like tasteless rice and salad. He would have thrown it back, but he was starving after the first day.
Every time they came inside was the same. The door would be unlocked, more than one lock on the outside, Goldie noted, the door swinging open, light rushing in. The eight times it had happened, there’d never been less than three of them. Two of them had either a sawn-off or a bigger gun, like you’d use on Call of Duty. Assault rifle, Goldie reckoned. He’d told Dean that, but not really got anything in response.
‘Dean,’ Goldie had said on day four, whilst they were eating a meal of some kind of mashed potato and meat, ‘we should rush them when they drop the food off.’
‘No …’
‘Hear me out, lad. We could get either side of the door and surprise them. Have them over and then get the fuck out of here.’
‘It won’t work. And then you’d have to go on the rack. Trust me, you don’t want to go on that.’
‘What’s the rack?’ Goldie said, his brow furrowing.
‘You don’t wanna know …’
‘Pretend I do,’ Goldie replied, an edge to his voice. The look on Dean’s face made him pause though. The lad had started sweating, his hands shaking a little … then more.
‘I … I … No. They told me not to say anything.’
‘Like I give a shi—’
‘No,’ Dean’s voice echoed around the room. ‘I’m not saying nothing.’
Goldie considered pushing harder, but Dean was now sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, silently rocking. Whispering to himself words which Goldie couldn’t hear.
Goldie recognised what just thinking about the rack had caused in Dean.
Terror.
Day five was when it started. Three of them arrived, with Goldie expecting the same process as before. Food dropped off, no questions answered. Any movement met with a point of a weapon.
It was different this time though. No food. Two of them came towards him as the other aimed a rifle at his chest. Strong hands gripped each of his arms and pulled him along.
Helplessness. That’s the effect a bullet can have on you. It wasn’t the gun so much. Not after he’d got used to it being pointed at him. All he could think about was what it contained. Tiny little things that would rip him apart. Kill him in a second.
They led him out of the building he’d begun to get used to, out into the cold winter air of December. He could see his breath as he exhaled, hoping that would continue as the memory of his mouth being gagged came back to him.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, chancing it. Not wanting to talk too much.
There was no response. Goldie measured himself up against the two people in balaclavas holding onto his arms, deciding he could probably take them if needs be.
If he could work out a way of doing it before being hit by a bullet, he’d do it. He didn’t want to turn into Dean back in the room. Scared for his life. Not yet.
He was led back inside another building, a large desk in a room, someone in a black balaclava and a suit sitting behind one side. It wasn’t so much a desk, Goldie thought as he was dumped onto the chair opposite the man, as a long table. A red cloth covered the surface, barely hanging over the edges.
Goldie stared across at the balaclava-suit man, not willing to break eye contact. Two of those who had brought him here left the room, leaving only rifle man and the weird get-up sitting across from him. There was something so odd about the combination of a bally and a pristine suit, which Goldie could tell was no Burton’s Menswear special. Nah, this was money. Made to measure, he thought.
‘Nice suit. Wanna tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing?’
His voice sounded exactly as he wanted it to. Hard as fuck. Don’t-fuck-me-about hard.
‘Be quiet. Learn to speak when spoken to, understand?’
Goldie forgot about the gun being pointed at him for a second. ‘Fuck off. Don’t talk at me like that.’
He heard, rather than saw, the whipcrack as Bally-Suit man raised and struck his face with something. A few seconds of nothing, before the pain cut in.
Stinging, burning. His face on fire, from ear to nose in an almost straight line. Goldie pulled his hand away from his cheek where it’d flown in reaction, looking at it as if it wasn’t his. Blood, thin lines of red. Broken skin, broken face.
Burning.
‘This is something my dad gave me. He no longer had any need to use it, so passed it down. I only ever got it once, that was enough. I deserved it then as well.’ Bally-Suit man was standing now, his accent softening as he spoke. ‘It’s like a riding whip, what you’d see a jockey using. Only this is worse. Thinner, more pliable.’
Bally-Suit man moved around the table-desk and came close to Goldie as he held his face with one hand, trying to decide if punching this dick now or later would be preferable.
‘You’re going to learn some manners, young man. And learn them quick.’
Goldie took his hand away from where he’d been stroking the burning, turning to face Bally-Suit man. ‘Fuck you,’ he spat.
Bally-Suit man sighed through the covering and shook his head at him.
The crack came again, quicker than Goldie could react. Across the other side of his face. As he went backwards, away from the pain, Bally-Suit man kicked at his chair, sending him flying. Goldie’s head cracked against the floor, making him dizzy for a second or three before his senses returned, his fists balling and swinging.
Laughter rang back at him as he punched thin air, then pain flared across his thighs as the crack hit there. Then all the wind rushed out of him as a boot flew into his stomach. He tried to get up, one arm across his middle, but a boot on his neck stopped him.
‘Stay down. I don’t want to have to put you on the rack first day.’
Goldie glanced towards the table-desk as the cloth fell from it, revealing something he couldn’t work out. Restraints and wood. In any other setting it would have barely caused a second glance. Seeing it there, Goldie began to breathe quicker, trying to swallow.
Goldie shook his head clear, tried moving again. ‘Am I fuck lying down for you,’ he said, pushing away the boot from his neck.
His voice wasn’t as good as before. The hardness was already going, leaving him, getting the fuck out of there while it still could. If he wasn’t alone, maybe it would have been different; with his boys backing him up, things wouldn’t be the same at all. As it was, Goldie was on his own, and the prick in the bally-suit was standing over him with some whip type of thing that was causing him a lot of pain and he couldn’t even see it coming.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’
‘Understand what?’ Goldie said, pulling himself onto all
