Hard Knocks

by Zoe Sharp

  One of them had pulled a combat knife from a sheath on his thigh and sliced through our bonds. I swear I heard my breastbone creak as the pressure on it eased. At least they helped us up with rather more care than they’d shown putting us down.

  “You may think this is a little drastic introduction to the course,” the Major said, nodding, as the three of us eased our shoulders and surveyed our sodden clothing, “but I assure you that everyone here has been through just such an experience.”

  He glanced round. The other people who were obviously not staff were grinning at us in rueful embarrassment that they, too, had been caught out. Gilby turned back to us and switched off the smile, fixing us with a serious gaze.

  “Let there be no mistake,” he said, “by the time you’ve completed your training here you can be absolutely certain that nobody will be able to take you by surprise like that again!”

  Three

  It seemed that Declan, Elsa and I were the last ones to arrive at Einsbaden Manor. Major Gilby launched into his full induction talk right away.

  The Major might have been a charismatic speaker, had not someone obviously once told him what a charismatic speaker he was. As a result he tried too hard and found his own jokes just a little too funny. Most of us dutifully folded our lips back and showed our teeth to order, but for the instructors it was apparently harder to feign amusement. Maybe they’d just heard it all too many times before.

  When he was done he told us we had an hour to get settled in and changed into dry clothes before supper. Elsa and I would be sharing a room with the two other women on the course. We were shown the way by one of the men who’d ambushed us. His name, he told us, was Rebanks, and he would be teaching weapons’ handling.

  “You’re in the east wing and the blokes are in the west wing,” he said as we followed him up the main staircase.

  He turned. He had dark reddy coloured hair over a slightly pointed face which made me think of an urban fox. Intelligent, but sly. “The instructors’ quarters are in the middle, so you’ll have to get past us first if you fancy any extra-curricular activity.”

  Elsa and I studiously ignored the knowing smile he flashed in our direction, but the predatory gleam was all too familiar.

  Getting past anyone wasn’t going to be easy, though. Einsbaden Manor had that slightly neglected air about it, like a seaside hotel in a resort long past its heyday. The carpeting was worn so thin in places you could no longer determine the colour. Under it, the creaking floorboards were loose and the way they rubbed against each other as a result gave them the shifting quality of sand beneath your feet. Making progress silently was not going to be easy.

  We seemed to tramp for half a mile along corridors that all looked the same, the woodwork painted an institutional cream. The tied-back curtains at the long windows were so frail I doubt you could have successfully drawn them.

  I noticed that the usual mandatory notices for fire exits were all in English first, German second, almost as an afterthought. Madeleine had told me that the school had transferred from Wiltshire after the gun ban. I hadn’t realised that relocation had been almost wholesale.

  Eventually Rebanks pushed open the door to a large room with a high ceiling. There were four single beds in opposite corners, lost among the floor space. Each bed had a lockable cabinet alongside it and a trunk at the foot.

  “There you go, ladies, home sweet home for the next fortnight,” Rebanks said with another grin. “Make yourselves comfortable.” I almost expected him to linger, but with that he departed, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Two of the beds were obviously already taken. I threw my bag on the nearest of those that weren’t and sat down gingerly. The metal frame squeaked and the mattress sagged deeply in the middle.

  Elsa had pushed open a small doorway in the far wall. “It’s a bathroom, I think,” she said, with some doubt in her voice. “Do you want first risk of the shower, or do I?”

  In the end, I took the first turn, finding to my surprise that although the plumbing appeared as ancient as everything else, the water pressure was good and the temperature was consistently high.

  “Please don’t wait for me,” Elsa said as I dressed again in clean jeans and a shirt. “I will follow you down in a short time.”

  I listened until she set the shower running again, then quickly unpacked my stuff. In the bottom of my bag was the mobile phone Sean had given me before I left. It would work all over Europe, he’d explained, and if I kept it switched off when I didn’t actually want to make a call the battery would last for quite a while without needing to be recharged.

  He’d programmed the number of his own mobile into the memory and told me to call him any time, night or day, if I needed to. He wouldn’t contact me unless it was absolutely necessary. There was a answering service for when the phone was off that would automatically activate and replay the message as soon as I next switched it on again. He would keep in touch that way.

  I flipped the phone open, hit the power button, and then hesitated. Finally, I switched it off again, hid it away in the cabinet. I hadn’t enough to report to make the call worth while. With a final glance round to make sure my stuff was all out of sight, I left the room and headed back for the stairs.

  On the way I looked for the quietest bits of the floor. I had a feeling that I might need to do some sneaking about and it was good practice. The edges of the carpet were much less worn than the middle and if you took it slow and careful the boards under them could be walked on without making enough noise to drown out a thunderstorm.

  As I crept onto the open landing I saw a man about halfway down the staircase and I recognised the reddy-coloured hair of our friendly weapons’ handler. He’d just reached the lower treads when he was halted by a harsh whisper from one of the doorways on the ground floor.

  “Rebanks! Where the hell have you been?” It was Major Gilby who stepped out into the light, hands tight by his sides.

  The man shrugged, on the sidelines of insolent. “I’ve been helping the ladies settle in,” he said lazily. “I think I might be in with a chance there.”

  I peeled back my sleeve and checked my watch. It was thirty-five minutes since he’d delivered us to our door and disappeared.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Rebanks, take this seriously!” Gilby snapped. He looked up then and I shrank back behind the nearest wall, just peering round the corner through the balustrade. He lowered his voice again, but the tiled floor of the hallway ensured that it carried up to me. “You know how things stand at the moment. No one goes anywhere on their own. Not for any reason! Understood?”

  “Yes sir!” Rebanks said, but there was laughter in his voice.

  Gilby went white. His fingers clenched briefly and he took a step nearer, pushing his face in close to Rebanks.

  “Until this thing is over, you follow orders,” he said tightly. “I don’t have to remind you of the consequences of—”

  He broke off, and I heard it, too. Creaky footsteps from the corridor opposite my hiding place, which led into the other wing. I hopped back a few strides, then began walking normally. The floorboards under my feet crunched noisily like packed-down snow. I’d just got to the head of the stairs when Declan appeared from the direction of the men’s quarters.

  “Charlie, me darlin’! Have you been waiting for me?” he greeted me. He seemed to have recovered his bounce. “Are you ready to eat? After all that pillocking about in the woods, I’m starving.”

  We walked down together, passing the two school men with only a short nod of acknowledgement. I tried to act casual, but I found Gilby watching us with a narrowed stare. Perhaps it was my guilty conscience, or maybe he just didn’t like Declan’s cheek.

  The dining hall had the same high ceiling of the rest of the house. It was huge, with a massive ornate fireplace at one end that cried out for a pair of sleeping wolfhounds in front of the blazing logs.

  There were two long tables laid up, one on the main floor and the other
up on the dais which ran across the opposite end of the room from the fireplace. The instructors, naturally, were taking their places at the high table. It was interesting that they felt the need to emphasise their elevated position with such heavy-handed lack of finesse.

  There was a hot buffet to one side where people were already helping themselves. Declan and I joined the end of the queue.

  Seeing that Einsbaden Manor was being run on military lines, I’d expected the worst of the food, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was more like the fare in a decent pub carvery. Three large cuts of meat and plenty of vegetables that actually hadn’t been cooked long enough to lose all structural integrity. I piled my plate high.

  More by accident than design, Declan and I drifted together towards a couple of empty chairs at the nearest end of the long table that was set for the pupils. There didn’t seem to be a seating plan. You just found a space and got on with it.

  Declan took the chair to my right. To my left was a big man with fair hair cropped close at the sides and gelled into a flat-top. He ate single-mindedly, resting his elbows on the table and shovelling it in. He had arms that were nearly as thick as my thighs, straining the sleeves of his T-shirt. He glanced at me as I sat down and I gave him a brief nod and a smile.

  He didn’t smile back. His pale blue eyes flickered over me once, then he turned his attention back to his plate, as though I wasn’t worth the effort. With a shrug, I dug into my own food and ignored him. Another of life’s charmers.

  Declan, however, wasn’t so easily deflected. He looked around at the faces nearest to us, and instantly struck up an easy conversation.

  I stayed quiet, letting them talk around me, but kept my eyes open. The instructors were drifting in now, filling up their plates and taking their seats on the dais. Now that they’d washed off their cam cream and hung up their woolly hats for the day, they looked human for the most part.

  Rebanks arrived with Gilby still glowering after him, although the Major’s expression settled into cool command as soon as he was among the students, like the professional smile of a politician.

  I picked out another face I recognised. The scarred Irishman who’d greeted us at the gate. As I watched him climb the steps onto the dais I caught him pause fractionally and grimace in pain. It was only a small gesture, quickly covered. If I hadn’t been watching him, I probably would have missed it. But the Major had seen it, too, and there was something darker and deeper in his eyes than the incident should have provoked.

  It seemed that the scarred man wasn’t the only one of the Einsbaden team who was below par. Another of the instructors entered the dining hall. A tall, wide-shouldered man with a slight but distinct limp. Half of the pupils at the table watched his progress across the room.

  Or we did until he turned and glared at us, at any rate. He had sunken eyes under full black eyebrows that met as a single feature across the bridge of his nose, emphasising the slightly Neanderthal bulge of his forehead.

  But something about the way he moved reminded me of Sean. They shared the same kind of cohesive control. I marked him out as dangerous without quite knowing why.

  “Now there is a man whose lessons we will not enjoy, I think,” said the beefy man next to me, suddenly breaking his silence. He had a deep voice with a trace of a German accent.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  The German didn’t look inclined to answer until he saw a couple of the others also waiting for his reply. “His name is Blakemore. Apparently he will be teaching us unarmed combat,” he said then, shrugging. “It was probably not a wise move to antagonise him so early in the course.”

  For a moment my heart jumped. He’d seemed to direct that last comment in my direction.

  “Who’s been antagonising the man?” Declan asked. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Did he not like the way we fell in the mud at his feet?”

  But the German nodded across the dining hall towards Elsa, who had just entered, freshly showered with her immaculate bob dried into place. She looked fit and self-confident.

  “When they picked the three of you up I understand that she put up quite a fight,” the man said. He went back to his food, spearing three or four carrots onto his fork. “Mr Blakemore has an old knee injury that has been aggravated and he is not a happy man.”

  I remembered the shape that had swung at me and the blow I’d managed to land. When I glanced up, I saw Blakemore studying Elsa with bleak interest that I didn’t like the look of. I could only hope that the unwitting German woman wasn’t going to get too much stick for my actions. But if I wanted my cover to stay intact there was no way I was going to hold my hand up.

  ***

  The next morning we started our training in earnest. At five o’clock the next morning, to be precise, when Gilby’s merry band of instructors came rampaging through the dormitories. They made a point of producing twice the quantity of noise that was required to get us out of our beds. And at three times the volume.

  I was shocked into wakefulness as the overhead lights were slapped on and by the nastily cheerful voice of Todd, who had been introduced after supper the night before as the head physical training instructor.

  He was short, almost stocky, with hair clipped razor-thin to his scalp. Not because he still hankered after his undoubted previous army career, but because he spent half his life in the shower after exercise. He had the air of someone who’s fitter on a daily basis than you’ll ever be in your life. And knows it.

  “Good morning ladies,” he barked, swivelling his bull neck to survey the room’s occupants with just a little too much attention. “Outside in your running kit in fifteen minutes, if you please!”

  The door slammed shut behind him and for a moment I continued to lie still, concentrating on slowing down my heart and preventing its imminent explosion. I’ve never liked loud alarm clocks and this was worse. It can’t be good for you to surface from sleep with such suddenness and ferocity. The wake-up equivalent of the bends.

  “Come on then girls,” Shirley said briskly, sitting up in her bed opposite mine and reaching for her sweatshirt. “We can’t let the boys think we’re not up to the job.”

  Shirley Worthington was from Solihull, the archetypal bored housewife. She was a bouncy woman who wouldn’t see forty again except in the rear-view mirror. Within five minutes of our meeting last night, she’d been handing round photographs of her grandchildren. Not exactly the kind of person I’d expected to find studying to be a bodyguard.

  To my left I heard a quiet groan, and then Elsa pushed back her bedclothes and sat up wearily. The German woman looked like death, but I had a feeling I was probably seeing a fairly accurate picture of myself. Only Shirley seemed irritatingly alert.

  I glanced over towards the room’s fourth occupant, who was little more than a vague outline under the blankets. Even Todd’s violent incursion hadn’t made an impact.

  Elsa heaved herself out of bed and padded across the squeaky floor. “Jan,” she said loudly, shaking the lump by what appeared to be a shoulder. “It is time for you to be waking up now, please.”

  Jan King made a muffled comment that probably contained at least four expletives. I’d never come across a woman with such a wide vocabulary of swear words. Or a man, for that matter. And I was used to hanging out around bikers.

  Judging from her dulcet tones, Jan was from the East End of London. She was small, sallow-skinned and intense, with the stringy skinniness of a long-distance runner and very bad teeth. She didn’t look much like a bodyguard, either.

  By the time the four of us had scrambled into our clothes and got down the main staircase, the men were already outside on the gravel. They stood in a huddled group, their collective breath rising like steam from winter cattle under the floodlights.

  The stars were still glittering above us. By my reckoning we were still a good two and a half hours away from sunrise. Why, I wondered bitterly, couldn’t Kirk have got himself killed on a summer course?

  “Ah,
so good of you to join us at last, ladies,” Todd’s voice was sneering as he jogged up in a dark blue tracksuit. “Too busy putting your make-up on, were you?”

  Jan’s response was short and to the point, but I don’t think the reaction she got was the one she was hoping for. If she’d thought it through that far.

  “Physically impossible, I would have thought,” Todd said mildly, then his face tightened. “Get down and give me ten press-ups.”

  Jan’s face mirrored her surprise. She put her hands on her hips. “Or what?” she demanded.

  “Or you can pack your bag right now and bugger off back home, love,” Todd said. He gave her a nasty smile. “Better make that fifteen press-ups.”

  “You can’t order me about like that,” Jan said, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice now, underlying the belligerence.

  “You didn’t read the small print when you signed up for this, did you?” Todd asked. He raised his voice, speaking to the group of us. “We need hundred per cent effort from you lot. Anyone who isn’t prepared to put the graft in and you’re straight out.” He waved an arm towards the edge of the gravel, where it faded out into the gloom in the direction of the forest track we’d come in on.