by A P Bateman
King braced, but felt nothing except splinters of wood and dust raining upon him. He pushed himself up and charged up the stairs onto the landing, slipping in Giorgi’s blood and briefly losing his footing.
There were a series of battery-powered camping lights placed at intervals, but the most light emanated from an open doorway to his left. He knew he should take his time, check for further threats, but he was also painfully aware that there was no time. There was still no sound, but as he neared, he could hear splashing.
Caroline was face down in the muddy bath. She was struggling, but her legs were tied back to her wrists and she had no strength or flexibility to keep her head out of the water. King lunged to the bath, just as her face went down and her whole body went ominously still.
King grabbed her roughly and hauled her out. She dropped to the floor like a game fish on the deck of a boat. She wasn’t moving. He took out his knife and sliced the bonds at her wrists, rolled her over onto her back. He started to pump her chest. He knew he should calm down, follow procedure, but he was simply too desperate. He bent down, listened to her for breathing, but her chest was still. He opened her mouth, checked her airway and thrust his fingertips into her carotid artery at the edge of her windpipe. There was a pulse. Faint, but detectable. He knew he had to get air into her, clear the water out of her airway, her lungs. He pinched her nose and breathed steadily. He started to pump her chest again, this time with the knowledge that she had a pulse and he had calmed himself enough to do it right. He worked on the principle that if air went in, he needed to get it back out. He couldn’t simply keep filling the lungs. He breathed for her again, pumped three more times to work her lungs. On the third attempt at breathing for her, she lurched, and a large amount of muddy water spewed out of her mouth. She opened her eyes and turned her head as she was sick. King rolled her over and rubbed her between her shoulder blades.
“Thank God!” he said. He wasn’t a religious man and had seen enough evil and hostility in the world to call himself an atheist. But he also knew that he had begged for his own survival in the past, and had no idea who he had been begging to.
Caroline wrapped her arms around him. She was sobbing. He had never seen her in such a state before, but then, she had never been so close to death before. And this from a woman caught in the terrorist’s blast that had killed her fiancé.
“Where is she?” she rasped, her throat raw, her breathing shallow and wet. The effort of talking make her cough repeatedly.
King looked up, saw the broken window. He hugged her close. “She’s gone,” he said.
“And Giorgi?”
“Dead.”
She smiled, wiped her tears. “Get her, Alex. I’m okay here. Leave your knife so I can get my legs undone,” she said. “Just get the bitch…”
54
There were noises. There was ambient light. The city was seldom dark, especially in open ground like this, where the light created a halo around the edges of buildings. The city was seldom quiet either.
King crouched and listened. He tuned out the natural sounds of his environment, sought what was out of place.
He had left the same way as Amanda Cunningham had. Through the broken window and down onto the flat roof. He had jumped the eight-feet or so to the overgrown garden. He couldn’t help but think he would have done it quicker than Amanda. This was the sort of thing he did. Or had done until a year ago. The landing shocked him all the way up his spine, and he hobbled out of the garden and into the waste ground. His ankles were stiff from the landing, but he couldn’t think about it. Had to keep moving.
King could hear footsteps on loose gravel ahead of him. He crouched low again. Closed his eyes briefly, putting his focus into his hearing. It was unmistakable. Someone was running. This wasn’t the place to take a jog. Not at this time of night. Uneven ground, no street lights, the risk of drug addicts and the homeless avoiding the law. He was certain that the noise was coming from Amanda Cunningham as she made her escape.
The waste land was mainly rubble. It was a predominantly flat area, but in places, great piles of rubble and earth had been piled high in the early stage of a previous failed development. King ran, skirting the hillocks. It reminded him of the terrain in Northern Iraq. He had fought there with the Kurds against ISIS. He had hunted battle-hardened, armed and ruthless men on this kind of ground. Amanda Cunningham didn’t stand a chance.
He was gaining on the noise. He tracked across to his right, could hear the noise on his left. It came from behind one of the hillocks of earth. He crouched low again, could hear breathing. She was breathless. He tried to imagine her - scared, cowering behind the mound of earth, praying he wouldn’t find her. He edged forwards. He could hear her. She was close. He edged forwards again, heard something on the air. Like a draught, or something scything through the air…
King was caught with the blow, absorbed it fully with his arm and shoulder, but the force at which it was travelling made the length of wood glance upwards and strike the side of his head. He went down hard. His ear ringing, his face hot and throbbing, his arm numbed from the impact. He tried to get up, but sensed the second blow before it got close enough and he rolled. The length of wood struck the ground, rebounded high in the air.
When he came to rest, he was sitting, his legs outstretched, his hands on the ground. Amanda’s eyes blazed in the gloom. She pulled the seven-foot length of four by two back, struggled to raise it, but got it above her head. King noted that she must have changed strategy and was attempting to strike with the thin edge. If it caught him like that, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. She rushed forwards, bringing the plank down like a giant sword. King heaved himself forwards, rolled and came up inside her guard, the plank crashing harmlessly to the ground. He headbutted her hard, missing the bridge of her nose, but striking like for like against her forehead. She grimaced and fell, dropping the wood. She held her forehead, looked up at him and spat. King twisted, took the spit on his arm.
“Bastard!” she screamed.
King nodded. He’d heard the insult a thousand times before. The first time he had been seven and his own mother had used it. That had been her name for him - in the confines of their home - ever since.
The Bastard’s bastard.
“How’s your woman?” she asked, vehemently. “I held her under the water for as long as I could before I had to leave. She was pretty much out of it by then. I’ll give her that, she put up a fight, right ‘til the end.”
“You’ve failed, Amanda,” King said. “She’s okay. I’ve spoken to her. I was going to stay, but she wanted me to get after you.”
She looked up at him dubiously. “Really?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, looked down dejectedly to the ground.
“Was it worth it?”
“It would have been,” she said despondently. “The pay-off would have been good.” She looked up at him, the hardness gone, an uncertainty in her eyes. “It still could be. We can cut you in. There will be enough to make you a rich man.”
King smiled. “Sir Hugo said that too.”
“And you didn’t take it?”
“No.”
“Your loss,” she said callously. “So, what’s your price?”
King stared down at her. It was all so business like. She had deceived and murdered. Lied, manipulated and falsified evidence. He thought of the attempts on his life, the destruction of his cottage and the attempt to murder Caroline so callously. He would enjoy handing her over to the police. Of being a part of her conviction.
“Get up,” he said.
“It’s not over,” she said. “You lot have gone over this mob-handed. You shot Ivan Kerchenko.”
“In self-defence.”
“You’re not legally allowed to carry a gun.”
“I’ll take my chances.” King shrugged. “You’re not meant to trespass carrying FAMAS assault rifles and start shooting. Nor, plant incendiary devices in people’s bedrooms. Blow up and bur
n down their house. I acted in self-defence.”
“You’ll get five years alone, just for carrying the illegal gun.”
“I found it,” he said.
“Happenstance,” she nodded in reply. “I was made a scapegoat. You lot piled this all on me. That’s what I’ll say, and stick to.”
“You blew up my house…”
“Prove it!”
King shook his head. “It’s all recorded. A parabolic directional microphone. You’ve certainly filled in the gaps for me. And I’ve recorded your entire conversation with Caroline. Right up to the point you tried to drown her in that filthy bath tub.”
“Someone had to fill in the gaps for you! You were bloody clueless!”
King smiled. “You saw what I wanted you to see. I knew there was something amiss as soon as you were assigned. Simply put, you shouldn’t have been the lead on an investigation like Sir Ian Snell’s murder. And I didn’t believe you travelled down to Cornwall by helicopter that day. The timings were all wrong. You had already mentioned you were staying in Truro. Then you denied it later. It was a slip of the tongue. You knew it would contradict your story of being flown down that day. You then went to the extreme of moving to a hotel in Falmouth. You were in Cornwall before Snell was killed. At the time, I put it down to nerves heading up such an important assignment. Or the drinking. But then, the more I’ve thought about it since, the more I suspected you were acting drunk. There’s a subtle difference. You were over-playing it.”
Amanda rubbed her eyes, sighed and looked back up at him. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “A good barrister will bring out a lot of your dirty laundry. How you set me up, twisted my findings, doctored my reports. Pressured me into coming to your house, sexually assaulted me, raped me, even. Enough to sully the case, cast aspersions on your character. That’s all a jury really needs and if you throw enough shit, it always sticks.” She cocked her head, widened her eyes. The transformation was incredible. She looked so innocent, younger even. “I’ll have a jury eating out of my hand,” she said coyly. “Especially the men. I can make men do whatever I want.”
“I watched you in the Jameson’s house,” King said. “I watched your emotion around the couple, and then in Liam’s bedroom. You were convincing, I’ll give you that.”
“I am convincing,” she said. “They were nothing but obstacles separating me from the money I was due. But I had you thinking I was all washed up because of it. The horror of such senseless killings. But I found it to be a revelation! Years of working with corpses, discovering evidence that would find the killer. Now I know how those killers felt! I know what they went through, how alive they felt at the time of their victim’s death.” Her expression changed, as did her entire demeanour. She looked at him intensely. “You’re not so different. You’ve killed before, I know that. Hugo found out more about you, discovered your links to MI6. You’ve killed for your country! You know the feeling, know what I’m talking about. We’re the same!”
“We are not the same!” King snapped. “I never enjoyed killing!”
“But you were so good at it!”
King shook his head. “I was good at surviving, that’s all.”
She slumped on the ground, knowing that she had expended her chances of getting away from this, of forming an alliance. Of buying him off. “What now?”
“One question,” King said. “When you killed Liam Jameson, did you really enjoy it? I find that hard to believe.”
She looked him in the eyes and smiled. “I have never felt so alive.”
King nodded. He dropped down and straddled her. His knees pinning her arms to the ground. She bucked and kicked out, but he pinned her legs down with his shins, adjusted his weight. He didn’t say a word, didn’t look her in the eyes as he pinched her nose shut and held a hand over her mouth. He gave it a full minute. Sixty seconds of her wriggling, urging, grunting and trying to bite at the palm of his hand. After another thirty seconds, she had started to slow down considerably, her movements less sudden, less powerful. King looked away, kept up the pressure for close to thirty more seconds, then looked back at her. He watched her eyes closely, saw that she knew. Knew there was no way out, no other outcome to hope for. That the realisation was total. Then he said quietly, “For Liam.” Before he looked away and waited another minute for her to lay completely still.
55
One month later
Scotland
The underside of the hire car scraped and grounded on the rutted track. Awash with puddles, raised in the middle and narrow in places, it wasn’t the sort of place to drive a hire car and keep your deposit.
Mereweather saw the cottage, nestled in a dip, surrounded by windblown grass and heather. There was no way to approach the cottage other than head on. It’s openness, its utter bleakness was its security. The cottage was small. It was squat in design, hunkered down against the elements. Obstinate and stubborn against the harshness of nature for two centuries. There was no garden. Mereweather doubted whether anything other than grass and heather could grow here anyway. Other than the cottage, a single hawthorn tree was starting to blossom. A gnarled and thorny thing bent over at ninety degrees, it was the only other object to obscure the flat and desolate terrain for miles. The waters of the loch were dark, almost black and only interspersed from the grey horizon by a million white horses lapping at the sky. Fifty-feet of grey and white shingle surrounded the three sides, the expanse of water stretching out into infinity where it joined the sea.
It was nearing the end of May. It had been a warm and pleasantly bright morning in London. Mereweather wondered when the summer started this far north in Scotland. Or whether it ever did.
He could see a battered old Land Rover Defender parked in a dip twenty-metres from the cottage. Beyond which, the cottage was in near total darkness, but for a single light shining from the upstairs window within. As he neared, he could see it must have been a simply two-up-two-down affair. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live all the way out here. The loneliness would drive him mad. But then, he knew why this place had been chosen.
Mereweather parked and stepped out of the car. He noticed it groaned, the suspension having taken a hammering from the lane.
“Time for that debrief?”
Mereweather spun around. He hadn’t heard King approach, hadn’t seen where the man could possibly have been standing in an area so open and bleak.
“Alex,” he said, shocked at his sudden appearance. He looked at him, took in the dark and sallow features, the unkempt hair and the beard. He tried not to let his stare linger, but the more he tried, the more he could not seem to break away.
“Congratulations on your promotion.”
“You heard about that?”
“I still have an ear to the ground.”
“So I gather.”
“Deputy Director of Operations. The position has been vacant for a while. I’m glad they chose you, Simon. Your predecessor came up here just over a year ago,” King said. “I don’t think he cared for the place much either.”
“I can see its appeal,” Mereweather replied. “A good place to set one’s head.”
“Or spiral to despair.”
“I doubt that.”
King shrugged. “Is this about Hollandrake?”
Mereweather frowned. “No, why would it be?”
King did not reply. The man was due to be buried tomorrow, which meant that his autopsy had not flagged up anything untoward. Either Sir Hugo Hollandrake had suffered a fatal heart attack some thirty-six hours after King had visited his office, or he had taken the MI6 issue suicide pill that King had given him. So, King had laid down the choices, shown Hollandrake what awaited him, what his and his wife and daughter’s lives would be like if he didn’t take another way out. He had essentially killed the man over a cup of tea. King had thought of the similarities between the tale Caroline had been told by Ryan Beard in South Africa.
He killed a man with a cup of coffee…
If they only knew, could only guess at what King had said to that traitor, what he told him he would do, on that clear and warm day in Geneva.
The Reaper.
King had been issued with two of the pills more than twelve-years ago. He had never carried them on operations. He had felt that here was always the possibility, the slim chance of survival, even when the odds were stacked against him. At least, that was what he had told himself until a month ago. He had the remaining pill with him now. Looked at it most mornings on his bedside table.
But there was always a slim chance.
A miracle, even.
“Can we go inside and talk?”
“I don’t think so,” King said. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
Mereweather shrugged. “The police still haven’t come up with anything.”
“I know.”
“Caroline hasn’t been seen since the operation to put Amanda Cunningham under surveillance. Her last contact was the text messages she sent to you.”
“Her last contact was with me in that bathroom,” King corrected him. “In person. I’ve told you this. I’ve told the damage containment and limitation team this. And I’ve said the same thing to the police.”
“But there are no witnesses, Alex. Amanda Cunningham’s body was found in the mouth of the Thames. She didn’t drown. Post mortem showed suffocation, but no DNA after water submersion. Sir Hugo Hollandrake suffered a fatal cardiac arrest and Viktor Bukov was found shot to death on top of a high-rise building.”
“With a loaded rifle in his hands aimed at billionaire Gipri Bashwani’s office window. The containment team cleared his body away, made the right call, I imagine?”
“Of course.”
“So, what are you saying?” King glared at him. “Because it sounds a lot like you are accusing me of knowing what happened to Caroline…” King was angry, but he felt a wave of emotion, forced himself not to breakdown. He had searched for her to the point of exhaustion, grieved without a body and while the crisis team had investigated, he had taken his suspension in total isolation from civilisation.
