Murder Team (2 page)

‘So how do
we
find him?’

‘There’s a crematorium on the eastern side of the city. That might be your best place to start.’

Danny gave him a dangerous look. Triggs shrugged. ‘Just saying it as I find it, boy,’ he said. ‘We going to agree terms?’

Danny took out his wallet and withdrew a thick wad of American dollars. ‘Three thousand,’ he said. ‘You get the other half once Spud’s in the airport.’

‘That other half, you give to my daughter in London. I’ll let you have her address. Don’t tell her who it’s from or she won’t accept it.’ He sniffed. ‘Long story.’ He nodded at the wad of cash. ‘Stick that in the glove compartment. You’ll find yourself a little welcome gift in there.’

Danny opened the glove compartment. Stashed inside was a firearm: a Browning Hi-Power tucked into a leather holster. Danny swapped it for the wad of notes and took the weapon out of its holster. It felt good to be armed.

‘Loaded?’ he asked.

‘Not much good if it ain’t, boy,’ Triggs said. ‘Hopefully those rounds will stay nice and snug in their chamber.’

‘So what’s our first move? How do we find Spud?’

‘British soldier with a plastic pipe sticking out of his lungs? Not the easiest thing to keep under your hat.
Somebody
must have seen him. And trust me, boy, people are very bad at keeping secrets round these parts. If you know who to speak to, you can find out pretty much anything.’ Triggs glanced down at his mobile sat phone. ‘I’ll make some calls as we drive.’

‘Do that,’ Danny told him. And as Triggs fitted a bluetooth earpiece and started dialling a number with one hand, the other hand only lightly on the steering wheel, Danny looked out of the window. They were on a typical African highway. The roofs of the capital were a mile in the distance, and all around them were a mixture of very old Mercedes, rusty old runarounds and battered white vans acting as taxis, full to the brim with people, their roofs piled high with luggage. There were pedestrians walking by the side of the busy road, and some people had set up stalls alongside the traffic and among the fumes, selling fruit and cheap jewellery.

Danny felt himself frowning. He ignored the little voice in his head that told him finding his friend would be almost impossible. Triggs seemed confident, and Danny had to hang on to that.

But where was he? Where, in all this stinking country, was Spud?

2

17.00hrs, EAT

It was all Spud could do to breathe. Speaking was out of the question.

That didn’t stop his doctors – Jack and Ed – talking to him. He’d learned that it was their bedside manner, and he understood why: keep talking to the patient to keep his mind active. Because a patient with an active mind heals faster and better than one dwelling on his injuries. Spud had spent a lot of time trying to place their accents. Scandinavian, he reckoned. Possibly Norwegian. They certainly spoke very good English. Wherever they came from, they were definitely aid workers of some kind. Probably Red Cross. Spud didn’t know how long he’d been in their care – a few days, he reckoned – but he did know that barely a waking moment had passed without one or other of them talking to him, and sometimes both if they happened to be there together.

‘You’re looking good, buddy,’ said Jack.

Yeah
, Spud thought in the depths of his mind.
Looking like this I’ll be fighting them off with a shitty stick.

‘We might even get you off that drip tomorrow. Your infection’s cleared up.’

Spud glanced up at the drip stand on the left-hand side of his hospital bed, then down at the cannula stuck into the back of his left hand. A thin sheet covered the lower half of his body, but his torso was open to the hot, humid air, and a five-inch ladder of stitches ran down the centre of his sternum. Last time he remembered looking, the skin around them was puffy and white. It looked less angry now, but he still didn’t like to look at it.

Instead he rolled his eyes to take in his surroundings. This was no hospital. It was little more than a shack. One room with bare breeze-block walls. A single window, the paint on its wooden walls peeling away and the panes themselves covered with cut-out squares of newspaper to hide the interior from prying eyes. A strip light on the ceiling, which flickered off now and then when the outdoor generator failed.

‘As soon as you can walk,’ Ed announced, ‘and that won’t be too long, we can remove the catheter.’ Spud could just see the transparent bag full of dark yellow liquid hanging from his bedside.

‘Trust me,’ Jack announced, ‘first time you take a leak in the open air, you’ll feel great.’

Spud felt himself smiling. These were good men. They hadn’t just kept him alive, they’d kept him dignified: washing his sweaty body, feeding him easily digestible food, and once even rolling him on to his side and helping him take a shit. Best of all, they hadn’t bothered him with questions. Not that they didn’t have any. There had been times, in the confused jumble of the past few days, when they’d evidently thought Spud was sleeping. He’d heard fragments of whispered conversations.

We can’t keep him here much longer . . .

He’s a British soldier – an easy target for militant groups . . .

If anyone finds him . . .

We’ve told too many people we’re looking after him . . .

What if one of them talks . . .

To keep his mind off the pain in his chest, Spud had worked out from their whispered conversations that he was still in Eritrea where Danny Black had dumped him. That both doctors had family out here who knew nothing of their private patient. And that they wanted to keep it that way.

Spud put his mind to the possibility of walking. The very thought of it made him wince. And it was as if his doctors were in tune with his thoughts, because Jack immediately said, ‘No hurry, buddy. You just take your time.’

He gave them a grateful smile. Half of him resented being dependent on these two men. The other half was just glad they were there. He closed his eyes, and almost immediately nodded off.

It was the sound of a vehicle that woke him. At first he thought it was part of a dream, but as the sound grew louder, he shook off his slumber and realised that there was indeed a vehicle approaching. He tried to establish its direction. It seemed to be coming toward the window side of the room. Spud knew that was roughly east, because the sun was always brighter there first thing in the morning.

He tried to work out in his confused head why this approaching vehicle made him so anxious. It was just a car, after all. But after a few seconds he realised that in all the days he had been lying here, he hadn’t heard a single vehicle outside. Come to think of it, he hadn’t heard
anything
outside. No voices, no animals. Nothing.

So who the hell was approaching now?

The same question had obviously occurred to Jack and Ed. They were looking nervously at each other.

‘Turn out the lights,’ Jack said. ‘It’s just a shack. If they think nobody’s home . . .’

No!
Spud screamed in his mind.
It’s daytime . . . they probably can’t tell the light is even on . . . but if someone’s watching they’ll notice if you turn it off . . . it’ll just confirm this room is occupied.

But all that came from his mouth was a slight groan.

‘Don’t worry, buddy,’ Ed said, his voice falsely cheerful. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

He switched off the light, then locked the door with a single internal deadbolt.

Spud felt himself sweating. He tried to move his legs, but it sent a shock of pain through his torso and he collapsed into his mattress.

Silence outside. The vehicle had come to a halt. Spud tried to estimate its distance. Not easy, but he put it at about twenty metres. He could feel his heart pumping loudly. He strained hard to hear what was going on outside.

A car door slammed. Jack and Ed stood with their backs to the wall on either side of the window.

Forty-five seconds passed. Fleetingly, Spud saw a shadow cross the newspaper-obscured window.

Twenty metres, forty-five seconds. It didn’t add up. Nobody walked that slowly.
He’s circling the building
, the voice in his mind shrieked.
Checking for exits . . .

But Jack and Ed, standing either side of the window, hadn’t even seen the newcomer’s shadow.

Spud’s eyes were darting around the room, looking for something –
anything
– they could use as a weapon. On a metal shelving unit to the left of the window he saw a brown cardboard box of medical supplies. He knew there were needles in there. Not much match for a handgun, but better than nothing. He gathered up all the strength he had and tried to say the word ‘needle’.

All that came out was a barely audible whisper.

In his mind, though, Spud was yelling futile, unheard instructions.
Whoever’s just found us could be armed . . . Get some needles . . . Stand either side of the door . . . Stab the first person who enters and grab their firearm . . .

The two doctors did nothing. They looked like they were holding their breath as they waited for something to happen.

Don’t just stand there! Don’t just fucking stand there . . .

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

The noise of the door being kicked in, when it finally came, was sudden and sharp. It shook the very walls of the rickety hut. The evening light flooded in. The figure – Spud could only assume it was the same one he’d seen circling the building – stood in the door frame. He had a neat goatee beard, short-cropped hair, tanned skin, a khaki hunter’s jacket, a khaki cap and a suppressed handgun – Spud couldn’t see what type – held at eye-level. One hand gripped the handle and caressed the trigger, the other surrounded its partner and kept it steady. This guy was a pro.

He was also neither African nor Middle Eastern. Spud’s heart leapt. Finally, someone had turned up to get him out of here . . .

But then he realised something was wrong. Just one guy? The Regiment would have sent a four-man unit at the very least.

It all happened in less than five seconds.

As the newcomer took in the contents of the room with a single glance, Spud summoned up another massive effort to move. All he managed to do was yank the tube leading up to the drip bag. The drip stand toppled and fell, jerking the cannula at an awkward angle so it twisted under Spud’s skin. Jack – seemingly instinctively – stepped forward to pick it up. That sudden movement meant he was the first to die. The noise of the round leaving the gunman’s weapon was like a fist rapping sharply on a wooden door. It entered the left-hand side of the doctor’s skull, spattering blood over Spud’s bed and halfway up the breeze-block wall and, at this close range, knocking the doctor back a full metre before he fell to the ground.

Ed cried out as the gunman took two steps into the room. But a second round from the handgun instantly cut short his shout of terror. He slid to the floor, and his catastrophic head wound painted a rough, dark red streak down the wall.

Spud made another attempt to move. One leg lolled precariously from the side of the bed. But that was all he could manage. He closed his eyes and waited for the third shot – the one that would end the life the two doctors had so carefully saved . . .

It didn’t come.

When he opened his eyes again, the gunman was standing over him. He had stretched out his gun and now slid the barrel – warm to the touch – down the stitches in his chest, as though confirming that this wound meant Spud was the person he was looking for.

Without any warning, he grabbed the drip pipe a couple of inches above the cannula and ripped it from Spud’s body. Spud winced, and felt blood spreading over the back of his hand. The gunman ripped the sheet from the lower part of his body. Spud was naked, except for the catheter that led from his urethra to the bag. Now the gunman grabbed this second pipe, and carelessly yanked it out. Spud inhaled sharply at the sudden, excruciating pain, but the gunman had already turned his back and was rummaging through the brown cardboard box of medical supplies.

Spud tried to move yet again. This time he managed to shift his right leg a few inches. The sound of the movement made the gunman turn immediately. Spud saw that he was carrying something: a needle, a syringe and a small brown vial of what Spud could recognised as liquid morphine. He felt himself grimacing. In the past few days he would have done anything for pain relief. Now he wanted to
feel
his pain, because pain meant he was still alive . . .

The gunman pierced the foil top of the morphine vial with the needle and sucked the colourless liquid up into the syringe. He dropped the empty vial carelessly on the floor, then approached Spud. Without a word, he dug the needle into Spud’s left arm and squeezed the syringe. Then he discarded the whole thing, stood back and watched, his head at an angle and an interested look on his face.

It took only seconds for the morphine to hit. A strange lassitude washed over Spud’s body. He could still feel the burning sensations where the cannula and the catheter had been ripped out, and of course the ever-present pain down the middle of his chest. He could still see the dead bodies of the two doctors, blood seeping from their head wounds. And of course he could still see the gunman, standing over him, his face grimly expressionless. But somehow he didn’t care about any of these things.