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The bullet in his brain isn’t the problem. She is. Michael North is a hero, with a bullet in the brain to prove it. A bullet which has rewired his neural pathways and heightened his sense of intuition. A bullet which is driving him mad…
Working for an extra-governmental agency called The Board, North knows one thing for sure. He is very good at killing very bad guys. But what happens when a hero is ordered to kill a good woman rather than a bad man? Because it turns out that rising political star, Honor Jones, MP, can’t stop asking the right questions about the wrong people. He should follow orders. Shouldn’t he?
In memory of Frank O’Reilly, who loved a good thriller.
Welcome Page
About Killing State
Praise For Killing State
Praise For Judith O’Reilly
Prologue
Chapter 1: London
Chapter 2: London
Chapter 3: London
Chapter 4: London
Chapter 5: London
Chapter 6: Westminster, London
Chapter 7: London
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10: University of Oxford
Chapter 11: University of Oxford
Chapter 12: London
Chapter 13: A West London Hotel
Chapter 14: Westminster
Chapter 15: London
Chapter 16: Newcastle Upon Tyne
Chapter 17: A1
Chapter 18: North Sea
Chapter 19: Hermitage Island
Chapter 20
Chapter 21: Northumberland
Chapter 22: Yorkshire
Chapter 23: Newcastle
Chapter 24: Newcastle
Chapter 25: Newcastle
Chapter 26: London
Chapter 27: Newcastle University
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30: Newcastle University
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33: Newcastle
Chapter 34: Chinatown, Newcastle
Chapter 35: Newcastle University
Chapter 36: Newcastle
Chapter 37: Newcastle
Chapter 38: London
Chapter 39: Savoy Hotel, London
Chapter 40: Newcastle
Chapter 41: Savoy Hotel, London
Chapter 42: Newcastle
Chapter 43: Newcastle
Chapter 44: Newcastle
Chapter 45: Newcastle
Chapter 46: Newcastle
Chapter 47: Newcastle
Chapter 48: Suffolk
Chapter 49: Newcastle
Chapter 50: Newcastle
Chapter 51
Chapter 52: Five hours later
Chapter 53: Suffolk
Chapter 54: 9.25pm. Thursday, 9th November
Chapter 55: Northumberland
Chapter 56: Northumberland
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62: London
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65: Banqueting Hall, Westminster, London
Chapter 66: London
Chapter 67: London
Chapter 68
Chapter 69: London
Chapter 70: London
Chapter 71: London
Chapter 72
Chapter 73: London
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78: Surrey
Chapter 79
Chapter 80: Westminster, London
Note to Readers
Acknowledgements
About Judith O’Reilly
An Invitation from the Publisher’
Copyright
“A terrific future-shock thriller full of pace, tension, character and emotion. Highly recommended.”
Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels.
“Killing State is a psychological thriller with more twists than a pretzel. The author’s first novel is a gritty, action-packed page-turner.”
Andy McNab, author of Bravo Two Zero and Line of Fire
“A worryingly plausible portrait of Britain in the near-future, Judith O’Reilly’s debut novel is fast-paced, packed with action, and introduces a series hero to watch.”
Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses and Spook Street.
“New thriller writers come and go. I suspect this lady will stick around.”
Frederick Forsyth, author of The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File.
“Smart, action-packed and totally immersive, Killing State is set to be one of the biggest thrillers of the year. Don’t miss it!”
T.R.Richmond, author of What She Left.
“A superb political thriller written with aplomb … Former soldier, Michael North is a terrific creation – a hitman with a bullet already lodged in his brain with no time to waste.. This is page-turning stuff and Killing State is a story you will keep reading right till the end.”
Howard Linskey, author of The Drop and The Search and The Chosen Ones.
“In a Dexter meets House of Cards battle this gritty thriller will appeal to readers with a sophisticated palate for political intrigue.”
K.J. Howe, author of The Freedom Broker.
'Compelling page turning read, fast and furious. Perfect for the screen. Cannot wait to read next book–am infatuated with the main character.'
Amanda Robson, author of Guilt and Obsession.
Wife in the North
“Funny, poignant and beautifully written”
Lisa Jewell
“Genuinely funny and genuinely moving”
Jane Fallon, author of Getting Rid of Matthew
“I howled with laughter tears of recognition at every bloody page. My only problem with this book was choosing who to pass it on to first”
Jenny Colgan, author of A Year of Doing Good
“A funny, uplifting and admirable book”
Observer
“Banish January blues with A Year of Doing Good by Judith O’Reilly who resolved to do one good turn a day…utterly uplifting”
Fanny Blake, Woman & Home
“Fizzing with energy Judith’s writing is open-hearted and funny… though not a guide to doing good, Judith’s story may inspire you to do a little more for others this year”
Express
“Glorious sincerity…the admiring accounts of others’ lives, the detailing of the deeds gladly done or furiously resented, the unending chaos of family life – all are rendered honestly, colourfully, and occasionally hilariously”
Lucy Mangan, Sunday Times
“A truly inspirational book with which to begin a New Year… witty and moving”
National Library of Scotland
This morning for Honor Jones MP was unremarkable, except in one respect. She was going to die.
In a dark fleece and trainers, a black Dockers cap pulled over his ears, her killer looked like any other jogger as he waited. It wouldn’t be long now. She liked to run when the streets were quiet and the park was empty.
The day before, he watched her as she stepped out with her shiny blonde hair in a ponytail and white earbuds. She was alone. He could have told her that was dangerous. When there’s a predator about, you’re safest in the herd.
She’d eased the door shut behind her – a considerate neighbour – and, yawning, she fiddled with the iPod. He could have told the Tory MP for Mile End that she should vary her habits. That routine would be the death of her. Down the short herringbone path, through the cast-iron gate which creaked, and onto the street. Stretching out her quads, her slim leg doubled as she pulled her foot up behind her. She did the same with the other leg and then set off. Running steadily down her street, across the road, ducking under the railway bridge, into the park where small-time dealers did small-time deals, by the canal, past the graffitied lock and right into Majesty Park. By the time she was round the far edge of the lake, she was breathing hard but even.
It was there he planned to move in behind her, and, with her listening to her music, he hoped she wouldn’t hear him. He would slide the blade once through the heart, and once through the wall of the stomach, aiming to catch the artery so she would bleed out before help came. Precise. Efficient. Professional. He had been through it in his mind a hundred times, counting it out: she would die forty-two seconds after she first felt his breath on her neck under the swing of that blonde ponytail. He would be careful not to get blood on his running shoes.
After yesterday’s run, the banker who lived in the flat above hers came out as she left for Westminster. She smiled, her hand on his forearm as she said something that made him laugh, leaving him staring after her as she headed for the tube station. The police would question the city boy after the body was found. Had he found her attractive and did she reject him? Did that make him angry? He’d be appalled at her death, distraught, and then outraged that anyone would think that he could do such a thing.
Across the road, Honor pulled the front door behind her, and the watcher felt the oak thud of it. She yawned as she opened the creaking gate, and behind the privet hedge, in the shadowed doorway, he flexed his muscles. He let her go, drawing out the two purple horse-pills from his fleece pocket, chewing them, swallowing. He could hear the sound of her trainers against the wet pavement. And then he moved out from the shadows.
*
At first, he kept his distance.
She was a quarter of a mile ahead of him, then five hundred paces, then four hundred. As she breathed in, so did he, and out again, in and out, drawing the air down deeper as she did. Her stride was shorter than his, but across the water, he knew the exact moment her breath grew ragged and a light sweat broke out on her forehead. She wasn’t as fit as he was but she was fitter than most. Fifty paces between them, she kicked up her heels, pushing herself and forcing him to move up a gear. She was flying.
She was in sight until the moment she disappeared into the trees. A less experienced man might have panicked, but the run through the woods took two and a half minutes, time enough to catch her, and he had the knife ready. Six inches, serrated, he would make it quick, make it a mercy.
His pace was fast and steady. But as he entered the woods and rounded the bend, she wasn’t running ahead of him but sitting on the park bench alongside the path. Smoke curled up from her mouth and for a moment he thought she might be on fire, till he realised there was a cigarette between her fingers. The burning tip the sudden centre of the world.
He broke his stride, hesitated, stopped.
Honor Jones had eyes which were sea-glass green and gold close up and there were smudges under them that looked like bruises. She’d been crying. She pulled first one bud and then the other from her ears, watching him all the while.
“I have to finish the cigarette,” she said, and with the tip of her thumb nail flicked ash from the barrel onto the damp ground.
From behind the trees, there was a squawking and a clatter as four Canada geese rose from the lake up into the air. And it came to him that she knew what he was. She’d known he was there all along. Waiting for her. Pursuing her.
Which meant that she knew what he was there to do. But why wasn’t she screaming?
His right hand lay alongside the knife, the thin polyester tracksuit the only thing between his cold flesh and the warm blade.
He was still six feet away from her, and she could run. Twenty feet beyond the shadowed bench was open ground and she might be lucky. A man might be walking a dog. It might have been a dog which spooked the geese. An Alsatian lapping at the water’s edge between the concrete and the slime. He didn’t think she would run though, her muscles weren’t bunched and ready for flight. Her left arm was stretched out along the bench, and he imagined her sitting relaxed on the green benches of the Commons chamber waiting for her turn to speak.
Her chest rose as she inhaled again. He moved closer and her jaw tightened.
She flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stood with a sigh. “I was warned you’d come and I didn’t believe it,” she said, using her trainer to grind the cigarette end into the path.
The blade was cold now – enough to burn through the muscle down to the bone. She tilted the blonde head to one side.
“Have you been sent to kill me?”
There was a note of enquiry to her voice rather than panic. Curiosity rather than fear. She took a step closer into the silence between them, and North smelled the Chanel on her skin. She reached for him, but didn’t touch him.
“Where’s Peggy?”
Honor’s voice was soft – persuasive.
He had no idea where Peggy was. No idea who she was.
All he knew was that when he broke into the MP’s flat yesterday, Honor had scrawled the name Peggy in scarlet lipstick over and over again on her bathroom mirror.
She dropped her attempt at persuasion, glaring at him, her hands on her hips. “You’re going to kill me because I’m looking for her aren’t you? That’s the only possible explanation.”
Her friend Peggy was missing and she was trying to find her. Someone didn’t want Honor to find Peggy.
He wasn’t a murderer or a mercenary. He was duty-bound to follow orders, and this was nothing personal. The MP was a target, and she was dead already if only she knew it.
His weight on the balls of his feet.
Honor’s death would happen in seconds. Merciful. She wouldn’t suffer more than she had to. North made a deal with himself.
He heard the messenger slide the black envelope under the door during the night, but he ignored it. An exercise in discipline.
Sun fought against charcoal clouds through the window of the Marylebone flat as a scowling Michael North emerged from the bedroom. His head pounded. He ran through in his mind the fight a week earlier: several sledgehammer punches to his temple and jaw before he closed the guy down. Not clever bearing in mind his situation.
And it was too bright in here. He pressed a button and the Venetian blind slid halfway down the glass. For a split second, he glimpsed a figure on the street gazing up at the building, but the falling wooden slats moved too quickly and, when he checked again, the figure had gone.
He popped the blister packet he pulled from his back pocket, chewing the two purple tablets en route to the kitchen, the taste bitter on his tongue. He didn’t know what was in them – the Harley Street medic prescribed them. “In the circumstances, Michael…” that is to say “bearing in mind you’ll be dead soon, you can have these experimental drugs”. He didn’t ask the medics questions but sometimes they told him anyway. Things like “Watch for an escalation in the insomnia and migraines or any obsessive behaviours – that may well mean the bullet has shifted”. And when the bullet in his brain shifted, he didn’t need anyone telling him – he was a dead man.
He was shot on patrol outside Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan five years ago.
The sniper made his own ammunition and the doctors told him he was “freakishly lucky” in the bullet’s trajectory and position – just short of the posterior parietal artery in the right temporo-parietal junction. North didn’t feel lucky. Neurosurgeons removed fragments of bone but couldn’t extract the bullet without further catastrophic damage. They were sorry. Instead they induced a three-month-long coma and let the inflammation of the brain subside. Would he like them to operate again? He’d said no but he often thought he should have said yes. Because what the doctors didn’t know was that he suspected the bullet was driving him mad.
On the upside, there was as yet no sign of the loss of cognitive and motor decline they warned him of. And he doubted he would live long enough for the epilepsy and dementia to kill him.
On the downside, the bullet affected his brain processing – new neural pathways establishing themselves, heightening his intuition when it came to other people, a sixth sense so to speak. At least that’s how he rationalised it when he left the hospital and did the research. Neuroplasticity it was called. The brain’s ability to heal and to compensate. He trawled through academic papers, medical journals and books he barely understood till it didn’t frighten him. Till he could make himself believe it was possible, probable even. Till he could comfort himself that he was as normal as the next person. Though the next person didn’t have a bullet in the brain.
If he was wrong about the re-wiring, then he was suffering from the hallucinations and delusions common after traumatic brain injury and the bullet had triggered full-blown psychosis.
He didn’t know which was worse.
With a boost like someone knocking him sideways, the drugs kicked in, spangles and the sensation of annihilating pain fading, and North relaxed.
He crossed to the door and picked up the black envelope, and with it copies of the day’s papers. Scanning the front pages as he switched on the coffee maker – interest from the Balkans in the New Army, Friday’s G8 summit in London, and a Newcastle barman who threw himself from Westminster Bridge, killing himself and a tourist on a Thames cruise. He read the suicide story twice against the racket of steel blades grinding single estate beans.
Something rankled.
There was a prolonged and dangerous-sounding hissing, and a solitary stream of espresso poured into a white cup.
Edward Fellowes jumped from the bridge late on Thursday night. But there were any number of bridges along the Tyne, why would a twenty-one-year-old Geordie travel three hundred miles to jump off a London bridge? North shrugged. The problem with his job was he couldn’t read about anyone dying without wondering who killed them, and whether he’d have done it better.
He carried the cup across to his desk, and sat staring at the envelope.
There was no name on it, but then there never was. The name that mattered was inside. Who was it this time? Would he recognise the face? He felt the familiar rush of adrenalin.
North never liked to hurry opening his orders. There was, after all, a man’s life at stake. It merited some ritual – a degree of reflection. He sipped the scalding coffee, savoured the earthy roast, tasting the promised notes of dark chocolate. He put down the cup, then slid the butcher’s knife under the flap, opening its crimson throat in one smooth sweep. There were no ragged edges.
*
The dozen 10x8s were snapped in a hotel foyer. An oversized lamp was on, so it had to be late. He lifted the first photograph. It was of a couple and he scrutinised the man. Twenties. Denim jacket. Full-blown hipster beard. His phone must have rung at some point because he took a call, turning away from the coffee table to face the camera. But instead of closing in on him, the pictures were suddenly all about the woman. Confused, North fanned them over the table looking for more close-ups of the man, but photo after photo was of the woman. She was dressed in an evening gown, and even in the black and white of the photography, it shimmered. The draped folds of its cowl neck exposing the elegant shoulders, chin resting on her fist, slim fingers covering her mouth as she listened to her companion. Her glance to one side, a slight smile. Even in two dimensions North felt the pull of her.
North flipped the photos with the knife – reluctant suddenly to touch them. On the reverse of the best one was a label written across in cramped moss-green ink. “Honor Jones (31), Tory MP for Mile End, East London. Extreme security risk. Status: critical. Termination: essential. Proposed disposal: random/sexual attack in public space. Deadline: one week. Authorisation: Tarn.”
*
The iPhone lay on his desk.
North had worked for the arms-length, extra-judicial, extra-governmental agency known as the Board for four years. He was going to die young – the bullet guaranteed it. He told them he wanted to do something useful with the time he had left. And they took him at his word.
He scrolled through his phone to tap the Crypt app with its skull and bones icon – a series of numbers and letters spun out through space then lined up, one banging into the next, shuffling and jumping, till the tail-end Charlie arrived and they shuddered to a stop. His private key – good for a 60-second window to break the encryption of the incoming email. He pressed his fingertips together as he swung gently on his chair, waiting for the ping of an incoming email. The digits and letters crumbled to dust in the silence. He refreshed the inbox but it stayed empty.
In the email he expected a briefing on his target of between two and thirty pages – aliases, addresses, known associates, places frequented, crimes, convictions, employment records, recreational activities, usernames, passwords, bank accounts, more photographs and videos, private surveillance and acquired CCTV. Nowhere in the encrypted text would it repeat the instruction to kill – that only came written in moss-green ink in a tar-black envelope. Perhaps there was a change in procedures and they’d sent a hard copy instead, along with the commission? He turned the envelope upside down and shook it to make sure, then peered into its emptiness. Perhaps intelligence on her came in late? More likely the threat was so immediate there wasn’t time to do the background breakdown – but he couldn’t leave it like that.
Pulling the laptop towards him, North took a DVD from a drawer, sliding it into the slot to load the virtual machine he used for sensitive work. These days you couldn’t be too careful. When he finished the work, and closed down the laptop, everything would disappear with it. There was a microsecond pause while he wondered if the Board hacked his computer despite his best precautions. He shrugged – he didn’t have anything to hide from them. But without the email’s unique digital signature, he had no authentication of the handwritten instruction. Unless you count money.
The manager of his account at the Austrian bank spoke English with only the barest trace of an accent. Yes, £100,000 was paid in late last night. Yes they were sure, Mr Wilde (the name in which he kept his account). The normal reference code. Could they help with anything else? Unctuous. Smooth. Unless they could explain why he was paid before rather than after the job, he didn’t need their help. He shouldn’t complain. He had his orders, and he would earn the money.
On first sweep, Honor Jones MP appeared to be a model citizen – a law degree from Oxford, Fulbright scholar, pupillage, tenancy in a leading Chambers specialising in criminal and regulatory law, with a special interest in domestic violence and child protection. Ambitious, smart, connected and charming – no great surprise when a London Tory constituency association selected her for a safe seat. Since then, four years’ steady media-savvy work, tipped for promotion at the next reshuffle, even mentioned by futurologists as a Prime Minister-in-waiting.
He almost missed it.
An online interview in a newsletter for a children’s mental health charity in North London. The article introducing the charity’s new trustees. A chartered accountant, a clinical psychologist and lawyer Honor Jones. “What’s your interest in children’s mental health?” the journalist asked. “Let’s say I have a special interest in resilience. How children who’ve been the victims of domestic violence or witnessed that trauma close up are affected long term.” “May I ask is that something you have personal experience of?” “Unfortunately, that would be correct.”
She could have capitalised on it but she never mentioned it again. Not in any speech. Not in any national interview. Though there were traces of it. A radioactive legacy if you knew what to look for. He went back into her parliamentary record. A hardline speech in a Commons debate on sentencing in cases involving domestic violence. An amendment to a housing bill to make it easier for victims to retain benefit when they moved into a refuge. Written questions on the value of psychiatric counselling for the families of murderers.
Whatever had happened to her as a child, she’d survived. Thrived. Gone into politics, and made a difference.
He’d gone into prison. The Army. Almost died, and killed people for a living.
They had their “resilience” then in common, aside from the fact he was going to be there at her death.
His mind turned to his mother. His drug-addled, booze-soaked, ruinous mother. Neglect. Bruises. Willing to sell herself for a wrap of heroin or a can of strong lager – the fact North loved her, never enough. She loved him too, he supposed, as much as she was capable of loving him. Just not enough.
Honor’s face in the photograph looked different to him now he could read the past in her. The smile still a thing of wonder. But once he looked harder, he thought he could see the hurt in her don’t-touch-me eyes. Harm that couldn’t be undone.
He was curious.
Not professionally.
Personally.
Looking in on her life from the outside, Honor was living up to her name. She was working to make the world a better place. Just like he was.
So what turned her from a public servant into an imminent danger to the security of a nation?
Status offered no defence, he knew that. Power. Wealth. Nothing could protect you if your name came up. He’d taken out a philanthropist-cum-arms-dealer at a black-tie charity ball – a tiny injection as he shook the man’s hand, solid gold cufflinks in the shape of guns, a heart attack, “terrible” everybody said. A corrupt chief constable – driving too fast, narrow road, knew it like the back of his hand but the shame of it: no seat belt, and he was “normally such a stickler”. Logically, killing an MP was not such a stretch, was not so very different. Forget the fact she was a beautiful woman. Forget her childhood. Fixate instead on her adult guilt, on the wrong she had done. But he had no idea what she’d done – why should she be terminated?
He leaned back into the oblique angle of the chair – staring at the laptop, willing it to explain something to him. He just didn’t know what.
Occasionally on an operation in Iraq, hair would rise on the back of his neck as if the air itself carried a message, an electric charge. On those days, at those moments, he stepped more lightly on the sandy roads under his boots.
Something was off.
His bosses thought he could improvise – and he could. When he needed to. But North liked routine, because routine minimised the scope for error. The messenger brought an envelope with photos and a name in green ink and an order to execute. An email spelled out the reason and the details. An unfortunate death came about – restoring a sense of how-it-should-be, of the world brought back into alignment. Only then did the noughts on his bank account ratchet up.
He had a code. He didn’t kill women. This time, worse yet, the Board wanted it to look like a “random/sexual attack”. And that left a bad taste, because there were things you didn’t do, even for King and Country. Remorse and shame weren’t feelings he ever experienced. Not as a child and not as a soldier. Not now. Never. But he feared Honor Jones was a game changer. Honor Jones would haunt him.
Only hunger made him realise the best of the day was gone. Sirens blared, the noise falling away as quickly as it came. His eyes snagged on the crucifix hanging on the wall before he closed them. After five years, North was used to his insomnia. Daylight torpor, night-time fading in and out of reality, and, when he did sleep for an hour or so at a time – the shuddering and falling through space into nightmares of blood and sand and fear. He let out a breath and, as he did, every page he’d viewed downloaded again in his brain, one after the other. Twelve hours. Hundreds of screens. Headlines. Photographs. Hansard reports. Local press. Shaking hands. National stories. Helpful speeches. Maverick blogs. Honor’s smile. The line of her cheek. North’s brain shuddered as if caught in an earthquake. He felt it like a stroke coming on him. Once. Twice. Three times. The sensation of flat moving silver sweeping over his consciousness, his memories, coming fast like the sea over a causeway, covering everything. He fought it and he lost; his last thought was Honor, killing her, and then he slept.
Londoners passed – this way and that, the city hazy and splendid on the horizon. A cold front was moving over the country from the Arctic, a warning that winter was closing in and it would be hard.
Nobody noticed North standing looking over Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames, thinking about where the moving water might take him.
North never met the Board’s other operatives. He presumed like him they’d signed the Official Secrets Act, and were well rewarded for their lonely service. Occasionally, he recognised their modus operandi. One favoured intricately plotted deaths of mid-ranking types that exploded across the papers and were never resolved – attributed to professional Eastern European gunmen, overshadowed by talk of serious financial or criminal interests – the type of murder investigative journalists chased down for decades, never getting anywhere. Another preferred “assisted suicides” – all “he-seemed-so-happy” and “we-never-thought-he’d-do-such-a-thing”. They generally used North when they needed someone who could think on their feet.
He took a breath – the air sharp and painful in his lungs. He hazarded that no one would pick up the phone so late on a Saturday night.
“Chalfont Securities. How may I help you?” The voice was chilly, well-bred.
“Please tell Mr Chalfont…”
That he hadn’t received the email.
That he needed authentication for the order to kill.
To send it and he would kill her. Chip-chop and sharpish.
He raised his fingers to the ridged dip where the bullet had torn through his skull.
“I can’t make the meeting.”
Please tell Mr Chalfont that he wouldn’t kill Honor Jones. Couldn’t.
Because Michael North didn’t have much. But he had his code and it didn’t include killing a woman unless she was physically holding a gun and pointing it at his head. Unless Honor Jones was doing that – and she didn’t look the type – the Board would have to find somebody else.
More than that. The touch of his scar under his fingertips. He couldn’t trust himself. What he believed he knew. Did his mind fill with other people’s thoughts and voices, or his own complex delusions? Freak or lunatic? He had no idea which he was. But he knew this. He’d done too much, killed too many, and he wanted it over. He wanted his freedom. It came to him suddenly, a neural snap, an instant of electricity re-routing his soul – like falling in love.
The certainty shocked him. He wanted to be a good soldier, to follow orders and get the job done. Not least because doing his duty was the only peace he’d ever known. Up to this point, he read a name on a page and followed through without hesitation. The problem was this time the sight of Honor Jones’s face made him ask “Why?” And instead of anticipation as he considered the photograph of the woman who was to be his next target, all he felt was profound dismay.
There were limits, and he’d reached them. Whatever time he had left, he wanted to live it differently. To stop the killing. To be honest. To connect. Not to be alone.
Beneath him, a Thames barge loaded with rubbish passed through the bridge on its way to the sea. It would be an old-fashioned way to die, he thought, drowning in a river. A Victorian death meant for lost women and foundlings.
“How very…unfortunate.” A note of surprise, disapproval, at the other end of the phone. As if no one had ever cancelled a meeting with Mr Chalfont before. “Are you sure,” a pause, “Mr North?” How did she know his name, he wondered? The number? He used a disposable pay-as-you-go. Different every time. Voice recognition? Or was his the only job out there at the moment?
He left the question out there. What happened when you said no to people who didn’t take no for an answer? He wasn’t at all sure, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Mr Chalfont will be in touch.” She disconnected the line.
Mr Chalfont didn’t exist of course. Neither did Chalfont Securities. Nor was there a frosty PA tapping at her computer with polished nails. Or maybe she at least existed – not so much a PA as an officer in an organisation whose only business was killing.
He dropped the phone on the ground, covering it with his right shoe, feeling the mobile give under his sole. Honor Jones was safe – at least from him. He’d made his decision. The phone splintered, the display cracking into a spider’s web, the back popping to reveal the guts of a tiny sim card. He picked out the sim and dropped it over the parapet into the Thames. A fierce eddy swirled around the supports of the bridge, the water a muddy brown, the tide high and choppy. The glinting sim rested on the surface for a second, before it sank. He once read a story about a fisherman who caught a fish, and when he gutted it, he discovered the fish had eaten a gold ring. North thought about the fisherman, how if a fish ate the sim card, he’d have to find the fisherman who’d caught it and kill him. Stone cold dead.
A yell of protest from further along the bridge brought him back to reality. A shaven-headed lad in New Army uniform staggered along the pavement – high on something cheap and potent. Behind him, an elderly vagrant, his skinny dog on a string, was limping away as fast as he could.
Months ago, as an isolationist US under President Donald Trump slashed its defence spending on Europe, the UK Government privatised the Armed Forces.
Reports about the nascent National Defence Force warned that thousands of experienced soldiers, sailors and airmen had quit overnight. In particular, traditionalists slammed the fact “New Army PLC” soldiers swore no oath of allegiance to King and Country. But the move was already saving the country millions in salaries and pensions, and recruitment – particularly straight out of prisons – was booming. No one could argue with the figures. Indeed, any opposition was branded unpatriotic as private investors brought market efficiencies to defence, re-invested savings into equipment and training, then sold back the services of the streamlined Armed Forces and procurement to the government. All the while making a neat profit and preserving national security in a post-NATO world. The term “nasty boys” to refer to the new recruits was unfortunate, but the New Army admitted there were still a few branding issues to work through.
North figured he was well out of it.
A bitter wind sliced through him like razors as he looked away, moving the pieces of the phone with his foot, letting them fall into the gutter. He started walking. He could afford to turn down this one job.
But they would never let him quit. There were no gold watches in this business. No, if he really wanted the killing to be over, he’d have to disappear – start over in some other place. Somewhere warm? Freedom. He raised his head. Pursed his lips to whistle. He liked whistling, though he couldn’t hold a tune.
When the nasty boy smashed hard into his chest, North used his own bulk to ward him off – careful not to meet his eye. But the lad wanted more respect.
“Mind yourself, cocksucker,” he snarled – the heady smell of lager and piss, grabbing hold of North’s arm to spin him round, spittle spraying his face. Like an old-fashioned boxer, the lad’s knuckles and the gaps between them were tattooed. Instead of LOVE and HATE though, it was with the New Army motto BRITAIN across the right fist and FOREVER on the left. “Britain Forever”. Patriotism made easy for those who didn’t have to live by it. This swaggering, vicious thug claiming to defend a country which was nothing like him.
The Board would come for him, thought North. Not tonight. But soon. He gave a quick look-round, checking the solider wasn’t a diversion, that an attack wasn’t coming hard and fast from somewhere else. But the street was quiet.
North held the struggling nasty boy away by the lapels of his serge jacket. The outraged solider pushing in towards him keen to do violence, spitting, cursing, small eyes bulging either side like those of a reptile – primed to survive, threaten, intimidate.
“You dropped something,” North said and spun him to one side, pushing the shaven head closer to the ground and raising his knee at the same moment to smash into the lad’s face. He brought him up again. From a distance it would look as if North steadied a drunk against the stonework of the bridge. Up close, he flattened one hand against the crushed wreckage of the cartilage and pressed hard. The nasty boy shrieked in a rising note of pain, his voice muffled by North’s other hand, and blood spurted from between the fingers.
He released the weeping nasty boy who reeled and staggered across the road, only stopping to spit and curse from the safety of the other side of the carriageway. And North admitted the truth to himself. Somewhere, the small print of his unwritten contract carried the warning that refusal was prejudicial not just to your career but to your own prospects of survival.
The vintage Bentley moved alongside him like a shark scoping a surfer. Occasionally the driver revved the engine; once the car mounted the kerb behind him – its steel bumper almost catching his heels, but North kept his pace steady. His trainer had a hole in the bottom – London rain filling the fabric shoe so fast he might have been barefoot in the roll and broil of the sea. He never gave much thought to his own physical comfort. If anything, he enjoyed the soft smack of the rain on his face – first this way, then that – puddle-damp feet, breathing in bus diesel and city dirt, the bite and push of the north-easterly wind through his sodden hoody bringing him back to a sense of who he used to be, distracting him from the conviction that something bad was about to happen. He just wasn’t sure what – or whether it was going to happen to him.
The Bentley bumped back onto the road.
At ten to six in the morning, the shops along Marylebone High Street were still shuttered and dark inside; bundles of bulky Sunday newspapers tied up like prisoners outside the newsagent.
Beside him, the rear nearside window cracked, and cigar smoke crawled out and up around the roof, eager to escape.
“Come in from the rain,” said the voice.
North stopped running, and turned on his heel towards the car.
“We can’t have you catching a chill, darling boy.”
A stranger might have termed the traveller’s voice engaging, but even a stranger would have recognised an order rather than an invitation.
A teardrop of rain trickled down North’s velvet nape and bumped along the bones of his spine before plunging into the warmth he’d been hoarding between hunched shoulder blades. Someone, somewhere, had been telling him what to do since he was born. A man could tire of it.
“North,” the voice warned, and with a sigh, North reached for the handle of the Bentley.
He hadn’t closed the door before the car set off, veering to the right. The door swung away from him, his body shifting outwards with the weight, dipping over the rapidly moving ground before he managed to pull himself upright again and slam it – his heart banging in his chest.
In the front – the driver’s head almost touched the roof of the car; the back of a familiar fat neck, the folds of flesh red and hanging over the shirt collar. North found the rear-view mirror, a razor flick of the driver’s pouchy eyes rewarding him for his effort, before they went back to the road.
“North, you look well.”
Lord Lucien Tarn, former Justice of the Supreme Court, himself looked like nothing more than a death’s head.
“Doesn’t he, Bruno?”
“Peachy,” said the driver, loading the word with contempt and ill-will. There was the sound of rods tumbling into a lock and Tarn spoke again.
“Not like a man with a bullet in his brain at all.” The judge sucked hard on the stub of a cigar as he regarded his reluctant passenger, its tuck flaring crimson and white, the acrid tang of it hot and dry. “Good enough to eat.” Under the cheekbones, smoke and words came out of the judge’s mouth, both together. “As Bruno says.”
During the trial at Southwark Crown Court for the manslaughter which left his mother’s pimp dead, thirteen-year-old Michael North learned to be wary when the judge’s sunken gaze met his; when the lawyers argued self-defence and those gimlet eyes told the boy that he already knew his absolute guilt, presumed his murderous intention, understood, and didn’t blame him. North resisted the sudden smell of blood, the shattering of bones. The judge never saw him without thinking of who he was as a child and what he did. Or he never saw the judge without guilt – one or the other. He forced himself to stare back; the skin beneath the judge’s clipped hair on the skull so white it was as if the stubble grew straight from the bone.
“Your call last night hasn’t been well-received, darling boy.” The judge shook his head in fond rebuke.
Bruno swung the car left on to Wigmore Street, clipping the pavement, and North braced himself against the seat in front.
“What can I say? It didn’t feel right.” How to begin to explain the deep sense of unease triggered when he stared at the photograph? His recognition that Honor Jones had survived who knows what. His sudden yearning for a life which was clean and free of the need to kill. It was a simple thing to write a name in green ink. It was altogether harder to draw a line through it.
“Exactly who is the Board?” There were times when it was easier to attack rather than defend a position.
Tarn frowned, and the atmosphere in the car chilled. A sudden memory came to North – one that was all his own. His mother, drunk, and shivering on a stained mattress. Gripping his hand. Blaming the future. Mortality. “Someone walked over my grave,” she said, blessing herself over and over. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Before letting go, to reach for the nearest bottle.
“Why ask?”
“I woke up curious.”
He’d always thought it better that he didn’t know. But who were these people who decided who should live and who should die, while other men did their killing?
“I’m intrigued, Michael. Perhaps you consider you have the luxury of free will?” Bruno’s eyes met his. Envy. Anticipation. Loathing. An appetite to do bloody violence. The sound of the car locking as he climbed into it.
“Because you made your choice when you signed up,” the judge spoke with deliberation – as if he were explaining due process to the accused child still standing in the dock. “You swore an oath to protect your country against its enemies, and it does have enemies. Are you paid enough for what you do? These questions, this virginal hesitation – is it a matter of money, dear-heart? Because as I understand it, you’ve already been paid?”
The implication he could be bought devoured North – anger growing and writhing and filling the world, filling him, before he sensed Bruno move in his seat, two massive hands gripping the wheel going to one, the other sliding into his jacket pocket. What did the big man have? A gun? Bespoke knuckle-dusters for those immense hands?
North exhaled, letting go the violence he wanted to do. The exchange was designed to provoke. He was back on trial.
He didn’t do what he did for money. Never.
As if he had been teasing all along, Lord Tarn laughed, his voice loud in the confines of the car, and patted North’s knee with bony fingers. The flick-knife eyes in the rear-view mirror widened in surprise, but Bruno took his hand from his jacket pocket again and moved it back to the wheel, then the gearstick, taking the Bentley up to sixty in what had to be a restricted zone. The car hit a speedbump – lifting and dropping back onto the road, and the impact travelled up through North’s spine and into his head. Another razor flick, as Bruno made clear the punishment was intentional. Tarn didn’t seem to notice, his hand still on North’s knee. He moved, and the judge remembered the hand, removing it with the kindest of smiles.
“Without my intervention, the Army would never have taken you. I spoke for you on your release from custody, because I saw something of myself in you. I always have. I understood what you’d done as a child and the great man you could be. And five years ago, when you were wounded, I sat at your bedside every day willing you out of the grave. Your own father couldn’t have done more.”
The memory of opening his eyes to the buzzing strip lights of the military hospital, of crushing pain, and of the judge’s face leaning in towards him. The shock of the other man’s pity. The judge’s desire smashing its way into North’s own mind. Before he worked out what the bullet did to him.
Tarn stared at the length of ash ready but not yet falling from the tip of his cigar. “Once you recovered, I assured people that you could be relied upon – and they took me at my word.” The judge pushed out his pale lips in distaste. “You have a purpose, my darling – don’t throw it all away on a whim, because it could be the last thing you do.” His eyes met North’s. “And nobody wants that. I wouldn’t want that.”
Rain skidded and careered down the passenger window. The car slowed. Photographs of a woman burning in the sink. North knew London well, took a pride in it. Fire devouring the woman’s beautiful face, turning her to ash. And he knew where this journey was heading because he bought the ticket a long time ago. There was no going back. No freedom.
But the judge was still talking.
“You and I, North, we share a belief in real justice and in our sacred duty. Our political system is dying from the inside out. We can trust no one. We have no one. The Board is necessary – now more than ever – because we keep things safe.”
“…Cannot be allowed to live…” he heard the judge as clearly as if he’d passed down a verdict in open court. “She’s dangerous and she’s too much of a risk to leave out there. Honor Jones threatens to bring down everything.”
There it was. Whether he was mad or whether he had a skill he didn’t want. Here was the truth of it. The beating heart. This man he trusted – a judge who dedicated his own life to public service – believed Honor Jones had to die. Or, North’s own subconscious knew that as a fact.
But it was hard. The taste of stale cigar smoke filled his mouth, furring his teeth as he made one last attempt at escape.
“I’m tired, Tarn.” His voice came out louder than he expected. The car had stopped. A beat.
“Aren’t we all? But we carry on. Regardless. The death of Honor Jones is regrettable, I agree, but it is necessary.” The judge reached out to a silver ashtray in his door and dropped the tiny body of the almost-dead cigar in its belly, its ash finally breaking apart.
“There’s a greater good,” the judge said as if it were the answer to everything.
It was over. The endorphin release of his run gone, North admitted the truth to himself – he wasn’t free. He would have to kill her. Honor Jones MP RIP. His gorge rose. Queasy from the cigar, the confinement, the job, he fought the urge to retch.
The door on his side opened onto the backstreet. He was somewhere in the furthest stretches of South London. Bruno would have made sure it was as inconvenient as he could make it.
“Don’t be distracted by a pretty face. Remember, without Eve, there would have been no Fall.”
North climbed out – and, as he looked back into the car, Tarn took hold of a newspaper, settling into his morning routine. “Latest hack embarrasses social media giant…” He couldn’t read the rest of the headline.
“You have till Tuesday. Let’s get it done.” Tarn’s teeth were blinding white, his smile charming. “You’re beloved by the gods, North, as well as me – few among us are given a second chance.”
As the Bentley drove away, the dirty spray from a gutter puddle drenched him. He stepped back, but too late, and swore. Through the side mirror, Bruno watched him, grinning.
North hoped Honor Jones was ready to die.
The photograph was a good one, their hair everywhere in the wind, blonde and black mixing together, pink cheeks and noses, laughing. When she printed it out, she wrote a reminder on the back in pencil like her mother used to do – Hermitage Island, February.
Bleeding cold!
Honor slid it back under the portcullis fridge magnet alongside the postcard quoting Winston Churchill – Never, never, never, give up – and reached for the merlot to pour a glass. Still standing up, she drained it, before she checked the phone. Peggy’s last text from three weeks ago. “Working on something big sweetie. Need headspace. Will be in touch soon as I can. Peggyx.”
Honor didn’t see it at first. She was too furious.
She didn’t see it till she got home after meeting Ned Fellowes in the hotel foyer, and read it over.
Peggy never called her “sweetie”, only ever “sweetpea”.
She’d never have used the term “headspace”.
And she never signed off her messages “Peggy”. She signed them Px, or didn’t sign them at all.
*
Despite the fact they lived in different cities, they talked every day without fail, sometimes two or three times. Things became real once she’d told Peggy. Events mattered more. Jokes were funnier. Most days they texted. Occasionally they emailed. At night, one or other would call and they’d talk through their day before sleep. Even on the nights she spent with her partner JP in Knightsbridge, she talked to Peggy at some point. JP sulking with silent fury till she wound up the call. Peggy maintaining it was good to make him wait.
What they never did was go to radio silence.
Honor checked the phone again, but there was nothing more from Peggy. No new email. No text. No call missed. By now, she’d have been surprised if there were.
It took her a long time to get back to any sort of normality after her parents died. For the longest time afterwards, Honor jumped at the slightest noise. Insomnia, nausea, palpitations, flashbacks.