The Alex King Series

by A P Bateman

  22

  Cape Town

  South Africa

  Ryan Beard had dropped Caroline Darby back at The Victoria and Alfred Hotel. She had taken the bag, much to his consternation. He had protested as much as was practical, but he had to concede it was going nowhere. He wasn’t about to try and overpower her, some battles were better left not started. He shrugged it off like it didn’t matter, but Caroline sensed it did. She imagined some backroom mandarin rubbing his hands together at the prospect of having a hold over MI5. It was part of the reason both she and Alex were behind the concept of a joint intelligence service.

  Beard had asked what she had planned to do, and she couldn’t decide whether he was coming on to her or fishing to find out what MI5 were up to in Cape Town. She hoped it was the latter, but was flattered at the notion of the former. She wouldn’t tell him her plans, but he opened the glovebox and nodded at the 9mm Sig. “Take it,” he had said, but she had already noted he didn’t touch it. “It’s loaded but not chambered. I wiped it clean. It’s brand new and unfired since leaving the factory. Completely untraceable. Keep it, then dump it wisely.”

  She had hesitated, but finally accepted. The incident had left her feeling shaken. She had walked back into reception, the weapon tucked into the front of her jogging pants and her top pulled down over to conceal it. Her contact from the State Security Agency had been waiting, was surprised to see her still in her jogging wear.

  “Ms Darby,” he said, his accent thick and guttural and not dissimilar to the man who had called himself Kruger. The man whose body was destined for the townships. “I am Peter Kruger, with the SSA.” He glanced at his watch. “You’re an hour late for our meeting. Is everything alright?”

  Caroline nodded. She couldn’t tell the man what had happened, but it was obvious that the State Security Agency had a leak. “I went for a run and got lost, sorry,” she said.

  “Is that blood on you?” Kruger asked. He stepped forwards, but she backed away.

  “I tripped and fell,” she said. “I need to shower and change, I’ll be down in ten minutes. And I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” Caroline turned and walked swiftly through the foyer and to the lifts.

  As she waited for the lift, she saw a waitress walk through a door and heard the clatter of plates and cutlery. She followed her in, and saw the source of the noise. The kitchen was immediately to her right, but the waitress walked ahead of her down a corridor, where Caroline could see daylight ahead. She followed and walked past a still-room with coffee and tea making facilities and kitchen porters scraping plates. The waitress veered off to a staff room, but Caroline walked on past and out into a shaded courtyard. She saw the bins and dumpsters. It wasn’t ideal, but she glanced around, then strode over confidently and lifted the lid of one of the bins marked: general waste. She dropped the bag inside, closed the lid and returned the way she had come.

  Once inside her room, Caroline closed the door and slipped the chain on the latch. She looked at her phone. There had been no calls or messages. She knew King was busy, he would message her when he could. She had expected contact from Mereweather, but Britain had a few security problems at present and her situation wasn’t going to pose a direct threat to civilian life. She suspected the whole affair would leave some sort of stain on her record. She dropped the phone onto the bed and took out the Sig, checked the action, like Beard had said, it hadn’t been made ready. She pulled back the slide, chambered the first round and dropped the de-cocking lever before applying the safety. She slipped it under the pillow while she stripped off and went for a shower. She let the spray play over her shoulders and neck. She ached and felt exhausted. The subsiding of adrenalin had left her feeling weak. She had missed breakfast, probably didn’t have time for any even if she could speak to reception. After she had showered, she put the kettle on to boil and made a cup of coffee between dressing and brushing her hair. There were some biscuits with the tea and coffee sachets and she ate them as she dressed. She brushed her hair, pulled it back into a damp ponytail and applied the merest of makeup as she drank the coffee. She felt a little better, and as she slipped the pistol into her handbag, she felt secure and in control once more.

  She took the stairs to give herself time to think. Her arrival and her reason for travelling to Cape Town had struck a chord with someone. The Home Office had tasked MI5 with the investigation into Anarchy to Recreate Society. They had carried out their threats and murdered the four wealthiest people on the planet. There was one more person on the list. He had his own security, but had blatantly, and very publicly refused twenty-four-hour police bodyguards.

  The terrorists, for that was what they were now classified as, were an organisation so new, nobody even used an acronym to refer to them. Did they have influence? They certainly had support from around half the population. People so disenfranchised from society and politics and income constraints and austerity that they even accepted the deaths of the few for the gains of the many. Was there a leak in the Home Office or MI5? Or was security merely weak in South Africa? Enough for someone connected in the SSA to have been bribed to organise a hit to hamper MI5’s investigation?

  She had little choice but to go with this man Kruger, if only to keep what had transpired earlier under wraps. She wished that the incident could have all been made official, bring the police into the mix and place her in the openness of the system. But if someone was willing to sanction the assassination of a British intelligence officer, there would be others. She knew that trusting the South Africans was now a risk. All she could hope for was to do the job she’d been sent to do and get back on her flight home.

  23

  King led the way down the stairs and across the hall. Amanda followed, still carrying her medical bag. King turned and watched her, she didn’t look confident and carried the bag like a child carried a satchel on their first day at school.

  “What now?” she asked. “You fought that man, beat him up. He might press charges.”

  King said nothing. He made his way into the kitchen, hunting the source of the monotonous sound. The dishwasher was running, nearing the end of its cycle judging from the light display. King squatted down and studied the display. He gave up, simply opened it to disrupt the cycle. The steam clouded his face and some drips of hot water splashed out. He looked at the load. Nothing but a few coffee cups. He looked past the steam and water dripping from the spinners. It was a set of six cups, large, a curious curvaceous shape to them. Most likely an expensive set, but in one of the homes of the fourth richest man in the world, King supposed they were bespoke and made by a prominent up and coming artist. He doubted they were from The Range.

  King got back up, left the door of the dishwasher open. He walked to the cupboards and started opening them. At the third wall unit, he found the coffee pot and milk jugs, even a small creamer.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” the man said from behind him. “You pulled a gun on me. You do that again, I fucking kill you!”

  King turned around and smiled. “Shall we see?” He smiled. “Back off, Ivan. The gun can come out and play anytime.”

  The man squared up obstinately. He had pulled on a loose-fitting shirt and a pair of jeans. They were fashionable, expensive. King thought they would look more suitable on a man ten-years younger. He turned his eyes to Helena Snell. She had barely put on anything at all. A slip and a silk dressing gown. It was short and barely covered her dignity. For what little she had.

  “Why are you here? Why are you trespassing?” Helena asked.

  “I’m asking the questions,” King said. “Do cousins do that where you come from? It gets cold in the Ukraine. Do you keep warm at night doing your own cousin?” Amanda frowned, but both Helena and the man glanced at each other. King leaned back against the counter top. “So, you met Snell, fell in love and married. Sweet. Then you brought over your cousin,” he paused, looking at the man. “Ivan Kerchenko. Ex-army captain and a former bodyguard to Vladamir Putin, no less. So per
fectly qualified to look after the wife of one of the richest men on the planet.” King shook his head. “Ivan Kerchenko, your cousin.” Helena looked at the man beside her. She bowed her head, was about to speak, but King cut her off. “Except, it’s not Ivan Kerchenko, and he’s not your cousin.” He turned and stared at the man. “Viktor Bukov. You served with Helena’s cousin in the military and borrowed his identity. You had similar skills and experience, except you later served in Spetsnaz.”

  “Spetsnaz?” Amanda asked. “What’s that?”

  King smiled. “Russia’s best of the best. Their equivalent to our TA. That’s territorial army.”

  “Your SAS!” Bukov screamed.

  “If you say so chum.”

  “Except we’d eat your SAS!” Bukov sneered.

  “Of course you would,” King smiled. “It looked that way when you were butt naked and unconscious upstairs.”

  Bukov took a step forwards, closing the gap between them. “Watch what you say!”

  “I’m right here, mate. No need to stop walking,” King said coldly.

  “Viktor,” Helena said quietly. “Calm down. They are here to ask questions. To investigate Ian’s murder. We must cooperate.”

  King winked at Bukov. “Do what your boss says, Viktor. There’s a good lad. You’ve had knock on the head, maybe you should take a seat and have a mug of warm milk and a cookie.” He looked at the cupboard with the remainder of the of the set of cups. “Oh, hang on, you seem to be out of mugs.” He looked at the open dishwasher. “So, what’s that all about?”

  “You’re here to talk about coffee cups?” Helena scoffed.

  “And you’re here to have sex with your long-term lover less than twenty-hours after someone blew your husband’s brains all over the patio,” King paused, looked at Amanda. “Are they even meant to be here?”

  She hesitated, looked at them both, then back to King. “No,” she said. “The tape meant it’s still off-limits. There was a non-admittance order taken out. There was meant to be another twenty-four hours to allow for the autopsy and subsequent findings before anyone was granted access.”

  “So, washing dishes in the middle of a murder investigation would be a bit of a no-no then?” King said, off-handed. “Well, to me, that would look like cleaning up something you didn’t want found in an investigation.”

  “We had some coffee,” Helena said, tiresomely. “So, sue me, that is, if you can afford to,” she scoffed.

  “And the sex?” King mused.

  “I fuck who I want!” she snapped.

  “I suspect your husband wasn’t aware he was employing your lover to look after you in that way. He had his own protection team, you must have had to convince him to circumvent it, have your own personal close protection. And from what I’ve seen, you don’t get any closer than that.”

  “You know shit,” she replied. “Have you read Lady Chatterley’s Lover?”

  “It never made my reading list,” King smiled. “Maybe if it had pictures.”

  “Ian turned a blind eye to my extra, needs.”

  King shook his head. “No, I don’t think he did.”

  “Prove it,” she said. “Are you done here?”

  King shook his head. “Not by a long chalk.” She frowned at the expression. He added, “No, I’m not. Now open up the patio doors for me.”

  24

  Tokai

  South Africa

  It was a fourteen-mile drive from Cape Town to Tokai and the notorious Pollsmoor prison. The traffic was reasonably light, and Tokai had good roads and a decent one-way system that meant they avoided hold-ups and made swift progress. The car was another white Toyota Land Cruiser, standard government issue in these parts, and Kruger drove expertly, keeping at the high-end of the speed limit and seeing obstructions well in advance. Caroline suspected he was trained in evasive driving. There was an automatic rifle in the rear foot well. Kruger had told her it was loaded, cocked, but the safety was applied. The fact that it was there made her tense, and she was relieved she carried the 9mm pistol that Ryan Beard had given her. South Africa was a dangerous place. A country where tourists could fall foul at the merest of wrong turns. The fact that Kruger had told her about the rifle made her relax about both his identity and her ability to trust him, if not for the risk of violent car-jacking that was so rife in South Africa.

  Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison was the place where Nelson Mandela said he did his hardest time. It was built to hold four-thousand-four-hundred prisoners in four separate mediums, but recent figures from the judiciary department showed there were in fact seven-thousand-two-hundred inmates incarcerated. It was desperately over-crowded and only getting more so.

  The prisoner Caroline was there to see had been unlucky. Even after the bulk of the blame had been directed towards his deceased brother for the tax evasion, and his defence proving he was ancillary to defrauding the state, Vigus Badenhorst had been sentenced to two years. His defence had lodged an appeal, but it had been overruled.

  A year meant everything in Pollsmoor. The difference between hell and purgatory. Sentences over a year meant that you were in a completely different lock-up, with completely different prisoners.

  Your life would never be the same again. For many, it would be over.

  “Sign here,” the captain said. He held out his hand for Caroline’s bag. She had secreted the Sig under her seat as they had got out of the vehicle. The captain took the handbag and dropped it into a clear, plastic self-sealing bag. He sealed it and handed it to a guard. Both men were black and built like front row rugby players.

  Kruger signed his name also and checked in his pistol. It had been agreed that he would be present during the interview as part of Interpol’s liaison with the South African intelligence service.

  A white man with an ample stomach and fair hair walked through the inner door. He walked up to Kruger, held out his hand. “Preet Boesak, I’m the governor here at Pollsmoor,” he said. He nodded a brief acknowledgement to Caroline, then turned his attention back to Kruger. “I will help in any way I can,” he said. “What is it you wish to know?”

  “I wish to talk to your prisoner Vigus Badenhorst, as arranged through Interpol and the South African government,” Caroline paused. “And I’m over here, Governor Boesak.”

  Boesak smiled. “Sorry, my dear,” he said in a thick, guttural drawl. “Naturally, I thought you were Agent Kruger’s assistant.” The two black guards sniggered, then carried on checking in the security bags.

  Caroline yawned. “Governor Boesak,” she paused. “Bigger, better and far more influential men than yourself have tried and failed to belittle me in the past. What makes you think your petty and infantile attempts at male chauvinism is going to lose me a second’s sleep? I hunt terrorists for a living.”

  “Listen, little lady…” He glared.

  Caroline interrupted him. “Use non-gender specific referencing, if you please. You will address me as Ms Darby. I have been asked to file a full and detailed report on Pollsmoor’s assistance with this enquiry by the South African judicial department. I’m guessing when they say Pollsmoor, they actually mean you?”

  Kruger smiled as he intervened. “Thank you Governor Boesak, we just need somebody to take us to him.” He was calm and polite, and it was evident he had only spoke to diffuse the situation.

  Boesak nodded, but his eyes were still on Caroline. He looked over slowly to Kruger. “Of course,” he said. He nodded to the taller of the two black men. “The captain will take you down. Enjoy the walk, Ms Darby.”

  Caroline nodded. “Thank you, Governor Boesak,” she said, but she figured she knew what he had meant. She had never been inside a prison before, and Pollsmoor’s reputation was unrivalled.

  The captain waited for the door to open electronically then led the way down the corridor. The walls were whitewashed and smooth. At the end of the corridor, approximately fifty-metres further down, there was a clear Perspex door, behind which, Caroline could see steel bars.
The captain hesitated at the door and turned to Caroline. “They’s not seen a woman in a while, missy,” he said. “Your boy is in Medium B Prison. He’s not a hard man, maybe because, well, you know. So, he’s a woman now.”

  Kruger drew near to Caroline. “Young offenders go to A-Prison, and prisoners sentenced for up to a year or due for parole go to C-Prison. B is renowned for gang members and in here, the gang members rule.”

  “But what did he mean by he’s a woman now?”

  Kruger pulled a face. “It’s rough in here,” he said. “There’s men in here with multiple life sentences. You’ve heard of prison gay, haven’t you? Well gangs like the Twenty-Eights, well, they use rape as a means of asserting their authority. They give new inmates a choice: be their woman or they’ll be killed. Often, they use a new inmate in the opposite way: kill this guy, or you’ll be raped by every member of the gang.”

  “And the guards know this goes on?” she whispered.

  Kruger nodded. “From what I’ve heard, the guards encourage it,” he whispered back. “It keeps everyone busy.”

  The captain waited at the Perspex door and looked up at a camera. The door slid open smoothly, and a miasma of heat, body-odour, screaming, jeering and the banging of metal bars on reinforced steel doorframes filled their senses. Caroline took an involuntary step backwards, then checked herself and followed the captain. Kruger followed. Caroline suspected the agent had been here before.

  They walked on a steel grate, a skywalk away from the prisoners, who were milling around below them, or leaning on the railings adjacent. Caroline felt wetness on her face, realised that a man was spitting into the palm of his hand and flinging it her way. She screwed up her face in disgust, wiped the spit away with her sleeve. Resisted the urge to vomit.

  “You’re lucky it’s just spit,” the captain said through a lecherous smile. “We might go back another way, before he gets busy with himself and gives you a real surprise!”