Adrian Magson - No Tears for the Lost

She hoped they weren’t feeling trigger-happy.

They climbed out to meet the security man. He had a shotgun tucked under his arm and looked as if he’d been born holding it. He was in his early fifties and built like a battle-tank, with weather-beaten skin and short grey hair beneath a tweed cap. Even without knowing who he was, or seeing the gimlet-like eyes appraising them, there was no mistaking the bearing of a former military man.

‘Palmer,’ he said crisply. His eyes swept across to Riley and hovered momentarily. ‘I didn’t realise you’d have company.’

‘My associate,’ Palmer replied. ‘Riley Gavin.’

The two men exchanged handshakes with wary civility. Riley received a curt nod. The look on Keagan’s face said he was unhappy with their presence, but that Palmer had passed muster, so he wasn’t about to complain.

‘You may have seen my three men on the way in,’ he said, eyes flicking past them toward the trees.

‘Four, actually,’ Palmer told him. ‘The man on the bike could lose a bit of weight. That Lycra’s deadly with a beer gut.’

Keagan’s face went tight around the mouth and Riley tried not to laugh. The major had been testing them and had tripped over his own arrogance. He either didn’t know or hadn’t believed that in Frank Palmer he was dealing with someone experienced in the game of spotting covert surveillance. She decided it didn’t augur well for any future working relationship.

‘Sir Kenneth wanted you brought in,’ he huffed, changing the subject, ‘against my advice and official suggestions.’

Palmer looked at Riley. ‘He means there are lots of hairy-chested ex-Special Forces people out there who are better qualified than me…which is almost true.’

‘So why not get them in?’ Riley asked. It had been puzzling her, too. She assumed that Myburghe, as a former diplomat under threat, would have access to some expert assistance, especially since the threats he was receiving might be coming from his last posting in Colombia. It wouldn’t be total cover, but better than nothing.

‘Sir Kenneth’s personal wishes,’ Keagan told her. ‘I’ve advised him — that’s all I can do.’ His tone indicated he was about to perform a hand-washing exercise, and if Sir Kenneth wanted to put his trust in a pair of amateurs in mismatched wellies, there was little else the official establishment could do but step back smartly and wish him good luck.

Riley couldn’t help but sympathise. Nobody likes having the rug cut from beneath them. But she had no doubts Palmer would have been checked out carefully first.

‘What about your men?’ Palmer queried. ‘How long will they be around?’

‘Not long. We’re over-stretched as it is with the terrorist situation and we’ve got more assignments than personnel. The letters and fake bomb here could just be the work of a nutcase. God knows, there are plenty out there.’

No mention of the finger, Riley noted. Either he didn’t know or it was being kept under wraps like a nasty family secret.

‘And the party?’ she asked.

‘Don’t know. We’ll be there, but in the background. Unless we’re pulled off for something else.’ His tone indicated that he meant for something more important. ‘Again, Sir Kenneth’s express wishes.’ He hefted the shotgun to change the conversation. ‘He’s not here this morning, on my advice. But I can give you a briefing. Do you shoot?’

The question was lobbed vaguely between them, but Riley knew it was for Palmer more than her. She shook her head. ‘Not me. But you boys go and play with your guns. I’ll try not to frighten off the birdies.’

While Palmer followed Keagan across the grass towards the other men, Riley helped herself from a flask of coffee in the car. One of the men handed Palmer a gun and a handful of cartridges, then they turned towards the open field before them as Keagan signalled to an unseen beater.

Riley wandered along on the fringe of trees near the car, sipping her coffee, turning with a start as a barrage of gunfire erupted. She watched as Palmer waited for the others to finish shooting, before turning and casually bringing down a pair of shapeless birds without even shouldering his gun. It earned him a startled look from Keagan and a scowl or two from his companions, but Palmer ignored them and re-loaded.

Riley bit down on her distaste at the firepower and the loss of wildlife. She and Palmer had a job to do; throwing a moral snit right now would merely get in the way.

She began to think about what they had taken on between them. At best, they might end up supervising a pleasant party and picking the odd guest out of the ancestral fishpond. At worst, they might find themselves up to their elbows in something nastier, a situation Palmer had once equated bluntly with having to pick their teeth out of the wallpaper.

If Myburghe was using his daughter’s wedding as an exercise in false bravado after admitting to himself that his son wasn’t coming home, he might have become blind to the real dangers. And they might surface only when Keagan and his security team disappeared, leaving Palmer and Riley to deal with any opposition.

A flicker of movement drew her attention to a beech tree several yards inside the wood. Riley stopped and sipped her coffee. She was no security expert, but she knew that protection was mostly about setting perimeters: outer ones to deter the half-hearted and to act as a filter; inner ones to catch the badly trained or the inept amateur. Finally — and most critically — there was the very innermost circle of close protection which nobody liked to think would ever be needed if the other two were doing their job.

Was this one of Keagan’s men standing close to the shooting party instead of covering the ground further out? Or someone else? An univited guest, perhaps. She scanned the area again in case she’d made a mistake. Maybe what she’d seen was a leaf falling, a swaying branch or even a foraging squirrel. Any or all three, possibly. She was about to move on when she caught her breath and felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. A man was standing a few yards away, watching.

**********

The man was heavily built and wearing a drab brown jacket and trousers, with a grey baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He appeared to have streaks of something dark across his face, as if he had rubbed it with a muddy hand. He was watching the shooting party, and Riley thought it odd that if he was a member of the security team, he wasn’t facing the other way. His whole body stance and look were too intense, and it was a moment or two before Riley realised that the man was completely unaware of her presence.

She stepped slowly to one side, inching out of his line of vision. Slipping into the trees and avoiding branches at shoulder level and twigs underfoot, she tried not to look too intently at the watcher. Once inside the canopy of trees, it was as quiet as a church, with only a faint breeze stirring the upper branches. The smell in here was green and loamy, with the faint tang of rotting vegetation, and for an instant, Riley was reminded of childhood visits to the countryside, where she had played the tomboy among similar scenery to this. It had all been fun back then, with only imaginary dangers lurking behind every bush and fallen tree trunk, and only friends likely to leap out at her.

This, though, was very different.

She felt something solid against her foot and shortened her step. Looking down, she saw it was a heavy branch, dry and solid, the length of a golf club. She slowly lowered herself until she could reach it, then stood upright again, holding the stick by her side. It felt reassuringly heavy in her grasp.

The man shifted his stance and Riley froze. His head turned away from the men out in the open, and she saw his eyes shift to the area immediately around him, scanning from right to left.