Hard Knocks

by Zoe Sharp

  I almost reached for the towel that I’d hung over the rail above me, just in case she pulled the curtain aside, but it wasn’t modesty that drove me.

  I’d been very careful so far to make sure that I dressed away from the view of the other women, keeping my neck and upper body covered. I knew that if I didn’t do so, I would have to answer awkward questions about the number of scars I possessed, and their origin.

  But how did I begin to explain about the one that curved a full five inches round the side of my neck from a point below my right ear to my Adam’s apple? How did I drop it lightly into the conversation that I’d got it fighting for my life against a madman who’d already committed murder and who’d been more than willing to do so again?

  I’d thought of lying, telling people it was from an operation of some sort, but the line of it was too ragged for that to be believable. And then they start to wonder what you’re really trying to hide.

  On the other side of the curtain I heard Elsa move away and close the bathroom door behind her. I sagged back against the tiles in relief, and wondered on the chances of getting through the entire two weeks at Einsbaden without having to explain what had happened to me.

  I could only hope so.

  ***

  When I arrived in the dining hall less than ten minutes later, I was alarmed to find the place almost empty.

  “Where is everyone, Ronnie?” I asked one of the cooks who was expertly flipping fried eggs on the hot plate.

  He grinned and jerked his head towards the front of the house. When I crossed to the window I saw a group of students and instructors clustered round a car that was just being unloaded from a transporter.

  Our first class after breakfast was down as vehicle security, then we were into the driving. I checked my watch, but according to that I still had half an hour to go. Dammit. Another of their switched timetables.

  I almost ran through the hallway, out through the front door and down the steps onto the gravel. I jogged across and nudged my way between the press of bodies.

  When I got through I found they were just standing around like a group of eighteen-year olds when the oldest buys his first second-hand Vauxhall Nova SR. Nobody was doing anything interesting to the car. It was the car itself they were looking at.

  I didn’t recognise the shape, but if it’s got more than two wheels any other details tend to pass me by anyway. Even your most amazing supercar can be out-dragged and outmanoeuvred by your most average superbike, at a fraction of the cost. I know where I’d rather spend my money.

  I had to admit that this one had a certain brutish charm about it. The car was big and squat, in a metallic shade that looked expensive enough to qualify as platinum, rather than silver. Not wanting to show my ignorance, I craned my neck until I could see the badging on the rear end.

  “But it’s a Nissan,” I said, and my voice must have well given away how nonplussed I was by this fact. I’d been expecting something a lot more exotic. Maserati at the very least.

  “Do you know nothing, girl?” demanded Declan, who was nearest. The reverential tone in his voice was slightly scary. “This is a Skyline GT-R R34 V-SPEC.”

  It was little more than an unlikely collection of letters and numbers to me. I shrugged. “What’s so special about it?”

  A couple of the others sniggered. Declan rolled his eyes. “Two-point-six litres, twin turbos, computer-controlled four-wheel drive,” he listed, speaking slowly. He saw I wasn’t cottoning on and broke off, shaking his head. “Your man’s a lucky bastard, I’ll say that.”

  “Whose is it?” I asked.

  “Oh this is the Major’s new toy. Apparently he’s just had the engine tuned to over five hundred horsepower. The acceleration on this thing will be feckin’ stunning.”

  I did a quick bit of mental arithmetic. My elderly quarter-litre Suzuki produced sixty-two brake horse. Multiply that up to two-point-six litres, and it came to the equivalent of a smidgen over six hundred. It wouldn’t work out like that in real life, of course, but the theoretical superiority made me feel better.

  “You’re really not impressed at all, are you?” Romundstad commented with a smile. I recalled him mentioning that he’d done some ice rallying in Norway. “I’d have thought you’d be into all things mechanical, Charlie.”

  I nodded my head across the gravel to where the black motorbike I’d seen the day before was parked at a rakish angle. “That,” I said, “is what impresses me. A Honda CBR900RR FireBlade. A hundred and thirty horsepower from less than one litre, bog standard. A hundred and eighty miles an hour top end. Something that takes real balls to ride to the limit.” I waved an arm to the Nissan. “Not something that has a computer doing it all for you.”

  “Thank you for your comments, Miss Fox,” said the Major’s acidic voice from behind me. My heart sank. He weakened enough to allow sarcasm to creep in. “I’m sure we’re all utterly fascinated to hear your opinion.”

  I turned to find Gilby approaching. And there was I thinking you couldn’t sneak up on anyone over gravel. He was eyeing me with all the favour of something he’d just scraped off his shoe. Behind him, Blakemore was glowering.

  Gilby stalked past us and dealt with the transporter driver in rapid-fire German, signing paperwork and taking hold of a set of keys.

  “Right, people,” he said then, his voice businesslike. “I would suggest you get yourselves fuelled up because in precisely twenty-three minutes you’ll need to be out here again and Mr Figgis will be taking you over vehicle security checks before we get you into the cars.”

  We drifted away from the Nissan. Gilby climbed into it and slammed the door. Even I had to admit that the engine note had that throaty growl when he turned the ignition key.

  Despite the four-wheel-drive system Declan had mentioned, as he set off the Major managed to kick up a shit-load of stones halfway across drive. Hmm, temper temper.

  I realised that Blakemore had moved alongside me. He looked from the departing Nissan to the FireBlade, and back again. “So you’d really rather have one of these,” he said nodding to the bike, “than one of those?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw his face begin to crease, and I realised he’d been fighting down a big grin in the presence of his boss. The Blade, I surmised, must be his.

  As I turned away he nudged Rebanks, who was standing next to him, and I heard him say, “Now that is my kind of woman.”

  ***

  “I don’t think in all the time I’ve been teaching here that I’ve ever come across a more useless hopeless case behind the wheel of a car than you, Charlie,” Figgis said two hours later, his long face mournful. “Have you actually got a driving licence?”

  It was the fourth time I’d stalled one of the school Audis. This to the obvious amusement of the three other pupils squashed into the back seat and the increasing exasperation of our instructor.

  The combination of unfamiliarity with cars of any description, plus left-hand drive, was doing its worst. Still, I wasn’t the only one having problems. Shirley had gone out with Blakemore in one of the earlier sessions and had apparently been reduced to tears by his scathing criticism. I was determined not to let it get to me, however much of a hash of things I was making.

  “What?” I said now, as I restarted the engine, feigning astonishment. “Driving licence? Oh, I thought it said you needed a diving licence. I can do scuba.”

  Romundstad called from the back, “The way you are going I would not be at all surprised if we are all ending up in a lake, for sure.” And there was more laughter.

  He wasn’t so far away from the truth. We were out on the roads around Einsbaden, which seemed to be made up of a mixture of twisting humps and dips, and deceptive fast open stretches like a rally stage. Working out one from the other was the tricky part.

  If you got it wrong there was an interesting selection of landing sites on offer, from solid-looking sheaves of timber to rocky drop-offs deep enough to qualify for the title of ravine. Some
of them did indeed have water in the bottom of them. Great. Survive the fall and you drown. All in all, it was a combination designed to make the most proficient driver nervous.

  I was terrified.

  The idea was that we were there to practise our general driving skills and observation. In theory, I was supposed to be giving a running commentary of the sparse other traffic and spotting possible obstacles or likely spots for an ambush. In reality, I was just hanging on for grim death to the mechanics of actually controlling the car.

  Fortunately, Figgis proved less hair-trigger than the other instructors. Maybe because he realised that if he yelled to the point where one of his pupils froze, they were likely to put their foot down and head for the trees.

  Out of a vehicle he was a tall, almost ungainly figure, with rounded shoulders and arms that seemed to swing loose and disconnected around his body. Put him behind the wheel, though, and there didn’t seem to be anything the man couldn’t make a motor car do.

  He’d given us a demonstration drive before we started and his skill was uncanny. He’d make some casual, unhurried movement with his hands and feet, and all of a sudden the car had swapped ends and you were hurtling backwards, but still going in the same direction that you had been. The easier he made it look the more difficult I knew it was going to be for any of us to replicate the manoeuvre.

  “That’s much better,” he said ten minutes later, when I’d successfully navigated my way along a contorted stretch of open road. “You’ve got a great eye for a line through a corner, Charlie. It’s just your clutch control that stinks.”

  “It’s not logical,” I complained. “Why on earth do you operate something as straightforward as a gear shift with your hand, but something as delicate as a clutch with your boot? Now on the bike it’s—”

  Another car overtook us suddenly then, so quick and so close that the shock of it made me twitch towards the side of the road and Figgis had to grab the wheel to steady us. I caught the briefest snapshot of a big dark saloon with four men in it as the driver flashed past. They all seemed to be staring intently at us.

  “Somebody’s in a bloody hurry,” Figgis muttered once we’d straightened out again and my nerves had settled, but his eyes had narrowed. He shifted round in his seat. “Right everyone, tell me everything you remember about that car. Every detail. You first of all, Charlie. How long’s it been following us?”

  I did some frantic mental searching. “He closed on us at such a rate that I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted, “but we passed a crossroads on a long straight about two klicks back, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t behind us before that.”

  Figgis nodded, and Romundstad gave him the fact it was a black Peugeot 406. Someone else had caught the registration number. They’d noted the number of occupants, too.

  “This all part of the exercise, yes?” Romundstad asked.

  Figgis grinned at him. “We like to see how awake you all are.”

  But as he faced front again I caught the anxiety in his face, the deep frown. As though aware of being watched, he flicked his eyes sideways and I jerked mine back onto the road ahead.

  Something about his expression niggled at me, but it wasn’t until we got back to the Manor that I put my finger on it.

  We pulled up to change teams on the rough car park behind the house to find another of the Audis already there, stopped at an angle with the doors open. Everybody was standing around the car watching two men face off as if for a fight.

  I stopped quickly and we all jumped out. Ran across to see what was happening.

  McKenna had his nose stuck under Major Gilby’s and was yelling at him, arms waving. The lad’s pale complexion was slashed with pink across his cheekbones as though he’d been slapped, and all the cords stood out in his neck. The Major was so stiff you could have ironed shirts on him. O’Neill was trying, not too successfully, to calm McKenna down and pull him away.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Figgis asked Blakemore, who was standing watching the tableau with his arms folded, not making any moves to intervene.

  “Oh, they were buzzed by some heavies in a Peugeot,” I heard Blakemore reply. “Nearly ran them off the road, apparently, and McKenna’s gone off at the deep end about it being dangerous.”

  “Is that so?” Figgis murmured. “The same thing happened to us.”

  Blakemore glanced at him sharply, and it was then that the niggle unfolded fully. I realised why I’d had the feeling that Figgis was lying when he’d said our near miss was all part of the game plan.

  I’ve always been good with faces. I knew I’d caught enough of a glimpse of the men in the Peugeot to recognise them if I saw them again. But, if they were all part of the Einsbaden staff, how come I hadn’t known them already?

  I don’t know how truly unnerved Gilby was by McKenna’s outburst, or by the fact that his pupils were being harassed. He was either being very calm about it, or he didn’t fully realise the dangers that had been involved.

  Either way, after that he sent the cars out in pairs. There were no more sightings of the black Peugeot or its occupants. Even though we were keeping more than a careful eye out for them.

  Trouble was, that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there. Maybe they were just being a lot more stealthy.

  Six

  “They’re pushing us hard,” I said. “All those damn silly exercises that are designed to break you rather than get you fit. It’s like being back in bloody basic training.”

  “And I know how much you enjoyed that,” Sean said, his voice made vaguely unfamiliar by the limitations of the mobile phone. “Didn’t stop you passing out top of your class though, did it?”

  It was difficult to read the hidden shifts and meanings in his tone without being able to see his face as he spoke. I couldn’t tell if I was reading too much into his words, or was taking them too lightly.

  “Yeah,” I murmured. “It was a laugh a minute.”

  I shivered more closely into my jacket, jamming the phone against my ear to keep out the wind. I’d wanted somewhere private to call Sean after supper and the only place I could be sure of getting it was outside, despite the dark and the cold.

  I’d found a staircase leading to the roof and a door that was only secured by bolts, rather than lock and key. Almost the entire roof of the Manor was flat, with a low wall that made up the facade of the building.

  I sat in the lee of a chimney stack with my back against the stonework, and kept one eye on my exit. If anyone found the door open and shut it again without me realising it, I was likely to freeze to death up there before morning.

  “So, how are you coping?” Sean asked.

  “With what?” I said, a little sharply. Somehow I knew it wasn’t just the training he was talking about. It put my back up that he could still so accurately pinpoint my weaknesses. It had always been his speciality.

  Right from the first moment I’d seen him I’d known that Sean Meyer was a danger to me. I was one of only three women who’d fought their way through selection to make it onto the Special Forces course. Sean, like the rest of the instructors, seemed to instantly zero in on the three of us as the candidates mostly likely to be the first drop-outs. There was nothing natural about the means of their selection.

  “Well, with being back in a military atmosphere, I suppose,” he said now, careful. “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

  “So why did you send me?”

  “I didn’t send you, Charlie,” he said, and there was no mistaking the mild reproof. “I asked you to go.”

  Same difference, I thought. “So why didn’t you ask Madeleine instead,” I snapped. “I’m sure she would have coped just fine. If you’re worried I can’t hack it out here, Sean, tell me now.”

  He sighed. “I know you can cope, Charlie,” he said, ignoring my latest dig about Madeleine, as he always seemed to do. I wondered if that was why I kept making them. “I’m just worried about what it’s costing you. I can imagine how difficult it mus
t be for you, that’s all. Pretending, holding back. I think that’s the part I’d find hard. I don’t like deceit.”

  I stiffened, as though he was talking on another level. As though he’d guessed that I hadn’t told him the truth about Kirk and what had happened before I’d left the army.

  I searched for the right words to begin to tell him, but they wouldn’t come. It really wasn’t the kind of thing you could do over the phone. Mind you, I didn’t think I’d have the bottle to tell him face to face, either. Stalemate.

  The silence hummed along the wires between us.

  At last, he said, “Yesterday you asked about the Heidi Krauss kidnap.”

  “Yes,” I said, realising almost with relief that I’d missed my chance.