Blake grabbed the other corner of the bottom mat. Ray winced inwardly at the fresh heavy cuts and bruises on his heavily calloused knuckles but chose to say nothing. Together they dragged the pile to the edge of the hall. They both palmed the grit off their hands.
‘It’s time,’ said Blake.
The day that Ray had dreaded from the moment Blake had arrived was here. He had hoped against hope that during their time together he would be able to convince him to take a different path. The likelihood of that diminished as Blake had retreated further and further from him despite their proximity and his offered hand. He had sensed something between Blake and Serena, a softening of the man in her presence. But whatever it was it was not going to be enough. Blake had buried deep the part of him that might have listened and there were times when Ray no longer recognised the man stood before him, who acceded to his every command, his every brutal push, so long as it took him further along the path he had set himself. Anything else was met with silence. He loved Blake. Blake was his son in every sense of what made a son. Except he was not born of his flesh. In every way that counted that made their relationship of trust, loyalty, love stronger than one that could have ever been built on biology alone.
But the man that he could once reach with a word was gone. The one left in his place was the one he had physically shaped.
‘Let me come with you.’ he whispered, knowing the answer before he uttered the words.
‘I could not do that to Serena.’ His logic was cold, irrefutable.
‘No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.’
Blake smiled at the words first uttered all those years ago. One of the many wisdoms Ray had taught him as he helped him reorient himself to a world that up until then had only brought him pain.
‘Words to live by,’ said Blake.
‘And words to die by,’ replied Ray.
‘What would you have me do?’
And that was the question. What would Ray have him do? He had driven a code of being, of living, deep into Blake. It made him the man he was. Who could anticipate that such things would come to pass and that the code he had been taught, that was now part of him, could reply with any other answer. Ray had taught him not to bend. What did he expect he would do? Ray put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
‘Come back to us alive.’
‘You say goodbye to Serena for me.’
He nodded.
‘They will kill you,’ said Ray quietly.
‘Then they’ll be doing me a favour.’
Ray’s eyes welled up. A tear escaped. He placed his other hand on Blake’s face. Blake placed his over Ray’s for a moment then took them both and placed the back of them to his forehead. His mark of respect. Then he let them go, picked up his kit bag and walked out.
Outside the night was fresh, the car park was vacant, save for the solitary shape of Ray’s cheap blue Ford in the corner and his silhouette thrown across the lot by the light from the hall. The empty streets beyond the car park were black and mirror wet, punctuated here and there with rippling puddles of weak yellow light from the streetlamps.
A bleak wind rose, high-pitched and piercing, whistling through the nooks and crannies of the awning above and blowing the warm air from him like dust from a statue.
Flicking up the collar of his coat and taking a deep breath of the fresh night air, Blake stepped from under the awning and cut across the car park, his shadow stretching and fading with each step. Behind him the lights from the hall flickered out.
CHAPTER 19
a dingy hotel...a pause...preparations for war...
The train slowed and jerked to a halt. He opened his eyes to find the name of his new home directly opposite the carriage window. The train had called at a number of stations along the way. He had not slept, his pain had kept him awake and attuned to the various entries and exits, the subtle change in pressure, the changes in temperature as the hot stale air was expelled and the cold wet air was let in.
He waited until all the occupants had left. A few furtive glances came his way but nothing that concerned him. He scanned the exterior of the train noting the placement of the security cameras. He stepped from the carriage, raised the collar of his coat against the cold and walked out of the station.
It was late. He walked down a yellow-lit thoroughfare onto the main promenade. All light stopped cold about twenty meters from where he stood. Small pinpricks of luminescence danced in the blackness that lay beyond. He walked across the promenade to the pebble beach. He trudged down the gentle slope and stopped when the water washed across his boots.
He filled his lungs with the cold sea air and stretched his arms and let the sea’s breath dispel the stale remains of the train’s interior that clung in the gaps between cloth and skin. His skin felt greasy and sour. He needed a shower.
A few cheap looking vacancy lights flickered further down the main road across from the promenade. He hiked back up the beach, pebbles crunching underfoot, across the promenade and past the expensive hotels heading for a sign that promised a bed for the price of a cheap meal.
He trudged the three flights of worn carpet stairs, the final flight leading onto a slanted ceiling corridor barely wide enough to walk along without his shoulders brushing the walls on either side.
At the end of the corridor was his room. The door looked like it had been kicked in and patched up a number of times during its lifetime. He unlocked it and stepped in.
The curtains sighed into the window frame, momentarily shadowing its deep boxy outline as the stale corridor air rushed past him to escape towards it. He let the sprung door click shut behind him. A neon sign outside the window bathed one side of the dark room in flickering reds and greens. He stepped over and pulled the curtains across. Beyond the whirring sign, past a slim gap between a multi-story car park and another hotel, he could just make out the streetlights of the promenade. Beyond that lay the blackness of the sea.
The room was freezing and damp. He pulled the window shut and flicked on the electric oil filled radiator. Then he lay down on the double bed. The mattress sagged feebly under his weight. He leaned across to switch on the bedside lamp and then changed his mind, preferring instead the artificial light from outside.
The room was cheaply and sparsely furnished. An old wardrobe leant against one wall; a tatty armchair sat next to a cheap bedside table with a connecting door to the only other room on this level. The carpet was some dark mottled colour. He couldn’t tell whether the mottles were part of the design or stains.
Only the high ceiling alluded to any notions of grandeur, the single naked light bulb socket set in an intricately patterned flower arrangement, the detail of which was only another couple of coats of paint away from being lost forever. A matching cornice ran along the walls, a testament to a finer period in this hotel’s history. He wondered idly what the craftsmen that had produced such enduring quality would feel if they could have seen how the future would reward their efforts.
He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around him against the damp chill.
Any warmth or welcome that had existed in this place was gone now. A cold anonymous place, a halfway house devoid of anything except a temporary damp warmth for passing transients. People like him.
Blake tried to sleep but a nibbling hunger kept him awake. He gave up after a while, got up and went out to find something to eat.
It was almost three in the morning when he stepped out of the rear fire exit, across a courtyard, down an alley and onto a side road parallel to the hotel. Another couple of turns and he was onto one of the main roads that ran down to the promenade. Even at this early hour there were a few people on the streets. Mostly drunk locals.
He made his way back down to the promenade and away from the hotel towards a cluster of lights.
The only place open was an American style diner. Bright light spilled out from its glass frontage illuminating the pavement outside. The interior was
one long bar, serving hatch, kitchen behind it and a series of booths that lined the long window that made up its frontage. He expected it to be empty but a short line of trucks and heavy goods vehicles parked along that stretch of promenade accounted for the men inside.
He took a stool and scanned the place and ordered.
While the chef busied himself with the order Blake took a look around. There was a guy, big, hunched over a coffee further down the bar. A few others were dotted around the booths, all on their own. It didn’t surprise him; truckers were a solitary bunch. All that time spent in their own company with no other human contact as a point of reference for miles, hours, days, weeks; except for service stations, cargo ships and cafes like this.
They were all heads down, tucking into their plates, drinking coffee, reading yesterday’s paper; little bags containing toiletries on the seats next to them.
They were not much different from him. Solitary beings. Endless days and nights spent with their thoughts. No external point of reference to reset their perspective clock against. A lonely, isolated environment in which a single insignificant train of thought could become an obsession. An innocent smile from a truck-stop waitress or a female shop assistant could be transmuted into an expression of desire, love even, extending over endless miles as it was replayed time and time again, each rerun slightly different from the one before. The lips a little fuller, the eyes a little more coquettish, the desire a little more evident.
It could twist a man’s perception. To look for meaning in every tiny interaction.
He couldn’t get comfortable on the high stool and swapped it for a seat at one of the empty booths. Nobody paid him any attention. His food arrived and he got stuck in. It was good.
The big guy finished his coffee, scattered a few coins on the bar-top and stepped into the cold.
He twisted round in his seat and watched him button his coat around him and disappear down past the trucks. Moments later a tiny rectangle of light lit up for a few seconds and then went dark.
He refused the offer of coffee. He paid the bill and left.
He took a different route back to the hotel.
When he got to his room, it was stiflingly hot. He turned down the radiator, cracked open the window a little, undressed and slipped under the covers.
He awoke to the sounds of seagulls and heavy afternoon traffic.
A fifteen minute bus journey took him to the port. It hadn’t changed since his last visit almost a year ago except then it had been a clear and sunny day. Now, as then, massive container ships lumbered slowly across the sea like monstrous cattle, grazing on fields of gray.
The lockers were exactly as he remembered, the wet concrete floor and the smell of salt and rust. Even the old lady was still there. She verified his identity and the key that he had and accompanied him wordlessly to his locker. The locker took two keys, one hers and one his. She unlocked hers and trundled back to her little office. He took out the long canvas holdall, checked its contents and returned her key. She didn’t even look up.
Back in his room, Blake examined the collapsed L119 sniper rifle, boxes of shells and counted out the thick wad of cash. There were also two SIG P938’s, silencers, several clips and boxes of rounds. Satisfied, he placed them back in the holdall and headed out.
CHAPTER 20
targeting simmonds...apartment firefight...blake shot...josie taken...
Blake was camped out on the roof of a hotel that overlooked another. His target had been holed in the top floor penthouse suite for five straight days and not once had he been remotely close to getting a clean shot. The open areas had remained unused, the blinds, even on the darkest days, had remained shut.
But Simmonds was there. The steady stream of visitors had told him that much. He had watched them through the telephoto lens on the L119 sniper rifle he kept trained on the windows that looked onto the entrance.
They had been women mostly. Very beautiful women. Two nights ago, two young men had arrived and left early the following morning. He had caught fleeting glimpses of figures moving behind the blinds. Only once he had caught sight of him, when he had opened the door to accept a room service breakfast delivery dressed in a short silk gown.
That Simmonds was being protected was a given. It was not just good fortune that had kept him out of his sights. He was deliberately being kept away from the windows. And in the evenings the lights were only put on once the blinds had been drawn.
Blake calculated that at any one time there were at least seven other people in the penthouse. Two he had identified. Five had remained as elusive as his target.
He had resolved to stay there as long as it took to get a clear shot. The only alternative was a direct assault. Maybe it would come to that. He’d wait while his target gorged himself on hampers of Harrods food, hookers and young men. He had to surface at some point. He fixed his eyes back on the telescopic lens of the rifle and settled in.
A chill early morning breeze swept across the roof space and between the two massive air conditioning units that he lay sandwiched between. He winced at the tart odour that carried up to his nostrils. He should go and get a shower. Shifting for the hundredth time that morning, he contemplated taking five and making his way down to the room he was renting on the floor below. The room was on the wrong side of the building and meant he was blind for the duration of his time away from the roof. He had set up a video camera that covered the penthouse for the time he was away and he reviewed the footage when he returned but it still meant that anything could happen over the minimum twenty or so minutes he was away. He had contemplated setting up a streaming link, but there was no way to secure the signal from being intercepted. Sure, he could encrypt it, but the mere presence would have given it away. He was damned sure that if he was watching, someone else could be too.
So, he had settled for taking the risk. So far, he had been lucky. Aside from one new visitor, nothing much had happened while he had been away.
The near constant vigil and broken sleep had begun to eat away at him, settling on his membranes like a layer of grease. He slept on the roof and set the camera to alert him via headphones if the image changed within a certain tolerance. The number of times he had been woken by the lights coming on in one or more parts of the apartment during the night. He had ended up focusing on the entrance only. He needed to know when anyone came and went.
His bladder was bursting as well. Normally he would relieve himself in a metal receptacle he kept near. He rubbed the tiredness from his eyes and panned slowly across the closed patio doors and blinds.
There wasn’t normally any activity before eleven, when a large brunch was usually delivered.
Blake set the camera to a wide angle and switched it on. Slowly and carefully he wriggled backwards, careful not to disturb the netting that camouflaged him. He listened for any signs of anyone on the roof. Satisfied he was alone, he squeezed out from behind the storage boxes he had used to mask the entrance to his sniper’s pit. Replacing the boxes, he quickly moved across the open roof and descended down the maintenance stairwell.
In his room he stripped, and jumped in the shower. Five minutes later, he was dressed and making breakfast to go. Another fifteen minutes he was back on the roof, pulling the boxes back in place. Sipping coffee from a flask and taking a bite out of a bacon roll he stopped the camera and scrolled back to review the footage that told him he was out of time.
The young woman had stepped out of her anonymous suburban car. Nothing unusual, there was space for hotel staff cars. It was the cluster of high-volume transceivers at the rear of the car’s roof that gave her away as police.
How had they worked through and replicated his search so quickly? They couldn’t have. There must be some other reason for targeting Simmonds. It didn’t matter anyway. If they took Simmonds into custody he would lose his shot at the third man on his list and he was not about to let that happen.
Blake took only the L119. It was too valuable. He had it dismantl
ed by the time he reached his room. The rest of the equipment would stay where it was.
Simmond’s floor was numbered fifteen. Caution dictated that a potential assailant would alight at the floor above or below. Blake pressed fifteen.
The adrenaline that had pumped in his chest making it flap like a wild bird had gone. It had lasted only a few seconds on the rooftop before it brought it under control.
A part of him marveled how quickly his shaking hands had steadied and the speed with which the fragmentation in his mind had been reversed, telescoped into clear purpose like a sheet of lightning bringing him from the roof to here in less than five minutes.
Blake gripped the silenced Sigs.
The lift doors slid across.
Josie parked her coupe behind the hotel in the staff car park. She swiped her security pass and the rear doors clicked open. She caught the lift to the top floor and made her way down the plush carpeted corridor and knocked at one of the doors. The familiar face of Kamal opened it and she stepped inside.
‘How’s the shoulder?’ she asked’
‘Getting there,’ replied Kamal.
The living room was a mish mash of half empty takeout food containers and expensive surveillance equipment.
Josie picked a slice of pizza from one of the half empty containers and took a bite.
‘That’s two days old,’ said James looking up from one of the banks of screens that dominated the suite dining room.
‘Uh huh,’ she replied, taking another bite and sitting beside him. The screens showed people dotted around penthouse rooms, still asleep.
‘So, what’s so important that you had to drag me all the way here?’
Other screens showed rooms in the penthouse. Most were empty, two others were occupied. Two men and a woman. Another man alone in the last.
He picked up a tablet and handed it to her. She scrolled through the surveillance log.
The Winter Man Page 20