Closer, page 17
Soon Matthew was lost to a twist in the trail that would take him into that small stand of silver birch trees where he’d left his car.
As she sat, one of the eagles drifted breathtakingly close, so near she could see the swivel of its head as it peered at her, trying to work out what she was doing on the cliff edge.
Her plan was to follow a hiking trail that led across the hilltops to where she could drop down into the forest that surrounded the Auldbrigg Haw estate. She’d be at the folly inside three hours, and from there she’d be on hand for when Matthew gave her the all-clear. In the meantime she would have a good view of the comings and goings at the estate.
But now...
“You can come out now.”
She’d become aware of the watcher while Matthew was still here, and had left it this long because she wanted to be sure he got away safely.
If the watcher had wanted to kill them, then they’d be dead already, so now Cassie was intrigued.
She didn’t look around – a show of confidence that, even here on the edge of the cliff, she didn’t feel vulnerable. She’d always been adept at mind games.
She heard soft footfalls, a scuff of stones. A woman, she guessed, from the lightness of tread, and immediately she knew who it was most likely to be.
She saw movement in the periphery of her vision then, and finally turned to look.
The woman who’d met Matthew at the village hotel, wearing what looked like the same leather pants and jacket combo. Big hair, big eyes, ridiculously glamorous, and now with a quizzical smile and tilt of the head.
“That was so sweet,” said the woman. “So touching. You two couldn’t keep your hands off each other, and oh my, that lingering contact of entwined fingers as you forced yourselves to part. I was genuinely moved. You do know he spent the night in my hotel room not long ago, don’t you?”
Cassie didn’t rise to the bait. She said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
She’d successfully managed to blank that night from her mind. She’d seen Matthew meet this woman, and had stayed long enough to know he wasn’t going to emerge again that night.
She didn’t blame him at all for taking comfort wherever it was offered.
She’d driven him to it.
“I tried really hard to seduce him.”
Now, Cassie faltered, glanced across at the woman again. Saw the glimmer of triumph on her face, that she’d broken through Cassie’s otherwise cool façade.
Cassie refused to ask for details. She didn’t even know if she could trust this woman – perhaps she’d finally met her match on the mind games front.
But she felt something lift in her heart at the suggestion that, even then, in what must have been the pit of Matthew’s despair in the face of her apparent betrayal, he’d not given into this woman’s very obvious charms.
“Who are you?”
“I told your boyfriend I was MI5.”
“And who are you really?”
The woman just shrugged. She hid it well, but her almost flawless English accent had a hint of something Eastern European about it.
“I need to know whether to kill you or not,” said Cassie.
The woman laughed.
“Let’s just say we’re not on opposite sides. My employers have an interest in seeing stability in this country, just as yours do.”
“But how do they want to achieve that?”
“By whatever means necessary.”
Cassie was starting to piece it all together. This woman, an agent for a foreign power of some variety – either a nation-state such as Russia or China, trying to exert some kind of influence over the UK’s current political turmoil, or some other faction with similar aims. And how best to exert that influence right now? By supporting and manipulating one of the key players...
“Napier?”
The woman said nothing, but the lack of denial was answer enough.
Instantly, Cassie’s brain raced. Matthew had gone to Napier... Was he in danger? Surely not: he was Napier’s closest friend, the one element of stability in that corrupt man’s life.
She had to get to him, nonetheless. But first, how to deal with this woman?
Cassie eyed the drop before them. It was, perhaps, the obvious solution.
“Napier?” Cassie said again. “Really?”
“He’s being talked of as this country’s next leader, prime minister of a government of national unity to steer through the current chaos. He’s positioned himself well.”
“But... he’s just been nearly assassinated.”
Even as she said these words, Cassie made the leap of understanding. She didn’t need the other woman’s smug smirk for confirmation.
“Nearly, but not quite. How convenient,” said the woman. “A soft tissue wound. No lasting damage. Relatively quick to heal. The gunman, Wilson. Didn’t you ask yourself the obvious question?”
Not until now...
“An experienced professional with a clear shot at that range. How did he ever miss the kill? Wilson was far too good for that. Unless the aim was never to kill.”
Now, Cassie’s mind was jumping from point to point across recent events. “Sutherland?” she prompted.
Again, the other woman said nothing, just smiled.
Had Lewis Sutherland ever been a captive of some Middle East faction? Or had the whole thing been staged, a publicity stunt designed with the sole intention of maneuvering Stewart Napier into the public view and presenting him as the kind of can-do hero the country’s political scene hadn’t had in generations.
How had she not seen through any of this?
Cassie thought back to the night she’d been forced to flee Auldbrigg Haw. The man who’d come to kill her... He’d been part of the estate’s security team. Cassie had assumed he’d infiltrated the place, just as she had. But what if Napier had sniffed her out and sent the man to get rid of her? He’d had an accomplice too – that was why she’d had to flee the scene without clearing up properly. Surely that made it seem ever-more likely that he had been no infiltrator?
“Your boyfriend’s pal, Napier,” the woman said now. “He’s been very clever. He’s positioned himself nicely. The people’s politician, soon to be the people’s prime minister. Matt Scullery’s old pal is staging a coup, right before the nation’s eyes, and everyone is willing him on to do it. How clever is that?”
“I need to get to Auldbrigg Haw,” Cassie said. “I need to get to Matthew.”
“Oh no,” said the woman. “I’m afraid not.”
Cassie stared at her. She hadn’t quite worked out the woman’s role in all this yet, but if she’d wanted to kill them, why wait?
“You were watching us,” Cassie said. “You had a clear shot, but you didn’t take it, so you’re clearly not here to kill us.”
“Oh, you’re quite right, of course. I couldn’t have killed Matt Scullery out here, particularly after recent events. Imagine the scandal, if Napier’s closest friend was shot out on a Scottish hill near Napier’s home?”
And now Cassie understood.
The woman couldn’t have taken a shot while Matthew was here, because it would have been impossible to keep the taint of scandal away from Napier. But now...
“But me?” said Cassie. Was this how it would end? She’d always known that one day she might come up against her match, but she’d thought it would be more dramatic than this.
“You?” asked the woman. “Who are you? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You’re nobody. And easy to dispose of.”
The woman moved swiftly.
One moment she was casually sitting at Cassie’s side, and the next she had swung an arm up, planted her hand firmly between Cassie’s shoulderblades and pushed with surprising strength.
Cassie cried out, in shock rather than fear. She felt herself toppling.
She flailed her arms, but there was nothing to catch hold of.
And then, in one final, desperate, move she did what all martial arts fighters learn early to do: she took a good grip on that leather jacket and transferred some of her own momentum to her opponent.
She had time to register the look of surprise on the other woman’s features, and to see that surprise transform itself into shock and then terror as momentum won, and then both women fell clear of the cliff with landfall some fifty feet below.
19. End Games
“So how does this play out?” I asked. I held my old friend’s gaze, expecting him to falter, but there was nothing – not a spark of compassion or guilt. Just a coldness I had been blind to until now. “Are you going to watch? Are you going to enjoy it?”
Napier shook his head. “Och, cut the drama, would you? We simply do what needs to be done. I’m not a fucking James Bond villain.”
He stood, still holding my look, and at some unseen cue Macpherson entered the room.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe this. I really don’t.”
Neither of them seemed bothered. Napier had made his decision and his head of security was simply doing his job.
Hell, I’d sat in this very room with the two of them, playing cards and drinking Napier’s whisky.
I’d considered Macpherson, if not a friend, then at least a companion of some sort, a man whose company I kept when I was here at Auldbrigg Haw.
I really was that poor a judge of character, it seemed.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Macpherson said to me.
“If I refuse?”
What could they do? An apparent suicide would be convenient for Napier, but I was sure that if I resisted then they would have other ways to stop my death from proving an inconvenience to his plans.
Napier still held my look as I said to him, “So how do I do it? Am I to hang myself from a tree? Or a bullet to the head?”
Napier shook his head. “Drama never became you, Mattie. I’m sorry it’s had to come to this, I really am, but you set this train of events in motion by the choices you made.”
“And so a killer justifies his own actions...”
There was nothing I could say that would penetrate his certainty, I realized.
“It’s over, Mattie. Your girlfriend’s dead by now, and you have nothing left. Let’s get this over with.”
For a moment, the logic of his words had some kind of magical sway over me. It would be so simple to accept them, to be done with all this.
I led the way outside.
I knew I had no chance of overpowering Macpherson. He was six inches taller than me, with shoulders so broad he had to turn sideways to get through a doorway, or so it seemed to me. He’d been a boxer in the Army, and still regularly trained in the ring with men half his age.
And he was carrying a handgun.
But still... Something might happen. We might encounter someone as we passed through the body of the building, or outside. There may be a distraction that would give me a chance to run.
I was clutching at straws, I know.
I didn’t stand a chance. I was no action hero, and I never had been.
§
“No.”
Napier and Macpherson stared.
We were outside now, on the broad sweep of lawns that led down the slope from the main building. This was where Napier’s helicopter had landed only the day before. Where he’d been shot.
Had that even been genuine? The shooting?
It had happened, of course. I’d witnessed it. I’d been covered in his blood.
But what had it come to that I was now thinking he might actually have staged it in order to present himself as some kind of victim or hero?
No. I couldn’t take that step. Napier was simply doing what he’d always done, finding a situation and adapting it to his own advantage.
“No,” I repeated.
I’d stopped walking, my feet planted firmly. I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to make it easy.
I was no action hero, but I was no meek loser, either.
“Och, we’ll just have to do it here, then,” said Napier. “Macpherson?”
His head of security raised his handgun, close to my temple. Even in my sudden rush of panic, I understood what he was doing, aiming from close to me so the forensic evidence would support a verdict of suicide.
It would never pass an autopsy, of course, but it would certainly make it easy for a bought pathologist to pass as suicide.
I held Napier’s look, throughout.
He showed no emotion, but I hoped at least this would stay with him, would eat away at what conscience he had in the wee small hours of the night.
I heard the gunshot, and had time to register surprise. Surely I would not have heard it? The bullet should have ended things in an instant.
The next thing I registered was the look of surprise on Napier’s face, and then in the periphery of my vision, I saw Macpherson crumpling into a heap on the grass beside me.
I was alive. Still breathing. And that meant... Surely, that meant...
20. Cassie
The hand between the shoulderblades. The firm push.
Twisting, grabbing, transferring some of her own momentum to her assailant.
The look of almost comical surprise on the woman’s face as Cassie pulled her off the cliff after her.
It was no act of revenge. No final gesture, a choice that if she must fall to her death then so too must her attacker.
It was far simpler than that.
A calculation.
One of those moments that others might put down to instinct but Cassie knew was the culmination of years of training, preparation and experience.
It was her best chance.
She’d grabbed her assailant and pulled her off the cliff because it was her best chance of a soft landing.
§
The hike to Auldbrigg Haw...
In her head it was to be three hours of remote Highlands scenery, keeping away from the roads. A rare spell of tranquility after far too long of living on her toes, trying to evade detection.
In reality...
The landing hadn’t exactly been soft, but she’d survived. If only that woman had been carrying a few extra pounds, but at least that bony, glamorous frame had broken the fall.
Cassie had crawled free. She didn’t even glance back. The woman was dead. She’d heard the crunch of bones, felt the horribly jelly-like squishing of flesh as the woman hit the ground first.
At least a couple of the snapping sounds had been Cassie’s. She’d broken something in her wrist, and at least one rib, on impact.
Still on all fours, she’d forced herself to stop, perform a quick self-check.
Pain in her wrist and chest. A sharp pain in her pelvis, which was worrying – pelvic injuries could be the worst, and were often associated with other serious internal damage. Her whole spine felt as if someone had popped each vertebra out of place and then back in again. She knew moving could make any spinal damage far worse, but she had little option.
Now, she allowed herself to look back.
The woman lay as if she’d been pressed into a gap in the rocks at the foot of the cliff – which, thanks to gravity, she effectively had. And the cliff... If anything, it looked even higher from down here.
Cassie shuddered. She never had done heights.
When she stood she felt dizzy, but managed to stay upright.
She tried to objectively assess her options. She could stop the next car on the road and drive to Auldbrigg Haw – you could do almost anything when you waved a handgun in someone’s face – but that would be reported, and the police might even stop her before she got there.
She could call for assistance, but now she knew her priorities were different to those of Section Eight. They didn’t care at all about Matthew Scullery.
In any case, her cellphone had been smashed in the fall, and when she brought herself to search the broken body of her attacker she found a phone, but it was locked.
She had to stick to her first plan. The walk.
The hike to Auldbrigg Haw was the longest walk of her life. Every step hurt, and as she went she felt the aches and pains in her body getting steadily worse, until she felt she might just black out altogether.
She kept going though.
They had Matthew.
21. Matthew
I’d never seen anyone shot before yesterday.
That time it had been Napier. I’d thought him dead – how could he live, with so much blood spilled? – but he had survived.
And now... Macpherson. Lying on the ground at my feet.
There could be no doubt this time. Macpherson was dead.
His face wore an expression of utter shock, and one side of his skull was dark red where the bullet had struck.
I looked at Napier and, bizarrely, he wore a matching expression of utter shock.
He looked at me, as if he thought that somehow I was responsible.
And then Cassie stepped out from the trees, her gun still leveled, aiming at Napier.
Oh, Cassie! She looked as if someone had beaten her severely, and in that moment I hated Napier more than I’d ever have thought possible.
He’d said I didn’t need to concern myself about her, his meaning clear: that she had been taken care of.
She’d clearly survived, but at what cost?
Her face was bruised, a long gash across her forehead dark red with dried blood.
She carried her left hand awkwardly against her chest, and even from where I stood I could see that the wrist was swollen.
Her face was ghostly white in the growing gloom of the late afternoon, dark shadows under her eyes.
She looked as if she might drop at any moment.
Perhaps Napier sensed this too, for this was when he made his move.
With surprising speed, he took two steps toward me. I thought he was going to grab me, but instead he stooped and swept up something off the ground with his good hand.
Macpherson’s gun.
Now, the two stood, guns aimed at each other.
I knew Cassie was a professional killer – hell, I’d just seen her in action – and would have no compunction in acting again. But also, I knew that she might hesitate, even for a fraction, because the death of someone with as high a profile as Napier would be a very public affair.
As she sat, one of the eagles drifted breathtakingly close, so near she could see the swivel of its head as it peered at her, trying to work out what she was doing on the cliff edge.
Her plan was to follow a hiking trail that led across the hilltops to where she could drop down into the forest that surrounded the Auldbrigg Haw estate. She’d be at the folly inside three hours, and from there she’d be on hand for when Matthew gave her the all-clear. In the meantime she would have a good view of the comings and goings at the estate.
But now...
“You can come out now.”
She’d become aware of the watcher while Matthew was still here, and had left it this long because she wanted to be sure he got away safely.
If the watcher had wanted to kill them, then they’d be dead already, so now Cassie was intrigued.
She didn’t look around – a show of confidence that, even here on the edge of the cliff, she didn’t feel vulnerable. She’d always been adept at mind games.
She heard soft footfalls, a scuff of stones. A woman, she guessed, from the lightness of tread, and immediately she knew who it was most likely to be.
She saw movement in the periphery of her vision then, and finally turned to look.
The woman who’d met Matthew at the village hotel, wearing what looked like the same leather pants and jacket combo. Big hair, big eyes, ridiculously glamorous, and now with a quizzical smile and tilt of the head.
“That was so sweet,” said the woman. “So touching. You two couldn’t keep your hands off each other, and oh my, that lingering contact of entwined fingers as you forced yourselves to part. I was genuinely moved. You do know he spent the night in my hotel room not long ago, don’t you?”
Cassie didn’t rise to the bait. She said nothing, just stared straight ahead.
She’d successfully managed to blank that night from her mind. She’d seen Matthew meet this woman, and had stayed long enough to know he wasn’t going to emerge again that night.
She didn’t blame him at all for taking comfort wherever it was offered.
She’d driven him to it.
“I tried really hard to seduce him.”
Now, Cassie faltered, glanced across at the woman again. Saw the glimmer of triumph on her face, that she’d broken through Cassie’s otherwise cool façade.
Cassie refused to ask for details. She didn’t even know if she could trust this woman – perhaps she’d finally met her match on the mind games front.
But she felt something lift in her heart at the suggestion that, even then, in what must have been the pit of Matthew’s despair in the face of her apparent betrayal, he’d not given into this woman’s very obvious charms.
“Who are you?”
“I told your boyfriend I was MI5.”
“And who are you really?”
The woman just shrugged. She hid it well, but her almost flawless English accent had a hint of something Eastern European about it.
“I need to know whether to kill you or not,” said Cassie.
The woman laughed.
“Let’s just say we’re not on opposite sides. My employers have an interest in seeing stability in this country, just as yours do.”
“But how do they want to achieve that?”
“By whatever means necessary.”
Cassie was starting to piece it all together. This woman, an agent for a foreign power of some variety – either a nation-state such as Russia or China, trying to exert some kind of influence over the UK’s current political turmoil, or some other faction with similar aims. And how best to exert that influence right now? By supporting and manipulating one of the key players...
“Napier?”
The woman said nothing, but the lack of denial was answer enough.
Instantly, Cassie’s brain raced. Matthew had gone to Napier... Was he in danger? Surely not: he was Napier’s closest friend, the one element of stability in that corrupt man’s life.
She had to get to him, nonetheless. But first, how to deal with this woman?
Cassie eyed the drop before them. It was, perhaps, the obvious solution.
“Napier?” Cassie said again. “Really?”
“He’s being talked of as this country’s next leader, prime minister of a government of national unity to steer through the current chaos. He’s positioned himself well.”
“But... he’s just been nearly assassinated.”
Even as she said these words, Cassie made the leap of understanding. She didn’t need the other woman’s smug smirk for confirmation.
“Nearly, but not quite. How convenient,” said the woman. “A soft tissue wound. No lasting damage. Relatively quick to heal. The gunman, Wilson. Didn’t you ask yourself the obvious question?”
Not until now...
“An experienced professional with a clear shot at that range. How did he ever miss the kill? Wilson was far too good for that. Unless the aim was never to kill.”
Now, Cassie’s mind was jumping from point to point across recent events. “Sutherland?” she prompted.
Again, the other woman said nothing, just smiled.
Had Lewis Sutherland ever been a captive of some Middle East faction? Or had the whole thing been staged, a publicity stunt designed with the sole intention of maneuvering Stewart Napier into the public view and presenting him as the kind of can-do hero the country’s political scene hadn’t had in generations.
How had she not seen through any of this?
Cassie thought back to the night she’d been forced to flee Auldbrigg Haw. The man who’d come to kill her... He’d been part of the estate’s security team. Cassie had assumed he’d infiltrated the place, just as she had. But what if Napier had sniffed her out and sent the man to get rid of her? He’d had an accomplice too – that was why she’d had to flee the scene without clearing up properly. Surely that made it seem ever-more likely that he had been no infiltrator?
“Your boyfriend’s pal, Napier,” the woman said now. “He’s been very clever. He’s positioned himself nicely. The people’s politician, soon to be the people’s prime minister. Matt Scullery’s old pal is staging a coup, right before the nation’s eyes, and everyone is willing him on to do it. How clever is that?”
“I need to get to Auldbrigg Haw,” Cassie said. “I need to get to Matthew.”
“Oh no,” said the woman. “I’m afraid not.”
Cassie stared at her. She hadn’t quite worked out the woman’s role in all this yet, but if she’d wanted to kill them, why wait?
“You were watching us,” Cassie said. “You had a clear shot, but you didn’t take it, so you’re clearly not here to kill us.”
“Oh, you’re quite right, of course. I couldn’t have killed Matt Scullery out here, particularly after recent events. Imagine the scandal, if Napier’s closest friend was shot out on a Scottish hill near Napier’s home?”
And now Cassie understood.
The woman couldn’t have taken a shot while Matthew was here, because it would have been impossible to keep the taint of scandal away from Napier. But now...
“But me?” said Cassie. Was this how it would end? She’d always known that one day she might come up against her match, but she’d thought it would be more dramatic than this.
“You?” asked the woman. “Who are you? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. You’re nobody. And easy to dispose of.”
The woman moved swiftly.
One moment she was casually sitting at Cassie’s side, and the next she had swung an arm up, planted her hand firmly between Cassie’s shoulderblades and pushed with surprising strength.
Cassie cried out, in shock rather than fear. She felt herself toppling.
She flailed her arms, but there was nothing to catch hold of.
And then, in one final, desperate, move she did what all martial arts fighters learn early to do: she took a good grip on that leather jacket and transferred some of her own momentum to her opponent.
She had time to register the look of surprise on the other woman’s features, and to see that surprise transform itself into shock and then terror as momentum won, and then both women fell clear of the cliff with landfall some fifty feet below.
19. End Games
“So how does this play out?” I asked. I held my old friend’s gaze, expecting him to falter, but there was nothing – not a spark of compassion or guilt. Just a coldness I had been blind to until now. “Are you going to watch? Are you going to enjoy it?”
Napier shook his head. “Och, cut the drama, would you? We simply do what needs to be done. I’m not a fucking James Bond villain.”
He stood, still holding my look, and at some unseen cue Macpherson entered the room.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe this. I really don’t.”
Neither of them seemed bothered. Napier had made his decision and his head of security was simply doing his job.
Hell, I’d sat in this very room with the two of them, playing cards and drinking Napier’s whisky.
I’d considered Macpherson, if not a friend, then at least a companion of some sort, a man whose company I kept when I was here at Auldbrigg Haw.
I really was that poor a judge of character, it seemed.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Macpherson said to me.
“If I refuse?”
What could they do? An apparent suicide would be convenient for Napier, but I was sure that if I resisted then they would have other ways to stop my death from proving an inconvenience to his plans.
Napier still held my look as I said to him, “So how do I do it? Am I to hang myself from a tree? Or a bullet to the head?”
Napier shook his head. “Drama never became you, Mattie. I’m sorry it’s had to come to this, I really am, but you set this train of events in motion by the choices you made.”
“And so a killer justifies his own actions...”
There was nothing I could say that would penetrate his certainty, I realized.
“It’s over, Mattie. Your girlfriend’s dead by now, and you have nothing left. Let’s get this over with.”
For a moment, the logic of his words had some kind of magical sway over me. It would be so simple to accept them, to be done with all this.
I led the way outside.
I knew I had no chance of overpowering Macpherson. He was six inches taller than me, with shoulders so broad he had to turn sideways to get through a doorway, or so it seemed to me. He’d been a boxer in the Army, and still regularly trained in the ring with men half his age.
And he was carrying a handgun.
But still... Something might happen. We might encounter someone as we passed through the body of the building, or outside. There may be a distraction that would give me a chance to run.
I was clutching at straws, I know.
I didn’t stand a chance. I was no action hero, and I never had been.
§
“No.”
Napier and Macpherson stared.
We were outside now, on the broad sweep of lawns that led down the slope from the main building. This was where Napier’s helicopter had landed only the day before. Where he’d been shot.
Had that even been genuine? The shooting?
It had happened, of course. I’d witnessed it. I’d been covered in his blood.
But what had it come to that I was now thinking he might actually have staged it in order to present himself as some kind of victim or hero?
No. I couldn’t take that step. Napier was simply doing what he’d always done, finding a situation and adapting it to his own advantage.
“No,” I repeated.
I’d stopped walking, my feet planted firmly. I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to make it easy.
I was no action hero, but I was no meek loser, either.
“Och, we’ll just have to do it here, then,” said Napier. “Macpherson?”
His head of security raised his handgun, close to my temple. Even in my sudden rush of panic, I understood what he was doing, aiming from close to me so the forensic evidence would support a verdict of suicide.
It would never pass an autopsy, of course, but it would certainly make it easy for a bought pathologist to pass as suicide.
I held Napier’s look, throughout.
He showed no emotion, but I hoped at least this would stay with him, would eat away at what conscience he had in the wee small hours of the night.
I heard the gunshot, and had time to register surprise. Surely I would not have heard it? The bullet should have ended things in an instant.
The next thing I registered was the look of surprise on Napier’s face, and then in the periphery of my vision, I saw Macpherson crumpling into a heap on the grass beside me.
I was alive. Still breathing. And that meant... Surely, that meant...
20. Cassie
The hand between the shoulderblades. The firm push.
Twisting, grabbing, transferring some of her own momentum to her assailant.
The look of almost comical surprise on the woman’s face as Cassie pulled her off the cliff after her.
It was no act of revenge. No final gesture, a choice that if she must fall to her death then so too must her attacker.
It was far simpler than that.
A calculation.
One of those moments that others might put down to instinct but Cassie knew was the culmination of years of training, preparation and experience.
It was her best chance.
She’d grabbed her assailant and pulled her off the cliff because it was her best chance of a soft landing.
§
The hike to Auldbrigg Haw...
In her head it was to be three hours of remote Highlands scenery, keeping away from the roads. A rare spell of tranquility after far too long of living on her toes, trying to evade detection.
In reality...
The landing hadn’t exactly been soft, but she’d survived. If only that woman had been carrying a few extra pounds, but at least that bony, glamorous frame had broken the fall.
Cassie had crawled free. She didn’t even glance back. The woman was dead. She’d heard the crunch of bones, felt the horribly jelly-like squishing of flesh as the woman hit the ground first.
At least a couple of the snapping sounds had been Cassie’s. She’d broken something in her wrist, and at least one rib, on impact.
Still on all fours, she’d forced herself to stop, perform a quick self-check.
Pain in her wrist and chest. A sharp pain in her pelvis, which was worrying – pelvic injuries could be the worst, and were often associated with other serious internal damage. Her whole spine felt as if someone had popped each vertebra out of place and then back in again. She knew moving could make any spinal damage far worse, but she had little option.
Now, she allowed herself to look back.
The woman lay as if she’d been pressed into a gap in the rocks at the foot of the cliff – which, thanks to gravity, she effectively had. And the cliff... If anything, it looked even higher from down here.
Cassie shuddered. She never had done heights.
When she stood she felt dizzy, but managed to stay upright.
She tried to objectively assess her options. She could stop the next car on the road and drive to Auldbrigg Haw – you could do almost anything when you waved a handgun in someone’s face – but that would be reported, and the police might even stop her before she got there.
She could call for assistance, but now she knew her priorities were different to those of Section Eight. They didn’t care at all about Matthew Scullery.
In any case, her cellphone had been smashed in the fall, and when she brought herself to search the broken body of her attacker she found a phone, but it was locked.
She had to stick to her first plan. The walk.
The hike to Auldbrigg Haw was the longest walk of her life. Every step hurt, and as she went she felt the aches and pains in her body getting steadily worse, until she felt she might just black out altogether.
She kept going though.
They had Matthew.
21. Matthew
I’d never seen anyone shot before yesterday.
That time it had been Napier. I’d thought him dead – how could he live, with so much blood spilled? – but he had survived.
And now... Macpherson. Lying on the ground at my feet.
There could be no doubt this time. Macpherson was dead.
His face wore an expression of utter shock, and one side of his skull was dark red where the bullet had struck.
I looked at Napier and, bizarrely, he wore a matching expression of utter shock.
He looked at me, as if he thought that somehow I was responsible.
And then Cassie stepped out from the trees, her gun still leveled, aiming at Napier.
Oh, Cassie! She looked as if someone had beaten her severely, and in that moment I hated Napier more than I’d ever have thought possible.
He’d said I didn’t need to concern myself about her, his meaning clear: that she had been taken care of.
She’d clearly survived, but at what cost?
Her face was bruised, a long gash across her forehead dark red with dried blood.
She carried her left hand awkwardly against her chest, and even from where I stood I could see that the wrist was swollen.
Her face was ghostly white in the growing gloom of the late afternoon, dark shadows under her eyes.
She looked as if she might drop at any moment.
Perhaps Napier sensed this too, for this was when he made his move.
With surprising speed, he took two steps toward me. I thought he was going to grab me, but instead he stooped and swept up something off the ground with his good hand.
Macpherson’s gun.
Now, the two stood, guns aimed at each other.
I knew Cassie was a professional killer – hell, I’d just seen her in action – and would have no compunction in acting again. But also, I knew that she might hesitate, even for a fraction, because the death of someone with as high a profile as Napier would be a very public affair.
