Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Chapter 6 - Then

No. 10 Downing Street

The three men sat around the table like bullets in a gun cylinder. Equal distance. Equal stature. Even their suits looked like they'd been stitched by the same tailor, albeit Eddie's was khaki green and adorned with military regalia. On the armchairs, they leaned back, spreading their weight so their shiny shoes - dangling about their crossed legs - were visible from where the Prime Minister's personal assistant stood at the door. She smiled curtly as she left, careful to close the door quietly.

'It was an inside job,' The Prime Minister said, stubbing the end of a cigarette butt into an apple shaped glass bowl on the chair arm. He left the smoking filter beside four others then rocked forward, pressing his palms flat to the polished mahogany veneer. It reflected the ruby flush of his cheeks and the hook of his nose that shadowed his cupid's bow on his upper lip.

'No one knew the casement of Fertility would be at Dover that day. It was on a leash tighter that my belt and this damn thing's pressing on my gut so tight, I can't even fart.'

The two others shared a glance, in no rush to speak. What was done was done. The Prime Minister reached for another cigarette, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his elbow, then slid the packet across the table.

'The attack was alarming,' Eddie, the dark haired one said, slowly, taking the packet from the Prime Minister. 'My wife has taken to drinking sherry before bed, just so she can sleep.'

'All our fears have come to the surface,' said the lighter haired one.

'I just can't work out who would be stupid enough to do it,' the Prime Minister said, inhaling deeply as the papery corners of his new cigarette flared and started to crisp. 'To attack a government casement, in transit for another government, in broad daylight...'

'But I thought all the evidence pointed towards the security guard whose body was found at the scene,' the lighter haired man said. 'He was the insider.'

'And his family. Were they not all there?' Eddie added, brushing a thicket of rough dark hair that fell to the middle of his forehead in thick blunt strands.

'They were just the rubbing rags,' the Prime Minister said. 'That security guard was skint - that's certainly motive - but who was he working for? There's no payment trail. No evidence that we can pin on him apart from the monthly salary he was paid, by you, Eddie.'

Eddie's frown depended into folds around his eyes and forehead.

'And that is perhaps what my wife needs the sherry for,' Eddie replied, smoothly.

'They want me to give in on foreign policy,' the Prime Minister said. 'I resisted then and I'll resist now. Whoever's behind this is not going to beat me over four dead border guards and a palette of Fertility. If anything I'll clamp down, lift the threat of attack level to imminent and close the borders quicker than you can say boo to a goose.'

'I was under the impression you already had done,' said the lighter haired man beside Eddie.

'That's temporary but I damn sure will.'

The two brothers were alike in posture, both upright now with their well-fed chests puffed and their hair brushed slightly to one side. Neither the dark or the lighter haired brother frowned though their tired eyes illuminated the scale of the predicament they now faced. There was no denying the severity. Innocents had died.

'Christopher, you need to calm down,' Eddie said to the Prime Minister, tapping a pen on his Marlborough packet. He'd overcome smoking in his twenties just like he'd survived the shrapnel that had lodged in his hip during a tour of the Gulf in his thirties. Though his eyes drifted to the packet on more than one occasion, he didn't lean out for them. 'I won't patronise you and tell you all the reasons why Dover was hit, but as a former marine, I'll tell you this, the ones who got away were not military trained, from here or any other country. Watching the surveillance footage back, it's clear they were novices; scared, erratic.'