Paul Finch - The Killing Club

The light hit Laycock in the face, penetrating to the backs of his aching eyes, causing him to blink involuntarily. A damp rag was moved vigorously back and forth across his face. He realised they were mopping away the clotted blood.

‘Yep,’ the American voice confirmed. ‘Check.’

The light went out and Laycock was taken by all four of his limbs and flung – literally flung – out onto the ground. He rolled over, thinking to jump to his feet, but when he looked up, the ramrod-straight silhouettes of his captors hemmed him in from all sides. Man by man, each one of them drew something from out of his clothing, and held it up. Laycock’s eyes had attuned sufficiently to the dim moonlight to observe that in every case it was the same thing – a claw-hammer.

‘What is this?’ he gabbled. ‘Whoever you are, you’ve got the wrong fella!’

‘No we ain’t,’ came that casual American voice.

‘Are you fucking mad? I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake!’

‘We’d hardly have gone to this trouble if you flipped burgers.’

‘Wait … just fucking wait!’ Laycock half-screamed, holding up empty palms, trying to press his abductors back with a helpless gesture. ‘Whoever you are, whatever I’m supposed to have done, I can fix it … there’s nothing that can’t be undone …’

But the first of the claw-hammers was already hurtling at his face, unseen in the gloom. It connected with a smack of meat and cracking bone.

‘Ouch!’ the American said, and chuckled.

The other hammers arced down from all sides, over and over, thwacking into limbs, torso, skull, shattering those flailing hands like they were porcelain.

It wouldn’t be true to say that Heck didn’t dream.

He did dream occasionally, or maybe he dreamt every night and only recalled vague snippets in the morning. But as a rule his sleep was deep and undisturbed. Perhaps this was down to his own body, some internal mechanism looking out for his welfare, preventing him reliving the worst events of each day as he tried to rest. Either way, all he ever knew of his dreams were brief, hazy recollections, though these could be disturbing enough: a prostitute’s severed foot still in its pink high-heeled shoe; a female body lying naked in a bathtub, its face covered with clown makeup. But for the most part, given how disjointed and out of context this fleeting, broken imagery tended to be, it was easy enough to shrug off.

Not so on this occasion.

This time he was in his sister’s house, which was located in Bradburn, a post-industrial town in a depressed corner of South Lancashire. It was the same house where his late parents had lived, where he had grown up as a child. Normally it was clean and tidy, yet now it was filthy and dilapidated. Heck wandered helpless and teary-eyed from room to room, appalled by the dereliction. What was more, he could hear the giggles of two children playing games with him – darting around, staying constantly out of sight. He never saw them, but somehow knew who they were: Lauren and Genene Wraxford, two pretty little black girls, sisters from Leeds, who as young women would be murdered by the Nice Guys. He shouted at them not to grow up, not to leave this place, which though it was dirty and crumbling – fissures scurried across the walls, branching repeatedly – they would be safer in if they just stayed here. But still he couldn’t see them, and now bricks and plaster were falling. He blundered through the dust to the front door, only to find it was no longer there – solid brickwork occupied its former place.

Frantic, Heck scrambled back through the building, which now consisted of empty, cavernous interiors, many made from rusty cast-iron and fitted with grimy portholes for windows. When he reached the back door, he saw that a heavy iron bolt had been thrown. This too was jammed with rust, and only by exerting every inch of strength did he manage to free it. The door opened – but not onto the paved back yard where he’d kicked a football during his childhood, onto another vast interior, this one built from concrete and hung with rotted cables. At its far end, a gang of men were waiting. All wore dark clothes and ski-masks. They approached quickly and silently, and now he saw they were armed with punk weapons – logs with nails in them, bicycle chains, lengths of pipe.

‘By the time we get bored with you, son,’ a gloating, Birmingham-accented voice whispered into Heck’s right ear, ‘you’ll wish we’d finished you the first time.’

He spun away, stumbling along a passage, at the end of which stood a bathroom, clean and well appointed, filled with warm sunshine. Heck recognised it from a holiday cottage he and Gemma had rented in Pembrokeshire when they’d been dating all those years ago. At its far side, a shapely woman stood naked in the shower. She faced away from him; her long fair hair flowed down her back in the stream of water. He knew it was Gemma – her hair had been much longer then. Before he could speak, the bathroom window exploded, and those hostile forms – more like apes than humans – came vaulting in. Heck shouted, but no sound emerged, and the bathroom door slammed in his face, another bolt ramming home.

His eyes snapped open in the dimness of early morning light.

For several seconds he could barely move, just lay rigid under the duvet, sweat soaking his hair, bathing his body. At last his vision, having roved back and forth across his only vaguely recognisable room, settled on the neon numerals of the digital clock on the sideboard, which read 5.29 a.m.

Gradually, he became aware of a need to urinate. At length, this propelled him from the warmth of his bed and sent him lurching along the chilly central passage of his flat to the bathroom. On the way back, he was still attempting to shrug off the soporific effects of sleep – for which reason he was caught completely off-guard when there came an explosion of breaking metal and rending timber downstairs.

Heck stumbled to a halt, damp hair prickling at the sound of furious male voices and the thunder of hobnailed boots ascending the single stair from the front door.

In a state of confusion, he backed into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Whatever was happening here, it struck him vaguely that he had options. He could try to escape, though his sole bedroom window opened over a fifty-foot drop into a litter-strewn canyon, through which an exposed section of the District Line ran between Fulham Broadway and Parsons Green. Alternatively, he had his mobile with him, and could call for back-up if he first shored up the door – but in truth there was nothing in here with which to create such a barricade; no chest of drawers, no dressing table. The other option – and this looked like the only realistic one – was to fight.

Heck kept a hickory baseball bat alongside his bed. He snatched it up just as the bedroom door was smashed inward. When he saw a gloved hand poking through, clutching a pistol, he swung at it with all the strength he had.

The impact was brutal, the smack resounding across the room, a squawk of agony following it. The pistol, a Glock, clattered to the floor. Heck made a dash for it, but the injured intruder, who was wearing a motorbike helmet, dived in, catching him around the waist, bearing him to the carpet. Other intruders followed, also armed with pistols, shouting incoherently – and wearing police insignia all over their black Kevlar body-plate.

What Heck had first taken for motorbike helmets were anti-ballistics wear, but he’d already rammed his elbow down three times between the shoulder-blades of the first assailant before realising this. ‘Bloody hell …!’ he said.

‘Armed police!’ they bellowed as they filled his room, seven of them training pistols on him at the same time. ‘Drop the fucking bat! Drop it now!’