The next fence bordered the road where I’d parked my car and it was much higher than the others. But one thing you can only appreciate if you’ve been in true fight-or-flight mode is that you are capable of things you never believed possible. Without even thinking about it, I sprinted the five yards to the fence and, as far as I can remember, simply ran up it, grabbing the top with both hands and swinging myself over.
As I hit the pavement on the other side, I heard the first siren. It was still some way off but clearly coming in my direction. My car was twenty yards away and I sprinted over to it, keeping my head down, not daring to look back. The keys were already in my hand as I jumped inside and started the engine, pulling out of the space with a screech of tyres and accelerating away from the scene, praying no one had seen me and taken the number of the rental car.
I had no idea where I was going; I just kept driving, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and the sirens, my fingers tight on the wheel.
Five minutes passed. I hit a main road. Turned left on a whim, joining a long, snaking queue of traffic heading into town. A police car raced towards me on the other side, lights blaring. I was frozen to the seat, thinking that I couldn’t continue running like this for much longer, but then it was past me and continuing down the road, weaving through the traffic, its occupants uninterested in me.
The kidnapper’s phone vibrated in my pocket. I ignored it. The shock was beginning to take hold of me now. I looked down. My hands were shaking and there were two matching stains on my jeans at the knees, from the blood pool on the carpet. I felt sick. I’d killed a man. Unintentionally or not, he was still just as dead. And it was only my word that it had been an accident. As far as the world was concerned, it had been cold-blooded murder. And now I was a fugitive, and there was a witness who’d seen my face.
My life had changed forever. There was no way back from that. But already I was thinking about the next big problem I had to face, because I hadn’t got hold of the flash drive the kidnapper seemed to want so desperately, and that left my bargaining power woefully short.
The traffic began to pick up as the light went green. I took a series of deep breaths and told myself to stay strong, because the alternative was collapsing into blind panic and I couldn’t afford that.
The odds might have been stacked heavily against me, but as long as I was free, I had a chance to fix this and get Kate back.
18
Sir Hugh Roper
Cancer.
I’ll tell you something about cancer. It doesn’t matter how much money you have; how powerful you are; how much you pray to your God. Nor even how perfect your nutritional and lifestyle habits are. Cancer respects none of these things. It can come at you at any time, and it’s clever. It conceals itself until it’s ready. It was like that with me. Stealthy, beginning symptomless in the prostate before spreading steadily through my liver and kidneys. By the time the coughing began and I noticed the blood in my urine, it had already invaded my lungs, making the end result inevitable.
As a self-made businessman who’s worked his way up from the nadir of bankruptcy and a conviction for theft at the tender age of twenty-four to multimillionaire status, seeing off violent rivals, family tragedy and HM Customs along the way, I’ve always thought of myself as ready for anything, and indeed I’d steeled myself for bad news when I arrived at the clinic to receive the results of my tests. At the age of sixty-eight, finding blood in your urine and developing a hacking cough means it’s likely to be something fairly serious. Even so, I hadn’t been expecting to be told by the consultant that my cancer was terminal; that with chemotherapy I had a maximum of a year to live, and without it anything between three and six months.
What does a man do in that situation? Cling on to life, even as it’s sucked out of him bit by shitty bit? Or try to go out with some dignity? I decided to forgo the treatment. In fact, I’d even contemplated ending my life with a pain-free cocktail of poisons at a private clinic in Switzerland, but somehow this felt like defeat, and I do not do defeat. Instead, I was going to let the cancer take its course and go out fighting. Like a man.
That had been two months ago now. Since then, the coughing had got steadily worse, as had my weight loss. I’d wanted to keep my diagnosis secret, but as CEO of Peregrine Homes, the UK’s premier luxury home development company, with a market capitalisation of over eight hundred million pounds, I had a duty to the shareholders, whether I liked it or not (and I didn’t), and so the previous week at a meeting of the board, I’d given them the bad news. I didn’t want to stand down. Peregrine Homes was my creation. I’d built it up from scratch, using a huge loan that had almost got me killed when I’d had difficulty paying it back, and I’ve sweated blood to make it the success story it is today. But there’d been no choice. The board had decided that I would remain chairman while the company’s deputy MD, Keith Clappe, would act as CEO until a suitable successor was found.
The announcement had already been made to the media, and since then I’ve been working from home, and already my workload was beginning to dry up, leaving me pissed off and frustrated. Retirement has never been an option for me. My second wife, Ellen, died suddenly four years ago and I live alone, having not met anyone else I was willing to grow old with. Work, effectively, has been my life.
And now both life and career are almost over.
Ironically, my coughing seemed to have got better in the past week or so and, as long as I didn’t laugh, I found I could avoid the prolonged hacking fits. And there was very little danger of me finding much humour from the man sitting opposite me that morning.
Edward Hurst is my stepson. An ambitious and supremely dull young man – as you’d expect from someone who likes to be addressed as Edward rather than one of the shorter and easier alternatives – he was determined to rise to the top in business like his stepfather. I’ve always had a distant relationship with the boy, which was surprising considering how much time we’d spent together over the years – and how much of a disaster my own son, Tom, has always been.
Edward was eleven when I married Ellen, his mother, a beautiful former model who’d popped him out when she was only nineteen. I’ve never known the identity of the boy’s father but I can say with some certainty that the culprit – whoever he was – had been no oil painting. Edward was skinny in build, and pale, with sandy hair that was already thinning at the crown, and a soft, round face that sat atop his body like one of those old-fashioned sticky lollipops. He looked like a twelve-year-old in ageing make-up. Having said that, what he lacked in obvious physical attributes, the boy more than compensated for on the intellectual front, being something of a financial genius. He’d come out of the LSE with a first in finance and economics, and Ellen had begged me to give him a chance at Peregrine. I’d been reluctant. I don’t do carrying people, and if someone doesn’t pull their weight when they’re working for me, then they’re out. End of. But as it happens things had worked out far better than I could have imagined. The boy had risen up through the ranks entirely on his own merit and he was now the company finance director, with a seat on the board, all at a comparatively youthful thirty-eight.
The problem was that now that I was stepping down, he fancied himself as the CEO going forward, and had been very unsubtly selling himself to me for the last half an hour in what was supposed to be a meeting about the costings of a proposed new luxury development on a lovely strip of greenfield land near Rickmansworth. I admired his chutzpah, badgering me like this when I had barely weeks to live, but it was a waste of time. I could have made it happen. As chairman, and the largest shareholder by some distance with thirty-five per cent of the stock, I had the clout. But as far as I was concerned, Edward had reached his peak within the company, and that was the end of it.
‘I know you don’t think I’ve got the killer instinct to take over,’ he said in that slightly high-pitched voice of his, finally coming out with what he was here to say – and doing a good job of reading
my mind. ‘But I can be tough when I need to be. It was me who came up with the plan in 2017 to shave eight million off the bottom line by shutting down Kettering. I let two hundred and forty people go on minimum redundancy payments.’
Which was true. That had been him. But all he’d done was come up with the plan. He hadn’t stood in front of each individual to give them the bad news. That would have been showing a killer instinct. That’s what I would have done, without batting an eyelid. Getting other people to do your dirty work is not the same. It’s like when some sycophantic journalist called that arsehole Tony Blair brave for sending British troops into Iraq and I almost coughed up my breakfast. Blair wasn’t brave, for Christ’s sake! Sitting in your comfy chair sending other men to their deaths is easy. A piece of piss. The brave men are the ones who do the fighting. End of.
I could have told my stepson all of this, but frankly I didn’t have the time or the energy. ‘Edward,’ I said firmly. ‘You will get there.’ Which was a lie. ‘But right now, you’re not ready.’ Which wasn’t.
The boy kept his cool although his cheeks were flushing red like they used to when he was a child. I could tell he was annoyed and doing everything to restrain himself. ‘But Keith Clappe as acting CEO? If I can be frank, he’s just a corporate yes-man. He’s only been with us eight years. He doesn’t know the company like I do. I want this chance to prove myself.’ He was looking at me with a steady gaze as he spoke, as if he’d been practising it in the mirror. But that’s the problem. You shouldn’t need to practise. And as I stared right back at him, not giving anything away, he lowered his eyes in submission, the hyena to my lion. ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, of course,’ he continued, not quite so confident now, ‘but I think you know how much I’m committed to Peregrine.’
‘I know you are,’ I told him. ‘So keep doing what you’re doing and your opportunity will arise.’ And by then, of course, I’d be long gone and it’d be someone else’s problem. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the boy to succeed. It was just that, when it came down to it, I didn’t much care either way.
Luckily, before the conversation could continue any further, there was a knock on the study door and my chief bodyguard, Thomson, poked his large square head round it. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Sir Hugh. I’ve got Mr Burns for you. He’s waiting in the sun room.’
Nigel Burns. My former bodyguard and head of security for thirty years until his retirement three years ago. He still did ad hoc work for me, mainly intelligence-gathering. But I was surprised that he was here, especially given that he now lived sixty miles away, and I was certain the reason wasn’t going to be good.
I nodded a thank you to Thomson and got to my feet, leaning on my new walking stick, which I hated but which I now couldn’t do without. ‘We’ll talk again on Monday,’ I told Edward, and put out a hand.
Edward looked disappointed. That was another of his problems. He wasn’t good at hiding his emotions. And he had too many of them to fight his way to the very top in this business the way I had.
We shook and I left the room without a backward glance, asking Thomson to show Edward out.
I own a ten-bedroom Edwardian mansion set in twenty-two acres of grounds in rural Hertfordshire, which I bought for £1.2 million in 1991 after my divorce from my first wife, and which is now worth roughly eight times that, even with the depressed property market. It contains two studies. The one I’d just met Edward in is my main one, for everyday use. The other, the sun room, is a secure soundproofed room with no windows (hence the amusingly ironic name) which I know can’t be bugged by anyone, and where I can talk freely.
Only one person knows the code to get inside and that’s me, so Burns was in the adjoining waiting room when I arrived.
Of all the people I’ve ever met, Burns is the most humourless. He makes even Edward seem a wellspring of chuckles. At sixty-six, the bastard is barely two years younger than me but still irritatingly fit-looking, with a strong build and perfect posture, a throwback to his days as an officer in the Parachute Regiment. He’s hard, serious, and doesn’t get flustered. I’d hired him straight out of the military and we’d seen a lot together, so I trusted him to get things done.
However, the expression on his face – even grimmer than usual – told me something was wrong.
We nodded at each other – two men who didn’t need to bother with formalities – and he kept a discreet distance while I punched in the code on the sun-room door and authenticated it with my hand print.
Once inside, I sat down at my desk and took a few seconds to get my breath back while Burns stayed standing opposite me. He had an A4-sized envelope in his hands.
‘You’ve got two problems, Sir Hugh,’ he said, without preamble, making it abundantly clear from both his tone and his words that neither of them was his. ‘This is the first.’
He handed me the envelope. It was unsealed and contained photographs. I examined them.
‘Those were taken last night while he was in London.’
I looked at the photos of my daughter’s fiancé and knew that I’d been right to have my suspicions about him. ‘Dodgy bastard,’ I grunted angrily as I returned them to the envelope. ‘Just as I suspected. What’s the other problem, Nigel?’
‘I’ve lost contact with the operative watching your daughter. She was meant to call at seven a.m. to give me an update. She didn’t and I haven’t been able to get hold of her.’
‘Have you been down there?’
Burns nodded. ‘Yes. The operative’s car is there but she’s nowhere to be seen. Your daughter’s rental car is in the driveway but there’s no sign of her either.’
‘What about the fiancé?’
‘His car’s not there. Neither is he.’
I cursed myself for not being more careful. ‘You need to find her,’ I told Burns. ‘And him. Do whatever it takes.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m retired, Sir Hugh. I told you that. I’m not getting involved in any strong-arming.’
I eyed him carefully, wondering whether it was worth bringing up all the things I had on him. All the strong-arming he’d done in the past in return for my money. But I immediately decided against it – I’ve always been good at making snap decisions and following my gut. If he didn’t want to help, then threatening him wasn’t going to provide the necessary incentive. He’d never been the type to be intimidated, which was what had made him such a valuable enforcer.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I understand that. But please make sure you’re at the end of the phone in case I need your advice.’
I nodded to show that the meeting was over, waiting until he’d left the room before picking up the phone.
It was time to move to plan B.
19
DCI Cameron Doyle
Sir Hugh Roper. What a travesty, making a man like him a knight of the realm.
‘How does it feel seeing him in a police interview room like this?’ DC Tania Wild asks me.
The two of us are standing at the two-way mirror looking into Interview Suite C. Roper sits alongside his very expensive-looking lawyer, opposite two of my colleagues, DI Marion Webb and DS Sunni Sharma. He’s dressed in a thick leather coat that’s far too big for him and an open-necked shirt. He looks tired and drawn, but his eyes are still alert. I know that even though we’ve got him against the ropes, he’s nowhere near finished yet. And looking at him now, I’m not sure what I feel. Wariness mixed with a hint of regret that, whatever happens, he won’t live to see any trial.
‘It’s about time,’ I say at last. ‘The key is making sure he stays here.’
‘And yet you didn’t want to question him,’ says Tania, looking at me out of the corner of her eye with more interest than she usually shows. ‘I’m surprised. I thought you’d want to go after the big prize personally.’
‘He’ll only tell us what he wants us to hear. His lawyer will make sure of that,’ I reply, still staring in at him. ‘I’d far rather use our time to talk to his daughter and the fian
cé. They’re the ones who are going to make mistakes.’
‘But what if neither of them implicates Roper?’
I’ve thought about that already, yet I experience a sudden flash of anger at the prospect of him walking free again. ‘Even if they don’t implicate him, we’ll make sure the press get hold of it,’ I say, with more emotion in my voice than I’d have liked. ‘It’ll destroy his reputation. He’s always wanted the world to think he’s this tough, swashbuckling character with a good heart. The reality is he’s nothing more than a sociopathic thug.’
‘You really hate him, don’t you?’ says Tania, and there’s a note of surprise in her voice, as if she can’t understand why I might be emotionally involved in the case. Because that’s the problem. I am, and I know it. I wonder if it’s just because I’ve never been able to catch him. Because he’s always been able to best me and I simply can’t handle it.
But no. There’s more to it than that.
‘Let me tell you something about Hugh Roper,’ I say to her. ‘Back in the early 1970s, when he was first starting out as a developer, he went into partnership with a man named Billy Davey. Billy was quite a lot older, in his forties, and by all accounts he acted as a father figure and mentor to Roper. Or at least that’s what Roper wanted him to believe. In reality, Roper used Billy’s money to buy up an old warehouse near Smithfield that they planned to turn into luxury flats. The project rapidly turned into a money pit. They borrowed as much as they could from the banks, but when that wasn’t enough, Billy decided to pull out. Well, Roper couldn’t have that. He knew he’d lose his payday, so he told Billy that he could get finance from family members, which was a lie. Instead, unbeknownst to Billy, he turned to a very unpleasant individual by the name of Vincent Carballion for finance. Carballion was heavily involved in organised crime and definitely not the sort of man you’d want to cross, but Roper clearly thought it was worth the risk.
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 8