by Andy Maslen
The leader moved into the centre of the tunnel, making Gabriel’s passage a choice between walking over the wino’s meagre estate or squashing himself against the slimy wall to let him pass. The other two spread out to left and right. He could smell their aftershave from yards away. Gabriel aimed for a gap on the leader’s left but the man mirrored his move, delivering a good bump to his shoulder.
“Oi,” the man said. “What do you say when you knock into someone?”
The other two laughed. Confident, smug, self-assured. Clearing his mind, Gabriel remembered the words of Master Zhao. Do not seek the battle: run like the mouse. But if the battle comes to you, fight like the wolf whose name you bear. That suited him fine. He’d seen enough fighting to last him a lifetime. And enough death to last him for all eternity. He wanted to give these idiots a chance. He wanted to get the early train.
“I’m sorry for bumping into you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”
The leader hooted with laughter and mimicked Gabriel’s voice.
“‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.’ I don’t think so, shorty. I want to hear something like a proper apology. Like maybe on your knees.”
No. That wasn't going to happen.
“OK, you’ve made your point and I said sorry. I just want to go home.”
“And I just want you to say it properly, don’t I?”
The others loved that one and cackled. Gabriel noticed they’d adopted a balanced stance, weight on the balls of their feet, fists curling and uncurling, muscles bunching and tightening under their jackets. He tried again.
“Please, let’s not do anything we might regret, OK? We can all just walk away from this. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You pissing coward. Nobody’s walking away from this. I tell you what. Why don’t you give that old wino all your money then we’ll give you a little something to remember us by?”
The old wino turned his booze-reddened face towards Gabriel. Maybe hoping he was about to get a windfall.
This wasn’t going to end well, Gabriel thought. They reminded him of the big-boned army brats at one of his schools in Hong Kong. The ones who’d taunted him about his mother, who was half-Chinese, before punching him to the ground and stealing his lunch money.
“If you insist,” he said, removing his jacket, “but let me put this down to kneel on.”
He folded the jacket with the lining outermost, knowing that everyone was watching, before laying it in a pad to his side. His shirt concealed a hard-muscled frame kept in shape through thrice-weekly visits to a gym run by an ex-sergeant he knew.
The gang almost looked disappointed that the verbals were over and only the beating remained. The leader smirked and clenched his fists, but what happened next took him by surprise. From his crouching position, Gabriel straightened lightning fast, took a step to his left and punched the giant hard in the throat. The big man never expects to get hit first: he’s relaxed, watching and waiting. So the surprise doubles the effectiveness of the blow. He toppled, cracking his head against the wall on the way down. Then Gabriel took two quick steps to his right, at the same time pulling the top off the fountain pen he’d palmed with his left hand as he took his jacket off.
The lead thug blinked and focused on the object sending tendrils of fear into his balls. Gabriel let the point of the steel nib hover a couple of millimetres from the man’s right eye. The pudgy man hung back; Gabriel barked at him, using his best parade ground tone.
“Stand still!”
He’d mustered out of the SAS as a Captain, and could bring the tallest, biggest, toughest men into line with that voice. The two thugs stood still. Very still. Behind them, Gabriel could see a young couple, tourists maybe, walk into the tunnel, notice the standoff and about-turn.
He leaned close to the leader’s face, then whispered in his ear.
“I used this in the Congo to relieve a warlord of his left eye. We had to practice on dead pigs in training, but men’s eyes are easier. Thinner ligaments to hold them in place.” The man gulped, his prominent Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. He wasn’t to know Gabriel was lying. “So be a good boy and be on your way, and I won’t use it on you. You can still get out of this in one piece.”
He withdrew the pen and stepped away from the shaking thug. That should do it, he thought.
“Bastard!” the man screamed before throwing a wild punch at Gabriel’s head.
By the time the fist arrived, Gabriel had moved to one side. The heel of his hand connected with the underside of his opponent’s chin, clattering his teeth together with such force that two upper incisors shattered on impact. As the man staggered back, clutching his bloody mouth, Gabriel moved again. No need for overkill, just some summary justice. One, two, three quick jabs with outstretched fingers to the man’s throat, his gut and, as he collapsed onto the pavement, the back of his neck. The last blow landed directly above the basal ganglion, a knot of nerve fibres that functions like an on-off switch for consciousness. As the thug passed out, the final thing he saw was Gabriel leaning over him.
“The nearest A&E is St Thomas’s,” he said.
No need to worry about the pudgy lieutenant. He’d scarpered as soon as his leader’s swing failed to connect. Gabriel reached into the leader’s jacket and withdrew a brown leather wallet stuffed with twenties and fifties. Three hundred pounds at least. He tucked the money into the wino’s pocket.
“Have a good night, Granddad,” he said, retrieving his jacket and picking up his briefcase.
He walked out into the sunshine and towards Waterloo. Still time for the 16.20.
Chapter 3
As Gabriel approached his front door at six thirty, a frenzied barking let him know his burglar alarm was still operational. Half inside, he was almost pushed over by the brindle greyhound snuffing and nuzzling at his trousers.
“Seamus! Did you miss me, boy?” he said, scratching the dog behind the ears. “Has it been too long since Julia let you out?”
Evidently the answer was yes as the dog bustled after its master into the kitchen, then raced into the garden when he unlocked the back door.
Jacket slung over the back of a chair, Gabriel tied on a butcher-striped apron, washed his hands at the sink, and selected a heavy cleaver from a wooden knife block. He gathered vegetables from the fridge and with swift efficient movements reduced them to a neat pile of slivers, cubes and slices. Smashing a clove of garlic under the flat of the blade, he worked it into a paste with a rough pinch of sea salt before frying the whole lot in a wok blackened by years of use.
Gabriel poured himself a glass of white Burgundy and looked across to his answer machine. Some people had done away with landlines altogether – so 1990s, as one ad he’d seen put it – but Gabriel liked to keep it as a fallback. The mobile was his main phone, his diary and his everyday camera, but he refused to entrust his entire life to a couple of multinationals and their here-today-gone-tomorrow technology.
The red light was blinking. One new message. It could wait. Gabriel needed a walk and so did Seamus by the look of his dog’s tail, which threatened to come off if it wagged any harder. He finished his food and the wine, then headed out to the park through the late evening sun, man and dog matching pace, no pulling or dragging on the worn leather leash.
As Seamus returned from a foray into the brambles surrounding the grassy half-acre, with its swings, zip-wire and climbing frame, Gabriel sensed rather than heard footsteps behind him. Before he could turn, something hard and sharp prodded him in the ribs. A husky voice, a woman’s voice, said, “Don’t move”. He complied. The voice continued, “There’s a bee on your back”. He felt a flick and turned to see Julia Angell. She was tall for a woman, maybe five nine or ten. Curvaceous beneath the loose V-neck sweater. Inky-black hair tied back with an elastic band. No makeup: none needed. Her hazel eyes were crinkling with a smile.
“How are you?” she asked. “Haven’t seen you around much these last weeks.”
“I know. I’ve been busy on this project. Just got back from the final meeting.”
He ran a hand through his hair, found he was having trouble making eye contact.
“Are you OK? You look a bit tense,” Julia said, frowning at him.
“Oh, I just had some trouble on the way home. Three blokes tried to jump me. No idea why.”
“Oh my God. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine.” He sighed. “I had to, you know, deal with them. Nothing major.” Nothing major? So putting a guy in hospital is a minor thing now, is it?
“I’m so sorry. I know you don’t like violence. What did you say last time? That little mantra of yours?”
“I said I was never going to send a man to his death again.”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Sounds like a good rule for living, hon. Listen, are you truly all right? Do you want to come over for a drink?”
“I’m fine. I’m going to get an early night. It’s all good, really.”
“OK. But you know you can. If you change your mind, I mean. Did your meeting go well?”
“Yeah, it was good. I think the client realised we could settle their little contract dispute without declaring World War Three.” He managed a smile. It was always easy, talking to Julia.
“Oh, yes. Your lovely clients,” she said, folding her arms across her chest, and grinning. “Who is it this time? Another tobacco company? Oil? Some dodgy politician? Do you have even one scruple about who you work for?”
“Of course. I turned down an adult TV channel last month.”
“Why, pray tell?”
“Too grubby.”
She laughed and punched him, hard, on the shoulder. She’d been a fight arranger for the movies in a previous life and her punches always hurt.
Gabriel laughed, too.
“OK, OK, I’m an unscrupulous mercenary and I don’t deserve friends like you.”
“That’s better. And I really am sorry about the fight. Now, listen. Why don’t you come to dinner at ours soon? We’ll even invite someone pretty for you to flirt with.”
“Sure. That would be great. Just not too intense – that last one was like an interrogator I trained with. She’d have had my inside leg measurement out of me if I hadn’t held her off.”
She hit him again. Same place, more force. After agreeing a date, they called their dogs and set off home, waving and calling goodnights. On the walk back, Gabriel remembered the phone message. Later, he thought. He settled Seamus, poured himself a finger of Armagnac and took it upstairs.
The next morning – after waking from a dreamless sleep with no nightmares, a sign of a good day to come – Gabriel pulled on jeans and a jumper and headed downstairs for breakfast. Before he reached the kitchen door, Seamus whined at his master’s approach. Gabriel never wondered at this, as many dog-owners did. His tread on the stairs was silent – old habits, and training, die hard – but he assumed the greyhound could pick up on changes in air temperature, pressure or scent. He opened the door to the kitchen to be greeted by the dog unwinding itself from the basket in the corner.
Gabriel made tea – breathing in the distinctive aroma of what he called “the house blend”. One third Kenyan Orange Pekoe, one third Earl Grey and one third English Breakfast, it had a tangy, floral smell that reminded him of his father’s morning routine. Always the same, never changing. His father drank tea from a bone china Willow Pattern cup, threads of vapour curling up and catching the morning sunlight slanting in over the bay through the apartment windows. Those moments before the school day were the best time. Before school and its torments. His mother left for work before his father. It had always felt unfair to the young Gabriel that teachers got paid less than government staff yet brought more work home with them at the end of the day. But as he got to spend these precious minutes with his beloved father, he didn’t let himself mind too much.
With the same clockwork regularity that he did everything else, the elder Wolfe would fold his paper, dab his lip with a linen napkin and stand.
“Well, old boy, duty calls. Queen and country. Mustn’t keep the old girl waiting, eh?”
With a ruffle of his son’s unruly black hair, his father would leave for his office, whistling a snatch from HMS Pinafore, The Gondoliers or The Mikado. Gabriel still couldn’t hear a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta without being whisked back to those precious mornings.
Now, though, it was he who finished his breakfast, cleared and wiped the table, loaded the dishwasher, all according to a strict and unwavering pattern, before heading for the front door with the ever keen greyhound bustling along beside him, eager for exercise and the possibility of chasing hares through the fields. But first, the message. The light on the answering machine was blinking, once a second, as it had been all night: almost as if it knew it could outwait Gabriel. He pressed play. Once the polite robotic voice installed by the manufacturer had trotted its unnecessary introduction about number of messages, times, dates and for all he cared the caller’s shoe size, he refocused on the message. His plans for the day changed instantly.
The caller had a warm voice. Cultured. “Hello Mr Wolfe. Sir Toby Maitland here. I’m an old friend of Martin Mackenzie’s. Listen, I need a chap with your sort of skillset and Martin spoke very highly of you. Come and see me, would you? Rokeby Manor. It’s the house behind the racecourse. Please call my secretary to fix an appointment.”
A mobile number followed, then the call ended. It sounded like work: very lucrative work. Why would a knight of the realm need a negotiator?
Chapter 4
Gabriel walked Seamus, then headed upstairs to change, the suit and tie replacing the other uniform he’d handed in a few years earlier. He checked his appearance on the free-standing mirror next to his dressing table, adjusted by half an inch the spotted pocket square peeping from his breast pocket, and called the secretary to agree a time for the meeting. He was heading over to his new client by 8.45. He knew there was something clichéd about a single man with a sports car, especially an Italian thoroughbred like his indigo Maserati GT, but he didn’t care. There’d been enough money left over from his parents’ legacy for a deposit after buying the cottage, and he’d found it easy to convince himself it was the right thing to do.
Once he left the village behind, the thirty miles-per-hour speed limit persisted for another 500 yards or so. Gabriel watched the road ahead for the familiar corner where it ended. As he passed the sign, he jammed his right foot down as hard and as fast as he could, sinking the drilled aluminium pedal down into the thick carpet.
Three things happened simultaneously: the engine note soared from an almost silent throb to a wail that penetrated the sound insulation of the cabin and made Gabriel’s ears sing; the car leapt forwards, so that he was not so much pressed as thrown back against the seat; and his heart rate swung up from its normal resting rate of 60 to 100 beats per minute.
At a fast-approaching right-hand bend, a discreet sign announced that Rokeby Manor was off to the left, down a narrow lane fringed with trees. Gabriel readied the car for the turn, the big brakes hauling the car to walking speed in a handful of seconds. After half a mile, the silver birches and hawthorns lining the road thinned, then ended and the house came into view. Rokeby Manor was a Georgian country house built of red bricks, weathered now to a dusty coral. Three huge windows at each side flanked a double front door. Gabriel drove up to the house over golden gravel that popped and pinged under his tyres. He grabbed his briefcase off the passenger seat and got out to take a look around before ringing the bell. Money comes to money, his mother used to say. Judging by the impressive parkland stretching down from the house’s formal garden to a lake, Sir Toby Maitland must be a very wealthy man indeed. Behind him the massive front door opened with a faint creak. A man’s voice broke the silence.
“You must be Mr Wolfe. Sir Toby is expecting you. Please follow me.”
Gabriel turned to see a man dressed like a tourist’s idea of an English butle
r. Black jacket, striped grey trousers. He was about thirty or thirty-five, with the build of a heavyweight boxer. Tall, too, maybe six three or four. Maybe he did more than bring Maitland the morning paper and his afternoon tea, thought Gabriel. The butler was glaring at the Maserati. Gabriel followed him inside. The interior of the house smelled of lilac blossom – there was a huge spray of blooms in a tall glass vase on a table in the centre of the hall. Towards the back of the room a staircase swept up and round in a graceful curve before splitting into two at a half-landing.
“This way please, Sir,” said the butler.
They walked a few paces down a wide hallway before the butler opened a dark wooden door and motioned for Gabriel to enter. It was a library. Apart from the door and a large multi-paned window looking out on the gravel drive, it was lined by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There was even an old-fashioned wheeled ladder on rails that you could slide around to reach the higher shelves. The room smelt of cigar smoke and worn leather, a very male smell not unlike some of the officers’ messes Gabriel had used during his military service.
“Sir Toby will be with you shortly. May I bring you some tea? Or coffee, perhaps?”
“Coffee, please.”
“Thank you, Sir. Sir Toby says to make yourself at home.”
With the butler gone, Gabriel gave the library a more careful appraisal. There was a long rectangular table under the window piled with magazines: Country Life, MotorSport and a couple of golfing and shooting titles he didn’t recognise. He smelled, too, the musty aroma of old books just underneath the clubby aroma he’d noticed as he entered. Gabriel wandered over to the bookshelf to the left of the window. Military history dominated, everything from campaign reports from the Boer War to recent memoirs from serving soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. A hefty slice of one shelf was devoted to political works, including an anthology of Great Wartime Speeches, 1939-1944. Another surprise: the speeches recorded weren’t Churchill’s as he had expected, but those of Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor Hirohito of Japan. The butler re-entered the room, sniffing as he saw Gabriel holding the book.
