She Will Rescue You

by Chris Clement-Green

  But, beneath the many uncertainties, Mia was already beginning to relish the absolute control she now had. She had gone into police work to keep her sharp mind honed. Working in animal welfare had never been an option — it would have satisfied neither her intellect nor her designer lifestyle. Now she could have her cake and eat it. She could leave the mundane-good, the running of the rescue centres, to others. She and Alex would hunt down the guilty, offering salvation to the persecuted and a chance of redemption to the persecutor.

  Alex’s cracked voice broke the silence. ‘I’m going to miss her, lass. Really miss her. She brought out the good in me.’

  Mia wasn’t sure how kidnap, torture and murder could be the good in anyone, but she searched for his hand and gave it a soft squeeze. ‘You were good for each other.’

  ‘But I didn’t love her — not like I love you.’

  ‘I know. But you did love her, and any kind of love can leave a very specific hole that no one else can fill.’

  The funeral was a simple affair arranged by Mick. Alex, Mick, Craig and Adam carried the feather-light wicker coffin from the house and lowered it on thick cream ribbons into the rich darkness of the Welsh soil.

  Mick quoted a Sioux poem: “Life is the flash of a kingfisher’s wing, the breath of a horse in winter, or a shadow losing itself in the sunset.”

  Ned had come down from Scotland, and he recalled his first conversation with Ellie, when she’d asked him to run a rehabilitation centre for hardened fighting dogs. ‘When I told her I doubted it could be done, she said, “Ned, I’m a positive thinker. Now, that’s not about refusing to see the negatives, it’s about refusing to dwell on them.”’

  Adam reminded everyone about Wilma, and how Ellie would always refuse to give up on any animal until the light of hope finally faded from their eyes. He added, ‘More than a little hope for animals has faded from the world today.’

  When Alex spoke, his voice broke more than once. ‘There’s an old soldiers’ saying that courage is not the absence of fear, but deciding that something is more important than fear . . . E’s love of animals was fearless and it brought an end to so much suffering. Be proud, lass . . . be very proud.’

  Mia was last to speak. ‘What you want in life is a question that becomes harder to answer the older you get, because the answers become more subtle, more complex. But I want what Ellie wanted. I want to fight for the underdog, and that is what we will all continue to do in memory of the great work E started. A gust of wind may extinguish a candle or fan a fire, and we will carry on Ellie’s fight.’

  As the sun set, everyone except Alex and Mick walked slowly back to the house for a stiff drink.

  The two men began to silently fill in the hole in the ground while the hole in their hearts continued to bleed. Finally Mick placed a beautifully carved piece of wood on top of the shallow mound.

  Ellie Grant — A woman who defended what God abandoned

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I am no monster; I’m merely ahead of humanity’s curve.

  Mia relaxed into Alex’s well-defined, tattooed arms. They had the unit’s cottage to themselves and, since Ellie’s death, their pillow talk had been getting deeper, taking on a wide-ranging diversity as they fed an urgency to know more about the person they were holding. Alex’s overheard confession to Mick had rocked Mia. She was enjoying the best sex of her life, but to have a known killer tell another man that ‘she was the one’ had been overwhelming, thrilling and just a little terrifying.

  Alex had eventually told her how deeply he felt, but he was also repeatedly sharing his regret and shame about their behaviour towards Ellie, and he turned the conversation in her direction once again.

  ‘Was she a psychopath then, Ellie?’

  ‘No.’ Mia pushed back from Alex’s arms and sat up.

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  He sat too and started to reach for his roll-ups before remembering who he was with. Instead, he kissed the top of Mia’s head and draped his right arm across her naked shoulders, letting his hand rest casually on her breast, her still hard nipple just out of reach.

  She was desperate for his fingers to creep lower. She wanted to get lost in more sex, not more Ellie-based conversation. But she now knew Alex could not, should not, be cajoled into doing anything unless he wanted to do it too. Now he wanted to talk, about sodding Ellie, and she struggled to find the right words.

  ‘Ellie certainly had . . . the focus . . . and hardness of a psychopath when it came to us humans, but she also had so much empathy for animals that she’d never be classed as one.’ She reached for the wine glass on the bedside table. ‘Studies have found a serial killer abnormality in the brains of psychopaths, which show they can’t produce the hormones linked to empathy.’ She took a sip, replaced the glass and nestled back against her lover, letting her manicured nail trace a series of idle circles on his chest. ‘Psychopaths are generally dismissive of virtue, unaware of beauty and uncomprehending of happiness — Ellie was none of these things. She could recognise the good person behind a bad act and she appreciated beauty — you only had to hear talk of the mountains or “the softness in an animal’s eye”.’ She hesitated a heartbeat. ‘And if you’d been able to return her love, she’d have been the happiest person alive.’

  She knew it was a mistake, like picking a scab that’s still healing, but she couldn’t help herself. Alex removed his arm on the pretext of running his hand through his hair before dropping it on top of the duvet — a physical barrier between them. Taking the hint, she moved away from Alex’s distracting closeness. He did nothing to stop her as she threw back the duvet.

  As Mick had been so quick to point out, their hard, physical attraction had always been easily seen by third parties. But she had become jaded to the point of irritation by the need to hide her frustration at Ellie’s oversensitivity. Now Alex was becoming as bad. She stifled the impulse to shout, For Christ’s sake, she’s dead! Get over it! Move on! Instead, she refilled her glass, finishing the bottle without checking to see if Alex wanted more. She was acting like a child, but this knowledge just made her suppressed belligerence burn brighter. It really grated that an uneducated killing machine could push her buttons in this way . . . That description was unjustified too — another example of childish frustration. She was just sticking out a metaphorical tongue as she name-called and grabbed the last sweet in the bag. She was better than that, or she should be.

  Mia sat on the tiny window seat and looked out into the inky blackness. Clouds obscured the stars and the brooding stillness in the weather seemed to seep through the thick stone walls. She took a large mouthful of wine and glanced over at Alex, who was watching her with a pleasing intensity. She transferred her glass to her left hand and placed her right behind her head; ostensibly to cushion it from the hardness of the stone wall. She hoped Alex would be unable to ignore her silhouette, but he didn’t move, so she continued.

  ‘It’s been calculated that up to four per cent of the population possess this abnormality including, ironically, the professor leading the research.’ She could feel the heat of Alex’s gaze. ‘Thankfully, he’s what’s called a functioning psychopath, able to create — although most psychopaths are only capable of creating illusion.’

  ‘Like bankers?’

  If Alex was aroused he was hiding it well.

  ‘Bankers?’

  ‘Unempathetic, immoral, corporate-tree climbing bastards, who don’t actually create anything other than the financial ruin of ordinary people.’

  He sounded as though he was speaking from experience. ‘Some bankers are certainly functioning psychopaths.’

  She carried her wine back to bed. The discomfort of the window seat was not worth the hoped-for outcome, but she could bear the cold a little longer, and she settled herself on top of the duvet, her back resting against the brass rail at the foot of the bed.

  Alex kept his eyes on hers. ‘So, what’s the difference between a functioning and a non-functionin
g psycho?’

  Mia flinched at his abbreviation. ‘Non-functioning psychopaths often start as clichéd small boys — pulling the wings off flies, burning ants with a magnifying glass, tying fireworks to various tails or even taking pot-shots at whole animals.’ She raised a freshly waxed leg and drew circles with her pointed foot, giving Alex an unrestricted view of what was on offer. But he continued to stare at her face. ‘They relish the exercise of such God-like power and enjoy manipulating the weak and vulnerable. In the end many will kill a human to exercise the ultimate power.’ She finished her wine.

  ‘Death over life.’ He sounded weary, defeated.

  She placed the empty glass on the bedside table and climbed back into bed, drawing the plain grey duvet up to her chin so as to hide and warm her rejected body.

  ‘One death will rarely be enough. They’ll need another God fix, and another and another. But the irony is, when caught, they’ll usually try and blame God!’ She turned to look at Alex, who gave her a superficial smile. ‘And if they don’t blame God they’ll blame their victims — anyone but themselves. Only once have I met a convicted psychopath who was prepared to keep responsibility for his actions. “I am no monster,” he declared, “I am merely ahead of humanity’s curve.” I used his quote as the strap-line for my thesis.’

  Feeling Alex’s body relax, she felt it safe to come full circle. ‘A true psychopath has no perspective, no conscience, no concept of the future, or the consequences of their actions on others, and often cares little about the consequences to themselves. Ellie never had any of this inner emptiness. Her empathy was all too evident.’

  ‘But towards animals. E wasn’t a lass that seemed bothered about causing pain and suffering to humans. She was pretty selective when showing mercy and her original plans for the whaling village were fucking outrageous!’

  ‘I agree. But you can’t show mercy to everyone. Without the withholding of mercy there’d be no punishment, no meaningful justice. But when Ellie chose to show it, like the three lads in Scotland and Johnny Claybourne, it was based on empathy. A true psychopath doesn’t seek redemption for themselves and certainly doesn’t offer it to others.’

  Alex propped himself on an elbow. ‘So what separates the functioning psycho from the non-functioning?’

  ‘It can be something as simple as a happy childhood — the old nature-nurture argument is what separates the professor from the serial killer.’ She looked up at him, ‘What about you? . . . Why do you kill?’

  The question had been a glowing ember since their first meeting, when the physical attraction had fizzed and exploded. She had a secret fear that Alex’s ability to kill was the underlying reason for their sexual tension and, if he got the answer wrong now, the fizz might flatten forever.

  His answer was succinct. ‘Money.’

  ‘It can’t just be that.’

  Alex reached for a roll-up. If Mia wanted the truth he needed a fag. ‘I joined the army because I had nowhere else to go — except prison. I liked it, I was good at it, and I had friends around me that I trusted and they trusted me. That’s a big deal to someone who’s survived an alcoholic father and a prostitute mother.’ He took a long pull on his roll-up. ‘The unit just took everything: skills, comradeship, danger, to the next level. The killing was only ever a small part of it . . . for me.’

  ‘But you were good at it?’

  ‘Of course I was good at it, lass. You can’t be bad at anything in the unit.’

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ He closed his eyes against the memories. ‘Killing radicals who’d blow up their own children gave me a buzz, satisfaction at a job well done. But collateral damage always lay heavy.’

  ‘The turkey shed and dog pit, they were . . . brutal.’

  ‘The bloke in the turkey shed wasn’t supposed to die, but the chain meant the fourth or fifth blow became an unplanned strike to his head. It killed him outright. E wanted a message sent and I thought the louder the better, so we continued to beat up the body.’

  ‘What did she say when you told her you’d accidently killed him?’

  ‘She just shrugged.’

  ‘Was that the first . . . death?’

  ‘Second.’

  He didn’t expand, and she didn’t want to know. Not right now.

  ‘I’m not going to be like her.’

  ‘Fair enough, but let me give you a bit of advice, lass. By all means draw your line in the sand, but the day you cross it there’ll be no turning back and no point in comparing yourself with E. Comparisons become redundant when you cross your own line.’

  ‘What was your line?’

  ‘It was never drawn by me.’ He took another drag, ‘and the problem with lines in the sand is that they’re easy to shift. The army made me cross so many that in the end I stopped even noticing them.’

  Mia still found Alex’s bad-ass attitude a turn on. She turned and straddled him, letting her breasts brush against his face. It was time to distract her lover from further introspection and bring him back to all the possibilities of his current life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

  Four helicopters vibrated in the night sky as they made their way towards the Danish coast. The full moon reflected light off the slow moving waves, lapping idly onto the beach that once a year saw the mass slaughter of the innocent.

  Alex thought the moonlight hard and cold — like the people whose lives they were about to destroy. He was relishing the upcoming operation, relieved that Mia’s takeover meant he and his men could do their work without the need to spill the blood of children; although he did wonder how childlike the children of this small village could be, when their parents hoisted them onto the backs of stranded baby whales and urged them to beat the life from such intelligent family-based mammals.

  He was hoping his men could lock down the village before its one satellite phone and radio could be used to raise the alarm. He and Mia had recced the place as passing photo-snapping tourists. He’d allocated one man per house and chosen handguns over rifles for both ease of movement and, as more easily concealed, to minimize terror in the children. The men had all been briefed for silent entry and to get the parents under control before forcing them to wake their children. The families would be allowed to dress warmly and take any household pets with them

  – including the three horses and two cows that called the village home. All other property was to be left behind. The villagers were to be stripped of everything. Nothing of value — financial or sentimental — was to be taken with them.

  Alex had suffered occasional flash-images during the planning, of holocaust victims with their suitcases being loaded onto trains. But his villagers’ luggage was being swapped for their lives, which seemed more than a fair exchange.

  Pressing the transmit button of his radio, he gave a final briefing.

  ‘One minute to drop, boys. Remember, if I hear any of you bastards shouting or yelling it’ll cost you twenty per cent of your fee, and if you let any of your adults shout or yell it’ll be another ten. You need to play nice, boys, but if anyone gives you any trouble — drop ’em.’

  ‘Kill them?’ A disconnected voice Alex did not immediately recognise clarified the situation for the other newbies.

  ‘Aye, lad, last resort — kill them. But the aim of this operation is zero deaths. This is as much about the publicity as it is about the extraction and destruction.’

  The men in his helicopter nodded and no further questions came over the radio.

  They dropped from the helicopters like shadows on ropes, two miles from the village. The pilots had flown into the target area downwind, to minimize the noise of their blades. Once the ground troops had exited, two of the four helicopters backed off a further two miles to wait for their recall while the third flew to where the villagers were due to be herded, ready to collect the escort party. The fourth, with its cargo of ricin, waited at the drop point for the all cl
ear to enter the village.

  The men did exactly as instructed and Alex did not hear one scream or shout. Slipping in through doors that weren’t even locked, the mercenaries located and woke the parents, ordered them to get dressed at gunpoint before watching them tell their children to do the same. By 2 a.m. the whole village was standing silently in the small central square, corralled by a semi-circle of armed and masked men. Parents carried babies and toddlers, while older children held the hands of younger ones.

  The barking dogs had been quickly silenced by their owners and the only sound now came from the three horses, which were restless at being bridled and brought out in the middle of the night. The two milking cows obviously felt the same and would not shut up mooing. Alex thought about shooting them, but that would have raised more noise than it silenced. The fifty-eight villagers continued to stare at him — some with sullen animosity, and others, especially those with children, with outright fear.

  He switched on the video camera that had been fixed to a tripod and placed to his right, overlooking the villagers.

  ‘Not so brave now are we, boys and girls?’

  One of his men translated, while Alex stood at the top of the wooden steps of the small community hall and surveyed the people below. The mouth of his woollen balaclava had a stitched opening so that he could be clearly heard.

  ‘Happy to club whole families of whales to death, but not so happy to be clubbed together here and now — awaiting your own death.’

  He wanted them to experience the same level of fear and panic that he imagined the whales felt, and was rewarded when the translation made one or two of the women start to sob. The children began to cry too, sensing the danger on an instinctual level from their parents — just like the whales he thought. But Mia’s plans had allowed for this reaction and he waited patiently while the women regained some control and parents comforted their crying children.