Tracers ht-2

by Adrian Magson

  Harry stepped across the room and knelt by the body, although he knew from the Libyan’s posture that he was already beyond help.

  A burst of noise came from the rear of the cottage. Harry reacted instinctively, reaching out to hit the light switch and plunging the house into gloom. He waited, breathing barely audible in the room, eyes on the emptiness outside the windows. He could just make out the back door. It was still closed, so he turned to cover the front. Anyone deciding to storm the place would come in the easy way.

  More noise, this time a recognizable clatter of wings. A pigeon landed in a tree nearby, closely followed by another, crashing through the foliage like a flying brick.

  Harry let out a long breath. He took out a slim Maglite torch and flicked it on. Other than the front door and the entrance to the kitchen, there was one other exit — a slim one to a narrow flight of stairs. He went up, gun held in front of him. Although the heavy silence in the house told him it was deserted save for the dead banker, it paid to be sure. Getting back-shot through carelessness was no way to live a long and happy life.

  He found a single bedroom, a bathroom and toilet. The minimal signs of Matuq’s presence signified a brief stay: a few clothes, a washbag and a suitcase which he checked. Just clothes.

  Back downstairs, he played the torch over the body. He didn’t know if Matuq had been a religious man, but whatever kind of afterlife he’d been bound for, he doubted he’d have been planning on reaching it just yet. He did a brief survey of the room. It was basic and drab, even allowing for the torchlight, and in need of a paint job. It was impossible to tell if anything had been moved, never having been inside before; there were usually signs if a place had been searched, no matter how carefully it had been done. But in this light it was a non-starter.

  He prowled around, careful not to touch anything, noting a scattering of newspapers and magazines, a couple of DVDs on the arm of a chair and some rumpled outdoor clothing in need of a wash. The table held the remains of a meal, a mug of warm coffee and a radio. The latter, a small multi-band receiver, lay on its side, as if Matuq had inadvertently knocked it over when turning to answer the door. A bunch of keys lay next to it, secured to a Renault badge by a heavy clip-ring.

  He peered through the window by the front door. All he could see was the bulk of the bushes screening the Saab and the dense mass of trees on the far side of the track. To his left lay the dark bed of reeds, their swaying heads just visible, bobbing in the breeze. The dying light had faded the dull colours of day to a standard charcoal to match the sky. In spite of that, he knew that anyone waiting out there for him to leave would have a clear field of fire.

  He checked the tiny kitchen, which held the basic equipment for a holiday let. The sink was full of soiled dishes, the pedal bin overflowing with fast-food packaging. A scattering of breadcrumbs covered the worktop. Three empty wine bottles stood clustered together on the small drainer, each with a cork balanced neatly on the top. It was an indication that Matuq had found time weighing heavy on his hands. The back door had a large key in the lock.

  He glanced through the side window at the carport. Whoever had done this had hobbled the car first in case Matuq tried to run. That did away with the idea of a rural burglary gone wrong. Burglars rarely carried handguns, even now, and the car would have been easy pickings for a quick sale, no questions asked. Harry flicked his torch across the room to confirm that there were no signs of even a cursory search; no torn cushions, open cupboards or drawers; no spilled papers or scattered magazines, none of the rumpled carpets showing the place had been turned over indiscriminately. So, no hayseed crackheads looking for a quick score.

  He went back to Matuq’s body and knelt down, holding his torch close. In the V of the dead man’s dressing gown lapels, a heavy red patch showed just above two ugly bullet wounds. But what drew his attention was the pool of blood on the clothing. Caught in the sticky liquid were what appeared to be bits of cotton stuffing, like loft insulation.

  Harry recognized the material. It was wadding — the kind used in homemade sound suppressors, or silencers. A tube lined with baffles, the gap between them packed with the material, it was a short-term but effective way of reducing the muzzle sound of a gunshot. Some of the wadding inevitably came loose under the intense pressures, as had happened here. The beauty was, the tube could be disposed of afterwards and few would give it more than a second glance, a nameless piece of junk. It was probably lying in the reeds nearby, if anyone cared to look.

  He glanced up as an alien sound interrupted his thoughts. A starter motor was turning over, insistent and high-pitched. The noise continued for a few seconds, reluctant to catch, then the engine coughed and caught, running fast as the accelerator was depressed.

  The utility van.

  Harry jumped up, the wadding forgotten. The killer had been close by all along. He’d found an alternative approach to the cottage. And a quick way out.

  FIVE

  A flick of the torch outside revealed a short stretch of unkempt garden running from the back door to the edges of the reed bed. A rusted wheelbarrow stood mired in long, twisted grass in one corner amid the remains of what might have been a rockery, and a straggly tangle of rose briar curled in on itself like an octopus.

  Harry pointed the torch and instantly spotted a narrow footpath leading away between the bushes bordering the track and the waving reeds. The tenants probably used it as a short cut to the village and the main road.

  He studied the ground around the drooping wire fence. Fresh footprints showed in the damp soil, and there was a gash where someone had skidded. He stared into the gloom, knowing this could be a trap. Whoever had come down here had the advantage of knowing the layout of the ground, and might be waiting for him to follow.

  He shook his head and eased off the safety. Standing here wouldn’t accomplish anything. He started down the path.

  The going was soft and the path narrow, with room for one person at a time. The smell here was heavy and sour, hemmed in by the reeds on one side and the bushes on the other. Something scurried away as Harry passed, and a splash echoed among the vegetation. He used the torch sparingly, flicking it on to gain a sense of direction, but ready to throw himself off the path.

  Something glinted at ground level a few feet ahead. He estimated he could be only yards from the road, probably close to where the van had been parked. He slowed but didn’t need to use the torch to see what the shiny object was; the backlight behind the keys showed it was a mobile phone. He stepped quickly to one side of the path and bent to scoop it up.

  The combination of movements probably saved his life.

  He heard a violent scuff of movement from close by, followed by a sharp exhalation of breath. Something hissed past his head. He felt a flash of intense pain in his shoulder and his torch tumbled away from numbed fingers. Reacting instinctively, he threw himself sideways away from the reeds and the soggy ground underneath and brought up his gun. But the attacker was already moving away, his footsteps fading along the path.

  Scrambling to his feet, Harry snatched up the mobile and used its light to find his torch, then set off in pursuit, wincing with pain from his shoulder. It didn’t take long to reach the road.

  As he burst out from the path, he was just in time to hear a vehicle roaring away into the darkness and see a brief flash of brake lights as it disappeared from view in the direction of the village.

  Harry muttered in disgust and looked at the mobile. He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the killer had dropped it to distract him and nearly caved his head in. He was willing to bet that the mobile had once belonged to the late Abuzeid Matuq.

  He wondered what the killer had been trying to accomplish. Doubling back along the path to lay in wait had been a risky manoeuvre. He’d already got back to his van and was clear and ready to leave. So why do it? There was only one explanation: he was improvising on the move, looking to distract attention from himself by leaving someone else lying near the
body.

  Harry walked back up the path until he reached the point where he had been attacked. He cast around with the torch until he saw a gleam of metal among the reeds. It was a long mains water key with a T-piece on one end and a heavy-looking prong on the other. Just right for caving in a man’s head.

  He left it and walked back to the Saab, a deep feeling of unease settling on him. What had started out as a simple job of chasing down a runaway banker had suddenly become a lot more complicated. Now there was a killer involved. And whoever he was, he was resourceful and quick on his feet.

  A professional.

  SIX

  As he drove south through the village and out the other side, Harry rang Jennings with the news. He kept it brief. The lawyer was silent for a few moments, then said briskly, ‘There’s nothing you can do. It was probably the Libyans. There was a danger they might take direct action if they located him — especially somewhere remote like that. They probably reasoned it would look bad if someone else recovered the money for them.’

  Harry felt a prickle of irritation. ‘And you didn’t think it worthwhile warning me?’ He didn’t mention that he had been armed, so therefore not exactly incapable of defending himself. Carrying a gun was no guarantee of survival, and there were some things Jennings was better off not knowing.

  ‘Time to move on.’ The lawyer ignored the question. ‘Someone else will come out to deal with Matuq. Report to my office tomorrow morning. Noon. I have an urgent job for you.’

  ‘What about Param?’ The other assignment on his list. So far, he had done no research on this runner, an investment manager from a London firm who had disappeared along with sizeable sums of money siphoned off through a batch of illicit accounts.

  ‘My office. In the morning.’ The connection was cut.

  Harry dropped the mobile and concentrated on driving, trying to push Matuq’s murder to the back of his mind. It wasn’t easy. After a stint in the army, including Kosovo and Iraq, followed by several years in MI5 on the anti-terror and anti-narcotics teams, death was no longer a stranger to him. Even less so after a drugs operation had gone wrong and his near-fatal punishment was a posting to a security services outstation in Georgia that he wasn’t meant to survive. But each death he’d seen had carried some kind of explanation or motive, some reasoning — even if not always a rational one. The shooting of Matuq, however, seemed pointless. Random.

  Yet he knew it wasn’t.

  It had been too efficient. Like an execution.

  ‘Christ on horseback.’ It seemed only minutes later when he sat upright and stared through the windscreen at the road ahead. He’d been driving on automatic pilot, the miles being eaten away without conscious thought or awareness. He gazed around; saw familiar landmarks streaming by under the glare of overhead lights, and a steady rumble of late night trucks on a motorway. He was just crossing the M25 around north London. He rubbed his eyes, gritty through lack of sleep, and lowered the window to get a blast of air on his face. He felt guilty at this loss of concentration; how he’d driven from a rural backwater to the outskirts of London, all without being totally conscious of the road before and behind him.

  Backwater.

  Suddenly he knew what had been puzzling him about Jennings’ earlier comment; what had finally jerked him back to reality.

  The only thing he had sent Jennings from Blakeney was the photo of Matuq taken on his mobile. There had been no details other than his name. No location, no directions, no indication of where it was taken — not even a county. That would have followed later when asked for. Confirmation first, then specifics; it was how Jennings liked to work.

  So how could the lawyer have known that the location was ‘remote’, or where to send his people to deal with the body?

  SEVEN

  ‘This is a priority job.’ Jennings selected one of two buff folders from his desk and slid it across the glossy surface. It was noon the following day, and if the lawyer was surprised by Harry’s display of punctuality after the events of the night before, he was careful not to show it. His secretary had shown Harry in moments ago, then retreated to her small office just off the main entrance hall.

  Harry picked up the folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper, a plain brown envelope and a six-by-four black and white photograph. It showed a slim, doleful-looking man with dark shadows under his eyes and closely cropped black hair dotted with flecks of grey. His cheeks were pockmarked, with what might have been a large birthmark just below his right eye. He had a neatly trimmed beard lining his chin, and his age could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. The sad expression in the man’s eyes spoke of something tragic about his past. Or, thought Harry cynically, maybe a lack of confidence in his future.

  ‘What’s this one done?’ he asked, putting down the photo. ‘Run off with his firm’s piggy bank?’

  Jennings gave him a cool look. ‘That’s not your problem. Somebody wants him found. It’s all you need to know.’

  ‘It may not be an issue,’ Harry explained reasonably. ‘But it helps to know if he’s bent or not. Or has a contract on his head.’ Jennings didn’t appear to understand, so Harry explained, ‘Crooks behave in a different way to those who’ve just gone AWOL for other reasons, like stress. They might turn nasty when I show up on their doorstep and ruin their day. Some might even have cosied up with a heavy to watch their backs.’

  Jennings opened his mouth, then gave a half-nod. ‘Fair enough. I can see that.’ He appeared to give it some thought, then shifted in his chair. ‘He’s not. . bent, as you so quaintly put it. His name is Samuel Silverman. Professor. You’ll find what we have in the briefing document. He’s gone missing from his home in Haifa. Simply left his house and disappeared without warning. Three days later, he was seen by an acquaintance arriving at Heathrow, coming off a Lufthansa flight. That was on the twenty-seventh, two weeks ago. Since then, nothing. His family is very worried and thinks he may have suffered some kind of trauma.’

  ‘From what?’ In Harry’s opinion, living in Israel must be enough to traumatize anyone, all that danger and tension. Small wonder if some found it too stressful and wanted to jump the reservation.

  Jennings studied his fingernails. ‘His daughter was killed by a car bomb, along with a grandchild. He took it badly. He stopped going anywhere socially without explanation some time ago, and they think it may have been a precursor to walking away. That’s all I can tell you.’ He looked up as if daring any further questions.

  ‘Was he travelling solo?’ The majority of runners travel alone, prisoners of their circumstances, trusting no one. But occasionally they pick up company along the way. That it sometimes turns out to have been planned beforehand is usually one of the reasons for their vanishing act in the first place. If Silverman had hooked up with someone, it would leave a bigger footprint and might make tracing him a little easier.

  ‘Yes.’ Jennings made no further comment.

  ‘Did they try the police? Immigration?’

  ‘No. It was considered a waste of time.’

  Harry frowned. There was something Jennings wasn’t telling him. Whatever Silverman’s reasons for running, surely it seemed unlikely the family would hire his kind of private expertise without trying the conventional agencies first.

  Unless there was something in his background they didn’t want made public.

  He picked up the briefing paper and scanned it. It told him almost nothing. No address, no family details or names, no work history. Someone had written ‘LH4736 T2 27th’ in the margin. A brief note saying he’d suffered a cut to his right hand. The item might have been useful had the person they were looking for been a one-legged asthmatic with a dodgy foot, but Silverman seemed to possess no such characteristics other than a bandage. ‘What was he a professor of? And how did he come by the injury?’

  ‘He is — was — a professor of theology, I’m told. But that’s irrelevant. The cut was believed to be a domestic accident. I’ve included it only because he might nee
d to visit a hospital to change the bandages.’

  ‘It’s not much to go on,’ said Harry. Actually, it was bugger all. He was beginning to feel depressed. ‘Are you sure this is it?’

  ‘I’m certain. Everything we have is in there. I’m reliably informed there was nothing worth considering in his home.’

  ‘But he’s a professor. The last academic’s office I saw was a mess of paper. They ooze the stuff. Confiscate their pads and pencils and they start biting the furniture.’

  Jennings remained unmoved. ‘As I said, it’s all we have.’

  Harry picked up the brown envelope. He tipped it up and a single piece of lined paper slid into his hand. It was brittle to the touch and brown along one edge. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed. It smelled charred. ‘Where did this come from?’

  ‘His office. A metal waste-bin. There was no explanation, but. . they thought it might be helpful because they couldn’t explain it.’

  ‘They?’

  Jennings leaned forward, easing his neck clear of his shirt collar. ‘Silverman has certain connections. I cannot go any further.’

  ‘Connections,’ Harry echoed. ‘Israeli government connections?’ He studied the scrap of paper, which had a faint line of writing on one side.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘If he’s one of theirs,’ said Harry, ‘I’m surprised they haven’t provided more information. I’d have thought they’d be pleased to have help.’ As he was speaking, he heard a small click from a door at the rear of the office, behind Jennings’ shoulder. He’d assumed it led to an executive toilet, the kind of personal ego attachment a man like Jennings would value. But maybe not. The door was open a fraction, and he was sure he caught a small movement through the crack.

  Jennings was looking impatient and shifted in his chair. ‘There’s a condition attached to this job,’ he added seriously.