Simon Green: The Dark Side of the Road

‘But why me?’ I said. ‘Why do you want me?’

‘You have qualities I admire,’ said the Colonel. And that was that.

‘I don’t know you, Colonel,’ I said. ‘Which is odd because there aren’t many in our line of work I haven’t at least heard of. I have made it my business to know who’s out there. So who are you really? Who pulls your strings? Who do you answer to?’

‘I am the Colonel, and I represent the Organization. That is all you’ll ever need to know. Safer that way, for all concerned.’

I looked into my glass and was surprised to find it empty. ‘What makes you think you know anything about me, Colonel? The real me?’

‘What does anyone really know about anyone else?’ said the Colonel. ‘I have followed your career with great interest, for some time. From a safe distance.’

‘No one was ever supposed to know what I do,’ I said. ‘No matter who I was working for. That was always part of the deal.’

‘You’ve done very well at being invisible,’ the Colonel conceded. ‘Always been very good at moving unseen, in the darker places of the world. I like that. I can use that.’

I gave him my best hard look. ‘What’s the catch?’

To his credit, he didn’t budge an inch. And I’ve made grown men wet themselves with my hard look. He just smiled calmly back at me.

‘If you say yes, you belong to me and my Organization, until I say you can leave. Is that acceptable to you?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

We both knew he knew I was lying; but we raised our drinks and toasted each other anyway. Because that’s how deals are made, in our line of business. And so I worked for the Colonel, and whatever his Organization was, for almost fifteen years.

I did good work for him. On his order, I broke into places that didn’t officially exist, to steal information that powerful people didn’t want to admit existed, and then I made it public for everyone to see. I travelled all over the world, passing through dozens of countries under dozens of names, from the biggest cities to towns so small that they didn’t even show up on the maps. I investigated strange situations and impossible stories, and did things about them. Always moving under the radar, never making waves. I drove on the dark side of the road, in the darker places of the world, dealing with people and things that the world was better off without. Sometimes, I killed people. And sometimes I killed things that weren’t even a little bit people.

And I never felt bad about it once.

I followed my satnav’s directions through the blizzard, hoping it knew where it was going because I’d lost all sense of where I was. The machine spoke to me in cool impersonal tones, which I preferred to any of the current celebrity voices. I’ve never liked machines that pretend to have personalities. Technology should know its place. Actually, the thing hadn’t talked to me in some time, because there weren’t any side turnings. I hoped it was still working.

On the brief occasions when the wind did drop, presumably to work up more spite and malevolence to throw at me, all I could see ahead and around me was snow and more snow, stretching away into the grey distance. Not a living thing to be seen anywhere.

The last village I’d passed through, half an hour back, had been two rows of dark-stoned houses, crouched together for warmth and support. Dim lights glowed from curtained windows, while people hid from the killing force of the cold and the deadly violence of the storm. I could have stopped, if only to check my location and maybe grab some hot food and drink … but I couldn’t shake off a terrible sense of urgency. The Colonel never asked for personal favours. He just didn’t. So I drove on, into the snow and the wind and the storm, fighting the car as it did its best to slam me into snow banks, or send me spinning out of control as it skidded round a corner.

The satnav finally condescended to point out a non-signposted side road that I’d never have spotted without its advance warning. I hit the brakes, but they didn’t want to know, so I just waited till the last moment and then hauled the steering wheel all the way round. I hung on grimly as the car threw itself into the side road. The wheel fought me savagely, and I fought it back, holding it firmly in position even as the steering column made ominous, unhappy noises. For long moments the car just slid sideways, none of the tyres able to gain any traction … and then suddenly they found gravel underneath the snow and dug in, and the car leapt forward.

The falling snow let off for just a moment, so I could see the narrow side road stretching away before me, bounded by two low drystone walls that had all but vanished under piled-up drifts. I drove on, bouncing and shaking over snow and hidden ice. I’d had the headlights on for some time, but they didn’t help much. The windscreen wipers … were doing their best. I almost missed it when the road came to a sudden end. I could just make out a tall stone boundary wall up ahead of me, stretching away in both directions until it disappeared into the storm. And right in front of me, getting closer by the moment, a pair of massive black iron gates. Very firmly closed.

I hit the brakes and the clutch, slamming both feet down hard, and the car shook and shuddered as it slowed. The gates loomed up before me. I really hoped I was going to be able to stop in time. Marking my arrival at Belcourt Manor by crashing through their front gates would not make a good first impression. But the car skidded to a halt two or maybe even three feet short of the huge iron gates, and I kicked the car out of gear, hauled on the hand brake, and then just sat there for a while, breathing hard. I took my hands off the steering wheel and opened and closed them several times, till I got the knots out. I’d been clinging on to that wheel for so long that I almost didn’t know what to do with my hands any more.

The old stone walls on either side of the gates were rough and bare and featureless. Surrounding the family estate, presumably. They looked like they could keep out most things. The gates had no decorations, no stylistic flourishes. Just brutal uprights and heavy cross bars. I probably wouldn’t have crashed through them after all. Just totalled the car. Not that I cared. It was only a rental. I looked for a sign plate somewhere, to confirm this was Belcourt Manor, but there didn’t seem to be one. Presumably you either knew where you were, or you had no reason being here. The satnav chose that moment to announce You have reached your destination in a very smug tone, so I shut it off. I studied the gates through the falling snow and could just make out a numbered keypad and an intercom grille, tucked neatly away in a niche in one of the stone gateposts. I sat and looked at the niche for a while.

The Colonel hadn’t provided me with an entrance code for the keypad; presumably because he didn’t trust an open phone. But I really didn’t want to get out of my nice warm car. I sounded the horn several times, but even to me the sound seemed small and pathetic in the face of the raging wind. There was no response from beyond the gates. So I sighed heavily, pulled my coat around me, and pushed the car door open.

That took rather more strength than I expected. Ice had built up all across the outside of the car, sealing the door shut. And even after I got the thing open, through a winning combination of brute strength and bad temper, the roaring wind just slammed it shut again, hitting the door like a battering ram. Unfortunately for the wind, I was in no mood to be messed with, so I just put my shoulder to the door and forced it open again.

I clambered out of the car, one careful movement at a time because I didn’t trust the snow and ice under my feet, and made myself stand upright in the storm. The cold cut at my bare face like a knife, and the freezing air seared my lungs as I breathed it in. The wind snatched the car door out of my hand, and slammed it shut again. I lowered my head, hunched my shoulders, and headed for the iron gates. One step at a time. My shoes sank deep into the piled-up snow, and it was hard work pulling them out again. The gusting wind hit me hard, slamming me this way and that with a bully’s enthusiasm. I just kept moving. The cold and storm might have stopped anyone else, but it wasn’t going to stop me.