Free Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye by Mark Morris

those Operations guys our stuff’ll be halfway to Karachi by now.”
    Abe looked alarmed, the finlike ridges on his neck fluttering in agitation.
    “Come on,” said Liz, “let’s get inside. At least if we’re quick we’ll have time for a proper English cup of tea.”
    Hellboy saw their chauffeur, Christopher, unclipping his seat belt. He guessed it was part of the guy’s job to open the car doors for his clients at the end of their journey, maybe even carry their luggage for them. Personally, though, Hellboy was uncomfortable with servility, hated being treated like he was something special.
    “It’s okay, pal, I got it,” he said, and pushed the passenger door open. He unfolded himself from the car, hooves clacking on the concrete as he swung his legs round and stood up. He was rotating his neck, shoulder muscles crackling, when he heard a car door clunk shut and a voice speak his name. He turned, tail swishing, expecting to see Agent Turner — even though the person who had spoken had sounded like a man. But Agent Turner was still sitting in her car, making a phone call, and instead what he saw was a vagrant, striding forward and pointing a camera at him.
    No, not a vagrant. The guy was unshaven, his clothes crumpled and caked with mud, but the fact that he had a car, which he had parked badly just inside the car-park entrance, and a nifty-looking camera suggested that he wasn’t forced to walk the streets and sleep rough.
    “Hey!” Hellboy shouted as the guy snapped him, not once but several times. Throwing up his hand in the classic “no publicity” pose, he growled, “Back off, pal.”
    The man lowered the camera. Hellboy’s anger seemed not to intimidate him in the slightest. He looked like the kind of guy who encountered threats and bluster on a daily basis.
    “Might I have a few words, Hellboy?” the guy asked.
    “Buzz off,” Hellboy muttered.
    “Please. My readers would love to know what you’re doing in London.”
    “Who the hell are you?” asked Agent Turner, who had now spotted the man and catapulted out of her car.
    “Abe Sapien, right?” the man said, ignoring her and pointing at Abe.
    “Never mind him. My colleague asked who you were, buddy,” Hellboy said.
    “My name’s Colin Proctor. I’m a reporter for the Star . I found out you were coming to London and — “
    “Who told you?” asked Liz, who had followed Abe out of the car and was now standing beside him.
    The man smiled — a little too smugly, Hellboy thought. He clenched his right fist, the anger rising in him.
    “A good journalist never reveals his sources, Miss Sherman,” he said. “By the way, may I just say that your photographs don’t do you credit. You’re far more beautiful in the flesh.”
    “Man, this guy is a piece of work,” Hellboy muttered.
    “Can I tell my readers that you’re here to investigate the torso murders?” Proctor asked.
    “You can tell ‘em what you like,” Hellboy said.
    “In that case, can I tell them that there’s more to this case than meets the eye? That there is perhaps some supernatural element involved? Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Investigate the strange, the unexplained?”
    “No comment,” Hellboy said.
    He began to stomp towards the hotel’s back entrance. Proctor dodged around Rachel Turner, who made an ineffectual effort to restrain him, and scuttled after him.
    “Are the people of London under threat, Hellboy?” he asked.
    “No comment.”
    “Can we expect a speedy resolution to this current crisis?”
    “No comment.”
    “Are there likely to be further victims of the torso killer, whoever he, she, or it may be?”
    “No comment.”
    Richard had been last out of the Daimler and was now trailing at the rear of the group. “Look, mate, why don’t you give it up?” he said. “Can’t you see you’re not going to get anything here?”
    Proctor took a photograph of Richard, then skipped nimbly out of the way as Rachel Turner made a grab