The team was shocked into complete silence by the villainous masterminds appearances. But as surprising as it was to finally see Gillies, Murdoch was even more astounded by Sally's manifestation. If the others weren't looking exactly where he was, he would have thought he was hallucinating again.
Gillies abruptly stopped clapping and voice carrying along the high walled structure so that it reached every corner said, "Well done, detective, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed your performance. It was highly believable. No doubt your chief constable had no idea of the plan you had concocted to save your beloved whore." Murdoch scowled at that and would have marched over to him but Julia held him back. "I know I didn't. Luckily for me, I had Sally here keeping tabs on your idiotic pups whereabouts."
Gillies glanced at George as he said this and the constable stiffened to attention and indignation. Emily placed a soothing hand on his arm and he calmed down.
"You goddamn git!" hollered Brackenreid. "I'll teach you how to bloody well behave! It seems my last thrashing didn't quite get through to you!"
He advanced on the pair but Sally said, "Now hold on a minute inspector, I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"And why the bloody hell not! Are you going to stop me sunshine?"
"As a matter of fact," she replied, smiling and pointing a pistol at his chest, "I am."
Brackenreid halted his approach, swearing under his breath, (which for him was a normal level of sound and everyone could hear every foul word he uttered) and instead was herded into a group with George and Emily.
Gillies made a tsking sound. "If only your mother could hear you now. She would be so proud."
The inspector contented himself with glaring at the bastard.
"Please detective," said Gillies amiably, "you as well. We can't have you running off to England, now can we?"
With the five of them close together, the scoundrels got down to the heart of the matter. Needless to say, things weren't boding too well for them.
"Isn't this a happy reunion?" he continued. They were all staring daggers at him. "All the people who ruined my life,"- he gestured to Emily, "and this woman as well. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."
She didn't respond and Sally aimed the gun at her. George placed himself protectively in front of her.
Emily gently moved him aside and said, "It's Dr. Emily Grace and you don't scare me."
"That's too bad," said Sally, "you should be scared. After all, none of you are leaving this place alive. In fact," she said, cocking the gun at Murdoch's head, making everyone freeze, "we might as well get this over with."
"Now, now, Sally," said Gillies, lightly touching her arm, "where's the fun in skipping right to the good part? We should savour this moment a little first. I think we've more than earned that honour."
"You're right of course, James," she said, removing her finger from the trigger. "How silly of me to lose my head."
They both laughed at that briefly, eyeing Julia now and again and then focused on Murdoch again.
"I suppose you're wondering how we met," said Gillies. "It's quite simple really. I wanted to make sure that you didn't best me again so I decided I needed a trustworthy accomplice. And it couldn't just be anyone,"- he waggled his finger,- "no, no, that would not do. So I went through all your past cases documented in the Gazette and quickly became intrigued with Sally's story. I assumed she would be eager to help out in your destruction so I sought her out. It was an easy enough matter." Sally seemed offended by this momentarily. He smirked, "Well, when one is as brilliant as I am, that is."
No one said anything. Murdoch frantically tried to devise a way out of this mess. Unfortunately he was coming up empty handed. They had been so close to escaping! Why couldn't they have just gotten away? As long as Gillies kept talking they were safe and they all knew how much he liked the sound of his own voice, especially when he was explaining how brilliant he was, so for now, they were safe.
"As for the frame up, that was marginally more difficult to achieve. Mind you, the first step was also the hardest. Before I could place the telephone call, I had to sort through months worth of recordings, recordings I had gotten from the doctor's home and work place. It took me days to piece together the phrases I needed, but eventually I succeeded." He gestured to Sally, "By now you must have surmised Sally's role in all of this. Even you are not that dim witted, detective."
Julia croaked out, "Murderer!"
"Such indignation, doctor," said Sally. "You really should be thanking me, I did you a service."
"Never!"
"Anyway," said Gillies, apparently annoyed by their interruption of his lengthy monologue, "while Sally dispatched of Dr. Garland, I was busy planting evidence in the station house."
Murdoch thought about that for a second. "The fingermarks. You switched the records with Sally's."
"Very good, detective," he said mockingly. "As usual, you overlooked the obvious and made everything more complicated than it needed to be. I mean really, detective. How on earth did you think I got the doctor's fingermark on the bullet casing?"
He had to admit, Gillies had a point. That particular piece of evidence had stumped him for days before he finally moved on to something else. He knew there was no way to plant a print from one object to another but it had never once occurred to him that the records themselves had been tampered with!
"Port Credit?" squeaked out Julia.
"I'm sorry?" said Gillies, holding his hand up to his ear. "What was that? Rope got your tongue?"
"You know what she bloody well said!" barked Brackenreid. "Stop being such a goddamn prat!"
"I'm afraid you've gotten on my nerves for long enough inspector. Consider this pay back for our last encounter."
Gillies retrieved his own gun like lightening and fired a shot off into his kneecap. Screaming, he collapsed to the ground, the others scrambling around him.
"Gillies!" yelled Murdoch. "Stop this madness right now! You'll never get away with this! The constabulary will hunt you down, hunt you both down if you kill us!"
"Oh really?" he asked, amused. "Who besides the bunch of you even believes that I am behind this? If Giles had believed a word you had to say, would we really be here?"
Again, he had a point and all Murdoch could do was grumble internally. But as long as he kept him talking, there was always hope that someone might find them. After all, it was an abandoned warehouse, but it wasn't an extremely isolated one. Surely someone had heard that gun shot?
Unfortunately, Gillies was thinking along the same lines for he said, "Well, my dear, I believe we need to wrap things up here. This isn't quite the ending I had envisioned, but then again," he said staring at Murdoch, "that went out the window as soon as you interfered."
"I think I'll start with her," said Sally, pointing the gun at Julia. "Your ninth life is about to run out."
Following in George's footsteps, Murdoch placed himself in front of her. In response, Gillies aimed his pistol at Julia. Murdoch's desperation was paramount but he couldn't think of what to do. They were surrounded from all sides!
"Such a shame you had to choose her, detective. We could have been great together." Slight pause. "One question before I pull the trigger." Her lip curved, "Do you still have my self portrait?"
"Why are you helping this madman?" asked Murdoch hastily, trying to buy more time. "You were many things, Sally, but a murderer, that was never one of them! You never wanted to get your hands dirty, so why are you now?"
Sally scowled at that.
"Ignore him, Sally, we need to wrap things up!"
Sally ignored her partner instead and said, "You may be under the impression that I escaped unscathed, detective. Well I didn't." She pulled off a glove to reveal a badly scarred hand. Then she undid some buttons on her high necked dress to reveal more burns. "Thankfully my face was left intact or I would have been quite useless in this whole affair. Other than my brains, I was rather fond of this body. For years I had been thinking of the perfect way to get back at you and then finally an opportunity fell right into my lap, and a well paying one at that."
An idea came to him then. "Have you actually been paid yet?"
"Sally, come on! We need to get this over with!"
"Well, no," she responded slowly to the detective again. "Why do you ask?"
"Think for a minute Sally! What did you always have done to your accomplices once they had ceased to be useful? Do you really think you're getting out of this alive? Wouldn't it be simpler just to frame you for this whole thing?"
"Don't listen to him, Sally! He's just trying to buy himself more time!"
Silence for a moment.
"He has a point, James. You weren't by any chance planning on betraying me after we killed them, were you?"
"Of course not! I have no problem with you!"
More silence.
"Tell her what you did to your last partner, Gillies! A man you claimed to be your best friend! Tell her about Robert Perry!"
"Don't you dare speak that name in my presence," he shouted. "That weak bastard deserved to lose his head!"
"You decapitated your best friend?" said Sally, appalled.
"Dammit, Sally! That's not important right now!"
"Oh but I think it is."
And then just as Murdoch had hoped, Sally fell for his trap. She swiveled the gun and pointed it at Gillies! He seemed flabbergasted by this occurrence.
"What are you doing? This is no time for games!"
"There's always time for games, James. Tell me truthfully now, were you planning on killing me after we finished here? And look at me this time, please."
He turned to face her but didn't lower his weapon. "I swear to you, Sally, I mean you no harm."
She sized him up for a moment. "I don't believe you."
Silence again, for quite awhile.
Gillies shrugged. "You're smarter than you look then. But tell me truthfully, dear Sally, you were planning the same thing, weren't you?"
Her lip curled again, "It's possible."
While they had been distracted, Murdoch and George had been busy sneaking up on them. They were about to make a move when the doors to the warehouse barged open and constables streamed through, telling them to drop their weapons. Sally and Gillies refused to comply. Then Giles stormed in. He was rather surprised by the scene in front of him but then like the professional he was, got a hold of himself.
"If you don't comply within the next five seconds, my constables will not hesitate to fire."
"What difference does it make?" screamed Gillies hysterically. "Either way I'm dead! And I refuse to hang!"
He squeezed off a shot into Sally's chest and then immediately was gunned down himself.
