The white-haired woman was tall when she stood. In her sixties, he guessed. She put a hand on the head of the young girl next to her. Carry on. It was coming together perfectly. Bunty Moss, captain of ladies’ golf at her Surrey club. Her clipped bob emphasised the exhaustion in the long face and the coldness of the grey eyes as she walked towards them. One slow step. Then another. Refusing to be rushed by the sight of the enemy.
Walsh reached for her as she neared the bed and she took his hand, gentle but firm, as you ’d hold on to a child about to cross a road. Warmth. Camaraderie. Respect. North felt it go through him – tried to hold on to it, take part of it for himself, but couldn’t.
“This young chap’s asking for Peggy.”
North glanced towards the other women and children to check. The men must be in a different hut. Presumably, Walsh was in here because he was ill and the women were looking after him.
“Who are you?” Bunty’s voice was well-bred. Home Counties. Imperious.
“A friend. Is she in another hut? I’ve come to get her out.”
Bunty Moss took a moment to decide whether to trust him or not. What was there to lose?
A decision.
“She was here at the start when there were only a few of us. A day, that’s all.”
North cursed. He’d missed her.
“Do you know where they took her?”
Bunty Moss frowned. “I only wish I did. She punched two of them. Put one out cold. Told them she’d see them all in Hell. I believe they wanted her to do something for them, but I doubt very much that she’ll do it.”
They didn’t want her to name a star after Judge Lucien Tarn – that much was for sure.
“Young man. Can you help us? We’ve children here. Babies. You can see Sonja is eight months gone. She needs urgent medical attention.” Bunty watched his face. “Can you get us out of this place?”
They were penned in, locked behind mesh fencing and barbed wire, surrounded by bleak and empty moorland – unless you counted the sheep, the red grouse and the skylarks. Moreover, they were guarded by soldiers who fought for money not for King and Country and certainly not for each other.
“One of you,” he said. He’d have brought Peggy out. He could at least attempt to take out Bunty Moss. Sonja was an impossibility – the risk too huge. He could feel Bunty’s wanting. The temptation as she closed her eyes imagining home, her husband’s arms around her.
But when she opened her eyes again, she said: “It’s all of us or none of us.”
The grip on the old man’s hand tightened, her knuckles white and North sensed the balance shift as the old man consoled the woman.
“This is a scandal,” the old man waved at the wooden hut, the lines of beds. “These are decent people, and they’ve been interned like enemy aliens – children among them. We’re not at war.”
North had the impression the old man made this speech in his head a thousand times a day. Walsh balled his fist as he hit the mattress, then grimaced with the pain of it. “I’m too old for all this.” He was grief-stricken, not for himself, but for the battle he wasn’t strong enough to fight. “You though – you’re young,” he looked at him appraisingly and North wondered if he could see the deaths he was responsible for, the darkness in him. He hoped not.
No court of law judged the people North killed over the last five years guilty. Only the Board. Did that mean those men were innocent? He didn’t think so – he saw their guilt over and over again. Their corruption and crimes. He read it in their files, he heard and felt their guilt course through him, and he saw damnation in their eyes over and over, before the last breath left their bodies. It was a ruthless justice, but it was justice of sorts. Wasn’t it?
“You can’t get us out but tell everybody. Not all my friends are in the grave yet…”
“Ring my husband at least,” Bunty reached out to touch his arm. “Let him know I’m alright. He’ll be frantic. And tell him he is on no account to pay them a penny or do whatever it is these despicable people want.”
North nodded. He could do that.
“His name is James Moss. Get him at work. He’s chief executive of Heathrow. Call there. Talk to Pam his PA. Tell her you’re my brother and she’ll put you straight through. My brother died last year so James will know to take the call.”
Heathrow. A stranglehold on a way in and out of the country. Everything ratcheted into place.
Respectable people.
“Emily and Gemma Dolan?”
Mrs Moss looked surprised he knew names. She nodded towards the table. At the far end sat two freckled girls braiding each other’s waist-length hair, each girl the mirror image of the other. They were being advised by a frizzy-haired 30-something woman in a tired suit.
“The twins’ mother is the Deputy Director General of the BBC. The young woman next to them is Jasmine Ramesh, her husband is head of British Telecom’s cyber security system. These are professionals for the most part, not the families of oligarchs.”
He pointed a finger at the pregnant woman.
“As I said – Sonja. Surname – Al-Farwaz.” Bunty briefed North as if she was making introductions at a cocktail party. A name. An interesting fact or two. “She has two children with her and her husband, Rahim, is in the other hut. She’s a refugee. Barely has any English. Her family certainly can’t ransom her.”
Sonja – Peggy’s refugee whom Honor had persuaded to stay in Peggy’s house. She should have followed her instinct, and left before the nasty boys came back. But the refugees were there because they had to be tidied away. Not like Bunty Moss or these others.
Was it really possible? Was Tarn so ambitious? Because outside the New Army was preparing to move. Tanks and armoured vehicles were chained and ready on low-loaders. A great many of them. Doubtless it was the same at every barracks across the UK. They had thousands of newly recruited soldiers and the latest hard-core weaponry, and they also had something very old-fashioned: hostages. And not just any hostages. They had hostages that would give them access to the utilities and infrastructure of an entire country. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. Beloved and precious. Not only to their families but to the ruthless, secretive organization that had watched over a country for more than four hundred years. The New Army had everything in place for a coup. And the New Army was a tool of the Board. Tarn had told him its history when he recruited him. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster set up the Board to protect the sovereign and the sovereign nation. North didn’t think Walsingham would have approved. He didn’t approve either.
But he did have a plan.
His plan was to stop it.
All he had to do was get out of a heavily guarded prison barracks in the heart of an Army camp in the middle of nowhere.
Chapter 59
When the alarms went off, he wasn’t surprised. They’d found the corporal and private out on the moorland, or they’d found the Land Rover parked up and checked the paperwork. It was irrelevant which.
As the first soldier hurtled through the doorway, Bunty pointed at the far end of the hut away from the women and children.
“Back there,” she screeched. “He has a gun.” She was a woman used to issuing orders, her voice loud and authoritative over the screaming children. Which is why the soldier was watching her and not the shadow by the door who knocked him to the ground with one ferocious punch.
“This animal attacked us,” she pointed at the unconscious man, as three more soldiers dashed through the doorway, almost knocking each other out of the way in their rush.
“Search the hut for weapons.” North issued the order like he was born to it as he strode out. “Don’t harm the prisoners. Bar the doors and don’t let anyone else in here.”
In the main camp, nasty boys poured from buildings, transforming their own base into a battlefield full of armed and dangerous men in pursuit of an unknown enemy. Adrenalin. Weaponry. Inexperienced soldiery. The perfect conditions to get shot.
>
And he was still locked behind an electric fence.
Could he blag his way out like he blagged his way in? Not for one second. The camp was in lock down.
He summoned the soldier who let him pass through into the hostages’ enclosure. The nasty boy came close to the gate and North gestured for him to release the lock on his side. He needed out, urgently if not sooner.
From a safe distance, the guard called out: “Orders says when the klaxon goes off nobody’s getting out of there. We need the prisoners secure.”
North nodded. Of course, the prisoners needed to be secure.
“Yep. But you need this – quick, man.” He held out Walsh’s Bible, careful to keep the gilt edges in hand so the soldier couldn’t see what it was. The Bible was stolen, but he didn’t think Walsh would mind. “It’s how they’re communicating with the outside. You need to take it to the CO. Right now, before the next transmission.”
The boy swore, opened the first gate, stepped into no man’s land, then hesitated, glancing behind him.
“Hurry, soldier,” said North, “or we’re all buggered. You and me most of all.” He pointed towards the shed as if he feared a surge of rioting prisoners.
The boy drew close to the fence, to North’s outstretched hand, and North shot him once through the kneecap. As he dropped to the ground, North reached through and hooked the key.
Shock was the only thing stopping up a scream, but it was coming. One second. Two. North stepped over the writhing figure whose bloody hands clutched at the shattered kneecap. It was a hard lesson, but he was still alive to learn from it. Who did he think he was guarding? What crimes did he think dying men and little children committed? The guard opened his mouth to scream in agony, and inside his teeth were rotten. North couldn’t have him shouting for help. He balled his fist and put him out cold. Best pain relief he knew.
The recruits were trigger-happy and North’s wasn’t the only shot fired. He moved at a fair trot, but not running. The pace of a man under orders from command. Heading for someplace he was supposed to be.
Pulling open the door of the eight-wheeler, he hauled out the driver by his arm and leg. A yell of protest before the man’s bald head smashed down against the pavement. North heaved himself up and into the cab, throwing the rifle on to the passenger seat, locking the doors, and turning the key in the ignition all in the same movement.
There was a shout and the rapid report of gunfire as the driver’s crumpled body was spotted. North crunched through the gears to throw the juggernaut into reverse and straight through the row of cars behind, the crunch of metal against metal, the shattering of glass and shouts of angry men. North swung the huge wheel and crunched his way back up the gears as he accelerated away – a mini with a Union Jack on its roof caught in his back bumper dragging behind him. North grinned. It was what he’d hoped. Some clever soul had souped up the engine to cope with the iron screens protecting the windscreen and front of the cab. His boot against the metal pedal against the floor, the engine roared and he ducked as a bullet came through the window ploughing straight into the back of the vinyl seat.
A Land Rover took off behind him, then another, but they couldn’t get past as he swung the huge wheel first one way and then another, the mini shaking loose, tipping and rolling as one of the 4x4s smashed into its front end.
The barrier was down. The mesh gates closed. The sentries had their General Purpose Machine Guns ready and, he was guessing, fixed for sustained fire. A glimpse of the Welsh guard’s face. I’ll be sure to get the CO to copy you in. The bullet spray came hard and fast into the windscreen, the glass splintering, cobwebs breaking out across the entire screen as the lorry smashed through the barrier and into the mesh of the gates. The impact shuddered through his foot, his leg bones and up into his spine, and for a nano-second North wondered how it would be to die at the wheel, before the gates gave with a shriek of metal, and he was through and on to the open moorland.
Chapter 60
Four Land Rovers bounced and roared through the gates after him. He counted them through his rear view and wing mirror as he calculated the odds. There were more of them and they outgunned him. Then again, the truck was a difficult target. Built to withstand assault. Too huge and heavy to side-swipe him from the access road and on to the rough ground. Most important of all – they had to take him when he was still within New Army territory. If he made it back to the public highway, they could hardly start a firefight against one of their own.
The driver of the first vehicle must have made the same calculation. A roar of engine and it disappeared from his mirrors – bullets embedding themselves in the driver’s door, pinging off the iron mesh against the window. North swung the wheel and the force of the collision travelled up through the steering column and down his spine this time. If the bullet didn’t move after this ride, it wasn’t ever moving. The Land Rover bounced off the road, its front near-side crushed – smoke billowing from underneath the bonnet. One down: four to go.
The other two were on him. Pulling in front in tandem, flooring it. Ahead, they drove as if they were yoked. Together they veered right and left, then turned towards each other, passed and without hesitation floored it again as they headed straight for him. It was a suicide mission. The collision might well wreck the lorry, but it would certainly kill the drivers of the two Land Rovers. They expected him to turn the wheel, take the lorry on to the moorland where its speed would be cut in half. North breathed out. Steady. He had no future. He was counting on the fact his pursuers did. Wives. Girlfriends. Kids. He could see their faces. White and terrified as they pulled their wheels to avoid the truck, bouncing off the road. The vehicle on the left slamming into a low stone wall, driving through it: the vehicle on the right not so lucky, catching the lorry’s bull-bar, rising into the air, spinning, turning over and over before smashing into the ground, rolling again and again, metal everywhere, the bodies of its passengers flying through the air. Sometimes the future didn’t last all that long.
One left.
The road ahead was straight. He rammed Walsh’s Bible on to the accelerator, levering it backwards till it caught beneath the steering column. He jerked out the trailing seat belt and knotted it into a loop before sliding his arm through. It caught on his elbow. He seized the rifle and swung open the door, the trunk of his body immediately hanging out into thin air. He put his eye to the sight of the stock aiming at the Land Rover and pulled the trigger. Missed. The truck hit a pothole and North felt his body rise and jerk, his arm wrenching. Fired again. Missed again. Bullets coming at him as a nasty boy pumped his machine gun. North let go his breath. Fired. Immediately, the hole opened up in the windscreen of the 4x4 behind him as the driver collapsed over the wheel, the vehicle moving faster, veering off the lip of the road into oblivion. North swung back in, the door swinging after him. He checked the mirror. The Land Rover was gone – North didn’t care where.
He spotted the ancient Saab parked up by a footpath leading out on to the moors. He slowed. Maps were scattered over the passenger seat. Hikers. North said a silent prayer for a sunny day. If the weather held and their walk went well, it would be hours before the car was missed.
Half a mile further on and he slewed off the B road, careering along the rough grass – the top of the lorry grazing the underside of the bridge, before it ground to a halt. He broke off branches of a bush to lean them against the tail gate. He was out of New Army territory, but they’d already have more troops looking. The bridge wasn’t much of a hiding place, but it was better than he deserved going into the camp without a plan to get out again.
Maybe Honor did have a point about risky behaviour.
Clambering up the bank, he jogged back to the car, keeping to the scrub, jumping at every bleet and note of birdsong, but the road stayed clear.
As he smashed the window and wrenched away at the plastic moulding to expose the ignition wires, North thought of Jimmy the Sniff. He brought the wires together and twisted the copper strand
s. The car thief had been right about the New Army taking Peggy. The sound of him hammering up the staircase. “North, mate…there’s someone…”. Jimmy saw something. And instead of slipping out the door and beating a retreat, instead of keeping himself safe as he did when they came for Peggy, this time Jimmy tried to warn him. The ignition caught.
North made the first call at York railway station, using the payphone on the concourse.
The personal assistant to the chief executive of Heathrow Airport put him straight through to James Moss, just as Bunty said she would. She didn’t ask questions after he told her he was Bunty’s brother.
“These people are going to want you to do something for them, Moss. Stop flights out? Stop flights in? I know it sounds insane…”
Moss was a man of few words.
“They warned me that you’d call, Mr North. My wife’s a formidable woman whom I love very much, which is why I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’m sure you understand my dilemma. I doubt my wife will, but I’m prepared to take that risk.”
And he hung up.
Chapter 61
2.30pm. Friday, 10th November
York railway station short-term parking provided a silver Audi which smelled of coconut air freshener and drove like a bitch, but it got him to London within three hours.
Surely Honor knew not to return to the Commons, and she wouldn’t go back home where she’d almost died in a bath of her own blood.
He drove by her garden flat twice to make sure, but the house was quiet. Curtains drawn downstairs, and he imagined the rooms still and silent. A bunch of pizza takeaway flyers stuffed into the letterbox – dead leaves scraping and scurrying over the path in the wind. His eyes went to the blank upstairs windows. North wondered if the parents had recovered the battered corpse of the young banker. If they even knew he was dead and lying in a steel drawer in a far-away mortuary. Hugh, he reminded himself. He was called Hugh and he was someone important.
Killing State Page 27