by Matt Drabble
“She’s left the apartment with a bagful of clothes. The doorman didn’t think that she was going for good.”
“What’s the latest word on her?”
“How do you mean, Sir?”
“Have we cause for concern? I know that you don’t trust her,” he said, waving away the big man’s already voiced suspicions.
“Nothing concrete. The bug in her car stopped working, but that may be nothing; the tech can be unreliable, and besides, we hadn’t picked up anything to worry about when it was working.”
“How long has the bug been out?” Tolanson demanded, annoyed at himself for another gaping hole in his once impenetrable net.
“Not long.”
“And she’s left the apartment?”
McDere nodded.
“So no bug and she’s left home. She was here when Mrs Wilberforce was killed and we know that Lomax has already approached her at her friend’s funeral,” Tolanson mused aloud.
McDere nodded in confirmation.
“Alright, we still need her for the debate but after that she goes, understood?”
Again McDere nodded, only this time with the faintest hint of a smile.
----------
Sutherland hung up with Donovan and slammed the phone down hard enough on his desk to make others look around. The station was emptying fast as the skeleton night shift took over.
The day had primarily been filled with the death of the Home Secretary, Victor Michaels. The man had run out in front of an oncoming bus and been killed almost instantly. Witnesses reported that the man had appeared to be running from something but as yet no one had identified a chaser. Of course, thanks to the previous phone call, Sutherland knew exactly who had been chasing Michaels and he wasn’t surprised.
He’d given Donovan strict instructions just to watch and wait but he should have known that the kid wouldn’t have listened and now their only weapon against Tolanson was dead. He would have strangled Donovan if he was here right now; how he had ever run a crew capable of rising to the top, even with Tolanson’s help, was staggering.
“Thought you’d be gone by now.” A voice disturbed him.
He looked up. “Oh hey, Steve,” he greeted his friend. “Just… you know, thinking.”
“I am well aware of the concept, despite the desk job.” Sergeant Steve Marine grinned.
“Chambers got you on the overnights again?”
“Downside of doing a good job… says he can’t trust anyone else.”
“That officious prick wouldn’t know a good copper if he fell over one. How are the girls?”
“Good, thanks. Mellissa starts university next month if you can believe that; it’s enough to make a man feel very old.”
“And Sophie?”
“Wants to be a drummer now. You wouldn’t believe the racket she’s making.” Steve laughed.
Sutherland could see the warmth and love in his friend’s eyes whenever he talked about his daughters. It was one of the main reasons that he asked, just to see that smile. After his wife’s death it was a look that Steve rarely showed anymore.
“You look beat, pal. Anything I can help with?” Steve asked.
Sutherland looked up at his one and only friend, but as much as he might have wanted the help, he couldn’t quite bring himself to drag an innocent man into this mess.
“Just a long day,” he replied finally. “This whole business with Michaels is going to be a shit storm of epic proportions, what with the election looming.”
“Don’t forget the debate.”
“How’s that?”
“Jesus, man, don’t you pay attention to anything in the outside world? The national debate? Knowles versus Tolanson? The polls have them neck and neck so it’s going to be a ‘winner takes all’ I guess.”
“It’s on TV?”
“Not just TV, you bloody caveman! It’s going to be streaming live across every format. Just about everyone in the country will be watching.”
Sutherland sat back in his chair and ignored whatever else Steve was saying as he suddenly had a very sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
----------
“Was this us?” Tolanson asked reluctantly.
McDere shook his head as the TV reporter stood jostling on the pavement, mainly surrounded by other reporters bringing the high street to a shuddering halt.
“Michaels?” Tolanson mused to himself, shaking his head.
He hated to appear anything less than omnipotent even when it was just in front McDere, but the inescapable truth was that he had no idea what had happened here. Michaels had proved to be a useful resource with a very useful appetite. He had gotten the general election delayed long enough for Tolanson to secure his position as leader of the Progressive Party.
“What have we got on for tomorrow?” he asked.
“Debate prep all day.”
“Fine.” Tolanson sighed heavily. “We’ll look into Michaels later; right now I’ve got an election to win.”
“And win you shall,” McDere said confidently.
“There was a moment earlier…” Tolanson suddenly mused aloud.
“Sir?”
“In the office… Sutherland, when he came in… he was… I don’t know…” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose wearily.
“A moment?” McDere enquired.
“Between him and Grant. I thought that I saw something… felt something maybe, or maybe I’m just imagining things. I used to have a vivid imagination as a boy or maybe it was night terrors… there was something in the darkness…” Tolanson trailed off.
The room was silent for the longest time.
“Sir?” McDere prompted. “Sir!” he tried again only louder this time.
“Hmm?”
“You were saying?”
“About what?” Tolanson asked, confused.
“Sutherland? The policeman.”
“I was? Right… yes I was… Sutherland.”
“And the Grant woman.”
“I know, I know,” Tolanson snapped like a pouting child.
“What do you want to do about him, Sir?”
Tolanson thought long and hard, desperately trying to focus. It was getting harder and harder to maintain all of the balls in the air that he was currently juggling. The debate was looming fast and he had to concentrate all of his existing resources on that. He was going to need all of his remaining power to reach a captive audience, nothing else mattered.
“Get rid of Sutherland. We’d have to soon, anyway, and I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”
“I’ll take care of him myself, Sir,” McDere replied.
“No… wait. Not that way. I can’t afford to risk any sort of blowback at this stage. I… I can’t be sure that he wouldn’t be linked to me somehow if he turned up dead.”
“I have an idea,” McDere said, uttering those particular words for the first time in their long history together.
----------
Avery entered her friend’s apartment warily. The key turned smoothly in the lock and she crept inside, wondering if anyone would be lying in wait.
The small one-bedroom apartment was modest and full of Debbie’s scent. It brought back hard memories of her friend, ones that threatened to overwhelm her with guilt and grief.
She shook her head hard to rid herself of negativity. There would be plenty of time later for recriminations; right now, she only had to concentrate on moving forwards.
The electricity was thankfully still on and the lights illuminated her way as she moved from room to room. Once she was certain that she was alone, she sat down to wait.
Lomax didn’t keep her waiting long and announced himself by knocking gently and calling out his own name to reassure her.
“Were you followed here?” he asked as he quickly closed the door behind him.
“No,” she answered firmly. “At least I don’t think… hell, I don’t know, how am I supposed to tell?”
“Fair point,” he conceded.<
br />
“What are those?” she asked as he carried in two large boxes.
“Everything that I know or was able to find out about Tolanson,” he answered. “Where?”
“In through here,” she said, motioning for him to follow her into the lounge area.
Lomax set the boxes down on a coffee table and sat down on the sofa facing them. “Where do I start?” he asked.
Avery took a seat opposite. “How about the beginning?”
“You’re sure that you’re ready for his? For all of this?”
“Let’s find out.” She shrugged.
“Well first things first: his name isn’t Christian Tolanson, it’s Tolan Christian. Oh, and near as I can figure it, he’s about 250 years old.”
----------
Two hours later and Avery was grateful for the bottle of Scotch that Lomax had thoughtfully brought with him. Her head was spinning from his tale and from reading the files that were now spread out across the coffee table and onto the lounge floor.
She had read about a small American town called Eden Gardens, a town that had defied every ecological and economical crisis that had struck the rest of the country to inexplicably prosper.
According to Lomax, Tolan Christian had run the town for centuries using sacrifice as a means of payment to keep them living up to the Eden name. That was until he had recruited the wrong couple. Michael and Emily Torrance had somehow found the strength to stand against Tolan and burn his murderous vision to the ground, but that hadn’t stopped him.
Next up was a tale closer to home. A private school up north had suffered a similar fate as Tolan had come back from the grave to seek revenge on one of the surviving Eden residents. Sarah-Jane Mears had drawn his ire even more so than Michael and Emily, for she had been one of his disciples, one who had betrayed him. His plan had succeeded to a certain extent, as Sarah-Jane had died while battling him to an ultimate draw. But according to Lomax, Tolan Christian had been left deeply wounded by the war and was now knocking on the last chance saloon.
“And what about now? What about this man?”
“Well as a young man at university there was a suicide by his rival for student president. The boy’s father swears blind that his son would never have committed suicide, that he was a perfectly happy young man, not to mention the fact that he was a deeply religious Catholic.”
“What else?”
“The Progressive Party’s leader Gerald St James’s accident.”
“Not an accident?” she prompted.
“Nothing that I can prove of course, but those people in Tolan’s way have a nasty reoccurring habit of ending up dead just when it serves his purpose the most. An accident here, a suicide there, a little blackmail and a lot of death along the way.”
“And Debbie?”
“She poked her nose in where it didn’t belong,” he said sadly. “I’m sorry.”
“How does he get away with it?” she asked incredulously.
“Because he’s smart, Avery - too damn smart. He’s got police in his pocket along with politicians and criminals alike.”
“You said about Sutherland? The detective I met?”
“He’s been working for Tolanson for a long, long time. He does the cleaning up while a local criminal called Donovan does the dirty work. Tolanson has built himself an empire, one that surrounds and protects him, Avery. It’s what makes him still so dangerous. Even with his own power waning, he’s still hidden behind a wall and we’re running out of time.”
Avery tried to find fault with Lomax’s story which simply had to be too ridiculous to believe, and yet somehow she did believe it, or at least part of it. Every instinct she had told her that this man was telling her the truth, as impossible as it was.
“What does he want?” she asked, fearing the answer.
“Now he’s back again, back to finally ascend to where he deems himself worthy. But he’s desperate, Avery, desperate to win back favour with whatever darkness had granted him his powers and immortality. I think that his plan is to deliver an entire country, tens of millions of innocent souls, to buy his way back into hell.
“How do you know all this for sure?” she asked, aware that she wasn’t immediately dismissing the whole thing as crazy.
“I have… sources,” he replied. “But I’m not prepared to expose them.”
“What exactly are his powers? I mean, what are the ground rules here?”
“Now that’s hard to say at the minute. He’s undoubtedly been weakened over the past few years. The wars that he’s fought have taken a toll and he doesn’t enjoy the full backing that he once did. But he’s still strong, physically strong enough to pull a man apart with his bare hands. He’s able to control those around him, infect them with his will enough to make them give their lives if necessary. It’s that last part that worries me.”
“Especially if he’s elected?”
“To be honest, it’s the debate that concerns me. That amount of people concentrated watching in one single burst? I shudder to think about how much he can infect them across the airwaves.”
“What about McDere?”
“Tolan always requires a minder, a guard, a pit bull at his side. McDere will be strong, physically stronger than Tolan himself. Also, McDere will be damn near unkillable: stab him, slice him, shoot him, and all you’ll do is piss him off. He’ll derive his life force from Tolan; stop the man and his puppets fall.”
“So how do we do that?”
“You’re on board so far?” Lomax asked incredulously.
“Hey, I believe in two things: what I see and what I hear, and I’ve been seeing and hearing some pretty crazy shit lately. So I’m not saying for one second that I believe everything or even a fraction of what you do, but Tolanson, or whatever his name is, needs stopping. So let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER 24
MARCH OF THE TWO-FACED BAND
Jimmy Horton waited patiently for his new client. Being a cop on the take was getting to be harder and harder and he longed for the simpler times. Time was when someone would shove a fat envelope into his hands and everybody went home happy. Nowadays everyone was looking over your shoulder. There was paperwork falling out his ass, constant supervision and a need to explain where he was every waking hour of every day.
The back alley was clichéd but what the hell, so was he - a dirty cop with an alcohol problem and two bitter divorces in the bag already and working on a third. He was a walking talking movie caricature, but he didn’t care.
He took a swig from the bottle hidden inside the brown paper bag in his hand and stamped his feet against the cold night. He was waiting for a guy but didn’t know what he looked like.
The alley was a known hangout for all sorts of undesirables and he had rousted more than one creep here before when he’d been in uniform. However, even shitholes like this had fallen on hard times and even the biggest scumbags had taken their business elsewhere now.
Footsteps approached from the other end of the alley and the figure of a rotund man emerged from the shadows.
“Mr Horton?” the man called out, and in that split second, Jimmy Horton knew that he was dealing with an amateur.
“Who’s asking?” he called back.
“No names,” the man replied in a tight, panicked voice.
“That’s not the way I work.”
“Well I don’t much care for what your usual procedures are, Mr Horton. I’m going to place a box on the ground here. The instructions are perfectly clear. You shall wait until I’ve left before you pick it up and we shall never meet again; is that clear?”
“Crystal,” Horton replied cheerily.
“Good,” the man said as he lay the box down on the ground.
Horton closed the distance quickly between them. He had been a decent athlete back in the day and he could still move fast enough when he wanted to.
The man looked up just in time to see Horton’s boot before it kicked him squarely in the chest, sending him crashing backwa
rds onto the wet ground.
“What are you doing?” the man blustered as Horton moved forward.
He could now see the man a little clearer, even in the dim lighting. The guy was fat and short. He wore a suit that probably cost more than Horton earned in a year and Fatso spoke with a clipped upper-class accent that demanded obedience.
“What’s your name and who sent you?” Horton demanded as he loomed over the fallen man.
“I was assured that wouldn’t be necessary; now let me up!”
Horton answered by kicking him again, only a little harder.
“What do you think you are doing?” the man gasped incredulously.
Horton leaned in and slapped the guy across the face. It was with an open palm and designed to humiliate rather than hurt, the sort of slap that reminded a man of his father and the scared little boy he’d once been.
“What’s your name, Porky?” Horton demanded again. “Before I beat it out of you!”
“Patterson. Albert Patterson,” the man squealed.
“Never fucking heard of you; now who gave you my name?”
Patterson cringed as Horton raised his hand again, but to his credit the fat man wouldn’t speak.
“Look, Patterson, it may sound like a cliché but there really are two ways of doing things here: one hurts and one doesn’t. Me? I don’t give a shit which way you want to go.”
“He’d hurt me,” Patterson blubbed.
“And I won’t?”
“He’d kill me.”
Horton withdrew a small folding knife from his pocket and theatrically opened it. Patterson’s eyes bulged at the silver blade and he started to scrambled backwards on the muddy wet ground.
“Stay still, little piggy, or I start carving,” Horton ordered and Patterson obeyed.
The guy was obviously scared of someone but Horton needed to know who’d sent him. For all he knew, this was a setup and the night could be filled with flashing blue and red lights any minute. He knew that he had a reputation on the force and that he wasn’t the only one. But the cleaner cops had been moving in lately, forcing men like him deeper into the shadows and soon there wouldn’t be anywhere left to hide.