‘Thoughts?’ Palmer spoke as they cleared a tunnel of trees and turned through a gateway onto a gentle hillside with half of Gloucestershire spread out before them. At least Riley assumed it was still Gloucestershire; her geography was never too good once she was out of London.
‘I’m still thinking them,’ she replied.
Several gleaming 4WDs splattered with mud were parked on the hill, their occupants standing in a group nearby, guns at the ready. They all wore the uniform of Hunter boots, Barbours and peaked caps, and had that air of well-fed leanness which comes from good breeding, money and time spent in the great outdoors.
One or two men turned their way, but nobody moved to greet them. Palmer parked with the front of the car facing back the way they’d come. He turned off the engine and they sat waiting for Keagan to come forward. The tree line around them was heavy and dark, full of shifting shadows.
‘If you go down to the woods today,’ Palmer sang quietly. ‘I counted three.’
‘Three what?’ asked Riley.
‘Security men hanging around in the bushes. Four if you include the chunky individual mending his bike near the entrance to the track.’
Riley nodded at the men with the guns. ‘What about them?’
‘Strictly local colour. Keagan brought them in to make it look real.’
‘Risky, isn’t it? He could have all manner of collateral damage if anyone lets rip at them.’
Palmer grunted as one of the men suddenly swung round with scant regard for his companions and blasted away at a pheasant flying by. The bird didn’t even bother to duck and continued on its way, leaving the shooter looking red-faced and the other men laughing. ‘With shooting like that, any gunman showing up here is in more danger than the birds.’
‘If the bomb package was a hoax,’ said Riley, musing out loud about the series of threats, ‘then why not the finger, too?’
‘There was a family ring attached. No hoax.’
‘Oh.’ Riley fell silent. The implications weren’t good. ‘In that case, the boy won’t be coming back, will he?’
Palmer shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’
‘Does Myburghe realise that?’
‘I think so.’
Riley shivered at the idea. If it was a straight kidnap, even moderate statistics held that most victims died within seventy-two hours of being snatched. In some cases, this was due to inept or simply callous kidnappers; in others it was the fear of being identified if they let the victim go. In a minority there was never any intention of the victim surviving, anyway, and few of these made it past the first day.
Then there was the matter of the finger. Getting hold of a spare as a ghastly form of hoax was no simple matter. It wasn’t simply a case of tripping along to the local morgue and buying a spare body part. And grave robbing was a little too public to go unnoticed.
She felt sickened at the thought of someone cutting off a finger. But the cold brutality of the act didn’t end there; she was no medical expert, but she figured if the boy wasn’t in a proper hospital or at least being cared for by a professional medic when the finger was cut off, he was going to die from shock, infection or blood loss.
She looked up as one of the men left the group and walked towards them, waving a hand. He had a relaxed air of authority and she guessed he must be Keagan. Then she glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw a slight shift of movement in the trees behind the car. No doubt one of his watchers.
She hoped they weren’t feeling trigger-happy.
They climbed out to meet the security man. He had a shotgun tucked under his arm and looked as if he’d been born holding it. He was in his early fifties and built like a battle-tank, with weather-beaten skin and short grey hair beneath a tweed cap. Even without knowing who he was, or seeing the gimlet-like eyes appraising them, there was no mistaking the bearing of a former military man.
‘Palmer,’ he said crisply. His eyes swept across to Riley and hovered momentarily. ‘I didn’t realise you’d have company.’
‘My associate,’ Palmer replied. ‘Riley Gavin.’
The two men exchanged handshakes with wary civility. Riley received a curt nod. The look on Keagan’s face said he was unhappy with their presence, but that Palmer had passed muster, so he wasn’t about to complain.
‘You may have seen my three men on the way in,’ he said, eyes flicking past them toward the trees.
‘Four, actually,’ Palmer told him. ‘The man on the bike could lose a bit of weight. That Lycra’s deadly with a beer gut.’
Keagan’s face went tight around the mouth and Riley tried not to laugh. The major had been testing them and had tripped over his own arrogance. He either didn’t know or hadn’t believed that in Frank Palmer he was dealing with someone experienced in the game of spotting covert surveillance. She decided it didn’t augur well for any future working relationship.
‘Sir Kenneth wanted you brought in,’ he huffed, changing the subject, ‘against my advice and official suggestions.’
Palmer looked at Riley. ‘He means there are lots of hairy-chested ex-Special Forces people out there who are better qualified than me…which is almost true.’
‘So why not get them in?’ Riley asked. It had been puzzling her, too. She assumed that Myburghe, as a former diplomat under threat, would have access to some expert assistance, especially since the threats he was receiving might be coming from his last posting in Colombia. It wouldn’t be total cover, but better than nothing.
‘Sir Kenneth’s personal wishes,’ Keagan told her. ‘I’ve advised him — that’s all I can do.’ His tone indicated he was about to perform a hand-washing exercise, and if Sir Kenneth wanted to put his trust in a pair of amateurs in mismatched wellies, there was little else the official establishment could do but step back smartly and wish him good luck.
Riley couldn’t help but sympathise. Nobody likes having the rug cut from beneath them. But she had no doubts Palmer would have been checked out carefully first.
‘What about your men?’ Palmer queried. ‘How long will they be around?’
‘Not long. We’re over-stretched as it is with the terrorist situation and we’ve got more assignments than personnel. The letters and fake bomb here could just be the work of a nutcase. God knows, there are plenty out there.’
No mention of the finger, Riley noted. Either he didn’t know or it was being kept under wraps like a nasty family secret.
‘And the party?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know. We’ll be there, but in the background. Unless we’re pulled off for something else.’ His tone indicated that he meant for something more important. ‘Again, Sir Kenneth’s express wishes.’ He hefted the shotgun to change the conversation. ‘He’s not here this morning, on my advice. But I can give you a briefing. Do you shoot?’
The question was lobbed vaguely between them, but Riley knew it was for Palmer more than her. She shook her head. ‘Not me. But you boys go and play with your guns. I’ll try not to frighten off the birdies.’
While Palmer followed Keagan across the grass towards the other men, Riley helped herself from a flask of coffee in the car. One of the men handed Palmer a gun and a handful of cartridges, then they turned towards the open field before them as Keagan signalled to an unseen beater.
Riley wandered along on the fringe of trees near the car, sipping her coffee, turning with a start as a barrage of gunfire erupted. She watched as Palmer waited for the others to finish shooting, before turning and casually bringing down a pair of shapeless birds without even shouldering his gun. It earned him a startled look from Keagan and a scowl or two from his companions, but Palmer ignored them and re-loaded.
Riley bit down on her distaste at the firepower and the loss of wildlife. She and Palmer had a job to do; throwing a moral snit right now would merely get in the way.
She began to think about what they had taken on between them. At best, they might end up supervising a pleasant party and picking the odd guest out of the ancestral fish
pond. At worst, they might find themselves up to their elbows in something nastier, a situation Palmer had once equated bluntly with having to pick their teeth out of the wallpaper.
If Myburghe was using his daughter’s wedding as an exercise in false bravado after admitting to himself that his son wasn’t coming home, he might have become blind to the real dangers. And they might surface only when Keagan and his security team disappeared, leaving Palmer and Riley to deal with any opposition.
A flicker of movement drew her attention to a beech tree several yards inside the wood. Riley stopped and sipped her coffee. She was no security expert, but she knew that protection was mostly about setting perimeters: outer ones to deter the half-hearted and to act as a filter; inner ones to catch the badly trained or the inept amateur. Finally — and most critically — there was the very innermost circle of close protection which nobody liked to think would ever be needed if the other two were doing their job.
Was this one of Keagan’s men standing close to the shooting party instead of covering the ground further out? Or someone else? An univited guest, perhaps. She scanned the area again in case she’d made a mistake. Maybe what she’d seen was a leaf falling, a swaying branch or even a foraging squirrel. Any or all three, possibly. She was about to move on when she caught her breath and felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. A man was standing a few yards away, watching.
**********
CHAPTER TEN
The man was heavily built and wearing a drab brown jacket and trousers, with a grey baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He appeared to have streaks of something dark across his face, as if he had rubbed it with a muddy hand. He was watching the shooting party, and Riley thought it odd that if he was a member of the security team, he wasn’t facing the other way. His whole body stance and look were too intense, and it was a moment or two before Riley realised that the man was completely unaware of her presence.
She stepped slowly to one side, inching out of his line of vision. Slipping into the trees and avoiding branches at shoulder level and twigs underfoot, she tried not to look too intently at the watcher. Once inside the canopy of trees, it was as quiet as a church, with only a faint breeze stirring the upper branches. The smell in here was green and loamy, with the faint tang of rotting vegetation, and for an instant, Riley was reminded of childhood visits to the countryside, where she had played the tomboy among similar scenery to this. It had all been fun back then, with only imaginary dangers lurking behind every bush and fallen tree trunk, and only friends likely to leap out at her.
This, though, was very different.
She felt something solid against her foot and shortened her step. Looking down, she saw it was a heavy branch, dry and solid, the length of a golf club. She slowly lowered herself until she could reach it, then stood upright again, holding the stick by her side. It felt reassuringly heavy in her grasp.
The man shifted his stance and Riley froze. His head turned away from the men out in the open, and she saw his eyes shift to the area immediately around him, scanning from right to left.
A bird chirruped overhead, then flew away through the branches with a clatter of wings. Riley held her breath and half-closed her eyes, in case the man looked directly at her. She knew that if you stared too hard at somebody, it might eventually trigger an instinctive response and draw his attention.
Suddenly he was looking right at her, eyes opening wide in surprise. Before she could move, he turned and was gone.
Riley was still holding her cup in her other hand. She dropped it and pulled out her mobile. She could just about see Palmer and the others through the branches, but they were too far away to alert without shouting. It was pointless anyway. If the men around Palmer were just locals, they might panic and start blowing holes in the trees right where she was standing.
‘What’s up?’ Palmer’s tone was casual, but he knew there was a problem.
‘I’m in the trees, in front of you and slightly to your left,’ she told him. ‘There’s a man wearing a grey baseball cap and what looks like camouflage cream. I thought it was one of Keagan’s men, but when he saw me he legged it.’
‘Which way?’
‘Back towards the road.’
‘Wait one.’ She watched him turn and speak to Keagan. The Major snatched a radio from his pocket and began calling names. He repeated one name several times without any response and began to look alarmed, as if all his plans had suddenly come unstuck.
Palmer came back on. ‘One of his men has gone off-line,’ he said softly. ‘Stay where you are and watch your back.’ He began walking towards the trees at an angle away from Riley. He was holding the shotgun in front of him.
Riley felt a cold shiver run down her spine at the thought of all the space behind her, most of it in deep shadow. Two steps sideways were sufficient to disguise anyone dressed in the right colour clothing; four steps rendered them invisible. She tucked her mobile into the top pocket of her jacket, then slid against the comforting bulk of a nearby tree, gripping the stick with both hands. She lowered herself to a crouch, hoping to see some sign of movement nearer the ground, but the thicket was too heavy to see more than a few yards in any direction.
A crashing to her right signalled the man was coming back. She held her breath. Then a darker shape than the background foliage appeared, charging through the thicket but moving with surprising speed.
Riley tensed. If he carried on his path, he’d crash right into her — and she had nowhere to go. She gripped the stick tightly and waited for the impact, hoping she didn’t get mown down like a helpless fairy.
But the intruder must have spotted her at the last second. He suddenly veered away with a muttered oath, hurtling at an angle through the trees and leaving behind a whipping frenzy of shaking branches and falling leaves. One of the branches swatted Riley across the mouth and sent her spinning, and by the time she got to her feet, the silent watcher was gone and a tall figure was standing over her with an impassive look on his face.
He was holding a pistol pointed at her head.
‘Did you see him?’ Riley asked, spitting out bits of bark and clambering to her feet. Her pride was more bruised than her face, and she wondered where this latest man had sprung from. God knows how they taught people like him and Palmer to move, she thought. They were like ghosts.
‘See who?’ he replied, and before she could protest, he’d spun her round and pushed her against a tree and was running expert hands over her. It was as impersonal and casually expert as it was demeaning, and she wanted to drop-kick him into the undergrowth.
When Palmer appeared, he was no longer carrying the shotgun, but had a furious Keagan in tow, shouting into a small radio. The minder who had searched her waited for a nod from his boss, then stepped back and disappeared among the trees without a word. Riley decided there was nothing wrong with their teamwork, even if their manners sucked.
‘You okay?’ said Palmer. He spoke automatically, but the look in his eyes showed concern.
‘No, I’m bloody not!’ Riley muttered. ‘That ape just treated me like a criminal.’
‘That was my fault,’ said Keagan. ‘I forgot to give him a description.’ He went back to his radio, clearly not too disturbed by the omission.
Palmer made a signal to Riley to follow him, and they walked back to the car. ‘We might as well leave,’ he explained. ‘Right now, we’re in the way. It’s still their job.’
‘They’ve got four watchers in place, yet someone gets close enough to lob a brick,’ Riley said angrily, pulling off her boots and replacing them with shoes. Her upper lip was smarting and she had a flash print of the man’s eyes in her mind, boring into hers. Not that it would help her recognise him again. The smears of black on his face had done a good job of breaking up his features. ‘Some protection team.’
‘Maybe.’ Palmer nodded, deep in thought. He looked back towards Keagan, busy organising his men to make a sweep of the woods for their missing colleague.
&nbs
p; ‘You’ve gone all quiet and moody,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
Palmer climbed in the car and started the engine. ‘Something about this doesn’t add up. Keagan told me he’s been told to stand down as of tomorrow, ready for re-assignment. That’s another way of saying that Myburghe no longer rates a security team.’
‘So?’
‘If Myburghe was still an important member of the diplomatic corps, there’s no way they’d leave him exposed — especially if serious threats had been made against him. It would be like telling anyone who cared to listen that it was open season on Her Majesty’s Foreign Office staff. They’d have nutcases and terrorists coming out of the woodwork all over the world.’
‘So they’ve cut him adrift?’
He nodded. ‘Looks like it. The only question is why?’
‘Maybe Tristram will tell me.’
‘If you could get him to talk. And if he knows anything.’
They drove back to London.
‘You were out in Colombia, weren’t you?’ Riley looked across the table at John Mitcheson, who was staring dreamily back, a happy smile on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. They were in a local Italian restaurant having a late dinner. Mitcheson had completed his latest assignment earlier than he’d thought, but was about to go off on another the next morning. After the excitement of her day in the woods, it was a welcome diversion.
‘Uh-huh. For a while.’
‘What did you do out there?’
‘A bit of training, mostly. Their government supplied the anti-drugs units and the British army ran the courses. Why?’
‘Bear with me. What’s FARC?’
Mitcheson sat up, eyes instantly losing the dreamy look. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a conversation stopper.’
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