The Increment (22 page)

Matram glanced at Turnton and Snaddon. 'You were sent to deal with her yesterday. She was lured to a prearranged property where she could have been quietly disposed of. The job went wrong. You must explain what happened.'

Turnton leant back in his chair, his arms behind his head. 'The target was rescued, boss, before the job could be completed.'

Matram rubbed his brow wearily. 'Rescued? What do you think this is, a fucking Bugs Bunny cartoon? People don't get rescued from the Increment, man. They may pointlessly sacrifice their own lives by attempting a rescue, but they only end up dying themselves. I can't believe I have to spell this out to you. If anyone attempts to rescue a target, then they get eliminated as well. Simple as that.'

Snaddon stood up, looking straight ahead at Matram: she'd always believed herself to be his favourite operative within the unit. 'We gave chase, sir,' she said crisply. 'We were waiting for the target to go inside the house, then we were going to deal with her. This man, the one in the picture, started fleeing with her, and jumped into a car. A Porsche Boxter. Fast.'

'I think I'm aware that a Porsche is quite a fast car. Just because I have to work with idiots doesn't mean I like being treated like one.' Matram paused, noting the way she blushed at the insult. 'You gave chase?'

'Of course,' answered Snaddon. 'He was good. He took the car up on to the pavement, then pulled it out on to the open road ahead of some traffic lights. There was no chance of following unless we went on the pavement as well.' She paused, her eyes cast down to the floor. 'Standard operating procedure for the Increment is to avoid civilian casualties, unless intervening to prevent a domestic terrorist incident. Because of that, I didn't think it was right to inflict injuries on bystanders.'

'I'm familiar with the SOPs, thank you,' said Matram coldly. 'I wrote them.'

'I think the man knew them as well,' interrupted Turnton. 'He was aware of the limitation on our actions, and he took advantage of them.'

True, thought Matram to himself.
Browning knows how the Increment works.

'When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it,' he snapped. 'Your inability to eliminate this man will be noted in the next review. I understand your failure, but I cannot accept it.'

Matram looked towards the rest of the unit. 'Nothing like that is going to happen again, because the rules have just changed. Hunting down these two people has now been reclassified as a counter-terrorist operation. That means the gloves are off. A full-scale terrorist alert has gone out to police forces across the country. Every policeman will be watching out for them. Every credit-card company and bank will be alerting us if they use a card, or withdraw any cash. Every hotel company will tell us if they book a room. These two show their faces anywhere, we're going to know about it. When it happens, the police will notify us. They've been told not to approach them. Too dangerous. The last thing we want is for the boys in blue to starting flapping around, buggering everything up.'

With his hands behind his back, Matram walked across the room in a slow methodical line. 'Since this is classified as counter-terrorism, we can use whatever means are necessary to achieve our objectives. Don't kill any bystanders if you can possibly avoid it, but at the same time don't let them escape. If there has to be collateral damage, so be it.' Matram smiled. 'They can run, and run fast. But not fast enough to evade us. Our eyes are everywhere.'

He paused, looking hard into the eyes of each of the men and women present in the room. 'We stop at nothing until they are dead,' he said. 'Now go do some killing.'

The funeral parlour was among a newsagent's, grocer's, butcher's and pub in a row of shops on the outskirts of Swindon.
JACK DAWSON & SONS
ran the name above the black stencilled lettering on the sign:
FUNERAL DIRECTORS, AND MONUMENTAL HEADSTONE CRAFTSMEN.

It was just after nine in the evening, and every shop in the row was now shut: the pub was still open but there was nobody going in or out. 'You wait here,' said Matt to Eleanor. 'I'll get in round the back.'

It was two weeks now since Barry Legg had been killed, and ten days since his body had been discovered face down in a ditch on the edge of a field three miles from the road where he had last been seen alive. They saw a news report detailing how the body had been released by the police and the funeral was scheduled for the next weekend. Now, the body was here, in a casket. If Legg had traces of XP22 in his body, then they had their case. The drug had been tested on British soldiers, and all the men who had taken it were being methodically eliminated.
By the Increment.

All they needed was a sample of brain tissue.

Matt stopped. A short alleyway ran down the back of the row of shops. There were some bins outside the butcher's, full of bones and offcuts of meat; the sun of the day had caught the decaying flesh, and it was starting to reek. A cat, chewing on one of the bones, glanced up at Matt, then scampered away. He walked forward. The undertaker's was the third shop in the row, with a single black door leading out on to the alley. There was a Banham lock, and a bolt holding the door in place, but above it there was pane of frosted glass with a mesh grille across it.

Not much security, thought Matt.
Then again, who ever tries to rob an undertaker's?

He checked above him. To the back of the alley, there was a row of buildings, but none of them had windows directly overlooking the door. Matt took out the crowbar he had equipped himself with earlier, and tapped it against the side of the glass. Soft. Not reinforced. He positioned the crowbar in his fist, and delivered a sharp blow to the centre of the window. Hit glass in the right 'way, and it crumbles in on itself, Matt reminded himself. You just have to strike at the point of maximum weakness, right at the precise centre of the pane. Now the glass splintered, cracking out from the centre, then falling on to the ground. Matt twisted the crowbar into the metal wire, gripped the handle, then yanked it back. The metal struggled, the bolts securing it to the frame straining. Matt concentrated, directing all his strength towards his shoulders, and yanked it again. One bolt dislodged, then another, and the mesh broke free.

Matt ripped the mesh out, cast it to the floor, and pushed his fist through the opening in the window, undoing the bolt. He wedged the crowbar into the lock, and pulled that open. The door swung free.

They'll know there's been a robbery. They'll just be puzzled that nothing has been taken.

The back door led into a small kitchen area. A kettle was next to the sink, a few unwashed cups at its side. A half-opened packet of sugar stood next to a pack of PG Tips. Matt walked through to the back office. He glanced at the papers, and the computer on the desk, then looked across to the row of five black tailcoats and top hats laid out neatly on a coat rack. There were several tins of black boot polish next to them.

These guys keep their shoes cleaner than the Ruperts on medal day.

The bodies were kept in a long, thin gallery just behind the main shopfront. From the heat of the day, it was still and cool in there. When he stepped into the room, Matt could see three coffins ahead: they were laid three feet apart, all of them closed. He checked them one by one, looking for the name tags. Nothing. Christ, he thought,
I'm going to have to look inside them.

Matt gently lifted the first coffin lid, the pungent smell of the chemicals used to cleanse and preserve the body hitting his nostrils. A woman, probably in her eighties, was staring back at him. He moved on to the next coffin: this time an elderly man. This must be you, he thought as he pulled up the third lid, and looked down at the corpse inside. A man, in his late thirties, with black hair, his eyes closed, and with his arms resting neatly at his side.

Matt winced. A decade knocking around battlefields had not hardened him to the sight of corpses. Every time he looked at a dead body, he felt painfully aware of how thin were the threads that separated the dead from the living. Some instinct told him not to touch it, if it could be avoided, as if death itself were somehow contagious.

He took the thick syringe Eleanor had given him, and thrust it into the corpse just below the ear. She had explained how the bone of the skull was at its softest there. The needle should be able to find a way through. Matt pushed, jiggling the needle as he did so, helping it thread its passage through the bone. The smell of formaldehyde, the most common embalming fluid, drifted up from the corpse: the body had already been prepared for the funeral. Matt could feel his stomach churning, as the sickly chemicals were sucked into his lungs. He jabbed the syringe forward, feeling the needle sink into the soft tissue of the brain. Pausing, he pulled the syringe back, extracting a sample.

Sorry, pal. If you knew why I was doing this, you'd forgive me.

Matt tucked the syringe into his jacket pocket, and pushed the lid back down on the coffin. He stepped quickly away, ducking back into the alleyway, and out on to the street where Eleanor was waiting for him.

'Got it,' he said, steering her towards the waiting car.

Eleanor took the sample, then leant across, kissing Matt on the cheek. 'All we have to do now is get it tested.'

Membury Service Station on the M4 was close to empty. It was after eleven at night by the time Matt and Eleanor pulled up, filled the car up with fuel, and grabbed themselves a pair of burgers from the café.

'Professor Johnson,' said Eleanor, sitting in the car. 'I'm sure he'll know how we can test this sample.'

Matt dialled the number on the stolen mobile Ivan had given him. 'I'm sorry, I know it's late,' he said to the woman who answered as soon as she picked up the phone, 'but it's urgent. Could I speak to Professor Johnson?'

'Too late,' said the woman, her tone hostile.

'I know it's late, I said I was sorry to disturb you,' repeated Matt. 'But I really need to speak to him. He won't mind being woken.'

'Who are you?'

Matt hesitated. There was something strange about the woman's tone. 'What's happened?' he asked.

'The professor died this morning,' she answered. 'Who are you?'

'I'm . . .' Matt struggled for the words. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Who are you?' repeated the woman, her voice louder now.

'I'm sorry,' said Matt. 'I can't say.'

He snapped the phone shut. 'The professor is dead.'

Eleanor looked back at Matt. 'He said we shouldn't have been to see him.'

EIGHTEEN

Matram looked down from the window. The sun was blazing down on the car park that lay twelve storeys below his hotel room. He could see a few men, dressed only in shorts, waddling back from the B&Q warehouse with new paddling pools for the kids, and hosepipes for the garden.

Ordinary suburban life, he reflected to himself. It makes me sick.

Behind him, the TV was tuned to Sky News. The newsreader was talking about the heatwave, now stretching into its third week. The government was urging people to stay cool, and to use sun cream. The AA was advising motorists to keep off the roads. Some road-rage incidents had been recorded in the sweltering heat and, up in Hartlepool, someone had gone crazy in Tesco with a knife. 'Coming up after the break,' said the newsreader, 'we ask a leading psychologist how to stay cool in the heat.'

Heat, thought Matram. They know nothing about heat.

Snaddon and Trench were in the room with him. The other six members of the unit had been dispatched around the country. Clipper and Turnton were up in Manchester. Harton and Godsall were down in Bristol. Addison and Marley, who had replaced Kilander and Wetherall in the unit, were in Newcastle. That gave Matram a neat quadrangle. Wherever the target appeared, they would have someone who could be on the spot in a couple of hours.

When he revealed himself, he would be dead the same day.

'They've vanished,' said Snaddon.

Matram leant forwards. 'Bollocks. In fairy stories people vanish. In real life, they are always there somewhere. You just have to track them down.'

A full-scale terrorist alert had gone out on Matt Browning and Eleanor Blackman last night: Matram had made certain of that. Their pictures had been circulated electronically to every police force in the country, with officers told to keep a close watch for both. Their car registrations had been noted: if they so much as passed a speed camera, or went inside the London congestion charging zone, it would be picked up. If they used their credit cards, the police would be immediately notified. If they used their mobiles, the location of the transmission mast used for the call would be sent through to the police. Any suspicious movement on any of the tens of thousands of CCTV cameras on street corners around the country would be examined to see if it resembled the two suspects. We live in an electronic society, Matram reflected as he studied the array of different ways their location could be revealed.
A man can run, but the only place he can hide is six feet underground.

'Nothing from the police?' he said, looking down at Trench.

A laptop was open on the desk, wired to a secure connection at the headquarters of the counter-terrorism unit at Scotland Yard. Any reports from local forces would be fed through to the police there, but would come through to this terminal simultaneously. They didn't want to waste time because one of the plods was on a tea break when the sighting was made.

'Nothing,' said Trench, shaking his head. 'A couple of false alarms. In Romford, they picked up a guy with some Semtex on him, but he turned out to be just a bank robber. Over in Cheltenham, they thought they got a sighting, but it was just a false alarm. Nothing else.'

'How about the financial system?' said Matram, looking towards Snaddon. 'Money is usually the key. People can survive without most things, but they need cash on the run.'

Snaddon shook her head. Her computer was hooked up to a central clearing system for both Visa and Mastercard. Any payment made by either person would show up the instant it went through the computers, giving the precise location of the cash machine used, or the place where a credit-card payment was made. 'Nothing,' she said. 'Not even a whisper.'

'Well, you know what the sportsmen say,' Matram said slowly. 'If the bird won't come to you, then you just have to shake the tree a little.'

Matt poured himself another coffee, and looked down at the plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and beans in front of him. He felt the caffeine kicking into his veins, and scooped some beans on his fork, stuffing them hungrily into his mouth.

First rule of combat, he reminded himself. Eat as much as you can, when you can.
You don't know when you might eat again.

Eleanor looked across at his breakfast, lightly spreading some jam on her toast. 'You do realise that binge-eating is a common symptom of anxiety,' she said.

Matt forked another sausage. 'It's also a symptom of being hungry.'

The hotel was on the outskirts of Chippenham: the kind of place that was occupied by travelling salesmen before the new chains of Travel Inns and Travelodges went up. This is the land of the invisible men, thought Matt looking around the breakfast room. Pensioners, tourists on a tight budget, maybe a pair of asylum seekers housed here until they got sent back home.
If you want to disappear, you can do it among these people.

'I'm scared, Matt,' said Eleanor. 'I don't know the endgame.'

'The endgame?'

'I don't know how we can possibly bring this all together,' she continued. 'What difference does it make when or what we discover? Even if we get the sample tested, who is going to believe us?' From the corner of his eye, Matt could see the outline of a tear starting to tumble down her cheek.

Matt paused. His breakfast was only half eaten, but he put his fork down. 'I remember one of the first really sticky firefights I got into in the regiment. We were in the Philippines. We'd been sent down there to help the local army fight some communist guerrillas out in the jungle. But the local boys didn't want to fight, they wanted to get back home. So we found ourselves holed up, four of us, facing about fifty or sixty heavily armed insurgents. We said our prayers and tried to get some sleep, but we were pretty sure we were all going to get slaughtered in the morning. Then, you know what happened? The monsoon came a week early. Freaky. There was so much rain nobody could see more than a few feet, they certainly couldn't shoot straight. It took us a week, but we crawled our way through the mud and survived.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning when you are in a war, you don't always know the endgame. You press on, and hope to hell something turns up.'

The car was an eleven-year-old Ford Escort, with cloth seats and a couple of dents in its paintwork. Matt had bought it yesterday, paying three hundred pounds, the last of the cash Abbott had given him for Kiev, at a second-hand car dealer in south London. He knew that part of town, it was where he had grown up: he knew there were plenty of dealers that sold scrappy old motors for cash and didn't ask any questions about who was buying it, or bother filling in any registration papers.
So long as you handed across the folding stuff, no questions were either asked or answered.

Matt had been on the run before. In Bosnia, he and two other men had been stranded fifty miles into enemy territory, with no radios to call in air evacuation: they had to march for three days through hostile territory, knowing that if anyone saw them they would be shot on sight. In the Philippines, as he'd told Eleanor earlier, he'd had to march for days through the jungle at the start of the monsoon season.

That was different. That was in a war zone. This is in my own country, against my own people.

It's all about staying out of sight, staying anonymous, he reminded himself. So long as they didn't use any cards, or try to get any money from the bank, they couldn't be traced financially. The Porsche had been dumped in London: the car was too conspicuous, and anyway, the number plates would give them away. And Ivan had arranged for them to be supplied with a pair of false passports, in the names of Keith Todd and Helen Nuggett: if the police should happen to stop them and ask who they were, that would at least give them a chance of escape.

The Escort came to a juddering halt. The brake pads felt loose, and you had to give the gearbox a good bashing to get it out of first. The car doesn't matter, Matt told himself.
It will get us around, and no one will know who we are.

They had pulled up outside Caldwell's house, in the countryside, just outside Chippenham.
We must get to him before the Increment does.

It was a small cottage, maybe three bedrooms, with about an acre of garden: most of it was given over to a series of colourful, elaborate rose bushes. It was just after ten in the morning, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Another hot day, thought Matt as he climbed out of the car.

Caldwell was standing in the garden, dressed only in his shorts, a watering can in his hand. 'They'll be lucky to survive this summer,' said Matt, nodding towards the roses. Matt judged him about sixty, with thinning sandy hair, and running to fat. He looked at Matt with curiosity, but without suspicion.

'You wanting directions?' he asked.

Matt looked about him. There was a farmhouse about half a mile away and, in the valley below them, you could see a village, but otherwise they were completely isolated. 'We're looking for some help.'

'You used to work at the Farm,' said Eleanor, stepping forward. 'Professor Johnson gave us your name. He said you might be able to help.'

'And you are?'

Matt hesitated, running the risk-and-rewards calculations through his head. Tell this man who they were and they might be discovered. Lie to him, and they could lose his trust. 'My name is Matt Browning,' he replied. 'This is Eleanor Blackman. We're trying to find some information about a drug that was tested at the Farm, about five years ago.' He paused, looking at Caldwell intently. 'It might save some lives.'

Caldwell laughed: a dry, hollow laugh rooted in anger, not amusement. 'The Farm?'

'What did you do there, Mr Caldwell?' asked Eleanor.

Her voice was gentle, Matt noticed: she was probing him, trying to put him at his ease, open him up.

'Me? Just a lab assistant, nothing special. I used to deliver the drugs that were being tested, then monitor the results. That's what it was mostly about. Checking for side effects.'

'There was a drug called XP22,' said Matt. 'About five years ago. It would have been tested on soldiers. Were you involved with that?'

Caldwell sighed. A look of sadness drifted across his face, as if some memories he thought long buried had suddenly been brought back to life. 'XP22?' he said. 'You know about that?' He looked at Matt more closely, suddenly afraid. 'You didn't take it, did you?'

Matt shook his head. 'But a friend of mine did. He died.'

Caldwell bent down. With his gloved right hand, he started gripping the stem of a rose, clipping it with his shears. 'Quite a few men did.'

'How many men had the drug tested on them?' asked Eleanor.

'About fifty,' said Caldwell, turning to look at her. 'All soldiers, all serving. They were brought in, given the drug, then kept under observation for the next week. Of course, there are fewer than that now,' said Caldwell. He clipped the stem of another rose, holding the bright red flower in his hand. 'There were side effects. Five of them became uncontrollable. Monsters. They had to be transferred.'

'Transferred?' said Eleanor, puzzled. 'Where?'

Caldwell laughed: that dry, laugh again. 'That was just the term we used. The Farm was full of euphemisms. When we said they were transferred, what we meant was they were taken away.' He paused. 'And we never heard what happened to them.'

'Shot?' said Matt.

Caldwell shrugged. 'That's all I know about XP22,' he said. 'It was a nasty drug, it should never have been used. Nobody should ever have touched it.'

'There may be other side effects, longer term,' said Eleanor. 'We need to find out who those other men were.'

Caldwell shook his head. 'Then you are on your own,' he replied. 'I never knew the names. The men who came into the Farm didn't have any. They just had numbers.'

'The names,' said Eleanor, her tone more insistent now. 'We have to have the names. How else can we help these men?'

Matt could see a look of fear drifting across Caldwell's face, like a small, dark cloud moving across the face of the sun, blocking out all the light. His expression darkened, and his lips started to tremble. 'I've said enough. It's dangerous.'

'The names,' repeated Eleanor.

'No,' said Caldwell, his tone rising. 'I told you, I've said enough.'

He turned, starting to walk back in the direction of the house.

'We've got a sample from one of the dead men,' Eleanor called after him. 'Will you test it for us?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said Caldwell. 'I don't have any equipment here.'

In the distance, Matt could see a police car advancing along the brow of the hill. Eleanor was following Caldwell, reaching out to tug on his sleeve.

'We have to go,' Matt barked suddenly.

Eleanor looked round, and saw the determination in Matt's eyes. He was already walking back to the car. 'Quickly,' he shouted. Eleanor followed him, her head bowed down, her expression concentrated.