Simmonds stopped and looked at me with the expression of a disappointed schoolteacher. ‘No, I think we’ll walk.’
I was sponsoring the RV, he should have known that I’d organize for our safety. He stared at me for a few more moments and then, as if he knew I was going to follow, continued on walking. I fell into step beside him.
Ahead of us, on the other side of the Thames, the Houses of Parliament glowed in the dark like a picture postcard. We were on a wide pavement that abutted a grass section, and then there was another pavement that serviced the shop outlets that were part of the archways.
Simmonds looked the same as ever, his tie about half an inch loose, the shirt and suit looking as if his wardrobe was a carrier bag.
‘So, Nick, what have you got?’ He smiled but he didn’t look at me. As I told him the story, he didn’t interrupt, just kept his eyes on the ground, nodding. I felt like a son unloading his problems on to his dad, and it felt good.
We’d been walking for about a quarter of an hour and I’d come to the end of my presentation. It was his turn to talk. I somehow expected him to stop, or at least find a bench where we could sit, but he carried on walking.
He turned his head towards me and smiled again. ‘Nick, I had no idea you’d be so thorough. Who else have you spoken to about this?’
‘No-one else, only de Sabatino and Euan.’
‘And has Euan or this de Sabatino also got a copy of the disks?’
I lied. ‘No, no-one apart from me.’ Even when you come to someone for help, you never play your full hand. You never know when you might need an edge.
He remained incredibly calm. ‘What we have to ensure is that no-one else finds out – not for the moment anyway. This is more than low-level corruption. The links with PIRA, Gibraltar and, it seems, the DEA mean this is very grave indeed. You seem to have made a pretty good fist of this so far, so let me ask you something.’ He paused as if he was a judge about to give his deliberation. ‘Do you think it goes further?’
‘Fuck knows,’ I said. ‘But you can’t be too careful. It’s why I wanted to talk to you on your own.’
‘And where is the Brown child now?’
I lied again. ‘In a hotel, fast asleep. I’ll be needing some help to pass her on to her grandparents.’
‘Of course, Nick. All in good time.’
We walked on a while in silence. We got to a bar on the corner of a car tunnel under the railway line. Simmonds turned to the right, taking us under the arches. Then he spoke again, and it was as if there was no question of me not complying with his demand. ‘Before I can do anything to help you, what I need from you, of course, is the evidence.’ He was still not looking at me, but making sure he avoided the puddles of water stained with engine oil.
‘I haven’t brought the disks with me, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Nick, I shall do my best to see that you both have protection. But I do need the proof – and all copies of it. Can you get them for me now?’
‘Not possible. It won’t be for a few hours.’
‘Nick, I cannot do anything without them. I need all copies. Even ones you’d normally leave in that security blanket of yours.’
I shrugged. ‘You must understand that it’s for my own protection.’
We turned right again and were now heading back towards the station, paralleling the railway. For a couple of minutes we moved in silence along narrow, warehoused streets. Simmonds was deep in thought. A freight train rumbled above us on its way to waking up the residents of south-west London. Why the fuck was it so important for him to know how many copies there were and get his hands on all of them?
‘Believe me,’ I shouted above the noise, ‘I’ve got that side all under control. I’ve been fucked over enough. You know as well as I do that I’ve got to protect everyone, including you.’
‘Yes, of course, but I need to control all the information. Not even you should have it. There is too much risk involved.’
This was getting stupid. ‘I understand that. But what if you get zapped? There would be nothing to back up what I’m saying. It’s not only the Americans’ corruption, don’t you see? Gibraltar was a set-up. It includes us.’
Simmonds slowly nodded at a puddle in the gutter.
‘A few things puzzle me,’ I said. ‘Why were we briefed that the bomb would be initiated by remote control? How come the int was so good about the ASU, but so wrong about there being no bomb?’
Still he gave no reply.
Things weren’t adding up here.
Oh fuck.
I felt as if I’d been hit on the back of the head by a fire extinguisher again. Why hadn’t I thought of it? The freight train’s rumbling was now in the distance. The early-morning silence had returned. ‘But you know all this, don’t you?’
No reply. He didn’t even break his stride.
Who had briefed us that the Gibraltar bomb was going to be initiated by remote control? Simmonds, who was there at Alpha to oversee it. Why the fuck hadn’t I thought of it before?
I stopped in my tracks. Simmonds kept walking. ‘This isn’t just an American/PIRA thing, is it? It’s much bigger. You are part of it, aren’t you?’
The rear arches were more light industrial than retail – car-repair shops, sheet-metal works, and storage units, most with company vans that had been parked outside for the night. On our left, about 20 metres away, was a grassy area that belonged to a council estate, then flats beyond that. All around us were metal refuse containers and large red recovery vehicles, with yellow warning lights on their roofs.
He turned to face me and took the six steps back to where I stood. For the first time, we had eye-to-eye. ‘Nick, I think you need to be aware of something. You will give me all the information – and I mean all of it. We cannot take the risk of other copies being in circulation.’
The look on his face was of a chess grand master about to make the decisive move. The shock and horror on mine must have been plain to see.
‘We didn’t necessarily go along with the Americans’ determination to kill you, but you should be in no doubt that we will do so now if we have to.’
‘We?’
‘It’s much bigger than you think, Nick. You’re intelligent, you must realize the commercial and political implications of a ceasefire. Exposing what is on the disks would mess up much more than just what you know. It’s very unfortunate about Kevin and his family, I grant you. When he told me what he’d discovered, I did try to talk my American colleagues into a subtler course of action.’
So that was why I’d been ordered back to the UK so apruptly. Once Simmonds had talked with Kev, he wanted me out of the US – and quick. He didn’t want me speaking to Kev – or interrupting his murder.
I thought of Kelly. At least she was safe.
It was almost as if he was reading my mind. ‘If your choice is not to give me all the information, we will kill the child. And then we will kill you – after extracting what we need. Don’t be naïve, Nick. You and I, we’re the same. This isn’t about emotion, this is business, Nick, business.’ He looked at me as a father would a wayward son. ‘You really have no choice.’
I tried to fight it. He had to be bluffing.
‘Euan sends his regards, by the way, and says that he managed to get a television set for her bedroom. Believe me, Nick, Euan will kill her. He rather likes the financial benefits.’
I shook my head slowly from side to side.
‘Think back. Who initiated the contact?’
He was right, it was Euan. Simmonds was there to direct it, Euan was there to pull the trigger. But I still fought against the idea.
He opened his jacket and pulled a mobile phone from his inside pocket. ‘Let Euan explain; he was expecting a call later anyway.’
He turned on the power and was waiting to put in his PIN number. He smiled as he looked down at the phone’s display. ‘This is how the Americans found you, you know. People think that detection can only take place when the phone is in use. Not so. As long as they’re switched on, these things are miniature tracking devices, even if no calls are made or received. It’s actually a form of electronic tagging. We find it terribly useful.’
He tapped in his PIN number, the tones blaring out of his hand. ‘However, once you’d given them the slip at Lorton, our only option was to let you make entry back into the UK. I needed to know what you’d found out. I have to say, I’m so glad your cancer treatment was successful.’
Fuck! He hadn’t even mentioned my lack of hair. That was because he already knew. But Euan. He’d been aware enough to mention it. I felt sick knowing he was using his skills against me.
Simmonds smiled. He knew he had me by the bollocks.
‘Nick, I’ll say this again. I really do need all the disks. You know the child would suffer greatly; it’s not something that we would enjoy, but there are important matters at stake.’
I wanted so much for him to get through to Euan. I wanted to speak to him, wanted him to confirm that it was a bluff. But in my heart of hearts I knew that it wasn’t.
Simmonds had nearly finished tapping in the number.
I had no choice. I couldn’t risk Kelly. He wasn’t going to make this call.
With my right arm in a hooked position, I swung round hard and connected with his nose. There was a dull crunch of fracturing bone and he went down with a muffled moan. While he writhed on the ground I kicked his case under one of the recovery trucks and, in the same motion, picked up the phone in my left hand, got behind him and positioned it at the front of his throat. Grabbing the other side with my right hand, I jammed it firmly under his Adam’s apple.
I looked to the right and left. We were too exposed where we were, and what I had in mind would take several minutes to complete. I shuffled backwards, dragging him in between two of the trucks. I got down onto my knees, all the time pulling back on the phone. He was kicking out, his arms flailing, trying to rip my face apart.
His whimpers and chokes filled the air. I responded by leaning forward, using the weight of my upper body to bend his head down so that his chin was more or less on his chest. At the same time I pulled even harder. Just another 2 minutes and I’d be done.
After 30 seconds he started to struggle furiously, with all the frenzied strength that a man draws on when the knows he is dying. But no matter what he did now he wouldn’t be getting up.
His hands still scrabbled at my face. I bobbed and weaved to avoid them, but maintained the pressure on his throat. Already the scabs from the fight with McGear had been pulled off, but I couldn’t feel much blood. Then he managed to get his fingernails into the cut just below my eye. I stifled a scream as his three nails started to make entry into the already damaged soft skin. I made the injury worse by pulling my face away; as I did, Simmonds’s nails took my skin with them.
I didn’t bother now to see if anyone was watching. I was beyond caring. I was fighting for breath myself with the effort, and sweat stung the injuries on my face.
Gradually at first, his movements subsided to no more than a spasmodic twitching in his legs. His hands stopped grasping. Seconds later he was unconscious. It crossed my mind just to get up and walk away, to leave him to suffer the effects of hypoxia and be brain-damaged for life. I decided against. I wanted this fucker dead.
I gave it another 30 seconds. His chest stopped moving. I put my fingers on the carotid pulse and felt nothing.
I dragged him to the wall and sat him up against the doors of a unit. Then I got to my feet and started dusting myself down. Keeping to the shadows, I tucked my shirt in and wiped away the sweat and blood with my sleeve. I checked the phone. It had been turned off in the fight. I wiped my prints off it, then just left everything where it was and casually walked away. If anybody had seen me, so what? It didn’t really matter. I had more important things to worry about.
I drove west, holding my coat cuff against my eye to stop the bleeding.
The whole situation was still spinning around inside my head, slowly beginning to make sense.
I now knew how Luther and co had found me – they must have beaten the number out of Pat and traced the signal while I had it switched on waiting for his call.
If I’d let on to Euan or Simmonds that there was only one more set of back-ups in my laptop and had handed it over, I’d have been dead. They were covering their arses but retrieving the information.
Had Simmonds arranged to phone Euan some time after our meet? Euan was over three hours away and Simmonds’s body would be discovered soon. If Euan found out, he wouldn’t take any chances. He would move location, maybe even kill her straight away. Either way, I’d have lost her. This time there was no question of just leaving her. I could call her on the mobile and tell her to run, but what would that achieve? She was in the middle of nowhere; even if she ran for half an hour it would make no difference. Euan’s house was in the middle of acres of mountains, grass, rocks and sheep shit. He would find her.
I could call the police, but would they believe me? I could waste hours trying to convince them, by which time it would be too late. Or they might take it on themselves to raid Euan’s house and the result would be the same.