Little Sister (A Group 15 Novella)

by Mark Dawson

  “The range?”

  “Aye. There’s a wee range by the gates of the estate with some targets.”

  Björn nodded. “Do you think the new owner would mind if we introduced ourselves?” He had no intention of doing that, but he was curious what the girl would say about the new owners’ attitude to strangers.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. They’ve got bodyguards.”

  “Bodyguards?” said Olya. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think they’re businessmen or bankers or something. They spend a lot of time on their computers. The boss fancies himself Scottish, but he’s American – both the men are. I think they live in London.”

  “Both the men? Are there women there as well?” Olya leaned forward conspiratorially, encouraging gossip.

  “Aye,” she said. “They’re supposed to be ‘girlfriends’. I think they’re from Poland or something. My friend Evie was doing up there this summer and she said there was maybe a Swedish girl and a Russian there then, too. Different girls to these two. But I’m sure they are all earning good money.”

  She might have green hair and a nose ring, but clearly Isla’s sense of propriety had been upset.

  Olya frowned for a second, her own sense of propriety dented too; she wondered what Gudrún would have thought at being called not only a whore but a Swede. She regained her smile.

  The waitress caught herself. “There’s me blathering on. I shouldn’t be talking about my employers. But, no, I wouldn’t pay them a visit if I were you. They’re just fine all alone.”

  It was nine o’clock by the time Björn and Olya got back to the inn at Torridon. They went upstairs to their room. Björn broke out the map, figured out a route and calculated timings. The terrain looked pretty near impassable, with swarms of contour lines crowding in on each other representing towering cliffs. It was fifteen clicks to where Björn estimated the range might be. He needed to be there by dawn, or preferably an hour before so that he could find the best spot to overlook the range. He would run where he could, but he guessed the fifteen kilometres would take him three and a half hours over that terrain in the dark. Dawn wasn’t until 0740, so adding in the hour, that gave an ETD of 0310. Call it three o’clock. Not so bad.

  “Shall I wait for you here tomorrow?” said Olya. She was sitting on the bed scrolling through her iPad.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Björn. “You should leave in the morning. Get a bus or a taxi back to the station and head to London.”

  “Why?”

  Björn looked her in the eye. “We have been kidding ourselves that the police won’t be on to us. There’s a chance we don’t get on their radar, that they don’t start asking more questions about Gudrún’s death or make a connection between that and you and me. But once I take care of Karsh and we’re suspects, they’ll check up on us. And then they’ve got us. They’ll find out we drove up to Scotland and stayed in an inn thirty miles away, and that will be it. I don’t have a good story: I’m probably going to jail. And I’m okay with that.”

  “So am I,” said Olya defiantly.

  “There is no need. Tell the landlord we had an argument and you’re going to London alone. Leave the car with me. Then, when the police ask later, you say you never realised until tonight that I was planning to kill Karsh and not just confront him. That’s why we argued; that’s why you left. I’ll back you up.”

  “Do you really think they’ll arrest you?”

  “I hope not. But probably.”

  Olya took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Björn. “Now let’s get to bed. I need a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Oh,” said Olya, with a smile. “Okay.”

  They undressed down to their underwear and crawled into the double bed, one on each side. Björn turned off the light. “Good night.”

  Olya didn’t respond. Björn was keyed up, but he could will himself to sleep where necessary. Rest was vital in the field; you took it where you could. It wouldn’t take him more than a minute.

  The minute was almost up when he dimly felt fingers on his thigh.

  He opened his eyes. “Olya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stop it.”

  The fingers moved further around his thigh. And higher. “I mean it.” He removed the hand from his crotch and shut his eyes.

  The light flashed on.

  Björn rolled over. Olya was sitting up, her arms crossed in front of her black bra. She looked angry.

  “What?” said Björn.

  “You’re saying no? Seriously?”

  “I’m saying no.”

  “No man says no to me. Ever.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt your pride.”

  “Don’t you like women? Gudrún never told me you liked men.”

  Björn sat up. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal. You’re a beautiful woman. A really beautiful woman. But I’ve got a busy morning ahead of me. A busy night. And I must be ten years older than you.”

  “So? I’m twenty-two. I can have sex with whoever I want to.”

  “Well, not with me tonight.”

  “What is it they say, ‘Eat drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die’?”

  “That was always stupid,” Björn said. “I have no intention of dying tomorrow. That’s the point.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Now, good night Olya. I’ll say goodbye tomorrow when I leave.”

  Olya snorted. But she turned off the light and rolled away with her back to Björn.

  Björn couldn’t get to sleep in sixty seconds. Nor in two minutes.

  There was that hand on his thigh again.

  “Björn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you quite quite sure?”

  Fokk.

  In one smooth roll, Björn was on top of her. Olya managed a peal of triumphant laughter before she pressed her lips to his.

  14

  Björn slipped out of bed at 0240, kissed Olya goodbye and by 0300 he was on his way. There was a three-quarter moon and no cloud. The sea loch glimmered in the moonlight, thin eddies of mist twisting and swirling a metre above the water. A towering mass of rock and scree loomed over him: Beinn Alligin. It was a still night of luminous beauty. No sound came from the village; only the lapping of the loch lulled the darkness.

  He paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark and then began to jog. A small road skirted the loch for a few kilometres before bearing off inland. Björn made good progress on the tarmac, but eventually he had to strike out into the wilderness. The going was very rough: bogs, lochans, burns, rocks, steep slopes and hidden gullies, but this was what Björn had been trained to do and he was good at it. In fact, he loved it. The cool air, the moon, the mountains, the warmth of the blood rushing through his veins, the utter desolation of it; it lifted his spirits.

  About two miles from the castle, he disturbed a small group of deer, as surprised to see him as he was to see them. They scattered towards the nearest crag and within a few seconds they had merged into the dark. He grinned: he could easily have shouldered the C8 and brought a couple down, but he jogged on.

  He reached the gates of the estate at 0620, slightly earlier than scheduled. There were two old granite gateposts, and what looked like a modern metal gate, no doubt installed recently by Karsh. There was a small lodge that showed no lights. Björn knew from his map that from the lodge, a track wound a kilometre through woods towards the castle itself; he hadn’t actually caught sight of the big house yet, nor the sea, which he knew was less than a kilometre away.

  A blackbird announced its presence to the morning from the branch of a tree above him. Another replied from a bush by the gatepost.

  Björn made his way parallel to the track for about four hundred metres until he came to a clearing. A line of three green-painted wooden shelters faced a series of targets in the shape of stags, all at different ranges. The furthest was probably two hundred metres.

  The range.

 
A grey-blue light was sliding in from the east, and Björn could begin to pick out the details of the surrounding hillsides. There were four good vantage points overlooking the range. He jogged up the hillside and checked each of them out. The best was a gentle indentation at the top of a ridge covered by a thick blanket of golden bracken.

  Perfect.

  Björn set up the C8, ranged the sights and waited. It was 0735, and soft morning light was splashing the summit of the mountain to the west.

  Number Five rested comfortably in the heather, his eyes never leaving the entrance to the castle two hundred yards below. His HK G3A3 was set up next to him. It was a selective fire rifle that was excellent at long range. Five knew that he could be accurate up to around four hundred yards with the iron sights, but the FERO Z24 telescopic sight would make him effective out to double that.

  Rosnager might be called a castle, but it was actually a grey stone house, higher than it was wide; four round towers topped off with little spires were tacked on to each corner. To Five’s untrained eye it looked more like a Victorian replica of some German medieval castle than the real thing. A lawn stretched down from the castle to the sea loch and a view of low purple hills on the northern side. Thickets of rhododendron surrounded the grounds, and an apron of gravel spread out in front of the entrance.

  It was seven in the morning, and all was quiet, at least down by the castle. Out in the loch, a little red fishing boat chugged by the house on its way to work, escorted by a dozen flapping seagulls. The heather was alive with the rustling and gurgling of water as it rushed down to the sea, and the urgent chirping of birds going about their morning business. Five’s nostrils were tickled by the scent of heather that sweetened the faint reek of decay rising from the bogs.

  Five had assumed Bertin would try one of three methods to take out Karsh, and had chosen his position accordingly. If Bertin approached the house at the front entrance, posing as a visitor and armed with a sidearm, Five would be able to shoot him there and then. If he decided to take up a sniping position overlooking the castle, Five would spot him easily.

  The trickiest was if Bertin attempted to break into the castle, especially at night. Five had night vision binoculars and he would probably see him. But he had to sleep and he had to eat, and so he couldn’t be absolutely certain he would be watching when Bertin made his move.

  Five had been in position since the previous evening. He had left his vehicle in the car park of the Rosnager Arms, telling the landlord he was going on a four-day hike and would be leaving it there until he returned. There was a sign saying that parking was for customers only, but fifty quid had dealt with that.

  Scotland had instituted a ‘right to roam’, which meant that anyone could walk across open land, even if it was private. So a single man with a backpack hiking across the estate wouldn’t arouse any suspicions. Five had started off along the seashore, a rough beach of pebbles and sand in front of the house, and then struck uphill alongside a burn in a sheltered wood. He had found a hollow in a cliff, almost a cave, to make his camp. He scouted out his observation point and waited.

  He was prepared to wait a long time.

  Lights appeared in the castle at 0710. At 0825 a Land Rover Defender pulled up outside the front entrance and two men and a girl got out; the men were dressed in tweeds and plus fours. One of them was a big, burly fellow of about forty, sporting the distinctive deerstalker headgear favoured by Sherlock Holmes. The other was thinner, younger and wearing a flat cap. The ghillies, no doubt.

  Ten minutes later, they reappeared with two other men, also dressed in tweeds, whom Five instantly recognised as Karsh and Brenner. A fifth man, more casually dressed in jeans and a black zippered jacket, joined them, giving the rhododendron bushes a cursory once-over. Their bodyguard, presumably. All five mounted up in the Land Rover, ready for a day’s deer stalking.

  This was a problem that Five had foreseen. He planned to jog along behind, keeping out of sight, and more importantly, keeping an eye out for Bertin.

  However, rather than setting off on one of the many tracks leading up from the house into the surrounding hills, the Land Rover headed back towards the gates to the estate.

  Five swore to himself, gathered up his rifle, and set off at a quick clip parallel to the track.

  Five minutes later, a clearing came into view, with a series of shelters and targets. A range. Presumably they would warm up there before heading out to the hills.

  Five swore again. He should have spotted that on the satellite images of the estate he had consulted the day before. It was a perfect spot for a sniper.

  The Land Rover was parked and the five men were standing next to it, Karsh and Brenner holding rifles, as was the older ghillie, who seemed to be giving them some kind of lecture. The vehicle obscured the line of sight from the hills above the range, although a sniper concealed in the rhododendron bushes on the other side of the road would have a clear view.

  Five squatted down, pulled out his binoculars, and began to systematically scan the bushes by the roadside.

  Nothing.

  Then he checked the open hillsides.

  There!

  The sniper was well hidden, but not invisible. As was his rifle, which was trained on the Land Rover. Three hundred metres at most. A walk in the park for a professional.

  As soon as Karsh moved away from the Land Rover to take up his position at the range, he would be dead.

  The sniper hadn’t seen Five; he was concentrating on the men below. Five was lower than the sniper, maybe four hundred metres away.

  He unslung the HK, chambered a round, and lowered himself to the ground. The lecture was over, and the group of men were beginning to move.

  Five picked up the sniper in his sight.

  He steadied his breathing and squeezed the trigger. He watched through the sights as the sniper jerked and rolled to one side.

  Impact had been on the torso, as intended. Five fired off three more shots, the first two missing the smaller target, but the third demolishing the sniper’s head.

  Job done.

  15

  Björn saw it all.

  He had been focussing on the range, his ears straining for the sound of a vehicle’s engine, when he had shifted position. He saw movement through his peripheral vision somewhere to his right. A man dressed in a green coat and brown trousers was crawling up the slope to the ridge and one of the four possible vantage points Björn had identified earlier. He was carrying a rifle.

  At first Björn assumed it was one of the estate workers, or maybe even Jesse Brenner, whom he had never seen, stalking deer.

  But the guy looked like a soldier. Or an ex-soldier, maybe. He was late forties, maybe fifty. Although he wasn’t wearing obvious camouflage, his clothes had been chosen to blend into the hillside.

  He reached the ridge and set up his rifle with a tripod. It was pointing down towards the ridge.

  This man wasn’t planning to hunt deer.

  He was hunting people.

  Specifically, Finlay Karsh.

  For an instant, Björn wondered who else would want to avenge his sister, when he remembered what Olya had said about Karsh needing to recruit security to protect him from some Central Asian businessman. Kazakh? No, Uzbek.

  Björn grinned. Maybe he wouldn’t have to shoot Karsh himself. Maybe he could just watch this guy do it for him.

  Although part of him wanted to avenge Gudrún, he knew that he was much less likely to wind up in prison if he left that task to someone else. A professional killer.

  There was also his own position to consider. He was well hidden, but there was a chance that the sniper might spot him if he focussed his binoculars directly at him. At which point, a professional hit man would probably not hesitate to shoot. Björn would need to stop that from happening. Ever so gently, he slid his own weapon round until it was no longer pointing down towards the road and the range, but towards the ridge and the sniper.

  Then both Björn and his new frie
nd waited.

  At 0820 he heard the sound of a car engine, and a green Land Rover appeared carrying two men, heading towards the castle. Twenty minutes later, it returned and parked next to the range. Five men got out. Björn recognised Karsh and the bodyguard he had dealt with in Southwark, Mr. Jessop. The other men were presumably Jesse Brenner and two estate workers. One of these began to lecture Karsh and Brenner, presumably about the rifles they were carrying. The bodyguard stood to one side, looking around at the woods and the hills. But he wasn’t systematic; he didn’t spot Björn and he didn’t spot the sniper.

  Sloppy.

  Björn glanced at the sniper. He was ready.

  Björn focussed on the Land Rover. The men split up and began to walk around the vehicle towards the range.

  A shot rang out, and then three more.

  Karsh didn’t move. He was unharmed. The sniper had missed. How the hell had he missed?

  For a moment, the five men stopped still, frozen. Then the bodyguard grabbed Karsh and pulled him behind the Land Rover, throwing him onto the ground. Jesse Brenner looked around in panic a second longer, and then dived after them. The younger estate worker just opened his mouth. The older one looked up at the hills.

  Björn turned towards the sniper. He could see how the man had missed. The gunshots had not come from him; they had been aimed at him. His head was a bloody mess.

  The shots had come from Björn’s left. At first he had assumed he had been deceived by an echo, but now he turned and saw a figure disappear down a gully out of sight.

  There had been another shooter. Someone who had spotted the sniper and killed him. Someone who didn’t want to be seen by Karsh or the estate worker.

  The estate worker had seen the sniper, but hadn’t seen Björn. He shouted out to the others and scrambled up the hill towards where the sniper’s bloodied body lay. The man was brave; Björn would have to give him that.