Down: Trilogy Box Set

by Glenn Cooper

  “They are not with war but they are not with peace,” the prince said.

  “Will she help us get to Burgos?” Trevor asked.

  “I think yes,” the prince replied.

  The prince’s own house, located about a mile away, was far more modest, a squat brick structure with a protective outer wall, though it was huge by the standards of virtually every other building in the city. But no sooner had they arrived inside the courtyard than the prince showed his true colors by ordering them seized and placed into heavy wrist irons.

  “What about our deal?” Trevor yelled.

  The prince merely shrugged and disappeared through a doorway carrying their book.

  They were led by their manacled hands to a side entrance where, with quick words, they were passed to another set of guards who sniffed at them like hungry dogs and took them down a set of steps into a cool, dark cellar. The five guards jabbered in Spanish as they marched Brian and Trevor to a rank cell block, filled with moaning and clamoring prisoners.

  As one of the men was unlocking the cell door Trevor said to Brian, “If this door closes on us, we’re fucked.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  “How are you in hand-to-hand fighting?” Trevor asked.

  “Only man I ever punched for real was my second wife’s divorce lawyer. Hurt my hand. I’d prefer a weapon.”

  “Then let’s get you one.”

  “Right, follow my lead,” Brian said.

  They were pushed inside against one of the stones. The empty cell was putrid with an overflowing bucket of slop and filthy piles of hay. The guards laughed and began to leave but Brian did something extraordinary to make them turn and stare.

  He began singing a Victorian music hall song and doing a soft-shoe dance.

  I'm a flirt as you'll discover,

  All my sweethearts I can tease,

  When I stroll out with my lover,

  Don't I like a gentle squeeze.

  When an arm around your waist is stealing,

  Oh, it thrills you through and through,

  Who can describe the scrumptious feeling,

  This is what you'd better say and do,

  Get away, Johnnie, I'm sure there's someone by,

  Get away, Johnnie, to kiss me don't you try.

  Get away you naughty man, or I shall kick and strike,

  Well get away a little closer if you like.

  It wasn’t only the guards who watched in amazement. Trevor was reasonably gobsmacked too and it was only at the end of the routine that he understood what Brian was up to.

  Brian held out his manacled hands and said, “Por favor, señores, por favor.”

  The guards laughed and nodded and two men began to fiddle with the keyholes of both prisoners’ handcuffs.

  The second that one of Trevor’s manacles fell free he swung it, still attached to his other wrist and crashed the heavy iron piece into his guard’s temple, sending him reeling backwards onto the ground. Brian’s guard dropped his keys before finishing the job and began to pull his sword but Trevor was on him, delivering a punch to his face that collapsed his cheekbone, incapacitating him with pain and setting him stumbling out of the cell into the corridor. The three other guards charged and Trevor engaged them with fists, elbows, and head-butts before they could get their swords out.

  Brian dropped to his knees to retrieve the set of keys and fumbled for the right one while Trevor fought on. The moment he succeeded in unlocking his left wrist, he received a kick to the chin from one of the soldiers and when the stars cleared he heard Trevor say, “Take this and get the man outside the cell.”

  Brian nodded and took the sword, scrambling out in time to see a guard weaving around the corner.

  Trevor fought on against the three guards, taking blows but relentlessly giving them back, tying up their arms so that no more swords could be drawn. Finally one of the soldiers was able to step back and unsheathe his weapon. He raised it high and swung it toward Trevor’s neck.

  All Trevor saw was the sword and an attached arm fall onto the floor. Brian was behind the man, his own sword bloody.

  “Take a rest, mate,” Brian said, laying into the two intact men and within seconds, all of the guards were in a spreading pool of their own blood.

  “All right?” Brian said.

  Trevor’s lip was split and his cheek was swollen. “I’ll live. Did you get the other one?”

  “Yeah. He’s finished. Let’s get out of this shithole.”

  In the corridor, the other prisoners had heard the commotion and from their cells they were shouting up a storm.

  Trevor retrieved a ring of keys from one of the fallen guards. “What do you say we keep the prince busy?”

  Soon the cell doors were opening and skeletal men began to stream out into the corridor, some so hungry they fell upon the fallen guards ripping their flesh with their teeth, others making a move toward freedom.

  Brian and Trevor were well ahead of them, running up the stairs and into the first floor of the fine house.

  “This way,” Brian said, pointing toward a way out.

  “We’ve got to get the book back,” Trevor said.

  Brian sighed but didn’t argue. They began sneaking down a hall.

  “What was that back there?” Trevor whispered.

  “You mean the song and dance?”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “Bit of old-timey nonsense. It’s called Get Away, Johnnie. Impressed?”

  “Not really.”

  They smelled food cooking. The kitchen was to their left so they took a turn to the right. They crept toward an open door and peeked into an ornate room where the prince was seated by his hearth, his feet on an ottoman. The book was on a nearby table next to the backpack.

  Servants ran in from another entrance and in a panic, informed the prince that there had been a prisoner escape. The prince sprang up, grabbed his sword and ran out.

  Trevor slipped in and took the book and soon they were in an alleyway behind the house, the ramparts of the queen’s palace just visible over the walls.

  “That’s where we’re going,” Trevor said.

  “It’s a shame not to give Prince Arsewipe what he deserves,” Brian groused.

  “Back at the village you said it best,” Trevor said. “We can’t save all the innocents. We also can’t crush all the bastards.”

  24

  Hunger made them pull off the motorway and stop at a small village shop.

  Christine spritzed herself with cologne before going inside where she filled a basket with snack food. She hastily paid the bored teenage countergirl and sat in the car with Molly at the side of the road, stuffing themselves with gooey treats.

  They drove off through the quiet village. It was late afternoon and passing a village primary school Molly slowed down and pointed at a small boy sitting alone on a bench by the gate.

  “Is he crying?” she asked.

  “I think he is,” Christine said. “Pull over.”

  “What?”

  “Pull over. I’ll just nip out and see if he’s all right.”

  “We shouldn’t.”

  But Christine insisted and out she went. As she knelt beside him a police car pulled up a few car lengths behind their Mini and the lone officer began typing into his dashboard computer.

  Molly spotted him in the rearview mirror and frantically tried to decide what to do. But before she could signal Christine the young officer got out of his vehicle, sauntered over and tapped on her window.

  “Could you roll down your window, please?” he said.

  She complied and asked as calmly as she could, “What’s the trouble, officer?”

  “Is this your car, madam?”

  “It’s my friend’s. She lent it to me.”

  “I’m afraid it’s showing as reported stolen. Would you mind getting out so we can sort this out?”

  She closed her eyes in despair and when she opened them the policeman was no longer at her
window.

  Christine was.

  Molly tried to open her door but the policeman’s body was blocking it. She slid over to the passenger side and went around to see Christine holding a stray flint nodule in her hand.

  “Did you kill him?” Molly asked.

  “No! I didn’t hit him nearly that hard. Come on, help me get him into his car.”

  Molly looked around. The only one who’d witnessed the attack was the small boy who had stopped crying. He watched in fascination as the two women dragged the officer and stuffed him into his driver’s seat.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, let’s get away from here,” Molly said, just as another car lurched to the curb, braking too hard.

  A young blonde got out and began weaving toward the boy.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” she shouted at him.

  “I’ve been here, mummy, waiting for you,” he said in a plaintive voice.

  “Get in the bloody car.”

  Christine’s face contorted into a rage.

  “Don’t,” Molly said, but it was too late.

  Christine approached the woman. She had her son’s arm in a rough grasp, the first throes of giving him a shake.

  “Take your hand off of him,” Christine demanded.

  The blonde turned and said, “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do with my son?”

  “I’m the one who’s going to thrash you, you drunken cow.”

  “You and what army?” She yanked the boy’s arm and made him yelp.

  Christine gave the woman a sharp shove, sending her to the ground rump first.

  “Know what?” the woman said. “I’m going to speak to that copper. I’ll have you nicked.”

  She managed to get onto her wobbly legs whereupon Christine landed a fist to her jaw putting her down and out.

  “Is mummy all right?” the boy asked.

  “She’s just having a kip,” Christine said. “Come on, Molly, help me drag another one.”

  They laid the blonde out on the back seat of her car. The boy answered Christine’s question: no one else lived at their house. Christine drove the woman’s car and Molly followed in the Mini. The boy, seven-year-old Roger, was able to give turn-by-turn directions to a detached cottage with an overgrown garden at the edge of the village. Molly pulled into the drive and tucked the Mini behind a hedge, well hidden from the road, and helped drag the woman inside.

  “She’s more drunk than punched-out,” Christine said.

  The boy was already watching the tele when they finished tieing her with lamp cord onto a love seat in the small conservatory overlooking the back garden.

  Roger looked up and said, “Can I have some tea?”

  “’Course you can,” Christine said. “What do you usually have?”

  “Cereal,” he replied.

  “What? For your tea? Auntie Christine can do better than that.”

  She spent the next half hour re-learning how to make tea while Molly sat with Roger, both of them happily watching cartoons. The tray Christine eventually produced had several rounds of a serviceable Welsh rarebit and a glass of chocolate milk.

  “What about me?” Molly asked.

  “Make your own bloody tea. You okay, luv?”

  The boy nodded and tucked in. “Will you be staying?” he asked.

  “I don’t think your mom will like that,” Christine answered.

  “She won’t mind.”

  “What would we do with ourselves while you’re in school?”

  “It’s term break for a whole week.”

  In the kitchen Molly told Christine the boy had told her that his dad didn’t live with them anymore and that his mum was often mad at him.

  “There’s more booze in the cupboards than food,” Christine said. “He’s a sweet little boy who deserves better than a drunk for a mum.”

  Molly shrugged and helped herself to some of that booze. “Well, leave her ropes loose enough so she can wiggle free and let’s get back on the road.”

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What it sounds like. I’m tired of running. I want to settle in for a while. This is a nice house. Roger’s a treat. Don’t you miss being around children?”

  “Excuse me, missy?” Molly said. “Isn’t there one tiny problem you’re forgetting?”

  “Monster mum? No I haven’t forgotten her,” Christine said. “I think mummy dearest needs to sober up for a week. Do her a world of good.”

  Murphy finished his supper and pushed his tray away. He got up and began pacing back and forth to the side of the bunk beds.

  “Stir crazy?” Rix called down from the top bunk.

  “Might say.”

  “It’s a gilded cage, mate.”

  Murphy leaned his back against the locked door of their Dartford detention cell. “Do you know how many times I dreamed of having good food, a soft bed, flush toilets, tele?” he asked.

  Rix didn’t have to answer.

  “But I’ll tell you this: I’d trade it all for knowing our girls are safe.”

  The TV in the next cell switched on very loud.

  Murphy pounded on the door. It had taken a while but Alfred, the sixteenth-century oaf in the adjacent cell had learned how to operate the TV, but he was woefully hard of hearing. He’d been given headphones but he kept forgetting how to use them.

  “Come on guards!” Murphy shouted. “Make him put on the bloody headphones.”

  The guards in the hallway responded and soon quiet was restored.

  Rix dangled his feet off the bunk. “I reckon they’re doing fine. They’ll be on the run, breaking into empty houses, eating up a storm, sleeping in comfort, hopefully finding some good wine along the way.”

  “It’s Hathaway I’m worried about.” Murphy said his name like a curse word.

  For thirty years, every single day in Hell had been dominated by their hatred of the man. Hathaway had murdered them, but that wasn’t the worst of it. He and the band of rovers he’d joined had made it their mission to terrorize them and their pitiful village of Ockendon, returning time and time again to wreak havoc and pick off their fellow villagers one by one.

  Rix hopped down and helped himself to a soda from the mini-fridge. “I will take his head one day and when I do, I’ll keep it in a box and take it out from time to time and play footies with it.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  Rix grabbed Murphy by his collar and shoved him against the wall, dropping the soda can on the floor. “Tell me about all your triumphs then, Murph. What’s your record in draining the fucking swamp?”

  Murphy didn’t fight back. In fact he dolefully agreed and Rix let him go, waving at the security camera to let the guards know they needn’t intervene.

  “Hathaway won’t find them,” Murphy said.

  Rix turned on the TV and cranked the volume so they could talk without being picked up on the cell’s mics. “He tried. He found her ex.”

  “Yeah, but it was a dead-end.”

  Rix retrieved the soda from under the bed and popped the tab, spraying cola everywhere. “For old Gareth it was a very dead-end.”

  “You think Christine will try to find her mum?” Murphy asked, his mouth close to Rix’s ear.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Well, maybe we should be straight with Ben.”

  “Let’s be honest, Murph. We want our girls back. They’re running and I’m sure they’re scared. We miss them so much it hurts. But if they’re found, they’ll send all of us back to Hell. That’s their intention, isn’t it? We love them too bloody much to have them return.”

  “Damned if we find them, damned if we don’t,” Murphy said.

  Rix nodded. “We’re fucking damned all right.”

  Trotter set his fiery eyes upon his desk blotter. He habitually looked downwards while he was hearing something he didn’t like. He waited until his aides had stopped talking before raising his head and fixing them with a
withering gaze.

  “Off the grid,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the analysts said. “Very much so. No digital fingerprints of any sort.”

  “And what about actual fingerprints?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Giles Farmer has real fingers, has he not? And real toes, and real legs, and a real face. If you’d done as I asked and had real operatives with real eyes on him he wouldn’t have been able to slip the noose.”

  “The lawyers …” The analyst looked like he regretted saying the word and Trotter punished him by jumping down his throat.

  When the tongue lashing was over they all sat in silence until Trotter composed himself and said, “Let me see the list of everyone Farmer called, texted, Facebooked, Tweeted, emailed, anythinged in the past month.”

  He took the dossier and paged through it.

  “It’s a bloody lot of people,” Trotter said.

  “He’s rather well-connected,” one of the analysts said. “Having said that we’ve applied certain filters to prioritize and probability-weight his contacts based on the closeness of his relationships, length of friendships, prior support for his conspiracy theories. We’ve narrowed them down to just over a dozen people who we believe are the most likely to be harboring him. It’s the last page of the dossier.”

  Trotter glanced at the alphabetical list. The first name was Melissa Abelard, the last one, Chris Tabor. All but three had London addresses. Ian Strindberg was not on the list.

  “I assume that aware, as you now are, of my views on surveillance that you have eyes on all these locations?”

  The analysts nodded.

  “And what about electronic surveillance?”

  “Telephones, Internet, yes,” an analyst said. “Getting listening devices into all these houses and flats would, I’m sure you’d agree, be challenging, and would have to be ex-judicial and therefore subject to a level of detection risk. But if you …”

  “No, that will do for now,” Trotter said, checking his clock. “Keep me posted. I’m late for another meeting.”