Truly Deadly: The Complete Series: (YA Spy Thriller Books 1-5)

by Rob Aspinall

  9

  What Happens In Manchester

  I joined the girls in the club. I felt euphoric. Like I’d got away with murder. What else could I use the scar for? Free food? Money off clothes? Better marks on my coursework? Free drinks? Millie had the last one well and truly covered, hanging off a much older guy standing at the bar with a posse of mates. They were all relics, thirties at least. All dressed in blazers or muscle jumpers, with shoes that were too polished and formal.

  Neon was one of those basement-level, speakeasy-style places, with a long, narrow bar area leading to pool tables and a small dance floor at the far end. It was busier than a cheap card shop at Christmas, second-rate gangsta rap shitting in my ears and temperatures hotter than the sun.

  We managed to squeeze our way through to the front of the queue at the bar, where the guy Millie had her arm around was lining up a round of shots.

  Becki stuck her arm in the air and shouted, “Free shots. Whoo!”

  So much for the lift home.

  “Down the hatch, girls,” said Millie’s new sugar daddy.

  I got the attention of the barman instead. “Excuse me. Have you got any vintage single malt?”

  “What?”

  “Scotch.”

  He looked at me like I was speaking Japanese. “We’ve got, um, the regular stuff.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “What mixer?” he asked me.

  Mixer? Why don’t you just piss in it as well?

  “Neat,” I said.

  The barman poured the drink and I paid.

  “Lor! What the hell is that?” Becki asked.

  “Single malt. Why?”

  “You’re not my grandma. Have a shot.”

  “Yeah, it’s on me,” said the sugar daddy, flashing his platinum card and doing a white-man grind to the music.

  Next minute, I was dragged off to the dance floor. We formed a circle with the old guys penning us in. I was more used to wearing my hospital slippers than heels, so it took all my concentration to dance without looking like a baby giraffe on a rolling log.

  Then I had one of these guys incessantly tapping me on the shoulder, blasting his beer breath in my face, asking me mundane questions. Like: What was my name? Where did I live? Was I having a good night?

  At first I was flattered. Then I just got bored and narked. Was this it? I thought. Was this what all the fuss was about? Friday nights in town?

  Holly signalled towards a free booth. And sliding into that faux-leather seat, oh yeah, best feeling ever. We puffed with relief, before turning our attention to the bar.

  “What do you think of Millie?” Holly asked me.

  “I dunno, what do you think?” I said, lying be-atch that I was. I knew full well what I thought.

  “Well, I don’t like to criticise,” Holly said, leaning forward and sucking on her vodka and Coke. “But she does make me want to go back in time and stop her Mum having sex with her dad.”

  I burst into laughter so hard my scar hurt. Holly’s polite way of slagging people off always cracked me up.

  As if to prove her point, Millie climbed on a table surrounded by guys and took her top off, wiggling her cleavage around to a chorus of “Get your tits out for the lads!”.

  Holly and I watched on with jaws on the floor. Becki turned round and mouthed, “What the fuuuuuck?”

  We’d only been here an hour and already Millie was smashed. Next minute, the bouncers waded in and pulled her down, whisking her out of the club. We all gathered outside in the cold, me wishing I’d hung on to that jacket. We wandered along the street in our bare feet, heels in hands, too drunk for Becki to drive her car home. The bigger issue was Millie. When she wasn’t falling over laughing and flashing her knickers, she was yelling and flashing her boobs at passing cars. We dragged her away from the road and into the pedestrian high street, where all the big stores were.

  I looked at my phone to check the time.

  12.30 a.m. Seven missed calls, two voicemails and a text from Auntie Claire saying, WHERE ARE YOU???

  I was in serious doo-doo. A fifty–fifty chance of survival when I got home. Plastic Jesus would be smugger than ever.

  Little did we know, the ASBO King and his Neanderthal mates were in town too.

  “Wa-hey! It’s ma’ honeys!” a slurring, nasal voice shouted from behind.

  We turned round to see Dave, Ollie and two older men sidling up. Of all the Friday nights in all the world …

  “You stalking us or something?” Becki said.

  “Fancy a shag?” asked Dave.

  “I’ll shag you,” Millie said, in between pukes against a wall.

  “Um, no ta,” said Dave. “Either of you three ladies will do though.”

  “Especially this one,” said one of the two older guys. A big ugly skinhead who looked like a cage fighter.

  “That’s Becks,” said Dave. “How are you doing, babes?”

  “You don’t get to call me Becks, or babes.”

  “That’s not very nice,” said a drunken Ollie.

  “Yeah,” said the other one I didn’t know. A tattooed hipster rat with a call-of-the-wild beard. “We’re only being friendly.”

  “Well, go and be friendly somewhere else,” I said.

  “Ooh careful,” said Dave. “You’ll make her faint, like in Subway.”

  Ollie laughed and pretended to go wobbly at the knees.

  Once Millie finished spray-painting the wall with her quarter pounder and cheese, we moved on. But the bastards wouldn’t give up.

  “Were are you going? The night’s still young,” said Dave, as they boxed us in. We tried to push on through. If we just ignored them, they might go away.

  Yeah, right. They were like hungry, sex-starved dogs and we were the fresh meat sizzling on the grill.

  “Come back to mine,” said the cage fighter. “We’ll have a nice little party.”

  “Yeah, girls,” said Dave. “We can sort you out with some free gear.”

  “Really?” asked Becki.

  “Yeah, we’ve got weed, powder, pills, whatever you like,” said Hipster Rat.

  “I was joking, you div,” she laughed. “As if—”

  That was it. Now they were angry.

  Cage Fighter grabbed hold of Becki’s arm. “Wrong answer.”

  “Look, just let us go, yeah?” Becki said, a slight tremble in her voice.

  “I’m not done with you yet,” Cage Fighter replied, tightening his grip as Becki attempted to pull her arm away.

  “We’ll call the police,” said Holly, getting out her phone.

  “You’ll do whatever we tell you,” said Dave.

  Hipster Rat laughed, snatching Holly’s phone off her. “Got any nude selfies?”

  “Give it back!” Holly said, trying and failing to wrestle it off him.

  Dave stepped into me and put a hand on my bum. I felt ill. Even tits-out Millie seemed shocked by the whole ordeal. I looked around for help, but there were no police and no passers-by. We were on our own and officially screwed, being herded down a hidden side street with no CCTV.

  One of us needed to do something. But what?

  As we backed up halfway down the alley, Dave did something that led directly to the answer.

  He put a hand up my skirt.

  Big, big mistake. HUGE.

  I don’t know how to explain it. Something inside just took over.

  “Give us a kiss,” Dave said.

  “Oh, I’ll give you more than that,” I said.

  “All right, now we’re talking. Come here,” he said, pulling me in close.

  I dropped one of my shoes, keeping hold of the other in my right hand. As he angled for a kiss, tongue flapping out of his mouth like a fish on a line, I hooked the heel under his balls and yanked up hard until he screamed. I drew my head back and planted it crown first in his face, dropping him to the floor where he cradled a broken nose.

  The girls shared a collective gasp.

  Hipster Rat let go of
Holly and tried to sucker-punch me from the left. I stepped to one side and he missed by a mile. For some reason, I knew just where to bend his arm to make it crack. I raked the heel of the shoe down his spinal cord and he yelped like a stood-on dog.

  Ollie smashed the base of his bottle against the wall and went for my throat. I stooped down and rabbit-punched him in the sternum. He collapsed instantly, fighting for breath.

  “Look out!” Becki screamed.

  Too late. The big guy knocked me off balance with a size-eleven boot I only half managed to block. All it did was make me mad. I picked up the other shoe, stood up and rolled out my shoulders. He flew at me, swinging left and right. I blocked him once, twice, three times with some kind of self-defence move.

  Then it was my turn.

  I hammered one of the heels into a pressure point on his shoulder that disabled his right side, then picked up the left heel and stabbed him in the neck. I tugged it out, a chunk of flesh stuck on the end, blood spraying in an arc. It made my stomach turn and the girls jump backwards. Cage Fighter’s goose was cooked, but Ollie and Hipster Rat were back as a tag team. I slipped on my shoes, grabbed hold of a pole at the base of a ONE WAY sign and swung myself around feet first, planting both heels smack in Ollie’s ribs. As I landed, Hipster Rat grabbed me by the throat and growled.

  “Fuckin’ ’av some!”

  I crossed my hands in an X and knocked his forearms away, kicked the back of his knee out and drove the point of my elbow hard between his shoulder blades like Dream Lorna had done to that bodyguard in the Hamptons. He hit the ground face first.

  The four of them lay twitching and murmuring.

  I stood in shock for a moment, breath fogging in the cool night air.

  Did I just do that?

  The girls stared across the alley at me in stunned silence.

  “What did they do to you in that hospital?” Becki asked, open jawed.

  Before I could muster an answer, there was a whoop-whoop at the end of the alley. The flashing lights of a police car, lighting the alley up blue.

  Oh, bananas.

  10

  The Hair Dryer

  The threat of Dave Lee and his mates was nothing compared to the full force of Auntie Claire. The fact that I turned up jacketless three hours past curfew was bad enough. Scotch on my breath, blood on my shoes and the long arm of the law on the doorstep really tipped her over the edge.

  As soon as PC Pleb left, the hair dryer came out. She had a good set of lungs, Auntie Claire. She screamed at me until she was literally blue in the face.

  “Can I actually get a word in?” I asked, tears in my eyes, shakily sipping on a glass of water at the kitchen table.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Auntie Claire said, taking a seat across from me, head in hands.

  “Never mind getting in fistfights with boys,” she said. “The police said the four lads are in hospital because of you. What on Earth has gotten into you, Lorna? Besides alcohol, obviously.”

  That was a good question. First the Big Mac, then the Scotch, now street fighting? Plus the other thing that I was trying hard not to acknowledge.

  “I was going to go away next weekend,” Auntie Claire said. “I’m going to have to cancel now. Clearly, you can’t be trusted.”

  “No, you should go. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Hmm …”

  “It was self-effing-defence!”

  “Language, Lorna!”

  “Effing isn’t even a swear word! I could have been raped and you’re bothered about swearing.”

  “Yes, you could have got raped. Going out like that and drinking until all hours. No wonder—”

  “I can’t believe this. You’re on their side? You sound just like the stupid police.”

  The po-po had very helpfully dismissed the lads’ attempts to sexually assault us in the alley. Their word against ours, apparently. And I was the one with blood on my heels. They’d even had the cheek to tell me I was lucky Dave and his mates weren’t pressing charges.

  Auntie Claire cooled off a little and looked up at me.

  “You’ve had a heart transplant, Lorna. Victim or not, you can’t just go out drinking and dancing. First of all, you’re sixteen. Secondly, you have to be careful. You’re not like other girls your age.”

  “Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me!”

  I stood up, scraping the chair back across the floor, grabbing my handbag and heels. I wanted to leave before I really started bawling. Why was I the bad guy here? Talk about injustice.

  “You all keep telling me what to do,” I said. “Have you ever thought that I might have an opinion? That I might know what’s good for me?”

  “I know what’s good for you,” Auntie Claire said, “and that’s keeping out of trouble. Until further notice, you’re grounded. No drinking. No partying. No going out.”

  A tidal wave of angry heat rose through me: full nuclear meltdown.

  “What the hell?” I screamed, dancing around on the spot. “What’s the point of living if I don’t have a life? I might as well be dead. Come to think of it, why not pack me off to that cult like you did with Mum? No wonder she never came back.”

  “Wait. Lorna—”

  Too late. I was gone. Up the stairs and into my room, head buried in the pillows. Life was supposed to get better after the transplant, not worse. My heart pounded away like a drum ’n’ bass track. I knew I had to calm down. But grounded? So unfair. Whatever happened to the benefit of the doubt?

  Grounding me was unforgivable. Yet I had no choice but to serve the sentence, keep my head down and hope for parole on good behaviour.

  Auntie Claire was the money. The legal guardian. The jailor.

  I slipped into my PJs, got in bed and popped my earphones in. I played the relaxation music I’d been given by Lisa, the shrink. After a while I drifted off, exhausted from all the fighting.

  11

  An Evening In Paris

  I stood in a black tux, crisp white shirt and a bow tie, sipping on a glass of single malt. I faced the room, elbow propped on a long, white marble bar. Some kind of posh hotel. Huge crystal chandeliers hung over a super-lush masquerade ball packed with men dressed like penguins and women in Versace and diamonds. An orchestra played on stage. Vienna waltz kinda stuff.

  I turned around. At last, a mirror. It ran the entire length of the bar. The reflection was a shock.

  I can’t describe how weird it is to expect to see your own girly reflection, only to see a man instead. And it’s not like this was one of those vague, abstract dreams where you turn into a glove puppet and it seems totally normal.

  It felt as real as homework and period pains.

  It probably wouldn’t have been so bonkers if I’d vaguely resembled the guy in the mirror. The man staring back at me was six feet tall and well-built, with short black hair and a square jaw with perma-stubble. No surgeon in the world could make me Hispanic, ripped and twenty-odd years older. In fact, the only thing I recognised was the man hand on my glass. I sunk my drink, slipped on a black velvet eye mask and prowled the edge of the ballroom floor. A leggy, athletic blonde in a red designer gown and sparkling silver mask asked me to dance. I took her by the hand and waist and we slotted into the mass of waltzing bodies.

  Wow, I was quite the mover. Spinning around to the music with the rest of the room. This almost made up for missing the school prom (hospital stuff). I felt like Cinderella. Albeit a sexually confused version.

  The mystery woman was an eight out of ten. High cheekbones and thinnish lips. She leaned in close, hair smelling of strawberries. What was that? I had to get some. She spoke in my ear with a German accent.

  “The couple to your right. White jacket. Blue gown.”

  She was talking about a middle-aged, married couple we seemed to be following around the ballroom floor.

  “Security?” I asked in a deep, husky accent that was European, but hard to place.

  “Four upstairs,” she said, her eyes darting over to
a couple of big guys with earpieces, lurking in a corner. “Two on the floor.”

  “Did you come prepared?” I asked.

  “Straight down to business,” she said. “Can’t we just enjoy a dance like a normal couple? I haven’t seen you since Mumbai.”

  I must have been giving her a dirty look. “Yes, of course I came prepared. Left thigh. Right thigh. Ever the romantic Philippe.”

  So my name was Philippe.

  “Come on, Inge,” I said. “As if you’re the romantic type.”

  The music stopped and so did the dancing. We turned and applauded with the room. Our target climbed on stage with a mic in hand. He removed his mask. Wait, I knew this guy.

  Everyone clapped and cheered.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said in clipped tones that couldn’t quite shake off Mother Russia. “Thank you for coming. Is everyone having a good time?”

  More cheering.

  “It’s so good to see so many friends turn out for such a worthy cause. I promise I won’t keep you long. I know a lot of you have care homes to go to.”

  A big laugh from the silver contingent.

  “But seriously, I just wanted to say thank you to our wonderful orchestra tonight.”

  More applause.

  “To my beautiful wife, Magdalena, for arranging every last detail, down to helping me figure out how to fasten this damn bow tie.”

  I kinda liked this man. Did we have to kill him? That’s how these dreams normally turned out.

  “And once again, thank you for your very generous donations,” he continued. “As an orphan myself, the Second Chance Foundation is an incredibly worthy cause that’s close to my heart and tonight will make a big difference. So, please, dig deep and have a wonderful evening.”

  Right, I was definitely rooting for him now. He stepped down and rejoined his wife.

  “Looks like they’re on the move,” said Inge.

  She was right. His bodyguards flanked the target subtly as he and his wife hugged their way out of the ballroom. Now I remembered. I’d seen him on TV. He was one of those Russian zillionaires. We followed at a discreet distance until we reached a grand, black marble corridor, buffed to a squeak underfoot. I dropped back behind Inge and staggered as if drunk. She acted a little tipsy too, suddenly yelling at me to leave her alone.