Lizzie turned and looked out of the tinted window in the back of the car. They drove past the white UN helicopter, so she raised her phone for a few snaps, hoping they would come out despite the window’s tint. She could see the curved roof of the main terminal building a few hundred metres away and assumed that they were driving to it. But then the convoy of vehicles turned to the right and away from the building.
A few moments later, they had pulled up at a side gate on the edge of the airfield, guarded by a young-looking soldier wearing the distinctive uniform of the Sierra Leonean Armed Forces. He had an AK-47 loosely slung across his chest and had a flat cloth peaked cap on his head. The lead vehicle rolled forward a few yards, and Lizzie saw something being passed to the soldier through the driver’s window. The soldier took a step back and waved with his hand to let the vehicles through.
As their SUV passed the guard post, Lizzie looked at the soldier more closely. He was younger than she’d thought, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and Lizzie wondered how much of the money he’d just been given he would get to keep. His unsmiling face stared back at the window, and Lizzie was pleased that they were heavily tinted.
A moment later, Lizzie was pressed back into her seat as JoJo sped up onto the road that led around the airport.
43
“Hannah, you are a bad woman,” Adams said as Hannah placed two full pint glasses on the table. “I thought you were going to the bathroom?”
“I did,” Hannah replied, “but I also went to the bar to get one for the ditch. Budge over.” She used her hip to butt Adams’s shoulder, and he moved sideways on the bench to give her room to sit down. While she’d been in the bathroom—or at the bar—another drinker had asked if he could have her chair. Adams, thinking that they were about to leave, had said yes.
Around them, the pub was now full of people, most of whom looked as if they were heading out for the night. It was almost nine, and Adams and Hannah had been tucked away in the corner slowly getting drunk. Neither of them was falling over drunk—they’d both seen the results of people not drinking carefully every day—but Adams had a buzz that was just about right.
“Did you get any more pork scratchings?” Adams asked, taking a sip from his beer.
“Nope,” Hannah replied. The seat was only just big enough for the pair of them, and he could feel the heat of her leg next to his.
“Kebab on the way home it is, then,” Adams said with a grin.
“My God, you know how to treat a lady.”
“That’s what you call yourself, is it?”
Hannah giggled and picked up her own drink. Adams sat back in the seat, pleased that he’d decided not to stew in his flat for the afternoon. Hannah’s company had taken his mind off Lizzie’s departure, if only for a few hours, and Adams realised that he’d not mentioned her once all afternoon. He glanced at his watch. If they didn’t take too long over their drinks, then he would be back at his flat just in time for Match of the Day 2. He could even push the boat out and grab a small quarter bottle of whisky from the corner shop to finish the evening off.
“Well, this has certainly been a lot more entertaining than sitting in front of the telly all afternoon,” Hannah said, raising her glass for Adams to chink his against. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“It certainly has,” Adams replied. Hannah ran her fingers through her blonde hair and looked at him with a mischievous grin.
“So, I have actually got a bone to pick with you, Adams,” she said.
“Okay, I’m all ears.”
“You remember that cardiac arrest that came in last week? The old boy from the care home?”
Adams thought back. He and Hannah had worked on a few arrests in the previous week, but only one of them had been from a care home. It had come in early in the morning, and from the look of the patient, the actual cardiac arrest had happened some time previously. But protocols were protocols.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “What about it?” In the corners of his eye, he noticed Hannah had folded her arms under her chest, and he had to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes up.
“Well. I was doing cardiac compressions on the poor chap, and I couldn’t help but notice that you were trying not to laugh on the other side of the trolley.” When Adams realised what she was talking about, he suddenly realised how warm it was inside the pub.
“Um, I was?”
“Definitely.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You’re a shit liar,” Hannah replied, grinning, and Adams thought of Lizzie for a few seconds. That was what she had told him on several occasions. “Tell me why you were laughing.”
“I can’t, Hannah,” Adams replied, taking a sip from his pint. “You wouldn’t like the answer. Will I get us a packet of pork scratchings?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I can’t. I’d have to kill you. Besides,” Adams continued in an American accent, “you can’t handle the truth.”
“Tell me.” Hannah looked at him, her eyes playful. “Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“Okay, okay,” Adams replied, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “I’ll tell you. But don’t blame me if you don’t like it.”
Hannah unfolded her arms and took another sip of her pint, her face triumphant.
“I’m listening.”
“So, when you stood on the stool and started doing the compressions,” Adams said. “Your, erm, your scrubs kind of fell away from your front a bit.”
“Please tell me you weren’t staring at my tits while I was trying to save someone’s life?” Hannah was starting to laugh as she said this, exhibiting the dark humour that kept anyone who worked in emergency departments sane.
“They were kind of bouncing about a bit, mate. I’d never really noticed you had them before.”
“What a compliment that is, you pervert,” Hannah giggled and looked at him over the top of her glass. “I’d overslept and been in such a rush that morning that I just grabbed the first bra I could and forgot my T-shirt.”
“It wasn’t the most, er, supportive I guess you could say.”
Adams watched as Hannah raised a hand to her collarbone and pulled the material of her blue top to one side. Underneath, Adams saw a bright pink bra strap.
“Is that the same bra?” he asked her, knowing what the answer was going to be.
“Well, I know you like it, so I thought I’d wear it this evening.” She pressed her lips together for a second. Adams knew he should leave. The temperature had just gone up another few degrees, and it was nothing to do with the heating. He was drunk. He was with a woman who, over the course of the last few hours, had become more and more attractive, and he had a feeling that something was about to happen. Hannah leaned forward until her face was only a few inches away from his.
“Do you know what I think we should do, Paul?” Hannah said, whispering. Adams didn’t reply. She was so close he could smell the shampoo in her hair. A few seconds later, he spoke.
“What, Hannah? What should we do?”
“We should go back to my flat and have some fun,” Hannah said. Then she kissed him.
44
Titch knew he was an unlikely birdwatcher, but that was the cover story that he was going to use if anyone asked him why he was on top of the multi-storey car park in Great Yarmouth. He had even bought a second-hand book of birds in a charity shop and a notebook which was sitting next to him. He brought the military grade binoculars to his eyes and scanned the horizon as the sun started setting. In his notebook, he had written the names of some seabirds that were, according to the Country File website, active at dusk.
“Seagull,” Titch mumbled as he saw a large white bird with an orange beak sitting on the roof of the house he was monitoring. It was cawing loudly and, as he watched, the bird ejected a violent string of white liquid faeces onto the tiles of the house.
There was one particular house he was interested in, and he flicked his binoculars down to get an update on
what was happening inside it. It was a terrace house, full of foreigners. In his estimation, there were at least eight or nine adults inside, and perhaps as many children, if not more. All crammed into a single three-storey terrace house. It had a garden the size of a postage stamp full of broken toys, and a front door that was only accessible from a narrow alleyway that ran between two streets. Titch could see a woman doing the washing up through a window that looked over the garden. She had removed the hijab she had been wearing as she walked down the alleyway to the front door and was, although foreign, quite attractive. She had olive skin, dark hair, and an oval face that Titch zoomed in on.
Titch looked back at the bird on the roof to make a further effort to look like a birdwatcher, although his was the only car on the top storey of the car park. He had altered both the number plates on the vehicle. A three had become an eight, and the letter C was now a G. Titch doubted there were any number plate cameras somewhere like Great Yarmouth, but it didn’t hurt to be sure. Besides, the alterations were only done with black insulating tape and would take seconds to put back.
He knew the next part of the mission was by far the most dangerous. Birdwatchers didn’t look for birds at night time, but he needed the darkness. Should someone come up to the top floor, explaining his presence would be difficult. But the multi-storey car park was like the rest of the town. Old and tired. It had no discernible security that Titch had seen, so the worst that might happen would be a mobile security patrol or, more likely, some older kids looking for privacy so they could do what older kids did.
Titch stepped away from the edge of the car park as the sun dipped below the horizon. He could see lights appearing in the houses below him, including the one he was watching. He checked his watch. If the people in the house did what they had done the previous two evenings he had watched the house from his vantage point, the lights would all be out within the next hour. The ones on the bottom floor first, then the other floors in order. Whoever lived in there went to bed early. Maybe it was a religious thing, Titch wondered. Maybe they all had to be tucked up by a certain time or their God would get angry with them?
Almost exactly an hour later, the final light in the house went off. Titch, despite his impatience to get the job done, gave it another thirty minutes before he picked up the petrol can from the boot of his car. He checked the lid was secure, as he had done when he had filled it up in a small one-pump garage on the outskirts of Great Yarmouth. The garage had a single CCTV camera in the shop that he’d easily avoided, and he had paid cash for the transaction. He’d even made sure the notes he used weren’t straight from a cash machine, but given to him as change in another shitty little shop run by people who could barely speak English.
Careful to keep his wits about him, Titch balanced his phone on the edge of the wall of the car park. When he was sure that the camera was pointing the way he needed it to point and that it wouldn’t fall, he pressed the record button to film the house below. Then he got to his feet to make his way through the car park.
Before long, Titch was back at his phone, panting hard. He threw the empty can into his boot and went to stand by his phone. He grinned to himself in the darkness. That had gone better than he had expected. It was, like any well-planned military operation, precise.
Titch checked his phone was still recording. He wasn’t going to hang about for long, but he needed to make sure that he had enough evidence to prove to George and Charlotte that he was worthy. Through the window below, the one that the young hijab-less woman had been washing up, Titch could see an orange flicker. He felt himself harden as the orange light grew, and could soon be seen through the windows of the adjoining room. The lounge, perhaps? Maybe it was a prayer room, and copies of their books were now fuelling the flames? That would be epic, Titch thought.
There was a loud crack followed by a splintering noise that could be heard even from Titch’s elevated position. He craned forward, eager to see what had happened. The kitchen window had broken, and as thick black smoke started billowing out of the hole in the window, the orange light inside the house intensified. Titch knew it was his imagination, but he fancied he could hear the crackling of the flames inside the house.
What wasn’t his imagination was the screaming. It was a single person at first. Perhaps the woman from the kitchen? Then the screams were joined by others, and a single light illuminated a window on the top floor of the house. A few seconds later, it flew open and Titch could see a silhouette at the window, thick dark smoke pouring from the orange room within. It hadn’t taken the flames long to reach the top floor. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female, adult or child. But Titch didn’t care. They were all equal in the eyes of their God, weren’t they?
More lights started flicking on in neighbouring houses, and Titch could hear people shouting. Reluctantly, Titch stopped the recording on his phone as the shouting intensified and became more frantic and slipped it into his pocket. He looked around to make sure that he’d left nothing behind, but couldn’t see anything. Titch was, if nothing else, thorough.
He started his car, leaving the lights off until he reached the road, and made his way through the narrow streets to the main road that would lead to Norwich and, forty-five minutes later, Honington. It wasn’t until he reached the main road that Titch saw the first flash of blue lights. A few seconds later, a fire appliance thundered past him, the tense faces of the firefighters in the vehicle plain as day in the streetlights. Perhaps thirty seconds later, another one roared past, followed by a police car.
“Good luck with that,” Titch muttered under his breath as he reached the outskirts of Great Yarmouth.
45
“I don’t care if you are the Chief of the Defence Staff, sir,” the police officer said to Waterfield. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re almost twice over the legal limit for driving.” Waterfield sighed and rested his forehead on the steering wheel of his Bentley. “Could you step out of the car, please?”
“Is this really necessary?” Waterfield asked when he lifted his head back up. It had been a disastrous evening. Amelia had left to play bridge or whist or some sort of strange card game one of her friends from church had just discovered, so Waterfield had taken the unexpected opportunity to visit Lady Jane in Holt.
They had spent a couple of hours in each other’s company, during which she had warmed things up by whipping him just how he liked it. Hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to leave a mark. After that, she had done what Waterfield thought she did best, which was fuck him. It wasn’t the other way round. Waterfield was very much a passive but willing participant in their coupling, and the feeling of utter helplessness as she did what she wanted to him while he was unable to move was exactly what he paid her to do. Then the stupid bitch had spoiled it all by telling him she was retiring. If Waterfield hadn’t been handcuffed to her bed, he would have taken the horsewhip to her and most definitely left a mark or two.
“Yes, sir,” the police officer replied. “I’m afraid it is. Now, would you please step out of the car?”
The police officer took a few steps back as Waterfield undid his seatbelt and opened the door. Waterfield noticed that the young man had a taser on his belt and was resting a hand on top of it as he looked at him.
“Mr Luke Waterfield, I am arresting you on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.” Waterfield sighed. There was no suspicion about it. The breath test the police officer had given him had turned with a few seconds of him blowing into the tube, and there was a half empty bottle of whisky in his glove compartment. Waterfield had been swigging from it when he’d driven past the police car that was half hidden behind a bush on the rural lane they were in. Waterfield had never been ambushed by the Taliban, but he imagined they used similar tactics. “You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“It’s
General Waterfield, not mister,” Waterfield replied as the police officer gestured to the rear of his police car.
“Just get in the car please, sir.”
Waterfield let the police officer push on the top of his head as he guided him into the rear of the car. A few moments later, having secured Waterfield’s Bentley, the police officer got into the driver’s seat and picked up the handset of the radio in the dashboard. Waterfield listened as he reported that he was bringing a man under the influence who claimed to be the Chief of the Defence Staff. Waterfield heard the laughter on the other end of the radio.
“Sure,” a male voice came through the speakers built into the car. “I’ll put him in the cell next to the Duchess of Cambridge. She got picked up again on Rosary Road.”
The police officer in the front laughed and pressed the button on the radio handset twice. He turned to look at Waterfield, who was sitting in what was effectively a metal cage in the back of the police car.
“Seatbelt on, please,” the young man said. Waterfield did as instructed, and as soon as the police officer turned back round, he reached into his pocket for his phone. It was time to call in a favour or two.
A couple of hours later, almost one in the morning, according to the cheap clock on the wall of the interview suite, Waterfield was still in custody. He wasn’t bothered about Amelia missing him. The chances were that she’d been dropped off back at the house by a cab and gone straight to bed. For all she knew, he was in his office at the top of the house, working.
The only saving grace of the whole sorry affair was that at least they’d not put him in a cell, but left him in the interview room with a cup of strong but instant coffee. The custody sergeant had, at Waterfield’s request, googled his name to show that he was indeed one of the most senior military officers in the country. But they had still taken blood samples from him, which Waterfield was far from thrilled about.
Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3) Page 17