‘Hello, Foxhole,’ said Chantrell.
‘Chantrell,’ croaked Foxhole. He cleared his throat, trying to enforce calm upon himself, wondering if he looked as bad as he felt, immediately getting his answer.
‘You’re looking a bit discombobulated, mate,’ said Tork.
‘Tork,’ he said, hoping they wouldn’t pick up on the croak in his voice. ‘Chantrell. Good to see you guys. What in the holy mother of ass are you doing here? Everything all right, yeah?’ He tried to smile and felt his lips crack as they pulled back over his teeth.
Chantrell shook his head sadly. His hands were clasped in front of him, and if Foxhole had been a fighting man himself, instead of a man who sat behind a desk making unreasonable demands of fighting men, then he would have known that fighting men like to hold their hands clasped in front of them that way because the hands could easily be deployed in either a defensive or offensive manner.
If he’d known that then he might have thought to avoid Chantrell’s fist that snaked out fast, catching him in the midriff and doubling him up.
‘No, everything is not all right, mate,’ said Chantrell, stepping inside with Tork at his heel. ‘Everything is not all right at all.’
CHAPTER 12
The man in the raincoat had made his way from Ray’s ex-pat shop to the address given, a street in downtown Singapore, lined with tenement buildings on either side, the odd three-storey house squeezed in between them like an afterthought, giving the buildings the look of a row of uneven teeth.
Most were residential and used as homes-for-hire by overseas companies who needed somewhere to put staff, either prior to permanent relocation, or for long-term contracts. As a result, a lot of ex-pats lived there. A lot of British. This, apparently, was where Alex Abbott had made his home for the last eleven months or so.
The raincoat man stopped. This was the one. Number twenty-three. Abbott had the top flat.
Unsurprised by the absence of any security measures, he made his way inside and took the stairs upwards. From behind doors on the landings he heard sounds of life: televisions, music, a couple arguing. Through a window left open traffic noise was borne inside on the cool night-time breeze.
He reached the top, and the door to Abbott’s room. There he stood listening for a moment or so before knocking. His clothes were neat, and so was his knock, and when there was no reply he rapped a little louder.
He waited and then with a frown returned to the street. A moment later he was walking into the bar two doors down from number twenty-three: The Big Smile Beach Club.
Rarely had a place been so erroneously named. Not only did it lack anything even remotely suggesting the seaside, but smiles were in short supply. Instead, it was small, and yet at the same time not especially cosy, thanks to decor that back home would be considered more suitable for a café.
That said, it was busy and, as far as he could tell, frequented by a certain type of ex-pat. As in, not the outgoing, sociable kind: copy of the Daily Express, memories of Tunbridge Wells and the time that Dirty Den returned to EastEnders. But the other kind: the guys who liked to drink either in pairs or alone. Drinking as a means to an end. Punishment drinking.
It figured that Abbott would have found himself a flat just two doors down from a place like this.
Behind the bar sat a Malaysian guy who was far younger and more fresh-faced than any of his grizzled clientele. He was reading a newspaper but looked up as the smartly dressed man approached. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked cheerily.
‘I’m after information,’ said the raincoat man.
The bartender pretended to scan the pumps and then the bottles behind him. ‘I don’t think we have any of that. How about a pint, mate?’
His English was perfect. By the sounds of things he was even adding a touch of Cockney just for comedy value. No doubt when your job was playing nursemaid to a bunch of jaundiced British soaks, you got your laughs any way you could.
‘Do you know a guy called Alex Abbott?’ asked the rain-coat man.
The smile left the barman’s face like smoke dispersing. ‘Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,’ he said.
Which was good enough for the visitor. ‘Spend a lot of time in here, does he? Likes a seat at the bar. Not here though,’ he ran a hand from left to right, ‘not with his back to the door. I bet he sits over there,’ he pointed, ‘or there.’ He indicated the other side where the bar turned a corner, where anybody sitting would have a good view of customers coming and going.
The barman looked at him, intrigued but wary. ‘If you’re going to ask me where he lives, I don’t know.’
‘He lives two doors down.’
‘Oh, does he?’ The barman played it down.
‘Yes, and I bet you he’s left you his spare door key, hasn’t he?’ He held up a finger. ‘He’s left you his door key and he’s told you not to give it to anyone but him. Is that right?’
The barman shrugged, giving nothing away.
The visitor leaned forward. He opened his coat. ‘But you’re going to give that key to me.’
CHAPTER 13
Abbott looked at the phone in his hand. Foxhole had cut him off.
Moments before, he’d pulled himself out of the water and onto the cruiser, cursing and groaning and owwing with pain as he slithered across the deck and then took the steps below decks. There, he had pulled himself into a sitting position, still cursing himself youtwatyoutwatyoutwat, the words meaningless now but like a mantra and helping to take his mind off the pain in his arm.
He reached for his trousers and retrieved the vacuum-sealed medipack. Pulling his wetsuit off he inspected the wound, cleaned it with solution, patted it dry and then reached for the QuikClot powder.
Next he dressed. Back into his civvies: black V-neck T-shirt with a long-sleeved khaki shirt slung open over the top. The wound wouldn’t slow him down. Blood loss was negligible. And so, as he grabbed his holdall and climbed off the boat, heading for his Honda Accord, he called Foxhole.
Who had – not to put too fine a point on it – shit himself.
Abbott’s first thought: Jesus, I’m the one who’s supposed to be volatile. Not you. His second was that, by the sounds of things, he could probably kiss the fee for the job goodbye. And his third? Would Foxhole take the flak, or would he pass the buck? Would he sell Abbott out?
He reached the car. His phone rang, and he got his answer.
‘Mr Abbott,’ said the caller. ‘My name is Chantrell. I work for Hexagon Security. You were doing a job for us this evening.’
‘Yup,’ replied Abbott. ‘All devices operational, I trust.’
‘Roger that.’
‘So maybe you could authorise transfer of my fee?’
‘More than happy to. You able to swing by Foxhole’s office right now? We’ll have a short debrief and get your fee sorted.’
‘Sounds grand. I’ll see you there.’
* * *
In Foxhole’s office, Chantrell finished the call. ‘Abbott says he’s coming here,’ he said, and Foxhole, who had been slumped dripping in his office chair, hair plastered to his face, gave a start.
‘Jesus Christ, he’s coming here. Do you know who this guy is?’
‘You’ve just told us that he’s a hard-assed ex-SBS guy, but that every time you met him you could smell booze on his breath,’ said Chantrell. ‘So a tough nut who can’t shoot straight. I think we can handle that.’
‘Not here, though.’ Foxhole’s usual Chicagoan drawl had risen to a near-screech.
‘You can rest your sphincter, mate,’ Tork assured him. ‘He ain’t coming here. He knows there’s nothing to be gained from coming here.’
He and Chantrell were already making for the door.
* * *
A hard rain had begun to fall. Having driven pell-mell across the city, Abbott dumped his beaten-up Accord a couple of streets away, grabbed his holdall and then jogged the rest of the distance, getting soaked but thanking the rain for one thing at least. It hid t
he fact that blood had soaked through his makeshift dressing.
He passed the Big Smile Beach Club, and despite everything – despite the fact that booze was half the reason he was in trouble in the first place – he still had to resist an urge to go in. That was how crazy this shit was. How it was in his brain. Imagine being at the bar: ‘How was your day?’ ‘Oh, you know, getting drunk, staging a covert night-time incursion, finding a dead hooker, getting into a firefight, picking up a flesh wound. How was yours?’
‘Yeah, pretty much the same.’
Now he slowed down. Catching himself before he made the mistake of acting out of habit and using the front door, he ducked through a narrow alleyway between his building and the one beside it, reaching a fire escape that he hauled down, clambering up quickly until he reached his window.
He paused on the windowsill, sitting on his haunches, one hand at his wound. From his holdall he dug out his Glock. Next he raised the window and climbed inside, wincing a little with the pain.
He stood there for a moment in the half-light, listening, holding the Glock two-handed by his thigh. Something wasn’t right. His sixth sense was trying to tell him something: an internal alarm bell jangling, that somehow managed to pierce the shroud of regret and alcohol he wore.
Then came a voice. ‘The barman warned you, didn’t he? I told him not to warn you,’ and a figure moved out of the shadows.
CHAPTER 14
There’s a scene in Citizen Kane where one of the characters talks about a girl he once saw on a ferry. It was only a fleeting glimpse, and she hadn’t even seen him. But there wasn’t a month since when that guy hadn’t thought about that girl.
It was a scene that had struck a chord with Abbott, who’d seen Citizen Kane one night in Thailand, of all places.
He knew that feeling. It was exactly the way he felt about Tessa.
Only it wasn’t every month he thought about her. It wasn’t weeks, either. It was days, it was hours. Because wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he thought about Tessa. Sometimes he might go half a day without thinking of her, and on those occasions he’d wonder if he was over her, if the ghost had finally been exorcised. But then he’d be thinking of her again; once more she’d be in his head, accompanied by that ever-present sense of what-might-have-been. No, what-should-have-been. Not quite one of the shit-thoughts, but in there keeping them company anyway. Jostling for position.
They’d met at school, back when his whole world was Burton-on-Trent and he already knew it was too small for him. She was his first love and now, he realised, his only. They had lost their virginity to one another and being wild that way found in each other a sexual chemistry that, again, he’d never found with another and could only assume he never would.
Theirs was a tempestuous relationship. Really, they should have just enjoyed each other and made the most of what they had, but they were young and thus had a predilection for introducing unnecessary drama into any given situation, even and most especially situations that did not require it.
Abbott, at the same time, was fighting his own demons. His parents, absent emotionally, too involved with difficulties that would eventually end in divorce, watched helpless as he, a promising student, had drifted towards petty crime, getting into fights, committing minor theft. Acting up. Showing off. He was the original good-kid-turned-bad. Not quite from the wrong side of the tracks but a regular visitor there. He’d even spent time in a remand home for minor arson. A mess, even in those days. The difference being that he didn’t know it back then.
Somehow their relationship had survived, and they had stayed together. Back then he took it for granted, being so full of himself, but these days he asked himself why a girl like Tessa would have stayed with a fuck-up like him, and he wondered if it was the whole bad-boy image. Or if maybe she just stayed with him as an act of rebellion at home. Her parents hated Abbott. Her dad fucking hated him.
Milestones came thick and fast: exams, part-time jobs, last days of school. The day Abbott passed his driving test he’d picked up Tessa in his mum’s Fiat Panda and they’d gone to the cinema, free at last. He was driving that same car when they went to collect their exam results together. She had excelled, of course. He, on the other hand? Well, his time in a remand home had done a lot to help him mend his ways, but he had been too far over into the dark side to turn things around completely. Poor to mediocre was the sad tale of the grades; Tessa, who with her supportive parents and protective older brother (who also fucking hated Abbott) knew only stability, absolutely sailed through. She had set her sights on Oxbridge. Abbott, meanwhile, planned on joining the Marines.
So he asked her to marry him. And of course she laughed because nobody got married at eighteen. Nobody in her world anyway, and certainly not Tessa, who thought of her life in stages, like a series of interlocking Lego bricks where marriage was at least two or three bricks away.
Abbott told her that being married need not affect her degree, her career. But she looked at him as though he were insane. He wanted her, that was the thing. He wanted to put her in a little cage.
He knew that now. He knew also that he had frightened her away.
They split up. It was no big deal at the time; they were bound to get back together as they always did. It was the reason their relationship was such a source of fascination for their mates. They were like a living soap: Alex and Tess, on and off like a light switch. During the five years they were a couple, they must have split up and got back together – what? – half a dozen times? Maybe more. And despite the marriage proposal, which was maybe more a gesture of loyalty on Abbott’s part than a serious consideration, they would get back together again.
Only this time, things took a turn. During the break, Abbott had a one-night-stand with a girl he met in town one night. A girl called Fiona.
Tess found out. Dumped him. As in, for good this time.
Worse, Fi was pregnant. Not yet eighteen, Abbott was to be a father and had lost the love of his life.
Off she went to Oxford, taking her broken heart with her and leaving him with his. He’d never seen her since. But like the guy in Citizen Kane, he thought about her all the time. All. The. Time.
As for him and Fi? For a while they tried to make it as a couple. But the spark was never there. Fi was different to Tessa. Where Tessa was water, Fi was fire. Where Tessa was soft, Fi was hard. Both were determined, but the source of Tessa’s determination lay outside the relationship, whereas Fi turned it inwards and onto Abbott, onto their marriage.
And the biggest bone of contention? That would be his long absences as a serving Marine. While he was away, she would complain that he was never there. When he was at home, she would remind him that he was never there. His drinking didn’t help, of course, and became a bigger factor in their relationship the more time went on. It meant that Abbott could never win any argument. Whatever the dispute; whoever was in the wrong, it always came back to that. Drink was as much her weapon of choice as it was his.
Their son, Nathan, was the glue that held them together. For a while. For a long time, actually. But in the end it wasn’t enough. Nath was ten years old when they split. Not long later, Fi had met another guy, a pen pusher from the Ministry of Defence, part of the MOD’s ‘defence diplomacy’ division.
Needless to say, and in accordance with every rule of divorce, the new guy and Abbott had never got on. They were different animals. And while there was no romantic rivalry over Fi, Abbott resented his replacement fathering Nathan.
Abbott would snipe, making no secret of his derision for ‘defence diplomacy’, while the other guy would make barbs about Abbott’s parental absence. For his part, Abbott made the most of the fact that his SF bearing and air of unpredictability intimidated the other guy whom he had named ‘Cuckoo’.
In short, the two were, if not outright enemies, then rivals.
Which made it all the more surprising that Cuckoo was standing in his one-room apartment in Singapore.
CHAPTER
15
‘All right, Cuckoo?’ said Abbott.
Cuckoo sighed. ‘Can’t you for once use my actual name, Abbott?’
Abbott looked at him, seeing the Cuckoo he knew of old: a man who was born to mow the lawn into neat straight lines and then settle down for Sunday lunch. A solid guy. Everything Abbott wasn’t and didn’t want to be – but somehow envied anyway.
‘You can’t remember my real name, can you?’ said Cuckoo, icily.
‘Is it Clive something?’
‘No, not Clive.’
‘Ian.’
‘No.’
‘Alan.’
‘Yes, it’s Alan.’
‘Well … Cuckoo. How about you tell me what you’re doing in my apartment?’ asked Abbott. As he spoke, he pushed the Glock into the waistband of his cargo pants, went to the centre of the room, brushed aside a threadbare circular rug and reached to crack open one of the floorboards. He began decanting his diving gear and assault rifle into the void beneath, reluctantly giving up his Glock and his knife, too, replacing the floorboard.
‘We need to talk,’ said Cuckoo.
‘Couldn’t you have called?’
‘I didn’t think you’d take the call.’
‘And why wouldn’t I?’
‘You know why.’
Abbott replaced the floorboard and then moved to a chest of drawers, yanked open a drawer and began rummaging.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Cuckoo, as Abbott began tossing socks and pants onto the bed before moving quickly to the wardrobe, grabbing a couple of shirts and adding them to the pile.
‘I’m putting up Christmas decorations, what does it look like? Hate to break it to your ego but you weren’t the reason I was coming through the window.’
‘You’re leaving? Where are you—?’
Abbott reached into the top of a cupboard, located and popped a small panel that he’d rigged up and retrieved his passports and his old military ID. Like most operators in his game, he had two passports, a ‘clean’ one and a ‘dirty’ one. The ‘clean’ one was, literally, clean. The kind of passport that barely received a second look at passport control. The dirty one, on the other hand, was covered in visas and stamps, mostly for Middle Eastern countries. Say you were going to the States, which passport would you present? Exactly.
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