Only now, it had been used in two murders. One of them, the poor bastard who’d acted as a go-between. That had scared him. He’d already been worried. Not long after he’d sold the drone, he’d started to wonder. Too little, too late, as it turned out.
Going to Lincoln’s office had been a mistake as well. Initially, he’d hoped she’d be able to tell him something about the investigation, to give him some idea how close the police were to figuring out that the shooter wasn’t flesh-and-blood at all. Because once they figured that out, Albion would know what had happened. Then they’d come for him.
That was why he’d left his flat and moved to the lockup. It wasn’t set up for comfort, but he told himself it was like camping out. And more importantly, Albion didn’t know about it. Nobody did. Except the courier, who was now dead.
Holden swallowed a sudden rush of bile. He hadn’t meant for that to happen. He hadn’t meant for any of it to happen, but it had and he was as responsible as the man pulling the trigger. He needed protection. Failing that, he had to get out of the city. Out of the country. Somewhere neither Coyle nor Albion could find him.
He laughed. There weren’t many places that fit that definition.
“Protection,” he muttered. He sat up. Albion was still feeling out the territory. The government hadn’t yet delivered that blank cheque that Cass wanted. There was still resistance to their presence in London. He could use that. He knew plenty about all the dirty tricks the company had got up to over the years – and what he didn’t know, he could fabricate. What he knew about the drone program alone might be enough to sink Albion’s prospects in London. The question was, who to sell it to?
A news alert popped up on his display. He expanded it, and saw that it was a GBB report from the Bethnal Green Police Station. He watched as Sarah Lincoln went nose-to-nose with Faulkner.
A slow smile spread across his face.
The man who called himself Marcus Tell sat in his tiny council flat, watching the sun set over the city through the kitchenette window. He’d done so almost every evening for ten years, from the same spot.
A cup of red bush tea sat cooling on the table before him, with only a few sips taken from it. He’d grown to tolerate the flavour. His GP had cautioned him against overindulgence in caffeine – bad for his blood pressure. Or was it his kidneys? It was hard to remember. These days, his body was nothing but a tangle of problems, held together by sinew and stubbornness.
He wasn’t long for the world. Death had always stood at his side, but now he could feel a bony hand on his shoulder. Time was running out. If his own body didn’t kill him, someone else would. He took a sip of the tea, grimaced, took another sip.
According to the news, there’d been another shooting. He’d known the victim’s identity before it had been announced. Colin Wilson had been a petty criminal, and lacking in respect for his betters, but he had not deserved such a death.
Tell – he thought of himself as Tell, now, though the real Marcus Tell was buried somewhere in Epping Forest – knew he would have to leave soon. The flat wasn’t safe. He would need a new Optik external as well, but that was easy enough to acquire. He tapped the implant, wondering if he ought to replace it. Better safe than sorry. But that would take time to arrange – and time was something he didn’t have a lot of.
He looked up at a picture on the wall – himself, in better days, and Peter. Dear, sweet Peter. Middle-aged, comfortable, content. Life had not been perfect, but good enough.
For a time, at least.
Peter was dead now. Cancer. A bad way to go. Painful and debilitating. He abandoned that train of thought as quickly as he’d boarded it. Peter was gone. The dead could feel no pain, and their ghosts did not haunt the living. That was what Tell told himself. He took another sip of tea, savouring the bitterness. If he was wrong, if the dead did not pass on, but instead stayed… there would be a crowd waiting for him when he passed.
He did not know how many people died due to his actions over the years. More than a few, less than a crowd. More had been hurt, crippled, traumatised. The man he had been had left behind a trail of human wreckage, stretching across continents. The reasons why no longer mattered, if they ever had to begin with. Looking back, he could not recall what had prompted him onto his path. It had seemed important at the time, he was sure.
Tell shivered and looked around. The flat was small, but full of memories, most of them Peter’s. Tell was not sentimental. He could not afford to be. But even so, the thought of leaving it was painful. He finished the tea and put the mug in the sink. Out the window, the sky was full of hornet-shapes – drones, whisking to and fro. The future was automated. Maybe the machines would make a better go of it than mankind.
He leaned over the sink, looking at nothing. He closed his eyes. Thinking now. The old instincts were starting to kick in finally, after the paralysis of the last twenty-four hours. He had three safe houses in the city, all registered under different names. He didn’t need to activate his Optik to see them in his head. He was old enough that he could find his way around London without a GPS.
Each
