Blue Blooded

by Emma Jameson

  He caught her right leg, twisting her in midair. Kate’s scream was silenced only by her agonizing impact with the roof.

  The pain was too immense to scream again. It was all she could do to keep breathing. Her knee bulged in the wrong place; her lower leg was at an angle.

  “Slow. Soft.” Looming over her, Sir Duncan sounded impressed with himself. “Either that, or I can add superhuman speed to my list of remarkable personal attributes.” He glanced toward the maintenance bridge. “See that, did you?”

  “I did,” Tony said, rising as she had earlier, pulling himself up courtesy of the catwalk’s guardrail. “A fit man took down a beat-up woman. If only your mother were alive to see it.”

  Sir Duncan folded his arms and put his head to one side. In his blue jacket, white shirt, chinos, and boat shoes, he might’ve just popped round to St. Katharine Docks for a Friday night yacht cruise.

  “Is a bit of pop psychology the best you can do, Baron Wellegrave? A dig about Mummy in hopes of sending me over the edge? Literally.” He glanced theatrically toward the roof’s short barrier wall and the dizzying depths just beyond. “Wouldn’t you be better off telling me I need to make a deal? That perhaps I can negotiate a helicopter to some extradition treaty-less banana republic, if only I take you as my hostage and spare dear Kate?”

  Tony appeared intent on descending the metal stairs. He didn’t make eye contact with Kate, which she took as a good sign. Perhaps her husband’s lurching gait and trembling hands were manufactured for Sir Duncan’s benefit. If not, they were both going to die on this rooftop. Approximately five seconds after Sir Duncan tired of toying with them.

  Tony made it down the first step. “Why don’t you tell me what we’re doing up here, Godington?”

  Sir Duncan grinned. “That’s right. Put me in my place. I’m only a baronet. You’ll always be better than me, even if I hack you up with my Day-Glo hatchet and rain bits of you on the City like beads during Mardi Gras. What are we doing up here? We’re about to witness my greatness made manifest.”

  Kate surreptitiously tried to move her injured leg. The stabbing pain brought tears to her eyes. Maybe Tony’s plan was to tempt Sir Duncan into bloviating. It was a good idea—except she was thirty feet from the camp axe and able to get to it only if she crawled.

  “Isn’t your greatness already manifest?” Tony asked. He eased onto the second step. “Just last week you blew up a fringe candidate for prime minister courtesy of some low-rent hackers.”

  “Yes, well, that’s nothing compared to blowing up DEFRA’s corrupt Secretary of State and her two equally corrupt ministers. Not to mention a good chunk of the Dolphin.” Sir Duncan pointed at the neighboring skyscraper’s tallest tower. “I no longer care if this country is globalist or nationalist. All this talk of Whitehall versus Brussels? It means nothing to me. But the UK must continue adhering to the EU environmental regulations. And DEFRA was poised to betray us. Whinging that it was all too difficult, too bloody hard, for Britain to continue its green commitments after the next Great Divorce.” He grew visibly angrier as he spoke. “Do you realize, do you have the slightest idea, what our elected public servants were up to tonight?”

  Tony, on the third stair, shook his head. Kate was glad Sir Duncan seemed especially intent on making his point to her husband and not to her. The camp axe might be too far to reach without losing the element of surprise, but the gym bag’s dumped contents were mere inches away. She’d go for the handcuffs. Could she do anything with them?

  Maybe. Clamping them on his wrists would require springing up, attacking, and generally being stronger and faster than she’d been before Sir Duncan shattered her kneecap. Snapping them around his ankles was something Bugs Bunny might try on Elmer Fudd. It would seem desperate if she succeeded and barking mad if she failed. But humiliation was preferable to meek submission.

  Sir Duncan was still complaining about DEFRA. “They were drinking vodka and eating caviar with their friends from the Russian Embassy. Diplomats, spies, escorts, and fossil fuel robber barons.”

  “Wish I were there now,” Tony said, easing down to the fourth step like a man who might topple at any moment.

  “I don’t doubt it. There’s plenty of money, power, and prestige for those who understand this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something for the Kremlin,” Sir Duncan said. “The Russians are counting on climate change. No ice makes for easier oil drilling. As for Ms. Neera Nausherwani and her ilk, they have no one to blame but themselves. They let themselves be separated from the pack, and for any prey animal, that invites certain death.”

  “And killing them will change things, you imagine?” Tony asked as if considering the practicality of Sir Duncan’s approach. “I’ll admit it will put the spotlight on the environment for a week. Perhaps two.” He descended another step. “Is there really a bomb at the Dolphin?”

  “Oh, yes. Gunpowder, treason, and plot, old man.” Sir Duncan smiled. “I told the kiddies I wanted one of your cars blown up, just like they blew up Ford Fabian for his wife. What a disappointment when you started using the Bentley. Still, it must have hurt you to park the Lamborghini and that ghastly yellow Testarossa. One of the happiest days of my boyhood was sabotaging your petrol-wasting cars.”

  Lady Isabel was right. He’s gone round the bend, Kate thought. He thinks Tony’s Sir Raleigh.

  “I fear I must remind you of your father,” Tony said. “But I’m not. Look at me, Godington. I’m Tony Hetheridge. I may have retired from Scotland Yard, but I still have plenty of influence. I can help you disentangle this knot. Let me help you. If not for your own sake, for your sister’s.”

  “Ah. Yes. Dear Izzy,” Sir Duncan said. “You needn’t concern yourself with her any longer. You were never a father to her, except in name. I intended to be gentle, but she woke just as I dripped the first bit of superglue into her nostrils. That hardened fast, which was lucky, because sealing her lips was a beast. Then she clawed at her face so much I had to sit on her chest. Dead in a quarter-hour. Cheeks red and bloody. Didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Is that how you’ll live with yourself?” Tony asked, stepping onto the roof at last but still clinging to the handrail. “Imagining she felt no pain?”

  Sir Duncan giggled. Once, he’d been deceptively handsome. Now there was no other word for him but ugly.

  “Oh, Izzy surely felt pain. Superglue in the nostrils must burn. My knees pinning down her flat chest probably wasn’t a day at the fun fair, either. I meant, I felt nothing.”

  Tony straightened his back. When he spoke, it was with a strength and authority that gave Kate new hope.

  “Sir Duncan Forgive me for saying so, but you’re not the man you were. You need a way out. Only imagine. Wouldn’t your trial be a sensation? A worldwide event. The entire planet would tune in to hear your manifesto on climate change. The DEFRA ministers would be publicly shamed for their lack of ethics. And showing mercy would give you the moral high ground, which will cement your legacy. You know I’m right.”

  Sir Duncan’s lip curled. “Daddy doesn’t dictate to me,” he spat, lunging for Tony. In the same instant, Kate surged.

  She got vertical by pushing off with her arms and her uninjured leg. It hurt like hell, but pain was meaningless. All she felt was desperation. A groin kick would be ideal but impossible. A groin punch was possible, but dangerous. It would expose the back of her neck to Sir Duncan, putting her center mass within his grasp. So she went for a throat rip, knowing she would fall in the process and hoping to take him down with her.

  “Kate!”

  Bzzzzt

  She screamed as the Hot Shot touched her jaw. Its sizzling jolt knocked her back on her heels, one of which couldn’t support her. She fell with no idea which way she was falling. Would she land in front of Sir Duncan, near the gym bag? Or behind Sir Duncan, near the camp axe?

  At her back was a chilling updraft. She hit something short and hard—the stunted wall at the roof’s edge—and heard something
she’d never heard before: her husband’s scream.

  Sir Duncan caught her by the blouse front. As his fingers dug in, her blouse tore at the seams with a soft, dreamlike riiiiip. She felt herself propelled backward.

  This can’t be happening. As she stared into Sir Duncan’s mad bulging eyes, Kate prayed wordlessly, Please God, save him. “Him” meant Tony, meant Ritchie, meant Henry. Her three loves; the three lives she would trade her own to protect.

  Sir Duncan released his grip on the cattle prod. Kate didn’t hear it collide with the roof; that was because it went over. Right hand freed, he seized Kate’s jacket. Hauling her back from the brink, he flung her down beside the camp axe. She tried to seize it, but her grip was feeble. He took it away.

  “Not a machete,” he said, smiling at the weapon before turning to Tony. “Still, it will do.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “There we are, old boy.” With the snap of a metal bracelet, Sir Duncan seemed restored to the glib good humor that had once been his trademark. “Too tight?”

  Tony pulled hard against the cuff connecting him to the maintenance bridge’s handrail. Sir Duncan had fastened it exactly right, damn him. The handrail was secure, too, welded seamlessly into the metal catwalk. A sledgehammer wouldn’t have loosened the railing. But that wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage.

  An avalanche of things had gone wrong that night. But since Tony regained consciousness on the Leadenhall building’s roof, three things had gone right. One: Kate was still alive. Two: he was still alive. And three: he’d discouraged Sir Duncan from cuffing his hands behind his back.

  Sir Duncan’s ease in handling the cuffs made it clear this wasn’t his first go-round. Hoping he knew that if a captive balled their fists and squared their shoulders, it would cause the cuffs to be applied too loosely, Tony made a show of immediately putting his hands behind his back when Sir Duncan approached him. Taking a deep breath, he made himself as big as he could. Fortunately, Sir Duncan noticed. Tutting, he’d seized Tony’s wrist, saying, “I think I’ll feel better with you attached to an immovable object.” So Tony’s right hand was cuffed, but his left was free.

  The cuffs were the classic style, metal bracelets joined by two steel links. Irrespective of manufacturer, most relied on the same inner mechanism. Therefore, any random pair could be opened by almost any random key. They were easy to pick, too. Dozens of items would do the trick: paperclips, ballpoint pens, safety pins, a bloody seafood fork. But Tony had visually scoured every millimeter of the roof within reach and spied nothing that fit the bill. Only a dog-end and a butane lighter.

  Not that he wasn’t capable of overlooking something in his present state. The cattle prod had been rougher on him than on Kate. Perhaps it was the difference in their ages. Perhaps it was because he took his initial jolt to the face. But despite shambling the last hundred yards to the roof, Tony hadn’t regained his wits until he saw Kate try her Taekwondo kick and fail. Only then did he realize the full peril of their situation.

  “I’ve no idea why the No-Hopers included handcuffs,” Sir Duncan told him. “They’re not part of the standard Urbex gear. Unless they’re for rooftop sex games. Those kids are degenerates.”

  Watching Tony carefully, as if angling for a specific response, he continued, “Tell me, did you ever use restraints on any of your women? Was that how it went wrong between you and my mother?”

  Before Tony could decide how to reply, Sir Duncan waved his question away. “Never mind. Evolved as I’ve become, I don’t need to know. There was a time when it used to torture me, imagining what you did to her. No longer.”

  “Perhaps I’ve always misunderstood you,” Tony said. It was standard advice within the Met never to challenge an assailant’s delusion. Playing along or redirecting was safer. Trying to drag the individual into the here-and-now could provoke a fatal attack. “Tell me about this evolution.”

  “Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You still think you can talk your way out of this. Bluster, bully, and run right over me.” Sir Duncan’s cannibal grin, long celebrated by the tabloids, flashed green as the Leadenhall building’s four-pointed spire pulsed far above. “You know why you’re still alive? Why she’s still alive?”

  Turning, Sir Duncan gazed upon Kate like an artist studying his half-finished landscape. She remained where he’d left her after taking away the axe. Tony allowed himself to meet his wife’s eyes for only a split-second. She looked scared, pained, and mad as hell.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Sir Duncan said. “Because no triumph is complete without an audience. Our friends from DEFRA can’t have much time left. Not more than… Oh, bugger.”

  He was looking out at the city, apparently at nothing. Was the man hallucinating? Then Tony saw it, faintly. A flash of light from one of the Dolphin’s towers.

  “Now what?” Pulling a mobile from his wind-cheater, Sir Duncan speed-dialed someone. When the line engaged, he said, “Kyla, my love. Why are you on the roof again?”

  Kyla Sloane, Tony thought. Kate never liked her. I hope she gets the chance to say ‘I told you so.’

  Sir Duncan listened to the response, idly twirling the camp axe and pacing. Each time the man turned his back, Tony rotated his shackled wrist clockwise, pulling with all his might. The handrail held; his bracelet left a hairline scrape on its metal surface.

  “The No-Hopers gave me a countdown clock,” Sir Duncan said into his mobile. “Let me have a look.” He advanced in Kate’s direction, turning his back again.

  Twisting himself counterclockwise, Tony threw all his weight behind an even harder pull, exerting so much force he thought his wrist might dislocate.

  The mobile beep-booped as Sir Duncan tapped the screen. Then he stooped in front of Kate, thrusting his mobile in her face. “Kate. Be a dear and read that number out to your mate.”

  She glared up at him, not answering. Sir Duncan’s back was still turned. Tony rotated his wrist clockwise again, straining his biceps and triceps enough to elicit an involuntary grunt of pain. Sir Duncan should have heard him, but clearly, Kate’s defiance held his attention.

  “I said be a dear!” he shouted, kicking Kate’s injured leg.

  Tony closed his eyes. As Kate answered, “Five minutes now,” he made one last desperate pull.

  “Five minutes. Hear that, Lord Hetheridge?” Sir Duncan asked, spinning on his heel to point at Tony. “Clever nom de guerre, isn’t it, Paul? As if I don’t see through it. Go on, milord. Tell your friend you’re up here, too, or I’ll kick Kate’s teeth in.”

  Tony’s eyes flicked to Kate. She looked pale with shock, worse than when Sir Duncan had pulled her back from the brink. That kick to her dislocated knee had done its work. As well as the news Paul was mixed up in this; that he might die tonight, too.

  “I’m here,” Tony said. He didn’t know enough about Sir Raleigh Godington to impersonate him with assured accuracy. However, he, Tony Hetheridge, had something in common with Sir Duncan. They were both the second sons of difficult men. That alone might allow him to speak with Sir Raleigh’s voice, cutting through Sir Duncan’s cold good humor to bring forth the deranged, thoughtless beast.

  “I think five minutes is plenty of time to kill Lord and Lady Hetheridge before a Met helicopter trains a single spotlight on Deadenfall,” Sir Duncan was telling Paul. “And who knows, maybe there’ll still be fireworks.”

  “I wish you would kill me, Duncan,” Tony said, imitating the cold, uppercrust tones of his own father.

  Sir Duncan’s back straightened. Leo Hetheridge and Sir Raleigh Godington hadn’t looked much alike, but they’d shared a near-identical manner of speaking. In channeling Leo/Sir Raleigh, he’d apparently succeeded.

  “At first, I thought I’d die of mortification, but no such luck,” Tony said. For years, he’d tried to forget these words, delivered by Leo on the occasion of his twenty-sixth birthday, but they remained etched upon his memory. Now they fell from his lips with remarkable ease.

  “This g
rand career of yours is a sham. Such a little man, scampering about with ludicrous self-importance. The do-gooder out to save the world. Everyone’s laughing at you.”

  Sir Duncan dropped his mobile and picked up the camp axe.

  “Your brother never would’ve done this. Your brother knew what was expected of him. I was proud of him. I was proud to think of one day giving him my title. But you. You—”

  Sir Duncan was upon him, axe raised high. Tony brought both hands up, the right encircled by a silver bracelet with a broken chain. As the axe came down, he could have blocked it, but he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed the open collar of Sir Duncan’s wind-cheater.

  A thunderous blow landed on his face. Maybe it hurt too much for his nerves to register. He felt no pain, only a shattering impact from skull to heels. But his double grip on Sir Duncan’s collar only intensified. As he fell, he brought the other man crashing down with him. Something was in his eyes – blood – but Tony ignored that, viciously twisting the wind-cheater.

  Sir Duncan flailed. The camp axe flew out of his grip. Seeing a flash of Day-Glo green, Tony realized he’d been hit with the blade guard still in place. No wonder there wasn’t a hatchet sticking out of his face. But strangling the bigger, taller man with his own jacket wasn’t working. Worse, Tony was positioned at a disadvantage: below his opponent and reaching up. He needed to reverse that. All chips to the center of the table.

  Tony let go of the collar. Sir Duncan drew in a desperate breath. As he shook free of the fabric bunched around his throat, Tony sprang to his feet. Seizing Sir Duncan’s head with both hands, he twisted with all his strength, as far as the neck would allow, and then up, up, up until something snapped. Maybe in his enemy. Maybe in him.