Shrike (Book 2): Rampant (29 page)

Magda insists on joining us, and maybe I shouldn't let her, but I'm not going to tell her no. 

This is her life, and while she might not have a boot full of surveillance equipment or superpowers, she has every right to help if she wants. She's smart, deliberate, and capable, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave her at home.

Also, I can't stay by Taog's side, and I'm not going to let Magda out of my sight. 

We wait for three hours at a Falkirk McDonald's for Granger's white dot to leave the house, and then we move in. It's already dark, and for that I'm grateful, but even in broad daylight I think Gina Galbraith would be able to bug a house without anyone suspecting anything. She picks the lock on the front door in seconds, and within seven minutes, we're out again. I show her the folded photograph in the loft, and Gina's eyes linger for a moment on Andrew's face, grief tightening her cheeks and throat before she folds it again between gloved fingers and pushes it back where it was found. She knocks on the floor in several places around Granger's pile of bedding, and I remember the cubby holes at the Columbine flat in Edinburgh where Trevor found evidence hidden. Evidence that someone on the inside managed to destroy before it got combed through, but it seems Britannia has a few  tried and true ways of hiding things.

Funny how in a digital age, hard copies become safer and easier to destroy.

Magda looks at Granger's pallet like she wants to spit on it, and part of me wishes I could tell her to go ahead.

"It is strange seeing where she sleeps," is all Magda says.

I keep a close eye on the tracer app, and when Granger circles back toward the house, we're already two miles away in Gina's car, where she's got her laptop out and is pulling up the feeds from the cameras and microphones to make sure they're all in working order.

"What do we do now?" Magda asks. The air inside the car is warm, both from the heater and from three people breathing steam onto the inside of the windows. 

"We wait," Gina says. 

And wait we do. Evening becomes night before anything happens, and Magda has dozed off in the back seat of the car. I've been listening to Granger's footsteps pacing for the past hour, and the repetitive noise makes me want to break something.

A buzzing sound comes through Gina's computer, and she looks at me. "I think that's her phone."

She's right, because a moment later, Rosamund Granger's voice cracks into existence with an accusation. "You said you'd ring an hour ago."

Even my hearing can't pick up what the other person on the line says back to her, and I repress the urge to bounce my foot on the car floor. If I were hiding on the roof, I could hear. I'm better than a microphone. I almost tell Macy to drive me straight there, but chances are, Granger will be off the line before I could get into position.

"I'm not going to talk about this on the phone. I want to see my son. You said after the next one I could see him."

There's a silence, and I know Gina is thinking about Andrew. How it must sting knowing Andrew never earned that kind of desperate consideration from his mother. I watched her almost step over his body with barely a sigh.

"I'll be there in two hours." Granger's voice startles me, and I lock eyes with Gina.

I pull up the tracer app on my mobile. 

The white dot is moving.

twenty-eight

Granger must be in a car this time, as the white dot moves far faster than her feet could take her on pavement.

We follow as she turns north toward Bannockburn and Stirling. Two hours, she said. I'm not sure where exactly she's going, but if she's going north, she'll almost have to be heading toward Inverness. The only town I can think of that she'd reach around the two hour point would be Aviemore. 

Sure enough, Granger gets on the A9 heading toward Pitlochry, and we follow a few miles back, still tracking her. I wish we had a bug on her, that we could hear if she's making any phone calls from her car. As it is, we drive in silence, with Magda asleep in the back and Gina and I keeping our thoughts to ourselves. 

It's after midnight when I notice that Granger's turning off before Aviemore. I signal to Gina, who's navigating the curves of the road as if she's done it a thousand times. Maybe she has. 

I'm not familiar with the area at all, so when we see that Granger's turning off at what looks like a small pub just off the side of Loch Alvie, I tell Gina to go past and circle back. The last thing I want is Granger knowing she's being followed.

It makes me wonder if she's had any sense of me in the past week, any idea that I've been haunting her. In her space, outside her windows, watching her every movement. Gina doesn't seem to fault me for not turning Granger in, but I suppose of all people, she wouldn't. Britannia play a long game; Gina understands you have to do the same to beat a game like that. I'm not even sure we can.

Gina parks the car off the side of the road about a quarter mile from where Granger's white dot finally stops. Magda stirs in the back seat. 

"Where are we?" She asks, yawning. The moon is high and it silhouettes the Cairngorms around us, which are bathed in white. It's some of the first snow I've seen all winter.

"Aviemore, or thereabouts," I say. "You two stay here. I'm going to go see what Granger's up to."

"Take this," Gina says, handing me a small microphone. "I don't know if it'll actually pick anything up if you're having to eavesdrop from the other side of a wall, but you never know."

I take the tiny object and palm it.

Again I haven't got my Shrike outfit, but it doesn't much matter. I run up to the building, skirting outside of the lights to get an idea of what I'm looking at.

It's a small village pub that probably makes most of its money from folks skiing nearby, and from the state of the carpark in front, I'd say they're closed for the night already, or close to it.

Sneaking up to the window, I look in and see Granger. She's across the room, right by another window, though she's not facing the outside. There's a young man with her. Blond like she is, I squint at him through the steam that coats the inside of the glass in the cold. It has to be Edmund Granger. I look around to see if there's anyone else in evidence, but the pub seems to be devoid of occupants other than the two Grangers. Edmund reaches across the table and takes his mother's hand, and I use that moment to hurry to their window, keeping low beneath it. There's a bush here, but winter has stolen away its leaves, and it provides me no coverage from any passers-by. Good thing we're in the middle of nowhere and it's after midnight.

"He said I'd be done once I got them all rounded up," Rosamund says. I risk a glance through the window, but pull back immediately when I see that Edmund is gazing sadly over his mother's shoulder. I pull out the microphone Gina gave me and position it on the sill next to the glass, as physically close to the two Grangers as I can.

"I know, Mum," Edmund says. "But you're lucky he let me see you tonight. He wants to be sure."

"It is sure. It's only days away. He'll get his little war, Scotland will take the fall, and England will do what she needs to do. I'm done. I want to take you home with me."

"We haven't got a home anymore, Mum." 

It's strange, this conversation. From the look of it, Edmund Granger is in his mid-twenties at least. It gives me a chill to realise that he's truly been raised in Britannia's world, that they are not so much a political organisation as a terrorist cult, and he cut his teeth on their insanity. He's older than most kids would be to consider still living at home, but it seems Rosamund is determined to build a nest and fill it with feathers for her remaining child.

Of course, the strangest thing about the conversation is the whole war bit. I will them to say more about it, but Rosamund is answering Edmund.

"We'll build a new home. We can go anywhere; your uncle made sure of that."

"After all this time, you'd just leave them?"

By them, I can only assume Edmund means Britannia, and Rosamund seems to confirm that.

"The cost is too high to stay. And we won't want to be here for what comes next."

"I know. I've heard. After York, everyone's going to have to lay low for a while."

York. He says it like it isn't anything, but every sense I have focuses on the slightly-muffled voice coming through the window. I say a spiteful thank you to Edmund Frost for his serum that allows me to hear this. It'd be a pity if it only got put to use listening to my neighbours shag.

There's a long pause, and I hear a sniff that makes me wish I could peek over the windowsill again, because if I didn't know any better, I'd say Rosamund Granger is crying.

Or Edmund is, but I really couldn't tell.

"Funny," she says after a moment, and there's no hint of tears in her voice. "After all this time, you'd think I'd feel some sort of excitement that it's finally going to happen. That we'll finally get to see this dratted country put in its place and take the first steps to showing that the empire hasn't crumbled to dust."

Hilarious. And this is just the kind of crazy talking that intrigues me from Granger, hearing her speak so definitively about things that make very little sense to me subjectively, but objectively either. Not for the first time, I wonder what she actually ever hoped to accomplish. What do the members of Britannia actually want? Had they put their efforts into simply attaining wealth or influence, they could have done that. What is it that makes them so sure hurting people will achieve anything at all? And what is the obsession with the dead-and-buried British empire?

Then again, someone got hundreds of people to drink poisoned Kool-Aid because they believed wholeheartedly it would take them to the rainbow clouds of heaven. Is Granger any crazier than that? Maybe when all this is over, I'll go back to uni and study cult mentality.

"It's hard to taste triumph when the people you love aren't there to share it with you," Edmund says, and I shiver at the truth in his words. "Andrew. Uncle Edmund. They would be proud."

Rosamund scoffs. "My brother would be proud. Andrew? He'd be cowering."

There's a moment of silence again, and I wonder if this Edmund just doesn't want to gainsay his mother. 

They talk for a while longer, but they don't say anything of interest. My mobile buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to see a text from Gina.

Car approaching. 

I turn, and sure enough, twin lights head toward me on the road. If I stay here and they happen to be pulling in, they'll see me. I bolt for the opposite side of the pub, and on a whim leap into the branches of a large oak tree just as the car indeed turns into the pub's car park. I have a full view from my perch

No one gets out, but after a moment, both Rosamund and Edmund Granger exit through the front door. Rosamund gives a jerky nod at the car. 

"I'm surprised he didn't send anyone with you," she says to Edmund. 

"He didn't need to," Edmund says dryly. Then he pulls back his jacket to show two thin rows of wires that run down either side of his chest. I hear Rosamund's angry curse, and she wheels on the car. A red light flashes on Edmund's chest. 

"Mum, stop!"

I'm frozen in my tree, wondering if I'm about to see another Granger or two die in front of me. 

"Mum, I'm sorry," Edmund says. "He told me not to tell you unless you mentioned it. There's a tracker in the wiring. If you'd tried to take me anywhere outside of a hundred yards from here, they'd detonate it."

I don't know what I'd do if I were Granger. Maybe exactly what she does. She takes five steps toward the pub and punches one of her fists through a pane in the window, shattering it. Glass falls to the cold ground, and even from here I can see dark blood on her knuckles.

Without another word, she spins and walks to her car, gets in it, and drives away.

Edmund gets in the passenger side of the car that's just arrived. I type the number plate information into my mobile just in case, and I almost miss it when the driver turns and the dome light above his head illuminates his face.

Of course it's John Abbey.

He says something I can't hear, then puts the car in reverse and backs out. 

We may now have the name of a place Britannia plans to attack — York — and a date, but that's far from anything useful. Last time I had such vague information, Trevor had bomb squads comb all of Scottish parliament and found nothing. There's no way they can evacuate the entire city, and they wouldn't on a simple maybe.

I get back to Gina's car. They tell me they only heard bits and pieces through the microphone, so I fill them in. At least there's a partial recording, even if it's shite.

I wish I could feel some sort of vindication having seen John Abbey's face. Instead I feel nothing, only a void of answers and alternatives. 

The drive back to Edinburgh seems to take longer.