by Mark Dawson
The sound of a police siren swirled into the restaurant from the night outside, and then another. For a moment, Björn was concerned. But then he took another sip of wine and went back to his book.
After half an hour he texted Gudrún. No reply. Five minutes later, he called her. Nothing.
Ten more minutes. This was getting ridiculous: the waiters were becoming impatient and Björn was hungry. He looked up Olya’s number on his phone and selected it.
“Oh, Björn.” Olya’s voice was laden with distress. Something was wrong. Something was badly wrong.
“What is it, Olya?”
“Gudrún has been shot. Just now. In the street. I’m at the police station. Oh, Björn, I’m so sorry.”
Panic rose in Björn’s chest. “How is she? Is she alive?”
“He shot her in the head, Björn. It was horrible.”
Björn had seen people shot in the head before. He had seen his friends killed. He had seen his stepfather die. But not Gudrún. Not his sister.
He swallowed. “Was it Finlay?”
She started to answer, then stopped.
“Olya! Have you told the police about Finlay?”
“No.”
The panic turned to anger. “Why not, Olya? Why the fuck not?”
“I can’t explain now. But I will, Björn. I promise you I will.”
“I’m coming to the police station. Where is it?”
“No. No, Björn. I’ll come to see you right after I have finished here. We need to talk.”
“But – “
“Björn. Trust me. Where do you live? I’ll come straight away.”
Björn sat in his tiny studio flat in Archway and watched the street outside. He had decided to trust Olya and wait until he heard what she had to say. In the army, Björn had been admired for his coolness under extreme pressure, but now he felt neither cool nor calm. He felt anger. Fury. Rage.
He was damned sure Finlay Karsh had killed his little sister. And Björn had failed to protect her. He should have done more when he had seen her the other night. He should have dragged her away from Karsh. Or beaten Karsh to a pulp. Or both.
A black cab pulled up in the street outside and the buzzer to his flat rang. He went down to open the front door of the house, which had been converted to three small flats. Olya’s eyes were red, but they were blazing. Björn could tell she shared his anger.
They stood just looking at each other for a moment, and then Olya wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Björn! I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
They went upstairs and Björn opened one of the two bottles of wine in his flat and poured them each a glass. Olya gulped hers down and held her hand out for a refill.
“Tell me what happened.”
Olya told him.
“What did he look like?” Björn pressed.
“I told you – like a junkie.”
“And you don’t think that’s what he was?”
“No, I’m sure he wasn’t. That was just an act. It was a professional killing. He was cool and alert.” She swallowed. “He would have shot me next. He was going to kill the both of us.”
“It must have been Finlay.”
Olya nodded. “Definitely.”
“So why didn’t you tell the police about Walsh?”
Olya slipped her wine, and then looked straight at Björn. “Finlay’s no fool, and he has money. A lot of money. We could get the police to treat him as a suspect; my guess is they’ll find it impossible to get a conviction against him. They might, but then again, they might not. Finlay might get off scot free. And that would be dangerous. And wrong.”
“It would be very wrong,” said Björn.
Now he understood.
“I liked Gudrún,” said Olya. “I liked her a lot. And I feel guilty. I introduced them. It was my fault.”
“And mine. I could have done more to get her away from him.”
“Right,” said Olya. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
They talked about what they were going to do for two hours and two bottles of wine. Then Olya fell asleep in Björn’s bed, and Björn stared out of his window at the short North London street below, thinking.
Brooding.
Planning.
12
Number Five entered Captain Pope’s office and took one of the two seats in front of his boss’s desk. Five had never seen Control this angry. Fortunately, Five was not to blame.
“I will not tolerate the loss of any agents,” Pope began.
“Do we know what happened?”
“Group Three,” Pope said. “One of their agents compromised herself. Eleven is dead because of it.”
Pope turned and glanced out of the window at the river. Five didn’t respond; he waited for Pope to turn back.
“I want you to find Bertin,” he said, “and I want you to terminate him.”
“Yes, sir.”
That was fine with Five. It would be dangerous, now Bertin was alerted, but Five was confident of his own abilities. “Any idea where he is?”
“Karsh and Brenner headed up to Scotland by private helicopter yesterday afternoon. Karsh bought a castle there earlier this year: Castle Rosnager in Wester Ross on the west coast of the Highlands. It’s remote, it’s isolated. It’s a perfect place for Bertin to carry out the hit. Stick on Karsh. Bertin will show up eventually.”
Pope handed Five a file with information on Castle Rosnager, including maps of the estate and the surrounding area and even a floor plan of the castle itself. Quick work by the analysts in Group Three.
“You need to get up there right away. An RAF helicopter is waiting for you at Northolt. But once you are there, you will be on your own.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Good.” Pope reached for another file on his desk. “There is one possible wrinkle. Finlay Karsh’s girlfriend was murdered in Islington last night: Gudrún Sigjónsdóttir.”
Five had read about the girl in Karsh’s file. “By Bertin?”
Pope shook his head. “No. The police think the killer was a junkie looking for cash. Gudrún’s friend Olya Delova was with her but escaped. She told them the killer looked like an addict.”
“Right.”
“We’re not so sure. Gudrún and Karsh had an argument a couple of days ago. Group Three were watching. Gudrún’s brother was involved; he dealt with Karsh’s protection very competently. We think that Gudrún may have slipped away from her minder yesterday. Brenner left Lochalsh yesterday and wasn’t seen until late afternoon when he met Finlay at Battersea Heliport and flew up to Scotland. They weren’t scheduled to make the trip until today; it’s possible they wanted to ensure they weren’t in London when Gudrún was killed.”
“So Karsh and Brenner had Gudrún killed?”
“It’s possible that’s what Brenner was arranging. It’s also possible that Delova and Gudrún’s brother might think that. Neither of them told the police about Gudrún’s argument with Karsh. Why not? Maybe because they want to take matters into their own hands. The brother has form for that sort of thing.”
“Who is he? An Icelander?”
Pope tossed the file to Five. The words Bjorn Thorsson, Sergeant were printed on the label.
“I know the name,” he said.
He opened the file.
Thorsson had been born in London to Icelandic parents, hence his dual Icelandic and British nationality. After his father had been killed in a traffic accident, he had returned to Iceland. After university in Reykjavík, he had joined the British army, serving in 2 Para. He had been recruited by the SAS in 2010 and had served on three tours in Afghanistan, plus two covert operations in Djibouti and Libya. He had attended courses in Arabic and Pashtun, where he had impressed the instructors with his ability to pick up languages fast. He had been awarded a Military Cross in 2011 and promoted to sergeant in 2012. He had been considered for officer training, but it was felt that he lacked leadership qualities: he was too quiet, too much of
a loner. In 2016 he had left the army and enrolled at University College London to do a master’s degree. He lived alone in North London.
“I remember Thorsson,” Five said. “I went on an Arctic Warfare Exercise with him in 2012 in Norway. He was . . . impressive.”
That was an understatement. The four-day exercise had been a disaster from beginning to end. There had been six of them, and they were instructed to ski for four days through January wilderness without GPS assistance to an RV in the middle of nowhere, where they would be extracted by helicopter. The planners had got the weather seriously wrong: a blizzard had started on the second day and raged for the next two nights. Five, as team leader, had insisted that they continue in the January darkness through the blizzard, against Thorsson’s advice. The corporal who was carrying the radio had slipped down a low cliff in very poor visibility, fracturing his leg and shattering the transmitter. For twelve hours the section had sheltered in a rudimentary camp. It was twenty degrees below zero and no helicopter could fly, even if it had known where they were. Five had dithered: all options seemed equally bad. He was beginning to think that he should abandon the injured corporal and save the rest of the men.
Then Thorsson had volunteered to ski back to the nearest road, thirty-two clicks away, and get help. It had seemed a ridiculous idea, given the conditions, but Thorsson had insisted he could do it. Five had agreed, and the rest of the section had waited. It had been difficult to keep the section’s morale up for the next thirty-six hours, but somehow they had all believed that Thorsson would make it.
And he did. He had returned with a group of Norwegian soldiers, expert skiers who had led the section back to safety with the corporal strapped to a sled.
Five knew he had performed badly under extreme pressure and had made some questionable decisions. Thorsson could have reported his mistakes, but he had chosen not to. It would have been the only blemish on Five’s long SAS record, but it would have been enough to prevent Group Fifteen from recruiting him. If it wasn’t for Thorsson, Five would never have joined the Group.
“What do you think?” Pope asked him.
“I don’t know. You think Thorsson might go after Karsh?”
“You tell me. You say you know him.”
“It’s possible. He was headstrong when I met him.”
“So, keep your eye out for him. Your goals are to terminate Bertin and ensure that Karsh survives, at least until DarGold are granted those mineral rights.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That might involve taking out Thorsson.”
“I understand.”
Pope looked at Five carefully. “Will you have any difficulty taking him out, if that proves necessary? Because if you think you might, I can give the mission to someone else. Number Three, for example.”
Five didn’t like the idea of killing a fellow member of the SAS. Thorsson had been a good soldier, but Five was eager to deal with Bertin. And he felt that Pope was testing him as well as giving him an out. In the Group, you killed whomever you were ordered to kill. Once you started questioning whether those orders were really necessary, you lost your effectiveness. Look what had happened to John Milton.
“No, sir,” said Five. “If I come across Thorsson and I consider he poses a threat to Karsh, I’ll deal with him.”
13
It took Björn a day to get organised. First, he despatched Olya to find herself an anonymous hotel somewhere in Central London. She needed to keep herself off Karsh and Brenner’s radar for twenty-four hours. The police came to see him shortly after nine. He answered some basic questions about his sister and admitted that he was unhappy that she had hooked up with Karsh, but didn’t say anything about her walking out on him. The police didn’t ask him whether he knew of anyone who might want to murder Gudrún, and so he didn’t have to lie to them. They were convinced her killer had been a junkie with a gun, and they were scouring CCTV looking for him.
Then he called Iceland. His mother was incredulous at first. Björn had repeated what the police had said: that it was a random mugging gone wrong. He had already decided he would eventually tell his mother the whole truth, but not yet. Not until he had done what he had to do.
His mother had fallen apart. Her hysterical sobs had ripped at Björn’s heart. He tried desperately to think of words of comfort, but none came; he wasn’t good with words. She never suggested it was his fault, but as she cried out in anguish, that’s what he felt. He had been in London and he hadn’t protected his little sister.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” was all he could think to say.
“Can you bring her back to Iceland?” their mother said. “So she can be buried here?”
“Yes, Mama. I’ll do that.” Once the police had finished with poor Gudrún’s body, he thought. His mother didn’t need to know those details. “Leave it with me. I’ll organise it.”
Then anger burned. Fury, guilt, anguish, grief – they all made him speechless. He didn’t know what to say. But he did know what to do.
He called UCL and spoke to his supervisor, explaining what had happened. She told him to take at least a week off.
He called a mate from the army who put him in touch with another mate, who arranged to meet Björn in a back street of Harlesden. There Björn exchanged a thick wedge of notes for a C8 carbine, a weapon he had used many times, and a Glock 17 sidearm, together with an ACOG sight, enough 5.56mm NATO ammunition for three thirty-round magazines for the C8, and 9mm ammo for the Glock. He went to Standfords, the specialist map shop in Covent Garden, to buy Ordnance Survey maps for the area around Castle Rosnager. Finally, he booked two tickets on an early morning train for the next day to Glasgow.
Olya had insisted on coming with Björn to Scotland. He had tried to dissuade her, but failed. There were some advantages to having her with him. He could keep an eye on her: she was safer with him in Scotland than alone and vulnerable in London. And he liked having her company. She shared his anger, his guilt, his grief, and, like him, she wanted to do something about it.
They spoke briefly on the train journey north, and Björn spent the rest of the time distracted by his book while Olya slept. On arrival in Glasgow, they hired a small silver VW Polo and drove north. The clouds were low and the rain heavy as they left the city, but the sky cleared once they passed Loch Lomond, and a bright watery sunshine splashed the purple and brown hills surrounding them. It was a long drive up the west coast, through Fort William and then northwards into Wester Ross. The desolation and the bleak beauty sparked a pang of familiarity in Björn, although the reds, browns and golds of the heather contrasted with the grey, green and orange of Iceland’s moss-covered lava. Also, there were trees, occasional ranks of pine or fir, or glens brimming with twisted trunks of mountain ash or willow, whose leaves were beginning to turn yellow. No trees in Iceland. But one constant between the two countries was the cropped green, sheep-nibbled grass and the hard, grey shoulders of rock.
“This reminds me of home,” Björn said.
“That’s what Gudrún said when we came up here in the summer,” Olya replied. “She loved it.”
“And you?”
“Not so much,” said Olya. “Jesse doesn’t like it much either. But he won’t tell Finlay that. Finlay is caught up in the romance of it – his crofter ancestors frolicking over the moorland. It was weird. For a guy who’s basically a geek he seemed to know everything about the Highlands. Gudrún egged him on.”
“Is that why he bought the castle?”
“Yes. They had something called ‘the clearances’ around here. From what Finlay said, the landlords kicked the peasants out. Finlay’s ancestors were those peasants, and Finlay wanted his revenge. So he became a ‘laird’. Not that I think he has invited all the crofters back or anything. But he did buy himself a Maclean kilt.” Olya laughed. “He wears it in the castle. He looks ridiculous. Although Gudrún said he looked cute.” She laughed again. “A short man in a skirt. At least Jesse wasn’t so dumb.”
They d
ecided to stay in a small inn in the village of Torridon, about thirty miles from the castle by road, but only ten as the crow flew. It was a spectacular location, a sea loch reaching inland between high towers of rock and scree. The village clung precariously to the foot of a particularly steep fell.
They dumped their stuff and drove around the mountains, past a deep blue loch scattered with islands, to the sea. They turned off the main road along a narrow lane that wound its tortuous way through steep green glens and bracken-clad hills with occasional glimpses of the sea, towards Castle Rosnager. About two miles short of the castle itself, they came to the tiny village of Strathcarnoch with its pub, the Rosnager Arms, standing guard by an ancient stone bridge. The pub was empty, but miraculously it was serving food.
Posing as a couple of Danish tourists, they ordered fish and chips for dinner. They asked the landlord about the castle, explaining that a friend of theirs from Denmark had considered buying it when it was up for sale recently: Olya’s internet researches had shown that a number of Danes and Germans had recently bought up Scottish estates. The landlord explained that the castle had been bought by a rich American, but he knew little about him. However, the waitress, who was called Isla and looked about seventeen, knew the castle well. She worked there occasionally cleaning, and her brother helped out with the stalking.
“Stalking?” Björn asked. “Deer?”
“Yes,” she said. “Not that there is much of that these days.”
“Doesn’t the new owner hunt?”
“Och, he says he wants to, but he hasn’t yet. In fact, just now is the first time he’s been up here since the season started, and the stag shooting’s finished next week, although they’ll be shooting the hinds until February.”
“I’m sure Hans would have been there every weekend,” said Olya, unilaterally deciding on a name for their fictional Danish friend.
“That would have been good for all of us,” said the girl, whose black hair was dyed green at the tips, and whose nose was pierced with a black-studded ring. But she couldn’t hide her healthy rosy cheeks; she reminded Björn of an Icelander. “Colin says the man can’t even shoot straight. Archie, the ghillie, he says they’ll have to take him and his wee friend out each morning for an hour on the range before they go after the stags.”