One of Alexander’s thugs had opened the door, forgetting to knock. His head was peeking round into the room, the nervous expression on his face at odds with the scars and lines and piercings covering almost every inch of his skin.
“There’s been an incident, Mr Alexander, sir. Someone’s been brought in – Murphy.” The name meant nothing to me, but Zane stiffened in his chair. “He’s been caught passing information to a GE officer, sir.”
“Where is he?” Samuel stood up, an ugly look on his face. Traitors were the one thing likely to provoke his temper. Alexander was riled, too. Although his expression didn’t change, he had tightened his grip on the tie still around my neck, half choking me. .
“In a room in the basement, Mr Samuel, sir.”
The basement was a jumbled maze of rooms, and I had only been in two or three at the very front: the stores, where drugs and guns and money and everything else Alexander peddled, were kept. Further back were small rooms, windowless rooms, rooms like this one, where the walls were lined with breeze blocks and the floor was poured cement, with a drain set into a shallow dip in the middle. The lighting was low, a single bulb hanging naked from a wire. The only furnishings were a small metal table and two uncomfortable-looking chairs. Only one of those was filled.
The man was forty, maybe, his body was tall and thin, his skin jaundiced yellow. His hair was short, a buzz cut, and the jagged ends glittered silver grey. His outfit was nondescript: a scruffy grey T-shirt and combat trousers, torn and muddy at the knees. I’d never seen the man before, but I’d never forget his face after today. I couldn’t stop staring. It was mutilated: swollen and bruised and bloody. He looked as if someone had set about him with an iron bar; as if his hands had been held behind him – like they were now – tied with rope, leaving him vulnerable, defenceless. His left eye was glued shut and he peered around the room with his right, little more than a slit, the pupil gleaming underneath as it danced from side to side, watching, waiting.
Alexander stopped just inside the door, his hand on my neck guiding me to a halt beside him. Zane entered a step behind and moved to take up a position against the wall, visible and yet invisible. It was Samuel who strolled forward, who grasped the back of the empty chair and dragged it across the concrete, metal legs squealing, until he was able to sit himself down directly facing the beaten stranger.
Samuel reached behind him, dug into the waistband of his trousers and pulled out a gun. I stiffened, my eyes widening as I watched him slowly draw it out and place it carefully on the table. The man in the chair saw it, too. He was supposed to.
“Tell me,” Samuel said softly, sounding much more like his older brother. “Tell me why one of my men saw you meeting with a GE officer in Camden.”
“I… didn’t.” The words came out a mush, barely recognisable, and it was clear that speaking was painful. I wondered if they’d broken his jaw.
“Don’t lie to me.”
Samuel leaned forward, his hands clasped together and resting on his knees. His face was intent, eyes staring keenly at the man in front of him.
“It’s the truth,” came the garbled reply.
“No, it isn’t. Perhaps you need something to jog your memory… Zane?”
At the sound of his name, Zane stepped away from the wall, cracking his knuckles in anticipation. The man in the chair attempted to twist away as he approached, but he was tied in place. There was nowhere to go. I tried to turn my head to the side, unwilling to witness the violence that was about to follow, but Alexander threaded his fingers into the tie around my neck and forced me to look straight ahead.
There was little noise as Zane’s massive fist connected with the man’s stomach, then his upper arm.
“So, Zane tells me some boy made a pass at you today on the train,” Alexander’s voice was a whisper in my ear, making me jump and distracting me from Zane’s assault. His thumb began to rub circles into my neck and his touch both thrilled and terrified in equal measure. I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to.
“I… never…” I managed to splutter, keeping my voice low enough not to travel in the crowded room.
“Shhh,” Alexander crooned.
The word did not calm me, however. My stomach convulsed, an involuntary response, and I had to swallow back the vomit that rose in my throat.
He let go of my tie and let his hand slide up into my hair, fingers pulling gently at the short strands, making my scalp tingle.
“Can I trust you, Elizabeth?”
I turned my head to stare at him, my eyes black as coals in the muted light, and he gazed back. He wasn’t looking for an answer, but I nodded anyway. Just a tiny dip of my head, almost imperceptible.
“I hope so,” he said, emotionless eyes boring down into mine. “The next time you accept so much as a smile from another man, I will make you truly sorry.”
I believed him.
“Yes, Alexander,” I murmured, dropping my gaze. He used his grip on my hair to pull my head back up.
“Good,” he said.
Not a single other person in the room heard our exchange. Zane was still circling his prey, looking for new areas to inflict damage. Samuel, however, held up his hand.
“Enough,” he said. “I’ll ask you again. Why were you meeting a GE officer?”
This time the man didn’t hesitate; the words tumbled out of his mouth, along with a thin stream of blood that dribbled down towards his chin.
“I was trying… to get information. Trying to find out what they knew about us. I didn’t tell him anything, I swear.”
“On whose orders?”
“What?” The man looked confused. His eye rolled in its socket before swivelling round to fix on Samuel again.
“On whose orders did you meet with him?”
“I was…” he stalled, “trying to use my own initiative.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Samuel picked the gun up off the table top. The man’s breathing started coming in great gasps. I felt my own pulse begin to quicken in sympathy and fear. More pain was surely coming. Slowly, calmly, Samuel cocked the gun and held the end of the barrel against the man’s thigh.
“Time to go,” Alexander murmured to me, pulling me backwards out of the room.
We made it as far as the base of the stairs before the sharp crack of a gun exploded in the air.
CHAPTER FIVE
Life went on as normal for a few weeks. Alexander sent me out on various errands, making deliveries, collecting information, spying, but most of the time I remained in his office, permanently at his beck and call. There were no more arguments, and no more bombs. Then one day I woke to an empty bed. Surprised, I lifted my head to see Alexander already up, dressed in a tight vest T-shirt that showed off his impressive muscles and a light pair of jogging trousers. He had a towel slung over his shoulder, and he was deep in conversation with Samuel.
I yanked the sheets up higher to cover my naked skin and the small movement made both men turn their heads.
“She’s awake,” Alexander said. “About time.”
I turned, squinted at the clock on the wall. It was barely after seven.
“I’m going to hit the weights. She’s all yours.”
He clapped his brother on the shoulder as he passed, and headed out of the door without another glance at me. I stared at Samuel a little apprehensively, my heart punching out a sudden staccato rhythm. What did Alexander mean by that?
He took a few steps towards me, then stopped as he registered my bare shoulders. His eyes dropped to the rest of my body, shrouded by the sheet, but just as unclothed, and then he turned his back, giving me some privacy.
“Get dressed,” he said over his shoulder. “We’re going out.”
“Where are we going?” I asked fifteen minutes later as I belted myself into the passenger seat of a faded red Astra. It was several years old, but it gleamed outside and in. The upholstery smelled of jasmine and lavender and the scents of other popular cleaning produc
ts. Somebody had gone over the thing with a fine-tooth comb.
“Scouting,” Samuel answered, twisting the key so that the engine roared to life.
I didn’t ask anything else as we wove our way out of Stepney. If he’d wanted me to know precisely where we were headed, he would have told me.
“Are you hungry?” Samuel asked as he twiddled the radio on. He stopped on a station pumping out harsh guitars, the drumbeat heavy in the background.
I was, but I didn’t know whether to admit to it or not. Alexander would have been irritated by the inconvenience. I gnawed on my lip.
Samuel looked over to me when I didn’t respond, and smiled.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He pulled over at a corner, handed me a note.
“Go grab us a couple of bacon rolls,” he said, nodding in the direction of a little white hut. “And some tea.”
I stared at him blankly.
“But—”
“Don’t worry about your face, not with Clive.”
He gave me a reassuring smile, so I took the money and rolled out of the car. It felt strange to walk along the street in the daylight without my hood and without any of the make-up. I looked around warily, but there were few pedestrians about this early.
I walked quickly to the street vendor Samuel had pointed out and gave my order. The man in the hut looked at me keenly, then gazed at the car. He half raised his hand in greeting. He must have recognised the model, because it was impossible to see through the tinted windows.
He said nothing to me, but hurried to put together my order. I paid, then turned to head back to the car, two steaming cups and two paper bags balanced precariously in my arms.
“Hey,” he called. “Samuel will want ketchup.”
So he did know who it was for. He stuffed a couple of sachets in my fingers, then watched carefully as I headed back to the car. When Samuel drove off I saw him staring after us.
“Is he a Celt?” I asked softly as Samuel accelerated away, holding his tea and simultaneously smearing ketchup on his roll. Only a lifted knee steered the car.
“No,” Samuel shook his head. “But his wife was, and they shot her, so he’s sympathetic to the cause. Throws information our way every now and then. He hears a lot of things he shouldn’t, working where he does.”
We drove on in silence for fifteen minutes. I stared out of the window, watching the houses get bigger and more impressive, more imposing, with each turning Samuel made. Finally he stopped outside a wide set of wrought-iron gates. From where he parked, on the other side of the road, I could easily make out CCTV cameras and a fingerprint entry pad. On either side of the gate was a tall, red brick wall. The top of the wall glittered slightly: spikes of glass.
“Who lives there?” I asked, craning my head to try to see the building behind the fortifications.
“Edwin Bowles.”
“The defence minister?”
“That’s him.”
I stared in wonder, and hatred. It had been Edwin Bowles who had pushed through the dissolution of the United Kingdom, had erected the walls, had championed the twisted laws that allowed the Scots, Welsh and Irish to be branded, and to be shot without trial. Edwin Bowles was an all-round bastard. If he’d walked out of his house right now, I would have begged Samuel to put his foot down and put the rest of the country out of its misery.
“Why are we here?” I asked, leaning over Samuel, trying to get a better look at the place.
“This is your next job.” His voice was husky in my ear, his breath tickling my neck.
I pulled back, stared at him.
“What?”
“This is your next job.”
I looked back at the house. Now, rather than grand and magnificent, it looked like Fort Knox.
“In there?”
“In there. See the alleyway?” Samuel rolled the car forward, revealing a narrow cobble-stoned alley lined with giant bins and side gates.
I nodded.
“That’s where you’ll go over. We’ve had a section of the wall tarred. You’ll have to go over that exact spot or the security glass will cut you to ribbons. The garage is just on the other side. The door isn’t alarmed, but there are CCTV cameras pointing at every angle. You’ll have to keep out of their sight. There are two cars in the garage. One is a Jaguar, that’s the one you’re after…”
Samuel’s voice was low and hypnotic. The gentle cadence made the impossibilities he was suggesting seem plausible.
Three days later I found myself parked back in the same spot, only it was dark. We were in a different car and Samuel was going over the exact plan once again. The explosives I had to plant were laid out in my lap, more complex than anything I had ever constructed before.
“Do you know what you have to do?” he asked me.
I nodded, trying to breathe around a hard knot in my chest.
“When you come out, I’ll be right here.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the gentle hum of the engine.
“Lizzie, you can do this.”
“I know,” I lied.
He smiled at me, raised a hand to my cheek. His thumb gently traced a slow circle around my tattoo. That staccato beat started up in my chest again as I gazed at him, saw his confidence in me, his belief in the job we were about to do. Felt his faith in me slither its way across the darkness to warm the ice in my belly. Then he dropped his hand and I knew the time had come to ghost out into the darkness.
I walked down the alley like I had every right to be there. Then, at the precise spot, marked out by a discreet chalk ‘X’ on the floor, I scrambled up the wall, agile as a cat, the apparatus for my bomb evenly distributed around my body. The top of the wall was smooth and cool, the tar that one of Samuel’s contacts had laid protecting me from the sharp edges of the glass spikes. I dropped down inside the wall, astonished that it seemed as easy as Samuel had said it would be.
Low lights lit up different areas of the garden; the garage I was heading for stood just twenty paces to my left. It was tempting to head straight for it, taking the shortest route, but I knew if I did that, the Bowles’s personal security would be onto me in a heartbeat. Floodlights would pool down, alarms would sound, and I’d be face down in the grass. Instead I took a winding path, counting my paces, twisting and changing direction, following the route Samuel and his detailed planning had laid out for me. When, at last, I stood before the garage door, all was quiet, all was still.
Thank you Samuel.
Bending down, I twisted the garage handle and slid the door upwards. I stopped dead at six inches, knowing a motion detector kicked in at eight. Then I dropped to the ground and wriggled on my belly until I was inside. At last I relaxed. Now it was time to work.
Putting the bomb together was easy. I used a short knife to split the grey putty explosive into three sections. I secured each block to different areas of the car: the front and rear axles, and the petrol tank. Then I ran wires between each section of the bomb, so that if any segment was detonated, all three would blow. The hardest thing was the trigger. From underneath the car, I had to reach up through the mechanics of the engine, something I was not familiar with, and hunt out the ignition system. Even with all of Samuel’s diagrams and coaching, the inner workings of the car were still just a gigantic puzzle of wires and pipes. The pinpoint glare of my tiny flashlight illuminated only a few inches at a time, making my task almost impossible. For a while I panicked, eyes raking across alien mechanics, but I forced myself to breathe, calm down; to concentrate. Eventually I saw the segment I was searching for; I stripped it down, slicing the rubber tubing from the wire. My trigger clipped on to the exposed copper threads. Any electricity passing down the wire would generate a chain reaction that could not be stopped.
I tried not to think about the person sitting in the driver’s seat when that happened. Edwin Bowles was a bad man.
Job done, I flicked off the light and spent a moment breathing deeply in th
e darkness. Time to get out. Incredibly carefully, I eased back out from under the car. Without the pinprick light of the torch, the dark was absolute, cloaking me like a thick blanket. Only a thin grey streak of light whispered under the garage door, still open several inches at the bottom and my only escape route. Feeling my way, I braced myself against the brick wall of the garage, my sleeves over my hands as always. I still had the short blade clutched firmly in my other one. Leaving it would have ruined the whole operation, because surely Bowles’s security detail would sweep under the vehicles.
I’d taken one single step towards the garage door when a low sound stopped me in my tracks. I listened, but there was silence. Then a tiny tinkle, like a bell, close to the ground. A moment later the low buzzing again. What was that?
I took another step and the buzzing intensified, building until it broke off in a sharp yap.
A dog.
“Shit,” I hissed.
The dog barked again.
It didn’t sound very big, maybe a terrier or a chihuahua, but it was going to be loud enough to call attention to me. I needed to shut the damn thing up, but in the dark I had no idea where it was.
“Where are you?” I murmured to the dark. “Come on, where are you?”
I took another step and there was a snarl, followed by an extended tinkle, like whatever was attached to the bell was running, coming closer. Good, that was what I wanted.
“Ow!” I yelled before I could stop myself. Something razor sharp attached itself to my ankle and chomped down. Instinctively I yanked my leg back, but the thing held on, twisting left and right, worrying at me, digging deeper into my flesh. It was growling and snarling as it bit, making one hell of a racket.
“Shhh! Shut up!” I hissed. I reached down, thinking I could maybe pull it off me, but the knife was still in my hand and as I threw my arms towards the ground, the blade sank into something – something that resisted, then yelped. “Oh hell. Oh hell, no!”
I flicked my torch back on, shining it downwards and hoping vehemently that the brightness wouldn’t be visible under the door. The dog – it was a chihuahua – was still attached to my ankle, but it wasn’t moving and its neck and shoulder were covered in thick, wet blood.
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