Final Target
E. V. Seymour

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright

Killer Reads

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Cutting Edge Press 2014

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Eve Seymour 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Eve Seymour asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008271718

Version: 2017-09-21

Dedication

For Susie Davis, my friend, writer-in-arms and the only woman on the planet who makes me laugh out loud.

Epigraph

‘Before you embark

on a journey of revenge,

dig two graves.’

Confucius

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Essay on Final Target

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading A Deadly Trade

About the Author

Also by E. V. Seymour

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

As soon as the lights went out I knew I was in trouble. Power cut, blown fuse, act of God – happens to honest folk. My dirty past ensured a different scenario. I was a cigarette paper away from a hole in the head.

Streetlight ghosting through the window made my body a perfect target. I stepped away from the door and dropped down onto the floor, belly-low. Unarmed, fear stuck like a chisel in my chest. At any second I expected the stutter of gunfire, the shatter of glass, the room stitched with metal. Game over.

Black seconds thudded past.

Killer-calm, I went through the moves. My prospective tenant hadn’t yet shown. Booked through an agent, the elusive Miss Armstrong could only view my rental property after work. The lady was, allegedly, hardworking and couldn’t spare time during the working day. From my new perspective on the floor, it seemed that she was the bait for someone out to get me, and there were dozens of possibilities. Odds-on my attacker was a hired assassin, someone who’d filled the void I’d left behind and, if he didn’t shoot within the next five seconds, he was on his way in. I’d always preferred to get up close and personal. It was a fair bet that he was cast in the same mould.

Eyes adjusting to the darkness, I used my elbows for traction and scooted across the carpet to the kitchen. A knife offered little protection against a gun, but it made me feel more secure. It was also possible that I’d strike lucky. I didn’t intend to die without a fight.

Cracking the door open, I slid inside. Windowless, the room pooled with dark, shifting shadows and that gave me an advantage. In one swift movement, I stood up, reached out, swiped the biggest knife from the block and stepped behind the door. Mute, breath sucked in, I waited.

‘Hex, is that you?’

I froze, peered dead ahead, exploring the darkness. The mention of my soubriquet, known only to a favoured few, sounded at once intimate and incongruous.

‘McCallen?’

‘Apologies for the subterfuge.’

I don’t like surprises. One moment I believe death is about to wave me through its checkpoint, the next the only woman who has ever truly fascinated me rocks up and wants to play games. Displeasure gave a cutting edge to my voice. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’

‘I pretended to be your new tenant because I didn’t think you’d agree to see me.’

‘What about the light trick?’ I hissed.

‘Nothing to do with me.’ The air around me parted. Citrus and sandalwood and hints of tobacco, then McCallen’s breath on my face, her lips brushing my ear, then my mouth. If she’d come to kill me, I was a dead man, but at least I’d die happy. I kissed her back, long and slow. Sure, she’d rattled me, but then McCallen always did.

‘Must be a power cut,’ she murmured.

‘You think?’

No sooner had the words left my lips than we were flooded with light. McCallen took several paces back and we blinked at each other.

She looked even better in the flesh than I remembered and, if I were honest, I’d thought about her a lot in the intervening twelve months. I took a moment to appreciate her full lips, neat nose and her voluptuous figure. Her copper-coloured hair was longer. It suited her.

‘Are you going to put that down?’ The amusement in her green eyes implied that I’d overreacted. It wasn’t as if the location was some rural backwater where power surges and consequent electricity cuts are commonplace. This was Cheltenham, big population, home of GCHQ and high tech. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out. I don’t do coincidence. What I could be certain of was that today was not my time to go.

‘Old habits.’ I replaced the knife in the block.

‘You’re looking good. More rested.’

Not one for small talk, I cut to the chase. ‘How the hell did you get in?’ It wasn’t the most obvious question, but it was the one that sprang to my lips first.

‘I’m a spook. How do you think I got in?’

‘Even you can’t travel through walls.’

Her mouth creased into a smile. ‘You know what? I’ve missed you.’

Inside, I was delighted. Outside, I was Mr Cool. The rational side of my brain told me that McCallen had blagged her way back into my life for one reason only, to use me. ‘And how did you track me down?’

‘Joe Nathan, as you now like to be called, is not much of a stretch from Joshua Thane.’

This worried me. If McCallen had seen through it, so could others. She let out an earthy laugh. ‘Honestly, Hex, you must be losing your touch. Remember the false passport you had in Barcelona?’

I sighed. My last gig. Mystery solved.

‘So how’s life now that you’ve gone respectable?’

Boring, mundane and banal. ‘Terrific.’

‘Managing to stay out of trouble?’

Nice try. ‘Fancy a drink?’ I smiled.

She smiled back. ‘Why not?’

On the way out I checked the fuse box in the communal hall. No switches thrown. No evidence of trouble. Didn’t mean a damn thing. If anyone had messed with the box, he’d have worn gloves.

Surrounded by chi-chi shops, the flat was off Montpellier Street and we could take our pick of bars. Finding one that wasn’t rammed, even in January, required more effort. We finally commandeered a table in the window of the Montpellier Wine Bar, a popular, if expensive, hangout for Cheltenham’s upwardly mobile and fashion-conscious.

McCallen took a seat and asked me to get her a vodka, ‘straight with ice and a slice of lime’. In spite of her upbeat manner, I thought I caught a trace of something haunted in her eyes, and wondered how the hell I was going to disappoint her without causing offence. Whatever she’d come to ask, my answer had to be no. I’d spent too long trying to rehabilitate myself to get involved in something that might force me to cross a line again. Nice as the kiss was, I didn’t believe she was after a date.

I pushed my way through to the bar, ordered a pint of lager and a double Russian Standard for McCallen, and mused on why exactly she was here with me and my newly adopted persona. Coming up empty, I paid for the drinks and returned. We chinked glasses like old friends and I settled in for the warm-up before the main act.

‘Why Cheltenham?’ she asked.

I’d come back home, but I didn’t wish to reveal this to her, or anybody for that matter. ‘As good a place as any,’ I shrugged. ‘Classy, friendly, full of wealthy people, not too nosey, and the architecture’s impressive.’

‘Of course, you’re in property now.’

It sounded as though I was a major entrepreneur. I was involved to the extent that I’d bought several houses, done them up and let them out. The rise in demand for affordable rental accommodation chimed with my plans for an honest life. I was making a respectable rather than lucrative living, my blood money already given away to charities and good causes. ‘Not much career opportunity for an out-of-work contract killer,’ I said with a flat smile.

She shot me a stern, reproving look. ‘Don’t do yourself down. You redeemed yourself.’

I wished I had her certainty. Truth was, I was like an alcoholic on the ‘Twelve Steps Programme’. I thanked a higher deity each day for not having to get up in the morning and kill to order. The thought of what I’d done for almost fifteen years made me feel physically sick. It mattered not that my targets were bad men, men who’d tortured and who had also employed people like me to stay on top of their criminal and grubby piles, but I’d be a liar if I said that I didn’t miss the trappings of my old existence: the buzz, the lick of danger at my heels, the variety, the international travel and the feeling of power. For the past three hundred and eighty-nine days I had stayed in one place and let life haul me, one twenty-four hour set at a time. I no longer carried a gun. I’d dispensed with anything that could be reasonably called a weapon. I had walked away from the company I kept. I avoided old haunts. I wanted to tell McCallen that I’d embraced my new life with a wholehearted sense of wonder and gratitude. I couldn’t quite do that yet. Yes, I had good days, but the bad ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing’ days outnumbered them. I guess it was character building and good for what passed for my sorry soul.

‘You must be wondering why I’ve tracked you down.’

‘I take it MI5 haven’t sent you in an official capacity?’

She hooked me with one of her big smiles. That was the thing about McCallen – she didn’t just smile with her lips, she smiled with her eyes. ‘Strictly off-the-books.’

And that spelt trouble. Having lusted for McCallen for so long, I didn’t like the effect she was having on my sense of purpose. One look and she could derail me.

‘I have a proposition,’ she said.

‘Unless it’s connected to a business opportunity, I’m not interested.’

She lowered her voice. ‘It doesn’t involve violence.’

‘What does it involve?’

‘Knowledge.’

Against my best intentions, I must have conveyed curiosity. McCallen went on to explain. ‘I’d like you to take a look at a set of photographs.’

I grinned, took a slug of my pint. ‘Are they dirty?’

McCallen elevated an eyebrow that suggested she thought me base.

‘What sort of photographs?’ I was an expert in asking the obvious.

‘Crime scene shots.’ She reached for her bag. I stayed her arm, looked deeply into her eyes.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Slippery slope and all that.’

‘Where’s the harm?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

She sat back up, sipped her vodka. In spite of the noise from the bar, we were enveloped in our own silent bubble. I’m an infinitely patient man so I can live without conversation. I can do quiet. McCallen is different.

‘I’m providing you with an opportunity to do good,’ she insisted.

‘Nice pitch.’

‘Won’t you reconsider?’ She turned those big green eyes on me. I wondered if I could get her beyond kissing. A steamy image of us both on a bridge in London flashed through my mind.

‘Why me? You have plenty of other means at your disposal.’

‘Because it’s private.’

‘Private or personal?’

Colour invaded her cheeks. She said nothing. The first ‘tell’.

I took another drink. ‘Are the police involved?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let them do their job.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

It never was where McCallen was concerned. Ambitious, looking to the main chance, her career was as important to her as my survival was to me.

‘Look, it involves three innocent people.’

‘Really?’ The cynicism rang clear in my voice.

‘All were shot dead in the same place by the same person.’

I blinked slowly and clenched my jaw. ‘Wasn’t me.’

‘I appreciate it wasn’t you.’

Glad we’d cleared that up, I took another drink.

‘You must have read about it in the news.’

‘I make a point of not reading the news.’ Another part of the ‘weaning off’ process.

At this, she broke into a wide smile. ‘Even better. I was afraid you might have a preconceived view.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I realised then that I’d caved in.

‘Afterwards.’

She wanted to reel me in first.

‘I don’t need to tell you that the identities and lifestyles of the victims will reveal far more than the crime scene,’ I said.

‘But the crime scene paints an interesting picture to a man of your particular talents.’

My particular talents? If only McCallen knew the whole, unvarnished truth – that I’d learnt from the very best, that my mentor had been a man who worked for Mossad, that I’d loved him as a son loves a father and that the tang of his betrayal was still sharp and bitter in my mouth. I shook my head, but my eyes failed to conceal my interest. Like a rat in for the kill, McCallen could spot weakness at fifty paces. She stood up, whisked a large brown envelope out of her bag and placed it on the table in front of me. ‘I’m going to get some air. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a look and give me your honest opinion.’

‘About what?’

‘Anything that leaps out of the picture.’

What she meant was the sequence of events, location, and the type of individual responsible, amateur or professional.

‘You’re not expecting me to be able to identify the killer, are you?’

‘Be good if you could, but my expectations aren’t that high.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

At this, she pursed her lips and blew me a kiss.

I glanced around. I’d chosen a relatively private spot in amongst a horde of serious drinkers. Everyone seemed too intent on having a good time to bother with a guy like me. It didn’t stop me from checking or watching for the sidelong look followed by the suddenly averted gaze.

‘Pretend they’re holiday snaps,’ McCallen said, disappearing out into the night.

CHAPTER TWO

The envelope stared at me like the bad fairy at the wedding feast. I stared back, belligerent. Draining my glass, I thought about having another drink and changed my mind. I didn’t know for how long McCallen intended to take the night air, but I wasn’t taking risks. Scooping up the envelope, I slipped it inside my jacket and left the bar. My intention was to walk around the block and return, the envelope unopened. My subconscious had other ideas.

Letting myself back into the rental apartment only metres away, I switched on the light, poured myself a glass of water and sat down. The paper crinkled as I moved, the envelope a sharp-edged rock digging into my heart. Only photographs, the devil in my brain told me. Where’s the harm? Do you really want to put yourself in temptation’s way, the other part of me said, aren’t you supposed to be walking away from all that? I’m providing you with an opportunity to do good, McCallen said. What she really meant was that I was giving her a chance to solve part of a puzzle. For some unspoken reason, she couldn’t ask anyone else. I was flattered. And for reasons I hadn’t yet nailed, I was more than tempted.

The devil won out.

I opened the envelope, slid out three black and whites, three identical in colour, and three close-up shots, again in colour. I laid them out in front of me like a croupier placing cards on the table, and took out my phone to capture the images. Next, using the MagniLink facility, I studied each in detail.

The first photograph provided an aerial shot of a two-lane road running through a section of dense woodland. Studying the leaves on the trees, which were oak, ash, chestnut and beech, I guessed it was taken around May or June. From the angle of the sun and hint of dew on the ground, it must have been early morning. Clearings revealed signs of human activity, animals and horse tracks, and beyond these, a criss-cross of paths and narrow roads, undoubtedly a tourist trail. As killing places went, it was an ideal location. No CCTV. With quick road access, the killer could get in and out within seconds and had plenty of cover for a speedy getaway.

On the road, a sleek-looking vehicle, a Jaguar, was positioned almost at right-angles as if the driver had changed his mind about the direction in which he was driving and had decided to turn around. Metres down the road from the Jag, most likely travelling from the opposite direction, an overturned mountain bike, top spec and only used by a serious cyclist. One body lay on the road almost underneath the bicycle. Another body hung out of the open door on the passenger side of the Jaguar. Spent cartridges littered the scene. Untidy. I’d come back to these later.

I moved on to a close-up of the Jaguar. Rounds of gunfire had extensively damaged the front and offside of the vehicle. Standard procedure: windscreen smashed, metal perforated by so many rounds that it looked like the car had been sliced open by a king-size can opener. This meant the weapon’s magazine capacity was at least thirty rounds and probably fired at a rate of 700 rounds per minute, maybe more. I looked closely at the measurement of individual holes. The problem with this is that when a bullet leaves a weapon, impact changes both it and the surface with which it comes into contact. Without the actual bullet in my hand, it was difficult to estimate calibre. Clearly fired from an automatic, I reckoned it could be 9 x 19mm Parabellum, but I couldn’t be exact.

The passenger door was open, the driver’s door closed. Rubber marks on the road suggested that the car had moved at speed, tyres biting the asphalt in the driver’s desperate bid to get out of trouble and make a fast getaway. I closed my eyes and pictured the scene: driver responds to the threat by stopping, takes fire but not enough to kill, reverses and then is felled by another round of automatic fire.

A close-up revealed the driver: her face twisted to one side, most of the top of the head removed, body slumped over the wheel, blood and brain matter decorating the expensive leather interior. Left arm extended, her hand stretched out as if trying to make contact with her male passenger one final time. Meant the relationship was close. Death conceals age to a degree, but I guessed she could have been anything between thirty-five and forty-five years of age.

Close-up of the passenger revealed that he had made some effort to flee but, caught in the spray, his upper torso was a mess of gunshot wounds. I estimated his age around the same as mine. Either way, I reckon he’d hit his thirty-third birthday. To my professional eye, the driver was first on the killer’s playlist, the passenger of secondary importance.

Next up, the crime scene with the unfortunate male cyclist. The bike, keeled over on the road, trapped the cyclist’s right leg. This indicated that the cyclist was facing the motorist and stationary when shot. Close examination revealed that, unlike the occupants of the car, he had been shot, at most, three times. He’d taken a bullet to the chest and one at point-blank range to the head. I suspected that this was the third in the sequence. The actual choreography would go something like this: one in the head, one in the chest, and a follow-up shot for good measure. A pathologist might state otherwise but, either way, he had been dispatched in a clinical fashion. He wasn’t riddled with bullets. I imagined the cyclist’s attention being attracted; maybe someone flags him down and asks for help – directions possibly – he stops to think and, before he knows it, death beckons.

I took another look at the overall shot. There were no visible tyre tracks on the verge, but the pattern of fallen cartridges told its own little tale. I frowned. My observations were so blindingly obvious; McCallen didn’t need my help at all.

My mobile phone rang. It was McCallen. ‘Where are you?’

‘Back at the flat.’

‘I’ll come round.’

I let her in and she sat down opposite and let her beautiful eyes meet mine. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For doing something you didn’t want to do.’

I fixed her with a cool stare. ‘It was pretty much a pointless exercise.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘None of my observations are rocket science. Any interested amateur would draw the same conclusions.’

‘Which are?’

I shook my head. ‘No trade until you answer my questions.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Who are the couple?’

‘India Griffiths-Jones and her toy boy lover Dylan Woodgate.’

‘Their occupation?’

‘Griffiths-Jones was a banker, Woodgate a city trader.’

‘Have you followed the money trail?’

‘It’s clean.’ She unexpectedly dropped her gaze. Meant she was lying.

I arched an eyebrow. McCallen glanced up at me with a cold look, lips zippered. Planning to return to this point later, I pressed on.

‘Where are the deceased from?’

‘Griffiths-Jones, born O’Malley, is originally from Newry, Northern Ireland. Woodgate from Kent. Both worked in the City.’

‘Political motivation?’

‘Police considered a possible connection to the Real IRA in the early part of the investigation, but it’s been discounted.’

‘The relationship between the two – illicit or otherwise?’

‘Smart of you.’

‘That’s what you expect from me, isn’t it?’

She smiled. ‘Illicit. Griffiths-Jones’s husband had no idea about her extracurricular activities until his wife’s untimely death.’

I gave my eyebrow another workout. Giving an order to kill one’s spouse on account of an affair was an obvious motive for murder. I’d never got involved in domestics, but I knew men who would and did.

‘He checks out,’ McCallen said, attempting to head off that particular line of enquiry.

‘As in, he has an alibi?’ Which meant damn all in my previous line of work. Those who gave the orders were nowhere near the crime scenes and they always ensured their alibis were watertight.

‘As in, he didn’t do it.’

‘So they simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?’ I said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because the cyclist was the target.’

‘That’s not what the police believe.’

‘Well they’re wrong. He was killed first.’

‘How do you know?’

I wondered whether McCallen was really dumb or acting dumb. Had to be the latter. ‘His death was played out in a distinctly different fashion. Whereas the occupants of the car had been treated to a spray and pray approach, the cyclist was coldly and surgically removed.’

‘Two killers?’

‘One killer who panicked when he had company.’

‘Amateur?’

I paused because I couldn’t be certain. ‘A professional, new to the job.’

‘Does he have a signature?’

I paused for a second time. I’d always favoured a three-shot approach. One in the head, one in the body, one to finish off. Sounded gruesome now, as if it had nothing to do with me. The tops of my cheekbones flushed hot to the bone in shame. ‘He didn’t favour a pistol, which is highly unusual for a hit. My guess is that he used one weapon, an automatic primed to fire single shot for the original kill, then he switched to multiple fire when he ran into trouble.’

She frowned. ‘Sub-machine guns are cumbersome.’

I shrugged. It depended on the weapon. The Heckler & Koch MP5K short version could easily be concealed under clothing or fired from a specially modified suitcase or bag. It had been one of my favourite methods for jobs where the target employed bodyguards. I didn’t tell her this.

‘There was nothing random about the hit. The killer had prior information about the cyclist’s movements. Odds on, he knew that the cyclist was touring the New Forest.’

McCallen’s eyes danced with interest. ‘What makes you say the New Forest?’

‘Ponies and donkeys.’

She didn’t say yes or no, just tilted her chin.

I explained my theory, then said, ‘The pattern of shell casings provides the clincher. The killer thought he’d done the business and then Mrs Banker and her lover show up. No witnesses equals no loose ends.’

‘Collateral damage?’

‘Rules of the game. If you’re good at the job you shouldn’t need to indulge in it.’

‘What about you?’ A sudden frosty note etched her voice.

‘I was good at the job.’ We’d hit rocky ground so I decided to change direction. ‘Who was he?’

‘A German tourist.’

‘Does he have a name?’

‘Lars Pallenberg.’

‘So what’s his story?’

‘He was a tourist who happened to be an artist.’

‘An artist, or asset?’ My expression was neutral. McCallen’s answer might explain why she’d come to me and nobody else. Her kissable lips parted very slightly. Only someone familiar with her could divine that McCallen’s first instinct to lie was rapidly substituted by the truth.

‘Both. I was his handler.’

‘Tough for you.’ No intelligence officer liked having an asset bumped off. Unfortunately, it was an occupational hazard. Recruit, use and let go, Reuben my mentor, once told me. ‘But there’s nothing you can do about it. You simply disavow, pretend he never existed and walk away.’

‘He was also a friend.’

The warmth in her eyes made me feel as if I had something cold and wet and slippery crawling through my intestines. I didn’t ask the obvious question.

CHAPTER THREE

‘It’s not what you think.’

‘You have no idea what I think.’ How could she possibly know? ‘Your relationships are nothing to do with me.’

She paused, cleared her throat. ‘What I mean –’

‘You allowed yourself to be compromised.’

She fixed me with a blizzard of green. ‘The association was finished before you and I met.’

‘Makes no difference to me.’ For a woman who’d once implied that there could never be anything between us, I thought she was labouring a point. But then that was a woman’s prerogative. ‘But you’re going to have to help me out. Why are you discounting the obvious? Lars got made and paid the ultimate price.’

‘Maybe.’

From McCallen’s monosyllabic answers, I got the impression that she was holding back. I looked at her hard. If she wanted me to help her, she’d have to trust me and tell me what the hell was going on. ‘Was he vetted?’

‘No.’

‘You kept him secret from MI5?’ I was fairly incredulous.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I love the way you lie.’

She flinched, but didn’t elaborate.

‘Were you careful? Could you have been seen?’ I’d always thought McCallen crazy, but there usually seemed to be an internal logic to her actions. Mixing business with pleasure, if that’s what she’d done, was as dumb as it gets. She’d exposed him to danger and herself to blackmail with all types of criminal permutations in between.

‘Possible, but unlikely.’

I thought about it. As an intelligence officer, McCallen could be on any number of bad guys’ radar. That meant whoever was seen with her was also at potential risk. But then she already knew the score in that regard. She was the expert. I was merely an educated outsider.

‘Are the police doing their job properly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Examining relationships and connections?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Her eyes met mine once more.

‘Which could lead straight back to you.’ And when the truth was out, her job would be on the line. Now I got it.

‘Precisely.’

‘Presumably you covered your tracks, gave Lars assumed code name.’

She swallowed and nodded. ‘The police are concentrating their efforts on the couple, which buys me a little time.’

‘Why the focus on the couple?’

‘Griffiths-Jones had a large sum of money that can’t be accounted for deposited in a private Swiss bank account.’

Hence her lie regarding the money trail. ‘Fiddling the books?’

‘That’s my take.’

‘White noise,’ I said. ‘Tell me about Lars.’

‘A German national who split his time between London and Berlin.’

‘So not a tourist at all.’ I was surprised how easy it was to catch McCallen in another lie. Signalled she was under considerable pressure. Typically, she went all pedantic on me. ‘He was touring the New Forest at the time of his death.’

‘Why recruit him?’ An artist didn’t strike me as typical spy material. It had to be down to a connection, the company he kept. I didn’t expect her to reveal operational details and, true to form, she chose her words with care. ‘Let’s say that the UK has seen a rise in right-wing militants. A certain group has energetic links with neo-Nazis in Germany. The latest breed are drawn from all sorts of disparate cliques: the disillusioned and unemployed, flat-earthers, anti-Muslim, anti-capitalist, anti-nuclear, anti-globalisation, animal rights activists, most without clear political aims.’

‘Rent-a-mob,’ I pitched in.

‘We’re talking the extreme end of the spectrum.’

‘And Lars, where does he fit?’

‘Thanks to an old art school friend, he had an in to a particular group of anarchists in Berlin who have heavy connections here.’

‘Then look no further. There’s your answer. He was bumped off because he got rumbled, either by his contacts in the UK or those in Germany.’

McCallen shook her head. ‘Lars had bailed months before. There was no reason to kill him.’

I didn’t like to point out that I’d killed men for weaker reasons. When a seriously bad guy got an idea in his head that someone was for the chop, there wasn’t much that could be done to dissuade him.

‘You said the association was over and that he’d extracted himself from his buddies, so what was Lars doing in Hampshire eight months ago?’

She viewed me with instant suspicion. ‘How the hell do you know the timing?’

‘Don’t be so damn suspicious.’ I indicated the aerial shot. ‘I’m good with trees. If you want a nature lesson, I’m happy to give it,’ I said, arch. Actually, the countryside had never done it for me, but my grandfather ensured that my Gloucestershire roots were not wasted. In later life, it had proved useful.

She looked at me a second longer than was comfortable. I’d often thought that talking to McCallen was like throwing jelly at the wall and seeing if it would stick. ‘I genuinely don’t know why he was in the New Forest,’ she said. She looked quite unhappy. However, this time, I reckoned she was being straight with me.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘End of January, and once briefly two months before his death.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘No,’ she said, slow-eyed.

‘No subsequent contact?’

‘A couple of phone calls.’

‘When?’

‘March.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘The weather.’ She looked ticked off.

‘Fine, don’t tell me.’

Her expression told me that on this we were in agreement. ‘Nothing you need to know,’ she added.

‘Maybe Lars wasn’t what he seemed.’

‘That’s what I’m beginning to think.’

The penny didn’t drop; two-pound coins rained down on my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘If you’ve allowed yourself to be compromised, that’s your lookout. No way in hell am I going to get involved, investigate, or anything else.’

‘I can’t go to Berlin, but you could.’

‘Which bit of my answer don’t you understand? And aren’t you forgetting something? One step outside the United Kingdom and a Mossad hit team will be snapping at my heels.’ The shout lines of my last job boxed my ears. With McCallen’s help, I’d foiled a plot to sell an ethnically specific biological weapon to an extreme fundamental terrorist group, and had killed one of my old clients, Billy Squeeze, in the process. During the fallout, it had emerged that Mossad was out to get me for an unspecified crime. I’d never properly worked it out. I might have jeopardised one of their operations by taking out a player. I might have unwittingly killed one of their informers. Whatever the detail, they’d only called their dogs off because I’d removed Billy, a man on their hit list, but I knew that it was only a temporary reprieve.

McCallen responded by doing what she does best – she threw me a curve ball. ‘What if Pallenberg was killed to get to me?’

I blinked. Was this the part of the story she hadn’t told me? I knew that there had to be another reason and my curiosity and lust for excitement meant that I was a millimetre from being dragged into her web. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘Threats.’

This was my cue to ask her to spill all. If she did, then I’d be done for. She threw me a look that could best be described as ravishingly doomed. My jaw clicked because all I really wanted to do was sweep her into my arms and tell her that I’d help in any way I could.

‘Not my problem,’ I said.

She stood up. ‘You know how to get hold of me if you change your mind.’

‘I’m not going to change my mind.’

She gave a knowing smile and left.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning I passed on the gym, stayed in bed longer than usual and wondered if the activities of the night before had been a dream. McCallen’s anarchic reappearance had awoken long-dead emotions and knocked me off balance. Made me consider what the German had that I didn’t. I let out a sigh and pressed my head deeper into the pillows in a futile effort to evade the simple truth. Lars Pallenberg had not spent fifteen years of his sorry existence knocking people off.

She had nerve, I was forced to give her that. And she knew how to get to me, the ‘personal threat’ argument a blinder.

I finally dislodged myself from my cosy pity, got up, showered and shaved and stared at my reflection. You’re looking good. More rested, McCallen had remarked. My normally cropped dark hair could do with a cut. The rest of me appeared much the same: blue eyes, wide nose, high Slavic cheekbones, but I got what she meant. I’d lost the hunted look.

I dressed in a pair of jeans, open-neck shirt and sweater, black loafers. Standing in the kitchen, eating a solitary piece of toast, I looked around me. I hadn’t really got the hang of homemaking. I had all the right kit, furniture in the rooms, plantation shutters on the windows, yet the deliberate absence of personal touches, anything that could betray my true identity, gave it a slightly sterile air. Occasionally I’d buy flowers – freesias, my mother’s favourite – but that was about as far as my interior design went.

I gazed out of the window at a grey, wet January day that was already dark before it got going. Miserable summed it up and it reflected my mood. I might have committed to a home and car and gainful employment, but I had nobody with whom to share my life because I could never reveal my past. McCallen was the only woman who knew me well, understood the way I ticked, and McCallen was off-limits and unattainable. I was the equivalent of a city after a bomb has been dropped on it – ruined and empty.

With no particular place to be that morning, I pulled on a leather jacket and let myself out onto a street of terraced houses. Collar up, I walked with a brisk step past the watchmaker’s, nodding good morning to the guy inside, and round the corner to a short row of shops, my destination the newsagents. Perhaps McCallen had a point, I reasoned, as I picked up copies of the local newspaper and a couple of broadsheets with my standard pint of milk. I couldn’t keep running away from the world now that I’d made a conscious decision to reclaim it. With a particular eye for any development opportunities, I did a quick browse of the window of an estate agent. Nothing grabbing me, I went back home and soon had a mug of fresh coffee and newspapers spread out at the breakfast bar like recently received gifts.

Confronted by the usual suspects: war, economic woes, the Eurozone crisis and failures in various institutions, little seemed to have changed since I’d tuned in last. Marginally bored and about to flick to the business section, a face suddenly stared out that made me skid to attention.

Smoothing out the page, I looked into the dark, heartless eyes of the man I’d known as The Surgeon, the soubriquet earned because Chester Phipps was as physically strong as an orthopaedic surgeon and as skilled at exploring human anatomy in spite of his skinny physique. It was a good picture, one of which he’d have been proud had he been alive to see it. Taken a couple of years ago, it showed him wearing an elegant navy pin-striped suit, shirt loosely open at the neck. He was seated, cigarette rakishly held between his thin fingers, legs louchely crossed, his grizzled, moustachioed features gathered tightly beneath a mane of long grey hair. Staring directly at the camera, thin and intense, he could have been an art connoisseur rather than a crime lord whose interests included, to quote the man himself, ‘cocaine, crack and cunts’. A headline accompanied the photograph: ‘New Killing as Turf War Escalates’.

Phipps had exited the way most bosses meet their maker, his death part of the unseemly scrabble for power in the wake of the vacuum left by Billy Squeeze, a man who once retained a formidable hold on the drugs trade, a man whose ambitions had extended to genocide, a man who had done his best to stitch me up. While alive, Billy’s vicious reputation ensured that nobody dared to piss on his patch or cross him, making the ensuing jockeying for power and subsequent all-out war inevitable. I’d witnessed the destructive power of fear at close quarters. Uncertainty spawns violence. Loose associations, once tolerated, shatter into a maelstrom of killing until a new natural order is established. But The Surgeon’s death had me troubled for two reasons: I’d killed Billy, and Phipps had pointed me in the right direction to enable me to carry it out.

The phone saved me from further brooding. I looked at the number and groaned.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Is that Joe?’

I scratched my head. ‘Yes, Dan, it’s Joe.’

‘We’ve got a problem. The toilet’s blocked.’

‘Again?’

‘The toilet’s blocked.’

‘No, you dope, I meant not again.’

‘Erm … yeah. We’ve tried to sort it, but –’

‘Don’t touch anything. I’ll be round in ten.’

I took my shit-busting kit from the garden shed and walked out of the rear gate to where I parked my Z4. Having never owned a vehicle before – cars were a perk that usually wound up crushed or destroyed – it represented one of the pleasurable upsides of going straight. Opening the boot, I threw in a beast of a plunger, a drain snake, thick rubber gloves and a pair of waterproof trousers and Wellingtons. I couldn’t help but grimly observe that clearing up other people’s shit, of one kind or another, was a constant refrain in my life.

My student let was in St Paul’s, close to the university. As this was my third visit in as many months, I was beginning to realise that renting out property to three young men was a ridiculous idea. They had no sense of hygiene, cleanliness or financial responsibility. Without a parent in tow, they reverted to the behaviour of toddlers. Both species were messy and had a habit of staying up half the night, Dan, the eldest of the trio, being a typical specimen. Likeable, smart and easy-going, he was also an accomplished liar. The rent money was never quite available or where it should be – in my bank account – and yet he always had an entirely plausible reason for delay. I’d once facetiously suggested to him that he would make a good addition to the security services.

As soon as Dan opened the door, I was assailed by the heavy aroma of curry and body odour. Upstairs had its own peculiarly vile tang.

‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ Dan said, as I squeezed into the narrow hall and manoeuvred my paraphernalia past a bike with a puncture in the rear wheel, a skateboard and a full-size supermarket shopping trolley. The open door to the lounge revealed upended furniture. I gingerly peeked inside and saw that one curtain was seemingly held in place by fresh air, the other lying in an exhausted heap on the floor. Carpet and every available surface lay coated in empty cans of lager, cheap cider and overflowing ashtrays. I grunted disapproval and made the mistake of walking into the kitchen.

‘Jesus, when did you last wash up?’

Dan peered through a curtain of dark hair and stroked a fledgling attempt at a beard. ‘I was about to start on it.’

‘And the rubbish?’ I stared out of the window onto a vista of bulging and split bin liners. ‘We have fortnightly bin collections,’ I added, piercing Dan with a look that used to reduce grown men to tears.

Dan beamed and idly scratched his rear in the region where the top of his boxers conspired with his jeans. ‘No stress, Joe. Take a chill pill. Jack and Gonzo are loading all the shit up and taking it to Kingsditch later.’ Kingsditch was the recycling centre.

‘How? On the bus?’

‘Gonzo’s mum is driving down for a few days. She’ll do it.’

I didn’t bother to ask whether or not Gonzo’s mother had been warned of the treat that lay in store on her arrival. I had a feeling that this was another product of Dan’s ripe imagination. Last time they’d vacated for the holidays, I’d removed twenty-four bags of rubbish from the yard and six from an upstairs bedroom. Students.

Dan loped upstairs behind me and hovered on the landing as I pulled on my shit-clearing gear. ‘It’s been a bit iffy for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Then it overflowed.’

I said nothing. I was busy trying to prevent my gag reflex from going into overdrive. The bathroom floor was covered with filthy water, loo roll and stools the size of elephant shit. Iffy for a couple of days was code for a week. It also told me something else. Nobody could have taken a bath or shower in that time.

‘Where’s Gonzo and Jack?’ I snapped as I waded in.

‘In bed.’

‘Get them up.’

The note of warning in my voice had the required effect. Startled, Dan disappeared as I pushed a plunger into the toilet bowl and created a seal. Working it gently up and down to start with, I then tried a more vigorous approach, pushing the plunger and letting it suck back up in a monumental effort to dislodge whatever was causing the obstruction.

Two sets of sleepy eyes appeared at the doorway, a general fug of unwashed youth melding with the odour of faeces. Nice.

‘Man,’ Jack said, lazily scratching an armpit. Gonzo didn’t say a word, just stood slack-jawed, as though an alien had appeared in his midst.

‘Go to the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Fill up a bucket of hot water and put two parts disinfectant in it. Bring it back with a mop. Either of you own a pair of flip-flops?’ Of course they did. Teenage boys spent their entire lives in them even when it was snowing.

‘Yeah. And?’

Gonzo’s upward inflexion and dismissive delivery suggested that he thought me cracked. I fixed him with a particularly menacing expression from my repertoire. ‘Get them.’

Both lads gawped at each other and shambled off. I continued working the plunger. Nothing budged. Time for the snake.

Dan had reappeared at the doorway and I asked him to pass me the drain snake, a wire coil with a corkscrew tip. On a previous occasion, I’d used a wire coat hanger and dislodged a hairbrush. If the snake failed, I’d have to remove the toilet, not something I was keen to do.

Feeding the snake into the opening, I wiggled it around the S-bend, the place where most blockages occur. Sure enough, and with a sense of eureka, I bumped up against something spongy, like a cushion or piece of foam rubber. Twisting the coil, I drilled in, gained purchase and yanked, the accompanying sound of water draining assuring me I’d literally hit pay dirt.

A plunge bra with enough padding to guarantee the appearance of a 38DD clung to the end of the snake. ‘Yours?’ I said, looking at all three youths.

‘Fuck,’ Dan said, clearly lost for a more articulate response.

‘Must be Mandy’s,’ Gonzo said.

‘Yeah, but how did it get there?’ Jack laughed, the others joining in, doubled up and helpless.

I didn’t see the funny side. ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell her that real tits are nicer than fake.’ With this, I sloshed out of the bathroom. ‘Over to you, big man,’ I told Gonzo as I pulled off my boots. ‘In there with the mop and bucket.’

‘Aw shit, man.’

Resisting the temptation to come back with a laconic response, I threw my next order at Dan and Jack. ‘And you two needn’t stand around pissing yourselves. You’re on washing-up duty.’

It took them the best part of two and a half hours, and only because Gonzo’s mother turned up and helped. Wondering about what my life had become, I drove back home feeling grim and flat, like a puppet with its strings cut. In an attempt to bat off a fresh wave of utter pointlessness, I took another shower, cracked open a cheeky beer, and resumed reading. Big mistake. Everything about Chester Phipps’s death bothered me.

In common with most ‘big men’, Phipps was into security. He had a couple of bodyguards with him at all times. He rarely drove, preferring a trusted driver. His food was checked. He never went anywhere without having the location swept for listening devices, weapons or explosives. A man rarely alone, the only exception was when he was screwing, which Phipps, again in common with the breed, did quite a lot. He oozed a rare, potent mix of sexuality and intelligence that women found bewitching. The fact he was also extremely dangerous added to the allure. Notwithstanding this, he always had a man posted outside the door of every place where he hung his hat. So how come he’d wound up alone in his car with a bullet in his temple? Surely, in the wake of Billy’s demise, a guy like Phipps would take special measures? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. In the old days, I’d have asked around, but that time was past and I couldn’t afford to take a risk. And that was the problem with my life. Deprived of danger, I ceased to be.

I made myself a sandwich and ate it while reading the business section. I washed up the plate, set it on the drainer and considered any number of tasks that could gainfully engage my time. Maybe I’d go for a walk, catch a film, prop up any one of a number of bars and play anonymous.

I did none of these things.

I picked up the phone and punched in McCallen’s number.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Are you in trouble?’

‘Part of the job description.’ Her flippant response did not answer my question. If she wanted me to play ball, she’d have to do better.

‘I can’t help if I don’t know what I’m dealing with exactly.’

Nothing gave. Maybe she was thinking. Maybe she was asleep. I tried again.

‘You implied that Lars was threatened. Like to explain?’

She paused, as if weighing up how much to divulge before taking the plunge. ‘He thought he was being followed and believed that his phone was tapped. Someone broke into his house in London.’

‘Little things.’ I hoped to get a lot more out of her now that we were safely separated by a telephone line.

‘I reckoned he was paranoid. It happens sometimes when assets lose their bottle.’

‘But he wasn’t.’

‘No,’ she said quietly.

‘Anything else you’d like to tell me?’ Confess to, admit to, and tell the truth about, I thought.

‘Someone tried to push him underneath a train on the Underground.’

Breath ripped out of my lungs. I wanted to ask her to repeat what she’d said, but I didn’t need to. I’d heard it right the first time. The train trick was the same method I’d used to kill Billy Squeeze. McCallen knew this. I thought she might openly say so. She didn’t. Was someone imitating my methods? Was I seeing patterns and connections that didn’t exist?

‘Did he see who it was?’

‘It happened too quickly. A commuter grabbed him and undoubtedly saved his life. It really put the wind up him.’

And me. This piece of news demanded a step change in my thinking. I wondered whether to tell McCallen about Chester Phipps. McCallen was still speaking.

‘Afterwards I couldn’t shake Lars off. He was becoming a liability.’

Hardly the odd phone call, I thought, remembering our previous conversation. ‘Remind me of the timeline again.’

‘From the end of January until a few days before he died.’ Which wasn’t what she’d originally told me. I almost missed what she said next because I was too wrapped up in the Billy death scenario. ‘We spoke often on the phone. I met him in person twice.’

‘Where?’

‘Remote locations. He insisted on it.’

‘You should have cut off all contact.’ Basic procedure.

‘Fortunately for me I did, which was why I didn’t keep the appointment.’

Something snagged inside me. ‘You were supposed to meet him on the day he died?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the New Forest?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Have you considered the possibility that Lars could have been faking it? You had no independent evidence that the threats to him were real.’

‘Correct.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘The post-mortem on Lars Pallenberg.’

‘What about it?’

‘Was there any reference to the amount of adrenalin in his system?’

‘No.’

Had there been, it would suggest that Lars had known his killer and knew what was about to take place. It indicated to me that Lars had no clue that he was about to be killed. It was all over and done with in moments, which was as it should be with a professional hit. There was an alternative scenario. A distant yet familiar sound, like the echo of ancient gunfire, rattled through my brain.

‘Do you think he deliberately set out to trap you?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. Either way, he was clearly deemed expendable.’

‘It explains why the killer took a heavy-duty weapon with him instead of a simple handgun.’

‘Because Lars was meant to be eliminated after I’d been taken care of.’

This meant McCallen was on someone’s death list, that her interest in her asset’s killer was of secondary importance. Her real concern stemmed from the danger to herself.

‘Do you have a file on Pallenberg – background, family ties, friends and so on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘Depends.’

Caught in the grind, I’d spoken before I’d had a proper chance to think through the full implications. ‘Can you get me a false passport?’

‘I can even arrange the flights.’

CHAPTER SIX

I flew to Berlin four days later.

After landing at Tempelhof I took a cab ride, courtesy of a Turkish driver who ran red lights and had a death wish, and booked into a modest hotel in Friedrichstrasse, close to Unter Den Linden. I’d changed my appearance by bleaching my dark hair blond and wearing a pair of fashionably oversized glasses with clear lenses. I wore a navy suit, shirt, no tie, and a wool blend overcoat with velvet revere collar favoured by bankers and high-end estate agents. Playing by Moscow Rules, the highest level of tradecraft, I checked the lobby to make sure that nobody struck a discordant note. It was just me and two receptionists – one male, one female.

The Israelis are the best in the business but I believed that, even if they cottoned on to my new whereabouts, I’d be long gone before they got a bead on me. At least that’s what I hoped. To be safe, once I’d entered my room, I checked it for listening devices and explosives, starting at the door, including the lock, and making a close examination of the carpet, ceiling, window and, Mossad’s speciality, the telephone. I did the same in the bathroom. Afterwards, I measured the distance from the second floor to the ground below and mapped out an escape route. If I ran into trouble on this excursion, there would be no help from Messrs Heckler & Koch. I was flying solo.

Satisfied with the room, I took out the file and recommitted to memory what passed for an obituary on Lars Pallenberg. I freely admit that he was not what I expected. For a start, he had blond hair and looked more like an economics lecturer than an artist. Fine-boned, he had blue eyes, even features and a reflective expression suggesting that he was a man of intelligence and given to introspection. I guessed he was a sensitive soul. Is this what had turned McCallen on? If so, it put me out of the running. Probably my height, around five eleven, Pallenberg did not look particularly fit or like the kind of guy who worked out. Standing still and lifting a paintbrush is not the same as moving fast and lifting a semi-automatic.

McCallen had also thoughtfully provided me with a rundown of Dieter Benz, Pallenberg’s old art school friend and right-wing agitator. Sleepy-eyed, with the dissolute appearance of a habitual drug user, his expression concealed ruthless intelligence. He’d been arrested countless times for racial abuse and incitement to violence against foreigners. This was the peripheral stuff. Security services suspected that he was plotting a campaign of terror, targets and locations unspecified. Reading his profile, it seemed to me that Benz had retro leanings, harking back to the 1970s and ‘golden age’ of the Baader-Meinhof group. I could see how men like him drew parallels. Replace the opposition to the war in Vietnam with the war in Afghanistan; disgust with rampant capitalism, evidenced by a number of spectacular bank raids at the time, with the current crisis in the banking system. Hatred of Jews was also on his agenda, but added to his hate-list were immigrants of any persuasion, and Muslims. Germany had done its fair share to offer sanctuary to others. It hadn’t always gone as smoothly as it might. The average German was sick of propping up sick European states so, for Benz, part of his pitch was an easy play to a disgruntled German electorate.

Once I’d got everything straight in my mind, I called Pallenberg’s grieving family. A woman, who I assumed was Gisela Pallenberg – Lars’s mother – answered the phone in German. I started off by asking whether she spoke English.

‘Ja, a little.’

‘My name is Stephen Porter. I knew Lars well.’

‘An English friend?’ Surprise, then hope, flared in her voice.

‘I’ve been travelling through Russia for the past few months and have only recently heard the news of his death.’

‘We are so terribly shocked. We still don’t really know what happened.’

‘Would it be possible for me to come and visit?’

‘You are here in Berlin?’

‘For a few days, yes.’

‘Then you must come. Can you visit tomorrow?’

‘Of course, what time?’

‘Wait one moment.’

I listened to a muffled exchange that grew in sound and clarity. A man came on the line, Werner Pallenberg, I guessed, his delivery gruff and final. ‘Mr Porter?’

‘Yes.’

‘My wife is mistaken. We have no wish to see you.’

‘But –’

‘That’s all we have to say. Goodbye.’

I don’t easily do ‘no’. Had Mrs Pallenberg opened her heart to me, I’d have respected the woman’s sensibilities and taken the next flight back. But she hadn’t. She’d been overruled.

The next morning I took breakfast in the hotel dining room and around ten o’clock stepped out onto the street and headed towards Unter den Linden under a chilly, two-tone sky. Like a greyhound released from its trap, I buzzed with excitement. It was good to be out and about in a city that was foreign, yet familiar to me, and I quickly made my way down what was arguably the most famous street in Berlin. Here, statues stared down from the tops of buildings like Roman gods watching over the mortals below. Heading east, I crossed over where the River Spree intersects and passed the Marienkirche, a lonely church overshadowed by its near neighbour, the Fernsehturm, or Television Tower, on my right.

Most of Berlin is clean and free from litter but there are odd pockets of resistance. Karl-Liebnecht-Strasse is a busy road flanked by large, unattractive grey buildings, like old containers rusting away, covered in graffiti and in the process of demolition. Whether it was the grim reminder of a city torn in two by checkpoints, Cold War politics and casual brutality, or the fact that the air temperature had dipped, I felt a sudden stutter of unease.

Stopping suddenly, as if I’d forgotten something, I twisted around, taking a long look back. A group of Chinese students, with a guide in tow, headed my way. Beyond, male and female pedestrians, young and old. Nobody looked shifty or out of place, or interested in me. No one had a suspect comma, or listening device in their ear, or talked into their cuff, or muttered to themselves or others. A glance at the road revealed nothing I didn’t already know. I could have put my anxiety down to a sudden attack of nerves. I’d been out of the game for over a year. I no longer carried. I was out of my comfort zone. But my instincts are strong and, for reasons I didn’t like to consider, my foe-detector was on high alert. Rattled, I headed straight to the nearest café.

It was dark, ratty and mostly empty. I took a table right at the back, near a fire exit, and with a good view of the door. In true Germanic fashion, a jolly, dark-haired waiter with a round face and excellent English appeared. I ordered coffee and cake and, under the guise of studying the menu, watched for anyone entering the premises. Apart from a young mother pushing a child in a buggy who came in a few moments later, the only customers were me and another guy finishing a meal. I started to chill and my order arrived.

‘There you go, sir. Are you visiting for the first time?’

‘No.’

‘You have business here?’

I glanced up, met the young waiter’s eye, and cast him the type of look that would silence a comedian on amphetamines. He got the message and scurried off.

The coffee was good – strong and bitter – the cake, which came in the form of a doughnut, less so. I ate, drank and thought about what had happened. Except, nothing had happened. I’d got spooked, that was all. My mind switched to McCallen. What exactly had she got me into?

It’s almost impossible to know a person completely. People are strange by definition. I knew bits about her, maybe more than some, her spy status making her remote and maddeningly unreachable. But one thing I knew for sure, McCallen always had a hidden agenda. She’d be looking at you one way with those big green eyes while her feet pointed in another direction. Had she been foolish enough to mention my leave of absence to someone she shouldn’t? Was she in cahoots with Mossad? If she saw a way to advance her career, she’d have no hesitation in shopping me.

I paid and, glancing both ways, set off. The two-tone sky had decided to snow and I rolled up the collar of my jacket.

Pallenberg’s grieving family lived in Prenzlauer Berg, a recently gentrified area of Berlin short on accommodation and big on bars and cafés. Artists and writers had once monopolised the area, but in the wake of redevelopment, the hard core had fled to other areas like Friedrichshain and the Turkish enclave of Kreuzberg. In recent years, Prenzlauer Berg had become a magnet for young professionals seduced by wide-open green spaces and contemporary architecture. Conversely, it had also been the target for a spate of arson attacks, a case of the ‘have-nots’ rising up against the ‘haves’, the latter eager to dance to a man like Dieter Benz’s anti-immigrant, racist tune.

My destination was a renovated factory divided into apartments. Crossing a park and threading my way through a couple of squares, I appreciated the appeal of the area. Wide streets, galleries and cafés gave the location an arty, open vibe, the odd building waiting patiently to be restored like a rotten tooth in a set of perfectly maintained molars.

Snow gusting around me, I hurried towards a glass-fronted building with loft-style architecture, including a community rooftop terrace and traditional Berlin balconies with granite windowsills. I imagined an interior of light oak parquet flooring, and white and chrome state of the art sanitary ware.

Inside the main entrance, I took an elevator to the third floor. I was hoping to get lucky and catch Mrs Pallenberg at home while her husband was at work. Stepping out, I almost collided with a young woman.

‘Sorry.’ With a heavy German accent, she spoke in English, which immediately got my attention. Small, petite, with big eyes the colour of tannin and a sweetly dimpled chin, she appraised me with a smile, as if she knew me. Did I have a label plastered on my forehead?

‘Should I know you?’ I said.

She flashed another smile. ‘You’re Stephen, aren’t you? Stephen Porter?’

‘Lars’s friend, yes.’ My mind teemed with possibilities, McCallen setting me up the clear favourite. Was it possible that this small creature in her pixie boots, layered clothing and suspiciously easy smile was about to take me out?

‘Mathilde Brommer,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped you’d show.’

I can usually cover my feelings well, but my guard was down. Call it stranger in a strange land syndrome. Mathilde glanced over her shoulder. ‘You’ll never get in. Werner is very protective of his wife. They’ve had a bad time with the press, you see.’

‘I understand, and Mr Pallenberg, is he at home now?’

‘Ja.’

‘Right,’ I said. Inside, I was uncertain. Outside, I maintained eye contact.

Mathilde tilted her head. Her shoulder-length wavy hair fell to one side, her exotic scent circling me like smoke around a fire. ‘I don’t remember Lars talking about you.’

‘We met in London.’

‘You’re an artist?’

‘I sell art. I’m a dealer.’

‘Then you must know Lorna Spencer, his agent.’

‘Of course.’ Lorna Spencer was the name assumed by McCallen. ‘Are you an artist too?’

The smile faded a little. ‘Yes, didn’t Lars tell you?’

‘I have a terrible memory,’ I said, apologetically. ‘I don’t remember him mentioning you.’

Pain invaded her pixie features. ‘We were engaged.’ She flushed deeply. ‘Didn’t you know he dumped me so that he could marry Lorna Spencer?’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Do you have time for lunch?’ It was the best I could come up with in the circumstances. Underneath, I was furious. McCallen had put my life at risk so that I could investigate her dead lover. Marriage, for Chrissakes. A huge part of me wanted to knock this business on the head and catch the next flight back.

‘Sure,’ she said.

Mathilde took me to a bar off Kollwitzplatz. Dark and cavernous, with orange and brown furnishings, it was populated by an eclectic crowd of students noisily playing ping-pong on an old table, ‘arty’ types and, as Mathilde described them, ‘anarcho-punks’. I must have been the oldest there. Techno music popped out of the speakers, not enough to deafen, just enough to annoy, but the beer on tap was good and I badly needed a drink. Mathilde ordered Augustiner, a beer brewed in Munich, and plates of garlic sausage with fried potatoes.

‘How long were you with Lars?’ I said.

‘We met when I was twenty. Love at first sight, or so I thought.’ She frowned and her eyes darkened.

‘Don’t let the break-up trash your memories.’

She flicked a sad, grateful little smile. ‘We moved in together after three months and for the next ten years were inseparable.’

‘Until his move to London?’

‘Ja.’

‘Which was?’

‘Three years ago. In the beginning, I’d fly back and forth, but he became evasive and secretive, which wasn’t like him at all. He was always so honest and open. I put it down to his increasing success and new circle of friends.’

‘He was hanging out with …’ I broke off, as if searching for the right description.

‘A lot of wealthy types with ambitious plans for him,’ Mathilde stepped in. ‘I knew straightaway that something was wrong.’

‘Because it was out of character?’

‘Totally. Lars has always been so grounded. He had nothing in common with those people.’

‘What about his friendship with Dieter Benz?’

Mathilde’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘What friendship? Lars told you about Dieter?’ She stared at me as if I’d suddenly found the ability to speak fluent German.

‘You knew him?’

‘Everyone knows him. Dieter was and always will be a creep.’

‘And a revolutionary, according to Lars.’

Mathilde’s face screwed up in disgust. ‘Dieter casts himself as a romantic freedom fighter, a nationalist. It is easy, is it not, in these uncertain times, to assume such roles?’

‘So why was Lars involved with Dieter?’

‘He wasn’t,’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘Lars loathed Dieter. He thought he was cunning and untrustworthy.’

‘Lars shared his radical ideas.’ I was running on fumes with this.

‘That’s crap. Lars didn’t have a political bone in his body.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

Mathilde looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and derision. ‘How long did you know him?’

I shrugged. It was a fair point. Silence opened up between us. It gave me time to think. I’d pushed her hard because this woman had known Lars well. She knew his beliefs and what he stood for. Lars would have to be highly motivated to take the type of risks McCallen demanded of him. Penetrating a right-wing group prone to violence led by someone like Benz required nerve and skill, and Lars didn’t sound the type or up to the mark. I wondered in fairly graphic detail what McCallen had done to corrupt and charm Lars into doing her dirty work.

Mathilde took a long drink of beer. Her hand shook and the bangles on her wrist rattled. She looked away then looked back, as if gathering herself.

The food arrived. Mathilde picked up a fork and speared a piece of sausage. ‘Gisela mentioned that you were in Russia when Lars was killed.’

I took a mouthful, chewed and swallowed. ‘I travel often to St Petersburg. I’m principally interested in iconic art, although I have a number of artists with whom I do business who paint other forms. They get a better price through me,’ I explained. ‘What type of art do you do?’

‘Conceptual.’ To me, this meant a pile of bricks, stuffed fish and dirty knickers. Mathilde rummaged through her bag and rooted out a typically arty business card and handed it to me. I made a play of studying it. ‘Different from Lars, then.’ I’d checked him out. He’d specialised in exquisite figurative work, women in all shapes and sizes, beautiful, some exotic, each oozing sexuality, stuff I could get my head around and wouldn’t mind hanging on my walls. I briefly wondered whether McCallen had posed for him.

A fleeting smile touched Mathilde’s lips. ‘He was extremely talented.’

I pocketed the card, left another pause, hoping that she would reveal a detail that would help clear the fog in my head. She didn’t. I continued to eat. The dish was flavoursome and earthy, like McCallen’s laugh. Hell, was I going to corner her when I got back.

Eventually, I rolled the conversation on once more. ‘You remain close to the Pallenbergs?’

‘I do.’ Her voice trailed. I could see that she remained deeply hurt by what had happened to her.

‘I’m sorry.’ And I genuinely was.

She shot me an angry glance. ‘You know the damn woman never even made it to his funeral?’ She meant McCallen.

‘I didn’t know that.’ It sounded thin. I knew it. She knew it. The smiley exterior slipped.

‘How well do you know Miss Spencer?’

‘I know her professionally, nothing more. She’d passed on several of Lars’s paintings to me. It’s how I originally met him.’

‘Which pieces of work?’ There was a suspicious light in her eyes. And she wasn’t buying Lars’s ‘caught in crossfire’ death any more than the rest of us. She wasn’t buying me either. I reeled off the titles itemised in the file.

‘She is who she says she is?’ Mathilde threw me a fierce look.

I blinked and remained impassive. ‘Who?’

‘Lorna Spencer.’

‘I don’t understand.’ My fork was poised mid-air as I gave my best impression of confusion. To be honest, it wasn’t much of a stretch.

‘She looks good on paper, but that’s it,’ Mathilde said with venom. ‘The art world is small. Nobody I know has ever heard of her.’

I forced a smile. ‘I assure you, her credentials are sound.’

Her eyes met mine. She didn’t say it but I knew what she was thinking: How good are yours? I leant towards her.

‘What do you think really happened to Lars?’

‘She bewitched him.’

I understood. I’d been fairly bewitched myself and that was dangerous. Emotions kill.

Mathilde looked around the bar, dropped her voice a note. ‘She got him involved in something, something that led to his murder,’ she hissed.

I put down my knife and fork. ‘That’s a fairly heavy statement.’

She smiled without warmth. ‘How else do you explain his death?’

‘He got unlucky. The banker was the prime target, I understand.’

She cast me a look that was cool and bitter. ‘Did you know that Lars was afraid for his life?’

‘No.’

‘Ach, of course, you were away.’

In spite of her German intonation, I detected sarcasm. ‘He spoke to you about it?’

She nodded. ‘None of it made sense. He claimed that someone had stolen stuff from his studio in Berlin and that he was being followed.’

‘Here?’

‘In London.’

‘Did he say who by?’

‘It was more a feeling he had.’ She pushed her plate away. She’d hardly touched the food. ‘One night he phoned and told me that someone had tried to kill him on the Underground. I wondered if he’d been smoking too much weed.’

So Lars wasn’t lying. I floated my next question as though it was an interesting hypothesis. ‘Do you think Benz is connected to his death?’

Shock flashed across her face. ‘Why must you persist with this …’ She broke off, searching for the word, ‘… this absurdity? You have an English saying, “thinking outside the box”. Lars was a man who thought creatively. Lars had no interest in politics. He found it a distraction. Art was everything to him. At least, it used to be,’ she said, with a sigh of unhappiness.

I finished my plate of food, drained my drink. ‘Do you know where I can find Dieter Benz?’

She flicked the fingers in a gesture of frustration

‘Please, Mathilde, I’d like to help you.’

‘Help me do what?’

‘Find Lars’s killer.’

She leant across the table. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Call it justice, a British sense of fair play. The police are looking in the wrong direction.’

‘I agree.’ She eyed me carefully for a moment then picked up the fork and idly pushed the congealed remains around the plate.

‘You can meet Dieter in person,’ she said with an empty smile. ‘He is holding a rally tomorrow morning in Alexanderplatz.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Benz had dreads and looked older in the flesh than his thirty-four years, even from a distance.

Bone-cold, I’d followed a procession of around four hundred people – young, middle-aged and old – from Alexanderplatz to the Brandenburg Gate. You didn’t have to speak German to understand what they were chanting. Many held ‘Pro-Deutschland’ banners, and anti-Muslim slogans with ‘Stop Islamiserung!’ One guy brandished what looked like a red traffic sign with a symbol of a mosque on it, crossed out in black. He had a big belly, white hair and venom in his eyes. I didn’t like these people. It seemed I was in good company. Most passers-by spurned offers of leaflets by screwing them up and dumping them on the road.

I clapped my gloved hands together and narrowed my gaze against a fine film of sleet. Up ahead a small platform had been erected and Benz, with a group of shaven-headed heavies in front of him, blasted away through a megaphone. To my British ears, he sounded unhinged, but the assembled seemed to like him – lots of grunts of approval, knowing nods and the odd cheer. This was no French affair, with water cannon and riot police and flying fists. Despite the verbal trash and racist views on offer, everyone was polite and well behaved, maybe because of the chill wind factor and a sky sheeting snow, or because cops in khaki lined the route. Having a deep-seated aversion to the law, I burrowed deeper into the crowd. I wasn’t happy. If anything kicked off, I’d be caught in the crush.

I was just mapping how I could creep closer to the action when I became acutely aware that the mood music had suddenly changed. Familiar with trouble, I knew how to read the signs. Benz’s diatribe had increased in volume. The cops, with their watchful eyes and neutral expressions, stirred as one. Mounted police and guys in black with white helmets and visors – the riot police – emerged out of nowhere. Police dogs, not in evidence before, barked with the type of intensity that says I am going to rip your head off. The crowd, which had been largely dormant, collectively woke up. It was positively tribal. I craned my neck. Other voices, other faces and bodies flooded in from Strasse des 17 Juni, ironically named after a bloody uprising, as a counter-demonstration of Turks and others took to the street. Fuck.

Riots have a peculiar kinetic energy all their own. Scuffles will often break out on the fringes of a big crowd and large groups will sheer off and clash head-on with others. But at its core, a big bunch of people throbs with accumulated heat and violence. In that dark second, I felt as if my life was in imminent danger.

In mindless confusion, we moved as one. The lucky ones got knocked and jostled; those who weren’t were done for. Staying upright was my main preoccupation as the baying crowd surged forward, funnelling in one ugly direction amid screams and shouts and the clatter of horses’ hooves, policeman shouting, helicopters circling.

Something hit me hard on the back of my head. My teeth rattled. Warm blood trickled down into my collar. A huge man with wide, terrified eyes gripped my elbow for balance, almost knocking me to the ground. Trapped, I needed to escape and escape quickly, but I could hardly breathe for people, moving human flesh and the collective body odour of fear. Any attempt to push my way through, to catch the slipstream, seemed doomed. Instead, I bowled along, letting the flow take me, like an uprooted tree caught in a river torrent.

People went down. Other people trampled them, their handbags and footwear scattered like unspent grenades. I grabbed a young guy who’d lost his footing, set him straight and kept him moving, one fluid motion. The noise was deafening. Terror stalked the streets, ugly and loud.

I estimated that at any moment now CS gas would make an entrance. Bang on cue, my eyes burned with stinging heat. I was breathing in tight bursts, wheezing and coughing as an acrid cloud of tear gas burst above our heads. By some miracle, I kept in motion, with no idea where I was heading. It was like being trapped in a smoke-filled room with all your bearings gone.

Snow fell in big heavy flakes. It was treacherous under foot. The looks on people’s faces reminded me of one of those weird paintings of chaos by Bosch or Blake. I couldn’t work out how this would end, only that there would be a heavy price to pay in blood and injury. I didn’t know whether German police had adopted the very British habit of ‘kettling’. I didn’t know if there was method in the madness. All I knew was that I was not in control, and for a man accustomed to calling the shots – no pun intended – this was bad news.

Looking up, I caught sight of the pentagonal-shaped exterior of the Philharmonic and Chamber Music Hall. We were moving west, towards Potsdamer Platz. Then, without warning, the depth of people abruptly thinned, and I and another guy made a break for it, popping to the surface after being caught in the deep. It felt good. I felt loose and free. As I looked about me, a thin malicious whistle of cold air passed by my left ear, followed by a dull thud.

I glanced down. Red so bright that it hurt my eyes stained the fallen snow. The guy next to me was on the ground, sprawled in a way I instantly recognised. Eyes open. Body twisted. Blood spreading out and pooled around his head from where a bullet had passed through the base of his skull.

A bullet meant for me.

Fear briefly stammered in my chest. Fear is good. It proves you’re not stupid. Screams and shouts sliced through the cold. The cute move would mean another gunman up ahead, the same way a bomber sets off a secondary device to catch those fleeing the first blast. I didn’t waste time searching for the shooter. I didn’t wait for the cops. I didn’t even pause to breathe.

I ran.

CHAPTER NINE

I didn’t return to the hotel. It took me two hours to fight my way through a lockdown of the city centre and bribe a taxi driver to drive with all speed to the airport. He could run as many red lights as he wished.

Lady Luck on my side, I caught the next flight to Bristol. I’d have gladly flown to anywhere in the British Isles. As certain of the intentions of my fellow passengers as I could be, I settled back in my seat, a large gin and tonic to hand, my brain hissing with numerous possibilities.

These were: McCallen had tipped off Mossad; McCallen, through her connections, had unwittingly turned the spotlight on me; McCallen, for reasons best known to her, had me targeted deliberately; Mathilde had been got at, either by Benz or persons unknown, or someone from my past had taken an opportunistic pot shot.

I took a deep drink, savoured the bite of gin at the back of my throat and swallowed. Mossad didn’t stack up for one blindingly good reason. They don’t miss. Added to this, the technique was crass. They’d never take such a risk in a public place, with the possibility of innocent casualties. If they wanted me removed, it would be my body lying in the dirt, thanks to a poisoned hypodermic, or another less high-vis method.

This did not let McCallen off the hook. She’d got me into this imbroglio in the same way she’d entangled Lars Pallenberg. Whether or not she’d deliberately set me up I didn’t know. Trust was in short supply where I came from. My pathological distrust of others had saved my life on more than one occasion. I wanted to believe McCallen for all the obvious reasons, but I couldn’t swear on my heart that she was worthy of it, and I was still angry with her for deceiving me about her relationship with Pallenberg. A guy doesn’t propose to a woman with whom he hasn’t had a close and intimate relationship, especially when he’s ditching the girl he was supposed to marry. Neither does he set her up to be killed, I had to concede.

Unless it was part of a double-cross.

I took another huge gulp of gin. Someone could have seen me with Mathilde, perhaps at the restaurant, and made the connection. The thought of her being threatened clawed at my gut. I supposed it was possible she could have stage-managed my removal, but she’d had little time to make the necessary arrangements and her exact motivation eluded me.

I stared out of the window at the grey light, its impenetrability mirroring the opaque nature of McCallen’s agenda. Unable to break through, I set it aside and, out of professional interest, concentrated on the method of the most recent attempted hit on me.

On the surface, it appeared opportunistic – reckless even – but it could have also been a carefully planned operation, the chaos of the demonstration a cover for cold-blooded murder. Clearly, the killer had estimated his chances and thought he could pull it off. Killing in a crowd wasn’t a method I favoured, the one exception a nightclub hit, but the weapon for me was always a ring-gun. It meant you had to get up close and personal, preferably with your ring finger placed hard against the base of the skull of the intended target. It meant there was no room for error. It meant you did not jeopardise the lives of others. A shot from a gun would never figure as an option, the possibility of hitting the wrong individual – as had happened in Berlin – too great.

Or, at least, that’s what I believed had happened.

In a more relaxed frame of mind, I had to admit that the guy standing next to me could have been the intended victim. Maybe he had a dirty past, links to a criminal network, had failed to pay a debt, crossed someone up … the list was endless.

Who was I kidding?

All roads led back to McCallen. She featured in three of my five possibilities, however outlandish those possibilities were. Whether she was guilty or not, she knew an awful lot more than she had been willing to tell me. As soon as I got back to safety, I intended to find out precisely what that was.

* * *

Customs waved me through without a hitch and I picked up the car and travelled back to the place I now called home. It was dark and I was tired, the perfect set of circumstances to get you slotted. To be on the safe side, I checked before entry and on entry. I double-checked the downstairs basement room that doubled as an office and spare room for stores and laundry, the mid-floor sitting room cum dining room and the kitchen and the upper storey bedrooms, two mid-size, one large enough to imprison an unwelcome guest. Next, I showered, fixed myself something to eat and caught News 24. It emerged that the German national killed in Berlin was a train driver. The Germans were keeping schtum, but the investigation, for obvious reasons, was heading in a political, right wing, nationalist direction. Which suited me. It also suited the killer.

Within minutes, my mobile phone rang. It was McCallen.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Never better.’

‘The guy shot in Berlin –’

‘What of it?’

‘Were you there?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Shootings in broad daylight on a Berlin street are rare.’

‘You think I’m responsible?’

‘No,’ she said, steely. ‘I simply thought you might be following up the Benz connection.’

McCallen never ‘simply’ thought anything. ‘Did you now?’

‘Why are you so pissed off?’

‘I was an inch from having a hole blasted through my brain, and it’s your fault that I came here in the first place.’ I wasn’t going to tell her that I was sitting at home on my comfortable leather sofa, feet up, with a beer. If she were as good at her job as I knew her to be, she’d already have checked the airport manifests.

‘You can’t think I set you up.’

‘I can think what I like.’

‘Hex, for God’s sake. Look, where are you exactly?’

‘You think I’m stupid as well as reckless?’

She let her voice drop to a sexy growl. ‘I have never thought you stupid.’

Wise woman. I remained impervious to her flattery.

‘Can we meet?’ she said.

‘I think we should.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow morning in Cheltenham.’

She was silent a moment, obviously working out how I could so confidently announce that I’d be happy to see her so soon in the UK.

‘The Queen’s, for coffee?’ she said.

One of the oldest and swankiest establishments in town, it overlooked Imperial Gardens and the Promenade and had recently undergone a makeover. Seemed an odd choice to me. She must have picked up on my reluctance. She attempted to persuade me.

‘All spies meet in hotels.’

I visualised her arching a teasing eyebrow. ‘I’m not a spy.’ I didn’t care for the hotel idea. In the serene splendour of the Queen’s, it would be impossible to raise my voice, threaten, get down and dirty or extract the kind of answers I was looking for. I’d probably break fine china. ‘St Mary and Matthew’s church, town centre, ten o’clock.’ Before she could respond, I cut the call and switched off my phone.

CHAPTER TEN

Winter fog like liquid nitrogen engulfed the streets. I offered a silent prayer to St Barbara, patron saint for ‘the protection against harm’ and glided across town, safe in the knowledge that if I couldn’t see more than a metre ahead, neither could I be seen.

St Mary and Matthew’s can be approached from three separate directions. In the middle of a more downmarket side of town and a thoroughfare for occasional shoppers and those en route to work, its location always struck me as unusual. I liked it because of its stillness. I’d chosen it because it was a good place to have the type of conversation I had in mind.

I arrived early. I did not do the obvious and wait in the porch. I did not skulk among the graves. I walked around to a set of steps that led down to the padlocked door of what I believed was a crypt. It was sheltered, out of the way and private. I waited, my back against wood, hands deep in my pockets. Mist embraced my cheeks. McCallen arrived a few minutes later and peered over the railings.

‘What are you doing down there?’

‘Care to join me?’

She let out a big indulgent sigh and stomped down the stone steps and into the confined space. I moved aside so that she could stand underneath an arched entrance that provided her with about a half-brick’s worth of shelter. This being nothing more than a ruse to get her where I wanted her, I pounced, my gloved hands flat against the door on either side of her shoulders, my body pinning hers – no escape. She let out gasp of alarm when she saw the cold expression in my eyes.

‘Back off,’ she hissed.

‘Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on.’

When McCallen is on the spot she makes a sound: tsk.

‘Did you tip off Mossad?’ Mossad was not involved, but I wanted to see how McCallen would react.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘How do you explain what happened in Berlin?’

‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘Yes, you do. Someone tried to kill me and missed.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘Unless you can tell me that the guy who took a bullet had a criminal past, or was one of yours, I can.’

She didn’t say a word, just stared at me.

‘He was clean, wasn’t he?’ I said.

‘It’s early days, but there’s nothing to suggest he had dodgy connections.’

‘So, again, why would someone take such a risk?’ From left field, it occurred to me, and not for the first time, that the hit man was a beginner, making mistakes while learning his craft. Good. Errors cost lives, starting with his.

She raised her eyes heavenwards as if I were being particularly dim. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

She stamped one foot. ‘There are any number of people who’d like to see you dead.’

True. ‘Are you one of them?’

‘No.’

‘So who did you tip off?’

She threw me an empty smile. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why would I?’

‘To further your career.’

Her eyes turned a deadly venomous green. ‘You think that of me?’

‘I do.’

She emitted a breath of cold air. Colour spotted her cheeks. She was angry, all right.

‘I came to you with one purpose in mind, to find out who threatened and killed Lars.’

‘You cynically risked my neck because you cut corners and your boyfriend got offed.’

‘He was not my boyfriend and that’s not true.’

‘You didn’t risk my neck, or he’s not your boyfriend?’ I glowered. ‘I met Mathilde Brommer, McCallen. I know exactly how close you got to Lars. He was going to marry you.’ I had not intended to say this. Her eyes widened. She seemed genuinely shaken. ‘Well?’ I said.

Recovering herself with speed, she threw me a look as fierce as a Russian babushka from Siberia. ‘I never promised to marry Lars. He was not my boyfriend.’

‘So you keep saying, but you did seduce him, right?’

‘Not in the way you mean.’

I bit back a dark smile. ‘Is there another way?’

‘It’s not –’

‘You stole him from a girl he’d loved for more than a decade.’

‘Not like you to be romantic. Come to think of it, why are you so bothered?’

‘Because what you did stinks.’

McCallen gave a dry laugh. ‘Pretty rich coming from a contract killer.’

‘A former contract killer,’ I reminded her.

She pursed her lips as though it made no difference. So much for her vote of confidence about my powers of redemption.

‘He was a grown-up,’ she said. ‘Lars could make up his own mind.’

‘So you don’t deny it?’

‘I’m not answerable to you.’ Her eyes locked with mine.

‘Do you use every man you meet?’

She wriggled free and punched me hard in the chest. The blow would have rocked most men. It didn’t work but it did succeed in making me even angrier than I already was. My life had been trundling along quite nicely, if a little uneventfully, until McCallen showed up.

‘All in the line of duty, was it?’ In the absence of a reply, I launched another accusation. ‘You’re a damn liar.’

‘It’s what I’m paid for.’ She stared at me with a get over it expression.

‘So what’s the real story?’

A pulse ticked in her neck. ‘Someone is out to get me.’

‘You already said.’

‘And out to get you.’

‘Old news.’

‘After Lars was killed I received a phone call at my home address.’

This got my attention. ‘From whom?’

‘The voice was distorted.’

‘And?’

‘He said that Lars had been killed as payback.’

‘Payback for what?’

‘Billy Squeeze.’ My mind flashed to Chester Phipps.

‘You said “He”.’

‘Yes.’ She shook her head, as though I simply wasn’t getting it. ‘Billy Squeeze made the call.’

I let out a dry, cynical laugh. ‘Ridiculous. Billy’s dead. I killed him.’

‘Are you certain?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘If you have to lie, at least make it a good one,’ I said.

‘I’m not lying.’

‘So all the stuff about Lars and his right-wing connections was an elaborate smokescreen?’

‘Not at all.’ She looked most put out.

When I spoke next my voice was clipped. ‘Lars had no interest in Benz. In fact he loathed the man. Lars stood about as much chance of penetrating his outfit as me running for Parliament.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Which was why I finally decided he’d be no good for the job.’

‘Was that after you’d slept with him or before?’

She issued another cold, sullen look. No way was she getting away with silence. I’d drag it out of her if I had to. ‘No matter,’ I said. ‘And next you dispensed with his services?’

‘Correct.’

‘But by then he was in love with you.’

‘It happens.’

‘Really?’

She ignored my question.

‘Whatever you asked the poor guy to do, he did because of you.’ The irony that I’d also risked exposure for McCallen did not escape me. ‘If anyone got him killed, you did.’

She glanced down, chewed her lip. The fabric of her jacket shivered. ‘His death,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘the fact that Lars had begged to meet me on the day he died made me less certain about him. I wondered if I’d missed something. I thought he might have been compromised, or that I’d read him wrong.’

‘Which was why you dragged me into it – to find out.’

‘Yes.’

Except I had discovered nothing new. In truth, I hadn’t been in Berlin long enough to check Lars out, let alone Benz. ‘You rinsed me.’

‘I did not.’

‘And now you’re switching your story.’

‘I am not switching my story.’

‘Of course not, you’ve just dragged Billy back from the dead for a little local colour.’

‘For God’s sake, I –’

‘Why didn’t you mention Billy before?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

‘Because first I needed to be sure about Lars.’

‘It didn’t occur to you that you were putting me in danger?’

‘You’re a big boy who can take care of himself.’ She flashed a smile in a vain attempt to lighten the mood. I wasn’t buying into it.

‘This is what I think.’ I poked her hard in the chest. ‘You’re feeding me titbits to see how much I swallow.’

The spots of colour on her cheek flamed crimson. I straightened up. ‘You know what? I don’t trust you. I don’t believe you and you can go to hell.’

She shouted something after me, but I was already up the steps, crossing the graveyard, back towards Henrietta Street. There was no use denying it. Like a fond greeting wrapped in barbed wire, McCallen was lethal to my physical and mental health and well-being. What angered me most was that I’d fallen for it.

Fact: by the time Billy Squeeze was exposed as a genocidal maniac, he had not a single friend left to defend him, nobody from whom to call in favours, no one who would give him sanctuary. Many rejoiced when he fell from grace, his reign of terror over, his ‘manor’ already carved up by others on the make. Nobody would seek revenge on his behalf now. Not the wife who knew nothing of his extraneous activities, not his three daughters, all of whom were in their mid-teens.

As for surviving the ‘accident’, I’d witnessed the fear in his eyes, the trapped scream in his voice, watched him tumble onto the tracks, his bones crushed beneath a train.

Billy Squeeze was dead. No doubt about it. Only one question remained: who had tried to kill me?

CHAPTER TWELVE

In a strange mood, I headed out that evening. I wanted booze. I wanted excitement.

I didn’t enjoy being shot at, but my brief flirtation with danger had definitely whetted my appetite for adventure. It put me in a fix.

Seeing the evil of my ways, I’d done as much as I could to reinstate my old identity, the one I’d had before my life went bad. I was still struggling, feeling my way. I wasn’t really certain who I was, but I’d been making progress. I now felt like a drunk who’s fallen off the wagon.

After trawling a couple of bars in Montpellier, I made my way down the Promenade and into Cheltenham central. My destination was Coco’s Beach Bar in Cambray Place where they made the meanest cocktail in town.

The interior is like a ghost train ride meets Malibu. Sand and thatched huts made from straw at the entrance and, inside, double leather seats in near darkness. Behind the illuminated bar, a full-size screen of beautiful girls on white-sand beaches playing volleyball and surfing waves. There are guys too, but they didn’t interest me.

I took a high stool at the corner of the bar and ordered a Manhattan from a young guy who had a degree in marine biology and passion for bourbon. I watched in fascination as, with expert skill, he poured and crushed, sliced and shook, and presented me with my chosen poison with all the flair of an illusionist. Ten pounds’ worth of luxury and it tasted terrific. We exchanged a couple of remarks, nothing personal, and he moved off to weave his magic on the next customer. I took up my favourite occupation – people watching.

The clientele was varied: young professionals, older groups having a sharpener before dinner, guys who’d got paid and wanted to spend, businessmen hoping to pick up a slice of glamour. A group of girls wandered in and ordered a couple of rounds of Cosmopolitans, stoking up before hitting the nightlife. Me, I sat and sipped and kept my eye on the entrance. If someone had taken a pop at me they could attempt the same thing again.

As I was about to order another drink, a woman with lustrous long black hair and dark exotic features, hinting at either Spanish or maybe Jewish blood, sashayed in. She looked like a model or an actress. Like a collective call of the wild, every red-blooded male was instantly transfixed and I was one of them. Luckily for me, she took the only available bar stool – next to mine.

She spoke softly to the barman. ‘I’d like a classic champagne cocktail.’

I listened hard, caught the strong French accent. The guy next to her, sleazy-looking with pouched skin, spiked gelled hair and a seasoned boozer’s complexion, instantly rolled out a wad of notes and offered to pay for her drink.

‘That’s so kind, thank you, but no,’ she said with a cool smile.

‘Maybe you’d like to share mine,’ Mr Lonely and Loaded insisted. ‘Two straws, please,’ he told the bartender.

‘I don’t wish to be rude,’ she said, ‘but I don’t accept drinks from strangers.’

With a big sweep of her slender shoulders, she turned towards me. I smiled. She smiled back. Mesmerising. It was hard not to be captivated by the curve of her eyebrows, sculpted cheekbones, espresso-coloured eyes and skin the colour of warm treacle. As she crossed her long legs, her coat fell open, revealing a short crimson dress with ruched sleeves, nipped in at the waist with a leather belt. Breasts high and firm. Her shoes were velvet, strapped around the ankles, with peep-toes and deep crimson-painted nails to match. Her perfume, which I guessed was Hermès, was floral with underlying notes of musk, amber and cypress. Everything about her shrieked class and wealth. Had she been a brand of cigarette she’d have been Sobranie. I wondered who she was and what she did. Could have been a lawyer. Could have been a high-end escort. Could have been a whore. Somehow, I didn’t think so. Wasn’t sure I even cared.

I took a drink. She did the same. When her knee brushed mine I did not move away. As I smoothed an imaginary crease from my trousers, she ran her long ring-less fingers over the satin of her dress. I ordered another Manhattan. She ordered another champagne cocktail. When I drained my drink, she finished hers. Not a word passed between us. As I stood up to leave she slipped off the bar stool, looked me dead in the eye, arched an eyebrow, and flashed the most seductive and inviting smile. There was enough electricity generated between us to power the grid.

I followed her out, slipped into step beside her, walking close, matching her long strides with my own as she headed right then left. It flashed through my mind that she was an elaborate form of honey trap. She could be a killer or an accomplice. It was time for a reality check. She was not luring me to a dark alley, away from human heat. We were at the epicentre of town with cops, clubbers, kids out to have a good time and revellers, and we were one of them. It didn’t negate the possibility of danger. I remembered the crowd in Berlin. At that moment I was willing to take the risk. I wanted it and needed it.

We hit Regent Street and a club that I’d never been to before. I paid the entrance fee, handed over our coats, and let her take me by the hand and lead me to the second floor. Within seconds, we were enveloped by the noise of pulsating music and by dozens of people dancing. It felt as if my ears might bleed.

Arms raised, snake hips twisting, her fabulous hair shimmering under the lights, my girl danced like a professional, the pace frantic and feverish. I’m not bad, but next to her, I made a clumsy dancing partner. Not that I cared. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And I wasn’t the only one. It had been a long time since I’d been in a public place where half the men lusted after the woman I was with.

Wordlessly, after an hour or so, we made for the bar, ordered water and more alcohol, and danced some more. Later, we broke out onto the street. At around two-thirty in the morning, there were not so many people about, but enough cops and paddy wagons to ensure my personal security. We crossed a square flanked by shops and silent cafés. I didn’t know whether we were heading to her place, whether I should take her to the empty apartment intended for the fictitious Miss Armstrong, aka McCallen, or what exactly my girl for the night had in mind. I could only hope. Silence was like static. At any moment it could charge and burst into flame.

Impulsively, she grabbed my arm, pulled me into the entrance of a big department store and pushed me up against the closed double doors. Most would surrender there and then. I caught both her wrists in one hand, forced them down, negating any possibility that she might try something nasty. A pure gasp of pleasure broke from her open mouth. She moved in close, breasts swollen against my chest. It would be fair to say that she fell upon me. What happened next was a blur of bruised limbs, torn clothing, my fingers in her hair, in her cunt, her lips on my mouth and then my cock.

I knew we should stop. At any moment someone could see us. I wasn’t even sure whether what she was doing classed as an act of public indecency. It felt raw and dirty at the same time as highly sensuous. I couldn’t take my eyes off her bobbing mane of long black hair, the smell of her perfume, the way in which this wonderfully sophisticated and glamorous woman got my rocks off. Scary as hell, it was like keeping a foot hard down on the accelerator of a Lamborghini as it reached two hundred miles an hour. Jesus.

We broke away, panting, a fine film of perspiration coating our skin. I loved every feral moment. The next I knew, she was walking away with long strides. I called after her.

‘I don’t even know your name.’

‘In your pocket.’

Baffled, I slipped my hand into my coat and felt something the size of a credit card inside. Pulling it out, it said: ‘Simone Fabron at Bagatelle’. Underneath was an image of the board game of the same name and a telephone number.

Fuck, I’d had a free blowjob from a high-class hooker. Foolish, for sure, but I needed her and knew I had to see her again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I slept the sleep of the satiated and woke around ten. Checking my phone, I had a missed call from McCallen. Tough. McCallen and her problems were like a bad, distant memory.

I went to my local leisure centre, spent an hour working up a sweat in the gym followed by a shower and fifty lengths’ front crawl in the two-thirds Olympic-size pool. In spite of my best efforts, my savage night on the town had left me needing more. I couldn’t stop thinking about Simone. She was in my hair and on my skin. I had taken what was on offer and I wanted her.

After a meeting with Greg, a builder I regularly used, to discuss a house I was renovating, I took out the card and called her. I didn’t tell her my name. I cut straight to the chase.

‘Where are you?’

‘At my office.’

Busy woman. Working by day, pleasuring by night. Something in the back of my brain dinged a warning. ‘That’s a pity. I’d love to see you.’

‘No problem. Drop in.’

‘Where?’

She gave the name of a café I knew well in the Suffolks. A popular hangout for poets and arty types, it served great coffee but without the high price tag.

It took me eight minutes to walk there. Simone sat facing the window, laptop open and latte at the ready. She glanced up as I walked in, her lips curling, kittenish with pleasure. I kissed her once on the cheek and sat down. Wearing a black roll-neck sweater, soft tan leather trousers and boots, and little make-up, she looked more demure than the night before, yet still retained a sexy aura of mystery. Automatically, my brain flashed to her going down on me in a public place.

‘Do you want a top-up?’ I said, obliterating the thought.

‘That would be good, thank you.’

‘Same again?’

‘Whatever you are having.’

I ordered a two-shot Americano with hot milk for me and another for Simone and paid.

‘What are you doing?’ I glanced over her shoulder as I squeezed past and sat down.

‘Checking on the details of a party I’m organising.’

‘Right,’ I said, unenlightened.

‘I’m a party planner,’ she explained with another cute smile. ‘Among other things.’

I met her eye and returned the smile, a moment of conspiracy between us. She stretched across and pressed an index finger to my lips. ‘Not as you think.’

‘No?’ I held her gaze.

‘I also get paid for life coaching, fashion and make-up advice.’

‘Online?’

‘It’s where I exist.’ She looked around her. ‘This is my office.’

I scratched my head. It was a different world to me. ‘You come here every day?’

‘Non, I have many offices, many homes. Everything I have I can pack into a suitcase.’

Something we once shared in common, I realised to my surprise. ‘You have to be the first woman I’ve ever met with such a minimalist approach to life.’

At this she smiled, displaying a perfect row of even teeth. ‘I rent a room where I store a limited amount of possessions,’ she confessed. ‘But, yes, I like travelling light. I like being able to move around at a moment’s notice. Cheltenham today – London, Rome or New York tomorrow.’

‘Not Paris?’

‘And Paris.’

I imagined gatherings of wealthy playboy types, live bands, exotic food and expensive alcohol. So that’s how she’d learnt to dance so expertly. Bagatelle, I thought. It was all falling into place.

‘And what do you do when you’re not travelling and working?’

‘Have fun.’ She issued another knock-’em-dead smile. ‘I ski when I can. I enjoy tennis and polo.’

‘Watching or taking part?’

She leant towards me, ran a fingernail lightly over my hand. ‘Playing tennis, watching polo.’ She looked at me so seductively I was in danger of dragging her across the table and doing her there.

‘And you,’ she said, drawing away a little. ‘Tell me who you are and what you do.’

I kept it simple. Told her my new name, my new line of work and nothing of my past. As far as Simone was concerned, I was Joe Nathan, local boy made good. Not keen to dwell on this, I changed the subject.

‘So this party, who is it for?’

‘No one and everyone.’ She smiled, definitely playing with me.

I scratched my chin. ‘Is Bagatelle a brand name, or what?’

She waited a beat while a guy delivered the coffee. I added milk and waited for mine to cool.

‘Bagatelle is a membership-only party site. Potential members must be between eighteen and forty-eight and apply online with a photograph. Only the beautiful are allowed to join.’

I muted my natural response, one of surprise.

‘What do you charge?’

‘£120 per single, £200 per couple, or there’s a gold membership at £1,500 a year.’

Seemed steep to me. ‘How many people on your books?

‘I have around 20,000 female members.’

‘And men?’

She shook her head.

‘What? Parties exclusively for women? Isn’t that a high-end form of networking? Sounds dull.’ And definitely not a label I’d attach to Simone.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You think?’

Somewhere I’d missed the point. Before I could ask another question, she said: ‘Would you like to come as my guest this evening?’

I was dubious. I’d wanted Simone to myself. I’d hoped for an evening out followed by an intimate night in. The thought of sharing her with a hundred other females held no appeal. ‘The only male?’ I didn’t know where this was leading. It seemed that with Simone all things were complex.

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘You do not understand. Men cannot be members but that doesn’t mean they cannot attend. They may come but only if invited.’

At this I pulled a face. ‘Isn’t that sexist?’

Simone gave what could best be described as a Gallic shrug. ‘Those are the rules.’

‘Any others I should know about?’

‘You may only watch. You must not touch or join in unless asked.’

I’d like to think I maintained a cool exterior. Secretly, I was fascinated. With Simone, I felt as if I’d met my match. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘What time do I have to be there?’

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