Free Seizure by Nick Oldham Page B

weights, cross-trainer, rowing machine, the full works. Up to date equipment and even large-screen TVs were dotted around the walls to ease the burden of exercise.
    Jamie Last was twenty-three, just a tad too old to find himself in with young offenders. Now he was part of the man’s world of grown-up prisons. Not that he cared. He was a tough kid, brought up on the estates of Salford and Moss Side, a gang member, gun carrier and knifer – which is how he’d finished up inside. A gang fight that went too far, guns and knives brought out and hand-to-hand combat on a bleak car park just outside Manchester city centre. He’d found himself tussling with a nasty black kid who whipped a pistol from his waistband, but in the heat of battle dropped it in the grit. Jamie managed to kick it away and plunge a four-inch shiv into the lad’s neck. Only the lucky intervention of mob-handed cops and an ambulance had saved Jamie from being up on a murder charge.
    But he was happy enough to do time, excited by his promotion into the world of the adult, not in the least afraid.
    He was on the mat now: press-ups, sit-ups, burpees. He sweated and pushed himself hard, determined that the day he walked back on to the streets he would be tougher, fitter and harder than ever. He was concentrating, in his own world, not aware that the few other users of the gym had been silently beckoned to leave. Only as he stood up following fifty press-ups did he realize he was alone in the room.
    He shrugged, unconcerned, turned to the treadmill facing a wall and a TV screen affixed out of the reach of mischievous hands. He began a slow trot, intending to complete 5k, after which he’d call it a day.
    The TV screen went blank.
    Again, Jamie wasn’t bothered. It was only boring daytime stuff they were allowed to watch. He hunched his head down, controlled his breathing and imagined himself pounding the pavements.
    The blow from the dumbbells floored him. Struck with agonizing force somewhere between the base of the skull and the shoulder blades, Jamie went down hard, smacking his face on the electronic control panel of the treadmill, sagging to his knees which were suddenly the consistency of jelly. The momentum of the rubber roadway dragged him back and deposited him behind the treadmill on the gym floor.
    Then somebody stomped on his head. It felt as though his skull went out of shape for a moment and he was underwater, until his senses returned. He groaned and twisted on to his back when a 125kg spinlock bar – the steel bar on to which dumbbells are slotted – was slammed across his unprotected throat. Then Felix Deakin’s out-of-focus face came swimming into Jamie’s vision, his mouth a twisted smile.
    â€˜Mornin’, Jamie.’
    Jamie struggled to raise the bar, but despite his strength and fitness he could not hope to dislodge Deakin and the men at either end of the bar assisting him. He tried to wrench himself free, but the trio pushed down harder until all their victim’s fight dissipated and he gagged for breath.
    Only then was the bar raised a little, allowing air to gush into his lungs, and he was allowed to roll away, clutching his throat.
    But if the young man had even begun to think it was over, he was cruelly mistaken. With no explanation for their action, Deakin’s two heavies began to beat him with fourteen-inch spinlock dumbbell handles, raining blows about his head, neck, arms and lower legs. It was a relentless assault carried out with ruthless efficiency.
    Deakin stood back and watched coldly until he said, ‘Enough.’ He jerked his thumbs at the two men and they dragged an almost lifeless Jamie across the gym and propped him up against the wall. His head lolled and blood poured out of his busted nose and broken mouth.
    Using a digital camera, one of the men took numerous shots of the injured victim. Then they left him and walked out of the gym. Deakin nodded a quick thanks to