by Chris Ward
Tommy waited in the driver’s seat, wondering if the other DCA agent would notice him through the tinted side window. How observant were they? Would the man notice a slight change in posture, enough to put him on guard, or was he as stupid as his companion?
He was taking his sweet time. Tommy drummed his fingers on the dashboard, wondering if the agent had found a sweet-looking wife or daughter inside and decided to exercise his dick. If he had, Tommy would blow it off, then perhaps let the man crawl back to his office as a warning to the others. One day the fuckers might learn.
Two figures appeared in the doorway. The first was a captive, a man Tommy didn’t recognise. In the light through the door Tommy saw swellings and bruises on his face. The second was the agent, holding the man cuffed behind his back. The DCA man’s hair was ruffled, one eye swollen closed. Good; it looked like the captive had put up a decent fight.
As he pushed the captive forward, a woman appeared in the doorway, screaming abuse. The DCA man pulled a gun with his free hand and waved it around, shouting at her to get inside. The commotion had woken half the street, Tommy saw, lights on now in several windows, a few faces peering out.
Well, if they wanted a show, it was about to start.
The DCA man pushed the captive down the path and out into the road. He banged his gun hand on the van’s driver’s door. ‘Get the hell out and help me with this bastard,’ he shouted.
Tommy opened the door. He lifted his gun, took a quick aim, then shot the DCA man through the shoe.
The man screamed, crashing to the ground. Tommy jumped down, kicked him in the stomach a couple of times, and then swung the gun’s butt into the man’s face.
‘What the fuck?’ said the captive man staring at Tommy.
‘Vigilante justice,’ Tommy said. He searched the DCA agent’s belt and found a key for the handcuffs. As he freed the captive, he said, ‘Tell the people that Tommy Crown now works out of a different office. Help me get this cocksucker into the van. Then it might be a good idea for you and your family to go and pack. You’re on their list now, and once you’re on it, you’re not coming off.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ the man said. ‘The cunt just pulled me out of bed. I had a go, but he had a gun.’
Tommy gave a grim smile. ‘Luckily I have one too, but I’m on your side. Quickly, help me with him.’
They hauled the groggy DCA agent into the van, the blood from the wound in his foot dripping all over the road and the passenger seats. Tommy slammed the door, then patted the man on the shoulder.
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Don’t stick around. They’re like fucking horse flies.’
‘Thanks,’ the man said.
Tommy climbed back in and drove off. A couple of dispatch messages flashed up on a dashboard screen, so he switched it off. Then, as he headed through town, aiming for a road that led up into the Mendips, he called up Saj.
‘I need a car and some muscle.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
He gave Saj a location, then he headed out of town. He turned off the main road that headed up through Cheddar Gorge and down a dirt track, killing the lights. At a farm gate at the end, he pulled the van to a stop, wound down the window and looked through the gate at the lights of Wells spread out below.
It had once been a pretty decent place to live.
The DCA men had a packet of cigarettes, so Tommy smoked one, reliving something he hadn’t done in twenty years. They also had a radio—something else that was hard to come by now—so he tuned it to a rock station and listened to some songs he remembered from his childhood.
Oh, how he would go back there now if he could.
Lights flashed on the lane behind him, briefly dazzling him in the side mirror. Tommy pulled his guns in case it was the DCA, but it was Saj with Nevin beside him. Tommy climbed out and gave them instructions. Both men listened with wry smiles, then got straight to work.
They loaded the men into the boot of Saj’s car then torched the van. It plumed with flame as Saj drove away, Tommy beside him with Nevin in the back.
‘Where are we heading?’ Saj said.
‘Carmichael Industries,’ Tommy said. ‘I owe someone a delivery.’
Then, with Saj and Nevin chatting easily beside him, he called Kurou.
‘I have your first shipment,’ he said. ‘I’ll be bringing it tonight, so be ready. The goods are in pretty decent condition, although one of them might have a slight limp.’
18
Patrick
‘What do we do, Patrick?’ Suzanne asked, lying beside him, one hand resting on a bare stomach that was as hard from lack of food as it was from exercise. ‘I mean, we’re fugitives now. We’re hunted. We can’t go back home or we’ll end up in jail.’
Patrick scowled, wishing she could have let them enjoy a quiet moment alone for a little longer before pulling the wide world back in. ‘For crimes that don’t even exist. Neither of us did anything wrong. Don’t forget that.’
‘I’m trying but I just feel guilty anyway.’
‘Don’t. We’re now prisoners of Uncle Tommy. Sure, it’s a bit better here than it was in jail, but we still can’t leave.’
‘Moose said wait for him to call.’
He remembered what Moose had said, but it had been several days now and no word. Race was out there somewhere, perhaps hurt, and with half a dog stuck to his face. Tommy was the only one who might have answers, even though the threat of taking his payment hung like a black cloud over Patrick’s head. He wouldn’t give Suzanne up without a fight, not again.
‘Why, though?’
Suzanne gave him a light slap across the cheek. ‘Because he’s trying to protect us.’
‘You don’t know my Uncle Tommy like I do. He’s a gangster. He’s as dangerous as the DCA.’
Suzanne shrugged. ‘At least he seems on our side. He had that man come and cut us down.’
‘Race. I told you, it was Race.’
‘Patrick, I know you said—’
He suppressed a groan. She still didn’t believe him. He pulled away from her and climbed out of bed, reaching for his clothes.
‘I’m going to talk to Moose,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on.’
‘Patrick!’
He tried to give Suzanne a reassuring smile, but he felt nothing but a growing sense of dread. She started to get up, but before he could give her a chance to talk him out of it, he turned and ran from the room.
The wooden stairs echoed underfoot as he hurried downstairs. The house was enormous, the floors connected by randomly located staircases which seemed designed only to confuse. He wondered if that was the point as he reached the landing below, turned left, found himself at a dead end, then turned to head back the other way.
He passed a window, caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and paused to look.
A car pulled into the driveway, and three men got out.
None wore uniforms, but from the way they moved Patrick sensed danger. He turned and rushed back up the stairs, calling to Suzanne to get dressed. As he burst through the bedroom door he found her putting on a bra.
‘There are people here.’
‘Who?’
‘I didn’t stop to ask, did I? Get dressed quickly.’
Suzanne threw on the clothes she had been wearing over the last couple of days and followed Patrick to the door.
‘I don’t know who they were,’ he said. ‘But they didn’t look—’
Gunshots cut his words off dead, muffled through the floors below but still loud enough to make the door shudder in its frame.
Patrick pulled Suzanne close. ‘Do you know if there’s a back way out?’
Suzanne frowned for a moment, then nodded. ‘There’s that service corridor, isn’t there? The one that’s plainer than the others. Perhaps that’s what servants would have used.’
‘Let’s go.’
Patrick regretted not preparing as Suzanne had. While she had wandered
the house, getting familiar with its layout and uncovering whatever secrets it kept in its many rooms, he had sat in their bedroom and brooded over what to do, listening to an old radio Moose had provided, hoping some current news would cut through the endless loops of pre-recorded programs.
He followed her to the end of the corridor, where she slipped through a door as thin as a cleaning closet. It opened out on a windowless, sparsely adorned corridor barely wide enough for two people to pass. At the end they found a staircase leading down.
They had just reached the bottom when more gunshots rang out. Patrick glanced at Suzanne, who lifted an eyebrow.
‘Sounds like Moose is putting up a fight,’ she said.
They carried on down. The gunshots came more frequently, echoing from the front of the house as though Moose were making a gradual retreat. The newcomers had to be DCA, but they couldn’t know how many people were here.
A corridor at the bottom ended in another door. Suzanne cracked it, peering through. Patrick looked over her shoulder into a pantry which he knew connected to the main kitchen. The door opened out of a corner beside a larder. He remembered seeing the door from the other side but had assumed it was a closet for coats and shoes.
Two doors led out of the pantry, one into the kitchen, the other into a porch and then out to a side terrace and a small car park where vehicles might once have stopped to make commercial deliveries, out of sight of both the front and back of the house. Patrick tapped Suzanne’s shoulder and pointed; she nodded her agreement.
The door creaked as Suzanne pushed it open. Both froze for a moment, but no sounds came from the rest of the house. Maybe Moose was dead, and the DCA men had gone upstairs.
‘If we can get into the gardens, we can hide,’ Patrick whispered.
Suzanne nodded, crossing the pantry to the back door and trying the door handle.
It didn’t move.
She looked back, a look of horror on her face. Locked, she mouthed.
Patrick glanced around, looking for a key, and saw some hanging on hooks beside the door to the kitchen.
It was only a few steps, but it might as well have been a mile.
He glanced back at Suzanne, who appeared frozen to the spot. Patrick stared at the keys, then a sudden creak in the ceiling above galvanised him into action. He moved across to the door, peering at the faded tape stuck above each key: front door, loft, study, potting shed….
He plucked the one labeled “pantry back door” just as the kitchen door opened and a burly man stepped through.
At first the man seemed as surprised to see Patrick as Patrick was to see him.
‘Stop,’ he wheezed, as though terrified, hand reaching for a gun hostler on his hip.
Patrick, who had entertained as many fantasies of punching out the DCA as anyone else, suddenly found himself useless. He tried to throw a punch, but it came out as a weak, half-open hand slap which glanced off the man’s shoulder as he turned, sheltering his body from the blow.
Patrick swung again, this time catching the man in the side, but he had never punched anyone outside of school and it felt powerless, blunted by a spongy thickness that could be concealed body armour. The man already had something black in his hand, but then something blunt hit Patrick in the side of the face and he flinched away. Beside him, the man grunted, dropping to a knee. A blunt thud came again, and the man hit the floor.
Suzanne stood there, breathing hard, holding a split bag of potatoes in her hand. One that had come loose had hit Patrick in the face, but the DCA agent now lay groaning between them, one hand clutching at air as it tried to reach his face.
Patrick pointed at a dark patch slowly pooling out around the man’s side. ‘He’s bleeding, look.’
‘I didn’t do that!’
‘He must have been shot. Quickly, come on.’
As though to cajole them into action, rapid footsteps came from overhead. Patrick, his hands shaking, pushed the key at Suzanne, who was nearer to the back door. She fumbled with it before getting it to fit, then finally they were through, into a porch hung with dusty coats and lined with Wellington boots.
The back door was thankfully unlocked and they found themselves in a gravel car park. A road led around the front of the house, with a path leading down into the rear gardens. On this side a steep, wooded hill rose, a fence separating it from the garden. At the house’s rear, the garden was a series of stepped terraces lined by waist-high hedgerows which then opened out onto the wide rear lawn with the stream beyond.
‘There’s not much cover,’ Suzanne said. ‘But we don’t have much choice. If they were DCA, they’ll call for reinforcements.’
Patrick pointed to the gardens opening out at the back of the house. On the far side, trees overhung the stream that bordered the other side of the grounds.
‘If we can get across that rear terrace, the river will give us cover.’
‘Let’s go. Just keep your head down.’
He forced a smile, then pulled her forward and kissed her. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Without you—’
She grinned. ‘Yeah, whatever.’
Patrick went first, running low but staying close to the house, trying to avoid being seen from the windows. No further gunshots came, but he didn’t dare hope that the other two men he had seen were also dead.
The house seemed to unfold ahead of him, as though dozens of extensions had been built on top of each other. Each time he reached a corner he expected to find himself at the back, only to find another dark alcove or patch of gravel as the house extended, more dirty windows peering back into rooms or corridors he had never seen.
At last he reached a corner and found himself peering out onto a patio at the top of the terraced steps—
And at the back of a man standing at the top of a staircase, a gun in his hand. Another stood a few steps farther ahead, looking out at the lawn below.
‘Double back?’ Patrick whispered to Suzanne, but the crunch of car tyres came from the gravel behind them. If the car was electric they wouldn’t have heard the engine, but since neither man turned, Patrick could only assume this was reinforcements come to help out.
A thin line of hedgerow would give them cover if they could reach it, but they had to cover half the distance to the men across a paved patio. Patrick glanced at Suzanne, who nodded. With a terrified smile, she pushed him in the hip.
‘Boys first,’ she whispered, her voice trembling.
Patrick took a deep breath, then ducked as low as he could, running in a squat so uncomfortable he had to keep moving forward or keel over. The back of the nearest man felt on top of him until he reached the hedge and ducked down. He glanced back, expecting Suzanne to be waiting by the wall, but she was right behind him, ducking down alongside, breathing hard, a hand over her mouth. Terrified eyes watched him, unblinking.
Patrick crawled forward and risked a glance out from the edge of the hedgerow down a central stepped path that led down to the lawn. The nearest man had advanced a little farther, but the other had turned back, waving his gun. Patrick ducked in, praying he’d not been seen.
‘There’s footprints over here,’ came a muffled voice.
Patrick remembered a patch of mud at the foot of the steps from when they had last ventured out. Perhaps the men had found their footprints or some belonging to Moose, but as he heard the nearest man jog down the steps he knew they had their chance. He glanced back at Suzanne and nodded.
With a deep breath to steel himself, he broke from cover, running across the open space at the top of the steps, and ducking down again on the other side. Suzanne followed, squatting down behind him. Patrick risked another glance, and saw the men standing at the bottom of the steps, peering at the ground.
From here the route to the stream was covered by the terraced hedges and then a stand of ornamental trees. Patrick waved Suzanne forward and they made their way down. They had just reached the trees when a patio door opened and another man stepped out, this one in a full DCA uniform.
‘Markle, Wright, I found Hartnett. He’s down.’
‘What?’
‘He must have taken a stray one. Come and give me a hand.’
Perhaps the new arrival was a superior officer, because the two men immediately jogged to the top of the steps and disappeared inside.
Patrick and Suzanne needed no words. They hurried across a last open path to the cover of the trees alongside the stream, then climbed down the bank. Rocks and patches of gritty sand gave them a passable passage upriver without having to expose themselves.
‘Those cars we saw,’ Patrick said. ‘Perhaps we can find one that works.’
Suzanne nodded. ‘But watch out for snares this time.’ She squeezed his hand and grinned. ‘Learn your lesson, won’t you?’
Patrick smiled back, but the relief he felt was minimal. ‘I’ll try.’
19
Kurou
Tommy Crown had really pulled through, Kurou thought as he surveyed his two newest subjects. The fusions had gone perfectly, and the vital signs of both were looking good. A healing process after the surgery would take a couple of days, but the tissue regeneration systems he had installed were working almost fast enough to be visible to the naked eye.
He couldn’t be happier.
Torching the civil lawyer’s offices had been a masterstroke, bringing them together in a way only a good disaster could.
Sometimes he wondered what it was like to have the simplistic mind of a person who had been born normal. Were they aware how easy it was to be read and manipulated? Once, Kurou had considered himself a great puppeteer, not just of his machines or of people, but of entire nations. All you had to do was pull the right strings at the right time, and you could incite the merriest of dances.
The DCA’s purge had made perfect cover, although even they weren’t stupid enough to drive underground someone as close to the escaped fugitives as Tommy Crown. Now he had become Kurou’s secret weapon, hunting down DCA agents and bringing them in, acting, he believed, for himself, unaware that he too had been played.