by Ellis, Tim
Lola found the baby in the bedroom and carried him downstairs. ‘I done found a baby up there.’
‘There’s nothing down here.’ He found the door to the cellar and descended the steps. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘What?’ Lola called down to him. ‘What you found?’
‘Blood... Lots of it, and what looks like a placenta.’
‘Oh my gawd, what she done with Mrs Parish and that midwife?’
Kowalski came back up. ‘I don’t know.’
A uniformed copper appeared at the door. ‘Evening, Sir.’
‘How many are with you, Constable...?’
‘Watts, Sir, Colin Watts. There are two cars, each with two in.’
‘Take the baby. Give it to one of them to look after, and call for an ambulance. The other two can take a look round outside. We’re looking for a woman. She should be considered armed and dangerous.’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Constable Watts said taking the baby.
‘Wherever she be, she in the vehicle,’ Lola said.
‘Dumping the bodies.’
Lola pointed into the darkness. ‘In the forest.’
‘Come on.’ Kowalski ran to his car with Lola waddling after him. He reversed up and drove along the track.
As he reached the road, a Range Rover came hurtling out of the forest and smashed into them.
‘Christ! Are you okay, Lola?’
‘I ain’t getting out of this passenger seat anytime soon. You go and find those women. Lola count the stars.’
He climbed out of the car, strode round the rear of it to the Range Rover, and pulled open the driver’s door.
Karen Kincaid’s eyes were focused on him, but she was seeing something else entirely.
‘Where are they?’ he shouted at her. He grabbed her coat and shook her. ‘Where are they?’
But the only thing that came out of Karen Kincaid’s mouth was a haunting lullaby:
Star light,
Star bright,
First star
I see tonight
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have this wish
I wish tonight.
He dragged her out of the driver’s seat, and handcuffed her to the twisted metal of his own car.
‘Beep the horn, the others will come running,’ he told Lola. ‘And tell the other two to follow me.’
‘Go find ‘em, Ko-wall-ski.’
He reversed the Range Rover in a circle, put the lights on main beam, and drove it back into the forest.
***
She found a ladder. When she shone the torch upwards, the ladder didn’t seem to go anywhere. Should she climb the ladder if it went nowhere? Should she waste valuable time following dead ends? What choice did she have? She shone the light in every direction, but there was nothing else.
The ladder was rusty steel. As she climbed hand over hand, she wondered who had put a ladder in the middle of nowhere. Then she reached a ledge, and another ladder. She climbed again to a second ledge and a third ladder. The torch slipped out of her hand. It bounced off the wall on the way down, and then she heard it smash on the floor. Now, she knew she had to keep going. Eventually, she reached a metal cover, but it was far too heavy for her to move. She wedged her back against it, but it wouldn’t shift. She began to cry.
‘Is that it?’ she heard Parish’s voice inside her head.
‘What can I do?’
‘You can stop crying like a baby. Where are you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What time is it?’
She hooked her arm through the ladder and pressed the light on her watch. ‘It’s twenty to six.’
‘Where are you?’
‘You’ve asked me that already.’
‘Where are you?’
Then she realised what the nagging voice was saying. ‘HELP. HELP. HELP.’
She shouted until she was hoarse, and just as she was about to give up someone banged on the metal.
‘Hello?’ a female voice called.
‘Please help,’ she shouted back.
‘There’s a car over the metal cover.’
‘Can you call the police and an ambulance. There’s a policeman dying down here.’
‘Doin’ it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Hey, what yer doin’ down there?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘We got a bit of time lady.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Karen Switzer – papergirl... and secret agent.’
Mary Richards had nothing else better to do, so she told Karen Switzer the story of P2 until the emergency services arrived.
***
Ray Kowalski drove the Range Rover into the forest and stopped exactly where Karen Kincaid had stopped the vehicle and turned it around. He found the freshly dug grave and scraped the frozen dirt away with his bare hands.
Constable Colin Watts and Constable Delores Cooneylee arrived and helped him. They found Angie Parish and she still had a faint pulse, but Staff Nurse Marveen Hollingsworth was as cold and stiff as washing left out overnight.
Kowalski followed Vinnie Jones’ advice and pushed hard and fast on her sovereign, with the song, ‘Staying Alive’ by the Bee Gees running through his head until the paramedics arrived and took over.
Angie opened her eyes briefly, and Ray held her hand.
‘My baby?’
‘Don’t worry, he’s safe.’
She would have wept tears of happiness, but she had slipped into unconsciousness again.
Aftermath
Once the paramedics had managed to stabilise Marveen Hollingsworth, and the ambulance had left, Kowalski went back to get Lola, but she was already turning cold.
‘Oh Lola,’ he said. It wasn’t often Ray Kowalski cried, but he did then.
When the fire brigade arrived and cut her free, they found that the Range Rover had crushed her pelvis and burst her internal organs. She’d died from massive internal bleeding.
***
Sunday 25th December
Against the doctor’s advice, Jed Parish transferred himself to King George Hospital to be with his wife and son on Christmas Day.
They said he’d lost nearly four pints of blood and was lucky to be alive. They’d also had to clean the wound after the mess the bullet had made, not only to his humerus, but also to the surrounding tissue, and a metal plate was inserted to help the bone heal.
‘So, did you find out?’ Angie said.
He was lying on the bedclothes next to her. And every time a nurse went past they frowned at him, but he didn’t care. ‘Let’s just say that our son has a legitimate claim to half the thrones in Europe.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
He withdrew the family tree he’d found in the P2 Lodge, and pointed to his name. ‘That’s me beneath the exiled Crown Prince of Italy.’
‘You still don’t know who your mother is.’
‘No, but it doesn’t matter. Our son can now trace his lineage all the way back to Lucrezia Borgia.’
‘Maybe I should be calling you, “Your Majesty”?’
‘You could do that, but then we’d have to have sex, and I don’t think those sour-faced nurses would approve.’
Angie smiled. ‘I don’t think we’ll be having sex for a while.’
‘You don’t really mean that.’
‘Oh yes I do, Jed Parish.’
***
Kowalski wasn’t really in the mood to play Santa, but a promise was a promise. So, he donned the suit and beard, slung the red sack over his shoulder, and crunched into the Children’s Ward at St Margaret’s Hospital like a grumpy ogre.
‘Ho, ho, ho,’ he said, and the kids all squealed with delight.
***
Karen Kincaid spent Christmas Day in Runwell Hospital until they transferred her to Thorpe Coombe mental hospital. There, they put her in the same room as her sister. She was now living in a world of her own. The only words
she would utter was a haunting little lullaby:
Star light,
Star bright,
First star
I see tonight
I wish I may,
I wish I might,
Have this wish
I wish tonight.
***
As soon as Catherine Cox’s death became public knowledge, a flood of envelopes arrived at newspaper and television outlets. Parish scanned the library map and emailed it anonymously to the media as well. The more astute of them realised it contained the original P2 membership list, and as each person joined subsequently, their name was added to the list.
‘You’ve been trying to figure it out for days,’ Parish said to Richards. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to tell you?’
‘Oh, you’d like that wouldn’t you? Then you can prance about like... Well, like someone who prances about... and tell everyone how you had to tell me the answer...’
‘I don’t prance about. Look at the shelves.’
‘You don’t think I haven’t been looking at the bloody shelves?’
‘And stop swearing.’
‘Sorry. It’s just... Each row of shelves has a catalogue code attached to it. The first one on the right, the one I started looking at when we went in there, has 000145LG81...’
‘Break it up.’
‘What into?’
‘Well start with 0001. What do you think that means?’
‘That’s because it’s the first row of shelves.’
‘You see, that’s where you’re going wrong. It has nothing to do with the shelves.’
‘But... All right, 0001 could be the number one?’
‘Or the first one...’
‘Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! The first member of P2?’
‘Who was?’
‘Licio Gelli – LG, but...?’
‘And when did P2 come into existence?’
‘1945?’
‘And when did Licio Gelli cease to be a member of P2?’
‘1981. I hate you, you know?’
‘I know.’
She ran her index finger over the library map. ‘There’s the Chief... 028571AK00. If they’re still members they have 00 after their initials. Look, there’s Walter Day... 028371WD11, and the Chief Constable, and... Oh God! You’re a genius.’
‘I’ve been telling you that since we met.’
‘This has every member of P2 on it.’
‘That’s why I sent a copy of it to all the journalists in Jenny Weber’s address book. With Catherine’s information, they should be able to work it out.’
And they did. Revelations regarding P2 ran for weeks and weeks in the newspapers and on television. Subsequently, there were a whole host of resignations from senior positions within the government, military, medical services, security services... The list was inordinately long. Twenty-seven senior police officers resigned – one, of course, being the Chief Constable of Essex.
The original list of P2 members became public knowledge, and the Italian government became de-stabilised. An interim government was appointed until an election could be held, and there was even talk of bringing back the monarchy.
####
About the Author
Tim Ellis was born in the bowels of Hammersmith Hospital, London, on a dark and stormy night, grew up in Cheadle, Cheshire, and now lives in Essex with his wife and five Shitzus. In-between, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at eighteen and completed twenty-two years service, leaving in 1993 having achieved the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major). Since then he has worked in secondary education as a senior financial manager, in higher education as an associate lecturer/tutor at Lincoln and Anglia Ruskin Universities, and as a consultant for the National College of School Leadership. His final job, before retiring to write full time in 2009, was as Head and teacher of Behavioural Sciences (Psychology/Sociology) in a secondary school. He has a PhD and an MBA in Educational Management, and an MA in Education.
Discover other titles by Tim Ellis at http://timellis.weebly.com/
Also, come and say hello his my FB Fanpage:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tim-Ellis/160147187372482
Historical Fiction
Warrior: Path of Destiny
Warrior: Scourge of the Steppe
Science Fiction/Fantasy
The Knowledge of Time: Second Civilisation
Orc Quest I: Prophecy
Adult Crime
Solomon’s Key
Jacob’s Ladder
A Life for a Life
The Wages of Sin
The Flesh is Weak
The Shadow of Death
His Wrath is Come
The Breath of Life
The Twelve Murders of Christmas
Body 13
The Graves at Angel Brook
The Skulls Beneath Eternity Wharf
Collected Short Stories/Poetry/Anthologies
Untended Treasures
Where do you want to go today?
Winter of my Heart (Poetry)
With Love Project – The Occupier
Raga Man (Short Story)
The Killing Sands – As You Sow, So Shall You Reap
Also due out in 2012/13:
The Gordian Knot (Stone & Randall 2)
The Timekeeper's Apprentice
Orc Quest II: The Last Human
The Dead Know Not (Parish & Richards 7)
