It was hard doing planks with a scratchy wool blanket around him, shivering and aching in every possible extremity. But it was a necessary part of coming back to himself.
North forced himself up on to his toes and the palms of his hands in a bid to drive oxygen through and round his system. He imagined the blood cold and sluggish in his veins and pushed through the pain from his chest to lift himself up and lower himself down again, his biceps and stomach muscles shrieking with the effort. What was he doing back in London? When he left, he didn’t think he’d ever come back. Didn’t focus on anything more than putting one foot in front of the other. Thought his only job now was to drink himself to death. He was fighting an acute sense of dislocation. Where the hell was he? He wasn’t in Berlin any more – he was in London, he reminded himself. His self-imposed exile was over. He wasn’t a stranger – he was home. He wasn’t alone to do as he wanted – suddenly, he had responsibilities and ‘people’. People important to him, who could get hurt if he messed up whatever the hell this was. And the thought of it made him nervous as a cat.
His chest hurt, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the adrenaline or from Plug’s efforts to revive him. He held on to the pain as a way of grounding himself. Bringing himself back to the moment. It shouldn’t, but it helped. His most pressing problem was the suspicion that the vile taste in his mouth was embalming fluid that had dripped through from Uncle Jim.
Last night, North had bought the phone from a 24/7 supermarket in Berlin, torn off the plastic packaging and pumped in the number he needed no help remembering. ‘Padraig Donne and Sons, Funeral Directors. Let us help you at this difficult time.’ The Cockney accent on the other end of the phone as familiar as his own voice. Donne and Sons, with a highly profitable side hustle in drug smuggling.
North had known Plug Ugly – otherwise known as Paddy ‘The Fighting Irish’ Donne – from his days in juvenile. The acromegaly or gigantism that had almost killed Plug as a child had left him with a protruding jaw and brow, and enormous hands, feet and face. He had been a king in the world of cage fighting before he was diagnosed with a disorder in the pituitary gland, which had run riot with his growth hormone. His cage-fighting profits funded his buyout of a failing funeral business, whose aged proprietor couldn’t believe his luck when the giant walked in with a case full of fifty-pound notes.
And since Plug expanded the business, the company had developed a particular specialism in the repatriation of the fallen.
North didn’t know how often his friend smuggled people into the country rather than drugs, and he didn’t want to know. He did know he himself needed a shave, and there was an even better chance he needed a shower. And the strange noise was the chattering of his teeth, he realized, because the cold had frozen the marrow of him. So much for Plug’s reassurances that he’d be warm as a sardine on a piece of buttered toast. That he wouldn’t know anything about it, because he’d be laid out with ketamine for the entire journey. That Plug would make sure his men in Berlin slipped the baggage handlers extra to guarantee they stashed the coffin in the climate-controlled pressurized hold that the pets went in. That they were good men and they hardly ever made mistakes, and ‘Uncle Jimmy’, under a whole variety of aliases, was back and forth at least once a month. That nothing could go wrong. Unless the plane was late, when the oxygen might run out. And he might die. Other than that, he was to think of it like a budget airline without the trolley service.
Never. Again.
He shuddered at the memory.
‘Is there a woman?’ He turned to see Plug pouring him a brandy. Trying hard not to show the state he was in, North sat on the greasy velour sofa in the back parlour. ‘Because with you, mate, there’s always a woman.’
‘Not any more,’ North said. He sensed his friend’s concern for him. That urge to protect even those who looked like they didn’t need protecting, and he loved him for it.
‘I’m assuming you shouldn’t be back in the country?’ He could sense Plug groping in the dark for answers, for his friend to open up about the past, but North couldn’t bring himself to say the words. It was too raw. ‘That it’s dangerous for you.’
It was only dangerous if they found out, North thought, which they almost certainly would.
‘You don’t have to be here. I’ve connections that can make it so you disappear. You get to be someone else, and no one bothers you again.’ Leaning against a stack of battered metal lockers, Plug folded his arms, waiting on the answer.
The idea of being someone else tugged at North. To acquire someone else’s peace and someone else’s way of going on. But he was Michael North and he was going to make the fact he was still here count. ‘Too late for that,’ he said. Plug shrugged as if he wasn’t surprised, but North felt his disappointment, the worry that had started to gnaw at the big man that his mate was into something bad that could only end one way.
Could he trust Hone in the same way he trusted Plug? Absolutely not. The one-eyed man was a ruthless bastard.
‘Fang and Granny Po stay with you,’ North said as he swallowed the brandy in one gulp. His chest felt like a carthorse had sat on it.
‘I really hoped you wouldn’t say that.’
Plug would keep the girl and the old lady safe. In another life, North had owned his own apartment in London. But it wasn’t anyplace that he’d be returning to. You could do without a home – it made it harder for your enemies to find you. ‘And I need a gun.’
‘I figured,’ Plug said, opening the nearest locker door before sliding a dark plastic case across the tiled coffee table towards him. North flicked open the latches. In the carved-out foam interior lay a SIG Sauer P226 and two magazines – 9mm, ten rounds. North smiled. He liked to think he was adaptable – he’d once killed an oligarch with a grapefruit fork – but if he had a choice of weapon, then this was it.
He eased the gun from the foam and weighed it in his hand – heavy at thirty-four ounces, heavier again when loaded, but the weight stopped muzzle climb when fired. Even holding it made him feel better. More in control. He was in this, whatever this was. Hone thought his niece needed protection – he could have brought in the police, or hired private security. Instead, he’d recruited a hitman. And North was under no illusions. He had been brought in to take out whoever threatened the life of Esme Sullivan Hawke – or die trying.