‘I can’t feel anything…’ said the man who’d been helping Napier, his suit now smeared in blood, his fingers on Melissa’s neck.
‘She’s alive, I tell you!’ Napier cried. ‘Who the fuck did this?’
Dale Lindegaard watched solemnly.
The bird continued to chirrup its lonely song.
1
Nowhere to Hide
A chill wind tore across the bus station and whipped up the corner of the newspaper the young woman was reading, as if it were trying to draw attention to the hard black headline on the paper’s front page.
MURDER HUNT CONTINUES
Soldier-husband suspect still at large
The woman looked up from the paper and glanced in his direction, possibly becoming aware of his staring. He quickly averted his gaze, grabbed his coat collar and drew it up, his head sinking down behind the flimsy barrier to the elements.
But it was all the time he needed to take in every tiny detail of her. It had been the nature of his job, to be vigilant at all times, to observe that which others might not. His life had depended upon it. She was aged about thirty-five, he guessed, plain but pretty with it, short mousey hair poking from beneath a woolly hat, a woman who struggled with her weight, he reckoned. She wore an engagement ring, no wedding ring, her fingernails painted in glossy dark-brown, her high-heel shoes hardly suitable for travelling. But the one thing that bothered him was the lack of any baggage. Where was her suitcase? She didn’t have anything with her. Not even an overnight bag of any kind. When he shot a quick glance at her, she was still watching him, standing by the side of the coach, holding the idle newspaper that flapped in the cold evening wind.
He began to get nervous. Scanned the line of people as they started to shuffle towards the bus driver. He was looking at their tickets, getting them to leave their cases in a tidy pile ready to be loaded into the coach’s locker.
Maybe this was a bad idea, he thought. Who exactly was this woman? Was she onto him?
He rubbed his stiff dark beard, his eyes once again taking in his surroundings. Looking for anything out of the ordinary. Buses, shiny-wet with the rain, lining up to drop off or take on passengers, unknown hundreds leaving or entering the city; the hum of many voices, the smell of burgers and fries, heads bent down to mobiles and tablets, wheeled suitcases being trundled noisily along concrete pavements, music floating out from somewhere. The sky above looking almost black against the bright lights of the bus station. A sky choked with angry rain clouds. And then the first loud spattering of rain on the roof of the bus shelter. Umbrellas being unfurled. Taxis lined up like black beetles. People ducking into them, swallowed up as if they fell down into black holes. The grunt of the bus driver as he checked off the tickets against his passenger list.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that shouldn’t be here.
Except for the woman. She didn’t feel right. Something was wrong. How many young women read actual newspapers these days? More likely to read one electronically, surely?
Samuel Wade felt his stomach tighten up into a painful knot. The not-so-distant grumbling of thunder caused him to flinch, his hands clench into fists.
The row of people shuffled along and he shuffled along with them, his lips suddenly dry. He wanted to look at her again, to see what she was doing, but that would only draw her attention all the more. So what should he do? Should he make a break for it? How far would he get? There had to be others waiting for him, somewhere in the bus station. She wouldn’t have come alone.
His eager eyes picked out individuals amid the crowds of commuters urgently going about their business, but each of them appeared to be lodged within their own tiny world, hardly aware of his miserable existence.
‘You worry far too much about everything,’ his wife told him one day.
Scratch that. She was always telling him.
‘It’s my job to worry,’ he replied.
‘Not here, Sam, not at home. You’re safe now. You’re with your family.’
He remembered kissing her, smelling her, the same sweet smell she always had about her, the smell he remembered from the day they first met, when he was seventeen and she was sixteen. Kids at a party. He knew then – even then – that they were meant to be together. How crazy is that? No one believed in that kind of stuff these days. But he knew it. She became etched into his very soul, her presence like an exquisite acid.
‘It’s not as easy as that,’ he told her, clutching her tightly to him, wanting to crush her so hard that he might absorb her very being into him, for her to always be a part of him so that he could draw upon her vibrancy when he needed it the most. She did not know – could not know – of the horrors he had seen, had doled out. She might say she understood, but no one can, except those who had had to endure the human obscenity that is war.
‘Colleen…’ he said.
The man in front turned round to look at him. ‘You say something?’ he asked.
Late-fifties, Samuel Wade surmised. Possibly retired. Labels from various countries pasted to their old-fashioned suitcase. Plenty of time and money to go on vacation. The woman at his side, presumably his long-time wife from the way they stood some distance apart and absorbed in their own private thoughts, turned round at the sound of her husband’s question.
‘Talking to myself,’ said Wade, dredging up a smile. ‘Weather looks about to take a turn for the worse,’ he added, looking up and diverting their eyes from him to the heavens.
‘Sure is,’ said the man. ‘I hate this bloody weather. It’s all we get over here. Miserable, damp, foggy, snowy…’
‘Now then, Paul, it’s not that bad, really,’ his wife said, smiling awkwardly as she gave her curmudgeonly husband’s arm a light tap with her finger.
He grunted and turned to the front again. ‘God, this guy’s slow,’ he said of the driver.
‘We’re on time,’ his wife said. ‘We’re travelling to Northampton. To see our daughter,’ she explained to Wade.
‘He doesn’t need to know that, Phyllis’ the man said tersely. ‘We should have taken the train. We’d be there in half the time.’ He shot Wade a glance, looking him up and down quickly. ‘But the coach is cheaper. It has that going for it at least.’
‘And it’s more fun,’ said his wife.
‘Fun?’ he blurted. ‘A coach?’ He shook his head. ‘At this time of night and in the goddamn rain. Sure, it’s fun.’
The woman shrugged at Wade and turned her attention to the front. They came up to the driver who ran his eyes down their ticket and nodded. The couple placed their suitcase near the pile of luggage and boarded the overnight coach. It looked warm and inviting with the lights glowing creamy yellow, in sharp contrast to the blackness of the tumbling clouds and the sharp wind that grew in intensity and caused Wade to shiver.
But for him it was more than the icy blast that made him shudder. That woman…
‘Your ticket, please,’ said the driver.
A fat man. Risk of heart disease. Type-two diabetes, or close to it, he guessed. Too many years sat behind a wheel. Too many fatty dinners at service stations and the like.
Samuel Wade sneaked another look at the woman.
‘Ticket,’ the driver said, doubly insistent.
At that moment a youngish man came dashing up to the woman, dragging a large wheeled suitcase behind him. She folded her newspaper and the couple kissed. Wade saw the look of relief in the woman’s face, saw her point to her watch and the man raise his shoulders apologetically.
He was late, that’s all, Wade thought. Nothing to get worked up over. He let out a long sigh of relief. Then realised that the bus driver’s eyes were narrowing, and the angry moss of frustration was gradually covering his bloated boulder-like features.
‘Ticket – yeah, ticket…’ Wade said, fumbling around in his pockets, failing to remember where he’d put the thing. Eventually he found it, and handed the crumpled printed-off ticket to the driver.
The driver nodded. ‘No
baggage, Mr Curtis?’
‘No. No baggage.’
The driver’s eyes remained narrowed. Was the frustration changing to suspicion? Wade wished he’d had the time to get a bag together. Anything, just to make everything appear normal. But everything wasn’t normal. It was a nightmare from which he could not wake, and casual details like packing a suitcase to hide the fact that he was on the run hadn’t even crossed his mind. Not until he saw the woman without hers, and he realised how such a thing stood out like a sore thumb. If you were looking out for sore thumbs.
‘Fine, Mr Curtis,’ said the driver. He flicked his head in the direction of the bus and Samuel Wade took this abrupt cue to climb on board the coach. He cast one last look behind him, aware that once he was inside he was trapped. No way out. If there were anyone out there waiting to pounce, now would be the time to do it. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
Except he knew that was not going to happen. It didn’t make sense to try to make a move on him now. There were people already on the bus and they wouldn’t risk any accidental harm coming to them. If they were going to make their move it would have been when he was out in the open, standing in line and about to board the coach.
Or maybe even that would have caused them concern. Still too many people around, someone likely to get hurt in the ensuing scuffle. Perhaps they were biding their time, watching him, planning their next move.
He instinctively put a hand to his inside coat pocket as he slumped down into the plush seat. Touched the heavy handgun lodged there. It felt both reassuring and terrifying to feel its cold metal beneath his probing fingers.
Samuel Wade crushed himself up against the window, feeling himself tighten into as small a ball as he could make himself, as if wanting to squeeze himself out of existence. Outside, the rain began to fall, morbidly heavy. A flash of lightning lit up the sky. The tall buildings of the city were reduced to mere outlines flecked with lights, and his breath steamed up a patch on the window and blurred them.
‘You worry too much.’
His wife’s voice echoed around his head like a moth haunts a light bulb.
God, I’m so sorry, Colleen, he thought, a tear finding its way into the corner of his eye. He quickly brushed it away.
The rain-spattered window appeared to be sprinkled with more tears, as if the world itself understood the debilitating sorrow that weighed down his soul. Understood the bare facts that even now he refused to believe, to acknowledge.
His beloved wife and two children were dead.
Killed with the very gun he carried with him.
2
Sweet Dreams
The man couldn’t help it; there was a part of him that always felt sorry for Melissa Lindegaard. He tried never to let it show in her presence, of course. He wouldn’t dare. But whichever way you looked at it, to have what had been your young, fiercely independent, active, promising life taken from you in such an undeserved, shocking, savage manner, leaving in its place a body that depended solely upon the ministrations of others for everyday help was tragic. He didn’t know how he would have been able to bear such a thing.
It was difficult to determine exactly what she thought of the entire thing. Here she was before him, her seemingly blank eyes staring from a head that had to be held erect by a padded headrest on her custom-made chair, her body already withering away, the flesh having melted off the bones, gradually becoming a shadow of the woman she once was.
But of course, such thoughts – the thoughts of those who looked upon her for the very first time, or those who continued to read about her sad plight in the gutter press, a woman turned into a helpless recluse, a story designed to wring pity from its readership – totally underestimated her. She was so much more than a damaged body. How much more only a few privileged people knew, and he counted himself honoured that he was one of them.
She was facing the window. She always insisted on being able to look outside. Today it was sunny, unseasonably warm, the cold blue skies and the chatter of birds outside in the garden intimations of the spring and summer to come. A spring and summer that Melissa Lindegaard may not see. She’d already defied the doctor’s predictions and lived far longer than expected, but time was running out and everyone knew it. None more so than Melissa. Another few months perhaps. She certainly could not survive yet another winter infection like the recent one she’d hardly recovered from. She was still weak from its ravages.
‘Are you ready, Melissa?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Doctor Sanderson.’
The voice was a remarkably good imitation of her real voice. Electronic, yes, but they could work wonders these days. They took digital samples of her recorded speeches and used those in the software that allowed her to tap out words on a special, touch-sensitive pad with the middle finger of her left hand, the only part of her body that still had any movement in it (apart from her eyelids) and translate them into speech. Sometimes it worked fine; other times she had to work desperately hard at it to get it right, the movement in her finger growing more erratic over the years as her body collapsed in on itself. He swore when she heard her own voice speaking for the first time in years she smiled. Which wasn’t possible, since she hadn’t been able to control the muscles for smiling since the shooting. But the spark in her eyes!
‘Okay, give me a hand here,’ the doctor ordered a young man, and together they lifted Melissa out of her chair and onto a couch-like affair in black leather. ‘Comfortable?’ he asked her as they connected her up to another set of instruments.
Her finger tapped on the pad. ‘Yes. Comfy,’ she replied.
‘Let’s just lay you back, shall we?’ Doctor Sanderson said, pressing a button on the chair and gently lowering the back so that she was almost flat. ‘You know,’ he said as he checked a computer’s settings on a table by the chair’s side, ‘you really shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not well.’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘What else would I be doing? Playing tennis?’ Her response was slow but faultless.
‘You can quip all you like, Melissa, but I have to take care of you.’
‘I’m dying,’ she said, the voice lacking any emotion as she said it. It was still difficult to get that built into the software. But there again, knowing her as well as he did, she probably didn’t intend emotion. ‘Time is short and death is long,’ she said.
He took out a syringe, filled it from a bottle containing clear liquid and shot a tiny fountain of the drug into the air. ‘Ready for your medicine, Miss Lindegaard?’
‘Ready…’
He swabbed her spindly arm and injected her. ‘I’d wish you sweet dreams, but we both know that’s not going to happen.’
‘You’re such a comfort,’ she said, and beneath the mechanistic monotone reply he knew she was being sarcastic.
‘Are you expecting a visit from Robert Napier?’ he asked as he stowed away the syringe.
Silence, her eyelids beginning to fall drowsily. ‘That wouldn’t be applicable…’
‘You mean advisable?’ he asked, placing her arm by her side and covering her up with the blanket to keep her warm.
‘Yes… Damn soft…ware…’
He smiled, turning to the computer and punching at the keys. ‘There you are, Melissa, you’ll feel a lot better soon.’
Her eyes closed and her breathing settled into a calm, steady rhythm. Outside, the sparrows chirruped noisily and a gentle breeze lifted the edge of the blinds.
‘Sweet dreams, nonetheless,’ Doctor Sanderson said.
3
Special Work
‘Sir, we have an intruder in the Heights…’
‘Which sector?’ the voice buzzed in the man’s earpiece.
The man scanned the computer screen, touched it with his fingertip, enlarged the map. ‘10225, sir,’ he replied. ‘Sixty-four miles west of Cain’s Territory.
‘Man or woman?’ The voice was harsh, uncompromising.
‘Hard to define…’
‘Man or woma
n?’
‘Cannot say either way, sir. They’re doing a good job of blocking it.’
A moment’s silence. ‘I’ll be down straight away.’
He burst into the large room, and though no one turned to look at him as he entered everyone was fully aware of his presence. He carried an aura about him like the sea carries a tsunami. Eyes briefly looked up from the banks of screens, but were quickly lowered again.
Robert Napier felt hot and bothered. He spent his entire life swamped in that feeling. An intruder? Lindegaard thought he’d managed to prevent that happening again. Drafted in key brains with no expense spared to make it happen. So, he’d say, how the fuck had someone gotten through our latest defences?
He moved almost silently across the thick blue carpet and hovered over the operative’s shoulder like a vulture; or at least that’s what he hoped they’d perceive him as. Fear kept them on their toes.
‘Show me,’ he said, softly, because he didn’t want anyone close by to hear too much.
The operative tapped the screen. ‘Sector 10225. See?’
‘Can we get a visual?’ Napier said, a demand thinly disguised as a question. He bent closer to the screen and narrowed his eyes.
‘No, Mr Napier, sir.’
‘Get me a fucking visual,’ he said.
‘I can’t, sir,’ he replied tremulously. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘We made it possible!’
‘Not this time. They’ve added some kind of screen that’s blocking our attempts.’
Napier slammed his hand down hard on the operative’s desk. The man flinched. The same hand slid through Napier’s sleek black hair, a touch of grey at the temples, adding severity to his already severe countenance. He was aware of the rank of twenty operatives, intent on their work, but with one ear on the proceedings. The low light of the room, the stillness and silence, reminded him of a funeral parlour, and not for the first time. Stroking his chin, he wondered what he should do next. He’d assured Mr Lindegaard that he’d cured the vexing problem of unwanted intruders into their operations. It was his turn to feel uneasy, as if a vulture perched close to his shoulder, too.
Armageddon Heights (a thriller) Page 2