Malcolm Copeland had indeed ramped up his security, as Black had predicted. Those close to him – his inner sanctum – comprised twelve men who had worked with him for over twenty years. Men who were eminently capable, and loyal. And who committed acts of violence without compunction. Copeland had contracted in another twenty-five men from a security firm based in London, at a cost of £21,000 per man, for a period of one week.
The cost was an irrelevance. If he needed them for longer, then he would pay whatever was asked, until he had Black’s liver pinned to his front door. He had stationed a man at each hotel in the surrounding area. He had a man at the front electric gates, plus five men patrolling the grounds, with Dobermans. He had four sentries at the front, four at the back, at various locations. The rest were inside, moving room to room, circulating. Essentially, he had a small army at his disposal. He was, to his mind, untouchable.
He’d shipped his wife and kids out to a house they had deep in the Lake District. She hadn’t objected. She accepted the downside to their lives with a quiet, grim resignation. The houses, the pool, the private education, the money, the clothes – she never asked where it all came from, because she didn’t dare. She’d sold her soul to the devil, and knew the consequences. Better then to accept, because there was nothing else she could do. She therefore chose never to ask questions, too fearful of what the answers might be.
Copeland stayed in the main living room – the same room where Daniel had explained about the man called Adam Black. The lights were muted. It was a summer’s night, yet Copeland had insisted on having a real fire crackling, for no other reason than he found it therapeutic.
He sat at one end of an Italian leather couch, cradling a glass of Bombay Sapphire Gin with tonic. On the armrest, an ashtray, upon which rested a lit cigar. Smoke weaved through in the air, the room suffused with its heavy scent. In the half light, furniture was reduced to shapes and shadows. Outside, at the French windows, a silhouette – a watchful guard. Another man entered the room. Dressed in a neat suit, opened-necked shirt, muscular, economical of motion.
“You all right, Mr Copeland?”
Copeland looked up. He didn’t recognise him. One of the new guys. He nodded. The man nodded back, did a quick check of the room, left.
Copeland took a drink. He preferred whisky, but it gave him heartburn. Acid reflux, as described by one of his doctors. Keep drinking, the doctors had said, and the acid will burn a hole in your oesophagus. Fuck the doctors. He lifted the cigar to his lips, sucked in the tobacco. Feeling the bite in his lungs. He replaced it back on the ashtray – a porcelain saucer he’d got from the kitchen. He pondered.
What would he do if he were Black? Run. Probably. All Copeland’s enemies either ran or died. Few, if any, resisted. Malcolm Copeland was feared. His name was his brand. You don’t dare fuck with Malcolm Copeland.
But the fundamental problem was that Black had done exactly that. He’d popped up out of nowhere, like a demon in the night, and within the space of a few short days, had killed Tristan, Daniel, Neville, and two others in Aberdeen. Five men. Copeland took a deep breath, tinged with a slight wheeze. Black had started it. Copeland’s men had visited Charley Sinclair, and Black had retaliated. In Copeland’s world, retaliation, no matter how slight, required a swift and brutal response. What did Black expect? But Black had responded right back, like a fury.
Copeland juggled the question in his mind. What would Black do? Copeland adjusted his thoughts. Black was no runner. He didn’t flee from danger. The opposite. He embraced it. And he was no stranger to the game. Copeland couldn’t afford to give this up. If he let Black go, what next? What other enemies would come crawling out from beneath the rocks. Black knew this. Black’s need to end this was as powerful as Copeland’s.
Black would come. Copeland felt it in his blood, his soul.
Good, then. Let it play. Let the scrapper come. He took another swig of the gin, let its strong bitter liquid slide down his throat.
And yet… He licked his lips, placed the glass on the armrest of the couch, sat back, stared at the crackling flames in the hearth, watching them spark and flicker.
He felt something he hadn’t experienced for many years. A flutter deep in his chest; a cold whisper in his mind.
An emotion he thought he was immune from.
Fear.