James Craig - Acts of Violence

‘No idea.’ Carlyle rubbed his eyes. He felt exhausted. It had been a long day, doing essentially nothing. Grabbing the remote, he clicked on to one of the rolling news channels. For a few moments he stared blankly at the ticker scrolling along the bottom of the screen; it was the usual mix of the irrelevant, the banal and the inevitable. ‘Maybe it’s time for bed. I’ve got an early start in the morning.’

‘I spoke to your dad this afternoon.’

‘Oh yes?’ Suddenly on alert, he pushed himself up into a sitting position.

‘He gave me a call at the office. He’s obviously worried about that cough of his.’ Helen gave Carlyle an admonishing look. Her own father had died years ago and she was close to Alexander, closer than Carlyle himself was, anyway.

‘He should go and see a bloody doctor, then.’

‘He’s got an appointment for the day after tomorrow.’ She took another sip of her tea. ‘I think you should go with him.’

‘I’ll see.’ The last thing Carlyle wanted to do was sit about in a doctor’s surgery for hours on end. If he wasn’t unwell when he went in, he would be when he came out. ‘Things are quite busy at the moment.’ A story about a footballer who had killed two guys in a car crash came on and, trying to let the conversation wither, he waved at the screen, saying, ‘Can you believe it? The bloody Prison Service released him by mistake. No wonder the families of the blokes who were killed are pissed off.’

‘John,’ she said, not interested in his diversionary tactics, ‘this is important. Your dad’s getting on. He needs our support.’

‘I’ll see,’ he repeated.

‘OK.’ Helen was clearly not happy with his response. ‘But you should do it.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Irritated, Carlyle tried to change the subject. ‘Does Alice still want to go on the school trip?’ Along with his father’s health, their daughter’s class study tour to the USA was another current bone of contention. Two weeks in America was all well and good, but how were they going to pay for it? It was hard enough coming up with the fees each term; the ‘extras’ were killing them. He had always felt somewhat ambivalent about sending his only child to a private school – Helen had insisted – but he realized that he mustn’t burden Alice with any of his concerns.

‘I think so. She understands that it’s expensive though.’

Lifting the remote, he switched the TV off again. ‘God, in my day we were lucky to get a trip to Margate. Now the kids are off to New York and Washington DC.’ Carlyle, who’d never been to America in his life, suddenly felt a pang of self-pity.

‘It’ll be good for her. All her friends are going.’

‘I know, I know.’ Placing the remote back on the coffee table, Carlyle forced himself to his feet and shuffled towards the door. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out. It’s just a question of money.’

Was he awake? Slowly coming to, he rolled on to his back and focused on getting his breathing right – deep and regular breaths – before reluctantly opening his eyes. Blinking, he gazed at the ceiling. It looked diseased. Dirty white emulsion was flaking off in various places and a thick crack ran from one corner towards the centre. Out of the crack a spider appeared, scuttling along its length before disappearing again.

‘Urgh.’

Lifting his head off the pillow, Michael Nicholson threw back the tatty duvet, slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed. For several moments, he dangled his bare feet over the linoleum floor, scratching his head while he checked that he still had the usual number of toes. Happy to confirm that was the case, he then inspected each hand in turn. A pedicure wouldn’t go amiss, but there were no digits missing. Finally, crucially, he stuck his hands down his trousers and gave his balls a vigorous scratch.

‘All present and correct,’ he mumbled. Yawning, he looked around. Directly in front of him was a small window, with bars on the outside. Through it, he could see that the sky was grey and the light was fading. Overhead was a light fitting but there was no bulb.

In the distance was the hum of traffic. Nicholson assumed that he was still in London but that was by no means certain. God knows how long he had been out for. They could have bundled him into a crate and taken him anywhere in the world. For all he knew, he could be back in China right now.

At least they hadn’t killed him.

Yet.

Running his tongue across his teeth, he realized that he had a low-level headache, caused by dehydration, and his mouth felt like it was full of cat litter. He tried in vain to raise some spit before noticing that a two-litre bottle of Evian had been placed in the far corner of the room, next to a large red plastic bowl and a roll of pale green toilet paper. Nicholson tutted unhappily. He had a thing about coloured toilet paper; if it wasn’t white, he couldn’t go. It was an immutable law that he’d learned to live with over the years. He looked at the bowl. ‘No matter,’ he said to himself, ‘I wouldn’t be able to crap in that , anyway.’

Getting to his feet, Nicholson felt dizzy, but the feeling quickly passed. It took him two steps to cross the room. Picking up the bottle, he checked the seal then unscrewed the top. Lifting the water to his mouth, he gargled, spitting it out into the bowl before taking a second mouthful and swallowing. Replacing the cap, he put the bottle back on the floor and took a cautious stretch. Pushing back his shoulders, he rotated his head and tried to massage his neck with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand as he recalled what had happened at the flat in Chelsea.

What was the last thing he could remember? Stepping through the sliding doors, in search of the gin, to be confronted by two large figures in black, like something out of a James Bond movie. He froze. Ren Jiong and Wang Lei were nowhere to be seen. Without Ren’s rap music blasting from the bedroom, the place seemed eerily quiet. On the muted TV, two middle-aged women were comparing carriage clocks on the Antiques Roadshow , one of Wang’s favourite programmes.

One of the intruders approached Nicholson, a syringe in his hand. The businessman opened his mouth in protest, but no sound came out. He watched as the needle was thrust into his arm and the plunger pressed down. For a moment . . . nothing; and then everything went black.

And now he was here.

As the crappy B-movie in his head came to an end, Nicholson chuckled grimly. Wang Lei might have been paranoid, but she had been right. They had come for them and they had taken them. When things got tricky, the expensive security she had hired hadn’t been worth shit. Twelve bloody grand a day. The thought of all the money that could have been going into his pocket made him want to cry.

Putting his own frustrations to one side, Nicholson fleetingly wondered what his captors had done with Wang, and with the boy. Quickly, however, he returned to his main interest: himself. If he made it out of here, wherever ‘here’ was, he renewed his vow that he would head back to Shanghai for good and opt for the quiet life.

Having sorted out the rest of his life, Nicholson looked slowly round the room. Apart from the bed, there was no furniture. Decoration was limited to a faded poster of the Victoria Falls advertising the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority. To his right was a door; he knew it would be locked but he stepped over and tried the handle anyway. When it didn’t open he gave it a couple of desultory slaps and listened for any activity on the other side. There was none. Nicholson hit the door again, harder this time.

‘Hello? Hello . . . HELLO!’

Mumbling to himself, he counted to a hundred.

Five hundred.