Low Profile

by Nick Oldham

  He opened his eyes.

  He was on his back, his left arm trapped under Karen’s shoulders, and she lay on his bicep as if it were a pillow, her face turned towards him, still asleep, breathing deeply and regularly.

  Although Flynn had opened his eyes, only one of them – the right one – actually came open. The other was still swollen and closed. He touched it carefully with his free hand, confirming the size of the swelling – big, soft to the touch like rotten fruit, and tender.

  ‘Yuk,’ he said. There was the possibility that a doctor might have to have a look at it.

  To more pleasant things: Flynn focused on Karen’s face and recalled the night they’d had.

  A silent ‘phew’ passed his busted lips. To say it had been incredible was a bit of an understatement. Flynn’s lips curved into what probably looked like an evil leer but was meant to be a half-smile at the memory and what it might mean to them both.

  Karen’s eyes flickered and she caught him looking.

  ‘Hi, babe,’ she said dreamily, ‘is that the one-eyed ogle?’

  ‘Yes … and hi to you, gorgeous,’ he said, feeling slightly self-conscious at his use of the lovey-dovey term. Flynn wasn’t really in touch with his romantic side. He was a man of action, a doer, and part of that psychological profile, the ‘doing’ bit, meant he loved ’em and left ’em. It didn’t make him feel proud but he knew he had been avoiding any form of intimacy beyond the actual bedroom, so he was a little afraid that this woman was already changing that.

  ‘Your face is a mess,’ she informed him, ‘but I still think you’re handsome.’

  ‘That’s both a reality check and reassuring.’ He paused unsurely, urging himself on. ‘And I think you’re beautiful … actually have done for months now.’ He almost choked on the words, but he did mean them.

  She raised herself on to one elbow, allowing the blood to flow back down Flynn’s arm. His fingers tingled. She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. ‘Last night was great,’ she said.

  ‘It was … I need to get going,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I know … but don’t even begin to think you’re running out on me. That’s not going to happen, you do know that?’

  Flynn swallowed. ‘I know and I’m not.’

  ‘Not least because I want you inside me again.’ She held his gaze as she reached down under the single sheet and grasped him. He responded instantly.

  Henry headed for Blackpool nick first and the poky office he had there as part of the FMIT presence on the Fylde coast. He kept his brewing tackle in a locked cupboard behind his desk, so he dug out his small kettle, his mug and some coffee and got things under way. Then he sat at his desk and corralled his thoughts whilst gazing out of the window overlooking the rear of the Sea Life centre, over which a huge shark was affixed that he had nicknamed ‘Dave’ after an old boss of his.

  He raised his mug to that bastard’s memory, spun back to his desk, opened his A4 size notepad and started writing.

  With the help of aspirin and paracetamols, the pain had subsided slightly throughout Flynn’s body as he made his way on foot from Karen’s apartment. He was wearing a T-shirt she had found in her wardrobe that he suspected might have belonged to an old boyfriend. Anyway, it fitted him. She promised to boil wash the blood-stained Keith Richards T-shirt even though Flynn did think it added a little something to it. Blood and Keith seemed to meld well together.

  The sun, even so early, was rising nicely in the sky, promising another day of swelter. It felt good on him.

  What also felt good was the feel of Karen’s hand in his as she walked alongside him. The last time he had walked holding the hand of a woman was over four years ago, so it felt good, but also strange – and he liked it.

  He knew that something had withered and died in him when he had lost Gill Hartland, but as he strolled along with Karen that ‘something’ deep inside was starting to stir again. When he thought back to Gill he remembered it had taken both of them too long to be brave enough to admit their feelings for each other, and then it had been snuffed out in an instant; the time they’d spent together had only been fleeting.

  Flynn knew he could not make that mistake again. He squeezed Karen’s hand and peeked at her. She knew he was looking but kept her profile to him, a proud smile on her face.

  They walked down the steep steps from the apartment into the commercial centre, their plan being to stroll down to the marina and grab a lovely breakfast at one of the quayside cafés in the small shopping centre nearby.

  First, though, Flynn wanted to call in to his villa, which they would pass on the way. They trotted across the road near the police station. Karen touched his arm, pointed and said, ‘Look. What sort of car is that?’

  The yellow and black Lamborghini was being chain-hauled on to the back of a breakdown truck, its front end mangled massively.

  ‘It looks like a Ferrari,’ Flynn said innocently. This had been an area that he hadn’t shared with Karen when he’d told her about his abduction: he’d just fudged how he’d got from the villa back to Puerto Rico.

  ‘What a shame.’

  Flynn swallowed. It was a shame. The damage was extensive and seriously expensive. Two cops watched the car’s slow journey on to the back of the truck as they listened patiently to another man. Even from this distance, Flynn could tell he was upset and having a right rant and rave, gesticulating as he spoke to the cops. The owner, Flynn supposed. His pride and joy, stolen and wrecked. Serve him right for leaving it unlocked and with the key in, Flynn thought.

  They crossed the road and reached the exact point at which Flynn had been bundled into the Mercedes. He carried on walking with Karen through the public gardens.

  His villa was set on the right, its small terrace behind a high rattan fence, giving it some privacy. He went through the gate and stopped dead. The sliding door was open and he knew he had left the place locked up. Karen bumped into him, not expecting the abrupt halt.

  ‘What—?’

  Flynn held her back and gestured for her to stay put as he approached the door, then stood on the threshold looking into the open plan living and kitchen area of what, essentially, was nothing more than an upgraded holiday apartment.

  The settee and two chairs had been tipped over, their cushions slashed open. The flat screen TV had been ripped from its wall mountings and smashed to pieces on the tiled floor. In the kitchen area he saw that all the crockery had been broken, the cutlery thrown everywhere. He stepped carefully inside, once more feeling the rise of rage at this invasion of his life. What instantly made it worse was the fact that this place did not belong to him. He was the custodian and had promised to care for it on behalf of the German owner, one of his clients.

  The walls had been spray-painted with loops and whirls of black and red metallic car paint, almost impossible to remove. It had also been sprayed all over the furniture.

  ‘Hell!’ Karen said behind him. ‘Kids?’

  Flynn didn’t reply but walked carefully through the up-ended furniture into the bedroom beyond, which had had the same treatment, as had the bathroom.

  Flynn inhaled, exhaled, trying to hold himself together, but struggling as the implications of this invasion also struck home.

  ‘I’ve been half-arsed about this, Karen, tripping through the streets like a lovelorn teenager. This is a dangerous game I’m in and there are people out there who mean me real harm for whatever reason. I’m not sure it’ll be a sensible thing for you to be associated with me for a while, until I get this sorted …’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  Before he could answer, Karen’s mobile phone rang out. She almost cancelled the call, but saw that it was Adam Castle, her brother, phoning.

  ‘What …? Right … yes … we’ll be there …’ Her eyes became frightened. ‘Five minutes,’ she said and hung up. ‘That was Adam … we need to get to the marina … someone’s wrecked Faye.’

  ‘Put Rik on … I said, put Rik on,’ Henry insisted. ‘
Jeez.’

  Rik Dean came on the line. ‘Henry – what’s going on, what’ve you just told her? She’s really upset.’

  Henry explained he had just phoned Lisa to ask exactly what Percy Astley-Barnes had said when he’d called the evening before last. Henry had somehow wanted to avoid breaking the news of Percy’s horrific death to her, but had been left with no options and had told her more bluntly than he had intended. This had set Lisa off ‘on one’.

  ‘He’s dead?’ Rik said.

  ‘Professional hit,’ Henry confirmed. ‘And I might have been killed too, had it not been for my excellent nautical skills.’

  ‘Ey?’

  ‘Never mind. Look, I know he phoned Lisa and it may be that she was the last person to speak to him … I’m gonna start my timeline with that phone call and work backwards and forwards from there, so I need to know exactly what was said and the exact time he made the call.’

  ‘Right, let me talk to her,’ he said dully. Henry picked up on something not right in his tone.

  ‘You OK, pal?’

  ‘Nah … he phones her and not the cops … just makes me wonder.’

  ‘Wonder what? If she doesn’t love you, or if she’s still playing the field?’ Henry asked straightforwardly.

  ‘Well …’ Rik drew out the word.

  ‘It’s bollocks, I’d say. Percy was clearly into something he couldn’t handle and desperate for some guidance … I’m pretty sure it was just a panic phone call and he knew she would get me to call him.’

  ‘But she’s so upset!’

  ‘Rik, he’s been murdered … let her have a sob and some hysterics, it’s a big deal. I’d be upset if you were murdered.’

  ‘Mmm … OK, I’ll get back to you.’

  Henry hung up, then stood up, grabbed his jacket and left the office. He was on his way over to the MIR.

  Time to get hunting.

  Two hundred and fifty miles to the south, another man employed in the business of law enforcement, but on a much broader scale than Henry, was entering his own office in the American Embassy in London after a short but tedious commute into the city from a small town to the west of the capital. He stood at the threshold, shook himself out of his jacket and tried to throw the garment across the room, hoping to get it on to the coat stand next to his desk.

  Unlike James Bond, he missed. The jacket flopped to the floor and the man shook his head miserably. ‘Story of my life,’ he thought. He picked up the jacket, hung it up, then slumped down on to his chair.

  Karl Donaldson was essentially a man of action but, like his hero James Bond (he liked the books, not the films), when he hadn’t had too much action recently his spirit went into decline. His life, he thought miserably, had become humdrum, homebound, office-bound. Fucking boring.

  He had once been an FBI field agent but for the past fifteen years he had been a legal attaché working from the FBI office at the US embassy. At the moment he was still working from the Grosvenor Square building, but a move to new, swanky premises was looming – and that thought filled him with dread. All glass partitions, water coolers and open plan office life … sent a shiver down his spine.

  His basic job was to act as a collector, collator, analyser and conduit of criminal intelligence through various police forces worldwide but mainly in Europe, where he had close links with Europol and Interpol, as well as state police forces, including those in the UK.

  Since 2001 his job had been mainly to chase, sift and sort for intelligence relating to international terrorism. Although he loved the job and had been responsible for bringing many evil men to justice – and some to the end of their lives – he had become bored and listless.

  True, there had been occasions in the past few years when he had found himself back in the field, physically chasing bad guys, coming head to head with some and almost losing his life in the process once. But for too long now he had been operating from behind a desk, getting increasingly involved in the tittle-tattle of petty office politics. Worst of all, he had started dreading the daily commute in from Hartley Wintney, sometimes having to stand all the way on a packed train, eyeing all the other zombie-faced commuters and wishing one of them would pull a gun and start shooting so he could disarm the bastard.

  His worst fear was that he might be the one to pull the gun.

  He had access to firearms. He was getting psychologically damaged by his humdrum existence and was only one step away from mowing down a carriage-full of innocent people. Or were they really innocent?

  Another thing that did bother him – killing fellow commuters was just a heavenly fantasy – was that although he was completely committed to hunting down terrorists, he was actually ‘brassed off’ with it all. (Donaldson, though a Yank through and through, did have a penchant for collecting and using British colloquialisms, and ‘brassed off’ was his current favourite.) He was particularly bored by seeing nothing but Islamic names passing over his desk.

  He was, in fact, missing everyday crime and criminals.

  Robbers, rapists, drug runners, murderers, gangsters, extortionists. Good old-fashioned hit men who didn’t have bombs strapped to their bodies, even.

  Where was the Mafia these days? Don Corleone – where the hell was he?

  The answer to that, he thought cynically, was that they were operating with impunity. The FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA and a plethora of agencies with three or four initials, hastily cobbled together with little thought of strategy, were now strongly focused on preventing and disrupting terrorism, sending in unmanned drones to launch missile attacks on mud huts in Afghanistan whilst they watched on monitors half the earth away, dancing around, giving high fives as a house was obliterated, and never getting their hands soiled.

  Donaldson knew this was all a necessity, did not question that, and he knew that others were still investigating organized crime, and he would do his utmost to find, seek, disrupt and destroy enemies of the USA. That was what was required of him.

  But hell! He missed criminals. Pined for them.

  Which was why the phone call that had woken him from a bad night’s sleep earlier that morning had triggered a glimmer of excitement in him. It also served to remind him that, important as his own job was, life did still go on in ‘normal’ land and innocent people took bullets and professional hit men still got contracts – and cops still hunted bad guys down.

  It had been a while since he’d heard from his old friend Henry Christie, whom he’d met too many years before for comfort, when he, Donaldson, had been investigating American mob activity in the north west of England. They had been firm friends since and even worked together occasionally.

  So, though Donaldson had been Mr Grumpy with Henry, what his friend had asked him to do had been of great interest.

  Donaldson sat back in his office chair after logging on to the FBI intranet. He interlocked his fingers, stretched out his arms, cracking his knuckles.

  The computer screen came lazily to life.

  He rocked forward, entered his complex password, then wriggled his fingers like a maestro pianist about to launch into a concerto.

  In his case, though, the only tune he would be playing was ‘Hunt the Hit Man’, a little known ditty which he had performed hundreds of times to great acclaim.

  Flynn had never felt such intense fury. It seemed to build into a crescendo as he stepped slowly, deliberately across Faye’s deck, into the cockpit, then beyond into the galley, stateroom and sleeping quarters beyond.

  ‘Bastards,’ he hissed.

  It looked as if the boat had been damaged by a herd of rampaging bulls armed with sledgehammers and spray paint, smashing and defacing everything in their path.

  The control panel that housed the sonar, GPS, radar, radio and other electronic devices – all massively expensive – had been hammered to pieces, just wanton destruction. The locked cupboards had been prised open, their contents dragged out and crushed to pieces.

  In the galley, all the kitchen fittings and fixtu
res and equipment had been smashed, too; then beyond, the luxurious furniture in the stateroom had been shredded with a knife and the walls and windows sprayed with the same metallic paint he had seen on the walls of his villa: same people.

  Flynn surveyed it all with his good eye, then walked slowly back through the mess to the deck to see Jose leaning over the rail, pulling something on to the deck.

  Flynn growled as he saw what it was. One of his treasured fishing rods, twisted, bent and mangled.

  Jose looked at him wretchedly, holding the broken piece of equipment in both hands. ‘They broke into the equipment locker,’ he spat. ‘All the rods are missing … I think they’re in the water … this one snagged on the side.’

  Flynn did a quick mental calculation. Ten of the best rods and reels. Looking at twenty thousand euros just there.

  He looked at Karen on the quayside, anxiously biting her thumb nail.

  Flynn sidestepped the open engine hatch, then knelt to peer into the compartment to see the oil filler caps missing from both engine blocks, empty sugar bags thrown on to the floor below. Sugar in the engines. The damage from that little act almost irreparable, other than by taking out the engines, completely stripping them down and cleaning them off. A mammoth undertaking. The cost of that repair was almost incalculable.

  The boat was ruined and Flynn felt like crying – just for a moment.

  ‘Did we get Costain’s address?’ he asked Karen.

  She nodded. ‘You think this was him?’

  ‘He’s my starting point – and I’m now going to finish a conversation I started last night that was rudely interrupted by the arrival of two cops and a nasty looking police dog.’

  It wasn’t a bad start: twenty-five detectives from around the county, a support unit team, two dog men, and three admin staff to kick start the computer system; plus an office manager, an allocator, an exhibits officer … great. Henry was fairly buoyed up about things as he gathered up his briefing notes and other paperwork, then walked in front of the murder squad and began the briefing to get a major investigation under way.