‘Well that’s no way to talk to an old friend.’ The voice on the end of the line changed suddenly. ‘Actually, I need your help. I have a serious problem, and I don’t know who else to turn to.’
Hedge noticed the change. There was something in Cole’s voice that wasn’t quite right. He seemed subdued, even depressed. He hadn’t known this guy for long, but they had previously shared an incredible experience together. They had completed a mission that had been requested directly by the British Prime Minister. It was a bizarre episode in his life, but that had ended almost two years ago. He hadn’t heard from Cole since.
‘I need your help Hedge. More correctly, I need your sister’s help. She is my only hope. I don’t know who else to go to. Can we meet, please?’
Hedge was confused. ‘Why do you need Maddie? You hardly know her. How can she possibly help you? What’s the matter?’
‘Not over the phone. Let’s meet up. I can come to London, or it might be better if you come up to see me. Are you free this weekend?’
Hedge hesitated. Yes, he could make Sunday. But, Cole was a dangerous man. He was worried. He didn’t want to get caught up in anything with him again.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Please. I’m desperate,’ said Cole. ‘Please. Come up as soon as you can. Bring Maddie. I’ll explain everything when I see you.’
Cole gave him his address and the line went dead.
Hedge went inside the building to his office, but he couldn’t concentrate on his work. All he could think about was the call from Cole. What did he want? Why did he ask about Maddie?
His mind drifted back to the first time he had met his sister. It had been in a cemetery on a grey day in Houston. Hedge had just arrived in Texas, accompanied by Cole. The two of them were attempting to trace the ringleader who was behind a plot to steal money from senior politicians. They had recovered the cash, and Hedge was taking some time out to look for the place where his parents had been buried.
He found the graves. He also found Maddie, who he never knew even existed until that day. She was visiting the same cemetery, on that same day. But then, she did visit her parents’ graves most days.
A few days later in New York, they had exchanged their life stories over a coffee. It turned out that Hedge’s mother had been pregnant with Maddie at the time of the car crash. His mother had died, but Maddie had been born. She had been adopted by an uncle who lived near Houston, in the United States. Maddie told him about her life in Houston. The family she had grown up with were great, even if they were very private people. She had done well in school, and enjoyed playing sports, but her real passion was horses. She had learned to ride from an early age, and spent most of her free time out riding. It was strange, she said, not knowing her mum and dad, and that saddened her.
She was a bit confused initially about finding out that she had a big brother, but had now got used to the idea. She wanted to spend a bit more time with her new brother, so had come over to London to stay with him for a while. That was two years ago.
Hedge was still trying to focus on his work. The file in front of him related to an elderly couple, Mr & Mrs Johnson, who had asked him to put together some financial advice for them regarding their forthcoming retirement.
It was no good. He couldn’t concentrate. He decided to take an early lunch and go for a stroll. He grabbed his coat and left the building. He ate a cheese and pickle roll as he walked. It was a cold day, so he turned his collar up a little. His mind wandered back to when he had first met his new sister. She seemed normal in most aspects, apart from one thing. She tried to explain it to him. His mind drifted back as he recalled what his sister had said to him at the time.
‘I can’t really explain it. I get this voice in my head occasionally, and it speaks to me. Sometimes what it says doesn’t make any sense, but I listen anyway. It happens only now and again, maybe just two or three times a year. It’s a woman’s voice, soft and gentle.’
She had hesitated a moment before continuing.
‘Don’t you dare laugh, but I think it’s the voice of my mother. She’s been talking to me ever since I was a little girl. She used to tell me that I wasn’t alone. She said this quite often, and I assumed she was telling me that she was there for me. Now I don’t think she was telling me that, I think she was talking about you.’
Maddie had stopped speaking for a while.
‘Much of the stuff the voice tells me is mainly insignificant, but there have been some very notable events also. I recall one particular time. It was near the beginning of summer, about three years ago, and I was walking back from college one afternoon. I was alone, and almost home when she spoke to me.’
‘Don’t let him go.’
‘That’s all she said, nothing more. I had no idea what it meant, so I ignored it. Then the next morning as I was brushing my teeth, the voice repeated the same words.’
‘Don’t let him go.’
‘It made no sense to me, until my uncle told me at breakfast that his brother Jake was going camping in the mountains with some friends next weekend. Was it connected to that, I wasn’t sure. So still I ignored the voice. Then on the morning of the planned camping trip, I awoke early, dripping with sweat, like I had some kind of fever. The voice said the same words again.’
‘Don’t let him go.’
‘I quickly got dressed and walked down the road, to where my uncle’s brother lived. He had a pickup truck parked in his driveway, and he was loading it up for the trip. We chatted for a couple of minutes – I always got on well with Jake, he was very easy going. Then suddenly, I just blurted out that he should cancel his trip. He laughed, and said he couldn’t and that he had been planning it for ages. I tried to convince him but he just told me to go home and annoy someone else. I didn’t have any good reason to convince him not to go, and I certainly couldn’t tell him about the voice. I couldn’t think what to do, and then I saw a hunting knife sticking out of the side pocket of a bag in the back of the pickup. I grabbed it, and before he could stop me, I slashed one of the rear tyres of his vehicle. He was livid, but I just ran off home.’
‘So he didn’t go on the trip. He couldn’t get a replacement vehicle, and his friends had already left. They went off without him. When my uncle heard about it later, he stormed into my room in a rage and asked what the hell I thought I was doing. I didn’t have an explanation, so he beat me as a punishment.’
Hedge remembered being quite horrified when she had first told him about the beating. He had asked her to finish the story though.
‘Anyway, everything changed several days later, when the local news reported that three men had been attacked by a bear whilst sleeping in the forest. The reporter told how one man had died after having his head partially crushed in the animals jaw. Another of the campers had been mauled so badly that surgeons had to later amputate his left arm. The third man escaped relatively unscathed and had managed to raise the alarm. My uncle sat at home and listened to the news about the three men – Jake’s friends. When the reporter had finished, my uncle slowly turned towards me. He was deep in thought, and he was shaking his head very slowly from side to side. He tried to say something to me, but no words came out of his mouth. I just smiled at him. A few minutes later he stood up and left the room. The incident was never mentioned again, and I was never beaten again.’
Hedge came back to the present as he walked back into his office. He made up some excuse about not feeling well and headed home early. He needed to think. What was he going to do? What did Cole want with Maddie? Why had Cole rung him? He had got his life back to normal after the last time he had been involved with Cole.
He arrived home in a bad mood. He spent forty five minutes rearranging the contents of his fridge. Everything seemed to be in the wrong place. The butter should always be on the second shelf, and some idiot had put the marmalade next to the cheese on the top shelf.
He decided to go upstairs and have a sleep. He would talk to Maddie when she cam
e home. He needed to relax, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to.
Bloody hell, Cole!
Chapter Eleven
Hedge tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. He felt too anxious.
Talking to Cole on the phone had stirred something in him. It was less than two years ago that he had first met the man. Within hours of that first encounter, he had been caught up in a dangerous mission to recover stolen money as a result of several senior government officials being blackmailed. He wasn’t quite sure how he had become so involved. He always thought of himself as just a normal guy. But circumstances had worked against him, and he was unable to prevent the events that had followed.
Cole worked for British intelligence, he knew that much. But he didn’t seem to be attached to any particular group. Rather, he took orders directly from the Prime Minister.
Being involved with Cole had shaken him. Several people close to Cole had met with violent deaths.
He closed his eyes again and tried to blot all that out.
There were other experiences in his life that also caused him acute anxiety. His time spent at boarding school was the main source of his troubles. He knew that. In the years that had followed school, he had seen several therapists in order to understand his troubled thoughts.
As he slowly closed his eyes, he started to recall in his mind a particularly nasty incident from his college days. It involved an older boy called Prem. The memory came flooding back to him as he dropped off to sleep.
Prem was a senior boy at Upperdale. How he had managed to pass the entrance exam to the school, no one quite knew. He was not especially intelligent and not particularly good at sports either. He was well known though. He seemed to get on with most of the staff and he had a large group of friends. But all the junior boys hated him. Prem was the worst kind of bully – he was a sadist.
Prem was smiling to himself as he walked towards the junior boy’s dormitory. It was a little after ten o’clock at night, and lights out for the younger lads was nine sharp. They should all be sleeping.
‘What have you got in mind?’ said Banks, ‘and what’s in the bag Prem?
Banks was a small, scruffy boy in the same year as Prem. He always seemed to have a confused look about him, and was known for being easily led by others. He had come along with Prem tonight as he sensed something interesting might happen.
‘Wait and see.’
They arrived at the door to the dormitory and Prem pushed it open. He flicked on one of the overhead lights so he could see in the room.
‘Wake up you little bastards,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve brought you a present to play with.’
Most of the boys woke immediately, but a few others just carried on sleeping. Prem went to the bed next to Hedge, where the occupant had just rolled over away from the light and pulled his head under the covers.
‘Sniffler, get your fat arse out of that bed,’ screamed Prem.
Ben Watson always seemed to be unwell. He caught more colds than most of the lads, and could never shake them off. He was constantly blowing into his handkerchief, hence the nickname.
‘I’m tired. I don’t feel well,’ came back the muffled reply from under the sheet.
Prem looked incensed. He ran his hand through his short ginger hair – something he often did when he was angry. He opened the plastic bag he was carrying and pulled out what appeared to be a short piece of wood. The wood was maybe twenty four inches long, and two inches wide by two inches thick.
‘What’s that?’ said Banks excitedly.
‘I made it in woodwork this afternoon. It’s a new type of weapon I’ve invented.’
Prem held the wood in one hand and raised it above his head for Banks to see.
‘It looks like just a piece of wood to me. That must have taken you a long while to make,’ said Banks sarcastically.
‘It’s not just a piece of wood, you pillock. It’s a dangerous weapon.’
Prem turned the wood ninety degrees in his hand. He smiled across at his colleague. Banks studied the implement again. There appeared to be a nail protruding from near the end of the piece of wood. It looked sharp and it stuck out about an inch from the surface of the wood.’
‘Very impressive,’ said Banks, again there was a hint of sarcasm.
‘What do you know about anything,’ Prem responded angrily.
Still holding the wood, he turned back to Sniffler’s bed.
‘Out of bed, Sniffler, now,’ he shouted.
‘I’m tired,’ the boy replied.
Prem raised his hand and brought the wood down on Sniffler’s back. It didn’t impact quite as he had hoped. The nail was at the wrong angle and so it was just wood that struck. It was a hard blow though, and still very painful.
‘Ow, that hurt,’ Sniffler screamed. He continued to lie under the sheets, but it was obvious to all those watching that he had started to cry.
‘If you think that was painful, then wait until you feel this.’ Prem turned the wood in his hand a fraction, he wanted to be sure that the next blow would send the end of the nail into the junior boy’s back.
Prem started to raise his hand.
‘Leave him alone. That’s bloody dangerous you idiot.’ Hedge had blurted it out, but he was immediately aware that he had probably overstepped the mark.
The older boy lowered his arm. He immediately moved his attention away from Sniffler. He put his new weapon down on top of a chest of drawers. He ran his hand slowly through his hair while he studied his new victim.
‘Banks, come over here, we need to make sure that young Hedge here is nicely tucked up in bed.’
Banks walked over to the other side of the bed. He smiled across at Prem and nodded. He had clearly understood what was required of him. It must have been something they had done many times before.
With Hedge still lying in bed, the two senior boys pushed the bed sheet under the mattress from both sides of the bed. They continued to push until the sheet was tight across the bed. This meant that Hedge could hardly move – his arms and chest were pinned down firmly. Banks then sat on his side of the bed, which meant that the sheet couldn’t be pulled free. Prem did the same, but as he did so, he leaned under the bed of Sniffler and pulled out a dirty handkerchief. It should have been white, but had clearly been used several times in the last few days.
‘Oh my god, that’s disgusting!’
Prem had opened up the handkerchief, and to his horror there were large blotches of a green, slimy, mucous like substance splattered across several parts of the material. He bunched the material back up, but in such a way that a large patch of the nasty looking mucous was on the surface. This particular area also had several small green and brown lumps mixed in with the mucous. Prem had no idea what they were, but it looked disgusting.
‘Open your mouth.’
Hedge ignored the request, but changed his mind when Prem hit him in the side of the face with a bunched fist.
‘There’s a good boy.’
Prem thrust the material into the open mouth. Hedge tried to resist, but it was too late. Most of the handkerchief was now pushing against the back of his throat. Hedge recoiled, partly because he could feel the slimy mucous filling his mouth, partly because the handkerchief tasted disgusting, but mainly because he was struggling to breathe.
‘What’s the matter, don’t you like that?’ asked Prem.
Hedge was fighting against the sheet that was holding him down. He was trying to shout something but no words came out, just a throaty mumble.
‘Sounds like you might be regretting your little outburst now?’
Prem allowed himself a smile, and then suddenly jumped up.
‘I’ve just had a great idea. Sit on him for a moment, don’t let him move. I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Hey, where are you going,’ said Banks.
‘Shut up. Just make sure you hold him down. By the time I’m finished with him, that little shit is going to wish he hadn’t messed with me.’
Chap
ter Twelve
Prem ran out of the junior boy’s dormitory and off down the corridor. Hedge was still trying to struggle free from the sheet which was tight across his body. Banks leaned across and lay on his chest so that Hedge couldn’t move. It was an awkward position, so he hoped Prem didn’t take too long.
Prem meanwhile was now running back down the corridor. He burst back into the dormitory and closed the door. He came back over to Hedge’s bed and sat down on the edge. In his hand he had small tube of something, and he had started to unscrew the top of it.
‘I knew I had this somewhere. Luckily I managed to find it,’ he said excitedly.
‘What is it,’ said Banks.
‘It’s superglue, of course. Watch this.’
Prem leaned over and squirted a small amount of liquid from the tube into each of Hedge’s nostrils. His victim recoiled and tried to struggle, but the two boys were holding him down firmly. The glue stung the inside of his nose, and Hedge tried to cry out, but once again nothing more than a muffled mumble escaped past the handkerchief in his mouth.
Prem now pinched the nostrils together tightly, and held them like that for about ten seconds. When he let go, Hedges nose had been completely blocked by the glue.
‘Excellent, it works,’ shouted Prem. ‘This is a bit like a Biology experiment. Just shows you how much fun science can be.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Hedge was not laughing. He was now completely unable to breath. His nose was blocked by the glue and his mouth was bunged up with the handkerchief. He started to panic, and tried to struggle against the sheet holding him down. Again, he tried to call out, but very little noise escaped from his throat.
Prem and Banks were both laughing.
‘Look, he’s starting to turn blue, and I think he’s crying. What a bloody girl,’ exclaimed Banks.
Hedge was rapidly running out of air. He was desperate to draw breath. He could feel himself beginning to black out. He tried to suck in air through his nose, but the nostrils were completely blocked. The more he tried to breathe in through his mouth, the more it simply wedged the handkerchief down his airway. He could feel gel-like liquid, caused by the mucous, start to run down his throat. It made him gag.
The Terminate Code: A gripping, page-turning, action adventure revenge thriller, with a fast pace, and a terrifying twist in its tail ! (Hedge & Cole Book 2) Page 5