A man came out of the main house to meet her. Hannah watched him give her the once over before his eyes settled on her face.
“Hannah Clements?” he asked, in a south-east England accent. He wore military fatigues in urban warfare pattern with a sidearm strapped to his right thigh. Somewhere close to fifty-years-old, with cropped grey hair and the voice and movements of a man who’d spent his life in uniform.
“Yes.” He did the decent thing and offered her a hand to shake.
“Paul Miro,” he said, and added with a gesture at her face. “IED?”
“Helmand Province,” Hannah lied.
“Shit hole of a place,” Miro said, as he turned. “Been there, done it, fuck it. Follow me. We’ve still got plenty of space so that you will have your own room, at least for a few months.”
Dragging her suitcase up four levels of a stone staircase made Hannah appreciate escalators and lifts a lot more than she had. Miro took her to her two-room accommodation unit. She’d seen worse and told Miro. He laughed.
“This place is a luxury compared to some of the rat holes I’ve slept in,” he said as he opened the door to the bathroom that contained a shower, toilet and sink. “Hot water runs between seven and eight in the morning and nine and ten at night. Don’t waste it. I’ll leave you to unpack. Head back down in an hour and wait outside. I’ll find you, and give you the grand tour.”
“Thanks,” Hannah said, as he headed for the door.
“Don’t thank me until you know what you’ve let yourself in for.” The door closed behind him, and Hannah stood alone.
The first thing Hannah did, like any good spy, was check for surveillance. The walls were all solid stone, the floor and ceiling thick, wooden beams. The electric lights supplied through plastic conduits fastened to the smooth surfaces. She examined light and plug sockets for audio and video devices along with various places on the few pieces of furniture (bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe). She examined the bathroom as well, not wanting any footage of her in the shower if there were men here desperate enough to want to watch a skinny twenty-something lathering up. Happy that the rooms were clean, Hannah unpacked. She checked the view from the one, leaded window that showed the rear section of the castle walls and native woodland beyond. Her look confirmed armed guards patrolled the walls. Whatever they were protecting lay inside the castle, and Hannah needed to find out what as soon as possible.
She headed down the staircase fifty minutes later and met Miro who took her to the admin office. Here she went through the induction, received her ID card, got told that her weapon would be issued once she completed a month’s employment at the castle. Miro gave her a guided tour. Walls. Buildings. It lasted fifteen minutes and comprised showing her how to find the canteen and kitchens and the room where she would work as part of the security team. Her role would be to monitor cameras that were watching all areas around and inside the castle. Miro also said that they wanted her to do the supply run into town.
“Why don’t you have it delivered?” Hannah asked as he showed her the Mercedes Sprinter van she would have to drive. It sat alongside four Range Rovers in the lee of the castle wall.
“We don’t want too many people seeing this place. You’ve probably already noticed the armed guards. Too many delivery drivers see that... then words gets around... and we’re getting a visit from local plod. We’re genuine, backed by the MOD, but need to avoid as much hassle as possible. Keys are left in the ignitions so anyone can grab a vehicle if they need one without running around looking for them.”
She would work eight days on and four off, then eight nights and four off. She could stay in the grounds or visit the local town in her own time, just be sure to let security know where she was going. Miro seemed pretty decent as Hannah waited to ask the ‘big’ question. She got her chance as they returned from looking at the van and six new guards carrying Diemaco C8 assault rifles swapped with the men already on duty.
“Some firepower they’ve got there,” Hannah said. “I’m still in the dark about what we’re guarding.”
Miro paused, gave her another of his ‘once over’ looks and said, “You’ll find out.”
“What does that mean?”
He’d already started walking again but Hannah held her ground. Miro turned to her, gestured at the central tower, and said, “We call her the Princess, she’s in there now. You’ll meet her soon, I expect, as she often wanders around the place.”
“She sounds important.” Hannah kept her voice natural as she walked alongside him into the tower. “Is she from the Middle-East? Is that why all the guards are here?”
Miro laughed. “No. She’s as English as you and me, though I sometimes wonder if she’s human.”
Hannah stopped. “What?”
Miro looked like he knew he’d said too much. “Only joking. The kitchen serves lunch at one.” He checked his watch. “Stay in your room until then. I can introduce you to those guys on duty when you come down. Admin should have you uniform sorted so we can get you kitted out and not look like some dizzy tourist.”
Miro left her standing in the main entrance hall of the tower. I sometimes wonder if she’s human. What the hell did he mean by that? Hannah heard a burst of laughter, and two uniformed guards walked in. They nodded and said hello after their eyes checked Hannah’s ID on the lanyard around her neck. She watched them head down the same corridor as Miro. Hannah thought about going to her room like a good girl and decided that she didn’t want to be good. She followed the two men. The corridor ended in a downwards spiralling staircase. Hannah glanced back. The empty space seemed foreboding, with the only pale light provided by low wattage bulbs strung from the dark, stone ceiling.
If she went down and Miro saw her, then she’d be out. He’d asked, almost ordered, her to go back to her room. Hannah drummed her fingers on the cold wall. She went down the first half-dozen steps, paused and listened. Nothing. She took the next half-dozen. That lost sight of the corridor and presented her with the view of a curving wall and more steps. She paused and listened.
An odd sound reached up to her. Like coughing, but fainter. Hannah chewed her bottom lip as she edged further down. Now she could make out the sound better. Gunfire. Of course, they would use one of the underground chambers for a firing range, so locals didn’t get to hear too much shooting. Hannah wondered how much further the spiral staircase would take her. The shots would mask any noise she made descending the steps, but would also hide the sound of someone coming up, or down, from her. Hannah decided that she’d made one discovery for today, and that was enough. She turned, trotting up the tight steps, praying no-one would be coming down.
She made it to the corridor with sweat on her brow and realised that for the whole journey up she’d been holding her breath. She walked with short, sharp paces and almost made it to the entrance hall when a door opened up in front of her. Her gut reaction took Hannah right, ducking into a recessed doorway. She pressed back against an arched, wooden door with thick metal hinges that pressed into her side. She risked a glance out and saw two figures walking away from her. A man, short, stocky and with sandy hair, and a child. A girl. Tall enough to be a teenager. Dark hair reached down to the nape of her neck, it curled around her ears and gave Hannah the briefest glimpse of a pale profile as she looked up at the man. He was saying something about Abraham Darby and pig iron.
No. It can’t be.
Man and girl vanished around the angle of the corridor leaving Hannah frozen in place, her skin crawling. She closed her eyes, bringing back the image of the girl as she walked. Impossible. She’s dead. Both of them are dead. Geordie told me they’d died when the car Douglas Congrave and Ben Scarrett were in ran them down.
Some sub-conscious thought made her move from the doorway and follow the pair. She’d lost them. Part of Hannah breathed a sigh of relief because she didn’t want to know the truth right then. She ran up to her room, taking the stone steps two at a time until she could slam the heavy, oak door shut and sl
ide the bolts home.
The castle is guarding a secret. And the secret is a twelve-year-old girl. Or maybe both of them are still alive? Lizzy and Vicky. The Terrible Twins.
Hannah slid to the floor, heart racing as she remembered the storm that engulfed a village primary school and raised an army of clay men that tried to kill her and Emily DeForrest. Emily said it was the twins who caused it. Helped by the mysterious Celtic goddess, Morrigan, in her attempt to take control of the government by killing the Prime Minister. Hannah only found out about these facts as she recovered in hospital after almost dying protecting the PM.
Recovering a little, she found her mobile phone buried at the bottom of her bag and turned it on. Shit, no signal. Hannah walked to the window, peering out at skies that were darkening again as another squall blew in. No signal. The words taunted her from the screen. They glowed with a beat of their own.
Calm down.
Easier said than done, but Hannah slowed her breathing and shoved the phone into the back pocket of her jeans. Walk down to ground level, out into the quadrangle and message Josh. Better still, compose the message now and as soon as anything approaching one bar appears on the phone send it. Then get one of the Range Rovers and drive out of the castle. Job done. Less than two hours and she now knew what operation the MOD were running.
It’s Stanton. He was there, at Chequers. He knew what the twins were capable of and must have got one, or both, of them out alive when Congrave and Reuben and the others were dying to save the country. Bastard.
She typed the message. Read it through twice and made some changes. Added at the bottom, Forward this to Geordie without delay. This is urgent.
Josh only joined the department after Chequers; he wouldn’t appreciate how dangerous this child could be. Why? What in God’s name is Stanton thinking? Whichever one of the twins it is she has the same psychic powers as Emily, but where Emily is sweet and good-natured, the twins were wicked and evil. Stanton must be mad.
Hannah made sure she had her wallet and spare phone. Everything else could stay. She drew back the bolts on the door and stepped out of her room. The walls seemed darker, stained with memories of bloodshed and war. Hannah fancied she saw ghosts reaching out of the stone as she made her way down the staircase. Pock-marked walls taunted her, names and dates scraped into the surface by soldiers who were now dust in the ground. The journey down seemed endless even though she knew it was only three stories.
At ground level Hannah stumbled away from the steps. She thought she saw a shadow stalking her, curved hands dragging along the floor as she ran to the doorway. The sky held a dark threat as the squall came closer. She stepped out into the first speckles of rain. A gust of wind made Hannah shiver, and she realised she’d left her waterproof jacket up in her room. Too late now. A quick check of her phone showed the familiar words No Signal shining as bright as before. The rain intensified as a gust of wind swept over the battlements and plunged down upon her.
Shielding her face from the cold, stinging raindrops, Hannah ran out into the open. The clouds were so grey that they merged with the high walls of the castle until she stood in a cocoon of wind and water.
“There she is!” A girl shouted, her voice still carrying the tone of a child but also the command of an adult.
Hannah saw the girl in the doorway she’d just left, flanked by Miro and a woman wearing combat fatigues. They came out into the rain, drawing their guns and when Hannah turned she saw armed guards coming down from the walls.
Hannah ran for the cars and flinched at the first crack of gunfire. A quick glance showed Miro chasing her, his automatic aimed up as he fired another warning shot. He shouted at her to stop, but the words disappeared in a violent swirl of gale force wind that caught Hannah by surprise. She fell on the slick grass and lost her footing twice trying to get up. Slippery mud covered her as she found traction and broke into a sprint. More gunfire, this time rapid as the guards put three-round bursts into the turf in front of her.
The cars emerged from the gloom. Hannah hit the front wing of one of them. She fell again, this time losing hold of the phone as it bounced off gravel and under the Range Rover. Hannah screamed in frustration, crawling after it. She clawed it out as Miro and the guards closed. The words No Signal blinked off. Hannah stared at the screen in shock before she found the send button and pressed it.
A hand lifted her from the ground and turned her in mid-air. No, not a hand, a psychic force wielded by an insane child who threw Hannah back. She hit the windscreen of the Range Rover and lay stunned for a moment before the same force wrenched her forward. Hannah slid off the bodywork and hit the gravel. She lost control of her limbs as the girl dragged Hannah towards her. Stones bit and scraped into flesh, opening new wounds and splitting old. Rain made the dirt and blood on Hannah’s face mix into a dark soup as she came to a halt at the girl’s feet.
“I know her,” the girl said. “I know this bitch. They sent her here to kill me.”
The child’s anger seemed to reach up into the storm as lightning and thunder tore apart the sky. It released Hannah, the weight lifting from her and giving Hannah a chance to push up from the ground and lash out at the girl’s throat. An iron-hard arm blocked the blow. The woman stepped in and kicked Hannah in the chest. She fell back, lungs empty and struggling for breath. Miro filled her vision, the automatic he carried aimed at her heart.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Hannah closed her eyes. Strong hands grabbed her wrists and handcuffed them. They pulled her upright.
“Look at me,” the girl said.
Hannah opened her eyes. Rain plastered the girl’s hair to her head and made the pale flesh of her face resemble a skull. “So which twin are you?” Hannah asked.
“Lizzie,” the girl said.
“I was told you were dead.”
“Obviously, I’m not.” Lizzie smiled a cold, cruel smile.
One of the guards came over. “She dropped this.” He handed Hannah’s phone to Miro. The screen glowed brightly in the gloom and Hannah saw, with a sinking heart, that Miro had access to the menu of apps. He tapped twice and looked up.
“She sent a message to one number, warning about Lizzie.” He gave the phone to the woman and said, “Lois, get this down to the control room. See if they can block the phone she sent the message to and trace where it is. We’ll be down in a minute.”
As Lois ran, Miro stepped in front of Hannah. “Did you honestly think you would get away with this?”
Hannah shrugged and winced as a jolt of pain shot up her neck, whiplash from her fall off the Range Rover. “Maybe I have,” she said.
Miro laughed. “And maybe you haven’t. What do you want us to do with her, Lizzie?”
“Mr Salmon, my history teacher, was telling me about all the things they used to torture people with down in the dungeon.”
Miro wiped rainwater from his face. “You should know,” he said to Hannah, “that I got dismissed from the army for the use of torture on a suspected insurgent in Afghanistan. The brass didn’t like the idea of me breaking bones even if I did save the lives of a hundred Afghani trainees when we stopped an attack on their base.”
“You don’t scare me.” Hannah stared straight into Miro’s face.
“Probably not,” he said as he stepped to one side and gestured at Lizzie. “But I bet she does.”
***
“Any news?” Miro asked Lois as he entered the control room.
“The number she messaged is registered to the security services. We’ve blocked it, but can’t keep that in place for very long without raising suspicion.”
“Any activity on the phone?” Miro leaned over the technician who worked the console.
“No calls or texts sent for over twelve hours. Just the usual pings to the nearest towers.”
“Can you triangulate and get me a location?”
“Easy-peasy,” the technician said. He rattled at the keys on the keyboard and Miro saw the monitor display ch
ange to a satellite view of the UK. For a moment it hung, suspended, before performing a dizzying swoop into the landmass. Image resolution struggled to keep with the speed of magnification, and it took a couple of seconds for Miro to realise the view expanding before his eyes showed Scotland. More precisely, north-east Scotland. The familiar shape of a loch emerged from the latest screen refresh. To the south, the local town, connected by dark ribbons of roads that wound along valleys, through forests and along the loch shore. Miro traced them to the castle. An icon popped up, flashing yellow.
“There it is.” The technician pointed with the business end of a biro.
“That’s Rhoffa’s Quay,” Lois said in shock. “The phone’s only half a mile from us.”
The icon sat on a rocky headland that thrust out into the loch like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Miro stared at it, expecting the phone and whoever owned it to start moving. It didn’t. The signal remained, unmoving, as if enjoying a day at the lochside.
“Get two teams rolling,” Miro said to Lois. “Go with them. We need that phone killed, and sooner rather than later.”
“And what about the person with it?” Lois asked, on her way out of the room.
“That’s up to you,” Miro said, still not taking his eyes from the monitor.
***
Josh watched another band of rain drive across the loch, obscuring his view of the castle once more. Since arriving on station, the decent weather hadn’t lasted much more than an hour before the murk descended and made him wonder if this part of the world operated in a different time zone. Twilight engulfed him, and he wished the spot he’d picked had a little more shelter and a lot less water gathering properties. He’d moved a dozen metres or so twice as the ground became waterlogged. Now, with his tablet tucked away inside his wet weather gear, he only had his phone for company and the strange message that Hannah had sent.
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 25
