A Few Words for the Dead (24 page)

‘I haven’t the first idea,’ said Ryska, ‘as usual. Shining, what’s happening?’

He held out the phone to her, not saying a word.

She took it from him and looked at the photo he’d opened. ‘Jesus…’

‘There’s more,’ said Shining, his voice fragile and quiet as if he didn’t want to wake someone.

Ryska scrolled through the emails, Jennings looking over her shoulder.

‘Who are these people?’ Jennings asked.

‘Friends,’ said Shining. ‘More dead friends.’

‘Who did this?’ Jennings asked, tapping the screen. ‘April… Your sister?’

‘No,’ said Ryska. ‘It’s him isn’t it? It. The thing that controlled Robie.’

Shining nodded. ‘Tightening the screws. Making me bleed.’

The phone buzzed in Ryska’s hand. She made to hand it back to him but he waved it away.

Ryska tapped the message to open it.

‘“I’ll be with you soon,”’ she read aloud. ‘“Are you ready?”’

‘No,’ said Shining, ‘I’m not.’

Ryska put the phone down on the table. ‘But why doesn’t it just, you know, appear?’

‘Because it’s in my sister and it wants to make me suffer. It wants to break every last part of me before we’re done.’ Shining was crying again. Nobody should have to see so many dead friends. ‘It’s enjoying itself.’

‘What does it want?’ asked Jennings.

‘It wants him,’ Ryska said, nodding at Shining.

‘Well we can’t let it have him,’ Jennings replied.

‘That’s exactly what you do,’ Shining said. ‘I need you all to leave now.’

‘No way,’ said Ryska. ‘We can’t just walk out of here and leave you sitting there.’

‘Why not?’ Shining shouted, accumulated fury spitting out of him like poison. ‘Because I’m a security risk?’

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Because we don’t abandon one of our own.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, pushing himself up off the floor. ‘I’m shouting at the wrong person, I know.’

‘I understand,’ said Ryska, ‘but I mean what I say. We’re not just leaving you.’

‘Think about it,’ he said to her. ‘You can’t help me. If you’re here, you’re just another weapon. I know what I have to do and I don’t need your help to do it.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Actually that’s not completely true, I need a gun.’

‘But shooting at it won’t stop it,’ said Jennings, ‘will it?’

‘The gun’s not for shooting it,’ said Ryska, leaning back against the wall, her head in her hands. ‘There has to be a way to fix this.’

‘There is,’ said Shining. ‘I had a plan… but that was before I knew what it had done. Before I knew about April. Now I…’ He shook his head. ‘I need to think. I need to get this right…’ He walked up and down, rubbing at his head as if trying to force his thoughts clear. ‘At least Toby and Tamar aren’t here. I haven’t cause to be grateful for much but at least there is that…’

‘How much further?’ Toby asked, checking the speedometer and risking another few miles an hour.

‘I do not know,’ said Tamar, ‘half an hour maybe? It is hard to tell.’

‘I wish April had been clearer. Why wouldn’t she explain? Why wouldn’t she say?’

‘We do not know. We will know in half an hour. I am sure August is all right, he is a brilliant man, a clever man.’

‘He’s the best man I’ve ever met,’ admitted Toby and suddenly he was hit with a feeling he hadn’t experienced in months. It welled up through him and he was forced to slam on the brakes. ‘Christ,’ he said, body shaking, ‘not now, not now…’

When he had first met August Shining, dumped on Section 37’s doorstep like an unwanted orphan, he had still been struggling with what he called the Fear. A terror so tangible, so all-encompassing, that when it fell on him he could barely breathe. The sensation was of a ceiling being lowered, the constant belief that you were about to smack your head on a world that was too close. He had hidden it as best he could, worked through it when possible, contrived an excuse to cover it when not. His file had shown a PTSD diagnosis after secondment to Basra, but he’d known how easily that could have been the kiss of death on his career so he’d done everything possible to deny it.

Of course, his career had hardly soared anyway.

Until he’d met August Shining.

Shining had trusted him. Shining had allowed him to grow strong, to be the man he’d always hoped he was capable of being.

The Fear hadn’t vanished, not completely, but it had shrunk to a perfectly manageable level. It had become something he had controlled, something he could put inside a box when it threatened to take him over. He had beaten it. All thanks to Shining.

Tamar was holding him. ‘Toby, it is OK. Just breathe.’

Now he was showing her how weak he really was, how pathetic. Why had she married him, anyway? He wasn’t worth it. He was broken, stupid…

He gasped for air. He couldn’t let it take him, not after everything he’d been through. He was better than that. He had to pull himself together. Had to put it back inside its box and fight. He had to make sure August was safe.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘so sorry. It was just… I had a…’ He shook his head. He’d never talked to Tamar about the Fear. Had always thought it would make him look less worthy. Ridiculous. He should give her more credit than that.

‘After I was in the Middle East,’ he said, ‘I suffered a breakdown. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Panic Attacks. When I first met August, I was still suffering. I could manage most days but… but sometimes it was hard. It was August that helped me deal with it. He made me stronger.’

‘He made you the man you are?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. He let you be the man you always were. That is good, but he didn’t change you. He showed you how to let the illness go.’

‘Maybe. But I owe him a lot. He means a great deal to me. I couldn’t bear it if he…’

‘Of course you could. We can bear anything. We always think a thing will break us, then it happens and we do not break. We are strong. So strong we are scared to admit it to ourselves I think.’

‘But if he’s…’

‘We do not know what has happened to him. He may be all right. We will go, now, and we will find out. But you are strong, my love, you can do anything.’ She smiled. ‘And if you struggle, I will help you. Because I am strong too.’

‘You are that,’ he agreed, nodding. Slowly the Fear was receding, the ceiling raising a few inches. ‘Sorry, it just hit me out of nowhere. I’m…’ He rubbed at his eyes. ‘Come on, this isn’t helping any of us.’

He drove on.

‘Of course,’ said the Assassin’s cab driver, ‘ideologically, most religion’s on rocky ground, isn’t it? You don’t have to look overseas to see a text filled with stoning, bigotry and sexism. It was like I said to Justin Welby the other day, “Justin,” I said, “it’s all very well talking about reform and revisionist thinking but when your core text is built on outdated values you’re building your house on sand.”’

They were close to their target now, the Assassin watching the GPS marker on his phone, slowly edging towards the address he had been sent.

He tried to get a lay of the land through the window but it was next to impossible with the lack of lighting.

He checked his watch. They’d made bad time thanks to the congestion leaving the city but he still had plenty to spare.

As his phone told him they were almost on top of their target, he pointed towards a farm track that led off the main road.

‘Pull in there,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them to know I’m coming.’

‘Fair enough,’ the driver said, perhaps slightly aggrieved at having to halt his invective.

He pulled in and switched off the engine. Without the headlights all was dark around them.

‘What’s the plan then?’ the driver asked. ‘You want me to hang here while you do what you have to do?’

‘Something like that.’ The Assassin said, lifting his bag up from the footwell. ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’

‘Well, as long as you’re not all night about it. I can’t fob control off for ever.’

‘That won’t be a problem,’ the Assassin replied, punching the driver in the throat. The man convulsed and the Assassin reached over, grabbed the man’s head and wrenched it in a sharp turn. There was a crunch, the driver’s legs kicking and thrashing for a few seconds then lying still.

The Assassin felt a sharp pain in his upper arm. One of the man’s badges had come loose and embedded itself near his armpit. He plucked it out. It was from a caravan park in South Wales, a jolly sun offering an enamel smile. He pushed the badge into the dead man’s chest and leaned over to disengage the safety lock on the driver’s door and eject the man’s seatbelt.

He reached up and deactivated the automatic light before opening his own door. He didn’t want the sudden light to slow his night vision.

Climbing out, he moved around to the driver’s side, opened the door and tipped the body onto the verge. It was an annoying few minutes, dragging the body out of plain sight but it will always be a killer’s lot that fat people sometimes need to die too.

That done, he hoisted his bag over his shoulder and began to jog along the road.

It took him five more minutes to reach the house. At one point, he was forced to take cover as another car passed, a dark hatchback. Had they come from the house? Possibly, possibly not – who knew what else was around here?

Arriving at the cottage, he noted it was predominantly dark and there was no vehicle parked outside. This was no firm evidence of anything, though the part of his mind that constantly shifted and correlated the details around him, wondered if the car he had seen
had
come from here. Did that mean the house was now empty? Had he missed his target?

A small security light on the front porch was the only illumination. It revealed no sign of anyone but he made a wide circuit of the place just in case, moving carefully through the trees that surrounded it then returning to the front of the building.

He went back to the road and moved out of direct sight of the building. He withdrew his phone and sent a text to his client, letting him know that he was in position. A few minutes later a reply came: ‘Your friend should be leaving shortly. Suggest you surprise him then.’

The advice was sound. The Assassin didn’t know who might be in the house along with the target and, while he wasn’t concerned about handling multiple aggressors, the neatest solution was always the best.

He put the phone away and unpacked his bag by moonlight. He lifted out what appeared to be an old laptop. In reality, its chunky casing cracked open to reveal a small battery that allowed it to give the illusion of functionality, the rest of the space taken up by a handful of polymer-framed components.

He didn’t need to see to construct the pieces together, the process practised so repeatedly that it was automatic. Based on the popular Glock pistol, the gun had been further refined so as to make it lighter and invisible to metal detectors. It’s capacity was smaller than the standard nine cartridges, but the five plastic rounds it held had always been enough. Choose your target with care and one bullet was all you’d ever need.

The Assassin moved back into the trees surrounding the house, took up a position with a direct line of sight on the front door and adopted a comfortable position. The minute August Shining stepped out of the door he would be dead.

Convergence.

From his position on the hill, the Watcher saw it all come together.

He saw the car leave with the security officers inside it, bouncing its way out of the rough driveway, then speeding off along the road, its lights receding.

He saw the Assassin jogging along the road before making his cautious circuit of the house. He received the man’s text message and replied accordingly. How strange it was to be sat here, orchestrating events from afar, pulling strings like a puppeteer.

Any moment now, he felt sure, August Shining would die and then the night’s work would be all but over.

But plans are slippery things and, however much you may think you have anticipated all the possibilities, life invariably surprises you.

The first surprise of the night was the presence of another car on the road. This in itself was not worrying, it was an open road and, even at this time of night, traffic was hardly impossible. When it pulled into the driveway of the cottage, however, the Watcher’s plans began to fall apart.

Shining, finally alone with his thoughts, moved through the house, checking all the windows were closed and the back door firmly locked. Doors would not keep the Higher Power out, of course, but it would at least channel its host. He wanted the only point of access to be the front door.

He passed into the hallway, running his fingers along the wall, tapping gently at the door of the understairs storage cupboard before moving back into the interrogation room.

He was removing the covering from the window — revealing the best view of the front of the house — when he was suddenly blinded by a set of headlights. She was here.

The woman who was not quite April Shining had enjoyed a comical drive through the country lanes, constantly forcing the dead body of Oman out of her way as it kept toppling over whenever she hit a bump or a pothole. Finally it had folded on itself, its chubby, dead face wedged against the open glove box. There it congealed against a battered A to Z and a box of tissues, no longer a problem.

She pulled into the driveway of the cottage and got out of the car.

She looked at the blade of the craft knife she had used on Oman and decided it was of no further use. She flung it into the grass and tried to remember where she had left the gun. Handbag.

She had to wrestle Oman’s body out of the way, which took considerable effort. It eventually popped loose of its wedged position, its face blooming with stuck tissues and a torn close-up of Holborn Road. It hit the ground with a fart of dead air and she chuckled at the pantomime of it all as she dug her handbag out of the footwell. It was sticky with Oman’s blood but she pulled out the gun and a glistening humbug that now tasted of copper and meat.

Time to call in all debts.

The Assassin had darted back into the trees when the Mini had appeared. He watched from cover as the driver got out and wrestled with a body on the passenger seat. He hoped this was not be a complication but, if need be, she would just be another target. Better to kill someone for free than leave witnesses.