London Wild (67 page)

She turned back to face Sult with the half smile of someone who is unsure of what they are about to suggest. ‘Maybe we should go and join him.’

Sult didn’t give Judith a chance to change her mind. Instead he walked across to where he had left the now sodden envelope filled with the counterfeit notes and then, having collected it, he began the short trek to the rear of the truck. Judith followed. She felt a little as if she was being led, despite the fact that it had been her suggestion that they should go. She tried not to think about the small detail of the dead body they were headed towards, but she couldn’t help wondering if there might be more in the truck itself.

‘So what happened
?’ she said. It gave her an excuse to look at Sult rather than the corpse, and his story might help take her mind off where they were going.

Sult never broke his stride as he turned his head towards her for a moment, then looked back to where they were going and started to talk. ‘Everything was going according to plan. I was sitting over there.’ He pointed to a rock that seemed to be of an ideal sitting height, located just beyond where the truck was now parked. ‘And I waited until the truck came into sight. And I waved to the driver in much the same way as I waved to you just now.’

Judith followed where his arm was pointing to the rock. She did her best to ignore that the body was in her line of vision as she did so. She was the odd one out here. The sight of corpses upset her, whereas both Joseph and Sult were probably old hands at finding bodies of one type or another. She would just have to grin and bear it.

They had already covered nearly half the distance to the truck
as he continued, ‘Well, I went up to the driver (Johnson, I think his name was) and began to talk to him about our agreement and to ask him to let Amba go. Almost immediately we could hear noises in the back of the truck. We weren’t sure what the noises were, but it sounded as if there was fighting going on; perhaps one of the prisoners had broken loose or something. Anyway, we had to open the rear doors to conduct our transaction anyway, and we would find out what was going on then. So we went to the back of the truck.’

At this moment Joseph’s head appeared at the rear of the truck and looked straight at them. He yelled at them, his voice garbled a little as if by tears. ‘What the hell has happened here? There are three dead guards
, and Amba is barely breathing.’ Then, without waiting for an answer, his head disappeared back into the rear of the truck.

Sult sped up the pace at that moment. Judith had to run to catch him at the new speed. It wasn’t that much further to the back of the truck, but there was enough time for Sult to finish his story. ‘As we reached the rear doors of the truck, they were suddenly flung open, broken from the inside
, and a cat carrying another over her shoulder rushed out, moving faster than I would have thought possible. She killed Johnson in one blow, and I think she would have killed me too if I hadn’t turned and ran. I’ve little doubt she could’ve caught me if she’d really wanted to, though. Seriously, I’ve never seen someone move that quickly. Just what have the cats discovered? What are they capable of? I think I’m lucky to be alive!’

‘You’re sure it was a cat?’ Judith asked as they reached the truck.

‘She looked like a cat. And other than the guards, there was no one else in the truck,’ Sult replied placidly. ‘It must’ve been a cat.’

‘You’d think she’d have rescued or at least released the others in the truck,’ Judith suggested. Her eyes had found the body of Johnson again, so much easier now
that they were virtually standing over him. She would have to do something about it.

‘I don’t know,’ Sult told her. ‘She may have had a good reason for rescuing just the one she did. Perhaps that was all she wanted
. Most of those in the truck were domesticated, and generally speaking, the wild cats don’t get on too well with those that are domesticated.’

Judith gritted her teeth and knelt down then where the body of the driver had fallen. Of the three of them
, she felt she had the least experience with death, and yet this task seemed to be being left to her. Joseph had ignored him, and Sult didn’t seem to be willing to do anything either. ‘We need a sheet or something to cover him with.’

Sult nodded and took off his jacket
. He emptied the pockets of the few small items it contained and then said, ‘Here you go, use this,’ as he handed it to her. Then, after quickly finding new homes for the items he had salvaged, he swung himself into the back of the truck, leaving the task of actually covering the body to Judith.

Judith joined the other two in the back of the truck no more than a few seconds later, her grisly task done.

Sult was over by one of the guards, checking for a pulse and looking a little upset when he failed to find one. Joseph was kneeling by the seat that Amba occupied, and there were tears in his eyes as he tried to tend to her.

Sult lifted the body of the dead guard on his shoulders and carried him to the rear of the truck
, where he stopped just long enough to speak to Judith. For once, his voice filled with emotion. ‘His name was Fredrick Hughes, Guardsman Hughes. He was probably my best friend, outside of the band. I talked him into helping us; it’s my fault he’s dead.’ Then without waiting for a reply, he carried the body off the truck and placed him next to where Johnson lay.

Judith had wanted to assure him that it wasn’t his fault that his friend had offered to help them out of his own free will, but she couldn’t find the right words
, and she didn’t really know what pressure, if any, Sult had brought to bear on his friend to influence his decision.

She looked about her
, lost. There was a third corpse she could help Sult with, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to handle him. There was just something spooky about the way the body lay there crumpled on the floor of the truck with his eyes open, staring back at her, and his head hanging at a very weird angle as if the neck no longer had enough rigidity to support it.

Sult was back on board a moment or two later and took the problem away for her, throwing the body over his shoulder as he had with the body of Hughes. Then
, staggering just a little under the extra weight, he carried the last of the three guards off the truck.

Judith felt a little spooked by the experience, the way the dead guard’s eyes
had seemed to be fixed on her as Sult walked past her. A shiver went down her spine. How could anyone ever get used to this sort of thing?

‘Judith,’ Joseph called, the anxiety plain in his voice, ‘can you ask Sult if he knows how to unlock these things
? I don’t see anywhere to insert a key. They could be D.N.A. sensitive, in which case I have no idea how we’ll get them open. They may be keyed to someone at their intended destination and not one of the guards.’

Sult returned to the truck’s interior a minute later
, and Judith relayed the problem to him almost word for word.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied in a stern yet friendly tone. Any hint that Sult had ever been bothered by the event that had taken place here that morning
was long since gone. He walked to the nearest of the prisoners, the one who had been added to take the place of Amba and by which name she was insistent on being called, and he examined the manacles holding her arms to the side of the chair. There was nowhere to insert a key, no series of buttons for a combination lock, and no pressure pad for a thumbprint or D.N.A. check.

‘I think these are inertia manacles,’ he said
as he opened this fake Amba’s for her. Then he looked across to where Joseph was kneeling by the real Amba’s side. ‘Did you not try to just open them?’

‘Inertia?’ Judith asked questioningly. She seemed more than a little surprised at how easily Sult
had released the prisoner.

‘It’s a simple idea. Anyone can open these things, but the pressure has to be applied from the outside. If the manacles feel pressure from the inside they lock all the tighter
, making it virtually impossible to escape from them unless you have at least one free hand. They’re considered ideal for this sort of transportation.’

Sult then looked around at the empty seat that was positioned directly opposite where the fake Amba was.

Judith saw what he was looking at. The manacles that had sat on the arms of that chair had been torn out of their housings, and though the torso brace appeared to be in one piece, the manacles that had held this prisoner’s legs in place had suffered the same fate as those that had held the arms. This prisoner had somehow snapped the manacles from the inside.

‘But not totally impossible,’ said a voice, echoing her thoughts at the sight of the damage. Up until now the prisoners had been sitting quietly. Now it was one of these that had spoken.

‘Not totally,’ Sult agreed. He looked towards the voice, and again Judith found herself following his eyes to the speaker. She was sitting next to Joseph’s wife Amba.

‘She needs a doctor,’ Joseph said insistently
.

‘Yes,’ Judith agreed, still feeling a little helpless. She wanted to take Amba and get away as quickly as she could. They had what they had come for
; why were they still hanging around? Sounding calmer than she felt, she said, ‘But I can’t see that happening. As soon as we take her to a hospital they’ll either just kill her or hand her back over to the authorities.’

‘We could kidnap a doctor,’ Joseph suggested
. There was only a little bit of hope in his voice.

‘Not a chance
,’ Judith replied emphatically. ‘I’ll help you with this, but I won’t be a party to anything like that.’

Joseph, having freed his wife of her chains, now lifted her free of the chair and headed towards the back of the truck with her. ‘I think she’s broken a couple of ribs, maybe three. I don’t think it’s as bad as I originally feared
,’ he said to Judith as he passed her. Then he hovered at the edge of the truck. It was clear from his expression that he was scared to jump down whilst carrying his wife in case he did even more damage to her.

Judith, realizing that there was finally something she could do, hopped off the back of the truck and turned so that Joseph could pass Amba to her. She did her best to ignore the three guards who lay together now. Sult’s jacket had been stretched as much as possible to cover the faces of two of them, but it didn’t quite reach the third.

Joseph then jumped down and took Amba back, carrying her carefully in his arms over to the car. As he walked, he looked similar to a husband carrying his wife across the threshold, but the car was parked a fair walk away.

Joseph’s demeanor did nothing to lighten the spirit of the day as they made the short trip to the car. He had acted all day as if there was some sort of a cloud hanging over his head
, but now that his worst fears seemed to be on the edge of coming to fruition, all his attention was centered about his wife. He may not even have noticed that Judith walked in step alongside him as they made their way to the car. It was certain that not a word passed between the two of them.

Again, with his wife in his arms, Joseph would have had a hard time opening the car’s rear door if Judith hadn’t been present to help. He laid her lovingly along the back seat and tucked her legs in gently so they could close the door again. Once they were ready to leave they would have to ease her into a sitting position so that all four of them could fit in, but for now there was no reason not to let her relax as much as possible.

Judith turned to head back to the truck. Though she’d prefer for them to be leaving now, she wanted to see what had happened to Sult. She also had the idea that Joseph had also intended to go back there, perhaps to try and convince her and Sult to release the others. However, Joseph had instead opened one of the front doors of the car and had climbed in. He was now kneeling backwards on the passenger seat in the front of the car, his arms resting lightly on the headrest as he kept his eyes fixed on his wife.

He must’ve realized that Judith was looking at him, because without looking up at her he said, ‘Sult might need your
help. I can stay here and watch her. I want to be with her in case…in case something happens.’

Judith felt helpless
. She wanted to protest and stay with him, to comfort him and maybe to help make Amba more comfortable. Amba might be Joseph’s wife, but she was also Judith’s friend, and she too wanted to be there for Amba should she regain consciousness, or should the worst happen.

All in all
, it hasn’t been much of a successful day,
she thought to herself as she started to head back to the truck. It was true that they had obtained their key objective and rescued Joseph’s wife, but at what a cost! Three dead soldiers and Amba looking so ill she might not survive the night. Two or three cracked ribs, Joseph had said. That didn’t sound too bad for how bad she looked. But then Judith would have been the first to admit that she had no knowledge of medicine.

She had made maybe half the distance back to the truck when Sult appeared. He seemed to reach up and aid the descent of another cat. It wasn’t easy to tell in the rain, but Judith had the feeling that it was the same cat
who had spoken to them earlier.

Sult took fairly large strides
, forcing the cat he was with to almost have to run to keep up. At first he made a few hand gestures towards Judith, trying to get her to turn around and head back to the car, but Judith stood there and waited for him to reach her.