Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  He watched her as he lifted it to his ear. A whisper of voices came from the receiver, then Justin’s eyes widened.

  ‘He’s early,’ Justin said. ‘He’s already here.’

  Urla was sweating as she took her place between the town mayor and the chief of police, two men who ostentatiously stood up to shake Maxim Cale’s hand first, despite both answering to her authority. As she reached out to take the hand of the towering figure in front of her, her heart was pounding enough to make her fingers tremble.

  Her expectations had been one thing, but the reality was quite another. Maxim Cale wasn’t just tall, he was enormous, towering at least seven feet high, and as wide at the shoulder as two men. His hand was large enough to cup hers like a child’s, and when she shook it she felt a bullish strength in his arm, as though he could lift her up and toss her across the room just like throwing a ball.

  Stressing a skin condition that made him sensitive to light, he had requested the lights be dimmed, but even inside he wore sunglasses which shielded his eyes. His face, though, was grey-white, like the colour of paper left out in the sun. His jawline was carved, his mouth and cheeks showing a strange ageless quality. His close-cropped hair was perfectly white.

  ‘I will speak with you in private,’ he said, and all Urla could do was give a frantic nod.

  With the formal greetings over with, her agents instructed his orderlies in moving Maxim Cale’s entourage into a series of guest rooms and suites on the upper floor. Urla, dismissing the mayor and chief of police with a little more forcefulness than was necessary, led Maxim Cale to her own office.

  ‘It is our great honour to have you visit,’ she said, instructing Justin to prepare tea before closing the door on her inner office.

  ‘I am but a politician,’ he said. ‘It is I who is honoured.’

  ‘You are the next leader of our country.’

  He smiled. ‘If the voters agree. We shall see on that.’

  ‘I have no doubt. Our current government is weak, rudderless….’

  Maxim Cale gave a short laugh, a booming sound like a foghorn misfiring. ‘A lot of pressure will be on whoever takes over to sort out the current mess.’

  ‘The country needs a strong leader. I have no doubt you are that man.’

  ‘I will do my best to repay your faith in my abilities.’

  They traded honourific praise for a while longer, before Urla turned the conversation to her department’s jurisdiction and the work she had implemented. She had prepared a slideshow presentation which she displayed on a pull-down screen, Maxim Cale nodding thoughtfully as he stood back in the dark. When she was finished, she turned back, looking for his reaction, but he was still staring at where the screen had been, as though unaware the presentation had ended.

  ‘Mr. Cale?’

  He looked at her, as though broken from a trance. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was wondering about your thoughts on the developments the DCA has made in my jurisdiction.’

  ‘Yes … wonderful, wonderful. You have done well, Ms. Wynne.’

  Urla smiled, hiding her disappointment. He sounded as though he had missed the whole thing.

  ‘You approve?’

  He lifted a hand and removed his sunglasses. Even in the shadows, Urla shivered as she saw they burned a crimson red.

  ‘There is unrest here,’ he said. ‘I have felt it, seen it in your agents’ eyes. Your people are revolting, turning against you. I am looking for unity, not division.’

  ‘I … I … it’s under control.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must turn down your offer to stay for tomorrow’s event. There are other places I need to visit. Time is of the essence with the election looming.’

  ‘No, please, it’s taken so much preparation.’

  Maxim Cale frowned as he stared past her. She saw confusion in his face, indecision.

  ‘Please,’ she said again. ‘Everything you might have noticed, it’s nothing. It’s under control.’

  Maxim Cale looked at her. For a moment she saw a hint of vulnerability, that he was no more than an imposter playing a dangerous game. Then he replaced the sunglasses on his face, and with the hiding of his eyes the feeling died. He was once more in control.

  ‘Very well. I will appreciate your hospitality for one more day before I return to my campaign trail.’

  Urla lowered her head. ‘You have given me the greatest honour.’

  His reply, when it came, didn’t seem to come in the form of words at all, but thoughts in her head:

  Don’t disappoint me.

  36

  Kurou

  Kurou chuckled as he watched the two brothers enjoying their reunion. For a while it had amused him to see Patrick struggling to keep up with Divan—oh, the frailties of humanity!—but it seemed Divan had felt a change of heart and carried his younger brother instead. Through the viewer implanted into one of Divan’s eyes, Patrick had become just the occasional flailing leg or arm as Divan raced in pursuit of Suzanne.

  On a scientific level, Kurou was impressed. Divan had managed to track the girl with ease. It would take a greater analysis to determine whether Divan was tracking her scent directly, or had realised that she had taken a vehicle and reverted to track it instead, following the trail until the girl’s resumed. Testing, testing. He had a lot of work to do if he was to achieve complete perfection of his new soldiers, and that would require the DCA to leave him alone.

  Somehow, he doubted that would be the case.

  An alarm sounded on another computer, and Kurou shifted across to check its status. He had sent several of his new Huntsmen to keep watch around the local area, and one was trying to contact him.

  He replayed a highlighted section of video footage. From a hiding place near the main road into the town, the Huntsman had witnessed the arrival of a four-car convoy. Tinted windows were no match for his Huntsmen’s adapted vision. Zooming in, running some filters, and then refocusing revealed Kurou’s deepest fear.

  His old adversary, Maxim Cale, had arrived.

  From a drawer he took a smaller handheld tablet and slipped it into a pocket of his jacket. Then, donning his top hat and monocle, he headed for a garage at the factory’s rear.

  ‘Laurette, I have some business to take care of,’ he said, calling his assistant forward. ‘I leave you in charge. Secure our perimeter and let no one inside bar myself. If Tommy Crown shows up, politely request that he make an appointment. If you need to contact me, use the third computer from the left. Press the red button.’ He winked, the monocle falling loose. He caught it with one hand, shrugged, and then replaced it in front of his blind eye. ‘I will be back soon. Hold the fort and keep it tidy, my dear.’

  Stanley Carmichael-Jones Esq. had been partial to high technology. Three exquisite, imported motorbikes, fully fueled and ready to ride, sat in a row inside the garage. Kurou climbed onto the nearest, started the engine, and turned it around.

  Ten minutes later, he was motoring along towards Wells, gravel spraying up from the old roadway behind him.

  Urla Wynne had placed a guard on the warehouse where the festival floats were held. Kurou, not wishing to shed any blood so late in the day, waved the man forward, then clicked his fingers, performing a neat little hypnotist’s trick to gain the man’s compliance.

  ‘It would be your greatest honour to unlock this warehouse and turn on the lights,’ he told the guard.

  ‘My greatest honour,’ the guard slurred, then pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked a side door. With a flick of his finger he illuminated a cavernous room, the floor of which was lined by orderly rows of carnival floats. Built by local businesses and schools, they were colourful wooden contraptions depicting scenes of village life, sports, hobbies, and fantastical situations.

  ‘Quite delightful,’ Kurou said, rubbing his chin.

  Urla Wynne was clearly trying to impress Maxim Cale. It would take most of the town to push these lumbering things past Britain’s future leader tomorrow afternoon.
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  How spectacular it would be.

  Kurou instructed his willing guard to take a nap in a corner, then pulled off a rucksack and opened it up to reveal spools of wires and bags of tiny electrical devices.

  He sighed as he hefted the empty bag. It would be so nice not to have the weight on the bumpy ride back.

  An hour later, he was done, his fingers sore from rolling back the years, working the kind of magic that even in his youth would have made him proud. Maxim Cale would certainly see a parade he would never forget, and Kurou only hoped he could make it close enough to get a bird’s-eye view of the action. It was time to entertain the Grey Man with a rainbow of epic proportions.

  He returned the guard to his post with a little memory loss trick which would leave the visit of a unique stranger confined to his dreams, then climbed back on to his motorbike and set out. The rumble of distant traffic disturbed his thoughts as he headed back in darkness, car headlights flickering over the hills up ahead. He pulled off the road and hid in a farm gateway while a convoy of unmarked cars came up behind him and then sped past.

  Feeling uncharacteristically nervous, he decided to wait a while before heading straight home. He pulled out the computer tablet and called up Laurette.

  ‘Dear friend, pray tell me what is going on back there?’

  For a while Laurette didn’t answer. Just as Kurou was beginning to fear something had happened to his assistant, Laurette’s face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Master, it’s bad news,’ he growled. ‘The factory is surrounded. They are calling for you to emerge.’

  Kurou winced. So, the DCA had come at last. It would take a little strategic planning to escape such a mortal situation unscathed.

  ‘Alas, I am currently occupied. Hunt out a loudspeaker or some other such device and inform them that I do not wish to concur with their demands, but that should they wish tea to be brought out while they wait, we can negotiate. On no account should you open the gate unless I give the instruction. Is that clear?’

  ‘Clear, Master,’ Laurette growled.

  ‘You are a fine servant. I’ll be in touch.’

  He switched off the connection and instead established a group link going to all his operational Huntsmen, currently scouting or hiding out in positions across the town. He had underestimated Urla Wynne, who it seemed had allocated the majority of her resources to an offensive against himself, when they might have been better served protecting the town. Now, they laid siege to a factory they felt was brim full of deadly technology, when in actual fact most of it was wandering around outside. Like ducks at a broken shooting gallery, they would be easily to dispatch with even the wobbliest of aims.

  And then, a little parade would go ahead tomorrow close to unguarded.

  Things were falling into place. If such a god of technology existed, it was surely smiling on him, offering him an olive branch for the years of imbalance, and an opportunity to finally exact his vengeance on the man who had left him blinded, crippled and scarred.

  ‘Dear friends,’ he told his Huntsmen, once they were all online. ‘I would like you to return to your nest and await further orders. I am feeling in an artistic mood, and have decided to paint a mural outside my factory, one which examines the full range of textures and tints that can be achieved with the colour red.’

  He switched off the connection and rubbed his birdlike nose. Yes. His final victory was coming.

  Soon, soon, soon.

  37

  Suzanne

  She felt like a prisoner as she waited with Kelly in a small backroom of Frank’s surgery. He had gone to meet a contact, but that had been over an hour ago and Suzanne was beginning to fear that he had shopped them to the DCA.

  ‘Where is he?’ Kelly said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Kelly sighed. Sitting on a chair beside Suzanne, she was awake and coherent but in constant pain. The infection was showing signs of responding to the medicne, Frank claimed, but the wound itself needed proper medical care if it were to heal properly.

  From an adjacent room Suzanne heard a door open and close. She stood up as the backroom door opened and Frank appeared. He looked flustered, as though he had been running.

  ‘Okay, come with me now. Both of you.’

  They stood up and followed after him. It was dark outside, the shoreline beyond the last row of houses a glitter of lapping waves beneath the glow of a half-moon. They followed Frank along the street, passing the solitary pub and down a side street that sloped steeply upward. Frank stopped outside a narrow door. In the adjacent window, light peeked around the edges of a thick, black curtain.

  ‘Let me do the talking,’ Frank said. ‘Dill Hedgers is an old friend, but he’s not a trusting man. You can’t be in his main line of work.’

  ‘Running a bric-a-brac store?’ Suzanne said, looking up at the sign over the window.

  ‘A cover,’ Frank said. ‘He’s a ferry master. Of a very risky kind.’

  Frank opened the door and went inside. Suzanne exchanged glances with Kelly, who gave a tired shrug.

  ‘It might be our only chance,’ Suzanne said. ‘Come on.’

  She took her younger sister’s hand and led her inside. She found herself in a cramped shop piled high with all manner of junk, from dusty ornaments to wind-up toys and old electrical items, many of which were officially illegal. With no clear order, it felt like a storeroom until she realised there was a price label on everything.

  A door opened at the back and a figure appeared. He ducked under a collection of die-cast model planes hanging from strings and beckoned them forward.

  ‘My office,’ he said.

  Whatever Dill Hedgers had for muscle was hidden beneath the signs of very hearty eating. A long grey beard hung almost to his stomach, and a fisherman’s cap held a mop of wispy hair against his head. Hard eyes stared out of a face weathered by the ocean. Suzanne could only guess at an age somewhere between thirty and fifty.

  ‘This the pair?’ he said to Frank in a thick West Country accent.

  ‘Two girls,’ Frank said. ‘One has an injury that needs hospital care. When can you go?’

  ‘Friday,’ Hedgers said. ‘That’s the earliest. On Fridays the coastguard changes shifts. There’s a window of a couple of hours to get out beyond the guard line, then we’re good.’ He turned to Suzanne. ‘Ever been to Ireland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a lot prettier than this shithole. You’ll like it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Hedgers pulled out a chair and sat down beside a cash register Suzanne had until now thought part of the goods for sale. He took a deep breath as though standing made him uncomfortable, then began laying out terms.

  ‘You have a vehicle to trade,’ he said, at last, after outlining the grave threat of the coastguard, not just on the people being transported, but on himself, and by association his whole extended family. ‘That’s better than most. Believe it or not, I’m a reasonable man. I could charge ten times what I do and still get takers.’ With a chuckle he added, ‘And Britain would have a whole lot more crime.’

  ‘Friday,’ Suzanne said. ‘That’s three days from now. Don’t you have any boats going sooner?’

  Hedgers glared at her until she felt so uncomfortable that she looked away. ‘Do I look like a fucking charter service? The day will come soon when they’ll have machine guns on those coastguard frigates and they’ll hunt us like whales. There used to be three of us making runs over to Ireland, helping losers like you who’d be spending your best years on your back in a London brothel otherwise. I’m the only one left, and I want to keep it that way.’ He leaned forward. ‘We go Friday.’

  Suzanne forced herself to meet his eyes. ‘Sure. That’s fine.’

  ‘Fucking right it is. Now, I want that car brought down tomorrow night. I’ll tell you where.’

  Suzanne looked at Frank, hoping for support, but the doctor had his eyes averted. She reached out and squeezed Kelly’s hand. Her sister
looked up at her, tears in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Suzanne said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  ‘Friday, at six p.m.,’ Hedgers said. ‘I need the two of you to be ready to leave. Time is of massive importance—’

  The door behind them creaked. Suzanne turned, her heart skipping a beat as a ghost stepped inside, looked up at her and gave a smile that had once melted her heart.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Time froze. A single word fell from Suzanne’s lips. ‘Patrick—’

  Boxes rattled, tumbling to the floor. Suzanne looked back to see Hedgers rising to his feet, something shiny and metal in his hands.

  ‘Wait, no, he’s a friend!’

  The harpoon gun whizzed. Suzanne screamed. Patrick twisted sideways into the nearest stack of boxes, but a shadow flashed between them, a billow of brown cloth that grunted as it absorbed the harpoon and then rolled on, out of the door and into the night.

  The bell above the door rattled as it clicked shut.

  ‘Get the fuck out of my shop!’ Hedgers roared. ‘All of you. Now!’

  He lifted the harpoon, but Frank reached for it, pushing its barrel away from Suzanne and Kelly.

  ‘Dill, wait—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Patrick said, pushing himself up to his knees and holding up his hands. ‘I’m a friend. I’m her boyfriend.’

  ‘You’re a fucking risk to my life and everyone I’m involved with!’ Hedgers shouted, throwing Frank off and marching forward. Frank reached for his shoulder but took an elbow in his face for his efforts. Hedgers held up the end of a severed wire cord.

  ‘What the fuck was that thing, and who in God’s bleeding name are you?’