Closer, page 13
I didn’t judge either, but now I saw that the scattered bodies were those who had dropped for cover, and were only now, slowly starting to get to their feet again or – in a couple of cases – crawling away, hugging the ground as closely as possible.
As we cowered there, I tried to think back through the sequence of events, and decided there had been at least two gunshots. How can you be so uncertain about something like that? If I hadn’t been there in the thick of it, I’d have argued that you must surely know, but in the chaos of the moment I was unsure about almost everything.
And part of the reason for my turmoil and confusion, at least, was the desperate hope – even now – that I was wrong, and there had been only one shot, because if there had been a second, did that mean someone had shot the original shooter?
Was Cassie alive or dead, or lying somewhere struggling for breath?
For I was convinced that she was the one who had shot Napier.
In the aftermath the press might convince everyone that Sutherland was the target, or perhaps the Jordanian, Prince Khaled, but nothing would convince me this wasn’t the culmination of events of the last few days, the decision to remove Napier from the picture.
The Puma’s engines roared into life, and Napier cried out – perhaps in response to the reverberations putting stress on his injuries.
I sat with him, trying to support him as his upper body slumped against me.
“Stop whimpering, you old softy,” I said, and he grunted a laugh.
I hung on as the Puma lifted – briefly panicking as I realized how easy a target we must be, before realizing they must have decided the risk of further gunfire was past or they’d never have taken off. Hating that thought, because there could surely only be one way the risk had been eliminated...
A uniformed man came to us then, gesturing for me to make room. As soon as I’d moved aside, he kneeled before Napier, produced a pair of scissors and started to cut the rest of the clothing away from my friend’s upper body.
“Sorry about the jacket,” Napier said to me – so it was clearly from one of my mills, as I’d suspected.
“Nae bother,” I told him. “They’re cheap as chips, anyway.”
Now his wound was exposed, I saw that the bullet had hit him in the shoulder.
“How is it?” I asked the officer tending to him.
The man looked up at Napier. “You’ve been lucky, sir,” he said. “Clean entry and exit. Plenty of muscle damage, but I don’t think it’s hit bone. A few inches lower and you’d be breathing with one lung right now.”
“So this is what it’s like to be lucky?” sighed Napier. “And everyone else? Was anyone else hurt?”
He seemed to have forgotten that this was one of the first things he’d asked me back on the ground. I thought then that it reflected a lot of what I knew of my old friend, that even in a situation like this, his thoughts were for those around him.
“They’re all fine,” I told him. “You took the bullet for everyone.”
He smiled then, and I realized he was exhausted. The adrenaline must be subsiding now, and the pain taking over. As the officer held some medical wadding against the wound to stem the flow of blood, Napier squeezed his eyes tight shut.
I put a hand to his forehead, feverish hot, and said, “It’s okay, old pal. You’re safe. And I don’t know for sure where we’re going, but I’m pretty certain it’s the nearest hospital.”
I glanced at the officer then, who nodded in confirmation. “Less than five minutes away,” he said, but Napier had already blacked out.
§
We landed at a Royal Navy base somewhere along the coast. I didn’t know which one, and I didn’t ask. I knew there were lots of establishments like this, albeit scaled back from the heights of the Cold War. The deep sea lochs here were perfect for the comings and goings of naval vessels, and the sea around the mouth of the Clyde at Faslane was still the country’s main base for the berthing and servicing of nuclear submarines.
These bases were also hubs for all kinds of other military activities, which was perhaps partly the reason Lewis Sutherland had been brought back into the country here – a more discreet place to land, and conveniently close to Auldbrigg Haw, where Napier had extended an offer of hospitality.
Once we’d touched down, it all became a bit of a whirl. Three paramedics came on board with a stretcher and, despite his rather feeble protests as he stirred from unconsciousness, Napier was lifted onto the stretcher and strapped into place before being removed from the aircraft.
After a moment’s hesitation, I followed. They seemed to have forgotten I was here, and I could easily have faded into the background, but what then?
I waited as the stretcher was clipped onto a gurney, and then walked with the small group across a wide area of tarmac. Other helicopters rested on the ground nearby, and farther away the big bulk of a transport plane sat at the end of a runway, all marked in military colors.
When we reached a waiting ambulance, I was left standing with a Navy officer.
“Can I go with him?” I asked.
The officer eyed me warily, before saying, “We’ll be picked up in a minute. You’ll be kept informed.”
For some strange reason, I almost felt as if I were under arrest, and, bizarrely, I felt as if I probably deserved it.
“He will be okay, won’t he?”
The man said nothing. Almost certainly he didn’t know, and he certainly didn’t seem to care much about keeping me informed.
I felt foolish, and completely isolated. Then I saw the way the man was looking at me out of the periphery of his vision. “We’ll get you cleaned up and checked over, and a change of clothes, sir,” he told me.
I glanced down at myself, and realized how I must look. My shirt and jacket were crimson with Napier’s blood, and the skin of my neck and face felt tight with dried blood. I must look as if I’d emerged from some kind of horror show and now I understood how freakish this whole thing must seem to this man – even someone with military experience was justified in reacting with shock at such a sight.
“I’m okay,” I said, although now that I’d been reminded, the thought of a shower and fresh clothes was a comfort.
Then I caught myself. How could I think such cozy thoughts, in the face of these awful events? My friend lay in the back of an ambulance with a bullet hole through his shoulder, and my lover – where was Cassie? What had she done? What had happened to her?
“Did they get anyone for this?” I asked, but the man remained expressionless and said nothing.
He didn’t know, didn’t care, and just wanted to be rid of me.
I was taken to some kind of medical facility and checked over by a doctor, even though I insisted I was fine. I hadn’t been shot, hadn’t been hurt.
I asked after Napier, repeatedly, and was eventually told he was stable, which was about as uninformative as it was possible to be.
I was shown into a room, some kind of guest suite, I supposed. It was like a room in an anonymous hotel chain: a generic wood-framed bed and furniture, everything decorated in shades of brown and gray, production-line artwork on the walls.
The shower was good – high water pressure, and warm. I stood naked, my head tipped back, and let the hot water soak me clean.
When I glanced down after a few seconds, the shower tray was red with Napier’s blood.
I felt sick. Not with squeamishness at the sight of the blood, but with guilt.
I’d brought Cassie into Napier’s inner circle. Got her close to him for when the order came. I’d failed to adequately warn him when I knew the threat was real.
I’d pretty much done everything short of lining up the shot for her.
Napier’s blood was, quite literally, on my hands.
I turned the temperature of the water up until it was almost too hot to bear, and started scrubbing at my skin with handfuls of bodywash.
I needed to scour myself clean.
More bodywash, rubbing until the skin was sore.
The shower stall was thick with steam now, and I could barely breathe. I turned away from the jets of scalding water, and pressed my hands against the tiled wall. I realized I was sobbing, and told myself it was a reaction to the heat.
I reached for the dial and twisted it anticlockwise. The water temperature dropped, paused briefly at a comfortable level, and then plunged to icy cold.
I gasped again, almost leaped from the shower, but instead made myself stand there and take the discomfort and pain.
Eventually, I stepped clear, shivering, hugging my wet, pathetic body.
I needed to get past all this. Sort my life out. Stop risking those few things that were genuinely precious to me for the sake of ... what? I didn’t know. Letting people close. That clearly didn’t work for me.
I dried myself. Pulled myself together.
I was in shock. My best friend had been shot right in front of me, and I’d held him in my arms as I thought he was bleeding to death.
I’d held it together long enough until I was in the privacy of this anonymous guest suite at an unnamed naval base, and then I’d let that shock steal over me.
I wasn’t being pathetic – I was probably being the most in control I’d ever been in my life.
I dropped the wet towel in the shower stall, found deodorant among the toiletries on a shelf by the washbasin.
Napier was alive. He was stable. He would recover.
And I had learned a great deal about myself, these last few days.
You have to take the positives wherever you can.
I went back through to the main room and saw that someone had been in. Where my clothes had been on the bed was marked by a smear of blood that must have come from the shirt. The few belongings I’d carried in my pockets were arranged neatly on the room’s desk. Wallet, cellphone, keys, a half-roll of strong mints.
A stack of fresh clothes had been left on a chair. Jeans, a generic polo shirt and sweater, boxer shorts and socks – even a pair of Nikes. Everything was in my size, and soon I was dressed and standing by the room’s wide window, looking out over a neat garden area.
I could have been anywhere. A business hotel anywhere in the country – or even another country altogether.
Maybe I needed to travel again. See some sights. Give myself some time to work out where my life would head next.
My reverie was broken by the buzzing of my phone, the vibration harsh and reverberating against the wooden top of the desk.
I crossed the room in three long strides, assuming it was going to be some kind of update on Napier – and a cruel part of my mind scaring me with the worst scenario of all...
I glanced at the screen as I unlocked the cellphone, long enough to see that the number was not recognized.
“Yes?” I said. “Matt Scullery here.”
The silence was long, and suddenly I knew this was no call from the medical wing to inform me of my friend’s progress.
“Yes?”
“Matthew?”
I wanted to lash out. I wanted to cry – with frustration that my torment was to continue, and with absolute relief that she was not lying dead in the back of some military van heading away from the Auldbrigg Haw estate.
“Cassie?”
I said it with a questioning lift, even though I had no need to question. I knew it was her.
“Are you okay, Matthew?”
How do you answer a question like that, in a situation like this? I said nothing.
“Matthew... I...” An even longer pause this time, then: “I shot him, Matthew. I killed him.”
Suddenly the emotion foremost for me was anger.
“No,” I said coldly. “No, you didn’t kill him, Right now my closest friend is lying in a hospital bed – or maybe in an operating theater – fighting for his life, but no, you haven’t killed him yet.”
This time the silence went on for so long I thought she must have cut the line.
“Matthew?”
She seemed to be waiting for a response, perhaps for the reassurance that I hadn’t ended the call.
“What?”
“Matthew, no. I didn’t shoot Napier. I shot the gunman.”
She gave me a second or two to digest this.
“I shot the man who tried to kill Napier, and now all hell has broken loose and I’m in hiding again. Matthew, don’t give up on me now. I’m trying to do the right thing. I couldn’t stop the first shot, but I think I saved Napier’s life again, only this time I meant to.”
14. Regrouping
How could I ever have doubted her?
Well, actually, yes: I had every reason to have doubted her. Every reason to assume she’d played me for a fool again to allow herself a chance to kill Napier. Cassie Deane had history at that kind of thing.
But that didn’t stop me from feeling like the worst person imaginable for having assumed the worst.
In my defense, I still inhabited the kind of mental space where it wasn’t normal for your girlfriend to turn out to be an assassin living some kind of double life.
“What will you do?” In my heart I knew the best option was for her to disappear. Go back to her mysterious controllers, probably get a new identity.
And none of that involved me.
“I don’t want to put you in danger, Matthew.”
That was it. She was preparing to tell me she was leaving.
“But...” She only spoke that one word, but it was enough.
Perhaps hope is the cruelest thing. I waited for her to go on.
“You’re safest without me, Matthew. I should just go.”
She’d said that ‘but’ though. Now it was my turn: “But...?”
“I don’t know how to walk away.”
I sensed then something of her dilemma. I knew she felt she’d made a mistake getting close to me – that it was some kind of professional lapse. But she had... got close to me.
The chemistry between us was undeniable. The love.
And when you acknowledge that, all the sensible, rational options go out of the window.
“Where are you hiding?”
“I can’t say. I shouldn’t be calling. This is a burner phone, so I don’t think anyone is listening in, but still... They might be. And they might trace it if we talk too long. You won’t be able to call me back: I’ll destroy the phone as soon as this call is over.”
“How will I find you?”
“You’ll know.”
She seemed confident.
“I might need a hint, at least.”
“Somewhere with character. You know me: somewhere a bit eerie.”
The old naval facility where I’d found her before was certainly eerie, but I didn’t believe that could be where she was now, though. Her superior knew that was her bolthole, and if she’d gone against orders then it would be the first place they looked.
“I’ll find you,” I said, when it became clear she would say no more.
“Be careful. I think someone’s trying to set me up.”
“I will. And you... you be careful too. I’m not ready to lose you again.”
The line went dead. A minute later, out of sheer curiosity, I tried to call her back but the number was no longer available.
§
I sat on the bed for a long time. I didn’t know what to do.
I wasn’t locked in – I’d checked, and my door opened onto an anonymous corridor – but still I felt imprisoned. I knew that if I simply tried to walk out I wouldn’t get far. I didn’t have the clearance to walk freely this deep in a military base.
It seemed that all I could do was sit and wait.
There was a TV in the room, and I channel-hopped before settling on a news channel. Before long they reached the story of Napier’s shooting.
I turned the volume up and watched events unfold – Napier giving his little speech and then pausing. That split second when the scene seemed to freeze, and then my old friend threw himself protectively across in front of Sutherland and Prince Khaled, right in the path of the bullet.
Cassie seemed convinced the bullet had been intended for Napier all along, but the footage seemed to indicate otherwise – that Sutherland had been the target – and that was the line the news reports were taking. An assassination attempt on the released hostage, intended to prove that he might be able to escape, but could never get away. Already a faction in the Middle East had claimed responsibility.
At one point they cut away to a live interview with Michael Parmentier, a senior minister in the Home Office. “Of course,” Parmentier was saying. “We’re all in a state of shock. Stewart Napier was a faithful servant of our country, a trusted advisor, and a good friend.”
For a moment, that use of ‘was’ threw me – had something awful happened? Then the minister went on. “And we’re all praying for a speedy recovery.”
The reporter asked about the broader implications of the shooting, and Parmentier said, “Yes, Stewart showed himself to be an utterly selfless man, of course. In that one split-second he not only proved himself to be a hero, not only did he save the life of a man whose freedom he had so recently brokered, but he may well have prevented war in the Middle East.”
I hadn’t considered that angle. If Prince Khaled had taken the bullet, what might the consequences have been? A senior Jordanian diplomat, and a key member of his country’s ruling class, killed on British territory... I knew Prince Khaled was prominent in peace negotiations in the region: might he have been the target? And if so, how might Middle Eastern stability have been affected?
It didn’t bear thinking about.
And I couldn’t help smiling at the thought that my old pal might have singlehandedly prevented World War Three.
The interview ended rather abruptly, I thought. Returning to the news studio, the presenter hesitated, a finger pressed to his earpiece, then he looked up at the camera.
“News just coming in that the would-be assassin has been identified.” A head and shoulders image flashed up on screen, a grainy, slightly blurred shot of a thirtyish man with a shaved head and a haunted expression.
“James Michael Wilson, a thirty-two-year-old security guard. A former soldier, and it’s being suggested a former member of the elite Special Air Services, with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since leaving military service it’s alleged that Wilson has spent time working with private security firms in Iraq, including projects with direct funding from the UK Government.”
