Tempus: The Phoenix Man

by Matt Hilton

  Soon the blood flow waned, and finally stopped.

  Semple found himself on his knees, straddling the dead man’s legs. He lifted his bloody hands and allowed the base of the tumbler to fall. He’d nicked his palm on the broken edge, but the blood that soaked his jacket sleeves almost to his elbows was all Sterling’s.

  He stood and weariness flooded over him. He’d physically hurt nobody in a long time and he couldn’t believe the effort he’d expended in the act. The strain of killing Sterling had taken more of his energy reserves than ever it had taken to beat the prostitutes when he was a younger man when he regularly sated his twin desires of lust and violence. He felt near to collapse, yet he also recognised the trembling in his limbs as something akin to satisfaction. Killing, as he’d found with the beatings he’d doled out, was more fulfilling than sexual gratification had ever been.

  He’d always suspected he was capable of extreme violence.

  Lying before him was the proof.

  But his psychopathic side had always been hidden by his more dominant sociopathic tendencies.

  Some psychologist once argued that if you recognised your own madness then you weren’t insane. Well, Semple wasn’t insane, because what he’d just done to Sterling was infinitely crazy. What he was happened to be incredibly self-protective and he’d allow no one to take anything from him, be it his reputation, his work, or his life.

  He left Sterling and went to the en suite bathroom where he took off his jacket and shirt. He had a fresh set of clothing in his closet. He washed the incriminating evidence off his hands, and dressed his wound with a Band-Aid from a First Aid kit in his bathroom cupboard. Next he moved to his bedroom and opened the hidden safe box and pulled from it a stack of blueprints and sundry notes and placed them inside a briefcase.

  Engaged in those other tasks his head had cleared enough to think more clearly and he returned to where the corpse lay. He thought about leaving Sterling in situ. Once he checked final details with Coombs and Fox, he needn’t fear anyone finding the dead man, because once Semple had transvected out of this disintegrating world, then what would it matter?

  Yet there was always the chance of discovery, and he couldn’t allow his plans to be derailed by the discovery of Sterling’s corpse and the resulting clamour it would cause. He bent, took hold of Sterling’s ankles and dragged him through the study and into the bedroom. He laid the man alongside his large bed. The bed was sumptuous, with a thick mattress and sturdy base, and easily concealed the corpse from view: the only way anyone would see him was if they walked around the bed, and though it was unlikely to happen, Semple pulled the duvet and blankets from the bed and laid them over Sterling like a shroud.

  He considered taking the briefcase with him, but decided against it.

  First he’d ensure that all was going to plan, and then he’d return for the briefcase and some of his other favourite belongings before making the jump to someplace he’d be safe from prosecution.

  Chapter 33

  January 28th 1988

  Wapping, London

  The deluge of recollections had left Rembrandt wobbly. More than the impact of the memories piling one on top of the other, his physical weakness was down to the manner in which his past had caught up with him. The way in which his body had shuddered, and the skin had crept over his bones, made him wonder if the feeling that someone was walking over his grave was important to the act of the timelines re-setting themselves. He felt that, because the two giant orderlies had been sent back as would be assassins from his proper timeline, the act had somehow realigned his past as David James Johnston with the current James Rembrandt, and as such it had kick-started his memory. Before that it was as if they had been single and unique individuals with their own set of original memories, but now they were one. On numerous occasions he’d experienced similar sensations, though nowhere near as violent, and assumed that it was an effect of other timelines converging. He supposed that everyone else was experiencing the same when they suffered the qualms of someone walking over their grave.

  He berated himself with a harsh curse.

  He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by random conjecture and fantasy. He had to keep a clear mind and firm resolution.

  Back there in the van, Barry Miller depended on Rembrandt to safely free his wife and child. He wouldn’t achieve his mission thinking about graves; he’d end up in one.

  His Glock 20 was prepared for action, and since the shootout with Mina and her henchmen, he’d restocked with spare magazines, jamming them into his waistband. The gun would have been an anomaly in the hands of anyone else, because it wasn’t introduced to the mass market until 1990, two years after this present time. Because the gun’s slide, frame and barrel had been modified to take the more powerful .40 S&W bullet, it held only fifteen rounds in each box magazine. But he’d four spares plus the mag in the gun, enough ammo to start a small war. Which, funnily enough, was what he intended in order to halt a much larger one.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was time.

  The thought would have elicited a snort of irony; except he worried that this close to the kidnappers one of them would hear him.

  Jamal and Harry should be in position.

  Rembrandt pushed into the narrow space between the house removals truck and the door to the tenement building. He half expected that one of the conspirators would be standing guard, and he aimed his gun into the open space as he pushed open the door. There was no one there.

  Rembrandt entered the derelict building, finding himself in a trash-strewn vestibule, at the end of which was a narrow set of stairs leading up. He could make out trails through the rubbish on the floor; people had regularly used the stairs in the past few days. Accumulated muck piled at the bases of doors showed that the rooms at ground level had been ignored, the kidnappers seeking somewhere higher up in the building to stash their captives. Rembrandt moved along the vestibule, avoiding as best he could the rubbish. Nevertheless his feet occasionally scuffed against the junk, and he paused to listen for any response. He moved on, and reached the staircase. The steps were concrete, not wood, so his ascent would be silent so long as he didn’t knock anything over. He took a breath, tasted must. The air smelled of piss and vomit. Remnants, he guessed, left over from when the building had been inhabited by squatters and drug addicts.

  He placed a foot on the first step, paused. He peered up the stairwell to the first floor, where the stairs turned back on themselves. Up there would be doors allowing entry to a landing from which the rooms could be accessed. The structure was four storeys tall, and the captives could be held on any of the upper three floors. He assumed that the kidnappers would have chosen either the first or second floor, rather than go all the way to the top. The stairs seemed to be the only internal route up, but metal fire escapes were a feature of the building and Jamal and Harry would climb that way. They were resourceful enough to find an alternative even if it meant scaling the crumbling brick walls.

  Rembrandt went up the stairs, staying to the right where he had the best view of where the stairs kinked back to the left. He held his Glock in a two-handed grip, levelled on the dark space that denoted a closed door at the next landing. He paused at that first door, noting that a plank had been nailed across it, secured to the frame. The nail heads were shiny, and therefore recent. He doubted that the kidnappers had fitted the barricade to keep their captives inside, but rather to stop any dossers from making a home in any of the rooms. In turn it told him that their hiding place was above. He checked below him before heading up. As he ascended the stairs, he heard a scrape followed by an unintelligible grunt of anger. He stopped, listening keenly. The sounds didn’t repeat. He wondered if his mind had caused the grunt to sound more human than it was, and the sounds were merely the natural groans of a settling building. No. Best that he treat the sound for what it most likely was: one of Mina’s gang standing guard at the next landing.

  Crouching, craning his head for a better
angle, he spied up through the darkness. From his position he could see moving shadows on the wall above. They were only slightly deeper in density than those they were set against, given a rigidity by a soft band of light leaking into the stairwell from somewhere behind the seated man that cast them. The man appeared to be fiddling with an item that Rembrandt couldn’t make out amid the shadow play. Again he heard a soft curse.

  Rembrandt took his opportunity while the guard was distracted. He rose, and then sprung upward, taking the steps three at a time. His rush was almost silent, but not enough to avoid detection.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The man’s question came like a bark from the darkness.

  It was a stupid question, and didn’t deserve an answer.

  Rembrandt was on the man in the next instant, using the momentum he’d gained running up the stairs to launch him with his right knee chambered, and aimed directly at the man’s face. It helped that the guard was sitting on a bar stool, and only began to rise as Rembrandt hit the top stair. Rembrandt slammed his knee into the man’s chin, battering his head backwards with the force. The guard didn’t cry out, and Rembrandt hoped it was a sign that the man was unconscious. That wasn’t the case.

  The man struggled to get up, and in his right hand he was holding a gun not unlike Rembrandt’s. In a split second Rembrandt recalled that the man had been struggling with something, cursing at it, and he decided that the gun had jammed. Though it wasn’t a chance he could take. He kicked at the gun hand, even as he brought down the barrel of his Glock against the side of the man’s face. A gash opened along the guard’s cheek, spilling blood as dark as oil. He was tough though, and neither a knee to the face nor a pistol-whipping was enough to stop him. He came back at Rembrandt, using his own gun as a blunt force weapon. Rembrandt ducked and the man’s gun swept past his right ear, even as the man came to his feet. Rembrandt didn’t stop. He pivoted on his left foot, swinging around his right leg and planting himself under the guard’s extended arm. Rembrandt grabbed the arm, braced it over his right shoulder and levered the guard up and over in a flailing somersault.

  Rembrandt’s Judo throw would not normally finish such a tough guy, and he poised to deliver a secondary blow, but fate took a hand. The guard didn’t land flat on the landing. His hips and legs went out into the space at the top of the stairs, his spine bent agonizingly over the top step. Rembrandt jerked his grip away and the momentum of his fall took the guard up and over again, into a headfirst tumble down the flight of concrete stairs. From the bangs and crunches, he didn’t miss hitting a single step. Rembrandt peered down to the next floor and saw the twisted body lying in a heap on the next landing. The shape was akin to an inkblot, and grew exponentially as his lifeblood pooled around him. The guard wouldn’t be getting up from that fall.

  Rembrandt considered the racket. He should have simply taken a shot, because even deaf men couldn’t fail to hear the guard’s fall. With each impact the floor had thrummed like a plucked guitar string. It didn’t surprise Rembrandt to hear questioning shouts. He took a step towards the door onto the third floor landing and twisted the knob. He thrust aside the door, even as he plastered himself in the niche next to the doorframe. The hallway beyond was much brighter than the stairwell, and illuminated the figure approaching. The man was almost a solid shadow, a nimbus of light around him. Someone was playing a flashlight down the hall from deeper inside the building. Rembrandt brought up his gun. No compromise, no warning shout, he simply shot the man in the chest, a double tap.

  The kidnapper fell dead.

  Rembrandt swung into the hall, eyes slitted against the sudden glare of the flashlight that swept over him. He fired at the beam of light, heard a yelp of agony. The torch fell from the injured kidnapper and rolled across the floor. As bars of shadow danced crazily along the walls, Rembrandt saw the wounded man lurch through a doorway into an adjoining room.

  More shouts came from the furthest room on the left. Someone poked his head around the frame, and in the next instant the barrel of a gun.

  Rembrandt rushed forward, trusting to his daring to force the gunman back inside the room. He fired as he ran, heard an angry shout of challenge. Bullets chipped the wall next to him on both sides of the narrow hall. Rembrandt went down on his belly in a graceless dive. His breath was knocked out of him, but he didn’t pause. He tracked upwards with his Glock, shooting as rapidly as he could squeeze the trigger. He cut chunks from the doorframe where the kidnapper stood, and holes through the adjoining wall. The man groaned and disappeared from Rembrandt’s line of sight.

  A distant crash of glass told Rembrandt that his backups were making their entry. He came quickly to his feet and edged forward. He hit the lever to eject the empty magazine, and with practiced precision slapped in a spare from his waistband. He came level with the door where the flashlight carrier had sought refuge. Rembrandt went to one knee as he spun into the room. A volley of gunfire went over his head. The bullets were poorly aimed, the gunman firing left-handedly, whereas he’d held the torch in his right. Rembrandt’s shots were aimed dead centre, and took the man off his feet. Rembrandt quickly assessed the room for other dangers, but the space was a bare shell, but for a tatty old carpet rolled and propped up in one corner.

  Using the doorframe for cover, he peeked into the hall. The torch was up against the wall, the lens almost flat to the skirting board. Smoke hung in the faint halo of light. The remaining gunman was in the far left room, three up and on the opposite side to where Rembrandt hid. He believed that was where he’d also find Marjorie and Jessie Miller. Partly their silence concerned him, because even through gags they should have been crying for help. He hoped that he wasn’t too late to save the women.

  The thought gave him pause.

  They meant nothing to him. His mission was to save Barry, not his family, and therefore deter the hit on President Ronald Reagan. All he had to do to ensure that Miller wouldn’t make the fateful shots at the president was to keep him well out of the way until the deadline in little more than forty hours had passed. Assuming of course there were no other patsies being lined up for the job should Miller fail, then the threat was negated the moment that Rembrandt and his team took Miller from Mina Feeney’s clutches. He wondered why, now, he was prepared to put his life on the line on behalf of two females who meant nothing to him. Chief James Rembrandt of Old City wasn’t one for pity. He thought that more than David James Johnston’s memories had returned to him: part of the man’s humanity had too. Despite thinking him weak and naïve, Rembrandt had to admit that his former self was a brave man. No, scratch that! Sergeant Johnston was a better man. Though, Rembrandt was the better at this kind of job.

  He stepped out from hiding, and paced along the hall. He made no effort to conceal his approach, but went forward with determination.

  He placed himself near to the room where the last of the kidnappers was, his gun down by his side.

  ‘You inside,’ he called.

  ‘Stay back,’ the man warned.

  ‘Where are your prisoners?’ Rembrandt said. ‘They’re all I care about. You mean nothing to me. Let them go and live.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘I promise you…free them unharmed and I’ll let you walk away from here.’

  ‘They’re my only insurance that I’ll get out of here alive. If you try to come in here I’ll kill them, I swear I’ll kill them both!’

  Rembrandt smiled at the man’s words. Not at his promise, but at the slip that the man had made. Unless he was a highly skilled actor, the man had just confirmed that Marjorie and Jessie were still alive.

  ‘This is your only chance. Yes, you might kill the women, but you’ll be dead a second after. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I want you to back the fuck away.’

  ‘Isn’t going to happen.’ Rembrandt lifted his gun, holding it alongside his jawline. ‘Mina and the others are dead. Your friends here are all dead. There’s only you and your prisoners. Their lives fo
r yours, mate, what’s it going to be?’

  ‘I told you what would happen to them. Now back the fuck away or I’ll shoot them.’

  Again Rembrandt smiled. The women were inside the room. He allowed his smile to carry to Jamal Dhand, who approached silently from out of the darkness to his right. He nodded to Jamal, who prepared his gun. Jamal stood to the opposite side of the doorframe, undetected by the kidnapper inside the room. Jamal mouthed a word: “Wait”.

  Rembrandt was happy to do so.

  ‘Your business here has ended. All your friends are dead, and you can say goodbye to any payment you were expecting. The hostages are no use to you now. Let them go. It’s the only way you get to go on living.’ Rembrandt waited for the kidnapper to respond. But there was nothing immediate. He looked across at Jamal, but again his friend urged him to wait. Then followed some scuffing noises, harsh whispers and the whimper of a woman.

  ‘Please do as he says,’ Marjorie Miller pleaded, probably urged to do so by threat of the kidnapper’s gun. ‘He’ll kill me and my daughter unless you leave the building and give him a clear way out of here.’

  ‘No deal,’ Rembrandt said. ‘He touches you or Jessie, and he’ll be dead. Nothing else.’ Rembrandt aimed his next words directly at Marjorie’s captor. ‘Do you hear me, arsehole? You’ve ten seconds to send both hostages out here. Do that, and I’ll take them and leave. You can walk away and you’ll never see any of us again. Disagree and on ten I come in shooting. What’s it going to be?’

  ‘Fuck you, I’ll kill both these bitches.’

  Rembrandt sighed dramatically.

  ‘OK, you don’t take me at my word. You need more from me before you’ll believe I’ll let you go. So be it. I’m prepared to make allowances.’ Rembrandt stepped out so he was fully visible in the doorway. With deliberate ease, he lifted his gun and thumbed the magazine release. The box cartridge slipped from the butt of the Glock and fell to the floor.