‘Keep it clear, no chatter,’ I said, one eye on the shadows between the pines, the other on the tracks slicing deep through the powder.
A crackle of static burst in my earpiece, the radio cut out. I slid to a stop, holding up my hand for Ringo to halt. Nothing to hear other than the wind skimming the swaying treetops above.
We set off again, whipping through snow-laden branches, still following the tracks. A piled of disturbed snow, a bunch of prints cut sharply to the left, a huge impression in the snow, as if something had been dragged.
I dropped to my knees, panic starting to creep up my spine. When I turned, Ringo had his Glock up and ready.
I pointed to the tracks. ‘They’re on foot.’
He made to run.
‘Wait,’ I hissed.
He looked back, saw my face. I held up my fingers. Blood. Spots were spattered across the fresh white, a small puddle a little further away melting a valley into the fresh snow.
He nodded, we sprinted through the trees until the snow grew brighter, the edge of the treeline. The tracks continued, I made to follow but Ringo tapped my shoulder and pointed to the right. I followed his gloves and saw it, on the edge of the hill a faint line of ski tracks slicing back across to the piste, disappearing over the edge of the plateau.
We ran, continuing to follow the boot prints. It didn’t take long to find the end.
The snow was kicked up, spots of red still clearly visible even in the ever-darkening light. A depression and more blood marked where McCartney had been dropped on the ground after being dragged out of the trees.
We looked at the tracks where the three attackers had disappeared, long gone now, it would take us several long minutes just to get back to our skis. Six clear lines cutting deep through the fresh snow, three pairs of skis.
I pushed my pistol into my pocket and crept further forward, fear climbing higher up my spine the closer I got to the edge. The ground dropped away in front, black, a vertical rock face slashing through the mountain, the head of the valley that eventually widened to envelop the village. I lay down, pushing forward on my front, towards the precipice.
The sharp rocks dropped steeply into dark shadows. A beam of light shone down as Ringo clicked his torch on, peering over the edge next to me.
‘Lennon, come in.’
‘What’s happening?’ She sounded worried.
‘McCartney’s dead,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
The drop looked lethal enough, a good twenty metres or so, but the direction of his limbs and the angle of his head meant it was a sure thing. Snow was already settling on him, melting where it hit the streaks of red.
There was a pause and then Lennon’s voice again. ‘Accident?’
‘No.’
‘We need to get down there,’ said Ringo, looking around, panning the torch across the rocks, landing on McCartney’s broken snowboard.
I shook my head and rolled onto my back, closing my eyes. ‘Snow’ll cover him soon. He won’t be found until spring, and even then maybe not.’
Lennon was jabbering in my ear, I pulled out the earpiece and pushed it into my pocket, climbed to my feet, started walking back to the trees.
Ringo grabbed my arm, spinning me round. ‘We don’t leave anyone behind.’
I shrugged him off. ‘We do if it’s minus ten and dropping dark on a mountainside, without climbing gear.’
‘You can’t be serious?’
‘If we pull him up, what then?’ I shouted. ‘Carry him off the mountain? In full view of everyone? The police, the questions, what then?’
‘We can’t leave him there.’
‘We can’t jeopardise the mission.’
‘I’m talking about the fucking mission! What if they find his gun? His radio? What happens when they ID him?’
‘Nothing ties him to us, he doesn’t have anything on him. He didn’t even know your real name, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Listen fella,’ he jabbed a hand at my chest. ‘I’m getting fucking paid!’
‘You listen!’ I brushed his arm away. ‘I’ve known him near-on ten years, you think I like the idea of him buried on a French mountain? We carry him out, call in mountain rescue, we do anything at all and this whole gig is blown.’ I waved a finger in his face. ‘And that means I don’t get paid.’
I turned back to the trees and stamped through the snow, trying to shut out the mental image of the body splayed out on the rocks. Another name for the list, another ghost to hound me.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Tiburon
I clung to the top of the deck ladder, with my head underneath the forward access cover, listening to the sea washing over the steel centimetres above. The ladder leaned back, threatening to tip me down into the hold, we were climbing again. I wrapped my legs round the rungs and grabbed the wheel on the underside of the hatch cover, straining to get it unlocked. It was heavy, I had to let go of the pitching ladder to push with both arms, then the salty air was pouring in, bringing freezing water with it. I pushed all the way, swinging it back against the deck with a thud, following up the final rungs out into the open.
I found myself looking straight out over the prow, the folded deck crane straining against its ties, bucking and banging with every movement of the ship. I’d come up on the darkness at the foredeck, right in front of my car’s bumper. It hid me from view of anyone on the bridge, but even without the car they’d have a job on against the dark waves.
The deck pitched, I grabbed the spokes of the front wheels, kicking the hatch shut, bracing myself under the front of the car as the ship slipped off the crest of the wave and down towards the next crash.
When it came it took my breath away. Freezing water submerged me, I held my head up and turned to the side, pressed up under the front bumper in the wash of seawater. My fingers were numb but burning, gripping tightly to the filthy wheels as the wash tried to pull me across the deck and take me over the side, out to sea.
I let go of one wheel, let the water carry me round the front of the car, swinging round the passenger side. The deck levelled, I jumped into a crouch, one last look at the wheelhouse and the faces behind the dark windows, I dived through the smashed window of my car and onto the passenger seat.
I pulled in my legs and turned. Hunkered in the bucket seat it was more like a roller-coaster as we pitched and bucked in the night. I scrabbled on the driver’s seat, no phone, I leaned over, feeling round the floor, and found it washing around by the pedals. I leaned off the seat, pushing it into my pocket as we hit again, water spraying in through the window.
I waited until the water on deck had receded then climbed out, crouching, holding the door handle. Still no movement or sign of alarm from the superstructure, only one way to keep it that way and make it back to my room. Back the way I came.
I crouched, sliding back round to the hatch and grabbing the big heavy handle. It wouldn’t budge. I heaved again, one eye on the incoming wall of water as the ship lurched, I hadn’t locked it down but it refused to move. The water loomed, I spun across the deck, my back to the incoming wave, bracing my trainers against my car wheels. The handle gave a millimetre, my fingers slipped on the freezing metal. One of the slower fingers of my left hand snagged, catching in the spokes of the little hatch wheel, bending it back. Nothing much but I’d broken it three weeks previously and the resulting agony cost me a couple more seconds.
I pulled out my pistol, jamming the long suppressor down into the spokes at an angle, yanking the wheel with the additional leverage. Millimetre by millimetre the wheel grated until finally it slipped free, I pulled it upward just as a crash of water hit the bow.
I dived through the hatch, propelled by a ton of water, one hand grabbing for the top rung of the ladder. I caught it, swinging through 180 degrees, bringing my feet up and snagging them on a rung. I hugged in close as water poured in, reaching up behind me to pull the hatch shut then dropping down the ladder to the rusting platform, slumping against the wall to ca
tch my breath. Spray-painted across the wall next to me a washed-out and flaking cartoon DJ was spinning decks, clearly the cathedral-like hold had seen illegal raves in that no man’s land when the Berlin Wall came down. Ironic that the same space now carried drugs into Europe.
I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, swiping to the fitness app. It showed an error message, the watch on the corpse’s wrist in my cabin was too far away to pick up the Bluetooth signal – not to mention the layers of steel separating us – but that didn’t matter. Last time I’d been in there it’d synced up and downloaded the history. Marty’s words of inspiration flashed back through my mind. Like CSI, no time of death…
I scrolled left through the tracker, following the flat line back in time. 6 a.m., 5:50, 5:00, onwards, still a flat line. 4:45, 4:30, 4:00, the line jerked and started back up, my prisoner was alive. I scrolled forward slowly until I reached the interesting part, which happened at 04:12. The ECG line jumped, then started skipping erratically, presumably as his heart sucked in air and pumped blood into his chest cavity. Seconds later it flatlined.
I reached in my back pocket for the crumpled timeline I’d scrawled in King’s paperback, smoothing the wet paper out on the metal tread plate. 3:45 a.m. – called to saloon. 3:55, returned to room. My prisoner had been alive at that time, he hadn’t been knifed until nearly twenty minutes later. I thought about it, King and I had turned in almost immediately. The implication was just as alarming as it was confusing. He’d been stabbed through the heart as I’d been going to sleep right above him, on a bed which had to be moved to gain access down into his room. By the time we found him with the knife sticking from his chest he’d been dead nearly two hours.
The other implication was something I already knew, but it was satisfying to have it confirmed – King couldn’t have murdered him. At that time, he’d been in my eyeline.
It wasn’t suicide, because my captive had been tied to a chair. It wasn’t some freak accident like falling on a knife in the rough weather, because it’d been pushed up right between his ribs, his jacket zipped up afterwards.
Crouched in the stinking hold of a ship in a storm, surrounded by angry smugglers and pursued by people who wanted me dead, I had enough problems. This information brought with it a whole bunch of new shit. I was holding in my hand proof that my prisoner had been stabbed by human hand while I was lying across the only entrance.
Chapter Thirty
Château des Aigles
Three days previously
I poured another generous slug of rum into the glass, topped it up some more for good measure, then drained half of it. Ringo had turned in a few minutes ago, still arguing with me even as he climbed the stairs. On the coffee table his half-smoked joint smouldered. I put it between my lips, sparked up the lighter, staring into the blazing fire. The broken body at the bottom of the ravine stared back.
‘To live on in hearts is not to die,’ I muttered, lying back on the sofa, staring over at the windows and colourful lights in the valley. ‘Or in nightmares,’ I added.
‘You’re drunk.’
I collapsed back, head upside down over the arm of the sofa, to watch Lennon walking down the stairs into the open-plan lounge.
‘You need to keep a clear head,’ she continued.
I didn’t tell her that a clear head lets in other things. Instead I sucked on the flame and blew smoke up into the deer antlers above the fire.
‘All he cares about is money.’ Lennon walked around the back of the sofa. ‘That’s why he’s angry.’
I tossed the lighter on the table. ‘I’m gonna kill every single one of those motherfuckers.’
‘No you’re not.’ She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re going to do the job, because this is business.’
‘They didn’t know that though, did they?’ I took another drag and flicked ash on the floor. ‘They killed him for sport.’
‘That’s not your fault.’
‘Letting him tail a group of white supremacists wasn’t the best decision.’
‘But it was his decision, he knew the risks.’
She didn’t know the half of it. If she knew the real reason I’d got them here… ‘I should have been on point.’
She shrugged. ‘He was the better snowboarder. It made sense.’
I grunted and inhaled again, blowing smoke up. It spiralled around the antlers, up into the beams.
She plucked the joint from my mouth and threw it into the fire. ‘We take the job, we accept the risks. If I die tomorrow don’t cry for me.’
‘No point living if you’ve nowt to die for.’
She smiled a sad smile, took my hand, pulled me up off the sofa. ‘Come to bed.’
She led me upstairs to her room.
Chapter Thirty-one
Tiburon
I climbed the ladder up from the hold carefully, trainers slipping on the thin steel bars. When I reached the top I took a second to steady myself on the platform before reaching for the door.
It opened before I got to it, I barely managed to duck a wrench whistling through the air. I spun to my left, the wrench bounced off the railings with a reverberating clang lost in the crash of waves on the hull. I carried on sliding along the railings as the ship tipped, then grabbed on with one hand to steady myself.
Seb was already snarling towards me, having no trouble launching across the tilting walkway. I grabbed for my pistol but he swung the wrench again, I ducked, bouncing against the bulkhead and rolling away. The ship lurched the other way, I slid back towards him just as quickly. He swung again, I scrabbled and managed to bring up my pistol, the wrench connected with the barrel. The suppressed shot died away in the hull, the bullet went wide, ricocheting away, my pistol sailed after it into the darkness.
Seb smiled, holding the wrench aloft. The wrench that had stoved King’s head in?
The deck tilted again, I slid away with him looming after me. I scrambled to my feet, ducked a half-hearted swing, landing a fist into his gut. He didn’t flinch, and Fatty had been a complete misnomer because it felt like I’d punched a wall. I dodged sideways, trying to get to the door, he threw the wrench. It struck me in the side just as I got through, I stumbled, hit the opposite wall hard, landing on my knees, winded. As the boat pitched again the door swung shut, I grabbed for the handle, spinning the dog latches closed just as I felt him pulling on the other side. The wheel turned through my hands, I grabbed the spokes, looking around for something to brace it but there was nothing, and he was far stronger.
I let go, ran back through the next door into the workshop, slamming it shut behind me. I heard the other door clang open, then he was turning the handle of this one. With one hand gripping the latch I reached for the tool rack on the wall, for something to give me some leverage, my fingers burned with effort, slipping on the metal, fingers twisting. I let go, colliding with the workbench, spinning me round as the boat pitched beneath me. I stood firm, raised my arms ready to fight, but amazingly the door stayed shut.
Contrary to what every hero on film believes, running is always a better option than fighting if it’s available, so I staggered to the door at the other end of the workshop, glancing back over my shoulder, waiting for those latches to slam open. They didn’t, and I’d made it.
I eased open the door into the engine room, stopping abruptly when I saw what awaited me. I closed the door quietly, slowly turning the handle and pulling it tight. On the other side of the door was another of the crew members, back to me, leaning on a railing sparking up a cigarette. Thankfully they hadn’t heard the door over the hammering engines.
It wasn’t necessarily the crew member’s presence which worried me, but the AK-47 hanging from his shoulder, one hand on the grip, finger already curled around the trigger as he brought his lighter up in the other. And it wasn’t even the AK-47 per se, but the knowledge that if that finger pulled the trigger, even if the bullets didn’t make it into me, they’d summon everyone on the ship. A swift trip to hell, or more likely, a
long one over the side of the ship.
I glanced back, Seb still hadn’t arrived, and then I realised why: he’d gone down into the hold to get my gun.
I grabbed a crowbar from the rack, slipped it through the handle spokes of the door into the engine room, jamming it down against the bulkhead to prevent the crew member on the other side getting in. I had seconds to find a weapon. I looked round the workshop: there were a hundred improvised weapons hanging from the walls and in the drawers under the workbenches but unfortunately none which matched the effortless lethality of a Heckler & Koch VP70.
I went for a chisel and a screwdriver, holding them down low as I crossed back to the other door, just in time for the handle to turn. I threw myself against the wall, holding the workbench for balance against the constant motion of the room.
My gun crept into the room, long suppressor first, I seethed as I saw it clenched in that murderous fist. I whipped the chisel up, embedding it in the bulging tendons across the back of Seb’s hand. He screamed, I dragged the chisel upwards, his hand sprang open in a shower of blood, the gun clattered across the greasy floor. I leaned my weight against the door, swinging it shut on his arm, bringing the screwdriver up, ready to drive it through his wrist.
Before I could he growled and shoved back, using his weight advantage and an inconveniently timed wave to throw me off balance, away from the door. I dropped the screwdriver, leapt for the gun, felt the world shift as something collided with my head, pushing me away from the gun, across the room. Everything spun more than the waves accounted for, I looked at him swimming in and out of focus, cradling his injured hand against his chest, gripping the huge wrench in the other. Pain erupted behind my eyes, I screwed them shut, put my hand to my head, it felt warm and wet.
I shook my head, opened my eyes. His whole body was rising and falling as he panted, short, angry breaths, eyes darting for the gun. The screwdriver rolled across the floor, I got my feet under me and grabbed it, ready for the attack. He was already halfway across the room, scooping up the pistol and aiming it at me while I was still trying to shake the fog from my head. What is it they said about bringing a knife to a gunfight? And all I had in my hand was a screwdriver.
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