Their attackers smashed their way through the front and back doors simultaneously, the front windows seconds later. North reached for the rifle, but it was already too late. A mountain knocked it out of his hands, balling his fist as he came, a glint of metal from the knuckledusters taking North under the chin, sending him into the air and across the room. Pain smashed its way across his jaw into each and every tooth, up through his neck, into every hair on his head, and down through his vertebrae to take over his nerve endings.
The mountain-man still coming for him, through the open door into the lounge North watched as she fought them, all flailing arms and legs. Bruno appeared from nowhere. The only one not wearing a balaclava as if he wanted North to see his face. He swung his massive fist, and Honor’s head cracked back on its spine, then forward, her knees folding as she collapsed to the floor. Roaring Bruno’s name, North staggered to his feet, two assailants blocking his path, sledgehammer fists pummelling his stomach intent on bringing him down. Dark figures dragging her to her feet, holding her while Bruno pulled a black hood over the slumped blonde head, her elbows and wrists already tied at the back. North’s consciousness in shreds, a thunderous ringing in his ears, he felt rather than saw Honor ripped from the room. A final triumphant smirk from Bruno.
White-hot anger. Upright, reeling, his vision still blurred, North broke from his attackers, aiming for the corner of the room where he imagined his rifle to lie alongside the broken lamp, but he was too slow. Weight slammed into him, crushing all air from his lungs as he and mountain-man hit the floor together – North breaking the assailant’s fall, glass shards from the bulb crunching under him, cutting through his khaki shirt. He swung his fists wildly, desperate for purchase, for a blow to land and crush bone, instead the attacker found North’s throat, the fragile larynx between the stranger’s fingers as they squeezed what was left of the air from his body. North fought for breath, darkness crowding him – the threat of oblivion. Temptation. He thought of Hugh, beaten to death, and scrabbled at his own throat, finding his attacker’s little fingers, bending them backwards as far as they would go. A churning double snap – enough to break not just bone, but the grip. As his opponent pulled himself upright and away from North, North brought up his legs, his boot in the other man’s face, smashing his nose, a cheekbone, mule-kicking him away.
The small kitchen was made smaller by the table. On the one hand, its size made escape impossible. On the other, his four attackers struggled to operate as an effective team. North had to hope the mule-kick had taken the mountain-man out of play, which left three. The biggest, whom North judged to be the leader, had no intention of letting their victim get upright. With the enthusiasm of a professional who resented the fact North wasn’t dead yet, he pulled back his booted foot to drive it into North’s ribs. As the giant’s boot came in for his head, with both hands North caught hold of the heel and toe, wrenching it 180 degrees outwards – his knee dislocated, the assailant screeched in pain then went silent as North wrenched it back the other way using the man’s own considerable bulk and his frail balance to tip him up and over, the man’s head slamming against the door of the larder with a bone-shuddering crunch. With a pack animal roar and their way clear, the two others leapt at North, pounding him, bringing him down to his knees. He seized hold of the testicles of the nearest, twisting and wrenching savagely. The guy screamed, and North used his free hand to find his throat and use him as a battering ram bringing himself upright through the other assailant.
A click from the doorway.
Winter light from behind threw Stella into darkness, the right side of her face slipping from the bones.
“Change of plan, lads.” She shot the mountain-man, his arms wrapped around himself in the corner, his crippled hands tucked out of harm’s way in his armpits.
“I have to admit, I’m really…” She swung the gun towards the second man, his eyes wide, and pulled the trigger.
“…Looking…” The giant cowered against the wall, but there was no place to hide.
“…Forward…”. The last man stood still, resigned to his fate, to the red blossom opening up over his heart.
“… To Disneyland.”
North let himself breathe again, sucking in a mix of gunpowder, blood spray and citrus cologne.
Long enough to remember Honor.
“They have her away already, North. She’s gone.”
He reached down to pull the balaclavas off the nearest bodies. Buzz-cuts, broken noses, hard been-around faces which told him nothing.
The Glock 43 lay just under the giant’s body. Its short barrel jutting from beneath the hip bone. The giant must have had it in his pocket. North pushed his foot under to clear the gun from the corpse and bent to pick it up.
He didn’t make it.
“The first thing I’m going to do is find an orange tree and pick myself an orange.” Stella’s gun pointed at him. He stood – slowly – as Stella took a step towards him. “Do you think when I cut it open that it’ll be warm inside, North? That it’ll taste of sunshine?”
“I’ve never liked oranges.”
Stella’s snakeskin jacket lent her skin the green tinge of rotting vegetation. “You should have let it go, North, but you’d have to be born over.”
“You told them where we were.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“You were never going to find that Peggy tart. They were never going to let that happen.” There was a note of regret in Stella’s voice. He’d have thought there was pity, but he didn’t think Stella ran that way. She never promised him her friendship. Never said Trust me, though he did. Never said she was his ally – only behaved like one.
Desolation.
Stella fronted up Bannerman, and the good professor informed the Board there was a grieving family asking awkward questions. Fortunately, Stella’s grief for Ned could be assuaged by money.
“When did they get to you?”
He was trying to work out when the betrayals started.
“You walked out the door looking for Jimmy the Sniff, and Bruno walked in looking for you. I told you Michael North was all kinds of popular.”
Poor dead Jimmy the Sniff. Jimmy saw her. Called out “North, Mate…there’s someone…” in warning. Stella cleaned the house for Tarn by burning it down. Disposed of the only witness to Peggy’s abduction. But North was never supposed to die in that fire – only druggie, no-mark Jimmy the Sniff. If North hadn’t tried to climb to safety, Stella would have doubtless rescued him herself. Broken into the house. Dragged him to safety and left Jimmy to burn, snapped his neck to make sure of it. Made herself that bit more indispensable. They wanted him watched.
“Before you went into the Camp, they thought they had her. Honor – isn’t it? She was holed up in some fancy asylum, but she gave them the slip.”
The Board needed North to lead them to Honor.
He’d been naïve. Complacent. Trusting.
The implications of Stella’s betrayal – not just Newcastle, but that Tarn knew he was at the camp all along. That hurt. Bunty’s faith, and Walsh. The conviction he could help when he was only ever bait. The Board let him break into the camp, and leave again. The nasty boys who died as they chased him over the moors were casualties of war. Tarn let him go because he calculated that North was only ever going to carry everything he knew straight back to Honor. And what did North do as he made his way back to London? What was his first thought? To call Stella, and tell her where he was heading. A place no one knew existed except JP and Honor and Michael North. His first thought was to reach out to his friend and ask for help.
“And Ned?”
“You weren’t straight with me, North. Bruno told me all of it. You’re one of them.”
“Not any more.”
“None of us walk away free and clear from the past.”
Even through his boots, he had the illusion his feet felt warm, wet from the blood spreading around each of the bodies. No surprise. He stood in the blood of other men, and had done for years.
“The Board killed Ned – not me, Stella.”
“What does it matter?”
“He left a message. Said to tell his mum he loved her.”
“I’ll pass it on.”
“Said to tell Jess.”
“Jess doesn’t need telling.”
“But why go to all this trouble when all they want is Honor dead?”
“Someone’s stepping out of line, and the good news is they’ve decided she’s leverage. At least for the moment. She’s a looker I grant you, but there’s no happy-ever-afters there for you. I know the type.”
“And these guys?” They tried to kill him. But they were on her side.
“Bruno told them to beat you to death and to take their time doing it,” Stella shrugged. “Even so, I’d have my money on you because you’re one hard bastard. Don’t get me wrong – I like that about you. But I also like to sleep at night, and I’ve you pegged as a man who bears a grudge. My way’s better for both of us. Quicker for you. Safer for me.”
The distant roar of a far-off jet on its way into or out of Heathrow. Stella smiled without showing her teeth. The only reason Stella ever smiled was the thought of Jess.
“Do you know what this is, Stella? These people are planning a coup. This is real.”
“Not to me. All I know is I’ve a plane to catch before they shut down the airports.”
As she raised her hand North lifted his foot and stamped hard on the belly of the dead man nearest him. The noise that came from his throat was ghastly. North didn’t think he was alive – just that the last of the air trapped in his chest had forced its way out. But if he had been alive, he wasn’t once Stella had shot the corpse again once, twice, three times.
The distraction wasn’t much. A matter of seconds. But it was all he had. North threw himself through the air into the living room and on to the floor, rolling as he grabbed for the Glock 43, using the sofa for cover. As Stella appeared, still firing, he lifted his own gun. The bullets ripped through the snakeskin jacket before they ploughed through the flesh and muscle and into her stomach. Staggering, she clutched her belly, then dropped to her knees.
Her face was ghastly. As if the blood had other places to go.
Slumping back hard against the wall, her legs splayed, her hands pushed into the wound, blood pulsing, squeezing itself between her fingers, their tips still sparkling green.
North stood over her, the gun in his hand. He had a code. He didn’t kill women. Except he just did.
A picture of Jess in the concourse of an airport filled his head. Stiletto heels. A mock-croc vanity case at her feet. Huge fake Louis Vuitton handbag. Glossy mags: Vogue and Tatler, OK. Passports in new names – both in hot pink leather covers. Tickets to Florida for her and her mother. Were the pictures real? He didn’t know. Either way, Stella wasn’t coming back. She had sold up the bar and liquidated her interests. Survival was everything. Start again. Where oranges grew in front yards and Jess wouldn’t go hungry.
He felt Stella’s urgency for Jess to do as she’d been told – climb on a plane to Nowhere even if her mother didn’t show. Especially if her mother didn’t show.
“You still owe me ten grand, North.” The voice was husky with pain, with the effort of staying alive. “Shake my hand and we’ll call it quits.”
Stella reached for him. The brush of her sleeve against the reptile body of the jacket. A fleshy suck and pull; her right hand vivid and gory, as her life’s blood gushed from the gaping wound. Regardless, she kept the hand out, trembling with the effort. A stomach wound is a messy way to die. Men died screaming, but Stella wasn’t the screaming kind. He moved the gun away from her with his foot, pulling across the chair to sit astride it as Stella’s hand fell back to her lap.
“Did Jess know what you came to do?”
Jess. The only person Stella loved more than Stella. More than money. Stella bit into her lower lip, shook her head. More blood. “She’s better than us. You know that.”
“They’ll kill her anyway. She’s been too close to all this. And you won’t be there to keep her safe.”
The pain of his prediction – its self-evident truth – would have killed a weaker woman outright. Instead, Jess’s mother made to stand up, and behind her hand, pale pink guts pushed and squirmed their way from behind the prison of her fingers into the light.
“I’ll call her.” He made it sound like a reasonable thing to do. Obvious. “She’s at the airport isn’t she? I’ll tell her to leave. Go to art college. Marry a dentist and have American children with perfect teeth. Cheryl and Sting.”
He dipped into the snakeskin jacket pocket for the iPhone. “One six zero five.” She told him her password, her teeth bared, incisors too long, and he pushed the numbers, found Jess. Her daughter’s smile wide and a little wicked – the picture taken on a summer’s day.
North hesitated, his finger over the green call button, as if something had crossed his mind, as if clarification was needed. Stella rested her head against the wall, struggling to keep her eyes focused on him.
“Where have they taken Honor?”
It wasn’t the inevitability of death, nor was it the wrenching pain that pushed the solitary tear out from Stella’s bloodshot eye, down the ravaged face to drop off her jaw into nothingness. It was the fact she didn’t know. That she couldn’t make the trade and that Jess was going to die. “Please, North…” For the sake of her only child, she offered the only thing she had. The notebook she was holding out was drenched in her gore. Stella had taken it as he lay unconscious and fire destroyed Peggy’s house. An insurance policy against the Board.
A bubble of blood broke from the corner of her mouth. Another and another, a honeycomb of blood. The book fell, and Stella’s eyes rolled into her head as North took hold of her. He rattled her back and forth, between Life and Death, but Stella had gone. On the ground, next to her mother’s body, an anxious tiny voice. “Mam. Mam?”
He picked up the phone. His hands dripping with Stella’s blood. “Run for that plane, Jess,” North said. “Call the boy Ned – name the girl after your mother. She’d have liked that.” He didn’t wait for her reply.