Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  Wordlessly, Chanelle stumbled out of the car.

  ‘You’re a fuckin’ nutcase!’ Maxine screamed, slamming the door. ‘Wanker!’

  Bethany watched them go, and then climbed into the front seat next to Slater.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Slater.

  ‘I’ll have to stop at the station.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to give Lennie that money. Maxie’ll tell him I’ve got it and if I don’t hand it over he’ll really hurt her.’

  Slater pulled out from the kerb. ‘Like I said, I could have a word with Lennie.’

  ‘Please,’ said Bethany, urgency contracting her narrow features. ‘He’s got what I need.’

  ‘How long have you been using?’

  ‘Please,’ repeated Bethany.

  The blur of the London night swung past the smoked-glass windows.

  Slater parked the Range Rover on a double yellow line in front of the station. Almost immediately he saw a black man in a leather coat pushing his way towards them.

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Bethany. Leaning towards the driver’s seat she touched her thin, papery lips briefly to his, then climbed from the car.

  Slater watched her go. He left the Range Rover standing there with its headlights on, and tossed the keys down the nearest storm-drain. In the distance he saw Maxine and Chanelle climb out of a black cab, laughing.

  Despair, or something very like it, washed over him. This was the bottom of the fucking barrel, and no mistake. How much lower could he go than acting as minder to a criminal? It seemed that he was about to find out – Berendt would make sure that Duckworth felt the full force of his displeasure.

  Even if Duckworth believed his side of the story rather than Berendt’s, Slater knew that he was finished as a bodyguard. You couldn’t physically attack your clients just because you disapproved of their behaviour. He’d be blacklisted – there wouldn’t be a security agency in London that would take him on.

  Fuck them all, thought Slater. Fuck every last fucking one of them.

  Turning away from the lights of the station he stalked off in search of a pub.

  SEVEN

  Slater woke to dusty sunshine. Blinking, he looked around him. He was on a camp bed, in a sleeping bag. A steel desk and filing cabinet stood against the opposite wall. An electric clock gave the time as 10am.

  It was the ringing of the telephone on the desk, Slater realised, that had woken him. Was it for him? Shrugging himself out of the sleeping bag he reached for it. It was Eve.

  ‘Neil. Good morning. How’s the head?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ Slater told her, ‘all things considered.’

  ‘Good. I’ll call for you in an hour. We’re going down to the country to meet the boss. If you’re up to breakfast I recommend the Cabin Café in Neave Passage, fifty yards down the road to the left.’

  ‘At the risk of sounding very stupid indeed,’ said Slater, ‘where the hell am I?’

  ‘Nine Elms Lane, SW8. If you look out of the window you’ll see the fruit and vegetable market. The front door key’s on the desk in front of you, the letterpad code is BASRA. See you in an hour. If you go to the Cabin I recommend the bubble and squeak.’

  The phone went dead.

  It had been a long night. After dropping the girls at King’s Cross station Slater had found himself in a pub in the Caledonian Road. The pub had filled up as the night wore on, and he had found himself drawn into the beery embrace of a local women’s football team. By 11pm, sadly, the Barnsbury Bantams had left, and Slater’s ear was being bent by a party of carp-fishermen from High Wycombe. At 11.30 the landlord had locked the doors, and it was at that point – Slater was drinking Red Stripe with whisky chasers – that time and events started to blur. What was certain was that shortly after midnight he had rung Eve’s mobile and suggested that she might care to join the party.

  She’d arrived forty minutes later, by which time the landlord had thrown everyone out. She found Slater sitting on the pavement, nursing a final can of Red Stripe.

  ‘Is this how it’s going to be?’ she’d asked him drily. ‘You only ring me at closing time on Friday nights?’ She was wearing a midnight blue evening dress, and looked considerably more glamorous than he remembered her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he had said, struggling to his feet. ‘I didn’t mean to . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘It was an official thing. I was leaving anyway.’ She beckoned him to her car, an anonymous-looking BMW. ‘So, what did you have in mind?’

  He looked down at his crumpled trousers and scuffed Ferragamo loafers, realised just how dishevelled he looked. ‘Can I, um, tempt you to a drink of something?’

  ‘I could go for a coffee. I’m driving tomorrow morning.’

  They ended up at the Bar Italia in Soho. A boxing match played on the TV screen. They ordered large espressos.

  ‘So, is this just a social call, Neil?’ Eve asked him, settling the folds of her skirt around her stool. ‘Or . . .’

  ‘You know why I’m calling you.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do I? Tell me.’

  He told her. Told her that he couldn’t kid himself any longer, and that bodyguarding was – not to put too fine a point on it – a total load of shite. Told her that civilian life was driving him out of his mind. Told her that he wanted to be operational again.

  ‘Is this the Special Brew talking?’ she asked him.

  ‘No. And it was Red Stripe, anyway. And a couple of measures of Bell’s. Let me tell you what happened this evening. Have you heard of a man named Howard Berendt?’

  He told her the story. She enjoyed it, especially the idea of Berendt looting Kat’s wardrobe to dress the trio of underage prostitutes.

  ‘But that apart,’ she said soberly, ‘it’s all pretty depressing. You didn’t honestly think you could change anything for them, did you?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Slater.

  ‘And there isn’t going to be any come-back, is there? You didn’t damage any of the punters too seriously?’

  ‘No. They’ll have to wire Gedge’s jaw and Oswald won’t be sitting down for a couple of weeks but that’s about the limit of it. Berendt might hire a couple of big lads to come looking for me, I suppose, but I can’t say I’m exactly quaking.’

  She nodded. ‘And you’re positive you want to join the department? You didn’t seem very keen last time I met you.’

  He shrugged. ‘Andreas was right. I am what I am.’

  She looked at him hard, and nodded. ‘OK, here’s what we do. You don’t go home tonight; instead I take you to one of our safe houses. Tomorrow, if you’re still interested, you meet Mr Ridley.’

  ‘So where are we going, exactly, to meet this boss of yours?’ he asked as they sailed down the M3 in Eve’s BMW.

  ‘Not too far,’ she smiled. She was wearing jeans and a tweed jacket. A well-worn Barbour coat lay on the back seat. Slater lay back with his eyes closed and allowed the warm breeze to pour in through the sunroof.

  ‘And Ridley isn’t the boss, in fact, he’s the ex-boss. He’s retired from the service now. He practically invented the Cadre, though, and spent most of his career running it, so he . . . he takes a continuing interest. It’s just a courtesy thing, really, but we always introduce potential new people to him. He likes to run an eye over them.’

  ‘How did you come to join the Cadre?’ Slater asked her.

  ‘I joined Box when I left Cambridge. Started off in Derry – source-handling with North Det.’

  ‘Did you get down to the hangar for any of the piss-ups with our lads?’

  ‘No, I was warned off!’

  Slater laughed and shook his head. It had been an insane time: for all the talk of peace the secret war had been waged right up to the wire, with killings and reprisals covered up by both sides. There had also been some serious mistakes made; a strong mutual distrust had prevailed between the various security services, and this had led to a lack of communication which on more than
one occasion had proved lethal.

  ‘Have you ever worked with a woman?’ Eve asked him. It was clear to Slater that they had followed the same train of thought.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Except on surveillance jobs. And I worked with a couple of female bodyguards last month. But never operationally.’

  ‘Would it worry you?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t see why it should,’ said Slater carefully. ‘But if it gets rough, to be honest, I’d be more comfortable with a couple of experienced blokes.’

  ‘Because the women would need “protecting”?’ she asked with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘No, just because I’ve got a theory that women tend to go for their firearms faster than men do. They know they’re going to lose a fist-fight or a kicking contest, so they pull out a weapon instead. And the thing escalates.’

  ‘Have you got any evidence whatsoever to back up this cute little theory?’

  ‘None whatsoever,’ admitted Slater cheerfully. ‘Nor for my other theory.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That a man will surrender to a man, when he wouldn’t to a woman. A lot of guys will literally risk a bullet rather than put their hands on their heads for a woman. It’s a face thing.’

  ‘I see,’ Eve said tersely.

  ‘They’re just theories,’ said Slater, ‘but they’re very good for winding people up.’

  ‘Oh, that’s where we are, is it? The wind-up stage?’

  ‘You drive beautifully,’ said Slater. ‘I always feel safer with a female spook at the wheel.’

  ‘Was that a compliment? I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Slater, ‘the answer to your first question is no. I have no trouble whatsoever with the idea of working with women, any more than I have with the idea of being ordered around by someone younger than me. All I think is that people should do the things they do best. The managers should manage, the planners should plan, and the doers should do.’

  ‘That’s all very well in theory,’ said Eve, reaching in her bag for her sunglasses. ‘But in practice we don’t always have the people for that. In this department we all do all of those things.’

  Slater nodded. ‘Point taken. So how did you move over the river from Five?’

  ‘I was . . . sort of recruited. My cover had been blown in Ireland, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career doing watcher duties, so I let it be known I was ready for a change. As it happened, the Cadre had just lost someone and were looking for a replacement.’

  ‘Lost someone?’ queried Slater.

  ‘A job went wrong. My predecessor was killed.’

  Slater stared at her. ‘Killed. How?’

  ‘In a firefight in a Paris car-park. I shouldn’t be telling you this.’

  ‘And am I replacing someone?’

  ‘Yes. There are always six of us on permanent attachment. Plus two support.’

  Eve pulled the BMW off the M3. Soon they were travelling along a sun-splashed country road overhung by trees. Village succeeded village – Nutley, Preston Candover, Chilton Candover – and the landscape seemed to broaden, to expand around them. As they emerged from a long tunnel of beeches and oaks Eve turned off the road on to a narrow track marked Dunns Ford Only. To either side fields of young corn stretched to the horizon. Dunns Ford proved to be a village of no more than two or three dozen houses – all of them old, all of them graceful, several of them large. Alongside the road the river Itchen wound its way over shining gravel and emerald-green weed.

  The BMW drew to a halt.

  ‘What do you think?’ Eve asked Slater.

  Slater shook his head. ‘It’s like a private world. What would one of these houses cost?’

  ‘Oh, a million or so at least. More with land. More still with a stretch of river. Many, many years bodyguarding, I’m afraid.’

  Slater nodded and looked down at his shoes. He would very much have liked the chance to change. There had been a washing and shaving kit in the safe house, but he still felt stale. This Italian gear might have looked cutting-edge in the West End, but in rural Hampshire it just looked flashy and inappropriate.

  ‘Thanks,’ he smiled sourly. ‘I needed reminding of my lowly status. So, your Mr Ridley is a multimillionaire?’

  ‘No, he’s a former civil servant who lives on his pension. He’s lived here for ages — long before prices went mad. Are you ready?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ said Slater.

  River House was bounded by high stone walls and set back some distance from the road. Eve rounded a small circular lawn, brought the BMW to rest in front of a pillared entrance, and pressed the brass bell.

  The door was answered by a smiling, pink-cheeked figure with a scrubby white moustache and a keen gaze. He was wearing shapeless corduroys and a frayed country shirt, and Slater guessed him to be in his sixties or seventies. The two men shook hands.

  ‘Mr Slater — Neil — it’s very good to see you. Come on in, hope you’re hungry, bathroom on the right if you want a wash. Eve, my dear, what a pleasure.’

  He beckoned Slater into a stone-flagged hall. The place was comfortable rather than grand, and not especially tidy. Bookcases lined the walls, and where there were not books there were photographs: children on horseback, pre-war school cricket teams, officers in uniform, African servants, Scottish rivers and long-demolished houses. There were also mounted antlers and fox-masks, and from its case above the fireplace a vast and snaggle-toothed pike cast a glassy eye on proceedings.

  Slater gave himself the once-over in the bathroom mirror, rejoined Eve and Ridley, and accepted a beer. A woman – a housekeeper rather than a wife, Slater guessed – was bringing food to the table.

  ‘Do you fish, Neil?’ Ridley asked.

  ‘I did as a boy,’ Slater admitted. ‘Not . . . not the sort of fishing you do down here, though.’

  It had been poaching, mostly, and eventually he’d been caught by the gamekeeper, a man with a reputation for punching you in the face first and asking questions afterwards. Until he went to Iraq Slater had never been as scared as he’d been when he felt his collar grabbed that night. His heart still turned over when he thought about it.

  ‘What I thought we might do’, said Ridley, ‘is have a bite of lunch, and then potter out and spend a couple of hours on the river. OK by everyone?’

  It was. Lunch was steak and kidney pie and a bottle of claret, followed by summer pudding. Slater had been right, the woman was a housekeeper. Ridley lived alone.

  Department business was not discussed or even mentioned during the meal. Instead the conversation embraced – among other topics – the English countryside, soldiering, books, marriage, whisky and Far Eastern travel. Slater was fully aware that he was being interrogated, and that his answers were revealing more and more about his private loyalties and his secret and inner self, but the whole thing was so skilfully and sympathetically done that he offered himself up without resistance. Aware that Eve was watching him – unlike Ridley, he noticed, she had not yet learnt how to observe people without their being aware of it – he made a point of limiting himself to a single glass of wine, and of not quite finishing it.

  When coffee was finished, Ridley led them through to his rod room. This was a pleasantly chaotic area with nineteenth-century prints on the wall, elderly Barbour jackets hanging on pegs, and waders and gumboots on the floor. And fishing kit. Reels and flyboxes cluttered a Victorian chest of drawers, nets hung from hooks, and dissassembled and partially assembled rods stood in every corner.

  ‘Now, Neil, how are we going to kit you out? British traditional or American high-tech?’

  The question, Slater knew, was a loaded one. ‘I’ll go for the Brit option,’ he said.

  Ridley nodded approvingly. ‘Eve, would you be so good as to fix Neil up with the eight-foot split-cane Hardy and the Princess reel?’

  Five minutes later, in a pair of Ridley’s wellingtons and with a borrowed bag of tackle over his shoulder, he followed the others through the g
arden. Ridley owned 500 yards of the fishing in the river Itchen – a stretch reached by crossing the bridge in the village and walking through a couple of water-meadows. Ten minutes later they stood at the foot of an ancient willow, with the gin-clear water streaming slowly past them.

  ‘First,’ said Ridley, ‘find your prey. Now how about him?’

  Twenty yards away, hard under the far bank, a dark shape wavered in the current. As Slater watched, it drifted upwards, plucked a fly from the surface, and returned to its station. Assembling his rod, selecting a fly from a battered tobacco tin and deftly attaching it to the end of a line of hair-like fineness, Ridley began to cast. The line snaked easily out and the fly landed with thistledown lightness a yard above the fish. Slowly, as Slater held his breath, it drifted downstream, and equally slowly the trout began to tilt upwards. Almost lazily it engulfed the fly, and then as Ridley tightened the line, the split-cane rod hooped, the reel screamed and the fish raced up-river with electric fury. It fought hard, but Ridley remained in control, and a few minutes later he slid the net beneath its shining, exhausted form. It was a beautiful fish, several pounds in weight, and Slater gazed wonderingly as Ridley released it. The trout hung in the current for a moment like a shadow and then, its instincts returning, raced for deep water.

  ‘The wild brown trout,’ said Slater. ‘The subtlest of the freshwater fishes. If you can deceive him you can deceive . . .’

  ‘Anyone?’ ventured Eve.

  ‘Why don’t you have a go, Neil?’ Ridley suggested. ‘If an old fool like me can manage it, I’m sure you can.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Slater, ‘but I’ll give it a crack.’

  ‘Let’s go upstream,’ said Ridley. ‘This one will have been disturbed by that last fish.’

  Another pool, smooth as glass. And another fish, lying between two waving banks of green weed. Assembling the tackle as he had seen Ridley do, and allowing Eve to select and tie on a suitable fly, Slater began to cast.

  Ridley had made it look so easy, but in truth fly-fishing proved nightmarishly difficult. Far from snaking effortlessly out over the river the line seemed to be everywhere. Within sixty seconds the fly had caught in the grass behind him, in a bush opposite him, and finally in the seat of Slater’s trousers from where Eve smirkingly extracted it. On his second attempt the line lashed the surface like a whip, and the trout vanished in a puff of gravel.