Consequence (24 page)

“Howard Price right?” the rugged man asked.

Howard nodded; his whole body seemed to be suffering from tremors of anger and fear.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the rugged one walked up to him and shook his hand. Unbeknown to Howard, Michael Richards had drifted away as his friend took centre stage.

“Really?” Howard stuttered.

“Sure,” Phillips said. “You’re a big man in this town. Hell, probably even the country. No doubt one of the richest too eh?” Phillips nudged Howard who smiled meekly out of bewilderment.

“It’s not about the money,” Howard replied eventually.

“That’s what all rich people say,” Phillips joked.

“The money doesn’t matter. I just want my daughter to be safe,” the emotions were rising inside of him.

“Your daughter? I’m sure she’ll be fine. With the amount of money you’ve got to throw around you can afford to keep her safe. Am I right?” Phillips asked, lightly nudging him again.

“Is she okay?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play games with me. You know who I’m talking about.”

Phillips shook his head, “I guess the craziness comes with the money,” he said softly. “So how’s the business?” he wondered.

“Why do you care?” Howard spat.

“I’m just being friendly. No need to get hostile. Can’t an honest citizen have a chat with a famous local?”

Howard paused. Something inside him told him he should play it cool and calm. The last thing he needed was to outrage his daughter’s kidnappers.

“You’re right,” he softened. “The business is fine.”

“Good. Good. Can’t say I use your programs, not much of a computer person myself.”

“Really?” Howard said with an incredible amount of disinterest.

“Yes,” Phillips replied, ignoring the dull reply. “I’m more hands on. I play some computer games now and then; browse the internet every so often, but only for porn of course,” he winked. “I don’t suppose your company gets involved in any of that?”

“Porn?”

“Computer games.”

“We have a few titles lined up,” Howard’s words were slow; he had stepped closer to the man, allowing their conversation to flow easier into the microphone.

“I’ll have to look into them. More of a console man myself, but I play the odd PC game, if it involves stripping models and cards,” Phillips grinned again. “So what sort of games are you making?”

“Nothing really big--”

Howard paused and looked past the quizzical criminal. Michael Richards had retreated towards the bus stop; the cash-filled duffel bag in his hands. His retreat was turning into a desperate sprint as he tried to leave in a hurry.

Phillips also turned to see his fleeing friend, “
What the fuck?
” he whispered.

“What are you doing!” Howard screamed in Richards’s direction. “I want my daughter!” he moved forward, past Johnny Phillips who was still looking in the direction of his runaway friend, somewhat bemused.

Gathering his senses Phillips stepped forward and grabbed the businessman, grasping a clump of material from his jumper he pulled him back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Howard raged. “I want--” his words transformed into a muffled clutter as his jaw met Phillips’s right hand with crushing precision.

He stumbled backwards. A pain instantly exploded across the left side of his face and he tasted blood. He lost his balance and fell, landing on the uncomfortable concrete.

His world turned black momentarily. Through blurred, blue and starry vision he glimpsed a bus roaring along the road towards the bus stop; his blurred attacker sprinting quickly towards it.

80

Phillips reached the bus stop just as the bus screeched to a stop in front of him. He reached forward and grabbed Richards who was ready to step onto the vehicle.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded to know.

“Get on the bus,” Richards said bluntly.

“You fucking ran on me. That wasn’t part of the plan. When has deserting
ever
been part--”

“Just get on the bus,” Richards persisted with a distracted air.

“Anything could have happened back there,” Phillips continued, ignoring his friend’s pleas.

“Get on the bus, I’ll explain.”

“All those years together and you fucking run on one little scheme?”

Richards turned and grabbed his friend by the collar. “Johnny,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “get on the
fucking
bus!”

Phillips, taken aback, obliged and they both hopped on the bus; empty except for an old man sitting at the front, supporting himself unsteadily with the back frame of a seat.

“What the fuck is this all about?” Phillips questioned as the two men sat down at the back. “You were supposed to sneak a look, take a few things of value -- if any -- give me the signal, then leave. We never mentioned running away. We’ve done this trick dozens of times Mickey, what the fuck are you playing at?”

Michael Richards smiled; a vision that disturbed his friend.

“What? What is it?” Phillips asked as the bus pulled away from the scene. “You manage to pick his pocket or something?”

Richards shook his head.

“You steal his watch?”

Richards shook his head again.

“What then?” Phillips was growing impatient.

He opened the duffel bag and allowed his friend to peek inside.

“Holy fucking hell!” Phillips bellowed. The old man at the front of the bus turned hastily -- almost losing his balance -- and sneered at Phillips. The bus driver shot a similar scorn through the rear-view mirror.

Phillips ignored them and kept his attention on the contents of the bag.

“Between five hundred thousand and one and a half million,” Richards said. “Probably. I haven’t had time to check, but I
think
they’re all fifties.”

“Holy shit.”

“Looks like our friendly local is involved in something bigger than computer software.”

“Probably fucking drugs,” Phillips said. “I can’t believe it, we’re fucking...
Jesus,
” he stumbled, lost for words.

“I tried to catch your eye after I snuck a peek but you weren’t looking,” Richards described with a smile engraved on his face. “You were busy talking. I hesitated and ran. I kinda hoped you would follow, not too sure what I thought would happen to be honest. It’s not every day you find a bag full of cash.”

“
Fucking hell,
” Phillips said again.

Richards laughed giddily, “How did you get away?” he asked.

“What?”

“How did you get away from Price?”

“I knocked him out,” Phillips said placidly before returning his attention to the open bag. “We’re rich!” he said.

“You knocked him out?”

Phillips turned to his friend, his mouth open, his mind couldn’t push the thought of the money away but it managed to grasp the question “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said eventually.

“So you hit him?”

“Pretty much. He seen you running away and tried to run after you so--”

“So you whacked the poor fucker?”

“Does it matter? He gets a sore jaw; we get a bundle of cash. I think we win on that one.”

Richards laughed again, “Good point,” he agreed.

After more moments of admiration and more random outbursts by Phillips, Richards sealed the bag and clutched it tightly to his chest.

“We’ll get off at the next stop, then walk to the flat,” he said. “We need a safe place for all of this.”

Phillips nodded, his jaw still practically on his lap.

81

Howard Price tried to stand but he was punch drunk, like a beaten boxer he returned to the canvas to stop the world spinning. His canvas was solid concrete; it had already cut the back of his head when he first made contact, now it pressured that pain.

Initially his nerves had mixed with the sleep deprivation and left him unawares, the punch had completed the task of turning him into a vegetable. His jaw ached, but he didn’t mind; his back, backside and head ached, but he didn’t mind. As he stared up at the blue skies, the only thing he saw, thought, and cared about, was Lisa. He had let her kidnappers escape.

He felt rage and depression combine to form a void of emptiness.

The swap hadn’t gone as planned, it wasn’t even a swap, they had his money, he didn’t have his daughter. They had retreated, he couldn’t catch them now but he would certainly try to hunt them down.

The police will be here soon, he thought as he watched a blackbird hover overhead before perching on the rusted rim of the basketball hoop. They would want to take control of the operation, and he would let them.

He had agreed to the swap and had kept the police away from the scene, but they had broken the ransom agreement, they had beaten him taken the money.

He tried not to think of the safety of his daughter. He only hoped that the detective had been right and that the kidnappers would become greedy -- he didn’t mind them asking for more money as long as his daughter was safe. He didn’t want to even contemplate the possibility that they had killed her already.

Through the roaring rivers of blood that screamed through his ears he heard the sound of at least three cars halt on the nearby road. No sirens had sounded but he knew it was the police, they promised they would be indiscreet. They had kept their promise.

Within moments he was surrounded by plain clothes officers offering their support, each of the officers had a saddened, sorrowful look on their face. They took pity in him; they had listened to the conversation through the microphone and now found him flat out on the concrete with no money and no daughter.

They took pity in him because they thought Lisa was dead.

Howard dabbed his jaw with a tepid ice pack that had been handed to him by one of the officers. It did little to soothe his discomfort.

“What about the bus?” he asked, each syllable a strain on his jaw.

Detective Brown answered the question as he paced the floor, wearing a tread into the living room carpet.

“We have men looking into the route the bus takes, if we’re lucky we may find some CCTV footage at one of the stops,” his words offered little hope. “We may be able to get some information from the driver as to where he dropped off the men but we don’t even have their descriptions.”

“Like I said,” Howard said sluggishly. “He was a rugged, hard type, about 5.11 to 6.2, something like twelve to fifteen stone.”

“That’ s just one of them,” the detective noted.

“I didn’t get to see much of the other. They were together though; one description should be enough to put forward to the driver right?”

“Well, the description is pretty vague. In fact you just explained half the population of this town. There’s also the possibility that the men took several bus journeys before jumping into a car. They might not have even got on the bus. You said your vision was blurred at the time?”

“I saw them waiting at the bus stop,” Howard’s words were slow and deliberate, anger was hiding deep down inside of them.

The detective paused thoughtfully, “It seems a bit strange that kidnappers would use public transport. Especially with one million quid in their possession.”

Howard sighed. This conversation had been going on for the last ten minutes. In that time all he could get out of the officers were “
it seems strange
” or “
that doesn’t fit in
” or “
it’s certainly not a straight forward case.
” He wanted his daughter back and they weren’t doing anything to help him.

“Is she dead?” Elizabeth appeared from the kitchen. Howard hadn’t seen her since his return. He had left her in high hopes; he had even seen a look of hope -- albeit drug and ignorance induced -- in her eyes. Now her eyes were filled with tears, red with pain and black with sorrow.

The detective did the wrong thing. He paused, hesitated. Howard was the one who eventually answered, “She’ll be okay darling,” he assured her whilst giving the detective the evil eye. “We’ll catch them next time.”

“Next time?”

This time Detective Inspector Brown spoke, “We believe, and it is highly possible, that the kidnappers will phone up to demand another ransom. They’ll get greedy. That’s when we’ll take them down.”

Elizabeth nodded, looked solemnly at Howard then retreated up the stairs. Her footfalls were slow and depressive; everyone in the living room listened to the quietly whimpering women as she ascended the stairs and crawled into her bedroom.

“Do you think they’ll phone again?” Howard asked after Elizabeth’s sorrow had faded.

“Of course they will,” Detective Brown said.

“But why don’t we have them now?” Howard wondered. “You said you’d be on standby if anything went wrong. Something went wrong and you were nowhere to be seen.”

“We kept our distance as promised Mr Price,” the detective said sternly. “We still have men scanning the area for any witnesses. Things like that take time, in the mean time we need to wait on another phone call. Hopefully, by the time they arrange the next drop off, we’ll have enough information on them to be ready and waiting. That is, of course, if you’ll let us this time.”

Howard nodded. “I want those bastards dead.”

82

Michael Richards and Johnny Phillips climbed off the bus and began a walk to the safe house, taking a short cut through a dense field.

“It still doesn’t make much sense,” Richards said.

“I know what you mean,” Phillips agreed, “but who gives a fuck? We have a bag full of cash and we did practically fuck all to get it,” he said with a grin.

“He could have seen us. He could be giving descriptions to the police as we speak.”

“Maybe. But if it
is
drug money, I doubt he would involve the police.”

“And if it isn’t?”

Phillips dodged out of the way of a melancholic bee on a rollercoaster ride to find flowers in a field full of weeds, “Well, he didn’t get a good look at you and you were the one that ran off with the money.”

“
You
knocked him the fuck out,” Richards reminded his friend.

“We’ll just have to hope I knocked some short term memory out of him as well,” he joked. “Plus he seemed distracted. He was nervous, sweating, almost scared. I doubt he had full control of the situation, he probably can’t remember what I look like.”