My family was at risk, and that was unacceptable; it was time to neutralise that risk…
Being careful to stay out of sight, I carefully eased myself over the dry-stone estate wall and moved stealthily from cover to cover across the restored formal Tudor garden, my mother’s pride and joy, using the clipped and shaped topiaries for cover as much as I could.
I worked my way around to the back of the house, being careful to keep low and in any cover I could find. The house was huge, built in the sixteenth century in the shape of an ‘E’ to flatter Queen Elizabeth, and three men couldn’t possibly cover all the myriad of windows and entrances, but no sense in taking any chances.
The lessons I learned during my stints in Helmand came back to me as I carefully skirted the house, aiming for the collection of lean-to’s and stone-built storage barns that three hundred years ago had been the estate dairy, smithy, and brew-house. The small milkmaid’s door at the back of the old dairy led into a room that had once been the buttery and cheese store, now just used as a lumber room, and from there into the little scullery kitchen next to the main kitchen in the basement of the main house itself.
Not many people on first glance realised that the narrow little panel door in the modern, updated kitchen that looked like a pantry was in fact the entrance to the old scullery, or even that there was a scullery there, and one of the servant’s staircases up to the attics was in there; if I got in there, and I knew how, it was one of my childhood escape routes, I had the run of the house and no-one would ever know I was there. That was my advantage over whoever those men were; I knew they were in my house, they didn’t know I was too.
The narrow staircase was still firm and solid, so I carefully made my way up to the first floor, where Georgy’s and my bedroom was. I had played on these stairs half my life; I knew which steps were the squeaky ones and I avoided them instinctively, and carefully eased open the door on the first floor landing. Good, no-one about, so I cat-footed along the corridor to my room, because in the bottom of my closet was a pair of Defender gloves one of the guys in 42 Commando out in Helmand had sneaked me; they were weighted and packed with quartz sand to add weight and extra impact.
A punch in the right place from one of those ended a fight before it had begun, and I had no other weapons apart from the fearsome collection of late-medieval and Renaissance swords, maces, daggers, and other killing implements on the walls downstairs, probably where those men were. With my gloves, and my steel toe-capped work-boots, and a little luck maybe, just maybe, I stood a chance of evening the odds a little.
Feeling like I at least had a chance, I started to venture downstairs when I saw a shadow on the stairwell at the end of the corridor; someone was coming upstairs, so I ducked back into my room and waited behind the open door, hoping whoever it was would walk past so I could clobber him.
It was almost childishly simple; as the hulking, shaven-headed scruff ambled past my door I stepped out and punched him just as hard as I could, a right uppercut that nearly took his head off and a left hook that smashed into his face with all my strength. The Defender gloves worked perfectly, it must have felt like he’d been smacked with a half-brick; I hardly felt it, the sand packing absorbing most of the impact, but his face caved-in with a meaty “schwack!” sound as his jaw snapped like a twig, his nose flattened, and most of his teeth exited his face in a spray of blood. The follow-up, my safety boot slamming into his testicles just as hard as I could kick him, delivered the coup de grace, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he folded silently, bonelessly, like a dropped puppet, out cold and staying that way for a while.
I quickly tied his hands behind his back with the decorative nylon tie-back ropes from my bedroom curtains, ditto his ankles, then tied his ankles to his wrists and shoved a wadded-up pair of my soiled shorts from the laundry basket in his mouth with one of Georgy’s knee-socks tied tightly around his head to gag him, and carried-dragged him into the back-stairs landing. I debated with myself whether or not to just kick him down those steep little stairs and let him take his chances, but I held off; he was going to be a soup-eating eunuch for the rest of his life, sufficient unto the day etc…
Served the fucker right for prowling around my house, anyway; you mess with my family, you take your punishment, and now there were only two left that I knew about for certain to deal with…
I slipped down along the corridor and lay flat at the top of the stairs, listening for any sounds of movement from downstairs. They must have been just inside the portico, or in the old salon next to the stairs with the double-doors open because I could hear voices, a man with a pronounced London accent and then Georgy’s voice. She sounded scared, even if she was trying to hide it, and my rage burned high again; how dare these bastards come into my home and terrorise my family, they were scaring my Georgy-Girl, how fucking dare they!
I dug my fingers into the carpet, willing myself to calm down and not go charging down there like an idiot, those men were armed, and I still didn’t know how many there were.
“Listen, girly, for the last time, who else lives here? There’s men’s stuff all over the place, I know those boots by the door are not your, who else lives here?”
“I told you, no-one else, just Aunt Kay and me…”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, girly, where the fuck is he?” he interjected, “his fucking stuff’s everywhere, now where the fuck is he?”
“It’s my br… my boyfriend’s stuff, he stays here a lot and he leaves his stuff here, but he’s working in London, he’s not here, I swear!” begged Georgy, her voice ringing with fear-harmonics; my brave girl, terrorised by big men with guns and she still wouldn’t crack, no matter how scared she was, I was so proud of her!
“Don’t worry, we’ll deal with him if he shows up, was that him calling you? Never mind, you’ll only lie, so fuck him, if he shows up he’s dead and it’s on you. Now for the last time, where the fuck is our money? Max knew all about the money stashed here, he was supposed to grab the cash and the old lady’s jewellery; he told us it was here, millions stashed in this house, now where is it? Don’t fuck with me, missy, I’ve got no problem blowing this old bitch the fuck away, you understand me? Just fucking hand it over and we’re gone, done, out of your lives; don’t you get that?”
“We don’t have anything, don’t you get that?” flared Georgy, “What, you think we all sit around at night like the fucking king in his counting house counting piles of money and gloating? This isn’t some stupid crime caper movie, no-one keeps that kind of money in their houses, that’s what banks are for, why can’t you understand that?”
Max! These were his accomplices, shit, that oily little butt-weasel, if I came out of this alive I was going to dig that bastard out of his cell and fuck him with a fire extinguisher!
The sound of a slap made my blood boil; that bastard had just hit my Georgy! My vision tunnelled as the rage threatened to overwhelm me, and I had to bite my lip, hard, letting the pain take me and prevent me from charging down there and just kicking the fuck out of that animal. It took all my willpower to hold myself back, to remember the lessons drilled into me in the sandbox; that an angry man is a careless man and I couldn’t afford to endanger my family any more than they already were; my chance would come.
When the roaring in my head cleared, I realised he was speaking again.
“Max said there was a safe here somewhere, he was supposed to scope out the house, find the safe, get the keys or combination off the old lady and ‘phhtt!’ gone, that was all, no-one was supposed to get hurt; he got greedy, all of this, all this stuff here, it went to his head and he wanted it all; I swear, no-one was supposed to be hurt, especially not an old lady, but he fucked up and now we’re here. Just give us the money, the old woman’s jewellery and we’ll be gone, no-one wants to hurt you…”
I knew that was a lie, it had to be; Georgy and Aunt Kay could identify them, they couldn’t afford to leave any witnesses alive. As long as they believed the money was here, Georgy was safe; if for one second they thought otherwise, it was curtains for her and Aunt Kay.
I lay silently at the top of the stairs as the roaring fury in my head subsided and my training came seeping back in, cooling me down, talking to me. I was a soldier first and foremost, one of Her Majesty’s officers, trained to plan, infiltrate, fight and kill, to eliminate my sovereign’s enemies, and survive to continue fighting, I’d survived four tours in that hell-hole, I’d literally fought hand to hand with Jihadists and Taliban insurgents, against kill-crazy religious maniacs and fanatics who were doing their damnedest to kill me and didn’t care if they died trying and I was still here, all of that came back to me and suddenly I knew what to do.
Easing back from the lip of the stairs, I picked my way back along the corridor, instinctively avoiding all the squeaky or warped ancient floorboards I knew well from my teen years of sneaking in and out of my room, and made my way to the far end of the corridor and back into the concealed landing. The man I’d clobbered was starting to stir so he got a steel toe-cap on the point of his smashed chin, he got a brief look of agony on his face then his eyes rolled up and he was out again.
I took the stairs two at a time up to the top landing and carefully eased into the attic, scoping out the place for any sign of intruders, anyone who might be up there searching for the mythical safe they were convinced was in the house.
The original medieval moated manor house that once stood on the site had been remodelled and rebuilt in the shape of an upper-case ‘E’, back in Elizabethan times, and the three servant’s staircases served each branch of the ‘E’; the staircase I’d just used led down to the old scullery in the top arm of the ‘E’, the one in the middle served the middle branch, where the main portico, the old salon, and the linen presses were, and the third staircase led down to the old laundry in the bottom of the ‘E’, which dad had used as a workshop when he tinkered with stuff or repaired Georgy’s riding tack.