Ben could hear Ruth sobbing behind him as he put his hand on the dog’s body. Just the tiniest flicker of movement. He checked the animal’s pulse. It was there, but it was weak. Storm’s eyes half-opened and looked right into his, as if he were saying ‘Don’t worry about me.’ He tried to raise his shaggy head, but the effort was too much. He licked Ben’s hand, then his eyes closed and he fell unconscious.
‘Will he make it?’ Brooke asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Ben turned and walked back towards the prisoner. Crouched down beside him and whipped off his mask. ‘You speak English?’ he asked him quietly.
The man nodded, squinting up with his teeth bared and his eyes glazed over with pain.
‘Who sent you?’ Ben asked. He spoke quietly, calmly. The rage was turning from hot red to a steady, controlled white.
No response.
‘Ever been on a farm before?’ Ben asked him.
Another nod, confused this time.
‘Then maybe you’ve seen those machines they use to shred up sawn branches? Big whirring blades, chew through anything?’
The guy just stared. His eyes bulged. Sweat was pouring down his face.
‘I have one of those machines,’ Ben said to him. ‘Right over there in the toolshed. If you don’t tell me who sent you here I’m going to lower you slowly into it, feet first. You have three seconds to reply. One.’
‘Fuck you,’ the guy said through clenched, bloodied teeth.
‘Two.’
The look of defiance melted a little, but not that much. ‘I don’t know!’
‘You don’t think I mean it, do you? Three.’ Ben stood, grabbed the guy’s ankle and jerked his body round brutally and started dragging him across the ground towards the toolshed. The guy kicked and struggled, yelling ‘No! No!’
‘Fire her up, Jeff,’ Ben said. Jeff trotted ahead to the shed, yanked the tarp off the shredder, stooped down to prime the carburettor and then pulled the starter cord. The engine spluttered into life. As Ben was dragging the guy inside the toolshed, Jeff grabbed a coil of rope from a nail on the wall and flung one end over a beam. Ben took a fistful of the guy’s hair, jerked him into sitting position on the concrete floor and looped the other end of the rope roughly around his chest. The machine whirred away next to them, blades gnashing like teeth, ready to devour anything that was thrown into its rusty maw and spew it out in little chunks from the outlet pipe underneath. Ben tugged the end of the rope and it went taut across the beam. Pulled a little harder, and the guy was lifted a few inches off the floor. Then a few more.
That must have been when he realised they were absolutely serious about feeding him to the shredder. ‘OK! OK!’ he shouted in panic.
Ben let go of the rope and let him slump back down. He unslung the crossbow. Bracing it between his chest and the floor, he yanked the bowstring all the way back with a click. Felt like a hundred and fifty pounds of pull. That probably gave the bow a velocity of over three hundred feet per second. He fitted one of the razor-tipped bolts and pointed the ungainly rifle-like weapon at the guy’s face.
‘Talk,’ he said.
There was no hesitation now. The man spoke a single name. ‘Steiner.’
Ben felt his mouth go dry.
His finger hovered over the crossbow trigger.
‘Let me go now,’ the man pleaded. ‘I swear I’ll never come back here again. I’ll tell them you’re dead. You and the girl, the way it was meant to be.’
‘The girl in the photo. Steiner ordered her dead?’
The guy nodded. Ben looked in his eyes and believed him.
‘Just let me go. I swear.’
‘You shouldn’t have hurt my dogs,’ Ben said.
And fired the bow. The weapon recoiled in his arms as it launched the bolt with a
Rory looked up from the corner of his cell where he was sitting when he heard the tinkle of the key in the lock. When he saw it was Ivan, his fear ebbed away as quickly as it had mounted.
This time Ivan had one of the guards with him, one of the most surly and taciturn ones, but said something to him that made him stay out in the corridor while he came into the cell and half-closed the door behind him.
‘I brought you something to read,’ Ivan whispered with a nervous glance behind him to make sure the guard couldn’t see. He reached into his jacket and brought out a tattered comic book.
Rory took it, grateful to have something to while away the hours with. He’d been here so long now, and the way day merged into night, he was losing all track of time and going slowly crazy. Ivan stood over him, smiling benevolently.
‘Something else for you,’ he murmured, handing the boy another chocolate bar.
Rory quickly hid the chocolate and the comic under his mattress, the way Ivan had told him to. Then he turned to the man, looking up at him with big, inquisitive eyes.
‘Do you know where my dad is?’ he asked him.
‘I have not been able to find out much,’ Ivan whispered. ‘That man Pelham—’
‘Shh.’
Rory spoke more quietly. ‘That man Pelham said he was coming.’
Ivan lowered his voice a notch further. ‘Pelham cannot be trusted,’ he said. ‘Don’t believe him.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Rory whimpered. There were times when he felt near the edge of hysteria, and that mood had welled up inside him more and more readily since the torture. It was as though some vital part of his inner core had been ripped out, leaving him as fragile as a sickly kitten.
‘If Dad’s not coming,’ he sobbed, ‘why am I here? What do they want with us anyway? When am I going home?’ Tears streamed down his face.
Ivan laid a hand on his shoulder and looked earnestly into his eyes. ‘Do not be so scared. I promised I would take care of you. And I will.’
Rory sniffed and smeared the tears away with his grimy sleeve. ‘Are you in contact with the other special agents?’
Ivan looked back at the door, then nodded, smiled and put a finger to his lips. ‘When it is time,’ he whispered, barely audible, ‘I will give the signal and they will come for us.’
‘Can’t it be now?’
‘I still have work to do,’ Ivan said. ‘It’s not over. But soon.’ He cleared his throat, gesturing at the door. In his normal voice he said, ‘You are to come with me. Time for your shower.’
Rory jumped up. The trips to the shower block were the only times he got out of the cell. In a world so limited and confined as his new environment, even something as simple as walking a few hundred yards through the dingy corridors to stand on cracked ancient tiles and get doused with lukewarm water from a rusty tank was something to look forward to.
Out in the corridor, the guard followed them. Ivan’s hand was on Rory’s shoulder all the way to the shower block, and the boy felt a little more protected with him there. As long as that terrible woman didn’t come back to get him, he knew he could make it through this. He imagined how it would be when Ivan’s special agent colleagues came storming through the place, taking out the guards one by one. How they’d drag the woman out from hiding, and put a gun to her head and blow her away. How Rory would watch, and smile to see it happen. After what she’d done to him, that would serve the witch right.
Running the scene through his mind as they walked, he looked round and up at Ivan with a conspiratorial smile. Ivan winked and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
They reached the shower block. Ivan opened the creaky door that led through to the washroom. A row of
