22nd March
Helen walked to the far side of the torture chamber, where there was another old, wooden, locked door.
She only had the one key that might fit into a lock of that kind, but she wondered if some of these old doors might open with the same key.
Relying once again on the strategy of risk and luck, she placed the key in the lock and turned it.
The door unlocked.
She turned the iron handle, and the door opened.
Helen found herself in a corridor, again with no sign of windows. It was dimly lit by a small electric light at its far end.
She cautiously made her way towards the light.
The bulb was at a right angled bend in the passage. As she reached the corner, she could hear voices. She carefully looked around the corner and could see an open door that was almost opposite to her.
‘Does he want us to do anything?’ A male voice drifted from the room.
‘No. He’s going to try the story about rescuing her from a cult. If that doesn’t work, he’ll take her into the larger crypt for questioning.’
‘Hopefully she won’t be as determined as some of the others. It would be very unfortunate if she had to join them with Fortescue.’
‘I agree. We must gain occult secrets for the Church, but I’ve never been happy with the deaths.’
Helen recognised the voices as those of her kidnappers.
Helen looked at the light streaming from the room and looked at the corridor beyond. It was very unlikely that she could pass that door unobserved. She turned and quietly returned to the torture chamber.
She looked around the room for some form of weapon and found a selection of pikes in a case on one wall. She selected one and returned along the corridor.
As she neared the corner, however, she stumbled on the uneven flagstones that formed the floor of the passage.
The tip of the pike fell forwards and clanged against the stone.
Almost at once, to Helen’s horror, one of the men appeared around the corner, alerted by the noise. He rushed towards her.
Instinctively, she lifted the pike to warn him to advance no further, but having just left a brightly lit room, his eyes were unacclimatised to the darkness of the passage.
He ran at full speed onto the sharpened point of the spear.
Helen dropped the pike in shock, and the end of the staff lodged against the edge of a flagstone where one uneven slab rose above its neighbour. The weapon was thus unable to move backwards.
The man fell further forwards.
His scream was surprisingly brief. Helen better understood why when she stepped forwards and realised that he had been run through by the weapon. He had probably been killed instantly.
Oh dear, she thought, I didn’t mean to do that either. … Sorry.
When Helen reached the corner, the second man was standing in the corridor. He was surprised; she was not. The kick to the chest winded him, and the almost simultaneous kick to the head sent him falling backwards. The back of his head hit the stone flagstones, and he was silent.
Beyond the room in which men had been waiting, there were windows in the wall of the corridor and a door to the outside world. She looked out onto a gravel drive on which stood a van. Helen guessed it was the one that had been used to take her from the farm.
Helen returned to the lit office and was relieved to see keys on a table. She took them and ran to the door. It opened.
She ran to the van. It was open.
The keys fitted the ignition, and the van started.
Helen was about to put the van into gear and drive away, but then she stopped.
The adrenaline and the unreality of her recent experience seemed to have generated a quite remarkable calmness and clarity of mind. She had heard of this happening to soldiers in the heat of battle when all anxiety had evaporated and they had been totally focussed on their tasks – despite being in hugely dangerous positions.
She got out of the van once again and looked at her surroundings.
She was outside a Norman church. There was a large country house on higher ground, several hundred metres away. She could, however, see no other buildings, and she could neither see nor hear any other people. Perhaps there have only been the four of us here, she thought.
Helen thought back over the past half hour. She had left two dead bodies in that building and one person unconscious. What should she do?
Her mind, as minds do, tried to consider what she had done in similar circumstances in the past. She had never before killed two people, and left one injured, in a church crypt in the context of an MI5 sting operation, however, so there was little past experience to draw upon. This is more the territory of MI5, she thought. What would Joan Stanford do?
Helen re-entered the building. The man in front of her was rousing but not fully conscious. She took off her belt, turned the man onto his stomach and bound his hands together. She then removed his belt and bound his feet with it. She then walked around the dead body in the corridor and returned to the torture chamber.
She recalled seeing a wheeled trolley against one wall. Helen pulled the trolley to the cage where lay what remained of Harris. She covered him with a convenient tarpaulin, trying to avoid looking at his injuries. She manhandled Harris onto the trolley then pulled it to the van, where she struggled to dump his body in the back.
Still no evidence of other people, she thought. Risk and luck were paying off.
She returned with the trolley and brought out her now conscious captor. She helped him to his feet and pushed him into the back of the van. He screamed as he saw Harris.
Now for the nastiest bit, she thought. Helen returned to the corridor with the trolley. She closed her eyes as she withdrew the pike from the final man. She was grateful that the darkened corridor did not reveal the full gore. She bundled him onto the trolley, slipping on the now blood-stained flagstones, and wheeled him out to the van.
She was exhausted when she finally closed the rear doors of the vehicle.
Helen climbed back into the driver’s seat. She had no idea where she was, but she could recall the post code of Duck’s farm, and her abductors had been thoughtful enough to install a satnav.
‘Drive ahead to the main road,’ said a calm female voice, ‘and turn left.’
~*~*~*~*~
Vladimir Paulov climbed the steep concrete steps which led from the underground bunker complex to the surface.
He checked the CCTV monitors at the entrance. He could see no evidence of anyone outside, so he opened the door and climbed out onto a grassy track.
Vladimir turned around and closed his exit behind him – a small metal door with the words ‘Danger – Electricity’ printed upon it – a door that anyone would assume was some innocent element of the power supply for the estate.
He looked along the track towards Meadowcote Hall, an imposing mansion that had been developed by generations of owners since it had been built as an Augustinian priory in the thirteenth century. It now stood empty with doors locked, covers over furnishings and valuable items in storage.
Vladimir then glanced down the hill which overlooked the estate church – a fine Norman structure that was now only used by members of ARK.
He noted a van driving quickly away from the church towards the west gate. He could not explain why, but something did not seem quite right to him. He started to walk down the hill towards the church.
He knew that the ARK team who worked from the church were planning to interrogate a member of the Morrison cult – the cook in his team had been asked to prepare meals for that person, but Vladimir had been too preoccupied with his own tasks to enquire more about it.
He approached the rear extension to the church, which adjoined the crypts. As he walked across the gravel, he could see dark stains running in lines across the stones. He crouched. The stains were blood – fresh blood.
He drew his gun and cautiously approached the open door.
Vladimir quickly entered the doorway with his weapon covering the corridor.
The corridor was empty, so he slowly advanced to a brightly lit room on the right.
He again darted into the doorway, covering the room with his gun – again no one was there.
He picked up a torch from a shelf, switched it on and began a cautious advance towards the interrogation chamber. The torch illuminated a pike on the floor. He took a closer look. The pike was lying in a large pool of blood, containing what appeared to be parts of human internal organs. He felt slightly sick from the sight and smell.
He followed a further wide blood trail into the interrogation room and across to the cage in its corner. This time, he was sick.
Whatever had happened here had been simply horrific.
Vladimir had no idea about who had done what to whom. The horror he had just seen, however, together with the absence of people, alive or dead, was very odd.
He decided that he and his team should leave the estate immediately and not return until he knew it was safe to do so.