The Increment Read online

  'And leave the body behind?' asked Wetherell.

  'It's a hospital,' said Matram tersely. 'They know what to do with a corpse. We'll meet back here in fifteen minutes, precisely.'

  Matram stepped back, climbing back into his Lexus. He watched as his two operatives disappeared into the darkness. There were only eight lamps in the car park, and two of those were broken, leaving a murky, half-light spreading out over the tarmac. A few shadows were flickering out from the hospital building, but Kilander and Wetherell soon disappeared from view. Matram leant back in his car seat, and allowed himself a few moments of relaxation.

  FOUR

  Matt tossed the prison diary aside, stood up and took his bag from the rack at the top of his train carriage. Abbott could keep his book, and he could keep his job as well.

  He hopped down on to the platform, walked quickly towards the taxi rank: might as well beat everyone else on the train to the queue. On the billboard outside the station, there was a headline about a road-rage incident on the Ml.

  Looks as if the heat is getting to everyone.

  It was a ten-minute ride from the station to the hospital. As he stepped out of the car, Matt took a deep breath, preparing himself for the few minutes ahead.

  He could remember one of the sergeants when he first joined the army warning him that one of the things a soldier had to get used to was the sight of their friends getting blown to pieces. They had to learn how to look at men laid up in hospital with horrible injuries and know how to shrug it aside.

  But it doesn't matter how many times it happens. Every time you see one of your mates with a bullet through his head, it gets to you.

  'I'm looking for Ken Blackman,' he told the receptionist, a black woman in her late thirties. 'Intensive care.'

  He noticed the woman eyeing him suspiciously. The shooting had been a big story locally. No doubt all the staff knew the psycho was in the building, and were tiptoeing around him as if he was some kind of monster. The receptionist was clearly asking herself: What kind of friends would he have?

  'Official or just visiting?'

  'Just visiting.'

  'You'll have to check with security when you reach the ward,' said the receptionist. 'They're not just letting anyone in to see that patient.'

  He's not just some nutter, thought Matt as he walked away from the desk. He was a good man, and he was my friend.

  There was nobody guarding the intensive care ward. Matt glanced down the corridor. There were twelve rooms, six on either side, each with a number stencilled on to it in faded grey lettering, and a small ten-square-inch glass window. There was no sign who might be inside. Matt glanced through the first window. An old man, with tubes hooked into his body. The second window, a young women, almost completely covered in bandages.

  I need to see him. Doesn't matter whether he can speak to me or not. I just need to look into his eyes, and see if I can find any kind of clue there. Something drove him crazy, something weird and inexplicable.

  'Who are you looking for?'

  The nurse delivered the sentence sharply, as if there was no answer that would fall within her rule book. She was about thirty, with brown hair. Julie Smollett, it said on the label badge.

  'Blackman,' said Matt. 'Ken Blackman.'

  That look again, he noticed.

  'And you are?'

  'My name is Matt Browning.'

  The nurse hesitated, running her eyes coolly up and down. 'Come with me,' she said.

  Matt followed her towards the back of the corridor. The office was just a small room, painted pale grey, with a desk, and a kettle and collection of mugs. 'Ken Blackman died in the night,' she said. 'If he was a friend of yours, I'm sorry.'

  The tone of her voice suggested she didn't mean it.

  'What happened?'

  Smollett looked down at her notes, as if she was searching for a phone number. 'He had serious injuries,' she said flatly. 'It was always touch and go whether he would pull through. He didn't.'

  Matt leant over the desk, looking directly at her. 'No, what happened exactly?' he said. 'What was the cause of death? Blood clot, internal bleeding, heart failure?'

  He could see the irritation in her eyes as she looked back at him. 'You'll have to talk to one of the doctors,' she said.

  'Give me a name.'

  A smile started to spread across her lips. 'I can't tell you that. You'll have to apply to one of the administrators.'

  'Can I see the body?'

  Smollett shook her head: he could tell she was starting to enjoy saying no to him. 'It's already been taken down to the mortuary,' she replied. 'Access restricted to next of kin.'

  Matt turned round and started walking from the building.

  My friend has died, and I haven't even been able to say goodbye.

  Pride Park was on the outskirts of the city. A modern set of family houses, they ranged from the prosperous to the ragged. A couple of kids were kicking a football across the street, and some teenagers were gathering around the bus stop. As the taxi drew up outside the house, Matt could see the curtains were drawn in Number Sixteen and an officer was sitting in a panda car outside.

  He had to ring the bell twice before the door was answered.

  'Who are you?'

  The man putting the question could have been sixty or more. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin pale and grey. Matt felt he had seen him somewhere before but he couldn't quite place him: a relative he'd met at the christening, or someone who'd come to see Ken back when they were in the regular army together.

  'Matt Browning. I was a friend of Ken's.'

  As he stepped into the hallway, Matt felt bad he hadn't brought anything. No flowers, no cards. In his black jeans and blue polo shirt he was hardly even dressed for the occasion. 'I just wanted to see Sandy,' he continued. 'To say how sorry I am.'

  'You were in the army with him, weren't you?'

  Matt nodded. The old man broke into something approaching a smile. 'I'm Ken's dad, Barry,' he said. 'Maybe we met at the barracks once, back when he was in the forces? Come on through, we're just finalising arrangements for the funeral.'

  Matt hesitated. 'But', he started, 'Ken died last night. Surely . . . ?'

  Barry looked back up at him. 'Not Ken. Sandy.'

  'Sandy's dead?'

  Barry nodded. 'Two days ago. Ken stabbed her the same day, before he went to the surgery. They didn't find the body until later.'

  'I'm so sorry.'

  Matt had used those words before, talking to the relatives of men who'd died in the regiment: each time he'd been struck by how little they measured up to the enormity of the sorrow he was confronting. But what else could you say? The words just didn't exist.

  'Since you're here, come and get a cup of tea.'

  Matt followed him towards the kitchen. The back door was open, and a pair of plastic chairs were sitting out on the patio that led into the small, ten-foot-by-eight garden. The woman was sitting alone, and Matt could only see the back of her head. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her shoulders were slumped forward.

  'This is Matt Browning,' said Barry towards the patio. 'He was a friend of Ken's in the army.'

  The woman looked round. Eleanor, Ken's younger sister. Matt had met her once before, at the christening, but she looked different now. Her eyes were puffed and blotched with tears, and her skin was drawn with worry and exhaustion.

  Matt stepped towards the patio, leaning against the spare chair. 'I went to the hospital because I wanted to see him,' he said softly. 'When I got there, they told me he'd died. I'm sorry.'

  He could dimly recollect their conversation three years ago. He hadn't known anyone at the christening, and, it turned out, neither did she, apart from her own family. Eleanor was very different from Ken, the way siblings sometimes are: Matt remembered being struck by that at the time. A lot more academic than her brother, she had gone down to London to study psychology at Imperial College. Last time he met her, she had been completi
ng a doctorate in mental illness. Where Ken was naturally cheerful and outgoing, his sister had struck him as intense, relying only on herself. They weren't close, Ken had said to him back when they were spending long nights together on guard duty. She was five years younger than him, and she was moving up in her own very different world.

  But whenever he spoke of her, there was a tenderness in his voice.

  Eleanor smiled, and for a brief moment the clouds around her eyes started to part. 'It's come as such as shock to us,' she said. 'The last few days have just been hell.'

  Barry put the cup of tea down in front of him, and Matt sipped it gratefully, glad to have something to do with his hands. 'What happened to Ken?' said Matt. 'I just can't understand it.'

  Eleanor looked up at him sharply. 'You mean the shootings. Or why Ken died?'

  'Both.'

  'Right now, I really can't imagine,' said Eleanor. She spoke quietly, but Matt could detect the steel in her voice. 'But I'm planning to find out.'

  David Luttrell was shorter than Matt had expected. Only one official picture of the head of the Firm had been published in the papers, when he had been appointed to the post two years ago, and that suggested a man of at least six foot or more. In the flesh, Matt judged he was no more than five five, with a slim, wiry frame, and sleek grey hair that was combed away from the sharp, tanned contours of his face.

  'Good to meet you, Mr Browning,' he said, looking up from the laptop on his desk. 'Do take a seat.'

  The building was protected by a thick set of steel doors, for which Abbott needed three separate passwords to gain access. The room was pleasantly air conditioned, a rarity in a London town house. The Firm's main headquarters was a big modern building on the south side of Vauxhall Bridge. But a year ago, its most senior officials had decamped to a modest-looking Victorian house just across the river in Pimlico. The headquarters was too well known, and too vulnerable to a terrorist attack. A September 11-style attacker could almost certainly crash one of his jets into that building, and no one wanted to have to give the order to shoot down a passenger plane over central London. A determined terrorist could even shoot a missile into it from the river as the PIRA had tried to a few years earlier.

  'I've looked at your file, and I'm impressed,' said Luttrell.

  He stood up from his desk, and poured three glasses of iced still mineral water from the counter, handing one to both Matt and Abbott.

  'You know a man called Ivan Rowe, don't you?'

  Ivan, thought Matt. The ex-PIRA bomb-maker who'd saved his life on the last mission. 'Yes,' he answered cautiously.

  'Interesting fellow,' said Luttrell. 'Ever played him at bridge?'

  Matt shook his head. 'No, not my game,' he answered. 'You?'

  Luttrell laughed. 'Ivan was far too good a player for me. I sat in on a rubber or two with him once. Impressive. He was always several tricks ahead of the game.' Luttrell looked back down at the file on his desk. 'Ten years in the SAS, a Military Cross, recommendations for promotion,' he continued. 'You were a model soldier. You should be working for us, not running a bar out in Marbella.'

  'I like the sunshine,' answered Matt crisply.

  'I'd have thought you'd have seen enough of it by now.' Luttrell sat down. 'Abbott has a job for you, and tells me you need some persuading. What are your doubts? If I can, I'll try to allay them.'

  'My doubts?' Matt laughed. 'I don't like being bullied and threatened.'

  'Nature of the work, I'm afraid,' answered Luttrell. 'It's a bit like the press-gangs they used to have in Nelson's day. You'd be walking back from the pub a bit squiffy, you'd get a knock on the head, and you woke up to find yourself doing five years in His Majesty's Navy.' Luttrell chuckled. 'People think the world has changed, but the one lesson everyone in the military or intelligence trade learns pretty early on is that nothing really changes. They are still studying Alexander the Great's battles at Sandhurst because they are just as relevant as they have ever been. What worked for them, will work for us. And, the kind of work we do, if we sat around waiting for volunteers . . . well, you know what I mean.'

  There was a feline subtlety to Luttrell's voice, Matt noticed. Nothing to suggest he was being deceitful or dishonest, but a playful, teasing quality that suggested he didn't mind stretching an idea when he needed to. From what Matt knew of his record, he'd served the intelligence services with distinction for thirty years, and he'd made his name as the Firm's senior officer in Belfast through the late eighties and early nineties. By reputation, he was a pretty straight guy, but nobody remained that straight while tiptoeing their way through the minefields of Belfast.

  Luttrell leant forward, taking a sip on his mineral water. 'If you think you're being press-ganged, Mr Browning,' he said, 'I'm sorry.'

  'You blocked my accounts.'

  Luttrell laughed. 'Take it up with the Consumers' Association.'

  'You're threatening me with murder charges.'

  'You're guilty. Not that it makes any difference.' He sat back in his chair. 'Try to picture a series of rocks, all piled up on top of each other, with cement between them. A brick wall. That's what you're banging your head against.' He stood up, walking towards the window. A fierce midday sun was starting to beat down through the window. Luttrell pulled down the blind. 'Abbott wants you for this job. The Firm wants you for this job. I haven't agreed to see you to haggle. I'm not a negotiating man. I'm just here to confirm what Abbott has already told you.' He turned to face Matt directly, his eyes locking on to him. 'We're making you a fair offer. Take this job, the slate gets wiped clean. All debts are paid on both sides. You have my word on that.' He shrugged, walking back towards his desk. 'It's up to you, but if I were unlucky enough to find myself in your boots, I'd make that deal.'

  'There's something I don't understand,' said Matt. 'What's the relationship with Tocah? What do they have that gets this kind of treatment?'

  Luttrell smiled. 'Look up the trade statistics sometime,' he said. 'Pharmaceuticals and oil, our two biggest exports. The British economy depends on companies like these.'

  The lamb dopiaza tasted good. It was just after nine, and Matt had hardly eaten all day. He shovelled the food on to his plate, mixed it up with some rice, dipped the edge of his nan bread into the sauce, and started eating.

  Never try to make a decision on an empty stomach. The hunger stops you from thinking.

  After the meeting with Luttrell, he'd taken the tube back to the flat he still owned near Holborn. Abbott had given him a grand in cash to cover him for day-today expenses. With his bank accounts frozen, it was impossible for him even to get fifty quid from the cashpoint, although he at least had transport – his Porsche Boxter was still safe in the underground garage.

  The flat felt dingy. It had been three months since he'd last been back, and without anyone to clean it a thin layer of dust had started to spread itself across the few items of furniture. The post had piled up, but Matt didn't feel like opening any of it. What's the point? he asked himself. It will just be bills, and I don't have any money to pay them.

  He checked the land line. Gill usually called his mobile but perhaps she would call him here if she just wanted to leave a message. 'You have one new message,' intoned the BT 1571 voice. Matt jabbed his finger down on the button, but it was only some prat trying to sell a new credit card. He put the phone down, disappointed, had a quick shower, then went round the corner to the local Indian.

  It was several days now since he'd heard from Gill, he reflected as he ate his food. He took a sip on the bottle of Cobra. She'd thrown wobblies before. Was it possible that this time she meant it? Can she really have left me?