by Andy Maslen
“Pays well, does it?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Better than the army did, that’s for sure.” He aimed for a rueful tone of voice that might distract the detective, but was beginning to think he might have underestimated him.
“Probably better than what we get, I’d imagine.”
“I don’t know. I get fallow periods when I’m not making anything. No pension, either.”
Ben frowned. “No, I suppose not. But you make enough to afford a Maserati, don’t you? The boss told us about your motor.”
“I bought it when my parents died. From my inheritance.”
At last he seemed to have gained the upper hand, at least for the moment. The detective looked down, blushing. When he raised his eyes, he looked directly at Gabriel.
“Sorry. For your loss. Which is what they teach us to say, by the way, but I mean it. My parents are both still alive, thank God. I didn’t mean to get in your face. Truth is, this is my first murder. I mean, we get the odd wounding or scrap that gets out of hand in one of the garrison towns around here, but nothing like this.”
Gabriel was about to comment when Lindsey reappeared with a tray bearing three blue-and-white striped mugs of steaming coffee that clinked together as she put the tray down. All three took cautious sips. The coffee was revolting. Gabriel blew across the surface and drank again before setting his mug down on the coffee table.
“What do you want me to tell you?”
Lindsey spoke first.
“Can we start with the victim? I mean, Mrs Angell. How did you know each other?”
“We met each other walking our dogs. You know how it is. You strike up a conversation about your dogs, or the weather or something, and then you meet again, and a friendship starts up. That’s how it was with me and Julia. I found out she was a fight arranger and we had some things in common because of that, so—”
“In common like what?” Ben asked.
“Unarmed combat. Martial arts. Weapons training.”
“Because you were a soldier, right?”
“Right. And because I was brought up in Hong Kong by a man who taught me karate.”
“You’re good with weapons, I’d imagine,” Ben said. “Being in the SAS and that.”
Gabriel frowned. “Have you been checking my background?”
Ben shook his head. “No. Must’ve been someone in the pub yesterday.”
Gabriel knew that was a lie. He’d never told anyone about his service in the Regiment. Even Julia. He wasn’t ashamed of it. The reverse was true. But there were enough people bragging about being ex-Special Forces who’d never been anywhere near a regular army base, let alone one housing the SAS. A small group of SAS veterans had even formed an unofficial team to visit men claiming they’d served in the Regiment. Gabriel had been invited to join it but had declined. “The Walter Mitty Unit” they called themselves. If someone was posting on social media about their time in the SAS, a couple of the lads would find him, and turn up on his doorstep. Suggest they come in for a brew and a chinwag about the old days. They’d ask the guy a few simple questions, “Who was your boss at the time?” “Where did you operate?” “Did you know X or Y?” “Wasn’t it a blast when we hit that terrorist cell in Somalia in ‘97?” If he couldn’t answer correctly, or tried to bluster, they’d put the hard word on him. Maybe give him the impression that continuing with his fantasising could prove injurious to his health. It always did the trick.
“Yes,” Gabriel said, bringing himself back to the present. “I am good with weapons. Most soldiers are. It goes with the territory.”
“Ever do any marksmanship training? Competitive shooting for the army? Stuff like that?”
“What the fuck is this?” Gabriel said, turning around and leaning towards the young detective, taking pleasure in seeing him flinch and draw back involuntarily.
“What the fuck is what, Gabriel?” Lindsey said calmly, smiling.
“Asking me about sniper training. Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with Julia’s murder, do you? I was driving down from London when it happened. I couldn’t have done it. I mean, anyway, why would I? We were friends, I just told you.” He could feel himself heating up inside his shirt and jumper and a smell of sweat gusted up from his chest.
“How do you know when it happened?” she asked. “We don’t have a time of death, yet, and we certainly haven’t released any details to the media, though God knows they want us to.”
“I was driving through the village yesterday afternoon. I saw the tent on the field and the cars with the blue lights. It must have happened before I arrived.”
Suddenly he saw the situation from their perspective. He knew he was streaking along the old Roman road between London and Salisbury at well over a hundred miles an hour when Sasha was gunning down Julia. But he couldn’t prove it. Julia had been killed by a high-calibre rifle round. He’d claimed he knew the killer and then suggested to their boss it was an international assassin, like something out of a James Bond movie. He’d also just admitted he was good with firearms.
Lindsey spoke next.
“Let me ask you something, Gabriel. Do you know the first thing they teach us about solving murders?”
Gabriel shrugged. Bit back a suggestion that it might involve going after clearly identified suspects. “Surprise me.”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s either a spouse or a lover. I know on the telly it’s drug gangs and turf wars and all that shit, but out here? In the real world? It’s people fucking people they shouldn’t. The loyal wife gets wind of hubby’s affair and bam! Or little miss bit-on-the-side runs out of patience and offs the missus to give herself a clear run.” She sat up straighter in the chair and asked her next question with a soft, inviting tone of voice. “Were you and Mrs Angell having an affair, Gabriel?”
He reared back.
“What? No! Of course we weren’t.”
Lindsey persisted, asking more questions in that calm, quiet, unsettling voice.
“Why ‘of course’? She was an attractive woman by all accounts. Husband sounds a bit boring. You’re a man of action. I’m not judging you. It’s just human nature. Maybe those dog walks turned into something else?”
Gabriel laughed. The suggestion was so ridiculous. He’d barely had enough time to sleep with Britta, let alone conduct an affair.
“OK, you know what? I’d be within my rights to walk out of here right now, or get a solicitor. I’m sure your boss didn’t authorise this line of questioning and frankly, you’re wasting time you should be spending chasing the only solid lead you’ve got. The one I gave you. And before you say anything, it wasn’t to throw suspicion off me, it’s the truth. You’re looking for, but you won’t find, an assassin named Sasha Beck.”
Means, Motive and Opportunity
LINDSEY placed a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re just looking at all the angles. You can see that, can’t you, Gabriel? You’re not under caution; this is just a chat about your friend and what you know. I accept what you said about Mrs Angell. How about we move on to this Sasha Beck woman? Who is she and how do you know her?”
Gabriel paused for a moment. He knew that the police regarded witnesses who didn’t answer straight away as possibly preparing a lie, but he also knew he had to be extremely careful. His work for The Department placed him under obligations of discretion that made signing the Official Secrets Act – which he had also done – look like writing an IOU for a five-quid poker debt.
“Sasha Beck is a hit woman. An assassin. I met her in Hong Kong when I was visiting a friend.”
Ben smiled, shaking his head. “Sorry, Gabriel, if I can just back up a bit. How did you know she was a hit woman? I mean, it’s not exactly the sort of thing someone admits to in casual conversation, is it? ‘Hi, I’m Gabriel, I’m in security contracting, what do you do?’ ‘Hi, I’m Sasha, I’m an assassin.’ Or is that how things are done in your world?”
“So, what, she’s an assassin but not a very good one, is that what you’re telling us? A trainee? Given that she obviously failed.” Ben looked at Lindsey, presumably hoping for a laugh at his wit. But she was stone-faced, scrutinising Gabriel as he negotiated the line of questioning.
“No,” Gabriel said, trying to hold in his mounting anger and disbelief that they were treating him as the prime suspect. “She is very accomplished at what she does. But so am I. I managed to throw her off.”
By hitting her with a date-rape drug given to me by a Triad boss, and then hypnotising her.
“Can you think of anyone who would want Mrs Angell dead?” Lindsey asked him then.
At last! They were starting to act like proper detectives.
“No, is the short answer. Like I said to Anita,” he hoped using their boss’s Christian name might give him some sort of advantage, “she may have had professional rivals, but I can’t see that being a motive for murder, can you?”
“You’d be surprised,” Lindsey said, straight faced. “I’ll be discussing every possibility with Detective Superintendent Woods later today.”
Gabriel made a mental note to stop name-dropping.
“She was happily married. Tons of friends in the village. She had a good income, a bit unpredictable, like mine, but she was doing OK.”
“How about Mr Angell? Anything you know about him that would ring an alarm bell? Even a tiny one?” she asked.
“Mike? Hardly. He’s a teacher. History. Active in the local church. Volunteers for a local charity driving old people into town to do their shopping.”
“A pillar of the community, is that what you’re saying?” Ben asked.
Resisting the urge to shout, Gabriel contented himself with clasping his hands together between his knees and breathing in, then out, slowly before answering, using the pause to slow his heart rate a little. He was developing a strong urge to hit the young detective somewhere it would hurt.
“I’m saying that Mike’s one of the good guys. You should be looking elsewhere.”
“Fine,” Lindsey said. “Let’s look at the casing. What did it say, Ben?”
Ben pulled out a notebook and made a show of flipping the pages over until he came to the one he wanted. He cleared his throat and recited the message as if he were a schoolboy competing for a public speaking prize.
“Fury is coming for you. SB.” He paused and looked at Gabriel. “Kiss, kiss.”
Lindsey looked up at the grey ceiling, then frowned back at Gabriel, her lips pulled to one side in a sceptical expression.
“You said Mrs Angell had no enemies. Nor does her husband. And, to be honest, even if she did have people who wanted to get to her somehow, round here the usual approach is to feed poisoned meat to the dog, or torch somebody’s car, not hire an assassin. I mean, that’s a bit over the top, isn’t it, Ben?”
“Last year, this bloke got caught sleeping with his best mate’s wife. By the best mate. He went down to town – the best mate, I mean – bought a baseball bat from that sports shop on Catherine Street, drove to the other bloke’s house and did a number on his motor. Beautiful BMW M3 in Dakar Yellow. The insurance company wrote it off. He’d done every single body panel, every window, all the lights, and finished it off by slashing the tyres, levering the filler cap off with a screwdriver, and pouring a bag of sugar into the petrol tank.”
“Classic,” Lindsey said. “So, Gabriel, if she had nobody who’d want to kill her, the question is, why is she dead? You see,” she said, holding up a hand as Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, “that shell casing bothers me.”
“Bothers you how? I told you what it means.”
“No. You told me who it’s from. The question is, who’s it to?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“Is it obvious? Not to me.”
“Sasha was talking to me. It can’t have been Julia, can it? She means Fury is coming for me.”
“Hold on,” Lindsey said. “It’s not got your name on it, has it? It could have been meant for her husband. Or her film company, or the leader of the parish council for all we know.”
Gabriel sighed, and rubbed his fingertips hard against his scalp. He started counting points off on his fingers.
“One, I’m the only person in this village, probably in this whole county, who knows her. Sasha, I mean. Two, the kisses. I think, I don’t know how to put this, but she’s—”
Ben interrupted, “Wait. Are you telling us she fancies you? This international assassin has a crush on you?”
Gabriel frowned. “I know it sounds off, but yes. Basically, that is what I think.”
“And three?” Lindsey asked.
“What do you mean, ‘three’?”
“You were counting off points. Nobody does just two. There’s always three.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just, I can tell. Trouble like this has a habit of following me around.”
Like when I got tricked into murdering a Zimbabwean politician in the not-too-distant past.
Lindsey got out her notebook. “I want a list of your friends in the village. Apart from the Angells. Work colleagues, too. Family. Anyone who might be at risk from this Sasha character.” Her hand hovered above the blank page. Gabriel said nothing. She looked up at him. “Well?”
“There isn’t anyone.”
“No one at all? Football mates? Ex-army buddies. Parents? Siblings? Come on, Gabriel, there must be someone you kick back with?”
Gabriel suddenly became very still. Cold inside, as if he’d woken after a night sleeping rough.
“Britta! Oh, shit!”
“Who’s Britta?” Lindsey asked, making a note.
“She’s my girlfr—, she’s my fiancée.” A frown flitted across Lindsey’s face, a blade of cloud across the sun: blink and you’d miss it. Gabriel didn’t miss it. “It’s recent. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Surname?”
“Falskog. She’s Swedish,” he added.
Lindsey looked up at Gabriel from her notebook. He couldn’t read her expression. A half-smile cut with, what? Cynicism?
“Congratulations. Place of work?” An urgent note had crept into Lindsey voice and her manner had become all business.
“She moves around. It’s government stuff. There isn’t really an office. Not as such.”
Lindsey put her pen down and looked at Gabriel. She turned to Ben.
“Do us a favour, Ben. Get another round of coffees in.”
He drew in a sharp breath but obviously decided not to say anything.
With Ben gone, Lindsey faced Gabriel head on. She made a show of closing her notebook and putting it beside her on the sofa.
“Listen, Gabriel. Here’s a picture I’m getting in my mind. You’re ex-SAS. Now you work as a private security consultant. You’re on first-name terms with a woman who you claim, and the evidence seems to back you up, is an assassin of some kind. Clearly a woman with a pretty sick sense of humour, and a shitload of self-confidence, if she can spare the time after killing an innocent civilian to engrave a little message to you on a shell casing, then leave it behind. You forget you just got engaged, and when you do remember, all you’ll tell me is your fiancée does government work. Let me ask you something. Do I look like an idiot?”
“No. You look like an intelligent woman doing a difficult job under very trying circumstances.”
“Thanks for the compliment, which I choose to take at face value. In which case, let me ask you another question. One to which I hope you will respect me enough to give a straight answer. Does she work for—”
Gabriel made a decision.
“MI5.”
“Pardon?”
“Britta works for MI5. She was on secondment from Swedish Special Forces, but they made the arrangement permanent. I don’t exactly know where she is at the moment. London is all I know. I can’t say what she’s doing, but she’s tough and sh
e’s trained.”
“I want to get a message to her. We need to let her know that her life may be in danger. If Beck is sending you a message by killing your only friend down here, then she might go after Britta next.”
“But why not go after her first? What would be the point of killing Julia when she knows about Britta?”
Lindsey spread her hands wide.
“Maybe she doesn’t know about Britta.”
Released from his interview with the detectives, Gabriel was driven home by a WPC in a marked car. It was impossible not to feel that he had committed a crime. He stared out through the side window seeing the city as a prisoner, rather than a concerned citizen trying to “help the police with their enquiries.” God, how different that sounded when you were the one being prodded and probed with innocent-sounding questions that suddenly turned into an interrogation about your military training.
As soon as he reached the sanctuary of his cottage, he called Britta. He sat on one of the kitchen chairs while he waited for Britta to answer.
“Come on, come on,” he said, willing her to pick up.
He stood again, and paced round the small room. Finally the ringing tone stopped and Britta’s voice came on the line.
“Hi, how are you?”
“Hi, darling, it’s me I—”
“Got you! This is Britta’s voicemail. Leave a message.”
“Sasha Beck’s in the UK. She killed Julia. I don’t know why. You have to be careful. Call me, OK? Call me.”
He ended the call, then repeated it as a text.
Sasha Beck, Britta Falskog
LONDON
“BEAUTIFUL hair, darling,” Sasha muttered. It was eleven in the morning, and she was slumped in the driver’s seat of a dirty, dark-grey VW Passat estate, holding the viewfinder of a digital SLR to her eye. Like all her equipment, the camera was the best out there: a very expensive Canon. Through the long lens, the plait at the back of the woman’s head glinted in the sun like stripped copper wire. The woman was dressed in tight, faded jeans, a white shirt and a brown leather jacket, loose enough to conceal a pistol in a shoulder or belt holster.
