Simon Kernick - Severed

'It looks like you've done very well,' I tell him, looking round the room. Nothing in here's cheap.

'It's nothing less than I deserve,' he says firmly. 'After the way the establishment betrayed me.'

The major was always a ruthless man. I notice now an arrogance to him that I've never really seen before, or perhaps it's something I've simply forgotten over time.

'You said you knew the real identity of the blackmailer,' he says. 'What was his name?'

'Iain Ferrie,' I tell him.

The major raises his eyebrows. 'I recognize that name. He served in the regiment, didn't he?'

'That's right.'

'Ah, so that's how you knew him.' He nods slowly, pondering this information. 'What a coincidence.'

'Ferrie told me that the case contained something terrible, something I never wanted to see. So, what exactly was the kind of business you were in?'

The major's half-smile returns. 'I thought Mr Stanic and I were in the same business – smuggling contraband, drugs, weapons, occasionally people – but it turns out that our businesses were actually diverging. You see, Mr Stanic made a lot of money from prostitution in this country, which was an area of the business that we – and by "we" I mean my former army colleagues and me – weren't involved in. However, he discovered what you might term a niche in the market.'

'What do you mean?'

'Some of his customers had rather bizarre tastes. They liked to do more than simply have sex with the girls. In some cases, they liked to beat and torture them. Even in a couple of cases, kill them.'

'Jesus, you're joking.'

'You were a soldier, Tyler. You saw what people are capable of doing. Sometimes even for pleasure. No, I'm not joking.'

There doesn't seem much that I can say to that, and I tell him to continue.

'I never knew about this side of Cosick's business,' he says. 'If I had, I wouldn't have approved. But someone else did. The blackmailer. Our old colleague, Ferrie. I'm not sure how he found out about what was going on, but he did. And he gained evidence of what was happening as well, and, more importantly, who was involved. My understanding was that he was blackmailing several customers, and those customers, terrified of exposure, contacted Stanic. Stanic tried to deal with matters himself since, as you can imagine, he wasn't keen on anyone else finding out what he was up to. I believe he set up a rendezvous with Ferrie to hand over a payment in exchange for the evidence in the briefcase, and then tried to have Ferrie killed. But when that failed, and Ferrie began demanding even more money, Stanic called on my expertise.

'We knew that Ferrie wouldn't trust any of Stanic's men turning up again to make the exchange, so we needed to bring in someone new. Someone gullible enough to fall for our set-up, and who could be trusted to follow instructions without running away with the money. Who could take all the risks without ever being able to point the finger at the people who sent him. Who was resourceful, brave and able to fight his way out of any trouble. And who, of course, was utterly expendable.' He stares me right in the eye as he speaks. 'That was you, Tyler. That was you.'

I feel like I've been kicked in the face. 'And you murdered Leah? Just to make sure I did what I was told?'

'It was unfortunate,' he says sharply, 'but, we thought, necessary. She was collateral damage.'

I think of Leah, the woman who for three short weeks I'd cared so much about, then of Major Ryan's cold, pitiless description of her. Collateral damage. She was nothing to him. I wonder how he could have become so twisted in his outlook on life. I feel the rage building within me. I want to tear this bastard apart, beat his head against the wall and make him suffer just a little of what Leah and Lucas suffered, but I force myself to keep calm. When I have the answers I still need, I'll take my revenge. Because I'm going to kill him for this, even if it has to be in cold blood.

I think about asking whether my relationship with Leah was a set-up, whether she too had been working for my enemies, but this is one answer I can't bring myself to hear. Better simply to leave the memories as they are.

'So, tell me,' I say, still trying to put all the pieces together, 'if Colonel Stanic was your business partner, why did you kill him?'

'Because the two of us had very different ideas about what we wanted done with the contents of the case. He, of course, wanted them destroyed, because they incriminated him and his so-called "special" customers. But I didn't. I wanted them made public.'

'Why?' I ask, frowning.

'Why do you think? These customers are high-ranking members of the establishment. There are the names of judges in that case. Of politicians. The very people who destroyed the careers of good men, men whose boots those bastards weren't fit to lick. I fought for this country for more than twenty years, in every war they sent me to. I followed every order I was given, but the one time, the one solitary time I asked them for support, they hung my men and me out to dry to appease a bunch of bombers and thugs. And they weren't content simply to wreck our careers, they had to grind our noses in the dirt as well, trying us by media, then throwing us in prison like common criminals.' His face darkens as he speaks, the bitterness coming off him in waves. 'Some of the men never got over it. Foxley, for one. He worked with me after he came out of prison, but he never got over the betrayal. He committed suicide, you know.'

'I know.'

'Do you? I'm surprised. You never went to the funeral, or even sent a card.'

'I'm sorry about that,' I say quietly. 'I wish I had done.'

'You're a fool, Tyler,' he says almost wearily. 'You deserted your comrades, and now you're paying the price.'

'It's no reason to put me through this. You're just using it as an excuse. You would have used me anyway, if you thought it was convenient.'

He shakes his head vehemently. 'No, never. I'm always loyal to those who are loyal to me.'

And what's so tragic is that I see he really means it, too. He genuinely thinks that he's acting from some kind of moral high ground. I look at him with a mixture of anger and pity, unable to equate the commanding officer I respected so much with the deluded ruthlessness of the man sitting before me now.

'You know, Major, whatever's been done to you in the past can never begin to justify what you've done today. You're a monster.'

'I'm no monster,' he snarls, and starts to get up from the chair.

'Stay where you are or I'll take your kneecap off.'

He sits back down, his expression hard and soulless. 'You can't call me a monster. The monsters are Stanic's perverted clients, and I can use them to bring down every one of those hypocritical bastards in the liberal establishment.' He spits out these last words, and a fleck of saliva lands on his chin. 'I want to throw their whole order into chaos,' he continues, his eyes alive with a fanaticism that fascinates and terrifies me. 'Bring the government to its knees and consign every one of the cowardly incompetents who run it to the dustbin of history.'

He pauses, calming down now.

'But Stanic was only ever interested in making money. He would never have agreed to the case's contents being made public, so he had to go. My plan initially was to get the code for the case from Ferrie and then put in an anonymous call to the police, so that when you delivered it to Stanic's men, they could intercept it and I could deal with Stanic separately. End of story. However, without the code, I wasn't able to do that.'

'So, you were never going to keep your side of the bargain with me. I was going to be arrested along with Stanic's men?'

'I couldn't risk leaving you at liberty. You were always resourceful enough to have worked things out if I had. As you have done.' He looks at me with an expression of admiration. 'I'm impressed.'