Her stomach was full and tiredness flowed through her, turning her limbs to lead.
She sat down for a moment to rest. And closed her eyes.
Chapter 24
Mitchell
‘Frankly, sir, he’s completely ballsed up the whole thing.’
Mitchell stood, feet apart with his hands behind his back, facing the superintendent.
‘That’s not something I can say officially, David,’ said Dix. He looked concerned but that was his default expression.
‘I realise that, sir, but I felt it was important to make the point.’
Dix stared at the papers on his desk. ‘The best I can do is put a note in my daily reports to the effect that the Special Agent is not fully utilising the resources at his disposal.’
‘Meaning me, sir?’
‘Meaning you, David.’ He looked back up at Mitchell. ‘I am also very concerned at what DS Yates has turned up. This is very awkward.’
‘The death of a board member of Utopia Genetics certainly is a cause for concern, sir. However, I can assure you that it has no relation to my investigation. Harry was just following a lead that he had acquired interviewing a witness.’
‘I’m not sure I made the best decision allowing him to investigate the murder.’
‘He was just assigned it in the usual way, sir. The fact the murder victim also happened to be Chloe Dark’s chiropractor was purely coincidental.’
‘Don’t patronise me, David.’
‘No, sir.’
‘You would not be so smug if you had to do my job.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What’s the connection?’
Mitchell relaxed slightly. ‘Nothing obvious at present, sir, but everything seems to lead to Utopia Genetics in one way or another. Yates’s request for research on the fake riffy shows there are a number of deaths, linked one way or another, to Utopia Genetics. All of them were either accidents or suicide.’
‘All of them?’
‘Some don’t have any obvious contact, but if it’s a hired killer he might have other clients.’
‘But if Utopia is implicated in a series of deaths the situation becomes very complicated.’
‘Does it, sir? I thought we were policemen, not politicians.’
Dix sighed. ‘Sometimes we have to be both. What’s your next move?’
‘It seems that Bob Moses is the man to talk to and I know where he’s going to be this evening.’
‘Moses? He’s a nasty piece of work.’
‘And that’s why I’ll be taking Special Agent Graham with me.’
‘Well, you certainly can’t leave him out of the loop,’ said Dix. ‘Though I’m certainly happy to see you taking the lead on this now. I can make sure that is mentioned clearly in my reports. The Purity will never make decent police. Let’s get this case solved, eh?’
‘Of course, sir.’
He took the final comment as a dismissal and turned to the door.
‘David?’
He paused and turned back. ‘Yes, sir?’
Dix gave a sad smile. ‘There’s something very odd about this case. Be careful out there.’
Mitchell gave a small laugh despite himself. ‘Thank you, sir. I always am.’
Chapter 25
Chloe
She came awake knowing that several men were creeping towards the house. They were trying to be quiet but they were incompetent. The cold air from the window had filled the place and the oil lamps had burnt out.
Her stomach screamed its emptiness at her. She couldn’t believe it, she had stuffed herself at most a couple of hours earlier. Was this it? Was this how she was going to die? Starved to death while eating everything she could?
Her back was cramped. She could feel her extras, even move them. From where they touched her back they had grown noticeably even in the last twenty-four hours; they reached down to her waist. She’d be able to scratch any itch now. God but they ached with the way they were constricted.
She brought herself back to reality. The men were closing in and they had her trapped in here unless she got out fast. Where had they come from? The one that got away must have found some friends, but why were they coming after her? Did that make sense?
She shook her head. The hunger was interfering with her thoughts.
She still had food in the bag. If she got out now she could find a nice cave and eat in there.
Cave? She hit the heel of her hand against her skull. What was she thinking? Cave? But the thought of a cave was attractive, somewhere safe to hide. Yeah, right, a cave. Somewhere in Manchester. That was likely. Maybe if she was in Alderley Edge, or even Stockport. They had caves. But not here, wherever here was.
The men weren’t saying anything and their acoustic images were not clear. More like outlines.
She needed to get out.
She clicked her fingers to light up the room, found her bag and slung it over her shoulder. With a quick motion she snaked her hand into the bag and pulled out a pie. She took a bite from it. The guy she had crippled was still lying half under the mattress. Was he dead? No, there was a hint of sound that imaged his neck as he breathed.
There must be a back way out of here. She clicked her fingers again. The kitchen had another door. She made her way to it and looked longingly at the cupboards before touching the handle. She paused. There were a couple of men out the back as well. There was a space above her, an attic, but the entrance was not here.
The men were moving in as she slid through the lounge and into the short corridor. The one in the bedroom was breathing more solidly than the other, but then the bedroom was not open to the night air. A hatch in the ceiling called to her. The attic was like a cave. She needed the chair by the dresser and brought it over. The men outside had reached the doors front and back. If she had any time for it she would have admired their control—and questioned it.
The chair gave her enough height to be able to push the hatch out of the way. Rather than climb, she moved the chair away then simply jumped up into the attic space and swiftly replaced the hatch.
Everything lit up for her as the man below shouted, ‘She’s in the loft!’
Bastard had been faking.
The attic space ran the full length of the building even though it was designed to be two dwellings. Within moments she was at the other end. All pretence at quiet was gone and she could see a confusion of figures moving below her. There was shouting and banging as doors were flung back against walls.
With the space as clear as day she sprinted the length of it in moments.
No way out. There was a second hatch that led to the other set of rooms, but that too was swarming with men. She counted at least twenty, and there might be more. The hatch at the far end was flung back and electric flashlights shone up through the space. A man was boosted from below. She was sure she could take him easily, but then he pinned her to the far wall with his light. He pulled out a gun and pointed it in her direction.
More men emerged through the hole and she could see them gathering below the other one. Her muscles quivered with the desire to flee but there was nowhere to go.
Finally a much larger man—fatter—was pushed up through the hole. He swore a lot as he was helped to regain his feet on the uneven floorboards.
There were now half a dozen men, all shining their lights at her. She could barely make out the details of this new one, though he took up a position in the middle so he could stand straight.
‘Miss Chloe Dark,’ he said. ‘I see you are not dead.’
‘Do I know you?’
He laughed. ‘A middle-class girl who keeps herself to her little corner of civilisation and never strays from the party line?’ he said. ‘No, Miss Dark, I do not think you know me.’
Chloe peeled herself off the wall and took a step forward. The men around the leader clicked weapons. The sounds allowed her to see them in more detail. Two carried what were probably shotguns, but the others had devices she did not recognise.
‘You can call me Mr Moses,’ he said. ‘I run things around here and I have a use for you, young lady.’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘That’s unfortunate, you see, because you really don’t get much say in the matter.’ He turned and gestured to the men around him, and then spread his arms to take in the rest of the attic space. ‘And you are quite thoroughly trapped.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Miss Dark, before you die, I expect you to make me a great deal of money.’
Freak fights. She had heard of them, but nobody in her sphere of friends and family knew if they were real. But now she did.
She needed to eat but she needed to escape more. She jumped up and back, twisted in mid-air and brought her feet against the back wall with her legs bent. She thrust away as hard as she could and rocketed the length of the attic, narrowly missing the support beams.
If they wanted her to fight then they wouldn’t want her shot. Twin beams lanced through the space she had recently occupied. One of the unrecognisable devices gave a thunk, then another fired. Something shot towards her, widening out as it came. Net.
Twisting again she kicked off from a support, dodged the incoming net but flew straight into the second one. Its edges were weighted and closed round her. Moments later she hit the roof joists, struggling to fight her way out of the clinging strands. Then the burners fired again and she lost all control of her body.
‘Excellent,’ said Moses. ‘She’s going to be magnificent.’
Chapter 26
Dog
The way the weather had closed in had forced Mr Mendelssohn to relent and allow Dog to stay at the house. But Delia had been in a foul mood yesterday evening and even this morning. Dog wasn’t stupid; he knew it was her mother. That woman always smelled bad in some undefinable way. He had made a point of steering clear of her after she had kissed him and grabbed him between the legs a couple of years before.
She hadn’t even been drunk.
It wasn’t in his nature to have sexual relations with his boss’s wife, no matter how bad their relationship. He valued his own skin. And he would never do anything to upset Delia—well, no more than what he did already.
After lunch he and Jason were dismissed to the studio until Mr Mendelssohn called for him.
The state of the weather would double their travel time and they left much earlier than normal. The car crawled north along the empty motorway and turned on to the ring road.
Dog didn’t like Bob Moses either, but if there was business to be done then that was fine. Mr Mendelssohn was quiet, as usual, and Dog knew better than to try to start a conversation. He just stared out of the window at the grey and white night.
Chloe
It was her hunger that forced her back to consciousness. The emptiness tore her apart; it was as if she was being eaten from the inside. As if her hunger was consuming her own body.
Her wrists and ankles were tied with a cord going between them and another lashing her tight to a radiator. There was another cord wrapped around her chest holding down her extras against her back. A blindfold was pulled tight across her eyes, and she was lying on a hard wooden floor. Every muscle ached and the heat of multiple burns pulsed through her skin. Cold air drifted across her skin and she realised she was naked. Bastards.
The blindfold meant nothing. There were enough people moving around the building for the whole space to be mapped for her in detail. She was one storey up and there was a room full of people below her. In the room with her were two guards, both of them looking her way. There were guards outside the door. The windows were barred. The ceiling was thin but above it was the floor of the next storey and that, again, was solid wood. No people up there at this time.
It made no difference. She couldn’t move.
‘I need food,’ she croaked. Her throat, her whole mouth, was dry.
‘Get the boss.’
A chair scraped on the floor throwing the whole room into vivid highlights. One of the thugs left the room but one of those outside stood in the open doorway.
It made no difference. She did not need to test her bonds to know they were tight. She could hear, in the distance, a human voice howling like a wolf. She knew where she was and what she was dealing with. These people ran freak fights and they knew how to keep their monsters under control.
She saw the bulk of Bob Moses coming up the stairs with three other people in tow: two with weapons, one without.
His footsteps added nothing to her acoustic conception of the room.
They did not know she could see without her eyes, she would keep that a secret for as long as she could. She desperately wanted to plead for food but she could not let him know that she knew who he was.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Miss Dark.’
‘Moses?’
‘That will be Mr Moses to you.’
‘I’m sorry, please, I need to eat.’
‘You killed one of my men.’
‘I was hungry.’
There were mutterings from some of the other men.
‘You were going to eat them?’ said Moses in genuine surprise.
‘No, I just wanted their food. I’m hungry, please...’
There was a pause. ‘Miss Dark, you present an interesting conundrum for me. It’s quite clear you are an exceptional fighter. Unfortunately you come with considerable risk.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You are the centre of attention for a number of parties, one of which is offering a considerable amount of money for your delivery.’
‘The kidnappers?’
If Moses smiled she couldn’t make it out, but he did give a short laugh. ‘Yes, quite, the “kidnappers”. I’m going to offer you a deal, Miss Dark, and please, make no mistake, I do not normally offer deals to my fighting freaks.’
‘What deal?’
‘You fight for me willingly, and I will not hand you over to any of the interested parties.’
‘And why is that a particularly good deal?’
Moses relaxed. ‘I know you don’t want to be handed over to the Purity, and we know exactly what DI Mitchell or one of the other police assassins will do to you the moment they see you—preferable to the Purity perhaps, but just now I expect you’re hoping to live for as long as you can.’
He was right, of course. ‘But what about the kidnappers?’
‘The unknown?’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps they want to take you to a tropical island to wine and dine you until you lose your mind, and then gently euthanise you into oblivion. Or maybe what they have planned is a thousand times worse than anything the Purity could think up. Which do you think is more likely? Either way it’s your choice because that’s where you’ll be going if you don’t agree.’
‘And if I try to escape?’
‘I’ll kill you myself.’
‘And if I stay, you’ll feed me?’
Then he really did laugh. ‘Yes, Miss Dark, I will feed you. As much food as you can eat.’
Chapter 27
Mitchell
‘Is this it?’ said Graham as the car pulled up amid the swirling snow.
‘You have arrived at your destination,’ said Lament. Mitchell glanced at Graham to see if he knew he was being mocked, but Lament’s words appeared to make no impression beyond their outward meaning.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Graham. ‘Why couldn’t we have just dragged this Moses person in and forced the truth out of him?’
‘Because I prefer not to force my associates into a position where they will be shot,’ said Mitchell. ‘Moses has resources and an unassailable position.’
‘He’s a freak-loving criminal.’
‘Since he makes them fight to the death, I don’t think he loves them.’
‘We don’t have freak fights in London.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
Graham turned on him. ‘You doubt me?’
Mitchell shrugged. ‘I kn
ow criminals, and human nature. If there’s money to be made from illegal fights—which there is—there will be people running them whether you know about it or not.’
‘We wiped them all out.’
‘The ones you found, but London is a very big place.’ Mitchell hesitated and then added, ‘Sir.’
If Graham wanted to argue he managed to suppress it. ‘Let’s go in.’
Mitchell checked his gun, then opened the glove compartment. He pulled out two balaclavas. ‘You’ll be needing this. Nobody at a fight has a working riffy and we don’t want to be recognised.’
‘Nobody will recognise me.’
‘But I’m a celebrity. Celebrities always guard against being spotted.’
‘Won’t they be clamouring for your autograph?’
‘In this place they’ll be expecting me to shoot their fighters.’
‘That’s what you should be doing.’
‘Agreed, but not this evening.’
They got out and walked across to the building from which noise and light was escaping.
Chloe
Moses had not lied. They had untied her hands and let her put on a smock-thing, but she was still firmly chained to the radiator, which was an old one made of solid iron. Then they had given her as much food as she could eat. She had filled herself until her body claimed it could take no more, but half an hour later she had eaten again. For the first time in months she was finally getting to the stage that hunger was no longer her constant companion.
These criminals ate well.
Once she had finished her seconds, Moses returned and sat on the other side of the room to her.
‘Nothing personal,’ he said. ‘We had one real nasty freak that could spit nerve poison. Useless in the fights, almost nothing could stand up to it. One spit and the opponent just keeled over.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘Threw it in the furnace. Make no mistake, Miss Dark, that’s where you’ll end up eventually.’
She nodded. But he was wrong: she had a job to do and she wouldn’t be staying any longer than it took for them to drop their guard.
‘I’m having one of the women make a costume for you.’
‘A costume?’
‘We have to hide your face and I’m sure you don’t want your pretty skin exposed to whatever nasty claws and teeth you’re put against. Most of these freaks don’t wash, and by the time they’re far gone they’re not eating cooked food. Their nails alone would have enough bacteria to take down an elephant.’
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