The Survival Game (36 page)

Dread I finally stopped sifting through the toolbox and turned around, something clutched in his hand, his snake dreads acting wild as if they’d each been given a fresh shot of adrenaline. He went and stood ahead of Valeria—who watched him all the way like a hawk—and next to John. Dread I stared at Valeria with his dead eyes. She stared back with her piercing, scared eyes. John could tell by the wideness of those eyes that she sensed something bad was about to happen. Something that she was powerless against.

‘Know what we do ’ere?’ Dread I asked her in an abrupt tone.

Valeria didn’t answer; she just stared.

Dread I lifted up what he was holding so she could see. It was a pair of pliers. ‘We play games. Mi favourite be dentistry.
Ya get me?
’

Valeria just stared at him, unblinking. She probably couldn’t understand a word he was saying anyway, but most likely understood the pliers in his hand perfectly.

‘Now, the rule dem simple,’ Dread I continued. ‘We aks ya question; ya answer. Any wrong answer…’ He opened up the pliers and snapped them shut. ‘
And out come a tooth.
Ya unnerstand?’

She just kept on staring, not uttering a word.
‘Where’s Marek?’ John then asked, and for the first time, her eyes left Dread I and focussed on him.

‘Nice to see you again, John Evangelou. I’m very pleased to see you made full recovery…’

John flinched back. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘The police know it was you who killed my father,’ she replied with a gleam in her eye and a look of disgust on her face.

John stared at her open-mouthed. ‘
I
killed your father?’

‘Yes,’ she replied with an ironic chuckle. ‘You left your fingerprints all over his house like the idiot you are…’

John glanced at Dread I, then back to Valeria, who was now staring at him with contempt tattooed all over her face.

Astinomia
are after me?
he thought with mild alarm.
Jesus, I’ve been a sitting duck,
gamota
!

He looked around the cache as if trying to find answers. He was a wanted man. Wanted for a crime he didn’t commit. It suddenly dawned on him he’d have to find a way round that fact. Sharpish.

Marek’s the key,
re
,
a voice told him.
He’s a wanted man too. You’ll have to bargain with him.

First I gotta find him,
gamota
.

He turned his attention back to Valeria. ‘I’m gonna ask you again,’ he said to her, putting
astinomia
on the back burner. ‘Where’s Marek?’

‘Come here,’ Valeria said. ‘
Come…
’

John hesitated before leaning his head forwards.

‘Closer,’ she said.

John leaned in closer.

‘Closer,’ she repeated.

John tutted and leant in further, she was starting to get his back up.

Now that his face was inches from hers, she craned her neck forwards. ‘
Fuck you…
’ she whispered in his ear and began to laugh.

Something inside John snapped like a taut bowstring. His eyes became golf balls and his back straightened. He instantly reached out and grabbed her by the neck. He tensed his arm, wiping that grin off her mug. Valeria’s tongue popped out of her mouth and she began choking.

‘Fuck me?
Fuck me?
’ John shouted as he started throttling her. ‘How about
I
fuck you! Huh?’

Valeria’s face began to redden and she struggled under her binds. John squeezed harder and he could feel the build up of blood in her blocked arteries as they tried their best to pump it up to her brain.

‘
Like that?
’ John asked, staring hard into her piercing eyes. ‘I’m finished playing fucking games, Valeria. Okay? So just tell me where Marek is? Where the fuck is he!’

She went to speak but all that came out were guttural chokes. John threw her head back, letting go of her neck. She instantly began gasping for breath as if she’d just been held under water for ten minutes, her chest heaving.

John just stared down at her without an ounce of pity inside him. ‘Where’s Marek?’ he asked in a calmer voice.

Valeria lifted her head and looked him straight on, and John could virtually feel the hate injected into him by those eyes. They were full of poison. ‘Arranging my father’s funeral,’ she replied in a cold tone.

John turned his head to the side and pushed his tongue firmly into his cheek.
Is this
putana
taking the fucking piss out of me, or what?

His response was to bring his fist back and thrust it forwards, connecting square on with Valeria’s nose. He felt it flatten under the force. And it felt good. Made up for her trying to mug him off. Valeria’s head snapped backwards and stayed there. John reached out and grabbed the back of her head. He pulled it forwards to meet her stare. Her eyes were now distant, glazed. The poison had vanished and now daydreams had taken over.

He slapped her lightly on the cheek. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Come back. Valeria. Come back!’ He kept on shaking her and lightly slapping her for a few seconds more. Slowly, slowly her eyes began to refocus. Blood was now seeping out of her right nostril like a leaky tap. She stared at him with half-closed eyes. John gave her a harder slap and they opened up fully. She was now staring right at him again and her eyes abruptly flushed with fear; she seemed to have underestimated the other bloke in the room. This one was just as dangerous, if not worse.

‘I want what Marek stole from me, Valeria,’ John told her, grabbing chunks of her lab coat with both hands. ‘Today! So, you’re gonna tell me where to find him. Okay?’

Valeria gave him a half-sheepish, half-smug smile, her eyes half-closed once more. ‘He will never give back what he stole,’ she said. ‘Never.’

‘Why?’ John asked. ‘What does he want ’em for?’

Valeria began laughing. It was a tired, mocking laugh. The sound of it wound John up proper and he grabbed her by the neck again.

Her smile quickly faded and she stared at him with her cold eyes. ‘What do you see?’ she suddenly asked.

John’s eyes began rolling around uncontrollably in their sockets. The question coming out of the blue like that made something inside him twitch. He suddenly felt as if he’d been stripped naked and his inner world was bare for all to see.

‘What things do you see?’ she asked again, and this time, her eyes were now glowing with excitement while she awaited an answer.

‘What are you on about?’ John asked, his grip on her neck loosening.

‘You see things, don’t you?’ Valeria then asked with a knowing look on her battered face. ‘Things that were not there before. Tell me,
what do you see?
’

John licked his dry lips with an equally dry tongue. ‘What is it?’ he asked back, the hard man act suddenly deserting him. ‘What did you do to me?’

Valeria smiled again. ‘
Aaahhh
, yes. You
do
see things,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Tell me what you see. I want to know.’

John fully let go of her neck and narrowed his eyes. ‘I see good and bad,’ he told her straight up.

‘You see truth,’ she replied.

John’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Truth? What do you mean ‘truth’?’

‘This is the reason Polish Government wanted my service, why I ran away from them. They wanted me to make drugs for them. Truth drugs. So they can see real world. To see real truth for when they interrogate people.
Fucking communists!
’ She turned her head to the side and spat on the ground before looking up at John again. ‘You are my test subject,’ she told him. ‘I injected you with the correct dosage, actually, maybe a little overdosed.’ She chuckled. ‘And now I can assess the results. I knew you would come back to me, the lab rat always does…

So tell me,
what do you see?
’ She stared at him with the genuine eagerness of a deranged scientist witnessing the results of a twisted experiment. She’d given him something that night when she shot him with that tranquilliser dart. Something that made him see, as the bitch put it,
the truth.
He turned his head to see Dread I’s zombie face and snake dreads waving on the air. The expression planted on his mug was one of proper confusion. He had no idea what she was on about.

Angels and demons is what she’s talking about,
re
Dread I. Angels and demons. Horns and haloes. We’ve all got one or the other. And some people like yourself… added extras.

He took a backwards step away from her; she watched him with those eager eyes, blood trickling out of her mashed nose.

‘I see the world underneath the world we live in,’ he said to the air ahead of him, then he glanced at her.

Valeria began nodding her head in understanding. ‘
Aaahh
, yes. You see truth.
Your truth.
The drug works. The experiment was a success.’

John looked away in disgust. ‘You used me,’ he said.

Valeria gave him a gleeful smile, and nodded her head briskly.

‘You bitch….’ John said in a neutral tone.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I needed test subject and you were perfect.’

There was a nasty arrogance to her voice, a palpable intellectual superiority that got right up John’s hooter. He laughed to himself and shook his head.

‘So, now you have the power to see the truth, John Evangelou,’ Valeria continued, ‘you know why Marek will never give back what he stole.’

John stared at her through narrowed eyes. ‘No, I’ve got no idea why he—’

‘It’s for his wife and son,’ Valeria interrupted smartly.

Something inside John tweaked, and at first the drugs and anger in his system masked it. But when he focussed in on it hard, and analysed it properly, he realised exactly what it was—it was the guilt demon again, breathing noxious fumes into his heart.

‘His wife and son?’ he echoed, and it was an after reaction, something he didn’t even realise he’d uttered.

‘They are hiding from Polish Government. They are on German border with others who escaped prison like my brother, hiding like scared dogs, waiting to be rescued so they can escape interrogation. If they are caught, the bastard politicians in Poland will send his wife to prison and they will take their son away from them both. My brother will never see his family again…’

John closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Of course you don’t!’ Valeria retorted in a spiteful voice. ‘How could people like you understand the love for one’s family.’ She stared at them both with disgust as she spoke.

Dread I stepped forwards and roughly grabbed her cheeks, making her mouth pop open. He held the pliers up to her face. ‘Ya know nuthin’ a us, so shut ya mouth, or mi gonna pull
all
ya teeth out so ya nah speak no more.’

Valeria stared at him with those wide, scared eyes again. Dread I let her go and moved back.

John rubbed his head.
What was she on about,
gamota
?
Marek had a wife and kid too?
Christ, was everyone who was entering his life right then attached with a kid?

He had his suspicions that Marek wanted the delivery for someone he loved, but didn’t know exactly who. Now that he was hearing this, he realised why the fat bastard was so adamant to hold onto it, even when he believed his old man’s life was in danger. The poor
malaka
must have been torn that day,
gamota
. Even though John hated the fucker for stitching him up back in the alley that night, another part of him now began to grow a sense of respect towards him; Marek was willing to go as far as risk his own dad’s life for the safety of his wife and kid. John suddenly found himself thinking of Alisha, seven months pregnant and sitting in a caravan, waiting for him to come home with some hard earned
lires
, while John himself was out and about doing all kinds of dark
skata
to get those very
lires
, just so he could put a proper roof over their heads, doing anything, absolutely anything for them. And why?

Because he loved them.

And Marek loves his family too.

And now he had another image burning in his mind. He could see himself from earlier in the day, out of his head on coke, shouting at
her
—his wife—talking to her like she was a piece of shit, and the guilt demon abruptly morphed and doubled in size like a bloated bullfrog before it released the contents of its swelled belly, breathing more guilt into his system. He shook his head to try and get rid of it, but it had taken over. He now wanted more drugs to blot it out, but something else deep down told him that wasn’t the answer. He’d been wrong back at Sagat’s flat in so many ways. He now suddenly realised with sad regret that he’d been very wrong and very misled.

‘So,’ he then asked the air ahead of him, his head full of questions that remained unanswered. ‘Why are you here selling drugs, while Marek’s family are in hiding?’

‘This was the deal I made with members of your Government. They wanted new drug to clean the streets, I needed safe, new country to live in—just like my brother and his family need right now. I make drugs for Government, they let me stay here in safety from
my
Government…’

‘You mean you work for the Government?’ John asked, his voice loaded with incredulity.

‘Yes, to fight against people like this!’ Valeria replied, staring at Dread I in disgust.

‘Nah worry,’ Dread I replied nonchalantly, ‘mi gonna bring dem down next, seen?’

John stared at the ground wide-eyed.
This shit’s deep,
gamota
!

‘We also had to pay for my father’s treatment,’ Valeria then informed him, making John focus on her again. ‘He had cancer. It is very expensive disease. Hospitals in England are better than Poland,
but that is not saying much from what I have seen…

‘People in England like drugs, and I had product to offer in return for my freedom. So, considering everything, it was best idea to come here. For me, my brother, and my father.
But, you killed him
.’

John glanced at Dread I, whose head was cocked to the side, a rude boy screwface planted on his dead, greyish mug. Valeria was accusing John of killing her old man, when the real culprit was the
malaka
standing next to him. He shook his head. The guilt demon was at work again, and now it was being fed prime cuts. So the old man had been getting treatment at NHS hospitals, but not on the NHS. He had to pay ’cos he was a foreigner. They came here to help him treat his cancer. What a fucking story. Not to mention Valeria working for the Government to counter the crack Dread I was serving up. Jesus, she was hot property, and they had her here strapped to a fucking dentist’s chair in Stokey!