Suffer the Children by Adam Creed Page B

shark he’s crossed.
    Suddenly, Johnson feels weak again. The blood has dumped and he is no longer wired quite the same tight way. He needs to be gone – and quick – so he holds a hand up, beckons the minicab. He hasn’t even got the strength to give Di Venuto a farewell slap.
    As they drive off, he wonders if that was what Staffe had wanted, or will it just mean Di Venuto takes it out on someone else. If he does, he’ll come back. Next time he’ll be stronger.
    *******
     
    Guy takes a draught of wine. His heart beats fast and his fingers tremble. This is the deepest night can be. It is at its most silent. Soon, the birds will sing and the newspaper boys will stir.
    He hears the soft metal of the gate’s latch and quickly drains the glass. He stands, looks at his watch. It is four minutes to three. He holds his breath, prays hard that the silence will stretch, that something will occur to him.
    Two loud raps at the door.
    All night, Montefiore has tried and failed to fathom an option that ends with him not answering the door. If the man was going to kill him, he would have done it in the park.
    The man’s portrait outline is shadowed in the door’s stained glass and the threat to Thomasina resounds. The cartilage around his knees fails and he is short of breath, light in the head. He reaches out, shoots the bolt, unlocks the door, and pulls it ajar.
    Somehow, in the sliced jag of a moment, as he sees the man in the open door, Montefiore knows he is done for. He tries to shut it back, but the man puts out a foot.
    He cries out, for help, but before the gushing air can make a sound, his breath is cut dead by a fast and expert blow to the Adam’s apple. Montefiore drops to his knees, makes himself into a ball and feels a rag on his face. He recognises the smell as he fades, slowly, away.

     
    Montefiore is dead still. He is naked from the waist down to his Church’s shoes, gagged with gauze, and streaks of blood run from his eyes down his cheeks.
    The final touches are applied. The tiny video camera is propped up so it takes in the whole of Guy Montefiore: his misshapen frame on the screen, bound up to a metal cross, made up from interlocking high-tensile aluminium tubes. The cross is, in turn, suspended from the ceiling by three lengths of rope. There were originally four. That was the hardest part: finding the main joists in the ceiling, something strong enough to screw into, to take Montefiore’s weight.
    Montefiore’s thighs are bound to his chest with wagon lashes and he looks as if he is suspended in mid-air, jumping into a swimming pool. Bombing, they used to call it. Each of the three remaining ropes vary in length. Each rope has a number pinned to it: 1, 2, 3, 4.
    Inside Montefiore, entering his body via the anus, is a five-foot length of two by two. The other end is securely attached to the floor by four screwed metal shelf brackets. He hangs from the cross which is in turn suspended by the various ropes.
    Through the drumming of the pain, Montefiore hears a car outside. It changes gear, revs up and the engine cuts out. A door opens and shuts. Then another. He tries to slow the pain, breathes in deep. He pushes his tongue at the gauze, trying to fashion a pocket of air, some way that if he emptied his lungs, some sound might ensue. He can hear his neighbours coming up the path and he breathes in as much as he can. Pain shoots up through his body and he shakes his head as he screams, trying to will the sound out. It seems loud in his ears, but he watches as the figure in the hood smiles with its blood-red lips as it turns up the radio.
    They both wait for the neighbours to open and close their front door. A finger presses ‘record’ on the video and Montefiore watches the figure advance towards him, cloaked in white – the penitent’s hood showing only wild, black eyes and blood-red lips that make a smile as a hand grabs the rope. Montefiore feels himself shift and the wood grates against him, inside.