NATIONAL TREASURE by Barry Faulkner (life books to read .TXT) 📗

alone. There was a light switch by the opening; I flicked it and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up the partitioned area. Janie Johnson was sat in a far corner on a mattress, next to a small table on which the remains of a bowl of soup and a bottle of mineral water stood. She stood up; she was wearing a blue boiler suit and I noticed her left wrist had a wide steel bracelet fastened round it like a handcuff, with a chain going from it to a hasp set into the floor. That was going to be a problem.

‘Who are you?’ Her voice was still trembling.

‘Mummy sent me. Don’t ask questions, just do as I say, okay? Questions can come later.’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’

I pointed to the bracelet. ‘Where’s the key?’

‘They have it, they unlock it when I go to the toilet.’

‘When’s that, once a day?’

‘No, no, I call and somebody comes.’ She pointed to a cheap child’s battery intercom on the table.

‘Call now.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

I walked out of the partition area and out of the room as she pressed it. I took a gamble that whoever answered Janie’s call of nature would come from the door at the end of the corridor, which I guessed would lead to a staircase like the other end of the corridor had. I went into the room nearest that end and waited. I had to get to whoever came before they saw the damage to the door to Janie’s room and raised the alarm. I had to be quick. I stood behind the door, keeping it open just a crack so I could see who went past; hopefully it would be just one person. It was, one middle-aged lady wearing an apron – staff from the living quarters upstairs? I quietly slipped out behind her and brought the gun down hard and fast on the side of her head with my right hand, as my left arm encircled her as she slumped forward. I pulled her through the broken door and into where Janie waited. Her eyes opened wide in horror.

‘Don’t worry, she’s not dead.’ I lowered the lady onto the mattress, pulled the key to the bracelet from the apron pocket and took it off Janie’s wrist. I could see her wrist was red raw with the chafing. Nice people, the Bogdans – they could have put a bandage on first. I slipped the bracelet onto the lady’s wrist, clicked it shut and threw the key into the opposite corner.

‘Right, let’s go. Stay close.’

‘Hang on.’ Janie gave the woman a good hard kick in the ribs, which brought a moan from her lips.

I raised my eyebrows at Janie.

‘It’s what she did to me every time,’ she explained, and gave the body one for luck. ‘Bastard bitch.’

I was beginning to like Janie, a lot.

We left the room and went along to the end of the corridor and through the door onto the stairs. I thought about calling the lift, but I didn’t know where it ended up on the ground floor, and really didn’t like the prospect of the doors opening in front of a load of Bogdan’s goons. I started up the stairs; I reasoned that there would be an exit onto the outside fire escape from the next floor, as that was marked as the living accommodation on the plan. Two zigzag flights of stairs up and we came to a small landing and a wall with a door. Music and voices were coming from inside. Too dangerous; if it was a living area there would be people, and people around Bogdan have guns. One or two I could deal with, but maybe there would be kids as well. Complicated. If we got trapped on that floor by goons coming up the stairs, we’d be in deep trouble.

I shook my head at Janie and started back down; she didn’t argue, just followed. I was hoping that somewhere off the stairs there might be a door leading out to the fire escape bolted onto the outside of the building, but there wasn’t. At the bottom of the stairs we could feel the thud of the disco music through the floor as we made our way along a corridor. Halfway along a door on the right was open and a flashing strobe light permeated through. We must be behind the club’s bar; beside the door on the floor were three crates of beer bottles which must have been the ones I’d seen loaded into the lift upstairs earlier. The lift was on the opposite side of the corridor, doors closed. We made our way slowly along. In front of us a man suddenly stepped out from the open door and bent to drag a crate back through it. Lucky for him he bent away from us and didn’t see us. My gun was aimed towards him all the while as Janie and I stood stock still, willing him not to turn our way. He did the same for the other two crates before the door slammed shut behind him.

I smiled at Janie. ‘Phew.’

She didn’t reply. We hurried past the door to the end of the corridor which had a heavy steel door set into it, the type that emergency exits have with a bar across that you push down to open. I pushed and it opened. We went quickly inside and I closed it behind us. The light was a dim red bulb hanging from the ceiling; there were no other doors. A closed room? We were trapped. The only way out was to retrace our steps past the bar. I noticed two large bolts on the door – why would you want to bolt yourself inside this room? I was about to tell Janie that we had to go back when she tugged my arm and pointed to