The Oktober Projekt

by R. J. Dillon

  Opening the inner door to let the light follow him in, the first kick hit Nick hard just below his left shoulder. Coming in for a second attack, the figure in motorcycle leathers and helmet threw a string of stinging punches to Nick’s head and neck. Rammed heavily back against the porch’s thick sharp walls, the attacker’s knee landed at speed in Nick’s groin. As Nick collapsed, his attacker delivered another brutal kick hard in his chest as he went down. Rolling to his right, Nick scrambled up, avoiding another lethal punch. Springing off the balls of his feet, Nick launched a fierce counterattack, elbows and fists flying.

  Breaking free from a disjointing hold, Nick gasped, needing air, one of his ribs trying to burn its way out of his chest. A vicious headbutt snapped Nick’s neck back, the helmet splitting his nose. Reeling, another savage punch sank Nick to his knees.

  Unzipping his leathers, drawing a hunting knife from a chest scabbard, the attacker lunged at Nick. On his back, Nick used his legs, all his power in his right leg to unbalance his attacker. Reaching behind him, Nick’s fingers locked onto the curved shaft of an axe used for chopping kindling. Sliding his hand down the shaft to balance his swing, Nick drove the axe viciously into the side of the attacker’s knee, spilling the tall figure into a heap. Back on his feet Nick roared with fury, using his body weight as he struck three decisive hacks, the final one embedding the axe head deep into his attacker’s neck below his helmet.

  Panting, his ribs severely battered and inflamed, Nick collapsed next to his attacker, a gurgling noise and stream of blood coming from under his helmet. Unbuckling the chin strap, Nick tugged off the helmet. On his back in his final moments of life, Nick recognised one of the drunks from the stairway he’d passed on his way up to the apartment of Lubov’s mistress. Kneeling, his breath coming in savage heaves, Nick looked for identification, but all he found was a tattoo on his attacker’s right shoulder; a star with a clenched fist bearing an AK-47 emerging from it, which Nick knew identified him as a member of the Spetsnaz, an elite Russian special forces unit.

  Dragging himself into the main room, Nick sat wearily down at a deal table set before the window, clutching a mug and bottle of Laphroaig. Outside, the dawn came with a rush, folding the light into the sea forming a damp November day starved by the cold. Between long pulls of Laphroaig, Nick rang Paul Rossan on his mobile. The call finished, he lit a cigarette and stared at the sea; dark and still, patches of soft morning light heaving and falling with the swell.

  • • •

  When Jane Stratton heard the news concerning Nick around a quarter to six that morning, she immediately set out for Devon. A nasty wind dried the air, raising goose bumps down her arms as she walked away from Poplar Dock and her sleeping lover. Taking the long route, Jane checked both ways along Boardwalk Place, over-doing what rational people call road sense. She made a fist round her bunch of keys, pulling them through her fingers into an improvised weapon that she kept tucked inside her pocket all the way to her car.

  As Rossan supervised the unofficial removal and disposal of any trace of his attacker, Nick had pulled on his jacket and set off for a walk in a filthy mood, marching along the coastal path for about a mile before the weather finally broke. Ephemeral flecks of snow were flying in the air and the temperature must have been at least minus three with the wind-chill, already his feet felt numb. He blew into his hands as the horizon darkened; either more snow or a storm was approaching, either one would be the only excuse he needed to turn around.

  An icy gust whipped powdered snow against his face and Nick looked up with a frown when he heard his name being called. Jane stood at a curve in the path a hundred yards ahead of him, her hair mauled by the wind.

  ‘They sent you to write me off?’ he said, an uneasy edge to his voice.

  ‘You know I’d never do that.’ She held out her hand for him, taking his weight as he climbed over a wooden fence edging in a narrow steep path snaking down to a coastguard post perched on the tip of a cliff.

  ‘How’s Paul coping?’ he asked, jumping down.

  ‘He’s made all the arrangements,’ she said. ‘Want me to get you a doctor to check you over?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’ll make it through the week. Any more details you need for your report?’

  ‘Not much patience for anyone right now, have you?’ She linked his arm, letting him lead. And for the first time in this strange light, she could also see what a gruelling time he’d had in Moscow; as though part of the Nick she knew and once loved had never made it home.

  ‘I’ll recover.’

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Another time.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Below them the sea crashed into the rocks and gullies determined to go further inland. They must have walked three hundred yards before he turned to see if they were alone, Henchard keeping an appointment with his Lucetta. He lit a cigarette cupping his hands against the thickening snow.

  ‘Teddy and C will have to be told?’ Jane said, an infected edge to her voice.

  ‘And what’s required in return?’ From her narrow frown he knew he was going too far, risking never finding what Lubov claimed to be so precious; unable to repay the deaths he’d been made responsible for.

  ‘A little bit of faith,’ she snapped, walking on, pulling up the collar of her thick coat as a screaming wind lifted a cloud of snow, whisking it over the headland in a fine spray.

  ‘I’m right out of faith at the moment, can’t say when I’ll be restocking.’

  ‘Put me down for an advance order,’ she said.

  ‘You might be in for a long wait.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘How’s the body being handled?’

  ‘The back-story the police are releasing is that he’s a Ukrainian tourist on a biking holiday, camping off the beaten track when he was viciously robbed and murdered. The team have chosen a remote location in Cornwall to pitch a tent, provide him with some personal kit, maps, bike, and the signs of a struggle. Everything’s taken care of.’

  ‘Is it?’ he replied, not sharing her mood.

  Motoring in towards the coast a fishing boat ran for shelter, its shape lost against the dark sky, a small green starboard lamp fading and gleaming on its mast.

  ‘So what do you propose to do?’ She couldn’t bear to look at him, his face had the waxy tint of a victim, someone who’d given up, didn’t care.

  ‘Stay low, watch my back.’

  ‘Good, you do that.’

  ‘That your professional opinion?’ His voice dipped, low and drained.

  ‘You sure you can rely on me?’ she huffed.

  ‘I used to think I could, in the past.’

  ‘You’re not in a very forgiving mood Nick.’

  ‘I’m not the forgiving sort.’

  Her face had a disquieting beauty to it as it fastened on him, half in tenderness, half in reproach; a disenchanted lover’s glare probing the stubborn defences. In the turbulent stormy light she looked younger, intense and annoyingly desirable.

  ‘Maybe you should cooperate, let me, Roly, Paul and Teddy handle it.’

  Like a terrier he couldn’t let go of his victim. ‘Is that what they asked you to offer?’

  ‘No. And I haven’t given up on you,’ she said, rebuffing a stray thought of why she almost became his wife.

  The coastguard hut loomed up at the end of the path, its whitewashed perimeter wall a cool grey in the damp light. They drifted in and sheltered from the wind and snow, sitting close together on the same step they could have been survivors from a wreck. She raked her hair with her fingers; don’t look at me, don’t see how I’ve given away my concern, inside she wanted to scream. Tridents of lightening cut into the waves and the snow gave way to hailstones that peppered their legs.

  ‘You think I’m here on C’s orders?’

  Looking deep into her eyes, Nick wondered how much he could trust anyone anymore. He grabbed a pebble and hurled it over the low wall. ‘Are you?’

&n
bsp; ‘I thought you knew me better than that,’ she said, her head slightly turned as she gazed out into the heart of the bay, resting her chin on her arched knees as the hailstones stopped.

  ‘I did but now you’re just a good friend.’

  Shrugging her shoulders, Jane drew away from him. ‘Don’t push it, Nick.’

  Sitting there with the sea grinding on the shale far below, he realised that Angie threatening to divorce him was another hole punched into the fabric of his life. When they told Nick his mother had died, committed suicide, he blamed his father, hated the sea with a bitterness that lasted months. He just didn’t understand that empty hunger in his stomach, the unfairness of it all. It was as if someone had stolen the sun.

  ‘I think Paul’s had enough time,’ Nick decided, hauling Jane to her feet.

  When they returned to the cottage Rossan and his team were applying the final touches, everything chemically cleaned, the body removed and all signs of a fatal struggle wiped away. Rossan busily inspecting everything three times, badgering Nick if he was going to be all right on his own. ‘He got in through the kitchen window, smashed it I’m afraid, but we’ve boarded it,’ he explained.

  ‘I’ll be fine, I’ve nowhere else to go,’ Nick confessed. ‘Angie’s thrown me out.’

  ‘Come stay with me, or I can leave a couple of the boys,’ offered Rossan as the team returned to their vans.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ insisted Nick.

  With a final check, Rossan wished him well. ‘See if you can make him see sense,’ he urged Jane as he swept out.

  ‘Impossible,’ she said.

  As Rossan’s car followed the vans up the track the gravel crunching under their tyres, Nick went into the kitchen.

  ‘The coffee’s going to be a while,’ he shouted through to her, clumsily spooning instant coffee into two mugs, his swollen fingers bruised and tender.

  ‘No problem,’ Jane answered from the living room.

  She stood by the window reliving the view. There were four sown arable fields running away to the cliff edge. Beneath the cliff Horseley Cove, Sharpers Head, Sharpers Cove and Dutch End, the remainder, the English Channel and a stormy half-formed horizon took the eye towards France. Jane knew the coastline and she knew the view; remembered from distant summers when the wispy fields of barley curved their heads a field at a time, bending on the warm drafts of feint breezes, days that she preferred not to dwell on. Pleasant tranquil times in the walled garden crowded with monkshood, buddleia, dog-rose and pellitory-of-the-wall, lying on a blanket covering the grass stubble. They’d spent hours here during their first two Oxford summers, Jane counting clouds, her head resting on Nick’s stomach as he summoned up the ghosts of dead poets.

  Picking up an embroidered scatter cushion she threw it on the sofa, one more of Angie’s touches, a little bit of Putney transported down to make her feel more bohemian.

  ‘You kept everything more or less the same,’ she said, coming through into the kitchen, holding a chipped pirate figurine.

  ‘It’s how I like it.’ He touched a big black kettle with the back of his hand, waiting for it to boil on a lazy Aga.

  ‘Bought this in Kingsbridge didn’t we?’ she said, turning the pirate round in her hands.

  ‘We’d had too much to drink.’

  ‘We we’re happy,’ she said, catching a quick flash of pain on Nick’s face.

  ‘You had a thing about buying things as tokens of your life journey,’ he said, pouring boiling water into the mugs. ‘Each object makes the journey into the future secure, always knowing that there’s something there to stop us becoming strangers with the past, I think is how you explained it.’

  Jane felt guilty that he remembered her philosophy so well. ‘I still believe it.’ Glancing at the whisky bottle and mug on the sink, she asked, ‘Don’t you?’ She came and touched his hand.

  For all the tenderness intended it might have been the tip of a knife, for Nick abruptly dragged his hand away covering his haste by adding milk to the coffee.

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ he said stiffly.

  Unable to comfort him as she had done in the past she stood back, consoling him with her strong eyes, deep and extremely green.

  ‘Then you never had any faith in me,’ she laughed. ‘That was one of the reasons…’ she caught herself and shrugged.

  They moved through to the living room deliberately standing apart, the heat from the log stove thoughtfully lit by one of Rossan’s team lay trapped under the low ceiling burning their faces. The window had steamed up so Nick dusted it with his lower arm, taking in the view; the long bead of golden light on the horizon, the dark wind stunned trees in the garden framed against the sea and bands of swirling sleet.

  From the fields he heard a tractor churn through the sleet, course and strong cutting through the molten air. Behind him Jane was reminiscing to show how much she still cared, reminding Nick of this, of that; Nick not really paying attention letting her run on, as he knew she would. ‘I’m sorry about you and Angie,’ she finally admitted.

  On how much she meant it Nick wisely refused an urge to press her, instead, he turned his attention to the window staring through the arms of sleet to the indistinct forms of ships slyly creeping by.

  In one graceful curve she had risen from the sofa and gone to the kitchen. ‘So what’s this about a Latvian lead?’ she called above the running water.

  Listening while she washed her cup the pipes hammering under the pressure, he thought again of the little accountant’s fear.

  ‘Wynn had a Latvian source and it’s just a way of making sure that I get through the door,’ he told her, using the same story he’d fed Rossan.

  ‘Well when you find out what she was working on, let me know, we really need an answer,’ she said, returning from the kitchen.

  ‘Has Parfrey been grilled why the collection flopped?’

  She brushed a cobweb from the windowpane at a rush, using the back of her hand. ‘I’ve spoken to Ruth and she’s just as puzzled as the rest of us,’ she said.

  ‘She would be.’

  ‘You haven’t many friends left, Nick,’ she reminded him angrily. ‘Why not let me help you,’ she urged facing him, her troubled face a mask with tiny hairline cracks starting to form. ‘After what happened down here, Roly, Teddy and C are going to believe that Lubov offered you an insight into his material. If he gave you anything, Nick, the actual product or the means to get to it, then for God’s sake, share it.’

  Withdrawn into his own dark world he refused to hear her petition, muttering something he could not catch she stormed off into the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t want anymore death,’ he said softly, as though it was an idea he had given much thought.

  ‘You don’t have the right to make those decisions,’ she said, coming back, staring at him. ‘Look, it’s time I got going anyway,’ she announced, gathering up her bag and jacket.

  ‘I appreciate the visit,’ he said as he walked her to the door.

  ‘Anytime you need to talk, to share, you know I’ll be waiting,’ she smiled, kissing him gently on his swollen cheek. Nick watched as she started the car, reversed it and set off up the track. He waved but Jane never waved back.

  After Jane had gone Nick poured a generous measure of Laphroaig into his mug, turned off all the lights, absently staring out at the sea. He fell asleep dreaming of reconciliation with Angie and awoke shivering and freezing as a car bumped down the track before dawn. He heard the engine’s piercing notes before its headlights shattered the gloom, that mysterious murky light that always lingers on land bordering the sea, the car’s bright beams forcing hard shadows against the living room wall.

  Through the window he glimpsed the shape of a Service car coming to a halt. Opening the cottage door Nick waited for the driver to approach, a thin small man Nick knew as Ray who occasionally acted as a personal driver to the top floor.

  ‘Sorry to bother you sir, but Mr. Blackmore asks if you coul
d accompany me back to London.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ demanded Nick, thinking of Angie.

  ‘Afraid I’m not privy to that, sir, but I know I haven’t to take no for an answer and you’ve to ride with me. My colleague Peter,’ he pointed to his passenger, ‘will drive your vehicle back for you, sir.’

  In the car Ray demonstrated all his skills as a professional courteous chauffeur, checking with Nick if the temperature was comfortable enough, if he minded Radio 2 played low, though Nick not really caring, only objected to the radio.

  ‘You’ve no idea what’s going on?’ Nick tried again as Ray steered a true course through the village.

  ‘Not a clue, sir, but it sounds like something major, because there’s a call gone out for all the senior people.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Wouldn’t happen to know where Miss Stratton might be contacted, would you sir? No one can find her.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen her,’ Nick told him, sitting back.

  Five

  A Lonely Place to Die

  Highgate Wood, November

  Bumping down the rutted disused railway trackbed in the Service car, Nick grunted as each pothole delivered a decisive jab to his lower spine. Glancing ahead, he winced as the pain reached a crescendo before fading.

  ‘This is as far I can go, sir,’ said Ray, nudging the car up onto a dull grass mound, stopping a hundred yards short of a metal latticework bridge illuminated by the flashes from crime scene photographers.