Who had briefed us that the Gibraltar bomb was going to be initiated by remote control? Simmonds, who was there at Alpha to oversee it. Why the fuck hadn’t I thought of it before?

  I stopped in my tracks. Simmonds kept walking. ‘This isn’t just an American/PIRA thing, is it? It’s much bigger. You are part of it, aren’t you?’

  The rear arches were more light industrial than retail – car-repair shops, sheet-metal works, and storage units, most with company vans that had been parked outside for the night. On our left, about 20 metres away, was a grassy area that belonged to a council estate, then flats beyond that. All around us were metal refuse containers and large red recovery vehicles, with yellow warning lights on their roofs.

  He turned to face me and took the six steps back to where I stood. For the first time, we had eye-to-eye. ‘Nick, I think you need to be aware of something. You will give me all the information – and I mean all of it. We cannot take the risk of other copies being in circulation.’

  The look on his face was of a chess grand master about to make the decisive move. The shock and horror on mine must have been plain to see.

  ‘We didn’t necessarily go along with the Americans’ determination to kill you, but you should be in no doubt that we will do so now if we have to.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘It’s much bigger than you think, Nick. You’re intelligent, you must realize the commercial and political implications of a ceasefire. Exposing what is on the disks would mess up much more than just what you know. It’s very unfortunate about Kevin and his family, I grant you. When he told me what he’d discovered, I did try to talk my American colleagues into a subtler course of action.’

  So that was why I’d been ordered back to the UK so apruptly. Once Simmonds had talked with Kev, he wanted me out of the US – and quick. He didn’t want me speaking to Kev – or interrupting his murder.

  I thought of Kelly. At least she was safe.

  It was almost as if he was reading my mind. ‘If your choice is not to give me all the information, we will kill the child. And then we will kill you – after extracting what we need. Don’t be naïve, Nick. You and I, we’re the same. This isn’t about emotion, this is business, Nick, business.’ He looked at me as a father would a wayward son. ‘You really have no choice.’

  I tried to fight it. He had to be bluffing.

  ‘Euan sends his regards, by the way, and says that he managed to get a television set for her bedroom. Believe me, Nick, Euan will kill her. He rather likes the financial benefits.’

  I shook my head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Think back. Who initiated the contact?’

  He was right, it was Euan. Simmonds was there to direct it, Euan was there to pull the trigger. But I still fought against the idea.

  He opened his jacket and pulled a mobile phone from his inside pocket. ‘Let Euan explain; he was expecting a call later anyway.’

  He turned on the power and was waiting to put in his PIN number. He smiled as he looked down at the phone’s display. ‘This is how the Americans found you, you know. People think that detection can only take place when the phone is in use. Not so. As long as they’re switched on, these things are miniature tracking devices, even if no calls are made or received. It’s actually a form of electronic tagging. We find it terribly useful.’

  He tapped in his PIN number, the tones blaring out of his hand. ‘However, once you’d given them the slip at Lorton, our only option was to let you make entry back into the UK. I needed to know what you’d found out. I have to say, I’m so glad your cancer treatment was successful.’

  Fuck! He hadn’t even mentioned my lack of hair. That was because he already knew. But Euan. He’d been aware enough to mention it. I felt sick knowing he was using his skills against me.

  Simmonds smiled. He knew he had me by the bollocks.

  ‘Nick, I’ll say this again. I really do need all the disks. You know the child would suffer greatly; it’s not something that we would enjoy, but there are important matters at stake.’

  I wanted so much for him to get through to Euan. I wanted to speak to him, wanted him to confirm that it was a bluff. But in my heart of hearts I knew that it wasn’t.

  Simmonds had nearly finished tapping in the number.

  I had no choice. I couldn’t risk Kelly. He wasn’t going to make this call.

  With my right arm in a hooked position, I swung round hard and connected with his nose. There was a dull crunch of fracturing bone and he went down with a muffled moan. While he writhed on the ground I kicked his case under one of the recovery trucks and, in the same motion, picked up the phone in my left hand, got behind him and positioned it at the front of his throat. Grabbing the other side with my right hand, I jammed it firmly under his Adam’s apple.

  I looked to the right and left. We were too exposed where we were, and what I had in mind would take several minutes to complete. I shuffled backwards, dragging him in between two of the trucks. I got down onto my knees, all the time pulling back on the phone. He was kicking out, his arms flailing, trying to rip my face apart.

  His whimpers and chokes filled the air. I responded by leaning forward, using the weight of my upper body to bend his head down so that his chin was more or less on his chest. At the same time I pulled even harder. Just another 2 minutes and I’d be done.

  After 30 seconds he started to struggle furiously, with all the frenzied strength that a man draws on when the knows he is dying. But no matter what he did now he wouldn’t be getting up.

  His hands still scrabbled at my face. I bobbed and weaved to avoid them, but maintained the pressure on his throat. Already the scabs from the fight with McGear had been pulled off, but I couldn’t feel much blood. Then he managed to get his fingernails into the cut just below my eye. I stifled a scream as his three nails started to make entry into the already damaged soft skin. I made the injury worse by pulling my face away; as I did, Simmonds’s nails took my skin with them.

  I didn’t bother now to see if anyone was watching. I was beyond caring. I was fighting for breath myself with the effort, and sweat stung the injuries on my face.

  Gradually at first, his movements subsided to no more than a spasmodic twitching in his legs. His hands stopped grasping. Seconds later he was unconscious. It crossed my mind just to get up and walk away, to leave him to suffer the effects of hypoxia and be brain-damaged for life. I decided against. I wanted this fucker dead.

  I gave it another 30 seconds. His chest stopped moving. I put my fingers on the carotid pulse and felt nothing.

  I dragged him to the wall and sat him up against the doors of a unit. Then I got to my feet and started dusting myself down. Keeping to the shadows, I tucked my shirt in and wiped away the sweat and blood with my sleeve. I checked the phone. It had been turned off in the fight. I wiped my prints off it, then just left everything where it was and casually walked away. If anybody had seen me, so what? It didn’t really matter. I had more important things to worry about.

  I drove west, holding my coat cuff against my eye to stop the bleeding.

  The whole situation was still spinning around inside my head, slowly beginning to make sense.

  I now knew how Luther and co had found me – they must have beaten the number out of Pat and traced the signal while I had it switched on waiting for his call.

  If I’d let on to Euan or Simmonds that there was only one more set of back-ups in my laptop and had handed it over, I’d have been dead. They were covering their arses but retrieving the information.

  Had Simmonds arranged to phone Euan some time after our meet? Euan was over three hours away and Simmonds’s body would be discovered soon. If Euan found out, he wouldn’t take any chances. He would move location, maybe even kill her straight away. Either way, I’d have lost her. This time there was no question of just leaving her. I could call her on the mobile and tell her to run, but what would that achieve? She was in the middle of nowhere; even if she ran for half an hour it would make no difference. Euan’s house was in the middle of acres of mountains, grass, rocks and sheep shit. He would find her.

  I could call the police, but would they believe me? I could waste hours trying to convince them, by which time it would be too late. Or they might take it on themselves to raid Euan’s house and the result would be the same.

  For a fleeting second I thought about Big Al. I hoped he’d be well out of it by now. He didn’t have getaway accounts for nothing. If he’d transferred 400 grand into mine, for sure he’d have taken 800 for himself. Old Melon Head would be OK. I cut him from my mind.

  The motorway services just before Heathrow were being signposted. I had a thought.

  I pulled off onto the slip road and drove into the car park. Now all I had to do was get to a phone and make a call.

  39

  THE SERVICE STATION was busy. I’d had to park 100 metres from the main entrance. I got out of the car just as the heavens opened. By the time I reached the bank of four telephones outside the Burger King, I was soaked. The first two I tried only accepted cards. I had about three pounds in change in my pocket – not enough. I ran into the shop, wiping my face to get some of the blood off. I bought a newspaper with a fiver and walked out, the woman looking worried at the state of my face. I then went back in and got a packet of Rolos with a £10 note. The woman looked even more scared. Maybe she thought I had seen her staring. She was just happy for me to take my change and see me leave.

  As I dialled the number I felt a knot in my stomach, as if I was a teenager phoning to arrange his very first date. Would she have charged it and left it switched on? Why shouldn’t she? She had never let me down before.

  It started to ring.

  For a moment I felt like a child in a sweet shop with his dad, hardly able to contain my excitement. Then I had new things to worry about. What if Euan had the phone now? Did I hang up or did I try to bluff it and maybe find out where she was?

  It was too late to think. The ringing stopped; there was a pause, then I heard a quiet, hesitant, ‘Hello, who is it?’

  ‘Hi, Kelly, it’s me, Nick,’ I said, trying for all the world to sound Mr Casual. ‘Are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes, you woke me up. Are you coming back now?’ She sounded tired and confused. I was trying hard to think of an answer; thankfully she carried on. ‘Euan said that I may be staying with him for a while now because you have to go away. It isn’t true, is it, Nick? You said you wouldn’t leave me.’

  It was a bad line. I had to put a finger in my other ear to hear her above the noise of the rain on the glass of the phone box. A lorry driver in the next box was shouting loudly and angrily, arguing with his boss that he couldn’t go any further because of his tachograph, and he wasn’t going to lose his licence just to get a few boxes of bloody anoraks up to Carlisle. On top of that was the steady boom of traffic on the motorway and the noises of people coming in and out of the services. I had to block all that out and concentrate on the phone call, because I couldn’t ask Kelly to speak up.

  I said, ‘Yes, of course you’re right, I will never leave you. Euan is lying to you. I have found out some bad things about him, Kelly. Are you still in the house?’

  ‘Yes. I’m in bed.’

  ‘Is Euan in his bed?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to speak to him?’

  ‘No, no. Let me think for a minute.’

  My mind was racing now, trying to think of the best way to say what I wanted.

  ‘Of course I’m coming to get you. In fact, I’ll be there very soon. Now, listen. I need you to do something very difficult and very dangerous. You only have to do this one thing for me and everything will be over.’ The moment I said it I felt like a lowlife.

  ‘I don’t have to run away from the people again, do I?’

  ‘No, no, no – it’s not like that this time. But it’s the most special job a spy ever does.’ I didn’t want to give her time to think, so I just carried on. ‘But I want to check something first, OK? You’re in bed, aren’t you? Get under the covers and only talk to me in a whisper, OK?’

  I could hear all the rustlings as she got underneath the covers. ‘What are we going to do, Nick?’

  ‘First, I want you to look at the front of the telephone and press a number. It will then light up. Tell me if you can see a picture of a battery. How many blocks are there where the battery sign is? Can you see it?’

  I heard some scufflings.

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘How many blocks are there in the picture?’

  ‘Three. There’s three blocks. One of them is flashing.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  It wasn’t really: two blocks meant she hadn’t recharged it and the battery was down to less than half-power, and I was going to need a lot of air time to talk her through the whole process.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ she said.

  The truck driver was now really pissed off and was hollering down the phone, the roll-up in his hand making the phone box look like a steam room.

  ‘Nothing to worry about. Kelly, I’m going to tell you what to do, but you need to keep listening to me on the telephone. Can you do that?’

  ‘Why is Euan bad, Nick? What—’

  ‘Listen, Kelly, Euan wants to hurt me. If he finds you doing this thing for me, he will hurt you too. Do you understand that?’

  I could hear lots of rustlings; she was obviously still under the bedcovers. Then there was a very quiet ‘Yes’.

  She wasn’t sounding a happy bunny. I was sure there was a better way I could be going about all this, I just didn’t have time to think what it might be.

  ‘If Euan wakes up,’ I said, ‘or if the telephone stops working, I want you to leave the house very, very quietly. I want you to go down the track to the road and hide behind the trees, just by the big gate that Euan drove through to get to his house. Know where I mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You must hide there until you hear a car come and stop, but don’t get out from your hiding place unless it toots its horn two times. Then come out. Do you understand that? I’ll be in the car. It’s a blue Astra, OK?’

  There was a pause. ‘What’s an As … Astra, Nick?’

  Shit, she was seven years old and American. What was I expecting?

  ‘OK. I’ll stop in a blue car and come and get you.’

  I got her to repeat it and, for good measure, I said, ‘So if Euan wakes up and sees you, I want you to run to the trees as fast as you can and hide. Because if Euan catches you doing what I want you to do, we will never see each other again. Don’t let me down, OK? And remember, don’t you come out from behind those trees, even if Euan calls for you, OK?’

  ‘OK. You will come and get me, won’t you?’

  There was a bit of doubt in her mind.

  ‘Of course I will. Now, first of all, what I want you to do is get out of bed, then put the phone on the bed and get dressed, very slowly and quietly. Put on a nice thick coat. And you know those trainers that you’ve got? Make sure you take those as well, but don’t put them on yet.’

  I heard her put the phone down and start rummaging around the room.

  For fuck’s sake, hurry up!

  I forced myself to calm down.

  It was almost two minutes before I heard ‘I’m ready, Nick.’

  ‘Now, listen to me very carefully. Euan is not a friend; he has tried to kill me. Do you understand, Kelly? He has tried to kill me.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Why? I … I don’t understand, Nick … you said he was your friend.’

  ‘I know, I know, but things change. Do you want to help me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, then you must do exactly what I tell you.’ I want you to put your trainers in your coat pockets. OK, now it’s time to go downstairs. I want you to keep the telephone with you. All right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Time was running short and so was my money.

  ‘Just remember, you must be very, very quiet, because otherwise you will wake Euan. If that happens, you run out of the house towards the hidey-hole – promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘OK, I want you to creep very, very gently down the stairs. Don’t talk to me again until you’re in the kitchen; from now on what we must do is whisper all the time. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  I heard the door open. As she came out of the room I imagined her passing the bathroom on her left. Ahead of her, up a half-landing and about twelve feet away, would be the door to Euan’s room. Was it open or closed? Too late to ask her. A few steps now and she’d be at the top of the main stairs and next to the old grandfather clock. On cue, I heard its slow, ponderous tick-tock; it reminded me of something out of a Hitchcock movie.

  The sound receded very slowly: good girl, she must be going down the stairs very carefully. Only once did I hear the creak of a board and I wondered again about Euan’s door. Did he usually sleep with it open? I couldn’t remember.

  At the bottom of the stairs she’d be turning back on herself to the right, heading towards the kitchen.

  I tried to imagine where she was, but lost her in the silence. At last I heard the barely perceptible sound of a protesting hinge; that was the kitchen door. I felt a stab of guilt for using the girl like this; but she knew the score – well, sort of. Fuck it, the decision was made; I just had to do it. If it worked, fine; if it didn’t, she was dead. But if I didn’t try it she was dead anyway, so let’s get on with it.

  She whispered, ‘I’m in the kitchen, but I can’t see very much. Am I allowed to turn the light on?’

  It was the loudest whisper I’d ever heard.

  ‘No, no, no, Kelly, you’ve got to speak very slowly and very quietly – like this.’ I demonstrated. ‘And don’t put the light on, that would wake Euan up. Just go more slowly, and listen to me all the time. If you don’t understand anything, just ask, and remember, if anything goes wrong or you hear a noise, stop and we will both listen. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  The problem with her being quieter on the phone was that it was harder to hear her. The lorry driver had now finished, slamming the phone down and storming into the Burger King. A woman took his place and was gobbing off to a girlfriend.

 

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