Close Protection

Chapter 24 Milosh

24 MILOSH

Teddy lets out another howl of pain as I slam my fist into his jaw for the tenth time.

Since tying him to an old wooden chair in George’s study, I’ve broken his nose, his wrists and all his fingers. He’s passed out twice already from the pain but now he’s come around again, I’m working on rearranging his jaw.

I’ll leave his knees for Henry.

I’m considerate like that.

‘Please, stop,’ Teddy sobs, spluttering blood onto the hardwood floor.

‘You chose to hurt Daphne,’ I state, my voice void of emotion. ‘Now I choose to hurt you.’

‘I didn’t want to!’ he wails.

‘Hey, Ted,’ I cut in. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself. Stop it.’

I know I need to keep him conscious until we question him but his face is just so punchable I strike him again. After hearing that delightful crunch I gain some much needed restraint and step back, letting him catch his breath just as Henry walks in.

‘You got started without me I see.’ He smiles when he notes the state of Mr Build-A-Bear. Teddy’s face pales several shades when he looks up with his one unswollen eye to see the look on Henry’s face.

‘Henr—’

‘No.’ Henry stops Teddy abruptly, walking over to him and bending down until they’re eye to eye. ‘There are certain people that you just don’t wanna piss off, Teddy. Yet you’ve managed to piss off all of them. It’s actually quite impressive, really.’ Teddy’s stopped crying now, but when the cold unnerving smile passes over Henry’s face again, Teddy’s lip starts quivering, prompting an automatic eye-roll from me.

‘Now, lucky for you, Milosh has self-control and has shown you grace.’ Henry stands up, treading on Teddy’s shot foot. Even though it’s been wrapped so he doesn’t bleed out, he shrieks at the increased pain and it’s music to my ears.

‘But Milosh works for the military,’ Henry continues, ‘so he has to show some level of restraint. I, on the other hand, don’t.’ Henry snarls, that cocky accent thickening. ‘Now normally, if someone touches my wife, they lose their hands. But you? You didn’t do that.’ His voice is eerily calm.

‘You hurt her. You knocked my wife unconscious. Then you shot Daphne. But not only did you shoot Daphne, you beat her up. That girl now has marks and bruises all over her body because of you . My wife may have a concussion because of you . You know what that means, Teddy?’ He walks away, coming to stand next to me.

‘Not only have you got to deal with Mr In-denial-about-his-feelings over here.’ Dick . ‘You also have to deal with me. And you hurt my wife.’ He chuckles, shaking his head. ‘You’re as thick as they come, Teddy. Really just remarkably stupid.’

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Teddy grits out.

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ted,’ I say. ‘You’ve always got a choice.’

The door opens and George storms in. ‘Oh, good, he’s awake.’ When I went to check on Daphne, George went to search Teddy’s things to see if there was anything to lead us to the truth, but from the look on his face he’s clearly been unsuccessful.

Apparently, all Teddy needed was a gun, audacity and stupidity to get him through the day.

‘You ready to start?’ I ask. I just want to get this questioning over so I can go check on Daphne again. The thought of her sitting there in pain from all those injuries brings a new wave of rage crashing over me.

‘Teddy, tell us the truth. Why did you do this?’ George asks. His tone is measured and neutral, but his eyes tell a different story. Where me and Henry feel anger, George feels hurt. A boy he considered a son just attacked his only child with no explanation.

‘M-most of my story was true, George,’ he stutters. ‘I came home and my house was ransacked. There were two men who knocked me out then woke me up with ice water.’ He stops to cough, wheezing in pain before continuing. ‘The only difference was they instructed me to complete a task… by giving me a riddle… and a gun.’ He’s still sniffling, snot and blood running down his face. He looks like the mess that he is.

‘They told me that I needed to complete the r-riddle and give them the item it mentioned within two days.’

‘Or what?’ Henry queries.

He hesitates for a moment. ‘Or they’d send an anonymous tip to the police, telling them about the under-the-table deals my parents made with several judges to keep my name clear.’

‘Keep your name clear of what?’ George asks.

‘Drunk driving, assault, battery. I-I don’t know, there were a lot of incidents.’

‘I see.’ Anguish swims in George’s eyes as he walks slowly to his desk to sit down.

‘What was the riddle, Ted?’ I ask, to get us back on track.

‘They told me to find what’s close to her heart. I didn’t know what that meant so I thought I’d come here and look around George’s stuff once everyone had gone to sleep. But when Daphne was lying down on my bed her necklace fell out and landed right on top of her heart, making me think that could be it.’

‘Wait,’ I interject, my blood running cold. ‘What was Daphne doing lying on your bed?’

‘W-w-well,’ Teddy stutters, ‘we were talking and I suggested we had a repeat of something we did a few years ago.’

‘And what was it that you did a few years ago, Ted? That would require her to be on your bed?’ I grit out, slowly but very surely losing any restraint I have.

‘We kissed,’ he says quietly. ‘On a sofa,’ he adds quickly. ‘Nothing happened a few years ago other than that, it was just this time that I suggested we…’ he trails off.

‘We what?’ Henry probes.

‘We m-move on to something a little more adult,’ he practically whispers.

George closes his eyes and takes a few deep breaths. ‘Did you force yourself on my daughter, Theodore?’

‘No! No, of course not, George. I may have… prompted her. But I never pushed.’

‘See, now why don’t I believe you, Ted?’ I push off the wall I’m leaning against and stalk over to him. ‘I’m only gonna ask you this once more.’ I drop to my haunches. ‘How did she end up on your bed?’ I can hear my Balkan accent thicken as I try to remain as calm as possible.

‘I flipped her onto the bed, but nothing happened, I promise.’

‘Your promises mean very little to me, Teddy,’ I state.

His breathing picks up and he looks a second away from losing the last shred of his composure.

‘Calm down, I’m not gonna kill you,’ I state coolly. ‘I’m just gonna take you through a death-like event.’

Teddy’s eyes widen in horror, while Henry laughs behind me.

‘A what?’

‘Here, let me show you.’

‘Please, don’t. I don’t think my body can take it any more.’ The expression in his unswollen eye is panicked and he’s shaking.

‘That seems like a you problem, Ted.’ I retrieve the knife from my back pocket and stab it into his thigh. I purposely miss any arteries and blood vessels because he needs to finish answering the questions, but it does bring a flood of satisfaction when he cries out in pain. I leave the knife in his leg and stand, walking away.

‘And who was all that for, again?’ Henry chirps at me, his eyes bright with glee.

‘I have zero problem stabbing that smirk off your face,’ I warn him.

‘Right, right, right, right,’ Henry nods before muttering, ‘because that answered my question.’

‘All right, let’s get back to tonight,’ George says as he stands up and comes round his desk. ‘You saw a necklace on Daphne’s neck?’

‘Yes,’ Teddy says between whimpers. ‘It triggered the riddle in my head but I went to check your room as well to make sure there wasn’t a clue in there. When I couldn’t find anything and Daphne told me the necklace used to be Elizabeth’s, I knew that had to be it.’

‘Elizabeth’s necklace?’ George questions. ‘Daphne was wearing Elizabeth’s necklace?’

‘Yeah, she was. I recognized it when I was checking her injuries,’ Henry confirms.

That explains why I recognized that necklace in the pool. Every picture I got shown of Daphne’s mother before I came here had her wearing that necklace. It’s the same in the few remaining photos of her that are dotted around the house.

‘She told me she lost it.’

‘Well, she lied. I’m guessing she learned that from you,’ I respond, taking the necklace out of my pocket and handing it to him. He stares at it for a moment, unmoving, but as if someone pressed Play , all at once he comes to life again, grabbing the necklace from my outstretched hand.

‘So what exactly was your plan, Teddy?’ Henry asks. ‘You thought you’d rip off the necklace and go on your merry way?’

‘I thought if I could get it off her neck I could jump the back fence and bring it back to my apartment where they told me to leave it.’ He moves ever so slightly but with the knife still in his thigh he lets out a grunt of pain, his lip quivering. ‘I promise you, I didn’t want to hurt Daphne, but she just wouldn’t give the necklace up.’

‘Oh, so now you’re telling me this is Daphne’s fault?’ George snaps.

‘No! N-no. It’s completely mine, it’s jus—’ He doesn’t get to complete that sentence because Henry rips the knife out of his thigh, dropping it to the floor.

‘We’re done with questioning him, yeah?’ He looks to me and George, and once George shrugs and I nod, he smiles sadistically.

‘Good.’ He starts pummelling Teddy. Blow after blow. Until Teddy passes out a third time from the pain.

‘That’s enough for now.’ Henry sighs, backing away. ‘What are we gonna do with him?’

I whip my phone out and shoot off a quick text to Davis. ‘Major Davis is gonna want to question him, so some people are going to come and take him, then I don’t know what will happen to him. Most likely he’ll get cleaned up, face the consequences of those charges he admitted to and go to jail. On top of conspiring, he’ll be in there for a while.’

‘So I can’t kill him?’ Henry gapes.

‘No.’

‘Well, that’s wildly irritating.’ He looks back at Teddy and throws one last punch. ‘That’ll just have to do, I guess.’

‘Do you know anything about this riddle?’ I ask George, refocusing.

‘Yes,’ he whispers, looking at me. ‘It was taken from the book that was stolen from my office.’

‘Your journal?’

‘Malcolm, my old lab assistant at MI6, was the only one who knew what I’d made. He told me not to tell anyone about it, and to destroy all evidence. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of all of my hard work, though, so I hid the formula for the toxin along with the antidote – yes, I pretty much had the formula memorized, but it was good to have a backup, just in case. He told me not to tell him where I hid it, but to hide the location in a riddle so it couldn’t be easily deciphered.’

‘And where did you put the formula?’

He looks at me wearily, then over to Teddy who’s so far passed out, I contemplate checking his pulse.

‘In my late wife’s necklace. She never used to take it off, so when she was sleeping I removed the pictures of Daphne and her and wrote the toxin formula down on one side and the antidote on the other before putting them back. It was stupid, but it worked. No one would ever look behind the pictures or even suspect she had the formulas, not even her.’

‘So Daph’s been walking around with the toxin and antidote formulas around her neck for years?’ Henry questions.

‘Yes.’ George nods. ‘She wasn’t to know, but yes.’ He caresses the necklace for a moment before walking towards the door.

‘George, that’s evidence,’ I say. ‘I need to hand it in.’

‘No.’

‘George, the longer that stays in your possession, the longer you put Daphne and yourself in danger.’ Right now this deal with the task force is mutually beneficial: he gets protection for his daughter and the task force gets access to his house. But George can request I leave at any time. It would be ridiculously stupid but sometimes George isn’t the most critical thinker. I can’t take the necklace by force, but I know George won’t give it to me either.

‘No, it won’t be safe with your team,’ he decides, opening the study door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To hide it.’ He turns to look at me. ‘To hide it somewhere no one will ever find it.’