‘Get that, will you?’ Kieran shouted at his wife. Janice, of course, knew better than to complain that her hands were full. Division of labour was division of labour. She had her jobs; he had his. But he listened to the sound of her coming downstairs, opening the door, and greeting their visitor with what sounded like enthusiasm but which Kieran – knowing her well – recognised as something else.
‘Cormac! What a lovely surprise. Come on in, won’t you?’
Kieran’s blood ran cold. Cormac never visited people.
Never
. They went to him – either at the Horse and Three Feathers, for business, or at a restaurant, for pleasure, although Kieran suspected that his uncle didn’t really make much distinction between the two.
He stood up just as another pair of feet thundered down the stairs. ‘Uncle Cormac!’ little Jackie shouted, and from his vantage point in the front room, Kieran could just see the newcomer in the hallway, bending down to ruffle Jackie’s hair and give him a lollipop. Then he stood up and looked through the door towards Kieran.
‘I’ll be needing to have a word with your da, young Jackie,’ Cormac said. ‘Why don’t you and your ma just pop upstairs for a while?’ He made his suggestion with a certain authority that it was impossible to refuse. Janice and Jackie immediately disappeared.
‘Come on through, Cormac,’ Kieran called, doing what he could to sound welcoming. ‘What’ll it be? Whiskey?’
His uncle didn’t answer. He stood in the doorway and stared at Kieran. His heavy overcoat made him look bigger than he was, and his bushy eyebrows were furrowed.
‘Will you not sit down, Cormac?’ Kieran suggested, pointing at the comfortable chair that he had just vacated by the gas fire.
Still no reply.
Kieran switched off the TV. He heard himself chattering over the silence. ‘Little Jackie will have been pleased to see you. Always asking where his uncle Cormac is. Doesn’t
stop
asking. He’s like a—’
‘Does the name Siobhan Byrne mean anything to you, lad?’ Cormac asked in barely more than a whisper.
Kieran tried not to let any guilt show in his face, forcing his features instead into an expression of bewilderment. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘No. Who is she?’ He couldn’t quite bring himself to look in Cormac’s eyes as he spoke.
Cormac walked slowly into the room. ‘Why don’t
you
sit down, now, Kieran?’
‘No, really, I’m—’
‘Sit down, Kieran.’ A soft, sing-song voice. Like a hypnotist.
Kieran took a seat.
A pause.
‘How’s Mikey?’
‘Not so good, Cormac. I fucked him up proper, like you told me. He might lose the leg.’
Cormac inclined his head. ‘A shame,’ he observed. ‘Mikey’s a nice lad. But it would be a disaster for us all, wouldn’t it now, Kieran, if we weren’t careful about security. If we didn’t make sure we knew who our friends were, and our enemies.’
Silence.
‘Would you agree with that, Kieran?’
‘Sure, Cormac,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘Sure I would.’
The sound of Jackie’s laughing drifted down from upstairs.
‘I’ll ask you again, Kieran. Does the name Siobhan Byrne mean anything to you?
Detective
Siobhan Byrne.’
‘I told you, Cormac. I’ve never heard of her.’ But he could feel the colour draining from his face as his uncle continued to stare at him with that flinty look.
‘Would you like to know where I’ve just been, Kieran?’ he asked.
Kieran nodded mutely.
‘The lock-up. You know, where you picked up the tools to deal with Mikey.’
Kieran swallowed hard.
‘I couldn’t help noticing, lad, that the money stash was short. To the tune of four G.’
‘That wasn’t me, Cormac,’ Kieran burst out with relief. Of this, at least, he knew he could speak honestly. ‘I wouldn’t touch your money, you know that—’
‘Ah, I thought I
did
know that, lad. Until today, I thought I did. But you see, here’s the thing. You were the only person that knew about that stash. So either you took the money yourself, or you told someone where it was.’
Kieran’s limbs felt heavy with dread. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his uncle was playing with him, like a cat with a mouse. He’d seen that happen before, and the mouse always ended up dead.
‘Maybe someone just knocked it off,’ he suggested, his voice cracking as he spoke. ‘You know, kids or something.’
‘Maybe they did. Maybe they just took the four G and left the rest – not to mention the weapons – and locked the door properly behind them like the good little children that they are. Does that sound likely to you, Kieran?’
He could do nothing but shake his head.
‘So the question is this. Why would I be nosing around that cache if I wasn’t suspicious about something in the first place? Can you think why that would be?’
He shook his head even as a wave of nausea crashed over him. He watched, in slow-motion horror, as his uncle put a hand into his pocket and withdrew a small scrap of paper, which he dropped into Kieran’s lap, like he was throwing a piece of loose change to a beggar.
Kieran looked at the paper. He knew what it was, of course. But the question was—
‘Where did I get it? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, lad? Well let me put you out of your misery. I found it on the floor of Detective Siobhan Byrne’s flat. Now wouldn’t you say that’s an amazing coincidence?’ He looked around the room. ‘Shall I pour you one of those whiskeys now, lad? Or have you got the bollocks to tell me what the fuck has been going on without any Dutch courage?’
Kieran swallowed. He felt sweat soaking into the back of his shirt. More laughter from Jackie upstairs.
‘She had me over a barrel, Cormac,’ he whispered. ‘Threatened me with enough chokey to keep me going till retirement. I couldn’t do it to little Jackie.’ And then he buried his head in his hands. ‘Don’t do it here,’ he breathed. ‘Not in front of my family. I’ll come quietly, but at least grant me that, Cormac.’
He didn’t dare look up.
It was a full minute until Cormac spoke. ‘You realise, lad, that if it was anyone else, you’d already be dead.’
Kieran removed his hands from his face and stared at his uncle.
‘It’s only out of respect for your father that you’re still sitting there.’
‘Thank you, Cormac . . .’ It was all he could think of to say.
‘Don’t thank me yet, you little rat. You’re not out of the woods yet.’
‘I’ll do anything, Cormac. Whatever you say.’
His uncle sniffed disdainfully. ‘So you will, lad. So you will. So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to arrange a little meeting with our inquisitive detective. We’re going to find out what she knows, and then
you
are going to put a bullet in her pretty little skull.’ He knelt down so that his eyes were at Kieran’s level. ‘And make no mistake about it, lad. You put one foot wrong and it won’t be
your
funeral Janice will be arranging. It’ll be young Jackie’s.’
He stood up and walked out of the room. ‘I’ll be showing myself out now, Janice,’ he called up the stairs, before opening the door, stepping outside, and shutting it quietly behind him.
Jack and Markus stood by a hole in the ground. It had taken them an hour and a half to dig it and they were sweating from the effort. And lying at the bottom of the hole was Caroline Stenton’s corpse.
They had taken it where no one would see them – a parched, treeless wasteland a couple of miles from Markus’s safari base, far away from any casual observers. ‘If it was down to the natives,’ he told Jack, ‘they wouldn’t bother burying her. Plenty of wild animals roaming around – a mouthful of her would be like a Big Mac and fucking fries for them. Too goddamn risky, though. Fine if she was black, but the authorities get jumpy when white bodies turn up.’ He grinned at Jack. ‘And I reckon the Company might have something to say about it, if the eyes of the world suddenly turn to my little operation here.’
They started shovelling dirt back into the hole.
‘Jack, buddy,’ Markus said when they were finished, ‘I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into. Ain’t none of my business. But if this is your idea of woman trouble . . .’
They walked away from the grave. Jack didn’t answer his American friend.
‘Done a bit of research of my own since we landed. Hell, Jack, don’t give me that kind of look. Some fucker tries to shoot me out of the air, I want to know who they are. I kept it under the radar, OK? Friend of mine over at Langley. Trustworthy. Got him to pull up everything he could on this Habib Khan fella.’
Jack looked at him. ‘And?’
‘Drew a blank. No priors, no nothing. He’s of no interest whatsoever to the Company.’
Jack remembered something Siobhan had said back in Belfast.
He’s just got good cover.
‘That figures,’ he said. He glanced back at the grave, then continued walking away without regret. Some people weren’t worthy of it.
By now it was dark. Since touching down back in Kenya, Jack and Siobhan had spent the time recovering. Siobhan had slept; when she hadn’t slept, she’d been silent. Jack had let her be. He knew her well, and he knew she’d talk when she wanted to.
Markus drove them back to the Safari. ‘You’ve got an hour,’ he said. ‘Plane back to Nairobi leaves at 21.00. You should be there in time to get the red-eye back to London.’
Jack nodded, then went to find Siobhan.
She was still in the hut where they’d been sleeping and she looked fucked. Red eyes, bags under them and the thousand-yard stare he recognised from the faces of any number of men in the field. But Siobhan was as good an operator as the Det ever had. Close-quarter battle didn’t faze her and Jack knew she wasn’t traumatised by the firefight. It was Lily.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed and barely reacted as Jack walked in. He sat down next to her.
‘You all right?’
Siobhan barely nodded.
‘You did well back there,’ he said. ‘Kept your head. I’ve seen a lot of guys lose it under fire, but—’
‘Do you think she’s still alive?’ she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.
‘Siobhan—’
‘
Do you think she’s still alive?
’
A horrible silence.
‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘But if she is, I’m going to find her.’
They sat in silence. Siobhan rested her head against him. It was comforting, and Jack moved one arm around her shoulders. She felt impossibly slight in his broad arms, and her body felt like it fitted snugly into his, like they were two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
‘We’ll be back in the UK tomorrow,’ Jack said. ‘Khan’s got my name, so I need to keep under the radar, but you can go straight to Belfast. Wait for me there. You should be safe – he doesn’t know who you are.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m going to stay in London for a bit. Do some snooping. Khan’s playing the authorities like an instrument, just like Stenton was. We need their help. They’re not going to pull the big guns out just to find Lily, but if they think there’s going to be a terrorist strike, they will. If we’re going to find him, we need to get them to take us seriously, to show them that he’s not what they think he is.’
‘How?’
A pause.
‘I don’t know.’ He kept his voice level. He could lie to most people easily, but Siobhan wasn’t one of them.
‘I still think we should tell someone now.’
‘Tell them what? That a guy the whole world thinks is a peace campaigner is actually a terrorist fuck? That a brainiac who advises Five is some kind of closet fundamentalist?’ He corrected himself: ‘
Was
some kind of closet fundamentalist. Think about it, Siobhan. Khan took a UN flight into Mogadishu. All the agencies will have details of who was on that plane, so as far as they’re concerned, he’ll still be somewhere in Somalia until they take him out again. He’s got it all figured.’ His face darkened. ‘As for us, I was sent home from the Stan for laying in to some Rupert. I’ve missed my disciplinary with the adjutant. My name’s shit and I’m as good as fired. Next thing, I come up with some bullshit about how they’ve been played and I’m the only one who knows what’s going down. Same with you – you saw what happened when you tried to finger Khan.’
‘What happens if he gets that device into the country?’
‘We don’t even know that the UK’s his target,’ Jack replied. ‘Even if it is, it’s going to take him a while to import it. You can’t just fly into Heathrow with something like that in your suitcase. If I draw a blank, we’ll do it your way, I promise. But I know how the security services work. They get intelligence of a hundred threats a week. Unless I can give them something more concrete . . .’
Silence.
‘What have you done with the body?’ she asked.
‘It’s dealt with.’