by Andy Maslen
REVERSAL
OF FORTUNE
Andy Maslen
Copyright © 2015 Andy Maslen
Published by
Tyton Press, an imprint of
Sunfish Ltd
PO Box 2107
Salisbury SP2 2BW
T: 0844 502 2061
www.andymaslen.com
The right of Andy Maslen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Darren Bennett
Cover design by DKB Design
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
For Mark Dawson. He knows why.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to all the people who help me be a better writer: Katherine Wildman, Sian Lewis, Jane and Charles Kingsmill and Tom Bromley. Thanks to Darren Bennett for another great cover, and to Rebecca Perl for editing with such a light but sure touch. Finally, thanks to my family, without whom everything would feel pointless.
Andy Maslen
2015
Since his greyhound had been killed, Gabriel Wolfe borrowed Scout when he felt the need for canine company. Scout was a feisty Irish terrier belonging to a friend. The ex-SAS man lived alone – but for his demons – and found dogs easier to deal with than people. As man and dog rounded the corner in the road curving away from Gabriel’s cottage, the dog pricked up its ears. A soft whine let Gabriel know he was unhappy about something.
“What is it, Scout? What’s bugging you, boy?”
Another low whine.
Then Scout strained on the lead and pulled Gabriel back the way they had come and past the cottage.
Around the next bend, he met the reason for Scout’s distress. A woman, sitting in her small, red Japanese hatchback, crying. He knew her a little. Her name was Elaine Marbey, a neighbour from a few houses further along the lane. She was wedged into a narrow layby with brambles and goosegrass squashed and tangled alongside the passenger side of the car.
While Scout sat and cocked his head to one side, then the other, Gabriel squatted by the open window.
“What’s wrong, Elaine. What’s happened? Are you OK?”
The woman swiped a sleeve across her reddened face. She was about 30, brunette, with widely spaced eyes.
“Oh, hi Gabriel. It’s that bastard, Lander Reeve. You know, he bought the big house behind the green a few months ago.”
Gabriel did know him, by sight at least. Tall, soft-fleshed, smooth skin and usually drenched in aftershave. Drove an Audi SUV like he owned the village and brayed into his phone in the pub, just so long as he had an audience.
“What’s he done now? Must be something bad to have a woman like you in tears. I thought you nurses had seen it all. Hides like alligators.”
She laughed, looking immediately beautiful, despite her smeary face.
“Oh, thanks for trying to cheer me up. It’s just, he always comes racing along the road and whenever he meets me he just stops dead, right in the middle, puts the handbrake on and switches his engine off. Then he sits there waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For me. To reverse, I mean. I think it’s like a sport to him. So I have to go back to a layby, or a passing place. Once he forced me all the way back to my driveway. Just kept coming on after me grinning.”
“And today?”
“Just the same. Only I messed up my steering and ended up here with brambles coming in through the window, and I think I dented the door. He slowed right down as he passed and said maybe I should buy a bike if I couldn’t drive properly. I hate him!”
She banged her fist on the steering wheel, prompting the car to emit a feeble beep. Somehow, that plasticky protest restored her good humour and in a moment both were laughing.
Gabriel straightened up, causing Scout to rouse himself from whatever canine reverie he’d sunk into.
“Don’t let Reeve get to you. He’s just a prick with too much money and no manners.”
“I’ll try. And thanks. You know, for coming.”
As he and Scout continued their walk, Gabriel looked over his shoulder to watch as Elaine pulled away and disappeared around the corner. What a bastard. Somebody needs to teach him a lesson.
Later that day, after some Internet research, Gabriel pulled into an industrial estate in Bristol. There were other companies that sold what he wanted closer to home, but he needed a little anonymity. To that end, he’d left his treasured indigo Maserati GT at home and borrowed a friend’s pickup, a battered Toyota in a special colour called farmtrack brown. He’d phoned ahead so was reasonably sure of getting what he’d come for without too long a wait.
He pushed through the uPVC door into the trade counter at the side of the building. The garish yellow and orange sign above the door, screwed to the brick wall, said ARJ Access Solutions. Why was everything a “solution” nowadays? he wondered idly after pushing the plastic doorbell button stuck to the counter.
A young man emerged from a swing door through which Gabriel caught a glimpse of huge machines and sweaty men in blue overalls lugging around lengths of steel stock and chain.
“Yes, mate. What can I do you for?” the young man said. His earlobes were distended with black plastic discs, like a tribesman on some National Geographic front cover.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, letting his voice slide a few notches down the social scale, and inserting a Wiltshire twang where none normally resided. “Name’s Fox? I called earlier? Bloke I spoke to said he could make me up a steel wire rope sling, self-locking hooks both ends. Eight-tonne strength minimum across all the components. Ring any bells?”
“Let me go and check, mate. Take a seat if you want.”
Gabriel sat on a spindly-legged office chair with a ripped red vinyl seat, through which grubby orange foam protruded like flesh from a wound. Unlike most people faced with a possible long wait, Gabriel didn’t automatically reach for his phone. Although he carried it everywhere, it wasn’t a religious totem. He wasn’t on Facebook – he had so few friends that it would have just reinforced how pathetic he was, he’d told Julia when she’d pushed him about it. Instead, he sat with both feet flat on the floor, placed his hands on the knees of his jeans and closed his eyes.
He slowed his breathing and let the sounds of chains clanking and machines whining become part of a background tapestry of noise that also included the radio in the reception area playing pop music and a dog barking in the unit next door. He played a movie in his head. Of what was to come. Of what was to be said, and done, and to whom.
In this way, five minutes passed in an eyeblink, and Gabriel started when the young man returned and called out to him.
“Er, mate? You spoke to an older bloke, right? Mick?”
“Yeah, Mick, that’s right. There’s nothing the matter with my order is there?”
“No, mate. Nothing like that. He’s just finishing the tension check on the rope for
you. Be another minute or so. So, how do you want to pay? Card, is it?”
“No. Cash. What’s the damage, then?”
“Including the materials, labour, rush charge and tension test, £120 on the nose.”
Gabriel peeled six notes from a roll he extracted from his jeans pocket and flattened them out on the Formica counter. The youth swept them up and rang the purchase through on the till.
“OK, well, I got to check on some customer orders, mate. Just wait here and Mick’ll come out with your gear in a min.”
As promised, 45 seconds later, a heavyset man with full sleeves of tattoos on both arms emerged from the working area with a coiled steel hawser, fastened with white nylon strapping.
Gabriel thanked the man, slung the hawser over his shoulder and was driving back towards Salisbury five minutes later, singing along, badly, to an old blues number – St Louis Gal by Bessie Smith. He made another stop about halfway home, at a petrol station. As he got out of the cab he pulled on a baseball cap with a long peak that he kept well down over his eyes as he filled the tank. Paid for the gas, and a couple of red warning triangles housed in yellow plastic cases, with more cash.
After a late supper of cheese and biscuits and a couple of apples, Gabriel went upstairs to get changed. The man who came downstairs ten minutes later wore black chinos, a black hooded sweatshirt zipped over a black T-shirt, black socks and all-black combat boots with heavy, cleated soles. A black balaclava rolled up over his forehead into a watch cap completed the look. In his right trouser pocket he carried a tin of black stage makeup – easier to remove than boot polish, which nobody really used these days anyway. In a black nylon sheath attached to his belt – black with a black rubber fastening – he carried a razor-sharp black knife made from a ceramic composite. Technically it belonged to the Queen, but Gabriel had felt sure she wouldn’t mind his holding onto it after he left the Regiment.
The matt black rucksack he carried contained a few other items he needed for his night’s work. First, night-vision goggles. Not military grade, or not current spec at any rate, but good enough for general-purpose intelligence-gathering and a steal on eBay. Second, a black groundsheet made of ripstop nylon. Third, a matt black vacuum flask full of strong coffee. Last of all, a small plastic Ziploc bag containing a black box roughly the size and shape of a matchbox. He headed out, locking the back door behind him.
The address he was heading for was only 30 seconds by car, but he intended to do this clandestinely. That meant a good 40-minutes tabbing through woods, streams and some boggy ground before he arrived at his target. The moon was full. Not ideal, but at least it afforded him a clearer view of any obstacles. He paused to apply the makeup to his face, neck and the backs of his hands. Then he was off. The village church clock struck midnight. The witching hour. Perfect for creating mischief. But Gabriel’s mischief wouldn’t happen for a day or two. This was purely recon.
He wanted to leave as few tracks as possible so as soon as he reached Tranter’s Brook, a grand name for a little stream, or winterbourne as they were called in this part of the world, he waded in. The boots were completely waterproof but only as far as the top. As Gabriel found the deep central channel, the icy water flowed into the tops of his boots, soaking its way down to his feet. It didn’t matter. He’d once spent three weeks virtually living in a swamp while observing a torture camp in the Bolivian jungle and had learned to ignore discomforts far worse than wet socks. He and his buddies had become adept at digging chiggers, leeches and other waterborne parasites out of each other’s skin with the points of their knives.
Keeping to the stream, he made his way due west. There was no need to navigate by the stars, although they were out in such profusion that he could have found his way to London without a map. Tranter’s Brook ran almost directly from the end of his garden to the edge of the big plot of land where his target lived. Looking up, Gabriel paused to take in the sight. Out here, in the country, the light pollution that blighted so many cities hadn’t really made its debut. The sky looked like an infinite cloth of black velvet such as diamond dealers use to display their wares. He wasn’t a God-fearing man, not in a church-going way, but Gabriel did believe in something bigger than himself. Something bigger than DNA, evolution and quantum physics. Out here, that’s where he felt it the most strongly. Where barn owls and nightjars hunted, the latter emitting a strange electronic chirruping, almost as if a more melodious bird had recorded the first millisecond of its song and set it on a rapid-fire loop.
He continued, ducking under low branches festooned with honeysuckle that almost overpowered him with its fruity scent. His splashing was drowned out by the stream’s burbling over the pebbles that tumbled along the chalky bed. He was within sight of his destination now: The Bond House, AKA the home of “superstar trader”, as the tabloids had dubbed him, Lander Reeve. What sort of Philistine renames a Tudor country house after bits of government debt? Not even pieces of paper, either, these days. Just ones and zeroes pursuing each other round the world through optical fibres and copper wires, and along probability-density equations encoded in satellite signals.
Lander Reeve was 35 – the same age as Gabriel. But whereas Gabriel had rebelled against his career-diplomat father’s wishes by joining the British Army’s Parachute Regiment, Reeve had disappointed his by becoming a bond trader. Reeve Senior, a head teacher at a large London comprehensive, had very publicly disowned his son on live TV after the latter had been filmed drunkenly boasting of his wealth in a packed restaurant. His rant against “peasants” who were “too lazy or too thick” to make a fortune had gone viral. Not that this instant celebrity had fazed Lander Reeve who was promptly headhunted by a rival bank at double his original salary.
After a lightning-fast ascent in the City, Reeve had surprised everybody, or perhaps nobody, by quitting the bond trading business and retiring to Wiltshire, where he splurged a moderate amount of his vast wealth on acquiring the estate formerly known as Chieveleys. The rich are not a rare sight in Wiltshire, and this particular stretch of the county was home to at least two musical megastars. Coincidentally, both were blonde and both were known only by one name, an accolade bestowed by the public on very few stars, including Karloff and Garbo. The man had parlayed a moderate ability to sing and play bass in a new wave band into a hugely successful solo career; the woman had pulled off the same trick as a singer, though her books of erotic photographs and eerily toned body were often felt to have contributed more to her fame than her vocal talent.
He left the stream and made his way up a rise covered with ferns. They were six feet tall, three inches closer to the stars than Gabriel and giving him perfect cover. All around him he could hear frantic scurryings as weasels, mice, voles and whatever other creatures were abroad at night escaped the oncoming giant. Then, as he parted a stand of ferns, he came face to face with a rabbit, a buck judging from the size. The creature didn’t flee but stood its ground, making a loud churring in the back of its throat. Gabriel thought ahead and of what he might meet. Holding the buck’s gaze and whispering soft, hypnotic sounds, he shot out his right hand and seized it by the scruff of the neck. With a sharp twist he broke its neck, and stuffed the still-warm body into the top of his rucksack. Then he uttered the words his old teacher had told him the ancient Chinese warriors used when they killed in service of the Emperors.
“I honour your life.”
At the crest of the rise he had a perfect view of The Bond House. Time to set up base camp. A rather grand name for a six-foot square of black ripstop nylon and a flask of hot coffee, but he’d endured worse, and for longer. He poured a steaming cup of the coffee, placed it beside him and then fished the night-vision goggles from his rucksack. Activated with a small sliding switch on the left of the headpiece, they came to life with a rising whine that faded to inaudibility as the batteries powered up the sophisticated electronics inside.
Gabriel slid the goggles over his head, having removed the balaclava first. The world was trans
formed. Even though the moon lit the scene in a pale grey light, details were hard to make out over the 200-yard distance from Gabriel’s vantage point to the house itself. Now, he saw everything, even though the inboard graphics card lent everything a harsh green glare. The house was dark, except for a low-level security light above the front door. Through the goggles, it flared and oscillated, too bright for the active electronics to cope with. Gabriel tracked left to right, identifying the points where the shrubs and trees surrounding the house grew closer, and where gravel gave way to stepping stones.
To the right of the front door sat the Audi SUV. In the spectral green light it looked like a monstrous bug, crouched in sleep. To the left, an Aston Martin DB9, reflecting the porch light in its mirror-like paintwork. He looked up at the walls behind the cars and found what he was looking for: two security cameras. High-end models by the look of them and no doubt linked to a PC inside the house at the very least, and quite possibly an external security company. No matter. He knew his way around cameras and these should pose no problem for what he had planned. Gabriel finished the coffee, screwed the cup back onto the aluminium body of the flask and retrieved another item from the rucksack: a digital video camera, no bigger than a matchbox. He pulled on the balaclava again and this time rolled it down over his face until the only skin showing was a quarter-inch around his eyes, to which he reapplied the black makeup.
Keeping low to the ground, he crawled down towards the house through the rank weeds that carpeted the ground before the formal garden began. He looked around, before identifying the perfect mount for the camera: a Japanese maple tree in full leaf, its five-fingered foliage profuse enough to disguise the camera’s position yet light enough for him to be able to cut a discreet viewing tunnel. He inched closer on elbows and knees until he was inside the canopy and shielded from the security cameras. Keeping the trunk of the tree between him and the house, he stood, slowly, then flexed his feet, ankles and knees to ease off the tension.