She headed south, intending to rendezvous with Itchy at Fairchild’s place. First though, she wanted to check on her father.
It was a little after nine thirty in the evening when she coaxed the bike up the gravel drive. The house loomed dark against a red sky, clouds piling in from the west. The windows stood black and empty, as if the place had been abandoned long ago.
She pulled up at the steps and turned the engine off. The headlight dimmed and she was left sitting astride the bike in a pale gloom. When she removed her helmet she could hear nothing except the distant rumble of a tractor and, closer, a pheasant clucking out a call as it flew up to a roost in the branches of a nearby tree.
Silva dismounted and moved towards the front door. She climbed the steps and turned the big brass doorknob. The door opened.
‘Dad?’ she said. ‘Are you here?’
Nothing.
She walked in and carefully closed the door behind her. She fumbled at the wall until she found a switch. She flicked it and lights came on in the hall and stairwell.
‘Dad? Mrs Collins?’
A wash of embarrassment came over her as she pictured her dad and Mrs Collins upstairs, going at it like teenagers. She moved to the foot of the stairs. Listened again. Still nothing. No bed creaking, no sound of Mrs Collins crying out. She shook off the vision and turned and went across the hallway to the kitchen-diner. The table was set for two and a large Le Creuset casserole pot sat on a cast-iron trivet in the centre. Silva walked over and touched the pot. Latent heat, a faint warmth. She lifted the lid. Meat, potatoes, veg. Her father liked to eat at six prompt, retire early. The casserole had been on the table for over three hours.
She lowered the lid with a clink and returned to the hallway. At the far end was an under-the-stairs toilet and the door stood open a crack. A vertical bar of white suggested somebody had left the light on inside. She crossed to the door and pushed it open.
Mrs Collins. Sprawled on the floor, her body contorted, her head twisted to the side as if she had reacted in surprise to something. Her left ear and part of her jaw had gone, blown away by a bullet that had carried on to hit a small mirror above the washbasin. Crazed glass reflected Silva’s face in segments of emotion. Shock. Horror. Fear.
Silva knelt. The head wound hadn’t killed Mrs Collins. There’d been a second shot. Upper left side of the chest. A coup de grâce direct to the heart. The pale-blue apron she’d been wearing bore a smudge of red blood and, farther down, a brown gravy stain.
They’d come shortly before six, then. Mrs Collins had either run to the toilet to hide or she was already inside, perhaps washing her hands before calling Silva’s father to eat.
Dinner’s ready!
Words she never got to say.
Silva stood and eased out of the little room and back into the hall. Where was her father? She shivered, thinking of his bedroom once more, but now the image was of him in a heap like Mrs Collins. If he’d had a chance he’d have defended himself, but this time the attackers would have been forewarned that he was armed.
She ran over to the stairs and bounded up two at a time. On the landing an occasional chair which usually stood by one wall lay on its side and the carpet runner had been scuffed up. She paused outside her father’s room, her hand on the door handle. Despite everything, she loved him. Perhaps because of everything. She pushed the door and, more in hope than in any real expectation, she called out.
‘Dad?’
‘Rebecca.’ The voice came flat and low, and with an undertone of sadness that only came to her too late.
‘Dad!’ Silva flung open the door and rushed in.
‘Rebecca.’ Her father sat in an armchair on the far side of the room. An anglepoise lamp on an occasional table cast yellow light on his face. His head hung low and there was a crimson bruise on his right cheek. His hands lay on his lap, bound together with a cable tie. The sadness had gone from his voice and now there was resignation. Defeat. ‘I’m sorry. I let you down.’
‘Dad, I—’
‘Ms da Silva. So nice to see you again.’ The bulky figure of Greg Mavers emerged from the shadows; beside him stood a grunt holding a pistol. Mavers chomped his jaws together. ‘I’m only sorry it couldn’t have been in more auspicious circumstances.’
‘You.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘He’s an old man.’ Silva gestured at her father. ‘Is that your idea of a fair fight?’
‘Self-defence,’ Mavers said. ‘He’s dangerous. We had to disarm him.’
‘And Mrs Collins? Was that self-defence?’
‘Brenda?’ Silva’s father looked up. ‘Is she…?’ His words tailed off and he shrank into the armchair.
Mavers shrugged. ‘We can throw accusations about collateral damage back and forth. For instance, Lashirah Haddad. What did she do to deserve her fate? Perhaps you put it down to sheer bad luck she happened to step into the path of your bullet?’
‘I didn’t shoot her.’
‘And I didn’t personally shoot Mrs Danvers or whatever her name is.’ Mavers nodded sideways at the man with the gun. ‘So I guess we’ll call it even, shall we?’
‘You won’t get away with this.’
‘It’s you who are not getting away with trying to pervert the democratic process and meddle in the sovereign affairs of another country.’
‘Karen Hope killed my mother.’
‘Forget it, Rebecca.’ Silva’s father raised his head for a moment. ‘The Yanks will justify anything. Always have, always will.’
‘He doesn’t speak for them all, Dad. He’s gone rogue.’
‘You think so?’ Mavers was smiling. ‘You’re as misguided as you are naive. I’d have thought with a boyfriend in the Agency you’d have understood just how the world works, but then again perhaps his pillow talk kept to the script.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You’ve been played, Rebecca.’ Silva’s father was shaking his head. ‘Sean must be in on it. He’s sold you out.’
Her father spoke softly, but she felt the fury in his words. It was as if he was the one who’d been betrayed. She felt light-headed, giddy. ‘Sean, he wouldn’t—’
‘Enough!’ Mavers raised a hand. ‘We’re leaving.’ He motioned at the man with the gun and then pointed at Silva’s father. ‘Make sure he can’t get free. You’re with me, Rebecca.’
Mavers gestured at the door and for one moment Silva wondered if, alone with Mavers, she could escape. Her hopes were dashed when they encountered another man in the corridor. Like the first grunt, he had a gun.
‘After you,’ Mavers said. ‘And no tricks, no funny stuff.’
They went downstairs and outside. Parked round the side of the house there was a silver Ford van with diplomatic plates. Mavers slid the rear door open and the grunt pushed Silva in. Mavers stood by the door and glanced at his watch. Minutes ticked by.
‘What’s going on?’ Silva said. ‘What are we waiting for?’
‘That.’ Mavers turned his head and peered back at the house. The second grunt ran from the front door and down the steps. A high pitched repetitive beeping pierced the air. ‘Now we go.’
The grunt jumped into the van and started the engine. Silva strained to see what was going on. There was a glow from one of the downstairs windows. Yellow and orange light flickering. The shrillness of the smoke alarm over the crackle of flame.
‘No!’ Silva shouted. She leapt forward, trying to make for the door before Mavers could slam it shut.
The man in the back raised his gun, turning the weapon so he could bring the handle down on Silva’s head. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then nothing.
She woke to a moving light. A single bulb hanging from a piece of wire in the ceiling. A draught from somewhere moved the bulb and the arc of its shadow crept over the walls and swept her face. Silva rolled over, aware of a throbbing at the side of her head and a sensation of stickiness round her left eye. She raised a hand and a scab of dried blood fell away. The light bulb swung and flickered and she was remembering the fire.
They’d left her father tied to the chair in his room and torched the place. She imagined him sitting there as the flames rose around him, imagined the fear he must have felt. She closed her eyes and almost inevitably thought of her mother too. What evil could have conspired to take both her parents from her in a handful of months? And the only other person she loved, Sean, had given her up to the enemy.
That thought caused the throbbing in her head to pulse faster. Had he really done that? Put his loyalty to his country above her? She held back a sob. Perhaps he’d never really loved her at all, perhaps everything had been a sham. She remembered the times they’d spent together, the quiet, tender moments, the laughs… no he had loved her.
Had or did?
A wave of emotion hit her and it was as if she was falling into the weir at her mother’s house all over again. Sliding down the weed-covered sill and plunging underwater. No air. No light. Slipping down into the depths. She tried to take a breath but could do nothing but wheeze. She gagged against a constriction in her throat, fighting asphyxia.
Sean?
His face was distorted in a blur of tears and then she was biting her lip in anger, feeling pain, tasting blood.
She blinked, the copper tang of the blood snapping her back to reality. She was lying on a piece of sacking stuffed with straw. The light bulb illuminated four walls of crumbling bricks and mortar rising to a roof of asbestos sheeting. In one corner there was some kind of trough, and water dripped from a join in the galvanised pipe that ran from the trough to a stopcock halfway up the wall. Scattered in one corner were several piles of dried faecal matter. Silva looked closer, but couldn’t distinguish if the crap was animal or human. The latter would suggest she wasn’t the first to be brought here. Not the first to wait in trepidation of what was to come.
Did Sean know where she was or what fate awaited her? Would he really have turned her over to the American authorities? Then again, this was nowhere official. Not a prison or a police station or a military base. She thought of Afghanistan. There’d been places where al-Qaeda militants had been taken. Black sites. Deniable. Places where the Geneva Convention didn’t apply. American operatives had waterboarded suspects and worse. Not that the British were without guilt. Silva knew UK intelligence officers had been present when militants had been interrogated. Silva hadn’t much cared back then. The militants had to be stopped by any means necessary. Now, though, the tables had been turned.
Thanks to Sean.
He must have called Greg Mavers, told him Silva knew about Karen Hope and Haddad. She didn’t think he had any knowledge of what Mavers intended to do, but his loyalties were divided. When pressed, had he come down on the side of his country? Like Hope, Mavers would have appealed to his patriotism for sure. He’d have told Sean the very future of democracy was at stake, that there was only one option.
She pushed herself up from the ground, sat upright and looked round. At the roof eaves there was a small gap where the rafters met the wall. A patch of blue sky and a smudge of cloud.
How long had she been here? She rubbed her head. Just a few hours, or had she been unconscious for longer? It didn’t really matter. Nobody knew where she was and nobody was coming to rescue her. Sean had always been an unlikely knight in shining armour, and now his armour was tarnished.
Silva stood, feeling dizziness and a sharp pain in her forehead. She took a moment to recover and then walked round the room, examining every inch. The door was of heavy boards, bolted through. There was no handle on her side, nor did there seem to be any sign of a lock or hinges. She figured the door must open inwards, which if the room was for animals made sense. She gave the door a tentative push, but it was solid and immovable.
The only other thing of interest was the water pipe. The piping looked substantial, but the fixings holding it to the wall had corroded. Silva reckoned she could pull the pipe free and use a length of it as a weapon.
She was about to test the strength of the wall fixings when bolts clattered on the door. Silva stepped back into the corner of the room as the door swung open.
‘You’re awake.’ Greg Mavers stepped into the room. Close behind came the two men who’d been with Mavers at her father’s house. One held a pistol while the other carried an iron bar and a length of rope. Mavers waved a hand at the room. ‘I’m sorry the surroundings aren’t up to much, but there you go.’
‘This can’t work. There’s too much of a trail. Too many people know.’
‘Oh but they don’t, Rebecca. Not the damaging stuff. They know about a few arms deals and some money which may or may not have come from various unsavoury sources. They don’t know about the rest of it.’ Mavers moved a finger to his right eye. Scratched something. ‘The problem is, you do know everything.’
‘And I’ve told others. If I disappear it will all come out.’
‘Then I’ll need to know the names of the people you’ve told.’
‘I won’t talk.’
‘You will. You must have had enough training to know that not talking isn’t an option. It doesn’t take much for people to spill the beans. I should know, I’m ex-CIA. Been there, done that. So if you thought you were dealing with some pen-pushing diplomat, then I’m afraid you’re mistaken.’
‘You won’t know if I’m lying or not.’
‘Let me explain.’ Mavers tilted his head at the man with the iron bar and rope. ‘We’ll need to investigate everyone you say you’ve told. So lie if you wish, but it’s not going to be pleasant for those you finger because we’ll have to interrogate each and every one of them.’
‘Well, I haven’t told anyone.’
‘You’ve changed your tune, but if that’s true then good. The problem is we need to be sure. The iron bar will help. We can beat you with it. We can break your fingers or smash your kneecaps. We can do other things. Think what it would feel like with that piece of metal inside you. Especially if we heat it up. At the end, we’ll know if you’re telling the truth or not.’
‘You’re going to kill me.’
‘You’re an assassin, Rebecca. You killed Lashirah al Haddad. Sure, you denied it earlier, but I don’t believe you.’ Mavers moved forward. ‘Our friends in Saudi Arabia would like you turned over to them, but I won’t hear of it. Their methods make ours look positively benign. To be honest I’d like nothing better than for you to be taken to the US to face trial, but the issue with that is your mouth. Far better you simply disappear.’
‘Don’t you think there’ll be questions asked? First my mother, then Neil Milligan, then me? Too much of a coincidence.’
‘There are questions asked about the moon landings, about Elvis Presley, about 9/11. Compared to those world events your death will be but a footnote. I really don’t think anyone will be interested.’ Mavers stepped back towards the door, careful not to turn his back. ‘Now, think very carefully about what you are going to tell us when we return, OK?’
Mavers slipped out the door and the two men followed. The door swung shut, the bolts clunked across and the light swung gently in the draught.