by Andy McNab
When I’d finished eating, I unfurled my Gore-Tex hood, put on my gloves and got my head down in the driver’s seat. That way I could stay as close as I could to what little warmth was leaking out of the heating vent.
It wasn’t the Ritz, but it beat the shit out of lying in a snowdrift with my brains dripping off a nearby tree.
PART THREE
1
St Francis Xavier’s Roman Catholic Church, Powys
Thursday, 26 January
08.13 hrs
I’d always steered clear of confession.
I could see the attraction of wiping the slate clean with a few Hail Marys, but I’d done some things over the years that I wasn’t proud of, and had never felt comfortable with the idea of spilling the details. The secret of keeping things secret was never, ever, to share them with anyone else.
I didn’t care about people standing in judgement against me, I just preferred not to give them any extra sticks to beat me with. Whoever said, ‘Knowledge is power,’ knew what they were talking about.
I’d given Anna the edited version of my life, of course, but she hadn’t bought it. She’d seen me in the shit a good few times, and with her journo hat on she was brilliant at uncovering stuff people wanted to hide. From the moment I met her, I’d had the slightly scary feeling that she understood me a whole lot better than I understood myself. Slightly scary because I discovered that it was one of the many things I really, really liked about being with her.
The only other person I’d allowed anywhere near the truth was Father Mart. I trusted him completely – which was why I was now sitting in a little wooden box in the corner of a church about fifty Ks north of his cottage. I needed to bring him up to speed on the events of the last twenty-four hours, and find out if he could fill any of the gaps.
The bench groaned as I shifted from one buttock to the other to try to make myself comfortable. Some hope. These places weren’t built for comfort. They were built for penance. But also for anonymity, which suited me fine right now.
I couldn’t help wondering about the kind of exchanges that must have taken place through the perforated screen that separated the sinner from the priest. And if the magic ever worked.
I ran a fingertip across a bit of graffiti some choirboy had scrawled in felt-tip while waiting to admit what he’d really done with the Communion wine: Beware! Sudden prayers make God jump! I didn’t know if Father Mart ever checked out this side of the booth, but I thought he’d probably like that.
The throaty growl of the 911 and the echoing clank of the heavy oak door told me he was on his way in. I kept eyes on the entrance through the gap in the velvet curtain.
Father Mart ducked his head towards the altar and made the sign of the cross before turning in my direction. His trainers squeaked on the quarry-tiled floor and the curtain rings on his side of the booth rattled as he stepped inside.
There was a moment’s silence. ‘In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti … Do you repent of your sins, my son?’
I couldn’t see much through the screen, but I swear there was a gleam in his eye. ‘How long have you got?’
‘Good point, Nicholas. That might be a conversation for another time …’
‘’Fraid so, Father.’ I paused. ‘You were right to be worried. Trev’s dead. A professional hit.’
I heard a deep sigh.
‘Who?’
‘No idea. He won’t be doing it again.’
Father Mart knew better than to ask for details.
I asked him if he knew about the claymore in Trev’s front hall.
He didn’t.
2
Father Mart’s bench creaked as he shifted position. ‘I’ve asked around, Nicholas, and got nothing.’
‘Well, now’s a good time to stop asking. There’s some high-level shit going on out there, and for the time being, no matter how long you’ve been on His firm, I don’t think we can rely on the Good Lord’s protection.’
‘Perhaps I should pay a visit to Barford …’
‘We should both steer clear of Barford right now. I think Trev had a pretty good idea who might be behind this, and he was dead set against going.
‘Maybe there’s another route to the truth about Harry’s boy. You know any of his mates?’
‘He kept his emotional cards pretty close to his chest. But, then, don’t you all?’ Father Mart went quiet for a moment. ‘I can’t think of any, apart from Guy Chastain and Scott Braxton. The three of them were almost inseparable.’
‘Where can I find Scott?’
‘On the post-mortem slab, I’m sorry to say. He was the boy they’re saying Sam Callard killed in the CQB Rooms.’
It was starting to sound like this lad’s friendships lasted about as long as mine did. ‘No one else?’
‘Well, there’s Ella, of course. His girlfriend. But Trevor took the precaution of hiding her before he hid himself.’ He took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’ve got to admit that I thought he was overreacting when he told me.’
‘I don’t suppose he mentioned where?’
That made him chuckle. ‘It was on a need-to-know basis. And he didn’t think I needed to know.’
‘Tell me about her. And maybe you could tell me about Sam too. I didn’t watch out for the boy like Trev did …’
I didn’t say that the few times I’d been with Sam Callard when he was a kid I hadn’t been able to shake the image of his dad’s face out of my head. I didn’t need to. Father Mart had done his best to deal with all that shit years ago.
‘She’s a great girl. A GP. They’ve been together for a couple of years. He had a pretty tough time during his last tour in Afghan. She picked up the pieces.’
‘I thought that was your job.’
‘As you well know, Nicholas, I need all the help I can get.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He refused to talk about it, even to Trevor, and Trevor was like a father to him.’
I gave a wry smile in the shadows of the confessional. Being like a father, as far as I was concerned, meant staying as far away from my son as possible.
‘But I know it haunted him. You could see it in his eyes. He’s not alone in that, of course …’ His voice tailed off.
Father Mart had seen more than his fair share of the wreckage of men from the war zone. Some could wear it lightly. Some couldn’t. In the silence that followed I found myself thinking about the lads I’d known who’d carried it around with them like a sack of shit until they could no longer take the smell, and Harry’s face loomed large again.
This wasn’t healthy. I cut away.
‘What’s the timetable for the court martial?’
‘I get the feeling they’re fast-tracking it, but I’m not certain. They like to bury these things as quickly as possible, don’t they? And they’ll do it behind closed doors. In the National Interest.’
‘Could you find out who’s in charge of the Article 32 investigation?’ The accused had the right to a thorough and impartial investigation into the incident before any general court-martial proceedings.
‘I’ll try.’
‘And the name of Sam’s lawyer?’ I warned him again not to rattle any bars on any more cages. Then I asked him the next most important question of the morning. ‘How’s the 911 in the snow?’
‘For once, I have to say I’d rather be in the Defender.’
3
Before leaving, I told Father Mart also to watch out for Postman Pat. We needed to catapult him into twenty-first-century comms so we could make contact from time to time when we needed to, and he could pass on any int he came by.
In the meantime, he gave me Ella’s home address and the name and location of her practice in Gloucestershire. Thank fuck it wasn’t in Hereford. Trev had been rattled enough by the MRUD to leg it out of town, and with good reason, so even the old haunts were no longer safe havens for me. Even if the connection between the Credenhill blackout and the Black Mountains sniper wasn’t clear, t
he threat level was.
We swapped car keys and I threw my kit under the bonnet of the 911. I was going to miss the Defender of the Faith, but a priest in a Porsche – especially my Porsche – would stick out like the balls on a bulldog, and I didn’t want Father Mart drawing un necessary attention to himself. He had links with Trev too.
There would probably come a time when I’d have to ditch my boy-racer wagon, but where I was going next it would fit right in.
He gripped my hand. ‘Look after yourself, Nicholas.’
‘You too, Obi-Wan.’
His brow furrowed for a moment before he tuned in. ‘Indeed. We must both beware of the Dark Side.’
Without getting stupid about it, I’d decided to give H as wide a berth as possible, so headed north-east for Ludlow. I stopped at a service station, filled the tank and grabbed a fistful of clear polythene gloves.
By the time I had dropped down to Evesham and spent some time in an internet café, the snow on the windscreen and tarmac had been replaced by drizzle. Their pig roll wasn’t as good as the one I’d had in Brynmawr, but it was enough to keep me going as I Googled Dr Eleanor Mathieson and her surgery.
I then pointed the 911 towards a part of the planet that seemed to be entirely populated by Range Rover Evoques, royal tree-huggers and signposts to villages with names like Upton Snodsbury.
As I drove, I wished I’d been able to hide Father Mart as well as Trev had hidden Ella, but he was never going to change his style for anyone. I hoped that his God would keep an eye on him – or at least remind the bad guys that, however much you could brush aside pondweed like me and Trev, the death of a Catholic priest who was also a local legend wouldn’t go unnoticed.
When I was growing up on our South London estate, I’d thought villages like Chipping Campden only existed on railway posters, and as I parked up within reach of the high street, I still felt like I’d entered a fairy-tale world of home baking, scented-candle shops and honey-coloured stone.
I saw the medical practice almost immediately – a handsome double-fronted building with cream-painted rendering. Dr Eleanor Mathieson and Dr Grace Nichol were two of the names on the brass plate beside its entrance, but all except one of the ‘Doctors Parking Only’ bays were empty. I walked straight past. I had a home visit to make before I started to quiz her friends.
I ducked into the first dry cleaner’s I came across. They were very happy to give me a wire coat hanger in return for a couple of quid in their Help for Heroes collection tub. As I moved on, I bent the wire back and forth until it snapped into two six-inch lengths. I curved their tips and slid them into my pocket. You could get lock-picking sets from Amazon, these days, but my homemade versions worked pretty well, and didn’t have ‘Burglary in Progress’ written all over them.
4
Oak Leaves was the last cottage in the lane, at the edge of a stretch of woodland that must have given it its very cosy name. I didn’t approach it directly: I had no idea if whoever owned Sniper One would have eyes on the place, but since it was one of a small handful of known locations linked to Harry’s boy, I had to assume they did.
I went back into rambler mode, vaulted the first stile I came across on the opposite side of the road and strode along a right-of-way that sloped gently upwards at the edge of a field, taking me further away from her front door. The grass was slippery underfoot, not crisp, and the ambient temperature was mild. Shafts of sunlight cut through the scudding clouds.
Five or six gates further on, and now sheltered by the rolling hill from the houses on the lane, I turned left along a hedgerow and followed it to the far side of the wood. A small herd of cows raised their heads as I passed, then lost interest when they realized I wasn’t bringing food.
There wasn’t another human being in sight, but that didn’t mean I could relax. I approached the wood with caution, but I also had to look as though I belonged there. These small rural communities kept an eye out for strangers, particularly when the neighbours were away. This wasn’t the home of the folding-stock Dragunov, but a hand-tooled Holland & Holland over-and-under could do plenty of damage in the wrong hands.
I needn’t have worried. The treeline offered some cover, but the growth was manicured, not wild. It was perfect for a kids’ game of hide and seek; it wasn’t Rambo territory.
Ella’s side door wasn’t overlooked, and was sheltered behind a five-foot stone wall. I emerged from the wood and swung myself up and over it, landed softly on the path, stopped and listened. When I was satisfied that the rest of the world didn’t care what I was up to, I stepped into the kind of porch where you’d be able to slip off your green wellies before popping in for tea and crumpets.
I took out my bits of coat hanger and slipped on my polythene service-station gloves, then reached for the very shiny brass handle and turned it. You felt like a complete dickhead if you got busy with your lock-picking kit, only to discover that it was already open.
They never were, of course.
But this one was.
There were three possible reasons why.
One: Ella’s mum was looking after the place.
Two: Ella had been in too much of a rush to lock up when Trev told her it was time to leave.
Three: her security was spot on, but someone had made entry after she’d gone, either in pursuit of her or because they’d wanted to turn the place over.
I looked at the mechanism. It was often easier to open these things than close them down.
I decided not to waste time trying to work out which it could be. I’d find out soon enough.
5
I eased the door back on its well-oiled hinges and stayed on the threshold, slack-jawed, listening for movement. The house was small enough and old enough for me to register a mouse moving upstairs.
There was no need to clear the whole house before I nosed around. After five minutes I was satisfied that there wasn’t a fully primed MRUD sitting there with my name on it, and that, apart from the heating system, nothing and no one was still interfering with the air molecules inside the cottage. I stepped into the lobby and closed up behind me.
Leaving my wet Timberlands on the mat, I moved past a rack of Barbour and Driza-Bone waterproofed coats, hats and scarves into a neatly organized kitchen. The Aga was on, but throttled back. I crossed burglary off the list. Everything seemed to be in its proper place.
The Rolodex beside the phone was filled with names, addresses and phone numbers in immaculate copperplate. That told me not all doctors had shit handwriting, and Ella took a lot of care with her surroundings.
I couldn’t tell whether any of the cards had been removed, but there were no obvious gaps. I keyed Grace Nichol’s mobile number into my iPhone, in case she wasn’t at the surgery when I got back there.
A wood-burning stove stood in the living-room fireplace, freshly laid, ready for the end of the day. The shelves either side of it were lined with hardcovers and paperbacks – everything from chick lit to the classics and a bunch of military memoirs – a state-of-the-art sound system and family photographs in silver and leather frames.
Sam obviously avoided the camera as energetically as I did, but there were two shots of other men in uniform. Google had told me that she had a brother and a father in the Green Army, so I assumed this was what they looked like. I wondered how they’d feel about having a court-martial defendant in the family. Ella and her mother shared the apparently effortless good looks that seemed to bless the county set. Harry would have been proud.
One frame was empty. I figured it must have been a snap of Ella, and that it had been taken. The second sign of slack drills – or maybe the intruder didn’t care? Either way, it was a problem. I liked players who were in control of what they were doing. That way I knew what I was up against.
I checked out the contents of a small roll-top desk without much hope of discovering anything as helpful as a forwarding address, but you never knew what might trigger a connection or a memory, and sometimes what you didn’t f
ind turned out to be as useful as what you did.
I uncovered a red slip file containing a print-out of Guy Chastain’s VC citation and a replica of the medal, which looked like they were ready for framing. Tucked in behind them was a handwritten note from someone called Stephen thanking Ella for her kind letter of condolence and doing his best to convince himself that at least Chris had died doing what he loved. I’d read a lot of letters like that, and some of them were true.
The two bedrooms upstairs were so snug I half expected to see Goldilocks in a big double bed catching up on her beauty sleep. The wardrobes weren’t full, but the rails and shelves were still well stocked with man stuff and girl stuff.
The bathroom had a tub you could do lengths in, gleaming taps, designer candles and big fluffy towels. The medicine cabinet was almost empty, apart from a bag of cotton-wool pads, some sterile dressings, a roll of Elastoplast, a couple of crêpe bandages, a bottle of Armani aftershave and half a packet of sertraline.
I’d never taken happy pills myself, though I knew one or two lads who couldn’t get through the day without them – and I didn’t think they were there to treat Ella’s OCD. I pocketed the dressings, and one of the bandages.
I scanned the immediate area through the first-floor windows: a row of quite spacious, carefully managed gardens, each with a selection of oiled teak chairs and tables. At the far end of Ella’s was a sage green designer shepherd’s hut with cast-iron wheels, a wriggly tin roof and a chimney.
No one was in sight, but I wasn’t going to risk crossing sixty feet of open ground and poking around in full view of the next-door neighbours. They wouldn’t call out the Specialist Firearms Unit, but a chat with the Gloucestershire Constabulary was the last thing I needed. I wanted to keep below the radar for as long as I possibly could.