Different

by Tony Butler

  They had toyed with the idea of taking some of the young mothers captive for breeding and organ transplants, but had decided that it was too much of a risk. They could have confided to someone that they were going to the Foundation and, if they disappeared and were reported missing, it just might lead to an investigation. All the transplant operations were carried out thirty miles away from the Foundation and performed here at Catherstone, and there was no way the two businesses could be linked.

  He was about to go into the dining room when he received a phone call from Henry.

  “I’ve just received some news about Jeremy,” he said. “If I were you, I’d get that girl we’ve been keeping as a donor for him ready for surgery. Give his doctor a ring and let him know that we can supply the kidneys and a secure operating theatre at Greystone. When Jeremy finds out that it’s our foundation, he’ll get the message and play along, but get Janine to be prepared to expect some very heavy security down there.”

  “I’ll take care of that myself—”

  “No! I need you to be on a flight back here now. With all this damned extra security over the terrorist threat, people are beginning to ask why my head of security is out of the country.”

  “Okay, Henry. I’ll get the jet fuelled up and be with you tomorrow.”

  “Good. I’ll have a car waiting for you at the airport. I’ll feel more secure with you around to watch my back.”

  After Henry had hung up, Russell rang Jeremy’s doctor, who, although Jeremy didn’t know it, was already a customer of his. Having completed his business, Russell went into the dining room and helped himself to a light lunch before getting himself ready to visit the groups.

  * * * *

  Russell was dressed casually in walking boots and a baseball cap, the universal attire of birdwatchers, with a pair of binoculars and a camera hanging over his shoulder. He, however, was not even remotely interested in birds. He regarded ornithologists as a bunch of nuts, but it was an effective cover because bird-watchers were abundant around here. It was a sudden urge to check the security of The Devil’s Footprint that had led him to return unannounced. A sudden uneasiness – an instinct that something was going to go wrong, and Russell always trusted his instincts. He wanted to check out the security fence and gates that isolated the house and the electric fences behind them. Between the fences, six Doberman dogs ran free, but he needed the reassurance that only inspecting them himself would bring. Walking through the village, he saw that there was a funeral in progress and he turned left away from the church and headed towards the chase. He would approach the estate from the chase. Adjusting the straps of his backpack, Russell pulled it back on and hoped that he’d got everything that he’d need.

  He lay concealed in the bracken, his high power binoculars mounted on a small stand and focused on the people who were gathered outside of the nearest group of huts. There was Marcus wearing his usual fancy suit and sitting on executive leather, like the Lord of some feudal manor. The young men and girls were looking at him the same way the kids back home looked at rock stars. Grinning, Russell screwed the long-range microphone together and, after putting on his headset, aimed the contraption that now looked like a rifle towards them. One of the boys came out of one of the huts and held up what appeared to be a newborn baby and everyone started to cheer. The guy sitting on the throne nodded in approval as the baby was held aloft and raised a hand to acknowledge the cheers of the others.

  “Let’s party!” Marcus cried.

  They went berserk. As soon as they’d unloaded a cow from Marcus’s low loader and starting to butcher it, it was like watching one of those medieval films he used to like as a kid. All that was missing was the knights in their armour.

  Russell wrinkled his nose against the ever-pervading stench that rose from deep in the ground. He would be glad to breathe some good clean air into his lungs.

  One of the men approached Marcus and handed him a pitcher of beer.

  “Thank you, Josh,” he said. “The baby will fetch a good price and your group will benefit.”

  “It’s going to be good year,” Josh said, smiling. “Three more of the girls are pregnant, so it will be a good year.”

  “You’ll be looked after, Josh. How about a new knife and an axe?”

  “Thank you!” Josh said, grinning with delight. “I hope you like the beer and I will get you a steak when it’s ready. Would you like to take one of the girls to bed while you’re waiting?”

  “Just the ale this time, Josh, but you may choose any woman for the night. We will be taking Emma with us. Someone has need of her kidneys, but the Lady Janine has already found a suitable replacement.”

  “I’ll have her tied up and put into your trailer, Doctor. Can we have her body for burial afterwards? We’d like to say our goodbyes.”

  “Yes, you can return her body to the marshes and wish her a happy life in the one beyond. She’s always been a good member of the group.”

  Russell packed away his equipment and smiled in satisfaction. His racket of kidnapping runaways and breeding them to sell their babies like God-damned puppies, was working like a dream.

  The organ transplant sales were also booming. He’d go back and join Janine for dinner; it would be good to get laid again.

  Stretching, he tossed the butt of his cigarette down an open shaft. A moment later there was a muffled explosion. Flames leapt up towards him but he had already jumped clear. After a few minutes, the flames were no longer visible but the gas would be burning in the tunnels of the abandoned mine; he’d heard that they could burn for years.

  He whistled as he walked back through the village. The funeral party was long gone from the churchyard. Climbing into his car, he drove towards Birmingham.

  He unlocked the car’s glove compartment and smiled when he saw the Beretta automatic and the envelope that would as always contain £30,000 in used banknotes. That was half his fee for the triple hit.

  Russell always charged the company for his services. After all, it was him who was taking the additional risk. The silencer for the pistol and the spare ammunition were in his pocket. He felt a surge of adrenaline. It was good to be in action again and this assassination business paid well, although he would willingly forgo the fee if he had to.

  His targets were a vicar who lived in Birmingham and the scrap metal merchant and his wife who’d threatened the Catherstone operation’s security by telling their vicar that they’d arranged the private adoption of a newly born baby. The vicar had been suspicious and had arranged to have dinner with the couple but, fortunately, Russell had wired the couple’s house once they’d paid their deposit. Originally, he’d planned to take them all out while they were having dinner together, but this way was more fun.

  The woman who answered the door didn’t recognise him, because of the wig and the cheek pads he wore. Although she was in her late forties, she was very attractive indeed. She frowned and looked around for the dogs, which he’d disposed of a few minutes ago, but before she could speak, he hit her hard in the stomach. Seizing her hair, he jerked her upright and she backed into the house, her eyes wide in fright and with the silencer rammed deep into her mouth. He kicked the door shut behind him and squeezed the trigger. The woman’s body seemed to jump away from him and fall heavily to the floor. Without hurrying, he placed the pistol between her blindly staring eyes and fired again.

  “What’s going on, Jill? Who is it?” A thickset man came into the room and stared in horror as Russell walked over to him and pressed the pistol against his throat.

  “You talk too much, Joe,” he said, and shot him. Although the man was already dead, Russell shot him between the eyes, too. It was his trademark, one bullet in the throat and another between the eyes, close up and personal. No sniper’s rifle or car bombs for The Death Dancer. No, he liked to see the fear in the target’s eyes before they died.

  He took his calling card from his pocket and dropped it on Joe’s corpse. It showed a skeleton dancing on a grave, and th
at was why the media had called him The Death Dancer. An hour later, the vicar had died in his study and Russell was driving back toward the airport, wondering if the murders would be on tomorrow’s early morning news.

  * * * *

  Jay, her eyes red from crying, stooped, took a handful of soil and sprinkled it into the grave, watching it land on the polished lid of her grandmother’s coffin. Peter squeezed her shoulder, comforting her, then led her and Sharon, his wife who had flown in from New York, away from the grave.

  “Look, Jay, come back with us to the States. We’d love to have you—really. Sharon, Scott and I all agree that we’d only worry about you being on your own over here.”

  Jay smiled at her Uncle Peter who looked more like Granddad Tom than ever. “I can’t. Not yet. I just want to stay here for a while, at least until the cottage is sold, but what about Mary?”

  “Mary, you were included in the invitation,” Peter said. “Why not come back with us? We’ll have to return here for the inquests in a few weeks and for the funerals anyway, and I’m sure Scott would enjoy showing you around.”

  Mary looked at Jay who, upon realizing that her friend wanted to go, nodded her approval. “I’d love to come back with you if Jay doesn’t mind being on her own,” Mary said. “I need to get away from everything.”

  “Of course, I don’t mind,” Jay said. “I’ll be fine and, anyway, it’s only for a few weeks.”

  “Alright, but I’ll put some money into your bank account to tide you over, Jay,” Peter said.

  “Don’t argue, I insist. Besides, the money from the sale of the cottage will be yours anyway. You’re definitely going to put it on the market?”

  “Yes, it would be too big for me and Mary. How do you like it in America?”

  “It’s a lot different from Canada, but Sharon and Scott love it and so do I.” He grinned. “Why don’t you and Mary come and take a look for yourselves?”

  “I will later, but not yet. It’s hard to explain but I need to stand on my own two feet for a while, find out what I can achieve on my own.” Jay shrugged. “But don’t worry. If things don’t work out, I’ll yell so loud that you’ll hear me on the other side of the Atlantic.” She took Peter’s arm and led him away from the others and over to one side of the funeral car, waiting to take them back to the cottage for the wake. Almost all the village had turned out to pay their last respects, and she’d invited all of them back. Peter had arranged for caterers to provide the food and drink. “Uncle Peter, you know that Granddad Tom found me after I’d been abandoned when I was three. Did he ever mention anything else?”

  “I don’t think so, Jay. Why? What’s on your mind?”

  “Do they use identity chips on dogs in America? You know, they’re implanted in their ear so that if they get lost they can be identified and returned to their owners.”

  “Sure, and not just cats and dogs either, why?”

  “You’re a research scientist. If I gave you a chip, could you find out what it says for me?” Jay reached into her pocket, brought out the small cardboard box and opened it, taking out the self-seal plastic envelope. She held it up so that he could see the miniaturized computer chip inside. Peter took it from her and frowned. “I suppose so, if it’s important. Whose dog was it taken from anyway?”

  “It wasn’t. When I was eight, I wanted my ears pierced like the rest of the kids and they found this implanted in my right ear. Now that Tom and Anna are gone, it’s important that I find out what it means. It might say who my real parents are.”

  She didn’t tell him that he might explain the special gifts she used to have as a child but now seem to have deserted her, probably because she’d suppressed them for over a decade. The night following her remembering about her and Granddad Tom’s game of hide and seek and Anna’s fall, Jay had tried to become. After stripping, she’d pressed herself against the tree but nothing happened and after a while she’d re-dressed and gone back to the house.

  When she went to bed, she fell asleep almost immediately and dreamt. Fire raged through the darkness, illuminating the rats that followed in its wake, feeding on their fellows who’d been trapped by the fire. There were iron rail tracks on the floor and she knew that she was in some old abandoned coal mine. She didn’t feel threatened, just uneasy as she followed the rats and the tunnel seemed to come to an end but then she saw that they were at a junction and could turn either right or left. She turned left and the fire died out. Strangely, though, she could still see and, as she followed the pack, she realised that she could feel a flow of air on her skin and the rats were feeding again.

  Jay almost screamed when she saw them tearing at the body of a woman wearing a white suit of some kind and on another body just behind it. She wanted to turn around and run but was pulled forward as though by an unseen hand and saw the boy completely encased in a block of ice except for one hand that protruded from the side. He looked familiar, as though she’d seen him before! But then a rat sprang and fastened its jaws to one of the exposed fingers of his hand and she saw the flesh tear and blood slowly ooze from the wound. The rat was joined by another and the first rat dropped with a severed finger in its mouth, blood dripping onto the ground.

  He’s bleeding, she thought. Somehow the boy in the ice was alive and the rats would eat him bit by bit as the ice thawed.

  Jay finally managed to scream and jerked awake, the nightmare still fresh in her mind. Nauseated, she got out of bed and made some black coffee. She didn’t want to go back to sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Devil’s Footprint

  Adam heard a scream and jerked awake. Instantly, he was aware of his predicament, of the ice that prevented him from breathing or moving and the intense pain in his left hand. He was barely able to see the rats that tore at his flesh. Two of them hung, writhing and twisting, with their jaws clamped into the raw, bloody meat. It was almost unrecognisable now as being a hand. Rage, terror and panic possessed him and he tried to pull his arm back into the protection of the ice, sending tremors through his frozen prison as he felt the ice shift.

  Colours sparked in front of his eyes as his oxygen-starved brain started to black out and he concentrated on moving his arm. He twisted it back and forth, pulled and pushed. A hairline crack appeared in the ice directly in front of his face. Knowing that this would be his last effort, he redoubled his struggles and suddenly his arm broke free, the pressure of the ice easing from his chest. But it was too late, he had to breathe. His chest heaved and instead of blacking out he felt air flow into his lungs. With a cry of triumph he shook his arm again. The ice in front of him fell away. The rats launched themselves at him as he slumped to his knees, snapping at his face, arms and legs. He ignored their bites, exploring the ground with his right hand. His fingers closed around a piece of splintered wood. He fought then, beating the rats with the branch until they released him and fell to the ground. He clubbed them in a fury until the ground was covered with their broken, bloody corpses. Adam felt so weak and knew that his strength was almost gone. He had to find food and drink or he would die. He blacked out.

  He awoke feeling stronger and found that he was chewing bloody meat. He looked in horror and disgust at the half-eaten rat in his hand. Adam hurled it away from him and saw several more halfconsumed rodents by his feet. His left hand was healing fast, though, and already replacement fingers were beginning to grow. Soon he would be strong enough to try and climb up out of here – back into daylight.

  * * * *

  Russell was suffering from jet lag. Since he’d returned, he’d been flying around the country, organising Henry’s security. The Presidential election campaign was now underway and the battle for the White House had begun. Russell’s ex-Vietnam Buddy, Henry Lane, was one of the leading contenders for the Vice-Presidency.

  Leaning back in his chair, Russell closed his eyes and someone tapped on his door.

  “Come in!” he said wearily. Whoever it was had better have a good reason for disturbing him.
>
  “I’m sorry, Mister Downey,” Arlene, his new secretary, said timidly. “But I thought you might want to see this.” She handed him a letter. “It’s from a Doctor Peter Williams, and he say’s he’s found a micro chip that refers to some experimental work that we were doing in the eighties in the UK. I tried to open the file on the computer, but it has restricted access.”

  Suddenly, Russell was very much awake. “Leave it with me and I’ll see to it,” he said.

  * * * *

  Russell was grateful that the house was secluded. It meant he could let Sharon Williams scream as loud as she liked as he lopped off the little finger of her right hand. He’d already finished with her left one. He’d arrived in New Hampshire this morning at first light and so had been able to snatch a few hours sleep.

  “You seem to be all thumbs tonight,” he said, picking up a severed forefinger and examining it thoughtfully as the woman’s screams faded to be replaced with great wracking sobs intermingled with cries of pain. She was naked and spread-eagled, face up on the table, secured with the thin nylon cord that he preferred.

  Her husband, the doctor, was crying quietly. He, too, was naked and his manacled wrists were fastened to the chain of his leg irons, but unlike his wife he was gagged. Russell had no doubt that the

  doctor would have answered his questions a long time ago, before he’d even started on Sharon’s right hand, but it never hurt to let them see that he meant business.

  They’d been having dinner when he’d arrived and he’d accepted their offer to join them after he’d told them about the mislaid letter. He’d waited until Sharon had cleared the table before pulling out the gun and subduing them.

  Now, he removed the doctor’s gag and bent to look into his eyes. “The chip. I want to know how you got hold of it and I want the truth. If I even suspect that you’re holding anything back or lying to me, I’ll just have to start in on Sharon’s toes once I’m done with her fingers.”