The Double Tap (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  Lynch grinned, then just as quickly, frowned. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to massage my ego, Marie, love, would you?’

  Marie laughed. ‘Just your neck, Dermott. Just your neck. We take the B4271 after Upper Killay. The A road goes to the airport and then to the south. We keep heading west.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘To Llanrhidian? About eight miles. What’s the plan?’

  The question set Lynch thinking. He’d been so busy getting out of London and worrying about the mess he’d left behind that he’d scarcely thought about what he would do when he got to the point on the map where Cramer’s helicopter had landed. For all he knew, Cramer could have been whisked into a car and driven anywhere in Wales or beyond. ‘We’ll take a look around, see if we can work out where he went,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the plan?’ she said.

  ‘It’s not really a plan,’ said Lynch.

  ‘I’ll say.’

  Lynch cleared his throat. ‘Do you have any suggestions?’

  ‘No suggestions. I just want to get him. We’ll find out where he is and we’ll get him.’

  Lynch shook his head. ‘No, Marie, love. I’ll do it.’

  Marie nodded slowly. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘I mean it. I don’t want you anywhere near him. He’s a trained killer. He’s one of the most dangerous men you’ll ever meet.’

  Marie raised an eyebrow innocently. ‘What, more dangerous than you, Dermott?’

  Lynch grinned despite himself. The road to Llanrhidian was narrow and winding and he drove carefully, aware of how easily he could lose control of the spirited Golf GTI.

  The village was tiny and looked down upon a long stretch of salt marsh which ran into the Loughor estuary to the north. To the west were the gaunt ruins of a castle. ‘What’s that?’ Lynch asked, nodding at the ruins.

  ‘Weobley Castle,’ Marie answered, looking at the map. ‘The place we’re looking for is to the east, just the other side of the B4295.’

  They drove by the village pub. Lynch resisted the urge to stop. While he would have enjoyed a pint and a rest from driving, the pub was in such an isolated spot that the arrival of two strangers would be bound to attract attention. Marie stared at the map, rechecking the coordinates that Lynch had given her. They followed the B4295 past a sprawling caravan park, then Marie pointed to the right. ‘There,’ she said.

  Lynch peered through the windscreen at what appeared to be nothing but farmland, most of it freshly ploughed. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. Marie nodded. Lynch braked. The road curved around to the right, and as he guided the Golf into the curve, a high stone wall came into view. ‘Could this be it?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘According to the map, the coordinates are about half a mile inside the wall.’ Lynch slowed the car to little more than a walking pace. Marie twisted around in her seat and tried to look past Lynch. ‘What is this place?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘There’s a gate up ahead.’

  Lynch accelerated smoothly. They passed a faded wooden sign affixed to the wall. ‘Did you see that?’ Lynch asked, looking over his shoulder.

  ‘Sorry. I missed it.’

  Lynch stopped and reversed the Golf down the road. The lettering on the board had once been dark brown but it was now streaked with greenish mould. LLANRHIDIAN GIRLS’ PREPARATORY SCHOOL, the sign said, but a white strip with red lettering had been plastered across the board announcing that the building had been sold, along with the name and telephone number of a local estate agent. Marie took a pen from her handbag and copied the name and telephone number into the back of her diary. Lynch put the car into first gear and drove down the road towards the entrance to the school. They were about twenty yards away when he saw the two men standing just inside the wrought-iron gates. They were both in their late twenties and wearing leather jackets and jeans, not standing to attention but not lounging aimlessly, either. They were both looking at the Golf.

  ‘Kiss me,’ said Lynch.

  Marie moved quickly. She leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek and hugged her arms around his neck. Lynch accelerated and they passed the gate. He checked his rear-view mirror but the men didn’t look through the gate after the Golf.

  ‘What was that about?’ Marie asked, releasing her grip on his neck.

  ‘Didn’t you see them?’ Lynch asked. ‘Two men, Sass by the look of them.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Lynch gave her a withering look and she slid down into her seat. ‘Now what do we do?’ she asked.

  ‘We wait until it gets dark,’ he said. ‘If they’re guarding the place, he’s probably still there.’ Lynch felt a growing excitement as he drove alongside the stone wall and he fought to control it. ‘Find us somewhere where we can look down on the school so that we can get an overview, okay?’

  ‘Sure. There’s a hill to the north. We should be able to see it from there.’

  Lynch turned to look at her and he saw that she was smiling. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, what?’

  ‘I mean what are you so happy about?’

  Marie ran a finger along his leg, scratching the material of his jeans. ‘You said “we” for the first time.’

  Lynch snorted softly and looked back at the road. She was right, he realised. He’d started thinking of her as part of the team. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.

  Bernard Jackman looked up at the blonde stewardess and took the small glass of orange juice that she was offering. He gave her a broad smile but she was already moving on to the next passenger. Even in first class the service was perfunctory and the smiles plastic, but Jackman didn’t care. He flew more than fifty thousand miles a year on scheduled airlines and regarded travelling as nothing more than a means to an end. All he cared about was that the plane arrived on time and that it didn’t crash into the sea along the way.

  He watched the stewardess walk down the aisle, dispensing drinks and more artificial smiles. Jackman was used to false smiles. During his time as an FBI profiler he’d interviewed hundreds of murderers, and rarely did they seem out of the ordinary. There was little to separate the serial killer from the man in the street, on the surface at least. Jackman had met serial killers who looked like kindly grandfathers, others who were as charming, handsome and charismatic as chat show hosts, and even one who was every bit as voluptuous as the stewardess. Jackman knew that it was only when you began to delve inside their heads that you discovered what separated the killers from their prey, the sheep from the wolves. He’d spent thousands of hours interviewing convicted killers, winning their confidence, peering into their minds, becoming their friend, so that he could discover what made them different. One of his bosses had said that a good profiler was like a chameleon, that when a profiler and a killer were together in a cell it should be impossible to tell them apart. Their mannerisms, their body language, the way they talked, should be virtually identical. The same man had also warned of the dangers of spending too much time in the company of serial killers. They had the same fascination as a flame to a moth: the profilers had to be careful how close they got, lest they got burned.

  Jackman opened the file on Mike Cramer. Most of it consisted of reports from Cramer’s time in the army and later in the Special Air Service, the British Special Forces regiment which was revered throughout the world. There was nothing to explain where the man had been over the previous three years. A colour photograph was clipped to the inside of the file cover: three pictures in a strip, left and right profiles and one full on. There was an intensity in Cramer’s eyes that burned out of the photograph. The effect was almost hypnotic and Jackman spent several minutes staring at the picture. He was disturbed by the stewardess asking if she could take his empty glass. He handed it to her, still looking at the photograph.

  Cramer’s eyes were deep-set and his nose was slightly hooked, giving him a predatory appearance. According to the file, Cramer was thirty-seven yea
rs old but the eyes wouldn’t have been out of place in an octogenarian. There was no sadness in the man’s gaze, no bitterness, just a cold level stare that seemed to look right through Jackman. Jackman wondered what Cramer had seen and done to get such hard eyes. The file provided a few clues. Cramer had served in the Falklands and had worked undercover in Northern Ireland. After three tours of duty in the province he had been captured by the IRA and brutally tortured. He’d been rescued and rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Belfast where surgeons had saved his life, but shortly afterwards he’d left the SAS for medical reasons. There were no details of what Cramer had been doing since leaving the regiment, but Jackman had gained the impression that the Colonel had been holding something back. Jackman was sure that the Colonel had used Cramer on at least one operation, something so sensitive that he couldn’t involve one of his own men.

  The Colonel had been cagey about Cramer’s motivation for taking Vander Mayer’s place. On reading the file, Jackman’s first thought was that Cramer felt he had something to prove, because he’d been forced to leave the army early. Unfinished business. On meeting the man face to face, Jackman had realised that there was something else driving him. Jackman would have liked to have spent more time with Mike Cramer, to have sat down with him and talked in detail, to have done what Jackman did best – probing and ferreting out what made a man tick.

  Jackman smiled as he recalled how the Colonel’s jaw had tightened when he’d pointed out how closely Cramer fitted the profile of the man they were looking for. Cramer’s family background – losing his mother and the lack of a father-figure during his teenage years – was almost certainly what had led him to join the armed forces. But Jackman knew that it was also the sort of environment that could lead to psychological problems which, coupled with the intensive training Cramer had received, could be the perfect recipe for producing a psychotic killer. Jackman’s own mother had died when he was young, and he knew all too well the void that left behind, a void that could never be filled. In Cramer’s case, no one had even tried and he’d sought sanctuary in the army.

  According to Cramer’s service record, he hadn’t shone as a regular soldier, and on several occasions had been up on insubordination charges. It wasn’t until he passed the rigorous SAS selection tests that Cramer finally found his vocation. Trained to a peak of fitness that most men could only imagine and schooled in weapons, explosives and parachuting, Cramer became a government-trained killing machine. But life in the regiment gave him back something that had been missing in the past – a family. His fellow soldiers became his brothers, the regiment supplied all his needs and wants and, Jackman theorised, the Colonel probably became the father-figure that Cramer sought. Jackman knew that being forced to leave the regiment Cramer loved must have been every bit as emotionally damaging as the death of his mother, and the move back into civilian life would have echoed his original loss. The end of his army career could have opened the floodgates and allowed the release of all the emotions Cramer had been holding back over the years.

  Jackman wondered what Cramer had been up to in civilian life. Men with Cramer’s background tended to end up as mercenaries, or in prison, or dead. Jackman leaned back in his seat, smiling to himself. He looked forward to meeting Cramer again: there was so much he wanted to ask him. Jackman wanted to know how many lives Cramer had taken, and how he felt about it, whether he enjoyed the killing or regarded it as just another branch of soldiering. He wanted to find out what the first kill had been like, and whether the feelings had changed with the second, third and fourth. And Jackman wanted to know something else – whether Cramer missed it.

  Cramer stood at his bedroom window looking down at the car park. White halogen lights illuminated the area and glinted off the cars. A ginger and white cat walked diagonally across the tarmac square with its ears pricked up and its tail erect as if it was on patrol. Cramer smiled at the thought – an SAS cat, trained to kill without emotion, a cat that could out-march, out-fight and out-drink all other cats. The cat stopped in the centre of the square as if it had seen something. A figure stepped into the light and, as it walked towards the cat, Cramer realised it was Allan.

  Cramer watched as Allan walked over to the cat and knelt down beside it. The cat arched its back and rubbed itself against Allan’s outstretched hand and Cramer could imagine it purring with pleasure. Allan looked up towards where Cramer was standing. Cramer wasn’t sure if the bright lights reflected on the glass would allow Allan to see in, but any doubts disappeared when Allan straightened up and waved at him. Cramer unlatched the window and opened it. ‘Hang on, I’ll come down!’ he called.

  Allan gave him a thumbs up. The building was in darkness but Cramer didn’t switch on any lights. He went quietly downstairs and slipped out of the back door where Allan was waiting with the cat in his arms. ‘Everything all right?’ Cramer asked.

  ‘Fine. Have you met Ginge?’

  Cramer stroked the cat. ‘She came with the school?’

  ‘I guess so. She seems tame enough. For a cat.’ Allan bent down and let the cat go. She looked at him for a few seconds and then disappeared silently into the darkness.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Allan asked.

  Cramer nodded. ‘Sure. I just fancied some air, that’s all.’

  They walked together around the rear of the main school building and across the lawn. High overhead they saw the lights of an airliner cutting across the star-strewn sky. The man who’d attacked Cramer in the dining room was standing at the gate and he nodded to them both. Allan waved in salute.

  ‘How did you get into this, Allan?’ Cramer asked.

  ‘The Colonel wanted somebody with bodyguarding experience, and I guess I fitted the bill.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They tend not to broadcast the fact, but the regiment supplies bodyguards for the Royal Family and politicians when they go abroad and we help train bodyguards who work for foreign heads of state. I did a six-month stint with the Sultan of Brunei before I joined the Training Wing.’

  ‘And Martin?’

  ‘I suggested that we use him. He left the Ranger Wing a few years back to start up his own bodyguarding business in the South of France. He’s doing well, too. The Colonel had to do a fair bit of sweet-talking to convince him to join the operation, but he’s the best in the business.’ He paused. ‘What about you, Mike?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ They turned away from the gate and headed towards the tennis courts. Cramer’s eyes were constantly moving, checking out the shadows, looking for any sign that one of Allan’s men was about to spring another surprise attack.

  ‘You know what I mean. In a standard bodyguarding operation, the prime objective is to protect the client. We keep close, we make sure the environment is safe, and if the shit hits the fan we get between the client and the trouble and we get the client the hell out. His safety is paramount.’ Cramer nodded. Off in the distance an owl hooted. ‘Martin and I aren’t bodyguarding you, Mike. You know that. Our instructions are to slot the killer. Your survival is secondary.’

  Cramer cleared his throat. ‘Secondary? I figured it was lower than that.’

  Allan smiled thinly. ‘So why did they choose you for the job?’

  ‘For bait, you mean? Just lucky, I guess.’ Allan nodded and didn’t press Cramer further. They walked in silence for a while. The floodlights around the tennis court were on. Discarded cartridges glittered on the hard clay surface, the detritus of the day’s rehearsals. ‘Where were you before Sass?’ Cramer asked. ‘The Paras?’

  Allan grinned. ‘Not me, Mike. I was a freelance.’

  ‘A freelance?’

  ‘I was sitting in a pub in London and saw an advertisement in the Daily Express for security guards in South Africa. I figured it was for store detectives, something like that. Two weeks later I was in the Angolan bush with a bloody Kalashnikov in my hands. I was nineteen.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Sure. They just wanted bodies, they cou
ldn’t care less about how much experience we had.’ He shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Though, truth be told, I did exaggerate a bit. I stayed a couple of years but when things started to get a bit hot I went back to Dublin, set up my own security company, ran a nightclub, even did a bit of acting. But I missed it, you know?’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Cramer, ‘I know.’ Cramer knew exactly what Allan meant. He’d never felt so alive as when he was in the SAS. It wasn’t just the adrenalin rush, it was the companionship, the fact that he was working as part of a team with men who were trained to a degree of professionalism that few could match. Cramer missed the SAS and he’d never found anything that could fill the gap it left in his life.

  A small insect buzzed by Allan’s ear and he waved it away. ‘So I moved to London and applied to join 21 SAS. I was twenty-three and figured I was too old to join the regular army, but reckoned that the Territorials might have me. Failed the first time, but they told me to work on my fitness and try again. The following year I made it. Did the Fan Dance in eighteen hours in the shittiest weather you’ve ever seen. The Colonel was on the course as an observer and he approached me afterwards, asked if I’d thought about serving full time. He put in a word for me and I joined 22 SAS.’

  Cramer was impressed. It was rare for a member of the Territorial SAS to be offered a place in the regiment proper. ‘And you like Training Wing?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s better than standing outside a Leeson Street nightclub with the rain pissing down and dealing with spotty teenagers trying to bullshit their way in.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, you get laid more often in Dublin, that’s for sure.’

  They skirted the tennis courts and walked across the croquet lawn. Allan was laughing but Cramer remained on his guard, fearful that at any moment an attacker would come rushing out of the darkness. The PPK was in his underarm holster but unless the attack came slower than usual, he’d prefer to go for the stiletto. Under Allan’s guidance he was now winning more of the confrontations than he was losing. There had been times early on in the training when Cramer had wondered about the point of rehearsing the moves over and over again, because at the end of the day he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to survive the encounter with the assassin. The pain in his bowels was getting worse by the day, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to eat: his appetite had all but disappeared and when he did force himself to eat he paid for it a few hours later. He knew the discomfort was but a fraction of what lay ahead, and that the day would come when a bullet in the face would be a welcome relief, but under Allan’s constant cajoling and pushing his professionalism had kicked in and he’d worked hard at perfecting the technique. Now he relished the opportunity of going up against the assassin, to prove to himself, and to Allan, just how good he was.