Quid Pro Quo

Chapter Five

I shook my head to clear the blur and immediately regretted it. It felt as if my brain had been replaced with white-hot ball bearings.

I cautiously opened my eyes and became dimly aware of a rhythmically pulsing light. I wondered, half-dazed, if the illumination was real, or an effect of the blow I had received.

Perhaps it was concussion; I certainly felt nauseous and a little dizzy. I was perplexed as to whether a man suffering from concussion could reliably self-diagnose, but at that moment it did not seem like my most pressing concern.

I tried to raise my hands to rub my face, but they wouldn't move. My arms stayed firmly where they were, despite several urges from my thumping brain.

Jesus, was I paralysed? I began to panic.

No, I was upright and sitting on some sort of chair. I sensed that I was no longer in the alley, but that meant that I had moved elsewhere. I didn't remember doing so of my own accord. In fact, I didn't remember much at all, other than the black shape of a bottle whistling through the air and a multi-coloured burst of stars behind my eyes.

That could only mean that I must have been moved.

I flexed again, but my arms remained stuck behind my back; steadfastly disobeying my wishes. I could feel a burning sensation in my hands like pins and needles, so I couldn't be paralysed. Pins and needles was a result of lack of blood flow.

I was tied up... That must be the answer. Everything was in such a haze, I struggled to order facts in my scrambled mind.

Was I a captive? Was I being held by those bastards from the alley? What else could they want?

None of this made any sense; the only thing that seemed real was the pain that thumped in my head like a pissed-off monkey with unexpected access to a hammer.

Twisting in my seat, I tried to take in my surroundings as best I could. I had to take it easy because of the agony and for fear of toppling over.

I was sitting in an enclosed space, and it was dark and cramped. The walls appeared to be wooden and slatted. Every available inch seemed to be covered with shelves that were stacked with pots, jars and bundles of plants that either cast eerie shadows or shone ethereally in the pulsing blue light.

My eyes stumbled upon a twisted grey shape that hung out from the storage jars and oddments towards me.

It looked... well, it looked like a squirrel on a stick.

Wow, I thought, head trauma could seriously fuck you up.

I blinked, trying to shift the fog from my eyes. The more I stared, the more I was convinced that it was a squirrel; bound by the paws to a foot-long twig that protruded from the wall.

I heard a soft click, distinct above the buzzing in my head. It was a human noise; a metallic noise, and I turned my head to the left to investigate.

I had to strain my neck to see but sitting hunched in the gloom was the figure of a tall man. In front of the man was an upturned wooden crate serving as a small makeshift table. Resting on the flat surface of the box lay an object that I did not have to blink to recognize. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, a gun. The dull metal of the barrel gleamed in the occasional blue light that flooded the otherwise dark night air.

"Wakey-wakey," the man spoke softly, his voice was deep and level. He made no move for the weapon that lay in front of him, the muzzle pointing conspicuously at me.

"Who are you? You already have my money," I croaked. I was surprised at how feeble my voice sounded. It hurt to speak, in fact it hurt to blink.

"Ah yes, the alley," the man said, tossing a square object onto the crate top. It landed with a solid thump and flopped open, doubling its size. It looked very much like my wallet.

"Who are you working for, Satchmo?" the shadowy man asked, not raising his voice nor altering the soft, level pitch.

"My name?" I stuttered, confused.

"... is currently Satchmo Turner," he interrupted me. "Now, be a good lad and tell me who you work for." There was a fearful monotony to the sound of his voice. It sounded like he was almost bored.

"That light, it hurts," I mumbled.

Blue flashes were still pulsing away, casting an intermittent glow over the bizarre surroundings.

"That's the ambulance, they'll be gone soon. Now, have a careful thought, because I won't ask a third time. Who do you work for, Satchmo?"

I got the feeling that him not asking a third time did not imply a change in the line of questioning, rather a further deterioration in my current state of health.

"I work for Yeoman Turner Investigations," I replied. It always stuck in my craw to say 'Yeoman' first, but this wasn't the time to raise my personal grievances.

The man leaned forward and put a small square of paper on the box in front of him. In the pulses of neon blue light, I recognized my business card.

"Please cut the shit. This is not a situation under your control. For the last time, who do you work for?" the man said, his voice carrying an undisguised tone of menace now.

"Look pal, is that my ambulance out there? I could really do with an aspirin and a CT scan," I replied, deciding to balls it out. Whoever this guy was, I was pretty sure that short of actually using that gun, no pain he could inflict would surpass that which I was already feeling.

"No, they're just scraping up those turds from the alley now. They didn't fare as well as you I'm afraid. They ignored their last warning too," The man said, his tone cold as if just portraying a statement of fact.

The ambulance light pulsed its last, then died, and we were plunged into total darkness for several seconds. Something told me that the man had altered his position and was standing over me in the dark. If he had moved, it was without making a sound. I was only vaguely aware of a presence near me, it had not been positively confirmed by my senses.

I was becoming steadily more afraid.

There was a fizz and a crackle as a match was struck, then the room was bathed in the warm glow of a paraffin hurricane lamp that swung gently from the low wooden roof. In the soft light I could determine two things: firstly, I was tied to a chair in an inordinately cluttered garden shed.

Secondly, and possibly more worryingly, the object that leered at me with a rictus grin of amused foreboding most definitely was a squirrel on a stick.

My captor sat back down. He was tall and broad with a tangle of dark hair that lay atop a lined and deeply tanned face. He had a good growth of near-black stubble and pierced me through with cold blue eyes. He wore heavy-knit jumper and loose canvas slacks that were festooned with pockets, many of which bulged. Edge palmed the gun from the table and slid it under his top, then his empty hand emerged and reached down to the floor next to him. He spread my dossier on Tyrone Edge across the crate and, without breaking eye contact, he arched an eyebrow questioningly.

"My car!" I spluttered indignantly. "What the bloody hell were you doing in my car?"

The file had been on the back seat of the Beetle. He looked at me, his eyes a little distant as if calculating a tricky sum.

"You work for," he picked up and read from my card, "Yeoman Turner Investigations?"

"Yes!" I responded, unable to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

He flipped though my handwritten notes on Edge, scanned them swiftly and chuckled lightly to himself.

"You're a bloody amateur, aren't you?" he scoffed. I chaffed at the description, but said nothing.

The man rose to his feet and walked behind me. He bent his right hand to his boot and withdrew a wood-handled knife. The blade wasn't serrated or notched like the ones you saw in films; it was short and plain and glinted evilly in the dim light.

His arm drew back out of my view. I held my breath, closed my eyes and rammed my chin to my chest. I waited for the swift slash of the keen edge across my throat and the warm flood of my life to come pouring into my lap.

There was no low chuckle this time, but rather the man erupted with a full-blown laugh; broad and deep like a rain-swollen river.

The bonds holding my wrists fell to the floor and my arms dropped lifelessly to my sides. I tentatively tried to raise them, and a burning pain shot from my fingernails to my shoulder blades. I decided against any sudden arm-related getaways and wondered if my legs would likewise fail me if I attempted to run.

The man sat opposite me again, the knife gone from his hands. He leafed through the dossier, reading a page intently. I took a certain amount of professional umbrage at being called an amateur.

"Look, I might not be Columbo, but I do make a living at this!" I huffed.

"Hermit..." the man read aloud. "I like that."

I said nothing, just looked up into the leering death grin of the squirrel. The squirrel looked back at me. It wasn't saying anything either.

"Satchmo, I wonder if you feel like telling me why you were sitting outside my house, and have been pestering my tenants?"

It wasn't a question.

"Your house?" My cogs finally began to turn. The man merely nodded. "I am looking for a man," I said carefully.

"Tyrone Edge," the man replied.

"Yes, and I think I found him," I murmured, my throat hoarse.

"Indeed, but I would like to point out that I found you," he smiled showing bright white teeth and causing deep laughter lines to appear in his tanned face.

"Would you tell me why you tied me up and waved a gun at me." I sounded a lot angrier than I was. I was still a little strung out; this was not the way most of my investigations went.

"Tying you was a precaution; the gun was a mistake," Edge said with absolutely no remorse in his voice.

This guy was obviously some kind of nutcase; haunted by paranoid delusions. He probably thought the KGB was after him, the Prime Minister was in reality a giant space beetle and the National Trust had tapped into his thoughts. His unflinching gaze remained glued permanently upon me, boring into my soul. I began to look for signs of a tell-tale twitch.

"Where are my manners? Tea?" He stood up suddenly and made towards the door of the shed.

"Tea?" I answered, incredulously. Jesus, less than a minute ago he had me tied to a chair with a gun effectively pointed at me and now he was offering me a cuppa.

"Yes, no Tetley's I'm afraid, just home brew," he replied with a smile.

"That would be lovely." I decided that my best chance of emerging unscathed was to humour him.

Edge left the shed, several minutes later he returned carrying with him a puff of wood smoke on the breeze. He opened an old wooden medicine chest that was tucked into the far corner of the interior and began rummaging through the contents.

"It won't be a minute now. Why don't you tell me why you were looking for me?" he said conversationally over his shoulder.

That seemed to be a tremendous idea to me. The sooner I could get the job done and leave this fruitcake behind to his shed and his squirrel totem pole, the better.

"I am here on behalf of the executors of the Will of Mr. Morgan Edge," I began. He stopped rummaging with a jerk, as if he had run his fingers over a live electric cable in the bottom of the chest. His head snapped round, and those eyes were on me again, digging straight through me.

"Morgan is dead?" His voice was quieter than it had been.

"Yes. I'm sorry," I replied. I wasn't really, I wanted out of there.

"Is there a body?" he demanded urgently. What kind of question was that?

"Yes, typically..." I said, rather forgetting myself, before recovering. "I mean, I have no idea. I, we, have been instructed to find you. You are the sole heir to Morgan Edge's estate," I tried to explain.

"Hmm..." That was all Edge said. He rose from the chest with two dented tin mugs in his hands and left the shed again.

After several minutes he returned and both vessels steamed. I held one in each hand, the warmth bringing feeling back first into my tingling fingers and then, slowly, up into my arms. I peered into the mug. The contents were no kind of tea that I could identify, it smelled rich and fruity. Edge sat back where I had first seen him, he leaned his back to the wall and propped both legs up on the box in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. He stroked his stubble thoughtfully with one hand and clasped the tin mug with the other.

I supped the drink; it was hot, sweet and tasted of apples and berries. I was surprised at how good it was and I gulped it down.

Snapping out of his reverie, Edge looked back at me.

"I could do something for that head, but you'll want to see a Doctor," he said, waving his mug airily in my direction.

The pain had faded into the background like a bad smell; it was still there but filtered out somewhat. I felt the area the blow had struck delicately and found a knot of tissue the size of a golf ball.

"I can go?" I asked.

"Of course, Satchmo. I'll be in touch about the will business," Edge replied.

I rose to my feet gingerly, gripping the back of the chair for support. The power drained from my legs like sand through a sieve and I felt light-headed. My knuckles whitened on the chair back and a sense of machismo held me just about upright.

I could feel Edge watching me, sizing me up. He was the same height as me, as broad but thinner and maybe two stones lighter. It was hard to judge under his baggy jumper, but I could tell that he was lean and strong. Edge was clearly a pretty dangerous character; he was smooth and languid in his motion and I had the feeling he could beat me senseless using only his weak arm and without ever breaking sweat.

I felt a little sorry for the scrotes in the alley, for whom the ambulance was necessary, then remembered what they did to my head and reconsidered my pity.

In my haste to leave, and bring an end to what had been a nightmarish evening, I took a few doddering steps to the door. I stumbled and reached out for the wall. Instantly, Edge was behind me, arm underneath mine, almost lifting me off my feet with no discernible effort. He helped me across the wasteland behind the houses, through the alley where several smears of blood were congealing, and to my Beetle. Without a word he turned and drifted noiselessly away into the night.

A light rain began to fall, misting on my clothing and the glass of the windscreen. I opened the door and fell onto the driver's seat. I fumbled the key in the ignition and dropped it to the floor.

Leaning forward, I struck my head on the steering wheel and cursed vehemently at the pain that shot across my temples. Having retrieved my keys, I fired up the car.

Still cursing, I drove shakily, swearing all the way home without ever repeating myself, breaking new ground in creative invective.