Chapter 62
LONDON
3.10pm. Friday, 10th November
There were no drivers sitting in stationary cars. No shadows behind windows. The Knightsbridge mews felt empty, otherwise he would have kept driving.
He pulled over, parked the Audi a little way down on the main street and sat awhile.
She’d left in search of JP Armitage who might well have handed her over to the Board or locked her up behind the walls of his Chelsea mansion. After everything he’d witnessed in the camp, North had to hope Honor had more sense than to rely on the tycoon who was up to his neck in whatever this was. The only place left to try was her “playhouse”.
“We all need sanctuary,” she said, as the storm raged around Hermitage Island – when she thought there was such a thing. Sanctuary, where you rapped the knocker at the church and the priest kept you safe and prayed for your atonement. Except Honor never struck him as someone willing to atone.
He walked back up, his pace slow and casual, towards the side street with its white-painted dolls’ house. The rifle he’d taken from the corporal on the moors wrapped in a rug he’d found in the boot of the car.
JP Armitage didn’t stint himself or his intended. Two round bay trees guarded the front door, curly railings and blue curtains pulled over the ground-floor windows. For all North knew, she was dead already. Without JP to protect her 24/7, staying in London was a supremely dangerous thing for her to do.
The chances were if there was anyone home, it was a New Army goon. North shook the rug from the rifle, raising the weapon as the front door opened.
The bread knife fell from Honor’s hand and clattered to the red and white tiled floor as he lowered the gun. Her desperate reconnaissance slid over him, behind him and out on to the cobbled street, searching for Peggy. Only when she absorbed her absence, only when she was prepared to admit it to herself, did she turn on her heel. North followed her through, shutting the door behind him, turning the deadlock, sliding the bolts across. He wasn’t trusting the bay trees to keep out any invaders and the fact he hadn’t seen anyone watching meant nothing.
In the tiny kitchen, a half-eaten plate of tagliatelle was on the table, an upright fork plunged into its heart. She sat down in her seat and pushed the plate towards him. She looked different – pale, dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was wrong. Short and spiked, it exposed the lines and planes of her face, giving her beauty nowhere to hide itself. She blushed as she appeared to remember her hair, touching her scalp, pushing the congealing plate further over, as much a diversion as an offer of hospitality.
He sat down across from her.
“This isn’t a good place for you to hide out.”
“It’s worse than you think.” She didn’t expand. “But I needed somewhere you could find me. I hoped you’d remember about this place.
The last time he saw her she was blazing at his betrayal. That he’d kept Hugh’s death from her. That he was mired in violence and blood. But she sought refuge somewhere she hoped he would find her. Risking herself again, but this time because she needed him.
“You didn’t go to JP for help?”
As he drove down, North ran over in his head how to explain his conviction that JP was involved in Peggy’s disappearance. Honor wasn’t going to take it well.
“I did.”
She spoke with due consideration, while he forked the strands of luke-warm and rubbery tagliatelle into his mouth. Ravenous all of a sudden. “Orchids and an asylum for the brittle-minded. JP’s old-fashioned that way.”
There was no over-sized diamond on her finger any more he noticed, and in his head the movie played backwards – unscrewing the ring, hurling it from a great height out into a garden, hacking at her hair in the mirror, the feel of JP’s traitorous arms around her as he walked her to the lift. Orchids of the palest green with crimson throats on the white cotton sheets of the hospital bed.
When she did see JP again, thought North, she was going to nail him to a door and leave him there. Remembering the fortitude of Bunty Moss and the old union boss dying in a strange bed without even his Bible to comfort him, North would hold JP upright while she did the hammering.
He assessed the sleek kitchen – its only window looked out on to yellow brick across an alley. He didn’t like it – they weren’t in their own secret foxhole – dug-in, hunkered down and heavily armed. They weren’t even on neutral ground – anticipating reinforcements. They were trapped in hostile territory with bullets flying. He wanted them out of here.
“Officially – a crazy man attacked me while I was there, then, thoroughly ashamed of his actions, jumped from the roof.”
Something was wrong. The tone of her voice? The fixed regard. A difficult memory, but it was more than that.
“I demanded a lawyer, told the clinic I’d sue them senseless – oh and by the way they have a psychotic nurse – so they let me go to avoid the scandal of a raped celebrity. The suicide…” she didn’t hesitate at the word. But the crazy man wasn’t crazy. He didn’t jump. She pushed him. He saw it play out – her attacker’s fall lasting forever, the sprawled marionette body on the ground, black blood, “…was bad enough. Terrible for business among a certain class of lunatic. Excellent, however, for me.”
Was he reading her right?
Did she kill a man in cold blood?
Or, did she kill to save her own life?
Had he infected her with his own violence? Or was it there all the time in her own DNA?
She stopped talking, as if she’d had enough of the half-truths.
“Unofficially – he was one of your colleagues. He killed Ned – he virtually said as much.”
North winced. She would never forget what he’d been. But if he found Peggy for her, she might forgive him.
“Does JP know you’re here?”
“He must know I’m not at the clinic. He might guess I’m here, but he hasn’t come looking. Probably because I will have his balls.”
“JP’s involved in Peggy’s disappearance,” he said, and Honor looked as if he’d slapped her.
“That’s not true,” she sounded stricken. “He ’s a control freak of the first order and an over-protective bastard, but he’s not involved. He would never do that to me. He has people looking for her in Chile. He told me.”
“Peggy was working on a smart chip to cancel out noise and he was going to distribute it. He’s doing it already.”
She shook her head. “Impossible.” Did it again. “They don’t even like each other.” Peggy thought he was a creep, and JP resented anyone Honor loved more than him.
Peggy was a rational creature and JP a logical choice. JP was a successful businessman and Peggy was an unworldly genius.
It wasn’t up to North to persuade her of the truth. It was up to her to accept it.
The acknowledgement of the deception passed over her face. “Why didn’t they tell me?” Her voice was sorrowful.
North could think of any number of reasons why JP wouldn’t tell her. That he intended to rip Peggy off and charge for technology which she wanted to be free to all-comers? That he intended to buy Peggy’s good opinion? Perhaps Peggy was embarrassed that she needed him after everything she’d said? Or perhaps she had every intention of telling Honor till she figured out something was amiss. Peggy Boland was a scientist. She would have wanted evidence she was right in any suspicions about JP before going to Honor.
He told her about the camp. The hostages – Sonja. The imminent coup. That in some way Peggy’s work played in to it.
“We go public,” she said when he stopped talking. “It’s our only chance.”
“Have you stopped being mad?”
“North – 350 miles away there’s a camp full of innocent people who say I’m sane. We can’t leave them there. Sonja is going to have a baby. That old man is on his deathbed – you said so yourself. There are children.”
When he broke into the camp, he changed the game. Bunty Moss knew that if no one el
se did. Hostages were a valuable commodity but they could be stored elsewhere. North didn’t stick around to watch the re-location; he didn’t need to watch lorries roll in to know there wasn’t a shadow of civilian life in that camp any more. No suggestion of illegal internment. Only marching soldiers waiting for the order to move out.
Honor worked it out for herself in the silence between them. “I told Sonja to stay – that she’d be safe.”
“You weren’t to know.”
She still wasn’t thinking about her own survival. So he had to do it for her.
The mews was barely a home and it certainly wasn’t a permanent refuge. Nor was it a fortress and that’s what she needed. She wasn’t safe. Couldn’t be, till he took apart whatever was going on. “Whatever JP’s involvement, you can’t stay here, but I know someone who can get you away and look after you till I finish this.”
One way or another.
“An Army buddy?” She wrapped her arms around herself though it was warm in the tiny house. Too warm – the kitchen window locked against intruders, late winter sun breaking through, backlighting her, lending her a glow. Radiant like an early saint, like a virgin martyr stuccoed on to the plaster of a Saxon church wall.
He shook his head – partly in answer, partly so he didn’t have to keep looking and not touch her.
Not an Army buddy. Someone who could handle themselves. Smuggle her out of the country. Someone who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. Someone like Stella. He ’d called her as he pulled out from the camp. A couple of hours to roust out decent passports in London – she knew someone who knew someone. Of course she did. Before a hop-skip-and-jump to Amsterdam and flights onwards to Florida.
“Holidaymakers. We’ll get lost in the crowds – Jess always wanted to go to Disneyland.” She’d be with them as soon as she could.
He was changing the arrangement. Honor had a burner they could use to text Stella from the car and they would meet en route to the airport. He didn’t want to wait another minute in the mews.
Honor looked around her – desolate he thought. Not at leaving the Wendy house, but at the idea of running away after all. Despite her best efforts. “I’m going nowhere,” she’d announced in hospital.
“You’re still alive, Honor. You haven’t won, but you haven’t lost. Let me find Peggy and stop whatever it is they’re trying to do. If it doesn’t work…”. If he died in the attempt, he meant. “Use your contacts in America. In Europe. Tell them what’s going on. Create an almighty stink.”
The fighter in her still struggled against what he was saying. To cut loose. Quit. Run as far and as fast as she could.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she said. “You had a chance to leave it all behind. I told you to go.”
It was a lie but he didn’t judge her. She’d known even as she walked away that he would never let it go. He couldn’t, because it turned out there was more than one kind of freedom.
North reached across the kitchen table for her hand. It was small in his and he brought it to his lips, unfolding her fingers to expose her soft palm then folding them back over. It wasn’t a diamond ring. It was a kiss. A salute. A consolation, and a goodbye. They both allowed him that.
Chapter 63
He didn’t hear them coming.
Chapter 64
Their attackers smashed their way through the front and back doors simultaneously, the front windows seconds later. North reached for the rifle, but it was already too late. A mountain knocked it out of his hands, balling his fist as he came, a glint of metal from the knuckledusters taking North under the chin, sending him into the air and across the room. Pain smashed its way across his jaw into each and every tooth, up through his neck, into every hair on his head, and down through his vertebrae to take over his nerve endings.
The mountain-man still coming for him, through the open door into the lounge North watched as she fought them, all flailing arms and legs. Bruno appeared from nowhere. The only one not wearing a balaclava as if he wanted North to see his face. He swung his massive fist, and Honor’s head cracked back on its spine, then forward, her knees folding as she collapsed to the floor. Roaring Bruno’s name, North staggered to his feet, two assailants blocking his path, sledgehammer fists pummelling his stomach intent on bringing him down. Dark figures dragging her to her feet, holding her while Bruno pulled a black hood over the slumped blonde head, her elbows and wrists already tied at the back. North’s consciousness in shreds, a thunderous ringing in his ears, he felt rather than saw Honor ripped from the room. A final triumphant smirk from Bruno.
White-hot anger. Upright, reeling, his vision still blurred, North broke from his attackers, aiming for the corner of the room where he imagined his rifle to lie alongside the broken lamp, but he was too slow. Weight slammed into him, crushing all air from his lungs as he and mountain-man hit the floor together – North breaking the assailant’s fall, glass shards from the bulb crunching under him, cutting through his khaki shirt. He swung his fists wildly, desperate for purchase, for a blow to land and crush bone, instead the attacker found North’s throat, the fragile larynx between the stranger’s fingers as they squeezed what was left of the air from his body. North fought for breath, darkness crowding him – the threat of oblivion. Temptation. He thought of Hugh, beaten to death, and scrabbled at his own throat, finding his attacker’s little fingers, bending them backwards as far as they would go. A churning double snap – enough to break not just bone, but the grip. As his opponent pulled himself upright and away from North, North brought up his legs, his boot in the other man’s face, smashing his nose, a cheekbone, mule-kicking him away.
The small kitchen was made smaller by the table. On the one hand, its size made escape impossible. On the other, his four attackers struggled to operate as an effective team. North had to hope the mule-kick had taken the mountain-man out of play, which left three. The biggest, whom North judged to be the leader, had no intention of letting their victim get upright. With the enthusiasm of a professional who resented the fact North wasn’t dead yet, he pulled back his booted foot to drive it into North’s ribs. As the giant’s boot came in for his head, with both hands North caught hold of the heel and toe, wrenching it 180 degrees outwards – his knee dislocated, the assailant screeched in pain then went silent as North wrenched it back the other way using the man’s own considerable bulk and his frail balance to tip him up and over, the man’s head slamming against the door of the larder with a bone-shuddering crunch. With a pack animal roar and their way clear, the two others leapt at North, pounding him, bringing him down to his knees. He seized hold of the testicles of the nearest, twisting and wrenching savagely. The guy screamed, and North used his free hand to find his throat and use him as a battering ram bringing himself upright through the other assailant.
A click from the doorway.
Winter light from behind threw Stella into darkness, the right side of her face slipping from the bones.
“Change of plan, lads.” She shot the mountain-man, his arms wrapped around himself in the corner, his crippled hands tucked out of harm’s way in his armpits.
“I have to admit, I’m really…” She swung the gun towards the second man, his eyes wide, and pulled the trigger.
“…Looking…” The giant cowered against the wall, but there was no place to hide.
“…Forward…”. The last man stood still, resigned to his fate, to the red blossom opening up over his heart.
“… To Disneyland.”
North let himself breathe again, sucking in a mix of gunpowder, blood spray and citrus cologne.
Long enough to remember Honor.
“They have her away already, North. She’s gone.”
He reached down to pull the balaclavas off the nearest bodies. Buzz-cuts, broken noses, hard been-around faces which told him nothing.
The Glock 43 lay just under the giant’s body. Its short barrel jutting from beneath the hip bone. The giant must have had it in his pocket. North pushed
his foot under to clear the gun from the corpse and bent to pick it up.
He didn’t make it.
“The first thing I’m going to do is find an orange tree and pick myself an orange.” Stella’s gun pointed at him. He stood – slowly – as Stella took a step towards him. “Do you think when I cut it open that it’ll be warm inside, North? That it’ll taste of sunshine?”
“I’ve never liked oranges.”
Stella’s snakeskin jacket lent her skin the green tinge of rotting vegetation. “You should have let it go, North, but you’d have to be born over.”
“You told them where we were.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“You were never going to find that Peggy tart. They were never going to let that happen.” There was a note of regret in Stella’s voice. He’d have thought there was pity, but he didn’t think Stella ran that way. She never promised him her friendship. Never said Trust me, though he did. Never said she was his ally – only behaved like one.
Desolation.
Stella fronted up Bannerman, and the good professor informed the Board there was a grieving family asking awkward questions. Fortunately, Stella’s grief for Ned could be assuaged by money.
“When did they get to you?”
He was trying to work out when the betrayals started.
“You walked out the door looking for Jimmy the Sniff, and Bruno walked in looking for you. I told you Michael North was all kinds of popular.”
Poor dead Jimmy the Sniff. Jimmy saw her. Called out “North, Mate…there’s someone…” in warning. Stella cleaned the house for Tarn by burning it down. Disposed of the only witness to Peggy’s abduction. But North was never supposed to die in that fire – only druggie, no-mark Jimmy the Sniff. If North hadn’t tried to climb to safety, Stella would have doubtless rescued him herself. Broken into the house. Dragged him to safety and left Jimmy to burn, snapped his neck to make sure of it. Made herself that bit more indispensable. They wanted him watched.
Killing State Page 28