Chapter 79
The press conference was scheduled for noon. In time to catch the bulletins.
Chapter 80
WESTMINSTER, LONDON
Nearly Noon. Tuesday, 14th November.
From the grass, she looked for him as the quarter bells chimed, her eyes scanning the crowd, the streets, flicking up to the windows with their bomb-proof curtains – but she didn’t see him and he felt no urge to step into the light. This was her chosen battleground. She was safe here. Confident and righteous. As he had known she would, she had to stop looking – there were too many camera crews, too many snappers and hacks around her on Abingdon Green.
She opened her mouth to speak, but a cameraman jerked his thumb towards Big Ben.
They didn’t want the noise of the bell tolling the hour corrupting the recording. Twenty-five seconds between the chimes and the hammer to fall against the Great Bell. Expectant. Waiting. Twenty-two. Twenty-one. She could wait that long. Wait for the bell to toll and for truth to be spoken.
North turned away – sixteen, fifteen. She’d warned him not to get in any camera shot. To stand well clear. She’d meet him later. They’d have coffee together in Portcullis House – water the thirsty fig trees. Make plans. He was already starting to cross Abingdon Street at nine seconds, eight. Moving towards the river as Big Ben tolled the hour for the first time and she slid to the ground. Only the frantic shutters of the photographers alerted him. The bell still tolling as the screaming started.
Noon.
“Doctor. We need a doctor,” a presenter he recognised from the BBC late-night news was hysterical, kneeling by Honor, her long crimson wool coat muddied as cameramen trampled over it, almost toppling on to the body. Honor Jones was dead. He was 200 yards away, there were 50 people between her and him, but he knew it. He knew it as soon as she’d fallen, as soon as the first monkey pressed the shutter, before the sirens blared. There’d been no noise. A silencer. The hole pre-cut in the glass of an upper-storey window. The sniper would be breaking down the weapon. Fitting it back into its case.
Already moving. He wouldn’t even be breathing hard. It wasn’t personal. He was following orders. Her name was written in green ink. Honor Jones MP. Extreme security risk.
It was a high-risk strategy. Even as the first ambulance drew up and the police cars skewed on to the grass, blocking the road – police suddenly everywhere, running, their hands on guns, shouting into walkie-talkies – the professional in him recognised the skill of it. The great and glorious and terrible inevitability.
He stood stock-still – everything else frantic and swirling around him. Around her body. Listening for her. But there was nothing. Only horror and grief and fear, and the sense of something being ripped from him, because he hadn’t held onto it with all his strength.
This was on him.
He should have let her be. What did the one-eyed man say – don’t begrudge her the golden ticket. She’d be alive if he hadn’t dropped that phone into her pocket in St James’s Park. If he hadn’t expected her to do the right thing and talk to Hardman. If he hadn’t reminded her who she was. The Board silenced her before she could reveal them and condemn them. And the Board punished him. Because he took their money. Millions of it. And in return, they snatched the only thing of any value in his life – the woman he learned how to love. He wanted to walk across the road. Beat back the crowds, medics, police. Lift her into his arms, say her name – over and over – breathe back life into her. But what was gone was gone.
Instead, he pulled the baseball cap lower, pushing his way through the crowds that were coming to stare, and he kept walking. One last look at the melee around her. The phones were raised now. Aloft. Recording. Witnessing. Walking away from Honor. Not too fast. Not too slow.
If you were going to take her out, if it was going to get messy, why wait for her to tell everything she knew? Do the hit. Take the hit and move on. Tarn warned him. “There’ll be a spark to the tinder and up it will all go.” A Great Fire. Is that what she was? Tinder? An assassination so close to a bombing campaign would create hysteria. Tarn’s final wounding blow.
Or maybe people weren’t so quick to move. Maybe the Board wouldn’t have their revolution. Their transition. Maybe everyone’s life would carry on and democracy survive. Instead, there’d be the odd documentary. Occasionally, a newspaper would run her picture – maybe one they’d taken today, framed with the clock face behind her as time ran out. She was beautiful, papers like beautiful women – they sell more papers. They especially like beautiful dead women. Beautiful dead women who die with just that hint of mystery attached. She’d be one of them. Marilyn. Diana. Honor. She’d have hated that.
That was what did it. Her scorn. How much she’d have hated to be one of those beautiful ghosts.
“You’re not that man any more,” she said as her soft lips pressed against his in the night, “you know, I’m right.” She believed him to be a good man, and there was a chance she had it right.
‘Never yield to force: never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy’. She had lain there naked, quoting Churchill.
It began to rain, and he shrugged himself out of the leather jacket. Passing a bin, he tossed in the jacket and the cap. He started running – slow at first, easing into his stride, the impact of the pavement shuddering up his spine and across his skull. Chasing after Honor Jones. He promised he’d stop killing – she made him swear it on her naked body, and he would. Because he was a man of his word. He would stop killing – just as soon as he found those responsible for the death of Honor Jones, and tore their heads clean off their shoulders.
THE END
Note to Readers
Our hero returns in another adventure - Curse the Day - later in 2018. It’s called Curse the Day because they killed the woman he loved. And Michael North is going to make those responsible “curse the day” he was born. It’s a thriller with guns, bad guys and plenty of jeopardy. Best of all though, it’s got teenage mutant ninja phenomenon, Fangfang Yu, and a dog called Killer
If you’ve enjoyed reading Killing State, head over to my website at www.judithoreilly.com and sign up to the newsletter to keep in touch, or you can always follow me on @judithoreilly. I’ve written a couple of Michael North short stories I’ll happily send you if you’re interested. Do let me know.
And bearing in mind that North is a new kid on the block, if you can possibly make the time in this busy world, do please spread the word and post a review on Amazon or Apple iBooks or simply recommend the book to someone. I’d really appreciate that.
Judith
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to: Patrick Walsh, my agent at Pew Literary who kept the faith; Martin Fletcher; Ellie Wood; and Tim “Hawk-eye” Pedley. My experts, advisers and facilitators include: Professor Carole Mundell and Tim Kaner of Bath University; Professor Tim O’Brien of Jodrell Bank; Dr Karen Bower; Oli Wood and Eric Pinkerton; DCI Andy Mortimer of the Metropolitan Police; Colonel (ret’d) AWG Snook OBE, late PARA; Dr Eamon McCrory of UCL and Philip McGill. Thanks too to Mei Lin; Grahame Morris, MP and Karie Murphy; Michael Reilly-Cooper; Dr Malcolm Bates; Nick Mann; Dr Will Elliott and Dr Stephanie Greenwell FRCA. They have done their best to keep me right with the facts. Any willful misinterpretations and outright mistakes are of my own making.
I also received guidance and support from: David Morrell (the Father of Rambo); Steven James; Jem Poster; Sarah Hall; Shelley Weiner; Venetia Butterfield; Lisanne Radice; Sophie Wilson; Carrie Plitt from Conville and Walsh; John Ash at Pew; Georgina Aldridge and the team at Clay’s; Charlotte Summers; Sophie Atkinson; Stephen Waddington; Iain Dale; Warren Shore; Sorrel Briggs, Ella Paul, Lottie Macdonald, Megan Constable; Rob Watts; Andrew Alderson and the legendary Ray Wells. Special thanks are due to Karen Sullivan at Orenda Books for her timely and generous pre-publication advice, as well as to Karen Robinson, and Anne Cater.
First readers and cheerleaders include: Sue Brooks and Andrew Macdonald; Abigail Bosanko; Angela
Barnes; John Woodman; Joanne Robertson; Fiona Ward; Allison Joynson; David Paul; Clare Grant; Fiona Sharp; Helen Le Fevre and Tim Burt; Marie Sedgwick and Grace Coates; Mary and Stuart Manley; and Mary Major. Hey, it takes a village.
In particular, I need to acknowledge Helen Chappell for her brilliant design and IT skills, as well as her advice on algorithms and probability, and of course her friendship.
For Alastair, R. G. & S.
What’s been said about Judith O’Reilly and her previous books.
Wife in the North
“Funny, poignant and beautifully written” Lisa Jewell
“Genuinely funny and genuinely moving” Jane Fallon, author of Getting Rid of Matthew
“I howled with laughter tears of recognition at every bloody page. My only problem with this book was choosing who to pass it on to first” Jenny Colgan
A Year of Doing Good
“A funny, uplifting and admirable book” Observer
“Banish January blues with A Year of Doing Good by Judith O’Reilly who resolved to do one good turn a day…utterly uplifting” Fanny Blake, Woman & Home
“Fizzing with energy Judith’s writing is open-hearted and funny… though not a guide to doing good, Judith’s story may inspire you to do a little more for others this year” Express
“Glorious sincerity…the admiring accounts of others’ lives, the detailing of the deeds gladly done or furiously resented, the unending chaos of family life – all are rendered honestly, colourfully, and occasionally hilariously” Lucy Mangan, Sunday Times
“A truly inspirational book with which to begin a New Year… witty and moving” National Library of Scotland
Killing State Page 38