by Paul Starkey
“Are you going to tell me you weren’t screwing Lucy?”
“I wasn’t,” he replied through gritted teeth. “She was…” he flexed his fingers, keeping the circulation going. “She was a very damaged girl when I met her, years of abuse by her father had seen to that. She was referred to me by a friend who thought she might make a good agent. After all, if you can compartmentalise abuse to survive, it isn’t much of a step to compartmentalising different identities. She failed the psyche evaluations of course, but I was able to wangle her on the administrative staff. It worked out better that way if I’m honest.”
Tyrell was nodding. “An off the books asset?”
Mellanby shrugged. “Something like that.”
“I’m surprised you could control her.”
“Oh Lucy was quite focused, and she trusted me implicitly for two reasons. First off I was about the only man who never tried to get into her knickers.” He paused and grinned. “Ironic, eh?”
The other man’s shoulders sagged slightly. “And the second reason?”
“I arranged for her to kill her father,” he said coldly. He smiled like a crocodile. “You can’t buy that kind of indebtedness.”
“You bastard,” Tyrell whispered, the word barely audible above the gale.
“You can talk, John. You only met her a couple of times, but remember what I said, I was the only man who didn’t try to follow in daddy’s footsteps.”
Those hooded eyes suddenly glowed, and Mellanby knew he’d made an error. Tyrell was still dangerous. Maybe not as much as he once had been, but he wasn’t as feeble as he sometimes appeared.
He held his arms out wide, spread his legs and surreptitiously gained another few inches on the plane. “What’s the plan, John? You here to take me in and get a hearty well done from the Home Secretary?”
Tyrell shook his head.
Mellanby felt his blood run cold. “You here to kill me, John?” he asked, wondering when he’d need to make his move.
Tyrell ignored the question. He took a step closer. “Why did you involve me?”
Mellanby shrugged. “Simple expediency. The doctors up at Devonshire House told me the last seventeen years of your memories were gone, that they’d never come back, but given Bottlewood was your idea I couldn’t take the chance.”
Tyrell smiled, a sad, pathetic little gesture. “Tying up loose ends?”
“Something like that.”
“What’s the plan?” Tyrell asked now, gesturing to the plane.
Mellanby licked his lips. If he could draw the man slightly nearer he could probably slap the gun out of his hands.
“Taking her to St Hellier, after that a ferry to mainland France and then...” He shrugged, allowed a wry smile. “Well that depends. You here to kill me, John?”
Again the other man shook his head. “No, Sir George. I’m not going to kill you.”
He frowned. Curious that the absence of a threat could seem so very threatening. “Then I don’t…” the sentence ended as he felt a something prick the skin at the nape of his neck. He spun fast, too fast as it turned out, it made him dizzy, made his vision blur. He’d barely completed the pirouette before his legs gave way. The ground was soft, but still his knees hit with so much force that he should have felt pain. He felt nothing. He stayed on his knees for a moment, staring up at the fuzzy figure of a man who only seemed to have one arm, and behind him a vehicle, a 4x4. He wanted to speak, but his lips and tongue felt numb. And then darkness engulfed him like a tsunami.
* * *
Tyrell was grateful when Mellanby dropped to the ground. It meant he could lower the gun, the thing weighed a ton and he was glad that now he could replace the Smith and Wesson in the shoulder holster beneath his overalls.
Leaning on the plane had been part of the plan, to make himself seem weak, make Mellanby overconfident, distract him from what was going on behind him. Still it took a modicum of effort to leave the comforting support of the plane. Once this was over he was going to take a few weeks to properly rest, and after that…well, after that he had a flight booked to Washington, a daughter and an ex-wife to connect with—to reconnect with—if it was at all possible.
Thomas Cheung awkwardly crouched beside Mellanby’s prone form. His left arm was still pinned to his chest in a sling, and so he had to put the syringe on the floor so he could use his right hand to check for a pulse. He stood up as Tyrell approached. He too was dressed in overalls. The only weapon he had was the syringe though, which was fine, the plan had never been to kill Mellanby after all.
“He’s alive,” he said simply.
Tyrell nodded. “Want me to back the car closer so we can lift him in?”
Cheung shrugged. “Nah, I made it from the helipad ok, I can manage another few feet.” He smiled. “Just glad it’s an automatic.”
As the younger man turned to walk back to the 4x4, Tyrell stood over Mellanby. It would be so easy to finish it here. One bullet, hell they didn’t even need that, just a hand clamped over his nose and mouth, but somehow that wouldn’t be fitting.
“You’re sure about this?”
He looked up. Cheung had paused halfway to the car and was looking back, concern etched onto his features.
“I am,” said Tyrell. “But if you’re not we can always call Domino and have Six pick him up?”
“No,” he replied earnestly. “This is right. It’s just…what if nothing happens to him?”
Tyrell smiled grimly. “Don’t worry. It will.”
* * *
His first thought upon waking was that he was hung-over, that he’d overindulged the scotch and was now paying the price. Certainly the pounding in his skull and the dryness of his mouth were far too familiar, but it was only when consciousness brought with it memories of an airfield, and John Tyrell and a prick on the back of his neck, that he realised what had happened.
With a groan he reached back to run at the base of his skull. There was a tiny scab there. “Idiot,” he muttered, his voice little more than a croak. He should have anticipated Tyrell might not be alone.
He was lying on a dusty floor, and now he got up, pleased to find he wasn’t tied up, and that his limbs seemed to function just fine. Now the main question was, where the hell was he?
The answer it seemed, as he looked around him, was in a cellar somewhere. A single bulb shone overhead, with another fixed to the wall. The room was small, and surprisingly clean but for a few shards of glass on the floor he saw reflecting the light. Those and a single chalk outline on the floor where a body had been.
Mellanby frowned. Glad he hadn’t been laid inside the outline, though in truth he couldn’t have been, it had been drawn around someone smaller than himself.
He looked around again, saw a staircase leading to a door. He imagined it would be locked, but from a cursory look around him he saw several tools that he might put to good use in unlocking it. He smiled. “As prisons go, John, this isn’t exactly Colditz,” he muttered. He dusted himself down then reached to pick up a screwdriver from the floor. It was as he straightened himself up again that he heard the noise.
He turned slowly, unsure at first that he’d even heard it until…yes, there it was again. The low growl of a dog maybe? He peered towards the back of the cellar, there several wooden shelving units had been piled against the wall, and now as he looked through the gaps he thought he made out movement in the shadows that clung behind them.
He stepped closer. Yes, there was definitely something there, something white, and now he saw two eyes staring back at him, slavering jaws. He held the screwdriver tighter. A dog. Well he could handle a dog. “Come on then, bitch, time to sit down and play dead,” he muttered.
And the lights died.
“Shit.”
He heard movement, shuffling as the dog, if it was a dog, seemed to be stepping out from its hiding place. Mellanby blinked, tried to see something, anything through the gloom, but the darkness was total.
Another growl. Closer this time
. Mellanby took a step backwards, then another. If he could make it up the stairs he had a chance. The dog had night vision, but higher ground might give him the upper hand.
He took another step, and backed into something. Damn it, the wall. He’d thought he was aiming for the stairs but he’d obviously veered towards the wall. That was ok, all he had to do was shuffle along the wall until he reached the staircase and then…
Behind him he felt part of the wall shift, as if bricks were detaching themselves, as if something was coming out of the very fabric of the wall itself. A hand gently rested on his shoulder. Cold breath blew past his ear as a whisper echoed around the cellar.
“Hi, Boss,” said Chalice Knight.
THE END
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