Die Alone

by Simon Kernick

  But of course it hadn’t happened like that. She’d made one bad decision from which all other bad decisions had sprung like weeds: she’d joined the police. A chequered and highly eventful career had followed in which she’d been taken hostage twice, shot, had witnessed close colleagues being killed, and had killed several suspects herself; and been fired from the job on two separate occasions. There’d been no third chance, and now she was a single forty-something private detective working mainly divorce cases.

  At least she had her own house, she told herself as she poured a lime cordial and walked out into her small garden, sitting down at the table at the end. It was a beautiful evening, with birds singing in the trees, and light jazz music playing in the background. It was funny how your musical tastes changed. A few years back she would never have even countenanced jazz, now she found it soothing. She sat back in the chair and looked up at the rapidly darkening sky, lighting a cigarette and taking a sip from the drink, wishing it could have been red wine, but knowing that that ship had long ago sailed. She knew she should be happy now that her life was calmer, but it hadn’t worked out like that. Instead, it was dull and empty, and there was still a nagging feeling that she had unfinished business.

  The previous year Tina had found herself working on a case alongside a Met detective, Ray Mason, whose career had been almost as controversial as hers. The case had pitted the two of them against some very powerful people who were responsible for some horrific crimes. One of those powerful people included the man who was now being talked of as the next Prime Minister, Alastair Sheridan.

  And that was the problem. She and Ray had failed in their task, with Ray ending up in prison, awaiting trial for double murder. Tina had thought about continuing the investigation alone but she knew that the forces she was up against were too strong. She also had no doubt that, after his abduction from the prison van a few days earlier, Ray was dead. Sheridan and his associate Cem Kalaman would have made sure of that. The thought hurt her terribly because she’d fallen in love with him, and for the few short weeks they’d worked together she’d been genuinely happy.

  The Tina Boyd of ten years ago would have been planning revenge on the men she was certain were behind this. The Tina Boyd of ten years ago would also have reached for the bottle and drunk herself into a stupor. Now she did neither of those things. Instead she tried to forget about Ray, the past, the myriad injustices of the world (which, however hard she tried, she knew she would never be able to expunge), and for once just get on with her life. She’d even started online dating for Christ’s sake, although the jury was still out on its effectiveness. But she had a date the following week with a decent-sounding (and decent-looking, if his pictures were to be believed) guy called Matt who, unlike a lot of the men out there, hadn’t been immediately fixated on her past. They’d spoken once on the phone and he’d been chatty and funny, and there was a lightness about him that Tina had missed, and felt like she needed right now.

  She sat back in her seat and took a long drag on her cigarette, concluding that it might just be possible that things were looking up for her.

  6

  The days I spent in the care of Lane and her associates were some of the strangest of my life, and also the most relaxing. I was still effectively a prisoner. I didn’t have access to a mobile phone or the internet, but they did give me a selection of second-hand paperbacks to read, and brought in a small TV that they put on a stand at the end of the bed, so I could watch the usual junk, or see the news on the prison van snatch.

  I was on the news a lot. The fact that I’d been quite a high-profile cop in my time, coupled with the embarrassment and drama of my abduction, meant the media were playing it for all it was worth, even more so as the days passed and there was still no sign of me.

  I was also allowed out into the garden for fifteen minutes twice a day, under the watchful eye of one of Lane’s two male colleagues, who I was now certain had been the duo who’d freed me from the prison van. They were hard men but professional, and I guessed they were ex-army. They never spoke except to give instructions and they didn’t appear to be armed.

  The garden was sheltered from the outside world by the leylandii hedge that surrounded the whole property, and high wooden gates at the front. I either walked round and round the house followed by whichever guard was on duty that day, or simply sat in the sunshine, looking up at the sky and enjoying the feeling of the sun on my face after so much time inside. There was a back gate built into the leylandii. I wasn’t sure if it was locked or not but it never occurred to me to make a break for it. There really wasn’t a lot of point, even if I did manage to get away.

  It was a lot easier to stay put as I was being fed really well too. Three meals a day, simple but tasty fare like steak and chips and roast chicken, always brought to my room by one of the guards.

  After that first meeting with Lane I didn’t see her again for a while, and I got the feeling she wasn’t staying in the house. During that time I followed her instructions to grow a beard and, with only limited exercise, and plenty of hearty food, I put on a fair amount of weight, which was no bad thing. Prison, and the stress of always being on my guard, had kept me thin and given me a gaunt, haunted look I was happy to lose.

  When she did finally reappear, I was actually quite nervous to see her, having settled into my new life of incarceration pretty well, and having no desire to end it.

  ‘We need to get you ready for your new passport photo,’ she told me, coming into my bedroom while one of the guards stood in the doorway behind her. As before, she was wearing a balaclava and gloves, on top of a navy trouser suit and flat work shoes.

  It was late afternoon and I’d been sitting in my pyjamas reading a book on medieval history.

  She was carrying a holdall, and she dropped it on the bed. ‘There are scissors in there as well as an electric shaver. You need to shave your head. There’s also black dye for the beard. Get everything done and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.’

  I’m one of those vain forty-year-old men who’s far too proud of his full head of hair, and the thought of getting rid of it filled me with horror, but I knew there was no point arguing.

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in a chair against the wall in the downstairs dining room, with a bald head and a dark beard. I didn’t look pretty, but I looked different, and clearly this was the point. Lane took some headshots on a Lumix camera and told me that my new passport would be ready in three days. ‘When we’ve got that, you’ll be ready to go out into the world. The hunt for you’s already scaling down.’

  This didn’t surprise me. The prison rioting had now spread to almost a dozen institutions, and there was constant footage of burning buildings on the TV news as the inmates vented their frustrations. I was still mentioned as a footnote but the rioting itself was sucking up most of the airtime, which suited me fine. It was strange really. I’d spent so much of my adult life putting criminals behind bars but I’d never given any real thought to what it was like for them in there. Now, having spent a year inside myself, I had a lot more sympathy with them. Prison was an overcrowded, debilitating hell, and it wasn’t peopled entirely by monsters, even on the VP ward. With the exception of child killers like Wallace Burke, they were just men who’d fucked up, made bad decisions, who’d been unable to control their emotions and had acted rashly. Some of them were mentally ill, including plenty of services veterans who’d spent years serving their country only to be deserted by the powers-that-be when they’d returned home with PTSD. They were the dregs of society and they knew it, locked away and forgotten by the outside world, only noticed when they finally fought back in a furious, desperate and ultimately futile way.

  I wouldn’t say I was rooting for them. But I wasn’t exactly rooting against them either.

  Three days after she’d taken the photos, Lane returned as promised.

  It was early afternoon and I was told to get dressed, pack my bags, and be ready to go. My rest and recuperat
ion was over. It was time for the real work to begin.

  When I was done, I was led downstairs to the dining room by both guards. Lane was standing there, in the same tailored suit she’d had on last time, a number of items next to her on the table.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Mason. Are you ready to check out?’

  I guessed this was her idea of a joke, and I have to say, even with the balaclava on she looked in a jaunty mood. Perhaps she was just glad to be seeing the back of me and this whole operation, which was clearly both secretive and very risky. ‘I’ve been sat on my arse in here for the last fortnight, stuffing my face and putting on weight, and I was sat on my arse in jail for the year before that. Of course I’m not ready.’

  ‘You’re a pro, Mr Mason, and you’re ex-army,’ she countered. ‘You also managed to fight your way out of a murder attempt by a number of assailants. I’d say you were ready.’

  ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  ‘It’s a very simple one, as the best usually are. As you know, Alastair Sheridan is fond of young women.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘There’s a very discreet establishment in a townhouse in Bayswater where the tastes of certain wealthy businessmen are taken care of. Alastair visits it quite regularly, and always likes to be entertained in the penthouse, where he won’t run into anyone else. He only stays for an hour or two at a time and then he’s gone. We’ve rented a top-floor flat in a townhouse on the same block, six houses down, where there’s access to the roof.’ Lane unrolled a set of detailed drawings of the buildings, and beckoned me closer. ‘We have a trusted insider among Alastair’s team who will let us know when he’s going to be there. Our insider doesn’t get much notice so you’ll have to be ready, and when you get the call, you will make your way across the roof to this building.’ She tapped the drawings with a gloved finger. ‘A flight of steps leads down to a black fire door, which is usually locked.’ She pulled something out of her jacket pocket. ‘Here’s the key,’ she said, putting it on the table. ‘The door leads straight into the hallway. There are three rooms on the penthouse floor. The jacuzzi room, the main bedroom, and a separate bathroom.’ She pointed them out on the drawings. ‘So, as you can see, there’s not much chance of getting lost, and the only people up there will be Sheridan himself and whichever woman he’s with. The security stay downstairs. All you have to do is find him and effect the termination with minimal fuss, restrain any witnesses using the gags and ties you’ll be supplied with, then leave the way you came in.’

  I nodded, and she stepped away from the paperwork and opened up a backpack on one of the chairs, removing a wooden display case containing a pistol, a separate magazine and a six-inch detachable suppressor that would help muffle the sound of the bullets discharging. As she opened it, her sleeve rode up and I saw she was wearing a simple silver bracelet. She had a tiny, very dark mole on her wrist, and her skin was mottled with sunspots. I’d never been this close to her before, and I guessed her age to be late fifties.

  ‘The gun’s a SIG Sauer,’ continued Lane. ‘It’s new, and as you’ll see, the serial number’s been removed. There’s no way it can be traced back to us, or you. The magazine’s been pre-loaded with ten nine-millimetre rounds, which should be more than enough for you.’

  I went to take out the gun but she closed the case and put it back in the backpack. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to examine it later.’

  ‘So what happens after I “effect the termination”? How are you going to extract me from the area?’

  ‘You leave the gun at, or near, the scene. Then head straight back to the rental flat. If all goes well, no one will have seen you, and it will take several minutes for anyone to raise the alarm. You should already be packed and ready to leave. Go out the front door and get to the pick-up point, which is approximately six hundred metres away at the intersection of Seymour Place and Upper Berkeley Street.’

  I frowned. ‘So you’re not providing me with a car.’

  ‘No, the traffic around there can be a problem. It’ll be far quicker for you to get to the pick-up point on foot. There’s a map in the backpack with it marked. Then you’ll be brought back here, and then you can have this.’ She handed me a brand-new British passport.

  I opened it at the photo page and saw a shaven-headed man with a dark, closely cropped beard. This apparently was Mr Neil Bennett. If you looked close enough you’d see it was me, but I had to admit, the photo looked a lot different to the police-issue one of me they’d been posting on the nightly news, so unless I was very unlucky it wasn’t going to get anyone’s attention. Nor was the passport itself, which was impossible to tell apart from a genuine one.

  Lane took the passport back. ‘That’s yours if you carry out the task. Along with the ten thousand euros in cash I promised. We’ll then drop you at one of the quieter ferry ports, furnish you with a ticket, and after that, you’re on your own. But I’m sure you’ve also got money stashed away, haven’t you?’

  ‘Why should I trust you? Surely it’s a lot easier for you to leave me out there rather than take the risk of being caught extracting me?’

  ‘If you’re caught, it’s far more complicated,’ said Lane. ‘You know very little about us, but what little you do know could provide leads, and it’s obvious that you’ve been sheltered and well fed somewhere. Even if you’re killed, it throws up some very unwelcome questions. But if you simply disappear, people will eventually forget about you.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m always going to be better off dead to you.’

  Lane sighed. ‘Listen, I know you probably don’t believe it, but we’re actually trying to do the right thing. The prospect of Alastair Sheridan becoming Prime Minister is unthinkable, not least because he could potentially be subject to blackmail by enemy states. We want him dead because it’s the only way of being absolutely certain he’s stopped. We don’t want anyone else hurt. And that includes you, Mr Mason.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said, giving her the kind of look that said I was going to be no pushover if they were planning on killing me.

  ‘And please don’t try to do anything foolish like disappear on us,’ Lane said, meeting my look. ‘I’m sure you think you’ve got a good chance of escape but let me tell you something, you haven’t. There’s an in-built alarm in a chip somewhere in your body. It was put in while you were unconscious on the night we took you. If you tamper with it, we’ll be alerted immediately and the deal’s off. If that happens, we’ll inform the police of your whereabouts, and you’ll be caught in hours, however resourceful you are. Don’t try to contact anyone else either. There’s a burner phone in the backpack but that’s just so you can receive calls from us. We’ll know immediately if you use it. You’re to stay inside at the rental address 24/7, waiting for the call to move. It could come at any time. It may take a day. It may take a week. It’s unlikely to be much longer. There’s enough food and drink on site to last you at least a month, so you won’t starve. And you’re used to being cooped up, so it shouldn’t be too much of a chore. Is that all understood?’

  I nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘OK, meeting over. I’ll see you again when this is all over and done with. In the meantime, good luck.’

  I picked up the backpack and was led out by the two guards, thinking I was going to need a lot more than luck to get out of this one.

  7

  A few hours later, Lane’s two associates dropped me at the safehouse, a spacious penthouse apartment that must have cost a fortune to rent, set in one of those attractive Georgian squares with a tree-lined private garden running through the middle of it. They didn’t hang around, just threw me the keys and told me to get inside immediately, then drove away, although not before I’d managed to steal a glance at the number plate of their Range Rover.

  That was one thing I’d learned as a detective. However well laid a plan, its perpetrators will always make at least one mistake, and that was theirs. They’d been very careful to hide
anything that would have helped me identify them, or the place where they were holding me, even going so far as to make me wear a hood for the duration of the journey here. Unfortunately, they’d had no choice but to remove it when they dropped me off.

  As soon as I was upstairs and inside the apartment, I pulled out the burner phone they’d given me, found the notes section, and keyed in the number plate details. I had no idea how long I was going to be here for but I was operating on the basis that it could be as little as a few hours, which meant I needed to move fast if I was to turn the odds of survival in my favour.

  After spending the best part of an hour scouring the apartment for cameras and finding none, I threw off my clothes and searched for the microchip they were using to track my movements. Now I’m no expert, but I was sure that Lane had been bluffing when she stated that they’d know if I tampered with it. I was also fairly certain they wouldn’t have had the expertise or resources to put it in too far beneath the surface of the skin – and I was proved right when I located a barely perceptible splinter-shaped bump in the small of my back which was still tender to the touch.

  Removing the chip turned out to be something of a rigmarole involving a small chopping knife from the kitchen drawer, a lot of manoeuvring in front of the bathroom mirror, and a fair amount of blood, but eventually I got it out intact and left it on the kitchen table, while I pressed the wound with damp toilet paper.