Wicked Leaks

by Matt Bendoris

  ‘Stop the car. STOP THE CAR!’

  ‘What is it?’ Monahan asked.

  ‘They’ve got Brian. They’ve got the kids. His mother has been dead for years,’ Kelly shrieked as she surged forward, waving the phone under Monahan’s nose. He grabbed her wrist to steady her hand so he could read the text.

  ‘Shit,’ was all he could say as Kelly began to scream hysterically.

  Monahan pulled Kelly’s face into his chest as he continued to drive north, her screams soon subsided into body-wrenching sobs, until she eventually fell silent, comforted to sleep like a baby.

  38: A–Z

  ‘Elvis, did you know you name is Ejaculate, Labia, Vag, Intercourse, Shag in the phonetic alphabet?’ DCI Crosbie said to Connor, having just called him on his mobile.

  ‘Actually, I think you’ll find it isn’t,’ the reporter replied. Connor had just filed his copy from near the farmhouse in Bannockburn. The place was now swarming with TV crews, photographers and reporters, including the perpetually flirtatious Amy Jones, who was working her charms with some hapless young journalist who had suddenly discovered he was God’s gift to women.

  ‘You’re right. But I thought I would work out my own phonetic alphabet. Make it official.’

  ‘Bing, do we have to do this now? I’m up to my tits, as usual.’

  ‘Hear me out, Elvis. I have news for you afterwards. So, let’s see. For “A” we have Arsehole.’

  ‘Inspired,’ Connor scoffed.

  ‘Look, if you’re going to be all sarky, it will just take me longer to get to my news.’

  ‘Right, fire away. Neither of us is getting any younger.’

  ‘Okay, “B” will be Bastard, “C” is Cunt, naturally. “D” is Dick, “E” is for Ejaculate, as we’ve already said. “F” is for Fuck.’

  ‘Not Fanny?’ Connor asked.

  ‘I know, I was torn between Fuck and Fanny, but in the end settled on good old dependable Fuck. We then have “G”, which will be Gobble; “H” is Hard-on. “I” would be Intercourse, again as we’ve already established. “J” is Jobby. That’s a personal favourite of mine. “K” is for Knickers.

  ‘Hang on. That doesn’t work. It’s got to sound the same, not spell the same,’ Connor protested.

  ‘Knockers, then?’

  ‘Same problem.’

  ‘So that’d also rule out Knob?’

  ‘Sure would.’

  ‘How about KY, as in KY Jelly?’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘“L” is for Labia, as stated earlier. “M” is for Motherfucker.’

  ‘Too long,’ Connor complained. ‘How about Muff?’

  ‘Brilliant, Elvis. Much better. You’re getting into the spirit of this. Could I have Knob for “N”, do you think?’

  ‘Why not? It’s your alphabet and I can’t really see Police Scotland adopting it, however hard you may try.’

  ‘“O” is an easy one, of course: Orgasm. “P” would be Pish.’

  ‘I’m interested in what you’ve come up with for “Q”,’ Connor said genuinely.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to lie to you, that was a tricky one. I thought about Quarter-pounder, as in, “My cock’s a quarter-pounder”.’

  ‘A bit convoluted, but I see what you’re trying to do there,’ Connor smiled. He was almost starting to enjoy himself.

  ‘Then I came up with Cucumber.’

  ‘Well, technically it doesn’t work, but then again neither did Knob. And also it’s a bit lame, Bing, especially for you.’

  ‘There’s nothing lame about a cucumber when your girlfriend uses it to ram it up her fanny.’

  ‘I asked for that one, didn’t I?’

  ‘But, in the end, the answer was staring me in the face. “Q” has to be Quickie. I mean, who doesn’t like a quickie, Elvis?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Exactly. “R” would be Rimming. I was actually spoilt for choice with “S”. There’s Shitter, Semen, Scrotum, Slippy, Sodomy...’

  ‘But you settled on Shag,’ Connor interrupted, trying to speed up proceedings.

  ‘Yes, because everyone loves a shag.’

  ‘Well done. Next.’

  ‘With “T” I couldn’t really decide between Tits and Twat. I am more of a tits man, truth be told, but then I do like a twat as well.’

  ‘I see your dilemma. And your final decision?’

  ‘Turd. “U” would be Uterus, “V” becomes Vag, “W” is Wanker. “X” is Ex-Sex, as in, having sex with your ex. That work, Elvis?’

  ‘Kinda. And “Y”?’

  ‘Yummy. As in, “I’d love to fuck a Yummy Mummy.” And “Z” is Zig.

  ‘Zig?’ Connor asked, intrigued.

  ‘Yes, as in, “Zig-a-zig-ah”. It’s what I imagine the Spice Girls shout out when they com…’

  ‘Right. Enough. Well done, Bing. “A” right through to insanity. Now, any chance you can tell me what you’re calling for?’

  ‘With information, my friend. No one knows where your Kelly character is. She seems to have vanished.’

  ‘Has she been kidnapped?’ Connor whispered into his phone, not wanting to catch the attention of the hungry pack of journalists.

  ‘Looks that way, Elvis. She is definitely not in police custody. I’ve been listening to the chatter on the airwaves all morning. Which means the attackers must have her.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ Connor replied. Like many journalists he was detached from the reality behind a good story.

  ‘Gotta go, Elvis. If I get any more info, you’ll be the first to know,’ DCI Crosbie promised before hanging up.

  Connor stared across at Amy Jones, who flicked her mane of strawberry blonde hair to one side as she took a call on her mobile. Connor then dialled Crosbie back, only for it to go straight through to voicemail.

  ‘I may be the first to know, Bing, but Amy always seems to be the second,’ Connor muttered to himself.

  39: The chef

  When Kelly woke up she was lying in the back seat of the Land Rover with a thick blanket over her. They had come to a stop and she was alone in the vehicle. Kelly lay in silence staring up at the trees outside. She knew she had been sleeping a while, but didn’t have a clue where she was. The only sound was the wind blowing through the leaves of the forest, and Kelly couldn’t hear any passing vehicles: it seemed to be a very remote location. She looked out of the window to see she was parked up outside a quaint wooden lodge. It looked beautiful, the type of place she’d have loved to have taken the kids.

  Pain and anguish gripped at her stomach again as she thought about her children. She began to quiver when the door was opened by Duggie.

  ‘Are my kids alright?’ Kelly pleaded with him.

  ‘Of course they are, hen,’ he said in a thick Scottish accent. ‘I tailed them all the way home. Kilsyth, isn’t it? Let’s get inside and get ourselves a brew.’

  ‘But the text message?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m no’ very good with technology. But the gaffer will explain inside.’

  Duggie led her up the wooden stairs to the lodge and into the kitchen area, where Monahan was boiling the kettle. Her patient was still wearing his army camouflage clothes while sitting in a wheelchair.

  ‘How you feeling?’ she asked instinctively.

  ‘As long as I’ve got my morphine and my protein shakes I’m tickety-boo,’ Monahan managed to beam, despite his hooded eyes and grey pallor.

  ‘Right, I’ve got work tae dae,’ Duggie announced as he picked up rolls of wire and headed outside.

  Monahan waited until he was out of earshot before saying, ‘He’s rough and ready, but great in a firefight. He took out two shooters last night. He’s lethal with that shotgun of his. Always has been, mind you. Helped me out of plenty of scraps. He’s rigging trip wire around the place, just so we know i
f anyone wants to pay us a visit.’

  ‘The text. My children?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Don’t worry about that. They’re fine. We reckon Brian’s mobile was cloned. It’s actually pretty easy to do if you’re near the same phone mast and know the numbers of both phones. You can intercept incoming messages and send outgoing ones as if they were coming from Brian’s mobile. Then all whoever cloned his phone had to do was engage you in conversation and find out where you were going. It’s the same methods they use in bank scams. SMS smishing they call it, when you hijack a text message thread. You’ve heard of that, right? Where you manipulate people to get information out of them.’

  Kelly silently nodded her head.

  ‘Well, the main thing is the kids are fine.’

  ‘Are they in danger?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘No. Someone will be watching them, but they’ll only be in danger if you contact them. So we’ve taken your phone off you.’

  ‘Like a prisoner?’

  Monahan smiled that smile of his. ‘Just for the time being. You can use it when we’re ready for them.’

  ‘You mean, when you use me as bait?’

  ‘Very succinct, Nurse Kelly. I guess we’ve got to make a stand at some point, don’t we?’

  Kelly felt strangely empowered. She couldn’t confirm it, but she knew in her heart of hearts that her family were safe. She wanted to warn them but couldn’t risk it. So now she would face the enemy head on, for the sake of her children. For the sake of her dead mother and Doctor Shabazi. To have any hope of a future, she would stand strong. She was ready.

  Duggie’s heavy footsteps came through the front door, his large UTS-15 shotgun in one hand and three pheasants dangling dead in the other.

  ‘You didn’t use that to kill them, did you Duggie?’ Monahan laughed.

  ‘There wouldnae be anything tae eat, boss, if I used Big Bertha here.’

  ‘Duggie, you’re the only man I’ve ever known who names his guns.’

  ‘Weapons are my mates, boss. They look after me and I look after them. But noo make way for Duggie the chef. That cunt Gordon Ramsay’s got nothing on me.’

  Monahan looked over at Kelly. ‘For such a rough diamond he is a surprisingly good cook.’

  ‘Aw thanks, boss,’ Duggie said as he placed an apron over his squat, muscular frame, which made him look faintly ridiculous.

  Kelly did something she hadn’t done in a while. She smiled.

  40: Bedtime

  Monahan had not been exaggerating about Duggie’s cooking abilities; he had plucked and prepared the pheasants in no time, flavouring them with herbs he’d collected, along with salt and pepper. Kelly had scoured the cupboards for supplies, finding tins of peas and carrots, along with packets of rice. They weren’t ideal accompaniments, but it didn’t matter as the game bird tasted sensational.

  ‘This is absolutely delicious,’ Kelly enthused as the three of them sat around the thick wooden table.

  They made unlikely dinner companions. Kelly was so petite next to Duggie, who had his shotgun slung over the back of his chair, while Monahan sat in his wheelchair, a liquidiser by his plate. He popped pieces of pheasant into the top of his machine, along with some veg, added half a pint of a protein shake then hit the button. The vibrations shook the table for a moment, before Monahan stopped, removed the lid and took a long drink of the multi-coloured goo.

  ‘Ah, magic.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘Don’t know how you can drink that shit, boss.’

  ‘Uch, it’s not so bad, Duggie. Your magnificent cooking added a certain je ne sais quoi.’

  They laughed again. Kelly felt relaxed. She knew she shouldn’t be, but she liked the unusual company.

  ‘How did you two meet, then?’

  ‘Long story, darling,’ Duggie replied. ‘But, basically, we were flung together for a job. They seemed to like our work and that was that. Twenty-two years later and I’m still saving his skinny arse.’

  ‘I love the way everything you guys say is so cryptic and vague. Mysterious, even.’

  ‘It’s a lot more polite than saying how we killed, maimed and blew things up around the world. Especially at the dinner table,’ Monahan said.

  There was a long pause before Kelly burst out laughing. ‘Malcolm, I think I’ll rename you Edward Scissorhands. You can cut any conversation dead.’

  ‘What can I say? It’s the reality of our lives. And it’s now the reality of yours.’

  The laughing stopped when Monahan delivered his warning.

  ‘There’s a shit-storm coming, Kelly, and you’re going to have to be strong. Stronger than you’ve been before. The bad guys are coming for you and you’re going to have to fight for your life. Ever used a gun?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Kelly replied, incredulous.

  ‘That’s okay, Duggie will teach you the basics.’

  ‘No thanks, I prefer saving lives rather than taking them.’

  ‘It’s your funeral. We’ve got an early start, so it’s time for bed. Nurse Kelly can have my room and Duggie takes the spare. I’ll do first watch. I hardly sleep at night, anyway.’ He wheeled away from the table, taking his plate with him.

  ‘I’m on dishes duty,’ Kelly said, clearing the table.

  ‘And I’ll just piss off to bed then and get some shut-eye. Chef’s privilege since I’m such a fucking great cook,’ Duggie said in his usual gruff manner.

  Monahan retrieved a gun case from a cupboard before he manoeuvred from his wheelchair onto the couch. Kelly stared in amazement. She had never seen a terminal patient with such high energy levels. She had witnessed big, strong men fade away to nothing. But here was Monahan still putting up the good fight, the very embodiment of Dylan Thomas’s exhortation to ‘rage against the dying of the light’.

  Now that they were alone, Kelly took the chance to ask about his health. ‘How are you really doing?’

  ‘Worse than last time we met, but then again I’m not exactly getting a lot of rest at the moment.’

  ‘What’s on that hard drive, Malcolm?’ She asked the question softly, almost intimately.

  ‘It’s complicated. I took some information. Actually, quite a lot of information – from someone who I felt was going to take it east.’

  ‘North Korea?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ Monahan scoffed. ‘They don’t have enough money to pay their electricity bills. The Chinese, on the other hand, would pay a king’s ransom. Anyway, when I discovered some fucker from our side was trying to sell it, I took it off him. Unfortunately for me, he is very high up the tree, and told the top brass it was me who was trying to sell the information.’

  ‘And Diana?’

  ‘True, sadly, but in the grand scheme of things it matters little.’

  ‘How can you say that? She was the Queen of Hearts. The nation loved her.’

  ‘She was a middle-aged, mad burd who was threatening to marry an Arab. Heck, she may have even been pregnant already. That’d mean the next king of England would have a half-Arab sibling. The establishment would never allow it. She effectively signed her own death warrant.’

  ‘These are conspiracy theories anyone could get off the Net,’ Kelly protested.

  ‘True. And I did,’ Monahan replied matter of factly.

  ‘So you are just telling me stuff off the Internet that everyone already knows?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know why she was killed. But that’s what it says on the Net.’

  ‘That sounds as though you’re distancing yourself from it. “Oh it’s nothing to do with me, guv.” I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Kelly, you’re looking for rhyme or reason, when there’s neither. We were instructed to take her out, which we did. It was surprisingly easy as the Arab’s security team was total amateur hour stuff. That may sound cold-blooded, but it’s not to me.
I don’t even think about it. It was just another job – a successful hit. I’ve made my career doing it.’

  ‘Killing people?’

  ‘Some people need killed.’

  ‘A mother who was an embarrassment to the royal family needed to be killed?’

  Monahan shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fuck knows. Although I’d suspect it would have been more serious than that. Trading secrets or something.’

  ‘Now you’re telling me the Princess was involved in espionage? The most famous woman on the planet – who was followed night and day by the paparazzi – was a spy?’

  ‘Like I said, fuck knows. But she did move in mysterious circles.’

  Kelly’s eyes began to well up with emotion as she stared at him intently. ‘I am sitting here with the man who claims to have killed Princess Diana, but he can’t even give me a reason why.’

  Monahan held her gaze, unblinking for what seemed an age before he finally replied, ‘I’m sorry. Some things just don’t have any reason.’

  ‘So all this stuff about getting the real Diana story out there was just a ruse?’

  For the first time Monahan looked ashamed. ‘I needed to find out if I was still a person of interest. Turns out I am.’

  ‘And now I am too?’

  ‘Yes. Again, I’m sorry.’

  ‘So I really was nothing more than a commodity to you. Something to be used and abused?’

  ‘It’s just the way I am. It’s how I’ve been taught to survive.’

  ‘Yet you’re not surviving, are you? You’re dying, but won’t change your ways.’

  ‘I need to survive only a little bit longer then I’ll be done. No more morphine or protein shakes. I’ll give up the fight and let go.’

  Kelly felt nothing but sadness. Her end-of-life-care training had taught her to help people get their minds straight and their affairs in order. But Monahan was a lost cause. ‘And what legacy do you leave behind? No wife, I take it? Or kids?’

  Monahan shook his head.

  ‘So what do you plan to leave behind?’

  Monahan’s look of shame was replaced by a steely gaze. ‘I don’t want the hard drive falling into Chinese hands. They will only use the information as leverage. They won’t be interested in getting the information out there. I want to get it on that Beast Shamer website. So everyone knows the truth. Then and only then will you and your family be truly safe. So there you have it, Nurse Kelly. My legacy will be to finally do something right. For the sake of your family, help keep me alive long enough to complete my final mission.’