Butcher turned to see that a pair of casually-dressed men had approached him from behind, boxing him in against Malik. Of course, for all their size and intimidating jawlines, they weren’t orcs and Butcher already knew he could take on an orc if push came to shove, so he turned back to Malik. It made sense to play along, for now. It wouldn’t do to get up the Old Bill’s nose at this point.

‘How can I help you, DC Malik?’ asked Butcher, ignoring the pistol.

‘You can help me by coming along quietly, Major Evans,’ replied the detective. ‘Or should I call you “Butcher”? Apparently you’re wanted in connection with an allegation of murder.’

‘Pretty sure that’s out of your jurisdiction, Saad,’ said Butcher, feeling the mooks behind him getting closer.

A car pulled up behind Malik, who turned and opened the rear door. It was a nondescript silver Mitsubishi SUV four wheel drive, and the men behind him bundled him in. There was another no-neck in a tracksuit inside and one of the brothers grim from behind him clambered in after him, pinning him in the middle, as Malik got into the front passenger seat and the car pulled away.

Butcher felt the situation seem to slow down before his eyes, while his brain kept working at the same speed. Was this the nanoids helping out again? What skill was this supposed to be?

But he didn’t have time to think about that. Malik hadn’t arrested him for possession of firearms, which was odd. And to break into his car he would’ve had to have probable cause. Even if there were an Interpol arrest warrant out for him, that wouldn’t be enough to justify a break-in and, if Malik had found himself a search warrant for the car he would still have been obliged to have Butcher there to observe the search. So the pistol wasn’t evidence.

And although Malik was in a different sharp suit to the one he’d been wearing when he and Butcher had last met, the others weren’t so well dressed. The one on his right was in jeans and a jacket, which was borderline acceptable for CID, these days. The one on his left was in a tracksuit and white trainers and that definitely wasn’t. And he didn’t know any police force in Britain that ran Mitsubishis as pursuit vehicles.

And that was definitely a neck tattoo poking out of the driver’s collar.

So Malik was dirty and this wasn’t an arrest.

And the pistol wasn’t evidence. It was a murder weapon.

‘I’m surprised your guv’nor let you come and get me on your own, Saad,’ said Butcher. ‘Isn’t Detective Constable a bit of a junior rank to be taking the collar on an international violent criminal?’

Malik didn’t even turn to look at him, which confirmed his suspicion. Malik was the trigger man. The others were just paid muscle. If Malik was smart, Butcher thought, he’d be seeing this as a double-whammy of an opportunity - killing Butcher for whoever was lining his pockets, and taking down a dangerous fugitive who was tragically killed with his own weapon in the struggle. But on the other hand, Butcher was never supposed to be caught. If Ball had followed through on his promises, and Nathan had done his part with the Det, there would be questions to ask if a body turned up that might be Andy Evans, but with the wrong fingerprints and the wrong face. Perhaps it would be easier if he were just… disappeared. Mind you, in either scenario Butcher was just as dead, so it was ultimately academic.

He called up his stats for a quick check.

STR

CON

DEX

INT

WIS

SPI

6(7)

8(9)

6(7)

6(7)

5(6)

6(7)

Athlete 3, Bluff 3, Drive 2, Endurance 3, Hard To Kill, Investigation 3, Martial Arts 3, Pain Resistance 2, Weapon Handling 4

Duty

Feat of Strength 1, Insight 1

Was it his imagination or were the stat boosts from Duty greyed out?

Yep, definitely greyed out. Which suggested that whatever it was in his head that told the nanoids whether he was getting the boost was, right now, telling them that he wasn’t going about his duty. Which just seemed unfair to him. He felt like there ought to be a higher power to whom he could appeal such arbitrary decisions. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be on duty. He had been forcibly diverted and wanted to get back to it. Did that not count as being on duty?

Apparently not, he thought, noting no change in the greyed out stats.

There was no attempt by the men to conceal where they were going and the car drove through a “Port of Liverpool” barrier checkpoint at the docks with nothing more than a nod to Malik from the guy at the gate. The car pulled past a dismal block and into an area filled with shipping containers, piled on top of each other in towering batches, stacked up in their hundreds.

It looked like a very good place to hide a body. Butcher elected to play the innocent.

‘This doesn’t look like the station, Saad,’ he said, glancing at the men on either side of him. They were each looking at him. Neither wore a seat-belt. ‘Am I even under arrest?’

Malik wasn’t wearing a seat-belt, either, he noticed.

He could’ve really done with that extra point in STR, right now. But, he figured, if he abused the Feat of Strength one more time it would give him STR 7. And that Hard to Kill skill was something he hadn’t really taken out for a test, yet. And, shit, Martial Arts 3 had to count for something, right?

He took a deep breath as the car turned towards the container park.

He flung out his arms as hard as he could, driving the backs of both fists into the noses of the gorillas either side of him. They recoiled almost identically and he could feel their hands grabbing at him, but it had already given him the space he had needed to get both of his knees up to drive his feet into the back of the driver’s seat in what he was desperately hoping would count as a Feat of Strength. Whether it did or not, he couldn’t tell for sure but the effect was what he was looking for. The seat broke off its rails and the driver’s face and chest was suddenly thrust hard into the steering wheel.

The gorillas were grappling him and Malik had turned in his seat to shout, but before he could speak the car ploughed into the base of the massive stack of containers.

Gorillas one and two were immediately hurled forward into the seats in front of them. The one on Butcher’s right went further, because the driver’s seat was already pushed forward and down, and his whole body wedged into the space and Butcher thought he heard the guy’s head impact the windscreen but, at the same time, Malik was hurled into the airbag exploding out of the dashboard. Had he been facing forwards, it would’ve been no more than a painful blow to the face and maybe a spot of whiplash but, twisted in his seat and with no belt on, it was a brutal one-two as the impact threw him one way and the air-bag threw him back the other, meeting gorilla number two as he returned. Malik shrieked in pain.

Butcher felt his left knee go as he braced himself against the impact with the feet he had pressed up against the driver’s chair and he found himself tumbling over the handbrake, the gear stick smacking him in the chest. But by happy chance he could see his pistol, tumbled from Malik’s pocket, in the footwell of the injured DC and he snatched it up, pushing himself back.

Gorilla number two was already grabbing at him, and Butcher thrust the pistol into his face with a snarl.

‘Get the fuck out of my way, you cunt!’

The gorilla backed off as well as he could, pushing the door open behind him and tumbling out onto the tarmac. Butcher scrambled out after him, leaving Malik to scream behind him and with no idea of the condition of the other two. And as he stood up, he swung one foot as hard as he could into the side of the gorilla’s head and the guy went down - dazed or dead, Butcher didn’t have a clue and didn’t have the time or energy to care.

He stuffed the pistol away into one pocket and ran from the car towards the checkpoint.

As he did so, a woman appeared from a side office, running towards him.

‘Oh, thank god!’ cried Butcher as he saw her. ‘Help! Help! There’s been a car accident! Call an ambulance!’

The woman looked at him for a moment, confused.

‘Weren’t you in there?’ she asked him. She had a badge dangling on a lanyard around her neck with the name “Tiffany Rambling”.

‘Oh, god, no,’ he insisted, waving his hands and ignoring the agonizing waves of pain shooting up from his injured knee. He guessed he was overcoming the urge to limp only thanks to the Hard to Kill ability. ‘I was just passing when they came ploughing into the container! It was horrible!’

‘But who -?’ she began.

‘Are you going to call a bloody ambulance!?’ he yelled at her with all the sincerity Bluff 3 could muster.

‘Yes!’ she cried, fumbling for her smartphone as she passed him, heading towards the crash. ‘Yes, I am!’

Butcher ran on to the checkpoint, where a man in a security uniform was just stepping out.

‘Quick!’ shouted Butcher as he approached. There’s been an accident. Tiffany’s calling an ambulance but you’re going to need to make sure they can get in and go to the right place. Make sure the road is kept clear!’

‘Yes! Right!’ replied the man, stepping back into the booth and picking up a phone.

Butcher ran on towards the main road, pulling out his phone as he did so, and flicked to local services.

‘I need a taxi to the turning for Port of Liverpool just off the A565,’ he said when someone answered. ‘I’m just going into the centre. If someone gets here in the next five minutes, there’s a fifty quid tip in it.’

Butcher plopped down on the side of the road to wait and let the pain flood in. He didn’t scream, though.

*

By the time he was back at his car, after tipping the cabbie an extra fifty for ignoring his agonized whimpers from the back seat on top of the fifty he’d promised, the pain had subsided to merely agonizing. There was no way he was going to be able to drive a manual car in this condition, so he took a double dose of ibuprofen and collapsed across the back seat of the car.

Feat of Strength 2

Well, whoopie-do, he thought as he let the ibuprofen fog consume him.

*

It started to ease off a couple of hours later and he had enough wherewithal to extract his phone again and call Cook.

‘We have a problem,’ he said when she answered.

‘My whole life is problems, Butcher. What’s yours?’

‘How much do you know about me?’

‘I know your name’s not really Gregory Parsons,’ she replied. ‘Is that what you meant?’

‘Yes, well, a DC Saad Malik in Liverpool Constabulary knows my real name and that shouldn’t be possible,’ he told her. ‘The good news, though, is that he probably hasn’t got it from his superiors and probably hasn’t told them, either.’

‘I don’t like “probably”,’ said Cook. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘He and three others who were distinctly not police-type people just tried to kill me.’

‘This Malik’s definitely police, though?’

‘Definitely,’ agreed Butcher. ‘He was the case lead on Cally Cuttler. So someone told him who I am.’

‘Your real name is completely need-to-know, here,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t know it. As far as I’m aware, only James does. And he’s the last person who would sell you out to the police.’

‘Well, a job for you then, Miss Cook,’ said Butcher. ‘Your boss’s plans, not to mention his liberty, might be severely at risk if this gets out. See if you can work out where he got it from.’

‘Where’s Malik now?’

‘By now? I would hope he was at the hospital. I think I left him with severe spinal injuries.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I’ve got someone to meet in Birmingham,’ said Butcher. ‘For now, all you need to know is that I’ve found Cally Cuttler. She’s alive. But it’s complicated. If you can find out who’s behind Malik, I’ll tell you what I found out about Cally Cuttler. It’s definitely going to be something Ball will want to know about.’

‘I’m not sure that James thinks this is a tit-for-tat relationship, Butcher,’ said Cook, testily.

‘The dynamic of our professional relationship is complicated, Miss Cook,’ admitted Butcher, testing his injured knee and finding it still painful, but another couple of ibuprofen should take the edge off. Incredible, really. Two weeks ago and an injury like that would have meant a brace and two weeks on crutches at least. ‘But if Ball has any concerns, he knows where I am. And I really do think that this might be something he should hear himself. If he doesn’t even want you to know my real name, I suspect he might not want you to know what I’ve found out, either.’

‘Fine,’ she replied after a sigh. ‘I’ll let him know you’d like to talk.’

*

By the time Butcher reached the meet place with Emmy, there had still been nothing from Ball and he couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or a bad one. But he parked up, stepped out of the car and reviewed the Cornwell Hotel & Leisure Club.

Butcher had to admit to himself that twelve years in the Army had made him into a snob. Walking around the neglected industrial backstreets of Liverpool was one thing, but the only thing he could think of when he looked at the dismal brick-and-PVC exterior was that it looked like something built by the spoiled daughter of the chairman of a double-glazing company who had married a second-division footballer. But he also had to admit that it was simultaneously very public and reassuringly anonymous.

He checked the pistol in his coat pocket, both phones on the other side, straightened his tie and put on his best “salesman” face.

He didn’t really have the hair for it.

But as he pushed open the double doors, he immediately spotted Emmy rising from a seat in reception. For the first time he could remember, she was wearing something other than her yellow training top - light cargo pants in grey rip-stop and a fitted black leather jacket, with her dense curls tied up in a dark red bandana. Once she knew he’d clocked her, she sat down again.

‘I got you a danish,’ she told him, nodding at the paper bag in front of him as he sat down. ‘Would’ve got you a coffee but I didn’t know how long it’d take you to get here.’

‘Been waiting long?’ he asked, thinking how strange it was to be exchanging small talk with a paladin who had tried to kill him just a few days ago. He gratefully opened the bag, though. Apple. His favourite.

‘Couple of hours,’ she replied. ‘Thanks for the text, though. I’d’ve given up otherwise. What happened?’

‘Turns out that “trying to kill Butcher” is the latest look for the Spring season,’ he replied, taking a bite. ‘So I’m stuck between wishing I’d let you come with me and being glad that I didn’t, depending on how selfish I’m feeling at any given moment.’

She looked concerned.

‘Seriously?’

‘Very,’ he agreed. ‘And I’m not a hundred percent sure who or why this lot were after my head. But don’t sweat it. They’re dealt with for now, and I’ve got BRS chasing up the details.’ He pulled her phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table. ‘Yours, I think.’

She picked it up.

‘That’s it?’ she asked, picking it up.

‘Unlock code is all sevens,’ he told her and she punched it in, eyes raising in surprise when the phone unlocked. ‘You’ll need to re-set the fingerprint, but I’ve not messed with any of your data or taken anything off the phone.’

‘I thought you wanted to know where Ron might be,’ she said, cautiously, looking hard at him from beneath dark eyebrows.

‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘But I think the time for quid pro quo is up. If you’re going to help, it needs to be because you want to, not because you’re getting something out of it.’

‘Huh,’ she replied, putting the phone into the inside pocket of her jacket and sitting back. ‘Well, I quit the job at the gym and it’s a couple of weeks until my first pro bout so I guess I’m free.’

‘You’re going to fight pro? UFC?’

‘It made sense,’ she shrugged. ‘I’m moving to London, because that’s where the action is on the streets and in the gym. Paladins need a mission and I thought it made sense to go and take on some of the postcode gangs making my home a misery. Pro fighting’s a way to make some scratch and level up these fighting skills!’

She threw him a bicep flex, grinning, but then turned serious and pointed back at him.

‘But you’ve found Cally?’ she asked. ‘Alive?’

‘Yep,’ he nodded. ‘Alive and well and neck deep in some deeply weird shit that somehow manages to be all connected with… well, with this.’

He gestured over his head at where he judged his mark was going to be.

Butcher explained what he’d been doing for the last few days to Emmy in broadly chronological order and skipping the boring bits. Her attention perked up when he told her about seeing the mark over Ozzie’s head, all glitchy and strange. But when he got to the point where Ozzie killed the homeless person, she exclaimed:

‘He murdered someone!?’

‘Jesus, Emmy, tell the next building over, would you?’ growled Butcher, only half-joking. No one listened to anyone else in this sort of place - half the time, even when they were talking to each other - but words like “murder” had a way of attracting the attention, like when you hear your name mentioned on the other side of the room. ‘Yes, he killed whoever it was, but that was by some margin the least weird thing to happen last night, so you’re just going to need to restrain your utterances of disbelief or you’ll have no leeway left when I get to Cally.’

He skipped over telling her the location of the Undercroft. There was a gleam in her eye that he didn’t like much, and he could see this paladin fight-junkie busting into the place to break heads and grind levels if she ever found out where it was. But her mood changed when he heard Cally’s story.

‘Mother-fucker,’ she whispered when he explained what Gordon had been up to. He left out his experience in Sudan, skipping straight to Cally’s experience. ‘So whatever they did to her while she was out must have been what caused her to change into an elf. A fucking elf! This has got to be connected to Ron. Nothing he ever told me about Gordon made me think he was the whimsical sort to go around calling his super-soldiers after fantasy creatures.’

A pit opened suddenly in Butcher’s stomach as Emmy spoke.

...whatever they did to her while she was out must have been what caused her to change into an elf…

And they had done it to him, too. How long had it been? How long had it taken for Cally to go from human to elf? How long was it since he’d met Arnold in Sudan? Was he about to Change too?

‘Butcher?’ said Emmy, shaking his arm. ‘Hey. Earth to Butcher.’

He shook off the panic and looked back at her. There was only one person connected to both BRS and CTS who might know the answers, and that was Ron Cuttler.

‘OK, enough story time,’ he told her, brushing past her momentary concern and back to business. ‘You brought me here to tell me where I can find Ron. I’ve played fair by you, Emmy. I hope you can see I’m not Bluffing, here. So where’s Ron?’

Emmy sat back with a smile and pulled something from her pocket - a deck of cards, it looked like.

‘Ever heard of Magic the Gathering?’