‘I haven’t got it,’ said Jake. ‘I stashed it somewhere safe when I realised what was going on. But I can get it in an hour.’
Michelle nodded.
‘OK, you get back here with the book. I’ll prepare the lab, so they’ll be expecting us.’ Suddenly she beamed. ‘This is going to be so good! This story’s got everything! Murder, conspiracy, torture, religion, weird sciences . . . and it’s all true! I’m going to make sure I get my own byline on this piece, and in big letters!’
‘I’ll just be glad to see it out there,’ said Jake. And Lauren back here with me, he added to himself. He got up and headed for the door. ‘I’ll see you in an hour.’
He stepped out of the offices into Villiers Street and headed towards Charing Cross station. Ten minutes on the Northern Line to Euston, ten minutes to get back, and the rest of the time waiting on platforms and at the Left Luggage office. In one hour, this would all be over. He turned to check for traffic as he stepped off the pavement, and a fist came out of nowhere and smashed him right in the face. He felt himself falling, dazed, his head filled with pain. Then he was being bundled inside the back of a car, his face pushed hard against the seat cover. He was aware of someone getting into the car beside him, the car door slamming, and then the car racing off.
Chapter 23
A gun was pushed into his face, the barrel pressing painfully into his cheek.
‘Any funny business and you get a bullet in the leg,’ said the man. ‘We need you alive, but that don’t mean we can’t hurt you. Understood?’
Jake forced a nod. He felt sick.
The man sitting in the back of the car next to Jake lowered the gun and rested it on Jake’s leg, pointing at his knee. He was broad-shouldered, the hand that held the gun big and powerful. Jake’s head was still throbbing from the punch. From the force of the punch, and the man’s bent and flattened nose and the scars around his eyes, Jake guessed he’d once been a boxer. He still had the power to hit hard.
The man in front of the car at the steering wheel was shorter and thinner. Not that Jake could see much of him, but he guessed that from the man’s thin neck, and the way he sat low in the driver’s seat.
‘Put your head down,’ ordered the Boxer.
‘What?’ asked Jake.
‘Put your head down, face forward,’ the man snapped, and he poked the end of the barrel of the gun warningly into the side of Jake’s leg.
They don’t want me to know where I’m going, thought Jake. He put his head down, twisting in the back seat so it touched his knees. The big fist that held the gun was now right by his eyes.
‘What do you want?’ asked Jake. ‘I haven’t got anything.’
‘The book,’ said the man with the gun. ‘The one you found at . . .’ He frowned. ‘Where was it?’
‘Glastonbury,’ said the man at the front.
‘Yeah. Glastonbury,’ grunted the Boxer.
‘I haven’t got it,’ said Jake.
‘Then that’s a pity,’ said the driver. ‘Because we’re going to have to hurt you until you tell us where it is.’
After what seemed an eternity, the car finally stopped. Jake heard the driver’s door open, and footsteps, and another door opening.
‘OK. Out,’ ordered the Boxer.
Jake sat up. He felt stiff all over from having held his twisted-up position in the back of the car. He opened the car door and got out. They were by a row of lock-up garages, one of which was open. Jake now saw that the other man was, indeed, short and thin. Shorty gestured at Jake.
‘In,’ he said.
The Boxer prodded Jake with the gun, and Jake walked into the garage. Shorty locked the car, then pulled down the garage door. It closed with an ominous click as it locked shut. The garage was lit by two overhead fluorescent lights. The central area was clear to allow a car in, but right now there was just a chair on its own in the middle of the garage.
Jake was reminded of the chair he’d woken up tied to in the timber yard in Holloway Yard. Had that been these same two men? Something told him no; apart from the chloroform, he hadn’t been injured. These two were set on inflicting pain.
Shorty walked Jake to the chair, and began to tie him to it with ropes. The memory of Robert’s body, battered, bruised and bleeding, tied to a chair in his living room, flashed in Jake’s mind.
‘You’re the men who hurt Robert,’ he blurted out.
‘That’s an allegation, that is,’ said Shorty, pulling the ropes tight around Jake’s wrists.
‘He wouldn’t tell us what we wanted to know,’ grunted the Boxer.