6.32pm. Saturday, 4th November
Londoners passed – this way and that, the City hazy and splendid on the horizon. A cold front was moving over the country from the Arctic, a warning that winter was closing in and it would be hard.
Nobody noticed North standing looking over Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames, thinking about where the moving water might take him.
North never met the Board’s other operatives. He presumed like him they’d signed the Official Secrets Act, and were well rewarded for their lonely service. Occasionally, he recognised their modus operandi. One favoured intricately plotted deaths of mid-ranking types that exploded across the papers and were never resolved – attributed to professional Eastern European gunmen, overshadowed by talk of serious financial or criminal interests – the type of murder investigative journalists chased down for decades, never getting anywhere. Another preferred “assisted suicides” – all “he-seemed-so-happy” and “we-never-thought-he’d-do-such-a-thing”. They generally used North when they needed someone who could think on their feet.
He took a breath – the air sharp and painful in his lungs. He hazarded that no one would pick up the phone so late on a Saturday night.
“Chalfont Securities. How may I help you?” The voice was chilly, well-bred.
“Please tell Mr Chalfont…”
That he hadn’t received the email.
That he needed authentication for the order to kill.
To send it and he would kill her. Chip–chop and sharpish.
He raised his fingers to the ridged dip where the bullet had torn through his skull.
“I can’t make the meeting.”
Please tell Mr Chalfont that he wouldn’t kill Honor Jones. Couldn’t.
Because Michael North didn’t have much. But he had his code and it didn’t include killing a woman unless she was physically holding a gun and pointing it at his head. Unless Honor Jones was doing that – and she didn’t look the type – the Board would have to find somebody else.
More than that. The touch of his scar under his fingertips. He couldn’t trust himself. What he believed he knew. Did his mind fill with other people’s thoughts and voices, or his own complex delusions? Freak or lunatic? He had no idea which he was. But he knew this. He’d done too much, killed too many, and he wanted it over. He wanted his freedom. It came to him suddenly, a neural snap, an instant of electricity re-routing his soul – like falling in love.
The certainty shocked him. He wanted to be a good soldier, to follow orders and get the job done. Not least because doing his duty was the only peace he’d ever known. Up to this point, he read a name on a page and followed through without hesitation. The problem was this time the sight of Honor Jones’s face made him ask “Why?” And instead of anticipation as he considered the photograph of the woman who was to be his next target, all he felt was profound dismay.
There were limits, and he’d reached them. Whatever time he had left, he wanted to live it differently. To stop the killing. To be honest. To connect. Not to be alone.
Beneath him, a Thames barge loaded with garbage passed through the bridge on its way to the sea. It would be an old-fashioned way to die, he thought, drowning in a river. A Victorian death meant for lost women and foundlings.
“How very…unfortunate.” A note of surprise, disapproval at the other end of the phone. As if no one ever cancelled a meeting with Mr Chalfont before. “Are you sure,” a pause, “Mr North?” How did she know his name he wondered? The number? He used a disposable pay as you go. Different every time. Voice recognition? Or was his the only job out there at the moment?
He left the question out there. What happened when you said No to people who didn’t take No for an answer? He wasn’t at all sure, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Mr Chalfont will be in touch.” She disconnected the line.
Mr Chalfont didn’t exist of course. Neither did Chalfont Securities. Nor was there a frosty PA tapping at her computer with polished nails. Or maybe she at least existed – not so much a PA as an officer in an organisation whose only business was killing.
He dropped the phone on the ground, covering it with his right shoe, feeling the mobile give under his sole. Honor Jones was safe – at least from him. He’d made his decision. The phone splintered, the display cracking into a spider’s web, the back popping to reveal the guts of a tiny sim card. He picked out the sim and dropped it over the parapet into the Thames. A fierce eddy swirled around the supports of the bridge, the water a muddy brown, the tide high and choppy. The glinting sim rested on the surface for a second, before it sank. He once read a story about a fisherman who caught a fish, and when he gutted it, he discovered the fish had eaten a gold ring. North thought about the fisherman, how if a fish ate the sim card, he’d have to find the fisherman who’d caught it and kill him. Stone cold dead.
A yell of protest from further along the bridge brought him back to reality. A shaven-headed lad in New Army uniform staggered along the pavement – high on something cheap and potent. Behind him, an elderly vagrant, his skinny dog on a string, was limping away as fast as he could.
Months ago, as an isolationist US under President Donald Trump slashed its defence spending on Europe, the UK government privatised the armed forces.
Reports about the nascent National Defence Force warned thousands of experienced soldiers, sailors and airmen had quit overnight. In particular, traditionalists slammed the fact “New Army PLC” soldiers swore no oath of allegiance to King and Country. But the move was already saving the country millions in salaries and pensions, and recruitment – particularly straight out of prisons – was booming. No one could argue with the figures. Indeed, any opposition was branded unpatriotic as private investors brought market efficiencies to defence, re-invested savings into equipment and training, then sold back the services of the streamlined armed forces and procurement to the government. All the while making a neat profit and preserving national security in a post-NATO world. The term “nasty boys” to refer to the new recruits was unfortunate, but the New Army admitted there were still a few branding issues to work through.
North figured he was well out of it.
A bitter wind sliced through him like razors as he looked away, moving the pieces of the phone with his foot, letting them fall into the gutter. He started walking. He could afford to turn down this one job.
But they would never let him quit. There were no gold watches in this business. No, if he really wanted the killing to be over, he’d have to disappear – start over some other place. Somewhere warm? Freedom. He raised his head. Pursed his lips to whistle. He liked whistling, though he couldn’t hold a tune.
When the nasty boy smashed hard into his chest, North used his own bulk to ward him off – careful not to meet his eye. But the lad wanted more respect.
“Mind yourself, cocksucker,” he snarled – the heady smell of lager and piss, grabbing hold of North’s arm to spin him round, spittle spraying his face. Like an old-fashioned boxer, the lad’s knuckles and the gaps between them were tattooed. Instead of LOVE and HATE though, it was with the New Army motto BRITAIN across the right fist and FOREVER on the left. “Britain Forever”. Patriotism made easy for those who didn’t have to live by it. This swaggering, vicious thug claiming to defend a country which was nothing like him.
The Board would come for him, thought North. Not tonight. But soon. He gave a quick look-round checking the solider wasn’t a diversion, that an attack wasn’t coming hard and fast from someplace else. But the street was quiet.
North held the struggling nasty boy away by the lapels of his serge jacket. The outraged solider pushing in towards him keen to do violence, spitting, cursing, small eyes bulging either side like those of a reptile – primed to survive, threaten, intimidate.
“You dropped something,” North said and spun him to one side, pushing the shaven head closer to the ground and raising his knee at the same moment to smash into the lad’s face. He brought him up again. From a distance it would look as if North steadied a drunk against the stonework of the bridge. Up close, he flattened one hand against the crushed wreckage of the cartilage and pressed hard. The nasty boy shrieked in a rising note of pain, his voice muffled by North’s other hand and blood spurted from between the fingers.
He released the weeping nasty boy who reeled and staggered across the road, only stopping to spit and curse from the safety of the other side of the carriageway. And North admitted the truth to himself. Somewhere, the small print of his unwritten contract carried the warning that refusal was prejudicial not just to your career but to your own prospects of survival.