Shadow Line

by Stephen Edger

  The female presenter thanked her colleague for the update and then passed over to the sports anchor to report all the day’s stories.

  Davies looked back down at his phone. It hadn’t been that long since he had spoken to Vincent, and he hoped that his boss had followed his usual routine of staying late. Picking up the phone, he quickly found Vincent’s name in his redial list and punched the number. His hopes were dashed by a beeping noise and a voice telling him that the number was currently unavailable.

  Davies threw the baguette into the waste bin and opened the mini bar. He grabbed the first two miniature bottles he found and poured them into a glass. As he started sipping the drink, he wondered what they had got themselves involved with.

  *

  At the same moment, nearly five thousand miles away in a small room underground, a very worried man was also watching the events unfolding back in the UK. The room was stacked with computer equipment, the latest in radio-wave technology and radar, and a single hard-line to the outside world, through hundreds of firewalls protecting the line from intruders of the World Wide Web.

  The man, a former spy, had been hiding in the Cayman Islands for a little over a year, but he had never lost sight of the task at hand. He knew only too well what his former employers were capable of; he was also aware that there was a contract out on his head. This thought served as a Damocles sword every day, but none of that was important at this moment.

  From his base here in George Town, he had been slowly feeding information to various agencies across the globe to aid and support open investigations into organised crime. He didn’t do it out of any sense of justice, but he did regard himself as something of a fixer; an invisible puppet master keeping the world moving at an even pace.

  He had phoned to warn Vincent to watch his back, but it seemed like his warning had come too late. As he sat and watched BBC News 24, he saw the body of Jack Vincent being stretchered out of the flaming shell of his flat and being placed in the ambulance. The male reporter at the scene was reporting that a body had been found but no identity had been confirmed at this time. He knew it was Vincent; who else could it be?

  It was bad news, a real blow to the operation he had been undertaking ever since his relocation to this distant land. But he wasn’t one to panic; too many years in the field planning insurgencies, coups and tactical warfare had taught him to remain calm. Yet he also knew there was a time to watch and see where the seed fell, and a time to be pro-active in taking action: this was the latter.

  Placing the headset on, he dialled a number he had phoned every day since Thursday. The call connected with a secure mobile phone in the UK. Whilst the two phones were free of any bugging devices, and the line was as secure as it could be, most telephonic communications were still prone to interception, which is why they would never address each other by name.

  ‘Turn the news on,’ he told the man who answered his call.

  ‘What for? What’s going on?’

  ‘We have a problem.’

  ‘Problem? What kind of problem?’

  ‘Just put the news on and watch,’ the man repeated.

  There was silence on the line for two minutes while the recipient of the call turned on his television set and took in the story.

  ‘So what? A bomb went off in the city? Big deal.’

  ‘It was Vincent’s flat,’ the caller explained. ‘They’ve just pulled his body from the building; it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘Oh shit!’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But without Vincent, there is no case. That’s it, it’s over. My word against theirs, we won’t win.’

  ‘Calm down,’ the caller urged. ‘It is an unforeseen hiccup, but we don’t need to deviate from the plan yet.’

  ‘The hell we don’t, dad!’ the man in the UK stated, breaking protocol. ‘I warned you before I came here, if this went belly up, I would exact my revenge.’

  ‘I understand you are disappointed, but this is not over yet. We can still achieve our target. Vincent may live through this; he’s a fighter.’

  ‘Do you not realise who these people are? They have bombed his flat; even if he survives, they will go after him again. They won’t stop. You should know that better than anyone. Remember what they did to me!’

  ‘Listen to me: now is not the time to panic and act rashly. However, we may need to alter the plan marginally.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I want you to go and see him,’ the caller explained. ‘Assuming he is still alive, reach out to him face to face. He needs to understand how pivotal he is.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t survive?’

  The caller let out a reluctant sigh, ‘Then we will do whatever it takes to conclude this mess.’

  FRIDAY

  31

  The first thing he felt as he started to wake from his dreamless sleep was a tube sticking out of his mouth. As he tried to swallow, he realised the tube was protruding down his throat. His eyelids felt glued shut as he tried to open them to see where he was. He raised a weak arm in an effort to feel where the tube went and as he did, became aware that his whole body ached. It felt like he had been beaten to a pulp. He tested that his limbs worked and, as he moved his legs, he could feel that there was some kind of sheet or blanket restricting the movement.

  He managed to force one eye open but it took longer than usual to adjust to the light in the room; he could see but his vision was blurred. His mouth felt very dry and his instinct was to pull the tube from his throat. As his fingers tried to grip the soft plastic he managed to open his second eye but all he could see was darkness. He began to panic about what might have happened to him. He didn’t know where he was or why he was there but he sensed he was in a bad way. He could not remember anything about himself, or even his name at first, but as his brain began to function the memories started to return.

  Jack Vincent was lying on a bed in a private room in the intensive care unit at Southampton’s General Hospital. His head was bandaged, and the strapping also covered his right eye, which itself was being protected by a small round cotton wool patch. There were gauze strappings around both wrists and also significant bandaging around his abdomen. Small wires were attached to his chest to monitor his heart rhythm. A window at the end of the bed was illuminating the room.

  The door to Vincent’s left opened and a small woman in a blue uniform entered. She chirped away merrily but he couldn’t understand what she was saying or whether she was even speaking to him. She shone a small light into his free eye, temporarily blinding him with the flash, before muttering something else and leaving the room.

  His fingers grappled with the tube and he began to pull on it. He felt it rubbing along his dry oesophagus as he pulled harder and harder, his gag reflex going into overdrive. It felt like the tube would never end but finally it did and slid over his bottom lip. He coughed dryly. The door opened again and the blue uniform returned. Her chirping sounded more urgent this time and he sensed she was telling him off. It was strange: he could definitely hear noise but it was very muffled, as if he was listening through earmuffs or as if the woman was talking into a cloth.

  ‘I can’t understand you,’ his croaky voice said, but even that didn’t sound right. He began to wonder if he had suffered a stroke and that was what was causing the pain and the strange reaction of his senses.

  The nurse muffled something else and returned minutes later with a man in a white lab coat. Vincent’s cloudy vision was now focusing, and he presumed the lab coat belonged to a doctor of some sort and that he was undoubtedly in a hospital; it was the best conclusion he could arrive at from the information available.

  The doctor said something, but again he could not understand what it was.

  ‘I can’t understand,’ he repeated, and as he did became aware of a slight ringing noise.

  The nurse applied a wet towel to his forehead, before lifting his wrist to check his pulse. The doctor scribbled on a clipboard at the end of
the bed and said something to the nurse before leaving. He felt a cool liquid on his left arm, and as he glanced down, he saw the nurse squeezing something through a syringe into the intravenous tube sticking out of his arm. Before he could ask what, he felt his eye lids grow heavy and then darkness returned.

  *

  ‘You’re like a cat with nine lives,’ a woman’s voice said, waking him. ‘Jack? Can you hear me?’

  He opened his eyes and saw the face of Lauren Smart staring down at him.

  ‘How are you feeling, Jack?’

  She was smiling down at him but there was something behind her eyes that didn’t seem to fit with the empathy she was vocally displaying. He wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming but his head certainly felt less cloudy than earlier. The ringing remained in his ears.

  ‘Do you mind if I take a seat?’ Smart continued. ‘I’ve been on my feet for hours.’

  He grunted. His throat felt too dry to speak. He grunted again and managed to nod his head in the direction of a small plastic beaker of water on the nightstand by his hospital bed. She put the beaker to his lips and tilted it so that he could drink. Some of the liquid spilled over his lips onto the cotton garment he was wearing, and she took this as a sign to put the beaker back where she had found it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he croaked. When they had last spoken she had said she would be returning to London.

  ‘Your D.C.I. asked me to stick around after the explosion. She said she wanted someone to pick up the reins on the open cases while you are recuperating, and as I had an understanding of each case and because of my experience, I was the natural choice. I will move on as soon as you are well enough to resume your duties. I assume that is okay?’

  He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could; it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.

  ‘Mercure also asked me to lead the enquiry into the explosion at your flat,’ she continued sombrely. ‘The official line is that a leaky gas main was the root cause. The press are reporting that a stray spark from the television set was the catalyst. In a poky flat like yours, it wouldn’t take long for a bubble of gas to form.’

  Vincent remained silent, waiting to hear more but when Smart didn’t speak, he challenged, ‘But I don’t have gas. I am on electric only.’

  Smart smiled.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘As I say, that is the official story. The truth is we found fragments of an exploded I.E.D. in the remains of your living room. It looks homemade and was presumably hidden within your television set, connected to the power cable so that when you turned the set on, you triggered the device. It is incredible that you survived. Do you remember what happened?’

  He tried to recall his last memory, but it was blank after he left the station. He tried to shrug his ignorance again.

  ‘So that leaves the question, who put a bomb in your flat?’

  She left the question hanging while they both considered their responses.

  ‘Do you have any enemies? Any bomb makers you’ve put behind bars? Anyone recently released who might want revenge on you for some reason?’

  It was his turn to laugh now, although the effort made his abdomen ache.

  ‘Maybe just one or two,’ he croaked. ‘Part of the job, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, ‘God knows how many hit lists my name is on.’

  He felt around his chest with his fingers, checking for injuries.

  ‘Am I okay? Have the doctors said if anything is broken?’

  She shook her head, ‘I don’t know to be honest, Jack. I only arrived about twenty minutes ago so I’ve heard nothing. Are you in pain? Do you want me to call a nurse?’

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ he winced as he tried to sit up. She moved across to help him, adjusting the pillows accordingly.

  ‘On a serious note, Jack,’ she said when she had returned to her seat, ‘what we found in the remains is some serious shit. You understand? It wasn’t some cheap bit of gear. This was something more personal. Somebody knew you would be in your flat watching television last night. Somebody wanted you dead.’

  The statement made him wince. Threats to life were part and parcel of any officer’s life but this was more than that; this had him worried.

  ‘But why go to the effort of planting a bomb? If someone wanted me dead, why not just shoot me? Or stab me? It would be less risky.’

  ‘As I said, Jack, this is personal. Somebody wanted you to know it was them who had done it. Can you think of anyone who could be responsible?’

  His head was starting to ache again, and the list of possible suspects was too large to narrow down. That said, none of the possible suspects he could think of, had any kind of bomb making skills that he was aware of. He remembered the call he had received from ‘Terry’ and the chilling words sent a shiver down his spine: watch your back Jack.

  ‘What is it? What have you thought of?’ Smart asked, noticing a change in his posture.

  ‘Nothing, nothing, it’s just hitting home that I could have died last night,’ he lied.

  ‘Well, it’s like I said earlier: you’re like a cat with nine lives.’

  ‘That’s twice this week, I’ve almost been killed, huh?’

  ‘Wait, you think this is related to what happened at the safe house?’

  ‘Sure, why not? The men who killed Laboué knew that I had entered the house; I heard a couple of them speaking. Maybe they thought I would be able to identify them and decided…’

  ‘I don’t see why they would come after you,’ she interrupted. ‘I mean, what can you do with a voice? It’s not like you had recorded them. No, I don’t think the two events are linked.’

  He didn’t like the finality of her tone. As far as he was concerned the two events probably weren’t related but it didn’t explain why she was being so cagey about it; unless of course she was worried that there could be repercussions for her if it was ruled that her operation had somehow endangered his life. He wasn’t sure how to play the situation from here.

  ‘I need to head back to the station in a minute for a meeting with Mercure. Can you have a think about the names of possible suspects and jot them down on some paper for me? I will get one of the team to start reviewing recent arrest reports you have made, but it would help if we can narrow our pool of suspects a bit.’

  He nodded. A machine to his left bleeped, causing him to glance up at it. It was a small plastic box with transparent plastic tubes leading from it.

  ‘That’s what is controlling your morphine dosage,’ she explained, moving across to it for a closer examination. ‘You want me to increase your dosage?’

  ‘No,’ he muttered but watched as she pressed the plus key on the side of the machine once.

  ‘A little extra never did anyone any harm,’ she said, turning back to him. ‘Rest, Jack, I will take care of everything. If the pain gets too much, just press the same button I did. Be careful, though,’ she added as she turned to leave. ‘Don’t over increase the dosage; we don’t want you to accidentally kill yourself do we?’

  She left the room and him with a feeling of dread. There had been something quite sinister in the way she had ended the conversation, and it made him trust her even less however, before he could process the thoughts fully, the cool mist returned to his mind and his eyes began to feel heavy once more. His last thought as he fell back to sleep was: I need to get out of here.

  32

  It was dark outside of the hospital window when Jack Vincent next awoke. A tray of food was within reach, but he couldn’t tell quite what it was; some kind of pastry with mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables he presumed. His throat felt incredibly dry again and he wondered whether he had been snoring as his mind had passed in and out of consciousness. A cough caught his attention and looking up he saw Kyle Davies sitting where Lauren Smart had been earlier.

  ‘Hiya, Guv,’ he said.

  Vincent grunted at the beaker again and once he had managed to swallow some water he asked Davies to give him an update on the
case.

  ‘I’m under strict orders not to discuss any police business with you at this time. Mercure was at the afternoon briefing and she was adamant that, if any of the team came to see you, we were not to talk shop. She said she wants you to rest and fully recover before focusing back on work. You know what she’s like, Guv: she’d have my guts for garters.’

  Vincent’s neck and shoulders ached slightly, and his stomach felt like it had been cut to pieces but there was no pain when he moved his legs about.

  ‘I need to get out of here, Kyle.’

  ‘Look, Guv, I hate hospitals too; too much death and diarrhoea for my liking, but you need to stay put until the doctor releases you.’

  ‘Someone is trying to kill me, Kyle; I know it.’

  ‘Well that’s an understandable fear to have, considering what you’ve been through, but I’m sure you’re just being paranoid. We’ve stationed a uniform outside the door, and he won’t let anyone in unless they have been properly cleared. It was Smart’s order. She said she wanted you protected.’

  ‘I don’t trust her, Kyle.’

  ‘Guv, look, you’re not yourself,’ Davies frowned. ‘You seem jumpy, but you’ll be okay if you just relax and let the doctors do their stuff.’

  ‘Stop being so fucking condescending! Someone put a bomb in my flat, possibly the same people who tried to kill me at the safe house yesterday!’

  ‘It’s Friday, Guv. The execution of the bomber was on Wednesday. See what I mean? You don’t even know what day it is. You’re not thinking straight. You’ve been through a tremendous amount in the last couple of days, the stress must be immense, and God knows what drugs they’re pumping you with here. For once, you need to let the rest of us take care of things.’

  ‘Kyle, someone phoned me before I left the station the other night. The same person who told me about the eighty-third passenger. He told me to watch my back. It was a warning.’