by Chris Ryan
The manageress was a woman in her early forties, with streaked blonde hair, and a winning smile. Janey had run one of the best pubs in Chingford before splitting up with her husband, and moving out to the sun. There was very little she didn't know about running a bar. Matt relied on her completely.
'No. Trouble?'
Matt shook his head. 'Just wondering where she's got to.'
'Sorry. Someone was calling for you, though,' continued Janey, closing up the ledger where she had been recording last night's takings. 'Some lady who said she was calling on behalf of Sandy Blackman. Said it was urgent.'
Sandy? Matt turned the thought over in his mind.
In the Parachute Regiment, Sandy's husband, Ken Blackman, had been his closest friend. Matt had served alongside him for five years, before he'd left to join the SAS. Ken had done a couple more years in the forces before handing in his uniform. Then he'd gone back to Derby where he was born, married his girlfriend Sandy and settled down. He'd been working as a truck driver, mostly hauling stuff up and down the Ml for Tesco. A couple of times he'd done long cross-Continent trips out to Spain, and about nine months ago he'd spent a night at the Last Trumpet. It had been a great session. About ten beers each, finished off with a bottle of port and a rough North African cigar. For a while they'd both been back in a windy, desolate barracks in Aldershot, wondering what they'd signed up for.
Whatever happens to you in life, nothing compares to the frozen, hungry, exhausted misery of your first few weeks in the army. The bonds you make in those few weeks are among the strongest of your life.
Last time he'd seen Sandy had been three years ago. At the christening of their first daughter, Jade. She'd be up and walking around by now, and so would the next one, Callum.
Why wouldn't Ken be calling himself?
He punched the numbers into the phone, looking out to sea as he waited for it to be answered. A man picked up the phone. A man he didn't recognise.
'Tell Sandy it's Matt on the phone,' he said. 'Matt Browning.'
'Haven't you heard what happened?'
Matt hesitated. He knew those words, he'd heard them often enough in the army.
'Look it up on the Derby Evening Telegraph website,' the man said.
The phone went dead. Matt checked his watch. Half an hour until he needed to be at the airport. He walked to the back office and fired up his computer. It took a few seconds on Google to find the site for the local paper. He clicked on the link, and watched as the front page of last night's paper downloaded itself. A one per cent hike in council tax, that was the day's news in Derby. That and the threat of some more redundancies at Rolls-Royce.
Maybe it was a few days ago? A crash, a fight? What could Ken possibly do to get himself in the paper?
He flicked back a couple of days. The announcement of a new ring road, some revelations about the business associates of the deputy council leader. No. Then, from three days ago, a picture flashed up at him. Ken. At its side, the headline was spelt out in 64-point black type: DERBY MAN IN HORROR KILLING SPREE.
Matt's finger stabbed on to the mouse, scrolling down the page to read the story.
Truck driver Ken Blackman, of Pride Park, Derby, went berserk today in a doctors' surgery, killing two people, injuring two others, then attempting to kill himself.
In a horrific shooting incident, Blackman shot Dorothy Houghton, 56, and Alan Miter, 24, both of whom were waiting for appointments at the surgery of Dr Rondy Toogut and Dr Marjorie Kent on Palmerston Road.
He injured Anthea Mills, 46, the receptionist at the surgery, who was shot in the leg, and Charles Bertram, 41, who was hit in the chest. Both victims are recovering in hospital, and are expected to be discharged in the next few days.
The incident happened just after 11 o'clock this morning at the Palmerston Road Medical Centre. Blackman had asked for an appointment with his GP, complaining that he was suffering from depression. His appointment with Dr Kent was delayed, and after ten minutes of additional waiting, he started shouting angrily at the receptionist. Then he pulled out a gun, and started firing at the other people in the waiting room, before turning the gun on himself.
David Holton, 29, who witnessed the incident, said: "It was just chaos. He started shooting randomly, and everyone started taking cover and trying to get out of the building. Then he just turned the gun on himself. He looked like a man possessed."
According to local police, Blackman is now in a secure room at the City General Hospital on Uttoxeter Road. His condition is described as critical but stable.
Blackman is 38, and a driver for the local haulage operator, E.H. Berris & Sons. An ex-serviceman, he is married with two children, and lives in the Pride Park district of the city. He has no criminal record. His wife could not be contacted today.
Matt leant back in his chair. A memory was playing through his mind. It was a couple of weeks after they'd joined the army, and both of them were just eighteen. Another new recruit, a Scottish kid called Ben, was finding it tough to cope with the daily hammering of military training. They all found it tough, but this boy was on the edge of a breakdown: he was sobbing in his bed every night, and couldn't even focus on getting his kit clean and straight. Matt noticed how Ken got up in the middle of the night and made sure Ben's uniform was straight and his boots polished so the sergeant major wouldn't give him a monstering in the morning. Ken never spoke to Ben or anyone else about it: he just occasionally went out of his way to make life more bearable for the other men.
Ken was one of the kindest, gentlest men you could ever meet. What could possibly make him do something like that?
The temperature in the foyer of the Oxford & Cambridge Club just off St James's in London's West End was surprisingly cool. He'd just worn chinos and a linen jacket – it was thirty-three degrees outside in the London traffic – but he'd stashed a tie in his pocket because he knew he needed one.
A gentle breeze was blowing in from the garden as Matt slipped the tie around his neck and knotted it. He could see the man at the desk casting a pair of disapproving eyes across him, but just turned back to the mirror to check his tie was straight.
Which college? Matt wondered to himself with a wry smile. The college of getting shot at for your country.
Abbott was already waiting for him in the restaurant, a bottle of white wine chilling in an ice bucket at his side. He looked down at the ground. 'Better keep your feet under the table, old fruit,' he said disapprovingly. 'The club recommends black brogues. And you're wearing brown.'
Matt looked down at his canvas shoes, then back up at Abbott. 'If they throw me out, we'll just have to go to the pub around the corner.'
Abbott smiled thinly. 'A glass?' he said, as Matt sat down next to him.
Matt shook his head.
When you're lunching with a rattlesnake, keep your head clear.
Abbott shrugged. 'I've already ordered your lunch,' he said. 'And a glass of Italian white. You don't have to drink it if you don't want to.'
'I can order my own food,' snapped Matt. 'Tie my own shoelaces, brush my teeth, the works.'
'Of course you can, old fruit,' said Abbott, his eye following the hemline of a passing waitress. 'Just trying to hurry things along.'
'So what's the job?' said Matt.
Abbott paused while the waiter put a plate of baked salmon down before him. He picked up the fork and toyed with a mouthful of food. 'There's a company called Tocah Life Science,' he started. 'Big drugs company. They need some help. You know, wet work. I think you'd be just the man for the job, old fruit.'
Matt glanced down at his own food, a fillet steak served with chips. It was a while now since he'd attempted to make any money from playing the stock market, but he'd heard of Tocah – he'd even owned some of the stock for a few months, and it had been one of the few shares in his portfolio that had gone up rather than down. Set up by a Frenchman named Eduardo Lacrierre twenty years ago, it had been one of the big successes of the industry in the last two decades.
It specialised in drugs for heart disease, and had grown dramatically. It wasn't quite in the league of GlaxoSmithKline or AstraZeneca, but getting close.
'They are a respectable pharmaceuticals company, with money to burn,' said Matt crisply. 'What do they need with me?'
'Counterfeits. An illegal trade in knock-off copies of some of their best-selling medicines. It's a big and very dangerous business. And they need it stopped at source. To go through all the retailers and stop it that way would take years.'
Matt chewed on a mouthful of steak, 'Real medicines with real ingredients, or just smarties with a different coating on them?'
'They're real all right,' said Abbott, refilling his glass of wine. 'That's what makes it such a clever racket. They steal the formulas for the drugs, then they copy them in some of the corners of the old Soviet Union where nobody minds too much what you do so long as you pay off the local mafia monkeys. Then they smuggle them into Western Europe. Some of these pills are charged at twenty or thirty quid a tablet, mostly paid for by the jolly old taxpayer. You don't need to be Einstein to run the maths on that.'
'And it costs Tocah a lot of money, right?'
Abbott smiled. 'That's what I like about you, Matt. You catch on quick.'
Matt could feel his heart thumping against his chest. I'd forgotten what it's like to be patronised by the Ruperts.
Abbott paused, taking a sip on his wine. 'A doctor writes out a prescription for one of Tocah's drugs, then the patient gets it filled out at the pharmacy, all as usual. The doctor is innocent, so is the pharmacist. Neither of them knows anything wrong is happening. But what has happened is that someone at the wholesaler has replaced the real drug with the fake one, and the gangsters are creaming off the profits. Like I said, it's clever, but it's dangerous as well. As you may imagine, pharmaceutical drugs are manufactured to exacting standards. The gangsters are using the same basic formula, but obviously they don't take the same care.' Abbott shook his head. 'People could die as a result of this.'
'You can save me the Tony Blair sanctimonious git of the year impression,' said Matt. 'What do you expect me to do about it?'
'Take out the factory.'
Matt looked down. He could see a trickle of blood oozing from the side of his steak. He speared the meat, holding it on his fork a few inches from his mouth.
'It's not a difficult mission, not for a man of your experience. Go in there. Blow it up. Run like hell.'
'Why me?'
Abbott shrugged. From the expression on his face, Matt judged the question bored him. 'Why not you?' he replied. 'Ex-regiment. There aren't so many of you around.'
'There's a few.'
'But they aren't all as good as you, old fruit,' said Abbott. He stood up briskly. 'Let's get coffee in the smoking room.'
Abbott threw his napkin down on the table, and started walking. Matt drained his glass of mineral water, and followed a few yards behind. The smoking room was just a few yards down a corridor that led away from the restaurant. A pair of men in their thirties were holding a discussion over an open laptop, and one man in his sixties was reading a paper. Otherwise, the room was empty.
I don't get it, thought Matt to himself. Something doesn't add up.
Matt sat down. 'But if it's a simple job, for which I assume Tocah are willing to pay good money, then why not just ask around on the circuit. There's always a few ex-regiment guys around who are short of a few quid. I was in that boat myself a year ago. Why go to all the bother of leaning on me to do it?'
'Christ, Matt, because you owe us.' Abbott smiled, torching up a Dunhill and blowing the smoke into the air. 'You know how it is at the Firm. We like everything tied up.'
Matt looked out towards the garden. A sprinkler was spraying water on the lawn, trying to put some life back into it. 'Well, what's the Firm doing getting involved in an industrial security issue?' he asked, his tone harsh. 'Tocah are big boys. They can pay for their own muscle.'
'Times are changing, old fruit,' said Abbott, stretching out his legs on a footstool. 'The security services have to reinvent themselves along with everyone else. We're taking a broader view of our role. Tocah is an important investor in Britain, and these gangsters are damaging their business. So, we're helping them out. Strong companies equals strong economy equals strong nation. Simple as that.' Abbott sat forward. 'Look, it's a fair deal. You go in, knock out the factory. You get a team and weapons. Shouldn't take more than a month. Then we unfreeze your accounts, and delete what happened last year from the files.'
'And I'm just meant to trust you?' snapped Matt. 'Forget it. I need a guarantee.'
Abbott paused, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. 'David Luttrell is authorising this mission. Personally.'
'David Luttrell? The head of the Firm?'
'I'll arrange for you to see him. You might not trust me, but you know you can trust him.'
'How soon?'
'Next couple of days,' said Abbott. 'I'll be in touch.' He stood up, and started to leave. 'You might like this,' he said, tossing a Waterstone's bag down on the sofa.
Matt picked up the book, glancing down at the title: a copy of Jeffrey Archer's prison diary.
'Thought you might like to get an idea of what life's like behind bars,' said Abbott.
The hospital car park was almost empty at this time of night. Ma tram checked his watch. Just after one fifteen in the morning. A nurse was walking back from a night shift towards a blue Vauxhall Corsa parked about thirty yards away. In the distance, he could see an ambulance unloading a patient into the accident and emergency unit. Otherwise the place was completely empty. Perfect.
'Ready?' he said.
Before him, Lena Kilander and Geoff Wetherell both nodded. Kilander was dressed as a nurse, in a starched white uniform, with plain nylon tights and flat black leather shoes. She had a folder under her arm: in any organisation, a person carrying papers always looks more official and is less likely to be stopped. Wetherell was kitted out as a consultant surgeon, with a grey suit covered by a white coat. Neither of them was carrying any medical equipment – not unless you counted the six-inch reinforced steel knives each had hidden next to their bodies.
A doctor-and-nurse team, reflected Matram. That was the advantage of having two women alongside the six men in the Increment. There were plenty of situations where a man and woman attracted a lot less attention than two men.
Nobody is threatened by a nice-looking young couple.
Matram handed across two NHS passes, both with fake names stamped on to them. 'These should get you through OK,' he said. 'The National Health has terrible security anyway, so you shouldn't have any trouble. Walk quickly. Wherever you are, so long as you walk quickly through the building, everyone will assume you're very important, so they won't challenge you.'
'Where's the target?' asked Wetherell.
'Second floor, intensive care unit,' said Matram. 'Private room. Turn left out of the lift, and it's about thirty yards. Room EH27. His name – Ken Blackman – should be on the medical charts.'
'If we're stopped?' said Kilander.
'Then use whatever force is necessary.'
Matram glanced back at Kilander. She was an attractive woman, with light freckles scattered over pale Celtic skin and black hair that she let grow to just below her shoulders. Her voice was soft and welcoming, keeping the ice within totally concealed. That was the way he liked women in the Increment to be: attractive enough to fit in, but not so pretty that men started staring at them, and with a manner that was easy and reassuring.
'He's on life support,' said Matram. 'Unconscious. And there's no guard. Disconnect the life-support machine, using your knives to cut the tubes. Then use a pillow to suffocate him just to make sure.'