Chapter 48 Up For Ransom
Roland came to as the car rolled to a stop, he couldn’t see as they had placed a hood over his head and he was unable to speak as they had also gagged him. His hands had been tied and he was leaning against them and pins and needles were shooting up his arms, and that’s what made him wake up. He pretended to be still in the land of nod and managed to relieve his hands of pressure with the movement of the car that appeared to be going backwards.
Much to his surprise he heard Goodall’s voice and his heart sank to a new depth. His mind was working fast, too fast and surmising all sorts of reasons why he had been taken prisoner. Was it because Joanna was dead and had died because she was a nuisance or was it because he was an extra bargaining lever and the two of them would mean that Martin would have to let Goodall get away with his exploits, so as not to have the innocent blood of two people on his conscious for the rest of his life. Roland was hopeful it was going to be the latter, although it was not in any way going to mean that they would get away with their lives intact.
Roland was roughly handled between the two men that had grabbed him outside the shop. He was half dragged, half carried to where, he did not
know. He felt that funny feeling in the pit of his stomach and assumed that it was the gravitation pull sensation he felt every time he went into a lift, so he was going up. He decided to come awake to his captors and moaned. The lift stopped, it didn’t take long – it must have been super fast. He heard one his captors say. ‘At least we don’t have to carry him anymore, he can sodding well walk. Before we bring the other one up from the basement we’ve got to help him with some of the electrics!’
Roland was prodded in the back when he heard the lift doors slide open to move. He was grabbed by the arm and guided the way they wanted him to go as if it was his fault that he went the wrong way. Perhaps they had forgotten they had blindfolded his eyes.
The floor where they were seemed to have a slight echo when the men spoke to each other, and by that sense Roland began to think it was a disused building with no dividing walls, but one gigantic open space and no solid outer walls, just plastic sheeting and what gave him a false sense of the situation was that he could hear this noise like the wind rushing through the building and as he experienced the lift moving very swiftly upwards, he assumed it was the builders lift. He used to watch steel workers in the city in his lunch time, how they used to whip up to each floor to carry on placing and bolting the steel girders together. His stomach used to churn over as they balanced themselves on a width of four inches.
Roland was marched this way and that way and the journey seemed endless and at last he heard a door being unlocked. He was prodded in the back and his feet faltered and he fell to the floor. He was dragged up and placed in a chair.
His chair was lifted on its back legs and dragged to a new position, the hood removed and the cloth taken from his eyes. He blinked and winced as a very powerful light shone in his face. Eventually it went out and it had blinded him temporarily and tears began to fall from his eyes and he couldn’t wipe them away.
One of captors said on the way out, ‘Two down, two to go.’
Chapter 49 Upside Down
Roland thought had they searched him. Of course they had, Goodall would have seen to that. His piece of soap had gone from his jacket pocket and he hoped who ever searched his pocket, cut himself. However they hadn’t searched the rest of him. He wasn’t even sure that the blade he had hid in his pullover cuff would still be there as all the mishandling he had received might have moved it.
He was going to have a devil of a job trying to manipulate his fingers to retrieve the razor blade from his sleeve without cutting himself. He cut three knuckles and although they were only superficial cuts, they bled profusely. He was able to hold the razor between his thumb and first finger and bent his hand towards the rope round his wrists. It was an effort as the rope began to chafe that part of the wrist that was moving in a sawing action. Blood was beginning to make a sizeable pool on the floor and every now and then he had to stop. The pain in his wrist was becoming unbearable, but he soldiered on until finally the rope’s last strand separated.
He untied his feet and wrapped his hands in his handkerchief. There was a wash basin that he filled with cold water that took an eternity to fill and plunged both hands and the water turned to a nice red colour. The bending of his wrist had made a shallow cut and it was very sore. His captors had left in the room one of the pairs of trousers he had bought in the room. He would have to ruin one pair by cutting out the pockets with the razor blade and use them as mittens to soak up some of the blood.
Having cleaned up, Roland walked to one of the two doors and he knew he hadn’t come through the door he had approached. He tried the door handle, but the door didn’t budge. He shouted out. ‘Hi! Anybody in there?’ He felt an idiot shouting, how could there be someone else around, he hadn’t heard any noises. But to his astonishment someone, a woman said, ‘Sod off, leave me alone, you bastard!’ Roland was somewhat taken back by the language, but realized it was his new wife, Joanna. Roland shouted back, ‘It’s me, Joanna. It’s me Roland!’ Joanna walked towards the door, the chains rattling as she approached it, not quite getting as near as she would like to. Roland was thumping on the door. ‘Joanna are you are alright?’ It was a daft question, but when desperate to say something, only ridiculous words seem to come out of your mouth. Joanna replied, ‘Now I know you are alive, I’m just fine darling.’
Roland heard the other door opening and ran back to the chair and sat down with his hands behind his back. In came Goodall’s henchmen with Martha Stefan. She was already tied up and how differently she was tethered. The rope went from her wrists and round her neck and down under her groin and she had to hop. Another chair was brought in from outside and one of the men had got on the chair and looped it round a beam and tied it to her groin and they hoisted her up and as she flipped upside down, her head just missed the floor. As she flipped over, Roland saw a piece of paper pinned to her back and written on it in bold capital letters. “THIS IS FOR THE TREE.”
At this point Roland shouted out, ’What about something to eat?’ ‘Later!’ one of the men answered and they walked out, locking the door behind them.
Roland waited for ten minutes to pass and then stood up and walked over to Martha. ‘Let’s get you down off this beam!’
Roland had a problem getting her down with his hands so sore and cut. But he managed in the end.
Martha flexed herself and walked up and down.
‘What are we going to do when they come back with the food?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well you’re not going to be trussed up like a chicken on a spit, are you?’
‘People only see what they want to see and as they won’t be expecting anything else than what was here in the first place – all I need to do is hang by my hands on the beam with the notice pinned to my front and by the time they’ve cottoned on, it will be too late.’
‘I hope you’re right!’ said Roland.
Roland was able to inform Martha that Joanna was locked up in the room next to theirs. Martha had a go at trying to get the door unlocked, but she hadn’t any of her magic tools with her. Roland had a long conversation with Joanna through the door and Martha tried to close her ears to the lovey-dovey talk.
Two hours later they heard two men talking and the door lock grating as the key turned. They walked into the room and sure enough they had not noticed anything different and one man walked towards Roland and the other towards Martha hanging, the one nearest to Martha turned round and said ‘How do you spoon feed someone upside down?’ ‘You don’t!’ said Martha as she placed her thighs round the man’s neck and twisted sideways and you could hear the crack across the room. The other man turned and got out his gun, but he didn’t have a chance, Roland had never killed anyone before and it was a shock to his system as he slashed the man’s throat with the razor blade. It was all over in a second.
They tried to open the door to Joanna’s room with the keys that the other man had – but none of them worked. Roland assured Jo that he would be back to free her.
Roland thought it would be better if Martha looked for her son, saying that if Goodall had captured Charlie he could be locked in any one of the rooms on this floor or broom cupboard. Most of the floors had broom cupboards as Roland had been told by Martin about how clean the floors were in the building.
Roland decided to visit the basement as it was a chance remark he had overheard one of the men say when they pushed him along to the room he had just escaped from. Something to do with electrics, maybe he was going to tamper with the lift machinery, hoping to cause a diversion that would be catastrophic should anyone be in them.
Martha found Charlie in a broom cupboard on the third floor all trussed up like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day.