The Alex King Series

by A P Bateman

  Caroline grimaced. She could hear what the men were shouting, picked up the odd line between the cacophony of noise that seemed to reverberate inside her chest. She looked down on the men, glanced to her right as they walked, realised what a hell on earth this place was.

  There was an identical set of steel bars and another Perspex door at the other end of the skywalk, and thankfully it was in sight. There were curious-looking viewing towers protruding from the walls. Caroline saw a man sitting inside one with a shotgun. She realised that these were most likely used in case of a large fight or riot. The guard didn’t look interested in anything much, not even the attractive blonde-haired woman striding across the walkway in front of him. The captain stood for the camera and the steel gate opened. They stepped through and it closed behind them, briefly boxing them in before the Perspex door slid open. Caroline and Kruger followed the captain and the Perspex door closed behind them, drowning out the noise so suddenly that they felt light-headed and off kilter for a few moments.

  “Takes some getting used to, eh? I used to hear it in my sleep,” the captain smiled. “Prisoner Badenhorst should be in an interrogation cell for you by now,” he said.

  They walked on around a long curve in the corridor and came up on a desk and a bank of monitors. It was a CCTV station of the general population and specific isolation cells, and a guard was ignoring it and reading a paper at the desk. He looked up but didn’t abandon his paper. He nodded at the captain and the two exchanged words. Caroline didn’t understand any of it, so broad, so pidgin that it sounded like another language. She supposed it could have been a shared tribal tongue, but didn’t feel she could ask Kruger. She glanced at one of the CCTV screens, saw two prisoners beating another. The prisoner went down, and the two men started kicking him.

  She pointed at the screen. “There’s a fight taking place,” she said.

  The guard glanced up at the screen, then looked back at his paper.

  The captain ignored the screen also. He nodded down the corridor at them, cocking his head towards a series of doors. “Cell four,” he said and pulled out a chair. He sat down without another word and picked up another copy of a well-read paper that was folded on the desk.

  Caroline led the way to the door and studied the handle. It was a simple pull-down lever. She opened the door and saw a hunched and cowed figure sitting at the stainless-steel table. There was a ring on the table and the man was tethered by a set of handcuffs. The chain was short, and he was attempting to scratch his nose when they entered, but was having difficulty.

  “Mister Badenhorst, I am Caroline Darby and I’m an agent with Interpol,” she said, her tone somewhere between warm and authoritative. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

  The man looked thin and gaunt and Caroline noticed the reason he had been struggling to carry out the simple bodily function. His left arm was gone from what would have been just above the elbow.

  “I wasn’t exactly given a choice,” he said.

  Caroline nodded. “Well, it is appreciated. Now, Mister Badenhorst,” she paused, looking at his arm. “I wish to know about the man who did that to you. I want you to help me to find him.”

  25

  King looked out across the valley to the Jameson’s farmhouse. Two-thousand-five-hundred metres away. He could see the window that the shot had been taken from. He could remember the look of surprise on the woman’s face, the man’s bruises and cuts, the neat little bullet hole in his forehead. He thought about Liam.

  Callously and meticulously suffocated.

  He had seen worse, that was human nature. He had seen atrocities in the war-torn areas of Northern Iraq and Syria that were indescribable. But this wasn’t a warzone. This wasn’t some foreign scrap of dirt in the middle of the fighting grounds of an Islamic State. This was leafy Cornwall, and this was the grisly and unnecessary end to a family who been pulled into a campaign which was being praised by people all over social media.

  Ordinary people were publicly accepting and even condoning innocent deaths as collateral damage in a war on the wealthy. The absurdness that people spouted online was beyond comprehension for King. The anonymity of living a sheltered life through Wi-Fi, a keyboard and a screen, and losing touch with reality.

  A redundant existence.

  “So, why are we out here?” Amanda asked. “Are you not happy with my investigation? I can assure you I have been meticulous.”

  King ignored her and turned his back on the farmhouse. The chair in which Sir Ian Snell died was still there, pulled out slightly from the rest of the furniture set.

  He pictured the image of the man when he had first seen him. Slumped forwards, his head blown away at the bullet’s exit point. It had left a crimson splash on the patio, which was now scrubbed clean, but still the stain was visible. More than just a water mark yet to dry. There was enough protein left in the bleach and water solution used to sluice the blood away to leave its grisly mark.

  “Does that not strike you as weird?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Helena Snell and her lover coming back here, so soon after her husband’s death.”

  She shrugged. “If they are having an affair, then maybe losing her husband wasn’t the worst thing that could happen?”

  “No doubt,” King said.

  “Maybe that’s how she gets over grief, of sadness. Losing herself physically and emotionally with someone else? Maybe she just likes sex and wanted to feel good?”

  King shrugged.

  “But you think there’s more to it?”

  “There always is,” he paused. “And the cups. Why are there nothing but coffee cups in the dish washer?”

  “They drank coffee?”

  “Two cups.”

  “You’ve never drank a drink and put the cup on the draining board, only to pour another into a clean glass?”

  “Perhaps.” King shrugged. “Glasses maybe. It’s a visual thing. Glasses smear with lips and fingerprints. You often change what you’re drinking as well. But cups? People just make another, don’t they? Pour tea or coffee straight into the same cup. I do. Most of the people I know do as well. And then there’s the fact that they didn’t use a pot or one of those plunger things.”

  “A cafetiere?” she smirked.

  “Yes.” He ignored her expression. “This isn’t a Nescafe house. Helena Snell isn’t going to drop in a teaspoon of instant granules. So, where’s the rest of the things to make the coffee?”

  “There’s a five grand Italian coffee machine in there.”

  “There is?”

  “Yes. Set in the wall, next to the oven.”

  “Still need a spoon, don’t you? There were no spoons in the dishwasher, just mugs.”

  “The machine makes it how you want it. Finishes it off with frothed milk, I imagine.” She shrugged like it didn’t matter anyway. “You knew all about… what was his name? Viktor Berkoff?”

  “Bukov,” King corrected her. “Yes. MI6 did some background checking and it was flagged up. Sir Ian Snell’s company, GeoSpec, won the contract to produce the motherboards for the new Goliath ICBM system. The nuclear weapons that will eventually replace Trident. After confirmation of the deal, GeoSpec’s shares went stratospheric. Naturally, anyone working for Snell and his company were thoroughly background checked by the government. There tends to be concentric circles when checking an individual. The further out from the priority, the less stringent the check. So, Sir Ian Snell and his executives, his family and close friends all get thoroughly vetted. The catering staff and cleaners, those on the outer circles, at GeoSpec all get checked but the vetting isn’t so concise. Otherwise, where does it end? But being Ian Snell’s employee, his wife’s personal bodyguard and family member, Ivan Kerchenko was in that inner circle,” King paused. “Except it was soon realised that Kerchenko, the real one, was back in Russia. MI6 being what they are, kept the imposter in play. They decided to watch to see what the scam was. The bigger picture. They handed this information
over to MI5 and Interpol when it became evident Snell was next on the kill list. I was tasked with the investigation.”

  “So, you were already investigating Snell when Anarchy to Recreate Society started killing the top five on the rich list?”

  “I was investigating, yes. But not just Snell.” King nodded. “MI5 kept me in play, and with Interpol’s remit, I was tasked with investigating Snell. Especially as the killing had been done with what was clearly military expertise.”

  “The sniper.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, what have you found out so far?”

  King shrugged. “Not a hell of a lot,” he said. “Or, more than I can make sense of. It’s like a chunk of rock. There’s a statue in there somewhere, it just needs chipping away at.”

  He could see Helena Snell and Viktor Bukov watching them from inside. Helena was perched on a loveseat, her long and shapely legs tucked under her. She looked feline, her arms on the seat, her long fingernails tapping in rhythm with her breathing. Her eyes were on King, almond-shaped, predatory. But she was calm, her expression unreadable. By contrast, standing behind her, his eyes staring daggers, Bukov looked seething. But more than that, he looked worried. Out of the two, Helena was the poker player. Bukov was more roulette. He’d either win or go bust. But Helena would play the strategies.

  King looked back at the stain on the ground, then to the house across the valley, then to the stain again, then further towards the wall. He was forming a picture in his mind. He looked back at Bukov, then back to the wall. There was a flicker in the Russian’s eyes, but his lover remained calm and composed.

  The wall was made from stones. Pieces of cut and shaped granite, laid with earth between the stones, Cornish hedge style. Lavender and rosemary grew on top and a flowery plant was trailing down, the fronds touching the patio. King did not know what type of plant it was, nor did he care. He walked over, knelt and studied the wall. He ran his hands gently over the wall, looked back at the house for confirmation, then lifted the plant out of the way. There were tiny chips of stone on the edge of the patio where it met the wall. He looked up at Amanda. “Here, hold this out of the way,” he said. “And bring your bag of tricks.”

  “What is it?” Amanda hurried over, glanced over her shoulder at the two behind the glass of the patio doors. They seemed impassive. Helena still watching, tapping her fingers. Bukov’s eyes must have been hurting now from maintaining the menacing stare. She looked back at King. “What have you found?”

  King took out his pocket knife, thumbed open the blade and dug it into the rock. The deformed bullet dropped onto the patio. It was flattened like a mushroom, the copper torn up into shards, the soft lead underneath grooved and textured from hitting the rock. “I’d say this was the first shot fired,” he said. He pulled back the tendrils of the plant without care and laid it flat on top of the wall.

  “That would have made a hell of a racket, hitting the granite wall like that,” Amanda said. She picked up the bullet with a pair of plastic tongs and dropped it into an evidence bag.

  “And here’s the next one,” King said. He looked back at the house across the valley and then down at the stain on the patio. “Right a click, up a couple more.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said.

  The wind had been crossing the valley from the Carrick Roads yesterday. A westerly. Two to three miles per hour. Just enough to send the .338 bullet a few inches in front of Ian Snell’s face as he drank his coffee, read his paper.

  “You mean sight calibrations?”

  King frowned at her. “You know about those?”

  “Sort of,” she replied.

  “Right,” he said. “So, the first bullet went low and wide. The rifle is sighted and accurate, so you don’t just aim a bit right and high. That’s winging it. Alright in a fast-moving combat zone, where you want to keep your weapon calibrated for multiple scenarios. Not at two-thousand-five-hundred metres. You can’t just hold the cross-hairs high and right and hope at that range. You need minute adjustments, and if you don’t have a spotter…”

  “A spotter?”

  “Yes. A partner watching and feeding the information back to you. So, if you’re on your own, you adjust the sight turrets and compensate. Right a click, up a couple more. The next shot gets closer, you identify the bullet strike. Another shot, another adjustment. Then…”

  “Bullseye,” Amanda interrupted.

  “Essentially, yes,” agreed King. “But on a range, that’s fine. Out in the open, say, Afghanistan, yes.”

  “So, what about here?”

  King dug the blade in between two rocks and prised out a less misshapen bullet. It dropped, like the first, onto the patio. “Snell wasn’t going to have two, three-three-eight calibre bullets travel past him and slam into that wall with a closing speed of four-hundred miles per hour and not look up from his paper. The three-three-eight Lapua Magnum isn’t a suppressible calibre. Not practically at least. It still makes a hell of a racket. So, no suppressor, or what most people will know as a silencer. Not for a two-thousand-five-hundred-metre shot. The suppressor robs too much muzzle energy and velocity. As well as two bullets slamming into the wall, Snell would have heard at least two gunshots before a third one took his head off. Enough for him to move, look across the valley and present himself as a more difficult target.”

  “But he was shot, nonetheless,” Amanda said. She put the second bullet into another bag and stood up.

  King stood up too, looked at the two behind the glass. Bukov was still staring at him, King returned a jovial wave and smiled as the Russian looked to implode. He turned back to Amanda. “He was,” he said. “But I have my reservations on the cause of death.”

  26

  Pollsmoor Prison

  Tokai, South Africa

  “You have to get me out of here!”

  “Mister Badenhorst,” Caroline replied calmly. “Tell me what you know, and I will have a word to the South African government. “But first, you need to tell me about the man who killed your brother.” She looked at his stump of an arm. It was wrapped in a bandage that was both grimy and discoloured. “And, did that to you.”

  Vigus Badenhorst flung himself back in the chair, tears in his eyes, his face ashen. “Look, you don’t understand!”

  “Mister…” she stopped herself, realised the man had started to sob. She glanced at Kruger, who shrugged benignly.

  “Listen Badenhorst,” Kruger said, his accent broad and thick. “It’s tough here, I get it.”

  “You don’t get shit!” the man snapped. “I got asked for, requested by the leader of the Twenty-Eights - do you know what that means? No, of course not,” he paused, attempted to wipe his eyes with the end of the stump. “It means I’m his fucking bitch!”

  “Mister…” Caroline trailed off as he snapped again.

  “I don’t have a choice! I tried to refuse, but they pulled out my cell mate, held him down and gauged out one of his eyes. They told me they would do the same to me. It was so horrible, the poor man screamed for hours. There were six of them, they beat me up, then held me down.” He tried to wipe his eyes again, but the stump restricted him, and the other hand was clamped firmly to the table with the handcuffs.

  Caroline pulled a clean handkerchief out of her pocket and reached across the table. She dabbed his eyes for him, left the handkerchief on the table in front of him.

  He looked at her, nodded. “Thank you.” He shrugged, then said quietly, “When they had all finished, they told me I’d been broken in, was a proper woman now. Not a butt-virgin anymore. They said if I ever refused their advances, they would gauge out my eyes and castrate me. They own me.” He continued to sob, and Caroline dabbed his cheeks again.

  “I will speak to the governor,” she said.

  “He knows it goes on,” the prisoner said bitterly. “While it does, the convicts are kept busy. My only chance is to give you the information you need in return for being moved. Or ha
ve my sentence cut, which gets me into a lower category. No gang members are in the lower categories. For heaven’s sake!” he snapped, anger flashing in his eyes. “I’m only in here because my brother fudged the taxes!”

  “It was more than that,” Kruger interjected. “You got off lightly. The illegal trade in ivory, weapons, tax evasion, come on! You were lucky to get two years. Had your brother been alive to have his say, you’d be in here for at least ten years, maybe more!”

  Badenhorst looked at him. “Do you know how they do it? How they rape a man? No? Well let me enlighten you.” He was clearly fighting back tears. He dabbed at his eyes with the end of his stump, then said, “They put you on your back and two men hold your legs in the air. Like the missionary position. Another man holds some glass or a shank against your eyeball while the man…” he hesitated. “While the man fucks you. You break eye contact and they take out one of your eyes. It’s all about looking the man in his eyes, so you know who is the boss. Who owns you. I see that bastard in my dreams!”

  Caroline looked at Kruger, then back at Vigus Badenhorst. “If I can swing something, you’ll talk?”

  “To my last breath,” Badenhorst said desperately. He looked at her, then at Kruger. “I see the other bastard too. The one who did this to me. The bastard who killed my brother. I see him in my dreams, my nightmares. I see his face, hear his voice. So, get busy on your phone, before I start to forget.”

  27

  “So, what are you looking for?” Amanda asked. “I mean, there has to be something in particular.”

  King checked his phone. There was a message from Simon Mereweather. His contact from MI6 had informed him that their asset was safe and well and had been dropped at The Victoria and Alfred Hotel in Cape Town. He relaxed a little, sighed at the thought, but knew Caroline would have contacted the South Africa Secret Service to liaise with an agent for her trip to Pollsmoor Prison. He knew she would be on tight time constraints, and hoped that was the reason she had not called or sent a text message. He knew what it was to be in the field, but he also knew she had taken exception to hearing Amanda’s voice in the background, and the coincidence in staying at the same hotel. He just hoped she had taken it for what it was and moved on.