Leaving it hanging in his lips he calmly stepped to the side and took Sarah’s arm, drawing her across the room with him away from Campbell whose eyes went wide as yet more fear fizzed through his body.
Spinning her around so she faced Campbell, Walker slipped a hand around her waist and drew her close to him, resting his chin on his shoulder and allowing Campbell to watch his gaze wander down over her body. Sarah froze and stared imploringly at Campbell, tears beginning to well in her eyes.
The hand at her waist began to creep up over her midriff toward her chest and Walker looked up again at Campbell with a smirk full of malevolence. As his hand moved closer to her breasts she squirmed suddenly and tried to pull away but this only made Walker grin more broadly and he clamped his arms around her ribs and shoulders and held her to him, his cheek pressed against hers.
Campbell made only the slightest of movements toward them, with no clear thought of what he might do. In a second he had dropped to his knees as a solid fist slammed into his kidneys from behind and his vision blurred as he winced in agony.
‘I could make this clearer for you,’ came that voice again. Sarah began to cry at the sight of him on his knees, ‘But I don’t think that’s necessary.’
As he knelt there, the pain shooting up through his abdomen he blinked tears from his eyes and tried to fight off a tangible feeling of panic. Not when bound and beaten in Gresham’s filthy lock-up, nor when Slater had chased him or even when the mystery caller at the cottage had run them down along the cliff-top had Campbell felt this scared. The situation had never been so completely out of his control until now.
The stakes had been raised once more and he was way out of his depth. Again, Sarah was at risk and Campbell could do nothing to help her this time. He felt his resolve crumbling fast and he knew he wanted out. Now. He had been foolish to think that he could win this game, foolish to think that he could even play it.
As he looked up again the tall thin man called Walker was in front of him and Sarah had slid down the wall and was crouched now next to Gresham’s daughter who had watched the entire scene in silence. He caught her eye and she looked almost apologetic for a moment.
‘Now then,’ said Walker and suddenly huge hands had wrapped painfully around Campbell’s bruised chest from above and he was dragged roughly to his feet. ‘Go with the boys, waste precisely none of my time trying to fuck me about and then bring me back what I want.’
He turned theatrically to look at the two frightened young women cowering on the floor behind him. ‘Do be quick though. I’ll have to find something to do if I get too bored.’
54
Tuesday. 1.20am.
It wasn’t quite clear what was happening here but it was obvious that Campbell was the key to it. Who then, were these others? As far as Drennan was concerned it was only Gresham and his motley crew that ought to even know who Campbell was, let alone be carting him off in the middle of the night.
So what was going on?
Drennan had been chewing this over for a few minutes since having parked the car further along the street and watched the group in the other car empty out and enter a run-down looking terraced house. Gresham had been sitting on the memory stick since the fiasco of the break in at Griffin. Then they had screwed up knocking off Cooper as he’d told them to but that had somehow panned out OK when he’d died in a west London hospital.
Neither Drennan nor his boss thought that Cooper would have been able to say too much to Campbell, who had got himself involved in something he couldn’t possibly understand. But Gresham’s lot had seemed as if they were going to tidy that up for them anyway, which meant that Drennan, Tyler and their boss could stay nice and anonymous. Of course as time passed and there were no results his boss had grown increasingly nervous.
Drennan could only imagine that perhaps Campbell himself had involved others and got himself further into trouble. He had certainly proved unpredictable so far and everybody had underestimated him, Drennan and his paymaster included. The other option made Drennan more nervous.
That Gresham had involved someone else.
Because if that was true, it could only mean one of two things; either Gresham was trying to sell the stick to a higher bidder. Or he didn’t actually have it. Otherwise, why would somebody else be after Campbell?
The young man was an irritation, and a possible witness and that meant that he was a threat to Gresham. But this new development seemed to change all that. Could that be it? Could that be the reason for his involvement? Not just that he knew something but rather that he had something?
Drennan needed to find out what was going on. But there was something more important on the agenda and that was to eliminate the exposure of this information. Campbell — and now the girl, whoever she was — would be disposed of shortly and then the memory stick, if indeed it was in Campbell’s possession rather than Gresham’s, would be his. No more time for messing around with these amateurs he decided, unbuckling his seatbelt and nudging Tyler. It was about time the professionals tidied this up.
The bigger of the two men, was at least six feet three and must have been pushing twenty stone, none of it fat. He walked in front of Campbell twirling his car keys on his finger whilst the other man gripped his bound hands from behind. It seemed like it had been some time since he had last been tied up like this but the sores on his wrists from Gresham’s rope stung as sharply as ever as he stumbled down the narrow staircase.
His course was clear now and left no room for improvising or running. This new man, Walker, had the upper hand and he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Campbell recalled the look of lost helplessness and terror on Sarah’s face as he’d been dragged from the room and he felt nauseous at the memory and the thought of her alone back there.
Now the driver and the man that he had run into as he had tried to flee his flat earlier on walked in front and behind him along a dim hallway of a small house. The bedroom upstairs, sparse and dingy with Sarah inside, was only a short distance away but already he felt as if he were miles from her.
Obviously Walker was the boss of the outfit. Obviously he was bad news as well. If he was willing to do something like this to a man like Gresham, he had to be.
They moved quietly through the shadows and stuck close to the wall, watching the front of the house carefully, checking the windows for signs of movement.
At the door Drennan pulled his hand from his coat and Tyler saw that his handgun had a suppressor attached. Just like Drennan, Tyler thought, always trying to be so bloody flash. Always playing the secret agent. Still, he was a handy enough operator and since Tyler was going to be the one popping the door open with his foot, Drennan would be leading the way in and that was fine with him.
He had no idea what they were getting into here but he could feel that familiar buzz of excitement and he fixed his eyes on the door figuring out where the locks were and where he’d have to kick.
Here we go then, he thought and closed his hand around the butt of his own gun.
55
Tuesday. 1.30am.
Gresham could see Walker standing over Angie and he was watching him remove his belt and begin to beat her with the leather strap. Then he was dropping his trousers and moving down on top of her as she lay there, gagged and tied and helpless.
Then something strange happened as Gresham saw that it wasn’t Walker at all. This man was bigger and his skin was dark and his hair cropped short and not parted with that dead straight line at the side. Gresham saw now that he was looking at Julius Warren.