The Way Home

by Glover, Nhys

  What if Marnie’s granddaughter had written a message in code somewhere? They did that in wartime. Why wouldn’t Fran use such a technique when danger was facing her and she didn’t know who to trust?

  Hawk read the message on the card but his English was poor. He could understand the words and their general meaning, but any possible inferences to be drawn from the semantics were beyond him. It would be best to take both objects back to Cassie and see if she could make sense of it.

  Closing up the flaps of the box again, he stacked it neatly on the pile. Then he turned off the light and left the shed. No one had disturbed him during the whole time he’d been there. If the criminals had been watching the place, they’d obviously decided to leave him to his search. And if they had any sense, now would be the time to make their move. If he’d found anything, he’d have it on him at this moment.

  Before he locked the shed back up, he checked his surroundings closely. There didn’t seem to be any unusual shadows in the brightly lit area. He noticed the surveillance cameras angled along the driveway between the sheds. Cassie had pointed out such cameras at different times throughout the day. People here were watched like hawks every minute of the day and night.

  But was that camera providing information to their hunters? It wouldn’t matter, as long as he got away from the location fast enough and disappeared back into the city centre.

  He’d just left the meshed enclosure and was striding out of range of the “floodlights” when the shadow came at him. If he hadn’t been expecting such an attack, his assailant would have caught him off guard and successfully knocked him to the ground. Instead, Hawk managed to sidestep the charging body and had his pocketknife drawn before the man skidded to a halt and turned back to face him.

  For a moment, Hawk was stunned by what he saw. This man wasn’t one of those he’d seen at Grange End. This man could have been his brother; he looked so much like him. He even had his nose, although his assailant’s was bent crooked, as if he’d had it broken a time or two.

  The man also did a double take at the sight of Hawk.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded in heavily accented English that was both harsh and guttural. Nothing like mine, Hawk thought. That’s a relief at least.

  ‘No one. A ghost. What do you want with me?’ He answered in German, the language coming back to him as easily if he’d never stopped using it. It amused him to be honest with the man like this.

  His double switched to Bavarian German. ‘What did you take from that shed?’

  ‘What do you think I took from the shed?’

  ‘A data disc. I want it now!’

  The man was an idiot, obviously. He’d given him the information he wanted, as if they were both on the same side. And now he knew for sure that it was some kind of information storage ‘technology’ they were looking for, just as Cassie had thought.

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t find it either. Maybe the girl had it on her when she died.’

  ‘We checked back then and found nothing. We thought it was lost for good, until a few months ago when an email to a German reporter surfaced. The old email from the computer geek said she’d left evidence with a friend. It was sent from London the day she died.’

  ‘How do you know that friend is Cassie?’ He didn’t bother playing games with his double. He was getting the answers he needed; that was all that mattered now.

  ‘We checked out all the others. She’s the last. She has to have it.’

  ‘She doesn’t. Cassie has no knowledge of this disc you’re looking for. When she found out you were looking for something, she thought it might be in her box of “Keepsakes”. But there was nothing there. I just checked. So you can forget about her. Cassie’s no threat to you.’

  ‘Where’s the girl? If you give me what I want, I won’t have to kill you. I don’t mind killing you if I have to. I’m good at it. And I can make it slow or fast…’ The man grinned as he withdrew a long, lethal knife from his belt and began kneading the handle like a lover might knead the breasts of his woman. ‘Whichever way you want it. But if you give me the disc, I’ll let you live, and possibly the girl, too. If I’m feeling merciful.’

  It gave Hawk an odd feeling to see a face so like his own smiling in that malicious way. Have I ever twisted my features just so? I hope not!

  ‘Are we related?’ He had no idea where that question came from and he blinked at his own insanity. How could he be related to this man? He’d been dead for nearly seventy years.

  The man seemed as non-plussed by his question as he was. But he considered it for a moment before answering.

  ‘You sound like a Pole. My mother’s family came from Poland. Maybe we’re cousins. It hardly matters. I killed my brother when I was fourteen so I won’t have trouble killing a cousin… if I don’t get what I want.’ The demonic, lecherous smile was back and Hawk shuddered. Could this man be distantly related to him? It was a horrifying thought.

  ‘I can’t help you. Neither Cassie nor I have what you’re after. And I won’t tell you where she is. You’ll have to kill me.’ Did he sound as uncaring as he felt?

  In the next instant, the man had launched himself at him, but Hawk was again ready for the attack. This time he stepped aside at the last possible moment, twisted and used his leg to trip his opponent. The man went down heavily with a grunt.

  Before he had a chance to regain his feet, Hawk grabbed a handful of short, dark hair and yanked his head back. With an efficiency that stunned him, Hawk sliced his small blade across the man’s carotid artery. Then he released his double and stepped back. The man clutched convulsively at his neck, where blood was now spurting like a fountain.

  In one part of his mind, he was horrified by what he’d just done. In another part, he was coldly satisfied. This man was a killer who was threatening his woman. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to stop him. And his hatred of Germans had become acid in his system since the death of Mika.

  He was a soldier killing his enemy in that moment. It wasn’t murder.

  It took only a minute or two for the man to bleed out. In that time, Hawk scanned his surroundings checking to see if they’d been observed. But his double had picked his spot to attack. They were shielded from view by dark shadows from a nearby factory. And there were no people nearby. Only a man walking his dog was passing on the street several hundred metres away, and he seemed oblivious to what was happening here in the darkness.

  When the man no longer moved, Hawk checked his pockets. He found a wallet, money and passport in a strange little bag wrapped around his stomach. Removing everything he could find that would identify his enemy; he then left him where he’d fallen.

  Once in the light again, he checked his appearance. He’d been pretty certain that the blood flow had shot forward while he stood behind his double. But he couldn’t be sure he’d stayed out of the blood when he was checking for ID. With a cursory glance, he assured himself that he was unmarked by the attack. There wasn’t even any blood on his boots.

  By the time he’d taken the Tube back to central London, it was very late and the train was almost empty. The last of the energy spike the attack had given him had faded and been replaced by sickness and the shakes. This was a sensation he knew well. How many times had he sat in barracks, his body soaked in sweat, shaking like he had a fever? Hundreds of times – so often that toward the end he barely felt it – just as he’d stopped feeling guilty for his ‘kills’ long ago.

  So coming back to life had brought back the not-so-pleasant aspects of life, too. But he couldn’t be sorry for what he’d done. The man had bragged of killing his own brother, of enjoying killing, of being willing to kill Cassie to get what he wanted. No, he couldn’t be sorry that he’d taken the man’s life. And he’d do it again if another of the assassins came after his woman.

  The shakes were over by the time he got back to the B & B and quietly let himself in. By the time he reached their room, he was just glad to be back with Cassie again. Nothing else mat
tered.

  ‘Hawk?’ Her voice was groggy with sleep and worry, as he closed the door quietly behind him.

  ‘I am back. I am fine. Go back to sleep, Cassie. I will tell you what happened in the morning.’

  But she was sitting up in bed, her little lace top half off her shoulder, before he began emptying his pockets onto the side-table by the window.

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Nothing in the card or the box. But I wondered if there might be a code in the message. I brought it with me. I also met with a little trouble. So now I have a better idea of who we are up against.’

  ‘Trouble? Oh, Hawk, you didn’t run into one of those men did you? Are you hurt?’ She was at his side in an instant, trying to discover signs of injury anywhere.

  ‘He didn’t touch me. But he did not fare so well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was high with shock.

  ‘I had to kill him, Cassie. I had no choice. He was a killer and he was prepared to kill you to get what he wanted.’

  She reached over and turned on the table lamp so she could look at him more closely. Her eyes were huge with horror, and for the first time he considered his actions as she might see them… as murder, and he was a murderer.

  ‘Oh god, Hawk, you could have been killed!’ she said, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. Her eyes filled with tears and he saw no recrimination in them, only fear for him.

  ‘He underestimated me and paid the price. I was in no danger.’ It was only partly true. The man had underestimated him, but if he’d lived long enough to realise his mistake and come at him more seriously, Hawk would have been in real danger. But Cassie didn’t need to know that.

  She kissed him gently, after assuring herself he was all right. Then she turned away to study the pile of objects on the table. Picking up the burgundy-red passport that had the German coat of arms embossed on it, she flipped through it until she came to the man’s picture. Her little gasp of surprise told him that she recognised the resemblance.

  ‘He decided we were probably cousins, as his mother’s family came from Poland. But he assured me he would not mind killing a cousin as he had killed his own brother when he was fourteen.’ He sounded defensive, not wanting her to think worse of him because he’d killed someone who was possibly family.

  His sister was born in 1930, so she might have been this man’s grandmother. That thought made his chest ache. To have killed his own grandnephew; to have killed the child of the child of his sister; what did that make him?

  ‘You did what you had to do. It doesn’t matter if he’s blood. He was a killer, a cold-blooded murderer. It was self-defence. Don’t blame yourself.’

  Her firmly delivered rebuke was just what he needed to hear to put the budding guilt where it belonged. She was right. He had done what he had to do. His sister would have been horrified to know what a grandson of hers had become.

  ‘This says the man’s name is Hans Fredricksen. It’s probably an assumed identity. He’d hardly be travelling under his real name. He’s probably wanted in a dozen countries for his crimes.’

  She checked his wallet and found a driver’s licence and a credit card in the same name. The driver’s licence had a Munich address on it.

  ‘I wonder if this would…’ She stopped and looked down at the picture and then up at him again, frowning with concentration.

  ‘What? I do not look enough like him to pass myself off as this man with his associates if that is what you are thinking.’

  ‘No, but if it’s real, it might be good enough to get you the paperwork you need to become a citizen… I mean, you’re corporeal now, but you can hardly tell people you were born in the 1920s and fought in World War II when they ask for ID can you? They’d lock you away. Before they deported you.’

  Hawk took the passport and studied the photo. Unlike the ones he’d known, this one was in colour. And except for the nose, it was a fair likeness.

  ‘What about the nose?’

  ‘Plastic surgery can fix things like that. You’d just say you had that done since the passport was issued. When was that? Five years ago. Okay, it has years left on it. Plenty of time to establish yourself here if you wanted to… Or back in Poland…?’ She looked at him as she put the second choice to him.

  What was she trying to say? That she didn’t want him to stay with her now that he was a ‘real boy’? He frowned and tried not to let the thought hurt him.

  ‘I may not stay in this form once I have saved your life. I might have to go…’

  Her look of despair warmed him. So he’d misread her meaning. So why had she mentioned Poland?

  ‘Do you want me to go back to Poland after all this…?’ he asked, determined to understand her thinking, even if it hurt him further. After all, they’d only known each other a few short days. How could they be talking about a future together when they didn’t even know if he was back from the dead for good or not?

  ‘I… no, I…’ She looked away, flustered.

  He took her bare arms in his hands and stood her in front of him so he could study her expression more closely. Her perfect porcelain skin was stained red and she looked like a doll he’d once seen in a toymaker’s shop. It had been a beautiful creation, but hadn’t yet had hair sown into the scalp. The white cheeks had been painted the same rose shade as Cassie’s were now.

  ‘Talk to me. I do not know what you are saying to me.’ He used one finger to lift her chin so she was forced to meet his gaze. Fleetingly, he wished he’d had a chance to wash his hands before touching her. The thought that even the slightest streak of that animal’s blood might be transferred to her was unbearable.

  ‘I don’t want to make assumptions about what you’ll do after this is finished… I want you to know that I won’t expect you to make an honest woman out of me, or whatever a man of your times would think should happen between us. We aren’t like that anymore. People hook up and move on all the time, now. I…’

  ‘Hook up? This is the term you used for sex. Is it used for making love, too?’ He frowned, even more confused.

  ‘No. It’s too casual for that. A shag is what we’d call it. Making love is what people in a… a relationship would do…’

  ‘So, this is what we have done? Hooked up? Shagged?’ He felt the pain deep in this chest.

  ‘If you want. I mean, this situation hasn’t been exactly normal has it? And I’m not exactly a good catch… Once this is all over and you’ve got a new life, you don’t have to feel tied to me…’

  Suddenly what she was saying made perfect sense. It wasn’t that she was trying to make less of their encounter. She was trying to give him an out. The relief was intense.

  ‘Cassie. I do not want to go back to Poland after all this is over. There is nothing for me there anymore. I have haunted Grange End waiting for you for seventy years. Do you think now that I have finally found you that I want to move on to a “better catch”? I do not. I know we have only known each other a short while and this is not a normal situation, but my feelings for you are real. You brought me back to life, physically and emotionally. There is no one else for me.’ He leaned down to kiss her cold lips tenderly. They trembled beneath his.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cassie didn’t know how to take his words. It seemed impossible that he could truly mean what he seemed to be saying. ‘Well, there’s plenty of time for decisions later. It’s just nice to know that you have an identity now for whatever happens.’

  ‘Cassie…’ He uttered her name on a groan, as if he were frustrated with her for some reason.

  She was leaving the door open for him. It was the right thing to do. Why couldn’t he see it that way?

  But whatever he was thinking was pushed aside for now as he refocused them on their real issues in the present. ‘Read the message on the card. See if it gives you any idea where Fran left this information.’

  Cassie picked up the card and read the words aloud:

  ‘To my dearest sister Cas
s,

  Please know that you’ll always be locked in my family’s heart, no matter how far apart we grow in the years to come. The secrets we shared for a lifetime will always be as vital as life itself to me. Know you hold what is dearest to me forever… My heart.

  Love always, Fran xxx’

  She frowned and reread the words again, trying to make sense of the stilted, flowery speech. It hadn’t been like her friend to write such oddly phrased words, but at the time, she’d taken it to mean that Fran was thinking in German rather than English now. It had seemed like a goodbye of sorts, as if she were trying to pull away kindly, but firmly, from their lifetime bond.

  Now it seemed as if there was some other meaning in the words. Could there be a code? Did every second letter make up another meaning? What if she read it backward? The ridiculousness of what she was thinking hit her hard.

  ‘Fran wasn’t into secret codes. The only code she knew was programming code. And that isn’t programming code.’ She threw the card down angrily and collapsed on the bed, covering her eyes with her arm. It was all too hard. Why did Fran have to make it all so hard?

  ‘What does locked in my family’s heart mean?’ Hawk asked, sitting down on the bed beside her. He didn’t try to touch her.

  ‘I don’t know. That I was important to the family… her and Marnie… but she makes it sound like a prison sentence! I thought she was trying to make out she was giving me a reprieve…’

  ‘What is locked…? What do you hold that is dearest to her? What is more important that life itself?’ Hawk kept on at her.

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! She never had a diary she locked or a jewellery box she kept locked. Not that I knew of, anyway. I thought she meant I held her heart. We used to share a lot of secrets when we were younger. But that had changed when she went away.’

  ‘Locked… not a diary, not a box, what else is locked? A bank safety deposit box?’

  He wasn’t going to let this drop, even though he had to know it was painful for her. So she let her mind focus on the message, no matter how much it hurt.