Killing for the Company

He tried to shout again, but the wind had been knocked from his lungs and he couldn’t so much as croak. He didn’t see the knife — smooth on one side, jagged and cruel on the other — until its point was pressed against his neck.

For the first time, one of the men spoke. His voice was heavy and rasping. ‘ Sisadzijo! Cocksucker! That pretty little bint of yours waiting back in your flat. My friends are fucking her right now. When we’ve finished with you, we’ll go join them. Let her know what it’s like to feel real men inside her.’

Anton forced himself to speak. ‘ Molim te… Please… please leave her alone. I’ll tell you everything…’ They laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound.

‘Tell us everything?’ the man with the knife said. ‘Don’t be stupid. We know everything. You think your little game in the bar was a secret?’ Another boot to the stomach. ‘We’re not torturing you, sisadzijo. We’re killing you.’

Anton shook his head just as he felt a warm sensation spread across his trousers. The men laughed again. ‘Pissed himself. What a joke.’

Anton closed his eyes and started to pray, murmuring words he hadn’t uttered since he was a reluctant child taken to the Orthodox church his mother attended. ‘ Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name… ’

When he opened his eyes again, he wondered for a moment if his prayer had been answered. The man was no longer pressing the knife against his neck, but was standing, looking down at him.

Pushing himself up into a sitting position, Anton looked, through his blood-bleary eyes, towards the two men. The knife man still had the blade in his hand; but his accomplice had something else. It was a thin loop of plastic, about fifty centimetres long, the ends fastened with a small notch. Only when the man holding it started to approach him did Anton work out what it was: a cable tie.

A fresh wave of dread crashed over him. He had heard of these people and what they did with this simple, everyday item. If he didn’t get away now, he never would. He scrabbled around, but a final kick in the chest was enough for the man with the knife to floor him again; seconds later the other one was forcing the loop of plastic over his head.

Anton’s hands went to his neck, as though he was strangling himself. In truth he was protecting it. The knife man was having none of it: with a flick of his wrist he slashed the back of Anton’s hand so deeply that he felt the blade hit bone. The pain was searing, and the blood smeared all over the back of his hands and down his shirt. So much blood. But he kept a hold of his neck because to let go would be suicide.

The knife man dropped the bloodied blade in the snow. Then he grabbed Anton’s hands and pulled them down to his side.

‘ Ne… No… I’m begging you…’ Anton’s desperate plea was cut short by the sudden tightening of the cable tie around his neck — a sharp yank that forced the plastic to squeeze his skin and severely restrict the flow of air into his lungs.

The two men stood back to watch as Anton desperately tried to loosen the cable tie. To get his fingers in between the plastic and the skin. It was impossible.

His lungs started to burn as his body silently screamed for air. He fell to his knees again, his panic matched only by the agony of his breathlessness. The knife was still there on the ground, no more than two metres away. Anton reached for it with his damaged, bleeding hand.

If he could just cut through…

But as he stretched for the knife, one of the men was there, stamping on the back of his hand with such force that Anton would have screamed like an animal if he’d only had the breath.

He collapsed.

Everything was spinning now. Confused. He saw the snow falling in slow motion. He saw the blood pumping from his hands. He saw the two men standing over him, the bright light of cruelty in their eyes.

And there was a moment, before Anton passed into unconsciousness and then death, when the pain disappeared and the lack of oxygen in his blood left him with only a sleepy, doped-up feeling.

The two men didn’t wait to check that he was dead. They knew the cable tie would do its work, and anyway they still had to get their rocks off with Anton’s girlfriend.

18.00 hrs.

The little town soon melted away into deserted outskirts, then came empty countryside. After following the Transit for ten minutes, Chet pulled over and allowed the white Skoda to overtake. Ivanovic’s man was probably too drunk to clock a tail, but they still had to follow SOPs. Once Sean and Marty were trailing the van, Chet caught up with them and followed at a distance.

Luke was studying a small map of the area, following their route carefully by the light of a thin, red-filtered torch. On his lap was a bulky GPS unit, blinking their position at him.

The snow fell harder, making the going slow, and the number of other cars was reducing. The white Skoda had been leading for about five minutes when Chet’s earpiece burst into life. It was Sean. ‘No one else on the roads. We should kill the lights.’