| “ | Don't move an inch, you bloody bastard. You didn't hear me arrive, did you? Didn't know we'd rumbled you. It's all finished, chummy. All of it. The old man told me it was my head or yours...and what do you know? It's yours. Because you're standing there with your bloody fancy knives and your bloody fancy karate gimmicks...and I've got a gun. | „ |
| ~ Almond's monologue to V just before being killed. |
Derek Almond is an antagonist in the V for Vendetta limited comic book series, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd.
Biography[]
Almond is the head of the Finger, the secret police for England's Norsefire dictatorship in charge of suppressing dissent and sending the elderly to death camps. A violent and brutal man, he is physically, verbally and emotionally abusive towards his loyal wife Rosemary, who he regularly beats and berates for being unattractive and pathetic.
Almond first appears being berated by Norsefire's leader Adam Susan for his inability to apprehend V, an anarchist terrorist who has blown up the Houses of Parliament. Susan threatens to have his head if he cannot have V's and sends him to talk to Roger Dascombe, the head of Norsefire's propaganda department, to find out what their spin on the explosion is before making any official pronouncements. During the meeting, Almond accuses Dascombe of being a degenerate homosexual after he gets under his skin by insinuating that Susan and propaganda broadcaster Lewis Prothero are homosexuals.
Almond later appears at a sermon by Bishop Anthony Lilliman, where Helen Heyer probes him for details about the terrorist case and V's recent bombing of the Old Bailey. When Lilliman is murdered by V later that day, Almond and Detective Eric Finch investigate the scene, finding that V left him a rose and force-fed him a poisoned communion wafer.
On the night of December 23, Almond batters Rosemary for speaking to him and later threatens her with an unloaded gun, gloating that it won't be unloaded next time. Later that night, he gets a call from Finch informing him that V is targeting former staff of the Larkhill concentration camp and his next target will be Dr. Delia Surridge. Almond races to Surridge's house to head off V, only getting there while V is on the way out after killing Surridge. Cutting V off, Almond holds him at gunpoint and exults that V has no chance of escaping because he only has knives and karate tricks while Almond has a gun. Too late does he remember that he had unloaded his gun to threaten Rosemary with and had forgotten to load it before going after V, as the chamber comes up empty. V proceeds to choke Almond with his bare hands and crushes his windpipe before leaving his body behind with Surridge's. Peter Creedy succeeds Almond as head of the Finger.
Trivia[]
- Almond's line about V only having knives and karate tricks while he has a gun was later co-opted in the 2006 film adaptation for the film's version of Peter Creedy, who makes a similar remark to V before shooting him at the film's climax.
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 Villains
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Norsefire Others | ||