Mrs Doyle flicked over a piece of paper that was on the desk in front of her, poked a pudgy finger at it. ‘There’s a picture of Alex Abbott,’ she squeaked. ‘And that’s you, ain’t it? Unless you’re going to tell us that Owen Flyte was your identical twin.’

Hands gripped Abbott. They dragged him out to the machine, the whole posse shipping out at the same time, all of them gathered around the huge, stainless-steel funnel. Looking down it, Abbott swore he could see the bits of the last unfortunates, little scraggy scraps of flesh and blood and bone. Was the real Owen Flyte down there? Was Jason Scutter in there somewhere?

‘They’ve normally shit themselves about now,’ gloated Doyle.

His wife stood to one side, her red-lipsticked mouth set, her arms folded across the front of her jogging suit. ‘Juicy Couture’ it said on the front.

Still held, Abbott was manoeuvred towards the mouth of the machine. Sure enough, he saw the machinery churning. There was no purchase down there. No living person would be able to prevent themselves being inexorably dragged into the rotating blades. It would be a slow death. A slow, painful death.

And although he was prepared to die, and probably had been since the day that his brother Chris was taken and his life fell apart, Abbott knew that he didn’t want to die this way. Better to die fighting.

He went limp, causing his captors to take the strain, altering their equilibrium in such a way that what he did next took them by surprise. He twisted and rotated his arms, bringing his knees up at the same time so that they were forced to bear his entire weight, making himself the slipperiest of eels.

During the months of drinking, his strength had diminished but not completely, and he was able to wrench one arm free of the first man while at the same time dragging the second man forward and rushing him in the direction of the meatgrinding funnel.

Doyle saw what was happening – saw his man about to be deposited into the machine – and came forward with the gun, waving it with no discipline, like a referee trying to deliver a red card. At the same time, Abbott saw his chance to grab himself a weapon, lost interest in feeding the goon to the meat grinder, dropped him and changed the direction of attack, going instead for Doyle, who was caught by surprise and had no time to react as Abbott grabbed his wrist and twisted, easily disarming him and then putting the gun on him.

Abbott was about to pull the trigger.

He was maybe a third of a second from pulling the trigger.

When the lights went out.

Part Three

PART THREE

Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

Abbott woke up feeling groggy, head throbbing from where he’d been hit.