Surviving the Evacuation, Book 13

by Frank Tayell

  “There were no guards on the command centre’s door when I got there,” Sholto said. “Not that I think that matters. The only thing of real worth in the command centre is the satellite uplink. The doors to the cabin were locked. I didn’t check the laptops were still there, but they’re password protected. I suppose, since they managed to hack into that grain ship’s navigation system, they might be able to hack my laptop. We should check, but I don’t think that’s why my bag was stolen. They’d planned that I’d be dead by then. Dead or injured thanks to that bomb. That might be the reason that our group was chosen as the target, or at least one of the reasons.”

  “Why, I thought you said there was nothing in the bag,” Kallie said.

  “It’s not what’s in there, but what someone thinks is in there,” Sholto said.

  “They thought it was worth engineering a bar fight to acquire it?” Kallie asked.

  “It wasn’t a bar fight,” Siobhan said. “It was murder. Mass murder. Two people died on their way to the infirmary. One of them had seemed absolutely fine. She was walking, talking, though her speech was a little slurred. She collapsed halfway here. There is a good chance that more will die. This isn’t someone trying to sell cheap booze to a pub. We’re dealing with a mass and deliberate poisoning. That’s the fourth crime today, only counting those we’re aware of. We’ve got the theft of the mines, the planting of that bomb, the theft of your bag, and now this. I’m going back to the command centre; I want to check whether anyone broke into the cabin.”

  “Did you turn off that camera you had on top of the warehouse?” Sholto asked.

  “What camera?” Kallie asked.

  “I was recording who came and went from Markus’s warehouse. It’s still there,” Siobhan said. “Or it was this morning.”

  “Will it have recorded who went into the command centre?” Sholto asked.

  “It didn’t have the angle to show the doors, but it should have recorded who walked along the road. If you knew the camera was there, you’d be able to avoid it.”

  “But from Kallie’s reaction, she didn’t know about it. Does anyone?”

  “As far as I know, it was just you and me,” Siobhan said.

  “Can you check on it, discreetly? We might get lucky. In the meantime, I think I’ll have a word with Markus.”

  Markus lay curled in a foetal position on six inches of cardboard. His eyes were half open and his legs were half covered by a clean, red blanket.

  Sholto ran a hand across the wire mesh. It was a pitiful sight, and a primitive jail, held closed by a new padlock and plastic-coated chain. “Do you have the key?”

  “Here,” Kallie said, fishing it from her pocket. “Siobhan didn’t think he’d be able to escape, but I don’t think it’s worth taking risks.”

  “Wise,” Sholto said. Markus didn’t move as the padlock was undone, but his eyelids flickered, then firmly closed.

  “Do you want me to get a bucket of seawater?” Kallie asked. “That might wake him up a bit.”

  “Considering what the seawater is like these days, I think that would count as cruel and unusual.”

  “After what he did to all those people in the bar, I think he deserves it.”

  “Tempting as that is, better not,” Sholto said. “Markus? Markus, can you hear me?”

  The barman rolled his head back, and gave them a look that might have been baleful if he’d been able to stop blinking.

  “Where did you get the wine from, Markus?” Sholto asked.

  “Wha’ wine?” Markus replied. Then he leaned forward, and vomited over the floor.

  Sholto sighed, and unclipped his water bottle from his belt. “Here,” he said, unscrewing the cap. “It’s water. Just water. Not much, but enough for a rinse-and-spit.” He had to help Markus tilt his head back. A good portion spilled over the man’s face. Even so, Markus spluttered and spat over Sholto’s uniform. “Ah, well, I needed a clean one. All right, Markus, can you tell us what happened? Do you remember?”

  “Member a lot,” he mumbled.

  “Do you remember opening a bar?”

  “No law against that,” Markus said. “No law against selling a few drinks.” His words rang with self-righteous anger, which had the benefit of making him coherent.

  “No, you’re right, there isn’t,” Sholto said. “You’re not in trouble. We just want to know where you got the wine from.”

  “Oh? Oh,” Markus muttered. With that, he seemed mollified. His head dropped back to his chest.

  “No, no, don’t sleep yet,” Sholto said. “The wine was poisoned, Markus. Do you understand? You’ve been poisoned.”

  “Poison?” he slurred.

  “Where did you get the wine from?”

  “Rachel,” Markus said.

  “Rachel? She’s dead,” Sholto said. For the briefest of moments, he wondered if she might somehow be alive, but no. Bill had shot her, and Sholto had come into the bar in time to see the blood spill onto the dark floor.

  “She liked poison,” Markus muttered.

  “That begs a lot of questions,” Sholto said. “They’ll have to wait. Where did you get the wine from?”

  “Didn’t drink much,” Markus muttered. “Can’t be a good barman if you drink your profits.”

  “No,” Sholto said, playing along to keep the man talking, “and you are a good barman, I’ll give you that. Were you selling anything other than wine?”

  “Only to people who’d finished their shift,” Markus said, half answering the question. “Told them. Asked them. Said you can’t drink before work. Only after. Told them.”

  “Yeah, and I bet you didn’t actually check,” Kallie said.

  “Not my job to check,” Markus said. “Should have been. Should have been leader. I won. Last candidate standard… sanding… standing. Should have been me. S’not.”

  “How were people paying?” Sholto asked, not caring about that particular answer, but just wanting to keep the barman talking.

  “With whatever they had,” Markus said. “Batteries. Matches. Don’t care. Not about profit. About business. Good business. Can’t give away for free. Can’t charge much. No one has much. Not now. Not me. Have to build up the business. Rebuild the brand. Hey!” Suddenly, he was alert. “Where’s my takings?”

  “It’s okay. It’s fine. No one’s touched them. They’re under lock and key. You can collect them when you’re feeling better.”

  “Right. Right. Good,” Markus murmured, his head beginning to loll once more.

  “No, you can’t sleep yet,” Sholto said. “Where did you get the wine from?”

  “Just sold a few glasses, that’s all. Didn’t take bullets. Told them, hand them in. I don’t want bullets. Don’t want trouble. Just want a quiet life. Shouldn’t have run for mayor. Didn’t want to. Rachel’s idea. Willis said it was smart. What did he know? Said he was sorry. Came to me this morning. Said the wine was an apology.”

  “You got the wine from Willis?” Kallie asked.

  Sholto waved her into silence. “An apology for what, Markus?”

  “Come to Anglesey, you’ll be safe. Work, and you’ll be rewarded. Stand, and you’ll be elected. Wasn’t safe. Wasn’t any reward. Told to leave, so we left. Came here, but why? For what? No farms here. No food. Nothing but rain. Nothing but zombies. It’s all a waste. All pointless. Lost everything. Lost Willis. Said he was going his own way. Where’s he gonna go? Thinks there’s a bunker. There’s no bunker. I told him, if there’s a bunker, Wright would have gone there. Wouldn’t have sent us here. There’s no bunker. There’s nothing.”

  “The wine was an apology?” Sholto prompted.

  “For leaving. Took everyone with him. S’fine. Can get more people. More muscle. That’s all he was. I don’t need him. Everyone wants a job. Wants a purpose. Said mine was to be barman. Gave me the wine. Said it was a peace offering. Said it was vintage. Worth a hundred pounds a bottle. It’s not. It’s just cheap… cheap… cheep like a bird.”

  Time was r
unning out. The man was drifting out of consciousness. “How many people did he take?” Sholto asked.

  “I should have kept birds,” Markus said. “I liked birds. My dad always said pigeons were a man’s best friend. People go away, but pigeons always come back.”

  Sholto sighed. “I think that’s all we’ll get for now,” he said.

  “Was any of that useful?” Kallie asked.

  “I think so,” Sholto said. He led her back to the cage door. When they were outside, he locked the door, then they walked away from the cage.

  “So, are you going to tell me what you think?” Kallie asked, when they were out of the semi-conscious man’s hearing.

  “Give me a moment,” Sholto said. “I just want to go over what he said. I think we have all the pieces now, but I need to be sure. We have to be sure, because we’ll only get one shot at this. Is your gun loaded?”

  Kallie’s hand went to the holster at her belt. “I… I think so. Why?”

  “Because I think they just wanted to kill Markus, not everyone else. They must know he’s still alive. They might try to finish the job. Probably not until nightfall,” he added.

  “That’s less than an hour away,” she said.

  Siobhan returned ten minutes later, and with the admiral. As the door closed behind them, Sholto caught sight of the skyline. The sun was already setting.

  As the admiral went to examine Markus, Sholto met Siobhan’s eyes and gave a small shake of his head. Her hand was already halfway out of her pocket. She put it back in. When she did take it out, it was empty.

  “He’ll be fine,” the admiral said, coming to join them. “I don’t think he drank much, and what he did, he threw up. He’ll need observation and fluids, and he’ll feel like death for a week, but he’ll live.”

  “Did he talk?” Siobhan asked.

  Sholto nodded. He’d had time to think, to put the pieces together, and he knew what to say, and what to keep to himself. “He said the wine came from Willis, that it was an apology, and that Willis thought the bottles were worth a hundred pounds each.”

  “Who’s Willis?” the admiral asked.

  “Markus’s former henchman and bodyguard,” Sholto said. “Mid-forties, bearded, always armed, always hanging around Markus in his pub and during the election campaign.”

  “His full name is Eustace Charles Willis Green,” Siobhan said. “He’s a former sergeant in the Royal Marines. Honourably discharged on medical grounds, he then took a job with a mercenary company. They operated shipping and logistics in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s there he met Markus. Markus was a truck driver. From what I can gather, Markus wasn’t military, but entirely civilian. He met Willis by chance after the outbreak. Willis was travelling with a group of twelve other mercenaries, and somewhere between eight and ten civilians. For some reason, Willis was happy to let Markus play the officer. They got to Anglesey, and the rest is history. I should add that my principal source of information for this was Willis himself, from the transcript of an interview Kim undertook back on Anglesey, after he left Markus’s… let’s say employ. Some or all of that might have been made up.”

  “Back on Anglesey, Willis shot Rachel,” Sholto said. “Bill fired, too, but so did Willis. At the time, we thought it was ire, irritation, anger at having been betrayed. That’s what Willis said, and since it counted as self-defence, we left the matter there. We had no reason to doubt him because we thought Rachel’s death brought that matter to an end. Of course, now we know we were wrong. He killed Rachel to stop her from talking. I wonder… I wonder if Rachel was expecting him to kill Bill, and to help her escape. A few weeks before that, after we confronted Paul in that pub, after Paul ran, after I gave chase, Rachel shot him so he wouldn’t talk. This group aren’t imaginative. Paul was wanted for the murder of David Llewellyn. That was staged like a zombie attack, but the man was drugged first. In that case, it was with adulterated beer, not wine, but it’s the exact same M.O. When Sorcha Locke came to Anglesey, Rachel gave her a drugged drink. Like I said, they’re not imaginative.”

  “But Rachel is dead,” Siobhan said. “She is, isn’t she?”

  “Yep,” Sholto said. “Any idea what they drank?”

  “Not yet,” the admiral said. “My hypothesis is that there are two compounds, an intoxicant, and a poison. Red wine was chosen as the delivery mechanism due to its strong scent and flavour. My initial theory was industrial ethanol and a cyanic compound. Neither would be rare in a working city like Belfast. We lost another patient half an hour ago. Cardiac arrest. That is consistent with cyanide, but… but I’m not confident with that diagnosis. I think this was something considerably more toxic.”

  “Then there’s no reason to assume there won’t be more poisonings,” Kallie said.

  “There’s no reason to assume that more of those who’ve been poisoned won’t die,” the admiral said.

  “I see,” Siobhan said. “We still don’t have any leads as to the whereabouts of the missing claymores. Did Markus say when he was given the bottles of wine?”

  “This morning,” Sholto said. “I’ll say this for him; he’s not someone to let the grass grow when there’s money to be made from cutting it.”

  “He’d already taken over that warehouse, more or less,” Siobhan said. “Was he the only target?”

  “That’s my theory,” Sholto said. “Willis told him that the wine was worth a hundred pounds a bottle. Give most people a crate of those, and they’ll try a glass or two. If you knew Markus, you’d know that he wouldn’t drink much more than that, so you’d overload the dose to make sure that a single glass would kill.”

  “But even if he was the only person poisoned, wouldn’t it be obvious what had happened?” Kallie asked.

  “Perhaps they planned to stage the scene after he died,” Siobhan said. “Let’s not speculate too much, as it’ll distract us from the evidence.”

  “Okay,” Kallie said. “So all the bottles were poisoned because they didn’t know which bottle he’d open, right? Then why not just give him one bottle?”

  “Because Willis knew Markus better than most,” Sholto said. “Give Markus only one bottle of an apparently expensive wine, and he’d trade it. Give him a few crates, and he’d obviously open a bar.”

  “And Willis abandoned Markus?” the admiral asked.

  “After the election, yes,” Siobhan said.

  “Because Markus was no use to him anymore,” Sholto said. “The man was his front, just like Markus had been for Rachel, and like Rachel had been for… for Willis.”

  “He’s behind all of this?” the admiral asked. “Including the sabotage?”

  “Why don’t we ask him?” Sholto said.

  “Do you know where he is?” the admiral asked.

  “I know where he was,” Siobhan said. “There’s a container park next to the aggregate depot on Herdman Channel Road. There isn’t much there except some shipping-container offices. I thought it a strange place for him to take over, except now I realise what he wanted. That place is a very short sprint to the checkpoint that runs between Seal Road and Dargan Road.”

  “So if we do this wrong, he could disappear into Belfast,” the admiral said. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll get the people we need.”

  Sholto bit his lip, waiting until she was gone before he turned to Siobhan.

  “Did you get the camera footage,” he asked, his voice even lower than before.

  She nodded. “There’s no one unusual on it. Certainly not Willis.”

  “No one unusual?” That was what Sholto had feared.

  Chapter 17 - Night Arrest

  Belfast Harbour

  Half an hour later, night had truly begun to settle and the harbour was more subdued than on previous evenings. News of the brawl, and the subsequent hospitalisation of so many, had spread, but no official explanation had been given. Earlier, following the discovery of the missing explosives, the admiral had recalled the patrols and scavenging teams that had ventured into the city. Again, no e
xplanation had been given. Added to the uncertainty over their immediate future, most people lurked inside, where rumour and fear were creating facts of their own. The community was at breaking point, yet they might still avoid disaster if dawn brought a trial, justice, and hope. Otherwise, those whispering rumours would turn outward while fear turned inward, and a few dozen mutinous sailors would be the least of their troubles.

  Despite that, the harbour was far from quiet. Pans rattled. Chains clinked. Footsteps echoed. Water dripped from a broken pipe onto the masonry at Sholto’s feet. A shell had reduced the building to a maze of shattered concrete and twisted steel, but it was the closest cover to the depot Willis had occupied.

  Next to Sholto, behind the jumble of rubble, were Siobhan, Toussaint, and half a dozen other veteran Marines. Three Rangers and a Marine sniper had set up overwatch positions on the opposite side of the depot, ready to offer covering fire. Sholto hoped that four would be enough as he waited for Lieutenant Whitley to return and give the order to advance.

  His fingers rolled around the handle of the bolt cutters. That was to be his duty in this arrest, a task that would keep him out of way of the professionals. He understood the logic behind that. He might have seen action in the last year, but that wasn’t the same as war. In his life before, he’d avoided violence, though it hadn’t always avoided him. He smiled at that conceit. In truth, it was giving the authorities a reason to ask questions that he’d avoided. This time, he’d be the one asking the questions, though he already knew most of the answers.

  “One minute,” Whitley whispered, his tone clipped. Sholto hadn’t even heard the man approach. “There are no guards outside,” the lieutenant continued. “No sign of movement. Inside, there are three containers, stacked one on top of the other. There’s an external staircase at the southern end. Two lights are shining from the top-most container. Before that, there are two abandoned trailer-rigs, and two trailers without rigs. Might be hostiles inside the cabs. Two containers in the northern corner; might be hostiles there, too. Make for the containers, secure the high ground, but watch your six. Thirty seconds.”