evening, Deveraux was sitting in his office with the signal in front of him on his desk. He had decoded it and was now shaking his head in frustration.
He picked it up and took a cigar lighter from his desk drawer. The flame blossomed, which he touched to the paper. As the charred remains dropped into his empty, metal waste bin, he picked up the decoded signal and torched that as well. He then picked up to the waste bin and took it through to the small washroom that was attached to his office. He emptied the contents of the bin into the lavatory and flushed them away.
The next thing Deveraux did was to go to his wall safe and open it, taking out a cell phone. The phone was not one that he used for anything other than a very, very private conversation with some extremely unsavoury people.
He dialled a number and waited for a reply. He heard the connection being changed to another exchange until he was eventually connected to a voice that answered without a name. Deveraux spoke briefly, his last words delivered with a slight tremor.
‘He’s compromised. I want you to deal with it’
He cancelled the call and put the phone back in his safe.
Marcus and Susan were now in a relaxed mood. Neither of them had drunk too much; a bottle of wine between them. They had let the evening roll by, enjoying each other’s company, being silly, being serious. Marcus enjoyed every minute of it, and hoped that Susan felt the same.
He was in such a good mood when the bill came, that Marcus gave the waiter a generous tip. Then he helped Susan on with her coat and took her arm as they walked out of the door.
It was fairly late, and there was a chill in the night air. Because there was no wind about, they decided to walk a while before going back to Susan’s. Marcus had no knowledge of the area and Susan, being a local girl, had very little reason to show caution at that time of night.
They strolled, arm in arm, talking of very little until they found themselves in a road where the streetlamps were not working. Suddenly Marcus felt Susan stiffen. He turned towards her and saw that she was looking directly ahead of them where two men had just walked from a doorway and were now standing motionless on the pavement just a few yards from them.
Marcus hadn’t noticed them, but he did now, and could see that they were not standing there for fun. The men took a couple of steps forward. Then one of them stepped into the road and came up beside Marcus, standing about six feet from him. He was holding a knife.
Susan instinctively put her hand up to her mouth to scream but nothing came out of her throat. Marcus felt her go absolutely rigid. As the man on the pavement advanced towards them, Marcus shoved Susan away and turned, bringing his leg up at the same time and lashed out at the attacker, catching him on the arm.
The force of Marcus’s heel catching the man on the tip of his elbow made the man shout and curse loudly, and he dropped the knife. Before the man could react, Marcus dropped to the ground and supported his body on the heel of his hand, spun and brought both legs slashing across the mugger’s knee caps. It dropped the man instantly.
Pushing the element of surprise and not giving either of the two men time to think, Marcus turned to face the second man who was advancing towards him. The attacker suddenly made a stabbing feint in Marcus’s direction but then moved towards Susan. Marcus leapt forward; fending off the slashing knife thrust and jammed the heel of his hand into the man’s face pushing his nose back up into his forehead.
The sound of the cracking bone and gristle made Susan scream out loudly. The man cried out in pain and immediately clutched his face. Marcus didn’t pause but clenched his fist and swung it sideways, chopping him across the windpipe. This made the man gag and he fell forward on to his knees, putting his hands out to stop himself from falling. Marcus then drove his shoe into the man’s face, knocking him back and then kicked him fiercely in the head.
As the man straightened up by the force of the kick, Marcus swung his arm downwards in a chopping motion and brought the heel of his hand down on to the busted nose. Blood erupted from the wound as the man screamed again and fell. As the man’s hands touched the pavement, Marcus slammed the heel of his boot on to the man’s fingers and busted those too.
He spun round and looked at the man whose kneecaps had been shifted severely and wacked him with another devastating blow, using his foot across the man’s forehead. The man groaned and passed out.
Susan was still screaming and crying when Marcus had finished. He looked at her with the venom of his attack still burning fiercely in his eyes, and in the poor light, Susan knew she was looking at someone she didn’t know. She pulled her hands away from her face and they were trembling violently.
Marcus grabbed her and dragged her away, shouting at her, ‘Run! Run!’
Susan felt herself being propelled away from the hideous scene where the two men lay badly beaten and ran as fast as her legs would go. Marcus kept close behind her, keeping hold of her elbow as they fled.
Eventually they ran into a road where there were a number of shops, all closed, but there were a couple of public houses and an all-night taxi rank. They ran up to the first of two taxis in the queue, yanked open the rear doors and dived in.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked.
‘Just drive, we’ll tell you when to stop.’
The taxi pulled away and Marcus flopped back into the soft seat. He looked at Susan and smiled. Susan continued to stare at him, still stunned.
‘Marcus,’ she managed to say eventually. ‘Who are you?’
He turned his head away, not in anger or anything like that. Then he laughed and glanced back at her.
‘Maggot would have been proud of me tonight,’ he answered and just kept on laughing.
SEVEN
James Purdy finished reading the Times newspaper and turned his attention to the Guardian. There were various sections of both papers that had been marked as ‘relevant’ for the minister, and it was simply a case of scanning the pages until he came across a section that merited some interest. After that he would turn his attention to the tabloids.
But try as he might, Purdy was unable to absorb much of the written word; his mind was still on the meeting with Cavendish the previous afternoon and the unquestionable consequences once the news was out in the public domain.
Immediately after his meeting with Cavendish, Purdy had made a short, but discreet phone call. He vented his anger on the person he had called and remarked that the reason for falling into the trap set by the security service was simply down to incompetence of the organisation. He said he believed Cavendish would be operating on his own, for now, and to avoid any problems for the organisation Cavendish should be eliminated.
Purdy had promised to deliver the names to Cavendish of those who had taken part in the orgy and subsequent murder of one of the girls, but now he expected that to be unnecessary; Cavendish would not be a problem.
Despite his own conviction that the organisation would deal with the problem swiftly, Purdy still carried a sense of doom and foreboding in his heart. He tried desperately to ignore the constant, nagging doubts that assailed his mind and concentrate on his work, but it was useless, no matter how he tried. So one hour after arriving at his office in the House of Commons, he informed his secretary that he felt unwell and would be returning home.
He took the lift down into the underground car park of the House of Commons and walked across to his designated parking space. The garage was well lit and it wasn’t unusual to bump into a colleague there and take time out for a chat. He saw someone climb into a car and pull out of a parking bay. Although he barely knew the woman driving the car, he acknowledged her as she drove by.
His own car’s flashers flickered into life as he triggered the security locks. He opened the car door and tossed his briefcase on to the passenger seat. He climbed in, sat for a moment letting the silence seep into his thoughts, then pushed a button on the dashboard.
