Mason pulled the car over on the cramped street of terraced houses. Not in a parking spot. There were none available. Other cars were already packed tightly on both sides of the road, so Mason could only stop alongside the parked cars, blocking the street to any other passing traffic until he moved on.
‘I’ll keep going, look for a space,’ he said, craning his neck to look at number two fifty-two. She couldn’t read his face; she didn’t really know him well enough to understand what he was thinking in that moment anyway, though she was sure she sensed a certain mocking in what he saw outside, as though this place, the modest lives of the people here were beneath him.
Angel got out without saying a word and stood on the footpath for a few moments. She looked along the street as her warm breath swirled around her and up into the cold, dark sky.
No one around, even though it was only seven thirty.
She moved to the warped metal front gate that sat within a pretty shoddy-looking three-foot wall at the front of the house. She pushed down on the gate latch and opened the creaky fixture.
Damn. Paul had said he would fix that crappy thing years ago.
Lights were on in the house, the glow visible around the edges of the drawn curtains in the cramped lounge at the front. Angel stepped up to the door and pressed the doorbell. A couple of seconds later the hall light flicked on and through the frosted glass, she saw the figure emerge from the lounge. Paul, judging by the size and shape.
Angel sucked in air through her nostrils until her lungs were full, prepping herself, readying herself.
Paul opened the door and for a brief moment, they both stared at each other, no words. The smell of cooked chicken and boiled vegetables wafted out with the warmth of the house. Paul looked… like he always had. Tall. Clean shaven. Hardly any gray, no receding in his hairline even though he was pushing forty. Lean figure. Bright blue eyes that sucked her in even though she wanted to hate everything about him.
No, she did hate everything about him. Apart from their daughter.
‘Paul, I—’
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Now his face twisted in disgust like he saw her as the scum of the earth. The shit on the bottom of his best pair of shoes, rather than the woman who’d loved him for years and had brought their daughter into the world.
‘I just… I’d really like to see her. I—’
‘You should go.’
‘Please, Paul.’
‘I thought you were on that retreat again? What? You couldn’t hack it? Same as always. Are you drunk?’
‘No. Paul, please. Just let me say hi to her. There’s…’ She paused and sighed and tried to find the words. She’d practiced this so many times on the trip over. Rehearsed in her head and out loud with Mason.
‘Who is it?’ came a ratty female voice from further inside.
That was all Angel needed. Bella poked her head out of the lounge, then stepped into the hall, the contempt on her face even greater than on Paul’s.
The audacity of that? Bella was the bloody imposter, not the other way around!
‘Paul, why is she here?’ Bella said.
‘She has a damn name, bitch,’ Angel responded.
‘Angel? Yeah, good luck trying to convince anyone of that one.’
‘Look, honey,’ Paul said, turning around. ‘Just give me a minute. I can handle this.’
That put Bella back in her place and she skulked off.
‘Angel, seriously—’
‘Just listen, will you. You can think what you like about me. Hate me, pity me, whatever, but she’s still my daughter. And… I need this. Help me.’
‘What’s happened?’ Paul asked, for the first time speaking to her with something approaching genuine concern.
‘I… can’t talk about it. I have something I need to do. I could be gone a while.’
‘They pulled you back in?’
As ever, skirting around the subject of her other life, her job – old job – by only ever referring to it in cloaked, vague terms. But then she’d never divulged actual details of her work. But he knew enough, knew how dangerous it was, the risks she took. She had no way to explain that this wasn’t that job, but something that had come about because of it.
Would he even know the name if she told him? Ismail Karaman. A name that meant so much to her, so little to him, even though both their lives – their daughter’s too – had been so tarnished by him.
‘Yeah,’ Angel said. ‘And… it’s big. It might… get messy.’
She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to stay strong. ‘Can I just see her? Two minutes. A goodnight hug.’
‘She’s not here. She’s with my parents.’
Angel’s heart sank.
But then she saw the bare feet appearing at the top of the stairs and Angel ducked down and locked eyes with her daughter. The most perfect being she’d ever seen in her life. Not so little now. She’d grown so much, but then it’d been six years already. Six years wasted. Angel flicked her eyes to Paul ever so quickly, a flash of anger, before beaming at Sasha.
‘Hey, sweetie,’ Angel said.
‘Sash, go back to your room, now!’ Paul blasted up the stairs and Angel had to hold herself back from grabbing him and sending him to the floor. When he turned back to Angel she saw nothing but hatred in his eyes.
‘You need to go.’
‘So, you’re still a lying piece of shit, I see,’ Angel responded.
‘Go. Or you’ll be sorry.’ He pushed his face close to hers. She didn’t budge. ‘I’m not scared of you.’
‘You know? You really fucking should be.’
Paul edged back and at first, Angel thought it was because of the genuine threat in her words, but then she realized he wasn’t even paying her attention anymore, but looking beyond her to the road.
She turned to see the idling car, window down, Mason glaring over.
‘What’s this? Your new screw-around?’ Paul said. ‘Is he going to beat me up?’
Angel shook her head. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she said to him. ‘You always were. You always will be.’
‘Says the alcoholic ex-con whose life is in pieces.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘You good, Angel?’ Mason shouted over.
She really wished he’d stayed out of sight.
‘Time for you to go,’ Paul said.
‘I won’t forget this. One day… you’ll wish you’d treated me better.’
‘Not likely.’
He slammed the door shut and she watched his figure darting up the stairs through the glass – was he going to admonish Sasha? It took everything for her to not break the door down and charge up after him.
But she had to stay strong. Sasha was the only innocent person in the whole situation. If Angel ran up there to confront Paul, and to… what? Smack him about? That did nothing to help her daughter. Paul wasn’t violent. He was manipulative and scheming but he loved Sasha and she was sure her daughter was only about to get an angry earful about what a dangerous fuck-up Angel was.
She turned around and walked quickly to the waiting car, her legs shaking as adrenaline and anger surged.
She sank down into the passenger seat and put her hands to her face and screamed. A huge, long holler until her lungs were empty and nothing came out of her mouth but a weird rasp.
‘You done now?’ Mason asked, sounding as relaxed as anything. He looked almost amused by the whole thing, which didn’t exactly help to calm her.
‘You didn’t have to show your face.’
‘Why? What difference did it make? He wasn’t going to let you see her, was he?’ he said, as though he had a perfect read of her, Paul, the situation.
‘Just get me out of here.’
‘Where to?’
‘A bar. A really fancy, expensive fucking cocktail bar. And you’re paying.’
He didn’t move the car and she glared at him and didn’t like the questioning look on his stupid face.
‘What?’
Mason shrugged.
‘I didn’t say I was going to get drunk.’
He shrugged again.
‘Drive. Or I’ll drag you out the car and reverse over you a couple of times on my way outta here.’
He smiled then laughed. She tried hard not to do the same.
‘Let’s go watch other people get wasted, then,’ he said before thumping his foot down onto the accelerator.
* * *
The bar was good enough. A converted old bank not far from New Street Station in Birmingham. The large, airy interior had high vaulted ceilings and a huge bar cluttered with hundreds and hundreds of bottles of spirits – an exhaustive cocktail list to go along with it. The place wasn’t super high-end – people weren’t dressed to the nines, and there was no security to keep the riffraff out – but it was… good enough. And in reality, Angel wouldn’t have gotten into anywhere more swanky tonight as it wasn’t as though she’d packed some Jimmy Choos and her best little black dress or anything. Just leggings and a sparkly little crop top that gave her a lot more cleavage than she really had and that she knew would grab her some much-needed attention. Like from Mason. Although he hadn’t exactly made an effort in his jeans, dirtied white trainers, and plain Nike T-shirt.
Whatever. Still, it was nice to see his muscles rippling through the top.
‘You know, they still have the vault in place downstairs,’ Mason said before taking a sip from the little straw of his cocktail. He looked at her, confused by her reaction. ‘What?’
‘You. With that drink. You look a bit…’
‘Not manly enough for me?’
‘Not what I expected you to have.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t really give a crap about fitting into molds, making impressions.’
Which didn’t fully make sense given his obvious liking for T-shirts that were a size too small. Regardless, the way he had to kind of crouch down to the table and grasp the tiny little straw between his thick fingers tickled her. She laughed when he did it again and for all of his confidence and bravado, she knew he was embarrassed from the way he nervously looked around as though hoping no one else was watching.
‘I’ll get a huge beer in a giant tankard next time, OK?’
He took the straw out and put it on the table and picked up the highball glass and took a bigger swig of the whisky-based drink – the orange slice tumbling over the ice toward his face as he did so, though he managed to pull the glass away just in time before the fruit smacked him.
Angel laughed again.
‘Glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ he said.
‘Anyway, you were saying?’
‘I was saying about the vault, downstairs.’
‘I’m intrigued why you thought I’d be intrigued by that?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a cool feature.’
‘No. Something else. What, you thought it’d play to my destructive side? A bank vault. Maybe some hidden treasures inside it still. Do you think I’d make a good bank robber?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Have you ever done anything like that before? A heist?’
He paused before answering, and she didn’t know if he was only contemplating the question or if she’d somehow offended him with it.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think you probably have. Because it’s not too dissimilar to what we’re planning now, is it? And we wouldn’t be even thinking about what we’re planning if we weren’t confident of pulling it off.’
He slowly nodded in response.
‘I wouldn’t know where to start with cracking a safe, though,’ he said with a wink.
‘Shame. I thought maybe that’s why you’d brought up the idea of the vault downstairs in the first place.’
‘No. It’s definitely empty. The door’s wide open. I think the only reason they left it down there at all was because of how hard it’d be to dismantle and remove it.’
Angel sipped her drink until it was gone.
‘Why don’t you get me another?’ she asked.
‘Same?’
‘Yeah. I’m going to go take a look.’
He headed off to the bar, and she headed off to the stairs down to the restrooms. But not without first lingering as she walked past the group of three men at the bar. Late twenties, early thirties, they were all smartly dressed in office gear. Professionals, full of themselves, enjoying a few drinks after work. The one on the left – the youngest and cutest of the three – had been giving Angel the eye in the mirror of the bar.
So as she passed she waited for him to lock eyes with her. She gave him a cheeky smile and he half swiveled on his bar stool.
‘Hey,’ she said to him, then carried on past and to the stairs without waiting for a response.
Just an opener. Just in case.
She kept her eyes on the other side of the bar from where he was sitting when she came back to the table. Mason was already seated again, two new drinks waiting. The same again for her, but a pint of beer for him. So her mocking had had an effect on him after all.
‘Cheers,’ she said to him and clinked his much bigger glass, and he reciprocated but looked a little sullen now. Perhaps because of the drink, or perhaps because he’d noticed the little exchange between her and the guy at the bar. Jealous? She liked Mason, and they’d had a lot of fun together the last time, but he’d lied to her. And now they had business together. And she knew not to mix business and pleasure.
If everything went smoothly tomorrow, then maybe down the line…
‘H is late,’ Mason said, looking at his watch then checking his phone. H being the third person joining them for their ‘job’.
‘He’s not been in touch?’
‘Not for the last hour or so.’
‘We’re in no rush,’ she said.
Mason humphed.
‘So you and H know each other?’ she asked.
‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘I’ve heard of him before. Know about some of the things he’s done. I’ve never worked with him before.’
Which was both a good and a bad thing. If they were best buddies that would put her in an awkward position, but having three people who barely knew each other work together on something so dangerous also carried obvious risks.
‘Is he going to be just as mysterious as you?’
‘Mysterious?’
‘A closed book.’
‘I’m not a closed book, I just haven’t told you anything about me that you don’t need to know.’
‘You haven’t told me anything about you.’
‘Because you don’t need to know it.’ He laughed as though he’d just made a really good joke.
‘You expect me to put my life on the line, but you won’t even tell me about yourself. And it doesn’t need to be about your professional life. Just about you.’
Because she already knew something about his professional life. That he’d worked for MI5 but had been kicked out because he’d been caught making money on the side out of some of his assets – money from drug deals, mostly. But she knew all that because it was in the public domain, not because he’d told her. He’d been hung out to dry by his employers, spent two years in prison even though from what she read he claimed he’d been set up. That his superiors had not only known about the deals but had wanted him to make them in order to gain the trust of the gangs he was working with.
‘Go on, then,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Fire away.’
She thought for a moment. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Not far from here. Lichfield. Born there, lived there until I left home at eighteen.’
She hadn’t detected anything in his accent, and it felt a little odd to know he’d grown up only a few miles from her own hometown of Tamworth.
‘You went to university?’ she asked.
‘No. I joined the army. Same as you.’
She squirmed a little at that. Hated that he knew so much more about her even though she’d told him little.
‘But I knew it wasn’t for me. I never saw active duty. I was more interested in… people. If that makes any sense.’
‘Kind of.’
‘But don’t think I don’t know how to fight.’
She already knew first-hand he had skills in close combat.
‘I wasn’t going to suggest that at all,’ she said. ‘So MI5 approached you?’
‘Organizations like MI5 and MI6 have a way of knowing who’s a good fit. You probably know that from experience. I’m guessing you didn’t apply for your job either.’
True. Though she didn’t bother to confirm or deny. ‘You ever get married?’ she asked.
‘My job didn’t provide much room for settling down.’
She couldn’t hide her amusement at that answer. ‘No, you just like playing the field too much.’
He rolled his eyes at that but in a playful way. She had him pegged.
‘Maybe one day,’ he said. ‘But you…’
‘Me, what?’
‘You did get married, had a kid even, despite your job.’
‘There’s nothing unusual about people in the military having families. Even in the special forces—’ which wasn’t exactly what she did, but it was close enough ‘—it’s a world away from the life of a spook.’
‘I’m not talking about the military,’ Mason said. ‘I’m talking about your life after the military. When you were a spook. More or less.’
‘A freelance security consultant. That’s what they actually called it.’ She said that with obvious disdain. ‘And you want the truth?’
‘Obviously.’
‘I didn’t do it for ideals or any of that bullshit. I did it for the money. I did it for me, Paul, Sasha. I thought I was creating a better life for the three of us. The money I was getting… It was good. Really good. And I knew I wouldn’t have to do it much longer. Maybe only one of two more assignments and I’d take a break after. I wouldn’t need to work again for years.’
‘Except you didn’t get paid for that last job, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
She downed a good portion of her drink, trying to push aside her rising distaste for how she’d been treated. Not just by her ‘employer’ but Paul too in the aftermath. And that evil bastard Karaman. But the truth was that not one person had stood up for her.
‘Did they really screw you over too?’ she asked.
He held her eye, his face hard as though he were reliving the betrayal in that moment and he didn’t even need to answer the question. She got it.
‘The same question to you,’ he said. ‘I know how everything fell apart after. But that day. On the rooftop in Beirut?’
‘Yeah. I was screwed over after, but I pulled the trigger. I missed my target. I’d never missed before. I was a good sniper in the army and I was a better sniper freelance where there wasn’t the pressure of war. But that day… I forever changed the life of a little girl, her family. So I got what I deserved, you could say. But…’
‘But what?’
‘I did my job out there. The mistake wasn’t even out of error or anything like that but because someone figured out the plan, or someone betrayed us, and I was attacked. I was lucky to survive. Karaman lived, I was arrested by the Lebanese police, thrown under the bus, and no one on our side made any attempt to help me for nearly four years. The people I worked for… They had enough power to make it all go away, to bring me back home immediately rather than four years later as part of some crooked deal. A deal which only saw me spend more time behind bars here as I served out my minimum sentence.’
‘But you do know why, don’t you?’
‘Yeah. I do. Karaman. You know, he actually visited me in prison?’
Mason shook his head. Of course, he didn’t know that. How could he?
‘He turned up one day, a few months after. To taunt me. To tell me my life was in his hands. They’d tortured me daily. Stress positions, white noise, sleep deprivation, waterboarding. But never for information or anything like that. Just because. Because of him. His wife wanted me dead because of what I did, but he wanted me to suffer. I was sentenced to ten years but he told me I’d never get out of that prison alive.’
‘But you did.’
‘I did. But… only because the landscape changed. I don’t even know exactly what happened but finally, it made political sense for our government to care. I was traded. Nothing more, nothing less. But the damage was already long done by then.’
Mason nodded, as though he understood.
‘So this is personal for you too?’ she asked. ‘With Karaman?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Like you said, the money for these ops is good. This is purely business for me.’ He picked up his beer and took a drawn-out swig as if indicating he was done with the conversation.
And his cold answer was certainly delivered with clarity and surety.
There was just one big problem.
Angel was certain he was lying.