Chapter thirteen
Earlier that same day Harvey awoke with a start, disorientated and groggy, his chest pounding and eyes blinking at the tumbling sensation of the room. The room stared back at him, and the previous night's events sluiced into his thoughts. Battered. Bruised. But alive. He was alive.
Harvey rose from the bed and groaned, stiff with pain from the damage his body had earned from the night before. He cursed his stupidity in every language he knew.
He shambled to the bathroom and checked the results of last night's firefight in the mirror. His face was grazed in places, a long, deep scratch running from cheek to chin. Vague memories of a splinter of wood catching his cheek and drawing the blood red line down to his chin. He touched the edges of his wounds carefully, looking for signs of infection.
He had slept in his clothes, having collapsed into bed after the harrowing drive home, and only now removed his dirty jacket and shirt to inspect his body for further damage.
The delicate shade of a lotus petal spread over his chest and left shoulder. Purple at the centre with a fringe of blue. Deep score marks over his stomach, two angry red welts where a bullet had grazed across his ribs and a deep scorch line along the length of his arm.
His hair was matted with dried blood and a lump at the base of his skull was tender to the touch. He remembered the sickening crack of his head against the metal rim of the wheelbarrow. Two inches further down his body and it would have snapped his neck. Lucky. Stupid.
Harvey removed the rest of his clothes and stood under a scalding shower for twenty minutes, hands braced against the wall, head hung low. He emerged gasping but refreshed. He dried himself gingerly, swearing aloud as he caught the towel on an unseen cut that opened afresh, leaking blood. He held a cloth to the open wound and kept it in place whilst he dried his hair, walking through the hotel room and checking out of the window.
No one was spying on him from the street or twitching a curtain in the opposite hotel. No lurking police vans or unmarked cars. He glanced at the blue and pitted white skies.
Harvey heaved a suitcase from the wardrobe to the bed and clicked open the latches. He aired a black shirt and a pair of trousers and sprayed the smell of death off him with deodorant.
He dressed quickly, blotting dry any seeping blood from the various cuts around his body with a cloth and threw it in the sink.
He checked his watch. Just enough time to visit Chinatown and talk to Master Wing Loo. Explain a few things. Reasons behind the decision to walk the path he had chosen.
Before dealing with the next Trustee.
Harvey placed the 'do not disturb' sign on the door handle, left the hotel and walked out onto the streets.
He made his way along back roads and dirty lanes of inner London, past small squares and statues of forgotten heroes. The wind picked up, carrying along with it a sharp cold that the bright winter sun could not warm.
Harvey cramped on one side as he turned a corner, the twist of his body causing an anonymous ache to intensify. He grimaced at the pain and recollected the events of the previous night.
Having doubled back in the woods, he had camouflaged himself under the white sheet, blending with the snowy ground. The two remaining mercenaries had walked a scant few yards past him - if they had worn infrared goggles they would have spotted his heat signature and riddled him with bullets. Instead, they stalked along the route left by his footprints, splitting up, one to cover the other.
He rose behind the last man as he walked past and hammered the back of his neck, clutching hold of a bagua stone. The stone tablet had split open and the out pouring energy had whomped into the soldier, knocking him unconscious.
Strapping the downed mercenary's goggles to his head meant that the other mercenary barely gave him a cursory glance. The deception worked. The bearded mercenary, eager to kill and be finished with his quarry, had rushed past to shoot at the slumped figure under the sheet. Harvey had taken his time and the mercenary joined his dead friend on the ground.
He'd escaped over the ivy-covered walls of the Manor grounds and made it to the hire car, driving at high speed to the Landsmark hotel in the heart of London. He vomited twice, the concussion from his fall having seriously affected him, abandoned the car in a side street and made it to the hotel room before passing out.
Luck was something he used, not something he relied on. And he knew, better than most, that luck came in two flavours. Good and bad. Drawn into conversation with MacDonald had almost been his downfall. The need to stand in front of the Trustees was dangerous enough, but to get caught up in a righteous confrontation was misplaced and idiotic. A lesson that Harvey almost paid for with his life.
Tottenham Court Road was busy with tourists and students. Everyone wrapped up against the cold. Harvey cut through a side street and down toward the main entrance to Chinatown. He kept his head down and shoulders hunched, pulling his collars up to hide the grazes on his face. He entered the Wing Loo Emporium and up to the counter.
Master Loo was serving someone, but spotted Harvey walking up the aisle. A forlorn look cast over his face, his eyebrows gathering like snowy clouds.
'Ahh, Salmon,' Loo said, shaking his head, 'You look like you have gone ten rounds with a 800 lb gorilla.'
And then Harvey recognised the other customer. The female detective from Grace's suicide and Master's funeral. Time seemed to shunt to a stand-still. Harvey became acutely aware of every empty doorway and potential hiding place within the shop. He expected to be charged down by half a dozen serious crime unit officers in full combat gear. He braced himself for the shouts and chaos of a well executed trap.
But there was nothing. No black and blue riot squad. No sirens. No arrest.
Harvey recovered, aware that the old man was staring at him. The detective seemed to be browsing the shelves at the other end of the counter.
'I need a trigram mirror. An eight or a nine should do,' Harvey said, staring into the mischievous eyes of Master Loo.
Harvey concentrated on his senses, reaching out with them as if they were physical parts of his body, trying to feel any other presence. Sensitive to any peripheral noise, flicker of movement or whisper of scent that might indicate gun metal sliding from leather holster or stealthy crunch of heavy boot.
Nothing registered. No blip on the radar, no glimmer of warning in the old man's face.
Master Loo retrieved a mirror and placed it on the counter. 'Anything else?' he said as he pushed the red and black mirror to Harvey.
'Anything for bruises?' Harvey said, narrowing his eyes, trying to discern if there was any secret message Master Loo may be trying to tell him.
'Just the thing for you.' He poured some ground elderberry herbs into a sachet and handed it to Harvey, 'Soak in a bandage and apply to the area. Fix you right up, big fellah.' Master Loo winked at Harvey and shooed him away with his hand. Harvey slid money onto the counter and left the shop, watching for any kind of surveillance. There was none.
Was he being followed? He couldn't be sure. If the Emporium was a trap the policewoman would not have been in such a vulnerable position. And if a trap - then it would have been sprung within the contained and controllable area of the shop. Not out in the busy pre-Christmas bustle.
Harvey walked through the streets, his awareness a razor as he watched for a face in the crowd that would look at him for a moment too long, or talk into a sleeve. Or one of any number of surveillance errors. He turned from the main road and darted down an alley beside a theatre, threading his way through the crowd.
Harvey glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes before the next Trustee would cross his path. He slid between a couple of parked cars and entered the Starbucks coffee shop where the Trustee would make his final order. He grabbed a coffee, sat at a chrome table in the middle of the cafe and gazed out at the last minute shoppers and late afternoon traffic.
There was nobody following him. No surveillance operation and heavy handed sting in operation. But w
hat was the detective doing at the Emporium? Following a lead? Something he had dropped on one of the missions? The world was getting complicated when revenge was supposed to be the simplest of tasks.
Harvey stirred his coffee with a plastic stick, his thoughts caught up in the circular pattern of cr?me.
The news of his sister's death had been devastating. Although he had not seen her for years, there was no mistaking her photograph in the magazine. He had discovered her death by chance. An article in a magazine that he flicked through whilst at Newark airport waiting for a connecting flight. He recognised her picture immediately. Long fringe and dour complexion. A grown up copy of the serious and intense twelve year old he had known in his youth.
He missed the flight, absorbed by the article on Helen's death. His next job, assisting a small cartel of Reno hotel owners resist the machinations of the local mafia was forgotten as he read the article over and over.
Killed by a bizarre accident, Helen Barker, 28, was one of many protesting against the development of a spa and country club complex in a woodland retreat in Sussex. After months of peaceful protest, the eco-campaigners had been close to declaring victory, and a few hardcore protestors were to take their petition to the court of appeal for a protection order to return the grounds back into a nature reserve.
However, on the eve of the petition to the courts, a freak storm had ravaged Southern England. High winds decimated much of the countryside, rain caused flooding and mudslides throughout the affected counties and heavy thunder and lightning resulted in mayhem.
The protestors had abandoned their makeshift camp and returned to the relative comforts of a hotel in a nearby village. All of them, apart from Helen, who had split from the main party and returned to the campsite to collect some valuables. None of the other protestors had missed her presence when they retired to their beds, sleeping through the worst of the storm.
Helen's body was found the next day. Details were unclear, but it seemed that she had tied herself to the biggest, oldest tree in the woods. Perhaps she became disorientated in the dark and, to weather out the storm until morning, had strapped herself to what was the symbol of their fight against the developers.
Whatever Helen's reasons, the decision had been a fatal one. During the night a lightning bolt had struck the grand old tree, survivor of four hundred years of English history. The resultant charge had shot through the tree and exploded the trunk, shattering the bark like a grenade. Wood splinters shot out in a circumference around the old tree.
The coroner's report had declared accidental death. Local media attention ensured that the restraining order against the developers was accepted and the secluded beauty spot was once more under the protection of the National Trust. Hundreds of people attended Helen's funeral, hundreds more sent cards and flowers and condolences.
Harvey had read and reread the article, unable to believe his eyes, a cold fury building up inside him. There were no accidents.
Using contacts within state departments and calling in favours from influential past employers, Harvey gathered all the evidence he could find surrounding Helen's death. The coroner reports, press releases, first hand witness statements and even the notebooks of police and ambulance crew.
Reports from those first on the scene differed wildly with the resultant articles and death reports. The shaky handwriting detailed the look of terror on Helen's face, a mask frozen in the moments of her death. The knots in the rope had been tied on the side of the tree, a full arms length away from Helen, making it impossible for her to have tied the rope herself.
The coroner's reports indicated broken fingernails full of mud and loam where she had clawed at the ground at her sides. Her body and face also had many razor thin cuts, too fine for any of the bark shards that were retrieved from the scene to have made. The coroner had written a strange word in the margin of the initial report, obviously considering options as he or she reread a printed version. He had written 'papercuts?' in pencil.
It seemed to Harvey that political influence had been involved. The story quickly controlled and managed and the outcome packaged up as tragic accident.
Harvey rechecked the notes and statements. The original petition was never found, and paper at the site was assumed to be the remains of the four thousand signed petition destroyed as a result of the lightning.
Within days of reading the article in Newark airport, Harvey was walking through the heart of the Sussex countryside. He paced around the woods, inspecting trees and the ground, circling the area a number of times before coming to a stop before a brass plaque on the base of the blasted tree to which Helen had been lashed.
The grim anger that had consumed him whilst reading the reports and statements almost stopped his heart when he stood in the spot where she died. It was at that moment he had decided to kill the people responsible for her death.
The construction of the complex had gone ahead anyway, land zoning had situated the hotel and golf course a few miles further south. A number of discreet enquiries and Harvey had the answers he needed. The construction was funded by a leisure company which itself was owned by a London based Trust. The Valentine Trust, upon which six board members sat and made life-changing decisions with a stroke of a pen.
It was these six people that Harvey knew were ultimately responsible, and it was through them that he may find other answers as to the real cause of her death.
So he gathered information on the Trustees, built up a profile and prepared to use his skills to kill each and every one of them.
Access to the Trustees was difficult. Having only seen them by their colour eight by ten's. The stills and thumbnail character sketch of name, address, likes and dislikes. But he knew nothing about the person behind the dossier.
Harvey felt the urge to confront each of these anonymous killers before ensuring their death. He needed to face each one before they died. To look them in the eyes and make it personal. Everything was personal now.
That phrase echoed through his thoughts as he searched the tables for another sachet of sugar for his coffee. He retrieved one from the counter, tutted at the lack of counter staff in attendance and sat back at the table. Something niggled at him as he settled into the same position at the table. Something about the caf?. The lack of customers? The lack of sugar? But the faces of the three remaining trustees floated back onto the surface of his coffee and he stirred them away. Three more to go. And then would it be over? Would it bring back his sister? Of course not. But this was the one thing left he had to offer. The only thing he ever had.
Lost in thought, Harvey was aware of people leaving and entering the caf? by the noise of the door. He glanced at his watch, then at the door, then resumed contemplating the half drunk coffee.
Yet the quiet, insistent voice in his mind grew louder. A meek child tugging at his coat, determined to be heard. And then it struck him. There were no objects on the tables. All around him were bare surfaces. Chairs were bolted to the floor and pictures screwed in place on the walls.
There was nothing to move, nothing to manipulate, nothing to align. No feng to shui.
The door opened with a jingle and moments later bare feet were by his side. His eyes tracked from the polished toenails, along the arch of perfectly formed feet, up freckled legs to the faded blue cut-off jeans. An orange fringe on a crisp white kaftan, sun worshipper tan with simple, hand-made jewellery, a stone necklace spelt out the name 'Karen', unkempt blonde hair tied back into a long ponytail. Beautiful smile and crystal green eyes. Harvey didn't know the woman that stood before him, but he recognised what she was. Yoga Warrior.
'Make peace with whatever Demons you cavort with, because today you die, Fung Shway Assassin.' Karen drifted closer, her kaftan wafting in an unfelt breeze.
Harvey gritted his teeth. 'Feng Shui. It's Feng Shui Assass-'
And then she hit him.