Silva rose early. She climbed from her bunk, dragged the kettle onto the hob and lit the gas. Flipped the radio on as a presenter read a news summary. Train drivers were on strike and there was countrywide commuter chaos. Overseas, the Pope had condemned the killing of a foreign dignitary on Italian soil, pleading for all religions to work together for peace and understanding. Back in the UK a fifty-seven-year-old man had been stabbed in north London. Another murder in the capital. The victim was one Neil Milligan, the owner and editor of the well-regarded Third Eye News agency. Police enquiries were continuing but so far no arrests had been made. The end of the piece noted the agency had, coincidentally, been struck by tragedy earlier in the year when noted foreign correspondent Francisca da Silva had been killed in a terrorist attack in Tunisia.
The kettle whistled out a warning and Silva turned off the hob before slumping down at the saloon table in shock. Milligan was dead, taken out by either Weiss or, more likely, Jawad al Haddad. Her mother had been close friends with Milligan. Not lovers – at least Silva didn’t think so – but confidantes. His death meant another part of her mother’s life was erased for good, another link to the past broken.
She sat for a few minutes and then got up and peered out of the companionway; she thought about Fairchild and his warning. The estuary was grey and almost still, just a slight movement as the tide began to ebb. Three boats up from hers a rope frapped against the mast and across the water there was a low rumble as a conveyor belt carried aggregate from a large cargo ship to the shore. All of a sudden she felt exposed. The little marina had a high fence and twenty-four-hour security with a guard, but the fence was old and rickety and Freddie likewise.
She ducked below and slid the hatch shut. She drew the curtains and hunkered down at the table. Fairchild had left her a burner phone, a pay-as-you-go mobile that was untraceable. Silva pulled it out. She was tempted to ring him but then wondered about Itchy. Was he a target? She didn’t want to phone him either in case Weiss was somehow listening in, but she felt responsible and he deserved a warning. She hadn’t unpacked the day before, but now she pulled the pannier bags open and took out all the clothing she’d taken to Italy. She rummaged in a locker for some fresh items and stuffed them in the bags. Then she clambered up through the companionway, slid the hatch shut and locked it, and made for her motorbike.
Ten minutes later she pulled up outside Itchy’s terraced house. A knock brought him to the door and he hustled Silva inside.
‘You hear about the money?’ he said. His mouth widened into a smile. ‘Twenty-five K. Not bad, considering.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve been paid. Twenty-five thousand pounds. It appeared in my bank account overnight.’
‘Never mind the money,’ Silva said. She followed Itchy through into the living room and closed the door behind her. ‘Neil Milligan is dead.’
‘Who?’
‘The journalist my mum used to work for. He knew about the story, knew about the Hopes. He’s been murdered.’
‘Murdered?’
‘He was stabbed and it was made to look like a mugging, but that’s just a cover.’ Silva shrugged and let her arms hang loose. She was at a loss. She stared past Itchy. The wall behind him had been stripped of wallpaper but little pieces of the gold-flecked covering remained. Itchy’s house was a refurbishment job and for a moment Silva thought about the ridiculousness of the situation. Here she was worrying about his renovation project when just two days ago she’d been attempting to kill the next president of the United States. ‘My guess is we’re next.’
‘Caz.’ Itchy tilted his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘She’s upstairs.’
‘Did you tell her anything about the Italy trip?’
‘Only that I was going on a security job. Protection. That sort of thing. She doesn’t know where we went, who we met, or any of the details.’
‘Good. Is there anywhere she can go for a few days? Not family – they’re too easy to trace – a friend perhaps?’
‘She’s got a mate in Edinburgh.’
‘Perfect. Tell her something’s come up. She shouldn’t be worried but it might be safer if she went away on a little holiday. Say it’s a treat. Spend some of that money.’
‘Shit, Silvi. I hate lying to her.’
‘Don’t lie, then. Just don’t tell her the whole truth, right?’
‘OK.’ Itchy nodded. ‘And us? I guess we could just bugger off in your boat.’ Itchy made a wavy movement with his hand. ‘Head out to sea?’
‘She can do about five knots with a good wind. That’s a hundred and twenty miles a day. I don’t think we’d get far before they caught up with us, do you?’
‘We’re not going to just sit here and wait for them, are we?’
‘No. Remember Afghanistan? What we did there? If there was an enemy sniper pinning down our unit we didn’t wait to be picked off, did we?’
‘No.’ Itchy was moving to the doorway. He’d got the message. ‘We went out into the field and hunted them down.’
‘Exactly.’
Hunting the enemy down was all well and good, but Silva had something else to do first.
‘We need to visit my dad,’ she said into her helmet microphone as they cruised up the motorway. ‘I want to persuade him to go somewhere safe for a bit.’
‘Good luck with that.’ Itchy’s voice crackled back through the earpiece. He’d met Silva’s father. ‘A tenner says he refuses to budge.’
Silva didn’t reply. Itchy was almost certainly right.
They arrived at her father’s place a couple of hours later. Silva told Itchy to wait by the bikes and she went up to the front door. Mrs Collins answered with the look of somebody not best pleased to receive visitors.
‘You,’ she said. Behind the housekeeper the parquet flooring in the hallway shone like a mirror.
‘Yes, me.’ Silva was afraid to step in from the porch. She nodded at the floor. ‘Would you like me to remove my boots?’
‘You could go round the house.’ Mrs Collins gestured at the gravel drive. ‘He’s down by the lake, fishing.’
‘Fishing?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Right. Thank you.’
Silva retreated down the steps and walked round to the back. She found her father sitting on an old director’s chair perched precariously at the end of the wooden jetty. He held a fishing rod in his right hand, and every now and then he swished the rod back and forth, the thick fly line curling behind him before he sent it shooting out over the water. Silva stepped onto the jetty with a deliberately heavy footfall.
‘Dad? What are you up to?’
‘What does it look like I’m bloody up to? I’m trying to catch something for dinner.’ The response came without any note of surprise, as if her father had been expecting her all along.
‘Any luck?’
‘Not even a nibble.’ Her father wound in the line and placed the rod down on the jetty. ‘I see Karen Hope’s still alive.’
‘Yup. Snafu. That’s me. Failed again. Only this time I don’t think any of it was my fault.’ Silva noted the fishing rod and the green canvas bag. ‘That’s Fairchild’s, isn’t it?’
‘He sent it to me.’
‘No he didn’t. He’s been here again, hasn’t he?’
‘Well, yes, he came by yesterday.’
‘I guess he told you what happened?’
‘Yes.’
‘And warned you about Haddad?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you heard about Neil Milligan?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what the hell are you doing here, Dad?’ Silva stood with her hands on her hips. Her father was fiddling with the fishing line. Untying the fly and placing the hook back in a small tackle box. ‘You obviously didn’t take Fairchild’s warning seriously, but the news about Milligan should have made you realise that Haddad doesn’t mess around.’
‘I’m not running away, Rebecca. I’m no coward. If Haddad shows up here we can have it out mano-a-mano.’
‘Dad, Haddad’s not going to turn up in person. He is a coward. He’ll send his henchmen and they don’t play by Queensberry Rules.’
‘I was in the SAS, remember.’ He snapped the lid of the tackle box shut and put it in the canvas bag, picked up the bag and the rod, and stood. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but what if there’s three of them? Five? Ten?’
‘Did Matthew Fairchild ever tell you how I saved his life in Iraq?’
‘This isn’t the time for—’
‘Rebecca! Listen, will you? This is important!’ The temper was characteristic of her father, but there was a waver to his voice that Silva hadn’t heard before. She paused and nodded. He continued. ‘We were deep in the southern desert, exfilling from a vantage point where we’d been calling in air strikes on Iraqi Scud positions. Our hide had been compromised so we had to make a swift getaway. Fairchild was bringing up the rear when he was hit. I told the rest of the guys to head on and create a diversion while I went back for him. When I got to Fairchild it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere fast. He’d taken a round in the knee. He told me to leave him a pistol and go, but I wasn’t having it. I got him to play dead and I scrambled up a nearby hill and hid in a gulley. About five minutes later the first of the Iraqis came round the corner. Fairchild stayed still and I allowed the soldiers to get up close. Then I opened fire. There were nine of them and I took out seven, while Fairchild got two. When I got back down to him I realised three of the Iraqis were still alive. According to the Geneva Convention they were now off-limits, but that was utter crap. If we’d left them they might have been able to attract the attention of other nearby patrols. They’d have been able to point out the direction we went.’ Her father paused and there was only the sound of a light wind brushing the rushes, a gentle lapping of little wavelets against the side of the jetty. ‘I shot them, Rebecca, one by one, and that still haunts me to this day.’
‘Dad.’ Silva moved forward. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shown her father anything other than cursory affection, but now she wanted to tell him she loved him and cared for him.
‘No!’ Her father held up a hand. He had tears in his eyes. ‘The point is we do what is necessary to help those we care about. Right and wrong don’t come into it.’
Silva stood a pace away. Was her father saying he loved her, cared about her? ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The best chance for you is if I remain put. When they discover you’re not in Plymouth they’ll come looking here. Let’s see what kind of state they’re in after that.’
Silva nodded but she wondered if her father had slipped over into fantasy, if this wasn’t some attempt to return to a time when he was younger and fitter and a world of possibilities still lay before him.
‘Itchy’s here, Dad.’ Silva changed the subject. Her father had always liked Itchy. ‘We’ll stay over if that’s OK? Be off in the morning.’
‘Itchy?’ There was a flicker of annoyance, as if he was cross she hadn’t told him this important news straight away. The emotion of a moment ago was gone. ‘Why ever didn’t you say so, Rebecca?’
With that her father was off down the pontoon and heading for the house, shouting for Mrs Collins to bring cold beers and some of those dry-roasted peanuts they’d stocked up on at Christmas. It was all Silva could do to trot after him and wonder what it was with father–daughter relationships.