The Darkness Within

By Ferguson Shaw

Everyone has a breaking point...

Jonathan Colby knows he is no one’s idea of a hero. Unfit, overweight, and weak. An entirely unremarkable accountant. The kind of nobody who never wanted to be somebody.

What he doesn’t know is how valuable he is to some very bad people. Or what they’re willing to do to get what they want.

For Colby has a beautiful wife and a baby son, and that perfect little family makes him vulnerable.

With those he loves in terrible danger Colby must do exactly as he’s told. Even if that means becoming a criminal himself. Even if it means risking his freedom and his life.

But everyone has a breaking point. And everyone has darkness inside them.

Jonathan Colby is about to find out just how much...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ferguson Shaw
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310887345

Ferguson Shaw

Ferguson Shaw has worked as a private investigator, taught martial arts, and once spent a month travelling six and a half thousand miles across the continental United States in a car named Frank.He lives in the west of Scotland with his wife, two daughters, and an ever-growing army of soft toys and dolls.The Darkness Within is his third novel. His previous two novels, The Worst of Evils and The Forgotten Dead, featuring the private detective Keir Harper, are also available in paperback and eBook formats.Visit www.fergusonshaw.com for more information on Ferguson and his books.

Book preview

Chapter One

I failed her. Of that there is no doubt.

I saw her there, tied to the kitchen chair, her mouth taped shut, a second before the bag whipped over my head, and I did nothing.

There was a moment, an instant, fleeting and ephemeral, when I could have acted, could have saved her, could have done something.

But then it was gone, and the bag came down, and I had failed. A strong hand held the bag in place while another came up beneath my arm and clamped hard on my throat.

I struggled, but the grip was resolute. I kicked out, but made no contact. The clear plastic clouded with my panicked breaths and beyond the fog my wife screamed in silent terror against her gag.

The world tilted and spun and blackness rushed through the room to take me in its embrace.

I failed them both.

*

Ben was crying. Screaming.

I lurched to my feet, as I always did when he woke crying in the night and roused me from sleep. Only this time it wasn’t night, and my attempt to stand was curtailed by the ropes binding my arms and legs to another kitchen chair.

Emma sat opposite me, still restrained, her eyes red with fear. Beside her, in his high chair, was my son; eyes screwed shut, twin streams of anguish rolling down his cheeks as he bawled his little heart out. His right hand jerked upwards and banged down on the plastic tray. Again and again; the thumps a counterpoint to his high-pitched wails.

‘He’s got two minutes. If he hasn’t shut up by then I’ll shut him up. Understand?’

The voice came from behind me. And it was female. That much I registered through the ice-cold flush of dread that flooded my senses. Why did that seem worse? Why should a woman be incapable of threatening a child?

‘He’s only seven months old! He’s a baby!’

I tensed, waiting for a reaction from the voice at my back. I held Emma’s eyes as the seconds passed. They were huge and moist, golf balls plucked from rain-sodden grass, her cheeks and the tape across her lips wet with tears. How long had she had to endure this torture?

A noise behind me, a faint rustle of clothing, and the woman stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Emma and Ben.

She was tall, over six feet, with the broad shoulders of a swimmer and skin as white as a geisha. Her long black hair was pulled back in the kind of severe ponytail that could have pulled the wrinkles out of a raisin. Her jeans were tight, her cropped t-shirt apparently painted on over a muscular chest and rounded biceps. Her exposed abdominals could have been sculpted from alabaster.

Her jaw was strong, almost masculine, and jutted out as she looked down at me. Then she spoke, her eyes and voice flat, like she was watching a rather dull news bulletin rather than invading the home of strangers.

‘I didn’t ask how old he was. I asked if you understood. The next time you don’t answer a question I’ll start breaking your wife’s fingers. Do you understand that?’

Emma gave a muffled whimper. I choked back the instinctive response to beg and stumbled out a yes.

By that time Ben’s screams had faded to a muted grumbling, as they usually did after a short time. He had tired himself out and would be asleep in his high chair within minutes. I tried to be grateful for small mercies.

‘He gets it,’ the woman said. ‘You should follow his lead.’

I looked away, unable to hold her unflinching gaze. My eyes wandered around the room looking for some small glimmer of hope, of escape.

There was none.

The blinds were pulled down and the only glass in the back door was opaque. Even if the door had been completely open, our back garden was surrounded by high fences and shrubbery. We had moved to Giffnock nearly a year ago, just a few months before Ben was born, and the secluded back garden had been a major selling point for us. Evenings like this one, with Ben safely in his cot, a light dinner on the deck in the late July sun, a gentle breeze stirring the trees, were something close to perfection. Now that private sanctuary I had been so fond of seemed a curse.

The woman moved away from me and opened a cupboard. She took out a glass as if this was her home and we’d just dropped in for a visit. She ran the tap for a few seconds then filled the glass. She turned around and looked from me to Emma and back again before draining the glass in three gulps.

I tried to process what was happening but my brain seemed incapable of dealing with the data it had been presented. I had left work and driven home as usual, some Eagles playing in the car, taken a call from Scott about tomorrow’s squash game (hands-free, of course) and listened to him boast about how badly he would destroy me on the court, pulled into my driveway, lifted my briefcase and entered my home with a big, stupid Daddy’s Home grin plastered on my face. As usual. As normal. Just like every other weeknight.

Then something grabbed my world and shook it like a snow globe full of nightmares.

Who was she? What did she want? It was a mistake. She had the wrong house; who was she really looking for? How could we convince her to leave us alone?

It was too much. My brain was overloaded and on the verge of shutting down completely. But my family needed me. I had to keep it together for them.

As if reading my mind she spoke. ‘What would you do to protect your family, Mr Colby?’

I hesitated, just a fraction of a second, but it was enough to fill me with self-loathing. ‘Anything,’ I said.

‘That’s what most people say.’ She placed the glass beside the sink.

Most? How many times had she done this?

‘I’m sure they even believe it. Some of them, anyway.’

‘I would.’

She stared at me with those dead eyes. Had I been too abrupt?

‘No,’ she said after a time. ‘You wouldn’t. You’re still too attached to your normal, safe life. You still think someone will come to save you. Or that we only want the contents of your jewellery drawer. Or maybe you think you can free yourself and be the hero.’

She walked over to Ben’s high chair, her eyes never leaving mine. Then she crouched so she was level with my sleeping son, looked at me as she kissed his sandy hair. ‘You’re not the hero. You’re nothing. You’re Jonathan Colby: fat, weak, boring accountant who’s completely incapable of protecting his family.’

A tear pricked my eye and I looked away, unable to face the truth. She continued hammering home the point. ‘You have one way out of this, and only one way. You do exactly as you’re told.’

‘I will. I’ll do anything.’

‘But will you, Jonathan?’

I had been so intently focused on the woman and her proximity to my son that I hadn’t heard the door open behind me. Or he’d been standing there the whole time. A man appeared at my side, squeezing my shoulder as he passed. He took another chair from beneath the kitchen table and spun it so its back was to me. He straddled it, looking as though he wanted to rest his forearms across the back of the chair but found his belly kept him out of range. He settled for placing his hands on top of the chairs back.

Where the woman was fit and strong the man was morbidly obese. The chair creaked in protest as he shifted his weight. His clothes were the kind of baggy that very fat men wear in the mistaken belief they disguise the wearer’s bulk. He wore a black short sleeved shirt open over a white t-shirt. His pasty, chubby legs were on display between long cargo shorts stretched to their limit and a pair of chunky skate trainers that seemed unlikely to be involved in any activity more strenuous than walking from sofa to fridge and back again.

His hair was brown, not quite long enough to be tied back, his round face partly hidden beneath thick sideburns and a goatee that tried in vain to stretch beyond his first chin.

The hands moved suddenly. Surprisingly quick fingers tucked loose strands of hair behind his ears, smoothed the sideburns and goatee and came to rest back on the chair. This time the pudgy digits were steepled in front of pursed lips, as though he was giving something serious consideration.

‘But will you?’ he said again. His voice was soft, as though asking the question only of himself.

I opened my mouth to answer but he waved me quiet.

‘You think you will. And you say you will,’ he continued. ‘But in my experience you, unfortunately, won’t. Not yet, at any rate.’

‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I asked. My voice trembled but I was too scared to feel shame.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman, who stared back, as expressionless as ever. He turned his attention to Emma, whose head was bowed, her shoulders gently shuddering, then back to me. ‘Because you’ve got a family.’

He said it like it was obvious. And in a way it was. As though I should have known my luck couldn’t be this good. As though I should have anticipated a moment as dark as this.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

He smiled again, though the movement his mouth made was undeserving of the name. ‘I want you to do exactly as I say. Does that sound straightforward enough?’

I nodded.

‘Good.’ He stood up and pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the ropes binding my arms to the chair. Then he turned to the glass on the counter and swept it into the sink.

I flinched as the glass shattered.

Emma’s head lifted and Ben stirred, his face contorting in unhappiness.

The man reached into the sink and pulled out a long sliver of curved glass.

‘Take this and cut your face with it.’

Chapter Two

That shard of glass became my world. I was paralysed, unable to do anything but stare at it: at the almost microscopic marks along its broken edge, at the miniscule cracks running along its length, at the beads of water still clinging valiantly to its wounded surface.

I stared at that glass for half a lifetime, maybe more, until my other senses returned in a rush. My palms had been immersed in fluid, the back of my neck was home to a thousand minute footsteps, and my scalp contracted as though pulled by an invisible hand. Yet other stimulus had somehow receded. My son’s grumblings were muted, the sound of my wife straining to free herself from her bonds and her muffled appeals for mercy could have been from a different continent.

The sound that echoed loud above all others was the almost inaudible squeak of the man’s thumb as it caressed the shard of glass.

My eyes followed the thumb, as though some message, come purpose to this madness, would be revealed in its movements.

But the squeak stopped before I could even find my voice.

The fat man hurled the sliver of glass into the sink where it exploded, sending fragments into the air. He rounded on me, a finger in my face as his turned scarlet with rage.

‘YOU LIED!’ he screamed. ‘You’ll do as you’re told? You’ll do anything? YOU’RE A LIAR!’

I pushed back against the chair, trying to put some distance between us, but there was nowhere to go. His eyes were wild, all traces of civility and sanity gone.

‘I wi… I will,’ I stuttered. ‘Please. I will. Give me another…’

‘You only get one chance,’ the woman said.

Her voice was so calm, so uncompromising, it cut through the enraged shouts of her partner and gripped my heart.

She took a phone from her pocket and held down a button for a few seconds, then put the phone to her ear. ‘Get in here.’

She put the phone away and went to the kitchen door, unlocked it and stood with her arms folded like a nightclub bouncer.

The man had calmed a little by now, but still had his face in mine. His breathing was laboured, his hair and goatee damp around the edges. I could smell his sweat and the hot scent of something spicy from his breath. He was so close that I could see tiny crumbs in his beard, but still I couldn’t look away from him.

Until the kitchen door opened and another man walked in.

He was extremely thin, with unkempt hair that could have been brown streaked with grey or just as easily grey smeared with grime. His face was lean to the point of being gaunt, his cheeks sunken, and I put him in his forties. Probably ten years older than the fat man, ten stones lighter, but just as unhealthy in his emaciated way. He wore jeans that hung like sheets on a washing line below the tightly belted waist and a bomber jacket zipped almost to the neck, but he didn’t appear to be feeling the heat.

He was exactly the kind of person I’d take a mile long detour just to avoid in the street. The sight of him in my kitchen would have been bad enough, but the single most terrifying thing about him was the look of jittery excitement on his face as his eyes bounced around the room.

He looked like a child who’d been allowed out to play. A child who’d have been better off locked in a secure ward receiving regular medication.

His eyes slithered up and down Emma with unconcealed lust. I said nothing and told myself it was for fear of reprisals. Then a small voice told me it was just simple fear and I had once again failed my wife.

The fat man turned to the newcomer. ‘Take her out of here,’ he said.

A hungry look came into the thin man’s eyes. Emma was a beautiful woman - slim and tanned, warm blonde hair, cool blue eyes, and clad only in the shorts and vest she often wore around the house on hot summer days – even in these circumstances, but everything about this vile creature told me he found her terror the most attractive thing about her. He grabbed the back of Emma’s chair, tipped it backwards and pivoted it so her back was to me. He dragged the chair towards the interior door. I threw out an arm as he passed, my fingers gripping Emma’s arm and trying to hold on.

The woman was fast. One moment she was beside the back door with her arms crossed, the next she was behind me, with my arm no longer holding my wife, but suddenly twisted around and locked behind me, bending me forward until my head was between my knees.

The physical pain was terrible.

The pain of knowing my wife was being taken from me was worse.

The kitchen door closed and a few seconds later the woman let me go. She turned on her heel and left the kitchen but I stayed in that submissive position until the tears subsided. As much as they had already taken from me, some foolish remnant of pride didn’t want to let them see how low they had brought me.

I looked up eventually and the fat man was waiting for me. He was completely calm now, all traces of his rage gone. And yet he was even more frightening when placid. His calculated cruelty would, I was sure, be far worse than anything he might do in spontaneity.

‘Please…’ I said. ‘Please don’t…’

‘Whatever you think is going to happen to your wife,’ he said, ‘it’s going to be worse. Much worse.’

Bile bubbled to the top of my throat.

He looked across the kitchen at my son, then back to me.

‘Everyone’s got a breaking point,’ he said. ‘A point at which they will do whatever is asked of them. And I find that point. Every time. How long do you think it will take me to find yours?’

I felt something then. Something deep within me, buried so deeply I was barely aware of it: a spark of anger. It was an alien feeling, one I had no idea what to do with, but I grabbed at it. If I could grasp it I could hold it close and use it to fend off the horror that threatened to tear my soul apart.

And then I felt something else. For the first time in my life I wanted another human being to die.

And he knew it.

The man walked round the table to the back door, checked it was locked, then leant on the table. He shook the damp ends of hair off his face.

‘You’re angry, Jonathan,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to see that. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it. I do. But anger will get you buried alive and your wife sliced into little pieces.’

I tried to lick the dryness from my lips but my tongue was swollen and uncooperative. Already the anger was fading, submerged beneath a wave of overwhelming dread.

‘You see, Jonathan, I want you to do something for me. But I need you to know the consequences of not cooperating. I need you to appreciate how absolutely horrendous the very short remainder of your life will be if you refuse, or if you deviate even remotely from my instructions. Understand?’

I nodded again.

‘Good. Because right now, this is as good as it gets. You’re unharmed. Your kid’s unharmed. Your wife, for the moment, is unharmed.’

‘What are they doing to her?’

‘Right now? Nothing. Except scaring the holy hell out of her, I’d imagine. Of course, that won’t last forever. Which brings me back to this being as good as it gets. And it can get a lot worse in a hurry. So you need to do whatever I tell you to. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

He stood in front of me and looked down into my face. ‘So what would you do for your wife and child? What would you do to save them from us?’

‘Anything.’ I tried to look him in the eye, tried so hard to show I meant it, that I would do whatever was necessary to protect them.

But his gaze was too dark, too invasive and my eyes dropped to the floor.

‘Would you kill someone?’ he asked, pressing his face into mine. ‘Would you take a life?’

My stomach lurched once more and acid crawled back up my throat. He saw my reaction and laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I don’t want you to kill anyone. You couldn’t crack an egg without going straight to the cops and turning yourself in.’

He straightened up and crossed the room, leant against the counter and looked at me in amusement. He cast a lingering gaze at Ben who was starting to stir once more. ‘Believe me, if someone needs to die, they’ll die. None of us are shy on that front. So, no, Johnny, I don’t want you to kill anyone. And by comparison, whatever I now ask of you is going to seem like a stroll on the beach, right?’

I nodded vigorously, relieved that murder had been taken back off the table.

‘You asked why we’re doing this to you,’ he continued. ‘And I told you the truth. A man with a family is a man you can hold in the palm of your hand and work like a puppet.’

He had already shown me how true that was.

‘But there’s something else you’ve got,’ he said. ‘Access.’

‘To what?’

‘To a certain millionaire.’ He rested his hand on the top of Ben’s head. ‘And all you’ve got to do is get me some of those millions. Now, isn’t that much easier than killing someone?’

Chapter Three

‘Diana Grayson,’ the fat man said. ‘Rich bitch. Frankly, it’s about time she shared some of that wealth with the common man.’ He pointed a finger at his flabby chest. ‘And I’m a very common man.’

‘But how… I mean…’ I shook my head, unable to take it in.

‘Here’s the situation – and feel free to stop me if I hit a duff note – Diana Grayson is a multimillionaire. You are an accountant, and she’s been a client of yours since you worked for Murdoch & Danvers. When you left to fly solo she went with you, since she liked you, and – take a note, ’cause this is the crucial part – trusted you. Since then you’ve become quite pally, haven’t you? Dinner parties at her mansion, your missus and her playing tennis regularly, doing lunch, eating out…’ He smirked. ‘All very civilised.’

‘How do you know all this?’

He looked at me as though I was the class dunce. ‘Credit me with enough intelligence to do my research, alright?’

I wasn’t paying attention. I’d already moved on to another, more important part of his speech. ‘She might trust me, but I can’t steal her money. I only keep track of everything. I can’t access any of it.’

‘Nobody’s asking you to steal her money.’

‘But…’

The fat man sat astride the chair in front of me again. ‘Diana Grayson has millions in the bank. Everybody knows that. But since it’s in the bank it’s untouchable. To our grubby mitts at any rate. Now this is probably where you start thinking we’ve broken into the wrong house, threatened the wrong family. Should have gone for a bank manager or something. Am I right?’

I was too confused to nod, but I had been thinking exactly that.

‘But a bank manager can’t get you anything worthwhile these days. The security systems for the big money are computer controlled and he knows less about them than we do.’

He rolled his eyes in a gesture that suggested there was something wrong with a world that made theft more difficult than it had to be.

‘So maybe we should just go right to the source,’ he continued. ‘Problem there is rich folk tend to have security: guards, fences, alarms, the whole circus. And usually enough pull with the authorities to make sure anyone caught dipping a rich man’s pocket goes down longer