“The hidden design is marvellous. I had the cellar built to my own specifications when I constructed the house.”
Finding no means to lift a trap door, instead, she applied pressure to the seam. A square section of the flooring responded by dipping, then swinging up with a small hiss of hydraulics, to an almost ninety-degree angle. Revealed were a steep, narrow flight of concrete steps, with their destination remaining out of sight.
Scott’s lip curled. “Down you go!”
She shouted down the stairway. “Mum? Amita?” No response.
“I said get down there, bitch.”
He spat the final word. When Kal made no move to comply, he drew a revolver from his pocket. Kal smiled to herself - yes Scott, all the cards are coming onto the table. Very soon, I’ll see your whole hand. Since she knelt on the floor the barrel pointed directly at her head and her muscles contracted, feeling like steel. She could unarm Scott in one motion, but first he must reveal the location of Amita and of her mother.
So she manoeuvred down the steps, facing forward so that she would have the advantage of seeing what she walked into. As she descended, the air felt warm and dry. The soles of Scott’s shoes scraped down the steps behind her head.
At the bottom, she entered what could only be described as a private torture chamber. There was a deep, central pit measuring around two metres square. The pit was surrounded on all sides by the instruments of Scott's depravity - a bed, video equipment, a set of steel and rubber instruments the same as she'd seen at the suite. And more dreadful than all of it, down in the central pit, huddled a small, human form, clothed in the tatters of a red, silk garment.
A wave of horror washed over Kal. She went to go down to the child and Scott waved her away with his gun. His eyes glittered. She could see he was volatile. Right on the edge. One spark would set him off.
“It’s not necessary for anyone to descend because Amita's already learned to obey orders and she does as she's told.”
Scott took the remote control unit and reactivated Amita's artificial limbs. Kal watched Amita stir from her slumped position. The girl did not look up.
“Climb out,” Scott ordered.
The child unfurled herself.
“You see how easy it is to subjugate another human being, and make them your slave? Amita is well on the path. In my experience it takes about seven days. After that, they splay themselves for my every desire. That’s true mastery. How can that not make you feel like a god?”
On the final word, Scott arched his back, raising his face to heaven. Kal balanced lightly towards her toes. On some subliminal level, Scott must have noticed, because the point of the gun swung away from Kal to aim at Amita's head.
“One false move and I'll blow the girl's brains out.”
Footholds had been cut in the side of the pit and Amita climbed out, slowly and painfully. She had bruising on the side of her face and the shoulder of her dress had been ripped away. As the child made it over the lip, Scott pushed her to the ground with his knee.
“Stay on the floor where you belong. So, we come to the end after all, Kal. You know what I want. Throw over the evidence.”
She produced a memory stick.
“You’ve been very stupid and made a real nuisance of yourself. So attractive, so vulnerable and innocent, though I’m sure you realise that if you try to cheat me, everyone you ever cared about will die? Nobody can stop us.”
Kal tossed over the memory stick and she studied the area again to make sure she’d not missed any sign of her mother having been there.
“It’s what you wanted and this is the only copy.”
The memory stick contained no evidence from Kolkata, and only the surveillance shots her mother originally left for her, nothing of any more significance. If he checked it now, she would have a problem, but she gambled he’d think she wouldn’t have the guts to double cross him.
“Good girl.”
Scott lifted his left hand to the top pocket of his shirt and pulled out a silver hard drive. A memory flashed of a similar motion of Scott’s hand at the Gala. So that’s where he kept the hard drive catalogue of all the acts of abuse. On his person.
Scott walked to the corner of the chamber and pushed the silver drive into the computer. As he did, Kal spotted the monogram engraving on the case - R.S.H, Richard Scott Henderson. The monogram was the first clue she'd missed on her visit to Scott’s city office. It had been the sole item in the entire room bearing a personal mark. It had stood out, amongst the sanitation, for that reason. And it contained that which Scott most fundamentally was, and kept concealed. The silver drive contained Scott’s obsessively collected, index of victims. All his sick perversions and those of his clients. Exactly the evidence Spinks needed.
Amita lay on the floor between Kal and Scott. The girl would present an obstacle and was at risk in that position. To attack, she would have to jump the space to put herself between Scott and Amita. The restricted space gave no margin for error. She flexed her knees slightly and a jab of pain ran up her injured leg.
“Where’s my mother?”
“Shut up, bitch. Take the noose, put it around your neck then feed the end into the mechanism.” Scott indicated a metallic construction protruding from the wall. “Slowly now, no sudden moves.”
“Please, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean things to go like this.”
“It’s too late.”
He had his gun trained on the child, so Kal did as he ordered. As she picked up the noose, she fumbled and it fell amongst the array of carefully laid out instruments.
Scott gave a vicious kick to Amita's back. “Get it right, bitch. Now push the ends of the noose into the mechanism.”
Anger made Kal tremble. In allowing the noose to slip from her grasp, she’d concealed a scalpel from the array and now it nestled in her left palm. She made her way to the mechanism. It was half way down the wall, which meant she’d be on her knees.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she said, “Where’s my mother?”
The mechanism had a thin slot. She placed the noose around her own neck and when she pushed the ends inside the metal box, she heard a loud click as something grabbed hold of the leather thong and clamped it tight. Then came a whirring noise as the slack in the noose disappeared inside the wall. She turned quickly to face Scott as the back of her head became pressed against the wall and it meant her knees were badly twisted to the side. Part of her wondered if she’d miscalculated. Missed the moment to make her move.
“It's an ingenious device. I invented it myself. Now you’re secured, every sixty seconds the cogs inside will turn, each time pulling the noose a tiny bit smaller. You'll strangle to death, not too quickly of course. The clicks are wonderful because we can both anticipate each tightening.”
Click. The cogs turned. A camera eye stared at Kal from the opposite wall. So Scott intended these to be her final moments, recorded as the next record on his catalogue. Come on, Scott, come over to me. Leave the child behind you.
“Please don’t kill me, I’ll do anything you say.”
Scott stepped over Amita and came up to her. “You don’t have your mother’s true beauty. She was a goddess, a Venus, a Cleopatra, you’re nothing compared to her. Alesha didn’t escape us in India, we knew she’d discovered the network and I let her go. I’d have allowed her to live if only she’d have agreed to our terms.”
“You drowned her.”
“Oh no, she survived the water treatment several times. I’m afraid she died later at the hands of Klaus. It was all rather messy and after that girl got washed up, we had to make special arrangements so that your mother’s body will never be found.”
Hearing these words, Kal marvelled at how calm she felt. Before she realised it wasn’t calm, it was numb shock. At a cellular level. The type that sucks all the fight, all the will, all your last strength, out of you.
“You’re lying.”
Scott’s victorious eyes pierced her. No, it couldn’t be true. He
must be lying.
Then Scott gave a short, bark of a laugh. And that’s what broke her. The sound of the pain in the back of his throat. A pain and an anguish which she saw reflected in his eyes, hiding behind the gloat of victory. Beyond everything, that pain told her he was telling the truth. That her mother was dead and perversely, it had cost Scott dearly to lose the woman he believed, in his own sick way, he loved. It had hurt him deep down. It had cut him. Yes, he was telling the truth. Her mother was dead.
The pain entered her own chest like a shard to sever her heart in two. She knew people could die of emotional shock, and that’s what it felt like. As if she were dying. Her body slumped like a rag doll. Like some grotesque puppet snagged by its own wire.
The hope for her mother’s safety had been so fragile. She’d protected it, never allowing it to fade - the flame growing weaker and weaker the further she investigated. The deeper she dug into the affairs of the Syndicate and their twisted minds, the smaller it had dwindled. Until now all that remained was an ugly, burned out wick. The beautiful, delicate, Chalkhill butterfly lay dead. A sob escaped her lips.
It seemed impossible. Her mother always survived, always came back from the wars and the bombings, giving the impression she was immune to ill fate. Charmed. That’s what Kal had held on to - her mother’s charmed life. The image of a mother who could never be quelled. But everything has to end sometime, doesn’t it?
Click.
The turn of the cogs sounded loud as a hammer by her ear. Kal looked up to see Amita’s dark eyes staring at her. The girl’s mouth hung slack with horror. The Syndicate had won after all. They’d taken everything - her mother, her best friend, her hopes for an honest, good father. They were victorious.
Scott came near and lay his revolver on the bench, turned her chin to face him.
“Oh, such lovely tears. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon and then everything will be peaceful.”
He smelled of cologne and musky sweat and Kal hit rock bottom of a pit far deeper and darker than the one Amita had been in. But something slithered down there with her. Something black and venomous and full of hatred. Amidst her despair, her rage stirred and it began its inexorable ascent, transforming into a stream of red hot magma pushing towards the surface. Searing everything in its path.
Click. The wire started eating into the skin at the front of her neck.
She felt Scott’s breath on her face.
“So stupid that Alesha let her skewed principles stand in the way of saving her own life, because I’d have let her live.”
The white hot inferno was setting her free. Free to be herself. To let everything go as she’d always been afraid to do. To let it all pour out.
Scott flicked her hair with the end of his finger. “I don’t condone such barbarous methods. We were forced to step up the interrogation of your mother after Detective Spinks became involved. Strange that she perished the very day you first visited me at my office.”
The white hot power of the lava evaporated his words. He couldn’t touch her anymore, and she wanted to tell Amita that it would be all right and moved her lips to speak, only nothing came out. Wait for your moment, said the voice in her head and Kal didn’t move a muscle, anticipating the movement of the cogs. Scott anticipated the cogs too, because she could see his excitement mounting. At exactly the right moment, it would distract his concentration. Of course, Scott had been too arrogant to imagine she might conceal a weapon. Too assured of his superiority. Too convinced by her meekness. Too bad. That simple precaution would have saved him from the surprise. One result of David Khan’s insistence on secrecy, was that her training had not figured anywhere amongst Scott’s surveillance of her childhood.
A red haze filled Kal’s vision. Of fury. Revulsion. The drive for revenge. A killer instinct. Within the haze, bright spots danced over Scott’s body, highlighting the target points. Part of her became sharp and still, ready to focus her aim.
C-l-i
Kal let herself go. Let herself ignite. Let energy blaze through her system like lightning. Like liquid fire. In the same moment, with the scalpel in her left hand she cut the noose and with her right she pulled out her gun.
i-c-k
Scott fumbled for his revolver.
Her rage obliterated any shred of reason. He’d stripped her of everything. The target mark over his heart vied with the one in the middle of his forehead. Blood pounded in her cranium. Building up the pressure. Exploding all her boundaries.
“Bas-tard!” Her own scream was full of hatred.
As her finger squeezed the trigger, she felt the dark part of David Khan rise inside her in triumph. She was down to nothing and all that remained was her raw essence. The core of who she was. In the end it was simple - you are who you are. In the space between two heart beats, just as she’d been taught, she blasted one shot.
Chapter Fifty-five
Kal gently lifted the child to her feet.
“You’re safe. Everything's all right now.”
Amita clung to Kal’s leg and stared down at Scott’s limp form. Scott lay in the bottom of the pit, his head at an impossible angle to his body. Neck most certainly broken.
“Did you kill him?” Amita asked.
“No, he killed himself and he deserved it.”
Her one shot had been a perfect hit, shattering his knee. Scott would have been screaming in agony, begging for morphine by the time Spinks arrived. Too bad for Scott he’d been so close to the edge of the pit and he’d staggered that one step. That he’d lost his balance and fallen.
Kal turned her back on Richard Scott Henderson and she picked up Amita and carried her up the steps.
Chapter Fifty-six
In one of the sunniest patches in the bluebell grove, a few early flowers were beginning to show.
That morning, she’d visited Marty at the hospital. Though the doctors were hopeful, there’d been no change in Marty’s coma status. Kal had whispered in Marty’s ear.
“I found out the truth about my father. I know what kind of man he was and now everything makes sense. I found out the truth about myself too and now I know you’re right, I’m much more than my father and I’ll never be a killer like him.”
She knew Marty would have been proud of her, would’ve put her arm around Kal and held her close. So that’s what Kal had done to Marty, despite the machines and the wires.
With Amita safe, and Spinks’ Child Crime Squad closing down the trafficking network, the work Alesha started had been completed. Children had been liberated, all seven on her mother’s list were under arrest with damning evidence against them and many more prominent public figures had been identified and charged with child sex offences thanks to Scott’s meticulous catalogue. Her mother had given her life for it. Uncovering such a high profile, paedophile network was a fitting testimony to Alesha - always fight for the disadvantaged, always search out the truth, and Kal wondered at what point her mother realised the connection between Richard Scott Henderson and their family - perhaps Padma was right after all, perhaps karma did play its part.
A small, blue butterfly flitted close by. Kal held out her hand towards it, but it flew away and the sobbing and tears started for real, and this time, Kal didn’t try to stop them.
*************
London Noir
The second in the kick-ass Kal Medi series. Available Now.
London Noir (Kal Medi book 2)
A serial killer hiding in plain sight.
Kal is reeling. From the shock of her mother. From clinging on to hope for Marty’s survival.
When Kal meets Sophie, a young girl in trouble, Kal feels an instant connection.
The young girl has a terrible secret. Her friends are being murdered one by one.
With the London Cartel calling in Kal’s debt, can Kal survive the Cartel’s demands?
And is someone really after Sophie, or is Sophie after someone?
Chapter One
Sophie dipped her brush in water and the
n chose azure blue to finish the detail. Azure blue reminded her of summer days and sandy beaches. It also reminded Sophie of her mother, and, as usual, the thought brought a bitter taste to the back of her mouth. Sophie swallowed. Concentrating to stop the trembling in her fingers, with one, two, three strokes, she finished the butterfly wings. The makeup brush clattered onto the dresser. Sophie twisted towards the mirror and admired the trail of tiny, azure butterflies sweeping up over her shoulder. In the light of the bedroom lamp, the sequins of her silver dress reflected the blue of the butterflies’ open wings.
Sophie swept her clutch purse from the bed and placed inside it the syringe, then the perfume and pepper spray. The spray was a noxious mix, designed to blind the victim and, even better, make them writhe in agony. For that reason, Lady Penny insisted all the girls carried it. Lastly, Sophie picked up the flick knife and touched her finger to the razor-sharp edge. Sugar G had trained them – a strike to the eye, to the crease of the groin, or the stomach – all the soft parts of the body. Not all the girls carried a knife, and she was certain of those who did, none of them carried it to commit murder.
Praise for London Noir
‘A five-star thriller which keeps you guessing until the end’ Jules 1960
‘Highly recommended’ Ellie S
‘Had me hooked from the beginning’ SandyJ21
‘An absolutely fantastic read’ S.A.W.
‘Brilliant!’ Dash fan
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