The smell was stronger.
His heart was thumping.
His knee hit something wet.
He reached out with his left hand palm upward, to allow the exposed skin on the back of his hand to do the feeling for him. Whatever this was, it was wet, warm and slippery, bristly and hairy. The smell was now pungent in his nostrils.
Oh Jesus, oh Christ, oh no, please, you fucking bastards. Oh Jesus no, not the dog, not Wellie…
Then his hand felt the note in the blood, and he retched with the smell of guts and blood and intestines, giving a full blooded roar of hate and anger and frustration and pain.
The door crashed open and he turned, the gun coming up.
By some strange fortune, the young policeman shouted out in time, his big torch hitting the floor with a thump.
“Police! Mr Black, it’s me! Don’t shoot! You OK? What’s happened?”
Black stayed on his knees, the young constable trying the lights and talking into a handheld radio.
“Junction box,” Black said, his voice flat. “On the stairs.”
At last, the constable pulled Black gently to his feet and eased him toward a chair. Then, looking down at the bloody remains on the floor, he walked quickly to the under stairs cupboard, took an old raincoat out and covered the dog’s body.
“Ask my wife to remain upstairs if you would,” Black said. “I don’t want her to see Wellie like this.”
When he came down, Black handed him the note that had been pinned to the dog’s liver. “Read it.”
The constable took the blood stained note and held it gingerly.
“It says ‘Naughty naughty. Stay out of it. Or it’s Mary’.”
He never saw her standing in the doorway, only heard her choked sob as she looked down at the pathetic bundle on the floor.
*
Holly Morton moved easily through the people, sunglasses balanced on her head so that she looked like one of the gaggle of Dutch tourists at the immigration point in Palma Airport. Twelve feet behind her, chatting amicably with a pair in their sixties like a doting son, Quayle followed her toward the sleepy officials. Here she slowed down to offer her documents to a bored officer and, without a second glance, he waved her through, his eyes zeroing in on a couple behind her.
Holly wandered through into the baggage hall and waited for her suitcase. She had very little to put in it, but Quayle had been shopping again, returning with a variety of things, some second hand, some obviously new, saying that tourists never travelled with just an overnight bag, and never travelled with everything new.
Collecting her grey Samsonite, she tried to look excited as she walked to the customs men near the exit, passed through and waited for Quayle. They had driven from Frankfurt to Amsterdam and stayed there for two days while he had procured a set of seaman’s papers and new passports, this time with full back-up papers like driving licences, theatre tickets, old letters, library cards – and, in one instance, a rate demand from a London borough.
Though she had managed to force Pope from her mind, delighted that he had survived, she was still getting used to not having his constant presence. Sometimes she forgot that he was no longer there and looked around for him, waiting for his imperceptible nod to move. Now, outside the terminal, she tried desperately to look like a tourist who did this sort of thing all the time, smiling at people who walked past.
Finally, Quayle walked past too. She followed him at a distance towards a hire car park, pleased to be up close again. As he started up, she climbed into the nondescript blue sedan and together again they drove out onto the main Palma road.
Only once they were free of the airport did she gave an audible sigh and begin to relax.
“Have you been here before?” she asked, pulling the band from her hair and shaking it loose.
“Once or twice,” he said, lighting a cigarette.
“Isn’t it full of sunburnt drunken Brits, vomiting, fighting and singing ‘you’ll never walk alone’?”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Bits of it – Palma Nova, Magaluf, Pagera – but most if it’s quiet and old and sleepy. We’re going near to a place called Valldemosa. You’ll like it...”
“Can’t I come with you?” she suddenly asked, looking out of the windscreen as they began to head inland.
“No.”
“But why, Titus?”
“It’s safer here. You’ll stay with a friend. Milburn don’t know about him.”
“What’s he like?” she asked resignedly.
“His name’s Marco. He has a big twirly moustache, a heart like a lion – and a thick-walled old bodega. He likes carpets, good wines and old boats. He also likes promiscuous women and dogs, and he cooks pasta just like mama used to do…”
She laughed, delighted at the rich description. “Sounds interesting,” she said with a wry smile.
“Oh he is that,” he replied.
Marco was exactly as Quayle had described. As they drove up his long driveway, he was standing shirtless, lean and brown, with waves of greying hair atop a regal head, a garden hose in his hand as he watered a tub of his precious flowers. Two Staffordshire bull terriers muscled around his bare legs, walking in escort as dropped the hose and approached the car.
With a huge smile painted across his lined face, he took Quayle into a huge bear hug, laughing and shaking him like a child before turning to Holly.
“Bellissima!” he said, kissing his fingertips in an extravagant gallant gesture. “Titus, she is magnificent! How can you trust me with her?” He bent to take a bag. “Come! As the natives here say, my house is your house.”
The interior was surprisingly cool after the hot glare of the sun outside, the thick stone walls and flagstone floors having been built to achieve that three hundred years before. The ceiling was high, cantilevered with thick oak beams that he explained had been taken from a ship that had foundered on the rocks below Deia.
Like the house on Serifos, this one had its share of Oriental carpets thrown about the stone floors. A powerful painting of an Andalusian fighting bull stood above a huge hearth surrounded with leather club chairs. The whole effect was brightened up with bowls of fresh flowers and brightly painted wooden shutters. When Holly looked up, she could see all the way to the terracotta roof tiles.
The bedroom Marco showed her to was an odd shape, with one half of the perimeter wall circular in shape. The hand-carved peasant bed was covered in a bright patchwork quilt. She put down her bags, brushed her hair, and wandered out through the kitchen to find Quayle.
Just outside the house, the branch of an ancient olive tree formed one edge of a pergola supporting grape vines, and an old tom cat –scarred by many battles – slept on one of several white cane chairs scattered beneath the leafy canopy. There Quayle sat with Marco, an open bottle of wine between them on an old cable drum table. As she approached, Marco held up a glass.
“My God Marco, it’s absolutely beautiful!” she said, waving her hand around her.
“Thank you,” he said, genuinely pleased, “I like it very much. My retreat. Come take a glass with us.”
“You don’t live here all the time then?” she asked, taking the glass and settling into one of the chairs, near enough to rest a hand on Quayle’s knee.
“Unfortunately no. I have business interests in Barcelona. I come here to rest, to think, to live like one should live!”
Quayle gave a dry laugh. “And very occasionally when a friend asks him to…”
“Paa!” Marco dismissed the very idea with a regal wave of his hand, but looked at Quayle with a half smile. “This man is like a brother,” he said to Holly, explaining as best he could. “He wants my heart, I rip it out and give it to him!”
Quayle left just after dark, Marco escorting him to the gates because there were Rottweiler guard dogs loose in the grounds, their armed handlers having arrived the hour before. “A Mallorcan man. He owes me a debt of honour,” Marco said indicating the armed men. “She will be safe. Now go and do
what you have to do.”
Quayle took the dark road back to Palma and caught the midnight flight to Lisbon.
*
She was a fifty thousand ton French-registered general freighter, bound on the midnight tide for Newcastle with a load of tinned sardines, wine and machinery parts. The dock worker said he could find the mate in a café nearby, and that he was a man one could deal with. Quayle thanked him , pulling his filthy reefer jacket about his shoulders, and went to find the man he would need to get him aboard the ship.
He was pleased. With airport surveillance systems and logging cameras, the classic way of entering Britain was becoming more difficult. But the smaller ports were still simple, and that would mean he could save the other full identities for another time.
He found the café by following the rock and roll music which flooded out onto the street. Pushing his way past a group at the door, he moved to the small bar where a woman was heating a small jug of milk under a steam jet. She ignored him for a while, until a flustered waitress took the milk, and then smiled at him.
“Expresso and cognac por favor.”
She took a pre-poured glass of the brandy from under the counter and handed it to him.
“The mate from the Mariella. He is here?” he asked in bad Spanish. She pushed his coffee toward him and pointed to a table directly behind him.
“That big Dutchman in the red jacket. It is he.”
Quayle thanked her and, carrying his coffee and brandy in one hand, approached the table where the man sat with two others.
Without being invited, he took a seat and looked across at the man. “I’m looking for a berth,” he said in French, pushing his papers across. Then he gulped the brandy in one mouthful, following it with a sip of the black coffee.
“Sorry,” the man replied. “We are full. Now if you...”
“One trip only, if you know what I mean,” Quayle said with exaggerated emphasis. “My wife mustn’t know I am back or poof... into the court I go.”
“Not my problem,” the Dutchman replied, turning to his friend to pick up the conversation. “Now fuck off, will you?”
“What’s it worth?” Quayle asked.
“What?”
“Don’t fuck about. What’s it worth? Sign me on for one trip, tonight My papers are in order. I want to get back and see my son. It’s worth money to me and no risk to you. How much?”
The mate looked at him. The other two had fallen silent.
“A thousand. American,” he answered softly.
“Three hundred now, and another three hundred at Newcastle,” Quayle countered. “There are other ships.”
The man looked at him, picked up the papers for a second, studied them and then nodded. “OK. Be aboard by ten.” And he held out his hand for the money. The Captain normally got half – but this was double the normal rate, and the Captain never needed to know.
Quayle paid and left immediately, walking back to the first restaurant and slinging his bag on the floor. Here he ordered his first meal in two days. He ate hungrily, the oily fish and potatoes satisfying, then eventually looked at his watch and moved back down to the docks and the rusty hulk of the Mariella. Once aboard, he was shown to a bunk in a smelly, cramped – but thankfully empty –crew cabin by a smiling young seaman, who gleefully pointed out the pin-ups stuck to the bottom of the upper bunk by the previous occupant. Just what I need, Quayle thought dryly.
*
Sir Gordon Tansey-Williams occupied a corner office suite on the third floor of Century House. The building appeared from the outside to be merely another pre-war edifice. There were no splendid columns or lobbies or atriums. That was for their new building, planned for the riverside location. This was a simple five floor brick and concrete building that looked as if it should house an ageing and suitably dusty insurance company. Callers to the front door were met by a polite but firm porter, who declined entrance to any unauthorised people. Behind him the real security began, with high tensile steel card access doors, cameras and surveillance systems. The walls and basement had been strengthened to blast standards and all the windows were made with one-way armoured glass, coated in an emulsion that prevented electronic eavesdropping by computer wizards. In the basement was a complicated electronic scrambler that increased the difficulties of listening in. Also in the basement was the tunnel that took those needing covert access directly into Euston Station’s labyrinth of underground tunnels full of buskers, commuters and tourists.
Tansey-Williams’ offices were swept by the counter electronic people every three days, from the original Constable over the antique dresser to the plaster-of-Paris dog his granddaughter had made which had pride of place on the solid oak desk. He enjoyed a substantial private income and was old fashioned enough not to expect the service to pay for that kind of thing, so he took up the cost personally. He also supplemented the civil service salary his secretary was paid with a handsome stipend that meant he could demand nothing but the best.
The bed-sized surface of the desk had three chairs placed along the front, and each position enjoyed ample space to spread out papers. Tansey-Williams was a workaholic and was often there in the office ten hours a day – and would frequently conduct meetings simultaneously in adjoining rooms. Today he sat alone, one yellow grade one file on the desk before him and a single bone china cup off to one side, when his secretary put her head round the door.
“Sir Gordon, Sir Martin Callows is here now.”
“Send him in,” he growled.
Tansey-Williams was everything Callows wasn’t. His family had direct links to Royalty and still owned huge estates in the south of England. Lloyds’ names were maintained more for tradition than need, and the family’s trust portfolio kept a small team busy at the Credit Suisse in Zurich. Well over six feet in height and always impeccably dressed, he radiated a charisma that swept others along, and tempered it by understating his actual power wherever possible. He was a product of Repton, Eton and Oxford. A Royalist and politically conservative, he did his job because he liked it.
Callows, meanwhile, was the opposite: a brilliant red brick scholar, he was the son of a Midlands’ shoe merchant who was driven by personal ambition. Although only ten years separated their ages, and both held knighthoods, Tansey-Williams was considered by many to be Callows’ mentor and protector in the minefields of Whitehall.
Tansey-Williams looked down his long nose as Callows entered and jabbed a finger at a chair.
“Martin. Nice of you to come over.”
Callows wasn’t fooled by the bonhomie. He had known Tansey-Williams too long, and he knew what this was all about.
He sat and they made small talk, until the secretary had poured fresh coffee for Tansey-Williams and brought a cup for Callows. Then, finally, rain running in small rivulets down the tinted windows, Tansey-Williams held up the yellow file that had been on his desk.
“Right. What the hell is going on?”
“Presumably you’re talking about...”
“Don’t presume! Know!” Tansey-Williams snapped.
“That’s the problem. We don’t know enough.”
“You know enough to put a kill order on a man we once valued, a man to whom we pay a pension, a man disabled in the line of duty!”
“The end justifies the means,” Callows rumbled back, his great leonine head lowered and his eyes glaring.
“What end? You don’t have an end do you?”
“Good men are dead! Maimed! We don’t know why. Someone who was close to Morton knows something that we don’t. That’s his daughter. We go to pick her up and three men are dead...”
“Shot, very skilfully I might add, by one of your own bodyguards…”
“We didn’t know that. The fact is, we still aren’t sure. Quayle is not only technically capable of having killed them; he was also close to Morton – and could well have been involved from day one. In everything!”
“I would like you to tell me about... everything,” Tansey-Williams s
aid icily, his long manicured fingers drumming on the file.
“You gave me carte blanche to get this resolved. Now, if...”
“I did not give you carte blanche to drag the name of the service through the mud. Which is precisely what is going to happen. You have people at Milburn who think they’ve been ‘got at’, a spate of murders, a blinded man who’s now fearful for his wife’s safety… and rightfully so! For God’s sake, man. They gutted his dog on the living room floor. Who are these people? How close are we? What are they hiding? I’m not concerned with your carte blanche, nor the authority of any of my senior men. I am concerned with the defence of the nation, and by God, I will ask any question I like, of whom I like, where I like and when I like. Understood?”
Callows nodded just once.
“Let’s hear it. A full brief. Then we can consider what else needs to be done.”
Callows talked for a full hour, Tansey-Williams occasionally stopping him with a question, and then letting the brief go on. Finally, he sat back in the big leather chair and fingers steepled together.
“So, after you realised that Quayle hadn’t done the killing, you still didn’t lift the Metro order.”
“No. I thought that, if I left enough pressure on him, he might just bring in the bacon anyway, even if only to get us to leave him alone.”
“Her.”
“Sorry?”
“Her.” Tansey-Williams repeated. “It would work if you positioned the threat at Morton’s daughter. He’s not frightened of you. But,” he said firmly, “we are not the Americans. Call it off.”
“Sir Gordon, we think he’s now out of Germany after that cock-up in Munich. The job is done. Let me leave it alone for another couple of days. Whatever he’s doing, it’s not lying idle. He’ll be looking for whatever it is that’s behind all this, and if he thinks the pressure is off, he’ll go back to his bloody shack on the beach. He might just turn up something, and soon!”
“Just hope it’s not you,” Tansey-Williams said dryly.
Callows gave a dry smile but, deep in his heart, there was a flicker of fear at the thought.
“All right. Forty eight hours longer. Then call in the pack. And then I want to run him.”
The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Page 17