5.50am. Sunday, 5th November
The vintage Bentley moved alongside him like a shark scoping a surfer. Occasionally the driver revved the engine, once the car mounted the kerb behind him – its steel bumper almost catching his heels but North kept his pace steady. His trainer had a hole in the bottom – London rain filling the fabric shoe so fast he might have been barefoot in the roll and broil of the sea. He never gave much thought to his own physical comfort. If anything, he enjoyed the soft smack of the rain on his face – first this way, then that – puddle-damp feet, breathing in bus diesel and city dirt, the bite and push of the north-easterly bluff through his sodden hoody bringing him back to a sense of who he used to be, distracting him from the conviction that something bad was about to happen. He just wasn’t sure what – or whether it was going to happen to him.
The Bentley bumped back on to the road.
At ten to six in the morning, the shops along Marylebone High Street were still shuttered and dark inside; bundles of bulky Sunday newspapers tied up like prisoners outside the newsagent.
Beside him, the rear nearside window cracked, and cigar smoke crawled out and up around the roof, eager to escape.
“Come in from the rain,” said the voice.
North stopped running, and turned on his heel towards the car.
“We can’t have you catching a chill, darling boy.”
A stranger might have termed the traveller’s voice engaging, but even a stranger would have recognised an order rather than an invitation.
A tear-drop of rain trickled down North’s velvet nape, bumped along the bones of his spine before plunging into the warmth he’d been hoarding between hunched shoulder blades. Someone, somewhere, had been telling him what to do since he was born. A man could tire of it.
“North,” the voice warned, and with a sigh, North reached for the handle of the Bentley.
He hadn’t closed the door before the car set off, veering to the right. The door swung away from him, his body shifting outwards with the weight, dipping over the rapidly moving ground before he managed to pull himself upright again and slam it – his heart banging in his chest.
In the front – the driver’s head almost touched the roof of the car; the back of a familiar fat neck, the folds of flesh red and hanging over the shirt collar. North found the rear-view mirror, a razor flick of the driver’s pouchy eyes rewarding him for his effort, before they went back to the road.
“North, you look well.”
Lord Lucien Tarn, former Justice of the Supreme Court, himself looked like nothing more than a death’s head.
“Doesn’t he, Bruno?”
“Peachy,” said the driver, loading the word with contempt and ill-will. There was the sound of rods tumbling into a lock and Tarn spoke again.
“Not like a man with a bullet in his brain at all.” The judge sucked hard on the stub of a cigar as he regarded his reluctant passenger, its tuck flaring crimson and white, the acrid tang of it, hot and dry. “Good enough to eat.” Under the cheekbones, smoke and words, came out of the judge’s mouth, both together. “As Bruno says.”
During the trial at Southwark Crown Court for the manslaughter which left his mother’s pimp dead, 13-year-old Michael North learned to be wary when the judge’s sunken gaze met his; when the lawyers argued self-defence and those gimlet eyes told the boy that he already knew his absolute guilt, presumed his murderous intention; understood, and didn’t blame him. North resisted the sudden smell of blood, the shattering of bones. The judge never saw him without thinking of who he was as a child and what he did. Or he never saw the judge without guilt – one or the other. He forced himself to stare back; the skin beneath the judge’s clipped hair on the skull so white, it was as if the stubble grew straight from the bone.
“Your call last night hasn’t been well-received, darling boy.” The judge shook his head in fond rebuke.
Bruno swung the car left on to Wigmore Street – clipping the pavement and North braced himself against the seat in front.
“What can I say? It didn’t feel right.” How to begin to explain the deep sense of unease triggered when he stared at the photograph. His recognition that Honor Jones had survived who knows what. His sudden yearning for a life which was clean and free of the need to kill. It was a simple thing to write a name in green ink. It was altogether harder to draw a line through it.
“Exactly who is the Board?” There were times when it was easier to attack rather than defend a position.
Tarn frowned, and the atmosphere in the car chilled. A sudden memory came to North – one that was all his own. His mother drunk and shivering on a stained mattress. Gripping his hand. Blaming the future. Mortality. “Someone walked over my grave,” she said, blessing herself over and over. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Before letting go, to reach for the nearest bottle.
“Why ask?”
“I woke up curious.”
He’d always thought it better that he didn’t know. But who were these people who decided who should live and who should die, while other men did their killing?
“I’m intrigued, Michael. Perhaps you consider you have the luxury of free will?” Bruno’s eyes met his. Envy. Anticipation. Loathing. An appetite to do bloody violence. The sound of the car locking as he climbed into it.
“Because you made your choice when you signed up,” the judge spoke with deliberation – as if he were explaining due process to the accused child still standing in the dock. “You swore an oath to protect your country against its enemies, and it does have enemies. Are you paid enough for what you do? These questions, this virginal hesitation – is it a matter of money, dear-heart? Because as I understand it, you’ve already been paid?”
The implication he could be bought devoured North – anger growing and writhing and filling the world, filling him, before he sensed Bruno move in his seat, two massive hands gripping the wheel going to one, the other sliding into his jacket pocket. What did the big man have? A gun? Bespoke knuckle-dusters for those immense hands?
North exhaled, letting go the violence he wanted to do. The exchange was designed to provoke. He was back on trial.
He didn’t do what he did for money. Never.
As if he had been teasing all along, Lord Tarn laughed – his voice loud in the confines of the car and patted North’s knee with boney fingers. The flick-knife eyes in the rear-view mirror widened in surprise, but Bruno took his hand from his jacket pocket again and moved it back to the wheel, then the gearstick, taking the Bentley up to sixty in what had to be a restricted zone. The car hit a speedbump – lifting and dropping back on to the road, and the impact travelled up through North’s spine and into his head. Another razor flick – as Bruno acknowledged the punishment was intentional. Tarn didn’t seem to notice, his hand still on North’s knee. He moved, and the judge remembered the hand, removing it with the kindest of smiles.
“Without my intervention, the Army would never have taken you. I spoke for you on your release from custody, because I saw something of myself in you. I always have. I understood what you’d done as a child and the great man you could be. And five years ago, when you were wounded, I sat at your bedside every day willing you out of the grave. Your own father couldn’t have done more.”
The memory of opening his eyes to the buzzing strip-lights of the military hospital, of crushing pain, and of the judge’s face leaning in towards him. The shock of the other man’s pity. The judge’s desire smashing its way into North’s own mind. Before he worked out what the bullet did to him.
Tarn stared at the length of ash ready but not yet falling from the tip of his cigar. “Once you recovered, I assured people that you could be relied upon – and they took me at my word.” The Judge pushed out his pale lips in distaste. “You have a purpose, my darling – don’t throw it all away on a whim, because it could be the last thing you do.” His eyes met North’s. “And nobody wants that. I wouldn’t want that.”
Rain skidded and careered down the passenger windows. The car slowed. Photographs of a woman burning in the sink. North knew London well, took a pride in it. Fire devouring the woman’s beautiful face, turning her to ash. And he knew where this journey was heading because he bought the ticket a long time ago. There was no going back. No freedom.
But the judge was still talking.
“You and I, North, we share a belief in real justice and in our sacred duty. Our political system is dying from the inside out. We can trust no one. We have no one. The Board is necessary – now more than ever – because we keep things safe.”
“…Cannot be allowed to live…” he heard the judge as clearly as if he’d passed down a verdict in open court. “She’s dangerous and she’s too much of a risk to leave out there. Honor Jones threatens to bring down everything.”
There it was. Whether he was mad or whether he had a skill he didn’t want. Here was the truth of it. The beating heart. This man he trusted – a judge who dedicated his own life to public service – believed Honor Jones had to die. Or, North’s own subconscious knew that as a fact.
But it was hard. The taste of stale cigar smoke filled his mouth, furring his teeth as he made one last attempt at escape.
“I’m tired, Tarn.” His voice came out louder than he expected. The car had stopped. A beat.
“Aren’t we all? But we carry on. Regardless. The death of Honor Jones is regrettable, I agree, but it is necessary.” The judge reached out to a silver ashtray in his door and dropped the tiny body of the almost dead cigar in its belly, its ash finally breaking apart.
“There’s a greater good,” the judge said as if it was the answer to everything.
It was over. The endorphin release of his run gone, and North admitted the truth to himself – he wasn’t free. He would have to kill her. Honor Jones MP RIP. His gorge rose. Queasy from the cigar, the confinement, the job, he fought the urge to retch.
The door on his side opened on to the backstreet. He was somewhere in the furthest stretches of South London. Bruno would have made sure it was as inconvenient as he could make it.
“Don’t be distracted by a pretty face. Remember, without Eve, there would have been no Fall.”
North climbed out – and, as he looked back into the car, Tarn took hold of a newspaper, settling in to his morning routine. “Latest hack embarrasses social media giant…”. He couldn’t read the rest of the headline.
“You have till Tuesday. Let’s get it done.” Tarn’s teeth were blinding white, his smile charming. “You’re beloved by the gods, North, as well as me – few among us are given a second chance.”
As the Bentley drove away, the dirty spray from a gutter puddle drenched him. He stepped back, but too late and swore. Through the side mirror, Bruno watched him, grinning.
North hoped Honor Jones was ready to die.