Everyone Lies by A. Garrett D. Page B

the boss says. ‘Should’ve gone with the pliers. Don’t feel bad, Dip. Everyone makes the same mistake. Pliers are messy, so they go for the electrics. I mean, it’s not even plugged into the mains – it’s not like it can kill you, is it? Thing is, these things are designed to spread the shock over five-inch-wide stickon pads, so they really pack a punch. The crock clips are what – a quarter of an inch? You’re getting a concentrated jolt of electricity. And with electrics, you’re wired direct to the nerves. Nothing’s more painful than that – passing a kidney stone isn’t more painful than that.’
    The shaking gets worse; Dip’s whole body is so racked with the aftershocks he can hardly speak. ‘J-just t-t-tell me w-w-what you want to knnnnnow. I’ll t-tell you a-anything.’
    ‘W-w-w-what I w-w-want to kn-n-n-ow?’ the boss mocks. ‘Okay. I want the truth.’
    Dip shakes his head, crying, blubbing and gulping helplessly, tears and snot streaming down his face. ‘But I don’t know what I did.’
    ‘If that’s the way you want it,’ his boss says, ‘I can go all night with this. ’Cos it’s really no effort, see?’ He lifts the pebble-shaped control. ‘How do we crank this up?’
    ‘No-no. Wait, wait, wait. I’ll take the pliers. Please, Boss, don’t—’
    His boss looks at Beefy. ‘He wants the pliers.’
    Beefy shrugs and his boss turns to Dip, a chiding look on his face. ‘Sorry, Dip, lad. You made your choice.’ He adjusts the control. ‘Let’s see if we can speed things up a bit.’
    The hurt is so intense, so beyond anything he has ever experienced, he feels he must die. But it goes on and on. Something seems to snap inside him like a rubber band and he looks down, horrified. His flesh steams, he can smell burning.
    ‘I’m on fire. Oh, no, oh Jesus, I’m on fire – ohJesusGod I’m burning!
    For one sweet, blessed, holy second, the pain stops.
    Jackal says, ‘He isn’t burning. He’s just pissed himself.’
    ‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ the boss says. ‘Good conductor, piss.’ He looks down at the control in his hand and Dip says: ‘The consignment. It’s got to be the consignment.’ He wants to tell them what they want to hear, but the one bad thing he did is the one thing he knows they can’t know about.
    The boss’s hand drops. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. The van. Three weeks ago.’
    ‘I did everything to the letter. I parked it in the Tesco 24/7 in Didsbury, locked it, walked away.’ His boss strokes the pebble that works the electric like it’s some kind of Zen relaxation. ‘I posted the keys at the agreed drop, just like it said in the docket.’
    His boss doesn’t speak.
    ‘Look – did it get nicked, ’cos if it got nicked, it’s nothing to do with me. I swear—’
    ‘Did I say you nicked it?’
    ‘No, Boss.’
    ‘No, Boss. That van stayed on the car park for ten days. It got ticketed seven times, but it never got towed. Know why, Dip?’
    Dip shakes his head fearfully.
    ‘’Cos the police were watching it, and they weren’t gonna let some car park Nazi tow it, because they wanted to catch the boys who were about to pick up 30 K’s worth of high-grade heroin. They were tipped off.’
    ‘No.’ Dip swings his head left and right in wide, sweeping movements. ‘No, Boss – I’m no grass.’
    The boss nods to the Jackal and Dip flinches, but the Jackal walks to the computer. A Lucozade-orange view of the entrance to Tesco’s car park lights up the screen.
    ‘This is the twenty-first century, Dip,’ the boss says. ‘Surveillance society. Big Brother. Security footage.’ The recording switches to an image of one of the bays. ‘Oh, look, that’s you, driving in. Just like you said.’
    Dip sees himself get out of the van. He looks over his shoulder, checks all around, making a big thing of it, and now he’s embarrassed because he looks like some guilty amateur. Embarrassed when he’s tied to a chair naked with electrodes