Chapter 5 Damaged Goods
The next morning Roland surveyed his wrecked flat more closely – burnt marks on cabinet tops made by cigarettes, dirt ground into carpets, you could see the heel marks. Potted plants emptied in the bath and the lavatory, the mattresses and bed linen in both bedrooms were cut and bullets fired into the pillows. Nothing but nothing was sacred or saved by these thugs. Even the pictures on the wall had not escaped. Moustaches had been inked in under ladies noses in one, bushy hair had been drawn under the arms of another lady, two classics utterly ruined and irreplaceable. They had gone to town everywhere. Roland was too tired to feel anger. He packed some clothes into two suitcases, locked up the flat and dared to venture to the garage below the building for his car which appeared to be untouched.
He pressed the button on his car key ring to open the doors but as he approached there was an almighty explosion as everything before him came in his direction in what seemed a thousand pieces of his car and instinctively he fell to the ground. Those cars nearest his were also damaged and alarms from other vehicles were blaring away, the noise was deafening. He lay there for what seemed an eternity while the noise was filling the air and then people came from all sides and saw him laying there clutching suitcases. A shard of glass had penetrated one of the cases. Of course it had to be the one with the two suits in.
He was helped up by two men who seemed to be dusting him down or maybe frisking him he wasn’t sure until he found that the old keys to his flat were missing. They were certainly going to get a surprise because he was still holding the new keys which he had put on his car ring before leaving. A fire engine arrived with a police escort and an ambulance. They insisted that Roland should accompany them to the hospital for a check up. No good arguing and he agreed. He gave the police his luggage and keys to his flat and after his examination at the hospital he said he would come straight along to the Police Station.
After Roland had received some first aid for a minor cut he had sustained from the blast he walked to Joanna’s Ward. She was not there! She had been transferred to the I.C.U. There was a policeman standing guard outside. He was allowed to see her just for a moment and he was shocked to see what may have befallen her as there were wires and tubes sticking in everywhere plus two drips and a heart monitoring machine. Apparently someone had tried to kill her and almost succeeded. An off-duty nurse decided to visit one of her colleagues who happened to be in the same ward about 9pm. She had promised her some magazines to read while she was getting over an in-growing toenail. Not life threatening but painful and she saw these two men attacking a patient and pressed the alarm button. Unfortunately the men got away. Roland thought it must have been the two who had frisked him this morning.
Chapter 6 Tea and Biscuits
Roland was beginning to wonder what on earth was going on and thinking there had to be more to it all than him going out with Jo. It would be silly to think that all this discomfort was because he had taken Jo to a dinner and dance. She agreed to go with Roland with the full knowledge of the man she really was going to marry. But it must have been that kiss, that certain intimate kiss that changed his opinion of what appeared to be like true situation between us, but to be honest there was nothing there, it was a thank you and a goodbye kiss from Jo for a good time, nothing else or so I believed at the time. Had she changed her mind about me or forgotten to tell me? Had I known, I might not have ended up on a flagpole half the night! They could have just shot me – that would have been easier, but probably one of them had an imaginary flare and saw the window and decided to chuck me out, who knows!
All this turmoil was going on in Roland’s mind as he stood watching Jo and the constant bleeping noise and the three squiggly lines going across the screen as if on an underground tube train on a loop line. The masses of wires and tubes – it wasn’t fair, all this for a kiss.
A nurse came up to Roland and tugged gently at his sleeve and led him away into the corridor. ‘She’ll be alright you know, it’s just the shock of seeing her like this, but I’ll give you my word she will pull through!’ Roland sat down on the bench. The policeman was walking up and down the corridor. The nurse said ‘I’ll get you two a nice cup of tea.’ When the nurse returned both the policeman and Roland were talking about the events of what had happened yesterday which the man seemed to know all about as he was the policeman who had asked Roland to report to the police station in the morning. The nurse returned with two hot steaming mugs of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives. ‘There you go, enjoy!’ ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ said the policeman nodding towards the room. ‘Yes! said Roland. ‘She is now that circumstances have thrown us together.’ The policeman seemed to drink his tea down in a couple of gulps, took two biscuits, put one in his pocket and started to eat the other. ‘I better start guarding again and you had better get to the Police Station. Roland raised his mug of tea to the police officer and drank down his tea and taking three biscuits, he looked into the outer room and glancing first through the partition glass at Jo, thanked the nurse for the tea and went on his way.
At the Police Station the usual formality ensued in the interview room repeating parrot fashion the events of the previous evening and the following morning in the garage. He knew little about Jo, only what the nurse had told him when he himself had treatment for a few cuts and bruises and decided to visit her while he was there. After two hours he was allowed to leave. He told the desk reception sargeant on duty that he was returning to his flat to pick up two suits as one suitcase was damaged by the blast from the explosion. The sargeant handed Roland his suitcases and keys to his flat and Roland left the building. Roland decided he was going to book a hotel room while repairs were being made to his flat and that he would telephone his insurance company to make a claim. He knew of course that the insurance company would drag its heels and think of some clause why it shouldn’t pay out and it would be quite true in one respect that the words thugs and gangsters are not mentioned in the pamphlet on what you can claim or not claim for, even though the damage is quite evident when the man they send to survey the flat will find out.
Roland returned to his flat to pick up two more suits. He placed the damaged ones in a black bag to dispose of later. The door bell rang its shrill peal and of course he knew that it could either be the police, the Insurance Assessor or the two men from this morning. He peeped through the spy hole in the door and sure enough, there they were the two men from the underground garage, but dressed in blue boiler suits and carrying tool boxes Obviously they were in disguise to fool the police who must be in the hotel foyer. Roland decided not to answer the door and instead went to smaller bedroom of the two bedrooms where there was a hole in the wall protected by two metal sliding doors. This of course was the laundry Shute leading to the basement where there should be a trolley in situ to catch the dirty linen. Roland found a smaller suitcase and a valise, rolled up his suits and jammed all the other essentials into the valise and with the black bag of damaged suits he sits astride the bag, but first lets go of the small suitcase and valise, sliding the doors shut and lets go and rides down towards the basement and manages to suppress a whooping noise. It is a long way down and he prays for a trolley to be there in place to catch him – concrete floors can damage your health significantly.
Roland was in luck because not knowing how these tubes worked, he hadn’t realised they came to a gradual bend to fall at a lesser speed and he felt more relaxed as his luggage followed by himself plunged into the laundry basket which was on wheels and with his added weight it transported him across the floor through double doors into the flat’s quadrangle where the vans come to collect and make deliveries. Roland stood up in the basket and was just about to climb out with one leg in and one out of the basket when he was hit from behind and everything turned black.
When Roland eventually came to, his hands and feet were tethered to a chair, he was blindfolded and the room smelt damp, so he assumed he was in a cellar. He felt something warm trickle down his face and then felt the searing pain as it soared through his head. He had fully awakened to what torture might lay ahead for him.
He heard the voices of his captors and guessed there might be more than two persons that he thought in his own mind he might be able to deal with – but no heroics were going to be done when he thought about Jo. He wanted to stay alive for her sake. If he wanted excitement in his life, this was it – although being thrown out of a window was slightly over the top, but with a bit of ingenuity on his part he managed to escape that situation. His car exploding should have happened after he got into it, but failed because someone didn’t really know what they were doing, thank the Lord!