Scotland Hard (Book 2 in the Tom & Laura Series)

by John Booth

At this point Elspeth acknowledged that whatever the Lady Fenella wanted, Elspeth very much wanted to live. She stepped towards Lady Fenella and punched her in the jaw with a superb roundhouse punch. Lady Fenella dropped to the floor unconscious.

  “Will you get someone to ca, carry her?” Elspeth asked in a remarkably clear and determined way.

  “It would be a pleasure… my lady,” Brennan said, and he gave Elspeth a deep and formal bow.

  Annelise Shultz felt more alive than she had in a long time. Killing innocents was always fun, but it was not particularly challenging. There was no great personal risk in it; the odds of capture could be easily calculated. The most you faced for failure was being imprisoned until your government traded you for a captured English spy.

  The fact was, stealthily moving through a factory at night against an unknown number of factions and with a noble cause, made her heart beat faster while sending adrenaline coursing through her veins. The pistol she carried was custom made with a longer barrel for greater accuracy. She practiced every day and she was an excellent shot. Hans Clerkes did not know it, but his days were about to come to an end for the wellbeing of the Hungarian Empire.

  Annelise knew the factory layout as she had been shown around it by Lord McBride. She walked down the track alongside the passageway that Trelawney would use a few minutes later, but she did not enter the shed with the train.

  She was aware of Lord McBride’s schedule and believed that the dantium would still be being cast into balls. In which case, Hans Clerkes would be supervising their production, either in the smelting room or in his device construction room. The fastest way to those facilities was via the factory shed that stood to the left of the one holding the train. She broke the lock on its door and made her way deeper into the factory complex.

  “They are not insane,” Clerkes said desperately to the skeptical factory workers, “The whole valley will be destroyed by my bomb in less than two hours. You must go to the railway station and get on the train at once.”

  “I see that these people have you tied up Mister Clerkes,” Stanley Fothergill, chief supervisor for the dantium steam engines said respectfully. “Under those circumstances, how can we believe anything you say?”

  “When you get to the Railway Station you will find Dougal McBride driving the steam engine. Ask him if you do not believe us, but go,” Daisy pleaded.

  “My wife and two kids are back in the village,” Rory McPherson broke in. “I shall have to go and get them.”

  “We have a team in the village waking everybody up and sending them to the station. Just go to the station and you will find them there.”

  Annelise Shultz listened carefully to the conversation from the walkway above their heads. The news that one of the bombs had been triggered and was due to explode in two hours was a bonus. It would destroy the factory and end the British capacity to produce more dantium for years. She would have to make sure she was on the first train out, but before that, she had to take care of a little business.

  “All this talk of giant bombs is absurd,” Stanley said with a sigh. “If we stop work now, my men and I will lose the Christmas bonus. I am afraid I require a little more proof than just the word of a foreigner and a couple of young people I do not even….”

  Stanley’s speech was cut short by the loud report of a pistol discharging at short range. The blast echoed off the factory walls.

  “Up there!” Arnold shouted as he took cover. He had seen the plume of gun smoke rising from the walkway above. He tried to drag Clerkes with him, but Clerkes seemed immovable. When he looked at the man, he saw why. Clerkes had a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead and where the back of his head had been, there was only empty space. Clerkes’ corpse dropped to the floor in the manner of a felled tree, revealing the missing back of his head for everyone to see.

  The only sound in the building was that of someone running away. Stanley Fothergill raised his head from behind a large piece of machinery and looked at Clerkes’ body dispassionately.

  “I reckon that will do me for proof. To the railway station, lads, and let’s be sharp about it.”

  The men were gone by the time that Cam managed to extricate herself from the equipment she had dived under.

  “It is clear that someone wanted Mister Clerkes dead,” she said to Arnold. “I wonder who?”

  At about the same time that Annelise Shultz dispatched Hans Clerks, Karl Wagner and his team arrived at the room where Clerkes built his devices.

  “Who the hell are you,” Lord McBride shouted from his entombment in the floor.

  Karl swung his pistol towards Lord McBride, but put it up when he saw that the man was trapped.

  “Ignore him,” he told his men, speaking in German, “He is the Lord here, but he has obviously had a significant mishap. We have no orders to either free him or kill him. Let us set our charges and go.”

  The British Army had been happy to give Karl explosives when he asked. He and his men had four small barrels of gunpowder between them along with long lengths of fuse wire. There was more than enough explosive to destroy the three partially constructed devices that Karl could see.

  Karl considered himself to be an artist. The barrels of gunpowder were carefully hidden from view and their fuse wires strung where they could not be seen. Karl did not want anybody wandering in and pulling out the fuses once they were gone. Lord McBride could not see what they were doing and had gone back to trying to free himself. Karl lit the four fuses and blew out his match.

  “Schnell,” he ordered his men.

  “And where would you gentlemen be going?” Alan MacTavish enquired from the far side of the room.

  Karl pulled his pistol and shot at MacTavish. MacTavish held his own pistol raised and his men held their rifles at the ready. Everyone on MacTavish’s side fired at once. When the gun smoke cleared, all the Hungarians in the room were dead.”

  “Well, that was amusing,” MacTavish said dryly.

  “MacTavish, get me out of here!” Lord McBride roared from the floor.

  “We are coming, Laird. Jimmy, go and get some cold chisels and some heavy hammers will you?” MacTavish said in an unhurried manner. “Do not worry, Laird; we will have you out of that floor in no time at all.”

  MacTavish looked up at the factory clocked and noted that it was twenty past two in the morning. They had eighty minutes before the bomb would explode. He calculated that if it took ten to fifteen minutes to get the Laird out, then they had over an hour to get clear of Glen Russell onboard the train. He estimated there was still plenty of time for them to make their escape.

  The fifteen-minute lengths of fuse wire that Karl had lit for his bombs burned away merrily out of sight of everyone. Two minutes of wire were already gone.

  54. Assassins

  “This is awfully good of you, young man,” Sir Ernest Trelawney said, his face beaming with an almost childlike smile. “I shall not soon forget it.”

  “Just pull that lever over to the next notch…, excellent,” Dougal said as Trelawney did what he suggested. The steam engine, pulling its four carriages, started to pick up speed as it cleared the confines of the factory with Trelawney and Dougal driving it.

  Laura, Tom, Michael and Belinda stood behind the two men and smiled. It seemed only right to Tom that Trelawney should be the one driving the train. Sergeant Taggart and his one remaining soldier stood on guard at either side of the cab.

  “Now, if I have set the points right we will come into the station alongside your train, Sir Ernest,” Dougal said. If there was a tremor in his voice, the others put it down to excitement. The sigh of relief he gave as they passed over the points exactly as planned was more difficult to ignore.

  Trelawney cut off the steam to the pistons and applied the brakes as the train rolled into the station. People were milling about and it appeared that the soldiers were operating more as police than an attacking force.

  As the train continued moving along the platform, Tom noticed
that an officer was running after them. He nudged Laura, who looked out of the window and giggled.

  While the ordinary soldier of the British army fights like a lion and is tough as old boots, the officer class is much less fit. Captain Pierson was a typical British officer of his time. His family had purchased his commission using money left for that purpose by his great uncle. The Pierson’s had been providing officers to the British Army for centuries and had been at many of the army’s greatest victories and at more ignominious defeats. Captain Pierson was not a fit man and the platform was long.

  Trelawney finally brought the train to a halt in a cloud of steam.

  “Most exhilarating, Dougal. That completes an ambition I had long given up any hopes of fulfilling.”

  “Perhaps you would care to be my co-driver on the way to Perth?” Dougal asked.

  Trelawney smiled and seriously considered the offer.

  “That is most tempting, young man. But should the press ever find out about it, they would hound me to death over it.”

  “Only out of jealousy,” Belinda said.

  “Nonetheless, I feel I must decline your kind offer,” Trelawney said reluctantly.

  “There is an officer on the platform who is about to have a heart attack,” Laura mentioned. “I do not think he is used to running any great distance.”

  Trelawney looked out of the cab window and repressed a chuckle. He noted that Sergeant Taggart and his young soldier were not so successful in covering up their expressions at the sight of their commanding officer doubled over and retching.

  “Sergeant, you and your man remain here for a moment while I go and talk to Captain Pierson. Guard Laura with your life. You may never have the privilege of guarding another Class A. Make sure you do a good job.”

  Trelawney opened the cab door and carefully used the steps built into the machine to get onto the platform.

  “Sir, there are hundreds of people demanding to get onto our train. What do we do?” Captain Pierson asked breathlessly

  “Tell the people to form an orderly queue and then get as many of them as you can into the carriages,” Trelawney said dryly. “Pack them tight as we will not have any spare room.”

  “But what about my men, sir; if there really is a bomb about to destroy Glen Russell?”

  “Oh, that there is, Captain, take my word for it. One of the consequences of taking the Queen’s shilling is that you have to risk your life from time to time. But never fear, Captain, I shall be taking the second train along with you.”

  Tom and Laura descended from the cab. Tom helped Belinda descend to the platform, much to her amusement.

  “You are training him well, I see,” she said to Laura.

  “But not in the most vital departments, unfortunately,” Laura said glumly.

  High up on the station roof, clinging to the iron girders that bound it together, Bruno Schubert spotted Laura for the first time. She was partially obscured by the ironwork and he decided to move to another girder to get a clearer shot. No one could possibly see him against the night sky and he knew he had plenty of time.

  Trelawney noticed that Laura was now on the platform and therefore vulnerable

  “Captain Pierson, I want you to take Miss Young and make sure she is safely put aboard the first train.”

  “No,” Laura said firmly and Trelawney raised an eyebrow.

  “We are a team and Cam and the others are not back yet. We will all leave together or not at all,” Laura continued.

  Trelawney looked at Laura’s determined face and considered having her bound and taken onboard against her will. Then he sighed and nodded his head.

  “Stay then, but remember that if you get killed, I will lose my career as a result.”

  “I shall bear it in mind and take the appropriate precautions,” Laura replied, grinning broadly at being allowed to stay.

  “Tom, Laura,” Tricky shouted as he, Ebb and Daisy approached them. Alice and the other girls were following a few yards behind. Daisy smiled at Tom and Laura before hurrying forward to the engine where Dougal waited to greet her.

  “What happened to your minder, the scientist?” Tom asked.

  “He is tryin’ to get on the train with about a million others,” Tricky told them with a look of contempt on his face.

  “I see that you roused the village,” Laura said as she looked at the milling crowd of excited people.

  “Alice did it, she shouted at ‘em, with her mind like, an’ they came out screaming,” Tricky said and grinned.

  Alice gave them a curtsy and the other girls giggled.

  “I spoke to your father the other day, David,” Trelawney said gravely and Tricky suddenly looked anxious. “He said to tell you that he and your mother are proud of you. He also told me that anybody who tried to take you prisoner would soon regret it and I think I can see why.”

  Tricky took a moment to decipher Trelawney’s words, and then he grinned broadly. “I can be a bit of an ‘andful at times.”

  Ebb stood next to Tricky looking at Laura and Tom. Tom was looking back at him when Ebb’s face went white. A second later, he ran and jumped at Laura.

  Up on the roof, Bruno finally had the shot he was looking for. He decided on a heart shot. The range was not that long, but a heart shot was an instant kill with the size of bullet he was using and Laura kept turning her head to look at people. He gently squeezed the trigger of his rifle.

  A blur obscured his sights as the bullet loosed from the barrel. Incredibly, a small boy put his body between the girl and the bullet. The rifle would take thirty seconds to reload on a flat surface. Up on the girders it would take longer. Bruno had no choice but to try to get away as fast as he could.

  Blood and flesh splattered everywhere, coating Laura’s face and blouse as part of Ebb’s shoulder was blown away by the large bullet. Tricky screamed and ran towards his friend.

  The soldier guarding them raised his rifle and looked up at the roof where he caught a glimpse of someone as they moved along the girders. Then he found his rifle wrenched from his hands and looked on in astonishment as Belinda lifted his rifle like an expert and took careful aim. When Bruno passed across a girder so he was outlined, she fired. Two seconds later, Bruno’s body fell thirty feet to the marble concourse below.

  Belinda handed the rifle back to the soldier.

  “Ladies rifle champion 1850 to 1857,” she told him as if by way of explanation.

  “Tom!” Laura shrieked, as she held tightly onto Ebb. Laura pressed at what remained of Ebb’s shoulder trying to keep his life’s blood inside him. Tricky was holding onto his friends legs as if that might somehow help.

  Trelawney turned to Captain Pierson.

  “Get a human shield around Miss Young right now, Captain. I will form part of it. Then get some men up on the roof. I want every inch of it searched.” Captain Pierson stood with his mouth open. This was the first time he had faced real action and he was frozen with shock.

  “GET ON WITH IT MAN!” Trelawney shouted and the Captain finally leapt into action, pressing the Sergeant and his soldier to stand together so they blocked Laura from the direction the bullet had come from. Dougal, Daisy and Trelawney joined the two men, as did Belinda. Seconds later, Alice and the other girls joined the swiftly forming circle, blocking Laura from sight. Reluctantly and lastly, Michael joined the others to form a tight circle.

  Tom moved Laura’s hands away from Ebb’s gaping wound. Ebb’s previously spurting blood had already reduced to a trickle as he put his hands where Laura’s had just been.

  “Can Tom save the boy?” Belinda asked Trelawney in a whisper.

  Trelawney shook his head very slightly, so that only Belinda would see. She squeezed his hand tightly in response.

  MacTavish placed a thick blanket over his Laird as his men attacked the concrete around him with sledgehammers. Concrete chips flew in all directions, cutting the men but leaving the Laird safe beneath his blanket.

  As soon as a large chunk of co
ncrete was broken free, eager hands lifted it out of the way. They had already dug a hole over two feet down around the Laird and freed his hands.

  MacTavish looked up at the factory clock. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed.

  “We are through the concrete and down to dirt,” Jimmy told MacTavish. The men pulled the last of the concrete out of the hole.

  “You should be able to pull yourself out of the hole now, Laird,” MacTavish said and Lord McBride bent his knees and sat down in the hole, pushed hard with his hands and pulling up with his feet.

  At that moment, the bombs exploded.

  Lord McBride pulled the heavy blanket off his head and coughed in the smoke and dust. The first thing he saw as the smoke cleared was Alan MacTavish’s head in the hole with him. It was not connected to the man’s body.

  Crouching in the hole had saved MacBride from the blast. His men were not so lucky and all of them were dead. Many of the lumps of concrete they removed from the hole were pushed back in by the blast.

  Lord McBride picked up MacTavish’s head and threw it across the room. Then he began to pick at the lumps of concrete and throw them out of the hole. It was three o’clock, or had been when the factory clock was broken by the blast. He knew he had little time left to make his escape.

  Tom felt Ebb dying under his hands. A large part of his shoulder was missing and blood was pooling within it. Ebb’s blood pressure had fallen dangerously low. Tom wondered what to do; this was not like any healing he had tackled before.

  Then instinct took over. Tom’s magic took control of Ebb’s body and sealed all the damaged veins and arteries. Then it ordered the cells pooling in the wound to change their purpose. Blood cells broke down and reformed as flesh, other cells rebuilt arteries and veins. Fat and muscle was broken down from other parts of Ebb’s body and moved to his shoulder. Enzymes and hormones flowed into Ebb’s organs, calming his body.

  Arteries opened up as they grew, allowing other cells to flow to the rescue and change into whatever was needed. All of Ebb’s spare body fat was gone and there was still more work to do. Body cells from Tom started to flow through the tips of his fingers directly into Ebb. Tom had no control over what was happening. He was not sure if either of them would survive this, but he did not falter.