37

Black pulled up outside Kathleen Finn’s house shortly before midnight. The blind twitched at the downstairs window. She peered from behind it and beckoned him over. He stepped out of the Land Rover, stiff and aching from his long walk. He would gladly have delayed his visit until the morning, but Kathleen had wanted to meet while the children were in bed, ‘So they don’t have to see me crying again.’

She opened the door and let him in, glancing left and right at the darkened houses of her neighbours.

‘It’s all right. I don’t think anyone’s seen me,’ Black said.

‘You don’t know what gossip is till you’ve lived in this street.’ She gave a strained smile. ‘Hi, Leo.’

‘Good to see you.’

The house was still and quiet and immaculately tidy, as if Kathleen had responded to the turmoil of her grief by obsessively ordering every item she possessed. Black noticed that Finn’s walking jacket had gone from its peg in the hall along with his boots, which the last time he had visited had still been among the collection of wellingtons and trainers now arranged on wire racks. He followed Kathleen into the neat front room, where the children’s toys were stowed out of sight in a stack of newly bought plastic boxes. Every surface was gleaming. He sat on plumped cushions and cast an eye along the framed family pictures carefully arranged along a shelf. There was only one small photograph of Finn – dressed in uniform, looking dignified and dependable. An image for the children to hold on to as other memories faded.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘No, thanks.’

Kathleen perched on the chair opposite. She had tended her appearance as meticulously as she had organized the house. Her nails were polished, her skin was smooth and clear and her black hair had been cut so that it perfectly framed her face. She wore black jeans and a blue cotton top the colour of her eyes. Small, delicate items of silver jewellery completed the impression of a woman determined not to show a chink in her armour.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind me coming here?’

‘I asked you to, didn’t I?’ She straightened her back as if bracing herself. ‘What do you want to know?’

Black hesitated, not wanting to distress her any more than he had to, but her defiant posture told him that she was ready for whatever he had to say. ‘Something’s been on my mind, Kathleen. Probably like you, I can’t help thinking about what happened in Paris. Perhaps Ryan was just unlucky, but I’d like to rule out the possibility that whoever did it had a history with him.’

She stared back at him, her expression impassive. ‘What kind of history?’

‘My best guess is that the perpetrators were also in the security business – the dark end of it. Did you ever get the impression he’d made enemies in that world, or had had some bad experiences?’

‘None that he mentioned.’

‘Do you have any idea who he’d been working for lately?’

‘He kept the contracts in his desk. I’ve been meaning to clear it out but it’s the one thing I haven’t been able to face.’ Black followed her through to the kitchen diner. In the centre of the room was a door he had assumed led to a pantry, but it opened instead on to a spacious cupboard beneath the stairs. It was large enough for a desk and chair with shelves above, on which were arranged a number of files containing the household bills and papers.

‘He kept all his work papers on this side.’ She pointed to the two drawers on the right-hand side of the desk. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink? I bloody need one.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve any whisky?’

‘I think there’s some in the back of the cupboard. You bought it for Ryan’s fortieth. He said it tasted like ditchwater.’

‘That would be the fifteen-year-old Bruichladdich. He told me it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.’

‘You were an officer. He didn’t like to hurt your delicate feelings.’ She smiled. ‘Straight ditchwater, is it?’

‘Please.’

She left Black to the task of sorting through the contents of the drawers. The uppermost of the two was full of the usual accumulated detritus: spent insurance documents, various pieces of official correspondence whose relevance had long since expired and, buried at the bottom of the heap, Finn’s official letter of acceptance into the Parachute Regiment, complete with orders to report to Colchester barracks on his nineteenth birthday. Finn had beaten Black into uniform by several years and was already a battle-scarred corporal of twenty-four when Black had first arrived in the old camp at Stirling Lines in Hereford.

The contents of the bottom drawer were more promising. There were letters from various close protection and security companies acknowledging his applications for work, remittances itemizing his fees and a number of standard contracts of engagement. Black glanced through a few. Karen was right – all contained strictly worded confidentiality clauses. They also excluded liability for any injury suffered in the line of duty but gave no detail as to what those duties were to be, instead stating vaguely: to perform such tasks and duties as the employer has prior to signature of this contract set out orally or in writing. Clearly the security business wasn’t keen on paper trails.

He gave up on the drawers and glanced at the contents of the shelf. Lying on their sides at the end of a row of files were desk diaries for each of the last two years. He picked up last year’s and flicked through. The pages were virtually empty, just the odd entry in Finn’s surprisingly neat hand, noting meetings with people whom Black supposed were prospective employers: 5 Jan., 19 Russell Square, Kieran Grant … 12 March, 35 Mortimer Street, Dan Weirside.

Kathleen returned with a tumbler half filled with pale amber liquid and a large glass of red wine for herself.

She handed him his drink. ‘Any luck?’

‘Not a lot. A few names to check.’

‘He preferred to keep things in his head. Army habit. How’s the whisky?’

Black took a sip of earthy petrol. ‘I’ll let him off – it’s an acquired taste.’

She gave a wry smile and took a mouthful of wine. Almost at once, it relaxed her. Her eyes softened and her tense shoulders dropped. She leaned against the door frame and watched him turn through Finn’s diary.

He arrived at a long stretch of blank pages that extended from the previous June through to September.

‘Is something wrong?’ Kathleen asked.

‘Did he have the summer off?’

‘No. It was the job I told you about. He went away in July. He was meant to be gone six months but he was back in the September.’

‘I remember … You said he got ill.’

She nodded.

Black detected something evasive in her manner as if whatever had occurred carried a taint of shame.

‘Any idea where the job was?’

‘He didn’t say exactly, but –’

She stalled. Her eyes briefly glistened with tears. She lifted her chin and regained control of herself. ‘He told me it would be a lot of money – a hundred and fifty thousand. I had a bad feeling about it, but I knew he was thinking it might be enough to sell up here and move out to the country like he’d always wanted.’

‘A bad feeling because you knew this wasn’t an ordinary job?’

She shrugged.

‘Was this a mercenary contract, Kathleen?’

‘He didn’t say so.’

‘But that’s what you suspected? But thankfully he got ill and came back in one piece.’

She nodded but was still keeping something back. Black could sense it.

‘You can tell me, Kathleen. It might help.’

She turned away and moved over to the kitchen table, where she dropped into a chair. Black joined her, pulling up a seat opposite. They drank in silence for a short while before she steeled herself to speak. ‘I was worried it was something dangerous or illegal. He swore to me it wasn’t, but I always knew when he was lying.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Africa is all he would say. Reading between the lines I think it was the DRC. That’s where a lot of them go. He mentioned something about training troops to deal with illegal mining. But when they say “training”, they mean fighting, don’t they?’

‘If it’s any comfort, it sounds like a regular gig,’ Black said. ‘It could have been far worse. How did he come to get ill?’

‘It was a tropical fever of some sort. He said that as soon as he’d been sick for more than a few days they sacked him. Didn’t get paid a penny. The whole thing was a disaster. I should have stopped him going. As soon as he took that job I knew it was time for him to walk away from it all. I knew.’ Tears dripped from her eyes and spotted the tabletop. ‘The only reason I didn’t put my foot down was that I was frightened that he couldn’t stop, that he’d be like all those others who end up hitting the bottle or their wives. You won’t know what happens to all the regular soldiers when they come out, but I do. You can’t turn a man into a killing machine and expect him to walk back into normal life like none of it ever happened. It doesn’t work that way.’

She dried her eyes with a tissue.

‘For what it’s worth it’s not everyone, Kathleen. And it’s never the guys who lasted as long in the game as he did. Ryan was just unlucky. There’s nothing you could have done to make things turn out differently.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m certain of it.’

His words seemed to comfort her. The emotion that had briefly consumed her subsided. ‘I suppose I married the stupid bugger with my eyes open. I’m just about young enough to have another life, I suppose … Eventually.’

Black couldn’t help but admire her strength. Finn would have been proud.

‘One last question. Had Ryan always been involved with Freddy Towers since leaving the army or was it a recent thing?’

Another sore point. Kathleen sighed and closed her eyes. ‘After he came back he said people weren’t prepared to touch him. Someone had put the word out that he was a quitter. He was all set to pack it in when one of the guys from the Regiment told him to give Freddy a bell – said he might be able to pull a few strings for him.’

‘And that’s how he got the Paris job?’

Kathleen nodded. ‘We could have managed … I used to tell him it was him I wanted, not a fancy house.’

‘It’s late. I should let you get to bed,’ Black said. He got up from the table and touched Kathleen affectionately on the shoulder. ‘Do you mind if I borrow the diaries? I’d like to check out some of the names.’

‘Whatever you want.’

He collected them from Finn’s desk and turned to go. ‘Look after yourself. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Leo?’

He glanced back. She was still sitting at the table, cradling her empty glass, her back to him.

‘You will get to the bottom of this, Leo.’

It wasn’t a question. It was an order.

Black drove away from the house and once he had cleared the outskirts of the city, pulled over into a field gateway. By the dim light in the cab of the Land Rover he again checked a diary entry Finn had made on 15 May the previous year: Mitch Brennan, 1 p.m., The Lanesborough. He hadn’t made a mistake. When he had first seen the name it had hit him like a fist. He had hidden his reaction from Kathleen, but now the memories came cascading back.

The Mitch Brennan he remembered was a newly promoted captain of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. He had been seconded to Black’s squadron in the early days of the occupation of Iraq, between 2003 and 2004. His role had been chiefly to observe and learn as part of a professional exchange programme. But in the maelstrom of Baghdad and the daily missions to kill or capture insurgents who seemed to multiply like maggots on a corpse, Brennan had taken an increasingly active role. Soon he was leading missions of his own and earning a reputation for being a fearless then a vicious and reckless operator. He had been known to hang suspects out of upstairs windows by their ankles then drop them when they failed to talk. Eventually Brennan’s behaviour became too much even for Towers, who sent him back to his regiment before his six months was up. Several years later Black had heard a rumour that Brennan had gone missing during a covert operation to track down al-Qaeda militants in Indonesia. He remembered thinking it was a good day for the Australian army.

Missing but not dead.

Black switched off the map light and sat in the darkness contemplating the call he felt compelled to make. He peered up out of the windscreen at an ink-black sky smeared with stars. It had always amused him to think that his eyes were receiving photons emitted at the dawn of the universe at the same time as others only seconds old and every age in between, that a simple tilt of the head raised the vision from the present to the whole of eternity. Most would live their entire lives unaware of this simple fact, but every soldier knew it, whether by book or by instinct.

He drew out his phone, brought it to life and dialled Freddy Towers’ number.

Towers answered enthusiastically. ‘Leo! I was going to call you. I’m in your neck of the woods. Any chance you could pop by tomorrow?’

‘Pop by?’

‘To Credenhill.’

‘You’ve had me followed?’

‘Let’s not quibble, shall we? We’ve a mission to organize. The Committee has got the all-clear from the Director, Special Forces. I hear you’ve been talking to Kathleen.’ He offered the non sequitur without explanation.

‘What of it?’ Black answered, concealing both his surprise and indignation.

‘Anything I should know?’

‘I found a name in his diary. Mitch Brennan. They met in London last May. I think he may have given him a lucrative job in Africa. It didn’t work out. Finn left early and didn’t collect his pay cheque.’

‘Brennan. I remember that bastard. Well, well, well.’ Towers sounded genuinely delighted. ‘Looks like you may be on to something. About time. Midday tomorrow, then? Main gates. They’ll be expecting you.’

He rang off, leaving a roaring silence.

Black started the engine, switched on the headlights and pulled away. He glanced in the mirror and caught a glint of moonlight glancing off the car travelling without headlights some fifty yards behind him. Towers had had him tailed. Whether he liked it or not, his life was no longer his own.

Black drove into the dark tunnel of the night resigning himself to one unavoidable fact: wherever he was going, there was killing to be done.