Relentless (12 page)

guarding Meron, having told him to do no further harm to their
prisoner, and clicked off the phone. Mantani was a reliable
operative but, like Lench, he enjoyed inflicting pain and could
sometimes get carried away. It was absolutely essential that
Meron remained alive, conscious and lucid, so that if he was
hiding anything it could be extracted from him. The boot of the
Lexus Lench was driving contained a variety of implements
designed to do just that. These included a remote-controlled
electro-shock stun belt which delivered an eight-second 50,000volt
shock to the person wearing it; a stun baton which could be
forcibly inserted into the anus, where a smaller shock could
then be applied; a dentist's drill for use on teeth; and a set of
six lethally sharp scalpels, perhaps his most favoured tools,
which could be used to jab and pierce the ultra-sensitive nerves
beneath the eyes and behind the ears.
Lench was an expert torturer with a great deal of practical
experience. No-one had ever held out on him for longer than a
matter of minutes. It was a record to be proud of. None had died
on him accidentally either, although on several occasions they'd
been finished off afterwards, as Meron would be tonight, when
there was no further use for him.
He turned off the main road and into the street where the
prisoner was being kept. He looked at his watch. It was 8.40 p.m.
and raining hard. He was three minutes away. Hopefully, within
the hour they'd have everything wrapped up.

17

'If you're holding out on us, I'd say so now,' the gunman told
me, his tone that of a man trying to be reasonable.
My head ached, and it was an effort to speak, but for what felt
like the hundredth time I told him I wasn't.
He nodded slowly. 'OK,' he said, 'I believe you.'
'If he is holding out, he'll get what's coming to him,' said the
driver. 'Lench'll have him begging like a dog.' He sounded
pleased at this prospect, and I wondered what the bastard had
against me.
As I sat there chained to the seat, I was reminded of an
old phrase my mother used to mutter whenever an event
happened on the news where evil appeared to triumph over
good. There are none so unhappy as those who care nothing for
their fellow man. And there was some truth in that. You could
almost feel sorry for a scumbag like him, so shallow was his life
that his greatest joy appeared to come from beating up and
doing his utmost to scare the shit out of someone he'd never
met before. Almost, but not quite. I wanted to say something
defiant that would demonstrate to him that I wasn't scared.

Unfortunately, the only problem was that I was scared.
Terrified.
'Listen, Mantani, I need a word.' It was the gunman speaking.
Behind the balaclava, the driver's features contorted with an
anger that never seemed to be far from the surface. 'What are
you doing using my fucking name?'
'It doesn't matter. He's finished anyway. He obviously doesn't
know anything, but he's seen and heard too much, so Lench isn't
going to let him go.' He motioned towards the door. 'Come on,
it's important.'
Mantani shook his head, muttered something, but started
walking anyway. 'This better be fucking good.'
'It is,' said the gunman, reversing the gun in his hand and
smashing the butt across the back of his colleague's head. The
impact was loud in the silence of the room and Mantani fell
unsteadily to his knees. With a fluid, dancer's grace, the gunman
karate-kicked him in the kidneys. His victim yelped in pain
before toppling over on his side and lying in a similar fetal
position to the one I'd been in only a few minutes earlier. The
gunman watched him thoughtfully for a couple of seconds,
then kicked him in the back of the head with such force that his
whole body was shunted across the grimy floor. Finally, Mantani
stopped moving and the gunman put the pistol in the back of his
jeans and bent down beside him, rifling through his pockets until
he found a bunch of keys. Then he jumped back up and made his
way over to me.
I tried to sit as far back in the seat as possible as he
approached. This was a dangerous man. Even to someone as
unused to violence as me, the speed and professionalism of the
assault on his erstwhile colleague had been impressive. A man
capable of that was capable of a lot of things, none of them nice.

But it soon became clear he had no interest in hurting me. At
least not yet.
'Hold still, I'm going to let you go.' He found the key he was
looking for and unlocked the shackle attached to my right wrist.
'We haven't got a lot of time before Lench gets here.'
'Have you got any water? Please, I need some water.'
Til give you some in the car. Now, stop moving.'
'Who is Lench?' I managed to ask.
'Someone you really don't want to meet,' he answered, freeing
my left wrist, then concentrating on the shackles pinning my
ankles to the chair. Finally, he pulled me up.
I was shaky on my feet, feeling very faint, but he didn't give
me any time to get my bearings. Instead, he pushed me impatiently
towards the door. 'If Lench finds us here like this,
we're both dead,' he explained hastily, and I was surprised at the
fearful urgency that cut through his own voice.
Mantani was moaning loudly on the floor. If I'd had more
strength I would have kicked the bastard as I passed, but it was
all I could do simply to keep upright and moving. And anyway,
my rescuer had already done enough.
We moved fast down the corridor and out the door we'd come
in, the gunman ushering me along by the arm. It was raining hard,
and I licked at the drops as they landed on my face. But the metal
steps were slippery, and as we made our descent I fell on my
behind and went bumping down about three of them, just like
Max liked to do on the stairs at home, before the gunman lifted
me up by the collar and shoved me the rest of the way down.
He clicked off the alarm of the black Nissan 4x4 we'd
travelled in and stopped and listened. We could both hear it. A
car coming along the road in our direction - the only one on it
by the sound of things. And it wasn't far away.

no
Lench.
'Get in, fast,' he demanded, running over to the driver's side.
I didn't need asking twice and hurried round to the front
passenger door, praying he hadn't been lying about the water.
As I pulled the door open and pushed a leg in, he slammed the
gearbox into reverse and the car shot backwards out of the car
park. I got a hand on the dashboard and pulled myself inside,
shutting the door behind me just before it smacked into the
boundary wall. The next second we were doing a three-point
turn in the middle of the street - a long and dimly lit place of
warehouses, vehicle repair shops and empty silhouetted concrete
buildings which squatted malevolently behind fences topped
with razor wire and keep out signs.

Fifty yards behind us, a single pair of headlights was approaching
quickly. My rescuer cursed. He shoved the car into
first and took off down the street in a dramatic shriek of tyres.

He took the first turning left, swinging the wheel so sharply I
didn't think we'd make it. The back of the 4x4 slid on the wet tarmac and the rear wheel on the driver's side smashed against
the kerb, jarring me in my seat. Immediately, he changed down into second, brought the car under control, and slammed his foot
to the floor. At that moment the other vehicle loomed up behind
us without warning, its headlights temporarily blinding me. Ten
yards separated us.
The 4x4 shot forward, gathering speed, its engine beginning to
squeal as the rev counter hit four thousand and kept on going,
before easing a little as we hit third. The pursuing car came with
us, accelerating even faster, the glare of its headlights subsiding
as it came within inches of our rear bumper.
'He's going to ram us!' I screamed.
There was a major left-hand bend in the road ahead. Thirty

yards, twenty yards . . . The engine continued to protest in a
banshee-like howl as the rev counter shot back up again, but the
gunman kept his foot on the floor. If we weren't rammed, then
we were going to smash straight into the concrete wall rising up
like a wave in front of us. I clenched my teeth and put my head
in my hands, praying that the car had airbags.
Suddenly, I was thrown forward in the seat, the belt not
stopping me from striking the dashboard at chest height. The
gunman had slammed his foot on the brakes and we were doing
an emergency stop. The tyres shrieked as we went into a wild
skid, and he was forced to turn the wheel sharp left to prevent it
from developing into a complete pirouette. Just as I pushed
myself back into the seat, trying to ignore the searing pain
shooting through my sternum, the pursuing car smashed into our
rear in a cacophony of shattering glass and twisting metal. I was
thrown forward for a second time, this time headbutting the
windscreen like an angry drunk. As I fell back, opening my eyes
again, all I could see ahead was the concrete wall. Five yards,
four, three, two . . . The 4x4 was swinging round with the
momentum of the skid, and we were about to hit it side on. I
tensed against the coming impact, wondering when this nightmare
was going to end.
And then suddenly we'd stopped, only a foot or so away from
the wall. The whole street became deathly silent. The pursuing
car was also stationary ten yards away; it too had been knocked
sideways. As I watched, the driver's door opened and an
immense black-clad figure appeared in the gap. I couldn't see
him very well in the darkness, nor did I make much effort to. I
was too busy looking at the gun in his hand, which, as he stood
up, was now pointing straight at me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get a word

out we'd shot forward again and were accelerating round the
bend and out of range, like something out of a computer game.
The driver ratcheted through the gears until he got to fourth, the
speedometer rapidly passing fifty. As the road straightened, I
looked round in my seat, saw that there was no-one following
and was just about to sigh with relief when he did another
ferocious emergency stop, took a right turning that seemed to
have appeared out of nowhere, roared down to where it became
a T-junction, and went right again. Still no-one was following,
but he kept driving fast, and we'd got close to sixty when he
finally jumped a set of red lights at another T-junction before
slowing down as we joined a welcome convoy of evening traffic
on a main road I vaguely recognized.
'Thanks for that, Schumacher,' I gasped. 'Now where's that
fucking water?'
¦ 'There's some in the glove compartment. And aren't you
going to thank me for saving your neck back there?'
I pulled out a three-quarter-full bottle of Evian and didn't
speak until I'd downed the whole lot. 'Thanks,' I said eventually.
It was only then that I asked him a question that was now really
beginning to bother me.
'Who the hell are you?'
He turned in my direction as we slowed down for more lights,
observing me coolly from behind the balaclava.
'I'm a police officer,' he answered.

18

Lench stood in the rain for several long seconds staring in
the direction the 4x4 had taken, knowing that something had
gone badly wrong. Finally, he lowered the gun and got back
into the Lexus. When he switched on the ignition, the engine
made an injured whine, and he could hear something rattling.
This annoyed him. He liked the Lexus. It was a nice, smooth,
comfortable ride and fitted his bulk perfectly. Now he was going
to have to get it repaired. It might even be a write-off. Someone
would pay dearly for this. But first he had to find out exactly
what was going on and why the vehicle his men had been using
had been fleeing the place where they were meant to be holding
Tom Meron until he arrived.
He drove back to the warehouse, becoming progressively
more annoyed. The car sounded like shit, and he couldn't get
round the fact that somehow he'd fucked up.
He pulled into the parking area and stepped out of the car.
Seeing that the door to the back of the building was open, he
drew his gun, an easily concealable short-barrelled Heckler &
Koch USP Compact loaded with powerful .45 ammunition that

he used only in emergencies. His preferred weapon was a spring
loaded jet knife with a six-inch steel blade; attached to the inside
of his forearm, it could be activated by a simple flick of the wrist.
He'd only used it once, during a struggle with a target on a boat
in the middle of the Irish Sea. They'd been trying to attach
weights to their victim so he'd sink like a stone when they
heaved him overboard into the black waters, but the bastard
had made a last-ditch attempt at survival by grabbing Lench
round the throat in a surprisingly powerful grip. The target had
been a loud-mouthed environmental activist with useful legal
and political connections, and the sort of good looks that
attracted unwanted attention. He'd been determined to stop one
of Lench's employer's companies from building a hotel and
marina on virgin coastline south of Dublin, so he had to be made
to disappear. He was young and fit, a semi-professional rugby
player as well, but Lench had still been caught out by the
ferocity of the assault from a man who must have known it was
futile, given that he was one man against four and his legs were
already partly bound. But perhaps, like a Hollywood hero, he
wanted to make sure he took one of the baddies with him.
Either way, he was doomed to failure. As his grip tightened,
cutting off breath, Lench had simply smiled at him, raised his left
hand so that it was caressing the young man's ear beneath the
vibrant locks of golden hair, and flicked his wrist with a sudden
jolt. The blade drove through the soft flesh just behind the lobe
and penetrated the brain instantaneously. The victim's eyes had
snapped open in shock, his grip had loosened, and he'd slid
down onto the greasy deck, his head disengaging from the blade
with a strange sucking sound. It was a pity they couldn't have
kept him alive for the actual ceremony of sending him helpless
into the icy depths. The employer had wanted him to be given a