Angel

by Jon Grahame

  The others followed and he watched with approval: Sandra, Jenny, Tanya, Keira, Yank and James, all dark with face paint, all heavily armed, all at a peak of readiness. Reaper was feeling the excitement, so he knew they would be, too. They had studied maps they had found in the manor house library: of the city; the Minster and the Treasurer’s House. Both buildings had been tourist attractions and there were several guide books. Mary had added to their knowledge with hand drawn diagrams giving greater detail.

  Now they were inside the walls, dawn was approaching and a persistent drizzle fell. The bulk of the Minster was ahead of them and, before that, the back garden of the Treasurer’s House. They went over the safety railing onto the sloping roof of a garage in a yard, and lowered themselves to the cobbles below. They went right, away from the Monkbar, and down a short private driveway towards the Minster, keeping to the grass verge to avoid noise. The grand house where Foster was supposed to be sleeping was to their right.

  They emerged on another cobbled lane behind the towering church. Tanya and Jenny headed for the front entrance to the Minster, Keira and Yank to the Chapter House at the rear. The Minster was where the people were being kept, so it would be necessary to remove their guards and free them.

  Sandra went to the Treasurer’s House that was located in its own grounds at the rear of the Minster. The gate into the gardens at the front was unlocked and she slipped inside and went left, round the edges of the shrubbery to reach the building and avoid the open expanse of lawn out front. James remained near the gate, hidden in the bushes, his carbine levelled and ready.

  Reaper took a different route onto Goodramgate. His priority was to rescue Brother Abraham before anything else happened. He encountered no patrols. The street was silent, the pavements glistening in the wet, no lights showed. He stopped at the entrance to the enclosed garden churchyard but heard nothing. If Abraham was still in residence, his guards would undoubtedly be sleeping inside rather than outside in this weather.

  He stayed on the grass rather than the path and reached the porch at the entrance of the church. The dim flickering glow of what had to be an oil lamp showed within the church. With great care, he turned the door handle. The door was unlocked. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

  The lamp rested on a table at the back of the church. Reaper took two steps to the side and laid the L85 that he carried on the floor and out of sight. He removed a Glock from its holster with his right hand. He had no intention of killing anyone if at all possible. Snores came from a box pew a few feet down the south aisle. He leaned over the side and saw the shape of a big man on the bench, a cricket bat propped up against the pew in front. The door to the pew was half open and he took the bat with his left hand and was lifting it high to clear the sides when he heard a noise behind him. A voice, still heavy with sleep, said, ‘What the fuck?’ and Reaper swung the bat round in an arc as he turned and clobbered a shadowy figure who had sat up in another pew.

  The big man from whom he had taken the cricket bat still slept, and Reaper looked into the pew across the aisle to discover the large woman whom he had previously seen on guard duty sprawled unconscious in a heap on the stone flags.

  Surely there would be no more guards?

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Abraham called from the front of the North Aisle where he and Reaper had last met. A match scratched and a candle was lit. The religious leader was illuminated in a halo of light to produce a portrait that would not have looked out of place in one of the church’s stained glass windows.

  ‘It’s Reaper. How many guards are there?’

  ‘Reaper?’ Abraham was surprised. ‘Two. There are two guards.’

  The man in the pew stirred.

  ‘What is it?’ He began to sit up. ‘Deirdre?’

  Reaper pointed the gun in his face. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘Where’s Deirdre?’

  ‘Taking a nap.’ He raised his voice to call to Abraham. ‘Are you ready to leave?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  The monk left his sleeping pew and walked briskly down the aisle to the rear of the church, bringing the candle with him.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can put them?’ Reaper asked.

  Abraham glanced over the side of the pew at the collapsed form of the women.

  ‘Is she …?’

  ‘Sleeping.’ He raised the cricket bat. ‘And I haven’t played in years.’

  ‘The vestry,’ Abraham said, and pointed back the way he had come.

  ‘You!’ Reaper told the conscious guard. ‘Pick up Deirdre and carry her to the vestry!’

  He stepped back to give the man room to comply with the command and he crouched and struggled to lift the woman.

  ‘She’s a big girl,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I either lock you up or I hit you for six,’ he said, raising the bat.

  The man heaved and dragged the woman into a sitting position; heaved again and put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. It wasn’t very elegant but then, as the man said, she was a big girl.

  Abraham led the way to the small room at the front of the church. Once the man and woman were inside, there was not a lot of room.

  Reaper told the man, ‘Foster is finished. Special Forces have taken the city. If you have any sense at all, you will stay here until you are let out. Try to escape and you could get seriously hurt.’ He levelled the Glock at him. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded several times. ‘We’ll stay put. Never did like Foster, anyway.’

  ‘Sensible chap.’

  He closed the door and Brother Abraham locked it.

  ‘They’re not the worst of his followers,’ the monk said, in mitigation. ‘They just lost direction for a while. Where now?’

  Reaper led the way out of the church, the monk following.

  ‘Your people are being held in the Minster. We free them and capture Foster.’

  ‘You’re not going to use guns in the Minster, are you?’

  ‘Not if we can help it.’ They were outside and the sky was brightening, despite the rain. Reaper stopped abruptly in the churchyard and turned to Abraham, who had an eagerness in his face, now that he had been freed. ‘Abraham, you have to know. They killed Rebecca as the girls escaped.’

  The life drained from the monk’s face, which went slack with shock.

  ‘Rebecca?’ He whispered the name. ‘Dead?’

  ‘A bolt from a crossbow in her back. She died instantly.’

  ‘Cedric.’ He whispered this name with venom. ‘It was Cedric.’

  ‘We took her to Haven and buried her. The Reverend said the words. Mary was with her.’

  Tears welled in Abraham’s eyes and he turned away and held onto a gravestone. He took a deep breath and his shoulders straightened and when he turned back to Reaper, his face was composed but grim.

  ‘Cedric deserves damnation,’ he said, softly.

  ‘He’ll get it,’ said Reaper.

  They left the churchyard, taking a rear path, and headed for the Minster.

  The Treasurer’s House was a handsome 17th century building. Two wings jutted out at the front while the main entrance was recessed between them and reached up half a dozen stone steps. Sandra crouched with her back against the ivy-covered wall of one of the wings. She had discovered in the last year that there were no such things as neatly worked plans. You started with broad outlines and hoped to get an end result. In between, you adapted. You made instant decisions, that were often a matter of life and death, and about which you could not stop to think until everything was over. Even then, some things were best not thought about.

  She looked across the lawn towards the undergrowth and gates where she knew James was hidden. The boy they had f
ound in a public school had matured into a dispassionate sniper. At least, he seemed to have matured and he seemed to be dispassionate, but she knew assumptions could be wrong. Who knew anybody totally? Everybody had thoughts and secrets; fears and hopes and shames, that they kept to themselves.

  Who really knew her? She smiled as memories of Jamie surfaced. Even Jamie hadn’t known her. Would he have come to know her, had they lived a longer life together?

  Once again, she reflected that the plague had given her opportunities beyond her wildest dreams. Anybody’s wildest dreams. This was now a different world heading in a different direction. Before, she had worked in Top Shop and dreamed of going to Technical College and then maybe, just maybe, on to university. Before, she would have never met Jamie, and if she had, they would never have socialised much less married.

  Before, she wouldn’t have dreamed of coming to York: a tourist city full of history and teashops and a superior university that was way above her ambitions. She had actually considered which university might have been suitable. To be honest, whichever university that would have allowed her to sneak in the back door and come out again with a degree. ‘The only thing I passed was the school gates,’ her mother used to say. ‘I want to see you pass everything. I want to be there with the other parents when you get your degree and you throw that mortar board in the air.’

  And she hadn’t even started the foundation course at Tech.

  But she would have done. She had had a plan and the motivation and she would have got the necessary qualifications and sneaked into her local redbrick university and completed a degree and her mum would have been proud. She wondered if she would still have been proud to see her now and she looked up into the persistent drizzle for confirmation. Of course she would. Proud that she had survived and proud she had helped others survive.

  Different rules, now mum, different tests. But I think I graduated.

  She rotated her head as her neck started to stiffen and wondered when Brother Barry Foster, former medium and hypnotist and now High Sheriff of York, would get up to begin ruling his subjects. The plan – the vague, broadly outlined plan – was that Reaper would bring Abraham to the Minster and that the monk would release those inside by strength of personality, plus the weapons held by Tanya, Keira, Jenny and Yank, and without bloodshed. Once that was accomplished, they could call Foster out and invite him to surrender peacefully. What came next depended largely on Brother Abraham and his followers. They might forgive some of those who had been tempted briefly towards the dark side, and banish others who had displayed signs of dangerous aggression.

  The rules here were different to the ones by which she and Reaper operated; this was someone else’s community. But someone should pay for killing Rebecca, even though the delineations between right, wrong and insane were not clear. Who was really evil? Who was mad? Could they impose a trial and execution? The possibility had been in the back of her mind for a while, before York had become an issue. As the federation grew, crimes were bound to happen. They would have need of courts and a form of justice that aspired to something slightly more formal than a bullet in the back of the head. The days of being judge, jury and executioner, through which she and Reaper had strode, were coming to an end. Even the Wild West had eventually succumbed to the rule of law. Of course, they had also had Clint Eastwood and his kind of justice had stayed in fashion for an awful long time.

  Dawn had slunk in with the rain. The sky was a grey backdrop, with heavy darker clouds, moving across it on a brisk breeze, as if looking for trouble. Had Reaper freed Brother Abraham yet?

  Abraham and Reaper approached the Minster obliquely from the rear of Goodramgate, staying under the cover of trees that fringed a grassy area by the Minster Yard. It was a compressed space between the end of the shopping street of Stonegate and the front of the Gothic cathedral. Reaper had considered it as an ideal place to stage his planned ambush of John Steel, but even he had baulked at spilling blood on the Minster steps or even inside the great church itself, and he knew Abraham would have opposed such a plan vehemently.

  There was still a chance that blood would be spilt but Reaper hoped they could avoid such an eventuality. He could see Tanya and Jenny either side of the Minster entrance and surmised the guards would be inside, imposing control, rather than outside in the rain, watching for possible danger. He signalled to them, and then he and Abraham ran across the Minster Yard and up the steps to join them, the monk holding up his white robes so that he could run more easily.

  ‘There’s movement inside,’ said Tanya. ‘Although most still seem to be asleep.’

  ‘Where are the people sleeping?’ Reaper asked Abraham.

  ‘In the nave. To the left, as you go in.’

  ‘Right,’ said Reaper. Tanya and Jenny waited for instructions; Brother Abraham didn’t: he pushed open the doors and went inside. ‘Shit,’ said Reaper.

  Tanya and Jenny followed in the wake of the monk, guns at the ready.

  ‘Put down your weapons, brothers and sisters,’ Abraham called, in a clear and commanding voice. ‘This schism is over. Brother Barry is exposed and deposed. We can return to our peaceful ways.’

  Which was when gunshots sounded from behind the Minster in the direction of the Treasurer’s House.

  Sandra heard sounds within the house and straightened up, her back tight against the ivy-covered wall, her carbine held upright and at the ready. She glanced across the lawn again but still could see no sign of James. She hoped he was still there and hadn’t disappeared to answer a call of nature. What had Yank said? Do as I do. Pee.

  She grinned to herself and could well imagine Yank doing just that without any feeling of embarrassment. Why should there be embarrassment if lives depended on staying in position? Her thoughts were rambling and she felt the tension; her heartbeat increased. It was always the same. Start the frigging action and she would be fine, but nerves still kicked in beforehand when she had time to consider how many things could go wrong. Plans? Forget plans. React.

  The doors opened. She waited three seconds and stepped round the corner, the carbine levelled.

  ‘Drop the guns. You’re under arrest,’ she said, wondering where the words had come from as she spoke them.

  Barry Foster, High Sheriff of York, was wearing black velvet trousers tucked into black knee-high boots, a black velvet shirt and a gold cross that hung around his neck on a thick gold chain. Over his shoulders was a black cape. Around his waist was an old fashioned brown leather military belt and a holster that held a handgun. It was an impressive outfit on a very mediocre-looking, middle-aged man with a paunch and a facial wart. With him were two tougher looking men, both carrying shotguns, who did not drop their weapons.

  The nearest one raised his towards her, but before he could fire he was flung backwards against the wall and a single shot rang out. The second gunman made the mistake of pointing and firing his gun up the garden and James Marshall’s second shot took him in the head and dropped him where he stood.

  Foster turned and ran back into the house. Sandra had the opportunity to shoot but she didn’t want to put a bullet in his back. Besides, she was still harbouring thoughts of arrest and trial. She ran after him.

  Sandra followed him into a great hall with a tiled floor, huge fireplace and large paintings high on its walls. Foster was at the bottom of a staircase that looked as if it led to an enclosed minstrel’s gallery. She fired a warning shot that chipped the banister and he stopped.

  ‘You can’t escape, Foster,’ she said. ‘Raise your arms and I’ll take you to Abraham. It’s over and you’re finished.’

  Foster had his back towards her and he looked over his shoulder. He was assessing her. She had seen it before. He was making assumptions. She was a girl and he was a mature man who still had delusions of grandeur. When he did begin to turn, he did it in a way that the holster would remain hidden from
her view for as long as possible.

  ‘It’s never over,’ he said. ‘It’s just beginning.’

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  Sandra’s gun never wavered and she gave him all the time in the world to change his mind as she saw his right arm move and he took the gun from the holster.

  ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘I think there has been a misunderstanding. But it is nothing that can’t …’

  He began to turn more quickly, his left arm raised but his right hand at waist level, holding the gun. She shot him without compunction. Chest shot. He bounced back on the stairs and ended up on the first landing. She took three steps closer, aimed and fired the second shot. Head and chest. Always make sure.

  For a few long seconds, she listened to the silence of the house. She sensed it was empty, except maybe for ghosts. Wasn’t there supposed to be a Roman legion in the cellar? Well, now they had a new recruit.

  Sandra walked out of the house and stopped on the steps. James was in the middle of the lawn, his gun levelled. He lowered it when he saw that it was her and nodded an acknowledgement. She nodded back. Their part of the plan was over.

  Reaper ran down the cobbled lane round the back of the Minster and in through the front gate of the Treasurer’s House. He stopped because James had turned at the sound of his approach and had him covered. James lowered the weapon. Sandra was on the steps leading into the house, in between two bodies.

  ‘Foster’s dead,’ she said. ‘He’s inside.’

  He nodded, relief flooding him. He should have known better by now, but every time he and Sandra went their separate ways on a mission, he couldn’t help but worry. Once again she had completed her part of the action with minimum fuss and full deadly affect. She came down the steps and onto the lawn.

  ‘You okay, James?’ he said.

  The youth nodded. His face showed no emotion. Reaper hoped to God he was feeling some inside. He would hate to think he had created a fifteen-year-old cold killer. The time, the situation, the plague, the whole damn world had a lot to answer for.