A Deadly Trade
E. V. SEYMOUR

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Copyright

Killer Reads

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Cutting Edge Press 2013

This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Eve Seymour 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

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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.

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ISBN: 9780008271527

Ebook Edition © November 2017

Version 2017-09-21

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by E. V. Seymour

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Female blowflies can scent the moment of death. I don’t understand how this works. But like the blowfly, I had a premonition that the woman I’d come to kill was already dead. I sensed it from the moment I slipped into the darkened room.

Yet I couldn’t be certain.

Senses alive, I crossed the floor without sound. Silence is important in this wicked game. And preparation. I’d memorised the precise location of the wardrobe and dressing table and the rocking chair that crouched in the corner. I’d charted the distance from the doorway to the bed: four point eight seven metres. A man my height and build with a smooth gait and a size eight shoe should cover it in less than six seconds. Basic law of motion. I had no fear of interruption. On entry I’d double-locked the front door.

The room was November cold. I could smell booze, brandy at a guess, the fainter scent of expensive perfume almost entirely smothered. When watching her I’d noticed the target appreciated expensive clothes, good quality shoes. She was particularly fond of a charcoal-coloured leather jacket. Personally I never wear leather for a job. It makes too much noise. I’m a clean, crisply ironed open neck dress-shirt with jeans and loafers kind of guy. When flush I buy my suits from Cad and the Dandy, Canary Wharf.

She lay on her back, one limp arm hanging down. Light from a fading four o’clock moon illuminated her face, neck and the fleshy slope of her shoulders. I leaned over – my eyes are pretty quick at adjusting to night vision – and stretched out a hand towards her, the same hand that would have smothered and suffocated and extinguished life. The cool skin felt inert against the latex of the surgical glove. No breath. No movement. No pulse.

Did I feel cheated? No. Was I angry? No way. I was confused and bunched up with alarm. I had been sent to kill her. Chances were so had someone else. And maybe they’d come for the same reason. Not easily fazed, something coiled slowly in the pit of my stomach.

I crouched down beside her. In death she neither looked serene nor at peace. Her mouth was ajar as if she were mid-snore. Marionette lines ran from each corner to her chin like two deep incisions. The blonde hair splayed across the pillow, dark at the roots, indicated a woman who once cared about her appearance but had lost interest. To establish the rigidity of her flesh, I touched her mouth and jaw. There was some stiffness but not much. There were no visible signs of violence that I could see. No vomit or bruises. No broken nails. No lacerations. I suppressed an involuntary shudder, an earlier memory threatening to erupt. This was now, I reminded myself, not then, not with the blood on the wall and…

Part of me wondered if by strange coincidence she’d died from natural causes. Unusual, not impossible, but as a general rule people in middle age don’t succumb with the same unexpected haste as those in the first flush of fickle youth. There was, of course, another possibility.

I took out a pocket torch, slid open the drawer of the bedside table and found a pack of Temazepam. Commonly used to treat those with a history of severe depression, the pills are seldom prescribed for insomnia although many insomniacs take them. Habit-forming and potentially dangerous when mixed in large enough quantities with alcohol and other medications they can kill you. Had she taken her own life? I checked out the blister pack and saw that only three were missing. Not suicide then.

A glance at my watch told me that ninety-five seconds had passed, eighty-five to go. Ideally, I like to be in and out within three minutes.

Moving noiselessly across the floor, I glided out onto the thickly carpeted landing and headed for the study. Ranks of laptops and a high-security computer, massive and squat, glowered accusingly as I sped past. The intelligence stated that the safe, concealed by a rug, was set into the floor at the back of the room. As I approached the combination numbers clattered through my brain like windows in a fruit machine. It would take twenty seconds to open, leaving a little over a minute to steal the portable hard drive and escape. With fingers pumping like a honky-tonk pianist, the door opened and I reached in and connected with empty space. I peered inside, shone the torch around.

Nothing.

Then it hit me; this was no ordinary killing. Anyone can commit murder, but to fake death, to make it look like natural causes, requires skill and subtlety. Whoever had carried it out was a professional assassin, a class act, someone like me.

Footsteps.

Retreating into the shadows behind the now open door, I slowed my breathing, listened hard. This was not part of the plan. But the plan was already fucked. Anything could happen. In readiness I took out the length of cord carried in my jacket pocket for emergencies.

Then I heard the sound of singing, low and haunting, like a chant.

It was so unexpected, so out of key with the situation, my mouth dried as though I’d swallowed coffee grinds. Stranger still, the quiet desperation of the lyrics coupled with the singsong melody awoke sleeping and painful memories of my mother. At that moment it felt as if her ghost were right beside me. But this was not my mother’s voice, not even a woman’s.

The singing stopped. So did the footsteps. I held my breath. I could almost hear the brain of the person less than a metre away making the calculations: door open, rug askew, safe open, trouble.

The light went on. On reflex, my hands flew up, each end of the cord coiled around fists prepared to viper-strike. Raw adrenalin spurted through my veins as the figure shambled into the room. It gave me a couple of seconds to observe the back of my quarry: male, around five nine, a couple of inches shorter than me, wearing a denim jacket, skinny jeans hanging low and exposing the top of the boxers beneath, trainers. I lunged. He turned. Christ.

Pale blue eyes stared out of a long-jawed and heavy-lidded face that had only recently made the transition to manhood. His hair was a mess of bleached blonde over brown. In that split-second I recognised that he was his mother’s son.

He gaped, managed to eject one word. ‘What?’

Instinct told me to kill him. No pointing fingers. No witness. No loose ends. I took a single, silent step forward.

His eyes were wide now, pained, the knuckles on his clenched hands white and shiny. He was probably working out that his mother was either dead or in mortal danger. Suddenly all the dusty years between the boy I was and the man I am now faded away. It was as if the lad had grabbed hold of my sleeve and, against my will, yanked me back to a darker and unholy time. Memories of old grief, misery, rage and helplessness, the seeds for transforming me from an ordinary teenager into a professional killer, swamped me.

‘Who sent you?’ He hissed.

I blinked, confused, the question odd in the context.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ Sweat beaded his top lip. His wild eyes flicked from me to the open door and back again.

My answer should have been yes.

CHAPTER TWO

I fled. Feet punching the stairs, the floor felt on fire, the air around me sucked dry of oxygen. I exited out of the back door the same way that I’d broken in, and tore alongside the fence at the rear, scaling a wall, landing on the other side, feet square. Not too many people about at that time of the morning. Even if there were I’m not sure I’d have paid them attention. The boy had knocked me way off course.

I was more than baffled by my own incompetence. How could I have missed something so fundamental? I did not make mistakes. I was unaccustomed to failure. I did the homework. As the Americans say, I did the math. Except, on this damn job, I hadn’t. Too little time and paid too much money. Greed had made me lazy.

Chill air brought me briefly back to my senses. I needed to get off the streets. I needed cash. Any attempt to access one of my numerous accounts too risky because it would tie me to a location.

I considered my options, which right that moment seemed limited. Truth was, I’d never found myself in this situation before.

It was still dark. Somewhere a dog howled. Shoulders back, I pushed my hands deep into my pockets, affecting a confident stride. No more than five minutes to the underground station, it would allow the wildness to pass and give me time to think. Inexorably, my thoughts returned to the dead woman.

The target, Dr Mary Wilding, a scientist based at Imperial College, London, had crossed up a crime lord. Not so bizarre as it sounds. Fake pharmaceuticals are hot big business, product piracy a prospering market. Without scientists there would be no drugs trade. Rumour had it that Wilding had been paid an exceptional amount of loot and reneged on a deal. My employer clearly wanted what he’d paid for. As for the hard drive, I had no idea what was on it. Not my business. But it was my business to know that Wilding had a son who lived in the house with her. I’d truly screwed up on that score and, if word got out, not only would I be finished, I’d be a dead man. The realisation that I’d committed professional suicide punched me hard in the gut. Whatever could be said about my existence, it beat to its own sick and twisted rhythm. I was used to living out of a suitcase, on the run, stakes high, as if each day were my last. What I’d do if I didn’t do this I had no idea.

What now?

I strode into the underground at Ealing Broadway. It was two minutes past five in the morning. Conscious of close circuit television cameras, I pulled down my cap to conceal my face, and calmed myself that for CCTV to be effective the cameras need to be positioned at the right angle, most CCTV is recorded over every four days so there is a one in four chance the film will be wiped before it is taken out and studied and, even if an image is captured, it still needs to be identified. A lot of film is grainy, of poor quality and indecipherable. Staring at reels of film hour upon hour will send even the most conscientious viewer into snooze-time. I wasn’t really consoled. I’m usually the hunter not the hunted.

Boarding a district line train, I hunkered down in the compartment and glanced around me. My only companions at that hour were solitary, desolate figures wrapped up against the cold and dark, heads down, the kind of people who were scraping by and clinging on by their fingernails, who bust their balls for nothing and knew it was all for nothing.

Like a disorientated homing pigeon, I stumbled out after a couple of stops. Under normal circumstances I’d be covering my tracks and making the all-important call to Wes. I did neither. The boy had seen to that. That I’d let him live when I could so easily have killed him meant that I was unmasked, no longer invisible, that I could no longer hide, not even from myself. From now on it would be like walking down the street stark bollock-naked.

Keen to go to ground, I turned a corner, my eye automatically clocking a café and dossers’ establishment, all white and red plastic furnishings. A wall of heat engulfed me as if I’d walked into a bank in Saudi with the air-conditioning bust. Rammed with men who’d slept rough the night before, their clothes stained, gnarled hands clutching mugs of tea, grease and sweat hung tenaciously in the air. Among the vagabond throng a number of unfortunate Eastern Europeans with beaten expressions. I didn’t exactly fit in, but it was the best place to go to avoid the attention I had no wish to attract.

I ordered tea, builder’s brew, the type you can stand a spade in. When I spoke my voice, so rarely used, felt strangely detached from the rest of me. Low in pitch and without obvious accent, it certainly contained no trace of my middle-class Gloucestershire roots.

‘You, alright, mate?’

I turned towards the man serving, the one who asked the question. He had a fleshy face ripe with folds and creases. All I wanted was a mug of tea. I did not welcome chat. I did not want be his mate. I nodded slowly once. His tongue flicked out, touched the side of his mouth, nervous. As he poured the beverage from an urn the size of a household boiler, I glanced at my reflection in the mirrored glass behind the counter expecting a drastic change in my appearance, some giveaway expression in the eyes betraying the disarray in my head, but I looked the same: cropped dark hair, blue eyes, wide nose that had once been broken in a game of rugby and reset, high Slavic cheekbones care of some genetic kink down my father’s line.

Counting out the exact change, I paid and took the mug to a corner table with a good visual on the door. Wes would be wondering why I hadn’t called. That got me thinking. Wes had insisted that Wilding was unmarried and childless. Had Wes been aware of this crucial piece of information but for darker reasons withheld it from me? Did he presume that any inconveniences would be ruthlessly taken care of? Knowing Wes, he would describe it as ‘collateral damage.’ This did not alter the simple fact that he had a fucking duty to tell me.

Uninvited, my thoughts cascaded, washing me up next to the wretched boy. No doubt about it, he’d supply a description to the police and thereby identify me. My face grew cold at the thought of a squad of armed coppers lifting me off the street, if I were lucky marching me to a station and Wilding’s son picking me out from a line-up. By sparing his life, I’d left myself wide open. I ought to go back, finish what I’d started, except…

Wired, I gulped the tea, scalding the roof of my mouth. By now the lad would have discovered his mother’s body. The thought genuinely appalled me, which came as a surprise. Not because Wilding was female – women can be twice as cruel and vicious and calculating as men – but because I wasn’t accustomed to this level of introspection concerning the relatives of the targets I’d removed. It was as if some unseen force had taken me over and brainwashed my mind. Truth is, over the years, I’d ripped men from life. Some had been rogues and murderers, some cruel and psychopathic. Some were good men who turned into bad men. Mostly motivated by greed and pride, always vanity, many strayed too far on the wrong side of the tracks and paid the ultimate price. Dr Mary Wilding was one of them. But the boy…

He was like a fly buzzing around my head. I couldn’t help but picture his anguish and pain and his devastation at losing his mother. No doubt about it, his life would be changed forever. If he became vengeful one day he’d come after me.

The door swung open and closed. My eyes flicked to the woman who’d entered. Middle-aged, stout, tired around the eyes, something in her manner reminded me of the woman I was sent to kill. Had I not skimped on the job, I’d be able to run through the strap lines of Mary Wilding’s life in my head: what she spent her money on, her medical and family history, her career path, her…

The mobile phone I used for the job vibrated. I snatched at it. It was Wes. Coldly furious, I pictured the pretty-boy American with his dark hair, and soft brown down-turned eyes inferring sensitivity that he didn’t possess but rendered women helpless. Part of me was looking forward to breaking the news that I’d aborted the job. It would be Wes’s stupid fault for screwing with me. The other part was not so keen.

‘You didn’t call,’ he said.

I said nothing.

‘What the fuck is going on?’

Good question. I didn’t answer. You learn more from staying quiet and letting others do the talking. Frankly, I was too livid to speak.

‘You all right?’ he began, clearly mystified.

No, I was not all right. ‘There’s been a problem.’

‘What sort of problem?’

‘She was already dead.’

‘Shit, you sure?’ I pulled a face at Wes’s loss of volume control. ‘What about the merchandise?’ he ranted.

Wes had an annoying tendency to imitate lines from the latest action adventure film or crime show. This was not an episode of The Wire. ‘The safe was empty.’

‘Fucking holy hell.’

I dislike excitable reactions, but often they lead to the kind of loose mouth talk that yields vital information. I wasn’t to be disappointed.

He lowered his voice in a way that I imagined he might if he were phoning Dial-A-Wank. ‘What about the boy?’

I felt a pulse in my jaw tick, Wes’s lapse in intelligence unforgivable. ‘What boy?’

‘The fucking son, you moron.’

I let the insult pass. I’d been called worse. I kept my voice low and controlled to conceal my rage. ‘You never mentioned a son,’ I growled. ‘The deal was for one target only. If there had been two the price would have been considerably more. Your lack of attention to detail could have compromised me. It could cost me my life.’ I didn’t admit that I, too, had screwed up, that I’d made monumental mistakes.

Faced with the irrefutable logic of my argument, he backed off. I also think he was afraid of me, which was good. ‘Look, I knew about the kid, right?’

‘You fucking lied to me.’

‘I’m sorry, man, but I was ordered not to tell you,’ he whined.

‘Who by?’

‘The guy who’s paying.’

What sort of half-brained lunatic was this man? I said something to that effect.

‘I know,’ Wes said, trying to appease me. ‘So there was no boy?’ he pressed.

One good lie deserves another. ‘No.’

‘Holy Christ, that’s going to be a problem’. Yours, not mine, I thought. ‘The boy is a loose end. He has to be removed.’

This was the equivalent of pouring a can of petrol over my very personal fire. ‘Fuck you. I’m out.’

Wes let rip with what could be best described as a full-on curse. I maintained a contrived and dignified silence so that he could calm down, which he did. ‘Can’t, man. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’

‘Who am I dealing with exactly?’

‘One nasty son-of-a-bitch.’

My laugh was cold. They were all nasty sons-of-bitches. Came with the territory.

‘And there’s the small matter of the merchandise,’ Wes said.

‘Which is missing,’ I reminded him.

‘Says who?’

I neither cared for the tone nor the inference. ‘Says I. Don’t get smart, Wes. I can track you down any time I like.’ And kill you, I inferred. Wes got the drift.

‘Hey, I’m not taking a pop at you, I’m only saying how the employer is gonna see it, bud. He’s one suspicious dude.’

Most of them were paranoid fuckers. ‘So who do you think beat me to it, apart from me, that is?’ I added acerbically.

‘Search me. You really sure it’s missing?’ The whine had returned.

‘Certain,’ I said, clipped.

Wes let out a big sigh. ‘You gotta find it.’

I swelled with anger. ‘I’m not a private detective.’

‘Yeah, I know, but please, you’ve gotta help me out here. I…’

‘What was on the hard drive?’ I now realised that the hard drive was more than straight business. The hard drive held the key.

‘I don’t know.’

Wes was the kind of guy who says no and does yes and vice-versa. I didn’t believe him. ‘If you want me to find it I need to know.’ I had no intention of doing Wes or anyone else a favour. I was done with them. I was only concerned with me.

Silence descended like a safety curtain at a theatre. I imagined Wes feverishly trying to worm his way out of the mess he was in. Finally, he spoke.

‘Data.’

‘What kind of data?’

‘Chemical, drugs, just stuff,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do, talk to the employer, or something. So you’re in?’

‘It will cost. Stay tuned.’ And I hung up.

First rule of the game: don’t botch the job. Second rule: don’t get caught. I’d broken the first and had no intention of breaking the second, but for what I hoped would be the only time in my life I was going to break the third. Insane, maybe, but I had no choice.

Finishing my tea, I stepped outside. Sun trickled through the cloud. My breath made smoke-rings in the cold morning air. Nice day for a walk. Me, I had other ideas: I was going back.

CHAPTER THREE

Less than four hours after I’d fled, I was holed up on the upper storey of a small boutique hotel, and on the opposite side of the road with a clear view of Dr Wilding’s home, a modest but attractive 1930’s red brick semi-detached property with a casement window in the front and triple-glazed French windows at the rear. Cutting corners on the job did not mean I’d failed to carry out basic groundwork. Days before, I’d already ascertained that her next-door neighbours were away on holiday and the attached property the subject of a repossession order, the occupants long gone following the collapse of their electrical business.

I’d expected the area to be cordoned off. I’d anticipated rafts of police officers. The view before me was a picture of the mundane, ordinary and commonplace. It spooked me.

As I saw it there were a couple of explanations for the lack of activity. Perhaps the killer had returned, or maybe Wes and his employer had interpreted my response as too negative, swung into action and appointed another assassin to finish off the boy. Doubtful, I thought. Too knee-jerk, too dangerous. Involving more people than you need always fraught with risk. And pointless – the boy’s death would not reveal the whereabouts of the hard drive. The gnawing desire to know what was on it made my skin itch, and it occurred to me then that Wilding’s murderer had come within a split-second of crossing my path, an awesome thought. If we’d both showed up for the same job at the same time we’d probably have ended up killing each other.

So who was he and who had employed him? If I could trace the guy I’d find his employer and then I could get my hands on the information. Best man to approach for that type of low-down would be Billy Franke. I let out a liquid breath. Easy to say, less easy to do: asking questions would draw attention to my failure, and Billy, one my main employers, didn’t like mistakes. I was still chewing this over when almost twenty minutes later the cops arrived. To tell the truth, I was almost relieved.

There were two police patrol units, an unmarked Mondeo with four plain-clothes guys inside, and a police Range Rover. I watched as the occupants piled out and into the house. Within ten minutes or so, a plod appeared doing what plods do: spooling crime scene tape around the front of the building. My stomach clenched. How many bodies?

I leant back then straight back up as a black Land Rover with tinted windows hove into view. It prowled down the street, paused outside the crime scene area for enough time to be significant, and drove on. The number plate bore the prefix 248D, assigned to all Russian diplomatic vehicles. While I swallowed this indigestible piece of information, another less assuming Toyota Land Cruiser with two men inside pulled up on double yellow lines and parked twenty-five metres from the property. Both occupants watched silently, unashamedly, as though they did this every day of the week, as if they operated by a different set of laws to the ordinary citizen. Next, racing down the road, a navy-blue Lexus, one male driver, and one female passenger. I could almost smell the rubber from the tyres as the vehicle cut and swerved into a tight space and parked between two patrol cars. The driver shot out a split-second before the woman. He glanced up the road, jerking his head in the direction of the stationary Land Cruiser.

‘What the hell is Mossad doing here?’ he said to her.

‘Doing what they do best: watching.’

At this, I froze. I have no particularly fluency in languages bar the bare rub-along stuff that buys me a beer and gets me out of tricky situations, but I can lip-read. I’ve no idea how I do this. Put it down to a predominantly solitary and lonely childhood. Lip-reading aside, I guessed that the woman and her sidekick were British Intelligence. To see so many security services congregated in one place made me more than uneasy. I felt as if I had chipped ice in my blood. Had Wilding been involved in some kind of industrial espionage? Selling trade secrets, maybe? Didn’t really compute with what I’d been led to believe.

But then what I’d been told was a pack of lies.

Painfully I tried to force connections, but my mind was swamped with the boy, the dead woman, the damned Israelis whose attendance closely reminded me of someone who taught me everything I knew. Cold sweat nestled in the small of my back. Feelings, alien emotions, played no part in my life. They were a luxury I could not afford.

Think, for Chrissakes. Think clearly.

I’d learnt a long time ago that Mossad had a habit of showing up either at or in the aftermath of all major events. Most recently and to name a few: the death of Princess Diana, the murder of Robert Maxwell, the suicide or murder, depending on your point of view, of Dr David Kelly. Their presence here confirmed that there was more to Wilding than I’d taken the time and trouble to find out. Now I saw why the hit on the scientist had been a rush job: Wilding was a big fish.

I turned my attention back to the woman. Tall, around five eight, full-figured without being overweight, probably a dress size twelve. She had a pale complexion, with a shock of short copper-coloured hair, side parting so that a lock fell over the right side of her face, which was a perfect oval. The lips matched the full figure, voluptuous with a nipped in waist, and she had a neat nose, neat everything. I couldn’t yet tell the colour of her eyes but I guessed they were green. She moved with feline stealth, fluid, impressive for a woman of her build and stature. From the way she threw her head back at the Israelis and blew them a kiss, the way she strode ahead of her male colleague, the way he deferred, this was her gig.

I followed her path to the door, half-mesmerised, then she took me by surprise. She turned, looked up, eyes scanning. I chilled. It was as if she were looking not straight at me but into me. I stared back, aroused. Then she turned and was gone.

An hour and a half passed. Forensics came. A white van appeared. Two men got out and disappeared inside, re-emerging twenty minutes later with computer boxes. Two trips later they were packed and gone. The patrol cars left. An ambulance showed. The Israelis stayed, mute, unyielding. The driver smoked incessantly. I never saw the Russians again. Then my mobile vibrated for a second time in as many hours.

‘Yes, Wes.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Out and about.’

‘Is that smart?’

I didn’t respond.

‘You still there?’ Wes’s voice, low and tense, scraped down the line.

‘Uh-huh.’ My deliberately Neanderthal response suggested that he’d overplayed his card and he knew it.

‘That’s great,’ he said, effusive now. ‘Can you meet? Charing Cross Hotel.’

‘When?’

‘Noon.’

‘Make it one. I’m taking an early lunch.’ I cut the call and switched off the phone. I don’t eat lunch. It makes me sleepy.

At half past ten the house opposite erupted into activity. Two men in plain-clothes came out first, closely followed by the woman’s sidekick. Next, the redhead, with the boy bunched up next to her. I let out a breath. He was alive. From this height and distance, armed with a Heckler and Koch military sniping rifle, I could ‘remove’ the problem at the click of a trigger. Not subtle, but effective. It gave me pause for thought. Would it even do the lad a favour? After the sudden death of his mother what would become his story later on? Would he turn to booze or drugs or sex to relieve his pain? Would he seek meaning in violence, as I had done? I wondered how he’d negotiate a path through a lifetime’s maze of hidden obstacles and mantraps and people out to get you. This was not my problem, I reminded myself. What did I care? Except now I realised that I cared more than was good for me, that even if I’d had the necessary kit I lacked the necessary ruthlessness.

Worrying.

A snarling phalanx of hangers-on, grim-faced, came out of the building last. Clear and easy in her movements, the woman directed the boy into the rear of the Lexus, climbed in next to him, but not before turning her back and issuing orders to the others who received their instructions as though ordered to eat dirt. I smiled in spite of everything. The woman running the show came across as direct, in cold control, authoritative and, yes, sexy. If anyone were going to hunt me down it would be her.

The main cavalcade drove away. The boy was out of immediate danger, whisked off by his minders no doubt to a safe house on some godforsaken housing estate where nobody asked questions. I almost envied him.

As for me, there was only one place to go, one man to see, the last person alive familiar with my real name and who could help me. I briefly wondered whether he’d think the time he’d devoted to my education in the Dark Arts wasted.

CHAPTER FOUR

Even in winter and under a sullen sky, Chiswick, moneyed and classy, oozed vibrancy and colour, aspiration and style. Treading an unfamiliar path through a crush of dead leaves, my senses alert to every police siren, every copper on the street, I turned right and left until finally I found myself in a maze of streets and homes that in summer would be hidden from view. It was as quiet as a desert night. Row upon row of classy red brick houses with white railings and balconies lined the wide tree-lined avenue. Suburbia at its finest.

It didn’t take long to locate the house right at the end. Screened from the street by a hedge, detached, it was a building of entrances and exits, a metaphor for life and death. It never occurred to me that Reuben might have moved or even died. Reuben, somehow, seemed indestructible.

Murmuring good morning to a young pretty mother pushing a baby-buggy, I followed the line of the wall to the rear of the building. A heavy wrought iron gate divided the boundary between the property and the pavement. As I walked back round to the front, the teal-coloured front door with the lion’s head brass knocker swung open and a woman stepped out.

In her mid to late thirties, her dark blue coat buttoned up, only the perilously high heels and pointed toes gave the game away. Actually, I lie. She had a satiated, just-fucked expression on her face. And I knew why. Even in middle age, Reuben had projected a strong sense of his own sexuality. A man’s man, Reuben adored women. Seemed like this peculiarity of his personality remained unchanged, his enthusiasm undimmed. Before she closed the door I bowled up to her and turned on my most winning smile.

‘Private parcel delivery for Mr Greene.’ I took out the dummy set of keys I carry with me, rattled them and pointed as if my van was parked around the corner.

She started, a flush of colour spreading across her cheeks. ‘Oh right,’ she said. ‘You want me to take it? Only I’m in a bit of a hurry.’ She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

‘It’s heavy,’ I said. ‘No worries, I’ll pop inside and get Mr Greene to sign for it first.’

She smiled, grateful. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Sorry to have held you up,’ I called after her, closing the door silently behind me.

I stood in the inner porch. I don’t know why but I felt as if my lungs were being crushed from the inside. I could hardly draw breath. I hadn’t seen the man in more than fifteen years and just because he’d worked for Mossad a long time ago did not mean that he could throw light on current events. Would my unexpected appearance trigger a negative reaction? Would he welcome a voyage into the past? I guessed there was only one way to find out.

The house was long and narrow with pale laminate flooring. Stairs to the right, two doors to the left, ahead a light and airy kitchen with a glass roof and two steps down into a dining area with a view of a pretty walled garden.

I could hear water running. The sound came from upstairs. I crossed to the kitchen, helped myself to a mug of coffee from a pot, still hot, and pulled up a chair near the window. After spending so much time out in the cold Reuben’s home felt unnaturally warm.

I saw Reuben before he saw me. The skin under his dark, intelligent eyes was more pouched than before, and his hair, now uniformly grey, thinner on top, yet he was still recognisable. An imposing figure, with a body built to last in spite of being a couple of stone heavier, he wore a dark shirt of needle-cord buttoned to his throat. The sleeves turned back exposed formidable forearms. I’d always believed that he could strangle a man with his bare hands.

I stayed absolutely still and watched as he suddenly registered that I was there. He had total mastery of his physical responses. Only someone who knew him well would be able to divine the thoughts and emotions running through his mind. I read shock in his eyes as if he believed that the day of reckoning had finally arrived and he was to be eliminated by one of his many enemies. Next, recognition, puzzlement, suspicion, and finally pleasure. His full lips drew back into a smile as he crossed the floor and down the steps, arms outstretched. I stood up, opened my arms wide, showing in that one small gesture that I had come in peace. He held me tight, clapping me on the back like a long lost son. His embrace aroused a brief, fleeting need in me to belong. As inconceivable as it was, an infinitesimal part of me flirted with the idea of rejoining the human race even though I knew deep in my heart it was impossible. Reuben was the only person in the world who knew me before and after. He was aware of what I’d become and what I was. He would not judge me. He would not ask awkward questions. He would not ask me to explain. We were never going to have one of those mundane conversations about what I’d done the previous day, week or year. We would not waste time discussing my choice of holiday destination. Relationships were off limits because I had none.

‘Joshua Thane, the young man I once described as shimmering with menace,’ he let out a loud laugh. ‘My God, I thought you were dead. What brings you here? We must eat. We must celebrate. You are hungry, yes? I have pastries and eggs. What would you like? Name it and you shall have it.’

If anyone could give me what I wanted Reuben could, but first he needed to be finessed. As far as brunch was concerned, I settled for eggs, poached, and more coffee. While he hustled around the kitchen he rattled on about the old days. He made no mention of my unorthodox entry. Reuben only ever voiced criticism.

‘Remember you asking what it felt like to kill someone?’ he said at last with a chuckle. ‘I told you that it doesn’t feel like anything. It’s…’

‘Business not personal,’ I chipped in.

Reuben cast me a slow sideways look. He knew where I was going with this. My first kill broke the cardinal rule. It was personal and it was supposed to be my last. The fact that I was here sitting in his kitchen meant events had come full circle. I don’t believe in karma. If I did I’d be dead a thousand times over, but I definitely felt the pull of something outside my very ordinary human powers. Disturbing.

‘Eat,’ Reuben said, putting a plate down in front of me. ‘Then we will talk.’

We ate in silence. In spite of the unusual and tricky circumstances in which I found myself, I was calm. I trusted nobody, but I trusted Reuben. If I pitched it right, Reuben with his extensive contacts would provide me with the answers I so urgently needed.

At last, when the plates were cleared, I told Reuben what had taken place that morning. I delivered the account without emotion, as he had taught me. I kept my pitch neutral, the information factual, giving as clear a description of events as possible. At this stage, I didn’t identify the target. He listened with the acuity I expected from him. He did not express surprise or comment upon my low diversification into theft. He frowned only once, but when I mentioned the surviving witness, he grew angry.

‘You did not know about the boy?’ Condemnatory, Reuben’s dark eyes turned as black as the sharps and flats on a keyboard.

My jaw ground but I said nothing. I’d broken a fundamental rule. ‘I…’

‘Didn’t do your homework,’ he barked. ‘What have I always taught you: surveillance, knowledge, survival. You check the intelligence then you check it again.’

He was right, of course. It was not Wes’s fault. The blame lay with me.

‘Have you forgotten the art?’ Reuben snarled.

What could I say? Even if I’d elicited screeds of personal details, something told me that I would have missed the one that counted. ‘It was a one-off, an unusual job.’ More unusual than I could ever imagine, and one I never wished to repeat. Ever.

‘How could you be so remiss?’ he growled. ‘What was it, greed?’

I met his eye. He had a point but I’m not sure it fully explained my incompetence. I’ve heard it said that there is a particular time in a serial killer’s life when he wants to be found and stopped. To facilitate his discovery, he makes a mistake. I was not a serial killer in the sense that the term was generally applied so I didn’t believe I fell into this category.

‘I slipped up, took my eye off the ball,’ I said lamely.

‘You got complacent,’ Reuben said, contempt in his eyes. After all I’ve taught you, his expression implied.

‘I admit I was reckless,’ I said, stubbornly defending my reputation.

‘And you let the boy go?’ Reuben saw me for the fool I was. This rattled me.

‘I did.’

‘Why?’ In Reuben’s book, you took no prisoners.

Stumped for an answer, I said. ‘If ordered to kill him I would have done. Nobody gave the order.’

‘Then you have taken an unacceptable risk.’

‘Yes.’ No point in denial.

‘The police will be all over it and now they will have a description of you.’

‘A description but not an identity.’ They couldn’t exactly issue a warrant for the arrest of a man without a name. Even so, the boy had dragged me kicking and screaming out of the shadows. Did Reuben of all people recognise this? If so, he didn’t enlighten me.

Reuben took out cigarettes and a lighter. I sensed he was playing for time. He offered me the pack. I rarely smoked but this seemed like the right occasion. I took one, lit it. Reuben did the same.

‘You need money?’

‘Yes.’

‘I will see to it.

‘Somewhere to hide?’

I hesitated. It would be the smart move yet I could see now that it would be too easy for Reuben to slip back into his old role as mentor and me as pupil. I no longer responded well to criticism. ‘No, just give me the cash, I’ll be fine.’

‘As you please.’ Dark-eyed, he took a drag of his cigarette, drawing the tobacco deep into his lungs.

‘The reason I’m here,’ I confessed, ‘is that I went back.’

‘Back?’ he spat, ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘To finish the job,’ I lied.

Reuben met my gaze with watchful eyes. He nodded briefly.

‘After I arrived,’ I continued, ‘the place teemed with British, Russian and Israeli security services.’

Most people would have reacted. Reuben was not most people. He barely flinched. ‘The woman,’ he began. ‘You said she worked at Imperial College.’

‘That’s right.’ I inhaled deeply. ‘Dr Mary Wilding.’ I floated her name as if it were a smoke ring. A pulse fluttered in Reuben’s thick neck. I checked any natural response of my own.

‘The microbiologist,’ he said slowly, as though his brain had suddenly filled with sludge.

I blinked. ‘She was a research scientist.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t bother to look into this aspect of her background?’

Unforgivably, I had not. I glared at him. He said nothing, his expression one of sheer disbelief. He took another drag of his cigarette, flicked a flake of tobacco from his tongue. ‘So who did she upset? What was her crime exactly?’ A shrewd glint entered his eyes.

I told him what I’d been told, then I said, ‘As the security services are all over it, I assume she committed industrial espionage.’

‘Assume?’ Reuben’s damning expression ripped right through me.

‘It’s a fair…’

‘Clearly you were not familiar with her sphere of work.’

I said nothing. My brain was in overdrive, misfiring and failing to make connections.

‘She worked at the Department of Virology at Imperial College,’ Reuben said.

‘Virology,’ I repeated, sounding leaden.

‘The department she allegedly worked in was a front,’ he added, darkness in his tone.

‘For what?’

Reuben did not answer my question directly. ‘The college has many departments,’ he continued, cool-eyed. ‘Some more secret than you can ever imagine.’ His voice assumed a forbidding note. It felt as if a chill easterly wind gusted across the room. I felt faintly nauseous and it was unconnected with brunch.

‘Meaning?’ I said.

‘Bio-weapons,’ he snapped. ‘Chemicals that kill,’ he added as though I didn’t get it the first time. ‘As deadly as nuclear but more vile in its application.’

‘And illegal,’ I flung back at him. This was Britain, for God’s sake, not some far flung Russian outpost.

Reuben threw me a contemptuous look. ‘Yes, which is precisely why any sane government ensures that it has counter-measures in the event of a biological attack. Wilding was working in strategic defence.’

I contained a groan. This had catastrophe written all over it. No wonder the security services were all over it like typhoid in an Indian slum. Christ Almighty, what was on the hard drive? Reuben read my expression and asked the same question. I shook my head.

‘Why don’t you know, and when the hell did you become a common thief?’

I opened my mouth to protest. Reuben waved away any attempt at excuses with a flick of his wrist. ‘And your American friend, how does he fit?’

I gave no names. I explained that Wes was the fixer, the guy who acted as a middleman. ‘Crime lords have their own contract killers on the payroll, but sometimes they need a specialist job that puts enough distance between them and the intended victim.’ Safe to say, I usually got involved in the dirtier end of the business although I drew a line at abduction and torture.

Reuben stared at me with distaste. ‘And this character, you have operated with him before? He is reliable?’

‘As much as anyone.’ Except, of course, he’d lied royally to me.

Reuben nodded slowly. I realised he was trying to work out a way to save my reputation, my skin. Thank God for that.

‘You want out?’

I did my best to conceal my shock. How could I? Was it really possible for me to rub out the past, get a nine to five job, settle down and start over? Straight answer: no. My silence lurked like a restless ghost in the room.

Reuben gave voice to what I was thinking. ‘We all want out at some time in our lives but it isn’t always possible. Few have the necessary requirements for this type of activity,’ he added with false delicacy. ‘What I am trying to tell you, Joshua, is that you cannot change who you are. You can change your name, your address, your friends and you can run away from problems, but not from yourself.’

This I already knew. I didn’t want a lecture. ‘Then I’d appreciate your help. You could find out what the Israelis are after. It would give me a lead to find those responsible for the theft.’

‘And then what?”

Take them out. I shrugged, a go figure expression on my face.

He shook his head. ‘I no longer have those type of contacts. Your only option is to finish what you started.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

Reuben hiked both shoulders, raised both hands, palms up in supplication. ‘It will be difficult but…’

‘I will not kill the boy.’ This took both of us by surprise. I cleared my throat, drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘It would be too tricky,’ I added. ‘He’s probably in a safe house.’ Seconds thudded past. Silence washed into the room like sea invading a stricken vessel.

At last, seemingly forgetting the boy, Reuben asked, ‘Who took out the contract?’

I shook my head. ‘His anonymity was part of the deal.’

‘You were paid well?’ Reuben’s voice thronged with cynicism.

‘Handsomely.’

He thought for a moment. Easy to guess what he was turning over in his mind: that no paymaster would rest easy with such a poor return on his investment. I was, in effect, a dead man walking.

‘What was on the hard drive, Reuben?’

He didn’t answer straight away. He seemed to be weighing something up in his mind. The stillness in the room was so tangible you could have heard a feather fall.

‘Have you heard of Project Coast?’ he said tentatively.

I shook my head, perplexed by the sudden change of subject. Once more he stared at me for a moment with what seemed genuine indecision, then when he finally spoke he had a certainty about him that I normally found reassuring. That morning I wasn’t reassured.

‘Project Coast was a programme that originated in South Africa. It involved the creation of an ethnic specific biological weapon. The weapon only attacked blacks.’

I wanted to interject, to lean forward. I didn’t flicker so much as an eyebrow. Reuben had taught me well.

‘The project was run by the Pretoria government. Deeply secret, it ran during the 1980’s. The then Defence Minister oversaw it. The work was still at the embryonic stage when the apartheid regime collapsed. Certain individuals assisted in the government’s twisted endeavours. One was an American, Dr Larry Ford, a gynaecologist who allegedly worked for the CIA, his role to create and develop biological weapons. Years later, he was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head. The official version was suicide, his involvement with the CIA, as one would expect, denied. When the police opened the refrigerator in his home they found enough toxins to poison the entire state of California.’

I wondered why Reuben was telling me this. His information seemed rehearsed and readily given, a little too pat. Irrationally, I had the sudden sick sensation of being played. Resisting the temptation to speak for a second time and with a deep, growing sense of unease, I nodded patiently for Reuben to continue.

‘You knew nothing of this?’ he said, a sharp edge to his voice.

I shrugged my ignorance. It was Reuben’s turn to go silent. I realised what he was driving at. ‘You think I had a hand in Ford’s murder?’ Suddenly I saw the connection to Wilding.

He did not answer straightaway. He studied my face with the same penetrating gaze as a man shining a spotlight into my eyes. I hoped that he was satisfied with what he saw. I am a gifted liar, but I wasn’t lying this time. ‘It was a particularly inept piece of work,’ he admitted. ‘I would have been disappointed in you.’

‘When was this, exactly?’

‘Spring 2000.’

My mind reeled back. I was twenty-four. Russia. My first gig for Mikhail Yakovlevich, a Russian thug. ‘Nowhere near. I can prove it.’

Reuben sipped his drink, nodded in agreement, accepting my explanation at face value. Glad we’d cleared it up, I was less happy that I’d fallen under suspicion. ‘You think there’s a pattern, someone bumping off scientists?’

‘Perhaps.’

Shit, and now the security services were on my tail. ‘You were saying,’ I said, trying to lose the thought and get him back on track.

‘Certain groups of people have individual genetic characteristics. As you probably know, there is an entire industry devoted to the creation of drugs to target specific genes responsible for certain genetic disorders.’

I nodded.

‘An entirely commendable endeavour, of course, it involves the precise sequencing of DNA. But there is a less benign application. By a rigorous process of selection, there are those who hope to develop pathogens to attack targeted individuals based on either their racial orientation or their sex.’

‘Hope? You mean it’s been developed?’ I said.

Reuben’s accompanying smile was claustrophobic. What was once a sick dream had assumed a reality of nightmarish proportions and, well out of my normal sphere of operation, I confess it shook me. ‘Think how such a thing could be turned into a military weapon,’ he continued, without missing a beat. ‘So obsessed with the threat of nuclear destruction, most politicians retain a blind spot for other more diabolical possibilities.’

I had no tremendous interest in politics, but I was certain this wasn’t true. Governments knew, all right. Only the general populace remained ignorant. And thank God for that. Reuben picked up on my dismay. With cool, he disregarded it.

‘Which is why there are secret departments to counter the possibility of such an odious attack.’

‘You think Wilding was involved in this type of research?’

Reuben shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Never a good idea to jump to conclusions, but it is credible.’

I blinked and cursed my stupidity. Even for a man like me there’s a big moral distinction between slotting bad people one at a time and annihilating innocent individuals en masse. What if such a weapon fell into the hands of a rogue state or terrorists? Aside from what they could do with it, it would provide the perfect means for blackmail. Christ, you could hold entire countries to ransom with that kind of leverage.

‘You think this was why she had to die?’ Already I was thinking her death politically motivated and unconnected to organised crime. For sure, the security services would be after my hide.

Reuben did not answer, just looked. I scratched my ear. ‘The U.K. is a melting pot of races. Which target group are we talking about?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘Can’t?’

‘Because I genuinely don’t know,’ he spread his hands.

‘But, surely, there are treaties and agreements…’

‘Which can be broken.’ He leant towards me once more. ‘Government exists to protect its people. One has to fight any threat, however vile, accordingly.’

I didn’t speak. Not for a moment did it occur to me that Reuben was mistaken. Whatever Reuben said about being out of the game, my old mentor had always been the kind of man who kept his ear close to the ground. There was no reason for me to suspect that this had changed. What scared me more, instead of coming to Reuben to pick his brains and borrow money, I’d discovered a conspiracy of unimaginable proportions. And I was at the centre of it.

‘Let me show you something,’ he said, climbing to his feet. He gestured for me to follow and retraced his steps through the kitchen and back out into the long hall. On his left, a wooden door, which I’d assumed led to a cupboard under the stairs. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door, opened it, flicked on a light, and descended a short flight of wooden steps to a basement room where, against the farthest wall, there was a sofa. Facing the sofa, and fixed to the wall nearest the stairs, a fifty-inch plasma screen sitting astride an antique desk, the remaining walls lined with books.

Reuben invited me to take a seat. I obeyed and watched as he touched a catch underneath the drawer in the desk revealing a false compartment from which he removed a brown sealed envelope that he placed to one side. Sliding the back panel of the dummy drawer to the left, he revealed a secondary hiding place. From this, he picked out a DVD with skull and crossbones drawn crudely in black marker pen along the spine. Reuben slipped off the cover and fed the disk into the DVD player. Nothing much happened. A lot of flicker. No sound. Lots of grainy moving images like the flaky footage you find on a pirate video. Then Reuben switched off the lights and it felt as if I was being swallowed whole. I blinked, fused in concentration.

Picture the image: a cavern, sides made of solid rock, wide metal ducting as if to pump fresh air into the bowels of the earth. At ground level, men dressed like astronauts walking slow-limbed. Some, who wore thick gloves and held clipboards, had their attention fixed on a chamber with transparent walls around twelve metres wide by twelve metres high, although difficult to tell. A metal tube fed into the domed glass roof. Inside, a group of people: an emaciated-looking white guy and a young teenage couple holding hands alongside two other men and women who stood separately. If I had to take a guess I’d say the non-whites were Chinese, Korean maybe. Their tattered clothes hung on them like shrouds, their expressions one of mute rank terror, the like I had never seen and I’ve seen a lot of fear in my time.

A cursory nod from one of the ‘astronauts’ or rather scientists, as I now believed them to be, signalled that something was about to happen, but I didn’t understand what. I pitched forwards, straining to comprehend, rapt by the figures in the glass dungeon. Within seconds all seven cupped hands over their faces and fled to the outer extremities of the see-through prison. The young couple herded desperately together, eyes agape with fear. Within a minute, two of the women were vomiting. One man, with blood issuing from his nose and mouth, crashed to the ground. Another turned purple, leaking through every orifice, body in spasm. The white guy, unaffected by the spreading contagion, collapsed to the ground and, with hands over his head, knees to his chest, rocked in despair. Blood and bile, faeces and vomit spattered the floor and glass. They were shouting, screaming, but I heard no sound, only a chorus of unheard voices. I am rarely moved, but my fists curled and found their way to my mouth. I longed to look away, to escape, and to empty my mind but I remained transfixed.

At last, buckling under the vicious assault on her nervous system, the last surviving girl, bloodied and broken, leant towards the dying boy and kissed his mouth. I thought my hardened heart would seize up.

Reuben’s voice shattered the silence. ‘The killing process took three minutes,’ he said matter-of-fact, switching off the film and switching on the lights. Same length of time I’d allowed myself to steal in and out of Wilding’s home, I registered.

‘What about the white guy?’

‘He was taken out and shot. Experiment over.’

‘So he was immune?’

Reuben nodded, held my gaze in a vice-like grip. ‘In simple engineering terms, it’s a tremendous feat to divide one human genome from another, but…’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, stumbling past Reuben and upstairs.

‘The cloakroom is on the right by the front door,’ he called after me.

I found it and threw up in the sink. Adrenalin dump, I convinced myself, totally unconnected, to what I’d just watched. Splashing water over my face, I gaped at my reflection in the mirror. Apart from my obvious pallor, I thought I’d be unrecognisable. I thought the man I believed myself to be was hiding but he wasn’t.

‘You are shocked,’ Reuben said as I emerged and rejoined him in the kitchen.

‘We’re talking about biological genocide,’ I snapped. ‘I take it the clip is genuine?’

‘It has been authenticated although we are not entirely certain where this took place. The footage emerged over a decade ago.’

‘Bearing in mind you didn’t show me this shit as a form of entertainment, what’s the exact connection to Wilding?’

‘I am simply making you aware of possibilities,’ Reuben said, pulling his punches, ‘I’m giving you the context within which I believe she worked.’

‘Why?’

An unnerving gleam entered his eye. ‘To save your soul.’

Too late for that. Redemption was beyond me: I’d committed too many acts of violence. I shook my head.

‘You are indifferent to death?’ he said, his turn to be shocked.

‘I’m indifferent to life.’

Reuben frowned. I think he found my response glib and irritating. ‘Joshua,’ he said, with a stern and penetrating expression. ‘What about the lives of others?’

I took a deep breath. I’d spent my entire professional life singularly unconcerned by the lives of others. I didn’t do noble and I didn’t do self-sacrifice. And yet…

Reuben was still talking. ‘I do not know how far such weapons have progressed because I no longer have the kind of connections I once had, but it’s a safe bet that you are mixed up in something of apocalyptic proportions.’

In spite of the outward show, the content of the video-clip and the spectre of mass murder taunted me. I thought about Wes, about the so-called data on the hard drive. Assuming Wilding had been engaged in defending the nation, someone had stolen it with the intention of neutralising our defence capability. It might also have been stolen to trade with individuals intent on carrying out an atrocity. Like it or not, I had to face the possibility that certain unscrupulous people, individuals I dealt with on a daily basis, wanted this type of material to sell on. I didn’t give a damn about my own survival but, as Reuben had already pointed out, the lives of others were now at stake. Locating the hard drive suddenly assumed increased urgency. What I was going to do with the material when I got my hands on it I hadn’t a clue.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hiding me in the rear footwell of his Volvo Estate, Reuben drove me into town, dropped me off and I returned as quickly as I dared to my lock-up near King’s Cross. My only official claim to property it housed the tools of my trade and, aside from weapons, included bikes, wigs, uniforms, props like walking sticks, and hair dyes; anything that could aid a metamorphosis in my appearance. There, I had a quick shave, changed into a smart cashmere coat over tailored trousers and brogues, and popped contact lenses into my eyes, transforming them from blue to brown. It was a detail. It would only count if someone got up close and personal but as detail had tripped me up I wasn’t keen to repeat the error. To complete the disguise, I chose a pair of glasses with plain lenses in black rectangular frames. I took a briefcase containing a pair of high-spec binoculars and a Cannon PowerShot digital camera, a false passport and false credit cards linked to the passport. It’s commonly assumed that these are difficult to acquire. They are, but fifteen or so years ago, when I was starting out, and the Identity and Passport Service was lax, they were a doddle.

Confident that I could not be recognised, I felt more at ease and made my way to the hotel to hook up with Wes. Despite his outward show, I’d always had the impression that he was a nearly man; nearly made it into the higher echelons of organised crime; nearly made it into accountancy. Never had enough bottle for the former and lacked application for the latter. Now I had my doubts. Now I believed he was more involved in the Wilding job than I’d given him credit. Why else would Wes lie about the boy and the reason for the scientist’s murder?

Stepping into the large foyer with its L-shaped reception area, I veered to the right into a wide corridor with booths down one side, lifts on the other. It was cathedral quiet. At that time the place was virtually empty. Wes was sitting three slots down. His eyes flickered with lust as a handsome-looking forty-something woman wearing a power suit and heels clicked by. He never could resist the call of the wild. As I approached he glanced up, no recognition in his eyes. I strode past as though making for the grand staircase. Like a guy who has forgotten something, I checked my pace, turned, strode back and slipped into a seat opposite. Wes blinked wide, sharply retreated into the leather, his olive skin two shades lighter. I met his startled gaze with a level expression.

‘Fuck, and holy fuck.’ His body braced. His dark eyebrows assumed two angry points in his forehead. For a moment I thought he was going to lean forward and punch me hard in the face. Fortunately his survival instinct kicked in.

‘Hello, Wes.’

Wes jerked towards me. ‘Have you seen the news? It’s on every television channel, every radio station. And the boy was there. He saw you, man. Your identikit picture is gonna be in every mother-fucking newspaper. You fucked up, Hex. You screwed me over.’

I glanced away, let out a long slow breath, a technique to control my urgent desire to smash his jaw into five pieces. ‘I screwed you over?’ My voice sounded ugly.

Wes looked me straight in the eye and leant in close. Fat beads of sweat dotted his brow. I realised then that he feared his employer more than he feared me. ‘The British security service is all over this one,’ he hissed.

‘And the Russians and Israelis. Now why would that be?’

‘Russians?’ He had the desperate look of a man crashing through a rain forest trying to evade a Cassowary.

‘You didn’t know what Wilding was up to her pretty white neck in?’ I said, a do me a favour expression on my face. ‘And you’ve got the fucking cheek to get me here to deliver a lecture.’

His shoulders dropped and he glanced away. ‘The employer is getting mighty jumpy.’

‘Then he needs to get a grip.’

Wes ran his fingers through his dark hair, his expression flashed from anger to anxiety to beseeching. ‘You have to find the material.’

‘I don’t have to do anything.’

He held my gaze for a moment then looked down. ‘You have three days,’ he mumbled.

Wes wasn’t making a lot of sense to me. What he said, his body language, everything about him was off. ‘Three days until what?’

He hiked one shoulder then he seemed to collapse into himself. He did not look up.

I let out a laugh to cover my nerves. I was thinking about the snuff movie with the biological twist. ‘Is this a threat?’

‘They hire you for slotting,’ he said, looking me in the eye again, this time urgent. ‘They have their own for torture.’

Oh do they? I thought. ‘Who is this bastard?’ I said.

His face was a stone. ‘We had a deal.’

‘We did, but the deal is off and the rules just changed. You can have the money back.’ Which was a fair offer and, in any case, I didn’t want it any more.

‘No way, man. I’m risking my skin already.’

I am an infinitely patient individual, but Wes was pissing me off and I was getting nowhere. I struck hard and fast, grabbed his throat with one hand and dragged him half way across the table.

‘I’m going to run through possible candidates and you’re going to agree or disagree.’

This was bluff on my part. I wasn’t going to disclose my personal list of clients to some creep like Wes.

‘Break my neck, if you like,’ he managed to croak.

I increased the pressure. Wes’s spaniel eyes popped. His lips clamped shut. ‘I suspect our dead scientist was engaged in a little more than finding the cure for the common cold. Right?’ I didn’t get a nod. I got a double-blink. Good enough. ‘She was working in strategic defence against bio-weapons.’ I didn’t know this, but it would do. I said nothing about my source, nothing about secret departments. Wes tried to swallow, difficult under the circumstances. ‘In an enterprise like this I’m guessing we’re talking dirty bombs, chemical warfare, terrorism. Nod if I’m on the right trail.’ He didn’t nod. I released my grasp. Wes coughed, cleared his throat, and shook himself like a wet dog after a walk in the rain.

‘I have to go to the men’s room,’ he rasped, standing up.

I stood up opposite him. ‘I’m coming with you.’ It would be easier to work him over in the tiled confines of a public lavatory.

He gazed up at me with defeated eyes, saw I wasn’t screwing with him and, with the same raised hands that had undressed dozens of women, showed me his palms in surrender. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, slumping into the leather, ‘but you didn’t hear it from me.’

I sat back down. Right, now we were getting somewhere.

‘Wilding was working on a blueprint.’

‘A blueprint for what?’

Wes looked round, furtive. ‘Some new kind of drug, works in a different way. I don’t know. I’m not a chemist.’

I stared at him and read deceit in his eyes. Again I cursed my own stupidity, lack of professionalism and downright criminality for embroiling me in something unspeakable. Without doubt, I was treading on unhallowed ground.

‘Honest, that’s all I know,’ he burbled, distracted. He ran a hand through his hair again. It stuck up in dark tufts. Pale, his face a mass of lines and edges, he looked genuinely stricken. I hadn’t just opened a can of worms. I’d eaten them.

‘I don’t believe you.’

He squirmed in his seat, desperate to escape. There was no escape. He seemed to come to the same conclusion because the fight went out of his body and he leant in close and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Drugs that kill certain types of people.’

My face stiffened. ‘This is a bit of a departure from your usual line of business, isn’t it? I thought the object was to get addicts hooked, not kill them. Who exactly?’

Wes shook his head, his expression contorted. ‘I don’t know,’ he said shooting me another beseeching look. ‘On my mother’s life.’

I looked him hard in the eye. ‘Fuck’s sake, Wes, don’t you care?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Man, it’s business. It’s money. Just money.’

I swallowed hard. No point in getting into a fight with Wes, snake that he was, about moral distinctions. I had no stomach for it and it would have been supremely hypocritical. ‘So the data for the blueprint was what I was ordered to steal, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who wants it?’ I’d tried before and got nowhere, but I was all for catching Wes unawares.

He recoiled as if I’d thrown boiling oil in his face. ‘I can’t, man. He’ll kill me.’

‘I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.’

‘You have no idea what this guy does. His victims suffer agonies.’

‘Then tell me and I’ll kill him before he gets the chance.’

A flame of indecision flickered in his eyes, guttered and blew out. There weren’t many men who could inspire that level of fear. Impressive, I thought.

‘Okay,’ I said, resigned. Something I’ve learned in life: don’t expend energy on people or things you can’t control.

Wes’s relief was plain to see. ‘Can you do it?’ he said. ‘Can you find it?’ His eyes glistened with hope and fear.

‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t telling the truth. I had to find it but when I did I wasn’t going to hand it over to Wes, or anyone else. ‘Let me get this straight, Wilding wanted to trade but welshed on the deal?’

Wes swallowed. ‘Yeah, I think.’

‘Think?’ I snarled. ‘How much was she paid?’

‘I don’t ask questions, man. I follow orders.’ He swallowed again, looked at me pleading.

‘There’s something not…’

‘Three days,’ Wes said, scrabbling to his feet. ‘Meet me in the usual place, usual time.’

‘Are you insane?’ Our usual hook-up was the Placa de Catalunya, a square in Barcelona.

‘Thursday morning. Be there. Make sure you have the hard drive with you.’

CHAPTER SIX

Even if I found the goods, no way was I travelling on a scheduled flight. My description would already be circulated to every customs officer in Europe. I still intended to show up at the appointed hour on the appointed day because my gut told me that if I were smart I’d find the man who’d employed me for the job. If I could pump him for information, it could give me the vital lead I needed to find who was also in the market for the stolen hard drive. It was a risk. Wes might turn up in Barcelona with backup in place.

I decided to call in a favour. A fan of the two birds with one stone scenario, I also wanted to chase down the Russian lead.

One of my main clients, Mikhail Yakovlevich, was currently in London. He had houses in Russia, France and Britain. His British home, in Kensington, was worth a cool ten million. Having made his fortune in the steel trade, he’d specialised in supplying raw materials to factories in short supply. This was the shorthand version. In reality he had clawed his way to the top of his particular grubby pile through the cultivation and maintenance of friendships within the FSB (formerly KGB) and the relentless elimination of his enemies. I knew this because I’d carried out most of the eliminating. His FSB connection was what interested me.

I arrived outside the white stucco porch, gazed up at the four-storey dwelling, and hoped he was in. Eight marble steps to the lacquered front door, and before my foot touched the first, one of the most sophisticated security systems in the world clicked into action. Yakovlevich took his own safety seriously; evidenced by the entourage of former convicts he hired to protect him. Most of them looked as though they’d been conceived in Frankenstein’s laboratory.

I rang the bell, one of those old-fashioned hand-pull affairs. The door swung open. There is a saying that behind each powerful man is a good woman. In this case, behind each discerning butler is a heavy-duty thug. Once the butler established that I was not there to arrange the flowers, Yuri, Yakovlevich’s lieutenant, stepped out of the shadows towards me. I found it difficult to meet Yuri’s eyes. Not because I was afraid of him, but because the tattoos on his face obliterated his features.

I slipped off the spectacles, popped out the contacts. ‘Hex to see Mr Yakovlevich,’ I said.

‘You have an appointment?’ Yuri knew full well I didn’t.

‘No.’

‘Wait.’ His eyes never leaving mine, he took out a mobile phone, pressed a few digits. A quick burst of Russian and I was allowed over the threshold. As usual I removed my shoes and was subjected to a full body search. Unpleasant and humiliating but essential if I was to gain an audience with Yakovlevich.

I followed Yuri upstairs to a first floor drawing room of immense proportions with fabulous views of a walled garden. The room should have been stunning. It was if one’s taste was one of decadence meets burlesque. Thick-pile rugs on oak flooring, gaudy ornaments atop highly decorated French furniture, and a series of floor to ceiling paintings of Yakovlevich’s young mistress in various states of undress, the last verging on pornographic.

Yakovlevich lay half-sprawled on a cream leather sofa. He was wearing one of his signature outfits: dark Italian suit, now crumpled, white shirt and silk tie. Red-faced, he held a glass of Chivas Regal in his hand, the half empty bottle sitting on the marble-topped coffee table in front of him. Chugging on a Cuban cigar, no doubt from Davidoff on St James’s, he welcomed me with a cheery wave.

‘Hex, my friend, come in, take a seat. I hope Yuri did not treat you roughly,’ he boomed, deep-voiced. I smiled as if being treated in such a degrading fashion happened to me every day, and sat down opposite him. He stared at me blearily. ‘Drink?’

‘Thank you.’ Refusal would only invite censure.

Mikhail summoned his butler. More whisky poured, I settled back, glass in hand. I was used to the drunken fool routine. A frustrated actor at heart, Yakovlevich was no more inebriated than his butler. He knew I knew but we all played along.

‘So what brings you here?’ His Russian deep-set eyes fixed on mine like barnacles clinging to the rusted hull of a wreck.

There was no point in using an obtuse approach with Yakovlevich. Well-connected, it was only a matter of time before he worked out my angle. In any case I really wanted to see if I could smoke him out. Making no distinction between commodities, the Russian was the kind of man who would do a mean trade in ‘babushkas’ if there were a ready market. It was rumoured that Yakovlevich had personally paved the way for the transportation of nuclear material from an old and decrepit nuclear facility. I never did discover who the buyer was and where it ended up. A man without scruples, Yakovlevich would not hesitate to deal in other forms of trade, including bio-weapons, as long as there was good money to be made.

‘Nerve agents,’ I said, suitably obtuse.

‘I know nothing of such things.’ Yakovlevich smiled broadly. ‘Only what I hear on the grapevine, as you say.’

I nodded, smiled encouragingly and took a long swallow of whisky. I had the feeling I was going to need it.

‘I remember some years ago,’ Yakovlevich began, a sage expression on his fleshy features, ‘Something about a stolen smallpox virus from a bio-containment laboratory in Siberia. A terrifying prospect.’

‘There are still bio-labs in Russia?’

‘All old. All crippled,’ Yakovlevich said morosely. ‘Before the break-up of the Motherland, there were many scientists working in the field. Many worked for Secret Department Twelve.’

I made an educated guess. ‘Part of the former KGB?’

‘The KGB’s First Directorate responsible for biological espionage,’ he explained.

‘What sort of research?’

‘The study and creation of toxins and substances specifically designed to poison reservoirs, pharmaceutical drugs and contaminate air conditioning systems.’

I stifled my interest by taking another snatch of whisky. ‘Where are these scientists now?’

‘Scattered to the four corners of the earth.’ He snorted a gust of thick aromatic smoke into the atmosphere.

‘To work for the highest bidder?’

‘Something a man of your obvious talent can surely appreciate.’ The chill in Yakovlevich’s eyes tempered the smile on his face. I returned the expression. A snake in a suit, Yakovlevich dreamt, slept and ate in terms of profit margins, marketing potential. ‘I understand there is a market for such commodities,’ I said softly.

He sat up, knifed me with a sharp smile. ‘You think I, Mikhail Yakovlevich, would trade in such things?’

‘Not at all,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said bluntly.

‘But who would, Mr Yakovlevich?’

His face assumed a dolorous expression. ‘Look at the world around you, my friend. Think of the turmoil. Think of the threat from Islam. See what they have done in Chechnya. Now that Bin Laden is dead there are any number of young radicals keen to avenge him and spill the blood of ordinary Russians.’ He leant towards me, a hawkish look in his eye, ‘What if such a commodity fell into the hands of fundamentalists?’

I snatched at my drink. Faced by such an appalling prospect it was hard to think, let alone think in clear straight lines. I attempted to factor this possibility into the context of my work. People for whom I worked, gangsters and felons, pimps and pornographers, could fill a criminal version of ‘Who’s Who.’ Many based abroad, all fell under the wide umbrella of international organised crime, yet I could no more envisage them doing deals with al-Qaeda than Santa Claus. Yakovlevich remained an exception and I knew for a fact, aside from the grandstanding, that he wasn’t choosy about his trading partners.

Temporarily forgetting his drunkard impression, he said, ‘I am guessing you did not come here for philosophical debate.’

My turn to smile, I leant back, took a verbal detour, eager to bring down the conversational temperature. ‘I need to be in Barcelona in three days.’ Which meant I had less than forty-eight hours to trace the hard drive. ‘You once offered me the personal use of your helicopter, remember?’ Originally Yakovlevich had suggested it in the particular context of a job he wished me to carry out. I’d declined. I’m not keen on flying coffins. He later proposed it in the form of a bonus. Now seemed like the perfect opportunity to make good on his offer.

‘I haven’t forgotten, Hex.’ He puffed out his massive chest. ‘I am a man of my word, a man of honour.’

He was neither of those things but I didn’t argue.

‘That’s most generous of you.’

‘Not at all, I am sure you will return the favour,’ he said, with a wily smile. ‘I will speak to my pilot and put him on standby.’

We discussed the finer details of pick-up and time. Yakovlevich took a big gulp of whisky and leant back, making the leather creak. ‘These scientists to whom you allude,’ he said slow-eyed, picking up from where we left off. ‘How is this of interest to a man like you?’

I evaded giving a direct answer. ‘In the light of the brain drain, Russia’s bio-weapons systems must be set back a couple of decades, at least.’

Yakovlevich closed his eyes. He looked half-cut. The more inebriated he seemed the more interested he was. ‘Officially, Russia has no interest in such things. Unofficially, who knows?’

‘Is this why the FSB are interested in the death of a British scientist?’

‘The Kelly affair,’ Yakovlevich ventured with another slow blink. He leant forward and deposited the remains of his cigar into an antique marble ashtray.

‘More recent, the Wilding affair.’

‘Ah, I heard something about it on the lunchtime news. Most unfortunate. They are saying that she died in suspicious circumstances.’

‘Unconfirmed, I believe.’

Yakovlevich held the glass to his thick lips, fixed me with a dragnet stare. ‘And you say this is of interest to the FSB? Since when did you work for the organisation?’

I let out a laugh. ‘I don’t.’

‘So?’ he pressed, his lips drawn back into a lazy smile.

‘I keep my ear to the ground. As do you.’

Yakovlevich let out a snort of laughter. ‘I like this game you play, Hex.’ He took another drag of his cigar. ‘Tell me what you have heard.’

‘A Russian diplomatic vehicle was seen outside Wilding’s home this morning.’

‘I know nothing of this.’

‘A pity.’

I played my next card softly. ‘I heard something was taken.’

His dead eyes briefly sparked with life. ‘Robbery? Fascinating. What exactly?’

‘Information,’ I said, obtuse.

‘Making the possibility of murder more likely,’ he said with a complicit smile. ‘In my experience, people are removed either because they threaten one’s interests, they know too much, or are offered the opportunity of collaboration but foolishly decline.’

I am not a rude man. I believe in go along to get along. Charm gets you further than aggression – to a point. I did not tell Yakovlevich that he was taking the linguistic equivalent of the scenic route and failing to answer my question. The fact he was prevaricating told me quite a lot. The wily old bastard was buying himself thinking time. Yakovlevich issued a sly smile. ‘My memory is not so good but didn’t Wilding inspect old bio-labs in Russia?’

‘I’ve no idea. When?’

‘Early 90s, I believe. Part of a UK/US delegation.’

‘She must have been a junior member.’

‘Who knows?’ Yakovlevich said, dismissive. ‘Many laboratories were closed down. Many good men were put out of work. Russians have long memories. Perhaps she was killed out of revenge.’

A fair point, a new angle, and one I wanted to explore. ‘Could she have been working on something that was of particular interest to your people?’

His smile was caged.

‘I have no firm evidence,’ I continued, ‘but there’s a possibility that Wilding was working on bio-weapons. In a defensive capacity, of course,’ I added swiftly.

‘Of course.’ He smiled without exposing his teeth. ‘And how did you come by this information?’

‘On the grapevine, as we say.’

He threw his head back, laughed, full-throated, then returned to his woozy eyes half-closed act. One glance at his watch was my cue for leaving. I duly obliged and drained my glass.

‘Forgive me, Mikhail, I’ve taken too much of your time already.’

‘Think nothing of it. A pleasure, always.’ He lumbered to his feet. ‘We must do business again soon.’

I cleared my throat. I wasn’t sure what to say, the concept of taking on another assignment strangely unsettling, then Mikhail handed me over to Yuri who, resembling a creature trapped between night and day, escorted me from the building.

I did not go far. I crossed over, walked to the end of the street and loitered in the descending mist. The air, dank and chill, nipped at my clothes.

Yakovlevich emerged fifteen minutes later wearing a dark cashmere coat slung rakishly over his shoulders. For him to venture out alone without a minder in tow a rare sight.

I followed at a respectable distance, the thickening fog concealing my pursuit. As I trailed from street to street, out into the glare of Knightsbridge with all its sleek and not so subtle charm, then dropped onto the Brompton Road and eventually to a residential maze of leafy squares and railings, I wondered where the big Russian was heading with such abandon. In his enthusiasm, he seemed to have forgotten the basic rules of tradecraft.

Yakovlevich was now quite a way in front, the grey and gloomy streets deserted apart from the odd cyclist. A glance at my watch informed me that it was not yet four in the afternoon. Then he was gone.

I paused, bent down as if to tie a shoelace, and listened. Muffled voices drifted from a garden square ahead. Screened from the road by railings and dense foliage, it provided an ideal location for a meet. I didn’t know who was on the other side of the conversation.

No gambler, I was more inclined to study a quarry and calculate his actions accordingly. All men had a price and Yakovlevich was no exception. Superficially, he seemed like any other gangster, the acquisition of huge wealth and riches his reason to get up in the morning. In reality, he was a power junkie, which explained why he rubbed shoulders with those who could really shake things up and make them happen: his cronies in the FSB. Straining my ears, I heard Yakovlevich’s deep bass voice speaking in his native tongue. I had no clue what was spoken, but I calculated that Yakovlevich’s garden guest was a Russian intelligence officer. Had Yakovlevich personally ordered the hit, he would have kept his distance. The fact he was here, reporting back to base, indicated that Wilding’s blood was not on Yakovlevich’s hands. The same could not be said of the Russians.

Straightening up, I squinted through the murk at the empty street. Frustratingly, there were few places in which to hide. Acutely aware that if I got close enough to see Yakovlevich and his friend, they could also see me, I backtracked and sloped across the road and stole down a flight of stone steps leading to a basement flat. Hopefully, the occupants were out. Concealed behind a boundary wall, I slipped the camera from my briefcase and waited.

Yakovlevich emerged first, followed by his friend. They crossed the road together, passing dangerously close to where I crouched, breathless. Taking a snap, I got a good look at the other man: middle-aged with short grey hair and a distinctive scar on the left side of his chin. Seconds later, they shook hands; Yakovlevich walking one way, ‘Scar-face’ the other.

Mission accomplished, I slipped the camera back into the briefcase. I probably had another hour, if lucky, before the light entirely faded, smothered by the thickening murk. Within an easy stroll of Imperial College in Exhibition Road, I decided to head that way. The Israelis’ London Station, embedded in the Israeli Embassy on Palace Green, was also within striking distance. Reuben once told me a small team operated there from several floors below.

Cutting back into a crush of shoppers, I allowed myself to be buffeted along on a human tide. A fragment of me wondered what it would be like to run alongside and join them. The thought lasted seconds.

It started to spit with rain as I turned a corner and walked up Exhibition Road past the Natural History Museum, the V&A on the opposite side, and glanced up at the main entrance to Imperial College with its geometric glass and steel winking in the gathered gloom. By now the woman from the British Security Service would already have paid a visit, interviewed Wilding’s line manager and asked all the usual questions: were all security restrictions in place; was anything missing; was Wilding behaving oddly; had she trouble sleeping; was she depressed? I wished I could have been a fly on the wall when that conversation took place. But I had other ideas.

I’m a big believer in timing. Wrong place, wrong time exists, but it’s rare. It underlines the theory of calculating the odds. Match a certain set of events with a number of different players and chances are those players will end up bumping into each other, the fact my path almost crossed with Wilding’s assassin a fine example. Given the circumstances, it was actually surprising that we didn’t meet. I hoped my theory held up now.

Taking a left into Kensington Gore, I sauntered parallel to Queens Gate with its classy hotels and wide residential streets of Victorian buildings and white stucco grand six-storey edifices, similar to those found in central Moscow. I felt peculiarly settled in the shadows and I walked slowly, softly, in the direction of Kensington Palace Gardens, more specifically Palace Green, the most secure and exclusive road in Kensington and beating heart of Embassy land. Within its half mile stretch of prime real estate lay the red brick former home of the novelist and essayist, William Thackeray, its current occupier the Israeli Embassy. As one would expect, security around the embassy remained extremely tight. Fine by me. I had no intention of straying too close.

My field of vision restricted, my hearing constrained by the hostile elements, call it intuition, but I sensed the redhead at Wilding’s house that morning would be chasing down the same leads, perhaps within the same time frame. All I had to do was pick a spot and wait.

I set down the briefcase beside me and took up a position leaning against a plane tree. Surrounded by a collection of moving shapes, silhouettes, the gauzy light of cars and lorries, I took out a pack of cigarettes I’d bought earlier in a backstreet newsagents. Fog stretched over my face in a damp embrace. There were many approaching footsteps, some fast and staccato, others flat and heavy. Still I waited.

Two cigarettes later, the last crushed against the heel of my shoe, I heard a purposeful yet even tread. Having devoted years to identifying the idiosyncrasies of others, I knew, without the smallest doubt, the gait and pace belonged to the woman with the flame-coloured hair.

I struck hard and fast. Action is faster than reaction. There are exceptions. The woman, highly trained, was one. As my hands clamped around her throat, she flicked her head up, the crown striking my jaw. Next, she raised her right leg. For this I was ready. Before her knee could make the connection with my groin, I flexed, and substantially increased the pressure on her neck. I had to be careful. A man can be rendered unconscious in three seconds, dead in fifteen. I needed her alive, articulate and co-operative.

I am a strong guy. My shoulders are broad. I used all my body weight to push her against the base of the tree. She didn’t scream. She couldn’t. Even so, you’d think someone would come to her aid. Nobody did.

I released the pressure on her neck. I did not clamp a hand over her mouth. I removed her earpiece, stuck my hand in her jacket and lifted her phone, scrolled through, switched it off and shoved it back. I let her recover, but I stayed up close and very personal. I could smell her perfume: floral, contemporary, notes of citron, cedar and musk. Anyone walking by would assume we were lovers about to get it on. I put my mouth close to her ear and whispered, ‘If you’re smart, you’ll understand I haven’t set out to kill you.’

‘What do you want?’ Nice voice, low and melodic, well spoken. Her eyes, an iridescent green, shone like a cat’s in the night. She hadn’t asked me who I was and that told me the boy had talked and she had paid attention. I smiled. She was smart. We were going to get along fine. I loomed over her, using my body to put a barrier between her and anyone else in the street.

‘Wilding was working on something big. What was it?’ No way was I prepared to suggest a blueprint for a biological military weapon let alone any possible ethnic aspect. Way too hot.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Not smart, reckless. I flew at her throat once again. ‘Do you enjoy killing women?’ she spat, her voice low and accusing. I let my hands drop as if I’d touched molten steel.

‘I didn’t kill Wilding.’

‘You were there.’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘If you didn’t kill her, who did?’

‘We wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation if I knew.’

‘This isn’t a conversation. It’s an assault.’

‘How did he kill her?’ Call it professional interest.

‘Fuck you.’

I admired her spirit. Faced with a force field of barely suppressed aggression, most keel over. Not this woman. ‘My guess is that he injected her with something.’

‘You should know.’ Her cold smile reminded me of light on icy water.

‘I already told you. I didn’t do it.’

‘So what were you doing?’ The green eyes narrowed to two feline slits.

Tricky one. ‘Searching for information.’

‘What exactly?’

I shrugged. ‘Data on a hard drive.’

She blinked slowly once, a cover for the interest she undoubtedly felt. She now recognised that we were dancing on the same stage. ‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t have it.’

‘You insult my intelligence.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. I don’t have it. Someone wants it. May even have it. And now I want it.’

‘Who’s the someone?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

Her brow wrinkled in concentration. ‘You don’t know who contracted you for the job?’

I didn’t care to be reminded of my failure. ‘You understand how the game is played. The man who instigates mayhem is five times removed from the action. You don’t think your average suicide bomber meets the mullah who commissioned him, do you?’

‘Rich,’ she sneered, ‘me taking lectures from you.’

‘I’m just saying that …’

‘You don’t have a clue who you work for.’ She glared at me in disbelief.

‘I don’t. Not on this particular occasion.’ I’d cocked up.

She gave me a long hard, venomous stare. When she spoke her voice scorched with contempt. ‘You might think you’re a somebody, but you have no idea what you’re involved in.’

‘I do.’ I didn’t. I was like a pilot making a crash landing. God knew where I’d fetch up.

‘No, you don’t,’ she repeated flatly.

‘Then enlighten me.’

Her laugh was dry as tinder.

‘I’ll take that as proof I’m on the right track. Wilding was involved in something most sane people would prefer not to think about.’

‘It’s proof of nothing,’ she said, tight-lipped. I looked into her eyes. I thought I detected weakness. She looked torn between keeping her mouth shut and wanting to trade. Getting down to the nitty-gritty, the gathering of intelligence is all about give and take, and I was the best lead she’d had all day. I decided to try and tempt her.

‘I’m thinking Wilding would hardly store A-grade information in her home, but then it would depend on what it was and what she planned to do with it.’

Two spots of colour flashed across her cheeks.

‘I accept I’m running ahead of the evidence,’ I riffed. ‘Must be virtually impossible to steal anything from Wilding’s place of work. The security arrangements would be strictly monitored, bombproof even. Then again, she didn’t need to steal anything. She already had it in her head. What should I call you, incidentally?’

‘Whatever you like, this isn’t a social engagement.’

‘We could help each other.’

At this she laughed again. Low, from her belly, this time. It was a good laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Secrecy’s my middle name. Your superiors wouldn’t have to know.’

She issued another cold, cynical look. ‘Unlike you, I have rules to obey.’

‘But surely they could be bent a little?’

She smiled without warmth. ‘What are you trying to do, end my career? Sorry, I’m not open to corruption.’

‘Not even if it helps save the day?’ I let that sink in.

She looked at me, sullen, eyes revealing nothing at all.

‘Toxins, nerve agents?’ I goaded, desperate to get a rise.

Her full red lips pressed together. I noticed she wore brick-red lipstick, very Forties starlet. I continued to barrage her with questions. ‘Who would be in the market for it?’

‘You’ve been reading too much spy fiction,’ she glowered.

‘What about your friends at the Israeli Secret Service? Do they have an opinion?’

Her face betrayed no emotion.

‘Funny, they showed quite an interest this morning.’

She let out a surprised breath and her body tensed beneath me. I smiled. ‘Your sidekick has quite a crush on you, did you know? The other guys hanging around were regular police officers. Judging by their sour expressions, they don’t care for the security services pulling rank.’ As soon as the words exited my mouth, I realised I’d said too much. For reasons unknown I’d wanted to impress her, to let her see that I was worthy. Vanity, Reuben had often reminded me, was a capital offence. ‘How is the boy?’ I said, changing tack.

She fixed me with hard eyes. ‘Safe from you.’

In spite of every effort to curb a reaction, a pulse above my left eyelid quivered. Like a shark scenting blood in the water, she spotted my weakness.

‘Why didn’t you kill him?’

I had no answer. If I wasn’t careful she would lead me to a place I’d no desire to visit. It was her turn to smile.

‘Your failure reveals worrying inconsistency. It’s as if you give a damn.’

I swallowed hard. She wasn’t finished. ‘I wonder what the hell that’s all about,’ she said, her turn to goad. ‘Care to share?’ I did my best to retain a blank expression. Her lips curved into a superior smile. She was onto me. I stepped back. ‘You’re free to go,’ I said. She didn’t move an inch. I had the impression of her staring right into my soul. I wanted to break her hold on me. Her gaze dropped, eyes fixed on a point beyond my shoulder. I turned minutely. Next, her hand thudded into my chest and she was gone.

I bent down to see if she’d taken the briefcase. It wasn’t there. She’d performed a classic disappearing trick. Like I said, she was smart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Conscious she’d call for reinforcements, I took a fast, circuitous route. Whether she believed me or not was incidental. We both knew what we were dealing with. We both knew what we wanted. Whether or not she would play on my team, I’d no idea.

A creature of shadows, I liked the dark: my milieu. But that night I wasn’t paying enough attention. The memory of the MI5 girl’s laugh, her penetrating stare, a blizzard of green, had sidetracked me. Quite suddenly, I found myself in a shabby lane, a cut-through between two rows of houses within spitting distance of Earls Court, reminding me of the many hutong you find in the Forbidden City in China – without the bikes and rickshaws. Lights from neighbouring streets cast a sickly glare through the gloom. I could hardly see but I could imagine the shattered walls that flanked the alley, the corrugated iron and outbuildings in varying states of disrepair. Weeds grew in knots between the cobbled stones beneath my feet. I didn’t hear another, no telltale breath, no loud footfall, but I recognised that I had company. Too late, I turned.

The guy exploded into action, raining blows, several cracking my jaw and head. I darted, lunged, parried. Bone connected. Blood spattered. Mostly mine. My adversary was bigger than me in every respect, a wall of muscle, a human Pit Bull. Grabbing me by one ear, he yanked me close with one hand, by the throat with the other. He had a bad case of halitosis; his breath reeked of garlic and Guinness.

‘Where is it, you fucker?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘The fucking hard drive.’

We were eyeball to eyeball. Blood streamed from my head. Shot through with pain, I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t notice his strong Belfast accent.

‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ I moaned through bloodied teeth.

Predictably he released his hold on my throat so he could mess me up some more. I arched, thrust my body back, felt my ear tear, but I was free. Enraged, he came in again at close range, fists, head and feet. Whoever he was, this clown meant business.

Under this level of fire thought vanished like the mist swirling around us. Fortunately I had good instincts and my instinct was to draw him back through a terrain of empty cans, litter and used needles towards a derelict building. He sensed my game and changed tempo. The pressure increased. I mostly absorbed the pain, landing the odd blow without doing him any serious damage. Acting the vanquished, I drew him close. Close enough to…

The length of wire flashed quicksilver against the dark and twisted round his neck with the speed of a cobra strike. In two steps I was behind him, hauling back, putting my full weight into hanging on, the struggling man twisting and turning and grunting, shoes sliding in the dirt. His fingers scrabbled to loosen the wire before it became embedded. I hauled some more. A fine spray of blood released and cascaded into the night. He fell back heavily, knocking the air out of my lungs as I collapsed beneath him. ‘Think like him and never stop thinking like him until he is dead’ Reuben had taught me. Men can do extraordinary things even when dying. I didn’t doubt that if I let go my assailant would produce a knife and make one last attempt to kill me. I clung on with grim determination until the spray became a pumping torrent of plasma and his heels drummed on the rough surface. My arms and shoulders juddering with strain, I gave one final wrench and it was over. A noise, like water gurgling down a plughole, rasped, rattled and hissed into the night.

I slid out from beneath him and dragged him by his feet into the remains of an empty building partially boarded up and smelling of piss. Rifling through his clothing revealed a wallet with five hundred pounds in sterling, no credit cards, no identification. He also carried a gun. Difficult to tell what it was in the stuttering light, but it felt like a Colt. I briefly wondered why he hadn’t used it, and pocketed both.

To conceal the bloodstains on my coat, I took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on. Retrieving the wire, I wiped it on the dead man’s trousers, returned it to my pocket, and made my way back to Reuben’s.

This time I used a conventional form of entry: I rang Reuben’s doorbell. He let me in, invited me through to the sitting room.

‘You look like hell.’

I shrugged off my coat. ‘This needs to be disappeared.’

He took it from me without a word and told me to take a seat. ‘I will get something for the cuts and bruises.’

A fire blazed in the grate, throwing shadows on the walls. I realised how cold I was and stood and warmed myself. Reuben was halfway down a bottle of red wine. There were three glasses, one empty, one his, one used.

Reuben returned with a medical kit and expertly cleaned me up. It stung.

‘Who did this?’ he said.

Had it not been for my assailant’s mean and precise line of questioning, I might have thought I was the victim of a stranger attack. If you walk in those sorts of places you’re likely to meet trouble. As it was, had to be someone with more than a passing interest in Wilding although I didn’t believe it was anyone in an official capacity. Not their style. As for the accent, well, who knew? Plenty of out of work thugs from that part of the world. I wondered whom he worked for.

‘A guy with no name built like a banned breed of canine.’ I was spent and dejected. My head and ear throbbed. I flinched as Reuben traced my face with his thick fingers for fractures.

‘You’re fine,’ he said.

I grunted thanks. I felt anything but fine and gladly accepted his offer of a drink, a Grand Vin and premier cru of a fine vintage from Bordeaux. He asked nothing more of me. He knew that I’d speak when ready. We sat in awkward silence for some minutes until I chose to deliver edited highlights. I did not tell him about my audience with a Russian crime lord and his theory that the motive for Wilding’s murder was revenge. I did not tell him about my personal run-in with the British intelligence officer. I wanted to keep her to myself. Instead, I told Reuben that Wes wanted the hard drive returned in three days. Seemed like Wes was not the only person who wanted to get his hands on it, any number of parties after the same thing. Made my job a hundred times more difficult.

‘To give it to whom?’

‘I don’t know but I intend to find out.’

Reuben did not react.

‘Who in hell wants to inflict biological ethnic genocide?’ I snapped.

‘You lack the evidence to support your claim,’ Reuben softly reminded me.

‘You’re now saying I’m wrong?’ After all you told me? My mind reeled back to my conversation with Wes. Drugs that kill certain types of people. What else if it wasn’t this? And McCallen hadn’t exactly blown out my allegations about nerve agents. I wildly wondered whether the Israelis harboured a desire to annihilate their Arab neighbours by twisting the genetic key, and vice-versa. I asked Reuben.

He smiled broadly and shook his head. ‘Israelis and Arabs share similar genetic characteristics. They are both of Semitic origin. In simple engineering terms, it would be a tremendous feat to divide one human genome from another. Any pathogen developed in a test-tube would result in mutually-assured destruction.’

I gaped at him. He leant forward, rested a paw of a hand on my knee. ‘Do not worry, Joshua, you come from a mongrel race. It would be extremely difficult to wipe out you and yours.’

Then whom in God’s name were we talking about? Orientals? I looked him in the eye. For reasons I could not describe I found Reuben’s fervour neither convincing nor reassuring. Difficult was not the same as impossible. The white man in the Korean showcase had been chosen for a reason. My mind unravelled. I’d narrowly escaped moving from the steal-to-order market into something more deadly and dangerous, maybe even state sponsored terrorism. And what of the Russian connection? By now, MI5 would have disseminated the contents of my briefcase, trawled through my false identification papers and studied the photographs on the camera. I wondered whether they’d yet identified Yakovlevich’s mystery contact.

Reuben broke into my thoughts. ‘I have not been idle in your absence. It’s all right I was discreet,’ he added in response to my obvious consternation. ‘I have an old contact who passed on some timely information.’ I retained a mask of inscrutability. That very morning Reuben had tried to persuade me that he no longer had connections. ‘The London station chief received a visit this afternoon from MI5’s Inger McCallen.’

Inger McCallen. I silently drank in her name, rolling it round my mouth like a fine wine. Suggestive of a Scottish origin, it explained the pale colouring, the copper-coloured hair, and flinty manner. It intrigued me. I mused whether Scandinavia played a part in her background. In my reverie, I clean forgot that her name was in all probability fictional. Reuben was still talking. ‘Apparently, Dr Wilding was killed by a bubble of air injected into the jugular vein.’ The suspected method used to kill Robert Maxwell before he was chucked overboard from his yacht, I remembered. I also remembered that in my foolish enthusiasm to impress McCallen I’d offered this as a possibility. In Wilding’s case, the combination of pills and alcohol would have masked the prick of the needle entering her skin. She would have put up no defence. As a method, it was brilliantly conceived, her assassin clearly taking advantage of available conditions on the ground – a masterstroke.

‘According to my source, the British are unusually upset by Wilding’s death.’

I gave a snort of frustration. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘To be expected, indeed,’ Reuben said. ‘With the lingering stink over the Kelly affair, the security services are bound to be at the centre of a swirl of new allegations. They will not welcome renewed attention.’

I didn’t react. With every appearance of calm, as if Wilding were nothing more than a humble computer programmer setting up a new project, I said, ‘What if Wilding had her own agenda? What if she was working in an offensive capacity?’ Why else would the information be at her home?

He spread his hands and gave a wide shrug. I frowned. Reuben was doing the equivalent of feeding me titbits and then running away. ‘Whatever it was, this is well outside my experience,’ I said. ‘More than likely a foreign security service is responsible for her death.’

‘Then why were you employed?’

He had me there. Wes dealt exclusively with international organised crime. Silence invaded the room like a conquering army. I stayed still, tuned out. Finally Reuben broke the deadlock.

‘The British have an asset within a newly emergent fundamentalist Muslim splinter group based in the Midlands.’

‘Terrorists?’ I said, with a snatch of alarm.

‘Yes.’

I remembered Yakovlevich’s take on young Muslim radicals. I eyed Reuben with suspicion. ‘How do you know and how is this relevant?’

He let out a tired sigh as though I was particularly stupid. ‘Muslim groups are always relevant. The uneducated masses still declare death to Israel and death to the West.’

I suddenly didn’t buy Reuben’s alleged ignorance. ‘Reuben,’ I added sternly. ‘You are forcing connections and speaking in riddles,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Frankly, this is political dynamite and I don’t do politics.’ Nor religion nor fundamentalism, I could have said.

Reuben flashed a smile and hunched his shoulders. ‘I may be out of the game, Joshua, but there are certain things that a man like me can divine.’ I looked deeply into his eyes. He met my gaze with a considered expression. ‘McCallen is meeting the asset tomorrow here in London.’ He gave me the details.

‘Divination is one thing,’ I said deliberately. ‘If you’re so out of the game, how come you know about the meeting?’

Reuben slow-blinked, issued a wily smile. ‘Remember that everyone is there to be used.’

Dissatisfied, I stood to leave. Reuben got up, too, and followed me out into the hall and to the front door. Before he opened it he rested a hand on my arm. Despite the lightness of touch, I could feel the power of the man radiating through his fingertips. He quoted a motto of which he was particularly fond: By way of deception, thou shalt do war.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I bought some electric hair clippers from an open all hours’ chemist and booked into one of many cheap budget hotels near Paddington. Not the most comfortable establishments but they had their advantages. Within close proximity of train stations they offered the best chance of escape, and they employed the type of temporary staff inclined to be less discriminating. The night porter barely lifted his eyes let alone paid attention to my battered appearance as I asked for a room for the night.

Reuben’s intelligence was non-specific in certain aspects, precise and detailed in others. Caught in a slimy net of events beyond my understanding, it made me suspicious. With this firmly planted in my head I fell asleep quickly and came to a couple of hours later, restless, awake and wired.

Logically, Wilding’s murder looked politically motivated, a foreign security service responsible for her death. And yet, as Reuben had pointed out, someone had been willing to employ a guy like me. In the same vein, my unknown assailant didn’t strike me as an ‘in-house’ professional. Whoever he was, I intended to find out – maybe Wes could offer an opinion – but first I’d keep my date with McCallen, the thought of crossing paths with her again strangely exhilarating.

In the past, my rare encounters with mostly foreign women had been restricted to the one-off, passionate and no holds barred variety, commonly termed the one-night stand. In the heat of the moment, terrific; hollow in the aftermath. I didn’t believe a woman like McCallen would ever look twice at a man like me and yet I briefly wondered what it would be like to sleep with her, how she would feel and taste. Wasn’t a simple case of sexual attraction, it was more elemental. Before the Wilding job I would have said that we were flip sides of the same coin. We both moved in murky worlds. We both had secret lives. We both hewed the rich seam of frail and foolish humanity. Long-term relationships were out. Neither of us could make promises, nor offer commitment. Alike in so many aspects and yet, I had to admit, light-years away in others. With this swilling around inside my head, I lay back down, resting in the shadows, then finally turned over and fell into a fractured sleep.

Low in spirit, smudged by fatigue, I rose at six in the morning. An hour later and, thanks to my new electric hair clippers, I had a brand new image. Along with the bruises and swelling around my left eye and torn ear, my freshly shaved head added several years to my appearance. Tag on a pair of outdated spectacles and scruffy jacket and I could pass for a recently released guest of Her Majesty.

Before leaving the hotel room, I wiped away fingerprints, paying particular attention to door handles, lavatory seats, anything that bore my personal insignia, then headed back to the streets and found a newsagents, part of a large chain, and rifled through the day’s newspapers. The identikit picture of me was particularly poor. Had McCallen protected me? I quickly dismissed the idea as wishful thinking.

Her meeting was scheduled for nine forty-five in a precise corner of Kensington Palace Gardens. (Reuben had all but given me the co-ordinates.) Arriving half an hour early, I walked up the road and entered the park through a wide set of gates that always reminded me of the elegant entrance to Pittville park in the Cotswold capital of Cheltenham, my home town.

Out of nowhere two black-clad police officers, carrying Heckler and Koch MP5’s, walked along the street towards me. Heart thudding in my chest, I curbed my natural instinct, which was to turn and leg it. Still they came, their gaze seemingly unfocused, the weapons held close to their barrel chests. At any moment I knew these guys could spring into action and empty a couple of magazines into me. The closer they walked, the more I sweated. My hearing went, my tongue stuck like bubblegum to the roof of my mouth. All I could see were the men and the guns, nothing else. Forcing my legs to move, I nodded good morning. They both nodded back, strolled past, oblivious of my real identity. I turned into the park and let out a painfully contained breath.

In spite of the Arctic weather, joggers ran, halting to perform the occasional squat thrust. Tourists milled about, snapping photographs. Footpaths were slippery and coated in frost. I meandered left, eyes raking my surroundings, and eventually walked past a bench that offered privacy without secrecy. If McCallen’s asset was as high-grade as Reuben led me to believe she would want him secure and in a place where nobody could slot him and get away with it.

Falling in with a bunch of Australians admiring the late Princess Diana’s old home, I waited when, eventually, a slightly built man in his mid-twenties rocked up. Hands thrust deep into a padded jacket, woollen Beanie hat close over his ears; he wore a desert scarf in a black and white chequered design, rebel republic style. A soft dark beard offset his pinch-faced features. Watchful and wary, he had standout eyes that made him look as if he wore eyeliner. He could easily pass for an Afghan, I thought.

He sat down with a bump, hunkered down into the seat in an effort to reduce his visibility, and clapped his hands together against the cold. His boots stamped the frosted ground. Swarthy complexion, tinged with blue, he looked frozen. With my freshly shaven head, I totally got where he was coming from. Slipping out the mobile phone for the Wilding job, I hastily took his picture and jammed the phone back into my pocket.

McCallen arrived a few minutes later. The latecomer’s way of asserting authority, of stating who’s in charge and calls the shots, McCallen was very much displaying her credentials. Giving her time to settle, to re-establish a rapport with her contact, I turned my back and wandered over towards a water fountain. Bending down, I helped myself to a drink. The bitter cold set my teeth on edge. At this level McCallen was directly in my eye line. I fixed my gaze on her full-lipped mouth.

Looking straight ahead, she engaged the youth with the standard openers of conversations recited all over the world. She called him Saj. Saj replied that he was well and that his family were just fine. Next she asked after a guy called Mustafa.

‘Zealous as ever.’ A faint smile played on the young man’s thin features.

‘And the group’s more recent activities?’

‘Lying low after the attack plan attracted too much heat and was aborted.’

‘And they had no idea you were responsible for the tip-off?’

‘None.’ Saj seemed like a polite and quiet individual. With McCallen at his side, he had lost some of the nervousness he displayed earlier.

Then she moved on to the heavy stuff.

‘You’ve heard of Dr Mary Wilding?’

Perplexed, he said, ‘The dead scientist.’

‘We believe she was the victim of blackmail.’

At this we both frowned. Me, because it was something Wes should have told me; Saj, because he was unable to fathom any possible connection to himself. He said as much to McCallen. ‘What sort of blackmail?’

‘She had access to pathogens with a variety of uses.’ My interest spiked. I wondered what form of blackmail would persuade Wilding to risk her job, her reputation, her life and indeed, as it now turned out, the lives of others. Against every instinct, I was reminded of the dying Koreans, the blood and ordure. Saj nodded, gravely assimilating the information. ‘Are you aware of anyone making overtures to Mustafa?’ McCallen pressed him.

‘Something like this would not be brought to my attention. Above my pay grade.’

‘With this particular type of material on the market we fear Mustafa will be approached.’

‘Who by?’

‘Our only lead is a British assassin. Around six feet, maybe a shade under, strong, with a slim to medium build. He’s dark haired, blue-eyed, striking with flat high cheekbones. We think he may attempt to trade.’

I tuned out after assassin. She was wrong. She didn’t believe me. And she wasn’t going to get anywhere if she concentrated her attention in a wasted direction. The idiocy of it made me flare with anger.

‘Anyone like that cross your radar?’ she concluded.

‘Never.’

McCallen flexed her shoulders, dissatisfied. She wasn’t alone. The tip of her nose glowed red from the cold. Her eyes scanned the human landscape. I turned away so that I missed her contact’s follow-up question. When I turned back McCallen was speaking once more.

‘The hit was professional and accomplished. The killer escaped with vital information concerning a certain bio-weapon.’ Too true, I thought, wondering about the exact nature of this type of material. ‘Do you think you could persuade Mustafa to test the market, to put out the word?’ she said.

‘Use him as bait to draw the killer out of the shadows?’

‘And lead us to those who have the information. Would Mustafa deal with a white guy?’

‘You mean would he bargain with an infidel?’ Saj flashed a rare grin, the question rhetorical. ‘The world has changed. For Mustafa, this is all the more reason to ramp up the violence. We do business with whoever will aid our cause.’

‘If you could persuade…’ She changed position so that I could no longer read her lips. Fuck.

Her contact blew out a breath, sending a plume of warm air into the chill atmosphere. ‘Can you be more specific about what exactly we’re touting for?’

She bent towards him then drew away. Irritatingly, she still had her back to me. Suddenly, her contact twisted round, facing her, his eyes bright like polished mahogany. I couldn’t hear but his bearing shrieked outrage. ‘The British government sanctioned this?’

She leant towards him for a second time. Frustrated beyond belief, my eyes locked onto the young man’s thin lips.

‘It should have been destroyed.’

She reached out, rested a hand lightly on his shoulder, squeezed it, said something else then got up and strode away.

I followed at a distance. She walked quickly, soft shoes pumping, frequently changing direction. I felt out of sorts, possibly because I hadn’t eaten for hours, probably because I was a marked man and I could be arrested at any moment, mostly because McCallen had shone a fiery light on a dirty corner. I thought about Reuben and how McCallen’s revelation chimed with what I’d witnessed in his basement. I thought about Wes and the pack of lies he’d told me. I thought about my own presumption of Wilding’s greed and guilt.

In no time we were in the heart of trendy affluence and bowling along Notting Hill, finally looping round towards Holland Park tube station. As we neared the underground her pace changed and she cast a long slow look behind her. Thinking she was on to me, I had no option but to take my chances and keep moving. If I darted out of view she’d definitely make me.

The closer I came the more her eyes seemed unfocused. She was looking but not seeing then two things happened in fast succession. McCallen drew out her phone and answered it, her voice drowned out by an ambulance followed by a fire engine, both with sirens blaring, racing down the avenue. Meanwhile her eyes did all the talking. She was clearly in receipt of important news. I just didn’t know what it was.

CHAPTER NINE

Riveted, I followed her into the underground and stood well back as she waited to board a tube train on the Piccadilly line. Her profile was neat and symmetrical. I liked the way her black roll-top sweater contrasted with and maximised the copper in her hair. I liked the way she stood: relaxed, confident, striking. I admired everything about her.

Two minutes later, the thunderous noise of a train’s approach. People surged forward, including McCallen. I stayed rooted, immobile, like a relic frozen in time.

Gasp of hot air, blinding lights, driver’s eyes, heat running through my veins, hammering in my chest, giddy sensation. Get close but not too close. Anxious I might be sucked off the platform onto the live rails and crushed and chewed into oblivion. Then the man next to me toppling, falling, plunging…

I blinked. McCallen had boarded. My abrupt lapse in concentration cost me and I took a hurried step forward. The doors squeezed closed, shutting me out, then suddenly snapped apart, ejecting McCallen. For the second time I thought she’d catch me in her visual crosshairs. Maybe she did, but she didn’t react.

I retreated into a crowd of students, recent shambling additions to the platform. My eyes followed as McCallen walked a short distance away, waited for and stepped onto the next tube. This time she stayed on board. I knew because I was in the next-door compartment. Together we rode as far as Oxford Circus where she changed onto the Northern line and got off at Embankment.

Outside the Thames looked choppy, white spume cresting khaki, the sky overhead milk-white as though it might snow. There were too many people. Hot-dog vendors and roast chestnut sellers plied their wares. Jugglers tossed flaming batons. A black guy break-danced to an admiring crowd of onlookers and a steel band thumped out reggae. The carnival atmosphere was intoxicating but I was too shaken by Saj’s violent reaction to whatever McCallen had said to get high.

She mooched towards an underpass where a number of skateboarders showcased their skills. One guy, older than the rest, gathered speed and careered off the edge of a ramp, taking a death-defying leap, soaring through the air and coming down with a tremendous clatter. Others zoomed in and out of pillars, pirouetting and contorting, agile and speedy. McCallen stopped, ostensibly to watch. I could tell it was a blind from the way she inclined her head. She wasn’t there to take in the show. She was there because she was waiting for someone. I slipped behind a pillar and waited with her.

Fifteen minutes elapsed.

A woman approached. She had shoulder-length raven hair, eyes the colour of double espresso. Her black wool coat fell from her shoulders in two vertical lines, the dress beneath a vivid blue, the neckline plunging. Not to put too fine a point on it, she was stacked. It was easy to imagine her naked. To my surprise, she walked straight over to McCallen and greeted her. Then my heart sank. I know enough Russian to translate privyet, which means hi. After that I was lost although, frankly, fascinated by McCallen’s obvious linguistic talent. I glibly wondered why she worked for MI5 when her skills would find a more appropriate home with the Secret Intelligence Service.

The rapid-fire discussion between the two women lasted roughly ten minutes. This time, my lip-reading skills wasted, I could only rely on body language.

McCallen started by flaring the fingers of one hand, as if about to reach out, reinforcing her desire to project her ideas and thinking. In return, the Russian sliced the icy air with the flat of her hand, eager to cut to the chase, the gesture eventually reciprocated by McCallen cupping her palms, begging for agreement. At one point the Russian tapped her nose in a classic conspiratorial gesture. McCallen nodded grimly and, finally, clenched her fist, a symbol of her determination. The display gave the impression that they were nothing other than two people on opposite sides of a fence, exchanging and pooling information, each having something that would benefit the other. There was no overt animosity. No power play. To the casual observer, they seemed like equals. Seemed.

Practiced in the art of deception, they could not quite contain their facial expressions. The way the Russian inclined her head, pressed her lips together into a smile, touched her mouth lightly to conceal a lie, revealed she was less than an honest broker in the negotiations. By contrast, McCallen, outwardly calm, touched the tip of her nose and subtly shifted her weight from one foot to the other, almost rocking. Yeah, she was definitely anxious. Was it possible that Yakovlevich’s mystery contact was the subject of the discussion?

They parted without a backward glance. I watched, waited, and moved away. There were people I needed to talk to and I had a ride to catch.

CHAPTER TEN

I headed back to the lock-up, exchanged my scruffy jacket and jeans for a navy Italian single-breasted suit and camel-coloured overcoat and, to hide my battered features, wrapped a fine Morino woollen scarf around my neck and chin, and topped it off with a trilby. I resembled a character from a romantic wartime novel, fine for the environment I was about to inhabit. Next, I selected a worn leather briefcase, one of my favourites, containing another set of I.D. plus a change of underwear and enough euros to bribe the most reluctant customs officer. I wanted to take the Colt accessory and spoil of war. Out of the question. Yakovlevich would never sanction it. I’d have to travel clean and pick up a weapon, as usual, at the other end.

My thoughts centred on blackmail, close country cousin to bribery and extortion, and blood relatives within the great family of organised crime. How and who had blackmailed Wilding? These were questions I wanted to pose to Wes, preferably with my hands around his neck. Flakier by the hour, Wes was starting to look less like a loosely involved link man and more like an integral player. Time I found out what Wes was really up to.

There’s a gentlemen’s club in Pall Mall populated by arms dealers, spooks, criminals and oddballs. Eclectic best describes it, and exceptionally discreet. It opened its doors at lunchtime and, in spite of my wanted status, I paid it a visit.

I was hoping an American called Ron Tilelli would be at the club. Tilelli had taken British citizenship a decade or more before. A driver for various watering holes, ironically one with a drink and gambling habit, he was a happy combination for me because it made him highly corruptible. Word on the wire said that several intelligence agencies had him in their pockets – another reason for having a chat. I wasn’t sure how true this was. Filled with enough sour-mash whisky, Tilelli could make some fairly extraordinary claims. I’d learnt over the years, however, that even the most unlikely stories contain grains of truth.

The club was decked out like an old country hotel with wood-panelled walls, tartan-patterned upholstery, and distressed-looking leather sofas the colour of old cognac. An overweight golden Labrador snoozed by the fake, but no less convincing, gas log fire. An assiduous Polish waiter took my coat and drink order.

Tilelli had a regular spot in one corner, the equivalent of the foreigner erecting his windbreak on a particular stretch of sand and marking out his territory. A bear of a man, with a mop of sandy-coloured hair, his face a mesh of thread veins in which small light-brown eyes sat like pebbles. He had a raucous laugh and Tilelli laughed a lot. It was one of the things I liked about him. The opposite of me, he was a glass half full merchant.

Tilelli held court with his usual flair, this time and to my relief he imbibed coffee. Around him, a coterie of hangers-on, or liggers as I sometimes described them. It included one man with whom I’d regularly done business. I called him Guy. Small, dapper, shiny-shoed, he looked more financial advisor than small arms dealer. He met my eye, winked and moved away. The others, whom I didn’t recognise, took one look at me and fled as though they had the Grim Reaper stalking towards them. In a sense, I suppose that’s exactly what I was. Tilelli stayed put, met my gaze with a smile. We got on as well as I get on well with anyone.

‘Hex,’ he said, clapping me on the back. People called me Hex because it had connotations of witchcraft. Considered first-rate at what I did, I was clearly no magician. ‘Good to see you,’ Tilelli enthused. ‘Say, what happened to you?’

‘A minor collision with a door.’

Tilelli was shrewd enough to accept my poor excuse. ‘Drink?’

‘Got one, thanks.’ I tipped my head in the direction of the approaching waiter who put a tray on the highly polished table in front of me. Bombay gin, plenty of ice, tonic, and a slice of lime. Tilelli leant forward, swooped up the bill in his big, fleshy fingers, handed it to the waiter.

‘Put it on my tab,’ he said.

‘Certainly, sir. Are you eating with us, gentlemen?’

‘Not me, thanks,’ Tilelli said, patting his stomach, the buttons under considerable strain.

‘No,’ I told the waiter who disappeared with the speed of a greyhound. Perhaps he, too, was scared of me.

I thanked Tilelli for his generosity. ‘My pleasure,’ he said graciously. Nothing in his bearing suggested he associated me with the man wanted by MI5. I wasn’t surprised. It was a rubbish picture. ‘How’s tricks?’ he said.

I smiled, ‘Average.’ Tilelli didn’t expect a rundown of my latest business ventures no more than I expected him to tell me whose payroll he was on. I had, however, revealed in one single word that all was not quite as it should be. Tilelli picked up on it.

‘There’s a lot of frightened folk out there and when folk get frightened they make mistakes and then those mistakes need taking care of.’

I nodded sagely. ‘Any folk in particular I should know about?’

‘Just making a general observation.’

He was right. Tough times usually meant an increase in my line of work.

I said, ‘Seen Wes lately?’

Tilelli frowned. ‘Not for a while.’ He didn’t ask me why I asked. Wouldn’t have been sensible or clever. Why? Was not a question to which I responded with warmth. ‘I heard he was banging some older broad,’ he added.

‘Wes would bang his own sister if he had one,’ I said, to which Tilelli hooted with laughter. ‘Any idea which outfit he’s operating for right now?’

Tilelli shook his head disappointed he couldn’t help. ‘Like I said, I haven’t seen him in a while.’

‘Nothing about him on the wire?’

Another shake of his head followed by another gulp of booze.

I followed his lead, took a pull. Terrific. The coniferous tang of gin drowned my nausea. Nothing, however, obliterated a sudden vision of mass casualties, the morbid results of a vicious dirty bomb.

‘You all right, Hex? You look a little haunted, if you don’t mind my saying.’

I flashed an easy smile. ‘I’m good. Tired, that’s all.’

‘Doing nothing sure is tiring,’ he snorted, taking out a silver hip flask. He unscrewed the top and poured a slug of booze, presumably brandy, into his coffee cup. ‘Damn cold out there,’ he said as if by explanation.

I leant forward, dropped my voice several notches, baritone to bass. ‘I’m looking for a guy. He carried out a hit two nights ago.’ As soon as the words left my mouth I wondered why the man in the alley hadn’t presented himself to me as a potential candidate. Just because he’d questioned me about the hard drive didn’t exclude him. Maybe he’d killed Wilding but some other party had stolen the information. Then I contrasted the crass, brutish attempt of my attacker to the neatly conceived and slick execution carried out by the assassin: no comparison.

‘This guy,’ Tilelli eyeballed me, ‘Is he pissing on your patch?’

My answering smile was without mirth. I flicked an imaginary mark from my trousers, deliberately suggesting that I wanted to flick the guy who’d rained on my parade out of existence.

‘Got anything else on him?’ Tilelli’s eyes were alight with interest.

‘His working method tells me that he has a high level of skill and nerve.’ Whether or not he bore the scars of his trade with relish, I’d no idea. I didn’t need to spell out to Tilelli that the nature of the work meant that we were loners, anonymous, secretive and deadly.

Tilelli clicked his tongue. ‘Not that many on the circuit with your particular skills, especially for the more exotic gigs.’

I knew. I’d come across a few, foreigners mostly. I guessed Wilding definitely fell under the heading of exotic gig.

‘With regard to the legitimate market,’ Tilelli continued, ‘Governments all over the world, including democracies, employ security services who employ specialists to carry out wet operations.’

I knew this too. The Israelis had kidon. Grey Ghosts carried out assassinations on behalf of the Pentagon, or so Reuben, feeding my boyish imagination, once told me.

‘Reckon there’s a lot of hypocrisy on the subject,’ Tilelli chuckled, clearly on his own pet subject and loving every second of it. ‘There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between their dirty work and your dirty work.’

‘I just happen to work in the private sector,’ I flicked a cool smile, making Tilelli laugh out loud. The politically motivated murder once again took precedence over the criminally motivated, to my mind. Tilelli was still rattling on.

‘Any clue to this guy’s mojo?’

I shook my head. Most were driven by money, some by cruelty. There were a few who, once they had the taste of blood in their mouths, were unstoppable. Neither money nor cruelty made me tick.

Tilelli lifted the coffee cup to his lips. ‘And the victim?’

‘A scientist.’

The cup loitered mid-air. Actually, it shook a little. Tilelli’s eyes widened. Deep furrows appeared on his brow. ‘The scientist, Mary Wilding?’

‘Uh-huh.’

The rim of the cup pressed hard to his lips, Tilelli drained the contents, and returned it with a clatter to the saucer. He paled. For a man in the know it seemed inconceivable that Wilding’s death was suddenly headline news to him. I’d pressed some kind of button, but I didn’t know what.

‘You okay?’ I said.

‘Sure,’ Tilelli forced a smile. He didn’t look it.

‘The man who killed her has something that doesn’t belong to him,’ I said.

Tilelli took a big gulp of air as though about to dive into the deep.

‘You know anything about it?’

Tilelli shook his head, jowls wobbling. ‘What was taken?’

‘Information. It’s been confirmed she was the victim of blackmail. Might be connected, might not. There’s all kinds of people with their snouts in the trough.’

Tilelli grimaced. ‘What kinds of people?’

‘Your kind,’ I said elliptically. ‘Think you can help?’

‘Sure would like to but I’m kinda busy right now.’

‘Thought things were a little slow.’ My voice cut like a razor.

Tilelli glanced at his feet for a moment then looked up. I narrowed my gaze to one of cold steel. Sweat broke out on Tilelli’s brow. The tip of his tongue grazed the corner of his mouth. His eyes shot wide. ‘I’ll triple your fee,’ I promised.

It took a matter of seconds for the power of my words to penetrate Tilelli’s booze-sozzled brain. When it did his large frame relaxed. The muscles in his face went slack. I recognised that expression, one of sheer, unadulterated greed tempered by fear. I stayed absolutely still and observed him making the mental deductions. He was working out how many crates of Bourbon he could buy with that kind of loot, how many games of roulette he could fund. Finally, he grinned broadly, slapped one hand against his thigh and ejected a nervous laugh. He stuck out a hand. ‘Always a pleasure doing business with you.’

I took and shook out of courtesy. I had no need to remind him that the consequences of breathing one word of our conversation would result in instant and final retribution.

‘How will I get in touch?’ Tilelli’s eyes gleamed like two shiny pebbles at the bottom of a stagnant pond.

‘I’ll find you.’ I stood up and left.

The sun had given up trying to punch a hole in the sky and had sensibly retired. There was a whisper of sleet in the air. I had the strong sensation of events out of control and swirling around. I hoped McCallen was having better luck because then the hard drive would be in safekeeping and maybe McCallen would realise that she’d got me wrong. Somehow that was important to me.

I caught a tube to Richmond, walked into a supermarket, head down, basket in hand, checking for tails, then, ditching the basket, walked out and caught a bus to Kingston where I picked up take-away coffee, and changed to the 459 to Woking Station.

Every step risked exposure and I spent the journey coldly checking faces, watching those with mobile phones and I-pods, trying to distinguish who was who, whether any posed a threat. The constant and universal blare of music in shops, cafes, garages, and on the street had mostly worked to my advantage in the past. Now I was the hunted it spooked me.

From the station I hailed a cab that took me to Chobham, a charming historic village that had fallen prey to the tourist trade according to Billy ‘Squeeze’, the man I was going to visit. Billy’s real name was William Franke, but nobody I knew called him that.

To the outside world, Billy was another wealthy landowner who’d made his millions in the City when times were hot. Only a select few knew the truth. I doubted his family had a clue that the upstanding, generous husband and father who dominated their lives possessed a hidden dark side, a side where men were dispatched with the same ease with which Billy shot and bagged a pheasant. They didn’t know about his legendary cruelty, that he had once squeezed a man’s brains from his head, or that their world was built on the proceeds of drugs and the spilt blood of others.

‘You a friend of Mr Franke?’ the cabbie said.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘A real gentleman, grand fella. We do a lot of business with him. Generous as they come.’

I couldn’t disagree. Spotting what he called ‘raw talent’, Billy had given me my first early jobs in the trade and provided me with an influential contact in the States. For this I remained indebted. His impressive list of contacts was what drew me here now. Whether or not, he’d play ball was a different matter. Billy always drove a hard bargain. He thought he was being fly. I thought he was a mean old bastard. Unlike others with whom I’d had dealings, Billy had no airs and graces. I was as likely to find him with his sleeves rolled up fixing the crankshaft of one of his vintage motors as sitting in his study working out the logistics for his next shipment of cocaine. I smiled, catching the driver’s eye, and as quickly wiped the humour from my face. The way in which he watched me in the rear-view mirror made me uneasy. My description, although poor, was out there, in circulation. Concerned that I looked familiar to him in a way that he couldn’t yet fathom, I arranged my features into one of stark uncompromising hostility. It worked. Unnerved by my stony expression, he wittered on about Billy’s wife and kids. I grunted another reply and, not keen to engage, turned my head aside. I didn’t need an association with the great man to protect me. I could do that on my own. Thankfully for the cab driver the distance to Billy’s place was less than five miles. Wouldn’t have been good for him to push my buttons.

Eventually we swung into the grounds via a set of large electronic wrought-iron gates and drove uphill along a sinuous gravelled drive with fields on either side. Symbols of Billy’s success stood like monuments at every twist and turn: the man-made lake on which sat a rowing boat anchored to a post and chain; an old Victorian dovecote beautifully preserved; a folly glimpsed from within the manicured gardens. With a shudder, I realised then that the trappings of great wealth counted for nothing against a weapon of grotesque proportions.

At last we drew close to the entrance of a substantial black and white timbered farmhouse. I paid the fare and, as I handed it over, it occurred to me that I was no different from Billy. My rewards had also been earned from the deaths of others. The driver took my blood money and, pretending affability, nervously asked me to pass on his best wishes.

Brief conversation with a housekeeper informed me that Billy was last seen in the stable block. She suggested that I head that way. Other men would employ more stringent security measures. I could have been anyone. It was a measure of the man’s ruthlessness that Billy saw no need for extra protection. I knew that if he wanted to kill me he could, and probably smile in a moment of sober reflection afterwards.

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