by Paul Starkey
Chalice nodded. It was important that an armed response unit showed up. If for some reason Ibex got the better of her, and of Tyrell and Cheung—both handicapped now in different ways—then she wanted a tactical firearms unit outside waiting for Quintus Armstrong, not some Dixon of Dock Green with nothing more threatening than a truncheon.
Felix looked tired, scared, bewildered…but mostly just concerned, brow furrowing in a way that made him look middle aged, made him look a lot like his mum. “What if they don’t believe me?”
“They’ll believe you, or at least they won’t take the chance of not believing you.” She cast a glance up the stairs. “Go now, hurry.”
He nodded half-heartedly then ran over to the front door. His footfalls were loud enough to make Tyrell spin on his heels. There was panic in his eyes until he realised who it was. He shook his head wearily. “I’m too old and too highly strung to be mixed up in crap like this anymore.” He smiled though, took a couple of deep measured breaths, then turned his attention back to the staircase.
Chalice stepped beside him, submachine gun at her hip now. “If it’s any consolation, John,’ she said, never taking her eyes off the stairs. “You’re not the only one.”
She felt his eyes on her, but she didn’t look his way, it would be easier to say what she was going to say if she didn’t have to look at him. This way she could pretend he wasn’t there, or at least pretend he was some anonymous priest. She almost chuckled. There was one anonymous priest she’d dearly love to meet some day.
“I feel old,” she said. “Hell, listen to me; I even sound old, like a little old lady. I’m tired of this business, I was tired before I even met Quintus Armstrong, before we came to this house…” she sighed. “I was probably tired before I even met Antonia, or knew this house existed.”
She frowned. “I thought it was just exhaustion, that I needed a rest, and I guess it is, that I do, I just didn’t realise that that rest would need to last longer than a fortnight in Cancun.”
“This job gets to everyone in the end. I mean, it obviously got to me, got to Sir George too because he’s…he was a good man.”
She wanted to concur, but another voice sounded then, advising of an entry violation, front door. Reassuringly it was the dulcet, accented tones of Antonia Carmichael once more.
Chalice half turned. The front door was side open; Felix was standing just outside, nose wrinkling at the rain tumbling down on him. It would be so easy to follow, to run through that open doorway, to hell with Ibex, to hell with Tom, no ambulance would come quicker merely because she was still inside the house.
It was foolish to even think it though, because even before she saw anything untoward she sensed it, disquiet as she looked through the doorway, wrongness.
Then her unease took form. She could see vehicles outside, only she didn’t see an Audi, or a Range Rover or even a Skoda, she saw something else instead, something utterly familiar yet utterly out of place.
Outside, in the English rain, she saw the familiar silhouettes of two Israeli Merkava Main Battle Tanks. There were figures too, soldiers standing all around the tanks, dozens of them, as still as stone angels in a graveyard, each holding a rifle. They wouldn’t need them; she knew all too well that the tanks would be enough. She’d seen tanks like that reduce an entire village to so much rubble; pounding one old country house to dust would be child’s play by comparison.
She felt her hands began to shake as the dark maw of one tank’s gun swung slightly so that it was pointing directly at her, the trajectory of its fire would send a high explosive shell over Felix’s head, through the open doorway and into the staircase, where it would obliterate the wooden stairs, vaporising her and John into the bargain.
Tyrell was looking too now, a curious expression on his face. She doubted he saw the same as her, just as she doubted that Ibex had seen a similar vision to the one she was now witness too.
She needed to shut it out, for both their sakes.
The shadowy soldiers outside were moving, dropping to their knees, raising rifles to their shoulders. The turret of the second tank was moving with agonising slowness so that it could add its own thunder to the violent storm about to be unleashed.
Her skin crawled with electricity, as if heralding that storm. She felt her heart start to quicken, even as she told herself it was only illusion, that there was no one out there except Felix.
The boy showed no indication that there was a small army behind him. Part of her wanted to tell him to run, but she knew he was safe from them. He was innocent, and this house had no interest in the guiltless.
Her legs felt leaden, and when she raised an arm to gesture towards the door, the limb moved with all the alacrity of the tank’s turret. Her joints felt rusted, atrophied. Eventually she pointed at Felix and said, “Close the door!” Those three words took a monumental effort. Felix nodded and closed the door, shutting himself and the Israeli Defence Force outside.
Once before, long ago when she was doing her finals at Oxford, after her return from Israel but before she ended up with MI5, she had found herself under intense stress. For months, expectation, revision, exhaustion, a failed romance, and a mother who still wasn’t quite talking to her recalcitrant daughter, combined to lay more weight upon her shoulders than any twenty two year old should have to bear. There’d been stress before, out in the West Bank, but that had been a short, sharp pressure, this was a broader more sustained burden, but she hadn’t even realised it was there until it lifted. It had been there so long she’d gotten used to it, until suddenly it was like her shoulders rose, the burden gone.
That was how she felt as the door closed. It was like someone had been smothering her, but the pillow had lifted, and she could breathe again.
Tyrell was looking at her, an eyebrow raised questioningly. She decided not to go into it with him, a back and forth conversation about what they’d each seen might have been good for their psyches, but would just allow Ibex more time to get away.
She nodded towards the stairs. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty seven
Walking slowly up the stairs, gun held tight, Tyrell was reminded of a tactical training session, early in his career with the Security Services. It had taken place in an old warehouse on some abandoned industrial estate. The place had looked grey and ordinary from the outside, but inside was something more Hollywood in nature. Plywood walls had been nailed in place to create mazes that you had to negotiate your way through at speed, and with the added distraction of targets that would spring out at you from concealed hidey-holes.
The first time he’d run through the maze he’d felt smug at the end. He knew he’d done it fast, knew as well that he’d perforated every target, he was a good shot, had been good shot.
The instructors had failed him.
He’d protested, argued his case, whined that it wasn’t fair…until they walked him through the maze, stopping off at each target in turn. Russian soldier- bullet hole to the head, Irish terrorist- two bullet holes to the chest, snarling Rottweiler-bullet through the eye…
Pregnant woman- shot twice through the face, police constable- neat round hole in his helmet…
His kill rate was 100%, unfortunately only 75% of the targets were a threat.
The next time through he passed, taking with him the valuable lesson that you never knew when an innocent civilian might find their way in front of your gun sight.
He had no such fear this evening. There was only one person up here, only one living person up here, and he and Chalice had already discussed the matter. As useful as Ibex might be to interrogate, the chances were that taking him alive wasn’t going to be an option.
Still Tyrell knew he’d hesitate, though it would be because the neurons in his brain would fire too slowly, rather than because of any ethical concerns. He hoped that sluggishness wouldn’t cost either of them their lives.
The carpet dampened their footfalls, and it was a short walk to the midlevel landing. Th
ey kept their gazes directed upwards, the barrels of their guns tracking in the same direction. It was always possible that Ibex was waiting up there, ready to use the advantage of higher ground. They kept apart in a vain effort to foil this advantage, the uncomfortable solution that Ibex wouldn’t be able to shoot one then transfer his aim to the second before the luckier one took him down.
Tyrell had almost suggested splitting up, that one of them should take the back stairs, so they could outflank Ibex no matter where he was, what he had planned. He hadn’t been able to articulate this though, so the suggestion remained unsaid. In truth he was afraid, not so much of Quintus Armstrong, but of being alone. He wondered if that was the reason Chalice hadn’t made the same suggestion.
“Ok,” she said now as they approached the small landing. At the moment they still had ceiling above them, but once they stepped out onto the midlevel they’d be fully exposed. “I’ll go left, you go right. On three…”
The numbers expired all too quickly, and again he was caught flatfooted. Chalice had her back to the wall, one foot on the bottom step to the left hand staircase, her elbow centimetres from knocking over the delicate vast sat atop the pedestal to her left.
He wasn’t only slow, he was clumsy, turning to aim upwards he backed into the pedestal rather than the wall, and winced as the vase on his side of the stained-glass window toppled, its fall broken by the carpet with a dull bump rather than a sharp crash.
“Sorry,” he muttered through gritted teeth, though he didn’t look her way. He looked up the second staircase, saw the steps leading up, the curve just before they reached the top landing, he saw banister rails above them. He frowned. He also saw something else.
“There’s a body up here,” he reported. He narrowed his eyes, tried to focus so he could see whose body it was, but he could see only a hint of the figure; mostly it was obscured behind the banister.
“Ok. Let’s go, but move slowly.”
He nodded. When he heard her begin to move he did likewise, eyes darting all around to ensure he wasn’t walking into a trap. The second staircase was longer than the first, but also narrower, and he fought a curious sense of claustrophobia.
The body was clearly lying across the top of the stairs now. Tyrell’s mouth was dry. It’s a trap, a voice inside his head warned. Quintus Armstrong is lying in wait; just itching to put a bullet in you as you step over him.
Except…
“Is it him?” Chalice questioned from the opposite staircase.
Tyrell was close to the top step now, the landing was so brightly lit that he could see into every corner, both doors was closed, so there was nowhere obvious for Ibex to be hiding. He trusted Chalice to watch his back and turned his attention fully to the body.
Even if he hadn’t noted the different dress, the blonde hair lacking a ponytail, the build of the body, he’d have known it wasn’t Quintus.
“It’s Brendan,” he whispered softly. He looked down at the half naked cadaver. Jesus… arsehole or not, rapist or not, the man deserved more respect in death than this.
He sensed movement, looked up to find Chalice now by his side, submachine gun still clenched tight in both fists, eyes alive, not staying still for more than a moment. “Doors are both closed,” she said, not looking at him.
He wondered how long adrenalin would keep her going, knew it would fuel her longer than it would fuel him. He could keep going a while longer yet though. He had to, for Tom and Felix, for her.
How curious, that he found he cared about what happened to three strangers. Despite everything that had happened in the last twelve hours he didn’t know this woman, not really, yet he was fighting fatigue for her, fighting the urge to crawl into a dark corner and hide from the terrors aboard in the night.
She dropped to one knee and rested the gun on the floor, then reached over and placed two fingers to Brendan’s neck.
“You don’t seriously think he’s alive?”
“He got out here somehow,” she said. “But he isn’t alive. The living never feel this cold.” She rocked back on her haunches and looked up; following the reed thin blood trails that led like dotted lines to the master bedroom.
“Maybe Quintus dragged him out here?” Tyrell suggested, chiding himself for being an idiot as soon as he’d spoken.
Chalice looked up, derision in her eyes but no malice, she understood he was just trying to make sense of something that defied reason, he guessed she didn’t blame him for that. “Why would he do that?”
“To spook us…I guess that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
She shrugged and turned her attention back to the body. “Look at the blood trails. If he’d been dragged they’d have probably been unbroken. This is almost like his body kept lifting off the floor then dropping back again…” She pursed her lips.
Tyrell shuddered, as the cold hard, terrible logic of the situation grasped him. “He dragged himself out here, didn’t he?”
She was nodding. She pointed to his hands. “Fingers dug into the carpet, yeah he dragged himself here.”
He fought the urge to step away from the body, for now at least. “Why though, and why…shit I can’t believe I’m asking this, but why’s he not moving now?”
She picked up the Uzi and stood up. “Let’s be grateful for small mercies.” She looked down at the body once more though and he saw her face harden, even as he saw her body tremble. He wondered if she was thinking the same as he was. Wondering if there was another body downstairs that had somehow clambered out of the cellar despite being equally dead?
Again he was so glad they hadn’t split up, finding Brendan if he’d been alone would have paralysed him with fear, finding Lucy downstairs might have caused his feeble heart to shatter.
“What now, the bedroom?” and he pointed towards the door.
“No. I doubt Ibex is in there, if Brendon was here like this when he ran upstairs he’d have veered away from him, that’s a single room that leads nowhere whereas the corridor leads to multiple rooms, not to mention another staircase down.”
“He might not have been thinking that logically.”
Chalice chuckled. “Forget logic, even if he was relying on instinct, primal fears…he’d have veered away from the body.” She looked again at the bedroom door. “If Brendon wasn’t here then that again precludes Ibex being in there, unless Brendon killed him before he dragged himself out here.”
“I doubt we could get that lucky.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So do I. No, wherever Ibex is now, he went that way.” And she gestured with the gun towards the doorway to the east wing.
“So we follow?”
“We follow.”
She took two steps but paused when she realised he wasn’t following. She looked back but said nothing, waited for him to pluck up the courage to say what he wanted to say.
Tyrell stared down at the dead man. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” He looked up at her, and she saw a plea in his eyes, for honesty.
“Yes we are,” she said simply. “But I’ll be damned if Quintus Armstrong isn’t going first.”
He nodded and began striding towards the door. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty eight
Finding a corpse trying to claw its way out of the master bedroom had unnerved him, Ibex wasn’t foolish enough to try and deny that, but even as the door to the landing closed, he calmed. Once he could no longer hear the slow, dread shuffle, once he convinced himself that, even if the body made its way to this door, well crawling was one thing, standing up and turning a door handle was something else.
This arrogance lasted all of a heartbeat, until he looked at the doorway to the bedroom he’d used earlier, the one he and Cheung had hidden in, the one that no longer had a door because the forces inside this house and torn it from its hinges.
He felt his hands tremble, fought the panic down. He was still Quintus Armstrong, he was free and he was armed, and he was—he truly believed—one of the most cunnin
g people on the planet. Clever as well, yes, but his instincts went way beyond his intellect.
And instinct was telling him that the quicker he got out of this fucking house the better. So hiding was out, and served no purpose anyway. The films might have it that the supernatural could be easily dispelled by the rise of the sun, but it was a thin hope at best, besides the sun wouldn’t be up for…he checked his watch; four or five hours at least, and even if the house didn’t contrive to kill him, or drive him insane, by that point, well there were more down to earth concerns. The boy was free, he had a phone, and so, one way or another, more natural agencies would soon be at work.
He moved quickly down the corridor, not running, a fast paced walk, holding the gun in both hands with no great care for the style of grip. Many people over the years— acquaintances not friends, contacts he needed to keep sweet,—had often taken him shooting, and each seemed to prefer a different style. It got to the point where Ibex decided there was no real benefit to bending an elbow, or turning the gun slightly to one side, such affectations were of less concern than just pointing it at the person you wanted to shoot.
He ignored the doors to his left, and similarly the windows to his right. After all, what would he likely see but an oak tree with a wolf or some other spectre stood beneath it.
He kept expecting to see something up ahead, hear something behind him, but all he heard were his own footfalls as floorboards creaked beneath the carpet, all he saw were the shadows caused by his own passing.
Maybe the house has had enough of toying with me for a while, he mused, maybe it can’t multitask and it’s turned its attention to Tyrell and that bitch.
Tyrell, oh what a piece of work is man indeed. It was hard, no impossible, to reconcile the feeble invalid downstairs with the ruthless bastard who’d drawn Sir George and himself into this operation. Quintus had jumped at the chance, and in fact had driven it onwards, taken Tyrell’s rough outline and forged it into something more elegant, more logical. After so many years of being treated like an idiot, by his bosses, his family, his so called wife, finally he would defy them all. That they’d never know was irrelevant. Quintus Armstrong would know, and that was all that mattered.