by Simon Toyne
‘Did you call anyone else?’
She thought hard, running back through the events of the morning. She hadn’t called anyone until she’d got away from the cops. Then she’d called her boss, and. .
She looked across at Kathryn. ‘I called you,’ she said.
Gabriel sprang across the floor towards his mother. ‘Give me your phone,’ he said.
She took it from her pocket and handed it to him. He checked the call log. Noted the time of Liv’s call. Held the power key to turn it off and turned to Liv. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he said. ‘Looks like they were not only tracing your phone, they were also tracing your calls. So anyone you’ve spoken to will be in danger.’
Liv looked back at the TV as another photo of Rawls cut on to the screen. It showed him standing in front of the offices of the Inquirer, beaming from ear to ear. She couldn’t believe he was now dead, just because she’d spoken to him. She couldn’t even remember what they’d talked about. Then she looked down, saw the smudged phone number on her hand, and remembered who else she’d called.
Chapter 112
Bonnie was upstairs in the nursery bedding the twins down when she heard the knock on the front door. She made no move to answer it. Myron was downstairs fixing lunch. He’d let her know if it was for her.
She smiled down at the two tiny faces, peeping out from their soft white blankets and cotton caps, and pressed a button on the plastic box fixed to the side of the double crib they shared. Above them a mobile started to twirl, black-and-white shapes waltzing along to the sounds of seagulls and the shore. One of the babies’ tiny mouths curled into a smile and Bonnie lit up at the sight of it — the hell with anyone who suggested it was only wind.
Her mobile phone rang in the bedroom next door, puncturing the moment. It had been going nearly constantly since Myron sent the group text announcing the arrival of Ella — six pounds four ounces — and brother Nathan, two ounces heavier and one minute younger. She took one last look at her babies then padded from the room, dimming the lights as she went.
Bonnie entered the bedroom, moving gingerly toward her phone, which stood charging on the nightstand. She still felt sore from the long labour and traumatic childbirth. She picked it up and glanced at the caller ID. Number withheld. She was about to put it down and let the voicemail deal with it when she remembered Liv’s earlier message. It might be the new reporter calling about the story. She’d told just about everyone she knew that her babies were going to be in the paper and she was damned if she was going to be proved a liar. She pressed the button to answer. ‘Hello?’
‘Bonnie!’ The voice was urgent and tight.
‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Liv — Liv Adamsen. The reporter from the Inquirer. Listen, you need to take Myron and the kids and get out of there right now.’
‘What are you telling me, honey?’ she asked, her professional calm automatically kicking in. Then she heard a sound downstairs. Like something soft and heavy falling on the hallway floor. ‘Hold on a second,’ she said, and started to lower the phone.
‘No,’ Liv screamed. ‘Don’t go. Have you got a gun?’
The question was so unexpected that Bonnie froze. Downstairs she heard more sounds. The click of the door gently closing. The shush of something sliding along the hallway floor. No sounds of conversation. No footsteps leading back to the kitchen to finish fixing lunch. She felt dread creeping over her as she listened to the silence.
Then there was another sound. Much closer, just along the hallway. The high-pitched wail of a baby crying.
‘Gotta go,’ she said tonelessly into the phone.
Then she hung up.
Liv heard the dialling tone purr in her ear and frantically searched the display for a redial option. When she couldn’t see one she held up her shaking hand and started dialling the number written there.
‘Put the phone down please.’ The voice was familiar, but totally unexpected.
Liv looked up. Saw Arkadian standing in the doorway. His badge in one hand, his gun in the other. It was pointing at Gabriel.
She heard the rapid beeps of the number sequence starting to connect. ‘No,’ she said, punching in the last two numbers. ‘You’re just going to have to shoot me.’
She held the phone to her ear, and stared at him as it started to ring.
Chapter 113
Bonnie stood in her bedroom. Listening.
From down the hall the crying of her baby pulled at her like an invisible cord, but she forced herself to ignore it and listen instead to the other noises in the house. She searched the silence. Heard nothing. Nothing at all.
She stepped over to the closet, her slippered feet silent on the thick cream carpet, and carefully opened the door, revealing rows of clothes on hangers. Then she heard it. The slow squeak of the kitchen door swinging on hinges that had never been set quite right. Someone was down there. Maybe it was Myron, heading back to fix lunch. But then why was he ignoring the baby?
She glanced across at the closet. Pushed her hand through the curtain of clothes to the small wallet safe fixed high on the back wall. She’d made Myron put it in the moment she discovered she was pregnant. The plastic covering on her patrolwoman’s uniform crinkled as her arm pushed past it towards the keypad set in the small steel door of the safe. She tapped her birth date into it and opened the door. Inside was her police badge, a box of 9mm cartridges, two fully loaded clips, and her service weapon.
She picked up the gun and a clip and pulled her arm out of the closet, listening to the wailing and the silent house beyond. She slid the clip into the stock of the squat, L-shaped gun until it made a click, like a tiny bone snapping.
From down the hall the crying grew, getting more desperate, and she felt a tingling behind her nipples as nature began to respond. She held her free arm across her front, padded over to the door, hunkered low behind it, and looked through the crack into the hallway.
Nobody there.
The hungry cry continued and she felt patches of wetness start to soak into her bra. Her grip relaxed slightly on her gun. Maybe she was simply hormonal and imagining all of this. She was tired, there was no doubt about that, and her lioness senses were probably working over-time. She listened for a few beats longer, feeling more and more foolish, and was just about to get up when she heard it.
A stealthy creak of a footfall on the third step of the stairs.
Then another on the fifth.
Myron had always joked that you couldn’t sneak up on anyone in this house.
Myron!!
Dear God, where was Myron?
She pressed her eye closer to the crack, trying to get an angle on the stairs, hoping to see him appear and amble towards the nursery. Instead the second twin started crying, and a faint smell of burning flooded her nostrils, then a vision of hell stepped into view.
It was a man. Tall. Bearded. He wore a red rain slicker, the hood pulled tight round his face. In his hand he held a gun, made obscenely long by the silencer screwed tight to its barrel. His eyes flicked between the sound of the babies crying and the partially opened door of the bedroom.
Bonnie looked up at him. Felt the warm wetness spreading across her chest, like she’d been shot. She held the snub barrel of her gun low against the crack of the door, angling it up as best she could so it pointed at the man. She’d been through weapons training at the academy. Learned to sweep through buildings checking for hostile targets. She went to the firing range every couple of weeks to stay sharp. None of it had prepared her for this. Her hand tightened round the gun as she watched him, his head cocked to one side, listening through the crying, as she had done.
The phone rang in the bedroom, startling Bonnie and bringing the demon towards her at terrifying speed. Red filled her vision as he leaned in to the crack in the door, his own gun raised as he looked through to the room.
Bonnie looked up. Angled her gun higher. Saw his head tilt down. His eyes meet hers.
She fired three
shots in quick succession, eyes closed against the splinters blowing back in her face from the bullets tearing through wood.
She opened her eyes. Saw the landing was empty. Leapt up in panic, terrified he may have retreated to the nursery, her stitches tearing with the effort but her mind oblivious to the pain. She rounded the door, tears of fury and terror streaming down her face, ears still ringing from the gunshots. She glanced right as she rushed on to the landing, gun drawn and ready to fire. And then she saw him, lying on his back, at the bottom of the stairs where two of her bullets had thrown him.
She whipped her gun round and surveyed the scene from behind it, her heart hammering, the twins still screaming.
Blood spattered the walls and the pale stair carpet, marking the man’s violent passage down them. Halfway down, his gun lay balanced on the edge of a step like a broken black cross. Bonnie dropped down the few steps to get it, her gun never wavering from the sprawled red form at the bottom of the stairs. She saw a bullet hole in his side and another in his head. His eyes were open and still. The only movement was the creep of dark blood spreading out from beneath him like a hole opening up to drop him back down to hell. She got closer. Crouched low to pick up his gun. Saw something further along the hallway, a sneaker attached to the foot of someone lying motionless on the floor.
She recognized it, realized what had happened. Then her own scream rose, desolate and terrible, drowning out the cries of her fatherless babies.
Chapter 114
In the deepening night a van pulled to a halt next to one of the silent warehouses, a few buildings short of the one with the cargo plane parked out front. Johann killed the engine. Cornelius looked out of his window towards the unmarked police car and the hangar beyond, its door slightly open, lights burning inside. Kutlar said nothing. He kept his head down, studying the two arrows on the screen of the notebook, one pointing at Cornelius’s phone, the other at the last recorded signal from Kathryn Mann’s. They were almost overlapping.
A soft buzz sounded in Cornelius’s pocket and he drew out his phone. Opened a text message. Frowned. Showed it to Johann, who glanced at Cornelius then nodded. He opened his door and slipped into the night, taking the keys with him. Kutlar felt the van rock gently as the rear door opened and he heard the muffled sounds of things being moved around in the back. The morphine had started to wear off on the drive to the airport and he could now feel the pain steadily bubbling up inside his ruined leg. The walk up the steep cobbled streets of the old town had ripped apart most of his internal stitching and he felt that the dressings and his trouser leg were now the only things holding it together. He’d tried to hide it from the others by folding his jacket on his lap, but he could still smell the blood, tainting the air with its rusty tang.
The van rocked again as the back door closed and a few seconds later Johann reappeared, ambling slowly across the tarmac towards the cargo plane, his red windcheater pulled tight around him, a canvas bag slung loosely over his shoulder. In the gloom he looked like a member of the ground crew doing the evening rounds.
Liv was still staring at Arkadian when the phone finally picked up. She could hear babies crying in the background.
‘Bonnie?’ she said.
‘He killed Myron,’ Bonnie said, her voice ragged and dry. ‘He shot him.’
‘Who shot him? Where is he now?’
‘In the hallway. He ain’t gonna hurt my babies now.’
Liv glanced up at Arkadian, his eyes still on her, his gun still pointing at Gabriel.
‘Listen, Bonnie,’ she said, ‘I need you to get the kids and get out of there, OK? I want you to call someone at the station, someone you trust, and get them to put you and your family in a safe house, somewhere no one can find you. Will you do that for me, honey?’
‘No one’s going to hurt my babies,’ the ravaged voice repeated down the line.
‘That’s right, Bonnie. You call the station right now, OK?’ She looked back at Arkadian, wishing she could ring the station herself, knowing she couldn’t push her luck.
The muffled sound of the furious babies rose like the howl of the damned through the crackle of the transatlantic line. She thought of them growing up, never knowing their daddy, all because of a phone call — all because of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into the phone. Then she placed the receiver back in its cradle to cut off the sound of the crying.
Chapter 115
Cornelius watched Johann close in on the squad car. The text message he’d received from the Abbot had changed things. He didn’t like changes to a mission midway through. It made him nervous. On one hand the new directive made things simpler. Just seizing the girl and returning to the Citadel was much easier than having to also silence every possible witness. But his training made him reluctant to just give up on his original mission. Maybe he could still complete both.
When Johann had covered half the distance he opened his door and slid out after him. ‘Stay here,’ he said, then pushed the door closed.
Kutlar watched him move away, making for the perimeter fence that ran behind the buildings. He reached the back of the warehouse and disappeared round the edge, heading towards the same hangar as Johann. Kutlar put the notebook on the seat beside him and lifted the folded jacket from his leg. A black wetness shone in the dim reflected light of the night sky. His leg looked as though it had been dipped in oil. Seeing its ruined state made it hurt even more. He reached into his jacket pocket and found the jar of morphine capsules — instant relief at his fingertips. He pulled it out and looked up at the distant hangar. Warm light spilled on to the tarmac from the open door. The girl was in there. The guard had told them that. And as soon as they had her, or she was dead, they’d kill him. They’d probably do it here and leave him in the warehouse along with whoever else was in there.
His eyes flicked across to Johann ambling up to the side of the car. He saw him lean down. Saw a muzzle flash briefly illuminate the interior of the car.
In the distance he could see the terminal building glowing brightly like a mirage. It was too far. His best bet would be to try and make it back to the guard’s hut. He’d have a gun stashed somewhere, and a walkie-talkie to call help. He remembered the surprised look on the guard’s face as he’d looked up from his newspaper straight into the barrel of Johann’s silenced gun. He hadn’t reached for anything. He just answered Cornelius’s questions. He’d told them the girl was inside and someone else was in there too. Someone who sounded like the man Kutlar had fought on the road the previous night. The man who had shot his cousin Serko and planted this pain in his leg.
He looked back at Johann now, running towards the open hangar door in a loping crouch, keeping clear of the light that spilled from it. He reached the edge of the door and another figure appeared from the rear of the building, slipping through the darkness to join him. They squatted on the tarmac, two demons in the dark, checking their weapons; and like a revelation Kutlar realized this was his chance. He edged over to the driver’s side, pain jabbing his leg with every movement. He took the jar of pills from his pocket and twisted the cap off, his eyes never leaving the two crouched figures as he popped a single capsule into his mouth — enough to quell the pain, not enough to blunt his sharp desire to survive.
He thought about the man inside, unaware that the man he had shot was sitting outside and oblivious of the two men by the door with guns in their hands. If Kutlar let things ride, that man would probably be dead in a few minutes. But then the killers would come back for him, and though he dearly wanted revenge for Serko, he wanted to live even more. He apologized to the darkness under his breath, hoping Serko would hear it wherever he was. Then he watched Cornelius and Johann, coiled in preparation, counting on surprise. And waited.
Chapter 116
‘We need to get out of here,’ Gabriel said, the moment Liv put the phone down.
Arkadian made no move. Kept his gun steady. ‘What were you doing at the morgue?’ he asked.
Gabriel sighed
and shook his head wearily. ‘I haven’t time to explain,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to arrest me, go ahead and do it — but you need to let these people go. And you need to do it right n-’
The sudden blast of the horn cut him off mid sentence. His head instinctively whipped round in the direction it came from in time to see the shape of a man slipping in through the open door on the far side of the hangar, body tense, gun rising up and pointing straight at them.
‘Down!’ he shouted, throwing himself forward, taking Oscar and Kathryn down to the floor with him. Then the world all around them started disintegrating.
Arkadian also saw the gunman. He swung his own gun round just as the window next to him exploded, filling the air with tiny crystals. He let off two shots at the distant figure before he felt something punch him hard on the shoulder, knocking his gun from his hand and spinning him to the floor.
He stared across to where Gabriel was crouched next to the woman and the old man, pulling a gun from a black bag on the floor. Beyond him, on the far side of the office, he saw Liv crouched behind a photocopier, covering her head with her hands as the TV exploded above her, cutting off the news report and showering her with sparks.
More gunshots boomed nearby as Gabriel returned fire.
Arkadian tried to crawl away from the open doorway and pain shot up his right arm. He rolled on to his side, his teeth gritted against the agony, then hands grabbed his jacket and tugged him to safety. He kicked out with both legs to help shift his weight and looked up into the straining face of the woman. He slid across the twinkling floor and into cover just as the doorway started spitting splinters.
The woman let go and reached across his body to retrieve his gun from where it had fallen. She expertly checked the breech, making sure it hadn’t been damaged in the fall, the snick-snacking of the action moving smoothly back and forth.