Run for Home (2 page)

‘It’s done.’

‘All of them?’

‘Well….’ Jackson hesitated and glanced sideways at his partner, Murphy, with a grimace. ‘Actually….’

‘All of them?’ the boss man insisted.

‘All but one.’

In the silence that followed, Jackson waited patiently. He knew there might be an explosion of rage. He would just have to weather it. Fortunately, it was a telephone conversation, not a face-to-face meeting.

‘Presumably one got away?’

He breathed easily again. ‘One wasn’t there. Just three of them.’

Another lengthy pause. Thinking time. Jackson waited, and motioned to Murphy to keep quiet.

‘So which one was missing?’

He told him.

Then there was an explosion, but it was not particularly directed at him and Murphy. It was more a matter of frustration with the world in general.

He held on until the man calmed down and told him what
to do next. Then he said yes, they would, and put the phone down. It clattered off the rest and fell to the floor. Damned old-fashioned thing! But they had to use them. Mobiles were too insecure.

‘What did he say?’ Murphy asked.

‘In a nutshell?’

‘That will do.’

‘He said to find him – and finish the job.’

Murphy nodded. ‘No surprise there. We knew it would come to this.’

Jackson agreed.

‘Did he say where to start?’

Jackson grinned, but without being amused. ‘I did ask him, but he just said it was down to us. That was what we were being paid for.’

‘Like that, eh?’ Murphy said with a chuckle.

‘Like that.’

Murphy switched on the TV. Jackson watched him do it, but he couldn’t be bothered with television himself. There was too much to think about, and even more to do.

He left Prague just before ten that night, crossed the Channel twelve hours later and got there early the next evening. He knew he was ‘there’ because it felt right. Not the end of the line perhaps, but the end of his journey. For now. There would be other journeys to come but he needed rest, and he needed time to think.

He parked in the main street and switched off the ignition. Then he sat quietly for a while with his eyes closed, listening to the clicks and creaks of the hard-pressed engine getting used to being at rest at last.

By the time he got out of the car, the light had gone altogether. Late October. What could you expect? He locked the door and turned to look up and down the street.

Not much was happening. One elderly man was walking his dog. Two others were standing talking, leaning against the iron railings at a bus stop. He saw two middle-aged women, arm in arm, walking quickly on the other side of the road, and three teenage kids locked in animated conversation as they unhurriedly crossed the road. A couple of cars crept past, and then a giant truck carrying logs swept through as if confident it had absolute right of way. Another followed close behind.

It was just a village. Quiet. Peaceful. And, he dared to hope, safe for the moment. With luck, he would be able to get something to eat and some sleep before he moved on.

They had a spare room in the only hotel – just a pub, really – which was on the main street. The Running Man. He wasn’t sure about the name. It was a bit too close to home. But he took the room anyway. Any port in a storm. It was no time to be fussy.

The hotel had any amount of spare rooms, was his guess. Not many customers in the bar, and he was the only one in the dining room. He was soon served with a meal. Lamb cutlets and winter vegetables, followed by coffee. He scarcely knew what he was eating, he was so tired. He was exhausted.

The woman that seemed to run the place came to refill his coffee cup and have a word with him about breakfast.

‘Breakfast?’ he repeated dully.

She smiled. ‘That’s right. It’s the first meal of the day around here.’

He tried to smile back.

‘So what would you like?’

‘Anything,’ he said.

‘Bacon and egg? Full English? Continental? What’s your fancy?’

He shook his head. Breakfast seemed too far ahead.

‘Do I need to decide now?’

‘No, of course not.’ She smiled again. ‘I can see you’re very tired. Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out in the morning.’

He nodded, grateful to her for finding a solution.

‘I’m Ellie, by the way. If you want anything, just ask for me.’

She seemed a nice woman, he thought, as he watched her retreat towards the kitchen. Pretty, as well. Good figure, and
he’d always liked shoulder-length dark hair. He wondered if she did everything around here. It seemed as if she did. So far, she had booked him in, shown him to his room, served him dinner, asked him what he wanted for breakfast…. There wasn’t much else left to do.

He smiled wryly to himself. Multitasking! Wasn’t that what they called it?

Afterwards, he went up to his room, lay on the bed and tried to think things through. A lot had happened in twenty-four hours, and he doubted if it had finished yet. But at least he had got out. Somehow he had. For now, he was fairly safe.

They would look for him, of course. He was sure of that. Something had happened, obviously. Whatever it was, they wouldn’t want a loose cannon like him roaming around. Take him out as well. That would be the plan. It had to be. Nothing else made sense.

Initially, he had assumed the opposition had got to the others, careful though they had always been about their meetings. But as soon as he had seen Jackson and Murphy, he had known the truth: they were cleaners, two of the best – if not
the
best. They swept things up and tidied them away. People, included. And bodies. So it wasn’t the Russians, after all. It was his own side.

Why, though? He scowled and shook his head. It was a fucking nightmare! He had no idea why. None at all. So far as he knew, nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Landis had called a special meeting, but it wasn’t as if it was the first time that had happened. From time to time, they did need to get together.

It wouldn’t be happening again, though. It struck him then that Unit 89 had effectively ceased to exist. Three dead
and him on the run. It was almost as if it had never been.

Could that be the plan, the reason? Make their team not only deniable but non-existent, a figment of the imagination?

He shook his head. He had no idea. Anyway, the why of it didn’t really matter right now. Not to him. What he needed to do was focus on protecting himself. And Lisa. Always Lisa.

He wondered if they would find him. Hard to say. But he knew it was possible. He had stuck a pin in his mental road atlas and covered a lot of ground to get here, this place he didn’t know and had no previous connection with; but randomness wasn’t everything. No guarantees came with it. He would just have to be careful, and avoid slip-ups. Otherwise, Lisa….

He shuddered. Best not to think of her right now, hard as it was. Or Landis and the others either. Keep things simple. Do the best he could, and hope it worked out.

He opened the holdall Landis had kept stored beneath the floorboards and stared at the money. He shook his head. Then he started counting it, which was something he had not dared to take time out to do until now; he had just grabbed it and run. There was ample, he soon decided, more than enough for the foreseeable future. He stopped counting and zipped up the bag.

There might be even more money, if he needed it. He knew where there was an emergency fund. Electronic banking, though? He grimaced. Activity could be monitored, and it left traces. Anyway, why bother? Money was the least of his worries right now.

He really would need to be careful, if he wanted to live – which he did. Very much so. Mostly for Lisa and himself. But he also wanted the chance to hit back. He owed it to the
others not to take this lying down. They had always been one for all, and all for one. In their line of work, you couldn’t operate entirely alone. You depended on a handful of people, and they became important to you. He wasn’t going to forget them now.

He shook his head and yawned. God, he was tired! He wondered about sleeping just as he was, fully dressed. But some of the fear and the urgency had left him now. He felt secure enough to risk undressing. Besides, he needed to look after himself – and his clothes, until he could buy more – to avoid attracting attention. He got up off the bed, undressed and took a shower. After that he could put off sleep no longer.

In the morning he didn’t feel so good. He had slept, off and on, but he hadn’t been able to escape the horrors. Back from exhaustion, he was on edge again – hyper. He got up as soon as it was light and stood beside his window. Easing the curtain slightly aside with one finger, he checked that his car was still there. Then he studied the street.

There were plenty of people about. They were all moving purposefully, walking dogs or heading for their work or their morning paper. No one was just standing, watching and waiting, in the shadows. Still, why would they be? He shrugged and let the curtain go, and turned away from the window to get washed and dressed.

This place had been good for him but his mind was made up. He would get moving again. Movement might not solve anything but he needed it. An illusion, perhaps, but he wanted the feeling of being in control that movement gave him.

He wasn’t hungry and declined the offer of a full English. He just wanted enough calories to put something back into the
fuel cells.

The landlady, Ellie, seemed worried.

‘If you’ve got far to go,’ she said, ‘it might be better to have a proper breakfast before you set off. You were very tired when you came in last night.’

And not much better now, she implied. That seemed to be the subtext.

He smiled and shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I don’t usually bother much with breakfast.’

She seemed about to argue, but instead, she smiled and turned to bring him the coffee and toast he had requested.

‘I hope we’ll see you again,’ she said when he settled up prior to leaving.

‘Anything’s possible,’ he told her.

Another smile. ‘Safe journey,’ she said.

He felt she meant it.

Afterwards, he got back on the road as quickly as he could and concentrated on the driving to the exclusion of everything else. There were people he could have called – emergency contact numbers, and so on – but he no longer trusted them, and couldn’t bring himself to take the risk. He feared what they might say, and he doubted they would be concerned about his welfare anyway. Not now he had seen Jackson and Murphy at the scene.

More practically, a landline call would reveal his area code, and generally where he was, while a call from his mobile would allow them to pinpoint his location exactly. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want them to have any idea of his whereabouts, or his direction of travel either. When he did make contact, which he would do when it suited him, he would do it from an internet café.

He would have preferred them to be unaware that he was even back in the country, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He had to assume that routine passport monitoring at entry points would have told them that anyway. It would be stupid to hope that they might not have noticed, or that checks might have been suspended again because the Border Control Force still wasn’t up to the job.

By 9.30 he had crossed the border just north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and was pressing on into Scotland. Happily, the Scots still didn’t require passport checks on entry. How much longer would that last, though, he wondered sourly.

He kept his speed down, not wanting a digital camera to record his passing. From now on, he reminded himself yet again, he had to be careful about every little thing.

In Edinburgh, he found an internet café and put out a message. I need help, he said to all the contact points. Something has gone wrong. Terrible things have happened.

Where are you?
was what he got back. He sat and watched the replies come in.
Where are you?
Three of the four were quick. At the other station they must be having morning coffee, he decided. The thought wasn’t amusing.

Where are you?
It wasn’t the response he had hoped for.
How can we help?
or
What do you need?
would have been better.

He closed down the connection and went to the counter to buy a coffee. Then he sat and watched George Street pass by. He sat at a little table towards the back, well away from the high seats in the window, but he wasn’t comfortable. If anything, he felt even more vulnerable here, in a city. Anonymous, perhaps, but that also meant he didn’t know who was observing him. It would be hard to see trouble coming.

And it would be. It would be coming. Trouble would have followed him home. It wouldn’t have stopped at Calais. Not trouble like this.

Where are you?
he thought again, bitterly. Fuck that!

So first they wanted to locate him. Why would they want to do that before asking what was wrong, discussing how they could help or assuring him of their unswerving support? Only one reason he could see; their priorities were higher than his personal safety. Probably, he was a nuisance, perhaps even a danger, to them. Foot soldiers like him didn’t count for much. They never had done.

Moodily, he stirred his coffee. They were not like the other lot. The Russians brought their people home and looked after them: celebrated them; respected them. He had always known that. It made you wonder if you were on the right side.

Bastards!

‘Have you finished with your cup?’

He looked up warily at the girl come to clear his table.

‘What?’

‘Your cup. Are you…?’

He shook his head and pushed the cup towards her. She smiled and took it. He wondered what was wrong with her, smiling like that. Then he made an effort and smiled back.

‘Thank you,’ she said, before turning away.

He ought to practise that, he thought ruefully. Smiling at people. It might stand him in good stead. Not everybody was his enemy. Just the people who had always mattered most to him.

He would try them again, he decided. Maybe he’d been too hasty with his suspicions, and was being too cynical. Maybe – God forbid! – he was a touch paranoid.

But the answer was more or less the same. However he
phrased it, all they ever wanted to know was where he was.

For the last time, he typed with some frustration: I need help. Can you provide it? Back came the standard response:

We need to know where you are first.

Fuck that!

Angrily, he studied the messages, all four of them now. Coffee break must be over.

You could say that any offer of help would inevitably be constrained by consideration of his whereabouts. You could say that they really did need to know where he was before they could offer to do something. But his instincts said that was crap. They wanted to know where he was so they could send Jackson and Murphy after him, as well. Complete the tidying up. Leave no loose ends.

He frowned with thought. It was possible that he might be wrong – about every bloody thing! – but he was going to assume he was right. If he was wrong, nothing was spoilt. If he was right, then looking after himself his own way would give him – and Lisa – a better chance of surviving.

So he would go with his instincts. They had served him well so far.