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  “As serious as a knife to your stepfather’s throat.”

  Estelle didn’t even flinch or look up from the file at the man’s callous words. She didn’t give two shits about her dead stepfather. Not one bit. She would gladly go through with the same action over and over again with even greater pleasure if given another chance. Perhaps she’d even keep him alive for longer next time so she could torture the shit out of him for a few hours more. She’d fantasied a lot about doing that during her time inside.

  “What about my sister?” Estelle eventually asked.

  “She’ll go to a good foster family. We can make sure of that. She’ll be well looked after. She’ll have a good life. But you will never, ever see her or be able to make contact with her again.”

  Estelle shot a dirty stare at the strange man. He had her attention now.

  “…Estelle.” The man continued. “If you do indeed decide to join us. You’ll never see anyone from your old life again. They’ll be dead to you and you’ll be dead to them. As a convicted killer under our guidance and tutorage, that’s the only way this is going to work.”

  Estelle let out a deep sigh, but said nothing more.

  “Didn’t you say in your original statement that your sister would be better off without you anyway?” the man continued. “That you would only bring her more pain, misery, and suffering if you continued to stay together, even if you hadn’t of ended up in prison? And if you did decide to stay here and serve out the remainder of your prison term and then eventually inside an adult prison too, just as soon as you turn eighteen, you’re not going to see her anyway for at least another fifteen years.”

  Estelle glanced down at the file again.

  “Just read the damn file, Estelle. And let’s discuss it all tomorrow, okay?”

  Estelle gave out the faintest of nods which was enough for the man to acknowledge that she understood everything he had said to her and would seriously consider his offer.

  Chapter 24

  Estelle lay, dazed, confused, and barely alive inside the back of an ambulance as it sped its way in and out of the busy Glasgow City Centre rush hour traffic on its way to the new Royal Infirmary on the far west side of the city.

  When she opened her eyes every now and again, she thought she could see two paramedics treating her wounds and telling her that everything was going to be okay. They even looked vaguely familiar for some bizarre reason, but that was impossible, she thought, and just blamed her disorderly state of mind and all of the drugs that were now pumping their way through her body just to ease her pain and sufferings and keep her alive.

  She thought she noticed two armed police officers too. Both seated at the very back of the ambulance, keeping a firm eye on her like she could ever do or try anything to escape in her current predicament.

  As Estelle drifted into another wave of unconsciousness, she thought she could vaguely make out the faint outline of a small black bird tattoo upon one of the paramedic’s wrists. But as she fell into a deep unconsciousness yet again, it seemed like nothing more than a crazy dream.

  The driver of the ambulance kept looking back at Estelle and her rapidly deteriorating condition whenever it was safe to do so. Suddenly he pulled off the main motorway and drove southbound towards a desolate housing estate somewhere in Cardonald—then into a huge maze of garage lock-ups somewhere on the outskirts of the derelict Glasgow estate.

  The entire area looked like something straight out of an apocalyptic warzone.

  As the ambulance approached one of the larger garages at the far end of the lock-up maze, two women, both wearing balaclavas, opened the garage doors to let the ambulance enter. The ambulance came to a sudden halt inside the lock-up and the two masked women closed the garage doors behind it.

  Inside, the driver of the ambulance switched off the engine and lights and proceeded to pull a hand gun out from the glove compartment. The armed police officers looked wildly confused as they both stood to their feet to take a better look out through the front driver’s window.

  “We’re at the hospital already?” said the first armed police officer.

  The back doors to the ambulance suddenly flung open and the two masked women stood pointing their guns right at the armed police officers.

  The ambulance driver then raised his own gun from the front seat, pointing it straight at the two-armed police too. The two paramedics then quickly disarmed the officers before forcing them onto their knees and shooting them both dead, straight in the head. There would be no witnesses here.

  The team of five men and women then swiftly helped to lift the unconscious Estelle out from the back of the ambulance and into the back of another large white van that sat waiting, doors wide open, in an adjourning garage next door, which seemed to be secretly connected to the first.

  Once Estelle and the rest of the team were all inside the new van, the driver started the engine and burst through the garage doors like a bat out of hell before speeding away back into the city streets to rejoin the bustling motorway traffic heading towards the Erskine Bridge.

  ***

  Estelle awakened in a groggy daze. She’d travelled around so much, while slipping in and out of consciousness, that she’d didn’t have a clue where she was anymore or how much time had passed since she’d left Glasgow.

  She awoke to find herself lying in a somewhat familiar single bed, surrounded by wooden log walls and a cozy log fire that burned away in the far corner of the room. All of her knife and bullet wounds appeared to be bandaged up and seemingly on the mend, even though she still felt a dull ache and pain every time she fidgeted around in bed.

  From the shadows of the doorway, an old man approached Estelle and handed her a glass of water with a large straw.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  Estelle glanced up at the old man and let out a relieved smile. She knew his face, and fairly well too. The old man worked for her employers and ran a small series of safe houses, one of which she now found herself holed up in, somewhere in the remotest regions of the Scottish Highlands.

  She’d been to this particular safe house before over the years. This was where she and all the other field agents like herself, injured in the line of duty, would come to recover off grid from their surgeries and healing wounds before they returned back to their homes and lives again.

  “You seem to be recovering well, Estelle. All your wounds are healing up rather nicely after all your surgeries these past few weeks.”

  “Hello, Bill.” Estelle replied in a weak tone of voice. She even managed to raise a rare smile but it took a hell of a lot of effort on her part.

  “It’s been a long time, Estelle. Nearly three years since you were here last, well, seriously wounded and recovering that is.”

  Estelle gently nodded.

  “I remember. After the bomb explosion in Beijing that went off twenty minutes early.”

  “Although, if I must say, this is the worst state I’ve ever seen you in to memory, my girl,” the old man continued with a wry chuckle. “And please take no offence. But after you’ve fully healed from this mess, I do hope to never, ever see you back here again.”

  Estelle smiled softly at that, even though it hurt like hell when she did.

  “I take it I’m not going to Columbia then?”

  “That ship has long since sailed, my dear.”

  “Am I in a lot of shit?”

  The old man gave her a faint but reassuring smile.

  “No more than usual. But if they didn’t want you back or had any further use for you, then they wouldn’t have taken the time and resources to patch you back together again.”

  “You make me sound like Humpty fucking Dumpty.”

  “Trust me. You came to me in much worse condition than he ever did.”

  The old man suddenly bent down and picked up a dull red urn from underneath Estelle’s bed. She recognized it instantly as her sister’s final resting place. The old man placed the urn gently down upon the bed besi
de her.

  “One of the team picked this up for you back in Glasgow when they cleared out your hotel room.”

  Estelle gently nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to say another word as she stared continuously at the urn like it was some long-lost friend. A tear almost came to her eye, too, which she tried to furiously fight.

  “You know, I had to do this for her right… She was my little baby sister… I had to do it…”

  “Look… There’s a beautiful loch over there if you remember from your last visit. I’m sure your sister would love it out there.”

  Estelle wiped her tears and hugged her sister’s urn just as tightly as she damn well could.

  ***

  Later in the day, just an hour before the late sunset, Estelle carried her sister’s urn in her arms as she painfully hobbled as best she could right to the very end of the long and tired-looking pier. As soon as she reached the very end she sat down and swung her legs peacefully over the side of the huge, sprawling loch.

  She took a few moments to sit back and take in the whole beautiful and tranquil scenery that surrounded her. She even pulled out a new pack of cigarettes that the old man had recently given her and casually lit one up.

  When she’d finally finished smoking the cigarette right down to its bone-dry filter, she stubbed it out on the edge of the pier before placing the stub into her pocket. She took another couple of long, deep, and relaxing breaths. Then, in her own time, when she was eventually good and ready, Estelle picked up her sister’s urn, unscrewed the lid and poured the entire contents of ash into the still, calm waters below.

  Once the entire container was emptied, she casually threw the urn into the loch too and watched it bob up and down for a few seconds before it gently filled with water and sunk its way down into the bottom of the loch.

  Chapter 25

  A few weeks later, back in Glasgow’s grizzly city center, Detective Jonas walked out of a Tesco Express store on Sauchiehall Street with a smug grin on his face and a new spring in his step.

  His mother had been doing surprisingly better these past few weeks, and so far, the ongoing police investigation into the death of Clark Wallace, Luke Bradshaw, and a dozen other gang members and bodyguards all found butchered to death at the local MP’s house on Claremont terrace, hadn’t been able to unearth any solid evidence of his involvement with any of it, especially the murder of Gayle Munroe. Even the best police detectives on the force hadn’t been able to connect the dots to her mysterious death just yet to the events at Clark Wallace’s house almost a month prior.

  His wife Victoria, the only survivor of the slaughter along with her blind little son Phillip, had also thankfully pleaded both ignorant and dumb to it all. She’d stated that she knew nothing of her husband’s criminal underground dealings and had seen nothing of the shootout slaughter at her home as she’d been hiding in the bathroom the whole entire time. She hadn’t mentioned the presence of Estelle at all, which Jonas found quite bizarre, since they’d most definitely met in the house at some point, he’d felt sure of that. But alas, he would just let it be. She obviously had her own good reasons and hidden demons for denying all knowledge of Estelle’s existence.

  Jonas also felt utterly relieved that nothing incriminating was ever found at Clark Wallace’s property linking him to the MP either. Not even the private phone call he’d made to him an hour before his death had been traced back to the joggers iPhone. It was all working out rather nicely, he thought. Rather too nicely, perhaps. But hey ho. He was still alive, still in one piece and good health, and most important of all, a free man. So, who was he to question the investigation and handling of the case?

  So far, the drowned body of Mrs. Lamont still hadn’t been discovered and neither had her blue Peugeot car that she’d been locked inside the boot of. The car was still, to that day, holed up at the bottom of the Clyde River and in a location that only Jonas knew the whereabouts.

  He’d found her little dog alive and well though inside her abandoned apartment once he’d finally gotten around to venturing over there and making sure there was no evidence or written mentions of his good self at her home.

  He’d taken the little critter away with him too, instead of booting it out onto the street or giving it over to the dog and cat home and letting it chance its fate with those barbarians. He’d then given the little dog to his mother as a present and something to keep her company once Jonas was fit and ready for work in the police force again. His only concern these days, and something that lingered in the back of his mind, was Estelle and the way she’d just disappeared into thin air like some phantom of the night, almost as swiftly and as eerily as she’d emerged out of it.

  Right after her ambulance had been hijacked on the way to the hospital and was discovered in a garage lock-up in Cardonald along with the bodies of two dead police officers, she had never been seen nor heard from again. And with no record of her ever having existed in the first place, the case was at a complete and utter dead end for all concerned.

  Eventually, the entire thing was blamed on Clark Wallace’s ties to the Glasgow criminal underworld. And the entire brutal event at his home labeled as a gangland criminal warfare confrontation that had gone horribly wrong due to owed drug money and possible blackmail over his now exposed and setup, gang race attacks around the city.

  But Jonas knew the truth. Well, most of it. He would take it to his grave if it meant staying out of prison and continuing his good work for Glasgow Police Scotland.

  He did worry about Estelle though from time to time and if she would ever make a reappearance in his life like some ghost in the night. But the more time moved on, the more Jonas began to assume that she had just died from her serious injuries that fateful day or had been permanently crippled by all the multiple stab and gunshot wounds to her entire body.

  Nobody could walk away from those kinds of hits and survive or even return to being as good as new again. No one. She was a human being after all, and not some indestructible super soldier. So alas, that was the one comforting factor that made the detective start sleeping soundly again a night. That he would never see that cold-hearted psycho bitch again unless she mowed him down with her fucking wheelchair.

  Jonas opened his newly purchased packet of cigarettes as he climbed stiffly back into the driver’s seat of his car. He hadn’t smoked for over ten years, but due to all the stresses and trauma of the past month, he desperately needed something to take the edge off again. And from what had started out as a habit of one or two cigarettes a day had now swiftly turned into one whole packet a day.

  Jonas finally eased himself into the driver’s seat of his car. He still felt a little sore and uncomfortable going through the motions of standing up and sitting down, but all of his wounds caused by that bitch were almost fully healed. Although, he wasn’t about to tell the chief of his department that yet. Not by a long shot. He was thoroughly enjoying his paid sick leave and time off and planned to enjoy it for a lot longer too; well, at least for another few months.

  Jonas shoved the fag into his mouth as he frantically searched the dark passenger seat beside him for his lighter, which he couldn’t seem to find anywhere now, even though he’d sworn that he’d left damn right there on the bloody seat cover, right after he’d lit up his last cigarette twenty minutes earlier.

  Jonas cursed and let out a deep sigh. He’d have to go back inside the bloody newsagents again and buy another, which meant climbing awkwardly and in great discomfort back out of the car again. Just as he was about to push open the driver side door and climb out, a dark and sinister shadow, lurking in the back seat of his car, casually lit up his lighter.

  Jonas jumped with shear fright. He looked terrified as hell as he stared with wide, horror-filled eyes right into the dark back seat of his car through his rearview mirror.

  At first, he imagined he was seeing things. His eyes playing a trick or someone playing a trick. But the more the flame burned, the more he began to realize that it wa
s no trick or hallucination at all.

  It was her. That cold-hearted psycho bitch was sitting in the backseat of his fucking car.

  Letting his gut instinct take over, Jonas dived immediately for the car door, but Estelle was too quick for him. She grabbed a strong violent hold of his hair and yanked both his head and neck back towards her. In another split second she whipped out her knife and slashed along the full long width of Jonas’s throat. The staggering wound and gash looked like one big, blood red smile before the blood began gushing out all down the front of his shirt.

  The wound on his throat gargled and spluttered for a few seconds more before Jonas finally fell down upon the empty passenger seat to bleed out, the life draining out of him like dirty, old bath water down the plug hole.

  Without words, Estelle calmly picked up Jonas’s dropped cigarette, lit it, inhaled her first puff, and sat casually back in the rear seat of his car to watch him die. She wasn’t in a rush to leave this time. In fact, she had all the time in the world to make sure that the job was thoroughly seen through to its final bitter end. Because she had no intentions of coming back for a third time to complete the task.

  ***

  Later that evening, Estelle stood outside a small cottage on the banks of Loch Lomond. With her gun firmly drawn and her presence protected by darkness, she glanced cautiously inside through the only lighted window in the property. The curtains were only half drawn, but there was enough of a gap for her to see inside without anyone noticing her hovering around out in the shadows.

  Inside the living room, she watched as Clark’s still-mourning wife, Victoria, along with some close family members—or so it seemed, all watched and listened to the young little Philip play a tune on the piano beside a burning fireplace.

  Estelle leaned against the outside wall and lit up another cigarette. For the next few minutes, she just stood back, smoked her fag, and continued to watch the young blind boy play. She seemed to be in two minds about storming into the house and taking her nephew away with her or just leaving him be. But it was such a ridiculous thought. What the hell was she and John going to do with another kid to look after?