The Guest House

by David Mark

  ‘At last,’ he whispers, as he feels its pleasing heft. ‘A chance to look sophisticated…’

  28

  Oscar Parkin is just leaving his apartment when his mobile phone gives a soft chirrup in his trouser pocket. The ring tone is the one that marks the caller out as important. It’s the one he’s been waiting for – the one that has kept him up until 3am and which he had begun to fear would not come.

  He looks at the screen. The caller ID is not shown but that is through choice. He uses an NCA encrypted telephone and the caller display unit shows only the most basic information, lest prying eyes are watching through a long lens. He knows it’s her. Even though she cannot see him, he automatically stands a little taller. Across from his apartment door there is a large mirror, angled to show anybody approaching down the long corridor. He walks three paces and stands in front of it, examining his reflection. Blue tie, knotted fat. Blue suit, white shirt flecked with little speckles of orange. Big glasses, head shaved down to a billiard-ball gleam. If this is the moment; if this is when it all goes to shit, he wants to at least feel prepared for it. His reflection tells him he can handle this. He’s good at what he does. He needs to stop worrying, and allow himself to hope that things have gone right.

  ‘Hello.’

  He watches himself in the mirror as she talks. Matters have moved far quicker than they had anticipated. The first of the transplants is happening today. It’s Pope. The man himself. It all simmered over last night. Ronni Ashcroft discovered that Nicholas Roe was concealing his true identity and he’d had no choice but to break cover. Her husband and the unit’s other undercover asset both did their damnedest to keep the operation on track, but to do that meant involving Mrs Ashcroft. That led them to Pope. And Pope hadn’t believed them. Now, Roe, Mr and Mrs Ashcroft and the other undercover operative are being detained by Pope at the castle on Ardnamurchan. And somehow, near-miraculously, Roe has managed to alert her to the presence of the resurrected Bishop. All the players are in one place.

  She needs tactical support, and needs it urgently. This could be a career-making operation. It could lead to the arrest of Pope, his deputies, and Bishop, not to mention the smashing of a new smuggling route and the saving of several lives in the form of unwilling organ donors. But he’s the only one who can make it happen. And it has to happen now.

  Parkin runs a hand over his face. Takes off his spectacles and rubs them on his tie. He says nothing for a moment, just looking into his own eyes and weighing up the odds.

  ‘If it goes well, it’s a huge result. If it goes wrong, that’s me done. And no doubt you step into my shoes. Not a bad position to find yourself in, eh?’

  She doesn’t respond, and her silence irks him. Her whole tone irks him: that entitled, arrogant way she has – even as she informs him of a major balls-up in her operation, she acts as if she’s doing him a favour and this was the plan all along. She should be on her knees. Should be pleading with him. Instead, she sounds like she’s giving him one last chance to do something right.

  He stares into his own eyes and feels briefly disgusted with himself. He’s better than this. He’s a good man who wants to do the job correctly and stop people getting hurt. There are people in danger. Officers. Civilians. Poor unwitting drug mules. To delay through self-interest would be the act of a bastard and he knows, having met plenty, that he is better than that.

  ‘Stay in a signal zone,’ he says, breathily. ‘I can get you a unit. Tactical support, based at Argyll and Dunbartonshire. I primed them last night. They’re waiting for the nod. You make the arrest. Then we’ll make all the pieces fit.’

  She has the grace to say one small word before she hangs up. It’s barely a whisper, but it makes him feel good.

  ‘Sir…’

  29

  I can smell fresh paint. Through the double doors at the end of the long corridor I find myself in an area of the castle where workmen have made progress. There is little light, but the walls gleam a moonlight white and the carpets have been ripped up – showing a wood floor beneath. There are dust sheets down in places and against one wall are big open boxes. I peek inside. It’s full of tasteful art prints and self-assembly frames. A smaller box contains glossy leaflets, advertising the new “Convalescence and Rejuvenation Spa”, opening this spring. I find myself wondering how many of the rich and famous guests paying for detox sessions and facial peels will know that in another wing, men from the far side of the world are being sliced open and having their organs removed for transplant. That their reward for crossing the sea to bring narcotics into Scotland is to become little more than a suitcase full of cash.

  I hear it again. The screech of it – the high, agonised wail of pain. Callum.

  I don’t feel like myself anymore. I can’t seem to make my hands do what I want. I’m groggy, ham-fisted. There’s a numbness spreading through me. I can’t hear properly. There’s a dull bloom of warmth across my back and it feels as if parts of me are falling asleep in turn. I shake my head, willing some life into my legs, and half run, half stagger down the white-painted corridor towards the sound of the shriek.

  What are you doing? I demand of myself. Stop. Stay safe. Hide! Think of the children. You can’t just blunder in. What can you do?

  I ignore the voice. Push open a wooden door and suddenly I am staring through a glass panel into a long, brightly lit room. I scrabble backwards before anybody can see me, and try to make sense of the picture before me. At the back of the property, through the last wooden door, is what I can only think of as a field hospital. Whatever purpose this room used to serve, it has been transformed into a long, white-painted space. The doors that shut it off from the main house have a glass panel midway up, and light spills out along with the noises of suffering and pain that have called me here from the relative safety of where they left me.

  Crouching low, half afraid to move, I force myself to scurry forward and to peer through the glass. I have to bite down on my hand as I see what lies within.

  There are four hospital beds, side by side. Strapped down, lashed like patients in a Victorian asylum, three dark-skinned, emaciated men. They stare at the ceiling, slack-jawed but chests heaving – drugged into some kind of paralysis. One man has gauze pads taped upon his eyes. He’s hooked up to a drip. Somebody has placed a blanket over him but shivers still rack his frail body.

  And beyond, in the fourth bed, the woman I know as Kimmy. She’s on her side, in what I take to be the recovery position. She’s been stripped. Bruises cover her back where the light catches her pale, scrawny form, and a colossal purple patch blooms on her cheek. She’s not tied down. She’s not moving.

  I turn my head. Duck down. In the corner of the room, enormous in a too-small chair, is the big man. The one who hurt me. Who hurt all of us. He’s talking into a mobile phone, his face inscrutable.

  I raise my head again as I hear another anguished yell of pain, and then a door opens at the far end of the room and a tall, white-haired man in surgical scrubs pushes through from a darkened space beyond. He’s shaking his head. Grumbling. The big man stands as he approaches. I press my ear to the door, but I can only catch snatches of words.

  ‘Not ready… can’t work like this – too many unknowns, not even sanitary, let alone sterile…’

  The big man doesn’t want to hear it. ‘Make it work,’ he says. ‘He dies, you die.’

  ‘It’s not like that. It’s not wishful thinking, it’s medicine…’

  ‘You’ve been paid. Do your fucking job…’

  And then that scream again. It’s an animal thing: the screech of something hurt beyond enduring. Head down, showing as little of myself as I can, I watch as the big man pushes past the man in surgical scrubs and barges through the doors into the room beyond. I bite down on my wrist as he returns, moments later, dragging Callum by one bloodied foot, his fist wrapped around his ankle, hauling him out like a sack of rubbish. He’s naked. His face is swollen all down one side and his fingers stick out at differen
t angles like the stakes in a broken fence. All the toes are missing from his left foot. Blood bubbles in his mouth as he yells, despairingly, and as I watch his lips move, I realise that the scream is not some unintelligible cry. It’s a word. A name. He’s shouting for me. He’s shouting Ronni, as if he’s a child who wants his mother.

  I feel parts of myself begin to dissemble. I’m overcome with such pity and love for him that it almost saps me of my fury. It comes back in a tsunami. How dare they! How dare they do this. To him. To me. To any of these poor bastards in the beds. I have to fight with myself to stay where I am – to not push through the doors and beat my hands bloody against the back of the great beast who has taken my husband apart.

  I sense a presence behind me. I turn, braced for impact, coiled to run.

  ‘Don’t,’ says Mr Roe. ‘Don’t go in there.’

  By the light of the window I make out his features. He’s at once the man I know and somebody else entirely. The illness that has haunted his features seems to have melted away like yesterday’s snow. He walks taller. Carries himself stronger. Years have fallen away from him. He puts a hand on mine and I see blood on the backs of his hands. He looks at the blood on mine.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ he whispers. ‘Police.’

  I look through him. Make sense of it. ‘Police like you?’

  He nods. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Soon.’

  My face creases with fury and frustration. ‘They’re going to kill him.’

  He peers past me. Takes in the scene. I hear the dull thud of big meaty hands hitting flesh, and know that fresh harm is being done to my children’s father. I look at the big wooden object that he holds in his hand. It’s a mallet: a big round head on it.

  ‘Give it to me,’ I beg. ‘I’m quick. I can hit him, and you get Callum out of there.’

  He shakes his head. ‘He’ll be armed. He’s doing this to entertain himself. He could already have killed him if that was the instruction.’

  ‘You’re the police! You can’t do nothing and let him die.’

  He looks into my eyes, trying to get me to understand. ‘I’m not scared of him, love. But if I go for him and can’t take him down, he tells Pope what’s happening. And Pope will do what all cowards do when they feel the walls closing in. He’ll scarper and burn the place down. And there’s no back-up, love. Nobody here to make sure those poor sods on the gurneys get free…’

  ‘And no result for you, eh? No arrests, no glory?’

  ‘Fuck glory,’ he spits.

  We both hear the big man’s voice. Both hear the words, clear as the sky above the loch. ‘…think you’d have had enough now, Callum. Think it’s time to put you down. Doc here says you’ve got a few bits and pieces in you that haven’t ruptured. Maybe we’ll find a buyer for your eyes, eh?’

  Sadness shows in Mr Roe’s face. Acceptance too. The decision’s been made.

  ‘Been a blast,’ he says, and one bony hand closes around my arm. He yanks me away from the door with such force that I tumble into the wooden doors across the hall, and then he is pushing through the swing doors, barrelling into the brightly lit room: the mallet in his hand, becoming a poleaxe as he changes his grip.

  I scrabble forwards, trying to follow. The door clatters into me, knocking me backwards, but through the strobing in my vision, I see.

  The big man is down on one knee, blood gushing from a wound to the crown of his head. The man in surgical scrubs is on his back, both hands between his legs, blood gushing from his crushed nose. And Roe is leaning over Callum, trying to get an arm beneath his head…

  ‘No!’

  The big man is back on his feet. He grabs Roe by the head – his whole hand closing over his skull like a basketball player clutching the ball, and he drags him backwards as if he were a child. He throws the other hand as if it were a hammer, and Roe only just manages to wriggle free of the grip in time to duck the lethal blow. He kicks out, booting the big man between the legs, but if it pains him he doesn’t show it. I watch, in stasis, as he throws another great haymaker and I see Roe swing upwards with the mallet. It hits the giant in the chest and he staggers backwards, half stumbling over Callum.

  I charge forward, unable to help myself, and Roe, gasping for breath, throws the mallet towards me. I catch it as I move and in one fluid motion I bring it down, hard, on the big man’s forehead, as if on a fairground strongman machine. He grunts and slides sideways, and I rush to Callum, who blinks, bloodily as I swim in and out of his vision. ‘Oh God,’ I say, and it’s all I’ve got. ‘Oh God…’

  I don’t see the big man move. Just feel the sudden agony of a hand closing around my neck. I leave the floor, feet kicking, gasping for air, and my vision spins and swirls and eddies as he dangles me high in the air. I see him stand over Callum. Kick out frantically as he raises his huge boot above his skull.

  In the doorway, a flash of light. Blonde hair, blue eyes, an absolute absence of feeling in her impossibly perfect eyes.

  She holds the gun with both hands. I see tanned skin. Perfect nails. See her lips move, and some part of me heeds the instruction. With my last surge of strength I reach down and claw at his eyes, feeling my index finger slip into the warm, gooey softness of the eyeball.

  He drops me, and I spill to the ground.

  And then Mr Roe is covering me with his lean, powerful body, and all I can hear is the muffled bang-bang, and then the ground seems to shudder as the big man falls like a tree.

  A moment later, I am being pulled upright. Roe is checking me over for wounds. And from somewhere nearby I hear the sound of shouts and running feet and the roar of revving engines.

  She’s standing in front of me. There’s not a hair out of place. She’s just killed a man and there’s nothing there – no tears, no twisted lip.

  I think of myself. Feel the blood on my hands. Those men, I think, suddenly. I killed those men…

  ‘Get him?’ asks Roe, softly.

  She nods. ‘Lovely guest room in the east wing. Paisley pyjamas and a bottle of Lucozade. He’s still up there, if you want to go take a piss before we take him in.’

  Roe shakes his head. ‘And Bishop?’

  For the first time, she smiles. ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘We’ve got Bishop.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘You think he’ll talk? Tell us what we want to know?’

  ‘Yes. And I won’t even need to touch his toes.’

  I stop listening. I’m on the floor, cradling Callum, stroking his forehead, the blood on his skin and the blood on mine mingling like spilled paints.

  Roe moves to the far bed. ‘She’s got a pulse,’ he says, of the woman I know as Kimmy. ‘She’s hard.’

  I hear his knees crack as he bends down and looks into my eyes. He gives me a nod.

  He puts his hand on mine – the one that covers Callum’s brow. Then, so softly as to be almost inaudible, he says “thank you.”

  Then he stands, turns, and walks out the doors, and I’m left with the woman who just put two bullets in the man who was trying to kill us all.

  ‘Who is he really?’ I ask, my mouth dry.

  She shakes her head.

  She’ll never tell.

  And I’ll never ask again.

  Epilogue

  Now…

  Somewhere near Chelmsford, Essex

  A green-and-pink canal boat, tied up at a shabby marina on the Chelmer and Blackwater Canal. Dirty lace curtains cover dirtier windows. Over the rail, black water holds a sickle of moon and gaudy puddles of coloured light.

  Inside, Nicholas Roe. He looks well, all things considered. He sits at the small galley table and pours a glass of good red wine into a brandy glass. Sniffs it. Holds the aroma, then takes a sip.

  ‘You’ve got no class,’ says the woman, returning from the bathroom. ‘And that toilet is disgusting.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, love. I’ll open a window. We all get tummy troubl
es from time to time.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ She smiles, sitting down.

  He toasts her health with his glass, and hands her a proper red wine glass that he has been hiding beneath the table. She smiles, indulgently, and takes it. ‘Barolo?’

  ‘Could be. They were in a case on the deck of another boat. Twelve of them. An invitation, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You just took them?’

  ‘No, I whistled and they followed me home.’

  They sit in companionable silence. The clock above the sink says 9.03pm. She may yet stay the night. He might yet invite her to. Perhaps tonight they will finally talk things through. What she means to him and what he means to her. It will never be physical – it is a bond beyond that. She kept him alive even as she sentenced him to death. She’s turned him from one thing into something else entirely. Whatever he is, she has created. She is his redemption, and he is hers.

  ‘Everybody happy, then? I saw the press conference. Jesus, Parkin was tumescent.’

  ‘That’s hard, yeah? Erection.’

  ‘You know it is. You don’t have to play me, love. I know you’re cleverer than I am – don’t pretend to be less than you are.’

  ‘Sorry, old habits.’

  ‘Die hard.’

  ‘Yeah, you do. And yes, they are. Bishop is talking. We’ve got new friends in enforcement agencies all the way across Europe and the Feds are literally wanking themselves silly over the information he’s providing.’

  ‘And he’ll only talk to you, yes?’

  She sips her wine. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got it safe?’

  ‘The recording? Yes. To be used only if he stops cooperating, or threatens to talk to somebody else.’

  ‘And the organ donors?’

  ‘A bit fucking confused. Home Office is offering asylum but they still want to go home.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nowt as queer as folk.’

  ‘Go on,’ she says, eyeing him. ‘Ask.’