Stephen Leather - The Double Tap

Jackman opened the file on Mike Cramer. Most of it consisted of reports from Cramer’s time in the army and later in the Special Air Service, the British Special Forces regiment which was revered throughout the world. There was nothing to explain where the man had been over the previous three years. A colour photograph was clipped to the inside of the file cover: three pictures in a strip, left and right profiles and one full on. There was an intensity in Cramer’s eyes that burned out of the photograph. The effect was almost hypnotic and Jackman spent several minutes staring at the picture. He was disturbed by the stewardess asking if she could take his empty glass. He handed it to her, still looking at the photograph.

Cramer’s eyes were deep-set and his nose was slightly hooked, giving him a predatory appearance. According to the file, Cramer was thirty-seven years old but the eyes wouldn’t have been out of place in an octogenarian. There was no sadness in the man’s gaze, no bitterness, just a cold level stare that seemed to look right through Jackman. Jackman wondered what Cramer had seen and done to get such hard eyes. The file provided a few clues. Cramer had served in the Falklands and had worked undercover in Northern Ireland. After three tours of duty in the province he had been captured by the IRA and brutally tortured. He’d been rescued and rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Belfast where surgeons had saved his life, but shortly afterwards he’d left the SAS for medical reasons. There were no details of what Cramer had been doing since leaving the regiment, but Jackman had gained the impression that the Colonel had been holding something back. Jackman was sure that the Colonel had used Cramer on at least one operation, something so sensitive that he couldn’t involve one of his own men.

The Colonel had been cagey about Cramer’s motivation for taking Vander Mayer’s place. On reading the file, Jackman’s first thought was that Cramer felt he had something to prove, because he’d been forced to leave the army early. Unfinished business. On meeting the man face to face, Jackman had realised that there was something else driving him. Jackman would have liked to have spent more time with Mike Cramer, to have sat down with him and talked in detail, to have done what Jackman did best — probing and ferreting out what made a man tick.

Jackman smiled as he recalled how the Colonel’s jaw had tightened when he’d pointed out how closely Cramer fitted the profile of the man they were looking for. Cramer’s family background — losing his mother and the lack of a father-figure during his teenage years — was almost certainly what had led him to join the armed forces. But Jackman knew that it was also the sort of environment that could lead to psychological problems which, coupled with the intensive training Cramer had received, could be the perfect recipe for producing a psychotic killer. Jackman’s own mother had died when he was young, and he knew all too well the void that left behind, a void that could never be filled. In Cramer’s case, no one had even tried and he’d sought sanctuary in the army.

According to Cramer’s service record, he hadn’t shone as a regular soldier, and on several occasions had been up on insubordination charges. It wasn’t until he passed the rigorous SAS selection tests that Cramer finally found his vocation. Trained to a peak of fitness that most men could only imagine and schooled in weapons, explosives and parachuting, Cramer became a government-trained killing machine. But life in the regiment gave him back something that had been missing in the past — a family. His fellow soldiers became his brothers, the regiment supplied all his needs and wants and, Jackman theorised, the Colonel probably became the father-figure that Cramer sought. Jackman knew that being forced to leave the regiment Cramer loved must have been every bit as emotionally damaging as the death of his mother, and the move back into civilian life would have echoed his original loss. The end of his army career could have opened the floodgates and allowed the release of all the emotions Cramer had been holding back over the years.

Jackman wondered what Cramer had been up to in civilian life. Men with Cramer’s background tended to end up as mercenaries, or in prison, or dead. Jackman leaned back in his seat, smiling to himself. He looked forward to meeting Cramer again: there was so much he wanted to ask him. Jackman wanted to know how many lives Cramer had taken, and how he felt about it, whether he enjoyed the killing or regarded it as just another branch of soldiering. He wanted to find out what the first kill had been like, and whether the feelings had changed with the second, third and fourth. And Jackman wanted to know something else — whether Cramer missed it.

Cramer stood at his bedroom window looking down at the car park. White halogen lights illuminated the area and glinted off the cars. A ginger and white cat walked diagonally across the tarmac square with its ears pricked up and its tail erect as if it was on patrol. Cramer smiled at the thought — an SAS cat, trained to kill without emotion, a cat that could out-march, out-fight and out-drink all other cats. The cat stopped in the centre of the square as if it had seen something. A figure stepped into the light and, as it walked towards the cat, Cramer realised it was Allan.

Cramer watched as Allan walked over to the cat and knelt down beside it. The cat arched its back and rubbed itself against Allan’s outstretched hand and Cramer could imagine it purring with pleasure. Allan looked up towards where Cramer was standing. Cramer wasn’t sure if the bright lights reflected on the glass would allow Allan to see in, but any doubts disappeared when Allan straightened up and waved at him. Cramer unlatched the window and opened it. ‘Hang on, I’ll come down!’ he called.

Allan gave him a thumbs up. The building was in darkness but Cramer didn’t switch on any lights. He went quietly downstairs and slipped out of the back door where Allan was waiting with the cat in his arms. ‘Everything all right?’ Cramer asked.

‘Fine. Have you met Ginge?’

Cramer stroked the cat. ‘She came with the school?’

‘I guess so. She seems tame enough. For a cat.’ Allan bent down and let the cat go. She looked at him for a few seconds and then disappeared silently into the darkness.

‘Are you okay?’ Allan asked.

Cramer nodded. ‘Sure. I just fancied some air, that’s all.’

They walked together around the rear of the main school building and across the lawn. High overhead they saw the lights of an airliner cutting across the star-strewn sky. The man who’d attacked Cramer in the dining room was standing at the gate and he nodded to them both. Allan waved in salute.

‘How did you get into this, Allan?’ Cramer asked.

‘The Colonel wanted somebody with bodyguarding experience, and I guess I fitted the bill.’

‘How come?’

‘They tend not to broadcast the fact, but the regiment supplies bodyguards for the Royal Family and politicians when they go abroad and we help train bodyguards who work for foreign heads of state. I did a six-month stint with the Sultan of Brunei before I joined the Training Wing.’

‘And Martin?’

‘I suggested that we use him. He left the Ranger Wing a few years back to start up his own bodyguarding business in the South of France. He’s doing well, too. The Colonel had to do a fair bit of sweet-talking to convince him to join the operation, but he’s the best in the business.’ He paused. ‘What about you, Mike?’

‘What do you mean?’ They turned away from the gate and headed towards the tennis courts. Cramer’s eyes were constantly moving, checking out the shadows, looking for any sign that one of Allan’s men was about to spring another surprise attack.