Surviving The Evacuation (Book 10): The Last Candidate

by Frank Tayell

  “Take a seat,” the bearded man said to me.

  “What’s going on?” a young woman asked. The bearded man didn’t reply. Nor did I.

  I sat at a table in the middle of the room, moving the chair close to the table so my hands couldn’t be seen. There were a few lamps by the window, another two were plugged into the mains socket by the bar, but the room was otherwise dark. Certainly it was dark enough for what I planned.

  The bearded man was gone only for a few minutes. He returned with Markus. The candidate was still pulling on a jumper, though he’d had time to strap a holster around his waist. A few seconds behind them came Rachel. She was fully dressed and looked wide-awake. I nodded to her, and she frowned as she took me in. She stood behind the bar, hands folded across her chest.

  “What’s going on, Mr Wright?” Markus asked. “You look like you’ve been in the wars.”

  “Please, call me Bill,” I said. “As to what’s going on, it all comes down to trust. So, Markus, who here can you trust?”

  “Everyone,” he said.

  “Really?” I asked. I raised my left hand to wave at the now-awake group standing uncertainly by the wall. There were nine of them, a mixture of men and women. All were young, in their early twenties. A few had knives at their belts, and two had picked up rifles. Both were SA80 assault rifles, though without the silencers that were commonly used by expeditions to the mainland.

  “Put those down,” the bearded man said. The two men lowered their guns, though with evident reluctance. “I trust ’em,” he said.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Markus said. “Good, so we all trust each other. Now, why have you come?”

  “Bishop is dead,” I said.

  Markus was literally speechless. He pulled out a chair, and sat down opposite me. The bearded man chose a chair at a different table, sitting almost behind me. I ignored him. Unless I’d completely misjudged the events of the previous few hours, and what they told me about the events of the last few months, he wasn’t a threat.

  “Is that Bishop’s blood?” Markus finally asked.

  I looked down. “No, well, maybe some. Most of it belonged to his followers. They abducted me and Lorraine. You remember her? She was in here a couple of days ago, asking questions about people in a photograph.”

  “Yeah, vaguely,” Markus said.

  “Immediately afterwards, she was taken by Bishop’s people. They got me yesterday, after I went to one of his rallies. Did you hear him speak?”

  “Sure,” Markus said. “Once. I wanted to see what I was up against.”

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  “Of Bishop? He’d lost it somewhere in the wasteland. Wasn’t going to find it again, either. Dr Umbert should have been taking care of people like that, not getting involved in politics.”

  I raised my left hand. “I’ll stop you there. The election’s over, so you can ditch the candidate routine. That was an interesting photograph that Lorraine had. You know where I found it?”

  Markus shrugged.

  “It was in a bunker in Belfast,” I said. “A fallout shelter that had been hastily built, situated beneath a warehouse in an otherwise unassuming district. You know who built it? Lisa Kempton. She knew about the conspiracy, about Quigley’s plot, and knew that it might end in nuclear war. Kempton had a ship, did you know that? Best place to survive a nuclear war, out on the empty ocean. That begs the question of whether the bunker was for her, or for her employees. I’ve picked up a few rumours and clues along the way, but what she told her followers wasn’t necessarily true.”

  “What’s your point?” Markus asked.

  “I’m coming to it,” I said. “One of the women in the photograph was named Sorcha Locke. I thought she’d died in Belfast, and I was wrong. She escaped Belfast, and didn’t escape alone. I think she travelled in the company of a man who was the live-in guardian of a house in a village south of the Shannon Estuary. I don’t know his name, so won’t ever be able to prove it, but I know Sorcha Locke made it this far. I know that a man in that photograph was seen in this very same pub, months ago, before Quigley died.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m laying out the proof,” I said. “I’m showing you that there is proof. This isn’t supposition, inference, or guesswork. There are photographs and witnesses.” I turned to look at the nine people, and then at the bearded man. “There’s proof,” I said.

  “Proof of what?” Markus asked.

  “You know that people have been disappearing? The ones we thought were taking their boats and sailing away, well some of them might have been. Bishop was responsible for the deaths of all the others. He held a trial, you see, and that’s what I was abducted for. I was going to be tried. I’m still not sure for what crime, but like you said, the man wasn’t sane, so perhaps even he didn’t know. He told us the names of some of the others that had been tried. Sorcha Locke was one of them. She escaped Elysium, made it to Belfast, and escaped from there. It’s no great leap to assume that she escaped from Ireland by sea, and if she did that, and if she headed south, she would have stumbled across someone fishing near here. It’s no surprise that she and at least one of her comrades ended up on Anglesey. It is a surprise that Bishop found out who she was. How did he know, because he did know who she was, and how did he know about Kempton’s involvement in the conspiracy?”

  “What happened to her?” Markus asked. “Bishop killed her?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “He thought he was releasing these people into the wasteland. There they would face trial by ordeal. If they made it back to Anglesey, their souls would be deemed pure, or something like that. No one made it back, because if they had, they’d have told everyone they could about what was going on. Instead, we assumed those people who went missing had taken a boat to search for their lost loved ones. Perhaps some did, but not all. Bishop didn’t kill them, but some of those people with him did. People like Paul.”

  “Paul?” Markus asked.

  “Which is why I’m here,” I said. “Bishop was being driven by his own demons. His true followers were the same, but not everyone with him believed in his cause. So that brings me to the wider question of why was he doing any of it? Why did he stand as a candidate, and why didn’t he drop out when all the others did?”

  “I asked him to,” Markus said. “To drop out, I mean.”

  “You did? You personally?” I asked.

  Markus frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  “Did you attack Donnie?” I asked.

  “Me? No. Surely that was Bishop,” Markus said.

  “It’s not his style,” I said. “If he wanted to get rid of someone, he’d take them for trial. Then again, standing to be leader of our little community doesn’t really seem like your style. You had a good thing going on here, a trading post and bar, a bit of influence and the chance to get more. Why did you want responsibility for all these lives? You didn’t, did you? You didn’t want to win. You wanted the power that comes with being the opponent, not the hard work that comes with leadership.”

  Again Markus said nothing, but I could see he was thinking furiously. I decided the game had been played out long enough. I turned my head towards Rachel, still standing behind the bar.

  “Yes, Bishop was being driven by his own demons,” I said, “but someone was guiding them. You wanted Markus to stand, and you wanted Bishop as his opponent. I’m right?” I asked, turning to Markus. “You asked Rachel to get Bishop to drop out?”

  Markus gave a fraction of a nod. I turned to Rachel. “You shot Paul because you couldn’t risk him being arrested. That man was a sadist and a butcher, but the prospect of a noose might have loosened his tongue. That’s why you shot him, to prevent him from talking to us, from trading the one thing he had, the one thing he knew, for his life.”

  “Rachel? I don’t…” Markus stammered. “Why?”

  “Except you didn’t just shoot Paul, did you?” I said. “You set him up. Did you ask him to kill Llewellyn?
We only suspected Paul in that man’s murder, and only brought our suspicions to this pub, because someone in Willow Farm said they saw a figure that matched Paul’s description entering Llewellyn’s home. We found beer next to Llewellyn’s body, bottles of the same stuff you sell here. Did that witness really see anything, or did you tell her to say that she’d seen Paul there? Was Llewellyn chosen as a victim because of how close his house was to Willow Farm? You knew what would happen, how Paul would react when confronted. You knew he’d go for his gun. Yes, it was all quite neat, until we didn’t shoot Paul on sight. When we tried to arrest Paul, you had no choice but to kill him. And that brings us back to Sorcha Locke. When she arrived on Anglesey, someone had to have recognised her. Her and the man she was with. Someone who worked for Kempton. Someone who wanted their own secrets to stay hidden. You.” I waited. She’d not reacted to any of my accusations nor made any move to answer any of my questions. I thought she might say nothing. The moment stretched. Finally, she spoke.

  “O’Brian,” Rachel said. “That was his name. The man Sorcha was with was Sean O’Brian.”

  “You did this?” Markus asked. “You really did all of it?”

  Rachel ignored Markus. So did I.

  “You worked for Kempton?” I asked her.

  Rachel smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression. “Oh yes,” she said, “but I wasn’t one of the chosen. There wasn’t room on her ark for me.”

  “That’s the reason for all this death?”

  She laughed. “No. Locke knew Kempton’s secrets. Those secrets, even now, especially now, are more valuable than bullets, electricity, or even safety. They are the future.”

  “You killed her to find them out?” Markus asked.

  “You would have done the same,” Rachel said, turning to face him.

  “What about everyone else?” I asked. “Why did they have to die?”

  “They had to die because I needed Bishop alive,” Rachel said.

  I felt like each question was taking me further from the truth, and I could sense that there wasn’t going to be time for many more.

  “Why did you need Bishop?” Markus asked.

  “For the same reason I needed you,” Rachel said. “There has to be an enemy. Otherwise, how do you know who is on your side?”

  “But Bishop had outrun his usefulness, hadn’t he?” I said. “You had Lorraine and I abducted because you wanted Bishop to be destroyed. When the search for us began, one of your people would have remembered seeing me at his rally, or seeing a boat heading for Wales. Some clue would be found. Perhaps you would simply have overheard some of your customers talking. That would be plausible, or just plausible enough. The Marines would have descended on that campsite. Of course, Lorraine and I would be dead, but then, so would Bishop and any other inconveniently loose tongues. Your people would already have killed them. Without Bishop, Markus would be the only candidate left. His victory was assured, and you controlled Markus, didn’t you?”

  “If you wanted people dead, why did it have to be so elaborate?” Markus asked. “Why bother with Paul, with Bishop? Why not kill them and dump their bodies in the sea?”

  “There’s only one punishment for murder,” Rachel said, “but how do you define murder? How should we define it after all that’s happened, after all that we’ve done? Are we all guilty? Are we all innocent?” She turned to the shelf behind the bar. “Who wants a drink? I think I could do with one.”

  “Killing people is easy,” I said. “Getting rid of the bodies is hard, at least here on Anglesey. A shallow grave might be discovered when the land is ploughed. If you dump them at sea, you risk the corpse being washed ashore. On the mainland, you just have to crush someone’s skull. Anyone discovering the corpse would assume it’s one of the undead, but that means you have to get the victims to the mainland. That requires help, right? Of course, people require payment, and at least some of that was coming from the grain ration that Willow Farm was claiming for all the people that Paul and the others had already killed. That wouldn’t have been enough, not on its own. So what else did you pay them with? Promises, to be delivered after Markus was elected, when you knew you would really be in charge?”

  Rachel placed the bottle on the counter.

  “You set this up?” Markus asked, and he sounded genuinely aggrieved. “You wanted me to run for office just so you could… could what? What did you want?”

  “The same thing I’ve always wanted. The same thing everyone one of us wants,” Rachel said. “Though right now, I want a drink.” She reached down behind the bar. When she brought her hand back up, it didn’t contain a glass, but a sawn-off shotgun. Before she could bring it to bear, three shots rent the air. Two of those were mine. One hit the shelf behind her, shattering a glass bottle. The second hit her chest. The third shot was fired by the bearded man, and it took her right between the eyes.

  “I’d put your gun on the table,” I said, as Rachel’s corpse collapsed on the bar. “The rest of you, raise your hands above your heads. Quick now, unless you want to be the next to be shot.”

  The bearded man did, but a few of the younger people were still uncertainly reaching for their rifles when the doors burst open. The French soldier, Francois, was first through the door, but Sholto was second.

  “It’s over,” I said, as the room filled with armed figures.

  “I thought you said she’d run,” Sholto said, more than accusingly.

  “I thought she would,” I said. I turned to the room at large. “Rachel lived here, we need to search the place for anything she left behind, any notes that might give an indication as to how many people died, that kind of thing.”

  “Like the secrets she got out of Sorcha Locke?” Markus asked.

  I felt suddenly tired, utterly spent. “It won’t be the location of the Holy Grail,” I said. “Locke died months ago, and she was Kempton’s representative in Ireland. You know what secret she had? The location of Elysium, the ship in the Shannon Estuary, and how to access the satellites that we’ve been using these last few months. That’s all she knew, and we already know it.”

  “This is now a crime scene,” Captain Devine said, taking a far more practiced control of the situation. “Everyone out. Move.”

  “Not you, Markus,” I said, as the man made to leave. “You and I need to talk. Alone.”

  The bar slowly emptied of everyone except me, Markus, Sholto, and Captain Devine.

  “I thought you said alone,” Markus said.

  “I think we should have a witness or two,” I said. “If not for legal reasons, perhaps for historical ones.”

  “And this is where you shoot me and claim self-defence?” he asked.

  “If my brother wanted you dead,” Sholto said in a tone that suggested that he did, “then it would have been me who knocked at the door.”

  I waved a hand at Sholto. I was too tired for posturing. “We’ve sent a hundred sailors and soldiers to Willow Farm to arrest everyone there,” I said. “I don’t know how many people that is, but come the morning, we’re going to have to figure out what to do with them. Some of them will have been complicit in Bishop’s horror show. The rest? I don’t know, nor do I know how we distinguish complicity from coercion, but we’ll have to find a way. The same goes with your people, Markus. I don’t know who among them might have knowingly helped Rachel, but I’m sure Paul wasn’t the only one. Who can you trust, Markus? Who can you really trust?”

  “No one, it seems,” he said.

  “The election is off,” I said. “You’re the last candidate. You can insist that the contest is run, but if you do that, then I’m going to imply that you knew all about this.”

  “In court? Wouldn’t that defy the purpose of having laws?” he asked.

  “Not in court,” I said. “In print. You saw how popular my first set of journals became. I’ve got some notes that I made while in Ireland. Tomorrow I’m going to write them up. The question is whether Rob— you remember Rob? Someone told him that we’d
taken him to Ireland so that we could kill him. The question is whether I print that he told us that someone was you. If I do that, your reputation will be ruined. You’ll be lucky if anyone will trust you to dig a ditch, let alone draw a pint.”

  Markus laughed, a brief guffaw of surprise. “That’s it? You just want me to drop out?”

  “We’ll hold a new contest in the New Year,” I said. “You can stand then if you want, but later this morning you’re going to give a speech. Bow out in the name of democracy. You do that, and I’ll print something that says you had nothing to do with any of this. You don’t, and I’ll print the opposite.”

  “Personally,” Sholto said, “I’d finish this here and now, but my little brother thinks you might actually be innocent in all of this.”

  “I am,” Markus said. “I swear, I didn’t know. You want me to drop out, give a statement? Fine. Agreed.”

  “Good.” I headed to the door. “We’re in the captain’s crime scene,” I said to Markus. “You have to leave.”

  “And spend the rest of the night in the cold? Well, why not? I’ve slept in worse places.”

  “I’ve one last question,” I said, one hand on the door. “When did you guess?”

  “I’m sorry?” Markus asked.

  “We first met you in a caravan site near Caernarfon. I couldn’t figure out why you’d gone there, but you were looking for Bishop’s place, weren’t you?”

  “I’d heard Paul and Rachel talking about some caravan site, and something hidden there. I wasn’t sure what or where,” he said.

  I’m not sure I believed him, but then again, I was unlikely to believe anything the man said.

  “I’ll ask you again,” I said. “Who can you really trust? Good night.” I left the pub.

  “It would be better if he was dead,” Sholto said, as we walked through the thin crowd. About half of those present were soldiers or sailors of one nationality or another, a quarter were volunteers from Menai Bridge, the rest were curious onlookers from the houses nearby.