Recompense

by Alan Richards

  “We only need to get her to a car.”

  “Okay. I will see if I can rouse her a bit so we don’t have to carry her. You go get us a car.”

  Drew left the hotel room leaving Letitia to try and rouse Alexa.

  Fourty Three

  Trainer was already awake as his alarm went off. He had been awake for hours, his mind racing with everything that had happened over the last two weeks. Felicia had been harassing him for information ever since Alexa had gone missing, she was becoming increasingly frustrated and he didn’t know how long it would be before she lost her temper completely; and he didn’t want to be around when that happened. He looked at the clock, it was six-fifteen AM, he needed to get himself out of bed and get to the station. It had been exactly a week now since the shooting at the hospital and the last sighting of Alexa. Today was Friday and he had a meeting with his bosses to keep them up to date with where they were with the investigation. He didn’t have much to tell them. The car Alexa was in had been traced to a Premier Inn hotel in Romford but by the time they got there she had gone. They had found the room with blood all over the bed and the left over fishing line and needle that had obviously been used to patch her up.

  They had scoured hotel CCTV and watched a car leave with three occupants, one of them barley able to walk. That must have been Alexa. They had used CCTV to follow the cars route around Romford and onto the main route into London but it had got so far and then the cameras on its route had all failed, they had lost any sight of it as it entered the city limits. Trainer knew that couldn’t have been a coincidence, Alexa must have been working with someone. He finally got out of his bed, showered, dressed and went down to his kitchen to get a coffee and some breakfast.

  “Hello Frank.”

  Trainer turned quickly and was greeted with Alexa holding a gun to his head.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Oh I think you can guess don’t you.”

  “Look...”

  “Don’t say a word,” Alexa pushed the gun against his forehead as he tried to speak.

  “Sit down. I need information,” Alexa pushed the gun against him again in the direction of a kitchen chair.

  “Please, please....”

  “Stop whining, I’m not here to kill you.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  “I need information.”

  Trainer sat down on the chair and looked directly at Alexa. She was stood in front of him with the gun pointed directly at him. He could see the anger in Alexa’s eyes. He also knew that if he didn’t do as she said she would kill him.

  “Listen carefully Frank. I need some information. If I get it then I will just walk out the door and leave you alone. If not then I will inflict pain on you until I get the information.”

  “Do you understand?” Alexa asked.

  Trainer just nodded.

  “Who was the woman at the hospital?”

  “Why do you need to know that?”

  Alexa raised the gun to Trainers temple.

  “That was a question. You don’t get to ask questions you just give me answers. Lets try again.”

  She didn’t want to hurt him so gave him one more chance. She also didn’t want to appear weak so the next failure to answer would mean her following through with her threat.

  “Who was the woman at the hospital?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Alexa pulled the gun back and pistol whipped Trainer across the head. As Trainer recovered and looked back at her she looked him in the eye and slowly, asked the question word by word.

  “Who..was..the..woman..in..the..hospital?”

  “Her name is Ionna.”

  “And the man?”

  “Pasha. He was Ionna’s brother.”

  “And they both work for Felicia?” Alexa asked.

  “Yes. They were sent to kill you.”

  “Good. See how easy this is when you answer my questions.”

  “What are you going to do with me now?”

  “That depends if you want to work with me or carry on working for Felicia.”

  “I just want to get out from this with my life. My career is over, I know that.”

  “No Frank. Your career isn’t over, in fact its just beginning.”

  “What?” Trainer wondered what Alexa meant and what she was up to.

  “Don’t worry Frank, you do exactly as I say and you will have my old job and I will be out of the country by the end of the weekend.”

  “How?” Trainer asked.

  Alexa picked up a towel from the kitchen table.

  “Put this in your mouth.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Alexa took the gun and held it against the top of Trainers knee cap pointing down towards the floor. He felt the excruciating pain at the same time as he heard the faint noise from the silenced weapon. His muffled scream was primeval as the bullet shattered his knee cap. As the pain started to dull he spat out the towel.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” he spluttered.

  “All part of the plan,” Alexa replied.

  “What plan?”

  “All will be revealed.”

  Alexa unscrewed the silencer and put it and the gun into a rucksack she had been carrying on her back.

  “Frank, we are going to make a wonderful team. Of course we need to remove our mutual problem first.”

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  Alexa took the towel she had used to muffle Trainers screams and ripped it into two. She tied one half around his knee and the other around the shin area of his leg to try and slow the blood flow from the bullet holes. She picked up her rucksack and walked towards the door that lead to the tower block landing.

  “I would ring an ambulance and get that sorted.”

  As she opened the door to leave Trainer shouted after her.

  “And how do I explain how this happened?” he gasped, pointing at his knee.

  “You can either say it was me or you blame it on the woman from the hospital and get her out the way.”

  “And if I say it was you?”

  “Then I will come back and visit you, except next time it won’t just be your knee.”

  She walked back towards Trainer. “You need to decide how much you want to get from under Felicia. I can make that happen.”

  Alexa walked back to the door and exited onto the landing. She just had to hope that Trainer would want to remove Felicia as much as she did. If not then the plan the three of them had designed would fail at the first step.

  * * *

  While Alexa was initiating the first phase of their plan Drew was beavering away at his laptop in the safe house he had driven them all to on the day of the shooting. The house itself was owned by a series of shell companies that hid the fact that it was owned by the hacking group that Drew was a member of. It was used as a safe house for members of the group to hide out if they needed to disappear. Its location was ideal for getting in and out of the country easily, it was on the outskirts of London in a place called Beckton. It was a great location being close to London Docklands, Excel Arena and the O2 Arena but that wasn’t the reason the group used it as a safe house. Its location to transport links was its allure to the group, it was located next to London City Airport and had a direct train link into the center of London. You could get anywhere from this unassuming house.

  They had spent most of the week helping Alexa recover from her gunshot wound but in the later part of the week they had worked out a plan to ensure Felicia paid Recompense for what she had done to Letitia’s sister and for her role in human trafficking. The plan also had to ensure Alexa got out of the country and didn’t end up back in prison or even worse..dead. The plan wasn’t without risk though.

  As he sat at his laptop he couldn’t help but think that he had the easiest part of the plan, all he had to do was hack into government computer systems, something he had done on a regular basis. It was Letitia and Al
exa who had the most dangerous parts of the plan.

  * * *

  “Patient is a fifty two year old male with a gunshot wound to the knee,” said the paramedic as Trainer was wheeled into the emergency room at St. Georges hospital. “Bullet has entered the knee from the top of the leg and exited around the shin.”

  “Okay, team lets get the patient comfortable and lets take a look at this knee,” the doctor said as he walked over to the bed that Trainer was now lay on. The doctor removed the dressing that had been applied at the scene. The entrance wound was clean and round, the exit wound had shattered the shin and was ragged with slivers of bone clearly visible in the bloodied and ragged skin.

  “Whats your name sir?” asked one of the nurses.

  “Frank Trainer.”

  “Well Frank, I am going to give you something for the pain so we can take a proper look at your knee.”

  Trainer just nodded, he was in too much pain to say anything.

  “Lets get him upstairs and get some X-Rays of these wounds,” the doctor instructed his team.

  “Frank, we are going to get some pictures of your knee to see the extent of the damage and then we can formulate a plan of action to sort you out.”

  Trainer just nodded again, the pain medication wasn’t taking effect yet, he hoped it would start acting soon.

  Fourty Four

  For phase two of the plan Alexa needed more fire power and she knew exactly where, or rather who to get it from. She had left Trainers flat, took the underground to Leyton in the East End of London. It wasn’t on her patch but Leytonstone was the home to one of London’s most notorious weapons dealers, his name was Eric Hunt. Word was that he could procure any weapon you wanted, even prototype weapons normally only available to the armed forces.

  The house was unassuming, the street was like any other in this part of town. Alexa looked up and down the street, there was mothers pushing babies up and down the street in strollers. Cars passed along as she stood looking at the house, there was nothing out of the ordinary, no obvious surveillance that would compromise her. She crossed the road, opened the gate and walked up to the door. She knocked on the door. As she waited Alexa took the gun from her jacket pocket and screwed the silencer to it. She didn’t plan on standing at the door of a weapons dealer with just her smile.

  As the door started to open she put all her weight behind her foot and kicked the door in, knocking over the person the other side of it. She followed her kick and stepped into the hallway of the house. She took another two steps towards the male on the floor, it was Eric, she recognised him from the photos she had seen on the police computers. He was starting to recover on the floor.

  “I would stay right where you are,” Alexa said as she pressed the silencer of her gun against his temple.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Alexa Blake.”

  “The corrupt cop?”

  “The one and only.”

  “And what do you want.”

  “Your an intelligent man, what do you think I want?”

  “How about a cup of tea,” he joked.

  “Actually a chat over a cup of tea would be nice,” Alexa replied.

  Alexa slowly removed the silencer from Eric’s temple and started to stand up. She looked down at the man at her feet. He was the epitome of a geek, thin, wiry and pale from his obvious lack of sunlight. He certainly didn’t look anything like movie interpretations of a weapons dealer. She couldn’t underestimate him though, he had managed to evade capture for years and just like the Fenner’s anyone that got close always seemed to disappear. Alexa followed Eric into the kitchen, her gun pointing directly at the back of his head.

  “Sit down,” Eric motioned to a bar stool at the breakfast bar in the immaculately gloss white kitchen.

  “Thank you Eric, you don’t mind me calling you Eric do you?”

  “Of course not, as long as I can call you Alexa.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Would you like to tell me what it is you want,” Eric asked as he started to gather cups from the kitchen cupboards.

  “I have a few items I need but I need them quickly.”

  Eric laid out two cups on the breakfast bar and sat down opposite Alexa.

  “Lets get down to business then,” Eric said as he sat down.

  Alexa placed the gun on the breakfast bar and pointed it at Eric.

  “Yes lets.”

  * * *

  Trainer had been in the operating theatre for hours and now he was lay in his hospital bed watching some television, he had no idea what it was but it was better than looking at the four cream walls that surrounded his bed. He picked up the remote control to start flicking through the channels as the door opened. He looked over a saw a beautiful woman in a white coat entering his room, it took him a while to focus on her face but when he did he recognised it as Letitia.

  “What do you want?” he asked. He was a little worried. The last time he met Letitia he had threatened her and now he was lay immobilised in the hospital bed.

  “I came to see how you were Mr Trainer. I am a doctor at this hospital,” she smiled at Trainer as she walked around his bed to check the machinery that was monitoring his heart, blood pressure and oxygen levels.

  “That’s nice of you, but I doubt it’s a coincidence that you happen to be my doctor.”

  “I’m not your doctor I just came to check on the morphine you are getting.”

  She looked at Trainer as she checked the machine.

  “I would hate you to be in pain or even worse, imagine what would happen if you got too much morphine.”

  “So you’re here to finish the job Alexa started then.”

  “Of course not Mr Trainer. We need you alive, but if you do decide to double cross us then I have known these machines to go wrong.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “We need you to tell the Police exactly who shot you.”

  “And who shot me?”

  “The same lady that shot Alexa of course.”

  “That’s suicide. If I tell the Police that, Felicia will kill me.”

  “She won’t get the chance.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it Mr Trainer. You have one job to do and when you do we can take out Felicia.”

  “You really think you can do that?”

  “I know we can.”

  “Okay, but I need something else as well.”

  “I don’t think your in a position to ask for anything.”

  “I need you to clear any record of me taking bribes.”

  “We have already started that, your bank accounts will look pristine by the end of the day. But remember after this you belong to Alexa, she owns you and you will do anything she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Good, in that case I will leave you alone. You know what to do.”

  Letitia opened the door, stepped through into the ward corridor and shut the door behind her. She stood the other side of the door, her heart was racing and her breathing was heavy. It had gone better that she had expected. Alexa had drilled her on what to do and say and Trainer had responded in exactly the way Alexa had anticipated. She hoped that Trainer would do what they wanted and Ionna would be a hunted woman.

  Fourty Five

  Drew was the last person down for breakfast. He looked at the clock it was eight twenty-eight AM.

  “You two were up early this morning,” he said as he searched the kitchen cupboards for something to eat.

  “You won’t find anything. Someone needs to go out and get food,” Letitia said.

  “Okay, I will do that. Let’s face it I’m the only one that doesn’t have people hunting them down.”

  “Turn the radio up,” Alexa asked.

  “I know you like this song but its nearly finished,” Letitia said as she turned up the volume on the radio.

  “It’s not the song, I want to listen to the news that should be on next.”


  The song finished and the jingle for the news came on.

  Our main news story today is the shooting of a policeman. Detective Sergeant Trainer was shot in his own home yesterday morning. He is now recovering in hospital. A Police spokesperson has said they are looking for a female who they consider to be extremely dangerous and should not be approached by any members of the public. The Detective Sergeant was able to identify his attacker as Ionna Babadishvili, a Georgian...

  “You can turn it off now,” said Alexa.

  “So he did as we asked,” added Drew.

  “Yes he did.”

  “What now?” asked Letitia.

  “We move onto the next phase.”

  “Did you get everything you wanted from Eric?” asked Drew.

  “Yes, it should be ready to collect today. Once we have everything then we can move into the final phase.”

  Letitia looked nervously at Alexa. “And what is the next phase?”

  “Kill Felicia and destroy her operation.”

  * * *

  Alexa had spent the morning briefing Drew and Letitia on the next stages of her plan and collecting her supplies from Eric. Everything had gone as she expected so far but the next phases were the most important. If it went wrong from this point on then they could all end up in prison or worse, dead.

  She had pulled into the hospital car park and walked through the reception area where she had killed Pasha without being noticed. Any Police presence had gone now and all the people walking around were too interested in their own problems to notice her. She took the lift and alighted at the floor for the ward where Trainer was recovering. Letitia had told her where his room was when she visited him so Alexa didn’t have to interact with the nurses, she walked through and past the nurses station and into Trainers room. As she entered the room Trainer was sat in the chair next to his bed. He looked up and saw Alexa.

  “Your taking a risk coming in here,” he said.

  “I wanted to see how you were. And to thank you for blaming Ionna for your injuries.”

  “I want out of this as much as you do. I know I have done some really bad things but I just want to get back to my job and out from under the cloud of Felicia.”