KILL ME IF YOU CAN (Dave Cunane Book 8) (40 page)

At least I was forewarned against him and I owed him the information he’d carelessly passed to Lew on that scrap of paper. Yes, I owed him for that and I also owed him a very painful death if I could deliver it.

Thinking on those lines led me back to Claverhouse’s words. I was being kept alive for a reason. Could it be that Hudson-Piggott had me in mind as the one who’d scatter the Caesium 137 round the fake ‘dirty’ bomb?

Thoughts of escape through the floorboards were crushed by the constant sounds of movement outside the hut. I’d never make it. I decided my best move was to feign weakness until it came to knife play with Lansdale.

I was moved before dawn.

I hadn’t slept but the sacks had given me some insulation against the biting cold of the floor and I felt less tense and strained than when they’d thrown me down.

I was hungry and thirsty but I had hope now.

Fortunately they were in a hurry and they didn’t check that I was still securely tied up. The missing shoe was ignored and I was wrapped in the same sacking that I’d lain on and thrown in the back of a van. To my horror ropes were tied round the sacking completely cocooning me.

The journey we took was a short one.

41

Saturday: Dawn

I couldn’t see out but I could tell that the van was moving slowly along a deeply rutted lane, turning frequently and slowing almost to a stop at times. There was no other traffic. The jolting motion hurt my ribs and I had to fight to stay centred. If I was fated to die today I’d rather go out fighting than whining and whimpering like a whipped dog.

Not that I’d ever witnessed a dog being whipped in pet loving England but I could imagine it. That picture of cruelty refocused me onto my own situation.

The van lurched to a stop and I heard them taking Rick Appleyard’s body out. There was an overwhelming stench of rubber: rubber tyres. It was strong enough to make me gag.

After a protracted interval I was also taken out and laid on the cold ground. The smell of rubber was overpowering. I was in some sort of enclosed space entirely surrounded by rubber tyres. There were fragments of metal on the ground: nothing useful, just bits of bolts and wire. I could move them by scraping my fingers. I heard the van drive away leaving me in the killing ground.

My doubts and fears surged. Claverhouse was playing a cruel joke on me.

I’d arrived at the real MOLOCH this time, the cruel furnace where children were sacrificed. When they started their radioactive bonfire I’d be in the middle of it.

I tried to work out where I was.

It had to be some kind of recycling area where old vehicles were ground into tiny particles of metal and tyres were salvaged. I struggled to get free. My foot came out of the plastic shackle but I couldn’t make any headway against the sacking. Whoever had cocooned me had taken his time and done it thoroughly.

But there had to be a way. I couldn’t allow myself to be turned into roasted meat. I freed my hands and was trying desperately to reach the knife in my sock when I felt a sharp kick.

‘Wait, you fool!’ Claverhouse whispered close to my ear. ‘You’ll get your chance soon.’

I gasped with relief. She was here and she was still on my side.

I stopped struggling and lay quietly, taking very shallow breaths. It was all right for Claverhouse to tell me to wait but the sacking was thick and I wasn’t getting much air. I fought to stay awake and relaxed and ready for action.

I’d just started on this when the binding ropes were removed and I was gripped by several hands and rolled over until I was face down. I waited but there no further attention was given to me so I took my chance to grab the blade and hide it in my sleeve. I could have been lying in the middle of a circle of observers but I had to risk it. Then I heard booted feet crunching over rough ground close by. I clamped my hands behind my back just in time.

The sacking was pulled off me.

My handcuffs wouldn’t have stood a second of inspection but they weren’t looking. Something else had their attention. I struggled to get onto my back and was helped by a contractor’s booted foot. He forced me back down when I tried to sit up.

I screwed up my eyes and craned my head forwards to see where I was. The stench of rubber was now joined by the smell of oil. As far as I could tell with my insect’s eye view I was lying at the base of an immense pyramid of rubber. Not rubber tyres but ground up rubber: product of an immense shredding machine which towered nearby. Large though it was, the pyramids it had produced were even bigger. Conveyor belts had carried the shredded material upwards onto the conical heaps. They were shut down now.

Someone had just drenched the base of the cone near me in oil. One of Hudson-Piggott’s thugs clumped past carrying a jerry can in each hand. 

‘Dave!’ a familiar mocking voice called out as if seeing me was something Molly Claverhouse had been looking forward to all day.

‘I didn’t think we parted company on the right terms last time so I wanted to see you again,’ she continued.

‘Get on with it,’ another voice snapped. ‘I’m still not convinced any of this is necessary.’

My sight was coming back.

The man who spoke was Hudson-Piggott. He was now dressed in a full body radiation suit with an air pack on his back not in black Nomex. He held the face mask under his left arm with one hand and his pistol in the other. 

Alongside him was a shorter figure I guessed was Lansdale, also wearing full radiation kit. Claverhouse too; she was in radiation kit, though hers was somehow different.

‘Right Cunane,’ Hudson-Piggott started, ‘decision time. You’re looking at a choice …’

‘Oh, I thought I was looking at a bunch of bloody traitors,’ I snarled, expecting anything, a bullet in the head, a sudden dousing with oil, any cruel death they could inflict.

It was foolish of me to speak. My words earned me a kick and a warning look from Claverhouse but not a bullet.

Like a teacher correcting a dim schoolboy Hudson-Piggott tutted mildly. He spoke with a cultivated upper class voice.

‘Actually, we’re a bunch of patriots, Cunane, but you wouldn’t understand that being Irish.’

‘You toffee nosed get!’ I snarled, imminence of death bringing out all my prejudices. ‘I understand that you’re a sadistic killer.’

‘Hmmm, you’ve still got life in you then. Perhaps we should just throw the sacking back over you and forget about you.’

‘Sir, we must stick to the plan,’ Claverhouse interjected.

‘Cunane, I’m in two minds about your disposal. There are two ways: one slow and one quick. The quick route involves the Sergeant here, a man who’s known for his brisk methods with troublemakers.’

‘A man who’s a murdering little rat, you mean,’ I muttered.

Hudson-Piggott reacted to my comment by drawing back his lips and revealing long teeth. He whinnied like one of Jenny’s ponies.

‘Eck, eck, eck,’ he went. ‘He wants to break your nasty neck and leave you here so it looks as if you lit this inferno. You’ll be wearing Islamic rig and clutching a copy of the Koran in your sweaty little palm.’

He bent over me and turned my head to the left so that I could see a portable torch kit with its oxy and acetylene tanks lying on the ground. There was a pile of clothing next to it, also a heap of splintered wood against the base of the cone.

My stomach gave a lurch but I tried to be defiant.

‘You’re a total nut job, aren’t you,’ I said, ‘a bloody psychopath.’

He let out that annoying whinny again.

‘Eck, eck, eck, not at all Cunane. I often think I’m the only sane man in a mad world.’

‘That’s a sure sign of insanity!’

‘Hmmm, as you persist in your stupid defiance I’m inclined to take your answer as no and let Sergeant Lansdale get on with things. However, thanks to you, we’re running late. So if you won’t cooperate I’ll have your family dealt with by the Sergeant. You have a choice, it’s up to you.’

Lansdale loomed over me. I could see the clouds and hear birds in the distance. The wind was blowing fiercely and the clouds were scudding across the sky. Lansdale raised his eyebrows expectantly. I swear he was licking his lips at the prospect of breaking my neck.

Claverhouse stood to one side. She looked very strained and though she didn’t speak I felt that her hazel eyes were imploring me. I noticed that she didn’t appear to have a weapon. Both Hudson-Piggott and Lansdale were wearing shoulder holsters over the NBC suits.

‘What’s this choice then?’ I muttered.

‘OK, you do exactly what we tell you. You’ll still die but your family will survive.  On the other hand, if you inconvenience us Sergeant Lansdale will kill you now and we’ll deal with your family later. By ‘deal’ I mean that they will disappear. There’s a remote possibility that your children may be taken for adoption but I wouldn’t count on that in the chaos of the regime-change which is coming.’

It wasn’t remotely funny but I found myself laughing. It was my nerves I suppose. His crazy idea of choice was no choice.

‘I choose the first option,’ I said.

‘Comical to the last, eh Cunane? I admire constancy in a man, a quality the unfortunate Rick Appleyard lacked. In consideration I’ll explain to you why your death will not be in vain.’

He assumed that odd duck-like posture that I’d seen before. Lecturing mode, I guessed.

‘Boss, we haven’t got all day,’ Lansdale complained. ‘This bastard has already caused us to bring the operation forward. Let me do him now.’

‘No,’ Hudson-Piggott said sharply. ‘It will be better for our back story if the authorities find Mr Cunane’s radiation burned body near our little blaze and I shouldn’t imagine you want to deal with the radioactive material yourself, do you Sergeant? Our contractor friends are terrified of it.’

Lansdale shook his head and swore under his breath.

‘No, I didn’t imagine you would,’ Hudson-Piggott said. ‘All right, Cunane thanks to various incentives we’ve been offering the recycling industry this is the biggest pile of waste rubber ever assembled in this country. As you can see these massive cones are attractively garlanded in white material round their summits. From a distance they resemble the Alps, only the ‘snow’ is low-level radioactive waste from hospitals. Feeble stuff, but potent enough to make our smoke column radioactive but harmless.’

‘Brilliant!’

‘Isn’t it? Your part, Cunane, is to add an extra touch of veracity to my illusion by sprinkling highly toxic Caesium 137, all over this site. You’ll open those drums,’ he paused and pointed out two yellow drums some distance away from us, ‘and you’ll dump the Caesium on the tracks and the soil, not on the cones.  Get it?’

‘Yes,’ I grunted.

‘When you’ve done that and incidentally sustained a lethal dose of radiation, you will light the bonfire with that oxy-acetylene torch. It starts with a simple click.’

‘Think of everything, don’t you?’

‘Boss, we’ve got to get moving,’ Lansdale interjected.

‘One more moment only, Sergeant, the man must understand his role.’

‘Gawd, Boss!’ Lansdale growled.

‘Now, Cunane, don’t get any ideas of escaping. The good sergeant will have a rifle trained on you the whole time and there are still twelve of my contractors available.’

He glanced to his right. I followed his gaze. There were two of the contractors some distance away from us. They were in ordinary clothes not radiation kit. The Nomex uniforms had been discarded.

‘I see.’

‘As soon as you save your family by taking the lids off the drums your own death is certain, a very painful death. Complete all your tasks to the sergeant’s satisfaction and you’ll be found dead and regarded as a jihadi martyr whose comrades mercifully sent him to his virgins with a bullet.’

I recognised his obvious lie. There’d be no merciful bullet. Exposure to high level radioactive material would kill me quickly which suited the plan better.

‘Very well thought out, Hudson-Piggott,’ I said sarcastically, ‘but what’s all this nonsense in aid of?’

He changed. All the assumed amiability disappeared.

‘What it’s in aid of, as you put it, is the freeing of this country from the terrorist threat we’ve lived under since 9/11. Our growing and aggressive Muslim population will get the blame when half of England falls under a radioactive cloud. They will be deported or will voluntarily renounce Islam and we will win the so-called war on terror or do you want your children to live under threat for the rest of their lives?’

I couldn’t hold my tongue.

‘I want my children to grow up in the tolerant country they were born in,’ I snapped.

He scowled; his lips formed a thin white line and he pulled out his gun.

I drew in a breath and flinched for the bullet. My last thought was of Jan as I’d seen her at Topfield on Monday, all pregnant and lovely.

Then instead of pulling the trigger he laughed and holstered his gun.

‘Nice try Cunane. I can see there’s much more to you than I thought. If I’d shot you now we’d have had to force one of the contractors to die of radiation poisoning and I don’t think they’re up for that.’

He turned to Lansdale.

‘Enough of this,’ he said. ‘I’m going to round up the men. You get Cunane into his Afghan kit and supervise him. Molly, you come with me.’

‘A word, sir,’ Claverhouse said.

She took Hudson-Piggott’s arm and they stepped away from Lansdale for a moment. After a brief conversation she came back towards us.

‘Molly stays, Sergeant, apparently she doesn’t trust you not to find a reason to kill the annoying Mr Cunane as soon as I’m out of sight.’

Lansdale pulled a face and spat on the ground.

‘All the same to me, Boss,’ he said.

Hudson-Piggott strode away with his curious duck like gait.

Claverhouse spoke to Lansdale. ‘What can he do? His hands and feet are tied. The man’s a bungling amateur.’

‘Who you’ve taken a fancy to,’ Lansdale said under his breath, ‘f**king stuck up bitch.’

The strong south westerly was blowing straight past us into the huge stack so it must lie on a SW/NE axis like a cannon aimed for the destruction of a vast swath of territory.

I shuddered.

There were enough tyres and shredded rubber to burn for days or weeks especially as the fire fighters wouldn’t be able to approach the blaze due to the Caesium 137 scattered everywhere. I’d mocked but Hudson-Piggott’s plan would succeed. It hit me how right Lew was to want him killed immediately.