Closer, page 8
“God help us.”
“Aye, Mattie. We may need some of that, too.”
We both laughed. I think Napier was just relieved to be able to talk openly about what was going on, and I was still in a state of disbelief that the scrawny teenager who’d once protected me from the school bullies had turned into the kind of man who would feature in the history books.
“Stay safe, Napier, you hear?”
He paused to study me more closely. I wasn’t about to confess my dealings with the security services behind his back, but still he sensed there was more to my warning than mere empty words.
“I have good people around me,” he said.
Now, he meant. Now that the viper in the nest had absented herself. Neither of us mentioned Cassie out loud, though.
“You’re a good person, Napier,” I said. “And sadly that seems to be the exception in the circles you move in.”
He grunted a laugh, and took a long drink of his scotch.
“I can be as bad as any of them,” he said. “I know when to get tough, believe me. But I make things happen. That’s why the Establishment likes me, and why it doesn’t quite trust a snake oil salesman like Bernard Bowler. I have a track record of getting things done. You know that, Mattie. When have I ever let you down?”
For a split second I wondered how much he knew about my dealings with Louise – was that a hint of a warning? – and then it had passed, and we leaned forward in our seats to embrace awkwardly.
Napier was right. He’d never let me down. And I knew I could never let him down, either.
7. Cassie
It was close to one in the morning by the time Cassie got back to her hideaway.
As she left the main road she cut the car’s lights, and then paused at the head of the track to allow her eyes to adjust. For a short distance there was a sheer drop to one side of the track and driving unlit was treacherous, but she couldn’t risk anyone noticing activity at the abandoned Naval installation. This place might seem remote, and indeed it was, but there were still crofts and farms on the hillsides, and fishing boats that plied the sea loch at all hours. All it would take was one person to notice mysterious comings and goings in the night, a word in a local police officer’s ear, and she would have a lot of explaining to do about why she was here, and why her only company was the two-day-old corpse of a man with a puncture wound under his chin.
All the way back, she’d focused on her surroundings. The road ahead, and behind. There had been no sign of anyone following her. Pausing at the head of the track, she’d peered through the gloom for any sign that someone had been here in her absence, any glimmer of lights on the hillside or down by the loch. Anyone out here checking up on the base now would be stupid to use a flashlight, but a glimmer of a cellphone screen or a motion-activated smartwatch was the kind of giveaway even an experienced professional might overlook.
Somewhere in the darkness she heard the wail of a bird – a wader disturbed by someone on the shore?
Her focus was intent. Single-minded.
Anything but let her mind stray to where Matthew was now, what he might be doing.
She drove slowly down to the abandoned base and parked in the shelter of an outhouse, out of sight of both the road and the loch. She’d secreted the body of the man going by the name of Jonny Cole in this building, and earlier in the day the buzz of flies had prompted her to wrap the corpse more tightly in a tarpaulin, which had helped. Still, she needed Section Eight to send in a disposal team soon.
She had a sleeping bag in one of the other buildings, but instead she chose to go down to the shore, where she could lie on the flat rocks above the high-tide mark. These abandoned buildings felt oppressive tonight.
For a time she sat, looking out over the loch, slate-grey under the stars. Occasionally, a shooting star flashed in the night sky. Someone had said this was the time of year for them, something to do with a peak in the amount of space dust hitting the upper atmosphere.
Matthew.
It was Matthew who’d told her that. Only a few days ago, telling her the clear skies up here during their visit would be perfect for the display. Dust from the tail of a comet. It had seemed so romantic at the time.
Oh, Matthew! What had he got himself into?
She didn’t blame him. It was a natural reaction to lash out after you’d been betrayed. To seek comfort elsewhere.
The more she considered it, the more convinced she became that she was right. Section Eight had to move someone in to pick up where Cassie had left things, and what better than to exploit a known weakness in Napier’s defenses? Matthew.
She should move out, head south and leave the body here for the clear-up team to deal with.
There was a new agent in town. One far more glamorous and exciting than Cassie.
Oh, she didn’t’ blame Matthew at all.
But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
§
She slept fitfully, always on the edge of wakefulness.
It was sleep, nonetheless, and as a field agent you learned to take it where you could find it.
She waited until after eight the next morning to call Connor in London, filling the time by breakfasting on freeze-dried rations from her emergency stash, and then checking the perimeter of the old Naval installation.
“All quiet at Auldbrigg Haw,” she told him, when she made the call. “I presume Napier’s still in London–”
“Flying north today, landing at Glasgow Airport at two-fifteen. Should be back at Auldbrigg by four, unless he makes any stops along the way.”
“And Scullery and the rest of the staff at Auldbrigg Haw have been quiet. I need a clean-up team here, though. Cole’s body is attracting flies and rats.”
“Noted.”
“Am I good to stand down now that you have a new operative on location?”
A slight hesitation. “New operative?”
“Cat Woman. Tall, brunette, leather pants. She made contact with Scullery last night.” All last night.
“Give me a more detailed description. Do you have photographs?”
She hadn’t thought to take pictures. Too distracted. When had she become so sloppy out in the field?
“You mean she’s not Section Eight?”
“Description.”
“Tall. About five-ten, and maybe one-forty pounds. Shoulder-length dark brunette hair, styled with a wave.” That didn’t really narrow it down much, she knew, and ‘drop-dead gorgeous’ and ‘high maintenance’ were just too subjective to be any use in running through the ID systems the section had at its disposal.
“Name? Car?”
She remained silent. She knew she should have been able to get more on the woman than this, but she’d been too distracted. She could feel the burning pressure of Connor judging her in that silence, and remembered his question from before, when they’d talked about the necessity for her to abandon Matthew: Is that likely to be a problem for you?
“I’ll keep a look out for her,” she said. “Try to get more on her. Is she a threat?”
“Hard to say on the information you’ve given me.” Connor always kept the judgment from his tone, but it was clear enough in his choice of words.
“I thought...” She was digging herself deeper, only highlighting her mistakes, but she felt the need to justify herself. “Well, when she showed up and spent the evening with Scullery, it seemed likely she was my replacement.”
“If it seemed likely to you, then it would do so to all concerned.”
Again, her superior’s tone gave nothing away, but she felt judged nonetheless. And she knew she was coming up short.
Then, as if he sensed the impact of his words, he went on. “If we made a like for like swap, especially so soon when we must assume that they’re aware of your infiltration, they’d have suspected straight away. Whoever this woman is, she’s not one of ours. I’ll put some feelers out. There might be overlap, one of the other agencies trying to get close to Napier. He’s the man of the moment, so that wouldn’t surprise me.”
Maybe that was the explanation. MI5 or one of the covert intelligence branches of the police might easily see the value in having someone close to Napier.
“Instructions?”
“As before. We have no immediate plans to replace you – it’d be hard to do so in any useful way without arousing suspicions. So sit back, observe from a distance, and always be prepared to act. It’s a watching brief for now, but things are stepping up a gear around Napier and we might need to move fast. Someone with your skills on the ground might be called on at short notice, so be prepared.”
“Sir.”
She understood what that meant. Her skills. A closer. An assassin.
Her career kill count was in double figures, but that didn’t mean she took her role lightly. Each one was a life ended, a tragedy not only for the target, but for those around them too, no matter how deserved such a fate might be.
She might be called on to take out Napier, or anyone who made a move on him.
It was what she did.
She knew she must remain objective, forget that Matthew was right in the thick of it.
A complication.
A distraction.
A vulnerability.
She cut the call. Went out to her flat rocks with a view over the loch, and tried, desperately, to find focus again.
She hated feeling so judged by Connor. Hated more that she felt such a need to impress him.
Right now it felt as if everything was unraveling around her. Losing Matthew. Being so blindsided by Coles coming after her that night. All the little mistakes she’d made, the lapses in her normally finely tuned professionalism.
She spent much of the day in the forest that wrapped around Auldbrigg Haw’s sprawling gardens. She didn’t want to get too close, because although security had been lax before, she knew that if Macpherson was any good he’d have tightened things up now. They’d had at least two infiltrators, after all: Cassie, and the man calling himself Jonny Coles. If it was down to her, Macpherson would be out of a job, but she knew Napier had a strong sense of loyalty to those he chose to be near to him – and now Macpherson would have a lot to prove.
She missed Matthew returning to the hall, but when she had completed another circuit of the grounds she saw the car he used parked by the stables.
She wondered how he felt? Guilty? Ashamed? Or a sense of release, a purging?
He wasn’t the settling kind – maybe he felt good to be sowing some guilt-free wild oats again...
She wasn’t the settling kind either. She’d been foolish to even allow herself that fantasy.
You always destroy what’s closest to you, in the end, after all.
That was a lesson she’d learned young.
When she was growing up, her family life had never been settled. Her parents had been distant, devoted to their work in the Civil Service, neither of them easy to impress. Her father had often been away. With the benefit of hindsight, it would be easy to join the dots: her parents working as civil servants, tied up in the world of power games in Whitehall, dealings with the Foreign Office and lots of unexplained absences... That kind of life was often cover for other activities. Had her father inadvertently provided a blueprint for her own life?
Either that, or he was some kind of criminal. She still didn’t know, and whenever she tried to dig the trail ran cold.
One day would always be burned into her memory, though.
She could only have been six or seven years old, playing on her own in her room at their townhouse in Pimlico. There must have been a childminder or nanny, but that part was a blur. She remembered the childminders as little more than girls, always slipping away for cigarettes or boys – co-conspirators rather than carers.
She’d heard the doorbell and then voices downstairs. The voices hadn’t been raised, but something in their constrained murmur had told her this was no ordinary visit.
She stretched up to peer out of the window to the street below, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. It took a moment to register that one of the cars pulled up in the street was a police car, and even then it was not so unusual. They were in a busy part of central London, after all.
A sound at the bedroom door made her turn, and she saw a woman standing there. She thought she must work with Mummy, because she wore the same kind of clothes, a smart skirt and matching jacket, a cream blouse with pretty frills at the neck.
“Katie,” the woman said, with a big smile, because Katie was what Cassie was called back then. “My name’s Yasmin.” She held out a hand. “Why don’t you come downstairs with me? Your mummy and daddy are down there waiting.”
It occurred to her briefly that it would have been more normal for her mother to come up to get her herself, but she didn’t really mind. Yasmin looked nice.
Downstairs in the living room – the posh one they barely ever used unless there were people around – four strangers crowded in around Cassie’s parents. Three men in suits, and another smartly dressed woman. They all smiled at Cassie as she walked in holding Yasmin’s hand, but they weren’t nice smiles. It felt as if she’d stepped into a fairy tale and wolves in human clothing were eyeing her up for supper.
She looked at her parents. Their smiles were kinder, but more scared.
Cassie went to her mother and pressed against her, felt her fingers threading through her hair. Shy, she turned to peer up at the strangers.
Yasmin came to squat before Cassie, so their eyes were at the same level. “Katie,” she said, with a kind smile, “your mummy and daddy want you to help me. Where does Daddy keep his guns?”
Looking back, the tactic didn’t surprise Cassie. She didn’t know what questions had already been asked by then, but the visitors clearly hadn’t got the answers they wanted. The chances of a small child knowing the answer to that question were slim, but even so...
Cassie had looked up at her parents, surprised. And, seeing the looks of shock on their features, she’d looked away again, found Yasmin’s gaze and held it, determined to give nothing away. But, in doing so, she’d been unable to resist a glance across at the bookcases that lined one wall of this room. It was a natural thing to do. A reflex response, to check that nothing had been disturbed.
Because she’d seen Daddy putting things in the hidden storage niche there, behind a set of fake book spines.
She didn’t know if there were guns – she’d never seen any – but she knew it was the safe place.
They saw.
All of them.
Two of the men went over to the bookcase immediately to examine it more closely.
Cassie’s father’s tall frame visibly sagged, while her mother looked sharply from daughter to father and back again.
It felt like forever. Little Cassie knew she’d done something awful, even though she didn’t understand what it could be. She wanted to cry. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to run back up the stairs to her room and never come out.
They found a metal box, and in it a pistol and several fat envelopes that seemed to hold just as much interest for them as the gun.
“Michael?” gasped Cassie’s mother.
“It’s okay. It’s...”
Cassie’s mother slumped to the ground. She clearly knew nothing about her husband’s stash, his secret life, whatever it might be.
And only now, staring at the cellphone after cutting the call with Connor, did Cassie understand just how closely her own path had followed the one she suspected her father’s had taken.
She’d never seen her father again, after they’d marched him away that day. She didn’t know his crime – never knew what crucial evidence that gun and those stuffed envelopes had provided – and her mother would never talk about it.
The details didn’t matter. It was the lessons that had stuck.
Her mother had never been the same again. A woman betrayed. A woman who could no longer trust the world around her. And with hindsight Cassie saw that at least a small part of her mother had always blamed the young child whose glance had destroyed everything. It wasn’t fair –her mother would have denied it, if she was ever confronted with the possibility – but it’s how it was.
And Cassie had grown up with those lessons close to her heart.
Never let anyone close. You’ll always betray them in the end. You’ll always destroy them.
These rules had served Cassie well, ever since that critical day in her childhood.
Keep the world at arm’s length.
It didn’t matter if that meant you could never have what others took for granted, because you can’t miss what you’ve never had.
Rules she’d never broken.
Until Matthew.
§
She saw Matthew that evening, from a distance. Sitting out on the terrace at Auldbrigg Haw despite the late summer chill in the evening air, sharing dinner with Napier, and then a dram of single malt.
She felt something twisting in her gut as she hung back in the trees, watching them through binoculars.
She should have kept him at arm’s length. Never let him get close.
She felt like the little girl betraying her father with a glance, all over again.
She ground her teeth, so hard it hurt. She had to focus. If someone had come after her, she was sure that meant they would move on Napier – even though she’d taken ‘Coles’ out of the picture with a sharp stab of the knitting needle.
She didn’t care about Napier, beyond her orders to protect him until she heard otherwise, but she did care about Matthew.
She watched them until they retreated indoors, and then there was little she could do from a distance.
She had to trust that Macpherson’s tightened security would prove more reliable than it had before.
If she was right and Coles had infiltrated from outside, then they must know that by now – he’d gone missing the night she had, after all – and so they would have rechecked the credentials of everyone with access to Auldbrigg Haw.
She loitered until late, just to be sure they were settled in for the night. Then she retraced her route through the trees to the forestry track where she’d parked.
