by A P Bateman
Until now.
King was suddenly unable to explain the emotion rising from deep inside him. He’d never known his father. Never had this sort of relationship. The daily contact, the expressions of love. He tried to put it aside, he had a job to do after all, but did he want to ruin all of that for the little boy kicking the football? The kick about was only a little thing, but he knew the little things were really the biggest things of all.
It had taken six months to find Simon Grant. Six long months. Switzerland had been difficult. He had lost all trace of Grant there, but not the money. MI6 had managed to seize a vast proportion of it, but in doing so spooked Grant, and King had lost him, not picking up the trail again until three weeks later in the former East Germany. A place where it was easy to hide and stay hidden. And it was too, because King lost him again and could see no way of getting back on the trail. But then he had a revelation. Stop hunting Simon Grant, and stay close to the man’s wife and son. King knew the pull they would have on him.
He nestled the field glasses against his eyes and watched as the couple strolled arm in arm. The snow was an inch deep now and falling quite heavily. The boy ran excitedly alongside, dribbling his football closely, making tracks in the snow, as he trotted to keep up with his reunited mother and father. Again, he felt empty watching.
France had been a turning point. The fire started by the red-hot poker had consumed everything. It had been burning too fiercely to attempt to put out, so King had fled the scene before the authorities turned up. He reported to his recruiter and mentor, Peter Stewart at the man’s home. With Forsyth gone rogue, he went to the only man he could trust. Stewart had contacted the legal department and they had met at MI6 headquarters for a thorough debrief. King was duly assigned a researcher, two former CID missing person specialists on secondment to MI6 and a Liaison officer to report to. The team were tasked with finding Simon Grant and retrieving the missing money. The bodies had been identified by dental records. Simon Grant’s was not among them. Nor was any evidence of incinerated money. Not a trace. Neeson’s Saab had been taken and had been found abandoned in Marseilles, the gateway to Europe. MI6 had filed Grant as one of the dead men. This meant that Grant’s fate had been sealed. MI6 wanted the money and they wanted his corpse. King had come up with the plan to steal back the money and Forsyth had padded it out accordingly. Get the Irish to go after Holman in a blood vendetta, leave all the loose ends neatly trimmed in another country and simply give MI6 the nod that both O’Shea and Neeson were terminated. King had learned that things rarely go to plan, but he had learned from it. Forsyth had intended to keep the money for himself, hence the change in attitude which King had put down to the innocent people killed during the heist. He had managed to dump the blame on Forsyth and play the hand of the dumb hired help. King was now close to bringing it all to a conclusion. Ninety percent of the money had now been accounted for and sat in an MI6 secret bank account. That had been enough to appease the mandarins. They still wanted Grant, and professional diligence was enough for King to give his all to the hunt, but he was being pressured to conclude matters and return to MI6 for further tasks.
Now he had Simon Grant in the lenses of the binoculars. It would soon be over. He watched the couple kiss again, then raised the radio to his mouth.
“Alpha Bravo Two, this is Alpha Bravo One, over,” he said. He kept his eyes on the couple. They now walked hand in hand to the edge of the lake. The water was grey and cold looking. He could imagine it frozen over with ice skaters on a Sunday morning. The snow was falling on the surface of the water like gentle rain.
“Alpha Bravo One, Alpha Bravo Two, go ahead, over.”
Alex King watched the boy trot over and hug his father. Grant struggled to lift him, but he did and they hugged. He spun around, and the boy looked like he was whooping with delight. The boy rubbed two handfuls of snow in Grant’s face and howled with laughter when his father dropped him and scooped up some snow of his own to throw. Lisa Grant laughed and hugged them both.
“Alpha Bravo Two, this is Alpha Bravo One…” he paused. He could have been watching a snapshot of his life. A loving mother and father, walks in the park, love and protection in a family unit. But it hadn’t been like that. His had another path, another start. A drug addict mother who sold sex. Little schooling and time in young offender homes. A mother so in need of a fix, she almost let a man have sex with her daughter. A fix to look the other way. King closed his eyes, shuddered at the thought. He was not a religious man, but he thanked God for the neighbour who called social services in time. He had never seen his siblings again, but at least they had been safer than at home.
“Alpha Bravo One, go ahead, over…”
King put down the binoculars. He could see the family reach the car at the edge of the park. “Alpha Bravo Two… target confirmed as negative, over. Repeat, negative. Another false trail. Reconvene at rendezvous point, over.” King put the radio back in his pocket and walked away. When he reached the exit of the park and turned around the car was gone. King felt the chill from the icy wind, and tucked up the collar of his trench coat as he climbed the snowy steps and re-entered the darkening streets of Stockholm.
Author’s Note
This book took nineteen years to make it this far, but I’m glad it did. It is all the better for it now. It started out very differently, but due to the success of the Alex King novels, I thought it would make a great prequel. Those who have read the other books will appreciate the background; those who have not read the others hopefully will read them with a little insider knowledge.
So why Shadows of Good Friday? Well, it goes back to my former life training in close protection. Chatting in small groups with large beers, I came across an ex-policeman who had been involved in an investigation of an armed robbery, the manager of which, had been the insider. He disappeared, but his wife knew more than she let on. She had clearly been abused and although the policeman didn’t exactly turn a blind eye, he knew she knew more, but they were unable to prove it. At the same table, another would-be bodyguard had lived a life of crime and had always wanted to get out. He always seemed to find himself pulled back in, and felt that the life he planned to have in close protection was his last chance. He would leave his associates behind, travel the world and become a new man. If he went back to crime, he may well spend more of his life inside prison than he had as a free man. After some banter, we watched him open doors throughout the pub using nothing more than a broken fork, a hairclip, a drinks straw and a selection of beermats. One of the instructors was a former SAS trooper and along with his former Royal Marine colleague, told us how they first met. The Royal Marine had been part of a surveillance operation on a high profile member of Sinn Fein. We all knew his name and so would you. The SAS trooper was tasked with putting a device under the man’s vehicle. As it was, there was some sort of compromise and the operation was aborted. Now, to this day, and put it down to the beer, but I do not know if it was meant to be an explosive device, or a tracking device. But all I knew, was that Shadows of Good Friday was already taking shape in my mind around that table. By the morning it was a working plot. While training for a new career, I had inadvertently started another.
Thank you for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed reading the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
A P Bateman
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