The Last 10 Seconds

My head spun and I could feel the blood leaking out from the wound where I’d been struck, but luckily I still had the presence of mind to roll myself into a tight ball and put my hands over my head as the kicks rained in on me.

I couldn’t see who was doing the kicking. All I could hear was heavy breathing as they worked on trying to cause me the maximum injury possible. There was no pain – there never is when you’re in a fight, even one as one-sided and brutal as this. The huge surge of adrenalin puts paid to that. All I felt was a series of jarring shocks as I was knocked about the floor. One of them – I think it was that bastard Haddock – was aiming his blows at my kidneys, but they weren’t that accurate, and I was fairly certain that neither of them had done me any permanent damage yet.

But I knew that this was only the beginning. I’d managed to make both Wolfe and Haddock lose face, which was some achievement considering I’d only known them roughly twelve hours, and hugely stupid given their history of violence. The only thing counting in my favour was that the other two people in the room were trying to calm them down.

‘Ty! Stop! Stop!’ Lee was crying in a voice so shrill it could have shattered glass. ‘What are you doing?’

Tommy was also telling them to leave me alone, that what they were doing was madness, but the tone of his voice was hopeful rather than confident, and he wasn’t making any move to intervene.

The kicking continued. Fast and furious, carried out largely in silence.

Then, just as quickly, it stopped, as they finally grew bored.

At least that’s what I thought, but as I lay there unmoving, the pain finally beginning to make its presence felt, I heard Haddock snarl and rumble out a low, angry curse. The next second Lee screamed, and I opened my eyes and saw him standing over me, legs apart, the Remington raised above his head like a club, the butt aimed directly at my face. There was a glint of madness in his eyes as he stood there stock-still, and then, with a roar that temporarily drowned out everything else in the room, he brought it flying down.

Instinctively, I rolled over and it bounced off my shoulder and smashed into the carpet with such force that the stock broke in two, sending a piece flying across the room in a cloud of dust. If it had made contact with my head, as it was meant to do, it would almost certainly have killed me, and I felt a rush of relief even as he lifted what was left of it above his head again, to have another go.

‘I’m going to have you, you dog,’ he snarled, and lunged forward, smashing it down again.

This time I rolled into him and he missed completely.

Seeing my chance, I grabbed one of his legs with both hands, hoping to knock him off balance, but it was like trying to uproot a tree trunk, and he shook me off easily, catching me in the midriff with a frustrated final whack of the battered Remington, the angle too low to do any real harm.

‘All right, Clarence!’ barked Wolfe, still panting after his exertions. ‘Leave it. He’s had enough.’

I rolled over on to my back, every movement seeming stiff and painful. It felt like I might have a couple of cracked ribs. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ I whispered, the very act of speaking hurting me. ‘All I did was ask you what we were doing here.’

‘You pointed a fucking gun at me,’ said Wolfe.

‘And you pointed one at me. So now we’re even.’

‘I don’t see why we don’t just get rid of him,’ muttered Haddock. ‘We don’t need him and we can take his share of the cash.’

‘Hey, boys, come on,’ said Tommy. ‘Let’s be careful what we say here.’

Haddock shook his head. ‘I don’t trust him. All he does is ask questions.’

‘All I want to know is why the hell we kidnapped Kent. I still do.’

‘Because he’s a dirty rapist,’ put in Lee, striding over, her heels clacking on the mouldy floor.

‘Look,’ I said desperately, trying to appeal to anyone who might listen, ‘there’s something wrong with this whole thing.’ I turned towards Wolfe. ‘I mean, if your client’s a relative of one of Kent’s victims, then how did he manage to set all this up so fast? Kent was only arrested yesterday. When did you get hired? Because if it was before then, then this whole vigilante story’s bullshit.’

Lee looked at Wolfe. ‘Is this right?’

‘The client’s a relative,’ Wolfe replied defensively. ‘Maybe he had some inside knowledge. Who else would want a nonce like Kent?’

‘We can’t let this dog leave here,’ said Haddock, prodding me with the barrel of the ruined Remington. ‘He knows too much. And we don’t know nothing about him.’

‘I vouched for him,’ said Tommy, ‘and I still do.’ But there was something half-hearted in his tone, as if he himself wasn’t sure of me any more.