The Phoenix Series Box Set 3

by Ted Tayler

  It was ten past six when Colleen walked through the door of the house she, Tommy, and the kids had shared for so long. There were happy memories in amongst the fiery arguments and bruises. It was a toss-up which had a greater number. Colleen would be glad to see the back of it. What use did she have for a four-bedroomed detached house in a desirable district, kicking around in it on her own?

  Colleen prepared herself a meal, then relaxed for the evening. There were none of her favourite soaps on TV tonight, so, she started hunting for a new place. Tyrone and Rosie had been well into computers, both for their work, and playing games. They taught her the basics when they still lived at home. Tommy never trusted technology. Unless it involved weapons and ammunition. There was still a laptop in the spare bedroom. Tyrone had left her idiot notes to help her find her way around before he moved out to Spain.

  She decided to search online to gauge what price she might get for the house, then browse the local estate agents for something suitable for a single woman of means. How difficult could it be?

  After the odd false start, Colleen found the information she wanted. Once again, her eyes lit up when she saw the prices being asked for similar houses. She was smart enough to appreciate London prices were off the scale compared to other parts of the country. Yet, the news these prices applied to the area where they lived came as a surprise.

  When she and Tommy first got together, they lived with Orla, Tommy’s mother. Tommy Senior spent more time in prison than he did at home, and Orla needed the company; and the contribution to the housekeeping. Tommy had bought this property on the edge of the borough of Kilburn for eighty-five thousand pounds.

  It was close enough to his roots on the South Kilburn estate to keep close control of the business, but far enough away he didn’t have to smell the squalor when he sat on the patio with a beer.

  Colleen got up and wandered around upstairs, then went downstairs to her lounge diner and kitchen. Tommy made sure they had a downstairs cloakroom, and a utility room when they moved out of Orla’s terraced house. It was a huge step up from the living accommodation on the seven streets back in Dublin their parents rented. Tommy wanted the wider community to know he had moved up in the world; no matter that in getting there he had blood on his hands.

  She retraced her steps and sat back at the table with the laptop.

  “One point one million quid,” she grinned, “bring it on.”

  The next site she browsed was the estate agency whose ‘For Sale’ signs littered the capital. Something she had noticed, but not considered important until now, was how soon the ‘Sold; subject to contract’ sign appeared. The quicker she could get the sale agreed and move to her new bolt-hole the happier she would be.

  There were plenty of apartments from which to choose. For a simple Irish girl, the idea of a one-bedroomed penthouse to come home to after a hard day’s work sounded too good to be true. Yet she could afford two of the damn things with a fighting fund generated from the Marbella apartment, the family home, the cars, and the cash Tommy had stashed in the wall-safe.

  It gave her such a great buzz she ran downstairs and poured herself a large glass of Prosecco before carrying on with the pursuit of her dream pad. As night fell, she looked out of her first-floor window at the garden beneath. Tommy was no gardener. Everything was low-maintenance beds, or grass and paving slabs.

  Over the fence, the panorama showed other gardens and houses whose owners had much the same outlook on life. They sweated their guts for their wages during the week, played hard at the weekend, then did it all again.

  Once, or maybe twice a year if they were lucky, they flew off to the sun to escape the rat-race, and the little boxes they called home.

  Colleen cursed not bringing the bottle upstairs with her.

  She looked back at the screen: -

  ‘Residents enjoy the services of a twenty-four-hour concierge. They benefit from secure underground parking, and each property has stunning views over the City.’

  ‘London's financial hub and its cosmopolitan surroundings are right on your doorstep. You will be living in an area which has become a sought-after London address. The eclectic mix of chic restaurants, stylish bars, cosy cafés and cool clubs scattered across your near-neighbourhood accentuate the apartment building’s fashionable reputation.’

  Colleen drained her glass and resisted the urge to pinch herself.

  “Perfect,” she purred, checking the distance between her choice and other prominent sites in and around The City.

  Colleen closed the laptop and returned to the kitchen for a top-up of her glass. She sat on her sofa and leant her head back and gazed at the ceiling. Colleen had marked today’s date on the calendar by the fridge when she came through. She mentally ticked off the days she thought it might take to be savouring a glass of wine in her fashionable new apartment.

  A place that didn’t have views over gardens and little boxes, but of the historic financial centre of the capital. An apartment only a hundred yards, as the crow flies, from the one occupied by Hugo Hanigan.

  “Let the Games begin,” said Colleen.

  CHAPTER 3

  Thursday, 29th May 2014

  Henry Case sat in his quarters at Larcombe Manor. The month of May had delivered a wide variety of tasks which were a mix of the pleasant and the unpleasant as was often the case with Olympus matters.

  This morning he received news from the Reverend Sarah Gough in the form of a hand-written letter. This was a novelty for Henry. He received text messages, and emails by the dozen every day, but a properly addressed personal missive was rare.

  Henry slit open the cream envelope with his FS Commando knife and extracted several sheets of cream writing paper. That was encouraging. Henry lifted the letter to his nose and inhaled. He convinced himself Sarah’s scent remained on the paper and reminisced, before reading the letter’s contents.

  As head of security at Larcombe, Henry had a role that gave little chance of developing social relationships. He moved to the West Country from Hereford after leaving the SAS. The opportunity to work with the Olympus Project had been too attractive to miss. His interview with Erebus had been brief. The old gentleman recognised a kindred spirit.

  When there was a job to be done, it must be carried out quickly and efficiently. There should be no hesitation if the task demanded an opponent be terminated with extreme prejudice. Henry prided himself on managing all aspects of his role.

  The security of Athena, Phoenix, and the other senior Olympus members was paramount. The boundaries of the estate were well-protected by personnel from the stable-block in which he sat, twenty-four hours a day. An array of motion sensor floodlighting supported the human guards, and booby-trapped areas discouraged the unwelcome intruder.

  Henry referred to this work as Border Control. His views on the ever-changing version supposed to protect the nation’s borders were scathing. He deemed them ‘not fit for purpose’.

  In the first week of May, he had received Dean Laker and Adam Dosumu. Henry never ‘welcomed’ anyone delivered to the ice-house for interrogation. There was never any friendly element to conversations that took place, or the treatment meted out. If you reached the lower level of the underground bunker, then you had committed more than a misdemeanour.

  Dosumu was responsible for the death of Awusi Debrah, the nineteen-year-old Ghanaian girl forced into prostitution in Birmingham.

  Dean Laker was the weasel who stalked Amy Grant in Reading and attempted to disfigure her with acid thrown at her face. Orion and his colleague dealt with that issue and suggested Olympus could decide the appropriate punishment. Dosumu and Laker had been collected by local agents who then drove him to Bath.

  Both prisoners had been handed over to Thomas and Longdon. The two former SAS sergeants now spent the majority of their working hours above ground. Their replacements in the armoury and the shooting gallery were two older agents retired from active duty.

  Thommo and Bazza escorted Dosumu and Laker
to Level Three and handcuffed them to a chair in Interrogation Room One and Two. They then removed the hood covering their head. Neither man had any idea in which part of the country they were now held. They may have registered the distinctive sound of a cattle-grid when the van entered the Manor grounds, but the location of the room in which they now sat would forever be a mystery.

  Laker looked around him. He was a frightened man. Opposite him sat a military type, in his mid-forties, tall, heavily built and with a face made for radio. He had a file on the desk in front of him, and he hadn’t looked up since the blindfold had been removed.

  “Where is this place? Who the hell are you? You can’t hold me here. This isn’t a police state. I demand to see a lawyer.”

  Henry Case didn’t answer. He was reading Laker’s file. Dean Laker had a criminal record. Amy Grant was not his first victim. The level of abuse was escalating with each young lady. Henry hated men who hit women. His own father had a tendency to give his mother a cuff around the head when the mood took him.

  Henry’s father served in the British Army for over thirty years. Henry’s early life involved moving from country to country, married quarters to married quarters, and school to school. No sooner than he made friends with a few chaps at school, he’d be starting afresh somewhere else in the world.

  Little wonder he joined the army himself as soon as he left university. Little wonder too that he never got married. The camaraderie in his regiment, and in the SAS when he transferred, was a cocoon. They trained together, fought side-by-side, and socialised in large groups. He met women from time to time, but his physical appearance left him way down the list of likely candidates when those women paired off with his mates.

  Dosumu had beaten a woman to death because she was pregnant and could no longer earn money for him.

  Henry imagined Laker meeting Sarah Gough and smooth-talking her in the same way he had Tina Fowler and Amy Grant.

  The lengths these animals were prepared to go to suggest only one course of action.

  He visited each prisoner and asked the same question: -

  “Can you hazard a guess why they blindfolded you?”

  Neither man offered a reply.

  “We take the precaution with every guest,” Henry had said. ”You are nothing special. Indeed, you are one of the most despicable toads I’ve ever met. The reason is simple. I’ll leave you to work it out.”

  Henry stood up, switched off the lights and left Interrogation Rooms One and Two. Once the door closed, the music blasted out from speakers mounted high-up in each corner. Not long after Phoenix’s arrival, the genre of music changed. It proved most effective. Adam Dosumu and Dean Laker could sit and have their eardrums assaulted by heavy metal music for the next eight hours.

  Then he would return.

  Back in the present, three weeks later, Henry snapped out of his reverie and examined Sarah’s letter.

  She apologised for not writing sooner. The odd text and email had passed between them since the wedding at Larcombe, but they weren’t an appropriate medium for the amount she needed to report. First, she had sad news. Her beloved VW camper van, ‘Maggie’ finally ground to a complete halt. Sarah told him she shed a tear when ‘Maggie’ was carted off to the scrap yard.

  Sarah’s visits to her parishioners were completed on her bicycle. She assured Henry she always wore her safety helmet and had only suffered one mishap, so far. That was when two of her kittens were playing ‘chase’ and shot across her front wheel as she left the house one morning. She avoided hitting either of them but landed unceremoniously in a heap among the cabbages in her vegetable garden.

  There were other stories too, concerning a churchwarden, and one of the ladies who did the flowers in her church. They had both been in their early eighties and passed away. Sarah officiated at their funerals.

  Henry found this fascinating. It was terrific to learn more about Sarah, and the work she did. The time they spent together on her first visit to Larcombe, and over the wedding weekend had been far too brief.

  The news he hoped for arrived on page three of the letter. Sarah had arranged a stand-in for the August Bank Holiday weekend. She was free to travel to Larcombe to christen Hope in the tiny, estate church. Henry’s heart filled with joy. He couldn’t wait to see Sarah again. It seemed a lifetime ago when they shared their first kiss under the Rock of Ages at Burrington Combe.

  He glanced at the wall calendar. Good Friday; gosh, that was less than two months ago. How things had changed for them both. Sarah’s next tale was about Annabelle Fox, and the high jinks they enjoyed at Cambridge University. Henry wasn’t sure she should share this with him, but nevertheless, he read on. As a carefree undergraduate, Athena was a different character to the cool, meticulous leader of Olympus at the Project’s HQ at Larcombe Manor.

  Something dramatic, and life-changing brought her here, to work with Erebus. She left the world she inhabited behind, to commit her future to an organisation that promised to redress the balance between good and evil.

  Evil such as that perpetrated by Dosumu and Laker. Henry had waited twelve hours before coming to his final decision. His conscience was clear. Neither man could ever be set free. The risk was too great. Henry opened the door to Interrogation Room One. The music died at once. Dean Laker’s head lay on his chest. Judas Priest and the rest had played their part.

  They walked together along the corridor on Level Three, moving from one pool of light to another; the darkness filling in behind their steps as each successive ceiling light dimmed behind them.

  Their destination Hotel California; the final door.

  Laker’s arms were secured behind him and the chain they were then attached to raised. Straps on the floor then pinned his ankles. His body was now angled at forty-five degrees. He never uttered a word in protest. Henry withdrew his SAS issue FS Commando knife from the leather holder at his waist and cut Laker’s throat with one swift slash.

  The Olympus head of security watched for a few seconds. Over ninety per cent of the blood would collect in the drain beneath his prisoner. He turned and headed back to collect Adam Dosumu.

  A work detail must be assigned first thing in the morning to remove the bodies for burial in the pet cemetery and return to Hotel California for clean-up duties.

  This morning, Henry wondered how long his secrets could remain hidden from Sarah. Death was a regular occurrence in her parish. She accepted it as inevitable, just as night followed day. Could she find it in herself to care for a man who chose whether another human being lived or died?

  Without question the guests that ended their days in Hotel California were evil. Henry never dispatched anyone who didn’t deserve to die. Could Sarah agree with the Olympus philosophy that the ends justified the means? Or might the padre refuse to have anything more to do with him if she uncovered the truth?

  Henry read through to the end of the letter. The news items and memories of university life with Annabelle Fox had been dealt with. In the final pages, Sarah told him how much she looked forward to seeing him in August. If only they could meet before.

  Henry re-read that part several times. The padre invited him to stay at the pub in the village in early July. It was the weekend of the village fete, and she would love to see him. If he could come, she could book the room. ‘The locals will gossip more than enough if we’re seen together at various functions,’ she wrote ‘I should prefer to invite you to the vicarage, but the scandal would be too great.’

  Steady on, old girl, Henry had thought. Things are moving fast. He studied the two kisses after her name at the foot of the final page. Why not? August was a long way away. He must ask Athena for weekend leave at tomorrow morning’s meeting. Henry replaced the letter in the envelope and put it away in the drawer of his desk. He had work to do. He would read it again later.

  His Border Control duties were squared away for the day. There were no perceived threats to security at Larcombe. His next task was to oversee the progress of their lat
est batch of trainees.

  Athena and Phoenix had returned from London and the last Olympus meeting with news that around one hundred agents were being brought home from overseas. The threat level in the areas in which they had been posted was low enough for numbers now to be reduced. After a brief period of assessment and retraining, they would increase the active numbers available for direct actions against The Grid in the UK.

  Thomas and Longdon started the retraining two weeks ago in batches of twelve. Henry assisted in the assessment, to pass the older agents mentally fit for the task. The former armoury personnel now took them through the rigorous training process. As each batch completed the course, Henry had to check their progress with the two trainers, and confirm their move out into the field, or look for administrative posts within the organisation to use their experience if they didn’t meet the required standard.

  Next week, the first intake of twelve brand new recruits arrived at Larcombe. These ex-servicemen would be under the supervision of Kelly Dexter and Hayden Vincent. The aim was to have these men and women in the field by September. The twelve-week course would be gruelling. Henry planned to keep an eye on their progress and offer advice to Rusty Scott on updates to the training manuals current security information indicated.

  It promised to be a tough summer ahead. A few lighter moments spent with the Reverend Sarah Gough were going to be most welcome.

  The ongoing struggle against The Grid might put a spanner in the works. Events during May didn’t offer hope they were cutting back on their aim to increase the stranglehold their criminal network held over the country. Phoenix and Rusty struck telling blows, but the imbalance of numbers was obvious.

  Henry left his quarters and went to check how Thommo and Bazza thought things were progressing with this first set of agents.