"Things have been bad because of the recession. People are staying at home instead of coming down to the local for a quick jar. No one from around here comes to buy lunch any more. It's only visitors. I don't agree with the wind farm they are building , but thanks to the workmen I should at least be pretty full for the next couple of months."
"So, where is this big wind farm being built then?" Pete asked, almost as much by way of making conversation, as out of genuine interest.
"Up at Forest View, just up and past Forest Rise. Here, give me a tick and I'll get the map and show you." The landlord disappeared and returned a minute later with one of the maps from the bar. Peter moved his plate and the barman spread it out on the table.
"Here, there it is."
Peter followed his finger as he indicated on the map where it was. It was in the opposite direction to where he had driven to get to the Grey Mare's Small Tail, about ten miles north, then up into the small band of hills that surrounded the sleepy little town where nothing had happened for a hundred years.
When the barman returned to serve a few pints behind the bar, Peter wolfed down his lunch, staring at the map. He had not looked at this one before.
There was something about the name Forest Rise and Forest View that seemed very familiar to him. Had they been mentioned on the TV broadcasts that had attracted him to this town in the first place? Or had he seen them somewhere else?
It began to bug him.
He looked at the map, following the road from the village up to Forest Rise. The route seemed familiar.
He stood up to take the plate back to the bar, and as he went to pick it up, a sudden picture appeared in his mind: an old terraced house. Derelict. In need of repair.
The flash of a knife. An SS knife. German. Pushing slowly downwards from above into the chest of a German.
Blackness.
Peter gasped for breath, the plate slipping from his relaxed grip and smashing to the ground.
The workmen looked up, saw the broken plate on the ground and spontaneously all burst into cheers and began clapping and laughing.
Peter shook his head, clearing his mind.
He turned to the bar.
"Sorry about that...do you have a broom?"
"Don't worry about it," the barman said, coming over with a dustpan and brush.
"Thanks. Sorry. Listen, do you mind if I borrow this map. Since I'm a reporter, I think I'll just pop up to Forest View and see how things are coming along. Maybe I can get a wee story to pay for my holiday!"
"Help yourself."
"Is Carolina working today?" Peter asked, as he handed the barman the money for the bill.
"Thanks...yes, she'll be here at 7 p.m. But remember what I said yesterday, lad. I feel very protective towards her, and I don't want to see her hurt. Take it easy with her. I know she likes you."
.
--------------------
.
As Peter drove through the town, and onwards and out towards the road where he would turn right and drive up through the small hills towards Forest Rise and Forest View, he passed scores of little thatched cottages, just like in the town.
There was no doubt about it, Knutsford was a lovely little town, nestled in the middle of some very beautiful hills: how come no one had ever heard of the place?
It occurred to Peter that this place was probably the English equivalent of Brigadoon. It hadn’t been touched for a hundred years, and then suddenly it was being exposed to all the ravages of the twenty-first century. Peter was worried that overnight it would be transformed and destroyed. Peter almost wished that like in the film and musical of Brigadoon, that he could make a spell and protect the town, its inhabitants and Carolina.
As soon as he thought of Carolina his thoughts turned sexual. A sudden image of him 'fucking' her filled his mind: they were in his room above the pub...he was taking her from behind...they were in the shower...he was sucking and kissing and playing with her breasts...she was on top of him...
The vision was so intense that he found that he couldn't concentrate on the driving or see the road ahead. To his great surprise he found he was fully aroused.
He pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out and took some long deep breathes of the country air.
Slowly his mind cleared.
As far as visions went, it was certainly one of the more pleasant that he had had!
Was is a vision of the future?
"Hopefully it's a vision of tonight!", he thought to himself as he climbed back into the car and drove on.
.
After driving for another ten minutes along a windy road that twisted and turned,-a canopy of tree branches which was illuminated by the strong sun, curling overhead to form a beautiful tunnel of a million different shades of green -, Peter came out into the sunlight to discover a scene of devastation.
Yellow diggers, trucks, workers, vans, cranes were everywhere.
Peter pulled over and stopped.
According to the map he was now on Forest Rise, a street of old houses and cottages. Obviously the map was out of date! Now there was nothing there but broken bricks, mud, rubble and wire fences.
Had all this happened in the past week?
It was amazing how mankind was able to change the face of his environment so quickly using machines, to craft it to his will. To make something out of nothing, or as in this case, nothing out of something.
He drove on up the hill along the badly damaged and severely neglected road. As he came to the end, he pulled his car over and parked, and got out beside what was obviously the remains of the last house on the street.
Peter stared at it.
Suddenly he shivered violently.
It lasted a few seconds and left him feeling slightly drained.
Peter looked around him.
That had been his strongest shiver yet.
Was there something here that connected him to KK? Had KK been here?
Was KK trying to show him something?
Or was he shivering and reacting like this because Peter was 'getting hotter', getting closer to tracking down KK and making KK feel bad?!
"Stop...!" Peter shouted aloud as he realised what he was thinking so lucidly. "What the hell is happening to me! Is KK alive? No! He's fucking dead! Dead as a fucking doorpost. Chopped up into little pieces! Why am I talking as if 'he' is guiding me, or showing me stuff? I am not being bloody haunted! " He exclaimed loudly.
And then a thought hit him between the eyes, making him stop in his tracks.
"Or am I?"
"Am I being haunted?
"Am I being 'haunted from within?' "
.
Locking up the car and taking his mobile and camera with him, he walked across the road to the fence that surrounded the rubble where the last group of houses used to be.
He stood beside the fence, peering through the wire mesh, looking at what was left of the buildings.
For some reason he felt compelled to stare at the rubble of the last house, trying to picture what the house would have looked like amidst the mud and earth and broken bricks that were now left.
Suddenly his mind was filled with a fresh vision, full of incredibly vivid detail: he was walking up an overgrown tiled path, opening a front door and walking inside. The house was dark. It smelt damp. It was cold. He turned to the wall and switched a light on.
And then there was blackness. That was all there was. Nothing more.
Peter blinked.
That's when it dawned on him.
Once, at some point, KK had lived here.
This was his house.
Peter shivered.
.
Peter stood by the fence for quite a while, staring at the rubble, trying to guess where the walls used to be, attempting to rebuild the picture in his mind of what the house had once been like. Trying to encourage or force the vision to rerun in him mind. To show him more.
It seemed incredible to think that KK had lived here.
That after everything so far, and against all the odds, Peter had somehow managed to find this place -even though it had been demolished- and was now standing outside looking in at all that remained of the house where 'his kidneys' used to live!
But who had brought who here?
Was KK teasing Peter? Had he brought Peter here, just to see his old house, or had Peter found this place by himself?
Or was it a bit of both?
After about half-an-hour of staring and thinking, it began to worry Peter that he was perhaps paying too much homage to the ruins of KK's life.
He decided that it would be best to 'fuck-off out of there!'
As the thought occurred to him, Peter was struck by just how much he was swearing nowadays. It seemed to be becoming almost second nature.
It never used to be like that. Never.
Fine, maybe in the past he was a little too much of a prude. Perhaps he was a bit too uptight, could maybe benefit from 'relaxing' just a little, but swearing didn't make you a better person, didn't make you 'cool' or clever. If anything, it was merely a sign of any person's inability to cope with tension or stress or anger, and a lack of imagination or ability to describe themselves using other less-offensive language.
Although perhaps, that was the point. Swearing was mainly meant to offend.
The question was, did Peter want to be so offensive?
The answer was quite simply 'no'.
Obviously KK had been a big swearer. Perhaps he had also wanted to offend.
Peter knew he was changing. He knew his views on things were altering, how he held himself, how he thought, how he reacted to people. His tastes in women were changing, the way he fucked...no, they way he made love to them....Carolina being a case in point. Now he could get aroused simply by thinking about her breasts. What was that all about? Before now, big breasts had scared him. Now he loved them! Also ....also, yesterday he had fucked...yes, 'fucked' Carolina on the bed, and he had taken her from behind. He never really 'did' that before. That was no his 'thing'. He always preferred to look into their eyes, to see their faces, and until now, his girlfriends had mostly always seemed to have preferred it that way.
The interesting thing was, he had turned Carolina over, 'taken her from behind', and he had really enjoyed it. In fact, he had loved it...Couldn't wait to do it again!
Peter was walking now, away from the rubble of the houses and following the muddy tracks and temporary road that the diggers had already made good progress on into the forest.
As he walked, he thought.
He conceded that some of the things he was learning or inheriting or adopting from KK were actually not that bad. They were actually perhaps improving the Old Peter. Making him 'a better man'. -He wondered if Susie liked him better now or before?- But, and this was the main point, Peter knew that he had to stop this now. He had to stop changing. He had to fight for the Old Peter. To preserve him.
If he didn't, where would it all end?
Who would he be in a few months?
KK or Peter?
.
No, things were going to change. Peter was going to fight back.
No more swearing. No more spicy sausages...! Okay, perhaps a little more big breasts and fewer missionary positions, but after that...no more changing!
.
Peter looked up and around him.
Without realising it he had walked quite far along the new temporary road into the forest. Someone was standing in front of him, holding up a hand and obviously wanting him to stop. He was saying something to him. Peter blinked, trying to focus. It was a man in a yellow vest and hard-hat.
"Are you looking for something, pal?"
"Yes. Actually I am. I am looking for what's left of the forest!" Peter replied rather flippantly.
The workman stared at Peter. It was the end of his shift. The last thing he wanted now was an altercation with a bloody left-wing environmentalist.
"Fine. It's over there," the workman pointed. "Normally the public would be allowed just as far as that standing stone over there. After that the forest is private land. But you can't go there just now. I'm afraid you will have to come back another day. We've just been told to stop work and the whole area is being sealed off. The digger's have just found a body, and we are waiting for the police to arrive."
"A body?" Peter asked, immediately alert.
"Yes..."
"A man or a woman?" Peter asked, without thinking.
The workman was already walking away from him, back in the direction he had come. He turned and looked at Peter.
"A man. It's bloody weird though...The boss reckons he's a German paratrooper from the Second World War. Incredibly well preserved or something. Doesn't make sense to me...The bloody war ended decades ago!"
Peter shivered.
Chapter Eighty Three
.
.
Craigmillar Estate
Edinburgh
May 7th
2.00 p.m.
.
.
Robert sat in his car with his hood up, looking out at Craigmillar and seeing it all in a new light. The estate looked different. Not because it was different, but because Robert had changed.
Big Wee Rab had died. Robert had been born. The transformation was irreversible.
It had been a long drive back up from Wales. He had left before breakfast, grabbing some food on the way up.
In the end, he had spoken to Gavin late the night before, just before lights out. He had told him that there was something that he had to do, to help fix a wrong from his previous life. Something that needed to be done if he, Robert, was to continue to grow and develop.
Gavin had given him some money for the petrol and asked if he was coming back.
Robert had said "Yes, I will be back in three days time. This is my new life now."
.
Robert was tired. He found driving and concentrating for so long mentally exhausting. He wanted to see his mother. To ask her for forgiveness. To seek her blessing for his new life. And to cuddle her.
The last time he had kissed or cuddled his mother was the day he had been sent to prison. That was in another life, a long time ago.
He just hoped she would be happy for him.
And then, when it had got dark, Robert was going to see Mr Wallace.
.
--------------------
Edinburgh Airport
2.20 p.m.
.
.
Mat Stevenson walked out of the airport terminal into the bright sunshine, took a deep breath, and smiled.
He had always wanted to come to Scotland.
His grandfather had been a welder in the shipyards of Glasgow and had helped build some of the great ships of the 1920s and 1930s.
When the war had come, he had taken his family to New York and had opened up a small grocery shop. According to his father, he had spent the rest of his life telling stories about the "Old Country" and planning to go home as soon as the war finished.
When the war had finally come to an end, he kept telling the stories, but never seemed to make any firm plans. Until one day, it was too late.
Mat could not remember much about his grandfather, apart from two times when he had gone to visit him, and sat on his knee and listened to his granddad read him a story.
He remembered the way he spoke, using different words than other Americans did. He liked the way his granddad had called him "a wee bairn", even though Mat never found out what it meant until he was much older: Scots for 'small child'.
Mat was far from a small child now. Tall, broad, and muscular, Mat was a trained killer. He provided a service to clients who needed work done that most other people could not do. Killing was a skill. Mat was good at it. He did not enjoy it, but he had long since discovered that he possessed a rare and very special talent for it.
Over the years he had built up a good reputation, and nowadays he could pick and chose his clients.
Very occ
asionally he even took on Government work, completing activity in the 'private sector' that no government or official agency could ever be associated with.
Mat had worked for Philip Grant several times before. He paid well, on time, and often included a bonus, which always went down well with Mat.
It had been a long flight. Mat hated long-haul. He always found it difficult to sleep, which meant that he arrived in the target zone tired and jetlagged. Mat was a perfectionist. In his line of work he couldn't afford to make mistakes: he had a reputation to uphold and a healthy fear of prisons. To ensure that Mat was alert and functioning at his best, Mat would normally spend a few days resting, exercising and acclimatising to a new time zone, during which he would reconnoitre the target zone, familiarising himself with the layout of a city and the movements of a target.
He would build a plan, decide how and when best to enact it, and then when his mind was once again sharp and unfuddled from jetlag, he would execute it.
His preferred method of assassination was with a gun, but nowadays it was almost impossible to travel abroad with his Glock, his favourite handgun of choice. When working abroad, he would use his contacts to source a weapon locally. It always surprised him how easy it was to get a gun almost anywhere in the world, if you really wanted one.
The timing on this project was not ideal. The schedule had been moved up rather rapidly and Mat knew that he should act sooner rather than later.
The complication was that there were now three separate targets, not just one. His priority was the woman journalist, followed by the doctor at the hospital. Lastly he would need to track down the second journalist. Currently he was in England, which would therefore either require an extension of the business trip down South, or the laying of a trap into which he would have to lure the reporter back to Scotland.
.
First things first though. For now Mat would hire a car, find his hotel, and then grab a few hours sleep.
Then he would go to work.
.
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The Edinburgh Evening News
2.30 p.m.
.
Susie sat at her desk trying to concentrate.
She was finding it difficult to concentrate. She was on to the biggest story of her career and she knew it. Over the past twenty-four hours she had been working non-stop gathering all the information she could on SP-X4 and its parent company StemPharma Corp. She was now building a file on its owners and management, trying to identify whom she should contact and request further information and a quote from. She was also trying to decide if it would be wise to alert them to their story before she had published it, although she had a pretty good idea that her editor would leave that decision with their legal department.
BOX SET of THREE TOP 10 MEDICAL THRILLERS Page 41
