Chapter 7 Questions and Answers!
Charlie was counting out the twenty thousand pounds in readiness for the shipment of cigarettes that was being delivered to his warehouse tonight. He knew it wasn’t by any means a big shipment and really not what he wanted, but you have to begin somewhere. He was more interested in drugs and he knew that to start rocking the boat in this neighbourhood would be risking too much, as already two members of his gang had been arrested and the other had been shot dead by the police in the flat of the prisoner who almost got away and so he had his men tie him up and place in the cellar. Charlie felt that it was time to interrogate this man, now that he had finished counting the money.
Charlie and two of his most trusted men descended into the cellar to where Roland was trussed up like a turkey on Thanksgiving day, a piece of dirty rag was tied round his head and covered his eyes. Charlie and his cohorts surrounded him and Charlie stepped forward and removed the blindfold and spoke.
‘Well! What have we got here then?’
‘If you don’t know, I’m not telling you!’
One of the men stepped forward and raised his fist to strike Roland, but Charlie held his hand up to stop the man from going through with it.
‘Look! said Charlie, ‘All I want to know is what your intentions are towards the woman I’m going to marry?’
‘Oh! I see’ said Roland. ‘Is that why you tried to kill her?’
‘Kill her! What are you talking about? I don’t want to kill Joanna.’
‘The bodyguard you sent to protect her when she went shopping tried to kill her,’ said Roland.
‘I never sent her a bodyguard, her life is not in danger!’
‘It is now!’ said Roland. ‘Someone tried again at the hospital and if it hadn’t been for an off duty nurse visiting a colleague, Joanna would not be alive now.’
Charlie nodded his head and for Roland everything went black. Charlie replaced the rag and murmured ‘We can’t have him spilling the beans – wheel him into the Freezer.’ Charlie hesitates and says ‘No! On second thoughts just make sure he is securely tied up and we will try again to get some sensible answers from him later on’ Roland thought about the last sentence and for extra luck Johnson hit him with the butt of his gun. Roland expected some sort of comeback and managed to move his head sideways and received a glancing blow on the side of his head and slumped forward, dazed. Roland wished he hadn’t moved his head as the gun had slid down the side of his face and the soreness that had been left afterwards was very painful. He murmured the word ‘bastard!’ as Charlie’s sidekick left the cellar. After what seemed an eternity Charlie returned with a few members of his gang and tried to interrogate Roland who didn’t feel inclined to answer any more of Charlie’s inane questions, but was forced to on the threat of torture. Did Roland know the bodyguard by sight? Roland said, ‘No, of course not, I didn’t even know the girl – I was doing my weekly shop. ‘Did you always shop there?’ ‘No!’ said Roland, ‘I decided to change my shopping habit by trying another grocery store. ‘Funny you should change that day, wasn’t it?’ ‘It was just a coincidence and as luck would have it a lucky one for Jo – I saved her life!’ Charlie clicked his tongue several times. ‘Who is the Chinese man who has been following you?’ Roland was puzzled by the question and returned with a question, ‘Who?’ ‘Don’t act innocently with me, you must have known that you were being followed.’ ‘No! I didn’t know and the only ones that were following me since the invasion of my flat were members of your gang.’ Roland continued ‘What about the two men in the garage?’ ‘Nothing to do with us.’ said Charlie. Roland was beginning to think that there seemed to be lots of turns and twists and there were more people involved in skullduggery of different sorts on something that must be highly confidential or even secret and might be Government based.
Charlie decided that all the questions he had asked Roland had been answered and he thought that was all the information he was going to get from him. He nodded to one of the men and the blindfold was placed about his eyes and he was wheeled into another room. Roland began his campaign of escape from the chair, and because of the peculiar way they had tied his shoes to the chair he saw a loophole in which he could twist his feet out of his shoes, lift up his knees and scrape off the blindfold.
Chapter 8 Escape
Roland could not have envisaged what he was about to see. The coldness of that part of the cellar must have temporarily dimmed his eyes, because before him sat an oriental gentleman with a baseball bat between his knees. He was looking straight at Roland but not moving. Was he asleep, he wondered and he cautiously approached the man, only to find that he was dead. He could see that a tourniquet of cheese wire had was wrapped and embedded in the man’s neck. This was a puzzling situation, Roland thought not what you would expect especially if he was guarding me. That meant that other forces were involved and were being applied unknown to the gang.
He didn’t have the balls of James Bond, his hero, but he had to do something, he couldn’t stay put. He walked up the wooden steps and stood momentarily on the square platform behind the closed door listening, hoping he could hear something that would be only beneficial to him to turn the tables on his adversaries, but no sound came. Roland took a deep breath and started to turn the door handle when the unexpected happened. The door opened with such force that he found himself knocked off the platform and hanging on by his fingertips on the edge, his body swaying backwards and forwards. A light was switched on and Roland could see that if he had let go, the fall would easily break a limb or two and he would be tied up again or killed.
Roland thought they would discover he was not where he should be anyway and he was just about to shout out when the men picked up the dead man and carried him to a side door that Roland had not noticed which was unlocked and the men disappeared with the body. The door had been left open, so they were coming back and Roland knew he would be discovered. He swung his legs sideways until his right leg could gain purchase on one of the wooden steps. He grabbed hold of one of the wooden posts and heaved his body in an upward motion until he lay on the steps gasping for breath. He was about to lever himself up when one of the gang came and stood on the platform and shouted across to the open door to the men to hurry up, how he had not seen Roland was a miracle. The man disappeared and Roland ran down the stairs and dodged under them and only in the nick of time, because the men came back through the door. Roland was breathing hard and fast and was afraid they would hear him, so he held his breath as they climbed the stairs.
One of the gang members said ‘What about our other prisoner?’ ‘Don’t worry about him he’s probably frozen to death by now! We’ll shift him later, we have other work to do that’s more important. Roland heard the door close and the click of it being locked. He sighed with relief that they had not discovered him. He bent forward trying to catch his almost spent breath.
He went back to the cold room and drank some more red wine and took a sizeable wedge of Cheddar and swallowed it down between swigs of drink which made him feel a bit high and had to steady himself by leaning against the wall. He walked out of the cold room holding a piece of cheese in one hand and an almost empty bottle of red wine in the other. He swayed as he moved towards the side door. He placed the cheese and bottle on a bench and opened the door to fresh air and freedom.