ASBO: A Novel of Extreme Terror (14 page)

“I said does that sound good?” Frankie repeated.

Andrew nodded.

Frankie clapped his hands together.  “Good.  Now get up and fight me.”

Andrew wondered whether he’d heard Frankie correctly.  “What?”

Frankie raised both fists in a boxer’s pose.  “I want to see what you got, old man.”

“I’m tied up,” said Andrew.

“I know that, you fuckin’ mug.  Dom will let you loose, innit.”

Dom heard his name and looked up from the television, fuzzy-eyed and half asleep.

Andrew thought about things for a second and decided this could be his only chance; the only opportunity he might have of getting away and reaching help.  He had to take it.

“Okay, Frankie.  I’ll fight you.”

Frankie started throwing punches in the air, fighting an invisible opponent.  “Dom, get him loose,” he ordered between an uppercut and an overhand right.  “Use the scissors – but keep a hold of ‘em.”

Lest I drive them into your skull,
thought Andrew.  Adrenaline was coursing through his veins in fearful anticipation.  Fighting was a skill beyond him and he had little doubt Frankie would whoop him in short order.  Standing toe to toe with a barbaric thug was not the plan Andrew intended to follow, though.  He had other ideas.

Dom hacked at the duct tape around Andrew’s body.  With each passing second, Andrew felt the bonds loosen, the circulation returning to his arms.  Several minutes later and Andrew was finally free.  He hopped up, wincing as the pressure in his kneecaps caused them to click painfully.

Frankie stood in front of him with clenched fists, holding them aloft his chin like a boxer.  “What shall we say?  Three-minute rounds?  Or shall we just fight till a knock-out?”

Andrew took the opportunity, one last time, to try and reason with Frankie.  “You don’t have to do this, Frankie.  You can just leave right now.  No one blames you for any of this.  Your mother has obviously failed you.”

The comment seemed to strike a chord with Frankie; his clenched fists lowered slightly.  Then he spat onto the carpet.  “Bitch has nothing to do with me.”

Andrew nodded.  “I know, and that’s a shame.  No one deserves to be raised like that.”

“You don’t know shit!  Not a thing, so don’t play the caring soul with me.  People like you couldn’t give two shits about people like me.”

“Yeah,” said Michelle.  “Just put his lights out, Frankie.”

Frankie nodded to his girlfriend, raised his fists again.  Then he rang an imaginary bell.  “Ding!  Ding!”

With Frankie approaching like a viper ready to strike, Andrew made his own move.  He dashed for the living room door.

“The fuckers trying to do one,” said Jordan from the floor.

Andrew shoved through the door and barrelled into the hallway.  He turned to his right and sprinted for the porch.  His plan was to rush into the street; cry for help with everything he had.  His neighbours may not come out to help, but he was sure at least one of them would call the police.  This would all be over soon.

When Andrew reached the porch, something that could only be terror filled his belly.

The front door was locked.

“Looking for these?” asked Frankie, jangling a set of keys in his hand.  He was leaning out the living room doorway.

Andrew was cornered; inside his very own house – but it may as well have been some dark, deserted alleyway for all the safety it provided now.  Andrew looked around and snatched at the first thing he saw, which turned out to be a golfing brolly.  He lunged forward, holding the long metal umbrella in front of him like a pike. 

Frankie dodged back into the living room.  “The fuck you going to do with that?  Catch the blood that’s gonna be raining down when I catch you?”

Andrew considered the viability of his weapon and realised it wasn’t going to hurt anyone – at least not enough to win a fight.  The only option was to run –
but to where?

Andrew eyed the stairs.  With panic threatening to explode his heart, he made a break for it.  Frankie tried to grab him as he passed, but Andrew managed to fend him off by poking the umbrella into his face.  The sharp point found its mark and caused Frankie to flinch back against the wall, clutching one eye.

“Fuckin’ dead man!” he shouted after Andrew.  “I’m going to mess you up.”

Andrew rushed up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.  Frankie continued shouting hateful threats from the floor below, rallying his drug-addled troops into battle.  Andrew sped across the landing and headed for the only room he knew that had a lock: the bathroom.

Once inside, he slammed the door shut behind him and turned the lock to:
engaged. 
Then he dragged the linen basket across the tiled floor and used it as a barricade.  He collapsed on top of it and placed his back against the door, huffing and puffing like a marathon runner.  It would all be for nothing, though.  The door was too thin to hold out for long, and upon realising that, Andrew figured out his biggest mistake.

He was trapped.

In any other room of the house Andrew could have escaped through one of the windows, or at least cried out for help, but the bathroom had only a slim, horizontal pane of frosted glass set high into the wall.  Even if he broke the glass it was too small to get through.

Andrew gave up, leant his head back against the door.  It wasn’t long before Frankie arrived and started to kick it in.

***

“You’re a dead man,” said Frankie, thrusting another kick at the door.

The wood at Andrew’s back was already cracked, splintered, and weakened further with every blow.  Andrew pushed against it, trying to brace the wood, but he already knew that it was a lost cause.  Frankie was going to get through eventually.

Andrew checked out his surroundings; the bathroom seemed alien to him.  Once a room where he could relax, de-stress, and release the worries of the day, it was now his prison; a cage where he was the rat trapped inside.

Another kick struck the door and rattled the fragile woodwork of the frame.  Andrew stepped away from the door and begun rifling through the bathroom’s wall cabinets, but couldn’t find a single thing to defend himself with (unless toothpaste had recently been reclassified as a deadly weapon).  The recently-renovated bathroom was a jewel of modernist design – which meant it was pretty much empty.

Andrew put his hands on the only thing that seemed even slightly useful and pulled.  The chrome towel rail came away from the wall easily, the thin cavity wall offering little resistance.  The quality of newer built homes did not compare to the industrious design of Victorian housing, but Andrew was thankful for it right now.  However it was also the reason that a large, cracking dent was widening in the middle of the bathroom’s flimsy door.

Frankie was going to get through soon and Andrew prepared himself for it; the earlier option of running no longer available.

“You’re finished, old man,” Frankie shouted through the door, rage filling his voice like steaming liquid into a beaker.  “Going to string you up and let your family watch you hang!”

“Yeah,” said a female voice that could only have been Michelle.  “But I’m going to stamp on your head first, you fuckin’ perv!”

Andrew could hear Dom and Jordan on the landing as well, but could not make out their words – it was just laughter mostly.  It sounded like a party out there. 
The whole gang is here; ready to get their pound of flesh.

A desperate anger started to occupy Andrew, an instinct reserved only for when fleeing was no longer an option – a sudden spark of insanity that infected any animal inescapably cornered: the willingness to fight to the death.

Andrew clutched the towel rail above his head and told himself it was a mighty broadsword.  He pictured that his attackers were pillaging Vikings coming to take his land and women.

Frankie continued kicking at the door.

The wood splintered.

Cracked.

Caved.

Before the door gave way completely, Frankie gave one last hefty kick that splintered it away from the frame.  It forced open slowly, pushing aside the linen basket that lay against it.

Frankie poked his head through the gap and grinned maniacally.  “Hey man, what you up to?  Guy spends too long in the bathroom it starts to look a little…unsavoury.”

Andrew huffed defiantly, still clutching the towel rail above his head.  “Nice word. You learn that today?  Here’s another one for you –
Pussy
!”

Frankie lunged into the bathroom.

Andrew swung the towel rail at his shaven head.

The blow connected.

Frankie stumbled backwards and the rear of his thighs hit the lip of the room’s bathtub.  He lost his balance and tumbled into the tub.

Andrew took advantage of the situation and made a run for it.  But Jordan and Dom blocked his escape; twin slabs of granite extinguishing any hopes of safety.

Before the twins had chance to react, Andrew swung the towel rail at them.  The blow missed both targets and struck the battered frame of the doorway.  It was enough to make the two boys flinch and step aside.  

Andrew suddenly found himself facing an open doorway.  There was no place he could think of running that would be any safer than the bathroom, but at least for now Andrew was no longer trapped.  He had options again.

He was just about to race out into the hallway when something bit into his calf muscle; a white-hot jolt that travelled up his entire leg.

Andrew fell down onto one knee and glanced over his shoulder to see what had pierced his flesh.  He saw Frankie standing over him, grinning, and licking blood from a nasty-looking knife.

“What are we going to do with you?” he said, before stamping on Andrew’s face and sending him swirling into unconsciousness.

Chapter Sixteen

Davie sat in the living room listening to the ruckus upstairs.  The women were sat beside him and both shuddered with every sound.

“It will be okay,” Davie told them.  “They’ll all be gone soon.  My brother’s just having a laugh.”

Rebecca looked at him like he was an idiot.  “A laugh?  Are you insane?  Someone is going to end up dead and you’ll be just as much to blame as your psycho brother.”

Davie shook his head.  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Wake up, you dickhead.  Your brother’s dragged you into this.  You’re the one keeping an eye on us – that makes you one of the kidnappers.  You’ll rot in jail unless you let us go right now.”

Davie wanted to make her see sense, but managed only to choke on a mouthful of words that never formed into sentences.

“You’re in a mess and you know it,” Rebecca stated.  “You don’t want any of this, do you?  You don’t want to end up a worthless thug like your brother.”

“Shut up,” Davie told her.  “I won’t hear you talk shit about Frankie.”

Rebecca shook her head at him in a way he did not like.  It looked like pity.  “Stop defending him, Davie.  You’re not like him, I can tell.  You’re a good person.”

Davie ran both hands through his hair and let out a long breath.  His head still ached and now he felt dizzy as well.  The banging and shouting from upstairs didn’t help the situation.  How had things gotten so crazy?  Did it start when he was hit by Andrew’s car, or was the whole turn of events inevitable even before that?  Davie had a feeling that Andrew and Frankie were destined to reach this point regardless. He just hoped his involvement hadn’t made things worse.

“Let us go,” Rebecca said calmly.  “This is the point where you decide whether you want to be part of this or not.  If you let us go now then it will be clear that you just got caught up in something.  Keep us here, though, and you’re proving that you’re as happy to go along with this as the others.”

Davie stared down at the carpet, down at a chunk of browning cod meat that jutted out from beneath the sofa.  He thought about things long and hard, then looked Rebecca in the eye.  “He’ll kill me if I help you.  You’ll have him arrested, and when he gets out he will literally kill me.  Frankie is all I have so why would I want to make him hate me?”

Rebecca stared back at him with deep, soulful eyes.  “Because you know that this is wrong, Davie.”

Davie nodded.  He didn’t want to see this girl get hurt – in fact he could hardly bear it.  “Okay,” he said to her in a hushed whisper, already regretting what he was about to do. “Get out of here.  Quickly, before I change my mind.”

Rebecca put her arms around Davie and squeezed him tightly.  “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear.  Then she stood up and grabbed her mother’s hand.  “Come on, mum.”   Rebecca tugged hard at her mother’s arm, trying to snap her out of the daze she was in.  “We can go and get help now.  It’s all over.”

Davie knew the decision he’d just made was the right one – could tell by the love and concern Rebecca had for her mother – but it didn’t make him feel any less apprehensive.  Frankie was indeed going to kill him.

Rebecca managed to get her mother standing, despite the woman’s hands and feet being bound, and was now looking down at Davie with an expression he wasn’t used to.  It looked like compassion.  “I’ll make sure the police know that you had nothing to do with this,” she told him.  “You should get out of here, too, before Frankie comes back dow-“

Andrew crashed through the living room door and sprawled onto the carpet beside the sofa.  His hands were covered in blood, as were his jeans and shirt.  Frankie came through the door immediately after him – followed by Shell and the twins – and swung a massive kick into his midsection.

Andrew was silent as the blow crushed his ribs and sent him struggling for breath on his back.  Covered by blood and swollen in the face, Andrew looked more dead than alive.

Frankie looked around and noticed that Rebecca and her mother were standing.  Davie swallowed a lump in his throat as he waited for his brother’s reaction.

“Sit down, bitches,” Frankie ordered them, without seeming suspicious.  Perhaps he assumed they’d stood up in surprise when Andrew had crashed into the room.

Rebecca did not sit down as instructed and instead lunged right at Frankie with her fingernails pointed out like claws.