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

by Rob Aspinall

  My hands tightened around the worn string handle of the stick. I raised it above shoulder height in the air, hoping I wouldn’t freeze when it came time to swing. I watched the door open a crack in the mirror. Suddenly, it flew open and a big Algerian-looking guy in jeans and a black jacket burst into the room, armed with a gun with a silencer attachment, ready to shoot. He looked at the hairdryer, confused for a moment. I swung the bat at the base of his skull. He must have seen me in the mirror. He caught hold of the bat mid-swing, yanked it out of my hands and tossed it away.

  Before I could make a run for it, he slammed me backwards into the wardrobe, the force of it smashing one of the doors in. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. He tucked the gun away inside the holster on the inside of his jacket and hoisted me out of the clothes and wire hangers. His hands were meaty. Strong. He pushed me down on the floor near the dresser and kneeled on my chest.

  “Where’s the list?” he asked in a deep, hybrid accent. London meets African migrant.

  I didn’t answer. I could barely speak.

  Just give him the case, Lorn.

  And what? Have him kill me anyway?

  The way I saw it, I had two choices. Die one way, or die another. I didn’t like the sound of either, so I stalled him while I thought of a third.

  “What list?” I choked.

  He slapped me hard across the face, then kneeled harder on my chest, right on my scar. I don’t know if it was the blind panic, but my kick-ass moves from the alley had totally deserted me.

  “Give up the list or I keep squeezing,” he said, tightening his grip around my throat.

  After all the pills and the exercise and the hoping and the praying and the raw broccoli, this was how it would end. I’d tippy-toed my way through life into a giant metal mantrap. Now I’d die on a Thursday night with damp hair, to the sound of a keyboard-playing cat.

  The man loomed over me like the grim reaper, pockmarked skin, a boxer’s nose and a badly shaven head. He slapped me hard again. My eyes stung with tears.

  “You’ve got three seconds to give me the list or you’re fucking dead,” he said.

  “You’ll kill me anyway,” I said. This is how these guys worked, I just knew like I knew. At last, Philippe’s heart was talking to me.

  “Three …” the intruder said.

  Desperate, I tried to peel his fingers from around my throat.

  “Two …”

  Even more desperate, I tried to gouge his eyeballs out. He smacked my hands away.

  “One …”

  I bit him on the wrist, but he seemed to enjoy it. He put a finger to his ear and a hand over my mouth, at least letting me hoover up some air through my nostrils.

  “She won’t give it up,” he said into a hidden mic on his lapel. “You want me to execute?”

  Talk to me, Philippe. Come on.

  I heard a click above my head. There, directly above my head, was a green LED light that meant HOT.

  “Understood,” the man said to his invisible boss.

  He grabbed a pillow off my bed and pushed it over my face. I tried in vain to break off one of his wrists. The pressure was immense, but the sense of panic worse.

  I had to fight, focus, stretch. My only hope was to reach those straighteners. But I couldn’t see shit with the pillow over my face. I reached, I stretched, I touched the wire, but couldn’t get a grip. The intruder pressed harder, pushing more of his weight on my chest.

  Finally, I touched the wire with a fingertip, then a full finger, and another. I tugged the wire and caught the straighteners in my hand as they fell from the dresser. At the same time, I thrust a knee upwards and connected with the intruder’s balls. The pillow loosened over my face as he gasped in pain. I rolled my head out to the side and reached up with the straighteners, clamping his nose between the red-hot plates. I squeezed with all the grip I had.

  The scream he made wasn’t human. More like a live pig having its intestines ripped out.

  He yanked his face out from between the plates and leapt backwards, the smell of sizzling skin filling the room. He cradled his blistered nose in his hands. I had a free second to scramble to my feet before he punched me hard in the face. Pain raged in my right cheek.

  “You fucking bitch!” he shrieked, dragging me up off the floor by my hair.

  I twisted the fingers on his hand until they cracked. He shrugged it off and picked me up clean off my feet, before hurling me the width of the room against the blinds that covered the bedroom window. I bounced back instantly. He reached inside his jacket for his gun, but came out empty. Without even realising it myself, I’d drawn it out of his holster a split second before I became a human javelin. I squeezed my eyes and then the trigger. I was going for the chest, but as I let off a shot through the silencer barrel, the gun kicked like a mule and I staggered back and hit him in the left shoulder. I steeled myself and fired again, but missed, the bullet tearing into the broken wardrobe door. In a flash, he bolted out of the room and thundered down the stairs, clutching his shoulder.

  I followed him down a few seconds later, wide-eyed and wired, the gun trained in front of my eye-line. Finger itching against the trigger. Clammy with cooling sweat.

  I swept each room like they do on TV. The house was dark and empty. The front and back doors were locked shut, but the kitchen window was gaping open. He’d smashed the pane in the corner and got in by reaching through and undoing the latch.

  Same way out as in.

  I took the key from the top drawer and unlocked the back door. I must have stood there for about five minutes, staring into the tiny brick and concrete yard before I was satisfied he was gone.

  I stepped back inside, turned on a light and took a seat at the kitchen table. The cordless phone lay in front of me on the table. I rested the gun carefully on its side and dialled 999.

  Attempted murder, I said. Come quick.

  “Has the intruder gone?” the call handler asked.

  “Yes.”

  Ten minutes, they said. Hang tight.

  My hands trembled like little lost dog’s. I could barely hold the phone still to my ear. I fumbled it onto the table. I let out a deep breath. I sat vibrating like a washing machine on spin.

  The police knocked on the door around forty minutes later, the neighbours at their windows. You can’t do much in a narrow terrace street without anyone knowing or talking about it. I was holed up in the closet under the stairs, clutching the gun and hockey stick when they came around. They sent a male and female in a small Vauxhall hatch. No CSI. No detectives in suits. They took down my statement at the kitchen table, trying to identify the nature of the crime:

  Did I know him?

  Did he shoot at me?

  Did he try and abduct me?

  Did he steal anything?

  Now, I can be a bit naïve sometimes, like when I bought an iPad online and it was just an A4 picture in an envelope. But I’m not a total donut. I know you can get in humungous trouble for firing a gun. I also know that the law says you can’t shoot people who break into your home. I’d heard too many horror stories of burglars suing their victims and people getting banged up for having the nut-sacks to take on intruders. I knew the law was a giant pleb. Which is why I pretended the intruder had shot at me. I made no mention of chargrilling his conk. No, I wanted them to treat me like a victim. Stick me in a safe house. Put a two-man team on me twenty-four hours a day. At the very least, have a fuzz walk up and down the street at night.

  All I got was a copy of the form I signed and a business card. They said they were looking in to it. They’d be in touch and they’d put a patrol car outside as a deterrent. That’s the best you got on a rough estate that half the shoplifters, drug dealers, armed robbers and benefit cheats of Manchester called home.

  “If you get scared, or in case anything happens,” said the female officer, “call the number on the card.”

  This is why I was holding on to the gun. If they wouldn’t beef up security, I would. I did
n’t tell them about the list either. Something stopped me. Again, a quiet little voice said not to.

  Trust no one.

  The police left, promising a team would turn up the next day to run ballistics, dust for fingerprints and carry out follow-up interviews with the neighbours. With little chance of sleep before morning, I made myself a brew and a cheese toastie. The only response I knew to a bad situation.

  I worked out my options.

  There were approximately none.

  Auntie Claire would shit a brick when she found out what had happened and would bubble-wrap me for the rest of my life. And what was she going to do about armed intruders, anyway? No, there was no point in her finding out any sooner than she had to. Then there was Becki’s place. I couldn’t stay there forever and I’d just be putting her beautiful face in danger.

  My only option was to carry on as normal. I’d go to the hospital on the bus, nice and public, then barricade myself in the house and power nap under Auntie Claire’s bed with the gun. Something deep down told me there were four rounds left by the weight. And I knew I could shoot the guy’s ankles off if he set foot in the room. Then put one in his skull. If I could get my aim right.

  To make the anxiety bearable, I decided to turn it into a game. Can you stay alive for the next twenty-four hours? Fun for all the family, ages sixteen and over. Yay!

  23

  Second Opinion

  Right then. New project. Project Stay Alive. It began on the bus. I waited at the stop half expecting a drive-by, but nothing came. Sitting on the number 42 to the hospital, I got to thinking that maybe MI6 – or whoever – had decided to let it go. The intruder had reported back to HQ with a burnt conk. They’d all had a big laugh about it around the water cooler and realised I posed zero threat. Case closed. Boxed up for storage.

  The bus pulled up over the road from the hospital and I made my way inside. The gun didn’t fit inside my handbag and the metal detectors in reception meant it was a complete no-no, so I’d left it at home, tucked under my mattress.

  I got a proper interrogation from Jocelyn. What was that bruise on my face I’d tried so hard to cover up with concealer? And as I turned around in my medical gown, what was that black-and-blue whopper on the right-hand side of my back? I was going to tell her about the intruder, yet, there was that voice again. Trust no one. I convinced her I’d fallen down the last few stairs and tightened the string around the back of the gown.

  “Dizzy spell,” I lied.

  “I know you, Lorna. You were probably overdoing it,” Jocelyn said.

  I stood on the weight scales in just my gown and knickers. (Unless I’m being surgically invaded, I refuse to go arse-cheek naked under a backless gown. It’s just too damn breezy.)

  I could still feel myself trembling. One life-threatening problem I could handle. Two was a bit much.

  “You’re shaking,” Jocelyn said. “What’s up, sweetheart? What’s really going on?”

  “Nothing, honestly. Must be the cold.”

  “Cold? It’s boiling in here, like always,” she said, jotting down my weight on a small notepad. “You look tired as well. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

  She held a digital thermometer to the side of my forehead.

  “Any shortness of breath?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Are you peeing regularly?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Does peeing my pants count?

  “Well, your weight is fine,” she said. “In fact, you’ve lost a few pounds.” She also noted how flat my stomach was and how thin my ankles were. All back to normal. Result! I may have been suffering from post-traumatic stress, but at least I didn’t have a muffin top.

  Jocelyn checked the reading on the thermometer.

  “You’re a little higher than usual, but nothing serious,” she said. “Okay, let’s get you into the DEXA.”

  The DEXA scan involved lying on a blue bench while a special X-ray machine scanned parts of your body. A male specialist sat analysing the pictures on a computer monitor in the room.

  “Now then, Lorna, this is quite strange,” the four-eyed boffin said.

  “Is it bad?” I asked, climbing off the bench, bracing for the worst. “Am I crumbling away?”

  A common side effect of heart transplants was a weakening of the bones, especially in petite femmes like yours truly.

  “Um, no,” he said, staring at the images. “That’s one of the reasons we called you back in today. Your bones have actually increased in density.”

  I didn’t get it. Wasn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t we be happy?

  “I thought it was the machine,” the guy said, “but obviously not.”

  These doctors. They really hated it if they couldn’t account for something. They’d rather your body fall apart in a nice, orderly fashion than do something fab they couldn’t predict.

  The last round of tests for the day would be the bloods. Normally, I hated appointment days. It was Back to Earth With a Bump Day. A grim reminder that I couldn’t just leave all this behind. Today, though, I didn’t want the tests to end. The end meant going back home and holing up under the bed with the gun, too afraid to venture out to the loo. It was an altogether grimmer reality that made the cardiology unit seem like Disneyland.

  I shuffled along the corridor, breathing a little heavy. Yet, according to the data, I was stronger and far more advanced than I should be.

  “You’ll never be out of the woods,” Jocelyn said as she pushed a needle tip into the vein on the inside of my left arm, “but being fitter should make life a bit easier.”

  Any other day, I would have taken it as a victory. Not only was my body not rejecting the new heart, but the two of them were acting like best buds.

  “Your Auntie Claire not with you today?” Jocelyn asked. “Not like her to miss an appointment.”

  “We’re not getting on at the moment.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said, removing the needle. “You only get one family, you know.”

  “She’s being a real nag,” I said. “She doesn’t want me to have a life.”

  “I’m sure she only has your best interests at heart, sweetie.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like. She acts like I’m two years old.”

  “I’m sure it’ll all blow over,” Jocelyn said, rubbing a wet piece of cotton on my arm. “There, you’re all done. Before you leave, pop into Dr Jennings’s office and he’ll sign you off. See you again, Lorna. Chin up.”

  “See you,” I replied, stepping out of the door and fighting back the tears. Get a grip, Lorn. I hated crying. When my dad was alive and not drunk out of his eyeballs, he’d told me only babies cried. I sucked up the emotion and made my way to the doc’s office.

  Everything was a long walk at the hospital. It was one of those big old buildings from the dark ages that they’d extended with new wings and multi-storey carparks. There was even a coffee joint, a gym and a mini supermarket. Away from the chaos of A&E, it was a maze of wide, empty corridors and elevators with multicolour signs leading you a merry dance. No matter what floor you were on, the hospital smell never changed. I noticed it more now that I wasn’t here as often.

  I took an elevator down to Level 1 and made my way down a long corridor to Dr J’s office, located in the older part of the building. The floor was squeaky white, with high pink walls interrupted on one side by old lattice windows that looked over a small courtyard that the staff smoked in.

  I’d been told to keep my medical gown on while I visited Dr J, which was odd because all the tests were done. This was the bit were he discussed your results with you, maybe wrote you out a new prescription and generally re-warned you about all the stuff you weren’t allowed to do.

  There was no need for a gown.

  As I approached his office on the left, a trio of doctors entered a room. They stopped and watched me for a moment before disappearing through a door. What were they staring at? I instantly pawed at my hair. It was fine.
I was a paranoid little android sometimes, especially when people laughed on the street as they were walking past me. I always thought I’d messed up my makeup or, nowadays, that they could somehow see my scar.

  Dr J’s door was half open. He paced around behind his desk and nearly jumped out of his skin when I knocked on the door.

  “Oh, Lorna, you startled me. Come in.”

  He skimmed through the results and told me that the machines had been correct after all. I was just one of those few lucky patients who’d adapted better than expected to the transplant.

  His fingers drummed on the desk repeatedly. Initially, I thought nothing of it.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I want to try a new form of medication. It’s a simple infusion drip once a month and, if it works, we’ll be able to significantly lower your immunosuppressants. So, fewer of those pills for you to pop!”

  He laughed unconvincingly. His voice was higher than usual and he was happy. Dr J, smiling? Okay, something was definitely wrong.

  He led me into Consulting Room B, a couple of doors down. The three doctors from the corridor were inside. One of them, a broad woman with a mannish face and a scraped-back ginger bun, was attaching a bag of clear liquid to a feeder pole. She wheeled it over to Dr J, who told me to sit down on the edge of the examination bench. I looked at the other two doctors. A black guy and a white guy with necks thicker than my body. They didn’t look like hospital doctors. More like a wrestling tag team.

  Something’s not right, that little voice inside told me.

  Something? Nothing about this was right. Or was I just being paranoid?

  I felt like I was losing it.

  Dr J noticed me noticing the other doctors.

  “These are my colleagues from another hospital,” he said. “They’re here to observe.”

  Consulting Room B was a poky little space with a tall, narrow window behind me. It threw plenty of light onto Dr J’s weathered old face. He had more wrinkles than an old supermarket carrier bag and wiry white hairs sprouting out of his ears like weeds. He took hold of the drip needle and glanced over his shoulder. The woman nodded. He then turned back to me and said, “This won’t take long. Just relax.”