“Not enough sugar?” Connor asked, not missing a thing.
“Too much. Sorry, but I normally take mine without.”
“Sorry, Doc. My mistake.”
“No problem.” She lowered the cup to the table between them and slid it away.
“Not poetic justice or not the captain’s doing?” he asked, returning to the subject.
“Not the captain. One of Sir Malcolm’s minions ordered the hit, hoping to kill both Ryan and Gravel at the same time. They wanted to silence any witnesses. Which, by the way, would have included me. I was in that farmhouse along with Rollo and Danny Pinkerton. You know Danny?”
Connor smiled. “We’ve met. Nice bloke, but I wouldn’t wanna take him on in a fist fight. Either him or the QM, come to think of it. And as for the captain …” He grimaced and shook his head slowly. “Never seen anyone with his skills. Hang about, Gravel’s wife died in that explosion, didn’t she? Collateral damage, I s’pose?”
“No, she was involved in the conspiracy all the way up to her botoxed forehead. No need to waste your sympathy on that woman. Ryan was actually trying to save her at the time.” She looked away, focusing her eyes on nothing. “He’s a good man. Kind. Honest. What happened to those poor people on that plane will haunt him forever. That’s why we’re here in London, trying to help the families of the victims.”
“Understood, Doc. Wouldn’t be here mesself if I didn’t want to help.”
“Thought you were here for the money,” she said, smiling to soften a perceived insult.
He leaned away and threw a hand on his chest covering his heart. “Ouch, Doc. That smarts.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean—”
“Not that the pay ain’t important. After all, I am a mercenary. That said, I’m also choosy ’bout who I work for.”
“Speaking of work, back to my actual profession. You’d have no problem with my treating you, should the need arise?”
“Not me, Doc. Especially since when the story first broke, there were a whole section on this mysterious veterinary surgeon”—he mouthed the words—“what saved the captain’s life and ran off with him in the end. Some painted it as a love story worthy of a romance novel.”
She sighed and managed not to roll her eyes, but her cheeks warmed.
He leaned closer, but not too close. “The way you two are together … I mean, the way the captain looks at you. Seems them stories weren’t total bullshit after all, yeah?”
Lara coughed. “Moving on …”
“Yeah, okay. Got the picture, Doc.” He finished his drink and placed the empty cup beside hers.
They fell silent for a few moments, allowing the noises of a busy hospital to swirl around them.
“Adding to the online conspiracy theories,” Connor said, “within a month of the plane crash, all mention of this mysterious vet disappeared from the internet. No pictures, no bio, nothin’. It’s as though the woman never existed. Funny that, eh?”
She nodded. “Yes. Funny.”
“Wonder how it’s possible to completely ‘disappear’ someone from the internet. Bet there’s a load of bad boys out there who’d love to know how to make that happen.”
She nodded again. “I imagine so.”
“Anyhow, when the QM invited me to join this particular shindig, the captain ordered him to answer any questions I had. Seems he don’t like to hold nothin’ back from his men. Even if I hadn’t already known your background, the QM would have told me about your … unofficial status as medic of the team.”
“And what did Rollo say about me,” Lara asked, although she had a pretty good idea of what the huge, gruff sailor might have said.
“Nothing much. Only that I could happily put my life in your hands should the medical need arise. Pretty high praise from an old salt like the QM, I reckon.”
Lara smiled. “Rollo is too kind.”
“The QM, kind?” Connor scoffed. “Maybe to you, Doc, but you ever seen him take charge of an exercise session?”
She matched his scoff and added an emphatic nod. “As a matter of fact, I have. Rollo puts me through the wringer whenever the captain’s away on … let’s call them ‘manoeuvres’. And before you give me that look, neither one takes it easy on this particular recruit.” She dug a well-manicured but unpainted fingernail into her sternum to emphasise the point.
Connor looked her up and down and seemed to appreciate what he saw, at least in terms of her physical preparedness.
He jumped up, said, “Hear that?” and headed towards the door to the prep room.
“What?”
“Damian. He called for Mr Griffin.”
Lara hadn’t heard a thing. She sprang to her feet and followed Connor across the corridor just as the prep room door opened, and Ariel appeared in the opening.
“Mrs Griffin,” Ariel said, her eyes puffy and her round face streaked with tears, “Damian’s awake. He’s asking for your husband.”
“Bill had to leave. Can I speak with him?”
Ariel backed into the room and Lara entered quickly. Connor followed and moved to one side of the door, standing guard.
The patient lay in pretty much the same position Lara had left him, propped up on his good side, an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. His blood pressure and heart rate were slightly depressed but, encouragingly, the oxygen saturation had climbed a few points and had reached the low nineties. The oxygen mask was doing its job. Damian’s eyes were open and they focused on her as she approached the bed.
She stood close beside him. He reached up to remove the mask.
“Mr G-Griffin,” he said, his voice weak and rasping. “Where …”
“Don’t worry about my husband, Damian. Just rest. They’ll be taking you into theatre soon.”
She tried to replace the mask, but he brushed her hand away.
“He … In the ambulance, he said somethin’ … somethin’ about searchin’ the school.”
Lara glanced at Ariel, who nodded encouragingly. She must have known what Damian was mixed up in and how he’d received his injuries.
“No, Damian,” she answered. “He just wanted to scout the area while the place was empty overnight.”
“N-No … He … he gonna search inside the school.”
Damian tried to sit up, but the movement brought on a spluttering fit. Wet rasping coughs dragged up from deep within. Blood speckled his lips. The EKG machine on the shelf attached to the operating table flashed red, and an alarm sounded.
Ariel cried out and tried to brush past Lara, but Connor held her back.
“She’s a doctor,” he said, firmly. “Let her help.”
Lara stepped in, forced the mask back in place, and held Damian around the shoulders. As the spasm eased, she leaned him back into the bed’s raised pad.
The door crashed open and a nurse in orange scrubs entered. Connor barred her approach.
Lara leaned closer to the patient.
“Damian what’s wrong?”
“TM and the … the Goons,” he rasped.
Her heart lurched.
“What about them?”
“Waiting for … Barcode. The school won’t … won’t be empty.”
Oh God.
Ryan was walking into a trap!
Lara stepped away and the nurse, muttering words Lara chose not to hear, brushed past her.
“Connor,” Lara said, “with me.”
Outside in the corridor, Lara turned right, heading for the emergency exit. Followed by her bodyguard, she crashed through the unsecured doors, pulled out her mobile, dialled, and waited.
After thirty seconds of her pacing, Ryan still hadn’t picked up. She let the call ring.
“Darn it!”
“No answer?” Connor asked.
She shook her head. “Anything on the comms unit?”
“I’ve been on radio silence since we got here.” Connor tapped his earpiece. “Alpha Four to Alpha Two, are you reading me? Over.”
She could only hear Co
nnor’s side of the conversation, but it soon became evident that Corky had lost contact with Ryan. Panic rose in her throat, restricting her breathing. Her stomach churned and her heart rate jumped.
Oh, God. Ryan.
“Understood, Alpha Two. Keep trying. Alpha Four, out.”
Connor tapped the earpiece and turned towards her. “It seems the comms are down intentionally.” He paused a moment before continuing. “This guy, Alpha Two. What do you know about him? Is he any good? I mean, can we really trust him?”
“Corky?” Lara frowned. “We can trust him totally. He’s an absolute genius. He’s one of the two people responsible for my removal from the internet.”
“Is he, by fuck? Impressive. And strange.”
“Why?”
Connor wiped his mouth with a hand and scratched at his stubble. “Turns out one of this Corky’s mates is helping the captain.”
“A friend? Who?”
“Dunno. This Corky geezer would only give me his first name—Sean. Any idea?”
“Sean?” Lara resumed her pacing. The short landing leading to the emergency staircase only allowed six paces before she had to reverse direction. “Sean? Don’t recognise the name. What about the comms?”
Connor scrunched up his face. “Seems like this Sean bloke built an anti-surveillance gizmo. Knocks out all the comms within a couple of hundred metres. Power, internet, satellite, phones, the lot. Everything goes down.”
“Oh my Lord.”
Lara clapped a hand to her mouth to stop herself shouting.
“Doc?”
“The school isn’t empty. Ryan’s walking into a trap.”
She spun and reached for the staircase handrail. Connor’s hand grabbed her wrist. She winced under his grip.
“Where the hell d’you think you’re going, Doc?”
Lara wrenched herself free and started down the stairs.
“I’ve got to warn him!”
“Doc, no. Wait!”
She reached the next half-landing before stopping and turning. Connor was halfway down the run. She held up her hand.
“Hold it right there, soldier!” she barked the order.
Connor stopped dead, years of training taking over. He held the handrail, his leading foot one tread down from the other.
“You are staying here!” she said, calm but firm.
“Let me go with you, Doc. You have no idea what’s happening at the school.”
“No. Your job is to protect Damian and Ariel. I’m armed,” she said and tapped the side of her handbag. It contained nothing more defensive than an illegal can of pepper spray that Ryan insisted she carry everywhere, but Connor didn’t know that. “And I know what I’m doing.”
“But—”
“You have your orders, Sergeant. Stay here. I’ll be safe. Ryan has trained me for this. I know what I’m doing!”
Before he could argue any further, she threw him an encouraging smile and raced downstairs, taking them two at a time, glad she’d chosen a pair of flat shoes that morning.
She had absolutely no idea what she was heading into, but Ryan was in trouble and needed her help, and that was enough.
Lara loved him and owed him her life. No way was she going to let him down.
Not ever.
Chapter 42
Monday 20th February – The Smoking Room
Walthamstow, NE London
03:09.
Kaine pushed through the doorway and found himself in a dimly lit corridor. It stretched out straight ahead for about fifteen metres, running at right angles to the other corridors he’d walked that night.
The first door he reached led into the kitchen. At the far end, between two metal units, a solid-looking door stood ajar. Beyond the door, bright lights illuminated a plush room with carpets, wooden furniture, and a library of books.
“Ryan,” Freeman called from inside the room, “that didn’t take you long. Come in, come in. Someone here is almost dying to meet you.”
Kaine hurried through the disused kitchen, passed through the open door, and stumbled straight into a scene from a Victorian melodrama.
A broken, bloody mess that used to be Demarcus Williams lay on the hearth in front of a TV screen that displayed a blazing log fire.
Freeman sat in a wingback chair in front of a coffee table, sipping whisky from a lead crystal tumbler, whose etched facets caught the light of a nearby desk lamp, adding multi-coloured sparkles to the amber liquid.
On the far side of a large mahogany desk, a slim man in a business suit sat tied to a chair. Thin nylon climbing ropes looped around his chest and neck, trussing him firmly to its back. The man’s forearms were likewise bound to the chair’s arms. The man screamed something, but the hood over his head and the gag tied around his mouth muffled his words, making them impossible to decipher. He struggled to free himself, but the knots didn’t look as though they were going to loosen anytime soon.
A small part of Kaine’s mind wondered where Freeman found rope in such a fairy-tale library, but he couldn’t summon the energy to ask.
Freeman pointed his glass towards one sitting on a silver coaster on an occasional table beside another upholstered wingback.
“I poured you a snifter. Please help yourself. TM won’t mind. Will you, TM?” The man tied to the chair didn’t respond. “Oops, there I go again, forgetting he can’t hear us. Shame on me, but I’ve had a difficult evening.”
“Your evening’s been difficult?” Kaine wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve to the background music of his new friend’s increasingly irksome chuckle.
Freeman picked up a spare coaster from the table and threw it at the bound man’s head. TM started rocking and screaming, the sound still muffled by the gag. Neither the ropes nor the solid chair moved.
Kaine crossed the room, trudging through a carpet with a pile so deep and plush, if it’d been in his house, he’d have considered running a lawnmower over the damned thing.
“Thanks, Sean. Been a long day.”
Kaine lowered himself gratefully into the chair, sank into the well-sprung seat, and leaned back against the soft cushions, sighing loudly. He reached for the glass, inhaled the warm, smoky aroma of oak and distilled malt, and wet his lips.
“Nice,” he said. “Very nice.”
“Thought you’d appreciate it. When did you twig I was playing a game?”
“Took me a while,” Kaine said after taking another tiny sip. “Thought I was going to have to teach you a lesson after I finished dealing with the Goons.”
“What gave me away?”
“When you started talking about how Corky was setting me up. It didn’t ring true. That’s when I decided to play along.”
Kaine used his glass to point, first at the deceased Demarcus Williams, and then at the hooded, still-struggling man in the chair.
“I thought you might need my help, but it seems I needn’t have worried,” Kaine said, stating the blindingly obvious.
“Nope,” Freeman answered. He reached for a TV remote and hit a button. The big screen in the middle of the bookcase flicked on to reveal a widescreen shot of an empty Hub. Alphonse Coulthard had made good on his word. Even Delinquent had manage to make it out in one piece—more or less.
“You did all right yourself. I watched you take care of the riffraff. Five against one. Impressive.”
Kaine curled his upper lip and shook his head. “Amateurs. I’ve faced tougher opponents in the January sales.”
Freeman narrowed his eyes in thought, and he drained his glass before nodding. “Yes, agreed. Those bargain hunters don’t take prisoners.”
Kaine waited while Freeman poured himself another drink from a cut glass decanter that stood in a cruet set on the desk. Freeman offered him a top up.
“No thanks, I’m good. Need to wrap up here before heading back to the hospital. I don’t like leaving the Doc on her own for too long.” He lowered his voice when talking about Lara.
Although, the way the former gang
boss was fighting his bonds, it didn’t look as though he had the spare capacity for eavesdropping. But Kaine wasn’t one to take chances.
“Don’t worry about him, Ryan,” Freeman said, nodding at the trussed man. “He can’t hear us. Trust me. And if you were wondering about the ropes, I never set out on a job without bringing a few trusted tools of my trade.” He pointed to his backpack, which sat on the floor next to the library door. “Ultra-thin climbing rope. You’ll be surprised how many times rope comes in handy in my line of work.”
“No I wouldn’t,” Kaine said after another micro-sip. “By the way, all that, ‘Please don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!’ Oh dear, oh dear.”
“What about it?”
“Laying it on a bit thick weren’t you?”
“What do you mean? That was award winning, my friend. Nowhere near your overacting. Cliché or what?”
“I’ve absolutely no idea what you mean.”
“What was it? ‘You’re a dead man. Hear me? A dead man walking!’ I mean, really. What were you thinking?”
Kaine wasn’t a man to blush, but his cheeks warmed a little. “Yes, well, perhaps it might have been a little OTT. But, what about you and all that stuff with Corky and the money …”
“What about it?”
“A little close to home, I thought.”
Freeman grimaced. “Yes. Sorry about all that, but I had to be convincing enough to reel this arsehole in.” His eyes slid across to fix his gaze on TM. “I had to out the murdering bastard.”
“That leads me to an obvious question. What’s your real role in all this? No way you’re just here to help me. You’re too involved and too well prepped. Come on. Out with it.”
Freeman stood. “Before all that, would you like to know who this creature is?”
“Only if he can tell me what happened to Glenmore Davits. Can he?”
“There’s a pretty good chance, I imagine.”
Freeman strolled around the desk until he stood behind the chair and, with the flourish of a sommelier revealing a rare bottle of wine, released the knot holding the gag in place and hauled off the hood. He also ripped off the stereo headphones strapped to TM’s ears with another length of climbing rope.
Ryan Kaine: On the Money: (Ryan Kaine's 83 series Book 5) Page 34