‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’
The red Toyota had its boot up and Luke and Finn were sheltering behind it. That way they wouldn’t stick out on the horizon as the sun rose to the east, and they could operate the patrol radio stashed in the back with the rest of their kit. Their hostages were still in the car, Abu Famir in the front and the second man, now unconscious, in the back.
A couple of miles to the south was the main road that ran from the Jordanian border all the way to Baghdad. Everywhere else was desert. When they’d stopped it had been light enough for them to see the traffic on the road with the naked eye. Busier than last night. Plenty of small cars, indistinguishable at this distance from their own, but plenty of military vehicles too. Luke couldn’t tell from up here if they were moving men, munitions or other supplies. But he could tell there were enough of them for that road to be a very dangerous place for two members of the British Army and two dissident Iraqi hostages, one of them with blood pissing from a gun wound.
The radio crackled, and then was silent.
‘Zero, this is Tango 17.’
A pause.
‘ Tango 17, this is Zero. Send. ’
‘We have the target, but we got into contact. Two men down, one wounded. We have the casualty in tow. Target claims he’s a fellow dissident. Request further instructions.’
‘ Tango 17, wait out, figures 5. ’
The line went quiet. Luke looked around. A desert falcon was circling up above. Apart from that, no movement in the immediate vicinity.
After five minutes that felt like a lot longer, the radio came to life again.
‘ Tango 17, this is Zero. Proceed to RV with both captives. ’
Luke glanced at Finn. He was shaking his head.
‘Zero, we’re in a bad spot here. We need medical assistance. Request pick-up.’
A brief pause, then: ‘ Tango 17, pick-up cancelled. No heli assets. ’
He heard Finn cursing under his breath. ‘What about Fozzie and the others?’
A pause.
‘ Back-up unit compromised. Enemy aircraft in border area airspace. Return via vehicle or foot. Repeat, return via vehicle or foot. ’
Luke nodded grimly. ‘Roger that, Zero.’ He replaced the handset of the patrol radio.
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Finn looked towards the main road. ‘I’m telling you, with that guy in the car it’s fucking suicide down there. We should just nail him now, say he died of his wounds.’
For a moment Luke didn’t reply. He walked round and glanced into the vehicle. The wounded man was pale and sweating, despite Finn’s on-the-hoof medical attention. He had a large swab bandaged to his wound, but it was already saturated with blood. He needed serious attention and this wasn’t the place to go looking for it. Maybe Finn was right. Maybe they should just ditch him.
‘You given him a shot?’ Luke asked.
‘Not the kind I’d like to.’
‘ Have you given him a shot? ’
‘Of course I’ve given him a fucking shot. But he needs more than morphine.’
Luke continued to weigh things up. He didn’t like the sound of the situation at the border. With Fozzie and the others compromised, getting over into Jordan was going to be tough. Maybe they should ditch the car and head across the desert on foot. But it was 100 miles to the border, and that was a big ask even for the two Regiment men. For an old boy like Abu Famir it was an impossibility. And as for the wounded man…
In any case, they had their orders. Luke looked over at Finn. ‘We need to get him into the burka,’ he said. If nothing else it would cover up the guy’s wounds.
‘We need to waste the fucker.’
Luke gave Finn a dangerous look before opening up the front passenger door to talk to Abu Famir.
‘What’s his name?’ he demanded.
The Iraqi academic avoided his gaze.
‘What’s his fucking name?’
‘He needs a doctor,’ Abu Famir mumbled. It was clear he was avoiding the question.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Luke sighed, before opening the rear door and moving his attention to the casualty. Their companion stank of sweat and was shaking. ‘Hey, buddy,’ Luke said — speaking English because he didn’t know what else to speak. ‘How you doing?’
The wounded man opened his eyes, but there didn’t seem to be much understanding behind them.
‘You got a name, buddy?’
When the man answered, it was in a hoarse almost-whisper. ‘Amit,’ he said.
That didn’t sound like an Iraqi name to Luke. He glanced in Abu Famir’s direction, then turned back to the wounded man.
‘OK, Amit, you need to stand up by the car so we can put something over you. Stop anyone paying us too much atten…’
‘Where’s Abu Famir?’ Amit asked. His accent had a strange tinge to it. ‘I need to get Abu Famir out…’ A moment of breathlessness. ‘I need to get him out of…’
‘Abu Famir’s here. We’re taking care of it.’ Luke felt a moment of respect for Amit, if that was really his name. ‘Now come on, buddy. I’m going to help you out…’
Luke could do nothing other than place two strong hands under Amit’s armpits to lug him from the vehicle. The wounded man gasped in pain, but he didn’t resist and moments later he was leaning against the car, his body crooked but his face a little more alert than it had been — even though the dressing of his wound was like a sodden sponge.
‘Your friend wants to kill me?’ he whispered.
Luke gave him a long look. ‘You want to give him a reason not to?’
Amit closed his eyes. ‘What do I need to wear?’ he whispered.
All of a sudden Finn pulled his Sig from under his robe and held the barrel of the gun hard against the man’s forehead. ‘Answer the fucking question,’ he instructed. But as soon as Finn had spoken, Luke knocked his gun away from Amit, and the two Regiment men found themselves staring each other down.
‘Leave it,’ Luke said. ‘That’s an order.’
‘This is insane,’ Finn spat. ‘We hit a roadblock and it goes noisy, half the Republican Guard are going to be on our tail. It’s daylight. They’ll be able to see us from fucking Syria.’
Luke looked back at Amit. The guy was leaning, exhausted, against the car.
‘We’ll find a lying-up point,’ Luke decided. ‘Wait till nightfall and work out what to do. Let’s get him covered up.’
With obvious reluctance Finn fished the burka and headdress out of the boot. Amit didn’t really seem to register what they were doing as the two SAS men struggled to get the robe over him and the headdress on, before Luke helped him into the back of the car again. By the time Amit was sitting down, his head lolling at a slight angle and his face obscured behind the veil of the headdress, it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep. Hell, it was impossible to tell if he was even still alive.
Luke put the bonnet down, got back into the car and turned to Abu Famir, who was still in the front passenger seat. The Iraqi had calmed down and was looking defiantly at Luke over the top of his little round spectacles.
‘I will have great influence in the new Iraq,’ he announced with great self-importance. ‘I will see to it that you are well rewarded..’
‘Fuck your rewards,’ Luke replied. ‘Who is he?’
‘My deputy,’ Abu Famir stated flatly. ‘And I will not see him killed. ’
Luke glanced at Finn. You might not get a fucking choice, he thought to himself as he started the engine. Abu Famir was still talking. ‘I know your Prime Minister Stratton well. We have spoken on the telephone. He has great respect for my judgement…’
They set off again. They’d been travelling for five minutes when Luke became aware of a sound from the back seat. He looked over his shoulder. Amit was moving — shaking his head — and muttering to himself. ‘What’s he saying?’ he asked Finn.
‘Fuck knows. Delirious.’
‘He must see a doctor,’ Abu Famir declared.
‘Thanks. I’ll phone for a fucking appointment.’
A couple of minutes later Luke hit the brakes. Something had caught his attention. He and Finn got out of the car. The terrain to the right was rough and undulating, and 500 metres away there was an outcrop of bare rock, about the size of a small house. A thin wadi ran towards it, alongside which was a rough dirt track that fed off the road on which they were travelling about thirty metres forward of their position.
Luke took the wheel again. They trundled slowly towards the track, turned right along the wadi and made their way to the rocks. The closer they drew, the higher the rocks loomed. He stopped ten metres from them.
‘Let’s recce,’ he said to Finn. The two soldiers grabbed their carbines and started walking round the rocks. The sides were smooth and weathered; to start with, they looked like they offered little in the way of protection, but on the far edge, out of sight of the car, they found a crevice about three metres wide and ten high. It was dark inside — from the opening Luke and Finn could only see a couple of metres in.
‘Cover me,’ Luke said.
Finn nodded, and aimed his rifle into the crevice while Luke stepped in.
It smelt musty. The temperature was a couple of degrees lower than outside, but it was dry and the ground was flat. As his eyes grew used to the gloom, he saw that the crevice was about twenty metres deep and — crucially — unoccupied. No doubt the desert dwellers of this area knew of it, but as somewhere to lie up for the day it would do. He walked outside and nodded to Finn. ‘We can get the motor in,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Finn didn’t look happy, and he started to reason with Luke. ‘Look, mate, don’t tell me you can’t see there’s something strange going on here. We can still ditch him. He could still die of his wounds. Abu Famir doesn’t have to realise, nor do the Ruperts back at base.’
Luke looked back across the bleak expanse of the desert. It looked totally empty, but he knew that danger could appear almost from nowhere: desert patrols, Republican Guard troops investigating the shoot-out back at the village, even innocent Bedouin wanderers stumbling across them. Their situation was dangerous, no doubt about it. Sometimes, though, you just had to go with your gut. This was one of those times, and Luke wasn’t going to waste Amit until he knew exactly who he was.
‘We lie up here till dark, then we go,’ he told Finn in a tone of voice that offered no argument, and the two of them hurried back round to the other side of the rocky outcrop to collect their car and their strange pair of passengers.
Chet and Suze headed west, then north. It was slow going. When Chet first pulled over, Suze looked alarmed. ‘What’s wrong? What are you doing?’
‘Checking for tails.’
He repeated this every twenty minutes. Occasionally he would do a U-turn, retrace his steps and take another route. A good tail, he knew, would drive past him when he pulled over, reduce their speed and then wait for Chet to catch up. He needed to try to scupper any tricks like that. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was the best he could do. Suze only asked him what he was doing once. After that they sat in awkward silence.
They stayed off the main roads, driving south of Oxford then north up towards Birmingham before bearing west towards the Welsh border. When he saw the first sign for Hereford, Chet had to fight the urge to follow it. He had friends there, of course. If he made a couple of phone calls, there’d be a welcoming committee for him at Credenhill. But a welcoming committee wasn’t what he wanted. Chet was going dark — for how long, he didn’t know.
The weather started to change around 15.00 hrs. Big black clouds billowed in from the west and the windscreen started to become spotted with rain.
‘A storm’s coming,’ Chet murmured. Suze didn’t respond.
As they crossed the border, thunder boomed across the sky and the rain fell more heavily. Ten minutes later it was a torrent. Every time there was a crack of thunder, Suze jumped in her seat. She was like a timid animal, ready to bolt but not knowing which way to go. Chet had no words of comfort for her. His mind was on other things. With the windscreen wipers going full pelt and everyone’s headlamps on, it had become more difficult for him to keep an eye on anyone following. Not good — but at least it was equally difficult for anyone trying to tail them.
The light was beginning to fail when he headed south, passing through several grim mid-Wales towns, their streets deserted because of the insistent rain. And it was almost dark when his headlamps lit up a signpost that read: ‘brecon beacons national park’.
‘Nearly there,’ he told Suze, like he was talking to a child at the end of a long journey.
Chet knew the geography of the Beacons better than he knew anywhere. He’d lost count of the number of nights he’d spent there, freezing his nuts off in the months approaching SAS selection, and many times subsequently on exercises. Every peak and valley was familiar to him; every road and every stream. When people are on the run, they return to places they know well. Chet’s pursuer might be expecting him to go back to his little flat off Seven Sisters Road; but in fact the rugged landscape of south-east Wales felt more like home than any shitty little corner of north London ever could.
The quieter and more winding the roads became, the more relaxed Chet felt. There were no cars now. Nobody following. No risk of vehicle identification cameras or unexpected police patrol cars. Just the Beacons, the heavy rain and a few hardy, bedraggled sheep. When he saw their final destination — the lights of a single, solitary farmstead a couple of hundred metres away, he felt more relieved than at any moment since he’d awoken on his birthday. And that seemed like weeks ago.
‘Where are we?’
It was the first thing Suze had said for a couple of hours. Her voice was cracked and quiet.
‘A B amp;B. We should be able to get a room here for the night. Stay under the radar.’
A pause.
‘We’ll tell the owners we’re married.’
Suze frowned. ‘What? Why?’
‘Because nobody remembers boring married couples. And because I want you in the same room as me, where I can see you. And where we can talk.’
Suze swallowed hard. ‘Right,’ she said, and they drove in silence up towards the farmhouse.
The rain was still heavy, and although it was only a short run from the car to the front door, they were half-soaked by the time they got there. They sheltered in a shallow porch where an old sign said ‘vacancies’, and they had to ring the bell twice before anyone answered. The door was opened by an elderly lady — seventy-five, perhaps older — with wispy grey hair, half-moon glasses and hearing aids on both ears. She peered at them suspiciously, as though guests were the last thing she expected at this bed and breakfast, while a floppy-eared cocker spaniel sniffed around her feet.
‘Yes?’
‘We need a room.’ Chet’s voice was abrupt.
‘A room?’ The old woman had a faint Welsh accent. She looked up at Chet’s scarred face with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Chet was about to reply, when Suze butted in. ‘We’ve travelled a very long way,’ she said, in much more friendly tones. ‘Might you have somewhere for us?’
The old lady’s face softened slightly now that Suze was talking to her. ‘Ah well, you’d better come in,’ she said. She took a few paces back, and the two of them walked into the house. ‘You can leave your rucksack in the porch,’ she told Chet. ‘We don’t want it dripping all over the floor now, do we?’
‘It’s dry,’ Chet told her. It was also heavy on account of the alabaster figurine he’d stashed in there.
Stepping into the farmhouse was like stepping into another century. Heavy oak beams traversed the low ceiling of what appeared to be a large reception-room-cum-kitchen, and a fire smouldered in a blackened inglenook. There was a very old gas oven along one wall, tired-looking floral worktops on either side, and a large butler’s sink, cracked and stained yellow. Heavy flagstones covered the floor and the whole place smelt of woodsmoke.
The spaniel started investigating Suze, sniffing round her feet and nuzzling her ankles with its nose. She bent down to scratch its ears and this seemed to please the old lady, who directed her conversation only at Suze. ‘She likes you,’ she said, in the slightly too loud tones of the almost-deaf.
Suze smiled and stood up again. ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘How many nights, dear?’
Suze glanced at Chet, who covertly held up a single finger.
‘Just one,’ she replied, and the old lady took a leather-bound guestbook from the heavy mahogany sideboard.
‘I’ll be needing your names.’
‘Carter,’ Chet said quickly. ‘Mr and Mrs Carter.’
The old lady ignored him. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said to Suze. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing…’
Suze smiled and helped write the name in the guestbook. Moments later they were being led across the flagstone floor, into an adjoining hallway and up a wide, winding, stone staircase that led to the first floor. The old lady climbed it with difficulty. ‘I can’t be doing with stairs at my age,’ she complained. ‘I only come up here for guests.’
The landing had threadbare rugs and creaking floorboards. They passed one room on the right-hand side of the landing before the old lady showed them into a second room. Suze took one look at it and, still in buttering-up mode, said, ‘It’s perfect. We’ll…’
But Chet interrupted her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not this one.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked the old lady.
He glanced up to the ceiling where there was a removable panel, presumably leading to an attic. ‘What else have you got?’
The old lady looked offended, but she led them back along the landing towards the first door they’d passed. This room was much more basic than the other. Frayed curtains, a lumpy, iron-framed double bed. Next to the bed was an occasional table with a beige, functional telephone on it. The adjoining bathroom had mildewed grout between the tiles and an avocado-coloured suite stained white with limescale.
Chet checked the window. The frame was thin and rotten, but it was locked and it looked out on to the front where he’d parked. There was no attic hatch.
‘This will do,’ he said.
‘I can’t give you anything to eat, you know,’ the old woman announced. It sounded like an accusation. ‘And there’s nowhere nearby.’
‘Please, don’t worry,’ Suze told her. She clearly had a way with the oldies. ‘We’re glad for the room. You’re very kind to…’
‘Is there a key?’ Chet interrupted.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘ A key? ’
The old woman looked at him as if he’d made a lewd suggestion. ‘Oh no… no, there’s no key.’
She shook her head and left the couple, muttering to herself and leaving the door ajar. Chet closed the door, then stood with his back against it. He gave Suze a piercing look — one that she couldn’t withstand for long. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her head in her hands.
‘Are you sure we’re safe here?’
He walked over, grabbed a high-backed chair that was against the wall and lodged it under the door handle. ‘As safe as we can be. But if that woman who’s chasing us is the person I think she is, we won’t stay safe for long.’
‘Who do you think she is?’
But Chet didn’t answer.
She looked up at him again. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For helping me.’
Chet shrugged. Suddenly his leg was very sore, and as he stepped into the room his limp was more pronounced than usual.
‘Your leg?’
He frowned. Then, after a moment, he pulled his trouser leg up a few inches to reveal the sturdy black shin of his artificial leg. Suze’s eyes widened but, he noticed, she didn’t look appalled. ‘I didn’t realise…’ she said. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I had a little disagreement with a man called Ivanovic. It was some time ago.’
‘That looks like more than a disagreement.’
‘He wanted to kill me. I didn’t want him to.’
‘Were you in the military?’ Suze asked.
‘You could say that.’
A pause.
‘Does it… does it hurt?’
Chet didn’t want to discuss his disability. There were more urgent topics. ‘Tell me, why were you eavesdropping on that meeting?’
Suze bit her lip and looked as though she was gathering her thoughts. ‘It’s the Grosvenor Group,’ she said at last.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you know who they are?’
Chet walked over to the window and looked out. The rain was still sheeting. It hammered against the window. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Dickheads in suits?’
‘You work for them?’
‘I’m a freelance security consultant. They pay me to debug rooms, that’s all. It’s not like I’m sitting round the board table.’
‘Of course not. You’re not the kind of person they want.’ She took a few deep breaths and looked around nervously. ‘They can’t find us here, can they?’
Chet shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Suze closed her eyes briefly and carried on talking — slowly and in fragments, as though she was unsure of herself. ‘The Grosvenor Group… it’s an American… a multinational… a kind of.. ’ A look of frustration crossed her face as she searched for the right word. ‘… A conglomeration of venture capitalists. They invest money in other, smaller companies… sometimes they buy them out totally…’ She gave an apologetic little smile. ‘I don’t really understand how all that stuff works.’
Nor did Chet. As far as he could tell, the Grosvenor Group was a bunch of money men. In his book, that meant arseholes.
Another crash of thunder, and the rain gave a renewed burst against the windowpanes. Suze stood up and started pacing the room. Suddenly her green eyes were flashing. ‘The Grosvenor Group mostly puts its money into military enterprises — arms companies, aerospace, that kind of thing.’ She stopped pacing. ‘Basically, they invest in people killing other people.’
Yeah, Chet thought. Welcome to the world.
‘The Grosvenor Group makes a lot of money,’ Suze continued. ‘I mean, like, a lot of money. Billions. You don’t make that kind of cash without influence. Their board is like a… a Who’s Who of Western politics. Former American senators, people with influence in Washington and Whitehall, politicians who might one day return to office. They’ve even got former US presidents advising them.’
Chet shook his head. ‘So some politicians are involved in the arms trade. That doesn’t explain why somebody’s trying to kill us.’
Suddenly she turned. ‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you see? If the US and the UK go to war in Iraq, it’ll be like all the Grosvenor Group’s Christmases have come at once. Arms concessions, reconstruction deals.’
‘People have always made money out of war, Suze.’
She stared at him contemptuously. ‘And for some people, it’s all they care about. My father was killed by a landmine in Angola. He was out there immunising kids. You might think it’s OK to sell shit like that. I don’t. Where’s that bloody tape?’
Chet walked over to his rucksack and rummaged around. He pulled out the Dictaphone and handed it to Suze, who sat back down on the edge of the bed and started fiddling with the controls.
For a while there was no sound in the room other than the rain against the window and the rewinding of the cassette. When Suze pressed play, all Chet heard was the crackly static that had filled his ears when he’d listened in with the headphones the day before, which morphed every ten or fifteen seconds into the sound of distorted, indistinguishable voices. He looked at Suze. She was hunched over the machine, her face intent.
They’d been listening for a couple of minutes when, all of a sudden, the static and distortion evolved into something recognisable.
‘… it’s extremely important that any funds payable now or in the future cannot be traced. ’
‘ Prime Minister, that’s a given. We’re very good at it… ’
‘ How do you propose to…? ’
The voices disappeared for a few seconds, replaced with a high-pitched whine of feedback. When that faded, the American was speaking again.
‘… worldwide network of business associates. If we ask them, they’ll offer you consultancy fees, speaking arrangements — all highly lucrative, Prime Minister. Highly lucrative. And untraceable to the Grosvenor Group. Hell, you won’t even need to rely on your memoirs for a pension. You could give the advance to charity. You’ll be raking it in from all… ’
Static.
Distortion.
Chet stared at the machine as the implications of what he’d just heard sunk in.
It continued to play for another minute, before he heard words that were more familiar to him.
‘ Trust me, Prime Minister Stratton. This war is good to go… the Americans are all on board. The question is, how are you going to get it through…? ’
More static.
Suze stopped the tape and looked up at him.
Chet had a sick sensation in his stomach. At the same time he felt as though a fog had been lifted. ‘The Grosvenor Group are paying Stratton to take us to war? Paying him personally?’
Suze stared hopelessly at him.
Chet thought about his Regiment mates — behind enemy lines, if his guess was right; he thought of the regular green army troops, preparing to move on Baghdad. How many of them would make it home?
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘Nobody. Only us.’
‘Aren’t you part of some protest group — activists?’
Suze shook her head almost apologetically.
‘Where did you get the laser listening device?’ he asked. The question had been nagging him for a while.
‘The Internet. There’s a guy who…’ She gave him a hopeless look. ‘I spent everything I had…’ It seemed like she was telling the truth.
Chet tried to clear his head. So many things suddenly made sense: Stratton’s meeting on the QT, away from Downing Street; the relentless assassin, tracking down first him, then Suze. The order had clearly gone out to eliminate them, and that order would stand for as long as they stayed alive.
Unless…
‘ It’s extremely important that any funds payable now or in the future cannot be traced… ’
Chet was trained to make the best use of the materials at his disposal, and right now that tape was their best weapon. Their only weapon. A scant resource, and they had to use it wisely.
‘What are we going to do?’ Suze asked.
Chet looked around the room. Hiding out here was OK for a bit, but it wasn’t a long-term solution.
‘We make it public,’ he said.
Suze blinked at him. ‘Won’t that…?’
‘As soon as this is in all the papers, Stratton and the Grosvenor Group will have bigger fish to fry.’
‘Are you sure?’
Chet gave her a direct look. ‘No. Not really. But we haven’t got a choice. They will find us, Suze. Eventually. Somehow. They will find us.’
She swallowed hard. ‘All right,’ she said, her voice timid.
‘Until then, we stay dark. We don’t contact anyone. We avoid populated areas where we might get picked up on CCTV. We don’t use mobile phones, bank cards or passports. And you stay close to me, you understand?’
Suze nodded, and Chet limped over to the window again. The storm was raging, the rain hammering against the window and the night was black. That was something, at least.
‘I’m scared,’ Suze said.
‘Good,’ Chet replied. ‘Stay scared. That way you don’t mess up.’
He turned to look at her and saw that fear was written clearly on her face. He didn’t blame her, because he felt it too.
The sound of the rain was joined by the sound of the shower in the en-suite bathroom. Chet paced, waiting for Suze to finish. Even though she was only in the adjoining room, he felt edgy not having her in his line of sight.
The shower stopped and the door opened. Suze appeared. Her red hair was clean and scraped back off her face, some of it sticking to the nape of her neck. She wore a towel wrapped around her torso that revealed her slim arms and her slight, sloping shoulders; and she was carrying a little bundle of her clothes in front of her. Her lips were slightly parted. She looked beautiful, but fragile. Like she could break at any minute. Suddenly she was no longer the crazy girl on the roof or the frightened target of a ruthless assassin. She was a young woman — vulnerable, certainly, but attractive and looking at Chet with an expression he understood.
‘I feel better now I’m clean,’ she said. There was a slight tremor in her voice, and Chet could tell she was trying to sound conversational.
‘I can wait in there if you want to get changed,’ he offered.
Suze didn’t answer. Instead she put her clothes in an untidy pile on the floor, then took a tentative step towards him. Another step, and when she was close enough she rested her head against his chest.
They stood there like that for a moment. Awkwardly. Chet could hear her nervous breathing, and feel the beat of her pulse against him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and then another. Suze felt tiny in his embrace. Her damp hair soaked through his shirt, and its fragrance filled his senses. It smelt good.
A boom of thunder. Suze was startled. ‘When will this bloody storm finish?’ she whispered. As if, in the grand scheme of things, a storm was important.
She looked up towards Chet and he felt her breath against his face. Her body was warm.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. ‘Take the bed. I’ll…’
‘I’m sorry about the things I said to you,’ she interrupted him.
‘No…’
He didn’t finish, because suddenly — as if she might lose the courage if she didn’t act immediately — Suze had brushed her lips against his. Chet frowned. It had been a long time since anybody had given him that kind of attention; since anybody had seen past the scars on his face or his awkward gait.
Suze stepped backwards. There was no smile on her face; just a kind of nervousness, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had just done. Especially here. Especially now.
‘I need to wash,’ Chet told her. His words were stilted.
Suze glanced at the floor. ‘Right…’ she said. ‘OK…’ She watched him as he limped self-consciously past her and into the bathroom.
It was still steamy in there from her shower. Chet had to wipe the condensation from the mirror, and he only had a few seconds to look at his tired, scarred face before it misted over again. He unbuttoned his shirt and splashed cold water over his face and torso, hoping it would clear his mind as well as his skin. It didn’t. The words on the tape replayed themselves in his head, and the smell of Suze’s freshly washed hair lingered in his senses. She was scared. Vulnerable. That much was obvious. She was relying on him to protect her. Chet was no psychologist, but it wasn’t too hard to work out that her advances just now were a symptom of that.
Images rose in his mind. The intruder in his room, her face full of steely purpose. Doug, his friend, dead, broken and spattered in his own gore on the railway track. Despite all his setbacks, the guy had been so full of life. And now…
Chet winced at the memory.
The wind howled outside once more, and a fresh wave of rain battered the window. For a moment Chet forgot about shadowy intruders and corrupt politicians. It was bleak outside and they were alone. Why shouldn’t they take comfort in each other’s company? Seize the day — that’s what soldiers always did. He wiped the mirror again. A battered face looked back out at him. Chet grabbed a towel and dried his face and upper body, before slinging it round his neck, taking a deep breath and opening the door into the bedroom.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he barked the moment he saw Suze.
She was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her towel still wrapped around her, and she was fumbling with the beige telephone on the side table, slamming it back down on its cradle.
‘I was just…’
‘Christ, Suze, do you think this is some sort of game? They want to kill us.’
She stared at him, looking like she might cry.
‘I said we don’t contact anyone. Do you know how easy it is to trace a fucking phone call? Who were you calling? I said, who were you calling? ’
‘I… it was… oh God… it was just the Met Office. I wanted to know how long this storm was going to last.’
Chet stared at her, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘Just don’t… use… the phone, all right?’
When he opened his eyes, she was standing by the side of the bed. ‘I’m really… I’m really sorry. I didn’t think it was…’ His voice trailed off and she chewed at her lower lip.
Suze took a tentative step towards him, and then another. Before Chet knew it, she was in his arms again, trembling slightly as she pressed her damp hair against his chest. They stayed like that for a minute before she stepped backwards again.
One pace.
Two.
She inclined her head slightly, then let the towel fall. It dropped heavily to the floor to reveal her slim, delicately curved body, her pale skin and her small breasts.
Chet glanced over to the door. It was still wedged shut with the chair. He turned to look at Suze. She was lying on the bed, and finally managed to give him a nervous smile.
‘Look after me,’ she whispered.
Chet hesitated for a moment, but then, without another word, he went to her.
As the rain fell in the Brecon Beacons, it also fell on the southern outskirts of London. It kept most visitors away from the Greenacres Retirement Home, a recently, and cheaply, built establishment next to the main road through Morden. In truth it hardly took freak weather conditions to discourage visitors to this place. The corridors were starkly lit and smelt of disinfectant and hospital food. There were no stairs, but lifts and ramps to enable wheelchairs to move around the buildings. The day room was decorated with floral curtains and dark carpet tiles. Channel Four News was playing on the TV, even though there was nobody there to watch it; at this time of the evening all the clients of Greenacres were encouraged to be in their rooms. It was easier for the poorly paid, often temporary, often Eastern European staff that way.
In Room 213, on the second floor overlooking the main road, an old lady sat in her wheelchair. It was dim in here — only a low-voltage bulb in a bedside lamp lit the room, but she preferred it that way. Her eyesight was deteriorating, and she found that bright lights almost blinded her.
Her right foot and ankle were swollen and wrapped in a bandage to protect the sores on her skin. She had decided a long time ago that it was easier to stay in the wheelchair all day than haul herself in and out of the armchair that was, with the exception of her single bed and a glossy pine dressing table, the only piece of furniture in her sparse room. A pink hyacinth — her favourite flower — was blooming on the windowsill behind her. Its fragrance went some way to disguising the institutional smell of the place, but the old lady wasn’t thinking about that. She was holding the telephone against her ear, and she was clearly flustered and confused.
‘I… I don’t understand dear,’ she stammered. Her voice was as frail as the thin hands that held the receiver.
The old lady frowned as she listened to the voice at the other end.
‘But… but… where are you? What do you mean, you can’t visit me? I don’t understand. Hello? Hello? ’
She looked at the phone. And then, with frightened and perplexed eyes, she let it fall from her hands and squinted up to see the other woman in the room with her, half hidden in the shadows behind the door.
‘Stay quiet, or I’ll kill you.’
It was clear to the intruder that the old woman was confused, struggling to understand who she was and why she was here. It was perhaps the strangeness and uncertainty of her situation as much as the Beretta Model 70 semi-automatic aimed at her head that was now distressing the old lady.
‘Your daughter?’ the younger woman asked.
The old lady shook her head but she was too scared to keep the pretence up for long, and after a few seconds a pathetic little mewing came out of her lips, accompanied by a trembling of her whole body.
The woman put a mobile phone to her ear. She waited a moment before saying a single word. ‘Traced?’
The reply was equally curt. A male voice that belonged to someone she had never met and never would. ‘Traced.’
She put the phone back in her pocket and returned her attention to the old lady. She was still making fretful little noises. Still shaking. But she had the presence of mind to reach for the body of the phone — an attempt, the woman presumed, to call through to reception and alert them to the intruder in her room. It was a moment’s work to pull the phone from her weak hands and place it out of reach on the dressing table. The mewing grew a little more desperate.
She needed to be killed, of course. That much was obvious. She had seen the intruder’s face and knew what she was after. A gunshot was out of the question. Often the best you could do was mislead people about the cause of death. So it came quite naturally for her to look around the room in search of a more subtle instrument than the Beretta.
It didn’t take her long.
The old lady’s dressing table was neatly arranged. Two fading family photographs of a young girl and an older man, a hairbrush, a bottle of Nivea skin cream and a Tupperware box containing an array of medication. The woman looked through the box, discounting the vitamins and the cod liver oil and paying attention to the less benign drugs. The bottle she finally selected was made of brown glass and bore a printed pharmacist’s label. Warfarin. One capsule to be taken once a day, it instructed, and — in stark, bold letters — ‘in case of overdose seek immediate medical attention’. She shook the bottle. It was almost full.
‘I mustn’t take those,’ the old lady whispered. She sounded rather like a child repeating her parent’s instructions. ‘The nurse gives them to me. I mustn’t take them myself… it’s very important.. ’ She nodded rapidly to emphasise her point.
The woman ignored her and, laying her Beretta on the dressing table way out of reach, spilled some of the little pink capsules into the palm of her hand. The old lady started shaking her head as she drew near, and the mewing started again, more panicked than before.
The first capsule was the most difficult to insert into the old lady’s mouth. It meant pinching her papery, wrinkled cheeks with one hand — not too hard, so as to avoid bruising — and using the other to force it past her brittle teeth and on to the back of her tongue. Warm saliva collected around the woman’s two fingers as she forced the old lady’s head back, and inserted two more capsules in quick succession. There was a strangled, gargling sound from her throat, which grew more severe as the capsules were forced down. Now the old lady tried to beat her attacker with her fists, but she was much too weak to make any difference. Another three capsules were forced down her throat.
Then three more.
And another three.
The old lady was choking for breath now, holding her grey, veiny hands around her neck as the woman stood back and examined her handiwork. She didn’t fully know what the short-term effects of a Warfarin overdose were, but that didn’t matter. The capsules were only there in the unlikely event of an autopsy. She stepped over to the bed, picked up the pillow and returned to the wheelchair.
Even through the fog of her confusion, the old lady knew what was about to happen. She looked up with bloodshot eyes and shook her head as forcefully as she could. ‘Please,’ she managed to gasp through her breathlessness. ‘Please, no. My daughter…’
The woman put her lips just an inch from the old woman’s ear. ‘Your daughter will be joining you very soon,’ she whispered. ‘When I kill her, I will explain that her mother died squeaking like a cat.’
The old lady shook her head and a tear forced its way from her withered tear sacs into the corner of her eye. ‘Suze is a good girl,’ she whispered. ‘A good girl. You mustn’t hurt her…’
The woman sneered slightly at these words — the last, she knew, that the old lady would ever utter. She placed the pillow over her face — gently, because she knew that to press too hard could cause bruising around the nose and mouth — and then lightly pressed with her free hand against the back of her head, entwining her fingers in the thin, dry hair.
It was pathetically easy. The old lady’s struggles were feeble; the way she flailed her arms and kicked her thin legs quite ineffectual; her mewing stopped and she was silent. The woman’s eyes shone in the gloom as she went about her work. And because her victim was old and her lungs were tired, the process was quick. After forty-five seconds the flailing had eased off; after a minute and a half the body had slumped in the wheelchair. The woman removed the pillow and put two fingers to the jugular. Nothing. The old lady’s face was still and grey. She replaced the pillow on the bed, then wheeled the chair in front of the dressing table, where she left the Warfarin bottle open just within reach of the fresh corpse.
A new smell hit her senses. Urine. That was no surprise. Now she was dead, the old lady’s muscles were relaxing, and that included the bladder. Sometimes it happened sooner, sometimes later. In this case it had happened almost immediately, and now there was a dripping of liquid from the edge of the wheelchair on to the carpet. The woman was experienced enough to know that the bowels would probably follow, but by the time that occurred, she would be long gone.
It was calm in the room now. The rain continued to spatter against the window; the pink hyacinth remained the only splash of colour in this gloomy place. The woman allowed herself a bleak smile. The staff here would be used to occupants dying. When they found the old lady they would surely assume that she had come to the end of her natural life. If anyone did decide to investigate further, they would discover the overdose of Warfarin and assume that the confused old lady had had one bout of confusion too many.
She opened the door and walked out. The corridor was deserted, and she didn’t encounter a single person until she was down in reception, where nobody paid her any attention anyway. Outside the home, she pulled out her phone and called a number.
‘Mrs McArthur has quietly slipped from our embrace,’ she said.
Then she waited as the voice at the other end read out an address.