brand spanking new modern, but updated in the last few years to a fairly reasonable standard.

  They had stepped into a lounge/dining area. The floor had bare boards but they had been varnished, polished and covered with a neutral beige rug. A two-seater brown leather sofa sat at the edge of the rug next to a wrought iron framed coffee table with a rough cut wooden top. There was a wooden TV stand, without a TV on it, tucked next to a bookcase which did have some books, mostly crime fiction, neatly filling every shelf.

  On the opposite side of the room, near to the front wall facing the street, were a few kitchen units; modern but cheap. There was a microwave oven, a kettle and a toaster on the counter, and a fridge and washing machine in the space below. Dom was impressed.

  “Now, there’s no TV in here but I have one upstairs you can use. Hasn’t got a zapper though.” She clenched fingers and pressed thin air with her thumb to demonstrate what she meant.

  “Thank you.” Dom was thankful, genuinely. Not just to Mrs Winter, but to Bob too.

  “You’re welcome. I’ll leave you to get settled.” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs Winter was gone.

  Toward the back of the room were two doors. A quick recce revealed a double bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers in a reasonably standard bedroom; bare boards, rug, neutral colours. Behind the other door was the bathroom. This had been modernised quite recently; new shower cubicle, new sink, new toilet. The walls were painted plain white and the floor had black and white checkerboard tiles.

  The warm feeling of freedom began to envelope him. This was his new life. This was his new start. Success or failure was down to him.

  Chapter 14

  Run and hide. Run and hide. The chemicals snorted up the straw didn’t play well with the massive quantity of adrenalin now surging through every capillary. There was only one door in or out of the fifth floor flat and that was the one being pounded on by the one person he absolutely didn’t want to see.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The door rattled in the frame.

  “Innis!” a gravelly voice roared through the letterbox. “If you’re in there, you’d better open the fucking door.”

  Should he stay silent? Should he hide under the bed? Should he try to climb out of the window?

  The rapid pounding of his heart was kicking out suggestions to avoid the inevitable. The clock was ticking, but then it had been ticking since the Boss had put fifty bags of cocaine in Innis’s hands and told him to sell it.

  He had sold it. Most of it anyway, but the money he made from the sales, three quarters of which was supposed to go back to the Boss, he had spent on booze, smokes and girls. Not the girls from his local pub, where he liked to act like the big man, but the street hookers from the precinct; the roughest whores ever to walk the streets of Bristol. Filthy, drug-riddled women who would forget the condom if the price was right. That was how Innis liked it – filthy.

  Oh how he wished he had had another thirty quid that afternoon. If so, he would have been scuttling over Trudy, his favourite whore, who would let him do just about anything he wanted to her anorexic chic, diseased body. He had already caught a dose from her but he didn’t care because she didn’t care. She was one of the few streetwalkers who could work all day, every day. Because of the lack of sustenance, coupled with her heroin addiction, her menstrual cycle had ceased. Trudy was always open for business, and he wished he was giving her business right at that moment, on a ragged, stained mattress in the squat she often used.

  But he wasn’t with Trudy. He was at home.

  The door frame splintered as the heavy fireproof front door exploded open, ripping the hinges from the frame.

  “Innis! Where are you, you horrible little cunt?” The Boss stepped into the dank squalid flat, tiptoeing through the discarded cigarette butts and beer cans that littered the floor. He was followed by his two favourite henchmen, Gibbo and Wade. They were his favourites because they were a pair of ruthless, conscience-free brutes who aimed to please their employer with acts of unrestrained violence.

  Gibbo was walking intimidation; a beast of a man with aged, faded tattoos on his substantial arms. He had closely cropped greying brown hair and a jagged face that screamed a history of violence.

  Wade was almost the opposite; of average build; but wiry, with a scrapper’s mentality. His head was shaven and his fists permanently clenched, as though waiting to punch someone – anyone. With a military background and a bare-knuckle reputation, he was just as intimidating as his much larger colleague.

  “What a filthy little shithole for a filthy little shit!” growled Gibbo, also picking a path through the debris of many months without a maid.

  “Innis! You thieving little fucker! If I have to send the boys to find you, they won’t be best pleased – and you know what they’re like when they’re not pleased.” The Boss was already impatient but was showing great restraint. Normally, he would have poured petrol through the letterbox and burned the toe-rag out, but since the Grenfell Tower fire some years ago, he’d thought better of that kind of tactic.

  Skulking out of the bedroom, Innis shuffled toward the lounge, the cocaine fuelling his natural anxiety about what would happen next.

  “Look, Boss.” Tears streamed down Innis’s cheeks. “I need a bit more time – you’ll get your money, I promise. Just let-”

  “Shut your fucking lying mouth, boy,” the Boss’s voice rumbled with rage. “You’ve had too many chances as it is. You need to either give me the money or give me the drugs - I’m guessing you’ve got neither.”

  “L-look…” Innis stammered in desperation, but the words didn’t come.

  “No, you look.” The comment was punctuated with the back of a hand that sent Innis to the floor. “You’ve been spunking my product all over town and spending my money. You’ve got nothing to give me, so what use are you?”

  “I’ve g-got information…” Innis managed to stutter, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth.

  “You’ve got nothing but lies, boy.” The Boss took a step back. “Gibbo. Wade. Teach this little fucker a lesson in obedience.”

  In synchronized movements, as though practiced a thousand times, the two henchmen moved as one, picking up the drug-dealing wannabe and throwing him onto an armchair. Gibbo stepped behind the chair, pulling Innis’ arms back.

  Wade took a claw hammer from inside his jacket.

>   Innis’s eyes went saucer-wide as he saw the tool. “No, please, no… AAAAAGGHH!”

  The pleading didn’t stop the hammer from being brought down hard onto his kneecap.

  Wade glanced at the Boss. The Boss nodded.

  The hammer fell onto the other knee. There was an audible crack as the patella bone shattered.

  Innis yelped like a tortured hound. Tears flowed from his reddening eyes.

  Another blow, this time on his ankle, cracking yet another bone. The high-pitched scream was muted by a rag thrust into the mouth.

  Both ankles – broken.

  Both shin bones – broken.

  Both thigh bones – broken.

  “PLEEAASSEE!” Even muffled by the rag, the word came out.

  The Boss nodded again at Wade.

  The rag was removed.

  “What do you have to say?”

  There was little breath going in as the shuddering sobs flowed out.

  “I… have… some… inform… ation…”

  “Well, why don’t you whisper it in my ear, like a good little grass.” The Boss leaned forward, placing the side of his face as close to the grubby little drug dealer as he dared.

  A few words – whispered – came forth. The information was delivered.

  “Thank you. That is very interesting.” There was sarcasm in the reply. “Would you like the boys to help you to hospital?”

  There was a nod of the head but not much more.

  “Gibbo. Wade. Make sure he takes the quick route down.”

  There was screaming, but no kicking, on the way to the hole where the front door used to be. There was screaming as the broken Innis was lifted above the railings. There was screaming as he fell five floors to the tarmac. But there was no more screaming as the man’s skull met the hard surface below.

  The Boss and his henchmen walked away. Nobody heard or saw a thing. At least that was what the police would be told.

  Chapter 15

  As first days at work go, it was pretty full-on. Dom had turned up on time, been given the health and safety tour - fire exits, drills, procedures and so on - then paired up with a warehouse worker to learn the ropes.

  There weren’t any ropes to learn, just stacking boxes neatly onto pallets and moving the pallets to a designated location. It was tedious and back-breaking but very satisfying for Dom.

  He’d not done anything so physical in over a decade, and he was feeling it. The clock was almost at 1pm and apart from a ten-minute coffee break, they had been hard at it since 8am. Dom’s back screamed while his thighs burned and his hands throbbed. Tomorrow would be a new day and he expected to be suffering.

  The colleague he had been paired up with was a man in his early thirties called Chris.

  Chris was not a local to Bristol. While he may have lived less than a five-minute drive from the warehouse, his accent was pure Essex. He was a likable guy, a bit blunt and very knowledgeable about the job. He didn’t seem to know much else. They had been chatting throughout the day about a variety of subjects from football to films, but the conversation had been steered away from personal information. Dom wasn’t willing to part with the fact that he’d just finished a twelve stretch as the driver in an armed robbery, but he didn’t need to worry as his new best friend seemed not to want to know anything about him.

  “So have you seen Snatch? Now there’s a great film. I mean Brad Pitt’s pikey accent is funny as fuck, but I love that shit. What a movie!” Chris was rambling through his top ten films of all time.

  Most of them seemed to be crime related. Goodfellas, The Departed, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption – either the films featured a prison or how to end up in one.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it. Good movie.” Dom was happy just to agree with the majority of the choices. Some of the more recent choices he’d not seen, but then, there hadn’t been day release for movie premiers.

  “Have you seen Training Day? Denzel Washing-” Chris stopped mid-sentence, as though distracted. “Amazing! This is one of the best things about working here - you’ll see.”

  Dom was bemused by his colleague’s goofy smile.

  Somewhere within the cathedral-like vaulted roof of the warehouse, a sound rebounded off the steel panels. It was the clip-clip-clip of a woman’s stilettoes.

  And then he saw her.

  Dressed in a tight black dress, with bare, lightly tanned legs and black four-inch heels, and the obligatory high visibility vest, was a stunning young woman. She was naturally tall, and taller still in the heels, slim, with long straight black hair. Her eyes were steel blue and narrow, yet sharp. Dom couldn’t breathe.

  “Hi, you must be Dominic…” She fumbled through some sheets attached to a clipboard. “Carver.”

  “Yes. Hello.” Overcome by nerves, he kept the words to a minimum.

  “I’m Georgia. I’m the HR consultant for Mach Tech. I have some paperwork for you to sign in my office. If you wouldn’t mind dropping in before you leave today, I can add you to the system. Would that be OK?” She smiled with her perfectly aligned brilliant white teeth.

  “No problem.” Dom nodded and smiled awkwardly back.

  “Good.” Without further ado, she clip-clip-clipped away.

  Dom just watched her go.

  “She can add me to her system any day she wants,” Chris uttered under his breath.

  “She is something else.”

  “Isn’t she just? I spend my nights dreaming about getting her into bed.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “I’m not mental,” Chris answered.

  “Is she seeing anyone?” Dom was hopeful.

  He wanted to integrate back into society and that would mean interaction with the female of the species. The only woman he had encountered in the last decade was the prison doctor. She was an overweight lady in her late fifties and didn’t possess the necessary attributes to pique Dom’s interest. That was not the case for some of the other prisoners. One guy had been so desperate for female contact that he claimed to have lumps in his scrotum just so he could be examined. Asking the doctor to remove her gloves for the examination had proved a step too far. Dom prayed that he would never stoop so low.

  “No, she’s not, but you want to steer clear of her.”

  “Why, keeping her all for yourself?” Dom was digging.

  “I wish. No, you need to steer clear because of her father.”

  “Who’s her father?”

  “Tommy McQuillan. She’s the boss’s daughter.”

  That was news to put off any suitor, but Dom was prepared to take the risk. He’d lost so much from taking risks; surely it was now his time to prosper by taking a few more. Right?

  Chapter 16

  The street was more than an indication of what was hidden behind the closed doors. Broken windows boarded up with cardboard. The occasional faulty electrical item dumped out in front, discarded like the people in this area. The few cars that were parked up were mostly old, battered MOT failures, without tax or insurance. It was a hive for hopelessness, poor unfortunate unemployed wretches in every property; men unable to work due to fictitious medical conditions; young women worn down by multiple children by multiple fathers, none of which were still in the picture.

  The Boss parked the standard white Transit van behind a rusting blue Vauxhall Corsa. The Corsa belonged to his man on the inside.

  As ever, accompanied by Wade and Gibbo, the Boss climbed out of the Transit and headed for the dankest of all the houses on the street.

  A young, emaciated woman in oversized clothing pushed a grubby pram, passing the three men.

  The Boss turned to his henchmen. “That one there,” he said, pointing at the woman deliberately, so she could see. “Only twenty-one and got four kids with four different surnames. Dirty slag should work for me. At least she’d get paid for opening her legs.”

  Wade and Gibbo fake-laughed in unison.

  The blistered red paint from the front door scattered like confetti o
n the broken slate slab that formed the doorstep. The aged doorframe crammed with so much filler that the frame was more filler than wood. The outside of the property though was just a taster of what lay within.

  There was no need to knock on the door. No need to be announced. The Boss ‘owned’ everything within the four filthy, damp, crumbling walls. Everything.

  The door creaked and lurched as it opened. Only two of the four hinges were actually attached to the doorframe and they were close to failing.

  Putrid air cloyed the hallway. The stench of too many people in too small a space was overpowering. What went on within the four walls generated a whole other odour.

  The Boss opened the first door in the hallway.

  The small room was a haphazard office-cum-reception. A battered faux leather sofa was for the waiting customers. It was empty, but then it was early.

  Directly opposite the sofa there was a cheap desk and a home office swivel chair. A skinny young man perched on the chair, nervously eyeing the three men. Nathan, or Nate, as he preferred to be called, was dressed head to foot in grey threadbare sportswear, a black baseball cap with oversized peak balancing on his clipped hair.

  “Bit quiet this morning?” the Boss asked.

  “All the girls are busy, I think.”

  “You shouldn’t think - you should know.”

  “Sorry, Boss.”

  “What’s last night’s take?”

  “About five hundred quid-”

  A rapid hand swiped the words from the man’s mouth.

  “ABOUT? ABOUT? You don’t give me ‘about’ or ‘approximately.’ You give me the exact figure when I ask. Got it?”

  Not wanting another, more vicious reprimand, the young man swiftly counted the notes in front of his employer.

  “Five hundred and forty-five pounds, Boss.”

  “That’s fucking light. Why is it light? Are you holding out on me?”

  Cowering to give an acceptable answer, the young man raised his hands to his ears, expecting a slap, or worse, “We didn’t get many in last night, it was quiet. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Boss.”