“I’ll see what I can arrange, but I’m promising nothing.” Vanessa was lost in thought for a while.
The sun had dropped below the trees, letting the evening air quickly cool the garden. Christmas wasn’t ready to greet her newly recognized siblings. We decided to go back to London.
At the front door, Vanessa hugged Christmas tightly saying, “There’s so much more that I want to tell you. Perhaps we can meet again in a month or a week?”
“We’ll come back soon,” Christmas said, squeezing her hand.
We walked down the path looking back at the house. Vanessa watched from the door. Sam joined her and waved.
As we reached the end of the long garden path, Christmas said in a hushed tone, “We’re hunting my own sister! She would never do anything bad.”
“Are you judging her by your own standards?”
Christmas thought. “Alright, maybe she would,” she pulled at my jacket sleeve, “but it would be with the best intentions.”
We passed through the gate and under the cherry tree. The descending chill had sent all the children along the road indoors. The avenue was quieter than when we arrived. I could still hear the children playing out of sight in Vanessa’s back garden. A little further up the road on the opposite side, a dark sedan was parked under the shadow of a tree. It seemed to be empty.
I started to think about the route home. It looked as though we’d been able to enter the lion’s den and would be leaving without encountering anyone more aggressive than a five-year-old with a bubble-gun. I opened the door of our car thinking that Christmas needn’t have brought all of her guns after all.
I got into the driver’s seat and a far-away idea told me that something wasn’t right. It’s hard to say where the thought came from. Perhaps it was an unexpected scent, not quite obscured by the woody fragrance of the hawthorn hedge and cherry tree outside the car, or the vehicle’s new fabric and plastic inside. Possibly, it was an almost imperceptible change to the way the car moved as we got in, due to a difference in weight distribution. Or maybe it was the slow recognition of a vehicle that I’d seen earlier. Some, or all of these things, churned together and coalesced into a warning. If I’d spent every day of my life hunted by predators, perhaps I’d have been better attuned to it. But daily physical threats were new to me and Christmas’s presence gave me confidence. So I ignored the distant worry.
Christmas was preoccupied, looking vacantly straight ahead as she pulled the seatbelt across. I knew we had a lot to talk through on the long drive back. For one thing, Sophie’s direct connection to Christmas complicated matters.
She must have been thinking about her siblings because she suddenly asked, “How old is your brother now?”
“He’s still eight.”
She looked at me, her mouth open in surprise. “The air-rifle?”
“It must’ve taken two of them. I was really surprised that they’d managed to prime it on their own. I remember it being really hard to do, folding the barrel down.”
“What happened?”
“You know how moronic small boys can be. They loaded a pellet and my brother’s friend got him to look down the barrel. Then he pulled the trigger. Didn’t think about the consequences. Thought of it like a toy. A water pistol or something of that sort.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“My mother blamed me for not locking it away properly. I was sure I had. But she wouldn’t accept that they’d found the key and got it out themselves. And of course she blamed my dad for bringing it into the house in the first place. Looking back, I can see why our family fell apart from there. I’d never had a great relationship with her. Different minds. And then all the anger, guilt and sadness from the accident meant she lost both sons in one go. My dad went off to make some more with someone less psychotic.”
Christmas squeezed my arm.
“So now you know why I’m not a fan of guns. I’ve fired them on one occasion since, but I didn’t enjoy it.” I pushed the starter button. Nothing happened. I was wondering if I’d dropped the electronic key. I started to say, “What’s wrong with this—”
Christmas was saying at the same moment, “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized—” when she yelped, her hand at her neck.
I felt a sharp sting in the back of my own neck. My vision became blurred almost instantly and a loud hum filled my head. I tried to look round but I could scarcely move and felt overwhelmingly tired. In my peripheral vision, I thought I glimpsed the dark-haired girl from the café attack, on the backseat. I felt I was falling. Darkness closed in from the edges of my view. I saw a movement on my left, and then as I sank from the conscious world, I heard two muffled bangs, close together.
A momentary flicker of dull orange filled the space that wasn’t yet black. I heard a long, painful scream that filled me with fear. For the briefest moment, I remembered the terror of the monster in my nightmare, killing my loyal friend. Then I knew no more.
THIRTY-TWO
My internal clock wasn’t working. I could’ve been unconscious for a minute or hours, or even days. I saw light but I had no idea where I was. My head hurt and my ears were ringing. I couldn’t move. I opened my eyes and struggled to focus on a horizontal band in front of me. Eventually I realized I was looking at the end of a long table. I heard voices but couldn’t make out the words. With an effort, I looked up. My neck ached.
I was in a musty room with painted walls, the ochre paint stained and peeling away in patches. No carpet, just rough wooden floorboards, dark with damp. On the wall at my right, grimy venetian blinds covered the windows. Plaster, broken away from the brickwork beside the window, lay in fragments on the floor. At the far end of the blinds, a half-glazed exterior door stood ajar, letting a cold draught into the room.
Two broad-shouldered, stubble-faced men stood beside the table, to my right. One was a little taller and had dark unwashed hair, cut short and uneven. The other was fair-haired and equally unkempt. They wore the same shiny black jackets and navy-blue cargo pants that I’d seen in the Limewood café. Their laborers’ hands were scabbed and tattooed with crude shapes. The taller one had recently been painting something white. Tear-shaped spots of paint on his flaking skin mingled with his childlike, blue-black inkings.
Miranda stood opposite them on the other side of the table, giving instructions. I recognized the tone but couldn’t make out the words. My mind was still fogged by anesthetic. She stopped speaking mid-sentence, interrupted by a doorbell on the other side of the building.
I tried to speak but words wouldn’t come.
She said to the men, “Wait here,” before leaving the room through a plain, wooden door behind her.
Immediately to my left, Christmas was tied to a tubular steel chair. Her hair hung over her face. She was bound with thick plastic cable ties. Several ties at the wrist bound her hands together behind the chair. Her arms were tied at the elbow to the chair back. Three ties held her calves to the chair legs and another three bound her ankles. Her breathing was slow, but I saw her eye twitch. She was coming round.
I realized that I was no longer paralyzed. I was bound in a similar way, but with fewer cable ties; one or two where Christmas had three. They knew she was stronger. I could move my elbows.
On the table, a plastic tray contained the contents of our pockets which included Christmas’s three guns, spare magazines for the pistols, her knife, the paper list of suspicious deaths, antidote syringes, tablet computer and phones with the backs off and the batteries out.
One of the men moved to the open door at the end of the window wall. He opened the door a little wider, looked outside quickly, and then closing the door quietly, he came back toward us, grim-faced.
I looked to Christmas. Her head was up now. The lower rear corner of her jacket pocket was torn away and blackened from the shots she’d managed to fire in the moment before the tranquillizer had taken full effect.
As the man approached he swore in a thick Russian accent and without warning or
breaking his stride, punched Christmas hard in the face, knocking her chair backward.
The shorter man had moved quickly behind her and caught the chair before it hit the floor.
I struggled to get free and tried to shout, but all that came was a grunt.
Christmas made a muffled yell, quelled by the tranquillizer.
The two men put Christmas upright. The taller man, leaning over her, drew back his fist again. Christmas closed her eyes tight and tried to twist away, moving the chair a little toward me.
I shouted, “Wait!” The word was strangled, as though coming out of a dream.
The man with the drawn back fist looked at me for a moment and then resumed preparation for the next blow.
“Wait! I’ll pay you to not hit her!” My voice was slurred.
The men looked at me and then looked to the internal door. Voices were coming from the other side of the house. Angry voices. The fair-haired man closed the door quietly.
The taller one put his face very close to mine and said slowly in a guttural voice, “You do not have enough money to stop me from beating this woman to death with my bare hands.” But then he stopped for a moment. I guessed he recognized an opportunity for greater hurt. “What do you have?” he asked scornfully.
“I’ve got two hundred pounds in the coin pocket of my jeans,” I said, forcing the muscles in my mouth to make the words.
They laughed derisively. “Your pockets are empty.”
“You missed this one. It’s the very small one. It looks empty.” I nodded at the small pocket below my belt.
The tall man’s brow furrowed. He pushed me upright roughly and pulled at the pocket, finding the tightly rolled twenty-pound notes in the plastic bag. “You know what? I take your money and I beat this murdering bitch till her eye socket breaks.” His face was almost touching mine, spittle flecking my eyes, his foul decay-laden breath flooding over me as he spat the words slowly and viciously into my face. “I knock her teeth out. I smash her nose broken and flat. I beat her harder now than if you said nothing. Her lovely face,” he said the words bitterly, “will look like it has been smashed with a sledgehammer.” He tapped his iron-like fist against my jaw for emphasis.
The other man beckoned with his hand for his taller companion to give him the plastic packet. They both glanced at the door.
The tall one opened the packet himself and started to take the notes out. He lost his grip on the bag, dropping it onto the table. Snatching it up quickly, he looked at his fingers as though the bag were sharp. Concentrating harder, he removed the notes, carefully smoothing them out into a flat bundle that he could count, as though he were going to split the money. He stood over the table, the shorter man watching him from the other side. While he counted, his hands shook. He stopped counting midway and the notes slipped individually out of his grasp, cascading onto the table. Steadying himself with one hand on his thigh, he took a deep breath and started toward Christmas again, seeming to forget about the money. I guessed that he intended to hit her again.
The shorter man said, “Shhhh,” as he gathered up the notes. His hand jerked, causing him to drop them. Quickly, he collected them all together again and began carefully thumbing through the cash to see how much he had. He looked puzzled, staring at the notes in his hands as though he were handling something new and strange.
The taller man moved past me unsteadily, his knee knocking hard into mine. He stood in front of Christmas and drew his fist back. Saliva bubbled from the corner of his mouth. He put a hand back to steady himself against the table. Breathing rapidly with short breaths, he closed his eyes for a moment as though drunk.
I avoided looking at the plastic tray and the antidote syringes. The antidote was within his reach. If he realized he’d been hit with VX, he only needed to grab the red-capped auto-injector from the tray and he’d be able to save himself. Christmas’s words came back to me; only seconds to act before you become too confused to do anything. Just a few more seconds might put him beyond help. I looked at his deeply black eyes and watched a trickle of perspiration run down the side of his face.
Shaking the confusion from his head, he looked ferociously at Christmas, grunted, and then swung slowly at her, falling back against the table at the same time. His fist passed slowly in front of her face as he sagged backward. He held the table and tried to push himself upright. Staring at me, the scowl of confusion on his face suddenly changed.
He knew. Still leaning back he turned his head with difficulty and reached toward the tray with the antidote syringes. His hand slid flat on the surface of the table, the tray just out of reach. Stretching further he touched the tray for a moment. The contact caused him to quickly redouble his effort. He managed to get the tip of his middle finger to the top edge of the tray. Groaning with the exertion through gritted teeth, his hand hovered there for a moment, trembling. A spasm made his body arch, his hand sliding back across the table, empty. He sank slowly, the table edge dragging his jacket up his back before pitching him around.
Collapsing to the floor, his hip landed on the wooden floorboards first, shoulder next and then the side of his face, grit sticking to his cheek. His mouth frothed. He writhed, one leg outstretched, the other bent with his knee to his chest. Breathing hard, he tried to prop himself up on one arm before suddenly convulsing, rolling onto his back, his body arched, teeth grinding. He mumbled and grunted. Perspiration ran across his forehead, tears from his eyes streamed into his hair. His hands shook and his arms quivered, pulling his hands claw-like, close to his chest. He rolled onto his side, breathing fast and shallow, eyes now wide with terror. Slowly the convulsions subsided, his breathing came sporadically and then stopped. He was still.
I looked across to the other man. He was on his back, on the floor, twitching.
The taller man had a bundle of cable ties and a pair of wire-cutters protruding from his back pocket. One handle of the cutters was outside the pocket.
I toppled my chair onto him, turning and twisting using my shoulders, elbows and feet, until I got my face to his back pocket. I was moving more easily now as the effects of the tranquillizer subsided. I gripped the cutters in my teeth and pulled them free. On my side, I worked my way round to the back of Christmas’s chair and lifted my head, putting the cutters against her hands.
She grasped them, unsteadily at first. Feeling them carefully, she oriented the cutters, getting her hand around both handles and positioning them under the first cable tie. She cut the ties one at a time. Eventually her hands were free but she couldn’t reach any of the other ties holding her arms; the wide chair back kept them out of reach.
I rolled onto my front, head against the rough floorboards, putting my hands within reach of Christmas’s hands so that she could free them. She cut the ties. I took the cutters. I worked quickly to cut one of her arms free, giving the cutters back to her so that she could free herself from all of the other cable ties. Christmas worked quickly, snapping through the ties on her other arm. She was working to free her leg when the interior door abruptly opened.
THIRTY-THREE
Miranda came in, eyes widening at the scene in front of her. She grabbed one of the large pistols from the plastic tray, levelling it straight at Christmas.
Behind her, Vanessa and her husband Frank entered the room in a hurry, dressed in outdoor jackets. They froze at the horror confronting them; dead bodies, bound captives and Miranda pointing the pistol at Christmas’s heart.
Vanessa shouted, “Miranda!”
The big woman ignored her and said calmly to Christmas. “Don’t move. Put those cutters down.”
Vanessa and Frank stood still in the doorway. Christmas put the cutters on the table slowly.
Miranda snatched them up with a pudgy hand, putting them in the tray. She took the paper from the tray with her free hand, holding it up in front of Vanessa and Frank, without looking behind her. Keeping the gun trained on Christmas, she turned her head a little to her sister behind her. “Do you know what
this list is?”
“A list of people you’ve murdered,” Vanessa said bitterly.
“A list of people who intended to harm us. All of us. You, your children, everyone in this village.” Miranda shook the paper furiously, “These people were ready to expose us as a threat to society. They would’ve burned our village to the ground.” Turning for a moment to look Vanessa and Frank in the eye, she said, “And some were killed by our children. You know all about that, don’t you Ness?”
Vanessa and Frank moved carefully around the far end of the table, stepped over the fair-haired thug and came to my chair, pulling me upright. Vanessa pulled at the ties holding me without result and sighed with frustration.
Frank studied Christmas closely, eyes narrowed at first, as though assessing their connection. Then his body bent with sadness, which I guessed came either from his recognition of her as his daughter or the situation that he now found her in, bruised and bound. Maybe both. He patted her arm. I hoped he intended reassurance while he worked out how to help us escape.
Miranda relaxed, resting her bulk on the creaking table, one foot off the floor, the other lightly touching the carpet. She eyed Christmas warily. Holding the paper beside the pistol, she looked again at the list. “This one, halfway down the list, Liam Cheeseman, killed by our niece Becky and covered up by me. The evidence burned away in a car fire.” She sniffed as though irritated again by the smoke and fumes. “Another, near the bottom here, Dylan Jefferies, killed by our niece Ella. Cleaned up by me. The evidence picked clean by the fish in the Irish Sea. And if your girl had followed instructions properly, she wouldn’t be using the wrong identity now.”
Vanessa spoke calmly, “What I see is a list of dead people who have a direct link to you. How many others have you silenced with your little death squad?”