by A P Bateman
“Have you ever seen this man in your time with MI6?” She held the phone out for him, lowered the pistol and kept it tight on her hip. She wouldn’t miss, and he wouldn’t get to the weapon before she could empty the magazine into him. Some couples played tennis together, others did this sort of thing.
He stepped closer cautiously, looked at the photo. His mind was racing, searching for a time, a place where he could put the face into context. He looked at the man’s features, concentrated on his eyes.
The eyes, the window to the soul.
“Jesus,” he said.
“You recognise him?”
He nodded, looked at her curiously. “I know him,” he said. “People in certain departments called him The Reaper.”
20
There is always a trail. There is always a point where discovery of a crime weaves a trail to the truth. Whether that trail can be followed is another thing entirely. Right now, there were two bodies. Bury them and the risk of discovery would lead to an investigation. Burn them in the vehicle and the investigation is merely hampered. But it is what it is. It shows premeditation either in the committing of the crime or in the attempt to cover it up.
Cape Town had numerous opportunities that could be exploited. Like bending with the wind. Do as little as possible, and it would be better than devising an elaborate plan. The principal opportunity rested in the many townships. Many were lawless places, some being complete no-go areas. It had been arranged using local criminals and a generous sum of money, for the two bodies to be dumped in a quiet place on the fringe of one of these no-go areas. A place where the police knew that the chances of a conviction was so low, it would barely warrant an investigation in the first place. The usual suspects of rapists, drug dealers, thieves and murderers would be brought in and if the charges could be made to stick, it would mean a few more scum off the streets. Karma convictions. Maybe not the crime they had done, but they would get the time they deserved nonetheless. The car they had used would be wiped clean and left in another area with the keys in the ignition. It would be stolen within the hour and would most likely be someone’s illegal taxicab within a few days.
The man from MI6 had driven Caroline in the Land Cruiser. He was an amiable man, tall and athletic with wavy blonde hair and young to have had ten years’ service at around thirty. He drove steadily, but they made timely progress. The SUV was equipped with large all terrain tyres and sailed over the numerous potholes with ease.
Caroline unloaded the Beretta as they drove. She was careful and meticulous to clean her fingerprints off the pistol with an oily rag she had found in the boot. She wiped both magazines as well, then placed the weapon and magazines in a carrier bag Ryan had given her. The men’s mobile phones went in too and after she had cleaned the knife and folded it using the cloth, she dropped both the knife and the cloth in as well and tied the handles.
“I’ll get rid of all of that,” Ryan said.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to go to the police and tell them what happened?”
Ryan Beard shook his head. “The station chief was adamant not to let you get into their system,” he said. “If I could make it look like a crime and extract you cleanly, then that was what I had to do.”
“And the fact that MI6 is bailing out one of MI5’s agents won’t hurt them in the future,” she said. “Money in the bank.”
“I see you’ve been around long enough to know how it works,” Beard commented dryly. “Hey, I don’t make it up, I just do my job.”
She nodded. She knew how it was, who made the decisions and why. She also knew there was always an angle. MI6 would exploit that angle later. She looked at the bag in the foot well, already deciding it would come with her when she reached the hotel. Her DNA would be on it, and she imagined it winding up in an evidence bag under the British Embassy in Pretoria until someone deemed it useful.
She watched the road ahead widen. The shacks were trading every half-mile or so. She could see the highway slicing through the brush in the distance. She turned to Beard. It was nagging her, twisting her gut. She needed to know. “The photo I showed you,” she paused awkwardly. “You called him The Reaper.”
Ryan Beard watched the road ahead. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “You’re close,” he said. “Judging from the pose.”
“He’s my fiancé.”
“Congratulations.”
“You called him The Reaper,” she repeated.
“I don’t think I should.”
“I’m not stupid,” she cut in. “Or naïve. Alex worked for MI6 for more than a dozen years. I know he’s killed people in his work, he’s been all over the Middle East, in all sorts of dirty wars and secret missions for MI6…” she trailed off. She had seen him kill, seen him show no mercy. But she had also seen his compassion, his kindness. King wouldn’t blindly follow orders, he would usually disobey them and follow his own lead, partly one of the reasons he was often out of favour with the top tier of MI5, but Ryan Beard’s expression when he had seen the photo, his sudden recognition of him, the nickname even, denoted there was more, something notorious. It didn’t sit well with her and she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“I only knew him as The Reaper,” he said.
“His name is Alex,” she said. “Alex King.”
Beard shrugged. “Names are sometimes best left out of it. I knew he was an asset, would be told where to meet him, what sort of assistance to give. I saw him three times. I won’t say where, but they weren’t the nicest places on earth. He was quiet and unassuming, but I guess you already know that better than most.” He glanced across at her, but she remained impassive. “In recent years the men have changed. Much of what the dirty tricks departments sanction now in the middle east is done by heavily tattooed and bearded security contractors who are full of bravado and bullshit. Ex-special forces mercenaries who have made a fortune doing the things the CIA and MI6 don’t want to be tainted with in Iraq and Afghanistan, Syria even. Half their back story is bullshit, I even doubt half of them were in anything more than the regular army. The TA more like. But they’re deniable and expendable,” he paused, swallowed to clear his throat. “But he was old school. He would make contact, pull the file and the next thing you would know, the target was eliminated, and he was gone. He would infiltrate and work his exfiltration on his own. No favours asked, no involvement requested. It was good for the embassy, because the handlers ended up knowing nothing incriminating. There were never the calls for help in the middle of the night, or a lift to the airport to get recorded on CCTV. It was clean.”
“And, The Reaper tag?”
Beard shook his head. “He just breezed through, and it was done,” he said. “Nobody stood a chance. Like the Grim Reaper touching you. Your time was up.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she said. She was finding it difficult to listen to and put it with the man she shared her bed with. She had only seen King kill in conflict. Since her previous boss had recruited him into MI5 to search for a missing nuclear warhead and eliminate an Islamic extremist group, much of his work had been intelligence gathering. She knew King had a past, but he never talked to her about it. Now she felt that she had betrayed his trust, gone fishing for something behind his back.
“I don’t know, but it was often talked about,” Ryan Beard paused like he knew he shouldn’t reveal more, but it was going to come out now regardless. Caroline didn’t try to stop him, so he continued. “There was an embassy man, old school, long time serving. He managed to skim money from SIS over the years. It grew to treachery and selling secrets. He was beyond the realms of even Kim Philby, because unlike Philby, he remained undetected for so long. His treachery was never made public. He cost the British GDP billions, he set NATO back decades, because the shift in North Korean, Chinese and Russian technology shifted so quickly as a direct result of the secrets he sold. We lost our edge. He levelled the playing field, so to speak.” Beard slowed as he negotiated the on-ramp then accelerat
ed. They joined the highway and the road felt like silk under the vehicle’s tyres. “The Reaper knew this man. And the man knew The Reaper. He knew his reputation. He killed the man with a cup of coffee…”
“What?”
Ryan Beard nodded. “He found this man. Found him in Switzerland. He waited until the man was drinking coffee outside a café on Lake Geneva and he sat down at the neighbouring table and ordered a coffee. He waited until the man looked at him and caught his eye. The story goes that he sipped his coffee and stared the man in the eyes. Those eyes are cold, so severe.”
“I like them,” Caroline commented sharply, then feared she’d looked and sounded foolish. It was true, they could be cold, but never with her.
“Well,” Beard paused, unperturbed. “Let’s just say they would never lose a staring contest. Not even with a rock.” He smiled. “Well, he stares this traitor down. His saucer in one hand, an espresso cup in the other, and he nods slowly at the man. The man looks away, and when he looks back, The Reaper has gone.”
“Bullshit!” she laughed. “Who was watching this? It’s like a scene in a film!”
“It’s a story,” Ryan said defensively. “I’m sure it’s been elaborated upon.”
“Well, I make the man’s breakfast and I can tell you, he drinks tea. I’ve never made him a coffee. Not once. Tea in a mug and he dunks his biscuits.”
“Well, the story says that it was a coffee,” Beard continued, unperturbed. “But the point is, the man looked at him and knew he was as good as dead. He wasn’t going to get away, he wasn’t going to beat him, it was over. All he could do was choose an ending. The Reaper’s, or his own. He wasn’t going to win a fight against him. He wasn’t going to get the drop on him, shoot him first. It was over. The embassy man went back to his apartment and he got very drunk and had a very hot bath and he sliced his wrist open with a very sharp kitchen knife. Right down to the bone. So deep, he couldn’t even hold the knife to cut the other wrist. Severed the tendons and opened up the arteries.”
Caroline shuddered. “Really?”
Beard nodded. “That’s how the story goes,” he paused. “The Reaper.”
21
“I have to be getting back to the pathology suite to do the post-mortem.”
King ignored her. The police cordon was wrapped around the property. They must have used a whole reel of tape. He had a key, wouldn’t be long. Technically, he should have told someone he was re-entering the scene of a murder, but he didn’t know who, was still learning on the job. He just wanted to check a few things out, satisfy his curiosity. It was a long-range sniper’s bullet that had killed Sir Ian Snell. There was little to go on in the house. But he had a feeling, and he had learned to trust those over the years.
“Whose car is that?” Amanda asked. The driveway was so large, the Bentley Continental looked lost beside the fountain.
“My thoughts entirely.” He didn’t need to check the Glock tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He knew he’d loaded it and that it was within easy reach, but as he got out of the car, he casually adjusted it for a better fit. He turned to Amanda, who was reaching into the backseat for her satchel. “What’s the procedure for re-entering a crime scene after the initial investigation?”
“Seriously?” She shook her head. “I thought you had…”
King shrugged. “We’ll just have to wing it then.”
King didn’t know if the security system was in place, but he doubted it judging from the arrival of the car, which had not been here yesterday. He tried the door handle and it gave. He eased the door inwards and listened. He could hear a motor of some sort. Soft and in the background, like a washing machine on a fast cycle. He frowned at Amanda and held a finger to his lips before stepping inside.
“Worth calling out?” she whispered.
King shook his head. He could hear movement, voices upstairs. He walked across the hall and looked up at the mezzanine above. The stairs were a prominent feature, chrome and glass and marble. He started to climb the first few treads. Solid marble, utterly silent.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, but this time it was shrill and far from quiet.
“Taking a look,” he said quietly. He had long since grown to realise that whispers carried further than merely lowering your voice. “You can wait down here.”
She looked worried, shook her head. “No, I’ll stay with you.”
King carried on. He could hear more noises the further he climbed, the mezzanine echoing and carrying the noise further. He could hear the types of noise now. Not voices, not a conversation at least. Softly spoken words, instructions. A woman’s voice. There were grunts and sighs and moans. Now at the top of the stairs, he could hear a bed creaking, shuddering.
It wasn’t a moment he wanted to interrupt, nor be a voyeur to, but a man had died here yesterday, and he had been tasked with investigating before news of it got out. Amanda looked at him and he shrugged. “You go back downstairs, and I’ll go and look.”
“You can’t!” she exclaimed. This time a little too loudly. The noises stopped altogether.
King glared his annoyance at her, then turned towards the door at the end of the landing. He imagined a couple, frozen in embrace, daring not breathe or speak for fear of drowning out further noise like the one they’d just heard. That was exactly what he found as he paced across the landing and pushed the door open. But for only a fraction of a second, because the man was off and up in an instant and bounding towards King with the toughest and most ruthless of expressions upon his face. King backed up, took the pistol out from his waistband and almost got it aimed, but the man was both quick and skilled and was already too far into disarming him for King to resist and fall fowl of an arm restraint. Instead, he let go of the weapon and barged the door into the side of the man’s head using his shoulder. He followed with a kick to the man’s groin. The man was naked and bore the brunt of the blow, but doubled up fast absorbing it, bringing his left hand around in a blow that caught King on the brow. King was surprised how fast and skilled the man was, and what started as drawing the weapon to threaten and stop the man in his tracks had turned into a fight for survival. This man wasn’t going to back off now with a few choice words. King dropped low, kicked out and caught the man’s kneecap. He yelped and favoured his leg, but he was closer to the pistol on the floor than King was, and he was already reaching towards it. King already knew that the man would know what to do with it if he gained possession and he dived forwards, over the man and into a roll. The man reached the weapon and was aiming it at the empty space to his right. It wasn’t a smooth motion to bring the pistol back around another one-hundred and eighty degrees and it bought King a split second. He rolled backwards, both knees coming back down either side of the man’s shoulder blades and pinning his arms to the floor. The man still had the weapon, but King was already sending his second punch into the back of the man’s skull. It was only when the man’s face dropped to the floor and he rested still that King could hear the woman behind him screaming. He picked up the pistol and rolled back onto his heels. She was pulling the bedsheets up to cover her breasts and launching into a tirade of abuse.
King tucked the weapon back into his waistband and looked at her. He understood Russian, enough to know his parentage had been brought into question. He shrugged it off. It meant nothing. He’d gone most of his life being called a bastard, the people not knowing how true it was, or that he even cared. He smiled at the woman in front of him. Dark hair, long and straight, eyes as dark as jet. Her skin was pale, and her features were sharp. She was attractive, but not beautiful. She looked predatory. Something animalistic and ruthless about her. Like she got what she wanted and gave very little in return. She was lithe, but had spent some of her husband’s money on cosmetic surgery. He had caught a glimpse of her before the sheet had covered her assets. She had been a dancer before she had met Ian Snell. At least that’s what the file had called it.
“Helena Snell, I presume?” King
asked, but he already knew the answer. Formerly Helena Milanovitch, thirty-three and from Kiev. She and Sir Ian Snell met when she was twenty-eight. He was twenty-three years her senior and recently divorced. They had married a year later.
“Who the fuck are you?” she drawled, her accent thick, her tone heavy. “And what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
The man on the floor was coming around. King noticed how muscled and toned he was. He was tattooed too. Military and prison artwork. King took the pistol back out and took another pace away. It had been a tough and unexpected fight. He could tell that the man had experience and feared nothing. But he’d never met King before.
“I’m with the home office,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to Interpol to investigate the recent murders by the terrorist group, Anarchy to Recreate Society.”
“Well you’re too late. He’s dead,” she spat at him. “What kind of investigator are you? A rubbish one, I bet! My husband is dead.” She looked forlorn, like she was holding back tears. “My poor husband!”
“Yeah, I can see you’re all about the grieving,” King said coldly.
“What do you know!” she snapped. “I am sad, I needed company…”
“Get out of bed,” he said. “Your husband’s not even cold yet. Get up, get some clothes on, wake up lover-boy and come down stairs. I want to talk to you both.” He turned around, side stepped the man, who was moaning and starting to roll rhythmically from side to side, and slammed the door shut behind him.
“What the hell?” Amanda asked as King walked towards her.
“The grieving widow,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Less than twenty-hours after Snell was shot, and twelve-hours after she would have been told the news.”
