by Owen Nichols
“No, it’s ok. Please stay.” Lucy’s voice caught as she spoke, the desperation clear. Anders moved closer and leaned against a sink, back to the mirror and facing Lucy. Her blonde hair was covering her face as if she was ashamed, so Anders gently tucked it over an ear as she spoke.
“What’s up? Anything I can help with?” Lucy shook her head and dabbed at her tears. She’d been so horrible to Anders, but now looked like a lost child. It was difficult to feel any anger towards her.
“No, it’s ok. I’m just a little shook up by what we saw back there. I never imagined we’d be doing things like this when I joined. It’s all so…” She wrung her hands in frustration, lost for words, unable to articulate how she felt.
“It feels like you’re being sullied simply by being there. Like you become a participant.” Lucy stared at Anders thoughtfully.
“Yes. I suppose it does. How do you cope? The things you’ve seen in America and now here? It’s a wonder you’re functioning.” Anders reflected for a moment, contemplating her words.
“I look at the worst of us so others don’t have to. Doing what we do makes a difference. It comes at a cost, but I pay that willingly if it means justice. Take a walk down the street. Watch the kids on their phones, the couples arguing about the tiniest things or mothers mollycoddling their children. We do what we do so they can go about their lives free from fear and oppression. Buckland seeks to undermine those very values and that is why we must stare hard at his work and not flinch.”
As she spoke, Lucy watched her intently. She saw the passion and fire in Anders’ eyes and knew that she believed every word. This was a calling for her and no matter how difficult the task, how ruinous the burden, she would suffer it stoically.
“I’m sorry about what I said the other night. It wasn’t fair to attack you like that.” Anders gave an easy shrug.
“I’ve had worse and I’ll have worse again. It makes no nay never how to me.” Lucy started picking some varnish from her nails, uncomfortable with what she had to say, but determined to do so.
“I just…it’s just that…I was raised Catholic. My family were very clear in their scriptures. When I heard you were coming, it was so easy to believe every word my group said. My mother even lent me some books on the matter and I soaked it all up.” She looked at Anders, guilt plain on her face.
“But you’re so…well, normal.” She let out a short bark of bitterness. “Actually, you’re not normal. You put most women to shame.” Anders shuffled her feet. She hated compliments. Too often they served some purpose for whoever was saying it, but she felt that Lucy was being genuine.
“That’s untrue,” she replied. “I look to every woman as a role model. You’re pretty kick ass yourself, you know.” Lucy chuckled, wiping at her drying tears as she did so.
“Not on your level. I can’t stand all that shooting and fighting.” Anders gave a throaty laugh, leaning in conspiratorially as she did so.
“I’ll tell you a secret and you’re not allowed to laugh.” Lucy leaned closer as Anders made a show of looking around to see that they were alone. “There was a Muay Thai boxer called Parinya Charoenphol. She was transgender and kicked butt. I figured if she could do it, then why should anyone tell me what I couldn’t do? I also watched far too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer during my transition!” Lucy gave Anders a strange look before bursting into peals of laughter, Anders joining in with her infectious laugh. Lucy quickly sobered and looked thoughtfully at herself in the mirror.
“My parents will hate me,” she said. “If you’re so real, how can it be a sin? You said that it was redemption through transformation and it’s hard to disagree.”
“The Catholic Church is a tolerant place now Lucy. There is even a transgender priest. Sure, there are groups that are less tolerant than others, but you find that everywhere. At the end of the day, we’re not here to judge. That will come later.” Lucy took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Thank you,” she said. “You could have been a real bitch to me, you know that?” Anders gave her a hug.
“Hugging it out is better,” she replied as Lucy returned the embrace. “Besides, the Gospel of Luke teaches us not to condemn or judge, but offer forgiveness without measure.” Lucy gave her a startled look.
“Chapter six, verse thirty seven, how did…?” Anders gave a sad smile.
“My father was a devout Christian. Some of it rubbed off I guess. He used to tell me that there wasn’t anything bound in thought that you couldn’t change. I thought he meant that in a positive way until he found out what I was.” Lucy whistled in disbelief.
“You’re full of surprises, you know that?” Anders smiled.
“It’s been mentioned on occasion,” she replied. “Come on, let’s freshen up and get out of here.”
A short while later, Anders left the toilets and strolled over to Jesse. He gave her a knowing look.
“You left Lucy in one piece or do I need to call an ambulance?” he asked. Lucy came out from the toilets and gave them both a big smile. She’d fixed her make-up and looked her normal self once more, if a little less sour.
“Okay,” said Jesse nervously. “What happened in there?”
“Never you mind,” said Lucy and sat next to Anders as they appraised his work on the screens. He’d put the projector on and showed them his research.
“So the warehouse belongs to a company called MB, Michael Buckland obviously, but it’s not registered to his name, rather an offshore company that doesn’t actually exist.”
“Try variations on his name and initials, see how many we come up with,” ordered Lucy and Jesse tapped away at the board furiously. Meanwhile, Mal and Abi joined them. Abi looked at Anders and Lucy side by side and smiled to herself. Mal pulled out a chair for her and she sat with an appreciative nod while he leant on the table next to Anders.
“How was McDowell?” she asked. He grimaced.
“Not happy. He’s getting a lot of pressure from above. Not best pleased with you either.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“You were filmed speeding around on that damn bike and then confronting an angry mob. You were supposed to lay low, not tackle a man three times your size live on TV.”
“I barely touched him,” retorted Anders.
“He did kinda fall on his face,” said Jesse, looking up from his keyboard with a grin. Lucy grinned as well.
“It was a little bit funny.” Mal gave them both a strange looked and turned to Abi who gave a nonchalant shrug. Before he could say anything, Jesse gave a cry of delight.
“Ladies and gentleman, I give you Lord Michael Buckland’s thirty two brand spanking new buildings and land deeds. He’s been a busy little boy.”
“You have a warrant to look at these records?” asked Mal.
“Um. Can you get me one?” Mal sighed and made to pick up the phone, but it rang before he had a chance. He grabbed it and listened, a horrified expression crossing his face. Dropping the phone, he sprinted to the elevator, yelling over his shoulder as he ran.
“Armed individual on the street outside, calling for the NCA taskforce.” Barry stepped from the lift just as Mal arrived and he hustled him back in. “You have your weapon?” he asked. Barry nodded as Lucy caught up with them and slid through the closing doors. Anders headed for the stairwell as Jesse tossed her an earpiece. Taking the steps two at a time she barrelled up them, bursting from the door to the ground floor as Mal stepped from the lift. Barry tossed her the same Glock she had used earlier and they made their way to the street outside.
Chapter 4
The road along the Thames was filled with traffic, but it ground to a halt at the sight of an armed man walking towards the Scotland Yard entrance. Tourists and locals alike scrambled for cover as a squad of armed police officers swarmed from the Yard and flanked him, taking cover behind walls and cars. Mal told them to back off and clear the site and they reluctantly shepherded civilians from the area.
The gunman was covere
d in blood. Cloying and sticky, it clung to his clothes, his skin and his hair, plastering it flat. Anders could see clumps of gristle clotting his tie and levelled her gun as she moved left and Barry circled the other side, careful not to place himself in line of Anders’ weapon and her to his. The gunman was plump and looked as if he’d never done a hard day’s work in his life, his chubby hands soft and manicured, his suit perfectly cut and his shoes unscuffed, gleaming in the midday sun.
He looked terrified as he stumbled towards Mal who strode confidently in his direction. The gunman held his weapon loosely by his side and it looked like an old handgun from the Second World War. Anders readied to shoot if he raised it, but she wasn’t sure the gun would even fire, it looked so old. She saw Barry prepare to do the same from her peripheral vision and scanned the area quickly. It was clear of civilians, the armed response team having hurried them from the area and secured it. There were at least a dozen guns aimed on the man, though only Anders and Barry were out in the open. She wasn’t worried. She knew that either herself or Barry could shoot him before he raised his weapon high enough to hurt someone.
“I’m Deputy Chief Constable Mal Weathers,” he said, his voice carrying clear across the suddenly silent street, a cool breeze wafting off the Thames and snapping at the flags above the Scotland Yard building. “I’m leading the taskforce currently assigned to catching Lord Buckland. I’m told that you have requested my team. What’s your name?” The gunman looked confused for a moment, clearly distressed, before focusing his attention on Mal.
“Why are they armed? Will they shoot me?” he asked. His voice was raw and strangely childlike, his chords scratched to ruin from shouting and screaming as he’d walked along the river. Mal raised his hands in a placatory gesture.
“You are carrying a gun. How about you drop that so we can have a chat?”
“They’re pointing their guns at me. I’m not pointing mine at anyone.” Mal indicated for Barry and Anders to lower their weapons and they did so reluctantly. He yelled for the armed response unit to stand down and there was a tense moment as their sergeant weighed up overruling a superior officer. Eventually, he nodded and they slunk into the shadows, their presence felt but not seen.
“There,” said Mal softly, his gentle Welsh accent soothing and full of kindness. “They’ve lowered their guns. What’s your name?”
“Steve,” he said. “Steven Kelly. I didn’t want to do it. I thought I did. I thought that what Buckland said was true. That we had to start a revolution. That life didn’t matter. It was cheap. Isn’t that what he said? There’s too many of us.”
As he spoke, Jesse relayed information into Anders’ earpiece.
“Steven Kelly, lives in Brixton, works in the PM offices, a few hundred metres from where you are now. Recently divorced. I’m sending a car to his work and his home, see what he’s done.”
“And his ex-wife’s place,” called Abi in the background as Mal inched closer to Steven.
“There are plenty of us Steve,” he said. “That doesn’t make life any less sacred does it? We value life, we treasure it and we fight to survive. We celebrate every birth and mourn deeply every loss.” Anders heard his voice catch, as if he recalled some great tragedy in his life. He spoke from the heart and Steve saw it too.
“That makes it worse then doesn’t it? What I’ve done.” Mal moved closer, almost close enough to reach out. Steve’s hand twitched and Mal stopped, Barry and Anders raising their weapons in response. Steve hadn’t noticed, focused as he was on Mal.
“I don’t know what you’ve done Steve. Whatever it is, I’m sure that you are deeply sorry. That you didn’t mean to. That’s why you’re here. To turn yourself in.” Jesse’s voice burst through Anders’ earpiece, startling her. Keeping her breathing steady and calm, she listened to Jesse as Mal talked quietly with Steve.
“Shooting at his workplace. Seems his fantasy involved blowing his boss’ brains out and throwing him from a window. Then he shot the secretary, his ex-wife, and apparently spent five minutes sobbing over her corpse. I’m listening to a recording of the nine, nine, nine call from the building. Sounds like several more shots were fired, but it’s garbled and panicky.”
Gun works then, thought Anders to herself as Mal spoke, failing to calm Steve who started pounding his skull with a clenched fist.
“It was supposed to make things better,” he shouted, frustration coursing through him, his body shaking with rage. “I was helping us all, making things better.”
“That’s the thing about fantasies Steve. Oftentimes, it’s best that they stay that way. We don’t always act out our fantasies because we know the hurt they’ll cause. Having them and feeling them makes us cope with the world as it is, not as we want it to be.”
Steve calmed at that and gave Mal a listless look.
“Is five million pounds worth it?” he asked. Mal gave the question some thought.
“That’s not for me to say. Hand me your gun and I’d love to talk it through. You and me.” Steve gave a long sigh and shook his head sadly.
“It’s not, you know. It really isn’t.” He gave a short, bitter bark of a laugh. “Heck, I don’t even know if I won.” A sudden thought hit him. “I forgot to take a picture.”
With that, he raised his gun. Mal lurched forwards, but was unable to cover the distance to wrestle the weapon from Steve as he lifted it to his own head. Two shots rang out, loud in the street, echoing off the concrete buildings and rolling away, screams of shock and fear in its wake.
The first bullet hit Steve in his shoulder and the second his arm. He spun to the floor, gun spinning away and blood gouting from his wounds. A silence smothered the street then as Mal turned to see that Barry and Anders had both fired. The sudden calm was punctured by screaming as the shock of Steve’s wounds wore off and the excruciating pain set in. He writhed on the floor, clutching his injuries as Mal ran to him, taking off his shirt and pressing it to the bullet wounds to stem the bleeding.
“Ambulance on the way,” said Jesse over Anders’ earpiece. She went to help Mal as the sounds of London slowly seeped back to the blocked off street, the city no longer holding its breath. He shook his head at her as she knelt down, removing her jacket and stuffing it hard against the second wound.
“This has got to stop,” he said. As the blood pooled around Steve, she looked down and knew that as each week went on, it would escalate further. They were only in the second week and there were another fifty to go.
Chapter 5
As Barry filled in the weapon discharge forms, Anders and Mal completed the incident report. Steve had been taken to hospital and they’d managed to stop the bleeding. The paramedics couldn’t say whether he’d survive or not.
“Should have let him bleed out in the street,” muttered Duncan as he sat down next to Anders. The team were all in the central Hub, working at their desks and filing paperwork. Since the NCA had been labelled ignorant and ill-informed by a High Court judge over their work practises in twenty fifteen, they’d had to be more diligent with their paperwork. Barry looked up as he typed on his computer, massive hands dwarfing the keyboard as he poked each key with a forceful thump.
“No way. Suicide’s too easy for that guy. He needs to pay his dues in the here and now.” He glanced at Lucy. “If there is a Heaven and Hell, he can damn well wait until we’re done with him first.”
As he spoke, Jesse switched on the projector, the whirring noise from the machine loud in the confined space. While it warmed up, he turned on the speakers and they all heard Lord Francis Buckland’s voice before the picture came on screen. He was standing outside the MP’s offices and speaking to the press.
“It is a truly tragic event that has happened here. As I have said many times in the past week, I cannot in any way condone my brother’s actions. They are a despicable affront to humanity. We were raised as children of Christ, promoting charity and Serviam above all else. I have initiated several new projects with the sole purpose of…” A
nders tuned him out as she finished her report. A chime on her computer showed an email had come through and she opened it up to find Ben’s crime scene report from the Docks. Swiping the screen, she sent it to Jesse who put it up on the projector.
“It’s only preliminary,” said Anders as the team looked at the report. She stood up and switched the lights off. By now, the team had learnt to sit back and let her work when she wore this look of intense concentration. It was as if nothing else but the crime existed.
“Jesse, can you get Helen on loudspeaker please?” she said as she walked to the projection image on the wall. “Show me picture three. Zoom in.” A close up of Boyle’s decapitated limb filled the screen and the team shifted in discomfort. Abi didn’t, intent as she was on watching Anders.
I could write a paper on this woman, she thought as Anders had Jesse zoom in and out of several photographs, scanning back to previous ones, laying the images over each other and placing them in columns on the screen.
“Helen, you there?” asked Anders as a fuzzy noise came over the speakers.
“I’m here love,” replied Helen. Her voice was muffled by the mask she wore for Boyle’s autopsy in the pathology lab. “What’s up?”
“Take a look at the left Ulna, right Tibia and right Patella. Tell me what you see.” A scuffling could be heard over the speaker as Helen sifted through body parts until she found the right ones. Eventually she spoke.
“You could be right. I’m not going to bet my career on it, but I think there is a possibility. That’s as far as I’ll go.”
“Thanks Helen, I’ll leave you to it.” As Helen hung up, Anders turned to the team who had been waiting patiently. She pointed to the photographs that she’d had Jesse sort. “What you’re looking at are the saw marks made by whatever device Buckland used to hack Boyle’s limbs off. This one here, three strong thrusts of a saw, this one, shallow cuts, followed by deep strong ones. This last one, smooth and steady, but not as deep with each cut.”
