Pendulum Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Adam Hamdy

  The right of Adam Hamdy to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2016

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 3346 2

  Cover photograph © BortN66/Shutterstock

  Ebook conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Adam Hamdy

  By Adam Hamdy

  About the Book

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PART TWO

  Chapter 24

  PART THREE

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About Adam Hamdy

  Adam Hamdy is an author, screenwriter and filmmaker who has worked with producers and studios on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to his own original work, Adam has adapted a number of comic books and novels for the screen, including the forthcoming film version of David Mitchell’s novel, Number9Dream.

  Pendulum is Adam’s third novel. Prior to becoming a writer, Adam was a strategy consultant and advised global businesses operating in a wide range of industries. Adam lives in Shropshire with his wife and three children.

  Follow Adam on Twitter @adamhamdy.

  By Adam Hamdy

  Out of Reach

  Battalion

  Run (exclusive e-novella)

  Pendulum

  About the Book

  You wake. Confused. Disorientated.

  A noose is round your neck.

  You are bound, standing on a chair.

  All you can focus on is the man in the mask tightening the rope.

  You are about to die.

  John Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted. No idea who his attacker is. No idea how he will prevent the inevitable.

  Then the pendulum of fate swings in his favour.

  He has once chance to escape, find the truth and halt his destruction.

  The momentum is in his favour for now.

  But with a killer on his tail, everything can change with one swing of this deadly pendulum . . .

  Targeted for death. Then fate intervenes. You have once chance.

  Run.

  For Amy

  PART ONE

  London

  1

  Burning sour acid caught in the back of John Wallace’s throat, and he knew instantly that he had been sick. He opened his eyes, but the world remained dark. Wallace felt his eyelids twist and his lashes turn inward as they moved against the blindfold. His heart raced, pounding in his chest with the jackhammer pace of a full-blown panic. He was familiar with the vicissitudes of an anxiety attack, but this was different, no trick of the introspective mind; this was all too real. Trying his arms, Wallace felt the strong grasp of surprisingly soft bonds around his wrists; it felt like silk. His ankles were similarly bound. Wallace could no longer feel his clothes, just his underpants; someone had all but stripped him. He heard movement nearby; soft footsteps against his thick rug. Stay still. Stay silent.

  Wallace listened to the movement around him and tried not to give the slightest indication that he was awake. A sudden rush of air and a blow to his stomach made him cry out in pain.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Wallace tried, hearing the crackling weakness of fear in his own voice.

  Movement across the room, and then noise – the familiar sound of the opening chords of Rogue, Air. Powerful speakers blasted the deep bass at full volume, and Wallace doubly regretted his inability to conceal his consciousness, knowing that the loud music would drown out any cries for help. And help was what he desperately needed. He imagined Leona, the sultry fire breather who lived above him. He fantasised about her knocking on his door to ask him to turn the music down, realising something was awry and urgently calling the police. The fantasy instantly died away; Leona had never once complained about noise. Neither had the Levines, who lived below. The solid brickwork of the converted church provided effective soundproofing, which, when combined with the residents’ laissez-faire approach to life, meant complaints were rare.

  Wallace didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but, until the knock at the door that started this nightmare, he’d been confident that his solitary existence was the safest way to go through life. Real connections brought nothing but suffering, so Wallace limited his relationships to the smilingly superficial. Until Wallace had risen from his desk and walked away from his computer, he’d been certain that very little good could ever come from other people. All they offered was disappointment, betrayal and pain. Now, lying vulnerable and afraid, Wallace realised that one person, just one person, might bring salvation.

  Noise. Activity somewhere above him. Something hit one of the wooden beams that the slick estate agent had pointed out when showing this feature-rich desacralised church. Second-floor views of one of London’s most expensive streets through original arched stone windows. A landscaped communal garden. A wet room. A dressing room. A bright studio space. A large kitchen diner. A list of things that had seemed so essential, so important at the time, but which now wouldn’t even figure as footnotes in his life. What really mattered was freedom. Escape.

  Movement. Near his head. Wallace’s heart raced faster and his breath grew shorter as panic gripped him. Someone – the person he had opened his door to – moved his head. Something. No!
No! No! This can’t be happening. Something was slipped over his head. If he didn’t admit what it was, it wasn’t real. It’s not real. This is a trip. A dream. This isn’t life. No!

  The noose tightened and Wallace couldn’t pretend any more.

  ‘It’s easier if you stand,’ came the voice. It was somewhere above and behind him. Deep, serious, unfamiliar, and delivered with a bland mid-Atlantic accent. Wallace clung to the faint hope that this was a practical joke taken too far. A colleague. A friend. A neighbour. Someone he knew seeking to repay some act of unkindness. But he didn’t recognise the voice. If this was a joke, someone had paid money for an actor. Please let it be an actor.

  ‘Please,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Please don’t do this.’

  Wallace remembered Kabul. He remembered the condemned men shuffling slowly to the gallows. He remembered wondering why none of them tried to run. He remembered pressing his cheek against his camera and peering into the viewfinder, searching for the answer in their eyes. The men, foot soldiers in a militant group determined to overthrow the Afghan government, had cast their faces at the ground, and it was not until they reached the foot of the small run of steps that Wallace saw the first man’s eyes. He had seen the man look up at his destiny, and, as the shutter chattered away to capture a stuttering record of the moment, Wallace saw the hollowness of defeat in the man’s eyes; such fire that animates the human soul had already been extinguished. You’re not one of them! Wallace told himself, as he felt the fire of life burning fiercely within.

  If I stand, Wallace thought now, as the noose choked tighter, I might be able to lash out and catch this guy off guard. Risky, but if I do nothing, I’m dead anyway. He fumbled to his feet, his upward progress aided by the taut rope around his neck. Once on his feet, Wallace strained his ears, listening for movement. The rope tugged at his neck, squeezing his windpipe, but it wasn’t getting any tighter. Wallace tensed his muscles. For almost two decades he had trained for just such a moment. He remembered his first aikido instructor, Shiodin Bal, telling him that true warriors had to be willing to greet death as a friend. As glorious as that sounded to a fourteen-year-old from West Hampstead, the combat techniques Wallace had learned in the intervening years all relied on him having free movement of his hands and feet. There was no glorious grace in fighting from the end of a noose, just simple, ugly survival.

  A creak and movement in the air ahead of him. Wallace jumped up and kicked out with both feet, holding nothing back and committing himself to the manoeuvre entirely. All in, high stakes, no holds barred. He visualised his feet connecting with his attacker’s head, the man going sprawling; freeing himself and living to tell his triumphant tale to the amazed police officers who arrived to arrest the villain. Reality had other plans. Wallace’s legs barely climbed above knee height, such was the difficulty of jumping while bound. His limbs connected with nothing but air, and he fell flat on his back, his neck catching the rope at a perilous angle. If his attacker hadn’t fed him some slack, Wallace’s neck would have snapped under his own weight. He felt the terrible blow of failure, and he realised that his effort would have looked less like an escape and more like an attempted suicide.

  ‘It’s easier if you stand,’ came the deep voice. No anger, no disappointment, just factual, like a doctor delivering a diagnosis. Or a vet talking to an animal.

  Wallace found himself trembling as he got to his feet. The music had changed; Polarized by Seven Lions. Haunting, moody, atmospheric, Wallace felt he finally understood the significance of the track. It was about second chances, a celebration of life. I don’t deserve to die here. Even as the words formed in his mind, Wallace knew that they represented the desperate plea of a fool, not a man who had seen enough of the world to know that tens of thousands of undeserving people die every single day.

  ‘Please. I’ll give you anything you want.’ Tears soaked his blindfold, and his tremulous voice said it all; he was broken. There was no practical joke, no action movie escape. Just him in a room with a stranger who controlled the noose around his neck.

  Movement. Something touched his skin. Wallace recoiled, but then realised it was a hand. A gloved hand. Leather or rubber. Cold but malleable.

  ‘Please don’t,’ he blubbed.

  The gloved hand grabbed his arm and held it firm. He felt movement in between his wrists and his arms were suddenly free – his bonds had been cut. Relief beyond any he had ever experienced rushed through him, as the man cut the ties that bound his legs.

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Wallace croaked.

  He didn’t care who the man was, or why he had felt the need to punish him, Wallace would forgive him. He had come face-to-face with his own mortality and it had taught him many valuable lessons. Get a chain for your door, Wallace thought to himself as he giggled inwardly, drunk with hysterical euphoria. Don’t trust strangers. Buy a dog. A big dog.

  He sensed movement around his head and the blindfold fell away. Every valuable object in his luxurious flat was undisturbed; this was definitely not a robbery, but there was no sign of the practical joker.

  ‘You can lose the noose,’ Wallace suggested, his confidence returning. He tried to turn his head, but the noose was pulled tight. ‘Alright!’ he cried out hoarsely.

  He heard the shard of doubt in his voice and his confidence faltered. It crumbled completely when he saw something being pulled towards him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a black-gloved hand holding one of his kitchen chairs, the ends of the chipped wooden legs brushing the long hairs of the woven rug as they travelled the short distance to his side.

  ‘Up,’ his assailant instructed, with a firm tug of the rope. The noose tightened and pressed his Adam’s apple into his throat with such force that he wasn’t able to talk. Every breath became a strain as he gasped for precious air. He hated his legs; he knew they were deceiving themselves because they believed there was blessed relief on the chair. Legs that could carry him fifteen miles at a run were weak enough to fall for a lie. He cursed his treacherous body as it mounted the chair, the crushing noose pulling him ever higher. He looked at the weathered, pockmarked beam and regretted his decision to have it treated for woodworm even after the structural survey had found none. Wallace wished that for once he had not chased perfection. If he’d been the kind of person who’d let things slide there was a chance that the beam would have been weakened by woodworm and that the weight of the heavy rope and his even heavier body would have brought it crashing down.

  With the blindfold gone, Wallace could feel tears cutting gulleys down his chiselled cheeks. He was too wrapped up in the prospect of his own death to maintain the pretence that he was anything other than an abysmal failure. He’d made a living chronicling other lives, but he had done nothing with his own. He would leave the world without having made the slightest difference; his only legacy was a few photographs that would soon be lost and forgotten. We’re all weak. We all fail. And then we die. Staring up at the beam, Wallace realised that something inside him had died: hope. Like the men he had photographed in Kabul, he felt nothing but the hollow emptiness of defeat.

  Movement at the edge of his vision. Wallace cast his eyes down, and what he saw filled him with dread. A man dressed in heavy black boots, black leather trousers and some kind of black body armour over his torso. A black combat mask with a mouth hole covered with a wire mesh, and round, opaque black goggles. Wallace could see his reflection in the lenses – a sickening echo of the ghost he was about to become. A full-length black leather coat with a beautifully rich purple lining completed his attacker’s attire. A superhero, Wallace thought darkly. Only there was nothing heroic about the figure before him. Even through the mask Wallace could sense brooding hatred.

  Who was he? Serial killer. No. There’s no hope with a serial killer. Don’t go there. Wallace ignored his fears and continued reaching for a memory; searching his past for someone he had wronged. His relatively blameless life frustrated him and he could think of nothing that merited murder. This l
unatic had the wrong guy.

  ‘You’ve got . . .’ Wallace tried, but the words were trapped in his throat, his voice box crushed by the noose. Anger overtook fear and the tingling fire of indignation coursed through his body. He was going to die for no reason, because a monster had got the wrong address.

  He tried to shout, but his throat wouldn’t open enough to get the words out, and he watched in horror as the masked man kicked the chair away.

  Time slowed.

  Wallace felt himself suspended in mid-air, free of any support, outside the laws of gravity; he was weightless, flying, he would live forever. He’d make some changes. Start fresh. Find purpose in life. Maybe find someone to share it with. Connie . . . Why was he falling? That’s not right. I can’t die.

  Time kicked in and Wallace fell, his full weight pulling against the noose, which tightened around his neck like a hand squeezing a tube of toothpaste. He was surprised by the lack of resistance his neck offered – it collapsed under the rope without any argument. Unlike the condemned warriors in Kabul, he hadn’t fallen far enough to break his neck, so Wallace knew he would choke to death. Slowly. His hands clawed at the noose, but it was so very tight, the fibres cutting into his neck, fusing with his flesh. Wallace’s fingers went further up, to the rope that rose behind his head. He pulled at it, lifting his own weight, and the noose stopped tightening, but it did not get any looser. Wallace was shocked at how heavy he felt, and how quickly his arms began to burn with the strain. All those hours spent in the gym, obsessively training his body to ensure it could meet the physical demands of his work. That obsession would finally pay off. He’d pull himself up to freedom and somehow overpower his misguided attacker.

  He trembled with the effort of keeping himself aloft. He was strong, fit, and determined. He would never give up. Letting go of the rope, letting the noose take his weight, he’d be almost as culpable in his own death as the masked man who put him there. He would endure whatever pain it took to pull himself up the rope, to the beam, out of the reach of his would-be murderer. Aikido had taught him that he was master of his mind and body. John Wallace was not about to give up.