The Minders

by John Marrs

  Emilia swallowed hard. Someone had located him before her. It meant they probably weren’t far behind them.

  “You’re not working with the government, are you?” he continued.

  As Charlie scrambled to pull himself upright, Emilia only just dodged his foot when he aimed it at her ribs.

  “Charlie, no,” she said firmly, but as she moved to restrain him, he found a second wind. “No, listen to me.”

  His fists flayed, but in his battered and bruised state, his coordination was off-kilter and they were easy to dodge.

  “I didn’t expose you,” Emilia replied, fending off his poor aim. “But I can help you. Tell me what I need to know and then I will help you to safety.”

  This time, Emilia wasn’t fast enough to avoid a left hook that caught her clean in the cheek, pushing her head into the window. Charlie drew from a hidden strength to launch himself at her, his fists punching any part of her body he could connect with. But he was no match for Emilia’s agility and strength. She caught him clean in the remains of his broken nose before grabbing the gun from the waistband of her jeans and pointing it at his head. Finally, he gave up. And now their only fight was to regain their breath.

  The screen of her phone illuminated—only Bianca and Adrian had her number. She hadn’t told them where she was going, but with a tracking device on the gadget and inside the car, it wouldn’t be long before they too descended, along with the government, and one of the rival parties whisked Charlie away before she got her answers.

  “We can help each other,” panted Emilia. “I don’t remember who I was back then but you do. They’ll already be tracking us but I can get you to safety.”

  Charlie hesitated, his eyes rapidly working his way around her face, searching for clues that she was lying. But she was telling the truth. If she got what she wanted, she would let him live.

  “Why did you kill the other Minders?” he asked.

  “I swear to you I didn’t.”

  Emilia could almost taste how close she was. All Charlie needed was an extra little encouragement.

  “You’re a liar. I saw what you did.”

  “We are in the same boat,” she pleaded. “We’re as desperate as one another. Something happened to me which means I don’t know anything before a few months ago. Tell me who I am and what you know about me and I’ll drive you back to the pub where you were supposed to be meeting Rosema—” She stopped abruptly. Charlie glared at her.

  “How do you know about Rosemary?” he asked slowly. “Or that we were meeting at a pub?”

  Emilia wasn’t quick enough to think on her feet, and for Charlie, the penny had already dropped. “She doesn’t exist, does she? You are Rosemary.” His body seemed to fold in on itself.

  Emilia recalled how Charlie had proved tricky to expose in a city of 3.5 million people. Then out of the blue, something struck Emilia. “Charlie is a twenty-five-year-old single man with no known girlfriends or boyfriends,” she’d told Adrian. “I wager that like most people who’ve grown up in the shadow of Match Your DNA, he has an account.”

  Moments later and Adrian’s team had an answer. “There are two accounts using different names but with identical DNA. And both are unmatched.”

  “What are the odds?” Bianca asked.

  “Nine in seventy trillion. Even twins don’t have identical DNA.”

  After identifying Charlie, they used algorithms to sift through his tens of thousands of pages of internet history to learn his likes and dislikes and gain an insight into his personality. Then they created an entire life and social media history for the fictitious Rosemary, a character named after a Lenny Kravitz song that Charlie had favourited on his streaming playlists. And within days of them sending Charlie notification of his “Match,” he’d responded.

  His conversation had been initially cautious, and Emilia hadn’t pushed him. But soon they were messaging regularly and he had paid for her flight from Ireland to Manchester. But the government’s unexpected release of his image that morning had taken Emilia and the Hacking Collective by surprise. Instead of being picked up by the team and escorted from the pub as planned, he had fled on foot and they’d had to track him.

  Now, as their eyes remained fixed on one another’s, Emilia could see how crushed he was. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, and a small part of her meant it.

  “I believe that you don’t know who you are,” Charlie replied. “And I’ll give you your answers. Not because I want to help you or believe that you’ll get me to safety, but because the truth is going to hurt you just as much as you’ve just hurt me.”

  What sounded like two shots rang out.

  Emilia yelped, but before she had time to identify the noise, it was followed by two more mini explosions. Whatever the cause, it was derailing their vehicle. Swerving across the road, the car hit a central reservation before flipping over onto its roof and throwing its occupants around like rag dolls. Finally, it landed back on its axles and scraped to a halt.

  A shooting pain ran through a disorientated Emilia’s spine as she pushed herself up from the rear footwells and looked out of the back windscreen to assess the damage. Behind the stinger used to burst the tyres, a crowd was approaching her car. She couldn’t let them come for Charlie, not when she was so close to the truth.

  She scrambled around the car until she found her weapon on the front passenger seat, lifting it to fire a shot through the back window. She protected her face with her hand as it rained glass shards. And it had the desired effect as the mob scattered. Emilia had bought them time.

  “They’re backing away,” she told Charlie, quickly scanning their outdoor surroundings to see where they could escape to. “I don’t know how long I can keep them back, so we need to get the hell out of here. Can you open the door?”

  When Charlie didn’t respond, she turned her head. “Charlie, I need you to focus. Can you open the door?”

  Only now did she notice that he was slumped across the driver’s seat, unconscious. “Damn it,” she muttered, and went to turn his head so she could pat his face and waken him. It was then that she saw his eyes were wide open and his neck angled in an unnatural position. It was clearly broken. Charlie was dead.

  “No!” she yelled. Even knowing it was a futile manoeuvre, she couldn’t give up without a fight; she tried to locate his pulse, then pushed him across both seats and gave him chest compressions. But it was too late. This gang of greedy faces had robbed him of his life and her of an explanation.

  The anger she had felt towards Bruno when he laughed at her was nothing compared to the rage against Charlie erupting inside her now. Emilia raised her balled fists above her head before beating his lifeless chest and arms with every ounce of her strength. Saliva frothed in the corners of her mouth as the frustration consumed her. Then from the glovebox, without knowing why, she grabbed the metallic silver device she’d killed Bruno with and skewered the exact same spot on Charlie’s scalp. But it wasn’t enough to quell her fury. There were others who needed punishing too.

  It took two kicks before the crumpled door released and she could exit. The crowd continued making its approach towards the car, determined to get its pound of flesh and a cut of the reward money. Emilia saw every face before her as someone who had prevented her from being reunited with her family. And without forethought, she marched towards them, removed her weapon, and began firing at will. Even when they screamed and turned on their heels, she continued to shoot until the bullets ran out, and she watched their bodies drop to the ground as fast as each spent cartridge.

  PART THREE

  Ten Weeks Later

  CHAPTER 81

  FLICK, CORNWALL

  Rainwater pooled on the metal bench and seeped into Flick’s jeans, dampening the backs of her thighs and her bottom. She tugged at her waterproof jacket until there was enough fabric to sit on, but it exposed her forehe
ad to the drizzle.

  The weather had been poor since her arrival in Cornwall weeks earlier, but she had grown accustomed to it. She opened a prepacked sandwich purchased in a tearoom she’d passed at the beginning of her six-mile hike. There had been slim pickings on the shelf and the two thin layers of brown bread housing a sliver of ham and a thin slice of processed cheese was the best it had to offer. “Sorry,” she said to her baby bump, apologetic that today, she’d yet to digest anything with nutritional value. As she nibbled the sandwich, she took in the rolling landscapes of Cornwall’s Tidna Valley that surrounded her.

  She ran her fingers through her shorn black-dyed hair. She was still becoming accustomed to it, along with her coloured contact lenses and glasses. The several pounds of baby weight she’d put on helped to fill out her face and stomach and made her look less like the terrorist the whole country was still on high alert for. Her new alter ego, “Martine,” had, fortunately, yet to be recognised.

  Flick took out the news story she had printed at a library weeks earlier. She had read it so often that the paper print was creased and smudged.

  TERRORIST FOUND BUTCHERED

  By LOUISE BEECH

  Police have confirmed that body parts discovered in a car in Manchester belong to terrorist Charlie Nicholls.

  A postmortem could not confirm how Britain’s most wanted man was killed due to “significant sections of his body being missing.”

  A source told the Online Post: “It appears he was torn apart by a mob that forced his car off the road in the hope that they might get a share of the £500,000 government reward for his capture.

  “Both feet, his torso, and a hand have been passed to the police but his head, legs, an arm, and fingers have yet to be located.”

  Nine people also died in gunfire that afternoon, in a shootout police believe to have been between rival bounty hunters.

  No matter how many times Flick read it, it didn’t lessen the impact of Charlie’s manner of death. And once again she shed a tear in memory of the only Minder she had ever met.

  Flick had made her most recent home a rented caravan in a park on the outskirts of Bude. She’d been careful to choose one located away from the other static homes and fitted her own electronic locks to the windows and doors along with an alarm system. Each of the four rooms and even the bathroom contained a hunting knife with a serrated blade that was within easy reach. She had also scoped the surrounding area for exits, parking her car in a nearby street that could be approached from five different directions. She had done all she could to protect herself, her secrets, and her baby.

  Taking a swig from a bottle of fruit juice, she slipped her hands inside her jacket pockets and rubbed her stomach. Not so long ago, she’d have berated herself for showing her baby affection. Now it was second nature and she hoped it offered him or her as much comfort as it did its mother. Since she was more than four months pregnant, her belly now displayed a definite paunch and it appeared to be growing as the library textbooks suggested it would by now. But a transient lifestyle and a complete mistrust towards all things official and traceable meant she had yet to book hospital scans or register with a midwife.

  The swell of the waves crashed against the cliff’s rocks below. They were more aggressive than Aldeburgh’s waters and she missed the latter’s calming rhythms. She tried not to dwell upon those she’d left behind, or the hurt she had caused to Elijah. But solitude gave her plenty of thinking time and made it difficult not to linger on anything else. Distance had given her clarity; what she had done to Elijah was unforgivable and she prayed his injuries weren’t serious. But at the time, she’d felt she had little choice. He paid the price for her panic. She wondered what he thought of her now and whether he hated her as much as she hated herself. Grace wasn’t far from her mind either. In a short space of time, they’d become close.

  Flick decided that despite what had happened to Charlie, she was safer out in the open than if she turned herself in to a government which had slapped a reward on her head. She would remain in the field for as long as possible, or at least another few months until the child was born. She did not trust the authorities with the baby’s safety.

  As much as she appreciated Cornwall’s solitude and privacy, Flick longed to return to Aldeburgh. She accepted that it had been a manufactured, false reality, but her feelings towards the place and its people were honest. She was merely going through the motions in Cornwall, filling her days with long walks whilst avoiding anywhere densely populated, and her nights with books she’d always wanted to read. But it was little better than when she’d hidden herself away in her London flat.

  She tugged her hood so that it covered her forehead, and continued to explore a wet and grassy Morwenstow. But when the drizzle turned to rain, she went back to her car. She hovered at the edge of the car park first, scoping the other vehicles until assured it was safe to return to her own. She ran her fingertips along the undercarriage, wheel arches, and sills to check for tracking devices. Then she confirmed that the memory-card slot in the satnav was still empty before the engine sparked to life.

  Suddenly, she felt it—the phone in her pocket was vibrating. Each of the three times it had done the same before, it had contained footage of a Minder’s murder. Charlie was the last video to have been sent, although he appeared dead before the silver device that killed the others plunged into his skull. And no name had been carved into his forehead.

  She could only assume that after a ten-week gap, it was alerting her to the death of another Minder. How many of them were left? Flick’s heart raced as she turned off the engine and removed the device. Just as she feared, the red circle disclosed that it was another video clip. She gripped the phone, opened its case, and pressed play without allowing herself to think.

  This time it was different. The camerawork was shaky, indicating that the killer was on the move. It was hard to tell where they were as the lens was pointed towards a cobbled pathway before eventually coming to a halt at a porch. Flick’s heart sank when it focused on a front door that she immediately recognised. It was Grace’s house.

  She watched helplessly as a hand reached out to ring a bell. A moment later, it opened. Grace was standing there, unaware she was being filmed. “Hi,” she began. “Can I help you?”

  The voice that replied was an unfamiliar woman’s. “Hi there, do you have any rooms available, please?”

  “Say no, say no, say no,” Flick whispered.

  “Yes, we do,” Grace replied as Flick held her breath. Grace opened the door with a friendly “Follow me,” and the woman entered. “We have three different types,” continued Grace with her back to the guest. “Two of them come with en-suites and the other—”

  Grace wasn’t given the opportunity to finish. Flick watched helplessly as a weapon fired hundreds of volts of electricity into Grace’s neck before her friend crumpled to the floor.

  CHAPTER 82

  EMILIA

  Grace’s breaths were short and shallow as she lay sprawled across the floor. The current that had soared through her body moments ago had left her completely incapacitated. Her eyes were open but she was barely blinking.

  The distance between the Emilia who awoke frightened and unaware of who she was and the woman today was now too far to be measured. It didn’t matter what Bruno had believed; she hadn’t been given a choice, she had been pushed into this. It was the actions of others that had conspired to turn her into a merciless hunter. Grace was more collateral damage in her search for the truth.

  According to the magnets stuck to Karczewski’s fridge and by a process of elimination, Flick’s last known location had been narrowed down to the small coastal town. By identifying her, the government had ensured that every amateur detective and his dog had converged on Aldeburgh. The pub where she’d worked, the church hall where she exercised, her artist ex-boyfriend, and the bed-and-breakfast she’d made her
home had all been deluged with visitors, each hoping to be the one to bring Flick out of hiding. But she was still very much a free woman.

  Emilia’s initial search of the town and its people weeks earlier had proved fruitless. But Emilia was convinced that wherever her target was residing now, Flick wouldn’t be able to stay there forever. She’d maintained a job and made friends in Aldeburgh; she had put down roots there so it was likely she’d left hurriedly and reluctantly. Perhaps there was a way she could be persuaded to return?

  Fortunately, the public’s fervour to find Flick had curtailed since the government had rescinded its reward following the aftermath of Charlie’s death. As a result, Emilia approached Bianca and Adrian, urging them to deploy another team to sweep through the town again and hunt for leads that might have evaded them the first time around. Bianca had been reluctant to allow Emilia any involvement after the shootings. She was “mentally unstable” and “a danger to herself and everyone around her,” apparently.

  Eventually, however, they appeared to take Emilia’s word for it that she’d had little choice but to react so drastically. She was unarmed and escorted to Aldeburgh under the direct supervision of experienced field operatives Gardiner and Lago.

  Their arrival coincided with the town’s annual three-day carnival weekend. It attracted thousands of extra tourists, which offered plenty of camouflage. Earlier, dozens of members of a samba band dressed in reds, whites, and blues had danced with drums hanging from their necks as they followed brightly decorated floats weaving around the town. As the music played, Emilia took a position from the top of the high street and slipped on her smart glasses, setting them to binocular mode. She then used facial-recognition software to scan the faces of the crowds lining the roads as far as the eye could see. As she had predicted to Gardiner and Lago when they’d given her the task, there was no sign of Flick.