‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘Bairstow came from a bloke over in Aberdeen. He ran a marine engineering company. Bairstow had screwed him on some tender bid or other. He was at it all the time.’
‘And you decided to punish him?’
‘Yes.’
‘By killing him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bit extreme, wasn’t it?’
‘Not really, not from where I sat. I wanted five decent deaths. Five headlines. Five bodies. Bairstow measured up nicely.’
‘Was the bloke from Aberdeen in on it?’
‘Fuck no, of course not.’
Kingdom eyed the remains of his cigarette. The pain in his ankle had definitely eased.
‘The MP on Hayling Island, Carpenter …’ He looked up. ‘Was that from a doctor? Jo Hubbard? Did she talk about him? Put you onto him?’
‘Yes. He was a pillock, too. Wonderful choice. Inspired.’
‘And Marcus Wolfe?’
‘Dave’s idea. Though he was too pissed at the time to remember.’
‘And what about Lister? The one you blew up? What had he done?’
Andy didn’t answer for a moment. The wind was sighing through cracks in the window frame. Finally, Andy began to roll another cigarette.
‘We’ve got an instructor up here, bloke called Hughie. Really nice guy. Genuine. You’ve met him. He used to work for Lister, down in Devon, replacing water mains up on Dartmoor. He had some experiences after they took the company private. It’s quite a complicated story but I’m sure he’d tell you if you asked.’ He paused. ‘He hated the man, and everything he stood for. He thought it was evil, selling water for profit.’
‘So you killed him? This Lister?’
‘Sure.’
‘And did that help?’
‘Help what?’
‘Help make the point you wanted to make.’
‘Sort of …’ He hesitated, his head down again, concentrating on the cigarette. Then he shrugged. ‘OK, I suppose I could have done it the proper way, Dave’s way, written a letter to the papers, got hold of my MP, all that shit, but it’s pointless, no one ever listens.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I tried. I wrote a book. And what happened? They binned it.’ He leaned back in the chair, the cigarette between his lips, gazing up at the trapdoor in the ceiling. ‘See,’ he said at last, ‘see what they made me do?’
Later, past midnight, Kingdom outlined the deal. In the morning, Andy would talk to Dave Gifford and ask him to send Cousins up to the hut. En route to the hut, somewhere on the path, Cousins would be shot.
Andy blinked. ‘Why?’ he said.
Kingdom refused to explain. He said he’d do it with Andy’s rifle. The one with the sniperscope. The one in the roof.
Andy was staring at him now. ‘You’ll do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is he? This bloke?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Who says it doesn’t matter?’
Kingdom began to laugh. ‘Why the conscience,’ he said, ‘all of a sudden?’
‘It’s not conscience. I’m just curious, that’s all. My hut. My mountain. My gun.’
Kingdom shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said again, ‘but it’s well-earned, believe me.’
‘Sure,’ Andy said, ‘but what happens afterwards? To me?’
‘Nothing.’ Kingdom eyed the table. ‘You’ll give me the typewriter and the photos. And the rifle, of course.’ He paused. ‘Where’s the weapon you used on Carpenter?’
‘In the roof.’
‘I’ll need that, too.’
‘Sure, but then what?’
‘Nothing,’ he repeated, ‘I’ll take the gear and that’s the last you’ll hear of it.’
‘You’ll just go?’
‘Yes.’
‘And all this?’ Andy gestured at the space between them, the remains of the roll-ups, three hours of steady confession.
Kingdom shrugged, easing his long body on the bed. ‘Never happened,’ he said briefly.
Andy nodded, taking it in, trying to understand it. Finally, he gave up, voicing the obvious question. ‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ he said.
Kingdom had his eyes closed now, the gun abandoned on the bed beside him. ‘You don’t,’ he yawned, ‘but don’t insult me by asking.’
Next morning, early, Andy talked to Dave on the two-way radio he kept in the bag he’d brought up the previous evening. Because the hut formed part of the An Carraig estate, Cousins should make time to come up and look at it. He broke off, listening to his father on the radio. The conversation finally over, he sat at the table, staring glumly at the rain driving in from the sea.
‘He’ll be up around ten,’ he said. ‘He’s talking serious money. Dave says he’s definitely interested. Thinks we might tie the deal up by the weekend.’
‘I doubt it,’ Kingdom said drily.
‘Why’s that?’
‘He works for MI5. And he’s probably here to take you both out.’
Andy looked round, astonished, the expression of a man who’s finally lost his place in the script. ‘You kidding?’
‘No,’ Kingdom smiled grimly, peering at his ankle, ‘far from it.’
They waited an hour for the rain to ease. Andy had listened to the forecast the previous afternoon and thought the front might be through by mid-morning. When nothing had happened by nine o’clock, Andy unlocked the trapdoor in the ceiling and clambered up into the roof space. Kingdom stayed below, supporting himself on the chair, reaching for the gun as Andy handed it down. It was a Steyr G69, an Austrian bolt-action rifle much favoured by snipers, one of three models the ballistics people at New Scotland Yard had identified as Sabbathman’s likely weapon.
Andy levered himself down from the roofspace. He had an automatic pistol in his hand. It looked like a Walther. He offered it to Kingdom.
‘You said you wanted it,’ he pointed out, ‘last night.’
‘I did.’ Kingdom nodded. ‘Leave it in the day-sack.’
They went out into the rain. Visibility was appalling, no more than a couple of hundred yards, and An Carraig was lost in the grey murk below. Kingdom hobbled to the top of the path, looking down, wondering quite how to set the trap. Andy stood beside him, rain dripping off the peaked hood of his anorak.
‘You know anything about these?’ he said. ‘Ever used one?’ He was carrying the Steyr.
Kingdom shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said.
Andy disappeared. When he came back, he was carrying a tin of white paint and a small brush. He set off down the path and Kingdom watched him as he danced down through the dripping heather. For a moment he was lost from sight, then he reappeared again, much further down. Finally he stopped, looking back up the hill. Beside him, invisible if you were climbing the path, was a low outcrop of rock. He put the tin on the ground and levered off the lid. Then he dabbed a splash of white paint on the rock and wiped the brush on the wet grass. Minutes later he was back beside Kingdom, picking up the rifle and spreadeagling himself on the sodden turf. He brought the Steyr to bear on the rock, making tiny adjustments to the notched ring on top of the sniperscope. When he was happy with the range, he told Kingdom to lie down beside him. Kingdom got down on all fours, then lay flat on his belly. The pain and stiffness in his ankle seemed to have spread upwards through his leg, making any movement an effort.
Andy handed him the rifle and told him to line up on the white paint. Kingdom did so, easing the gun through a blur of heather and rock until he found the sighting mark. The optics on the gun were astonishing, the splash of white paint filling the sniperscope. Kingdom held his breath a moment, trying to steady the gun.
‘Here.’ Andy took the gun and adjusted the support strap, lengthening it for Kingdom’s long frame. Then he looped it around Kingdom’s left arm, showing him how to use the strap to tension the gun into his shoulder. ‘It’s got to be part of you,’ he muttered, ‘it’s got to feel like you’
ve just grown the bloody thing.’
Kingdom practised with the weapon, listening to Andy at his side. How to breathe. What kind of pressure to put on the trigger. Why there was always more time than you thought. At the end of the lesson, Kingdom looked up. He’d come to find Sabbathman. He’d come to put an end to the killing. And now Sabbathman was teaching him how to kill.
‘How many bullets?’ he asked, patting the box magazine.
Andy grinned down at him. ‘If you miss at this range,’ he said, ‘you’re fucked anyway.’
They moved into cover. Andy found a hollow behind the ridge that overlooked the track, no more than five yards from the head of the path. He waded into the heather, returning with handfuls of the stuff, making Kingdom take up the prone position again. Then he dressed him with the heather, checking from the path time and again before he was happy with the camouflage. If Cousins came from the kind of background Kingdom had described, then he was leaving nothing to chance.
The rain began to ease a little, the wind shifting to the northwest, and Kingdom lay beneath the sodden heather, shivering with cold. At one point, Andy offered to make a brew. The camping stove in the hut had already given them a rudimentary breakfast and there were two tea-bags left, but Kingdom shook his head. He could think of nothing but Cousins. Cousins was there for the taking. Unlike Annie, it would be the cleanest of kills.
They waited for over an hour while the mist slowly lifted and by the time Andy spotted the figure climbing up from the valley floor, the rain had stopped.
‘There,’ he whispered, ‘ten o’clock. About four hundred metres.’
Kingdom wiped his face and peered down the hill. At first he saw nothing. Then he recognised the figure striding up the path towards him. Cousins was wearing a long, green waterproof. There was a hood attached to the collar but as Kingdom watched he reached up and pushed it back off his face. On his head, beneath the hood, was an old green cap-comforter.
Kingdom heard Andy stifling a laugh. ‘It’s Dave’s,’ he muttered, ‘Dave must have lent it to him. Put a hole through that and he’ll go barmy.’
Kingdom ignored him, easing up the rifle, sliding his forearm through the sling. Tracking Cousins through the sniperscope wasn’t as easy as it seemed. The optics were almost too powerful, the image too big. For the first time he began to wonder whether doing this himself was such a great idea.
Andy was aware at once of his uncertainty. ‘You want me to do it?’
Kingdom peered over the sights. Cousins was moving fast. In a minute or so he’d reach the rock with the splash of white paint. Already it was too late for Andy to take the rifle. Any movement now would simply give them away.
Kingdom shook his head, settling behind the gun again. Another thirty yards, he thought. Then he’ll pause by the rock, turn for the next stretch upwards. He tracked the big, loping stride through the sniperscope, tilting slowly upwards, trying to pin Cousins’ head in his sights. For the briefest moment, he caught the expression on the man’s face, eager, keen-eyed, his breath clouding on the cold air, his cheeks pinked with the climb.
The rock was closer now, only seconds away. First pressure, Andy had said, only the slightest touch, then the shallowest of breaths, nothing dramatic, no hurry, and finally, when the moment came, just a gentle squeeze on the trigger. Kingdom was sweating now, he could feel it, and the warmth of his breath clouded the glass in the sniperscope. He peered over the sights, wondering exactly how far Cousins had got, whether or not he had time to wipe the scope, then he saw the man below him, already there, already at the rock, already turning for that final stretch upward.
‘Do it,’ Andy hissed, ‘just fucking do it.’
Kingdom bent to the scope again, seeing nothing, firing blindly. The plastic stock jumped backwards into his shoulder and the bark of the single bullet rolled away over the hills. He felt Andy getting up beside him, pulling the rifle out of his hands, and he looked up at him, rolling over on the wet peat, the unvoiced question answered.
‘Missed,’ Andy said, ‘you missed him.’
Andy worked another bullet into the chamber, crouching low. Then he skirted the top of the plateau, past the hut, and disappeared into the rocks above. Kingdom watched, helpless. Cousins would have a weapon. In the SAS he’d have spent years at this kind of game, perfecting his fieldcraft, honing his concealment skills, preparing for the moment when his life might depend on them. In the shape of Andy Gifford, that moment had now arrived.
Kingdom stared down the mountainside, knowing that he had to do something, make a decision, join this small, vicious, intensely private war that had so suddenly erupted. He closed his eyes a moment, gritting his teeth, then he tried to stand up. As soon as he put weight on his ankle, the pain made him gasp out loud. He did his best to ignore it, limping up through the heather, his body at a half-crouch. In the hut, he retrieved the big Browning, checking the magazine and working the first round into the chamber. The click of the slider sounded deafening in the windless silence.
Outside again, Kingdom edged carefully round the hut. To the rear, beyond the spring, the mountain shouldered upwards, a tumble of bracken and moss-covered boulders. Height, he thought. I need height. I need to get above the action, to look down on whatever is happening. He began to scramble upwards, knees and elbows, moving as carefully as he could, trying not to dislodge loose rocks. Now and again he’d pause, listening for some tiny noise, some clue to what might be happening, but apart from the bubble of the spring water and the more distant murmur of the sea there was nothing.
Soon the hut had disappeared, veiled by the mist. To the left, in a gulley amongst the rocks, there was a rough path scabbed with sheep droppings. The path eased upwards, the shallowest of gradients. At the end of the path, an outcrop of rock loomed black in the enveloping greyness. Kingdom hesitated a moment. Taking the path would put more distance between himself and where he estimated Cousins and Andy Gifford might be, but that didn’t matter. Height, he told himself. More height.
Beside the rocky outcrop, sweating now, he stopped again. Fronds of dripping heather still clung to his anorak and he wondered vaguely about removing them. He leant against the rock, taking the weight off his ankle, pulling at the heather, trying to imagine how Andy was coping. He’d know the terrain, every inch of it. He’d know the places to avoid, the hidden, shadowed foxholes where Cousins might be waiting for him. He’d be like an animal, patrolling his territory, scenting his prey. He’d doubtless take his time, working his way upwind, waiting for Cousins to make a mistake, show himself, and when that moment came then Annie’s real killer, the one who’d sent her to her death, would be history.
Kingdom looked down at the Browning, warmed by the thought, and he was still smiling when he heard the gunshots. There were two, same weapon, the flat, sharp bark of the Steyr. The reports pinballed around the mountain, bouncing from rockface to rockface, making it difficult for Kingdom to judge where they came from. Somewhere back towards the hut, he thought. Somewhere down below. Two bullets. Cousins winged, wounded, maybe even dead.
Beyond the rocky outcrop, the path disappeared into the mist, hugging the mountainside, circling back towards the sea. Kingdom set off again, moving as fast as his ankle would permit, oblivious of the pain now, wanting only to see Andy, make his peace, apologise for fucking it all up. Five kills, he thought, and not a single mistake. Then, thanks to Kingdom, this. Andy had been right all along. Attend to every single detail yourself. Trust nobody.
Kingdom stumbled on. The path rose before him, bare earth, worn rocks. Disorientated, he was about to stop again when he found himself on the edge of a shallow drop. Below him was a hollow protected from the worst of the weather, a bowl scooped from the flank of the mountain. A wind from nowhere stirred the wet heather, parting the curtains of mist, revealing the shapes of two men. The larger stood astride the smaller. A small, neat automatic dangled from one hand and he had his back to the ridge where Kingdom crouched. From thirty feet, Kingdom could hear ev
ery word.
‘Your father says you were here,’ Cousins was saying, ‘all weekend.’
Andy Gifford lay face down, one leg twisted at a strange angle, one cheek pressed to the black earth, and Kingdom knew at once that he was injured. Cousins mentioned the weekend again, turning the comment into a question, and when Andy didn’t answer, he put his foot on the back of Andy’s knee, leaning slightly forward as he did so. At the first real pressure, Andy’s whole body convulsed, as if Cousins had applied some kind of electric shock. The kneecap, Kingdom thought. He’s smashed the kneecap. One bullet at least. Probably two.
Cousins was bending down now, his voice more urgent, every word, every intonation clearly audible. ‘So?’ he queried. ‘Am I right?’
Andy nodded. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘And who else? Who else was there?’ Cousins paused. ‘Those girls in the van? At Inverness? Were they there?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the American?’
‘Yes.’
Cousins stood up again, nodding, and Kingdom withdrew a little, sinking onto his haunches, recognising the exchange for what it was, Cousins adding more names to his list. The two girls and the American would know that Andy couldn’t possibly have killed Willoughby Grant. Another little problem for the new Controller of ‘T’ Branch.
Cousins stooped a moment and picked something up, tossing it to one side, and it was several seconds before Kingdom recognised the Steyr. Crouching beside Andy, Cousins had put the muzzle of the automatic to the back of his other knee.
‘Who else?’
‘No one.’
‘I said who else?’
‘Nobody.’
‘You’re lying. I know you’re lying.’ He paused. ‘Last time of asking, Gifford. Who else?’
Kingdom had the Browning up now, both hands, waiting for Cousins to move. Crouched beside Andy, the two men were in line. Up on his feet, Kingdom might manage a decent headshot with no risk of hitting Andy. That, he knew, was his only option.
Cousins shifted his weight, the automatic still nuzzling the back of Andy’s knee.
‘Travis?’ he said. ‘Man calling himself Travis?’
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