by Adrian Wills
‘Come in, make yourself comfortable,’ she said to the shadow standing in the doorway, her voice dripping with promise.
She staggered across the carpet as if she was drunk, but her eyes told another story. They were clear and focused, scrutinising the room, no doubt trying to work out where Blake was concealed.
Stone skulked into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. He stood with his hands in his pockets looking uncertain. Parkes popped the cork and squealed with delight as a plume of foam erupted all over the floor. She found the plastic cups by the kettle on the side and poured two large measures.
‘Don’t be shy,’ she said, with a coquettish grin, handing Stone one of the cups, as he sat on the edge of the bed, facing the wardrobe.
From his cramped position, Blake watched Stone closely, staring through the tiniest gap where he’d not pulled the doors fully closed. The soldier looked a little lost. The cocksure confidence he’d exuded at the school and on the moor when he was co-ordinating the search party for Kyle Hopkins had gone. Furtive eyes darted around the room, not settling on anything, and his foot tapped furiously on the floor.
Parkes stood by the window, hands on her hips, shoulders back, tossing her hair out of her face, showing off her wares like a second-rate whore. ‘Wait here, I’ll be back in a moment,’ she giggled, floating off towards the bathroom. She pulled the door closed and Blake heard the lock click into place.
Stone let out a long breath, sipped from his cup and put it down on the table by the bed. He stood and moved towards the window, pulling back the curtains and looking outside. Then he turned to a selection of tourist leaflets fanned out on the desk. He ran the tips of his fingers across Parkes’ jacket hung over the back of the chair, and checked his appearance in the mirror, running a thumb over one eyebrow and then the other.
He was coming closer. Blake readied himself.
Next he tried the drawers in the credenza by the wardrobe, easing each one open noiselessly, peering inside and closing it again. He discovered the miniature fridge hidden behind a concealed door and helped himself to a packet of peanuts, popped open the bag and shoved a handful into his mouth.
As he stood, Blake caught the alcohol on his breath. He was that close. Too close.
A shooting pain seared through Blake’s calf as it cramped. He had to bite his lip to stop himself crying out as the muscle locked tight. Stone’s attention moved on, his curiosity undiminished. He glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom and reached for one of the wardrobe handles.
Blake shrunk into the darkness, his Browning pressing into the small of his back. He wondered how quickly he could reach for it given there was no room to move his arms. If Stone opened the doors, he’d have no choice but to plant the barrel between his eyes, take him down and worry about the explanations later.
Blake willed Parkes to hurry back.
‘Hey, what’re you up to?’
Stone jumped, and as he turned, Blake saw his chance. He adjusted the position of his body, working out the angles.
‘Nothing,’ said Stone, sounding as guilty as hell.
‘Why don’t you tell me about the army.’
Blake hesitated, holding his breath. He’d not expected Parkes to pick up where she’d left off in the pub. Maybe she could get him talking after all.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘It must be tough,’ she said, moving towards him and deftly avoiding his clumsy attempt to snatch a kiss. ‘Any more fizz?’
Stone filled up her cup and she beckoned him to join her on the bed.
Blake relaxed into a more comfortable position.
‘I don’t know what it is about men in the military,’ said Parkes, toying with her hair. ‘I suppose it’s partly the uniform, but I guess it’s the danger too. It’s such a turn on.’
‘Well, it’s not for everyone.’
‘Have you been to war?’
Stone shrugged, throwing back the contents of his plastic cup in one mouthful and trying to suppress a belch.
‘How was it?’
‘Hot. Dirty. Dusty. Like I said, it’s not for everyone.’
‘I can’t imagine how you could do it, knowing you could be killed at any moment.’
‘I dunno, you just have to, you know? I guess the training kicks in.’
‘Do you have any scars?’ Parkes asked, with schoolgirl delight. ‘Can I see them?’
‘Not really. I was always careful. No point taking unnecessary risks.’
‘You must have seen some awful things though?’
Stone tensed and went quiet, all humour draining away.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Parkes, reaching for his face. She placed a tender palm on his cheek. ‘Did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Stone swallowed hard. ‘It’s just that guys these days are so spineless. That doesn’t interest me. I guess you can take care of yourself, Jake?’ She looked him straight in the eye, and he tried to kiss her again.
‘Steady on, cowboy. Let’s not rush things. We have all night. Tell me, what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done?’
Stone looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You must have done loads of crazy things?’
‘They made us abseil down the side of a cliff during training in Wales. That was pretty scary.’
‘I thought you said you went to war?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where?’
Blake tensed. There it was. The big question. Would he bite?
‘All over,’ he said.
‘Anywhere I’ve heard of?’ Parkes giggled. Stone’s eyes misted over and a faraway look shadowed his face. ‘You can tell me.’
He ran a tongue over his lips as his eyes travelled the length of Parkes’ body. He opened his mouth and was about to speak when the phone by the side of the bed rang with a loud, intrusive trill.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Under any other circumstance, the guesthouse would have been an idyllic place to stay with its commanding perch overlooking the loch and surrounded by a picturesque Scottish pine forest. A perfect spot for a quiet getaway where the air was clean and the landscape like something out of a travel guide.
Patterson had paid up front in cash, given false names and lied to the owners when they’d asked polite questions about where the couple had travelled from and what plans they had for their stay in the Highlands. They seemed more than content with his cover story that he and Helen were returning to Scotland to renew their vows twenty years after their honeymoon. If they thought it was strange that they only had a small rucksack between them, they hadn’t said anything. In fact, it was all Patterson had had time to pack after his narrow escape in London. He’d grabbed a few clothes, his laptop, their passports and the Glock handgun he kept hidden in a safe in the study, and dragged his wife protesting from the house. He wasn’t going to leave her behind as leverage. Of course she wanted to know what was going on. He wished he had the answers. But what could he say? Only that their lives were in danger and he needed some time and space to think, to work out what the hell was happening.
‘I wish you’d just tell me,’ said Helen, lifting a crocheted blanket off the bed like she was picking up a lice-infested sheet.
Although handsome from the outside, the interior of the guesthouse was a throwback to the nineteen seventies. Their room was clean, but it felt forty years out of date with lacy net curtains at the windows, heavy floral paper on the walls and lavender scented bags in the drawers and wardrobe. But it wasn’t a major concern for Patterson. They’d have to move on the next day anyway. And keep moving until he figured out who was after him and why. He was pretty sure it was connected to the files on the Duke of Yorks he’d lifted for Blake, but whatever it was they thought he’d found out, he was none the wiser.
‘Honey, I’m sorry. I wish I had answers, but I don’t,’ he said, peering through a crack in the curtains into the inky darkness outside. ‘All I can tell you is that we need to keep our h
eads down until I can work this out.’
‘But you must know who we’re running from.’
‘No, Helen, I don’t.’
She slumped on the bed, the strain showing on her face. She looked exhausted, a combination of the travel and anxiety.
‘Surely there’s somebody you can call? The police or someone from the office?’
Patterson shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had the stirrings of a headache coming. ‘No, there isn’t,’ he snapped, and instantly regretted his tone. He had no right to take his anger out on his wife. She was one of the few people he could trust right now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, moving to the bed. He took her hand and looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t know what I’m dealing with, and I’m scared.’
‘Hey, it’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not. I never intended for you to be dragged into any of this, but if I’d left you behind they could have used you to get to me.’ Patterson took a deep breath. ‘I think it might have something to do with that missing soldier in Devon. I sent Blake to investigate because there was a chance he’d been abducted by a Jihadi cell.’
‘I saw the story on the news,’ said Helen. ‘They didn’t mention anything about terrorists.’
‘They wouldn’t have done. Blake’s down there, nosing around, and I think he’s stumbled on something he wasn’t supposed to find. He asked me to look into some military records. Shortly afterwards there was a raid on my office, and suddenly there are these guys looking for me.’
‘Who?’
Patterson threw up his hands. ‘I have absolutely no idea. Government people I guess, someone with the authorisation to raid the Firm.’
He spared her the details of the car crash, and how the Range Rover with blacked out windows had raced through traffic lights and tail-ended his Audi, spinning it across the road in a shower of smashed glass, broken plastic and squealing tyres, and into the path of an oncoming garbage truck.
He’d been driving around aimlessly after Heather had tipped him off that half a dozen men had turned up to search his office, and he’d diverted away, not sure where to go or what to do.
At first he thought the crash had been an accident, but that idea was quickly dispelled when, with the explosion of the airbags still ringing in his ears, he saw two men in sunglasses jump out of the Range Rover, muscles bulging under their dark suits and carrying Heckler and Koch guns, cocked and loaded.
Ignoring a pain down one side of his neck, Patterson reached into the passenger footwell and grabbed his laptop that had been thrown off the seat. He ducked out of the car with it under his arm, and keeping his head low ran into a nearby shop where a sales assistant had come to the door to see what was going on.
‘Is there a back way out?’ he’d asked.
She nodded mutely and pointed beyond a counter at the rear of the shop. Patterson raced through a dingy back room piled high with cardboard boxes and crashed through a fire door into a back-alley rank with the stench of rotting cabbage. He turned left and sprinted into an adjacent street, took a right and another left and saw a bus pulling up at a stop. He glanced over his shoulder, and satisfied the two men weren’t on his tail, hopped on the double decker with his heart pounding and breathing hard.
After four stops, he jumped off, hurried into a leafy park and hid in the public conveniences next to a cafe busy with a mid-morning crowd of young mums and businessmen. He locked himself in a cubicle with his computer on his lap and his heart in his mouth.
Although he was confident he’d given his pursuers the slip, he feared there might be others, especially if they were Government agents, which seemed the most likely explanation. London was a bustling city, but there were few corners not covered by CCTV cameras, and it wouldn’t have taken a tech genius to have tracked his movements.
He made his mind up to get out of the city. He thought about calling Helen to warn her, but there was no point causing her unnecessary alarm. She’d only panic. His next thought was to contact the Deputy Director General, Sir Richard Howard. Patterson stared at his phone and knew it would be a mistake. In fact, they were probably already using the device to trace him. He made one last, panicked call to Blake, then popped out the SIM card, threw it down the pan and tossed the phone into a waste bin on his way out.
‘I thought you worked for the Government,’ said Helen, frowning. ‘Why would they be trying to find you?’
‘I told you, I don’t know.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you handed yourself in? Talked to them?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Patterson. He’d had plenty of time to reflect on who his pursuers might be on the sleeper train. He’d heard about a shadowy investigatory unit attached to the Ministry of Defence but had never seen their existence officially confirmed. A little like Echo 17.
‘Then I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t need to say anything.’
‘You probably shouldn’t have told me all that stuff about Blake and the missing soldier.’
‘You have a right to know.’ Patterson stroked her hair. After all these years, she was still beautiful. ‘You look tired. Why don’t you try to get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning. They always do.’
Helen hauled herself off the bed and dragged her weary body to the tiny en-suite bathroom. Patterson sat at the narrow dressing table under the window and switched on his laptop. He disabled the WIFI and navigated to a folder on the desktop he’d encrypted with a fifteen-digit code. Inside the folder were copies he’d made of the military records Blake had asked him to look into. He’d hidden another copy on a memory stick in his safe in the office. There were six files in total. No photos. Only basic career histories. Five of the files belonged to the instructors from the army’s school of survival, plus another belonging to a soldier called Private Anthony Okeke, who’d been part of the same unit in Iraq and who had also returned early to take up ‘support and liaison duties’ at the regimental headquarters in Surrey. But while the others had been subsequently appointed training positions at the school, Okeke had taken a voluntary discharge from the army.
‘Find anything?’ asked Helen, emerging from the bathroom in the pair of cotton pyjamas he’d shoved in the rucksack as they left the house in a hurry.
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, don’t stay up too late.’
‘No, I won’t be long,’ said Patterson, as Helen climbed into bed and switched off the light on the bedside table.
He scanned through each file again, looking for something he’d missed. Everything was exactly as Blake had reported. It was unusual for a patrol to be returned home while on active duty, but not unheard of. And yet somebody had put a protective ring around the files.
At first it had prompted a call to Sir Richard from a senior official in the Ministry of Defence complaining MI5 was digging around its databases without authorisation. But with a soldier missing, possibly abducted by terrorists, Patterson had done nothing wrong. As an MI5 investigating officer, he was well within his rights. Sir Richard had told them so, and they’d both thought that would be the end of it.
Patterson was drawn to the file belonging to Anthony Okeke, for no other reason than he was the one individual who’d not taken up a post at the training school. He was the son of Jamaican parents, born in London, and one of two siblings. He had no disciplinary issues and nothing out of the ordinary on his file, apart from his early discharge. Just a regular squaddie who looked as if he’d kept his head down and got on with the job. So where was he now?
The temptation was to search for him online. The tech geeks in the IT department had installed special software on the laptop which supposedly masked its location, but even so, Patterson was nervous. It would be risking everything. But with Blake still out in the field, exposed, he had to try.
The WIFI speed was surprisingly fast, even though the guesthouse was in the middle of nowhere. Patterson started with the obvious, typing “Anthony Okeke” into Goog
le. It returned a few hits, but nothing of note. A doctor in Texas; a university lecturer in Virginia, but nothing in the UK. He scrolled through a few Facebook profiles and some LinkedIn biographies, but nothing matched up.
Helen rolled over and groaned. He should get some sleep too. Tomorrow was going to be another long day. He closed down the search engine and was about to switch off the computer when he had a fleeting idea. He fired up another piece of software, typed in his credentials and waited as the system logged him in on slow time. Patterson checked his watch. He’d already been online for ten minutes. Plenty of time for a hacker worth his salt to track him down.
Finally, a search bar popped up and he typed in Okeke’s name. The results came back with one result, which was one more than he’d expected. When he clicked on it, Okeke’s current employment details popped up. Patterson read them with wide-eyed wonder, his palms slick with sweat as he realised he’d actually met the guy, albeit briefly. He cast his mind back but couldn’t recall his face. Those personal protection officers all looked the same, but it was a breakthrough at last, and he ought to warn Blake.
He switched off the computer and quietly let himself out of the room. The landing was illuminated by soft night lights. He edged down the stairs to the desk by the front door where he remembered seeing a phone when they’d checked in. It was an old-fashioned handset, like everything else in the house, a throwback to a bygone age. First he dialled Blake’s mobile from memory. When it went straight to voicemail, Patterson slammed the handset down in frustration.
The other number he’d memorised was for the hotel he’d booked Blake into in Devon. He dialled with one finger and reached a helpful receptionist who put the call straight through to Blake’s room.
The phone rang twice before it was answered by a woman who sounded breathless, impatient even.
‘Yes?’ she said.
He wondered if he’d been connected to the wrong room.
‘I need to speak to -’ but before he could finish his sentence, the woman slammed the phone down.