Captives by Shaun Hutson Read Free Book Online

peered out of the window into the street below, puffing slowly on his Menthol cigarette. He hated the taste of the bloody things but his doctor had told him that if he didn't cut down from his usual forty Rothmans a day he'd be in line for lung and heart trouble before he was forty-five. And, with just seven years to go to that deadline, Plummer was taking no chances. He'd cut down on his intake of cholesterol, too. He'd even started jogging. He hadn't quite got to the stage of popping sunflower seeds but, if it made him healthier, he'd be quite prepared to start on all the organic shit, maybe even become a vegetarian. Although the thought of doing his weekly shop at a fucking garden centre instead of a supermarket made him wonder if he wanted to be that healthy.
        He turned and smiled, a crooked smile exaggerated by the scar on his left cheek that reached from the corner of his mouth to the ridge of the bone.
        'I was passing by,' he said. 'Thought I'd drop in and see how business was.'
        Scott offered him a drink but Plummer declined.
        'Got to watch the old liver, James,' he said, holding up his hands. And the heart. And the lungs.
        'I'd better go,' said Carol. 'I'm due on in ten minutes.' She smiled thinly at Plummer then at Scott.
        'I'll see you later,' he said softly, but she had already gone.
        'Nice girl,' Plummer said. 'Lovely arse.' He blew out a stream of smoke.
        'Is this a social call?' Scott said, changing the subject.
        'You sound suspicious, Jim. Think I'm checking up on you?'
        'I only asked.'
        'Like I said, I was in the area, thought I'd pop in and -see how business was.'
        'It's good. We took over two grand last night. Mostly on drink, of course.'
        Plummer smiled.
        'Of course,' he echoed. 'I wish all my bloody joints were doing as well as this one. Old Benny, you know Benny Fox runs one of my places over in Dean Street, he's lucky if he sees two grand in a fucking week.' Plummer shook his head. 'It's the quality of the girls, you know. I mean, some of them in the other places, they're not top quality, if you know what I mean. There's one bird over at Benny's I swear to Christ he got her from Smithfield. Arse like a fifty-dollar cow. Face to match.' He shook his head. 'We need more girls like that Carol. She's tasty.'
        Scott eyed his boss warily for a moment, anxious to change the subject again.
        Plummer sat down at Scott's desk and glanced at the remains of the pizza.
        'Not exactly haute cuisine, is it?' he said, wrinkling his nose.
        'If I had as much money as you, Ray, I'd eat better,' Scott told his boss.
        'Perhaps you could do with a raise. I can afford it. Most of the shops and clubs turned a profit last year and my other business concerns are ticking over nicely.' He took a final puff on the cigarette, then ground it out in the middle of the pizza. He smiled that crooked smile again.
        Plummer owned six clubs in Soho, most of them providing live sex shows. Four also showed imported films and sold a range of soft and hardcore magazines. The shop upstairs at 'Loveshow' dealt in that kind of literature. It came in on containers three times a month, carried in by lorry drivers paid to smuggle the banned material in the cabs of their trucks. He also owned a couple of gaming clubs in Kensington (the more respectable side of his business) and he had just bought into a syndicate responsible for opening a large outdoor sports arena in Fulham. With an annual profit of over ten million pounds, Plummer was one of the underworld's wealthier barons. He disliked being compared to a criminal gang boss, though. He had men working for him, some of them armed, but he wouldn't have called them a gang. Associates was a word he preferred. He didn't own clip joints, he operated adult entertainment emporia. To Plummer this wasn't a lie. He saw himself as a businessman, not a