Successio

by Alison Morton

  Observing the speed limit – the last thing we needed was to be picked up by the cops – we drove to the docks and found a deserted yard with no CCTV. Parked in the shadow under the shelter of a semi-derelict delivery hatch, we approached the trunk, prepared for attack by an angry hornet. Michael had his Sig Sauer ready, me my knife and cuffs.

  ‘One, two, three, mark!’

  Michael pulled the lid up and I swung in sideways to body block our captive. I deflected him enough for Michael to push him back in on his face so I could cuff him.

  ‘Fuck you, you bastards!’

  We let him rant for a few moments, his breath pluming in the cold. He stopped trembling after a minute or two, took a deep breath and coughed.

  ‘Finished?’ I said.

  ‘Not by a long way, you bitch.’

  I laughed at him, which made him angry again, but I said nothing. I stared into the back of his eyes until he broke his gaze.

  ‘Now, Christopher, last time we had a little chat, I hadn’t realised what a lot you knew. This time, we’re going for full house. Same choice. But having two doses of this relaxant so close will make you feel sick for weeks.’ It was a lie, of course. It wouldn’t do a thing to him. ‘Or you could cooperate.’

  ‘Screw you. Nic was right.’

  ‘Right. So it’s right to kidnap, brutalise and starve a man who’s done nothing to you? A man who’s obviously ill? Her own father?’

  He stared at me. ‘Her father?’ His voice rose several notes. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Your Nicola is a very devious young woman. But you know that, don’t you, Christopher?’

  He looked down and said nothing.

  ‘You know, don’t you, in your heart, that she’s been manipulating you all along?’

  ‘Remember the training accident out on the Brecon Beacons when she made you take the rap? Or the failed reconnaissance in Mogadishu when you lost three comrades? Now she’s trying to make you an accessory to murder.’

  He looked away.

  I nodded at Michael who brought me a plastic folder. The chill breeze ruffled the pages, but I held two stapled sheets up and turned my flashlight on it.

  ‘The top one is a translation of the DNA test done a few months ago.’ I held up Conrad’s photograph. ‘This is the man, isn’t it?’

  He glared at me, changed to sullen, but gave a quick nod.

  *

  Back at his house, accompanied by Michael, he fetched the keys. We’d taken his cell phone, money and ID.

  ‘You’ll get these back when we’re finished, Christopher. If you try escape, or fuck with us, you’ll be so finished, you won’t need them back. Understood?’

  He nodded.

  ‘If you cooperate, you may even find something in your bank as our thanks. Oh, and I’d go on a little trip someplace a distance away for a few weeks. For your own good.’

  We met nobody around the warehouse yard. It was approaching midnight and frost had already coated everything with a light sheen. Newton unlocked the padlock on the chain linking the corrugated metal doors together. The concrete floor was patched with oil stains. Workbenches strewn with tools, machine parts, half-cars, a ramp, gas canisters and welding equipment screamed illegal bodyshop. The acrid smell of paint came from a taped-up glistening shell in the far corner.

  ‘Remember. Nothing stupid.’

  He led us around a partition into a dark passageway with two doors off. He stopped in front of one and unlocked it. I signalled him to go in first. I nearly choked on the smells of oil, unwashed body and faeces filling the room. A rim of orange from the street lighting showed around a boarded window opposite. As my eyes adapted to the gloom, I saw the figure huddled on the concrete floor and dropped to my knees.

  XXIII

  Orange light reflected off the links of a chain ending around the figure’s ankle. I swallowed hard.

  ‘Take the key off our friend here.’ I said, ‘and lock us all in. I don’t want him taking off if we’re a little occupied.’

  I fumbled in my pocket for my flashlight and shone it on the body. It hadn’t moved since we’d arrived. My other hand trembled as I reached down to touch it. The face was hidden by the shirt collar but I didn’t need to pull it back to see it was Conrad. I pressed my fingers on his throat hoping, praying, to find a pulse.

  His head jerked back at my touch, eyes gleaming like a wounded animal fearful of the hunter’s knife. His hand came up to shield his eyes.

  He croaked, ‘No.’

  Alive. He was alive.

  I sat back, releasing my breath and closing my eyes for a moment. Then my brain re-engaged. I cradled his head and put a bottle of water to his mouth and let the first drops dribble over his lips. When he drank, from it, he swallowed like he was never going to stop. I prised it away for a few seconds. He couldn’t afford to lose more liquid by throwing up.

  ‘It is really you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here. You’re safe now.’

  *

  The imperial transport landed late next afternoon at the local air force base, disgorging Antonia Faenia, the PGSF’s chief medical officer plus Livius, Paula and Atria from my ART. No, Hades, my former ART. I no longer had a team. They were all dressed in casuals, mostly jeans and fleeces. Not Faenia; designer suited, carrying a polished doctor’s black satchel and striding across the tarmacadam, she looked like any medical prima donna. But a load fell off my shoulders when I saw she’d come in person.

  At the hospital, she gave staccato nods at the British medic as he gave his report to her, nervous under the piercing stare and the frown of concentration on Faenia’s strong face. She gestured impatiently as soon as he spoke his last word and followed him down the glaring white corridor to a door guarded by two armed cops. Inside, Michael, who was sitting opposite the doorway, rose to his feet, wary at the sudden invasion.

  ‘Professor Faenia, Captain Browning.’

  She nodded briefly and went straight to the patient. While she was scanning and checking, and exchanging terse comments with the British doctor, I told Michael we’d take over security.

  He frowned at me.

  ‘I’m grateful, Michael, very grateful, but he’s our problem.’

  ‘Commissioner Brudgland instructed me to stay until the transport was in the air.’

  I smiled, almost to myself. ‘Yeah, he’s a real careful Harry, isn’t he?’

  ‘No comment. I have to stay, but I’ll stand the police down.’

  A knock and Atria and Paula entered, glanced at me and took up position on the back wall. Faenia came over to me after she’d given the patient a shot and bundled her stuff back in her bag.

  ‘He’ll sleep for about twelve hours. I’ve instructed this doctor to give a vitamin injection every four. I’m going to eat now and sleep. I’ll be back at seven.’ She scrutinised my face. ‘I suggest you come with me, Countess. You look exhausted.’

  *

  Faenia woke me as promised; I thought she might ignore my instruction and do that ‘we left you to rest as you looked as if you needed it’ routine. She didn’t say much as we drove from the air base mess back to the hospital.

  A suit was arguing with Livius outside the door to Conrad’s room.

  ‘I cannot have a private security force in my hospital. It will intimidate and unsettle the other patients.’

  ‘We have taken over from the uniformed police who were armed, so I think we are not so menacing.’ Livius was smiling, releasing all his charm on the man in his accented English.

  ‘It really won’t do. I insist on speaking to your supervisor. Where is he?’

  ‘She’s right here,’ I said, stepping up to face him. I left two centimetres between us.

  He stumbled back.

  ‘Countess Carina Mitela, representing Imperatrix Silvia Apulia of Roma Nova. How can I help you?’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyes darted between Livius, Faenia and me. Faenia shot a look of contempt at him and went in to see her patient. The administrator waved his hand in a
vague circle. ‘Your people are upsetting the other patients. You’ll have to remove them.’

  ‘I’m very sorry you think that. I’ll ask for a squad of your armed police to replace them. That’ll be so much more calming.’

  ‘That’s an extremely unhelpful attitude.’ His face flushed with anger.

  ‘Look, I apologise. I didn’t mean to be rude. What have my people done? Have they caused a problem or been discourteous, or annoyed anybody?

  ‘Not specifically, no.’

  ‘Any complaints made by individual patients?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  I said nothing. I folded my arms across my chest, raised an eyebrow as my grandmother used to do and stared at him.

  ‘Oh, very well. When are you leaving?’

  ‘That will be the professor’s decision, but I’ll be sure to keep your team advised. Anything else?’

  He shook his head.

  I went into Conrad’s room, leaving the little man puffing outside.

  *

  The ginger and malt aroma of the restorative hit me first. Conrad was sitting up in the hospital bed, drinking it out of the aluminium cup matching the flask Faenia held in her hand.

  He smiled up at me hesitantly. I reflected it automatically. He looked exhausted; brown shadows surrounded his eyes and the skin over the bridge of his nose was tight, emphasising the scar from his broken nose. Dark blond and grey stubble covered his lower face making him look even more like a fugitive. But more than that it was the anxiety in his eyes as he searched my face.

  He’d torn my personal life into shreds, destroyed the trust between us and blighted my professional career. I should hate him. I kept my gaze steady. After a few moments, he tipped his chin up like a defiant child, then blinked and looked away. His face crumpled like a piece of discarded paper. He was at rock bottom. Despite the hurt, I wanted to fold him into my arms and hold him there safe.

  But I couldn’t. Never more did ‘servant of the state’ sound as meaningless as it did now. I retreated into banalities.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

  ‘Hungry. I haven’t eaten for four days.’ His voice was light, but his hand trembled.

  ‘As soon as you’ve drunk that, Legate,’ Faenia said a little too briskly, ‘you can eat some cereal and one piece of fruit.’

  I frowned at Faenia. She was wrong to call him legate, and she knew it. I beckoned her outside.

  ‘How long before he can travel?’ I asked.

  ‘Tomorrow at the earliest.’

  *

  Atria and I worked the night shift. She took up station outside, but I spent most of the night watching Conrad and thinking. I must have dozed off as it was light when Livius shook my shoulder next morning.

  From a plastic shopping bag, Livius handed Conrad a battery shaver and Conrad took himself into the shower. We kept the bathroom door open. As he towelled his hair, now free of the brown dye Lucius had given him, I was shocked to see how much white there was amongst the dark blond. His arms and torso were bruised, and a cut on his forehead had opened and was seeping. I handed him a gauze pad, but didn’t say anything.

  He tore open the clothes pack Livius handed him, glanced at the two of us, but we didn’t move. No way was I going to have fewer than two people in the room with him at any time. He shrugged, slid off the towel around his waist and dressed in the casuals. He hovered, uncertain what to do. He rubbed his free hand along the hairline by his accident scar, but looked at the floor.

  I chewed my lip and tried to find some way to break the awkward atmosphere.

  ‘I presume you’ve come to take me back,’ he said.

  I nodded, swallowing the ache in my throat. Why the hell had Silvia forced me to do this?

  ‘Did they revoke your resignation?’

  ‘No, I work under a different authority.’

  ‘Not a scarab?’

  ‘No.’

  He gave up.

  ‘Did you find Nic…Nicola?’

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘What stopped you taking her?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My orders are to prioritise finding and bringing you back over her capture.’

  ‘Mars! That was hard for Silvia.’ He spoke with the sympathy of a husband. I felt a bloom of anger. Although their eight-year partnership had finished before we met, I could never forget the emotional bond Conrad and Silvia shared because of their three children. I batted it away and pulled my shoulders back. Time to do my job, however shitty.

  ‘By my authority as imperial agent, I am placing you under arrest. Do you submit to the court?’ As I said the formal words, my heart was breaking.

  ‘I submit to the court,’ he replied after a few moments in a cold, despairing voice.

  ‘I am not going to cuff you in front of foreigners, but you must give me your personal word of honour that you will not try to escape.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Aloud.’

  His face tightened, producing a peevish look.

  ‘You have my word. Aren’t you going to read me my rights?’ he asked with an ironic tone.

  ‘You don’t have any rights. You’ve been proscribed.’

  *

  Ever efficient, Michael provided an SUV to transport us from the hospital to the airbase.

  Conrad had collapsed into the hospital chair like his bones had dissolved into powder when I told him about the proscription. He stayed there, frozen, not believing it and staring at the floor. In the end, Livius had taken Conrad’s arm in a firm grip and hauled him to his feet. Conrad hardly reacted, but followed automatically. Atria and Paula fell in close behind as I led the group down the hospital corridor to the glass door. I gave the hospital administrator an ironic bow before making our way out to where Michael was waiting. Wedged between Livius and Atria with Paula watching him from the opposite seat, Conrad slumped and still said nothing.

  As we rode along, Michael made light conversation in that polite way the British do in tense situations. At the plane, the others took Conrad up the steps, Faenia following. On the tarmacadam, Michael and I waited until they were out of earshot.

  ‘I’m truly grateful for all the support you’ve given us, Michael. I don’t know any other way except to say thank you. Please convey my thanks to Andrew Brudgland for putting you at our disposal.’

  ‘No trouble at all. I mean it. We’ll keep an eye out for Nicola Sandbrook. If she resurfaces, we’ll have her before she can move.’ I knew he was saying that to comfort me. She was an expert at living below the wire and they just didn’t have the resources. I gave him an understanding smile.

  He looked at me steadily. ‘I think you’re in for a rough time on all fronts in the next few weeks. Give me a call if you think I can help or you want a sounding board.’ He bent down and kissed me lightly on my cheek. ‘Take care.’

  *

  Conrad flinched as I touched him on the knee. We’d been in the air for an hour. I glanced around in the half-gloom of the transport deck. A crate and our bags were secured by heavy nets to bolts in the centre of the floor. A row of tubular-framed canvas fixed seats lined each side. Paula, Atria and Livius sat along the opposite side towards the back, Faenia eight along from us.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I raised my voice against the aircraft noise. Unlike a cosy civilian aircraft this military transport had no plush cabin with insulation. ‘Do you want something to eat or drink?’

  He shook his head and stared at the opposite wall of the fuselage.

  ‘You have to talk to me sooner or later. I prefer not to do it in Interview 2 with half of the Interrogation Service listening.’

  ‘She beat Quintus, she broke his arm.’ He shivered. He seemed so fragile. ‘Her hands were locked round his throat and she was shaking him. He was making choking sounds like an animal. She would have killed him if I hadn’t dragged her off. Gods, she’s vicious. I knew then I had to go after her. But I was so unprepared. She took me as
if I was a one-day cadet.’ He looked at the floor.

  ‘That’s the least of your troubles. Silvia is furious, boiling. When you disobeyed her summons, I thought she was going to implode. Quintus tried to take the rap, but she wouldn’t accept it. She’s devastated, Conrad. She knows Stella has been difficult and is impressionable, but she expected you to rein Nicola in.’ I stopped before I went too far.

  ‘She’s Caius, all over again,’ he whispered.

  I remembered Conrad’s haggard face the day he’d talked about Caius Tellus. We’d been at Castra Lucilla, our summer home in the country, lying on a rug drying in the sun after a vigorous swim. Conrad wouldn’t detail the personal abuse Caius had imposed on him; he stayed silent for a few minutes at that part, his breath light and eyes unfocused.

  After the city had been re-taken by Imperial forces and Caius’ brutal rebellion defeated, Quintus had discovered the nine-year-old Conrad cowering, filthy and terrified, in a locked cellar in Caius’s suburban villa. During the journey to the derelict farm in the east that the ruined and disgraced Tella family had been allowed to keep, Conrad remembered pulling the blanket over the back of his head and huddling on the seat of an old utility truck, refusing to let go of Quintus as they drove through the night.

  When Conrad had stopped talking that day by the lake, I’d held him in my arms while he wept at the memory of his ruined childhood. That was nearly fifteen years ago. I’d thought it was all behind him; he’d never mentioned it since. Now he looked haggard, lost somehow. He took some short breaths and gazed out of the aircraft window.

  ‘It was that kid being beaten, the day of the accident. That man was Caius and the kid me.’ He closed his eyes for a few moments. ‘It was a nightmare when Caius came to live with us. One day my dad wasn’t there. I ran all round the house, looking for him, crying for him. I kept asking for him. Instead, my mother said Caius was going to be my new dad. Even at three, I didn’t like him. He’d pull me on to his lap and stroke me. I felt hot and uncomfortable. I wanted to run. Mama was cross with me and said I had to stop being silly, but in the end I saw she was frightened of him.

  ‘When we came back from her funeral – I was six – I clung on to Uncle Quintus’s hand praying that he would take me home with him. But Caius pulled me away. I didn’t understand why I had to go with him, but later I learnt it was because he’d been named by my mother as legal guardian. That night he gave me my first beating. To settle me in, he said. Then the nightmare started.