Hard Knocks

Seven

I was intending to call Sean at the earliest opportunity about my discovery, but when I walked into the dormitory to change before supper, I could tell at once that something was wrong.

Elsa was sitting on Shirley’s bed with her arm around the older woman’s shoulders. Jan was leaning against the wall near the head, looking serious and uncomfortable. All three of them tensed up when I opened the door.

I paused with my fingers still on the handle. “What’s up?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, dear,” Shirley said, and I could tell by the thickness in her voice that she’d been crying. She sat up straighter, opening out a crumpled tissue and blowing her nose fiercely, as though she was annoyed by the need to do so. Elsa let her arm fall away.

“Shirley wishes to leave,” the German woman said bluntly, her voice giving no clue as to whether she was happy about this occurrence or not.

I glanced at Jan, but it was difficult to know what she was thinking at the best of times. She caught my eye and shrugged.

I sat down on the bed opposite Shirley. “Why did you want to come here in the first place?” I asked gently.

Elsa made an impatient gesture. “What is that to do with it?”

I ignored her and held Shirley’s eye instead. I wanted to find out if her reason to stay was stronger than her reason to go. “Well?”

Shirley swallowed, stared up at the corner of the room over my head, biting her lip as though that would keep the tears trapped beneath her eyelids. “I wanted to do something different,” she said at last. “I wanted to get out there into the real world and do something exciting, just for once. Something that would matter.”

She skimmed her gaze over me briefly, then let it fall. “I’ve always been really good at organisation,” she said, now talking to the worn carpet in front of her feet. “I can plan and organise a children’s party, a conference, a fund-raiser.”

She glanced at the three of us briefly and gave what might have been a self-derisory laugh. “All three at once, if you like. It’s easy. Multitasking, my daughter-in-law would call it. Somebody told me that was what ninety percent of close protection work was all about. Organising security during transport, hotels, restaurants. That’s what fascinated me about the job. Not all this running around in the mud and the dark, being screamed at by a bunch of thugs.”

Her face collapsed again, and she brought her hands up to cover it. Elsa put her arm back around Shirley’s shoulders and gave her a helpless squeeze. She flashed me a look of reproof from behind her glasses.

“Anybody on the job would give their right arm to have you co-ordinating all that kind of stuff behind the scenes for them,” Jan said suddenly. “It’s not all gung-ho bullshit. You hang in there, girl, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

In spite of herself, Shirley smiled wanly but looked no more convinced. We tried for another half an hour to talk her into finishing what she’d started. When the memories of the cold and the tiredness and the bullying had faded, she’d always berate herself for giving in. What was a few weeks of discomfort, compared to a lifetime of regret?

In some ways, I had done exactly the same thing. Given in when the going had become too difficult. Maybe the sense of disappointment I’d felt then went some way towards explaining some of my actions since. My occasional stubbornness to the point of stupidity. My disinclination to just let things go, however prudent a move that might turn out to be.

When we left her, Shirley seemed more positive, but there was an underlying sense of defeat about her. I knew we hadn’t really got the message through.

***

Shirley wasn’t the only one who was feeling low. There were a lot of subdued faces in the dining hall that evening. Lack of sleep and a punishing regime of exertion and mental fatigue was taking its toll. As I ate I had the chance to quietly observe the people around me. Even Declan was looking miserable.

I was beginning to pick out faces from the crowd. They were becoming more individual and distinct, and so were their abilities. McKenna had started out badly and gone downhill from there. It wasn’t so much that he was sitting a little way apart from the others, as they were sitting apart from him. He was picking at his food, with his head down and his eyes fixed to the tablecloth in front of him.

A couple of places away was a big Welshman called Craddock. He was an ex-Royal Engineer with a robust sense of humour, who was sailing through the course with a calm that sometimes seemed almost drug-induced. The more Todd had ranted at him that morning, the more serenely Craddock had taken it. I wondered if it was a deliberate ploy.

The German contingent were all very competent, with Hofmann probably in the lead, but Elsa not far behind him.

Of the rest, Romundstad was the quiet one of the bunch, but I had a feeling he might turn out to be a very useful player in the long run. He’d certainly been the best of us during the afternoon session. We’d spent part of it on more driving drills, and the rest learning immediate first-aid from Figgis for dealing with our damaged principal.

I’d done first-aid before, from simple stuff right up to full scale simulated casualty exercises with the army. I’d even had to cope with more genuine medical emergencies – involving myself as well as others – than I liked to think about.

At the Manor, though, things were slightly different. Figgis had headed up the usual priority checklist of Breathing, Bleeding, Breaks and Burns with another point of consideration. Being Safe.

“If you’re still under fire, or in a position where there is still a threat, it’s pointless trying to start CPR on the guy,” he’d said. “You must make sure you’re secure before you do anything else.”

We’d all nodded, sober, then he’d added. “Oh, and the most important rule. What do you do if it isn’t your principal who’s hit, but another team member?”

There was a moment of silence. I think we all knew the answer he was looking for, but nobody had wanted to actually come right out and say it.

It was Romundstad who’d spoken, frowning as he tugged at the trailing end of his moustache. “Nothing?”

Figgis nodded, looking round at the various degrees of discomfort and distaste on the faces of the class.

“That’s right. It doesn’t matter if he’s lying in the middle of the street screaming. You get your principal to safety first, then you help your mate, but only if you can do so without putting your principal in danger. If you can’t, you leave him where he’s fallen. It doesn’t matter if he’s your brother. It’s the first rule of BG work. Your principal is the only one that matters. OK?”

“Penny for them?”

I shook myself loose from my recollection and found Rebanks hovering next to my chair. He’d finished his meal and was carrying a mug of coffee. “Sorry?”

“You look deep in your thoughts,” he said, grinning. “I was just offering you a penny for them. Did old Figgis come over too graphic on the blood and guts front today?”

I smiled back. “No, he was very restrained,” I said. “Hardly anybody fainted.”

He hitched his hip onto the table next to me, made himself at home. “You don’t strike me as the fainting kind of girl,” he said. He eyed me momentarily over the rim of his mug as he took a swig of his drink.

I waited a beat, then said sweetly, “I was talking about the blokes.”

The instructor’s grin grew wider.

Now, I thought, would be a good time to ask my awkward questions. “You said this morning that there’d never been an accident on the range.”

“That’s right,” Rebanks said smartly. “And I aim to keep it that way, which is why I don’t appreciate pillocks like Mr Lloyd.”

“I did hear,” I said, as offhand as I could manage, “that there was something that had happened recently. That somebody was killed out here?”

“Where did you hear that?” Rebanks tensed, then took a drink of his coffee, making a real effort to relax.

I shrugged. “It was just a rumour.”

“Yeah,” he said with a touch of bitterness about him, “and we know how easy those start.”

“So,” I said, “any truth in it?”

He shook his head, but his body language shouted that he was lying. “Nah. You don’t want to believe all the gossip you hear.”

Undeterred, I tried a different tack. “So, is it true we’ll be firing Hydra-Shok hollowpoints on the range next time?”

“What?” Rebanks said, his voice almost a yelp. He swallowed before he went on, more calmly, “Waste good stuff on you lot? No chance. Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, someone mentioned it, that’s all,” I said, waving another vague hand in the direction of just about everyone else in the room.

“Well they’re talking bollocks,” Rebanks said firmly. “We don’t have any in the armoury.”

There was a pause, then he turned the tables on me. “So,” he said, “you did pretty good this morning. Where did you learn to shoot?”

I laid my knife and fork on my empty plate and pushed it away from me slightly before replying. “I did a bit at a local gun club – before they closed it down, obviously,” I said.

“No military stuff then?” he asked, voice a shade too casual.

Physically, I sat still but mentally, I jumped. What had I done to give myself away?

My mind threw a rocky excuse together with all the care and skill of a third-rate cowboy builder. “We’ve an army camp with an outdoor range near where I live,” I said. “I went there once to see if I fancied joining the Territorials and we had a go with nine-mil pistols.” I shrugged. “I enjoyed that, but I didn’t fancy the weekend soldier bit much.”

He nodded. “I thought you’d done some before,” he said. “You’ve got some promise, Charlie. Bit inconsistent maybe, but I reckon we could do something with you. A few more weeks here and you could be quite a passable shot.”

For a woman. I heard those extra words. Even though his lips didn’t move and no sound came out.

Blakemore paused by the side of us then. “The boss wants you for a team briefing,” he told Rebanks, jerking his head towards the door from the dining hall. He passed a dark gaze over me, as though I’d been the one who’d stopped Rebanks to chat.

The weapons’ instructor gave me a last grin and tilted back the last of his coffee before getting lazily to his feet. “Be seeing ya,” he said with a wink.

But the two of them exchanged words before they reached the doorway and Blakemore turned back to lance me with a brooding stare before he followed the other man out.

I watched the two of them leave with a sense of foreboding that tightened my chest. I’d tried to be low key. I’d tried not to stand out from the crowd. Hell, I’d gone out of my way to miss the target. How on earth was that showing promise?

I got to my feet and dumped my plate with the pile of dirty crockery in one of the plastic bowls to one side of the room. Then I went slowly upstairs wondering what I’d learned, and at what cost?

***

I decided not to risk the roof again as my location to call Sean that night. Instead I went out onto the terrace, down the steps to one side, and walked across the rough car park where we’d first practised our driving drills. I ended up enveloped by the shadow of the trees on the far side.

From there I could see the whole of the rear of the Manor laid out in front of me, the windows streaming light into multiple shadows across the ground. It was quiet out there, removed from civilisation and cold enough for my breath to cloud in front of me.

And if Gilby came this way again I would see him – and his stealthy follower – long before he saw me.

At least, that was the theory.

Sean’s mobile was on divert to a land-line, which he answered on the fourth ring. His voice when he picked up was lazy, relaxed. In the background a soaring choir of voices swelled and broke. Either Sean had his stereo system wound up or he was hosting a very unusual house party.

“Hang on Charlie,” he said, “let me just turn this down.”

I heard him lay the receiver down onto a hard surface with a click, just as the main soprano took flight in the background. The male and female chorale swept in behind her, creating a rush of emotion, an overwhelming wrench of sadness. Then the voices died and were lost, and all I could hear were Sean’s returning footsteps.

“Sounds cheery,” I said dryly.

“It’s a John Rutter requiem piece, so I don’t think it’s supposed to be,” he said. “I was looking after a guy in the States last year who was really into it. When you’ve heard it night and day for a month you either grow to love it or hate it.”

He paused and I knew I should have brushed the comment aside and got on with my report, all business, no personal asides, but I found I couldn’t do it.

The stark realisation surfaced that I needed this brief snatch of respite with Sean. I’d missed the reassurance of his voice, even at the other end of a phone line, hundreds of miles away, from another country.

It was not an admission that made me proud.

“Don’t apologise,” I said now, recognising his hint of embarrassment that I’d caught him listening to classical music. “It sounds interesting. You’ll have to let me have a listen to the whole thing when I get back.” And just so he didn’t think I’d let him off the hook entirely, I added, “I wouldn’t have put you down as being into that kind of thing.”

He laughed softly and batted that one straight back, a return blow that made me squirm. “Well, Charlie, as I recall when we were together we spent more time making music than listening to it.”

Memories came bursting up along with his words, fragments of other times and places. A host of stolen moments, always in a hurry, always against the clock. We’d never had time just to be together. Never had the chance to find out if we fitted anywhere else except in bed.

Haste and secrecy had brought us together in a shower of sparks, with a kind of emotional violence that had left me shaken to the centre. I’d never experienced anything like it, before or since.

Especially not since.

I was glad of the darkness, and that I was alone in it. I blushed scarlet to the point where I could warm my chilled fingers on the heat coming off my face. I stuttered some incomprehensible reply and hurried the conversation on.

Across my babble Sean asked, “So how did it go on the range today?” I could still hear the amusement in his voice.

“Interesting,” I said, thankful to be on safer ground, and I told him about my discovery.

As I spoke I took the round out of my pocket and turned it over in my fingers. There was just enough light bleeding into the trees from the house to be able to make out the bullet’s cylindrical shape and the characteristic notched hole in the nose.

“There isn’t a good reason I can think of for Gilby to be using Hydra-Shoks,” Sean said, all trace of that teasing humour wiped out of his voice. “OK so they tend to ricochet less, and they don’t go through body armour as easily—”

“Which would be useful to us if we happened to be wearing any,” I interrupted.

“Which you’re not,” Sean agreed. “Gilby just wouldn’t be using them for training. Hollowpoints generally don’t load as freely, so you tend to get more stoppages, not to mention they’re too expensive to waste on target practice. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless he’s using them to get rid of people who get in his way,” I said, my voice grim. “Did you make any headway finding out what Gilby might have to hide?”

“We’re still working on it,” he said. “How did you get on today anyway? Did you shoot sloppy?”

“Sort of,” I said, remembering again those three closely-grouped rounds when I hadn’t been paying enough attention. Had that little lapse been enough for them to rumble me? “Not sloppy enough, it would seem. I’m not sure what I did, but Rebanks asked me this evening if I’d ever done any military shooting.”

Sean sucked in his breath. “What did you tell him?”

I repeated my TA story then asked, anxious, “Is there any way he can check up on that?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sean said slowly. “Hang on.” He must have put his hand over the receiver. There was the sound of muffled voices in the background, but I couldn’t catch the other one clearly. “I’ve just got Madeleine onto it.”

“She’s working late,” I said. I didn’t think I brought anything sharp to the statement, but I must have been wrong about that.

Sean sighed. “It’s just work, Charlie,” he said, but his voice was gentle. “You should know that by now.”

“OK,” I said, aiming for a level tone, off-hand. The logical half of my brain recognised the truth of it. The emotional half sulked and glowered and stuck its bottom lip out. I slapped it down. “Have you found out any more about these kidnappings?”

“Not much,” Sean said. “The last kid to be taken before they snatched Heidi Krauss was a Russian businessman’s son. He disappeared about three weeks before she did, on his way home from school. They forced the car off the road, shot the bodyguard who was driving, and burnt the wreckage with him still in it. They had to identify the guy from his dental records. The kid’s fifteen. He’s still missing.”

“Gregor Venko again?”

“Hmm, possibly,” Sean said, but there was a hint of doubt in his tone. “I’ve been reading his profile and if it is Venko who’s behind these kidnappings then it’s not his usual style. He’s always been ruthless, but this is beyond that. It’s nasty. Vicious.”

I realised I was still turning the round over and over in my fingers like a worry bead. I slipped it back into my pocket.

“D’you think there’s any connection with what happened to Kirk and these kidnappings?” I wondered aloud. “Do we know what kind of weapons the kidnappers were using?”

“Machine pistols,” Sean said, “But that doesn’t prove much. The close protection team were using something very similar.”

“The same type of weapon used to kill Kirk.” A cold little ghost scuffed its feet all the way down my spine. “Are you sure he might not have been involved in some way?”

“Salter was many things Charlie, but I don’t think he’d quite lowered himself to criminal status,” Sean shot back. “Besides, just about every thug in eastern Europe can pick up a machine pistol and a box of Hydra-Shoks these days. It’s common. I wouldn’t read too much into it if I were you.”

“Nevertheless, we know that there is some connection between the Manor and Kirk’s death, and whatever’s going on here they might be prepared to kill to keep it covered. Bearing that in mind,” I went on with a studied mildness, “you might want to get Madeleine onto another little research topic before you finally send her home for the night.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, if this all goes pear-shaped,” I said, my voice calm and even, “how do you propose to get me out of here?”