Brotherly Blood

by Jean G. Goodhind

  Flicking from one TV channel to another gave her something to occupy her right hand more so than her brain. She certainly wasn’t ready to go to bed. Her mind was in a state of planning. How about weapons? She had to have some kind of weapon, perhaps not a gun. A kitchen knife would do.

  A rummage through the kitchen drawers produced a carving knife, the modern sort that looked as though it were made of plastic rather than steel. It was in a shade of bright pink, not quite the colour one associated with an offensive weapon, but lethal all the same. It just might hold him off should the cavalry not arrive in time.

  She settled on the late night news channel which led on an item about the girl found buried in Shropshire and the suspicion that she’d been buried alive. Her blood ran cold.

  Other items of news followed, including the lowdown on the worsening weather situation. Storms and gales of gigantic proportion were set to batter the West Country and two month’s rainfall was expected to fall in one day. Not good, as it had already been raining on and off for a few days now.

  A sudden flash of lightening was closely followed by thunder.

  Honey looked out of the window. Low lying cloud rolled over the trees that formed a barrier between the cottages and the single track country road obliterating the moon.

  Forked lightening speared the sky. Thunder rolled and the whole world seemed to throb with electricity.

  The rain came down in bucket loads followed by more lightening, more thunder.

  The TV went dead. The lights went out.

  Honey moved quickly. She could be wrong, but whatever electronic gadgets surrounded her relied on mains electricity. Even batteries could be put out of action by a thunderstorm.

  Should she or shouldn’t she? Was she safer here or out there on her own?

  She decided on the latter. Being the cheese in the mouse trap didn’t suit her at all. She’d take the chance that she was right and surveillance was out of action.

  Slipping her feet into her shoes she swooped on her car keys conveniently left on the coffee table and headed for her car.

  Outside a maelstrom raged, whipping her hair around her face, stinging her eyes and sending twigs, leaves and even branches tumbling around in a dervish dance. A bin from the end cottage hurtled past, its rubbish festooned like a treasure trail through the dying foliage. Further away on the far side of the lane beyond the garden, leaves fell in torrents of red, brown and orange before scuttling off like frightened mice along the tarmac lane.

  Where to, she asked herself, as she turned the ignition key.

  Home. She was going home! Hopefully Doherty would have made his escape and already be there.

  The car bumped along the track towards home, the branches of trees waving and creaking along the route. She glanced in her rear view mirror, but could see no sign of pursuit.

  When the lightening flashed she could see the smoke from the pork factory, twisting as the wind wound it upwards.

  Then it came to her that it couldn’t be the pork factory; it was too far. The smoke, steam or whatever was coming out of something else, and the only source had to be one of the vents above long dead ancestor’s private access to the railway station. The chimneys were no more than six feet high. Most were covered in ivy or hidden behind suitably decorative landscaping, the lords of the manor not wishing the brick-built constructions to spoil their views. But why would there be smoke? It was just a disused railway tunnel.

  Her mind went back to when she’d seen Dominic outside. He’d given no excuse for being there but had looked decidedly pensive.

  Tunnels, sausage factories with few employees and a forest of weeds and brambles around it, land leased by the government and spooks of one kind or another all over the place.

  Some kind of secret installation? Back in the Cold War they were everywhere, hidden beneath the most inconspicuous buildings.

  The urge to run for home was very strong, but her curiosity would not be ignored though fear of what was stalking her wouldn’t go away.

  Thanks to the Polish lorry driver, Doherty had got back to Bath well ahead of his guardians, picked up his car and headed for Torrington Towers. Everything seemed to centre around that place and he thought he knew why. The Tarot Man was there in disguise and had been for a very long time and he thought he knew who it was

  The night time roads were plagued by road works and speed restrictions.

  He’d taken the step of phoning the local police responsible for the village of Wyvern Wendell but was told they were rather busy.

  ‘A lot of trees have come down in the storm and there’s flooding in places. Can you tell me what it’s about?’

  ‘I think somebody is going to be murdered. I’ll need back up.’

  ‘Just one moment, please.’

  He was passed to a senior officer, the sort who wears a uniform and carries a baton, but totally lacks street cred.

  The fact that Torrington Towers and the town of Wyvern Wendell was in Somerset should have clinched the request. It didn’t.

  ‘Look, Doherty, I cannot send men to you purely on a hunch – which I presume this is...’

  ‘No. It is not. It’s got a lot to do with MI5. You can check with them if you like.’

  ‘Now it sounds as though we’re heading into the realms of fiction,’ the senior man said sardonically.

  Doherty swore when he slammed down the phone. It was all down to him and him alone. Uttering a couple of other well known swear words, he slammed his foot down on the throttle and hurtled south.

  Security at Torrington Towers refused him entry.

  ‘We have a dangerous incident on our hands,’ the man at the gate gabbled, his eyes glowing with a mix of excitement and fear.

  Doherty had seen this kind of look before. The security job had veered from routine to something unusual.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ he said. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Not unless you’re used to dealing with lions,’ said the man. ‘The electricity failed. We’ve had more than six trees fall onto the electrified fence. It’s dangerous to be out tonight, officer, but if you want to help, get yourself a gun and head for the old railway tunnel. There’s game down there, small creatures they can hunt and eat.’

  Doherty didn’t have a gun but that was not going to stop him.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, got back into his car and roared off in the general direction pointed out to him.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  She finally came to the entrance to the tunnel. Steam and smoke was rising from one of the chimneys. The rain was coming down in torrents. A single light on a long iron arm hanging at the side of the arched entrance helped her see her way.

  Luckily she had a hooded coat with her which she struggled into while still behind the wheel. Better than getting wet too early, she decided.

  The coat was heavily padded and the hood was large. She pulled it over her head as she got out of the car slamming the door after her.

  The light hanging on a curved iron bracket adorned with entwined leaves, threw a watery light before the tunnel entrance. Beyond the pool of light there was only blackness, a solid blackness; no movement. Nothing except night.

  Where there were no puddles, the ground was slippery underfoot and the smell of rubbish being burned was quite strong.

  She hesitated to go further. Someone was burning rubbish in the tunnel. In this downpour it made sense to do so. That’s all it was. Just rubbish. Oh well. She might as well have a quick look while she was here though for that she would need a torch.

  Feeling in her pocket she got out a Maglite, a tiny thing armed with a series of LED light bulbs, far brighter than an ordinary bulb.

  The wind howled around her as she flashed the beam over the tunnel entrance, then around at the bushes and trees, their branches waving like frenzied arms.

  In the midst of all that movement, she picked out something that did not move, a solid black shape – no = not black. Dark green. The dark green o
f one of the estate’s Land Rovers, the sort the rangers drove around the safari park.

  And then she saw him.

  Adrian Sayle stepped swiftly between her and the Land Rover. She knew then who this really was. Peter Orlov!

  She spun round, her feet sliding through the slop of mud as she headed for her car. She should have gone home. Curiosity killed the cat and it might well kill her if she didn’t get out of here.

  It was so sudden, she thought she was mistaken. Adrian Sayle, Peter Orlove, the Tarot Man had moved before she had chance to open the car door. He grabbed her shoulder fiercely and she yelled with pain. With the sharp light of her |Maglite, she saw the steely glint of a needle and then felt its tip nick her arm. Her feet slid from under her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked as her legs buckled under her.

  There was no gloating laughter. No cackle of glee just an ice cold voice speaking in an ice cold tone.

  ‘I think you already know the answer to that. You’re your father’s daughter and that’s enough for me.’

  His eyes glittered with excitement at the panic he saw in hers.

  She felt her arm growing numb where the needle had gone in. She tried to raise her other arm and rub at it, but found she couldn’t.

  Her limbs were going numb. She tried to shake his hands away from her hair, but whatever drug he’d injected was taking swift effect.

  Next the roughness of a hemp rope tightened around her neck.

  ‘You paid Geoffrey Monmouth to report Tarquin’s death.’

  By virtue of the numbing affect of the drug, her words were mumbled but he heard her.

  ‘I never give notice, but your case was special. A little rash of me perhaps, but your father’s reaction was even rasher when he found out what my father was doing. He was directly responsible for my father’s death.’

  She wanted to shout for help, but her tongue lay like a pork sausage in her mouth, and her lips felt as though they were smeared with starch. Her words came out slurred and unrecognisable.

  The world whirled around her as she was lifted off the ground, her arms flapping helplessly downwards as though her bones had melted away, her legs like two sodden bags of mud.

  The wind whipped her hair across her eyes but she could still see where she was destined to end up. The yawning mouth of a pit was directly beneath her dug close to the wall of the tunnel.

  Even her scream of pain as she landed at the bottom of the pit was subdued to a squeal – like a rat caught in a trap; or smaller, a mouse possessing too small a voice to be heard.

  Clods of clay landed on top of her. She heard a grating sound followed by gushing water.

  At a guess he’d pulled a drainpipe away from the tunnel wall, directing the unrelenting flow into the pit. The clay would hold the water and also mix with it into an orange sludge.

  Honey knew she would drown here. The back of her head was already submerged. Her face would be covered first unless she could raise her head and keep her nose above water.

  Suddenly somebody else spoke. ‘Peter! I’ve got the map.’

  It was a woman’s voice, one Honey recognised. Miss Vincent. She immediately recalled the puppy dog expression on Miss Vincent’s face whenever Adrian Sayle had appeared.

  Then the man’s voice. ‘Give!’

  Miss Vincent’s pale face appeared and Honey saw her look of horror.

  ‘You can’t do this!’

  Honey heard the clang of a spade against bone. Miss Vincent had received her response from Peter Orlov and groaned as she fell with a splash into the mud, just outside the circle of light.

  In this, his moment of sweet revenge on the one hand and feeding his own perverted taste for killing, he had no more time for the woman who had helped him achieve his aims. With manic intent he continued to shovel mud down into the pit, his arms working with frenzied excitement, so frenzied, so obsessive, that he was no longer aware of what was happening around him.

  Thin and of late middle age she might be, but Miss Vincent had been fiery in her day and some of that fire still burned deep inside. She began to crawl.

  Using her fingers like claws, she crawled on her belly further away from the circle of light. Thorns from brambles tore at her hands and her fingernails began breaking under the strain. Still she crawled on until one set of fingers landed on something that was not mud. The toe of a shoe. Someone else was here. Her face a mess of blood and bone, she pointed before her face fell forward into the mud.

  Steve Doherty stepped over her, his eyes narrowed against the darkness and the rain.

  The light hanging from the bracket at the side of the tunnel bravely fought the night and the weather. He could see all he needed to see. He knew all he needed to know.

  A lone figure was bent over shovelling the sopping mud into the pit at the side of the tunnel entrance with alarming efficiency.

  He guessed the pit always filled with water when it rained. In time the foundations on that side of the tunnel would subside.

  It was then he saw something else moving in the darkness; something heavy and moving on all fours. He heard the low rumble of a growl deep in the lion’s throat. He saw the figure with the spade start and half turn, the shovel braced like a shield before him.

  The sudden crack of a pistol shot split the darkness. The bullet went haywire as the man slipped in the mud, the lion taking full advantage of the situation, standing four square and threatening.

  The man who had called himself Adrian Sayle, whose real name was Peter Orlov, raised his weapon and fired over the head of the snarling beast. Much as he didn’t care whether Orlov – The Tarot Man got mauled or not, water was pouring into the pit where mud had already been thrown. It was a matter of minutes before yet another young woman was plastered in clay.

  Orlov turned, crouching over a job unfinished, his gun pointing not at Doherty but down at the woman, Mrs Honey Driver.

  Just as he was taking aim to make a killer shot, a pair of spiderlike hands wrapped around his ankles and threw him off balance. Miss Vincent!

  He lashed out in a backward kick, his heel slamming hard against her face. He heard her give one last groan and collapse into the mud.

  Turning back towards the tunnel, both the man and the lion were gone.

  Doherty hoped the lion was in command of the game and that Orlov was dead meat. He hoped it was so.

  Never, ever was she so glad as to see Doherty’s face. She managed a mumbled response. Luckily she was wearing a pretty thick jacket with puffy sleeves. She’d been moving to open the car door and the needle had only nicked her.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said as though reading her mind. ‘And so’s the lion.’

  The first thing she did after having a bath back in the coach house at the Green River Hotel was to sit with Doherty in the kitchen whilst he tossed a dozen or so crevettes in a mixture of garlic and butter. The salad was good too and so was the bottle he fetched from the hotel cellar.

  They went through all that had happened.

  It had all started with the report of Caspar’s death, a lie woven as part of an intricate plan to capture an elusive bogeyman whose family history was caught up with Honey’s own family.

  ‘My biggest surprise was that Caspar had been in on the plan. I don’t think I can ever forgive him for keeping me in the dark. Using me in fact.’

  ‘The same applies to Christiansen and his bosses.’

  ‘That’s different. Caspar was a friend.’

  Doherty arched an eyebrow. ‘You said the most telling word – was. That’s past tense. I take it you don’t think him such a good friend now.’

  ‘You bet I don’t,’ she said, almost choking on a mouthful of wine.

  Doherty set the plates on the table. ‘You said he did try and explain things to you.’

  Honey shook her head. ‘Okay, he explained to me that he’d long suspected his half brother’s involvement in internation
al espionage and despite his success in the hospitality industry he had always felt inferior to the legitimate heir to the family title.’

  They both agreed that the reporting of his death had been a trifle melodramatic, but necessarily so to persuade him to do as the spooks wanted and also to convince Honey that it really was Caspar’s brother who’d been found dead at Bradford on Avon.

  ‘The Tarot Man chose the wrong man to kill. Nobody quite seems to know how that happened, but they think Miss Vincent might have had a hand in it. Peter Orlov was good at befriending women who were past their prime. Miss Vincent was totally loyal to his lordship, but considered herself in love with Orlov.’

  Honey interrupted. ‘I get it. Collins was the body cremated once Caspar had followed instructions and identified him as his brother.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And he never was found dead at his home in Dunster. That particular charade was put on for my benefit.’

  Doherty shook his head. ‘Dominic Christiansen is not to be trusted. Not like me.’

  Honey slapped his wrist.

  ‘Stop looking so smug. And the map?’

  ‘There’s a mass of underground store rooms, passages and top secret items beneath the estate of vital importance to the Western World, or at least it used to be in the days of the Cold War. I don’t know the exact details; the underground facility is still kept under wraps. Just in case.’

  Honey eyed him over the top of her glass. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  Doherty held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’ve been offered a transfer to Christiansen’s department.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I turned it down. I mean, do I look like James Bond?’

  Honey smiled. ‘You do to me.’

  ‘Nobody needs to fly off James Bond style to foreign parts any more. The baddies are here, babe. The baddies are here and yours truly can be a British secret weapon guarding the home front. Although there is another option I’ve been considering...’

  Honey was only half listening. She had picked up the phone and punched in Caspar’s number.