something soft. He looked down. It was shit. Despite his physical condition, Massey pulled a face and dragged his shoe across the floor to get it off his sole. He heard a click as the foot connected with and moved something.
This time it was a thick steel chain, one end sunk deeply and concreted into the wall. Massey reached for it and pulled it up. The links were heavy and strong. He ran them through his hands until he came to the end, attached to which was a leather collar two inches thick, one that would have fitted around the neck of the world’s biggest dog.
Massey inspected the collar. It was made of thick but softly pliable leather with a big steel buckle. He held it to his bloodied nose and sniffed it cautiously. Then he dropped it as his guts spun over and he suddenly remembered where he had smelled that reek before — and realized that the stupid rumours he’d heard were true.
A very basic terror gripped him. Every hair on his body rose as adrenalin rushed into his system and drew blood away from the surface capillaries.
He moved quickly to the door. Fully expecting it to be locked, he ran his fingertips down the edge opposite the hinges and pulled at it. It creaked open an inch.
Massey paused. His senses tingled, heart pounded. He half expected them to burst in now, having realized their mistake in that they hadn’t actually killed him. No one came. A cold, biting wind hissed through the gap, hitting his face with its iciness, and its freshness took away the odour of the room for a moment.
He opened the door a few more inches. Cautiously he peered out, still uncertain as to his whereabouts, but definitely not in the location in which he’d been assaulted. He edged out into a bright, moonlit, but excruciatingly cold night and seemed to be standing in the middle of nowhere. The world was completely silent, other than the sound of the wind. Not even distant traffic. And the room he had woken up in, thinking it had been a cellar under the main house, was nothing of the sort. It was the inside of a complete little building, about the size of a detached single garage. It was a sort of fortified hut, with one door, the high barred window and nothing else, with an outer perimeter twelve by twelve, maybe eight feet high and flat-roofed. The outer walls were thick stone. A sign on the door reiterated the inner warning: ‘DANGER — EXPLOSIVES!’
His beaten, befuddled brain then realized where he’d been dragged to and dumped, and what the building was, or used to be.
He waited, listened for a few seconds, hearing nothing but the crash of his heartbeat. All he could feel now, even above the pain that wracked his injured body, was complete and utter fear.
He moved away from the building, limping, dragging himself along, knowing he had no time at all to worry about his wounds, what might be broken, damaged or bruised. Somehow he had to get away from this place. He forced himself to walk as quickly as he could across the barren, rocky ground, stumbling but managing to stay upright. He scrambled up an incline to the top of a mound of earth and stood squinting across a vast, open expanse in front of him, a huge black hole on the face of the world. But he did not pause for long. He moved on, hoping he had regained consciousness sooner than they thought he would.
He caught his foot, stumbled, fell, smacked down on to his sore knees, jarring his whole being. He cried out involuntarily and tried to muffle the noise, turning it from a scream of agony into a moan. But a noise nevertheless.
Then he was on his feet again, half sliding down a rubble-strewn slope and skidding into a wheel rut, cut deep into the clay.
Which way?
He started to follow the ruts, hoping there was some logic to this plan. Surely they would lead somewhere.
Once more he kicked a big stone and lurched. His body jarred and the broken rib touched his lung again, making him hiss with pain. He crumbled to the ground, waiting for the pain to ebb. Slowly it receded. He took a few more seconds for complete recovery.
Then, somewhere behind him, a slight scuffing sound. And another noise to accompany this: a rough, sawing cough.
The fear he felt intensified.
He rose slowly to his full height. Turned and looked into the darkness behind him. All his senses prickled. He was ready to flee.
Now he recalled what the man had said about his knees: ‘Don’t break ’em. He needs to be able to run.’ Run! That was the word and Massey now knew why his knees hadn’t been smashed and broken. It was always the intention that he would wake up. That he would live through the beating, as savage as it was. Intended that he had some ability to run, or at least hobble, on two feet. So he could take part in a dangerous race for his life.
He could not see or hear anything now. ‘So it’s true,’ he said to himself. Then shouted, ‘Come on you bastard,’ into the dark.
And then he remembered that other thing. The stench. Now he placed it and he knew what was out there in the dark just beyond the periphery of his vision.
The moon had been covered by cloud which now peeled away and cast light across the rutted ground.
There were two short coughs.
Massey spun. He had been looking in the wrong direction. For a moment he was fixed to the spot, anchored by injury and terror, paralysed. Then he moved, but too late. His ankle twisted in a tyre rut, he screamed and went down. The last thing he saw were the two almond-shaped eyes reflecting silver in the moonlight.
TWO
Flynn immediately didn’t like the guy. Smelled the stale alcohol on his breath, instinctively knew there would be trouble to come.
Had times been less harsh economically, Flynn would have told him the boat was fully booked and pointed him in the direction of one of the other charter fishing boats moored along the quay. But any charter is a good charter, Flynn’s boss had told him, especially in this day and age. The fishing business had gone pretty limp over the last few months and there had been a rumour about mothballing some of the boats next month — January — if things didn’t pick up. That meant no income from fishing and, for Flynn, a long, unpleasant spell as a doorman at one of his boss’s clubs up in Puerto Rico’s Commercial Centre.
So, quoting a vastly inflated price for the day that did not even cause the man to bat an eyelid, and separating him from 800 euros, Flynn said, please step aboard, sir. The only good side of it was that trailing behind the guy like a petulant teenager was his scantily clad lady friend, who looked as though she would rather be anywhere else in the world than climbing aboard a sportfishing boat in Gran Canaria. Her continually rolling eyeballs and accompanying body language told their own sorry story.
Flynn introduced the customer to Jose, his Spanish crewman, who extended his bear-paw of a hand to be shaken and was completely ignored by the man. Jose, undaunted, maintained his professional attitude and kept his broad grin in place as he withdrew his hand and redirected his attention to the even less receptive girlfriend.
She teetered up the gangplank on to the deck, losing one of her flip-flops into the water, and demanded, ‘I want to be inside, I want food and booze… ugh, I feel sick already.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ Jose said and ushered her into the stateroom, passing within earshot of Flynn, mouthing a Spanish obscenity to him.
‘Nah then, mate,’ the customer said to Flynn, who hooked the floating flip-flop out of the water with a gaff, ‘I’m told you’re the best skip in the Canaries. Let’s see, shall we?’ He rubbed his hands and raised his face challengingly. ‘If I don’t come back having caught a blue marlin, I’ll be really pissed off.’
‘The marlin run ended late September,’ Flynn told him. ‘Won’t be much chance of catching one, I’m afraid.’
‘So what will we catch?’
‘Maybe nothing, but there’s plenty of thornbacks, stingrays and congers out there. Maybe lock into a shoal of tuna if we’re lucky. Shark are always out there, too.’
‘Don’t want luck to be a part of it. You got fish finding equipment, haven’t you? Sonar, y’know?’
‘The most sophisticated and up to date,’ Flynn confirmed. ‘But even that doesn’t guarantee fish.’
