A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery

by Vogel, Vince

“Yes.”

  “How’d they find us?”

  “Someone tipped them off that you’d be here.”

  Alex had no idea who could have done that. As far as he was concerned, no one knew they were there.

  “Who tipped them off?”

  “I don’t know. They only gave us the address and told us to get here. Get the girl and kill the man with her.”

  “What do they want with the girl?”

  He shook his head.

  “I have no idea. I’m only a—”

  But he got no further. Dorring had grown tired of the exchange and put a bullet in the man’s forehead. He looked around at the weeds blowing in the wind outside the abandoned homes. Gazing up at the slate-gray sheet above him, he saw the bruised flashes of lightning a little farther away in the distance.

  A storm was coming.

  62

  There was still supposed to be at least another three hours of daylight left, but the brooding cloud had completely covered the sun, leaving the sky coated in a deep purple twilight. The torrent of rain had started the moment Jack and Lange had left the M25 and entered the countryside surrounding London. Now great globules smashed down upon the car as they splashed their way along country roads that snaked through verges of overflowing grass. Bordering the road on either side were wide stretches of plowed fields, the landscape dotted with the gray, twisted limbs of oak trees, many of them bearing down upon the road like giants keeping watch.

  Every so often they’d come across low parts of the road that had become flooded in the deluge, and Lange would have to slow the car down as they eased through it. Several times the brown water had come up almost over the wheel arches, and the two feared they’d be forced back or worse: kill the car.

  But on each occasion they made it through and stormed onward to the town of Buntingford, eventually making it there an hour and a half after leaving the forensics lab in Lambeth. It was a small market town, the type that would have once been a staging post, thriving with carriage inns during the days of horse and cart, a stopping place for those coming to and from London. The town square was still surrounded by the historic buildings that used to house those old inns, but most of them were now homes, and only a few gave themselves over to drinking establishments: two pubs, a bistro, and an Indian restaurant.

  Patrick O’Brian’s grandma, Moira, lived on a small council estate at the edge of the town, and it wasn’t long before they were pulling into a small close of semidetached government houses all dressed in ugly gray cladding, many of the gardens overrun with weeds and litter. At the end of a cul-de-sac stood a two-story yellow-brick block of flats, two featureless rectangular slabs interconnected by a central stairwell that had a tall window stretching up its entire height so you could watch the residents going in and out of their flats. It was one of those four-apartment buildings that exist all over Britain in towns and villages and are inhabited primarily by the impoverished elderly.

  They ran out of the car, the rain pelting them every step of the way, and buzzed the old woman’s flat. Soon a husky female voice with an Irish accent answered.

  “What’d’ya want?” it barked.

  “Is this Moira O’Brian?” Jack asked.

  “Yes it is, and who in the feck wants to know?”

  Jack gently smiled. Her accent reminded him of his own mother. The language, however, didn’t.

  “My name is Detective Sergeant Jack Sheridan, and I’m here with Detective Constable—”

  “The filth?” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, madam, we are the police.”

  “Then you can feck off.”

  “Please, Mrs. O’Brian, this is very important.”

  “And so too are my programs and ya spoilin’ them. So be away with ya.”

  “I don’t want to argue, Mrs. O’Brian, and I don’t want to bring you trouble. I need to speak to you about Patrick.”

  The old woman sighed on the other end.

  “What’s the little gob shite been up to now?”

  “I’m not sure. He may be in a lot of trouble. I was hoping you might be able to help me in that.”

  Another sigh.

  “I’ll tell you what, only because I don't get many folk comin’ my way, I’ll let ya in outta the rain for a wee minute to have a cuppa tea. But once ya tea’s finished, ya can go backs ta where ya came from. Okay?”

  “That’s all I want. A cup of tea.”

  The door buzzed open, and Jack and Lange got out of the rain. As they made their way to the second floor, the hollow sound of their footsteps on the concrete stairs intermingled with the elements bashing the tall window. Upon reaching the landing, they saw an elderly stout woman with white permed hair framing a round friendly face, a rosy red mist across the cheeks and the burst sausage of a nose. She was wearing a white cardigan and a green-and-blue tartan skirt to her knees. The stumpy little legs sticking out the bottom were the same reddish color as her face.

  “The kettle’s on,” she announced. Jack and Lange got their badges out, but she waved them away. “If you’re not the rozzas and have come to thieve from us, you’re wastin’ ya time. I got about a tenner’s worth of nothin’ in there. Anyway, it’d be just as good to have the company of a thief as much as the company of the rozzas. In my long life, I’ve spent time with the both of them well enough.”

  They followed the old woman into the cramped flat as she waddled back inside. Like many old ladies that live alone, Mrs. O’Brian was a gatherer of things, and the place was full of knick-knacks she’d collected throughout her time on Earth. Making their way through to the lounge, Jack and Lange spotted at least four carriage clocks decorating various surfaces, each one telling a different time. The walls were peppered in framed photographs, and it appeared the old girl had known many people at one time or another. Other quaint little oddities were the innumerable miniature models of windmills, cottages, and other things that sat on sides or on little shelves that had been erected all over the walls for the distinct purpose of carrying it all. Walking through the collage of Moira O’Brian’s life, Jack was particularly interested in the photos. The old lady appeared to surround herself with a crowd of smiling faces that probably no longer came to visit for one reason or another. It was as though merely having their image close by somehow made up for their absence.

  Upon reaching the lounge, Mrs. O’Brian ushered the two to sit down on a threadbare couch that had a home-knitted pink throw-over covering its middle, When they were sat she went off to the kitchen to prepare the tea. The moment she was gone, the two men began glancing around the room, paying specific attention to the pictures.

  “There you go, sarge,” Lange said, nodding in the direction of a large framed photograph that had prominence in the middle of a Formica mantlepiece built over an electric fire.

  Jack looked in the direction Lange had nodded and couldn’t believe his eyes. He stood up, walked over to it, and took the picture from its spot. He then sat back down, and the two men studied it. It was a family. Mum, dad, son, daughter. The daughter looked early teens, and the son was only eight or nine. Mum and daughter both had blonde hair. Father and son, brown. They were all huddled together smiling, showing off their teeth, the sun shining brightly behind them and lighting them up in a halo of light.

  Soon the old woman waddled in holding a tray of teas. She placed it carefully on the chipped wooden coffee table in the room’s center and sat herself down with her own mug in a large easy chair covered in a sky-blue knitted blanket.

  “So what’s Pat been up to?” she asked, blowing on the surface of her tea.

  “This girl here,” Jack said, holding the picture up to her and pointing to the daughter. “Is her name Gemma?”

  The old woman took her glasses from a small table at her side and placed them over her eyes. She then leaned forward and took a good look.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s Gemma. My granddaughter.”

  63

  Dorring screeched through the streets back t
o the hotel. He was driving the Hummer he’d taken from the men who’d come to kill him, his own car now riddled with bullets. The reason he needed to get back to the hotel was simple: if the Doyles had Chloe, he’d need serious firepower to get her back.

  A single thought raged through his head while he plowed the Hummer through the endless curtain of rain. He was petrified that they’d hurt Chloe. Absolutely petrified. In the short time he’d come to know her, he’d felt some kind of divine connection open up between them, some kindred part in each of them recognizing instantly the pain held within the other. He felt at ease in this girl’s presence, something that he rarely did in the company of people, and he raced to her now as though she were his own flesh and blood.

  Alex pulled up outside the hotel and flew into it, waking the sleeping receptionist when he came bolting past. His feet pounded up the stairs, and he threw himself through the door of the room.

  But when he bounded inside, he quickly froze.

  There sitting in the chair in front of him was a man he’d never seen before, but one he knew in an instant. Gazing at him with a gun in his hand sat the dead face of an agent.

  “Close the door behind you, 192,” the man said in a cold tone. Calmly, Alex did as he was asked. “Put this around your wrists.” With his free hand, he threw Dorring two thick zip ties tied together so that they formed a set of loops, like handcuffs. Alex placed his hands through the loops and pulled his arms apart, thus tightening the ties around his wrists. He knew that if there was an opportunity to escape, it wasn’t now. He’d be shot instantly if he made a wrong move. Perhaps they planned to kill him anyway. “Sit down on the bed, 192,” the man added, illustrating his instructions with a flick of his gun barrel.

  Dorring did as he was told and sat himself down on the end of the bed. The agent repositioned his chair slightly so that they were facing each other with a two-meter gap in between. A bullet would easily outrun a punch or kick at that distance, Alex thought.

  “Have you any other weapons except for what’s in the two suitcases?” the agent asked.

  “I have a pistol in my jacket pocket.”

  The agent got up, came to Dorring, pressed the gun to his forehead with one hand, and took the silenced PPK from his jacket pocket with the other. Once he had, he sat back down, aiming both pistols at Alex.

  “What happens now?” Alex wished to know.

  “You come back. Pretty easy. Nothing to worry about. Control understands. Your sister has been killed. You’ve become emotionally unstable. You have to be monitored for your own good. So you’ll be taken to the Pit.”

  This sent a faint tremor through Dorring. The Pit was a place no agent wanted to go. Death was a better retirement than the Pit. It was basically a high-security psych ward for unstable agents. Life imprisonment hidden away in an underground facility, officially registered as dead. Locked away from the sun.

  “How did you find me?” was Alex’s next question.

  “How do you think? You made a mistake by going after the stepfather so blatantly. You should have terminated him. Instead you called the police. You know we’re listening. Control put a search out on his car, had a look at all the CCTV footage taken of it through cameras that had scanned it with automatic number-plate recognition software recently. They watched the footage of the night before and saw another car following it to Epping Forest. They took the number plate of that car, ran it through the software, and found that it belonged to a Travis Margate. Fake identity, they found out. Then Control discovered that the car had spent a large amount of time parked up in a back road here. I drove down and had a look around. The moment I saw this place I knew. Call it intuition between agents. Anyway, under the cover of booking a room, I had a quick scan of the registry book and saw that someone had used the alias James Bond 007.” Alex rolled his eyes at Chloe’s choice of name. “I checked the room and saw the two cases. Bingo. I have 192.” Alex shook his head. He knew they should have moved. “So now the explanations are out the way, shall we make our exit posthaste? I have a van waiting for you on a side road not far from here.”

  The agent raised his tall frame from the chair, the gun’s aim never leaving Alex, and signaled for Dorring to get up with an upward flick of the barrel. Alex stood and the agent threw a black T-shirt belonging to Chloe over the top of his bound wrists to hide the zip ties. With a sweep of the gun, the agent instructed Alex to lead the way, forcing him to awkwardly open the door with his tied hands.

  Wondering how he would get out of this and save Chloe, Alex began making his way down the stairs, the agent several steps behind him holding a gun by his hip so that it was slightly concealed. Stepping out onto the floor below, Dorring turned toward the next set of stairs, and as he turned his head, he saw someone in the corner of his eye. He didn’t stop to look further, but he was sure he’d seen a man leaning with his back against the wall, as if waiting for someone to come by down the stairs. When the agent stepped out onto the landing behind him, Alex heard an almighty thud and quickly turned. The agent was crumpled on the floor, and Alex instantly kicked the gun away from him. He looked up and saw Danny standing to the side, a short piece of scaffold pole in his hand.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” Danny asked, his eyes glaring down at the agent, a trickle of blood beginning to flow from the man’s hairline.

  “Whatever he is, he won’t be getting up anytime soon. Have you got a knife?”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, looking up from the body and coming over to Alex.

  He took a penknife out of his back pocket and began sawing through the zip ties. While he struggled through them, he explained why he was there:

  “I saw that fella come in here earlier. He looked dodgy. So I snuck into the place and followed him up the stairs. I saw him go into your room and then not come out. So I waited here. That’s when I saw you shoot past. You were going so quickly I couldn’t warn you. I didn’t want to shout in case he heard. So I went round the corner and got this piece of scaff bar from a skip and came back, hoping you’d both come out.”

  “I thank God you did.”

  Danny freed Dorring’s hands, and Alex went over and picked the gun up, placing it down the back of his jeans and pulling his jacket over the top. Then the two of them shot back upstairs to the room. They grabbed the suitcases and left, stepping back over the bleeding body of the agent on the way down. They ran out onto the street and got into the Hummer that was haphazardly parked at the curb. Alex pushed his foot all the way down on the accelerator and tore out of there, weaving in and out of the traffic and the rain.

  64

  Jacob Earle looked down with love at his Remington 870 Express Super Magnum. Running his hands down the wood finish stock and along the smooth barrel of the powerful pump-action shotgun, he felt a flutter of purest joy enliven his heart. It was like the first time he’d smoked crack.

  He’d shot the gun several times at private ranges and out in the woods, but it had never tasted blood. He’d often wondered what it would be like to see a man smashed apart by this supreme gun. But he’d never had that chance since he’d owned it. As a matter of fact, Jacob Earle hadn’t personally killed another man for almost twenty years. Given the order to kill, yes. But it had been a long time since those orders had been given to him.

  Today marked a change. Since he’d received word that afternoon that his warehouse was up in flames and that Don Parkinson of Scotland Yard was personally coming after him due to evidence of drugs and weapons smuggling being found in the charred remains of the building, he had been in hiding. His lawyers stated that he was personally being sought in the matter and that the Met were going all out for him, blaming him also for the attack on the Sensual Sin studio, a legitimate business in the police’s eyes, and for the woodland shooting. It was all being pinned on Jacob Earle, and the way he saw it, the whole shithouse was going up in flames around him. If that was to be, then he would drag that fat fuck Jerry Doyle and his depraved little son into the flames with him. />
  Earle looked up from the gun and saw his brethren sitting opposite and alongside him in the back of the van, all armed to the teeth, serious looks of war on their faces. Underneath them, the road rumbled by, and overhead, a storm of biblical proportions raged down on the world. There were three vans in all filled with a total of thirty men. Black knights galloping to battle. They were going to storm the Fat Man’s castle and erase everything. It was the Book Of Revelation now for Jacob Earle. The final chapter in it all.

  Nothing would remain after today.

  65

  The ties on Chloe’s wrists and ankles were biting into her skin. She was sitting in a crudely nouveau-riche sitting room on a purple chaise longue, the walls vandalized with gold-and-black-streaked wallpaper, a despairing purple chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Completing the utter gaudiness of it all were marble sculptures of naked women in differing poses from the Kama Sutra standing everywhere on shelves and coffee tables. In front of her on a purple cushioned chair was a large man with a crooked nose and a wide forehead. He was glaring at her the whole time.

  Suddenly the red door of the room opened, and her face instinctively scowled at the sight of Billy Doyle. In contrast, his own face glowed with a smile the moment their eyes met. It looked perversely odd on his otherwise spitefully cold face.

  “At last,” he said, closing the door behind him and seating himself down next to her. Chloe instantly recoiled from him, but it didn’t bother the man. He merely looked at her with an expression of admiration. “My God, you look just like her.”

  “Don’t you ever mention her,” Chloe spat at him. “You don’t have any right mentioning her.”

  “I loved her.”

  “Is that why you killed her?”

  “I set her free. She was soiled. Tainted. But you. You’re something more. Something incredible. A symbol of purity.”