Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  ‘What?’ Blumenthal demanded again.

  Cohen shook his head and sighed deeply. ‘Nothing, Ehud,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’ And he watched with an expressionless face as the Rottweiler stormed out of the room, slamming the door noisily behind him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Leaving Hereford had been far from straightforward. First there had been the meet and greet with the Royal Protection Squad at 07.00 hrs. Luke hardly heard anything the RPS boys said. He was just replaying last night’s conversation over and over again. Trying to make sense of it. Trying to work out what it meant.

  I was with Chet Freeman the night he died . . . the night he was murdered.

  Part of him thought the caller must have been a nutter, winding him up or playing some sick joke. But his phone was supplied by work. That meant it was encrypted. Impossible to trace and impossible to find the number if you didn’t know it already. Luke knew that he had to get out of camp and down to London.

  They were scheduled to leave for Israel the following morning. Going AWOL wasn’t an option, so he approached O’Donoghue at midday and spun him a crock of shit about having a few personal loose ends to tie up before heading out on the op. The ops officer hadn’t been happy. ‘Fucking hell, Luke, we leave in twenty-four hours. It’s not the time for you to start sorting out your woman trouble.’ But he cut his man some slack and agreed to stand him down for a few hours. And so, by early afternoon, Luke had changed out of his camouflage gear and into a pair of jeans and an old hooded top that he normally wore for jogging in the winter. Today he selected it because the hood would disguise his face a little. Before long he was screaming down the M4 to London.

  He hit the western outskirts at 14.45 hrs. As a London boy born and bred, it felt like coming home. But it was an uneasy homecoming. By 15.45 he was parking up just off Fleet Street. He was in good time for the RV and that suited him well. He didn’t know what this woman looked like; he didn’t know if this was some elaborate game; so he wanted to get eyes on the location early.

  The light was just failing as he walked up Fleet Street with the illuminated dome of St Paul’s rising above him. Luke turned up the collar of his leather jacket against the cold, pulled up his hood and stood fifty metres from the steps, in the shadow of the maroon awning of an Indian restaurant. The smell of curry reminded him how hungry he was, but he put that to the back of his mind and surveyed the scene.

  The entrance to the cathedral was lit up, and people were wandering in and out of the huge wooden doors, only just visible behind the temple-like column of the façade. Many of them were tourists – there was a large party of Japanese students with backpacks and cameras – but he saw too a good number of ordinary Londoners, suited and booted. Perhaps, he thought to himself, the events of a couple of days ago had made people more religious. Luke didn’t know. It was all bullshit to him. When you’re dead you’re dead. No pearly gates or swooning angels. Just a hole in the ground, if you’re lucky.

  The minutes ticked away. Luke stayed in the shadows, watching the steps. Waiting. People came and went. Was the woman he was here to meet one of the crowd sitting on the steps? Impossible to tell.

  He continued to watch. It grew cold. He ignored it.

  ‘You hungry, boss?’

  He looked round sharply. An Indian man in a grey suit had appeared at the door of the curry restaurant. ‘I have very good food.’

  Luke shook his head and went back to watching.

  Time check: 16.57. Three minutes to RV.

  Luke scanned the steps, directing his vision in concentric circles so he covered the whole area. Nobody stood out. He looked at his phone. No calls. He scanned the façade of the cathedral; he checked along its wings for anything suspicious; he searched for loiterers in the general vicinity.

  Nothing. It looked like just another London evening.

  16.59.

  Something caught his eye.

  Two people had emerged from the entrance of the cathedral. A woman and, holding on to her hand, a young child. Luke wouldn’t have given them a second glance, were the woman not looking around anxiously, as if she too was searching for someone. The child stood calmly by the woman’s side. He showed none of the woman’s anxiety, but then why should he? He was just a kid.

  Luke stayed where he was. A nearby church bell rang the hour and the woman’s anxiety appeared to increase. He continued to check for anything suspicious: unmarked cars parked nearby; anyone else observing the steps.

  Still nothing.

  At 17.03 he stepped out from the shadows. He didn’t walk directly up to the steps, but followed a circular route and approached from the side. As he drew nearer to the entrance of the cathedral, the woman’s features became clearer. She was thin, with short red hair and bags under her eyes. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her face, but the same couldn’t be said of the child who held her hand. He was thin too, with serious eyes and dishevelled brown hair. But there was something familiar about him. So familiar, in fact, that just to look at him sent a prickle of recognition down Luke’s spine.

  He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up. The woman was chewing on her lower lip. She glanced at her watch and muttered something to herself, then bent down and spoke to the child. And it was as she was speaking that she caught sight of Luke staring at her.

  She stared back and slowly stood up to her full height again. Her expression was questioning. Luke hurried up the steps, but he didn’t head straight for her. Instead he bypassed the pair of them and passed through the main doors of the cathedral.

  He’d never been inside before. Last time Luke had been in a church was to say goodbye to a member of A Squadron who’d had his bollocks blown off during a raid on a Taliban facility in the badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They’d repatriated those bits of his body they could find, but the guys who’d shouldered his coffin said afterwards that it felt empty. Whatever. The family had something to plant, that was the main thing.

  He quickly took in his surroundings: the narrow aisle with its chequerboard floor and row upon row of wooden pews, the massive dome, the highly decorated altar and imposing organ, the huge arches along either side of the aisle leading to the unseen wings of the cathedral – very pretty, Luke supposed, but he wasn’t here to marvel at the fucking architecture. At the far end of the cathedral, just in front of the altar, a large choir of maybe a hundred people was rehearsing – a fifty-fifty mixture of schoolboys in blue and grey uniform and men and women of retirement age. Their conductor, clearly unhappy with something, was shouting at them, and his voice echoed meaninglessly around the huge space. Weird, what some people got themselves worked up about. Aside from the choir, there were probably another hundred people in here that he could see, some of them sitting on the pews with their heads bowed, others wandering aimlessly, looking at the architecture, or just talking.

  The conductor’s shouting stopped and, almost imperceptibly, the choir started singing. It was quiet, but the voices sounded like they came from every corner of the cathedral.

  ‘Monteverdi,’ a voice said from behind him.

  Luke spun round. A young priest with neatly brushed but thinning blond hair, black robes and a dog collar was standing no more than a metre from him. ‘The Vespers,’ he said with a serene smile. ‘So powerful . . . Are you here for contemplation?’

  Luke looked over the priest’s shoulder towards the main doors. No sign of his date.

  ‘Something like that.’

  The man inclined his head. ‘Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for . . .’

  Me too, Luke thought. He moved away, walking ten metres to the right, into the shadow of the first side arch. From here he could keep an eye on the entrance and he didn’t have to wait long before he saw her walking into the cathedral. She was clutching the boy’s left hand with both of hers and her eyes darted around. When the priest who had approached Luke walked up and spoke to her, she was visibly distressed and scurried towards the aisle
without saying a word, pulling the kid along with her. She looked fucking terrified, Luke thought, as the woman walked past the arch where he was standing. Fine by him. He didn’t like these cloak and dagger games and if she felt uncomfortable, that made two of them.

  He left the shadows of the arch and moved quickly down the aisle. Within seconds he was a metre behind the woman and the boy, but they were quite unaware of his presence.

  Luke kept his voice low. ‘Walk.’

  The woman looked round nervously. He pointed down the aisle towards the altar. ‘That way.’

  She swallowed hard and, the little boy still clutching her hand, did as she was told. Luke walked just behind her. Less than a metre. Close enough that they could talk as they went.

  ‘First things first. What’s your name?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ the woman said quietly. He could only just hear her over the choir. The Vespers, whatever the fuck they were, were getting louder.

  ‘Well, here’s the problem, honey. I’m not a patient man. Fuck around with me any more and I might just decide to stick your arm behind your back and march you down to the nearest Old Bill. I’ll let you explain what you’re doing with a dead man’s phone. Could be an interesting conversation.’

  ‘Oh, God . . .’ the woman murmured. She pulled the little boy closer towards her.

  ‘So let’s try again. What’s your name?’

  A pause. And then, with resignation: ‘Suze . . . Suze McArthur. And this is Harry.’ She stopped and turned round to look at Luke again. They were standing underneath the dome now, and the acoustics had changed. The choir sounded more ethereal, as though a hundred voices were floating around in the air, searching for someone to listen to them.

  ‘Chet’s boy,’ she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  Luke blinked.

  ‘What?’

  He looked down at the kid. Harry stared up at him. He didn’t look scared, not like Suze, and Luke felt the recognition again. He knew she wasn’t lying.

  ‘I’m scared someone might find us,’ said Suze. ‘I don’t feel safe.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who else knows we’re here?’

  Suze looked back towards the entrance of the cathedral, and her right hand instinctively gripped the boy’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell . . .’

  ‘Either you’ve told someone or you haven’t.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  Jesus, this woman oozed paranoia. But whatever was going through her head, she clearly believed it. Luke looked around. Up ahead, to the right of the altar, through one of the ornate arches and at the end of the right-hand wing of the church, there was a small, separate altar with three rows of shorter pews in front of it. ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘If anyone’s watching us, we’ll see them.’

  ‘And what then?’

  Luke gave her a flat stare. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  Together, the three of them hurried between the front of the main pews and the choir, towards the smaller altar. The light was a little lower here, the smell of incense stronger. A cast-iron barrier stopped the public from approaching the altar, which was about two metres wide and on which sat a plain bronze cross, about half a metre high. Behind this little altar was a painting: some Bible scene, all stormy skies and men in robes. The altar cloth was inlaid with gold thread and there were three pews facing it for the faithful to pray in. They were all empty. Luke stood with his back to the altar. To his right there was a clear path to the area under the dome and the choir. Straight ahead he could see back along the side length of the church. It was gloomy, but his eyesight was sharp. A few tourists were milling about, perhaps twenty metres away, but they paid this nervous trio no attention. Between them and the tourists was the top of a stairwell, next to which was a sign with an arrow pointing downwards and the words ‘to the crypt’ in big black letters. But the stairwell was cordoned off with a piece of thick rope.

  Suze encouraged the boy to sit in one of the pews, which he did without argument. Then she came to stand next to Luke.

  ‘Me and Chet were pretty close,’ Luke said. His voice was hushed, but not out of reverence. ‘He never mentioned anyone called Suze.’

  ‘We didn’t know each other long.’

  Luke glanced at the boy. ‘Long enough,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Suze replied without a trace of embarrassment. She sighed deeply. ‘Long enough for him to save my life. And lose his.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Suze closed her eyes. Her face was drawn, as though the effort of talking was too much for her. But when she opened her eyes and started to speak again, the words were like a flood.

  She talked. Luke listened. For all her nervousness, the story Suze told was vivid, as if she had relived the events she was recounting every day of her life since. He could almost picture the rooftop above Whitehall and Suze’s little flat. He didn’t have to imagine the B&B in the Brecon Beacons because he knew it.

  And she started talking about Alistair Stratton. About the Grosvenor Group and a conversation she and Chet had overheard. The words tumbled from her mouth, like they’d been locked up and were now escaping. She didn’t seem to notice that the look Luke gave her was disbelieving.

  By the time Suze had finished, the choristers were in full song, forcing Luke to speak up.

  ‘So where’s this tape now?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Burned,’ she told him. ‘In the fire.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Convenient,’ he murmured.

  A pause. A dissonant chord echoed round the cathedral.

  ‘You think I’m lying?’ She said it as if the possibility had never occurred to her. ‘Why would I lie about something like this?’

  ‘I’ve never met you, honey. I don’t know what you’d lie about.’ Luke glanced over at the kid. He certainly looked like Chet, but that didn’t mean the rest of this bullshit was true. And then, like the sun coming up, something clicked in his head. He pulled out his wallet. There was always money in there, never less than a couple of hundred. He removed a thin sheaf of notes. ‘How much do you need?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chet was a good mate. I owe him. If you need help you don’t have to make this crap up.’

  ‘You think I want your money? You think I’d wait all these years to tap you up for . . . ?’ She looked around desperately, like she wanted to escape but didn’t know where to run to. ‘You think I’d risk this for a few quid?’ She was whispering now, and on the verge of tears. She pushed Luke’s hand away, sat down next to her boy and put her head in her hands. The little boy didn’t seem surprised at his mother’s sudden emotion. He just looked calmly up at Luke. Fucking kid. For some reason he gave him the spooks. Luke swore under his breath and took a seat next to Suze again.

  They sat there for a full minute, not speaking. The choir grew quieter too.

  It was Suze who broke their silence. She sat up straight and stared at the bronze cross on the altar. ‘You knew Chet,’ she said. ‘Do you really think he died in a simple house fire?’

  ‘He was badly wounded,’ Luke replied. Even as he said it, though, he doubted himself. Chet was wounded, but had that ever stopped him getting around? Like hell it had. Chet Freeman took some killing. Luke knew that better than anyone.

  He closed his eyes briefly.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this now? Why didn’t you come to me immediately?’

  ‘Haven’t you listened to anything I said?’ she snapped. ‘I was scared, all right? I still am. Chet told me to hide and that’s what I did. I’ve been hiding ever since that night.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere,’ she said, suddenly full of hopelessness. ‘Everywhere. I move around. I know they’re still after me. I know that if they find me, they’ll . . . they’ll do to me what they did to Chet. And there’s Harry . . .’ She paused to inhale deeply. ‘But something’s happened. Something important. These b
ombings. You know about them?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Suze pulled her mobile phone from her pocket. Luke noticed that her hands were shaking as she pressed a couple of buttons and handed it to Luke, nodding at the screen.

  The image that it displayed was slightly blurred, but he could make out a black and white CCTV still, and the edge of the TV screen from which the photo had been taken. Two men, their heads circled. It looked familiar. ‘I’ve seen this?’

  ‘The bombers,’ Suze whispered, her face earnest. ‘They released it yesterday.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  Suze tapped the screen, pointing not at the circled men but at a dark-haired woman behind them.

  ‘What?’

  She looked up at him. ‘It’s her,’ she said. ‘The woman who came for us. The woman who . . . who killed Chet.’

  Luke stared at the picture.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  Suze took a deep breath. Her hands were still shaking. ‘Has anyone ever tried to kill you?’

  ‘Once or twice, as it goes.’

  She quickly recovered. ‘Do you remember their faces?’

  Of course he did. Some things you never forget.

  ‘Chet said she works for Mossad. I don’t know how he knew . . . something about her gun?’

  ‘Mossad? That doesn’t make any sense.’

  Suze shrugged. ‘All I know is that someone wanted us out of the way because of what we knew. I don’t care who she was working for . . . but Alistair Stratton had something to do with it.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Listen to me. If Chet was right about her, about a Mossad connection, she could be working for anybody.’ Because official allegiances change, he thought to himself. One day you fight for one man, the next day you fight for another. Hadn’t the Regiment trained up the Mujahideen before they were public enemy number one?

  Suze stood up and walked towards the small altar. For a moment she didn’t move, gazing up at the bronze cross, before suddenly turning towards him again. ‘Alistair Stratton’s a warmonger. He always has been. Don’t you see? Doesn’t anybody see? First the Balkans, then Iraq, now this. Don’t you see what he’s . . . ?’