If Looks Could Kill

by Gary Kittle

  IF LOOKS COULD KILL

  GARY KITTLE

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any method, electronic,

  mechanical, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of

  The Author – Gary Kittle

  If Looks Could Kill Copyright Gary Kittle, 2016

  This eBook is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual

  places or events, the names, characters, incidents and locations within are

  from the author’s imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or

  dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  This eBook is dedicated to the late Edward (Ted) Atkinson (1928-2016).

  Cover design and illustration by John Wallett.

  (Email: john.wallett@livingmaps.org.uk)

  Contents

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Coming soon

  About the Author

  Connect with Gary Kittle

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  Set in the very near future, Britain has suffered a massive biological terrorist attack. The result is a disease that rivals the Plague in its mercilessness. The symptoms are easy to spot. They cover every inch of skin: disfiguring, blighting and rotting with shocking rapacity.

  But this is a disease custom-made by the extremists to cause the greatest amount of hopelessness and misery for the British people. Victims seldom die and the disease, christened ‘Foedus’ by the media, only affects women. Forced to hide their blemished faces, the women of Britain adopt the burqa, are forced to stay at home for ‘reasons of hygiene’, and can only visit public places with a male escort.

  So when Devina, an immigrant, falls into the hands of a gang of ambitious petty criminals, it is clear that her apparent immunity to Foedus is potentially worth a fortune to anyone searching for a cure. But the State doesn’t want to pay millions for something that might be a hoax, so rookie field agent Dan Rhodes is thrown the impossible task of tracking down the kidnappers before their ransom deadline expires.

  Despite his inexperience Dan realises there is much more going on in this case than he has been told. But what else could his boss, Trevor Jenkins want with the girl except to hand her over to the medical team waiting in a secret lab? As for Richard Simmons, he may be the leader of the kidnapping gang, but are his two sidekicks as loyal as they pretend? And just how badly has Foedus affected the mental health of his wife, Fiona?

  As the clock ticks down towards the hour of the ransom payment, true identities and motives are exposed; and the truth is spotlighted against a backdrop of veiled faces and rabid prejudice.

  In the War on Terror the mirror just became a secret weapon.

  Chapter One

  ‘So, you’re an immigrant,’ said Simmons. ‘And you’re immune.’

  The hostage didn’t reply; didn’t take her eyes from the floor. The ropes binding her arms to the chair creaked timidly.

  ‘When was the last time you saw a face like that?’ whispered Jamie. ‘I mean, look at it. Just look at it.’

  ‘I don’t think I can stand it much more,’ said the third man, Gareth, scratching at his ski mask.

  ‘No,’ agreed Simmons, and stepping forward he snagged the bandana with his fingertips from around the girl’s neck and slipped it up over her mouth and nose.

  Jamie let out a troubled sigh. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘What’s the point?’ Gareth moaned. ‘As far as I can see they’ve won.’

  ‘They may have won this battle,’ Simmons replied. ‘But it’s a fair bet the war goes on.’

  He carefully brushed hair away from the girl’s eyes, but she did not recoil.

  ‘That’s my point,’ Gareth continued. ‘Immune or not this battle’s lost. She can’t be worth anything.’ His eyes flicked towards the girl. ‘No offence, love.’

  ‘She must be terrified,’ Jamie complained. ‘We shouldn’t be talking like this in front of her. I mean, it’s not her fault.’

  ‘Even if she is an immigrant,’ Gareth scowled.

  ‘I know one thing.’ Richard Simmons turned to address them both. ‘I haven’t been able to look at my own wife in months without wanting to puke. And I certainly haven’t touched her.’

  ‘You can’t catch it that way,’ said Jamie.

  ‘You can’t catch it at all if you’re a bloke, stupid.’ Gareth scoffed.

  ‘Take a look outside,’ Simmons growled, ‘both of you. Go on. Take a long look.’

  Jamie glanced uncertainly at Gareth. They sloped over to the window. Simmons followed, looking over their shoulders into the busy street below.

  In many respects it was a typical weekday morning. Cars waited at the traffic lights. A burly man in overalls was struggling to unload a truck with two wheels parked on the pavement. A group of primary school children disappeared into a church that was now home to the natural history museum.

  ‘Now there’s something you won’t see much longer,’ said Gareth, nodding.

  A female teacher herded the last few stragglers inside the museum, like Noah’s wife, her head draped in black cloth.

  ‘All creatures great and small,’ muttered Gareth. ‘Maybe she’s immune, too.’

  ‘Do you think some of them might have converted?’Jamie asked suddenly, resting his brow against the cold glass. ‘Like the papers are saying.’

  ‘Would you? Honestly? If you were a woman and you had to see yourself naked in the bathroom mirror every day?’ Gareth scoffed. ‘Doesn’t sound much of a miracle to me.’

  ‘Perhaps the idea of God sending down a plague helps them to make sense of it all,’ Jamie suggested.

  Gareth turned to Richard Simmons. ‘Listen, whatever plan you have you’d better finalise it pronto.’ He stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Because if anyone finds out we’ve got a woman symptom free under our roof they’ll lynch the lot of us.’ He marched out, Jamie following with a shrug.

  Richard was still looking down at the world below, thinking. The female teacher looked up - or appeared to. Finally she turned away and disappeared inside the museum. Had she been looking at him? he wondered. How could anyone tell under that get-up? Still, it was preferable to the alternative, even at this distance. The last time he’d seen his wife naked he really had thrown up.

  At least the burqa spared him that.

  Chapter Two

  ‘So th
is is where you’ll be working initially,’ Trevor Jenkins told him.

  They marched through a large open plan office. With its background hubbub and the constant meandering from desk to desk, it was not unlike a beehive.

  ‘Later on, if things go well, we’ll get you your own office. You do come highly recommended.’

  Dan Rhodes still wasn’t one hundred percent certain what this place was. He’d been hand-picked, apparently. It wasn’t MI5 or 6, he was sure, but neither was it the Inland Revenue. Whatever these people were investigating it involved a lot more than just misplaced decimal points and dodgy expenses claims.

  ‘Obviously, the recent crisis has precipitated a major overall in government strategy.’ His new boss raised an eyebrow. ‘Which is why you’re here, of course: to get results.’

  ‘No pressure, then,’ Dan thought to himself, less pleasantly.

  The ‘recent crisis’ was the greatest national disaster since the Plague. Thankfully he had never seen his infected mother and sister without the burqa. He’d seen images of victims on line, of course, but his flat was deliberately cluttered with pictures of his family before the outbreak. That way he only had to think of them the way they had been, not as they were. Most were not so lucky, he knew.

  ‘All these men here have wives, girlfriends, sisters, aunts, grandmothers.’

  The office was an all male working environment, as most were these days. The crisis had set back gender equality in the workplace by centuries. Even though males were immune, there were still ‘hygiene issues’ that led to segregation. Female only shops, cafes and even gyms were springing up throughout the country; though a couple had been torched overnight already. No one was thinking straight and everyone was affected one way or another.

  ‘My own wife,’ Jenkins began but could not finish.

  Dan struggled to think of an appropriate response and couldn’t. What it must be like to go home to someone you’d known for years but could never look at again, and even if you did, not recognise them? Did they still sleep together? Eat together? Use the same bathroom? As a word ‘crisis’ just did not do justice to what had happened to their country over the past year.

  Jenkins patted Dan on the elbow and said, ‘Let’s go down to my office. I don’t think it’s too early for a drink, under the circumstances.’

  Dan only realised how loud the noise in the general office was as Jenkins’ door shut it out. His new boss gestured towards a chair. Dan sat down whilst Jenkins poured two large whiskies.

  ‘There’s a question you want to ask me,’ Jenkins said with his back to Dan.

  There were dozens; but one in particular sat at the top of the pile. ‘Official secrets?’

  Jenkins handed Dan his glass and sat down in his own leather chair, taking a sip. ‘This is a national emergency.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that.’ Jenkins half-smiled. ‘To be frank, there are no official secrets here, only tight lips and keen senses.’ He took another sip. ‘You’re probably wondering who we are, though?’

  Dan wriggled in his seat.

  ‘We’ve only been in operation a few months, and hopefully in a few months time we’ll all go back to our old jobs again.’ Jenkins dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Once the crisis is over.’

  ‘You mean we’re that close to a cure?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. But it’s painstaking, round the clock work: two steps forward, one back. Of course, in the meantime society is coming apart at the seams and the terrorists have themselves the propaganda coup of the century.’

  ‘So what will I be doing exactly?’

  ‘Surveillance.’ Jenkins finished his drink. His cheeks were pleasantly rouged, making him look at little like Father Christmas. Dan didn’t think many women would be unwrapping mirrors as Christmas presents, though.

  ‘We suspect the terrorists might try something else. Whilst the nation is on its knees, so to speak,’ Jenkins said. ‘So we’re keeping our ears to the ground. Whilst we’re on our knees, that is.’ He smiled at his own humour.

  ‘Something else?’ Something worse, was what he meant.

  ‘After Hiroshima, Nagasaki.’

  ‘So you want me to ‘spy’? On who?’

  ‘On,’ Jenkins circled his empty glass in the air. ‘Whoever. We’ll come that in due course.’

  Dan swallowed his drink in one. His previous job had been in Immigration. Did Jenkins think he might have heard rumours about the biological terror attacks of last year?

  ‘And we prefer the term ‘surveillance’, by the way.’

  Whoever ‘we’ are, Dan thought.

  Jenkins stood up, looking satisfied. This was the cosy chat he had with everyone, Dan supposed. Was there some kind of threat underneath this discussion? If so it was implied rather than articulated. Signing the Official Secrets Act would actually have made Dan feel a lot safer.

  ‘Surveillance.’ Dan stood to shake his new boss’s hand. ‘In the national interest.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jenkins smiled. ‘Glad we understand each other.’

  Dan couldn’t help wondering what happened to those who didn’t ‘understand’.

  ‘Now, let’s get your surveillance started, shall we?’

  At least you couldn’t be shot for surveying.

  Chapter Three

  Richard Simmons recognised the unreasonable tone in the woman’s raised voice immediately. Gareth looked at him and frowned beneath his ski mask. Richard turned back to the door, heard Jamie pleading with the owner of the voice from somewhere below, as her footsteps stomped up the stairs.

  ‘Here comes trouble,’ he muttered, glancing down at the girl.

  ‘Should I lock the door?’

  ‘Why,’ Richard huffed. ‘I think it’s fair to say she already knows.’

  The door burst inward, but for a moment Richard was confused. The woman’s burqa was bright yellow, with subtle touches of orange that resembled flames. ‘The fires of hell,’ he thought to himself. Then he remembered it was his suggestion that his wife replace her former drab outfit. Someone was always ready to capitalize on other people’s misery, it seemed. With every female in the country affected by the disease the market opportunities in pseudo-Islamic dress were enormous. Richard followed his wife’s wide-eyed stare. ‘Almost every female in the country,’ he corrected himself.

  The eyes behind the mesh turned on him. ‘Is it true? Is that her?’

  ‘Please, whatever you do, don’t use our names,’ Gareth spoke up.

  Richard considered tactics and decided not to bother. If you were going to have to swim through a tsunami, which stroke you choose was irrelevant.

  ‘Darling, this is Devina.’ Richard noticed that the material covering his wife’s head was trembling slightly. ‘Devina, this is my wife.’

  Fiona Simmons charged towards the bound girl and ripped the bandana from her face, making the younger woman jump. Gareth recoiled at Fiona’s violence and shot a glance at Richard.

  ‘Easy does it, love. She’s not much more than a kid.’

  Fiona staggered backward immediately, her arms hanging lifelessly by her sides. She shook her head and let her hanging gloved hands turn into fists.

  ‘And she’s clean?’

  Jamie entered the room, looking guilty and ill at ease. ‘I tried to stop her.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Gareth barked. ‘You couldn’t stop smoking in a hurricane.’

  Richard squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself for the shit storm ahead.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told Jamie. ‘I was going to tell her today anyway.’

  ‘Like hell you were!’

  Fiona stepped towards Devina, bending down to peer into her unblemished face.

  ‘Is she like that all over?’

  ‘I assume so. Yes.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t checked,’ Fiona spat up at him.

  For the first time Richard felt uneasy. He’d predicted anger, jealousy, self-righteousness even. But he hadn’t expecte
d this level of animosity so instantaneously. This would add impetus to getting the young immigrant on her way as quickly as possible. At least now he knew the girl was immune they could get the ball rolling. He stared at Jamie whilst directing his next question to his wife. He’d already guessed the answer. ‘How did you find out?’

  Fiona let out an unnatural guffaw and turned to stare at Jamie. ‘Someone asked me where I kept my make-up.’

  Richard let out a resigned sigh.

  ‘Nice one, Einstein,’ sniggered Gareth.

  ‘I had to tell her,’ Jamie simpered.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She threatened me.’

  This time Gareth roared with laughter.

  ‘No, honestly, guys. She threatened to remove her whatnot.’

  ‘Burqa,’ Richard qualified.

  ‘You took the word right off my lips,’ Gareth muttered.

  Richard turned to his wife. ‘And you were actually going to show this poor sod what you’ve got under that?’

  ‘I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘She would have, too,’ Jamie whined.

  ‘Where did you get this ‘creature’ from?’ Fiona said, ignoring him. ‘And what are you holding on to her for, as if I don’t already know?’

  ‘She’s an immigrant. Someone sent her my way to get her out of the country. It’s what I do for a living, remember?’

  ‘And when you saw how beautiful she is you decided to do otherwise.’

  ‘No. When I saw she was symptom free, I speculated that we might be able to make a much bigger profit than usual.’

  ‘And how long ago was that?’

  ‘Three weeks today.’

  ‘What?’ Fiona exploded. ‘You’ve kept this little tart tucked away all to yourself for nearly a month? And you’re trying to tell me that nothing’s happened? Ha!’

  ‘No. Something has happened.’

  Fiona was suddenly silent.

  ‘I have deliberately exposed her to the disease in every way I could think of and she’s still symptom free.’

  ‘You took her out? How?’

  ‘She’s about your height. People just assumed it was you.’

  Fiona was so incensed it left her speechless.