Jimmy Coates (8 page)

“Where is she?” Jimmy shouted, spinning to survey the room. Felix and Georgie were frozen, crouched against the wall, staring into the blackness. Saffron and Helen were in the middle of the room, acting quickly to make sure both the soldiers were secure. But the small woman with the white coat was gone.

Jimmy was breathing hard, but he was acting automatically, the assassin in him refreshing his strategy every second. While the others crowded round the two captured attackers, Jimmy rushed back to the window. On the carpet were two small cylinders of yellow sponge – the Capita woman's earplugs. Jimmy kicked them out of the window in annoyance.

“Where did she…?” he began, but he knew there was no point.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” said Saffron. “I tried to bring her down, but she was sturdy. She made it to one of the ropes.” Then the purpose of the attack finally sunk in. “They've got Chris…” she gasped.

Jimmy leaned out of the jagged hole, searching the shadows below. Was Viggo still in the grounds of the building? How many other Capita fighters were waiting beneath them?

Helen pulled the torches from the soldiers' heads and set them up on the floor to illuminate the room. Jimmy turned to look at the walls. The bullet marks formed a line around the room, but it was high up. Surely if the men had wanted everybody dead they could have easily spread the gunfire. It was obvious to Jimmy that they were trained fighters. In a small room like this, with only a flimsy sofa for cover, there was no way anybody would have survived by accident.

“You left us alive,” Jimmy declared. “Why? Why do you need us alive?” He strode towards the two men. They were balanced on their knees, with their arms held tightly at their sides by their own rope.

“It's OK, Jimmy,” said Saffron firmly. “Let's find out what's going on.” Immediately she turned and slapped one of the soldiers across the face.

Jimmy was startled by the anger in Saffron's voice. He knew Viggo had trained her over several years, and he'd even seen her impressive combat skills in action. But still he couldn't imagine Saffron using any kind of brutality to extract information from her enemies – she was the most gentle person Jimmy had ever met.

She moved round behind the two attackers and gripped the rims of their helmets, ready to rip them off. But Jimmy felt something whiz past his ear. Then came two soft thuds, one after the other. A metal rod about ten centimetres long pierced the centre of each man's flak jacket and lodged in their chests. Both men went limp and slumped forward. A pool of blood oozed into the carpet beneath them.

Jimmy's veins froze. At first nobody reacted. It was too shocking to scream. Georgie and Felix lurched backwards.

“Oh god!” Georgie gasped, her voice trembling. “What have they…?”

Jimmy spun round to see where the shots had come from.
Crossbow darts
, he heard in his head. Inside, he felt nothing. His emotions were squeezed in a tiny ball in his chest, held in place by a far more powerful physical reaction. He heard Felix puking in the corner.
Should I throw up as well?
he wondered. But the question was crushed by a new calculation – were he and his friends still in the shooter's sights? What were the sightlines? How many of them could make it to the corridor before another arrow reached them?

“Sorry…” moaned Felix, still retching. “I…”

Suddenly there was a piercing ring. It made everybody jump.

“What's that?” Felix yelled, even though it was obviously a mobile phone. “I mean,
where
is it…”

Jimmy felt his heart pounding. Somewhere in his mind he could feel an exploding horror, but it was instantly quelled by a cool wave. He watched his limbs moving as if they weren't his own, businesslike, unaffected by the murders that had just taken place less than a metre away from him. In fact, he found himself moving towards one of the men. He reached down and pulled the ringing mobile phone from under the flak jacket on one of the bodies.

Warm blood smeared the screen, but it didn't stop Jimmy answering the call.

“You should have let them go,” said the person on the phone, at last. It was the woman's voice, breathy but full of confidence.

“You didn't…” Jimmy could hardly speak. He held the phone away from him for a second, clenching his face to fight back tears. “What are you doing?”

“Collecting a debt,” came the reply. “Mr Viggo is going to tell us what we need to know.”

“What are you talking about?!” Jimmy protested, shocked by the strength in his own voice.

“Mr Viggo should have told you while he had the chance.”

“That's not funny.”

“I'm not a comedian.” The woman sighed. “In twenty-four hours you can have him back. Possibly alive, if he cooperates. Meanwhile, I'm giving you the chance to help him. I assume you don't have the money, but bring us the H Code.”

“The what?” Jimmy exclaimed.

“The H Code. Viggo's hidden it somewhere or knows how to get it.”

“How much money do you need? And what's the H Code? I've never heard of it!” Jimmy looked back to the others, but their faces were blank. “What does Chris have that you want?” He shouted the question, half into the phone and half to Saffron and his mother. Were they hiding the truth from him? Had they shared in some of Viggo's secrets? They looked just as stunned by what was happening.

“The H Code!” insisted the Capita woman. “Either Chris will tell us where it is, or you will bring it to us. If you want Chris back, you'll meet us twenty-four hours from now. Bring the H Code. Goodbye.”

“Wait!” Jimmy was too late. She had disconnected. “We don't even know where to…” Jimmy frantically tried to retrieve the number from the phone – or any information at all – but there was nothing. He dropped the handset to the floor. “She's playing games!” he yelled. “She says they've taken Chris hostage until they can get what they want.”

He glared at the others, anger flaring up in his belly. His mother and Saffron had slowly started dragging the bodies away, while Georgie couldn't take her eyes off the blood on the carpet. Felix was crouched in one corner, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Can't you say something!?” Jimmy shouted at them.

“Hold on, Jimmy,” It was his mother. “We need a second. We're only human.”

For a moment, Jimmy saw his friends with disgust.
I'm stronger
, he heard in his head.
More than human.

“No!” he shouted out loud, forcing those thoughts away with an eruption of sheer will. Finally he pulled in a deep breath and explained, quietly, “She said to get Chris back we have to take her the H Code twenty-four hours from now.”

“What's the H Code?” Saffron asked. “And where do we take it?”

Before Jimmy could even shrug, the answer came. It arrived on the end of a crossbow dart that pinged into the back wall and lodged there. Fixed to the stem was a postcard bearing an address and a single word: LOCO.

 

“They don't know!” wailed Christopher Viggo. “Leave them alone! They don't know!”

His arms and legs were tied to a chair and his head was covered with a black cloth bag, secured tightly at the neck. There was something warm trickling down his front, which he assumed was his own blood, but he hardly had any sensation left in his face. Somehow the pain remained, though. It seemed that the Capita were experts in their field. They'd even managed to carefully preserve his ability to speak – which was, after all, the whole point of the exercise.

“If they don't know,” came a hot whisper in his ear, “that would be very convenient for you, wouldn't it?” It was the only voice he'd heard for several hours. The voice of the woman who had come to collect the Capita's debt. “Because if you're the only one who knows, that means we have to keep you alive. And yet if you're telling the truth, and your friends really don't know where to find what you owe us, then we should kill them, shouldn't we? So which is it?”

“They know,” Viggo declared boldly. “Of course they know. Everybody knows.”

“Stop playing games, Mr Viggo. You owe us the H Code.”

“They know. They don't know. They know. They don't know.” Viggo reeled off the words until they had no more meaning. The Capita may have been experts, but this wasn't the first time he had been interrogated, and he had been trained by the very best. Being an ex-NJ7 agent had some advantages at least. “They know. They don't know. They know. They don't know.”

His head was growing heavier by the second. His limbs felt far away, as if they weren't attached to him any more. He knew that was just the cocktail of drugs they'd injected into his spine.
Stay focused
, he ordered himself. “They know. They don't know.” He chanted it under his breath, distracting himself by trying to deduce exactly which chemicals were in his system and when his next dose would be coming. “They know… they don't know… they know… they don't know…”

Viggo stopped when he heard the faint whir of a tiny electric motor. Were they about to subject him to a new procedure? No, it didn't sound powerful enough for that. Then came the thin voice of an old man with a strong Italian accent.

“Isn't there a more efficient way of doing this, Miranda?”

 

‘LOCO.' Jimmy turned the postcard over in his fingers while the word revolved in his head. The lettering was ornate and gothic. Above it was a simple black and white drawing of two snakes twisted round each other up and down a microphone stand. On the back of the card was an address in North London: 5–17 Highgate Road. It wasn't an area Jimmy knew, but this was obviously a flier for one of the illegal music nights that happened all over the city.

Public performances were closely monitored by the Government, so clubs were forced to move from night to night, with bands, promoters and even the audience at risk of being arrested if they were caught. Jimmy had never really thought about it before, but it seemed likely that most of these events were run by the Capita. From what he had heard, they operated in every sphere of illegal activity in Europe.

“You should all go to bed,” said Jimmy's mother, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“How am I meant to sleep?” Georgie asked. “I'm not even going back up there.”

They had abandoned the apartment at the top of the building and come down to the offices in the basement. Saffron and Helen had been switching between planning their response to the Capita and looking after Felix, Georgie and Jimmy.

“Aren't you even shocked?” Georgie asked. “Did you see what they…?” She didn't finish. Her mother looked gently at her.

“I know, Georgie,” she explained. “Come here.” Helen pulled her daughter into a hug. “It's going to be OK. We've been through some horrible things. Things I never thought I'd see again.” Her tone was soft and measured. “But don't forget I was trained for all of this once. You don't have to go back up there, but we do need to stay calm and get some rest until we can work out what we're going to do.”

Jimmy looked at his mother and his sister. They had both shown themselves to be more capable than he could ever have imagined – and without the benefit of the programming in Jimmy's blood. Watching them handle this crisis made him feel proud, but it also reinforced how different they were from him now. In Jimmy, any shock or disgust at the assault on the top floor had been crushed by that swirling power inside him.

“I'm not sleeping tonight,” announced Felix. Jimmy could tell he was trying to sound a lot more cheerful than he felt. His voice was trembling. “I'm going to come up with a plan. Jimmy, get me a pad of paper, some pens, paperclips, lots of elastic bands and something to eat.”

“Elastic bands?” Jimmy asked.

“Never mind.” The energy drained from Felix's face. “Maybe just something to eat. Except I still feel sick.”

“I could never eat after…” Georgie's face was twisted in horror. “…after what we saw.”

“Actually,” said Saffron gently. “I think Felix is right for once. We're all in shock. Eating something will help.” She quickly searched the drawers of one of the desks and gestured to the others to do the same. Within minutes, they were sitting round the largest desk with a pile of crisp packets and sweets in the centre.

“We should search the desks and computers for information as well,” said Jimmy's mum. “There has to be something in this building about Chris's arrangement with the Capita. Something about the H Code. What about in his office?”

“I'll see what I can find,” said Saffron, “but he was so secretive. He refused to have his own computer in case it was hacked, and I wouldn't be surprised if he hid anything about the Capita from his advisors. After all, he hid it from me.”

She turned away and started work on one of the computers, but Jimmy caught a glimpse of the heavy sadness in her eyes. She and Viggo were meant to love each other. How much of that was left after all these months of secrets and deception?

“What if it wasn't the capital?” Felix asked.

“
Capita
,” Jimmy corrected him. “It means ‘the head', or something…” He trailed off, lost in the memory of his encounter with the Capita's boss. Darkness had obscured the man's face, but he remembered the hoarse Italian whisper and the hiss of the man's wheelchair. His immense power had come at the expense of the use of his body. From what Jimmy had seen, the Capita boss was a head kept alive on an almost-dead body. His men even referred to him as ‘The Head'.