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  Table of Contents

  O N E

  T W O

  T H R E E

  F O U R

  F I V E

  S I X

  THE CHOIR PRESS

  Copyright © 2014 Laurence Todd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  The right of Laurence Todd to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by

  The Choir Press

  ISBN 978-1-910864-80-7

  O N E

  Monday evening

  The two men were running for their lives down the street. Fast. They were scared, one of them absolutely terrified, and they had no idea where they were going to. They just knew what they were running from. Was this madman still behind them and where could they go to shake him off?

  Ten minutes earlier they’d been coming out of a large multiplex cinema after seeing the last screening of a recent blockbuster. Both agreed that Spielberg was losing his touch and that the evening had been a waste of time and money. They should have gone to the club instead and seen if there were any women who might have taken their fancy. “That’s the last time I let you talk me into going to see a Steven Spielberg film,” the younger of the two said. His older brother slapped him around the side of his head, not quite playfully, and told him to shut the fuck up.

  They walked along the main road then crossed over and turned left towards a piece of waste ground where they’d parked their stolen car. It had been easy to steal. Despite all the exhortations from police and insurance companies not to do so, many drivers still left their spare keys behind the visor above the steering wheel. All that was required was a Slim Jim to open the locked car, take the keys and drive away. The older one wondered whether the car owner would have the honesty to tell the insurance company he’d been complicit in the theft of his own vehicle.

  “Come on, man, start the damn car, huh? Let’s see if we can get a beer someplace, maybe meet some skirt so the evening won’t be a complete waste.”

  Louis Phipps was talking to his younger brother, Paulie, who was fumbling with the keys whilst trying to find the right one in the dark. Paulie, who had just turned 19, and a young 19, always tried his hardest to please his brother. Louis was his hero for all the wrong reasons. He took no kind of lip from anyone and lived for himself. Paulie was too weak and so in thrall to his brother’s aura, he couldn’t see that Louis had all the makings of a man destined either for a lifetime in prison or an early, possibly unmarked, grave because he’d crossed the wrong person at the wrong time.

  Louis was almost 22 and already a career criminal. His crime sheet was impressively long, with convictions for assault, burglary, shoplifting and taking and driving away as well as being in possession of a small amount of a class B drug. He’d also appeared before the Magistrates’ Court recently, charged and convicted of the stealing of a car and receiving a suspended sentence. He’d been warned he would go to prison if he appeared in court again anytime soon.

  “Here it is,” Paulie said triumphantly. He held the key up for Louis to see.

  Both men heard the gunshots at the same time. A sound like “Phut” repeated a number of times in only a couple of seconds and the feel of bullets speeding past their heads and exploding against the old warehouse wall. They dropped to the ground.

  “Christ, it’s him. He’s found us again. I thought you said we’d lost him.”

  Paulie was scared. That was evident in his quavering voice. He was lying on the floor, shaking. His breathing was erratic and he could feel his heartbeat racing at what felt like 200 miles an hour. Louis was angry but couldn’t see far enough into the dark to focus his anger.

  “Shut up, Paulie, I’m trying to think,” Louis whispered harshly at his brother.

  He looked in the direction the bullets had come from. It was dark and he couldn’t see any signs of movement. There were bushes, a few trees and a number of other cars, plus an absence of street lighting – plenty of vantage points for a man with a gun to hide. He could be circling around trying to pick them off from the other side of the park. They had to get away or else be picked off like ripe cherries from a low hanging tree. He waited a few moments whilst his heartbeat stopped racing.

  “We gotta get outa here, Paulie,” Louis whispered.

  “How we gonna do that, Louis?”

  Louis looked around. Behind where they’d parked was a chain-link fence with a gap wide enough for an adult male to squeeze through. Beyond that was a side road leading away.

  “Paulie, when I tell you, crawl over there to that fence.” He nodded towards it. “Get through that gap and start running. I’ll catch you up.”

  “Okay, Louis.” The terror in his voice was noticeable.

  Louis looked around. Now was as good a time as any.

  “Go,” Louis ordered his brother.

  Paulie crouched down and ran towards the fence. He saw the gap and went through it. He was expecting to hear the sound of gunfire. He didn’t. He started to run.

  Louis waited a few moments then did the same. He scrambled through the fence remarkably nimbly as his sense of survival was much more greatly honed than Paulie’s. Survival was what it had always been about for Louis Phipps. He began running and soon caught up with his brother.

  “Where we going, Louis?” Paulie was gasping, already out of breath.

  “Just keep running. Let’s get away from this fucking madman.”

  She could feel the car lurching slightly to the right and she could hear the dull sound, almost a schlopping type sound, the sound a tyre makes when it’s going down and the car is beginning to run on the front axle. She knew she had a puncture in the front tyre. She navigated the car to the side of the road and stopped. Damn. She was only two miles from home as well. Her boyfriend would be wondering where she was. She couldn’t see a phone box and her mobile was out of battery power so she couldn’t call and ask him to drive over and help her change the tyre, and she didn’t have enough money for a taxi.

  Amanda Redmond had had the car, a graphite blue Mini, bought for her by her father as a congratulations present for getting all grade As plus one A* in her A level exams the previous summer, which had meant her getting a place at university in London. She’d passed her driving test first time and had taken to the Mini in the same easy manner a baby duck takes to the water. This was the first thing that had gone wrong with the car. She knew there was a spare tyre in the boot but didn’t think she was strong enough to undo the nuts holding the punctured tyre on. She needed help.

  Looking along the darkened street she could see the sign that indicated there was a bar open. She decided to ask for help there. Bound to be a man in there who could help me change the tyre, she thought to herself. She locked the car door and walked along the road to the bar. As she arrived at the steps leading down to the entrance, two men came out. They both nodded to her, with one holding the door open for her. She briefly wondered whether to ask one of those but, as she got to the door, the man smiled and walked away. She continued into the bar.

  Louis and Paulie were now a few roads away from where they’d left their car.

  “Have we lost him yet, Louis?” Paulie was breathing hard and his pace was slowing. He was not a fit man.

  “Hell do I know?” Louis shouted. “We gotta get off the road and find a place to lie low for a while. Hey look, over there. Paulie, come on.”

  They crossed the road.

  Amanda looked aro
und the bar. There were only two people there and neither were customers. A woman was sweeping the floor and there was a man behind the counter wiping some glasses and stacking them in neat rows next to the till. It was not very big, maybe eighty feet long and about half as wide, with an alcove in the corner by the toilet door. There was an illuminated sign for the toilets and several pictures around the walls of famous sporting personalities, like footballers and rugby players, and the occasional boxer. The bar did not look at all salubrious and she was glad her boyfriend would never even consider bringing her to a place like this. It had the feel and smell of the kind of place men went to when they didn’t want to be alone at night.

  “We’re just closing. Can I help you?” The man behind the counter asked.

  Mickey Corsley had run the bar since he’d opened it after leaving the police a few years back, which he’d joined after six years in the army. He was 33 and looked younger. He’d left the army because he’d twice tried and failed to join the SAS and, as he was not considered ‘Officer and Gentleman’ material, to quote one of his commanding officers, Mickey had decided to join the police. He also helped out at a local sports centre giving classes in self-defence to teenagers and others who wanted to be able to protect themselves.

  “Oh, ah, yes. My car’s got a puncture and I was wondering if there was anybody here who could help me change a flat tyre.”

  “Sounds like a job for you, Sir Galahad,” Sarah Corsley said with a smile. She was Mickey’s wife and the co-manager of the bar. They’d been married six years and she’d been all in favour of Mickey leaving uniformed service and going into the entertainment business, as she referred to running a pub, albeit on a small scale.

  “Where you parked?” Mickey asked.

  “Just along the road outside, right down the far end.”

  “I’ll finish up here. You help the young lady,” Sarah said.

  Mickey came around from behind the bar. At that moment the front doors crashed open and two men came running into the bar. Both were carrying small handguns. Mickey’s initial concern was that he was the wrong side of the bar. He had a cosh, a sap and also a small handgun behind the counter but they were in the cabinet beneath the glasses shelf and it was locked.

  “What the hell—” Mickey began to say.

  “Shut it, just shut it. Alright?” the older of the two men shouted as he pointed his gun at Mickey.

  He looked around. There were only three people, and two of them looked like they were getting ready to leave.

  “Real popular joint this, isn’t it?” Louis Phipps laughed. “Closing time, pal. That’s why no one’s here.”

  Mickey could feel the anger rising within him but he’d been trained to be calm and rational in these kinds of situation and wait for the right moment. This wasn’t it.

  “Paulie, lock those doors.”

  Paulie nodded. He closed both the doors to the bar and slid the bolt above the main door into place and flipped the catch on the Yale lock. They were now locked in.

  Mickey’s initial thought was that the two men were intending to rob them, but locking the doors meant they weren’t planning on leaving just yet. What was going on?

  “Who’s the manager of this dump?” Louis Phipps asked. “That’d be me, and it’s not a dump, okay?” Mickey said calmly.

  “Yeah, whatever. You got a back exit here?”

  “Nope.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “Exactly what it means, there’s no back exit. That’s the only way in or out of here,” Mickey nodded at the front door, “and you’ve just locked it.”

  “You got an upstairs here, anywhere above this place?”

  “There is but it isn’t ours. We just have the ground floor. We can’t get upstairs from here even if we wanted to. There’s no access from here.”

  “And there’s no back rooms or any other way out?”

  “You got it.”

  “Jesus,” Louis sighed. This wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d thought he’d go into the bar and leave through the back way, throwing their pursuer off the scent. It hadn’t worked. The realisation dawned on him he may be trapped with a maniac waiting for him outside. He tried to compose himself and think. To go back outside was to invite this maniac to shoot at them again, possibly even killing them in the process. The man might not be able to find them but he didn’t want to take a chance on that. He’d already found them again this evening.

  “What’re we going to do, Louis?” Paulie asked, imploring his brother to have the right answer.

  “For the moment, we’re gonna stay put. Not much else we can do.”

  Paulie shrugged and shook his head.

  “Okay, you two, sit over there, against the wall.”

  Louis pointed his gun between Mickey and Sarah. Mickey looked at Sarah and raised his eyebrows, a gesture which she knew meant to go along with the situation and keep calm. I’ll get us out of this. They walked over to the wall, next to the pool table, and took a chair each and sat down.

  “Paulie, watch them. Think you can do that?”

  Paulie nodded and walked across to where the Corsleys sat. He sat a few feet away and pointed his gun at them. Mickey could see the younger of the two men was scared. That much was evident from the look in his eyes. He was holding the gun with all the bravura of someone holding the business end of an anaconda. Mickey thought that, if he could just get close enough, he could take the man’s gun away and clean his teeth for him with it, but he wasn’t going to risk the life of his wife and an innocent teenage girl who was only in the bar wanting a tyre changing.

  Paulie took off his jacket. His green T-shirt had sweat stains under the armpits and across his chest from the exertion of running. Mickey could see Paulie’s arms. They were thin and had no defined muscle tone. Piece of cake to take this wimp, he thought.

  Louis Phipps walked to the counter and sat on a barstool. He unbuttoned his shirt collar and loosened his tie. He was breathing less heavily now.

  “Hey, sweetheart, come on over here.” He was looking at Amanda Redmond.

  “Alright, but tell this guy not to shoot me when I get up,” Mickey said. Sarah laughed.

  “You a wiseguy or something?” Louis snarled at him.

  “Or something. I’ve been called worse things.”

  “You get out that chair and I’ll blow out one of your fucking kneecaps.” He turned back to Amanda. “Come on, honey, over here.”

  Amanda was scared but she walked across to where Louis Phipps sat. She stood in front of him.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart? ”

  “Amanda,” she replied quietly.

  “Amanda, that’s a nice name. Tell you what, honey, you play your cards right, you and me might get better acquainted before the night’s over.”

  His smile had the same menace a lion has when it spots a helpless deer grazing twenty yards away. He turned her around so she was facing Mickey and Sarah and he pulled her closer. He put his left arm around her shoulder, still holding the gun. His right hand was holding a particularly vicious looking knife, which he was tapping against his thigh in time to music only he could hear.

  “Hey, hotshot,” Louis called to Mickey, “If that door there’s the only way in or out, where do you get all your beer delivered to?”

  “Just along the road. There’s a cellar entrance where barrels and crates get lowered into. We hook it up to the pumps and it comes up through the pipes on the bar. Spirits, crisps and other snacks get delivered through the front door.”

  “No other way out through there, I suppose.”

  “Nope. That’s why it’s called a cellar.”

  Louis looked around and shook his head. He was thinking about his situation.

  It began to dawn on Mickey that these men had planned to come in through the front and go out through a back entrance, but hadn’t bargained on there being no back exit. They were as much a prisoner as he was.

  “If you’re planning to rob us, pal, you�
��re out of luck. I cashed up a little while back and the money’s down the tube. You can’t get at it.”

  “Down the tube?”

  “Yeah, it’s a security procedure. Lots of small businesses round here use something similar. The till gets cashed up and all the notes and coins go into a bank bag and dropped down this little vault. Only way to get at it is with a key from the bank.”

  “Actually, no, I wasn’t planning on that at all, I mean, does this dump have anything worth stealing? It does look like a real classy joint, doesn’t it?” he said sarcastically.

  “If you’re not going to rob us, why are you here? What have we done to deserve your sparkling company this time of night?” He ignored the slight on his bar.

  “We’re trying to get away from someone,” Paulie Phipps opined.

  “Paulie, shut up, will you?” Louis raised his voice.

  “There’s someone out there trying to kill us.” The panic showed in Paulie’s voice.

  “Now my brother’s taken you into our confidence,” Louis spat out his invective at his brother, “he’s right. Some fucking nutter outside is taking shots at us. That’s why we came into here.”

  Mickey resisted the desire to offer congratulations to whoever it was.

  “What, just like that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve no idea why this guy keeps shooting at us.”

  “You sure about that? No one just starts shooting at someone for no reason. You’ve obviously upset the wrong person somewhere.”

  “Told you, man, we ain’t done nothing.” Louis sounded angry.

  “So, you’re in a trap, so to speak,” Mickey said.

  Neither man replied.

  “If you need it, I can show you a possible way out of this mess.”

  “Oh yeah, how?” Louis sneered.

  I was at home in Acton, in the flat I shared with my partner, Karen, lying on the couch and reading a book about Britain in the 1950s, a decade I was endlessly fascinated by. I was currently on a week’s holiday from my job as a DS in the Special Branch and was enjoying the break as it was going to be a chance to catch up on my reading.