Enemy Within: A heart-wrenching medical mystery (British Military Thriller Series Book 3)

by Nathan Burrows

  “Had you?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, at least he wasn’t here to nick you,” Chalky said as he got to his feet, putting his mug next to Titch’s after emptying the contents into his mouth. “I’ll have a fresh one while you’re there. Just going for a smoke.”

  Titch took a few deep breaths as he waited for the kettle to boil. When he’d first heard Chalky say SIB was here to see him, his heart had started racing like he’d never known before. He didn’t think the scuffer had picked up on his nerves, but it wasn’t until he’d said about the fence incident that Titch had been able to relax slightly.

  He knew that the military police, or even the civvies, couldn’t know about the network he was joining, or at least trying to join. There were too many layers, too many checks, for them to penetrate it. He hoped that was what George was doing at the moment. Background checks on him to make sure that he was a suitable candidate to join, despite the DNA thing. Maybe then he could realise his long-term goal of leaving the RAF and working on his real passion full time.

  Only time would tell.

  51

  Adams stirred as the phone on his bedside table buzzed. He groaned as he unzipped his sleeping bag and got to his feet. He needed a pee, some water, and some paracetamol in that order. Drinking the entire half bottle of whisky the previous evening hadn’t been his wisest move, especially on top of several pints of beer. Adams groaned as he remembered what had happened in the pub with Hannah. The text message on his phone was probably her letting him know that she still thought he was an idiot, or worse.

  After he had used the bathroom, Adams walked into the kitchen. Water or milk, he thought as he looked at the fridge. He decided on a glass of each, returned to the bathroom to get the paracetamol he’d just forgotten, and climbed back into his sleeping bag after draining the glass of milk to chase down the tablets.

  He picked up his phone to see he had a text message from a number he didn’t recognise, but he knew it was Lizzie from the unusual prefix to the number. It had +232 at the beginning.

  Hey you, the text message read. This is me, obviously. All good here. Hope ur okay and missing me! xxx

  Adams started composing a reply, but then stopped. He’d had a bizarre dream last night, with Hannah in it. It wasn’t the sort of dream he could tell anyone about. Especially not Lizzie. Or indeed Hannah, come to that. Adams didn’t think she would be particularly flattered about what he’d dreamt about, although knowing her, she would probably think it was hysterical. It hadn’t been an explicit dream, more erotic than anything else. He knew he couldn’t help what he dreamed about, but he would rather it had been Lizzie in the dream than Hannah. Adams swiped out of the messaging app and opened up his photos before scrolling to the one he wanted to look at.

  As he looked at Lizzie’s face and her expression, thoughts of Hannah receded to where he wanted them. In the back of his mind, not the forefront.

  Missing you more than you know, he replied before saving Lizzie’s number to his phone. A few seconds later, it buzzed again.

  We’re clubbing together to get wi-fi so hopefully will be able to video call at some point this week. Will txt u later. Have a good day xxx

  Adams responded with a simple you too and a smiley face before putting his head back on the pillow. He wriggled in his sleeping bag, hoping that he might get back to sleep for a while. Random thoughts were running through his mind, and he wondered how much alcohol was still in his system. He forced himself to think about the last time he and Lizzie were together and what they had done. How she had felt, how she had sounded. Adams wished she were with him then. If nothing else, at least the ache between his legs would go away without him resorting to a spot of do-it-yourself.

  It was almost ninety minutes later when he woke to the sound of the bins being emptied on the street outside his flat. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to snooze for any longer, he got dressed and had some breakfast. Adams was just munching the last of his Marmite on toast when his mobile started ringing. He groaned when he looked at the screen. It was Hannah.

  “Hey, Hannah,” Adams said as he answered after briefly considering ignoring the call. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, bit of a sore head,” she replied.

  “Likewise.”

  “Listen, Adams, about last night?” He heard her hesitate before continuing. “I was phoning to apologise for what happened. I was out of order and a bit drunk.”

  “Hannah, there’s nothing for you to apologise for. Besides, nothing happened.”

  “But I kissed you,” Hannah replied. And I kissed you back, Adams thought, but said nothing.

  “Seriously, don’t worry about it. Nothing happened.” Perhaps the more he said it, the more he would believe it?

  “Okay, as long as you’re sure. Nothing happened, like you said.” There was a pause on the end of the line for a few seconds before she continued. “Are we still mates?”

  “Of course we are,” Adams said. “But I do have to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I had a rude dream about you last night.” Adams was grinning, imagining the shocked look that he hoped was on Hannah’s face.

  “Oh, my God, you never did!” Adams heard her exclaim before starting to giggle. “Was I any good?”

  “You were pure filth,” he replied. “I can see why your nickname in the emergency department is Dyson.”

  “Please tell me you’re joking?”

  “I am about the nickname, not the other bit.” Adams paused and closed his eyes. He needed to end the conversation before it went in the wrong direction. Adams knew he was playing a dangerous game that could end up really badly. “Hannah, listen, I need to go before I say something I’ll regret. But for the record, I think you’re lovely.” He paused, realising the second he said it he shouldn’t have, and he needed to change the subject. “If it weren’t for Lizzie, I’d be diving into the sack with you like Tom Daly off the ten-metre board.”

  “That is possibly the most unromantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” Hannah said with a chuckle. “But now I’m never going to look at Tom Daly again and keep a straight face. I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

  “Yep, definitely.”

  Adams disconnected the call and sighed. The next time he and Hannah had to work together was going to be awkward. He briefly thought about having a quiet word with the sister who managed the off duty to see if she could rearrange their shifts so they didn’t work together too much, but he dismissed it almost immediately. The sister would want to know why, and Adams wasn’t going to be able to tell her anything. Knowing the woman, she would just fill in the gaps and get to something close to the truth, anyway. Gossip spread through the hospital faster than coronavirus, and he certainly didn’t need a rumour about him and Hannah going around.

  Still, Adams thought as he got to his feet. It could be worse. He could have woken up in Hannah’s bed. Although he tried not to, he couldn’t help but think about that scenario as he went to the bathroom to have a shower. It was going to have to be a cold one.

  Adams forced himself to think about Lizzie, and nothing but Lizzie, as he showered. By the time he finished, he was feeling worse than ever about what had happened and what could have happened the previous evening.

  How could he expect Lizzie to trust him if he didn’t trust himself?

  52

  Eleanor shuffled on the edge of her seat and brushed an imaginary crease out of the business suit she had borrowed for the interview. Her eyes were smarting from the contact lenses she was wearing, and she hoped her eyes weren’t red. They had been earlier when she had been in her GP’s surgery, crying about Fiona. Or at least, making the doctor think she was crying about Fiona. But once she had been signed off for a fortnight, her crocodile tears had dried up. To her surprise, her editor had been uncharacteristically sympathetic, telling her she should take off as long as she needed to get over her friend’s death.

  “Eleanor, is it?” Eleanor loo
ked up to see a matronly looking woman standing in front of her, smiling. She was perhaps in her mid to late forties, was carrying more than a few extra pounds on her hips, and had a clipboard in one hand. “I’m Sue Bentworth. Would you like to come through?”

  Sue led Eleanor into her office, which was as white as the rest of the interior of the Ascalon Institute. The room was sparse, almost minimalistic, save for a photograph of three smiling children on Sue’s otherwise empty desk. There wasn’t even a computer monitor on it.

  “Wow,” Eleanor said as she looked out of the windows at the fields beyond the fence. “What an amazing view.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Sue gestured at a chair set in front of her desk. “Please do take a seat. Can I get you anything? A glass of water, perhaps?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.” Eleanor patted her handbag. “I’ve got a bottle of water in my bag.”

  “Well, that’s a good start,” Sue replied with a disarming smile. “Very organised.”

  Eleanor took a few deep breaths to compose herself. It wasn’t the fact that she was being interviewed that she was nervous about. It was the fact that she was going to spend the next half an hour or so lying through her teeth.

  “Now, Eleanor, why don’t you tell me what you know about the Ascalon Institute?” Sue asked.

  Eleanor ran her tongue round the inside of her mouth before she replied. When she did, it was an almost verbatim transcript of the information on their website. Sue smiled in encouragement, and Eleanor wondered if she knew it was the same text. She and Liam had spent most of the previous evening practising what Eleanor thought would be the first question in the interview.

  “Excellent, excellent,” Sue said when Eleanor had finished. “Now, I have read your curriculum vitae. Ever so interesting. I always wanted to go travelling when I was younger.” She tilted her head in the direction of the photograph on the desk. “But life had other plans. Tell me, if you would, about a challenge you faced while you were seeing the world, and how did you approach it?”

  Almost exactly thirty minutes later, the interview was over. Eleanor finally reached into her handbag and took out her bottle of water. She wanted to drain it in one go, but forced herself to take small sips.

  “So, Eleanor, what will happen next is that I will e-mail you with the results and, if you are successful, to agree a start date,” Sue said. Then she lowered her voice to a stage whisper, looking around her as if someone might be eavesdropping. “But it’ll be good news, my dear, especially if you are able to start soon.”

  Sue showed Eleanor back to the foyer of the Institute building where a security guard was sitting behind a desk. It was one of the ones who had been on the golf cart, but if he even vaguely recognised Eleanor, he didn’t show it. Eleanor waited until Sue had returned to her office before she asked the guard if she could retrieve her mobile phone from the locker he had placed it in when she’d arrived for the interview.

  “How did you get on?” the guard asked her as he unfastened the locker. “You were here for the admin assistant interview, right?”

  “I think I did okay,” Eleanor replied, nodding her head. “Do you know if there are many other applicants?”

  The guard turned and handed Eleanor back her phone.

  “Well, if there are, they’re not booked in for an interview. I’m Jimmy, by the way.”

  “I’m Eleanor.” They shook hands, and Jimmy held on to Eleanor’s for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary. He smiled at her, and Eleanor smiled back. Jimmy was a very good-looking man, but she’d set her bar higher than a security guard. Still, it might be useful having him as a colleague. “What’s it like working here?”

  “I think it’s about to get a lot better,” Jimmy replied, and Eleanor grinned rather than winced, which is what she would have preferred to do. “It’s not too bad, to be honest. Some of the white coat lot are a bit up themselves. It’ll be nice to have someone a bit more normal to talk to.”

  Eleanor thanked him and said goodbye, making sure she slightly exaggerated the swing of her hips as she left the building, fully aware from the reflection in the glass doors that Jimmy’s eyes were firmly fixed on her backside.

  “Liam, I think I got it!” Eleanor said a few moments later when Liam answered her call.

  “Really?” Her brother’s voice was animated but cautious at the same time. “That’s fantastic, Eleanor. Well done. But are you sure you really want to do this?”

  “Come on, Liam,” Eleanor replied. “We went over this last night when we were looking at the stuff Fiona got. There’s something dodgy about the place, and I intend to find out what.”

  “As long as you’re sure,” Eleanor’s brother replied. “We’ll get a pizza in for tonight. My treat?”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  Eleanor disconnected the call and walked down the road toward the car park. She had a spring in her step that she’d not felt for a while. That journalist award had just got a step closer. Of that she was sure.

  53

  “Hey, you,” Lizzie said , looking at the screen of her laptop. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yep, loud and clear,” Adams replied. “No video, though.”

  “Hang on, let me work out how to turn it on.” Lizzie looked at the screen, trying to turn on the webcam. When she clicked what she thought was the right button, the screen flashed and she could see a small version of herself in the corner. Adams’s face appeared a few seconds later on the main screen. He was wearing a T-shirt that she remembered him buying when they had been in Cyprus. “Nice T-shirt,” she said, wondering if he’d worn it deliberately.

  “Thanks. You’re looking good,” Adams replied. Lizzie ran her fingers through her hair. It didn’t feel like she was looking good. “I can’t believe you’ve been there almost a week already.”

  “I know, it’s gone really quickly.”

  They had spoken on the phone every night, but the wi-fi had only just been installed that morning. Claire had already worked out a rota system for using it when they realised that if more than one person tried a call at the same time, it fell over and crashed.

  “You still enjoying it?” Adams asked.

  Lizzie thought back to her first day when she had stood at the front of a classroom full of expectant faces and introduced herself to the medics in her class. “Yeah, more than I was,” Lizzie replied. “It’s so different over here, though.”

  On their first full day, JoJo had taken them into Freetown. Once he had found out that she was in the military, she was upgraded to the passenger seat and put in charge of the AK-47 on the basis that she should be able to use it if it was needed. JoJo had grinned widely as he had said this, more because of the look on Jack’s face than anything else. He had looked horrified.

  “How d’you mean?” Adams asked.

  “They’ve got nothing, Adams,” Lizzie replied. “I mean, I know there’s poverty in the United Kingdom, but even the poorest people there would be rich as royalty here.” She thought back to the drive through some of the residential areas that JoJo had taken them through. “There’re entire families living in shipping containers. No electricity, no running water. Nothing.”

  That was the hardest thing for Lizzie to accept, that there were people in the world with that little.

  “But isn’t that why you’re there? To make a difference?”

  “I don’t see how me teaching first aid to a bunch of medics is making a difference,” Lizzie replied with a sigh. She was on the verge of tears, but didn’t want Adams to see her upset.

  “But if those medics then teach other people, and they teach other people? That’s making a difference, surely?”

  “It just doesn’t feel like it, that’s all. Anyway, can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure,” Adams replied with a broad smile. “Tell me about the others?”

  Lizzie had given Adams a brief rundown on the rest of the team during their phone calls, but they
’d been so short that she’d not been able to tell him much.

  “Okay, so there’s the cohort leader, Claire, who’s sleeping with the boss but pretending not to,” Lizzie said. She was a very light sleeper, and had heard Claire’s door opening and Charlotte’s door closing on more than one occasion.

  “Seriously?” Adams laughed. “I thought the supreme boss was a woman? The doctor?”

  “Women are allowed to sleep with other women, Adams,” Lizzie replied. “Are you in date for your inclusivity and diversity training?”

  “I am, thank you, Sergeant Jarman,” Adams replied, pulling a face on the screen. Lizzie cast her mind to Tom Fletcher’s comments about his training.

  “Let me guess,” she said with a grin. “That’s two hours of your life you’re never getting back.”

  “Bloody right,” Adams replied, laughing.

  “There’s Divya who works in the same school as me. She’s lovely, really funny. Then there’s Jack who used to be a vegan until a few days ago.”

  “What, he converted back?”

  “When he realised he was probably going to starve to death, I think he realised he didn’t have a choice. But apparently his parents are proper militant vegans, so that might have had something to do with it. While the cat’s away kind of thing.”

  On the screen, Lizzie saw Adams laughing, but his face was blocky and she had lost the sound.

  “Can you still hear me?” She saw him give her a thumbs up. “Okay, then there’s Obi and Isobel who’re working at a different school, so I don’t really get to see them that much until the evenings.”

  “They’re okay, are they?” Lizzie hadn’t told Adams about her run in with Claire, but seeing as things had been fine since, she couldn’t see the point.

  “Yeah, they’re a good bunch.” Adams said something, but his voice was broken up. “Say again, over?” Lizzie asked.

  “I said I miss you,” he replied, his voice suddenly clear. Then, the screen went blank, and a box appeared in the centre.