Winter Falls: A Jimmy Blue novel by Sainsbury Ian W

Author:Sainsbury, Ian W.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fuse Books
Published: 2021-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Torture provided a means to an end. Winter took no pleasure in it, although he suspected Christopher enjoyed it. Violence could be as dangerous as sex in his business. Some men and women became ensnared by a need to inflict pain or to kill. Both had their place, but when it became an end rather than the means, it led to disaster. Unpredictable, savage criminals only rose to the top in movies. In real life, if you thought your boss might shoot you in the head when you said the wrong thing, you tried to shoot him in the head first to avoid the situation ever arising. Like everything else, it was a balance. Winter relied on fear to run his organisation, but the fear needed to be rooted in logic, in the expectation of a proportionate response. If someone insulted Winter, he'd have them beaten. If they tried to muscle in on his business, skimmed from the profits, or tried to cheat him, then they died. Reasonable. Logical.

Tom Lewis had been in the dungeon three nights and two days. By December twenty-fourth they'd got nothing out of him. Lewis was still the same stammering idiot they'd brought in.

Winter's men stuck to a simple list of questions. How did Lewis find Marty and Rhoda? What was he planning next? And what was this Jimmy Blue crap? Nothing got a response. Winter wanted those answers first before discussing Rhoda's incriminating recording.

The lads on dungeon duty alternated between asphyxiation and good old-fashioned beatings, but nothing worked. When they punched Lewis, he cried. Winter was astonished. In his early thirties, built like a fighter, Tom Lewis was one of the broadest-shouldered men he'd ever seen, his arms hard as oak. Shaved head, over six feet tall, he looked like he had stamina, like he could take punishment without complaint. Not so. When Christopher punched him in the gut, he folded to the floor and sobbed like a child. A couple of kicks later, and he stopped crying, becoming unresponsive. At Winter's order, they checked his breathing and his pulse. Deeply asleep. Snoring, sometimes. Slapping, pinching, or kicking did nothing. He became unreachable.

If they left him alone, Lewis would emerge from his catatonic state and sit up, snivelling. During the next beating, the same pattern of crying and withdrawal followed. They went back to the sleep deprivation.

Near the end of the third day, Winter admitted his doubts, if only to himself. Lack of sleep tripped up liars. It chipped away at the subject's sense of reality, slowing their thought processes, making it near impossible to dissemble. But Lewis's answers, and his demeanour, remained consistent. He had displayed nothing other than the same halfwit idiocy since arriving. Which left two possibilities. First, he was what he appeared to be, which meant—despite the strong resemblance Lewis bore to Rhoda's killer—that they had the wrong guy. The man downstairs was brain damaged, incapable of planning, and carrying out, three murders. The second possibility would make Lewis

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