The Last Contract: A brooding thriller of espionage and identity, page 1
THE LAST CONTRACT
a novel by
PHILIP BENTALL
OTHER WORKS BY PHILIP BENTALL
NOVELS
Stray Dog
Wild Flower
POETRY
Where Cows Are Met
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright©2023 by Philip Bentall
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN:979 839037 200 5
‘If you want to keep a secret,
you must also hide it from yourself.’
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
‘Memories are killing.’
Samuel Beckett, The Expelled.
1
‘Where the hell is he?’ Sean said, adjusting the van’s wing mirror.
They’d been waiting for over an hour for this guy that their boss, Mr Hayes, wanted picking up and Sean was getting fidgety. He started playing with his hair in the mirror, done recently at his girlfriend’s salon – shaved round the back and sides, left long on top.
Seeing him, Terry shook his head. ‘You are vain, you know that?’
Readjusting the mirror, Sean said, ‘I thought you said an hour?’
Terry folded his arms and looked across the car park. ‘He’ll be here.’
They were parked up in a van outside Hindley Golf Club and they could hear balls being struck on the driving range behind them.
Sean said, ‘I wonder who he is.’
‘Like I said. It’s none of our business.’
‘Yeah, I know, but—’
‘But – nothing.’
It was the same with every job – no questions. Sean had been working with Terry long enough to know better. But what with it being his first live cargo assignment, he couldn’t help himself. ‘He must have done something pretty bad, don’t you think?’ he said.
Terry turned and glared at him. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’
‘All right,’ Sean replied, holding up his hands in defence. He turned and looked out of the window. A silver-haired couple steered battery-powered golf carts across the car park. They stopped beside a BMW 730d, popped the boot, and loaded the clubs in the back. Having once stolen cars for a living, Sean knew the car was worth about twenty grand on the second-hand market – its keyless entry system requiring only a hacked radio to unlock it.
A cloud passed in front of the sun and a shade-line swept briefly across the car park. Watching it pass over, Sean asked, ‘Any plans for the weekend?’
Terry shrugged. ‘Fishing probably.’ Terry was always fishing. Sean figured he didn’t have much else.
‘Me and Tash are going to that restaurant I told you about,’ Sean said. ‘With the Michelin star.’
Not looking round, Terry said, ‘I wouldn’t waste your money.’
‘Why not? It’s our anniversary. I want to take her somewhere nice.’ It was Sean’s dream to open his own restaurant one day.
‘Her idea, was it?’
Sean looked at Terry, who was nearly twice his age, with his regulation buzz cut, jutting chin, and nicotine-stained fingers, and thought how he didn’t want to turn out like him, doing this sort of work, not smiling, for the rest of his life. He had plans – like marrying Tash and setting up his own restaurant. He said, ‘You know what your problem is, Terry?’
‘What’s that?’ Terry replied, still not looking at him.
‘You need to get a little romance back in your life. Take the missus out.’ Sean grinned.
‘Let her waste my money, you mean.’
‘No. Show her your sensitive side. Open up a bit,’ Sean said, still grinning.
Terry shook his head. ‘It sounds like Tash has got you where she wants you to be.’
‘What? How do you work that out?’
A golf ball pinged against something metallic and Terry glanced across at his wing mirror.
Sean said, ‘Tash isn’t like that actually.’
Terry replied, ‘No?’ without looking at him.
‘I think you’re just jealous, Terry.’
Terry ignored him and looked across the car park.
Sean said, ‘You are, aren’t you?’
‘Give it a rest, Sean.’
‘No. I want to know why you think Tash has got me where she wants.’
‘We all have our place in the world,’ Terry replied, ‘nothing wrong with that. A hierarchy helps a species survive.’
‘You what?’
Terry gave him a glance. ‘You think you’re somehow different?’
‘Are we still talking about Tash here?’
‘In a way.’ Terry put his hand in his pocket and removed his tobacco pouch. ‘As individuals, we are of almost no consequence. Our genes have potential, but that’s about it.’
‘What?’
‘Our genes,’ Terry said, opening his pouch. ‘They have immortality in their grasp, not us. We’re just their temporary carriers.’
‘Where did you get that from?’
Terry stripped a Rizla paper from its packet. ‘Dawkins. The Selfish Gene.’
Sean watched, not for the first time, Terry purse his lips with concentration as he separated strands of tobacco and laid them along the trough of the Rizla paper.
‘The point is,’ Terry said, beginning to roll up the corners of the paper, ‘we’re here to pass on genes. That’s about as significant as any of this gets. Think about it. In a hundred years’ time, do you think anyone will remember any of us?’
‘Yeah, right, Terry – whatever.’
‘Like I said, it’s our—’ Terry stopped mid-sentence and looked across the car park.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s him.’
Sean scanned the car park but couldn’t see anyone. ‘Where?’
‘The clubhouse.’ Terry licked along the gum of the Rizla.
‘Are you sure?’ Sean leant forward in his seat. ‘I can’t see him.’
Terry checked the photo lying on the dashboard of a man in his mid-thirties, slim, six-one – the man Sean now saw coming out of the clubhouse.
‘Shit,’ Sean said, sitting back in his seat again. ‘It is him, isn’t it?’
Terry, calmly removing loose strands of tobacco from the end of his rollie, said, ‘Keep still.’
Sean realised he was juddering his leg and stopped.
Terry stuck the cigarette in his mouth and put on his cap. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ Sean felt his heart rate go up several notches. He let out a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair.
Terry asked, ‘You remember what you’ve got to do?’
‘Yeah. Drive round. Then pick you up.’
Terry reached for the door handle. ‘Remember. Just take it slowly. Okay?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
Terry got out of the van, closed his door and nodded at Sean through the window.
Sean nodded back at him, then pulled up the hood of his hoodie and started the van. His arms shook as he gripped the steering wheel and watched Terry head in the direction of the clubhouse. About halfway across the car park, Terry stopped and lit his cigarette; whether that was part of the plan, Sean couldn’t remember.
The cargo came down the clubhouse steps, looking just like he did in the photo, Sean thought, dressed in beige chinos, polo shirt, and boat shoes. Only everything felt a lot realer than it had five minutes ago.
Sean looked back at Terry, puffing on his cigarette, and got ready to pull out. He knew he mustn’t rush it – that he had to make it look like he was just driving round until Terry had the cargo. Releasing the handbrake, he was about to pull out when he saw the cargo stop and take out his phone. ‘Shit!’ he muttered, stopping the van.
He glanced across at Terry, who was now pretending to examine a large electric meter box. He felt his leg tremble as he held down the clutch, the engine idling. Then he glanced at the cargo speaking on his phone and thought how he looked like the sort of guy you’d expect to see at a golf club – mid-thirties, well-dressed, in good shape. Not the sort of guy about to be forced into the back of a van. But it was one thing looking at someone’s photo and quite another seeing them in the flesh, Sean thought. He hadn’t expected to feel so nervous. His pulse was racing like he’d taken a hit of amphetamines; his mouth was dry.
It had all seemed so easy when Terry explained it to him in the pub on the Sussex coast six months ago. How they just had to pick up this guy and take him to some farmhouse so someone could come and speak to him. Sean remembered thinking about the money at the time, how it was nearly three times more than h
‘You sure you’re up to this?’ Terry had asked him at the time. ‘Yeah, of course,’ he’d replied. Why wouldn’t he be? And Terry had given him that can-I-trust-you? look. Well, sod him, Sean had thought, he could handle it. Besides, he wasn’t going to be doing this forever.
Watching the cargo speak on the phone, Sean felt his hearing go weird for a second, like on a plane during take-off.
The cargo ended his call and pocketed his phone. Then sweeping his hand through his hair, he continued down the steps into the car park. Directly after, Sean saw Terry emerge from behind the meter box, taking a puff on his rollie, and start to follow him. It was like the pause button had been released; the film on play again, the sound back. The scene unfolding before Sean’s eyes like it’d been explained to him in the pub on the Sussex coast that night.
And here they were. No going back now.
Sean released the clutch and pulled forward, the loose gravel crunching under the tyres of the two-tonne transit. He headed up the nearest row of parked cars towards the clubhouse, his hands shaking on the steering wheel.
He saw the cargo stop to let a woman pass in a golf buggy. The woman, in three-quarter length tartan trousers and tight roll-neck, waved to him as she went past. They seemed to know each other. Terry hung back, with his head turned to the ground.
Sean observed the woman in the buggy stop outside the golf course’s pro shop and go inside, wondering what she’d remember about this moment when asked about it later. Would she recall Terry? The van?
Dust hung in the air where the buggy had gone past. The cargo crossed the road and walked down a row of cars. Terry followed him.
Sean, watching them, drove slowly along the top of the car park. He saw the cargo stop briefly, taking out a set of keys and pressing a fob.
Scanning the row of cars, Sean looked for the winking tail lights. And there it was, an Audi A3.
Sean noticed Terry had spotted it as well.
The cargo then took out his phone again. Had it buzzed with a message? He checked the screen as he walked along, Terry closing in on him, lifting his hand from his jacket, gloves on now.
Sean changed up to second, checking his wing mirror, and accelerated down the lane of cars towards them. This was it. About thirty metres ahead of him, he saw Terry draw up behind the cargo.
Terry must have said something because the cargo looked round. But before he could work out what was going on Terry had him round the neck, doubled up.
Sean drew up alongside them, got out and opened the sliding side door. Terry dragged the cargo into the back where he began to strap his hands with a cable-tie.
Sean got back in the van and kept an eye on his wing mirror as he waited for Terry. A moment later, he saw Terry getting out of the back of the van and slide the door shut. The cargo’s phone was lying on the gravel. Noticing it, Terry picked it up and, opening the Audi’s boot, chucked it inside. Scanning the car park, he closed the boot and approached the van.
‘Okay. Let’s go,’ he said, climbing inside.
Sean pulled away, his heart going like the clappers, and headed down the driveway. Glancing at Terry along the way, he asked, ‘Do you think anyone saw us?’
Texting on his phone, Terry said, ‘Just drive.’
2
Parked up in a lay-by alongside a wood, Graham Hayes was sat in a silver Kia Caren, yawning hard, when his phone buzzed with a message.
I’m getting too old for this, he thought.
The message was from Terry: they had the cargo. Hayes then opened a photo on his phone of a woman – early-thirties, blonde, five-six. The cargo’s wife, Amanda.
Hayes had a greying goatee and shaved head and scratched at both now as he checked his rear-view mirror. The road was an unmarked country lane. Only three cars had passed in the last ten minutes. Through a line of trees, he could see down to a large detached house, surrounded by sloping lawns and flowering rhododendrons.
Noting the time on his watch, Hayes shook out a mint gum onto the palm of his hand and put it in his mouth. Poxy things, he thought. Six months after giving up smoking and he was still chewing the damn things. He’d be fifty-three next month. Fifty-three, on his second marriage and a father again. His kids from his first marriage were all grown up now – Chloe, 24, studying ceramics at Royal Holloway; Jamie, 20, trying to make it as a rock star. Pam, his new wife, was fourteen years his junior and Malaysian. He’d initially employed her to help out in the house after he’d split up with his wife. Well, one thing had led to another…
Hayes sat there, chewing the gum as he pictured Terry and Sean leaving the golf club with the cargo. From there, he’d instructed them to head to a derelict farmhouse in the West Country, where they’d wait for his call. Meanwhile, he was at the cargo’s house to take photos of the wife. You didn’t ask the contact employing you on a job why. He’d give Terry another few more minutes before doing what he had to do.
Working as a freelancer in the intelligence and security sector, Hayes was used to the jobs no one else wanted to touch. Nowadays, government agencies were so hamstrung with bureaucracy they couldn’t fart without having to file a report. That was where he came in. Apparently, his employer was going to make this whole thing look like the cargo had just disappeared and was having some kind of a mid-life crisis or something. What a luxury they were, Hayes thought. Why couldn’t he disappear somewhere? His whole adult life had felt a bit like a mid-life crisis. He deserved a break.
Hayes checked his watch and saw it was time. He got out of the Kia, putting on a grey flat cap and crossed the road. On the other side, he disappeared up a track through the wood.
The sun was shining. He moved quickly through the trees and soon came to the end of the wood where he stopped beside a hunting gate and looked across the adjacent field. Two horses stood in the far corner, heads down, eating grass and swishing their tails. Hayes listened out for the sound of people, but all he could hear was birdsong, so he climbed over the gate and started round the edge of the field.
Coming to a water trough, he stopped and looked through a gap in the hedge. The ground sloped down towards the house, which was situated at the end of a long rhododendron-lined driveway. At the front of the house was a turning-circle of loose stones, while at the rear a two-tied lawn, divided by a low stone wall, led to a tennis court and the shade of pine trees. All round, a secluded and pleasant spot.
Hayes unzipped his jacket to uncover a camera hanging round his neck. A Nikon digital SLR with 50x optical zoom range, he lifted it and focused in on the house.
He tracked across the downstairs windows – pictures on walls, a leather top desk, a computer, framed photos on window sills. Then he came to the front door, where there was a cluster of balloons tied to the door’s brass knocker. He scanned the front of the house, noticing coloured streamers from party poppers lying on the gravel. It was then he heard a vehicle approach in the distance.
Hayes lowered the camera and saw a car coming down the driveway. He lifted the camera again and zoomed in on it. A woman was driving, short highlighted brown hair, mid-thirties, with a kid in the back.
Through the camera, Hayes followed the car’s progress.
It stopped at the front of the house, and the woman got out. She was wearing Lycra shorts and trainers – on her way to or from the gym it looked like. She helped a young girl, seven or eight, out of the back. The girl was holding a present, done up with a red ribbon.
Hayes moved the camera to the front door as it opened. Another kid came out, wearing a polka-dot dress and sparkling headband, and went to say hello to the new arrival. A woman followed her, blonde, skinny jeans, UGG boots.
It was the cargo’s wife, Amanda.
Hayes zoomed in on her, could see her pearl earrings, the blusher on her cheeks. She curled some hair behind one ear, bending down to say hello to the kid. Her long grey cardigan touched the ground as she did so.
Hayes held his finger down on the shutter-release button – click, click, click – then looked up from the camera, chewing the gum a little quicker than before.
