If The Bed Falls In Page 6

  “But you are Mona… married to Taylor… tale-telling friend of Sarah’s,” the words dribbled out of Tom’s mouth, making sense to him, but seeming a foreign currency among this American assembly.

  “No, Joseph, I’m Sherry Goodman. And you’re yanking my chain.”

  “No,” stammered Tom, “I’m not yanking your… You called me Joseph?”

  “You prefer Joe?” Mona offered, “You always insisted on Joseph, before.”

  “No, there seems to be some confusion. My name’s Tom Friday. I’m a photographer. I’m having an MRI scan… and… and… you don’t exist.”

  “Joe, Joe, Joe, you can do better than that.”

  “Better than what? You’re a… what did Sarah call it?… A cocaine hangover,” Tom continued, stoically.

  “So, you look like Joseph, sound like Joseph, and…” she wiped a finger across Tom’s top lip, “… bleed like Joseph. But you still claim you’re not Joseph?” Mona suggested ironically.

  “You can say what you like. You’re not real.”

  Tom pouted and attempted to hold down the continuing acid reflux rising from his churning stomach.

  “Okay,” reasoned Mona, “pray explain how we picked you up yesterday, outside your house?”

  Tom turned his head away, and stared into the distance.

  “Look at your shoes, Joseph. Go on, just take a quick look. Humour me.”

  Tom nonchalantly look down. The brown, suede trainers, that he did not recognise, were spattered with something red.

  “Yeah, Joseph… Oh, yeah!…” Mona said triumphantly.

  “These aren’t my shoes,” pleaded Tom.

  “And I guess that’s not Preston’s blood either?” Mona concluded.

  He stared at the woman, dumbfounded; feeling his eyes moistening.

  “Now, before you so rudely curtailed Preston’s promising career, he asked you something important,” the woman said. “Now, whether you gave him the answer or not is sadly interred with his bones, due to the small fact that you all but removed his head from his body. However, good ol’ life is givin’ you a second chance.”

  Tom believed he knew what was coming next, and he feared it greatly. He closed his eyes tightly, but the woman’s voice continued, supplying indisputable proof that this time, tight eye-closing was not transporting him anywhere.

  “Look at me, Joseph. Just tell me, who is the Spring?”

  Tom lifted his head and opened his eyes. He noticed a sudden intensity both in his body and his stare. His confusion remained, but cutting sarcasm sprang from some dark recess of his psyche pushing his fear to one side, and taking him by surprise.

  “Listen, you pathetic twat,” he said, “as you are well aware, the last person that insisted on asking me that question ended up as road kill on my trainers. So before you open that tight little mouth of yours again – Sherry – you might like to ask yourself if you are feeling extraordinarily lucky.”

  Sherry moved back half a pace, as if the power that Tom had felt flow into him was patently visible to others.

  “… And we’re back in the room,” sneered Sherry, “For a moment I thought Joseph had become a simpering, Limey limpdick.”

  Tom jerked his head up, bringing his eyes into direct contact with hers. A laugh snorted from his bloody nose.

  “‘Limey limpdick’, that’s the best you wankers can do, is it?”

  “Look, Joseph, we are all professionals here. Why do we have to behave like rookie no-nuts, huh?” She gestured to one of the four spooks that stood around her, “Looks like we have no choice, Boris,” she said to the thick-set man standing next to her.

  Two of the others grabbed each of Tom’s legs, and a fourth, his arms. He was held down tightly onto the bed.

  “Get his pants off,” ordered Sherry.

  Boris started to remove Tom’s trousers. He kept his gaze downwards as if he was reluctant to make eye contact. Tom struggled violently, but the other three were too strong.

  “Come on, Boris. And his underpants!”

  Boris obeyed, and pulled Tom’s underpants down, with a look of dutiful disgust on his face that one might see when a dog owner wipes up his new puppy’s vomit. Tom’s penis and testicles stood proud, but showed signs of stress. Boris reached down to the floor, and returned to Tom’s view holding a pair of bolt-cutters.

  “Now,” Sherry said with a wry smile, “talking of no-nuts…”

  Boris slipped the open blades of the bolt-cutter around Tom’s exposed scrotum.

  Tom caught Boris’ eye.

  “Sorry about this, compadre,” Boris said.

  “Do I have your attention, now?” Sherry asked.

  Tom nodded, staring down at the potentially grizzly scene.

  “Okay, Joseph,” Sherry walked over to Tom. He noticed a slight, but visible limp in her left leg. She held her face inches from his, “Do you want to try that ‘pathetic twat’ crack again… No?… I thought not.” She straightened up and glanced down at Tom’s exposed privates, “Not a bad package. Real shame…” she stepped two paces away from the bed, “… real shame. So, I’m gonna ask just one more time. Who, Joseph, is the Spring?”

  Tom brought his gaze up to meet Sherry’s.

  “Sherry…” he said.

  “Why yes, Mr Miller?” she teased.

  “… Go fuck yourself!” Tom said.

  Sherry nodded to Boris.

  “Boris, cut the fuckers off!”

  Boris turned his head to her.

  “Really?” he asked in undiluted anguish.

  “Just snap those two liddle ol’ handles together,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Boris, “but really?”

  “Are you going to disobey a direct order, soldier?”

  “No, Ma’am, but… really?”

  Sherry reached to her waist and pulled a gun from its holster. She pointed it at Boris.

  “But Sherry, he hasn’t told us anything.”

  “Well, he can still talk without his balls. He’ll… just have to move sections in the choir,” Sherry said, bereft of emotion, and cocking the hammer on her revolver.

  Boris pushed his elbows outwards in preparation to exert the force necessary to separate Tom from his testicles. He stopped again, and looked beseechingly at Sherry. She simply waved her hand like a Caesar proclaiming at the arena. Boris threw his elbows out again. In spite of all his protestations, the look on his face left no doubt in Tom’s mind that the blades were coming together this time.

  “Wait!” Tom shouted.

  Boris just managed to arrest the powerful movement he had almost started. He looked at Sherry. She waved him away.

  “So,” she asked Tom, “are we ready to talk now?”

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  Chapter 8

  Tom pulled up his underpants and trousers, swung his legs around and sat upright on the bed. He shook his head as if trying to dispel water from his ears, and then stretched.

  “So,” he said, “how long have I been here?”

  “About twenty-four hours,” Sherry informed him, “and now it’s time to talk.”

  “Then why don’t I remember being here?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sherry said, moving over to a small side table, and picking up a hypodermic syringe.

  “Ah,” responded Tom, “I guess that’s why I feel like shit. What have you been giving me?”

  “Just a little something they cooked up in Langley. Heavily barbiturate based, I believe, but chemistry’s not my strongest suit.”

  “Is it safe?” Tom inquired.

  “Sure, as long as I keep the needle point away from me, yeah,” Sherry joked, “for you… there may be some side effects.”

  Joseph laughed as clarity bubbled into his brain.

  “Hallucinations, by any chance?” he asked.

  “Apparently, real vivid fuckers!” she said. Joseph laughed with deep pathos. Sherry continued. “Looks like you’ve been having a field day in there.”<
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  Joseph nodded his head.

  “Pretty weird, yeah.”

  Suddenly he raised his hands to his chest. All five spooks moved towards him.

  “What’s wrong?” Sherry asked, her face contorted.

  Joseph cried out, and clutched himself tighter.

  “You fucking idiots,” he wheezed, “you’ve given me too much… I… I… can’t fucking breathe!”

  Sherry threw a quick glance at Boris, and the two rushed forwards. As they reached Joseph, he instantly raised his knee with tremendous force into Boris’ crotch. Almost simultaneously, he reached out to Sherry’s waist and slipped her gun from its holster. While Sherry’s brain was still trying to engage the correct gear, Joseph flipped his legs up, spinning him to a standing position on the far side of the bed. He left Boris nursing himself and Sherry momentarily paralysed by her own gullibility, and turned his attention to the other three. They were bouncing, like pinballs, between a rock and a hard place. Joseph raised the gun, and fired three shots in rapid succession. The men fell; none of them would ever be able to experience indecision again.

  He turned his attention back to Sherry and Boris. She was looking towards her three felled comrades. Boris was in a whole heap of testicular trouble. Almost without hesitation, Joseph pointed the revolver at him, and fired a single quietening shot. As he turned back to Sherry, he found that not only had she finally found a gear, but had revved up to near top speed. She kicked the gun from his hand. Joseph punched her square in the face. She staggered backwards, but was only a moment in recovery. In that split second, Joseph’s highly trained mind wasted nothing. He bent down and retrieved something alongside the bed. As he stood up Sherry’s powerful kick was almost on him again, but he arrested its progress by sinking the tempered blades of the bolt-cutters deep into the soft flesh of her left thigh. Her hands clasped the heavy tool as she staggered, and blood spurted from between her fingers. Joseph felt saddened by her lack of luck. Whereas he had had no emotion regarding killing the others, Sherry and he had history. He hadn’t wanted to kill her, but he seemed to have nicked an artery in her leg. That hadn’t been his intention, but he was totally culpable.

  He knew that regret would only slow him down, and he had already lost twenty-four hours. He moved over to where the gun had fallen, picked it up, and was gone.

  It seemed almost unbelievable that Tom, Sarah… everything… had simply been hallucinations. But he now remembered, with crystal clarity, the words of Ayn Rand that had meant so much to him at university, ‘We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality’. He – Joseph – was undeniably real, as was his life, his history… his job. The truth flowed into him like a tidal wave, flushing out every grain of Tom… ‘It was Tom, wasn’t it?’ he thought. ‘Tom… Tom…’ Joseph couldn’t even remember Tom’s last name.

  Since he had escaped Sherry and co., Joseph had been running flat out. He now stopped and looked around. He touched his own body as if it were a new suit of clothes. He recalled every jerk, every snatch that had built each of the impressive muscles. He was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans and brown, suede trainers. All the items now seemed totally his. He could even remember buying them. But what he couldn’t remember was; what he was involved in. What – in the parlance of his life as Joseph – was his mission?

  He looked around, again, and recognised the area, and that his house was not far away. ‘Well, it may be dangerous to go there,’ he thought, but he needed to pick some things up, especially some necessary items from his hidden stock of weapons. But most importantly he needed to contact his controller; report in and find out what was going on.

  After twenty-five minutes of walking, he turned a corner and slowed down, then hid behind a plane tree, and surveyed the street. Around three quarters of the way down the road was his house; on the left. Cars were parked on both sides. Any of these vehicles could conceal an enemy, but in this light every car window was a mirror reflecting green trees and the other cars. Joseph walked carefully, every one of his senses on red alert, but he was well aware that a bullet from a hidden sniper would make a mockery of any precautions he was taking.

  Two more houses and he would arrive at his. A car door flew open in front of him and a man got out quickly, nearly colliding with Joseph. For a split second the man froze, his hands raised.

  “Sorry mate!” he said, then closed the car door, and walked away down the street.

  Joseph, himself temporarily frozen, watched as the man, that had momentarily been a possible assailant, was diminished by perspective to a mere smudge beneath the leafy trees.

  At the front door to his house, Joseph reached into the pocket of his jeans and retrieved the key. He opened the door and went inside.

  The mess he had made despatching Preston had been professionally cleaned up. There was no trace of a struggle or even the tiniest smear of blood. He assumed that he had been abducted as he left the house after the deed, and his clean-up team had either done their job and left unaccosted or now lay in shallow graves courtesy of Sherry and Boris. It seemed ironic to Joseph that killing people – and death generally – meant almost nothing to him, yet his whole raison d’être was securing society; keeping it safe from people who found no moral hazard or taboo in destroying the lives of others. He, and people like him, kept society clean by doing the dirty work, but they had to do it in secret. Nobody would sanction what he did if they had to see it. He was a refuse collector that society insisted only did his rounds under the cover of darkness. He sullied his hands because most other people didn’t have the stomach for it, but neither did they want to rub shoulders with him, out of the fear that he might contaminate them with the dirt he cleaned up on their behalf. Thinking about it like that might lead to resentment, but in Joseph, it didn’t. However, as much as he tried to dress his motivation in noble clothes, the truth was he enjoyed killing and he was good at it; and that scared him more than anything else. It always had.

  He checked the ground floor and deemed it clear. Now he started up the stairs, and with military precision confirmed the top floor was clear of personnel as well. Unlike his last remembered visit to the house, every room was full of accessible memories. In the bedroom he ran his hand over the dressing table touching the beautifying paraphernalia left in neat rows by his wife. He had been so busy staying alive he had forgotten that his wife was not. He looked at the framed picture of them on their wedding day, and another holding hands – looking very much in love – on a holiday to Washington DC last year.

  Apart from recent events, the last memory he had of his life was the funeral of his wife, Tilda. Hers was the first death he could remember ever touching him. When his mum had died, at the hands of his father, despite her having been his whole world, a coldness had entered him that had persisted throughout the rest of his life. The only person that had warmed him enough to thaw out was Tilda, and as he stood watching her being lowered into the ground, he had felt the uncomfortable prick of ice crystals forming inside him again.

  He turned his back on the dressing table and faced the bed. Joseph walked over to the right-hand side, and putting both hands onto its edge, pushed hard. The bed slid heavily to one side. He knelt down and picked at the floorboards. From the ceiling void, under the bedroom floor, he took a selection of weapons, which he placed in a shoulder-bag. Normally he would carefully re-conceal the hiding place, but this time he knew he would not be returning. Somehow, although he still had no conscious recollection of what his current mission was, he knew it was an end-game. If he did have a future, when the dust settled, it would not be here. He was sure of that.

  A short time later, he entered the gates of the graveyard in which his wife had been buried. He moved slowly between the headstones, until he arrived at Tilda’s. Joseph looked down at the stone through a film of distorting tears. He blinked to clear his vision. The inscription read:

  Tilda Miller

  My darling wife

  1st February 1978 – 2
1st June 2015

  His eyes swam with suppressed tears again. He rubbed the moisture away with both hands, then turned to face the faint sound of footsteps from behind him. The man walking towards him wore an expensive pin-striped suit and anachronistically sported a trilby hat. Although the person approaching was totally familiar, Joseph knew he was not the man he thought he was.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” the man said, “We didn’t know where you’d gone, but thought you’d turn up here sooner or later.”

  Joseph wanted to address him as Taylor, but knew that Taylor was a drug induced hallucination. In reality this man was Geoff Simmons, head of British Intelligence. Although Simmons had obviously been Joseph’s subconscious inspiration for Taylor, Simmons was a good decade older than his mirage counterpart.

  “What do you mean, ‘We didn’t know where you had gone’? Joseph asked.

  “You’ve been off the grid for twenty-four hours,” Simmons replied. His accent was clipped, and although his words conveyed emotion, a lack of empathic subtext denied it. “I’ve been really worried about you… Are you okay?”

  Joseph nodded his head noncommittally. Simmons stopped a couple of paces from Tilda’s gravestone. He smiled awkwardly.

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “I’ve had a little bit of trouble with some old friends,” Joseph said with sardonic levity.

  “Old friends?” questioned Simmons, taking his hands out of his jacket pockets, rubbing them together redundantly, then returning them to their former home.

  “I was grabbed by Sherry Goodman.”

  “What?… where?” Simmons stammered, one of his hands re-emerged and flapped momentarily.

  “Outside my house… apparently. I seem to have lost most of my memories of the last day.”

  “Joseph, that’s not good. That’s really not good,” Simmons said with detachment.