He’d park the taxi up in long-stay. The darkest, furthest corner he could find in the most distant, shabby parking. He’d wipe it over, get a message to the cabbie. He never left it at Heathrow, and the cabbie wouldn’t be happy but he’d leave an extra grand in the glove compartment. For his time and trouble. The cabbie would get over himself. If he was lucky he’d get a good fare out of the airport back into the City. North himself would break up the gun and dump it in several bins. Then he’d catch a flight to Singapore and onwards where the spirit moved. With a passport in the name of Philip MacDonald and with one flight out of Changi airport every 90 seconds to 300 cities in 80 countries and with more than 50 million people through there a year, he had a good chance of getting lost, which sounded like a great destination in itself right this moment.
Eventually, he’d go to ground in the Caribbean, he thought. One of the smaller islands that attract enough of the affluent and idle to blend right in. White rum daiquiris and cracked ice? Too sweet. Whisky then. Yamazaki single malt, aged and almost, but not quite, ruined with ice. Ice in a ball this time. And the whisky not drunk alone, but in an infinity pool with a giggling woman with a heart-shaped face.
Freedom. It was within his grasp. He’d earned it. Several times over. He saved enough lives when he was in the Army – walked through a minefield to reach a wounded mate and got shot in the head in return. He was leaving Honor to it, and starting over.
He rested his head on his hands as they moved to grip the top of the steering wheel. He should strap himself to it, tie himself with thick jute ropes. Let the storms rage. If he waited here, quiet and peaceable, in this street with its pretty Queen Anne houses, in an hour or maybe two, he’d hear the sirens. The metropolitan equivalent of the tolling bell marking the death of Honor Jones MP. Because that was about how long she had left to live. He should sit here, mourn briefly – he barely knew her after all – and drive into an apricot sunset and just reward. Wispy clouds scudded over the roofline as he peered upwards through the windscreen. There was enough in his account to buy a boat and sail between the islands. A ketch – something with good lines that handled like a dream. He’d carve the name into a piece of wood and hang it on brass chains from the stern. “Honor”. Twists and ringletted oak blowing away in the trade wind. No – that was a terrible idea. He would call the ketch “Liberty”.
He turned the key in the engine.
Surely Honor was too smart to stay. She set herself up this morning for a particular reason – to catch him. She wouldn’t do it again because she was on a mission – to find her friend, and dying would put a real crimp in that.
No. She would run. Hide out while she kept looking for Peggy. However reluctant she was to follow his advice, it was her only real option. He ran through the encounter in his head. The sweep of the passport into her handbag as she kept talking. If she caught a plane to the US, she could have a Cosmopolitan in her hand by nightfall. She could drink a cocktail and thousands of miles away he would drink whisky and rest easy, with a soft woman who looked nothing like Honor Jones. Freedom could still be his.
He pulled out, ignoring the crunch as the hard-rubber tyre caught the arm of the discarded spectacles crushing them, plastic and glass splintering, the frame left mangled in the gutter.
The problem was the only thought in her head when she walked away was going home. And if there’s one place you don’t go, when people are trying to find you and kill you, it’s home.
Chapter 9
As he leaned into Honor’s front door to pick its lock, North glanced across at the house for sale where he’d watched for her this morning. He should have texted an acknowledgement that he did the job. How long would they wait before they sent someone with fewer scruples? Bruno wouldn’t have any problem with a murder disguised as a random sexual attack. He’d relish it.
He was putting her on the first flight out of Heathrow – Destination: Anywhere. Short haul was better by this point. Less time for the Board to organise any sort of pick-up the other end.
The tumbler retracted under the pressure of the pick and North felt the lock give.
He had his story ready for “Chalfont Securities” to buy them both time. He would watch her plane take off from the observation deck and explain he’d tried to take her out in the park and again in the Commons, but there were always too many people around for what they wanted. Thirty thousand feet up in the sky as she opened a foil packet of peanuts, he’d explain that he must have spooked her because she fell down a crack in the pavement. He’d hang up all “Count–on–me” and “any-minute-now”, and catch his own plane, slip down his own crack in the pavement, to start over.
Behind the door to flat 21A as he stood in the narrow hallway she shared with the banker upstairs in 21B, he could hear her moving around.
He changed his pick, tripped the lock and eased his way into the flat.
Her court shoes were neatly aligned by the door.
He tracked pale grey footprints over the cream carpet of the hallway, into the lounge and beyond. She was in the kitchen. He could see her from the doorway.
Picking up a vase, Honor carried it from the table over to the draining board. She extracted the flowers and plunged her hand down the narrow throat, but whatever was in there, she couldn’t reach it. Her hand emerged dripping, and cursing, she smashed the vase hard against the butler sink – a large crack opening up in the ceramic wall. He moved forward as she leaned over the sink, sorting through the pieces, raking over the broken china, till she found what she was looking for.
“Shame about the vase.” His tone was hostile.
Honor jumped. Swore.
“It looked pricey.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Turning to face him – her back to the sink, her white-knuckled hands gripping the laminated wallet. “It was a gift.”
“And the memory stick in your hand – was that a gift?”
Honor slid the wallet into the side-pocket of her dress, and he recognised his mistake. Whatever was on that stick was part of the reason the Board judged Honor Jones a security risk. The Board didn’t make mistakes – they’d have thought hard about killing an MP not least because the publicity would be brutal. Her friend Peggy was involved in something bad, and it had corrupted Honor.
“All right – Ned gave it to me,” With her free hand she reached for his arm and gripped it, wetting his sleeve. “I need it.”
North shrugged. It wasn’t his business. All he wanted was Honor Jones the other side of the world, and his life back.
“And I need you on a plane before you get us both killed, because, trust me on this, they’re coming for you.”
She stared at him, as if she was deciding something.
“Trust cuts both ways,” she said, raising her chin as if in challenge.
Her palm was warm on his bare arm. Electric.
Trust me – I’m a politician.
Her fingers touching North as she touched the banker yesterday morning before she walked away, as she touched him this morning. Coming into his space, invading it, connecting – knowing the effect. Her touch was her weapon of choice as much as a gun was his.
“I don’t even know your name.”
North hesitated. A name gave her power over him. He could still walk – leave her to her fate. Maybe he would take the memory-stick with him as leverage to keep himself alive? He didn’t think she would last long on her own – but if the police got involved along the way, perhaps she’d live long enough to tell them his name. He shouldn’t tell her anything.
“North.”
It came out despite himself – as if it was waiting for her to ask.
“OK – North.” His name sounded different on her lips. “Give me two minutes in the bathroom and then I’ll catch a plane. Though I’m going to Chile not America.”
She walked past him, across the lounge and over to her shoes before sliding them on to her bare feet. A thought appeared to come to her.
“You should come with me,”
she said and smiled. Shy for the first time since he met her.
He knew she didn’t trust him. Her gestures. Her smile. The shy invitation. They were lies. He knew it, and he didn’t care because he wasn’t a weak-chinned, gooey-eyed banker. He glanced across at the flowers which didn’t yet know they were dying, the remnants of china, the damage she’d done. The mixer tap needed a washer. The drip pulled at the faucet till gravity did what gravity does and the water smashed into the cracked bowl, echoing the tick tock of the kitchen clock as the seconds passed. “You should come with me.”
He turned over the offer in his mind.
Why would he?
Because she was stop-your-heart beautiful.
Then again, the world teemed with beautiful women.
Because he wanted to know how it ended.
Badly, he predicted.
Because if she came back for that memory stick, she intended to keep looking for Peggy.
“You should come with me.”
Enough women found him attractive for the invitation to make sense, but Honor Jones didn’t want him as a sexual diversion – she wanted him as a weapon in her armoury. As hard muscle and a source of information.
Even so, he considered Chile. The weather in Santiago in November. Mild, he guessed. Springtime. New life. Fresh starts. She could forget Peggy. He could make her forget, and she could make him forget he used to kill people for a living.
She was taking too long.
Two thoughts slammed into his brain at the self-same moment.
She intended to use the bathroom window as her way out.
And she wasn’t the one to walk the dirt into her new carpet. He tracked the dirt through the living room and down the corridor.
From under the bathroom door, water seeped slowly into the sodden cream of the wool. With a roar he kicked the door open.
Her attacker kept her under the water, his enormous hand forcing the blonde head below the seething surface, pressing down, the other holding her two ankles together, stretching her out the length of the bath. A cut-throat razor lay in the blood-splattered sink, blood from her right arm writhing and turning and spinning in the water as she struggled to break free, her hands reaching out towards her attacker’s face, fingers scrabbling for a hold on his sleeves. North threw himself against the man, smashing him into the sink and against the tiled wall. The sound of water rising and falling as Honor made it to the surface, gasping and retching, blood pumping from the wound.
North was big but the intruder was bigger. He snarled as he steadied himself against the sink then rounded on North, slashing in front of him first one way then the other, the razor in his left-hand making a swooshing noise as it cut the air into ribbons. North leaped back, slamming his spine into the half open bathroom door, groaning with the pain of it, as the man – his teeth bared in a grim smile – closed in for the kill. If you can’t run away and you don’t want to stand still, the only way is forward, a grizzled Army instructor once told him. The Charge of the Light Brigade he called it. Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of Hell. North stepped in towards the flailing razor, both hands reaching for the man’s wrist. The intruder reached his right arm across North’s body to keep him away but North took out his right leg and the man tipped, falling wildly, heavily – the razor still between them – into the bath. Curled up at the other end, half over the edge, bleeding still, a white-faced Honor moaned as the man’s head and chest hit the water, a pinkish wave rising and falling against her, with a crash. The human body carries an average of nine pints of blood, you can lose around 40% before shock sets in. She would die if he didn’t stop the bleeding. She was already dying.
Inch by inch, North forced the razor closer and closer to the man’s straining neck – the weight of his body now against the intruder’s legs pressing his lower half against the side of the bath. The other man’s fear, his desperate urge to suck down oxygen almost made North let go as below the water the attacker’s face smashed against the bottom of the bath, the jaw working furiously, chewing the water – air bubbles rising to the surface and popping. As the blade bit the skin, sinking through the cartilage and larynx, under North’s body the man’s struggle grew more ferocious – then less, and less again, till the panic went out of him and he stopped fighting all together.
North sat back on his hunkers.
Honor’s mascara’d eyes blackening the sockets, her face whiter than the tiles behind her. She lay back against North as he dragged her from the water on to the black and white linoleum floor, grabbing for a towel to hold against her wrist, arterial blood saturating it within seconds – white turning to crimson.
The Board knew. Tarn sent the attacker to do what North didn’t do. Kill her. Instead, North killed the attacker, and saved her. It was a topsy-turvy world. He could feel her shallow breaths through the wet clothes. Hours ago, he should have slid his knife into this flesh because green ink and powerful men told him to. She was too easily broken, too small and vulnerable. He didn’t want her dying in his arms because the world would be a colder and less interesting place without her in it.
With his free hand he dragged the corpse along the bath closer to them. The nearside jacket pocket was empty. The same on the other side. He found it in the inside jacket pocket. Folded over twice. The same picture of Honor sitting across from Ned. Her name on the reverse, smudged and running from the bathwater.
At first, he didn’t see it. The water sticking the photographs together, but as he peeled them apart he saw his own face folded into quarters. Snapped one morning running. The morning Tarn caught up with him. The Bentley coming up behind him in the rain. Bruno at the wheel staring down the lens – as if he knew the cameraman was there, which meant Tarn knew the cameraman was there. Few of us get second chances Tarn told him. North was nobody’s dear boy. Nobody’s darling. If he didn’t take the job, they were going to kill him.
“The mirror.” Honor’s voice rasped, her eyes fixed on the wall behind him, and North turned.
There was nothing to see. The mirror was clean and sparkling. It took him a second. No lipstick scrawl. No “Peggy” written over and over. The attacker made sure of it. Wiping away the name like the genius astronomer herself was wiped out of her life. In the same way they wanted to wipe away the bleeding woman in his arms. If he didn’t believe there was a link before between the disappearance of her friend and the death sentence over Honor’s head, he believed it now. The lip-sticked name of Peggy written across her bathroom mirror was a loose end and the Board made a point of avoiding loose and messy ends. They wanted Honor dead with good reason. She was tugging at the thread, refusing to let go, intent on unravelling some meticulously crafted creation.
North had no doubt they would keep coming for her till they could draw a black line through the green inked name. Except he couldn’t let that happen. He travelled light. He’d never wanted the responsibility for someone else weighing him down, slowing him down.
Except here she was in his arms.
Chapter 10
OXFORD UNIVERSITY
Sixteen years earlier
The girl in paint-on blue jeans was drunketty-drunk-drunk as her dad used to say. Blonde silky hair framing a heart-shaped face, and small tip-tilted breasts. No one had to imagine their perfection because the girl’s top was off as she danced on the bar. She danced well, her tanned arms lifted, but the baying members of the college hockey club weren’t showing their appreciation of any sense of rhythm. As the girl swayed, almost toppling, and the reaching hands went up to pull her down, Peggy Boland in her solitary corner of the college undercroft bar, put down a half-finished pint on the sticky table. She closed the ring-file binder and slid it under the bench, before pulling on the sheepskin jacket.
Enough already.
She stood up, remembering too late to duck to avoid concussing herself on the stone arch. She should have stayed in the library. But it was Friday night, and she thought – this once – she would finish her work while enjoying a d
rink in peace. Thanks to these braying, lecherous toss-bags, she was managing neither.
Cursing under her breath, she stood on the chair to rescue the tee-shirt dangling from the candle light-fitting, before pushing and shoving through the outlying ranks of the cheering rabble.
The team captain, his cheeks bumpy with purpling acne scars, was holding the dancer upright against his chest, his meaty arm around the golden skin.
Peggy moved with the crowd, using her own height and weight to intimidate the middle ranks. She need full ticket access. She caught a glimpse of the blonde’s bleary-eyed face, as the bruiser half-carried and half-dragged her through the crowd towards the doorway. A dozen others followed him, whooping their encouragement.
He didn’t notice Peggy at first.
“You’re in my way, Chewbacca.” His breath reeked of stale beer and spicy kebab. The colour rose in Peggy’s cheeks as she held out the girl’s discarded tee-shirt. “You’ll catch your death. It’s perishing out.”
The blonde’s green eyes attempted to bring Peggy into focus as she patted herself down to check the exact state of her undress. The small hand went to her mouth in exquisite confusion at the nakedness it discovered, and blushing she shrugged herself into her top as the mob booed its disapproval.
“Come on with me, sunbeam,” Peggy said. “It’s past your bedtime.”
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