by Karl Hill
Black held his breath. A noise behind him. He turned slowly. A man stood in the doorway. He was dressed from head to foot in the papery plastic outfit worn by crime scene investigators. In one gloved hand he held a semi-automatic pistol. Black recognised the issue – a Glock G22. Equipped with silencer. The man had narrow features, jutting chin, nervous eyes set under a beetling brow.
Black heard the front door close. Another man, similarly garbed, entered the living room via the kitchen. In one hand, a long steel-handled butchers’ knife, smeared in blood.
Easy to guess what it had been used for.
The man held the Glock in a two-handed grip, the barrel only four feet from Black’s face.
“You’re here,” he said. “You couldn’t let it go.”
“Let what go?” asked Black, ignoring the pistol, keeping eyes locked on the man’s face. The man with the knife stopped an arm’s length from him, hovering. Waiting for instructions, Black surmised.
“Our lucky day. This is how this plays out. You had drinks. Things got out of hand. You wanted to fuck. She said no. You’re not the type of man who takes no for an answer. You had your way. You stabbed her. Stabbed her, and kept going. Using the knife as your dick. Classic sex crime. But she caught you in the neck. A single flick of the blade. Caught you in the carotid artery. You’ll bleed out on the floor, beside your girlfriend. Your fingerprints all over the knife. Hook, line and sinker. The police won’t look beyond the end of their nose. Case closed. As I said, lucky day.”
“You should have been in amateur dramatics. Shooting me with that fancy Glock isn’t going to help your little stage setting.”
“Shut up. Kneel down, Mr Black, or I will blow your fucking brains out. I kid you not.”
“I assume the dead girl is Fiona Jackson.”
“Shut up. Kneel.”
“No.”
The man took a step closer, licking his lips with a small darting tongue. His voice rose.
“I swear I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
Black answered in a measured voice. “I have no doubt. But whether I kneel or not, I’m a dead man. Either shot, or stabbed by your friend. I don’t like my choices.” He gave a cold grin. “So, I guess I want to fuck things right up for you. I’d rather have a bullet in the head and the cops asking lots of questions, than giving you a gift-wrapped crime scene. So be my guest. Pull the trigger.”
Black held the man’s stare. He heard a sound in his head – the drum of his heart. He was playing a dangerous bluff. The man looked nervous. A millimetre twitch of the finger, and Black had a bullet in the head. He focused, nerves stretched. A second passed, two seconds. The man gave a delicate, almost imperceptible shrug, flicking a glance at the man with the knife. But Black saw it. And Black knew exactly what it meant. It was what he was hoping for. The last thing they wanted was to shoot him.
The other man knew as well. He jerked forward, slicing the knife towards Black’s neck. Black wheeled round to face him, stepped in, raised a forearm, blocked, jerked up his elbow, slamming it under the man’s chin. He heard teeth crack. The top of the man’s tongue flew out, a pink lump of moist gristle, bitten clean through. The move was performed in two seconds. The man was stunned, staggered back.
Black wasn’t finished. He caught the man’s wrist, pulled him in, twisted. A bone snapped. The man shrieked in pain. The knife clattered onto the wooden floor. He was off-balance. Using his momentum, still gripping his arm, Black whirled him into the man holding the Glock.
A further two seconds of confusion followed. The man with the Glock shoved his friend out of the way. Too late for niceties. He would kill Black any way he could. Gunshot or knife wound, it was past time for caring. He pointed the Glock. Black was on him, slapping the pistol to one side. It fired, the silencer reducing the shot into a sound like a muffled cough. The man who’d carried the knife grunted, as a bullet punched through his chest, shredding organs and spine. He collapsed onto the broken television, and lay still.
Black was in close. The man tried to bring up the pistol, manoeuvring it with his hand to shoot Black at close range. Black seized his wrist, holding it away. The man hacked at Black’s neck. Black shifted his body, absorbing the blow, but it was expertly executed, crunching the nerves. Black experienced sharp, mind-jarring pain. He head-butted the man once, twice, slamming forehead into nose, mouth. The man’s hold on the pistol loosened. He brought his knee up, catching Black on the groin, and hacked at his neck again. Black grasped the knee, pushed forward, using his weight to propel the man back through the living room entrance and into the hall. They both fell with a clatter. The pistol spun away. Black was on top. He punched the man hard on his throat, crushing the larynx. The man made a strangled gurgling sound, suddenly disorientated. Black struck again, bringing another fearful blow down on the man’s throat. The man convulsed. Black caught his head in an arm lock, jerked hard to one side. The neck snapped.
Black lay back, panting.
In less than thirty seconds, he had dispatched two men.
He got to his feet. His neck and shoulder ached. He made his way back to the living room, past the man with the hole in his chest, past the young woman still bleeding out from countless stab wounds. It was a place of death. Black went to the kitchen, found a dish cloth in the sink, made his way back to the dead man in the hall. Wrapping the cloth round his hand, avoiding fingerprints, he unfastened the man’s outer garment. Beneath he was wearing collar, tie, jacket. Someone who like to be smart when he killed, thought Black grimly. He reached into his inside pocket, retrieving a mobile phone. There was nothing else. No identification. The man was experienced.
Black turned his attention to the other dead man. His blue overalls were soaked. The bullet had ripped through, his back yawning open, blood and tissue spilling on to the floor, mingling with the blood of the young woman.
A fucking horror scene, Black thought. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, repeated the procedure, checking for ID, but the man was carrying nothing save a packet of chewing gum and some loose change.
Black stood back, surveying his surroundings. He would telephone the police from a phone box a half mile away.
Suddenly, the mobile he was holding buzzed in his hand. Black looked at the screen, which revealed a number, but no name. Black answered.
A voice immediately spoke. Deep, brassy. Unnatural. Modified. The other person was using a voice modulator.
“Is it done?”
“Yes,” said Black.
A pause.
“Who is this?”
“Adam Black. The man you tried to kill. Who are you?”
Another short silence.
“You’re a dead man, Black.”
“Apparently not. But there are two dead men here. We weren’t introduced.”
Breathing. The voice spoke.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with. You’d better run, Mr Black. This is your new life. Running. Until we find you.”
“My running days are over. You’ve crossed the wrong man, friend. I swear to Jesus Christ it’s me who will find you. And when I do, I’ll rip your fucking lungs out.”
Black hung up. Let them sweat.
He closed his eyes, trying to stay calm, manage his thoughts, keep the tremble from his hands.
The prestigious and established firm of Raeburn Collins and Co. had tried to lure him to his death. Two men had killed a young woman, and tried to kill him. People were dying – all because of a man called Gilbert Bartholomew. And his last will and testament.
To unlock the riddle, Black had to find a key.
What the hell was Bastard Rock?
But maybe, just maybe, he had the beginnings of an answer. And if he was correct, then the riddle only deepened.
11
Black left the building. His skin prickled. Others would come. He felt considerably more conspicuous leaving than he did arriving. If people noticed him, what would they say? A big guy in jeans and a leather jacket. Not much o
f a description. Should the police come knocking on his door, then he would deal with that problem when it arrived.
He walked the mile back to the city centre, taking a different route. He phoned the office from his mobile. Tricia answered immediately. “Where are you?”
Black cleared his throat, kept his voice as neutral as possible.
“Enjoying the sights. How’s things?”
“Quiet.”
“Good. Take a week off. Make it two.”
Silence.
“What?”
Black attempted flippancy. “I’m going on a holiday. Spur of the moment. I need the break. And being out in this weather has given me the urge. I can pick up my messages on the answering machine.”
Tricia hesitated. “You sure? This is very sudden, Adam.”
“Nothing wrong with a bit of spontaneity.”
“You never seemed to me the spontaneous sort.”
“You have a holiday home in Millport, don’t you? Use the time. Enjoy the summer weather.” He attempted humour, hoping it didn’t ring false. “Get out on that bicycle of yours. Isn’t that what Millport’s famous for?”
She laughed. “I don’t own a bike. The thought appals me. Are you sure?”
“Positive. Two weeks.”
He hung up. It was fair to assume that his office was on his enemies’ radar. As such, no one was safe.
He ditched the mobile phone he had retrieved from his attacker, tossing it into a public waste bin. He found a phone booth on Princes Street, and made a call to the cops. Commotion at 31 Brereton Place. Flat 3/2. Men with knives. Better get there quick. He hung up.
He didn’t get the train. He grabbed a taxi, a black cab he hailed on the street, and headed straight to Glasgow. Expensive. But Black had no desire to stay longer than required.
Black rented an apartment in a part of Glasgow known as Mount Florida, a two-bedroomed flat in a tenement block in the south side, a half mile from his office, adjacent to a sprawling park where Black ran four miles every morning before work.
Black arrived back early evening. There was a strong possibility his address was targeted. He watched the building from a coffee shop for an hour. Everything seemed normal. It meant nothing. If he was under surveillance, and properly done, he would never know. Nerves tingling, he made his way to the front communal entrance, expecting a car door to open, a looming figure, a motion, the scrape of movement. He entered without incident. He was one level up.
He reached his front door. It seemed perfectly normal. Again, if the lock had been tampered with, he might never know. With the right tools, a professional burglar would enter and leave without any trace. Black turned the key, opened the door, waited, straining to detect the slightest sound. With held breath, he entered.
Everything was normal. Nothing had been touched. No one had been there.
He locked the door behind him and went immediately to his bedroom. He opened a wardrobe and started unloading cardboard boxes onto the bed. Stuff he’d taken from his house a lifetime ago and had never bothered unpacking. Stuff he wanted to forget, but for some reason didn’t have the courage to destroy. Books, journals, photograph albums. He flitted through pages of photographs. Pictures of his wife and daughter. Holidays, moments in time, smiles captured, mannerisms caught forever. He swallowed back a wave of sudden bitter sadness.
But Black had to go back further. He still had photos of his old life, the life in the army. He came across a folder containing loose pictures, documents, papers.
There it was – a faded photograph. On the back, scribbled in pencil, a date. 1998. He tucked it into his jeans pocket.
Black went through to the kitchen. Like every other room, it was minimalistic, clean, uncluttered. Black had never enjoyed cooking, but he refused to live on take-outs, and he knew the truth about food and health. You could be the fittest human being on the planet, but you could never outrun a bad diet. An electric juicer sat on the kitchen worktop. Twice a day, morning and evening, he used it – spinach, kale, a banana, an apple, ice, plus a half pint of orange juice. Blended. The end product was green and mildly disgusting. But it was his concession to five a day. He tried to cut out sugar, and went easy on the salt. Other than that, he didn’t give a damn what he ate. When he was on tour, deep in enemy territory, he ate stuff that would make a dog puke.
But it wasn’t the blender he chose. He opened a cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of single malt whisky – Glenfiddich – and a glass. He poured himself a generous quantity. Rough day.
He went back through to the living room. Black did not believe in clutter. He had never got round to decorating, or kitting the place out with excessive furniture. The room had a bookcase, crammed with books. A low coffee table. Black did not own a television. On a shelf was a CD player and a couple of small speakers. He pressed play. Some old Rolling Stones music. His wife loved them. He sat on a faded red cloth armchair. Other than a small couch and the coffee table, there was nothing else in the room. No paintings on the walls. No ornaments, no memorabilia, no framed pictures. His past was a time of death. He chose not to be reminded of it.
But yet it had found a way to surface. He took out the photo, gazed at it, sipping the whisky.
Three men wearing combat fatigues. Smiling. Exhausted. Taken at the top of a hill. Forty-pound Bergen rucksacks dumped at their feet. He was the man in the middle. He barely recognised the face which stared back. All SAS, serving with the 22nd Regiment. He had just been promoted to captain, as he recalled. The men on either side were both dead. Sergeant Peter Welsh, shot in the head by a sniper in Afghanistan. Sergeant William Kent, cancer of the throat. Behind them, some way off and at the top of a further incline, a large rock, about the size and approximate shape of a double-decker bus.
He thought back. This was taken in a place called Cape Wrath. The most north-westerly point in mainland Britain. Difficult to get to. Most of it owned by the Ministry of Defence. An uncompromising, brutal landscape, exposed to the elements, with severe frosts in the winter, and winds that could whip a man off his feet. Perfect for training. Perfect for SAS training.
He studied the photograph. He remembered the circuit. Running up the hill, full gear, rifle, ammunition. Touching the rock at the top, then back down. Then again, until the lungs felt they would burst, the muscles screamed in revolt. But you kept going.
To the top.
To Bastard Rock.
12
Who Dares Wins – Official Motto of the SAS
Who Cares Who Wins – Unofficial Motto
Black felt the need to move quickly. The clock was ticking. He had enemies. People – unpleasant people – were aware of his existence. They’d tried to kill him, for reasons unfathomable. Black had little doubt in his mind they would try again. Whoever wanted him dead would regard this as priority. Keep moving, thought Black. If he stayed in his flat any longer than he had to, he’d wind up dead, of that he was sure. He had to make assumptions – that they knew where he lived; that if they didn’t strike here, they would follow him, and strike elsewhere. He closed the blinds in his front bay window, glancing outside. Everything seemed normal. He would have been surprised if it were otherwise. There was little he could do. It was something he had to accept, if he wanted answers. The trick was to stay alive. Keep moving.
Cape Wrath was not the easiest place to reach. Roughly a six-hour drive from Glasgow to Durness, the closest village. From there, a passenger ferry across a stretch of water called the Kyle of Durness. Then a thirty-minute journey in a minibus along a track barely resembling a road. The rock – Bastard Rock – was about a mile from the lighthouse, as Black recollected. Stuck in the middle of brutal, windswept moorland, as close to nature as you could get, devoid of human habitation. Impossible to reach by car. Difficult on foot for the average tourist.
But Black was no tourist.
He would travel light. He would drive up, leaving at dawn. He daren’t risk driving in the dark. In daylight, he would at least see his enemies.
He would take a holdall, packing mountain boots, waterproof trousers, fleece top, woollen hat, gloves. Also, a light rucksack. In the Scottish Highlands, the weather could change in the blink of an eye. Sunshine one second, blizzard conditions the next. Volatile and deadly. One reason the army trained their combat troops in such conditions – confront and cope with the unpredictable.
Also, he would equip himself with a fixed blade Ka-Bar Marine Hunter knife, kept in a leather sheath strapped to the belt of his trousers. Razor sharp, serrated edge. And two switchblades, one in an inside pocket, the other he would strap to his calf under his sock. Black had a strong intuition he would need them.
Black fell into a light, fitful sleep, on his chair, one ear open for the quiet click of his lock being picked, the creak of footfall.
He awoke to a grey, listless dawn. Rolling clouds heralded rain. He got ready, slipped out. His car was parked on the public street outside. He opened the main entrance door. The air felt heavy, tinged with cold. It was late August, though it felt like autumn had arrived. Summer was dying. Black surveyed the street, the place illuminated by the sickly yellow glow of streetlights. It looked deserted. He drove a Mini Cooper. He made his way to the driver’s door, unlocked it, got in, senses heightened. Nothing untoward.
Black drove off, heading north, on the long road to Cape Wrath.
The journey was uneventful. He stopped at Inverness, for a coffee, in a nameless roadside café, senses alert for anything unusual. A glance, a stare too intense, contrived movements, anything suspicious. He was aware that a good surveillance team would be invisible, almost impossible to detect. He sipped the hot liquid from a paper cup. It was too public to strike, if indeed he was being followed.
