Lucy was wrapping up her conversation as Shelley finished saying his goodbyes to the Drakes and stepped away.
She took his arm as the funeral-goers dispersed.
‘Did you ask how it happened?’ she said. They reached the Saab and climbed in.
‘I chickened out,’ admitted Shelley ruefully. He picked his hat up off the back seat and fitted it back on his head. A Christys’ newsboy cap. Like him, it looked like a worn relic from another age, and just wearing it made him feel more himself again.
‘Thought you might. So I asked for you. Well, I didn’t ask outright. I dug.’
His fingers dropped from the ignition key. ‘Yes. And?’
‘She shot herself, Shelley. Took herself off to that hostel and ate a bullet. And if anybody knows anything more than that, they’re not saying.’
For a moment he simply sat in silence, absorbing that fact, thinking, She shot herself. But before that, she called me. Why did she call me?
He reached for the key to start the car. ‘Did you see any paparazzi hanging around?’ he asked Lucy.
‘No,’ she said.
‘No, me neither.’
CHAPTER 5
THEY ARRANGED TO meet in a coffee shop in Islington, close to where they used to make contact on another job.
It was funny, thought Shelley, how you never really left your old life behind. You just added to it, like the old masters reusing a canvas. You painted over it, but it was still there underneath all those layers, and at some point it would make its presence known again.
Already installed at a table, wearing a pinstriped suit and looking incongruous among the yummy mummies and retirees, was his appointment: the man from MI5, Simon Claridge. He was slouching a little, reading the Daily Telegraph as he sipped his coffee, but he looked up as Shelley turned from the counter and made his way across the coffee shop. ‘Hello, Shelley,’ he said.
Shelley placed his coffee down, removed his newsboy cap and dropped it on the table, running fingers through his hair and dragging his scarf from around his neck.
Claridge watched it all with a half-smile. ‘Looking good there, Shelley,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘In fact, you’re looking like a man who’s enjoying a well-earned rest in the company of the beautiful Lucy.’ He laid his Telegraph to one side and pulled up his chair, ready to talk.
‘Careful,’ replied Shelley, ‘or I’ll tell her you said that.’
Grinning now, the MI5 man held up his hands. ‘I beg you, anything but that. How is she? Well, I hope?’
Claridge knew Lucy, but they hadn’t seen each other since the three of them had worked together to bring down the Quarry Company, a sick hunting-game organisation that had murdered their friend and comrade Cookie.
After leaving the Regiment, Shelley and Lucy had retired to their cute Stepney Green terrace in order to look after their dog Frankie and cook up ideas for their fledgling PSC.
Cookie, however, had fallen on hard times and taken to living on the street. Then a bunch of blokes with too much money and bad taste in high-powered weapons hunted him down and killed him for sport. The Quarry Company. The bastards had killed Frankie too.
After taking down the Quarry Company, Shelley and Lucy had to spend time on the run – just over a year – until Claridge had been able to assure them that the coast was clear. With that they’d returned home to resume their lives, which meant renewing attempts to get the business off the ground. Their low-profile period, while proving to be a wonderful holiday, hadn’t exactly done much to advance their plans in the PSC department.
‘She’s fine,’ Shelley answered. ‘Mostly.’
‘Mostly?’
‘Yeah. Mostly.’
‘I see, and what about you?’ asked Claridge. ‘How’s life treating you?’
‘Well, you know,’ shrugged Shelley, ‘can’t complain.’
‘Hmm, not much of an answer, is it? Okay, but if you were to complain, what would you be complaining about?’
Shelley felt one side of his mouth lift in what he knew would be a somewhat wintry smile. ‘I guess things could be a bit more comfortable. Financially, I mean. It’s not like the work is flooding in.’
Claridge nodded. ‘And that’s why Lucy is “mostly” fine?’
‘She misses life in the forces more than I do. She’d be happier back in Iraq, I reckon, as long as she had something to keep her occupied.’
‘And you’ve got nothing in this country to keep her occupied?’
‘Like I say, the work isn’t flooding in.’
Claridge frowned. ‘The last time we spoke, I told you that if you had difficulty finding work then you were to get in touch. Now you tell me that you are having difficulty finding work but that’s not the reason you got in touch, is it?’
‘I like doing things on my terms,’ sighed Shelley. ‘As soon as I start accepting work from someone, even someone I trust, I’m surrendering that luxury. I stop being the one who says yes or no, and I start being the one who says “thank you, I’ll do it”.’
Claridge rolled his eyes. ‘Welcome to the real world, Shelley. It’s called commerce. And really, it’s no great hardship. You decline work if you don’t like the sound of it, wait for something more suitable to come along, and if you put a few noses out of joint doing that, well, who cares, frankly. None of those noses will belong to me, of that I can assure you. What does Lucy say?’
‘If Lucy was here she’d be nudging me in the ribs right now, going, “See? I told you so.”’
‘There you go.’
‘Look,’ said Shelley, ‘I’m really grateful for the offer, you know I am. Let me just try it my own way first, see if I can make a go of it, and if I can’t, then I’ll try it your way, the Lucy way. How does that sound?’
‘Can’t say fairer than that, I suppose,’ said Claridge. ‘So, let’s get to the matter that brought us here today.’
Shelley nodded slowly, his mind returning to Emma Drake.
‘Okay, before we start, there is one thing I need to get clear.’ Claridge had laid his hands on the table, palms down, fingers spread. ‘Have you told the police everything you know?’
‘You’re talking about the phone call.’
Claridge nodded.
‘My phone went. I ignored the call. That’s it.’
‘That’s it?’ Claridge offered him an appraising look, his head cocked slightly to one side. ‘You’re asking me to believe that you just “ignored the call”.’
Shelley looked away, across the coffee shop, where mums tended to babies in pushchairs and gossiped with other mums, where older gentlemen sat with newspapers, looking like relics from another time. In the old days when phones had handsets, and even dials, and no little readout to tell you who was calling, you just picked the fuck up. Nowadays you got to ‘screen’ your calls. And that was what had happened. He’d ignored her call because he was screening.
He returned his attention to Claridge. ‘I get the occasional cold call,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t recognise the number so I chose not to answer. I figured if it was important—’
‘Somebody wanting to hire you, for example,’ pushed Claridge.
‘Somebody trying to hire me,’ conceded Shelley, ‘then they would leave a message.’
‘And?’
‘No message. And now I feel like shit and wish I’d taken the call. Happy?’
Claridge lowered his eyes. ‘My apologies. I’m being insensitive.’
Shelley leaned over and pretended to give Claridge a slap. ‘Don’t be daft. No, you’re not. Christ, people die. Even young people, sometimes. That’s the way the world is – we know that better than most. It’s just that she was a great kid. So much spirit.’
Claridge was sipping his coffee. He placed his cup to the saucer before he spoke again. ‘So what are you saying? You’re surprised she killed herself ?’
Shelley thought. ‘No, not really. People change, don’t they? Nobody can look at a ten-year-old kid and predict they’re going t
o kill themselves. But there’s something up about this one – something a bit more than usually off about it all. For a start, she called me, out of the blue, for no good reason I can think of. Why would she do that? Secondly, her dad’s employed security. Three guys. Three.’
‘All right,’ said Claridge, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve got. Victim: Emma Drake, twenty-four years old. Cause of death: self-inflicted gunshot wound. But you know all this already.’
Shelley nodded. ‘Do we know where she got the piece?’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘What sort of gun was it?’
‘Nine millimetre, semi-auto. Croatian Parabellum. The sort of thing you can buy in a pub, which is probably where she got it.’
‘Stolen?’
‘No doubt. Originally. Serial number hasn’t given us anything yet.’
‘Right,’ said Shelley, seeing something pass across Claridge’s face. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Did you know that she had a history of intravenous drug use?’
Shelley screwed up his eyes in a wince. ‘Ah, shit. Really?’
‘I’m afraid so. She was a user, Shelley, of some vintage. My apologies if that comes as a shock.’
It did. But then again it didn’t. He would have hoped that Emma, of all people, might have stayed away from hard drugs, but he knew how easy it was to fall into. He, Lucy and Cookie had carried out operations against the cartels. He’d seen the pain and suffering drug addiction inflicted indiscriminately. It was a scourge with no respect for gender or class. It didn’t look at a bright young girl from a good and loving family and decide to walk on by. It didn’t work like that.
So no, shock wasn’t exactly what he felt.
It helped explain her taking her own life suddenly. He doubted she would have been able to go home and admit her addiction to her parents. Guy was a good father, but he was the doting, overprotective sort, and probably not nearly as approachable as he liked to think. Susie? Shelley was sure Emma would have got a good hearing there, but even so, anything serious would likely have got back to Guy sooner or later.
‘She obviously meant something to you,’ said Claridge.
Shelley nodded. Yes, she did. But in that moment he was mainly thinking, Why, if she was a user, didn’t she just use smack to check out?
CHAPTER 6
TWO DAYS LATER, Shelley found himself in the living room of the home of a thirty-something actor in Berkshire, having completed the first phase of the one and only job on his books by safely delivering a supposedly top-secret script.
‘So you’re the SAS man, are you?’ the actor said, leading him into the house. He wore jeans and a tight T-shirt, his hair shaved in a number two or three. He stared hard at Shelley. ‘You don’t look much like an ex-SAS man.’
‘And how do we normally look?’ asked Shelley, feeling old and out of shape, and also thinking the guy was a weapons-grade arsehole.
‘I don’t know,’ laughed the actor, dropping onto a large sofa and propping bare feet on a glass coffee table before pulling the brown envelope onto his lap, ‘like Jason Statham, I suppose. You’re more stylish than I expected.’ He pointed to Shelley’s boots. ‘Nice Red Wings, by the way.’
‘Thank you.’
The actor cocked his head. ‘What’s that accent?’
‘My accent?’
‘Yes, what’s that? Where are you from, originally?’
Shelley shrugged. ‘Originally? Limehouse.’
‘Limehouse in London?’
‘Yeah, Limehouse in London.’
‘Do you work out?’
‘Not as much as I should,’ said Shelley, thinking of that rarely used gym membership. ‘I stay mobile, that’s the important thing.’
‘I stay mobile,’ repeated the actor, trying to approximate Shelley’s rasping voice. ‘That’s the important thing. Limehouse. In Lahndahn. South of the river. Do you smoke?’
Oh, Christ, you’re a bell-end. ‘No, mate, no, I don’t.’
‘You sound like you smoke.’
‘Look, mate—’ started Shelley, and then, belatedly, feeling like a man who’d only just understood the punchline to a bad joke, he realised why he had been asked to do this particular job. It wasn’t just a delivery for this guy. It was research. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he sighed, ‘your script involves an ex-SAS man.’
Grinning, the actor gestured with the envelope. ‘I hope you haven’t had a peek.’
Typical. Guys like this thought the world revolved around them; they couldn’t imagine it any other way. ‘It was sealed,’ said Shelley. ‘It’s still sealed. I didn’t look at your script. That’s your job. I’m just supposed to wait while you read it and then return it.’
He swiped the hat from his head and began to shed his woollen overcoat, indicating an armchair, all black leather and steel tubes, the kind that was popular in the 1970s but must have come back into style. ‘If it’s all right with you I’ll take a seat while you get on with it.’
‘Mi casa su casa,’ quipped the actor, and Shelley sat down in order to wait.
He was sitting watching the actor – who read his script while at the same time being supremely aware of Shelley’s presence, as though the process of reading the script was in itself a performance – when his phone buzzed. Claridge. Shelley excused himself and moved out of the living room to a quiet corner of the house.
‘Good to see you the other day,’ the MI5 man said. ‘I hope I was of some use.’
‘I guess,’ said Shelley, who still hadn’t decided what, if anything, he planned to do with the information he’d been given. It was like some bad movie tagline: he’d gone to Claridge in search of answers but all he’d got were more questions.
‘Something else has cropped up since we spoke,’ said Claridge. ‘I left a flag on the file and an old friend got in touch to let me know there’s been a development. Two developments, to be exact.’
‘Fire away.’
‘Well, the first thing is that you’re not the only one who’s been making enquiries about the death of Emma Drake. Don’t ask me who, I don’t have names. All I know is that, according to my contact, interest has been shown by party or parties unknown.’
Bennett, perhaps? thought Shelley. Was that it? Was Bennett doing investigative work for Drake? Could be, although an ex-Para wasn’t the first person you’d call on to do some detective work. Not unless there were other, related, duties you wanted performed.
‘Right. I see. And this third party, are they being supplied with information?’
‘That I couldn’t possibly say with any degree of authority. Ask me what I think, however, and I’d say yes, because … well, why not?’
‘Okay. Well, thanks for that. And what’s the other thing?’
‘The cops are working on a theory,’ said Claridge. ‘Not that she was murdered. As far as they’re concerned it’s beyond doubt that she killed herself. But they seem pretty sure that the body was moved to the Clapham hostel. And if that is the case then the body was moved complete with bed sheets. Wherever she killed herself, it was also on a bed. But not, they think, in that hostel.’
‘I see,’ said Shelley.
‘One final thing, about the gun. It only had one bullet in it.’
‘What, like one round remaining?’
‘No,’ said Claridge, ‘what I mean is that she only ever used one bullet. The bullet that killed her.’
‘So she only loaded one bullet?’
‘Exactly. But the odd thing is that there were no other bullets recovered. It seems that she bought a gun and one bullet. Or she bought a gun and several bullets but discarded all but one.’
Shelley considered. ‘Maybe she didn’t want them falling into the wrong hands.’
They fell into silence, knowing it was an implausible scenario. Shelley filed it away for later use.
‘That twitching antenna of yours, what’s it doing now?’ asked Claridge.
Shelley swerved that particular question. But he decided that the
Drakes’ home in Ascot wasn’t too far away, and while he was in the area he might as well pay Guy Drake a visit.
CHAPTER 7
AS HE DROVE – Elvis on the stereo – Shelley thought about the man he was on his way to see.
Guy Drake had launched Drake Electronics in 1980, when microchips were still making the journey from science fiction to everyday mundanity. It was because of entrepreneurs like Drake that chips dropped in price and became smaller. And then, as a result of their size and availability, came to be used in every gadget in every room in every house in the developed world.
But where Drake had prospered more than others was in spotting the military applications for this new, smaller and less expensive microchip and being quicker to offer them for sale to the British Army. That had made him very rich, very quickly.
What’s more, Guy Drake had a great backstory. He’d been laid off from an engineering job in Salford, Lancashire, ‘victim of the bastard Tories’, he liked to say. But instead of retiring to the nearest pub and drowning his woes in cheap bitter, he’d used his redundancy payment to launch his new enterprise. What had previously been a spare-bedroom hobby had become Drake Electronics.
With his success had come a taste for publicity. Credit to him, it was usually for the right reasons. He donated to charity and he cultivated a reputation as a generous employer, often treating his staff to lavish parties – even, on one well-reported occasion, a holiday, en masse, for all his employees and their families.
But then came the begging letters. Followed by the threatening letters. And when the letters started to become more menacing, Drake made use of his military contacts and employed a security consultant, Gerald Mowles, an old friend of Shelley’s, to decide whether any of them constituted a credible threat.
Gerald was one of the few people entrusted with the information that Shelley and Lucy were a couple and were planning to get married. Knowing Shelley was due a sabbatical, as well as being in the market for a bit of extra cash for his impending nuptials, he’d got in touch. With good reason. Take a map and pin the world’s kidnap hotspots – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Yemen – then pin the places Shelley had served. You wouldn’t need two sets of pins.
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