Killing for the Company Read online

  Chet winced at the memory.

  The wind howled outside once more, and a fresh wave of rain battered the window. For a moment Chet forgot about shadowy intruders and corrupt politicians. It was bleak outside and they were alone. Why shouldn’t they take comfort in each other’s company? Seize the day – that’s what soldiers always did. He wiped the mirror again. A battered face looked back out at him. Chet grabbed a towel and dried his face and upper body, before slinging it round his neck, taking a deep breath and opening the door into the bedroom.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he barked the moment he saw Suze.

  She was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her towel still wrapped around her, and she was fumbling with the beige telephone on the side table, slamming it back down on its cradle.

  ‘I was just . . .’

  ‘Christ, Suze, do you think this is some sort of game? They want to kill us.’

  She stared at him, looking like she might cry.

  ‘I said we don’t contact anyone. Do you know how easy it is to trace a fucking phone call? Who were you calling? I said, who were you calling?’

  ‘I . . . it was . . . oh God . . . it was just the Met Office. I wanted to know how long this storm was going to last.’

  Chet stared at her, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘Just don’t . . . use . . . the phone, all right?’

  When he opened his eyes, she was standing by the side of the bed. ‘I’m really . . . I’m really sorry. I didn’t think it was . . .’ His voice trailed off and she chewed at her lower lip.

  Suze took a tentative step towards him, and then another. Before Chet knew it, she was in his arms again, trembling slightly as she pressed her damp hair against his chest. They stayed like that for a minute before she stepped backwards again.

  One pace.

  Two.

  She inclined her head slightly, then let the towel fall. It dropped heavily to the floor to reveal her slim, delicately curved body, her pale skin and her small breasts.

  Chet glanced over to the door. It was still wedged shut with the chair. He turned to look at Suze. She was lying on the bed, and finally managed to give him a nervous smile.

  ‘Look after me,’ she whispered.

  Chet hesitated for a moment, but then, without another word, he went to her.

  As the rain fell in the Brecon Beacons, it also fell on the southern outskirts of London. It kept most visitors away from the Greenacres Retirement Home, a recently, and cheaply, built establishment next to the main road through Morden. In truth it hardly took freak weather conditions to discourage visitors to this place. The corridors were starkly lit and smelt of disinfectant and hospital food. There were no stairs, but lifts and ramps to enable wheelchairs to move around the buildings. The day room was decorated with floral curtains and dark carpet tiles. Channel Four News was playing on the TV, even though there was nobody there to watch it; at this time of the evening all the clients of Greenacres were encouraged to be in their rooms. It was easier for the poorly paid, often temporary, often Eastern European staff that way.

  In Room 213, on the second floor overlooking the main road, an old lady sat in her wheelchair. It was dim in here – only a low-voltage bulb in a bedside lamp lit the room, but she preferred it that way. Her eyesight was deteriorating, and she found that bright lights almost blinded her.

  Her right foot and ankle were swollen and wrapped in a bandage to protect the sores on her skin. She had decided a long time ago that it was easier to stay in the wheelchair all day than haul herself in and out of the armchair that was, with the exception of her single bed and a glossy pine dressing table, the only piece of furniture in her sparse room. A pink hyacinth – her favourite flower – was blooming on the windowsill behind her. Its fragrance went some way to disguising the institutional smell of the place, but the old lady wasn’t thinking about that. She was holding the telephone against her ear, and she was clearly flustered and confused.

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand dear,’ she stammered. Her voice was as frail as the thin hands that held the receiver.

  The old lady frowned as she listened to the voice at the other end.

  ‘But . . . but . . . where are you? What do you mean, you can’t visit me? I don’t understand. Hello? Hello?’

  She looked at the phone. And then, with frightened and perplexed eyes, she let it fall from her hands and squinted up to see the other woman in the room with her, half hidden in the shadows behind the door.

  ‘Stay quiet, or I’ll kill you.’

  It was clear to the intruder that the old woman was confused, struggling to understand who she was and why she was here. It was perhaps the strangeness and uncertainty of her situation as much as the Beretta Model 70 semi-automatic aimed at her head that was now distressing the old lady.

  ‘Your daughter?’ the younger woman asked.

  The old lady shook her head but she was too scared to keep the pretence up for long, and after a few seconds a pathetic little mewing came out of her lips, accompanied by a trembling of her whole body.

  The woman put a mobile phone to her ear. She waited a moment before saying a single word. ‘Traced?’

  The reply was equally curt. A male voice that belonged to someone she had never met and never would. ‘Traced.’

  She put the phone back in her pocket and returned her attention to the old lady. She was still making fretful little noises. Still shaking. But she had the presence of mind to reach for the body of the phone – an attempt, the woman presumed, to call through to reception and alert them to the intruder in her room. It was a moment’s work to pull the phone from her weak hands and place it out of reach on the dressing table. The mewing grew a little more desperate.

  She needed to be killed, of course. That much was obvious. She had seen the intruder’s face and knew what she was after. A gunshot was out of the question. Often the best you could do was mislead people about the cause of death. So it came quite naturally for her to look around the room in search of a more subtle instrument than the Beretta.

  It didn’t take her long.

  The old lady’s dressing table was neatly arranged. Two fading family photographs of a young girl and an older man, a hairbrush, a bottle of Nivea skin cream and a Tupperware box containing an array of medication. The woman looked through the box, discounting the vitamins and the cod liver oil and paying attention to the less benign drugs. The bottle she finally selected was made of brown glass and bore a printed pharmacist’s label. Warfarin. One capsule to be taken once a day, it instructed, and – in stark, bold letters – ‘in case of overdose seek immediate medical attention’. She shook the bottle. It was almost full.

  ‘I mustn’t take those,’ the old lady whispered. She sounded rather like a child repeating her parent’s instructions. ‘The nurse gives them to me. I mustn’t take them myself . . . it’s very important . . .’ She nodded rapidly to emphasise her point.

  The woman ignored her and, laying her Beretta on the dressing table way out of reach, spilled some of the little pink capsules into the palm of her hand. The old lady started shaking her head as she drew near, and the mewing started again, more panicked than before.

  The first capsule was the most difficult to insert into the old lady’s mouth. It meant pinching her papery, wrinkled cheeks with one hand – not too hard, so as to avoid bruising – and using the other to force it past her brittle teeth and on to the back of her tongue. Warm saliva collected around the woman’s two fingers as she forced the old lady’s head back, and inserted two more capsules in quick succession. There was a strangled, gargling sound from her throat, which grew more severe as the capsules were forced down. Now the old lady tried to beat her attacker with her fists, but she was much too weak to make any difference. Another three capsules were forced down her throat.

  Then three more.

  And another three.

  The old lady was choking for breath now, holding her grey, veiny hands around her neck as the woman stood
back and examined her handiwork. She didn’t fully know what the short-term effects of a Warfarin overdose were, but that didn’t matter. The capsules were only there in the unlikely event of an autopsy. She stepped over to the bed, picked up the pillow and returned to the wheelchair.

  Even through the fog of her confusion, the old lady knew what was about to happen. She looked up with bloodshot eyes and shook her head as forcefully as she could. ‘Please,’ she managed to gasp through her breathlessness. ‘Please, no. My daughter . . .’

  The woman put her lips just an inch from the old woman’s ear. ‘Your daughter will be joining you very soon,’ she whispered. ‘When I kill her, I will explain that her mother died squeaking like a cat.’

  The old lady shook her head and a tear forced its way from her withered tear sacs into the corner of her eye. ‘Suze is a good girl,’ she whispered. ‘A good girl. You mustn’t hurt her . . .’

  The woman sneered slightly at these words – the last, she knew, that the old lady would ever utter. She placed the pillow over her face – gently, because she knew that to press too hard could cause bruising around the nose and mouth – and then lightly pressed with her free hand against the back of her head, entwining her fingers in the thin, dry hair.

  It was pathetically easy. The old lady’s struggles were feeble; the way she flailed her arms and kicked her thin legs quite ineffectual; her mewing stopped and she was silent. The woman’s eyes shone in the gloom as she went about her work. And because her victim was old and her lungs were tired, the process was quick. After forty-five seconds the flailing had eased off; after a minute and a half the body had slumped in the wheelchair. The woman removed the pillow and put two fingers to the jugular. Nothing. The old lady’s face was still and grey. She replaced the pillow on the bed, then wheeled the chair in front of the dressing table, where she left the Warfarin bottle open just within reach of the fresh corpse.

  A new smell hit her senses. Urine. That was no surprise. Now she was dead, the old lady’s muscles were relaxing, and that included the bladder. Sometimes it happened sooner, sometimes later. In this case it had happened almost immediately, and now there was a dripping of liquid from the edge of the wheelchair on to the carpet. The woman was experienced enough to know that the bowels would probably follow, but by the time that occurred, she would be long gone.

  It was calm in the room now. The rain continued to spatter against the window; the pink hyacinth remained the only splash of colour in this gloomy place. The woman allowed herself a bleak smile. The staff here would be used to occupants dying. When they found the old lady they would surely assume that she had come to the end of her natural life. If anyone did decide to investigate further, they would discover the overdose of Warfarin and assume that the confused old lady had had one bout of confusion too many.

  She opened the door and walked out. The corridor was deserted, and she didn’t encounter a single person until she was down in reception, where nobody paid her any attention anyway. Outside the home, she pulled out her phone and called a number.

  ‘Mrs McArthur has quietly slipped from our embrace,’ she said.

  Then she waited as the voice at the other end read out an address.

  TWELVE

  For a soldier in the field, the sound a chopper makes is like the sound of Christmas bells. Nine times out of ten it means casevac or exfiltration. One time out of ten it means something more sinister. This was one of those times.

  Luke knew from the rough, mechanical sound of the rotary blades it was a Russian MI-8, even before he saw it. ‘Not one of ours,’ he told Finn as they stood quietly by the mouth of the cave, their assault rifles strapped to their bodies. They weren’t expecting an exfil, but if it had been a rescue helicopter it would be travelling low, fast and in a straight line towards them. This one sounded like it was circling above. Searching.

  They stayed in the shadows as they looked out and up into the cloudy sky. Two minutes later the MI-8 appeared and circled above the desert just half a klick from their position, low enough for them to be able to see it.

  ‘Reckon they’re looking for us?’ Finn’s voice was dry.

  ‘If Fozzie and the others are compromised, maybe it’s just increased security?’ Luke frowned. ‘Put it this way: I don’t think it’s a jolly.’ He checked his watch. Midday. Ample time for word of the firefight back in the village to have reached military headquarters in Baghdad and for them to have dispatched a heli. Did the authorities know that Abu Famir had been hiding out there and was now on the move? Maybe, maybe not. But Luke had to plan for the worst. He had to assume that the Iraqis were coming for them.

  He looked over his shoulder into the gloom of the cave. Abu Famir was half kneeling, half lying by the Toyota, deep in prayer. The guy was a pain in the arse – weaselly, whingeing, never stopped talking. No wonder the British and Americans wanted him to be prime minister of the new Iraq: he had all the right qualities.

  He turned back to Finn. ‘We better hope that cloud cover stays put,’ he said.

  ‘Roger that,’ Finn replied. ‘We get a bright moon tonight and it’ll be the shortest E and E in the history of the fucking Regiment.’ He looked back over at Abu Famir. ‘I’d like to put one in the back of that wanker’s head and all,’ he said.

  At that moment the noise of the chopper altered. From their hidden vantage point, they saw it change direction and head straight towards the cave. The two men stepped back quickly, taking cover further inside, and Luke felt himself holding his breath as the helicopter hovered almost exactly above them. It stayed like that for a full minute, no more than thirty metres high and now so loud that it was impossible to talk. Then it curled away as quickly as it had arrived.

  The two men exchanged a glance. It was clear they were both thinking the same thing: have they spotted us?

  Another noise, but from inside this time: Amit crying out in pain. Finn made no attempt to hide his irritation, but before he could speak, Luke told him, ‘Keep stag,’ then stepped back into the cave.

  They had driven the Toyota as deep inside as possible, opened all the side doors and turned the back seat into a makeshift hospital bed. Finn had suspended a drip bag from the roof and mainlined it into the back of Amit’s hand, but things weren’t looking good for their companion. He’d lost a lot of blood and they had only one morphine shot left. His bouts of delirium were now more frequent than his bouts of lucidity. All in all, the guy was fucked up.

  Luke crouched down by his head. ‘Amit, buddy,’ he said quietly. ‘How you doing?’ His voice was accompanied by the gentle drone of Abu Famir’s muttered praying.

  Amit’s eyes shot open. ‘Maya?’ he whispered. ‘Efoh at . . . Maya . . .’

  Whatever language he was speaking, it wasn’t Arabic. Which meant Abu Famir was lying to them: their companion wasn’t Iraqi. No fucking surprise there. But he wasn’t Jordanian either.

  ‘Hey, buddy. Nobody called Maya here.’ He looked over at Abu Famir, who was still praying, then back at Amit. ‘You want to tell me who you’re working for?’

  Amit took a few shallow breaths before he spoke again. ‘Abu Famir,’ he said. ‘I need to . . . I need to get him out . . . It doesn’t matter about me . . .’

  Luke was about to reply when there was a noise from the mouth of the cave. A hiss. Finn was beckoning him over.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute, buddy. You hold on, OK?’

  He hurried silently over to where Finn was stationed, and he didn’t need to speak to know what the problem was. There was a voice on the wind. A lone voice, singing.

  Someone was nearby. Luke held his breath.

  Through the mouth of the cave he could see, just coming into view from the right and about fifty metres away, a herd of perhaps fifteen goats. A single person was driving them – a Bedouin, from the look of him, wearing a white dishdash and red headdress. He was looking up at the chopper still circling in the sky about 200 metres away, but there was no doubt that the goats were wandering towards the
cave.

  ‘Shit,’ Luke muttered.

  He hurried back inside to find Abu Famir still praying. He nudged the Iraqi with his foot. ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘But I am . . .’

  ‘Shut the fuck up. Someone’s coming.’

  Abu Famir scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Luke told him. ‘Now.’

  ‘No violence,’ Abu Famir whispered. ‘I will not . . .’

  ‘Get in the fucking car!’

  He returned to the front of the cave. Finn was in the shadows, one knee on the ground and his weapon in the firing position. The goatherd was driving his beasts directly into Finn’s line of fire. He was only twenty metres away now, and from this distance Luke could make out that he was singing in accented English, and gradually the words became clearer. ‘Walk like . . . an Eee-jyp-shuun . . . walk like . . . an Eee-jyp-shuun.’

  Luke loosened a knife in his ops waistcoat. ‘If he sees us,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll jump him before he can shout out. If he runs, slot him.’

  Finn kept his sights on the goatherd, while Luke took up position in the shadows on the other side of the cave’s mouth, one knee on the ground and weapon engaged.

  The singing had stopped and now there was silence. After about a minute, however, another sound reached Luke’s ears: a gentle clanking of the bells round the goats’ necks. An occasional bleat. Then the musty, shitty stench of the animals as they wandered within ten metres of their position.

  Luke felt his blood pumping in his veins. It was only a goatherd – no trouble for two fully equipped Regiment soldiers, but that wasn’t the point. If they killed him, he might be missed – they were no more than five miles from the village, and that would mean more people searching the area; but if he saw them, they couldn’t risk letting him go and warning other people of their presence.

  The first goat – a scrawny thing with great, bulging eyes – came into view. It stopped just outside the cave and pawed at the dust while several other animals surrounded it.