Harrison
Carl Brixsom was fucking tough. I’d give him that. He’d been tighter than a melon in a peapod with information. However, I was tougher, and it was about time he started to realise that.
There wasn’t much of his face left, or his teeth and nails come to that. I was just about to start on the soles of his feet when the motherfucker, infuriatingly, passed out.
“Fuck me,” Andy, a guy I occasionally used to give me a hand if I needed it, grumbled. “Thought he’d hold out better than that. Just goes to show that packing some iron doesn’t make you formidable.”
I wanted to hurt him some more. I had relished in his screams. Basked in his tears. Every slice of my blade over his flesh and each hit I hurt him with had come with a vision of the bruising he had marked Lily with.
Throwing down the scalpel onto the small table, I made my way over to the tap that stuck out of the wall and started to wash the blood away.
“You want me to stay and see if I can break him some more?” Andy asked as he peeled off his latex gloves and threw them into the large bin liner that would later be incinerated – along with the half-dead body of Carl Brixsom. It would be good to hear his screams as the fire melted his heart and blistered his brain.
“Nah. He’s not gonna crack, Andy. If he was he’d have done it by now. Ain’t much left of him to torture, to be honest.” I gritted my teeth at the fury of defeat that raced over me. “I’ll get my tech guys to see what they can find out about him. Maybe he was sloppy with some transactions or emails.”
He nodded, agreeing with me. “Might be worth a shot.” Slipping on a clean pair of gloves, he started with the clean-up regime. Weirdly, this was always his favourite part. Each to their own, I supposed. “You want him cremated alive or dead?” he asked as he injected Carl with a paralysing serum, just enough to disable him so he wouldn’t give us grief on the final journey he would take.
When I merely quirked an eyebrow at him, he smirked. “Alive it is. I’ll hang back until the serum dilutes. Just to give him a more epic goodbye.”
Handing him an envelope containing his fee, I snatched up my coat and bid him goodbye.
Unable to resist again, I opened the tracking app and checked Lily’s location. The red dot moved through the backstreets of Amsterdam. I wasn’t sure I liked her in that sketchy part of town, but I knew Liam would have her back. From the fast pace the icon twisted around the map, I presumed she was in a cab. Frowning when something didn’t feel right, I enlarged the location. She was travelling away from the hotel. Checking the time and finding it was as late as 3am, I brought up Liam’s number.
It rang for a while before he answered. “Hmm?” he mumbled. Evidently, I had just woken him.
“Where are you?”
“At the hotel. Why?”
The blood in my veins curdled and I sucked in a long breath. “Where’s Lily?”
“Hotel. Came back around half one this morning. Why?” He was more alert now. As was my heartbeat.
“Any chance she has lost the bangle?”
“No, it was with her earlier. Harry?”
Ignoring him for a moment, I checked the map. Her dot had stopped moving. As had my heartbeat.
“Why the fuck is she in the dodgy area of the city centre then?” There was an edge to my voice that shifted Liam from his bed, the sound of sheets rustling and the whisper of a woman’s voice asking him what was going on, alerting me to the fact he’d been cosying up. And not detailing Lily!
“Fuck!” I hissed, running to my car. I just prayed there was an outgoing flight to Amsterdam within the hour.
***
“Hotel security guy said Lily went out for a smoke around quarter past two this morning. CCTV confirms that as…” Liam stated before I cut him off.
“And he didn’t think it funny she didn’t come back in?” Jesus, they were all morons!
We’d gone to the location the bangle indicated and found it tossed on the side of the road. The twinkle of the diamonds was subdued by the smear of blood.
I couldn’t think, fear making my brain mush. My hands shook from the surge of adrenaline rushing through my bloodstream.
My phone rang, and I quickly answered. “Harry. Quick update. I’ve managed to liaise with Daan, a mate of mine in the National Police Corps over there,” Jimmy stated. Luckily, from the CCTV situated at the front of the hotel, we’d managed to get a faint image of a guy walking up to Lily as she stood to one edge of the hotel smoking a cigarette, and I’d sent the footage over to Jim. The trouble was, that because they were just to the side of the angle of the camera, we’d only managed to obtain a rear view of him and half the registration plate of the car he stuffed her into. I had watched over on a loop as he’d slapped a rag over Lily’s face and pinned her down until she stopped writhing.
“Go on,” I urged him.
“Possible four vehicles from the partial plate you got.” He reeled off the registration details, including addresses for each one, and I signalled to Kit to write them down, repeating them out loud to her. “Daan has traffic over there searching their CCTV for sightings of each one. All ports have been alerted, and Lily hasn’t come up on their system since she landed at Schiphol airport on Saturday. So, at least we know she’s still there. Somewhere. If anyone tries using her passport, it will flash up on their system, and they’ll notify him straightaway.”
“You had a sniff from anyone over there?” I asked, referring to the bullshit we were receiving from all the hierarchy in the MET.
“Not yet. But doubt it’ll be long before it flashes up that I’ve logged in from an alternative location than The Yard. Amsterdam are on it, anyway, Harry, and I have no worries concerning Daan. He’s solid. He has your number to contact you, just in case I go off the radar.”
Thanking him, I ended the call.
“You wanna try the addresses?” Liam asked, but I shook my head and grabbed my laptop.
“He won’t be stupid enough to keep her at his home address.”
Logging into the SIS database, I proceeded to input the details of the only leads we had. Something had to flash up about one of these guys. Surely.
Lily Cooper was close. I was sure of it. I just prayed that I found her in time.