He’d show the bastards, he thought, as he left the dregs of his pint on the bar top and tottered to the door connecting with the toilets. He’d make the arrests, get the convictions, clean up this fucking cow-town, and when the pompous shithouses from New Scotland Yard came to give him his medal, he’d tell them to fuck right off.
There was no one else in the toilets, which Laycock supposed he ought to be thankful for. There were far too many scrotes with sleeve tattoos, crappy earrings and Burberry caps loitering in mysterious little groups in pub bogs these days. They really must think the rest of society was stupid. Well, their time was coming. At least in this neighbourhood. He wandered to the nearest urinal, unzipped and let it go – four pints’ worth. That was as many as he’d thought he’d had since he’d last taken a leak.
It wasn’t something to be proud of, he supposed. It even made him feel a little hypocritical. But then Laycock drank for a reason; for one thing it helped cushion his monumental fall from grace, and at the same time, in a weird contradiction he felt no inclination to try and explain, he fancied it clarified his thinking, focused his aims. And of course he needed to be in these pubs; needed to find out for sure what was going on; needed to know indisputably who the lice were he could earmark for elimination.
So absorbed was Laycock in this line of thought that he only vaguely noticed someone else had come into the toilets. A brief glance over his shoulder detected a man wearing a grey hoodie under a khaki flak-jacket, now with his back turned as he too stood at a urinal. Another fucking hoodie, Laycock thought. Antisocial bastards. Terrorising the world with their pseudo-American gangsta wannabe attitude. No doubt, when the time came, he’d be rounding a few of those losers up as well. But first he needed the evidence to answer those all-important questions. Who actually was it? Who was dealing, who was fencing, who was catering to the kiddie-fiddlers …
He didn’t really feel the bang on the back of his head. Or rather, he felt it and at the same time heard a dull, hollow thump – but he didn’t notice any pain.
Not at first.
Not until he’d slumped down amid a deluge of cheap wine and a shower of broken glass, hitting the rim of the urinal with the bridge of his nose, causing an instant fracture. His head flirted backwards, the rear of his slashed-open scalp impacting hard on the dirty, piss-stained floor tiles.
Laycock was so fuddled that he didn’t even realise the guy reaching down towards him, the guy in the khaki jacket and hood, was the same guy who’d attacked him. Only when a pair of gloved hands took him by the lapels of his jacket and dragged him across the lavatory floor to the exterior exit, did an alarm bell start sounding in the back of his mind. He struggled, began to feebly kick. But his assailant was strong, hauling his twisting form effortlessly out over the step and down onto the gritty tarmac of the pub car park, from the opposite corner of which the rumbling of an engine, a pair of white reverse lights and the open rear doors of a high-sided van revealed a vehicle backing at speed towards him.
Two indistinguishable figures jumped from the rear of the van as it screeched to a halt in a cloud of murky exhaust. Laycock was in so much pain and confusion that he could barely burble, but this didn’t stop him writhing in his captor’s grasp, which he did increasingly as his senses seeped back. The guy in the hood responded by punching him, delivering a hard, clean shot to the middle of his solar plexus, driving the wind out of Laycock’s lungs. A savage nausea clenched his lower belly. As he doubled up, they clamped him by his knees, his ankles and his elbows, lifted him and slung him into the darkness of the vehicle’s interior – where more of them were waiting to receive him.
‘What … why’re you …?’ Laycock stammered, only for more blows to rain down.
One smashed his gagging mouth; another slammed his already broken nose, sending a jagged lance of pain through his head. Another caught him in the solar plexus, in the same place as before; maybe by accident, maybe by design – either way it induced such pain that Laycock thought it might kill him. For several seconds he couldn’t breathe, while one by one, his abductors climbed into the van, and the doors slammed shut, locking him in a stifling void where the stench of his own blood mingled with oil, sweat and the choking stink of carbon monoxide.
‘Who the … who the fuck …?’ he blubbered, but another gloved hand, this one spread wide, closed over his mouth, blocking out further words, pressing his lacerated head hard into the corrugated iron floor.
The engine growled, drowning out his muffled whimpers, and the vehicle juddered as it pulled out of the car park onto the road network. Laycock struggled harder, but they were literally on top of him, a mass of booted feet and heavy muscle swathed in canvas and waterproofs. Noticeably, no one spoke; there was no reassurance that everything would be okay if he complied; no consolation offered that this would all be over in the morning; no attempt of any sort to reason with or calm him.
Laycock wasn’t sure how long they were on the road for; maybe half an hour, maybe less. All he knew in that time was the darkness, the airlessness, and the pain of his injuries, the crushing weight on top of him, and the violent banging and jolting of the vehicle – and then the abrupt crunch of a loose surface beneath tyres, and the prolonged squeal as brakes were applied.
When the rear doors were yanked open, only very little light was shed in – the result of a waning half-moon passing through autumnal clouds – but it was sufficient to show the tall, angled outline of an unlit building, the exposed ribs of its rotted roof suggesting it was derelict. Yet more men were waiting there – in an orderly row, like a bunch of soldiers on parade.
Despite the violence he’d so far been subjected to, the first bolt of genuine horror only passed through Laycock’s rapidly sobering mind when he realised they were all wearing black ski-masks. With a wild lurch, he attempted to fight his way out of the van. He was a big guy himself, in his youth a military policeman, and he could pack a punch and a kick. But he didn’t get more than two or three inches before he was again restrained. One of the figures outside leaned in. With a metallic click, torchlight speared through the entrance.
‘Let’s at least make sure it’s the right guy,’ an American voice said.
The light hit Laycock in the face, penetrating to the backs of his aching eyes, causing him to blink involuntarily. A damp rag was moved vigorously back and forth across his face. He realised they were mopping away the clotted blood.
‘Yep,’ the American voice confirmed. ‘Check.’
The light went out and Laycock was taken by all four of his limbs and flung – literally flung – out onto the ground. He rolled over, thinking to jump to his feet, but when he looked up, the ramrod-straight silhouettes of his captors hemmed him in from all sides. Man by man, each one of them drew something from out of his clothing, and held it up. Laycock’s eyes had attuned sufficiently to the dim moonlight to observe that in every case it was the same thing – a claw-hammer.
‘What is this?’ he gabbled. ‘Whoever you are, you’ve got the wrong fella!’
‘No we ain’t,’ came that casual American voice.
‘Are you fucking mad? I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake!’
‘We’d hardly have gone to this trouble if you flipped burgers.’
‘Wait … just fucking wait!’ Laycock half-screamed, holding up empty palms, trying to press his abductors back with a helpless gesture. ‘Whoever you are, whatever I’m supposed to have done, I can fix it … there’s nothing that can’t be undone …’
But the first of the claw-hammers was already hurtling at his face, unseen in the gloom. It connected with a smack of meat and cracking bone.
‘Ouch!’