The House of Killers

by Samantha Lee Howe

  Sharrick sees Vasquez enter. He knows him because he is wearing a tie from a certain public school. Just as Sharrick himself is. Neither of them went to school there but it is a calling card for the Network.

  Vasquez nods in the direction of the private offices and turns and walks away. A few seconds later, Sharrick follows.

  Vasquez waits in the same office that Sharrick has just vacated.

  Sharrick enters. There are two other men also in the room with Vasquez.

  ‘Search him,’ Vasquez orders and one of the thugs runs a weapon scanner over Sharrick, while the other pats him down. They both look like bouncers from a city-centre nightclub in their black suits.

  ‘Mr Beech sent me,’ Sharrick explains. He doesn’t tell him that the thugs’ search is pointless. No one gets into the Methuselah carrying a gun. Luggage, as well as physical bodies, are searched coming in.

  ‘Leave,’ Vasquez says to his goons. The two men leave the room and Vasquez takes a seat behind the desk. He places his own laptop down on the desk and opens it.

  ‘Code?’

  ‘Seventhchild. All one word. Uppercase S,’ Sharrick says.

  Vasquez types in the code and then stares at the screen. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I need some names. Tracey Herod’s trainees.’

  Vasquez briefly glances back at Sharrick.

  ‘Herod was an icon,’ he says. ‘Shame she got wasted.’

  Sharrick nods, noting Vasquez’s American accent. He doesn’t speak while Vasquez does something with his computer.

  ‘I’ve sent you a file. There are two of them residing in England. One just got promoted to the house.’

  ‘Same batch as Neva?’ Sharrick asks.

  ‘The one above.’

  ‘What about one from Neva’s year group?’

  Vasquez looks on his computer. ‘Hmm. Not showing. That’s odd.’

  ‘Retired? All of them?’

  ‘Only one is listed “retired”. Kurt. He was Neva’s graduation piece.’

  ‘Then where are the others?’

  Vasquez searches once more. ‘Looks like they’ve been moved to a place above even my paygrade.’

  ‘Thanks for the help,’ Sharrick says.

  ‘Forget we met,’ Vasquez answers.

  Vasquez leaves the room while Sharrick once more opens his laptop. Vasquez’s emails are an introduction note to each of the operatives. Sharrick has two new codewords that will get him access to their information. It crosses his mind that he’s wading into dangerous territory. How much will the Network permit him to learn before they feel he knows too much?

  With little more to go on, Sharrick leaves the Methuselah Club and takes a cab back to his hotel. He now has two files, with two names. One is called Elba and the other Olive. Both from a class above Neva. It is possible, he thinks, that Tracey Herod had given these two some pearls of wisdom that Neva also took on board. They might be helpful. Surely, Tracey’s radical methods had to be responsible for the way Neva had turned out.

  Back in his hotel room he receives a text on his burner from Elba and arranges to meet him the next day.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  SHARRICK

  They meet in St James’s Park. It’s a bit of a cliché to Sharrick, but assassins like their games and in-jokes. Sharrick supposes that it makes them feel ordinary – as if their job is a normal nine-to-five.

  Sharrick waits on a specified bench at a certain time until Elba joins him.

  ‘Anarchy rules,’ says Elba.

  ‘Only in the suburbs…’ Sharrick responds.

  Sharrick is expecting a male, but he finds that Elba is female.

  ‘I was never a very butch boy. It became evident when I was twelve that I had to become a girl.’

  Sharrick wants to ask more but he remembers that curiosity kills and so he nods at Elba.

  ‘I need to know about Tracey. The methods by which she trained you.’

  A child screams in the distance. Elba looks coldly over to where a mother is chastising a small boy.

  ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child,’ Elba says. ‘That was very much Tracey’s motto. Therefore, she didn’t spoil or spare. But she had favourites. She preferred the girls. For this reason, she also liked me. She recognised I was a girl inside.’

  ‘She treated the girls differently? How?’

  Elba smiles as though remembering a favourite aunt. ‘Girls need more rules. Different protocols. She made us swear we’d never share this information with the boys.’

  ‘What information?’

  Elba frowns, struggling with her conditioning. ‘I can’t,’ she says.

  ‘Tracey is dead,’ Sharrick reveals, although Tracey’s demise is also on a need-to-know basis. He realises he has to free Elba from some of the conditioning restraints if he’s to get what he wants from her.

  Elba lets out a slow sigh. A slight shiver ripples through her. Sharrick wonders what it signifies. Relief? Fear? Shock? Maybe all those things. He can almost remember the feeling of his own conditioning, even though he’s been permitted to go beyond it these past ten years since becoming a handler. But even that was under controlled post-conditioning circumstances.

  ‘Girls have to have less emotion than the boys. We have to be devoid of fear. But I assume that is the same for boys? It’s harder for us girls, Tracey used to say. We have more to prove, yet we’re also so much stronger mentally than our male counterparts, if not physically.’

  Sharrick’s eyes follow the flow of muscles beneath the sleeve of his own shirt. There is little dispute that most of the males were physically stronger than the female operatives. The girls, however, always have the element of surprise on their side, as well as some dirty tricks to win a fight. They are ‘unexpected’ and cold too. Tracey was right in her assessment that they had to be. But the Network’s training had always found ways to address the balance in the male/female physical concern. It would have been standard procedure to make the girls’ mental strength impenetrable. In fact, they were taught to fight regardless of pain, injury, or fear of death. Like cornered rats, they’d come back at any assailant again and again and they’d either go down fighting or they’d win through sheer persistence.

  ‘Did she tell you anything about protecting yourself? For the future?’ Sharrick asks. He is feeling impatient now. He wants answers. He wants Neva. He wants to put her back in ‘the room’ and see if they can claw her back. He doesn’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she was the least likely to break and yet … she has. They need to learn how and why that happened. Neva ran. It was planned. She knew all along that one day she would have to go to ground and she was ready when the day arrived. That knowledge had to have come from somewhere, because it went against the standard conditioning. It went against everything the Network had worked for over the years.

  ‘The mantra,’ Elba says now, ‘is there to protect us. Tracey was very strict about maintaining our equilibrium. It’s something I’ll pass on. When I go to the house to become a trainer.’

  ‘You’ve just been promoted?’ asked Sharrick.

  ‘It’s on the cards. I’ll be able to choose from my favourite students.’

  Sharrick remembers the house and the other six that grew and worked with him. He recalls how only five of them made the grade. He doesn’t know if he would delight in taking others through this process; maybe Elba is well chosen for the role, because she will.

  ‘If there is any piece of knowledge that Tracey gave you that you’ll share with your future protégés what will it be?’ Sharrick asks.

  ‘Not to question your superiors,’ Elba says. ‘For they know better than you what you have to be.’

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  MICHAEL

  ‘Who’s the guy?’ asks Beth when I call her and Leon into the briefing room. I have the picture of Sharrick up on the large screen at the end of the room.

  ‘Someone who might lead us to the people behind the series of murders we’ve been looking a
t,’ I explain.

  Beth and Leon sit down. We all study the screen.

  ‘How did you get this?’ asks Leon.

  ‘I can’t reveal my source,’ I say.

  ‘Okay. So, what do you know about him?’ asks Beth.

  ‘They call him Sharrick. He’s an operative for “the Network”. In fact, he’s higher up than that: he’s a handler,’ I tell them.

  ‘The Network? Unimaginative name, but it sounds familiar,’ Beth says. She frowns at the screen as though trying to remember where she’s heard the name of this organisation.

  ‘This guy is a handler? Who does he look after?’ asks Leon.

  ‘Trained killers.’

  ‘Like the one we’ve been searching for?’ Leon says.

  I nod. I’ve thought carefully about how much I will tell the team without giving Neva away. Half-truths are the best. ‘My source told me Tracey Herod was his superior. She died because one of the assassins wants out.’

  ‘The woman you met at the crime scene?’ says Leon. ‘Anna? It would explain why Herod had to die.’

  I don’t answer. I let them work it out for themselves.

  ‘So, we find him, we find her?’ Beth says.

  ‘I’m hoping for more than that. We find him and we find those above him,’ I say. ‘My source wants to remain anonymous, as I said, but has given some inside information. These are dangerous people and any enquiries you guys make, please give away as little as possible. Sharrick is looking for the same woman we are. But he’s not alone. From what I’ve been told, their spies are everywhere. It’s why he’s in town. He’s staying in a hotel near Canary Wharf.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ Beth asks.

  ‘I followed him from the Methuselah. He’s had a few meetings there this week. He wasn’t very cautious but I suppose he isn’t expecting anyone to know who and what he is.’

  After I parted from Neva, I remembered how I knew about the Methuselah: Ray Martin had told me about the club when I joined Archive. All the male members of the taskforce had free membership – a point that annoyed me as it excluded Beth.

  ‘It’s traditional,’ Ray had explained. ‘There is a female version of this place, though I’m not at liberty to explain where.’

  Despite Ray’s explanation, I’d avoided the club, refusing to buy into something I believed was sexist and outmoded. But with this new development, I’d activated my membership for the first time. Then, all I’d had to do was wait and watch.

  I’d texted Neva after I read her report. She rang me, willing to talk, but it was brief. I think she was still afraid to trust me. Given the information she had shared, I now understood why. After that call, I received one other text with a new contact number. Neva was taking no chances and had changed her phone.

  After that I decided I’d follow Sharrick and see what I could learn. Sharrick had appeared on the second evening that I attended the club. He went into one of the private offices and remained there for an hour, before coming out and buying himself a brandy from the bar. Then he sipped the drink and sat in a corner, reading a book. He looked innocuous, but I knew that he was far from harmless. From the file that Neva had provided, I’d learnt about Sharrick’s long relationship with the Network. However, this information was limited to speculation mostly and did not have any real evidence to back it up. Neva had devised the dossier based on what she knew, but the problem was, her access to the Network was limited to her own now deceased handler.

  Even so, Neva had surmised that Sharrick was a former-operative-turned-handler. Because of his age, she concluded that Sharrick had succeeded in a long career. This made him trusted and eligible for promotion in the Network. Somehow – and Neva’s report explained this – he had avoided being ‘retired’, just as Tracey had until Neva killed her. This meant one of two things. Either he was resourceful and had proved himself loyal time and again, or he always appeared to be under their control, never raising suspicion that he had doubts about his masters. Both could be true, of course. Neva’s report also described how any doubt, no matter how small, often led to the termination of an operative. Therefore, Sharrick’s longevity was significant.

  Neva had ended the dossier with a comment confirming that she felt Sharrick was being groomed for future promotion. He would most likely skip a few levels and move up the ranks soon, especially if he found Neva and turned her in.

  I was aware that most of this information was merely her conjecture, but I reasoned that it was enough to justify making Sharrick a person of interest to Archive.

  ‘So, you’re proposing we monitor this one?’ Beth says. ‘See where he leads?’

  ‘He’s a piece in a puzzle that I’d like to put together,’ I say. ‘He may well provide us with something we don’t know about the Network. Beth, we’ve talked about the possibility that someone was taking kids and turning them into killers. I think Sharrick is linked to these people. He may be able to enlighten us about what happened to them. It’s even possible that he was one such child himself. Perhaps we can study the faces of those recorded missing that might fit into Sharrick’s age bracket.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be hard. This is a very clear shot you got,’ Beth says.

  I don’t tell her that I hadn’t taken the picture but I let her believe I had because it would only lead to more questions about my source.

  ‘I must admit, I do want to know who brought you this,’ Leon says.

  I give them everything tangible we have on Sharrick, but no more about my informant.

  ‘I’ll put feelers out with my sources. The Network is ringing some bells with me. I’m sure I’ve come across them before,’ Beth says.

  ‘Okay. But reveal as little as possible. We don’t want word getting back that Sharrick has appeared on our radar. Are there any surveillance cameras on the Methuselah Club?’

  ‘The deal with that place is that there shouldn’t be any. At any time,’ Beth answers.

  ‘But?’

  ‘Well, if there are any, they aren’t officially available to us,’ she says.

  ‘Unofficially?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Beth says. Then she winks.

  I smile. If anyone can, Beth can.

  ‘For now,’ I say, ‘I have a source in there keeping an eye out for him. We’re taking careful note of anyone he interacts with as well.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  SHARRICK

  Sharrick leaves the park before Elba. He’s frustrated that Elba has given him nothing. Except … Sharrick now knows that Tracey was willing to go further than other trainers. Did Elba really suit being a girl? Or did Tracey change her because she needed a specific type for a precise role? He wishes he had access to Elba’s full files. He would love to learn what her first job had been. Even so, this all shows him that Tracey did adapt the training. Maybe she even personalised it. In which case, what was it she gave Neva that was unlike the others?

  Sharrick returns to his hotel room and opens the encrypted files that Vasquez sent him. He looks at the training sequence for both Elba and Olive. There was a combination of drugs, hypnosis, therapy, and physical training. Languages are a high point. Each of them is taught three different ones. Elba isn’t particularly strong in this area. Olive is better. But other than the usual martial arts, weapons training, and body development exercises, there’s nothing different to what Sharrick himself experienced. At least, nothing on record.

  Much to Sharrick’s surprise, Elba’s gender change is mentioned. The male Elba was given hormones age 12 and then gender reassignment surgery at 13. There are no reports inside the document justifying this decision to change Elba at such a young age from male to female. It just occurs. Tracey signs off on it as casually as any of the treatments the trainees are given. Sharrick knows that no one would have questioned it. But he is beginning to wonder about Tracey even more now.

  When he’s read everything available, he sends an encrypted message to Olive. After a few hours Sharrick receives a reply. Olive
agrees to meet. This is expected because an authority higher up will have given her clearance to speak with him.

  I’m not sure I can be of any help

  She says in the encrypted email.

  But we must find Tracey’s killer so I’ll do my best to give you what you need.

  This response, so open and informed, surprises Sharrick. Then he notes that Olive has asked him to attend her at ‘the house’. She is going to be there, ‘overseeing the training of the current batch’.

  Sharrick agrees to go, a mixture of excitement and fear cramping his stomach. He hasn’t suffered from such a feeling since he left the house thirty years ago. He wonders if it will be as he remembers. Then he realises he doesn’t know the address. He’s thinking how to word his response to ask the question of Olive when he receives another email. It reads:

  I have been authorised to have you collected and taken to your destination.

  * * *

  Meet at The Methuselah Club.

  * * *

  Bring overnight bag.

  There is a time and date. With shock, Sharrick realises it is today, in less than an hour. He closes his laptop, packs a bag with a few things, and then heads off back to the club.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  SHARRICK

  Alderley Edge in Cheshire is where highly paid footballers choose to live when they work for the Manchester clubs. It’s a place of wealth and privilege and, above all, home to many who value their privacy. The house is located on the outskirts of the village in a rural setting, surrounded by several acres of land. It is obscure enough not to draw attention, and surrounded by further agricultural land which is also owned by the Network and rented out to farmers, making the location completely isolated and not overlooked by any other private landowners.

  Sharrick is in the back of a limo, with the windows blacked out. He works on his laptop during the long drive from London, sipping from a glass of sparkling water.