by Chris Ward
‘Christ, not much of a burglar, are you?’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she said, looking up into a face shadowed from the streetlights by a deerstalker hat. ‘I just … just … my….’
The figure squatted down. It was a man in his mid-thirties, with a kindly face soured only by eyes that had a distant look about them, as though he had seen too much he wanted to forget.
‘I’m a doctor; I wouldn’t hurt you. But who are you and what the fuck are you doing trying to break into my surgery?’
Suzanne looked up again, but when the man smiled, lifting his eyebrows at the same time, all she could do was burst into tears.
‘Look, you can save the excuses about why you’re in whatever predicament you are,’ the doctor, who called himself Frank, said. ‘I don’t really give a shit, because there’s little injustice you can tell me about that I haven’t seen with my own eyes. This country’s being eaten alive from the inside out, and if Maxim Cale gets in power, it’ll only get worse, despite what people seem to think.’ He handed her a cup of tea. Suzanne drank, tasting the pang of something exotic.
‘Cinnamon,’ he said, noticing her look. ‘It was the best substitute for brandy that I had to hand. It’ll give your immune system a boost, if all those quack doctors are to be believed. If nothing else, it’ll warm you up.’
Suzanne whispered a thank-you as she held the cup with both hands. ‘My sister is hurt,’ she said. ‘She has an infected knife wound.’
They were sitting in a little kitchen in a house connected to the surgery. Black curtains entirely hid the world outside, but in the quaint, cramped room Suzanne felt safer than she had in a long time.
‘It’s a good job I saw you,’ Frank had told her after letting her inside. ‘The windows are wired up to a security system. Porlock would have been crawling with DCA within five minutes of you breaking that window.’ He glared at her. ‘I knew you weren’t from round here because locals know better.’
‘I was desperate,’ she said, and his nod told her that he understood.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘our medicinal supplies are severely limited. Very little is imported now and British companies are charging a premium few doctors or patients can afford. I’ll give you what I can, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be strong enough to work.’
He got up and went through a connecting door into the surgery. After a couple of minutes he returned carrying a small jiffy bag. As he handed it to her, Suzanne counted four unmarked pills.
‘One when you get back tonight, then three over the course of tomorrow. Come back again tomorrow night and I’ll come up to take a look. If you bring her down to the village you’ll arouse suspicion. You know you need a permit to stay here? How you got around the roadblocks is beyond me.’
Suzanne shrugged. ‘I took the scenic route, I suppose.’
‘You’ll note these are unmarked,’ Frank said. ‘There’s a reason for that. While I believe you, I don’t trust you. And if you’re playing me for an idiot, you’ll find these impossible to sell on.’
‘How can I trust you? How do I know these are what you say they are?’
Frank grinned and winked. ‘Because I’m a doctor. Would I lie?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Hope, that’s all most of us have these days. Can you find your way back in the dark?’
‘I found my way down here.’
‘Be careful. You’re not the only runaway I’ve seen in these parts of late, and others might be a lot more dangerous.’ He opened a cupboard and pulled out a box, which he rummaged through. ‘Take this.’
He handed her a metal tube with a button on one end. ‘What is it?’
‘Taser. Point the flat end at what you want to zap. Won’t kill anyone, but it’ll give you a few seconds’ head start. It’s police-issue.’
At the mention of the police, Suzanne felt a sudden hot flush, as though this were all a trap.
‘Where did you get it?’ she said.
Frank grinned. ‘Black market. A doctor’s best friend.’
32
Tommy
The guards were dead.
Tommy, walking a few paces behind Nevin Reynolds, kept his gun held to his shoulder, in case the Huntsmen had missed anyone. The corridors of the small insurance firm were deserted, the memory of the three hardmen left behind to guard what was a cover for a trafficking boss and one of Tommy’s main rivals now nothing more than a few patches of blood.
The Huntsmen had dragged the corpses away into a side room. Tommy, unwilling to know what they were doing, had closed the door. It had been a small mercy for the guards that the Huntsmen were so efficient none of the guards had even seen them coming.
‘Here,’ Nevin said, pointing into an office room. He frowned, looking away, and Tommy wondered what savagery he would discover.
Claude Auteur was crudely tied to a chair. A man to whom Tommy offered a grudging respect in person but hated behind his back, he was missing one eye and part of his face. Visibly struggling to control himself, he stared up at Tommy out of his remaining eye.
‘You’re late on your payment,’ Tommy said. ‘And for that reason I’m shutting you down.’
A shaking arm slipped out of the bonds and grabbed something from beneath the chair. As Claude lifted the gun, Tommy kicked it away before the man could get off a shot. As it clattered across the office floor, Tommy made a mental note to tell Kurou to remind the Huntsmen that guns were dangerous. While they might be able to take a few shots, he could not.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ Claude gasped. ‘I hear you’re helping some runaways. I can get them into London and make them disappear … for a small fee.’
A week earlier, Tommy might have considered it, but now Patrick’s betrayal continued to make itself known in his aching knee. Even so, on some levels he understood the ungrateful little bastard. The kid was young, he was desperate, and his girlfriend was a stunner. Plus, he was family. If Tommy ever caught up with Patrick, he would beat the living shit out of him, but afterward would take him for a drink.
‘That deal has passed,’ Tommy said. He lifted his gun.
‘Wait!’ Claude groaned, holding up a hand. ‘We can work something out.’
Tommy shook his head. ‘I know little birds were whispering that Tommy Crown had fallen on hard times, but that was bullshit. Speculation. You cancelled your payment. That’s not just rude, it’s insulting. I’ve had your back for years, Claude.’
‘Tommy, wait—’
‘What, Claude?’
‘How about we double it? Triple? Come on, for an old friend.’
A younger Tommy might have made the mistake of letting the other man bargain, but he had been around too long. Claude trafficked runaways for prostitution gangs in the big cities. He didn’t possess a single empathic bone. Had it not been for the cash helping to run Tommy’s own underground ventures, he would have put a bullet through Claude’s skull years ago. It was just a sad fact that money talked louder than actions.
‘Okay, Claude, I’ll make you a deal. You write me down a code to triple your payments, and I’ll let you live.’
‘You’re a kind man, Tommy,’ Claude said, smiling with what was left of his mouth.
Nevin had been vomiting in a corner. Tommy called him forward and instructed him on loading up Claude’s computer system and working the injured man through setting up a tripled payment code. The whole while Tommy stood back and watched, the gun held firmly in his hand.
‘There,’ Claude said, when it was done. ‘See? I’d never let you down, Tommy. It was a simple mistake, that’s all.’
‘It’s much appreciated,’ Tommy said, going to the door. He opened it and leaned out, whistling as Kurou had taught him. The Huntsmen appeared, their lips glistening with blood. Tommy shivered as he waved them forward.
‘Got more for your master,’ he said.
‘Wait!’ Claude shouted. ‘You said—’
Tommy smiled. ‘Oh, I’ll let you live. I’m a man of my pro
mises, Claude. In a few days you’ll be better than you ever were.’
Claude screamed as one Huntsman cut him free then helped the other throw Claude over his shoulder. Claude was still screaming as the creature ran out, carrying him with no more difficulty than it might a bundle of sticks.
Nevin Reynolds was vomiting again. Tommy looked at him, then glanced at the two Huntsmen still standing in the doorway, wondering how much longer he could trust his old associate. The DCA were closing in. Moose was dead, Saj had disappeared. Dave Green was also dead, caught by Kurou’s Huntsmen leaving the offices of Urla Wynne. What Dave had said, Tommy didn’t know, but he wondered if it wasn’t about time to get himself out of Britain while he still could. He had money overseas, in Ireland and France; he could start over. It wouldn’t be so hard.
‘Let’s go,’ he said to Nevin, and they headed for the stairs. The Huntsmen had gone ahead, taking the stairs in two bounds, rushing out into the street.
Tommy hurried after, Nevin at his shoulder.
As he burst out on to the street, he didn’t hear the gunshot that caught Nevin in the neck, but he felt the hot spatter of blood as it hit his face, blinding him momentarily before the spotlights that came on did.
He was still on his knees, wiping Nevin’s blood out of his eyes, when strong hands grabbed his, forcing them behind his back. Cuffs went over his wrists, and someone slammed a fist into his face for good measure.
As he lay on the pavement, his eyes filled with a red-washed glare, he wondered who had shopped him; whether it had been Kurou, Nevin, Dave Green, Claude, or someone else.
‘Hello, Tommy,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.’
In a cell on a basement floor of the town’s main DCA office, three DCA agents chained him to the bars and then kicked him around for a while, a beating that made him feel like a piece of meat being tenderised. Their blows were lazy and lacklustre, but by the time they were done he was a mess of blood and bruises, and a couple of his back teeth lay among splashes of blood at his feet.
They used a few buckets of cold water to clean him off, then chained him, battered, bruised, and shivering, to a metal table fixed to the floor.
Urla Wynne looked dressed for a night at the opera when she showed up and allowed the guards to let her inside.
‘Hello,’ she said, taking a seat opposite.
‘Fuck you,’ Tommy answered. ‘Just string me up and get it over with.’
Urla laughed. ‘You think you’re a big fish, do you? That I should be happy to have landed you, and treat you with the kind of public send-off you deserve? Come on, Tommy, you’re not even a fish. You’re a nobody. A nobody caught red-handed. We found four bodies inside that building.’
‘I didn’t kill them. I didn’t know they were there. I saw the doors were open so I went in for a bit of gentle thievery, casual like. Opportunistic.’
Urla laughed. ‘Really? You expect me to believe that?’ The DCA chief rubbed her chin. ‘Actually, I know part of what you say is true. You didn’t kill those three men. Well, you might have done, but you certainly didn’t … eat them.’ She laughed, but Tommy sensed a little nervousness behind it. ‘Not a well-fed man like you.’
‘Go take a running jump. I’ve done more for the people of this town than you and your scumfuck army of enforcers has ever done. Call yourself a policing force? You’re a fucking disgrace. It’s because of people like you that people like me exist.’
Urla laughed again. ‘Oh, so noble. Like it or not, Tommy, you’re not in control. I am. And above me, soon Maxim Cale will be.’
‘Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse—’
‘And little people like you are causing me too many problems. At the moment, as it stands, you’re a dead man, Tommy. But that can be changed. There are ways.’
‘Who shopped me? Who tipped you off to where I’d be tonight?’
‘Ah, now we come down to it. The bottom line. Do you really want to know?’ Urla took a deep breath as though excited by the big reveal. ‘Our servers received an anonymous message, but we traced the IP address back to a computer at Carmichael Industries.’
Tommy said nothing. He had thought it more likely Kurou would shop him to the devil than to Urla Wynne. It was true then that you could trust no one, even the least trustworthy person of all.
‘Now, we know what’s going on up there,’ Urla said. ‘And we’re going to shut it down. Here’s the moment you get to let yourself out of the cage. I want to know exactly what this Doctor Crow is doing in there. I want to know what those dog things are, how many he has, what they are capable of. When we go up there to close him down, I want every possible situation covered. If Crow is taken into custody—dead or alive—you’re a free man. Do we understand each other?’
Tommy stared at her. There was no way Kurou would have just shopped him for no reason. The only agenda Kurou worked to was his own, but he must have known how Tommy would react, how he would try to save his own skin. It was all part of one big plan, the reason for which only Kurou knew.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’
33
Suzanne
Sun was streaming through the windscreen when Suzanne woke. She shivered at the morning chill, sat up, and began rubbing her arms to get a bit of heat into them. She had given Kelly the best of the blankets found in the boot, taking only an oil-smelling old towel for herself.
Beside her, Kelly was still breathing. Suzanne nudged her, and Kelly opened her eyes.
‘Where are we?’ Kelly said, her eyes sagging.
‘The coast,’ Suzanne replied, keeping her voice steady, but inside feeling ecstatic that Kelly looked better. It had been the first time Kelly had spoken in two days without slurring her words. As Kelly blinked sleep out of her eyes, Suzanne reached across and touched her forehead.
The fever, while still there, had eased. No more the throbbing heat it had been, it was a gentle warmth.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Like I’m going to die,’ Kelly muttered. ‘But less like I’m going to die than before.’
‘Stay here where it’s warm,’ Suzanne said. ‘I’ll find you something to eat.’
What had felt like a lot of cans jostling about in her bag was only a couple of days’ supply, but she would worry about that later. Wishing she had some way to make heat, she selected a can of soup with a pull-tab cap, opened it and gave it a stir with a plastic spoon. It didn’t look particularly appetising, but it would keep Kelly’s strength up. Her own belly was starting to look skinny, and she wished she’d eaten more at the cabin while she had a chance.
She gave Kelly the soup and then helped her over to the nearest bushes to take care of her bodily functions. Back in the car, Suzanne sat Kelly up in the seat and covered her over with the blanket.
‘I found someone who will help us,’ Suzanne said.
‘Where’s Patrick?’
Suzanne looked down. ‘I don’t know. He went to get help, but he didn’t come back.’
Kelly sniffed. ‘Perhaps he got caught and taken to the same place as Mum and Dad.’
Suzanne didn’t want to think about it, even though it was as likely as anything else. ‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘I hope he just got sidetracked, got caught up in something else.’
‘What are we going to do?’ Kelly asked.
Suzanne shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We can’t go back, can we?’
‘No. Not right now. Perhaps, when things settle down a little.’
Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. Things would never settle down. Things would never settle down ever again.
With not much else to do, they talked idly for a while, catching up as sisters, with Suzanne talking a little about Patrick and her father, Kelly about school, her friends, and her mother and Don. Suzanne checked Kelly’s wound, and while it still looked bad, a little of the swelling had gone down. She had brought th
e medical kit from Don’s cabin, but the supplies in that too would only last a couple of days.
She tried to stay positive for Kelly, tell her that things would be all right, but inevitably the time came when the euphoria of her fever passing was replaced by the vacancy of her mother and father, and the likelihood that Kelly would never see them again, that she was as much a fugitive now as Suzanne.
‘I’ll never leave you,’ Suzanne said. ‘We’ll stay together, and we’ll get through this together. I promise.’
With a sullen expression, Kelly shook her head. ‘Mum used to say the same thing every time Dad went off on a trip. She never let me see how worried she was that he wouldn’t come back, but I could tell just from the way she acted. And she’d tell me not to worry, that even if Dad had to go away, she would take care of me.’
Suzanne wasn’t sure what to say. She took Kelly’s hand and gave it a squeeze, wishing she could say something to offer Kelly more comfort.
After another cold can of soup for lunch and the second pill of the day, Kelly slept for a while. Suzanne walked back along the lane, checked out the forest around them, and made sure they were safe. Then she gathered some twigs and managed to make a small fire using a cigarette lighter found in the car’s glovebox to ignite some dry grass. Setting the fire among rocks back near the tree line where the rising smoke would be disguised by the tree branches overhead, she made a little platform and attempted to heat a can of soup for their dinner.
Twilight was already falling. Suzanne wondered for the thousandth time what had happened to Patrick, then forced herself to shut images of him being tortured in a DCA cell out of her mind.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ she told Kelly, then headed for Porlock.
She went around the back of Frank’s surgery and found a light on in the little kitchen. Frank looked surprised to see her, as if he had expected her never to return. Appearing delighted to have some kind of project, he set the pace as they headed back up the hill to the car.
