If You Were Me by Sam Hepburn Read Free Book Online Page A

methodically. I was on my knees, sweeping the torch around, inching backwards, when I heard a noise. A wheezy engine turning over, tyres crunching tarmac, and voices. Hushed. Urgent. It sounded like someone was moving the JCB I’d seen outside. My skin turned icy. I flipped off the torch and squeezed behind the pile of appliances, holding myself against the wall of boxes. Apinprick of light winked red in the darkness. My phone. Just out of reach. Footsteps were coming nearer. I willed them to go away. Fear exploded through my body as I heard the jangle of keys and the electric hum of the rolling door sliding up. Through a gap between the boxes I saw a red van back in and made out something that looked like ‘—tal Meats Ltd’ written down the side. Two men jumped out. Outlined in the glare of the headlights, the driver was tall, thin and stooping, wearing a woolly hat. He used a key to lower the door and as he turned round I caught a glimpse of a face I wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Thick eyebrows, sunken cheeks, hooded eyes and skin like badly mixed cement. The other man flung open the back doors of the van and the two of them sat on the tailgate, lighting cigarettes, checking their phones. Waiting. For what? My muscles burnt with the strain of keeping still. The slightest twitch would crackle the plastic. Give me away. I bit down on my lips to stop my teeth chattering and glanced at my phone, poking out from under one of the boxes. If it rang, I’d be dead.
    I heard something outside. Muffled cries, scuffling, an angry shout, then footsteps coming across the car park, getting louder. Cement Face switched off the headlights. Dropping his cigarette in a shower of sparks, he raised the rolling door. Three more people ducked under it, and as he turned the key to lower it again I fought a crazy urge to dash out, wriggle under the slowly narrowing gap and make a run for it. I knew I’d never make it.
    The headlights flicked back on. One of the new arrivals, a big fair-haired bloke, was dragging a hunched-up woman who had a black shawl over her head. The other man, a weaselly-looking creep, had a gun wedged into her back. When he snatched off the shawl, I nearly gasped out loud. It wasn’t a woman. It was a young dark-haired guy, blinking and shaking his head. Despite the blood and the bruises, I recognized him. He was the man I’d seen that morning on the stairs. He was trying to speak, hissing bubbles of blood through broken teeth. ‘Please . . . don’t hurt my family, they don’t know anything . . . please . . . please don’t hurt them.’
    â€˜Shut up.’ Cement Face had a voice that made my hopes sink for the bloke they’d just dragged in. He held his hand out to the weasel with the gun. ‘You get his phone?’ Weasel tossed him a mobile.
    They pushed the young guy towards the back of the van. As he stumbled forward his head shot round in a last desperate hope there’d be someone there to save him. There wasn’t. There was just me, cowering in the dark, nearly wetting myself. Weasel flipped the gun, caught it by the barrel and thwacked him hard on the side of the head. With a dull crack of metal on bone the man slumped forward. They caught him as he fell and threw him inside.
    â€˜What you going do with him, boss?’
    Cement Face gave a short, grating laugh. ‘I’m going to make him famous.’
    He slammed the doors. As he got in the driver’s seat he jerked his head at the pile of appliances. ‘Get that stuff out of here. Before it all kicks off.’
    Weasel slipped his gun in the back of his trousers and got out his phone. ‘No worries. I’ll get Jez and Ron on to it.’
    Jez and Ron. The names slammed round my head. Jez Deakin and Ron Abbott.
    The rolling doors hummed shut and after couple of minutes I heard the JCB rumble back into place outside. They’d gone. I crept from behind the