Simon Kernick - A Good day to die

I was doing some stretching exercises to encourage the circulation and warm up a bit when the lift dinged again. A couple of seconds later, a shortish man with thick black curly hair and a moustache emerged, his footsteps echoing as he strode purposefully towards the Jaguar, a briefcase in one hand. As I watched from my vantage point ten yards away, he flicked off the car alarm remotely, then opened the car boot and chucked the briefcase in, before heading round to the driver's door.

As he got in, I drew the short-barrelled Browning pistol Tyndall had supplied me with and came out of the shadows, screwing on the silencer as I walked towards his car. The engine started with a low rumble that hinted at a lot of power.

He didn't see me until I'd pulled open the front passenger door and deposited myself in the seat next to him. A shocked expression shot across his face and he started to protest, but I wasn't having any of that. I smiled and shoved the silencer against his cheek, using enough force to push his head back against the window. He ended up in a position that looked very uncomfortable.

'My wallet's in my jacket pocket,' he spluttered. 'Take it, please.'

'No thanks, Theo,' I said. 'I've got a better idea. I'm going to ask you a question and you're going to answer it truthfully. Otherwise I'm going to shoot you in the face right now, then drop you in the back seat and let you bleed to death while I drive your nice flash car out of here.'

I waited for Theo Morris to protest, to tell me he didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but he said nothing, just whimpered slightly. His expression slackened, or maybe it was just the way the silencer was pushed against him, but I knew that he was aware that I was the man he'd either been trying to have killed or framed these past few days, and I could tell that he wasn't going to bother playing the innocent. I also had a feeling that he wanted to unburden himself. It was something in his eyes. Defeat? Guilt? Probably both. This guy was no ruthless pro. He might have been good at handing out orders from the comfort of his air-conditioned office, but he wasn't the sort to get his hands dirty. Somehow that made him worse.

'What's the question?' he asked after a long pause.

'I think you know, but I'll ask it anyway. When you sent those men to kill Les Pope on Sunday, and to kill Andrea Bloom at her home in Hackney yesterday, on whose authority were you acting?'

'Oh, God…'

'He can't help you now, Theo. Only you can help you.'

'I swear I didn't know it would end like this. I didn't ask for the bloodbath last night. I just wanted Crown to shut the girl up. How was I to know he was such a bloody psychopath?'

'Crown? Was he the blond guy? The one who was sent to meet me on Saturday with the ticket back to the Philippines?' Theo tried to nod, but it was difficult in the position he was in. 'Well, Crown's dead now. And so will you be unless you answer my question.'

He paused again and I leaned forward and pushed harder on the gun. His cheek began to go red and he grunted in pain.

'My boss,' he said. 'The company's CEO, Eric Thadeus. He got me to organize it. I wouldn't have done it, but-'

'But he paid you well, no doubt.'

'I told you, I honestly didn't know that it would end up like it did. I didn't want it to get messy.'

Theo Morris was only a little guy, and slightly built, too, apart from round the belly area. But I guessed that when he was in the boardroom he was full of confidence and swagger. This was definitely a man who lived his life knowing he was one of the top guys in his closeted little world, a big fish in the corporate pond. Only now, as he sat here helpless with me, was he discovering that true power came not from the influence you held amongst your kind, but from the barrel of the gun, and unfortunately for Theo, he was facing down the wrong end of it.

'Where's Eric Thadeus tonight?'

'I don't know.'

'Yes, you do. Don't lie. There's no point. Whatever he's promised you that you haven't already got, you're not going to get now, so don't waste your time protecting him. He's finished, and you're staying with me until I find out where he is.'

'He's at his place in Bedfordshire. He's staying there until tomorrow. After that he's flying out to another of his homes in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks.'

I kept the gun where it was for a couple of seconds, then decided he was telling the truth, and removed it from his face, positioning it instead across my lap with the silencer still pointing in his direction.

'All right, turn off the car phone.' He did as he was told. 'Now start driving. We're going to Bedfordshire.'

Theo looked at me like I was mad. 'He's got security there.'

'I'm sure he has. Start driving.'

I think he knew there was no point in arguing or begging for his life, so he put the car in reverse, pulled out of his space and settled once again for telling me he'd never wanted it to end like this.

I told him to shut up. I really wasn't interested. The drive was long, silent and uneventful. Theo tried only once to make conversation but barely managed a few words before I cut him off and put the radio on, turning the volume up. I didn't want to hear anything from him — not small talk, not excuses. Nothing. As far as I was concerned, he was as guilty as all of them.

I tried not to think, working hard to empty my mind of all its fears and doubts. I'd been betrayed, and betrayed badly; I was trapped in a country in which I'd been a fugitive from the law for three years. If I was captured, I'd be lucky to see the outside of a prison cell again. If I escaped, I wasn't at all sure I could go back to where I'd come from and carry on as before in business with a man I'd once trusted, but who now had questions of his own to answer. Tomboy Darke had relationships with people who'd been involved in some horrific acts, and things between us could never be the same again. But now wasn't the time to dwell on that.

The radio station we listened to as Theo drove was Magic FM, which specializes in easy listening tunes. They played 'The Boys Of Summer' by Don Henley, followed by a couple of old Elvis Presley numbers. Neither of us sang along, although Theo appeared to relax a little and his driving became less erratic. I noticed that he was still sweating, which was understandable.

At eight o'clock, the news came on. As Magic was a London-based station, the top story was the massacre at Andrea Bloom's place the previous evening. Theo sighed loudly and tutted as the newsreader reported that two men and two women had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death at a house in Hackney, in what she called 'another terrifying tale from the violent city'. The identities of the victims had not yet been released and the police were keeping an open mind regarding the motive, which usually meant they didn't have a clue. There was no mention of Barron's death in Wembley, but no doubt this would follow soon enough.

I lit a cigarette, sat back and watched Theo as he drove us up the M1 in the direction of Bedfordshire. A little over an hour later, some ten minutes after we'd pulled off the motorway, we passed through a pretty village which was little more than a collection of houses and a church, and took a left-hand turn. The road started to climb up a tree-lined hill, and large detached houses appeared on both sides, all set back from the road, the majority behind imposing gates. It was a fitting spot for the wealthy to live in, allowing them to look down on the rest of the village from their superior position.

'How far?' I asked Theo.

'We're almost there.'

'Point it out to me as we pass, but keep driving.'

'There it is,' he said half a minute later as the road began to flatten out. He was pointing to a whitewashed stone wall about ten feet high coming up on our left. As we passed the wrought-iron gates, I caught a glimpse of the house itself, which stood at the end of a long drive. It was a huge, Elizabethan-style double-fronted mansion, with latticed bay windows and tar-blackened wooden beams running from roof to ground.