by Paul Starkey
She was face down. There was a halo of blood on the carpet around her head, but it was faint, her heart hadn’t pumped in hours, so even though Ibex had taken the top of her skull off, there was no force to push the blood out beyond gravity. She stunk of death, yet somehow he couldn’t reconcile the fact she actually was dead with the fact that she’d been moving just a few moments ago. He had an urge to reach down and place his fingers to her neck to check for a pulse. It was curious, how he knew Chalice was dead, yet somehow felt the need to be more certain with Lucy.
He didn’t reach down. In part he told himself this was because reason dictated it was useless, but if he was honest he was also fearful that she might come alive again if he drew too close, reach out with ice cold talons to wreak her revenge.
He left her where she was, stepping backwards for the first few yards to ensure he didn’t take his eyes off her. Only when he drew level with Chalice’s body did he turn. He felt like he should do something more, that he owed the woman more than he had given her, but his concern had to be with the living.
With one hand against the wall he staggered up the corridor. When he reached Brendan he paused again, but not for long. For some reason he knew that, of the two of them, Brendan had been the lesser threat than Lucy. Not a good man, but perhaps not as bad as he’d once appeared. Weak certainly, but not a traitor, not a murderer.
Still Tyrell stepped carefully past him.
And then he was at the door to the landing. Some power had closed it after Brendan, but when he reached out the handle turned easily, and it opened smoothly. He kept one hand on the wall until he reached the banister rail, then followed it round to the top of the staircase and staggered down, taking two steps at a time.
With each step further from the bodies upstairs he felt somehow cleaner, calmer, less afraid. It was only now that he realised that a miasma of dread had settled upon his shoulders many hours ago, but finally the fog had cleared.
He had his head down, so he didn’t see him. The first he knew about it was when he heard footsteps on the parquet floor. He stopped dead, gripped the bannister tight and looked up to find Felix standing in the middle of the hall. He was drenched, and behind him through the open front door, Tyrell saw rain lashing down.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” said the boy.
Tyrell allowed himself a sigh of relief before he took the last few steps. He went no further, kept his hand on the banister. “How did you know?” He didn’t trust himself to let go just yet, his legs still felt shaky.
Felix shrugged. “They told me…I mean…the house…my phone…” another shrug. “It is over, right?”
Tyrell nodded. No time like the present, he thought, and released his grip.
He didn’t feel too steady, but his legs remained loyal. He took it slow though, and Felix made it to the drawing room door before him. “You called the police?”
Felix turned from the door and nodded. “Yes, ambulance first though, then the police. I think they thought I was joking…but they’re coming.”
“Good. Now step back, let me.” Felix looked perplexed but he did as instructed. Tyrell didn’t have the energy to explain that if Tom’s trigger finger was too twitchy it seemed fairer that he copped the bullet rather than a kid with his whole life ahead of him.
He opened the door slowly, calling out as he did so, “Tom, it’s John Tyrell. Everything’s ok, you can stand down.” The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Inside he was relieved to find that Tomas Cheung was still sat in the same spot, and was still breathing. He was also pleased to see the Beretta was pointed at the floor.
“How are you doing?” he asked kneeling by the younger man’s side. There didn’t seem to be any more blood, and though he was pale he didn’t look any worse, his eyes still seemed alert.
“I’m ok, I think.” From somewhere he dredged up a smile. “I’ll feel better knowing help’s on the way.”
“Ambulance is coming!” said Felix excitedly.
Tyrell smiled down at Cheung. “Not long now.” He gestured to the gun. “Surprised you weren’t pointing that at the door.”
“No point, I knew it was all over, felt it, like a weight being lifted from my shoulders.” He looked suddenly saddened. “Chalice is dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah,” he said simply as he watched a single tear escape from Cheung’s left eye. “She made sure Quintus Armstrong went first though.”
Felix yelped, and he saw Cheung’s shoulder jerk as a door suddenly slammed somewhere in the house. Tyrell didn’t react; he knew it was likely just the wind slamming the front door shut. Besides, he had no energy left to worry, soon he was going to need to sleep, in fact he wasn’t even sure he could stay awake until the authorities arrived. But suddenly he realised he had to, they still had things to discuss.
Cheung must have noted the sudden shift in his eyes, he looked at him, eyes wide now. “It is over, isn’t it?”
Tyrell narrowed his own eyes, hardened his gaze. “Not quite,” he said coldly.
Epilogue
Sir George Mellanby had run as soon as he got the first small inkling that things hadn’t gone to plan. He was an old man, but whilst his joints weren’t as fluid anymore, his thought processes were as slick as they’d been when he was twenty five; In fact probably a damn sight slicker.
After he dropped Tyrell off with Chalice he had returned to Thames House and gotten on with the minutiae of his daily business as if it was just a normal day, as if he hadn’t sent friends and colleges to their deaths.
He had a short meeting with the Home Secretary, then responded to a few dozen emails before heading across the Thames to Vauxhall Cross to attend an SIS briefing on the latest ISIS intelligence.
He left the modern concrete and glass ziggurat at just after six, and returned to the more traditional Thames House for a further half an hour and a few more emails before heading for dinner at his club for seven. He chatted with the usual collection of boors and liars, then headed home just after ten.
Of course home was really a grade two listed building in Reigate, but he also maintained a small flat in Pimlico, close to the office, and it was here that he retired to. The place was spartanly furnished, but did contain an extremely comfortable leather armchair, a decent hi-fi system, and several bottles of a rather nice single malt.
He put Debussy on low, placed a bottle of scotch and a glass on the small occasional table, then turned out the lights and sat down. He had no plans to sleep, although he might allow himself a doze. A prepaid and untraceable mobile phone sat beside the bottle.
He should have received confirmation by midnight. Three rings, then silence for a minute, then four rings. The phone didn’t make a sound as time passed the witching hour. Still operations always needed a degree of flexibility, and he might have waited another hour before getting truly worried.
Instead he’d assumed things hadn’t gone to plan, acted on his gut instinct, the way an intelligence operative was supposed to. Even if you don’t see a threat, if you feel something isn’t right, it’s usually because it isn’t.
His eyes were acclimatised well enough, and the flat devoid enough of obstacles that he didn’t need to put the lights on. He kept a small overnight bag packed at all times, in his position you never knew when you’d have to fly off at a moment’s notice, so its presence wasn’t something that would have raised eyebrows even if he was ever under suspicion.
There were only two items in the flat that would have. The first was the sim card in the phone. He pulled the mobile apart and broke the sim card into quarters that he slipped into his trouser pocket. The second item was an American Express card in the name of Max Palmer and he retrieved this from its hiding place, cellotaped high inside a dusty cupboard where nothing short of a forensic ransacking of the flat would find it.
He left Debussy entertaining an empty flat. There was no obvious surveillance, and so few people about that a tail would have been obvious, so he felt safe as he left his life
behind and made his way to the tube station.
* * *
That had been September. It was October now—just— and the rains had eased off, to be replaced by a biting wind the forecasters said had sprung up beyond the Urals and which now swirled the fallen autumn leaves into miniature cyclones as he drove past naked, skeletal trees.
He took it steady, kept the small Renault to the speed limit, obeyed every traffic law. The last thing he needed now was to be pulled over. The wind buffeted the car, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle; he knew he’d have to handle more turbulence soon.
That was fine; he and turbulence were old drinking buddies.
Entry to the airfield was via a flimsy yellow barrier that even his flimsy yellow car could have torn through it. He didn’t need to; instead he rolled to a gentle halt a few feet away and lowered his window at the approach of an overweight security guard whose thick white beard failed to obscure the pocks that marked his florid face.
“Hello, Tim,” said Sir George with a smile. Always best to be on first name terms with the lower orders, imply familiarity even if it was illusion.
Tim actually tugged at the peak of his cap like he was an Edwardian chauffer tugging at his forelock. “Hello, Mr Evans, sure you want to be up in this?”
“I’ve told you before, it’s Ted.” He glanced skywards, the dark clouds seemed to race overhead. He looked back at the guard. “Trust me I’ve flown in worse.”
With another tiny salute Tim opened the gate and Sir George Mellanby drove through.
Ted Evans was a legend he’d maintained for several years, even before John Tyrell had roped he and Ibex into Bottlewood. It hadn’t even really been created with sinister intent, he just wanted the ability to indulge his passion for flying without anyone looking over his shoulder. That Ted Evans had also proven useful for the odd dalliance with the ladies was neither here nor there.
The Max Palmer credit card had been a stopgap, a buffer zone between Sir George and Ted. Max Palmer had outlived his usefulness as soon as he’d drawn a large cash advance on the card, then it had been dropped down a drain.
Sir George Mellanby was no more, and neither was Max Palmer and, pretty soon, Ted Evans would be no more either. He sincerely hoped his next identity would be his last, or at least that he’d get a good few years wear out of it before he had to move on again. He really was getting too old for this.
He parked the car in his usual spot. Retrieving his overnight bag from the boot he then locked the car, even though he had no intention of ever returning to it.
There was little activity on the airfield today, and the wind whipped across the grassy fields that separated the tarmacked runways and taxiways like oceans separating the continents as he strode across the grass, his brogues growing wetter by the step.
His plane was waiting for him, close to the runway. He didn’t doubt that it would be fuelled and prepped as per the instructions he’d telephoned ahead that morning.
It was a small Cessna 152; the airframe white with red and brown markings. It was a shade over thirty five years old but still perfectly serviceable. He’d owned it for four years but hadn’t gotten nearly as much flying time out of it as he’d planned when he purchased it—thank heavens for Bunty’s inheritance—and as he approached it now he was quite sad as he realised this upcoming flight would be their last together. He didn’t even want to countenance that this flight might be the last he’d make period. No, wherever he ended up, he was sure there’d be opportunities to get airborne again.
Aside from his Cessna, the only other aircraft nearby was a helicopter, a sleek black Augusta A-109, probably the corporate run-around of some multimillionaire or another. As he reached his plane he paused with his hand on the door handle and watched it take off. There was a grey 4x4 that had been parked near to the spot the helicopter had taken off from, and he assumed it had delivered some passengers to the helicopter.
He had less interest in cars over aircraft, so he gave it no further thought as it headed at an angle towards the main entrance. Eager to get going he tugged open the door to the Cessna.
Which was when he sensed movement and turned to discover John Tyrell stepping out from behind the tail of the plane, where’d he’d obviously been hidden. He wore the ubiquitous blue overalls of a mechanic, but the large calibre revolver gripped in his right fist wasn’t the sort of tool Mellanby was used to seeing a mechanic wield.
Mellanby still had one hand on the door handle, the other still gripped his bag. He let the overnight bag drop to the floor now as Tyrell stepped closer. “I’m impressed, John. I thought I’d covered my tracks quite well.” As he spoke he released the door handle and took a step towards the other man, stepping to one side to put the open door behind him and get closer to the interior of the plane.
“Don’t come any closer,” said Tyrell.
Mellanby complied, holding his palms out in supplication. “Whatever you say, John.”
Tyrell looked like hell, it might have been his imagination but he was sure he saw more grey in the other man’s wind tousled hair, more lines on his face since just a handful of days ago. His eyelids seemed heavy with fatigue, and he seemed to be struggling to keep the cannon in his fist pointed at Mellanby.
But it was still a big gun, and it was still pointed at him, so Mellanby knew he had to bide his time. For all that Tyrell was the younger man, Mellanby was willing to wager that he was faster, both mentally and physically.
“I’m glad you’re still alive, John. Truly I am.” He needed to play for time. The longer he kept Tyrell talking, the weaker, more off guard the man would become.
Tyrell smiled. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”
Mellanby shrugged. His eyes scanned the immediate vicinity but he saw no signs of life. The helicopter was long gone, as was the 4x4. He’d hoped there might be a passer-by to distract Tyrell, but it seemed it was not to be.
Mellanby was a man who always looked on the positive side of life though, that was what had made him such a great pilot. His ability to imagine what was possible rather than what wasn’t. The fact that Tyrell was here meant he was alone, if SIS or MI5 had been involved the airfield would have been swarming with men.
Better one disabled old man with a revolver than two dozen SAS with Heckler and Koch submachine guns. There was a Browning automatic secreted inside the plane. All he had to do was get to it and he could still get away. Free as a bird.
He smiled at the thought. “So how did you find me?”
Tyrell cocked his head to one side. “Playing for time, Sir George?”
“Just curious,” he said, his manner offhand, as if he didn’t really care one way or another.
Tyrell leaned against the metal body of the plane. Mellanby took this as a good sign.
“Ibex mentioned you had a plane at Cranfield, once I knew that it wasn’t hard to whittle the possibilities down. I’ve been waiting for a couple of days. I knew you wouldn’t run too quickly, you’d want to see which way the wind was blowing first. Pardon the pun,” and he gestured towards a nearby windsock being tugged by invisible hands.
Mellanby chuckled, but inside he was seething. How the hell had Quintus Armstrong known about Ted Evans and the Cessna, and if he’d been able to figure it out, who else might have?
Tyrell continued. His speech was quickly paced, as if he wanted to make sure he could get all the words out before fatigue took him down. “You’d have been watching the news, checking the radio, and no doubt you still had feelers out there back into Thames House.”
This was all true, but Mellanby said nothing.
“You probably saw reports of an incident at White Wolf House,” Tyrell continued, he had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind. “But nothing more than that, your contacts probably advised that you were wanted in connection with the events there. There are a lot of people in Special Branch who want to speak to you, never mind Five and Six.”
“I take it they all debriefed you thoroughly
?”
Tyrell nodded. “It was like being back at Devonshire Hall being prodded by psychiatrists again.”
Was now the right time to start mentioning what those psychiatrists had really said about Tyrell, Mellanby wondered? No, not just yet.
“I’m sure you told them everything they needed to know.”
Tyrell shook his head. “Not remotely,” he answered, and Mellanby frowned.
“I don’t understand?” Or perhaps he did, perhaps Tyrell had regained enough of his nous to imagine he could bargain for some of the nest egg Mellanby had put aside. If that was the case he was sorely mistaken, what Mellanby had salted away was finite, enough to keep him in relative comfort for maybe a decade if he was frugal. He’d never been good at sharing, as Bunty had found out to her cost the one time she’d tried to have an affair of her own.
“I don’t have a lot of time here, suffice it to say that there are some things that went on in that house that I wasn’t about to talk about.” Tyrell smiled. “They’d have thought I was nuts.”
“I see.” Although he didn’t really. “I wasn’t able to glean much, but should I take it the rest of the team are dead?”
Tyrell nodded. “Yes.”
He was a clinical, emotionless man most of the time, but a tiny flare of anger burned in his gut. “Who killed Lucy?”
Tyrell raised an eyebrow. “You actually care?” he sounded surprised. “Don’t tell me she was another one of your projects.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mellanby took an angry step forward, halting when Tyrell hefted the revolver.
“Back where you were, please.” It was said without weight though, Tyrell looked scared. Mellanby noted the hand that held the gun was shaking, and the man’s eyes didn’t seem able to stay still, constantly furtive.
He fought down his anger and took the requisite step back, he also took the opportunity to veer closer to the plane at the same time, already starting to wonder how quickly he could retrieve the Browning.