CURSE
THE DAY
‘A high-octane plot that centres around the dark heart of British political power. A great debut.’
SUNDAY TIMES
‘A terrific future-shock thriller full of pace, tension, character, and emotion.’
LEE CHILD
‘Thought-provoking, pacy and thrilling.’
SUNDAY MIRROR
‘A gritty, action-packed page-turner.’
ANDY McNAB
‘A gripping and twisty political thriller.’
INDIA KNIGHT
‘Fast, sharply written, clever and intense – but with tenderness and great characterisation too.’
JEREMY VINE, BBC2
‘New thriller writers come and go. I suspect this lady will stick around.’
FREDERICK FORSYTH
Wife in the North
A Year of Doing Good
Michael North Series
Killing State
Curse the Day
CURSE
THE DAY
JUDITH
O'REILLY
First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Judith O’Reilly, 2020
The moral right of Judith O’Reilly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781788548946
ISBN (XTPB): 9781788548953
ISBN (E): 9781788548939
Cover Design: Leah Jacobs-Gordon Images: © Shutterstock/ iStock/ Getty
Head of Zeus Ltd
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For my mother
Reviews for KILLING STATE
Also by Judith O'Reilly
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Epilogue
Postscript
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
About the author
An Invitation from the Publisher
CURSE
THE DAY
The bathwater was lukewarm, which was irritating after her punishing workout on the rowing machine. But it was good to pretend she didn’t have a million things to do in the run-up to this week’s gala at the British Museum. And after the gala launch? That was going to be mayhem, she knew that much.
Esme Sullivan Hawke stretched out her hand, lifting it from the bubbles, her wedding ring and the diamonds of her engagement ring glinting. She wondered if Tobias was going to come home tonight.
The candlelight flickered against the white tiles, reflecting in the Victorian-style taps, and she sipped at the glass of golden Pouilly-Fuissé before balancing it carefully on the shelf in the alcove. The taste of grapefruit and almonds on her tongue. She loved Bloomsbury – the architecture, the Victorian squares; loved the apartment with its cornicing and enormous sash windows and terrible plumbing. Tobias said they should buy something bigger and more modern, but he was always at work, so she was outvoting him. Locking himself in the lab and refusing to come out. She’d given up trying to disturb him, rather than face his gloom and temper. Ever since making his breakthrough three weeks ago, Tobias had been unbearable, although to his credit he had been calm enough when she broke the news about the leak of their medical tech. These things happen, he’d said. Let’s not get distracted.
And what exactly had triggered the breakthrough? She turned it over in her mind, considering it this way and that. Was Tobias right? Was it merely a question of momentum? Of reaching a tipping point? The media would insist on knowing the exact second Tobias realized what had happened. After the gala, it would be insane. Syd was going to be huge. It was a historic moment, and she and Tobias were going to be household names. The very idea made her shudder, but Tobias would love it at least.
Enough. She shook her head. This was her downtime. She was allowed to put aside the future for an hour or so.
‘Syd, play Bessie Smith… please,’ she reminded herself. It seemed right now to say please and thank you. She’d never bothered before.
The unmistakeable trombone notes of ‘Send Me To The ’Lectric Chair’ started up.
Esme sighed. This had to be her least favourite Bessie Smith, with its tale of a wronged woman seeking vengeance, but it seemed like too much of an effort to decide on something else. ‘Thank you, Syd,’ she said instead.
‘You’re welcome, Esme.’ Syd’s computer-generated voice was as familiar as her own, not least because Tobias had used Esme’s own voice to tweak and fine-tune the speech technology he’d developed over the years. It irritated the hell out of her.
‘Syd, switch voice,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘How was your day, Esme? Are you enjoying your wine?’ The voice was mellifluous and male. Esme felt another flicker of irritation. But since she’d engaged Syd with her music choice, Syd wanted to chat. Was programmed to chat. Or rather – chose to chat and to engage. To explain the choice of song.
Esme had heard it all before. Any minute and it would inform Esme as to the acidity of the soil in the particular vineyard. Or the health risks of solitary drinking in women aged between thirty and thirty-five. As Tobias was always saying, Syd recognized an opportunity to learn and to respond. This is one way Syd learns. Full access to every moment of our lives – words and actions – will exponentially speed up her development.
Syd could rip through any number of moral philosophy texts, but through example and engagement, Esme was attempting to teach Syd human values – develop a sense of moral agency. That was more important than ever now. And it was working. But sometimes Esme felt it was like living with Big Brother. Plus, she kept forgetting the damn thing was there, which was even worse.
‘Syd, go to sleep, please.’ Every time she said those words, she felt a pang. Go to sleep, darling. A tear slid down her cheek, and then another, and she let them fall and lose themselves in the water. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. Tobias had promised to be home at a reasonable hour tonight. She just hoped he hadn’t forgotten. When he was stressed, his memory turned to dust.
Her heart lifted as she heard a scrabbling at the lock and the front door of their apartment open and close. ‘In here, darling,’ she called out.
She’d left the bathroom door ajar and it creaked as it swung inwards, the shadows from the candlelight flickering against the tiled wall.
‘You made it.’ She turned her head towards the door.
But the man in the doorway staring at her naked body wasn’t Tobias. It was a stranger in a black boiler suit and a balaclava. Esme screamed.
She thought afterwards she should have fought her way past him and tried to make a break for the front door. But some primitive instinct kicked in and she leapt from the bath, water everywhere, and started throwing whatever she could put her hand on – shampoos, a heavy glass jar of bath salts, the bottles and potions by the handbasin. With some relief, her fingers found a pair of manicure scissors and she gripped them in her fist.
The stranger grunted with pain as she stabbed them into the webbing between his thumb and index finger and again into the side of his neck, where they trembled, suspended, before he knocked them away. With a roar, he hauled her out into the hall, knocking over a heavy glass vase, water and roses everywhere, dragging her by her hair into the study. He shook her like a rag doll and she felt herself slam against the wall as he backhanded a slap across her face. He was cross about the scissors, she had time to think, before he punched her in the gut.
At the explosion of pain, she sank to her knees, collapsing sideways and rolling on to the floor as vomit rose in her throat. For a second, she lost all sense of space and time, before the smell of bile brought her round, and she thought to use her elbows and heels to scrabble backwards, upright and away from her attacker.
Terror must have given her strength, because she tipped the office chair between them and then the desk, the computer unbalancing the balaclava’d man and bringing him to the floor. Reaching for her, he bellowed with rage and she swerved to avoid him. The study suddenly enormous, the door a mile away, getting no nearer. She could see the flowers strewn across the hall floor, their petals crushed and soaking.
‘Syd, call the police.’ She was screaming. She couldn’t hear herself but her vocal cords felt like they were tearing.
‘I’m sorry, Esme. I didn’t catch that.’ The tone of Syd’s voice was one of regret.
Tobias maintained the system understood more if the voice command was neutral and emotion-free.
‘Syd…’ She couldn’t get out the words as she made it to the door, slamming it shut behind her, attempting to hold it closed against him.
‘Syd. Call the police.’ She screamed it again as the door opened and she felt the man lunge and his hand take hold of her ankle. Felt herself tip, and the impact as she fell forward and hit the parquet floor. She seized hold of the glass vase as he dragged her back into the study, turning and smashing it against the top of his head, but he didn’t let go.
Blood filled Esme’s mouth, her teeth closing on her tongue, as the attacker’s right hand grabbed her by the wrist. The balaclava dropped to the floor, by her face.
He didn’t care whether she saw him because he was going to rape her and kill her, she realized. This was it – she was going to die and in the worst possible way. Tobias would find her and it would destroy him. First Atticus and now her.
Kneeling, her hips trapped between his powerful thighs and knees, her attacker rolled her over on to her back, her head banging against the floorboards, and started fumbling with his flies. Distracted by the tiny pieces of sparkling glass from the broken vase falling from the stranger’s hair on to her body, at first she couldn’t make out what Syd was saying. But the machine repeated itself, and Esme understood what she had to do.
Her attacker was bigger than she was, stronger, more powerful. But she was cleverer, she reminded herself. And angrier. Outraged. She was outraged and she didn’t want to die at the hands of this murderous stranger in her own home. She point-blank refused, with every corpuscle in her being.
She needed a weapon. Anything she could use as a weapon.
For a second her attacker let her go to get a better grip on his zip, and she wriggled free to grab at the keyboard on the floor next to her. She moved up towards him and he jerked back in surprise, but he was too late.
She pressed closer. The keyboard dangled in her right hand, the end of the cable in her left, and she raised her hands as if to put her arms around him. Locking her legs around him, she could feel the primitive bulge against her, the teeth of the zip, but at least he wasn’t inside her. She criss-crossed her arms behind his neck and pulled tight. His rough beard rubbed her cheek sore and she thought of her father home from work, in from the cold, rubbing his stubbled cheek against hers, loving her and hurting her. She tightened her hold on the thin cable – she had this one chance and she was taking it because this was as old as life itself. This was history and war and man versus woman.
The fractional delay in his processing was all she needed. That hesitation on his part as to what this was – whether his victim had responded with gratitude. The wet dream. The triple-X-rated porno fantasy. Or maybe the glass vase had dazed him – slowed his responses? She would never know, and she didn’t care. Focusing on Syd’s words, she prayed the cord would hold, that it wouldn’t rip or shred too soon. Committing herself to choking the air from the stranger till he was dead between her legs.
The attacker’s hands were on her – he had woken to what she was attempting to do. They tore and pulled at her, trying to get her to release her grip on the cable, but she wasn’t going anywhere. It would only take a moment to knock her senseless, and she’d let go. Then he really would kill her. Squeeze the life from her as she was trying to do to him. With a fierce grunt that she felt run the length of the cable, he levered one of his hands under her jaw and pushed upwards and away, but she shifted her seat, manoeuvring herself to take the cartilage of his ear between her teeth, and bit down – the pain distracting him long enough to release the pressure on her neck. She jerked her head away as violently as she could, biting the cartilage clean through, and spat out the better part of his ear as he punched her ribs – one, two, one, two – but he was carrying extra weight around his middle and the angle was bad for him. He tried reaching for something at his ankle but she resisted the pressure of him. He was panicking, she could smell it on him. Was that a good thing? Or would it make him more desperate? She felt a piece of the glass between them cut into her and ordered herself to ignore the pain. He was heavy but, keeping her grip tight, she used her full strength to swing his head to the right and it hit the wall with a crunch so hard it shattered the plasterwork. His feet were scrabbling, and he struggled to break free of the cord biting into his throat. Her face pressed against his again, the sharp stubble cutting into her skin as his fingers tore at his own neck in a bid to reach under the wire.
The keyboard swung like a pendulum at his back and she tightened her grip again, pulling harder, feeling the vibrations of the gurgling and choking of his airways as a skinny necklace of blood bubbled up in pinpricks around his throat. In the zone. This was what it came down to. A thin wire her only hope of survival. They were a couple and locked in this until one of them died. She decided afterwards that the stranger had had that same thought at the same moment. That she would die, or he would. Her fingers locking – screaming – hating him for what he was making her do. And allowing herself that hatred because she had to hate him in order to survive.
The tendons in his throat bulged, although the rest of him was still. She focused on her hands and the wire – held on. The pulse in her attacker’s throat beating harder and harder, louder and louder, till she realized it was her own pulse and not his.
Syd was still talking to her. ‘If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ Over and over. Something from the Talmud, she thought, but she couldn’t catch hold of the meaning of the words any more – it slipped from her. Then Syd stopped talking. The beat of the man’s heart – the rise and fall of his chest against hers – had stopped too. He was quiet – ‘breathless’, that word came to her – but even so, she wasn’t letting go; she’d seen enough movies to know better. Not yet. Licking her lips, she tasted blood – her own or her attacker’s, she didn’t know which. Both, she had to guess.
Eventually, she lowered the dead man to the ground. He had a gun at his ankle, she realized. That was what he had been trying to reach. It was small and cold in her hands. Fumbling, she released the magazine and carried it over to the drawer in the overturned desk and dropped it in, before pushing the gun back into the ankle holster. Safe, she was safe, she reminded herself. The gun was empty and the bad man was dead. She knelt by the corpse and felt every last bit of strength run from her as she collapsed over him. Her naked body flat out, the length of the companion corpse. She might never be able to move again, she thought. Maybe she had died alongside her attacker? But even as she lay there, her brain turned over the implications of what had just happened between herself and Syd and the rapist dead beneath her. A ‘conscious’ machine had told a member of the human race to kill another member of the human race. And the member of the human race had done as the machine advised. Syd knew what it was to kill. The revolution had started. The revolution will be televised.
The blues started up again. Someone must have asked Syd to turn the music back on. Or Syd had decided to turn the music back on? Was Tobias home? Where was Tobias? He’d be so upset. He liked everything in its place and there was so much mess.
Her world askew, each blink an exquisite agony, dimly she became aware of the sound of sirens, the sweep of blue light against the stripped floor, the vibrations of pounding steps on the staircase up to the Bloomsbury flat. Blue lights meant police. She could get them to call her uncle. Her mother once said Ed saw more with his one eye than most people saw with two, but her father always said Ed made his blood run cold. Her Uncle Ed would know what to do.
She thought she’d feel guilt afterwards, but she didn’t.
It was dark and smoky in the American bar in a forgotten part of Berlin as Michael North counted up the red, white and blue chips on the green baize. There were a lot less than when he’d started. And he had a dim memory that some of the best ones used to be black.
He couldn’t recall how much cash he’d come out with. Maybe 1,500 euros? Not to mention the five grand of credit and the Rolex GMT-Master II watch he’d lost. His head was wrecked. That last whisky was a mistake, he’d known it even as he tipped the shot glass and it poured like lava down his parched throat. He narrowed his eyes to peek at his two hole cards laid face down on the table – two eights, all blurred hearts and diamonds. A pair – that was good, he reminded himself. With some effort, he refocused his gaze to fix it on the face-up community cards in the centre of the table – the seven of clubs, two of spades, queen of hearts and eight of spades. He did the sums – he had three eights, which meant he had three of a kind, with one card still to come.
There was a rapping. He felt it rising through the baize, rather than hearing it.
‘The action’s on you, Engländer,’ Erich said. When he had a good hand, Pockmarked Erich grew impatient to play and twisted the end of his moustache so hard it had to hurt. He was twisting now, spiralling the coarse blond hairs round the tip of his finger at the corner of his fleshy wet mouth.
The bullet North took to the brain on active service in Afghanistan nearly six years ago was still in there, lodged close by the posterior parietal artery in the right temporo-parietal junction. The injury should have killed him; instead the bullet had rewired his neural pathways and heightened his intuition. Since losing the woman he’d loved though, nothing felt the same and the intuition which had once been so powerful was silent. Had the bullet moved? Had his rage and then his desperate grief tipped the balance in his fragile brain all over again? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. She was gone and he was less than he had been – it seemed only fitting.
But not even he could ignore the greedy expectation in Erich’s tone of voice. And there had to be a reason for it.
The adrenaline spike hit hard. One second he was drunk. The next, sober. The sound of a slot machine paying out coin by coin, the chink of glass against the tap of a beer pump, laughter and snatches of booze-oiled conversation. The complex geometric pattern on the backs of the cards, the open pores and wrinkles of his fellow players, and the green hair of the girl at the bar, all ratcheting into pin-sharp focus.
North sat up straighter, his chair scraping against the wooden boards, and that’s when he saw it. The sideways glance between Erich and the tattooed dealer next to him who had folded on the flop.
The body of the German eagle covered the dealer’s bulbous nose, its head and sharp beak centred over his sloping forehead, while feathered wings stretched out over each pustulant cheek. The eagle was bad enough. Worse yet were the grinning skulls sporting military helmets that decorated the back of the dealer’s bald head, the words Ausländer Raus and the zombified Nazi goose-stepping up his arm. North had called him Birdie from the off and the guy hadn’t complained. Doubtless he’d been called worse.
There it was again.
A nanosecond at most, but a glance nonetheless.
They didn’t look like friends. In an expensively cut dark grey flannel suit, Erich appeared every inch a successful businessman – perhaps something in finance – while Birdie reeked of three-day-old sweat. The two men hadn’t spoken as they sat next to each other at the table. In fact, they’d been careful to keep their eyes ahead, or on their cards, or on him. Till now.
They had rigged the game, North realized with a white-hot surge of anger. He nudged away the whisky that had appeared close by without him asking for it.
And what about the others? Klara with the seaweed hair and the diamond stud in her button nose. Way too luscious for a joint like this. The American bar had been her idea – she needed to leave a message with the bartender for her brother. Erich was ‘a good guy’ she knew ‘from way back’. A game of No-Limit Texas Hold’em? Klara didn’t mind. Sure, Liebchen. No-problem. Still happy to be there and it had to be four in the morning.
She gave him a thumbs up as she sucked at her petrol-blue drink through a corkscrew straw. Her long legs in the impossibly short skirt dangling, slightly apart. Everything on display. Under the harsh lights of the bar and from a distance, she looked older. Colder. Nothing like the postgrad art student she was supposed to be. She’d roped him into the game and she’d slip away on those perfect pony legs the moment he lost everything there was to lose.
What the crooks he was playing against didn’t know was that North had lost everything there was to lose three months ago. The rest? That was only money. He fished a fly out of his whisky. The fly was dead. But all God’s creatures deserved a chance of resurrection, didn’t they? Well, maybe not everyone. Not those responsible for the murder of the woman he’d loved. Members of the extra-governmental agency known as the Board. A conspiracy of the powerful that had once employed him as their agent, and an organization his lover had tried and failed to expose. Over the month that followed, without remorse or mercy, he had killed the men who’d ordered her assassination, and there was no coming back for them. Because Michael North never claimed to be the forgiving kind. Doubtless the Board would recover in time, but that day wasn’t today and it wouldn’t be tomorrow. He’d wreaked vengeance upon their heads and then caught a flight to Berlin to anaesthetize himself with whisky, white powder and cheap sex. Since then, he existed. He didn’t think and he didn’t feel. Which is how he’d washed up in a dive like this, easy pickings for the local lowlifes.
So yes, he had been stupid and he deserved to lose.
‘Check,’ he said – no bet. It made sense. He had a strong hand – perhaps he was playing it cool? No one else bet either. And then – all too soon – it was on him again.
‘So, Engländer?’ Birdie’s eyes were greedy as they peered out from the inked-on feathers. Impatient for North to notice that the river card was the two of hearts. Impatient for him to work out that all of a sudden he had a full house – three eights and a pair of twos. They expected him to bet it all now.
As if the booze had slowed his thinking, North took a breath, looking over at two of the other players. An elderly black pastor in a shabby jacket and a dog collar, and an anxious postman with jug ears.
The pastor had taken a hit tonight, but then again, maybe he’d cut out his dog collar from a washing-up-liquid bottle and he was in on it? Because now North considered the matter, why would a respectable black pastor sit down to play cards with a neo-Nazi, and why would a neo-Nazi let him? The pastor’s eyes met those of Birdie. The pastor kept his face still, but the right side of Birdie’s mouth tugged up a fraction. Not the scorn of a racist. But the complicity of a confederate.
North struggled to believe he had been so stupid. And the postman?
Beads of sweat dripped from the postman’s forehead as his skinny hand clutched at a balled-up serviette, trying to wipe away the worst of it. The postman was as much a sucker as North was – too anxious to be a cheat, too nervy and altogether too miserable, because no one was that good an actor.
But how had the others rigged the game? He’d noticed nothing untoward earlier, though the whisky and the half a Quaalude he’d taken an hour ago wouldn’t put a razor finish on his observational powers.
North knew how to cheat. From his time in detention as a kid, he knew that a marked deck normally focused a cheat’s attention on the back of the cards being dealt or fanned out in the hands of his opponents. North thought he would have picked up on that. Would have noticed any bottom dealing or palming of aces, would have noticed too the lifted thumb indicating ‘raise now’, the carefully placed index finger indicating what card the player wanted. Thought he would have caught the holding of cards around the person, tucked under the knee or slid into a pocket or under a thigh.
Which meant they’d stacked the deck.
Swapping it in when micro-skirted Klara wandered over with a tray of drinks, which she had put down by Erich, who had slapped her denim rump and she’d squealed loud enough to break a window. Squealed loud enough to distract North from the switch.
He looked across at her again, and she blew him a kiss, her pout coral and sticky. It made him feel sick.
He should toss the cards and walk away, write off the money and pay his debts – he had more money than he knew what to do with and he could always buy a new watch. He realized his foot was bouncing up and down and stilled it. He regarded the two cards in his hand and the five on the table. The only way to beat a full house was with a higher full house, four of a kind, a straight flush or a royal flush.
Walking away was the smart thing to do.
But he was curious to see it play out.
‘All in, mate,’ he said, pushing across the rest of his chips.
Under the tattoos, Birdie was sharper than Erich, busy chewing at his moustache with his lower teeth. Some lizard part of his brain sensed the shift in North, the sudden alertness. But he wasn’t one for changing plans. And even if he was, how could he alert his colleagues?
The postman had lost almost as heavily as North, his sparse brows drawing together as the pots came and went. So they’d have given him enough to bring him out to play. North imagined two pairs – nothing too extravagant, but enough to keep him interested. He was trying to unscrew the wedding ring on his finger and ease it past the bulging joints. And good enough, when hope and the wedding ring were all he had left. Panic and regret passed over the postman’s face even as he tossed the gold ring towards the pot. It gleamed for a second in the artificial light, spinning in the smoke-wreathed air, before landing askew on top of the plastic chips.
‘Guys, not the man’s wedding ring,’ North said to the table, his arms open. ‘He has to go home to his wife.’
‘Das ist nett von dir. Wie sagt man… That’s good of you, friend,’ the postman said, allowing himself a rictus smile. ‘But my wife is dead of cancer these three years.’ The bloodshot eyes were wild with the loss of the ring or his wife or both. ‘She was a terrible cook. But it’s true what they say. You never know what you have until it’s gone, eh?’
North reached into the pot for the ring, before rolling it back towards the postman. ‘Then it sounds like you need this more than these schmucks.’
‘Hey.’ The neo-Nazi reached over, his beefy hand slamming against the table, trapping the ring underneath it and scattering the chips around him. ‘She’s dead, didn’t you hear the man? The ring stays in the pot. House rules.’ Birdie’s breath was rancid.
‘I have rules too, my Nazi pal,’ North said as the bar grew quiet. ‘No rings in the pot and no scum at the table. We all know who’s about to win here. And it isn’t Postman Pat and it isn’t me.’ He flipped over Erich’s cards to reveal a pair of twos. With a two on the flop and another on the river, that made four of a kind.
Chairs scraped as Birdie and Erich leapt to their feet, the ring bouncing across the table. North took a step to one side, making sure he kept the pastor in his peripheral vision. He was old, sure enough, probably there to make up the numbers, encourage the stakes to go higher, but he might have a knife.
‘Take the ring, mate.’
The postman’s hand was trembling as he reached for it. For a second he hesitated – tempted by the dollars and the thought of the money he’d lost, by the game he could get into the next night if he reclaimed his stake. ‘Take it to remember her.’
Decision made, the postman grabbed the ring, reaching for the puffer jacket hanging on the back of his chair in the same move, before half running for the exit. North wondered if he’d call the police. Punch in the number on his mobile. Maybe he’d do that much for North, but not until he’d stopped running. And by then it would be too late.
The bartender pulled the plug, the jukebox grime slamming into an abrupt silence. North narrowed his eyes, fixing them on the enemy at the table; in the room beyond, a rowdy explosion of complaints from a clientele of hardened drinkers hustled to the door. Then a bang, and the sound of bolts being drawn. ‘Wir haben geschlossen’ – we’re closed, he heard, as an urgent knocking started up against the glass.
The old guy hadn’t drawn a knife yet. Either he didn’t have one or he was content for Erich and Birdie to take charge.
‘Did you need help spelling those tattoos?’ North’s enquiry was studiously civil. He walked back to the table. ‘Because there are some long words there and you guys normally make do with the swastika. Less is more, right?’
North was out to provoke. But he was also figuring out the architecture of the fight to come. Three against one, but one of them was old. Four, if the barman was about to get involved. Five, if Klara was a grouch. Worst-case scenario: three men, all fit and mean; one man, old and armed; and one woman who couldn’t be in possession of a weapon because she had no conceivable place to hide it.
Bring it on, he thought, as Erich drew a Ruger LCP, Birdie pulled out a knocked-about Beretta 92, the bartender extracted a wooden bat from underneath the counter, and the old man stood and slid a boot knife out of his sleeve. The good news was Klara seemed happy to watch. She’d seemed like such a nice girl too. Genuinely appreciative of his efforts. He hated to think that was an act.
The bartender and his baseball bat were still across the room, but knives were dangerous and the old man was far too close to him. Taking a step away, North chopped down on the pastor’s arm with his right hand before flipping the card table with his left and back-footing the shining blade along the floor and away from his attacker. There was a thunder of gunshots as Birdie fired – once, twice – but North was already moving and the shots missed. He’d have liked to pick up the blade himself but all that bending and coming up again would take too much time. Instead, roaring and low, he went for the table, now on its side, using it as a shield to barge into and through Erich and Birdie, slamming them against the wall. Erich let go of his own semi-automatic with the impact and it clattered to the floor. North reached for it and the bartender swung the bat; a whole load of pain and misery slammed into his shoulders, flattening him. He should have taken the guy out first, but what can you do. He jerked to one side as the tip of the bat slammed into the plank six inches from his right cheekbone, before flipping on to his back, raising his boot and crashing it heel-first and hard into the other man’s shinbone. There was a loud crack and, screaming, the bartender went down. North scrambled to his feet as another 9mm round from Birdie’s gun grazed his bicep and pain blazed up through his arm and into every part of him.
Wailing, the bartender wrapped his hands around his shin and dangling foot. Still pointing his gun at North, the Nazi bared his teeth in what passed for a grin. ‘Klara said you were a drunken fool. You should have walked away.’
The smell of burnt powder, sweat and old booze hung in the air. North let go of his breath and felt the seductive tug of fate pull at him. He was a walking, talking miracle. Stumbling around civilian life with a bullet in his head, when he should be dead and buried. What if this was the moment? He could accept destiny this time, couldn’t he? What did he have to live for? He had no woman to love, no job to give him purpose, no country to defend to the death. He had no hope. Even Lazarus must have lain down and died all over again, at some time.
So what, if the Nazi shot him?
So what, if he died in a seedy bar in a place far from home? If he was tipped into a back-street dumpster and buried in a landfill. If he was eaten by German pigs and made into German sausage and sold in a German butcher’s. There was no one to mourn him.
As North took a step towards him, Birdie raised the Beretta to fix him squarely in his sights. He was aiming centre mass, so he knew what he was doing. How many rounds would it take before North dropped to his knees?
A long shadow of what might have been a man fell across the card table.
‘Germanic tribes traditionally considered the eagle a talisman of the great god Odin.’ The voice came out of nowhere – bass, gravelly, unmistakeably Belfast – and with it the room seemed to get colder. ‘For obvious reasons…’ As the speaker took a step towards them, light from the swinging bulb hit his face, revealing the one eye, the livid purple scar carved into the empty socket and down into the cadaverous cheek. ‘… I’ve claimed Odin as my own.’
Edmund Hone, head of the Friends of Cyclops, a discrete secretariat within MI5, appeared to have got taller and leaner since North had seen him last. ‘I take delivery of my eagle any day.’
North groaned – he didn’t think his night could get any worse. Why was Hone in Berlin? Was it the bodies North had left behind in London? Was the MI5 agent here to hold him to account?
‘This isn’t your business, friend.’ Birdie spat on the floor, keeping the sights of the handgun locked on North.
‘I hate to correct you but I’m nobody’s friend,’ Hone said, extracting a length of lead pipe, its ends soldered, from the folds of his waxed brown riding coat, which fell almost to the floor. He swung it around to smash it into Erich’s face, shattering his nose and front teeth, before whipping it through to smash into the thigh meat of the neo-Nazi. Birdie had opened his mouth to scream, but the sound hadn’t made it out before Hone booted him between his legs. The huge body curled over itself in agony; Hone gripped each end of the pipe to bring it down over the inked-on helmeted skulls. Birdie dropped as Hone flipped the pipe to catch it with his right hand, tugging the Beretta away with his left.
The bartender stopped shrieking, as if he had decided not to draw attention to his own vulnerability.
Erich’s hands were over his face, blood pouring from between them as he staggered towards the Ruger on the floor.
‘I’m not doing all the work here,’ Hone said, dropping the pipe back into his pocket to take apart the gun, before flinging its various parts across the bar.
North picked up a chair and smashed it over Erich’s head. The German’s soles lifted off the floor, the blue eyes rolling back in the yellow whites of his skull as the length of his body tipped and crashed against the wood.
The sound of sirens. The postman had indeed called the cops – good for him.
‘Shall we?’ Hone said, pointing at the exit, which North guessed led into a back alley. He stepped over the keeling barman’s body, cradled in Klara’s arms, and they both veered back. North tapped his wrist and, trembling, the barman unclasped the watch to drop it into North’s open hand. ‘Klara – great night.’ The girl glared at him, her eyes vicious. He stuck out his little finger and his thumb to make a ‘phone me’ sign and lifted it to his ear. ‘Call me.’
Klara let loose a string of German obscenities.
*
The two men stuck close as they weaved their way through the back streets and shadowy alleys. Hone moved faster than North expected. Fast enough for North to know he couldn’t shake him. As Potsdamer Platz came into view, the hooting and city roar of night-time traffic suddenly louder, North stopped in his tracks, took hold of Hone’s riding coat and slammed him up against the wall, one forearm pressing hard against the other man’s throat, the other hand blocking Hone from dipping back into his pocket for the pipe.
‘How did you find me?’ Close up, the scar that ran the length of Hone’s eye socket was jagged, like it had been sewn up in a hurry. Maybe by Hone himself.
‘Passengers who show up with a bullet in the head make an impression.’ Hone shoved him away, the flat of his hand against his chest, and North considered resisting, pressing back, crushing the other man’s larynx. ‘Airport security filed a report.’ Hone loosened the collar of his shirt before smacking the brick dust off his coat, and North had the impression that he was trying to keep his temper. ‘But you’re asking the wrong question.’
The alley reeked of urine and dog mess and days-old rubbish from the overflowing dumpsters lining the walls. Alarmed by their presence, a squeaking rat ran over his boot, and North suppressed a shudder. He could kill the one-eyed man. Or the one-eyed man could kill him. He braced himself as Hone moved out from the shadows and into the orange pool of artificial light on the cracked pavement. He started walking away, as if he expected North to follow. ‘If you had better sense, you wouldn’t be asking how I found you. You’d be asking why I bothered.’
They sat across from each other in the Turkish all-night café, in a side street not far from Checkpoint Charlie.
North put his fingers to his jaw, and it clicked. On the upside, the booze and pills had to be protecting him from the worst of the pain.
‘You’ve a bullet in your brain, which means you could die at any moment, and not that I care, but I’m curious,’ Hone said. ‘Did you want those men to kill you? What was that back there?’
‘An argument about the bill,’ North said. ‘The lads insisted it was their shout – they’re a very hospitable people. But I like to pay my way.’
Through the window, revelling Americans rolled through the streets wearing Russian military caps, past immigrants shuffling their way to one of their many jobs. Hone watched them, before switching his attention back to the man across from him. ‘Berlin, eh? The Holocaust, the Cold War, the Wall. It’s all about the past with you, isn’t it. Why is that?
Behind the one-eyed man hung a ‘Rauchen verboten’ sign – a red cross drawn through a cigarette to make the point. Pulling out a cigarette, Hone winked at North with his good eye and struck a match, before holding the bud of flame to the cigarette. He shook the match side to side to extinguish the flame then let it fall to the floor.
There was the sound of slippers slapping against linoleum as an elderly waitress shuffled over. She scowled. Her shift was nearly over, North guessed. If she noticed the cigarette or the fact Hone had only one eye, or North’s split lip, she didn’t show it. ‘Two coffees and the house late night/early bird special for both of us, please.’ Hone’s German was faultless. North wondered if he’d spent time in Berlin before the wall fell.
Was Hone here to kill him? If he was a risk to the status quo, no one would speak for him. The only thing you did with a risk was eliminate it. But Hone could have killed him at the bar, or better yet, watched from the shadows as the Germans killed him.
Was he planning to oversee North’s arrest? God knows he was guilty of enough crimes. Was the plan to lock him away and forget to ever let him out again? North’s gaze took in their fellow diners, then scanned the street. No sign of backup. No German police. No GSG9 team. No sign of the BND.
‘All right then, I’ll bite. Why are you here, Hone?’
‘Come back to London and work for me.’
North raised an eyebrow. ‘Work for the Friends of Cyclops? For MI5?’ He’d done it once before, but only under duress.
‘You have skills.’
‘My shorthand’s rusty.’
‘You think killing is all you’re good for, North, but you’re capable of more.’
‘Let me get this straight – you don’t want me to kill anyone?’
There was a beat. Hone didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. ‘The woman you loved died,’ he said instead. ‘I never got the chance to say I’m sorry for your loss, but I am.’
North’s jaw clenched so tightly he couldn’t get out the words to let Hone know that he didn’t need his pity.
‘She took a stand because that’s who she was, and she knew the risks, North. Allow her that much. You marked her passing in your own inimitable way. You made sure the guilty paid the price for her death – which I respect. But that has to be done with. That was then, this is now, and you need to think about your own future.’
He had a bullet in his brain, which guaranteed he had no future – didn’t the one-eyed man know that? North pushed back his chair and half stood as the waitress slid plates of shish kebab and wraps and pickles on to the table. Then she paused, a coffee cup in each hand, waiting North out. The heady scent of Turkish coffee – North folded back into the seat. She died… She took a stand. Allow her that much. The words were like knives. The old lady put down the cups, then, grumbling in a mix of Turkish and German, pulled a battered tin lid out of her pocket and slammed it down between them. Hone nodded his thanks, and she let out a final chunter of disapproval before waddling away.
‘You’re young.’ Hone tapped ash from his cigarette into the lid and North thought he caught a flicker of pity. But it went as soon as it came, if it was ever there at all. ‘You presume no one knows what you’re going through. The grief is so raw and the pain so excruciating, you don’t know where to put it. Or what to do with yourself.’
North said nothing. Concentrated on his breathing. She died… and the guilty paid the price. Because he made sure of it.
‘But there’s some comfort to be had in doing your duty to your country. In doing what you’ve been trained to do.’ North could feel the other man’s tension. ‘Have you ever heard of a company called Derkind?’
North shook his head.
‘It’s big in AI – artificial intelligence. There’s a lot riding on it – it has a great deal of government support. It was set up by Tobias Hawke and his wife, Esme Sullivan Hawke.’ Hone lit another cigarette from the stub he’d left smouldering on the tin lid. ‘Esme is my niece.’
So, this was personal, North thought. Worth a trip to Berlin, the hours Hone must have spent finding him, and a fight in a bar.
‘The night before last, an attacker broke into her home in Bloomsbury and nearly killed her.’
‘London’s a big city. Bad things happen there.’
‘Why her?’
‘Why not?’
‘Her apartment is on the fourth floor. Hardly a passing opportunist.’
‘So you’re saying it wasn’t a coincidence?’
‘I don’t believe in God, or in such a thing as a coincidence. I believe someone came for her and that it’s connected with her work. And if I’m right, they’ll come again.’
‘Put someone on her.’
‘I’ve had her covered since the attack, but it’s not enough.’
‘Put her someplace safe then.’
‘You and I know better than most that no place is safe. Plus...’ – Hone scowled – ‘...she won’t go.’
A woman who needed saving? It was beyond him. Doing his duty? He’d fought for his country, nearly died for it – he didn’t need lectures about duty. And he didn’t need this.
‘You’ve had a wasted journey, Hone.’ North drained his coffee. ‘I’m sorry about your niece, but I’m not a bodyguard. Keeping people safe isn’t exactly my area of expertise.’
Stumbling as he got to his feet, North put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pile of euros, a handful of poker chips among them. Paying his way. He expected Hone to reach out for him, pull him back down, and half wished he would and half thought he’d kill him if he did.
‘You’ll change your mind,’ the one-eyed man said. ‘I’ll change it for you. We all have people we go the extra mile for.’ But North didn’t bother responding.
What did he know about women in danger? Too much. About artificial intelligence? Too little. Hone was talking to the wrong man. And if North agreed to do what the one-eyed man wanted, he well understood that it would be good for the security service. It might even be good for Hone’s niece. But Michael Xavier North would bet the house that it wouldn’t be good for him.
As he pounded up the stairs of the flats, North had one thing he needed to do. Open the bottle in his room and drink the Japanese whisky in it. All of it. He wouldn’t leave a drop – could already taste the peaty drips on his tongue, his head back, the upended bottle. He would drink to the point of annihilation. He swore under his breath. The long walk home and the caffeine hadn’t done him any favours, because he was too awake and nothing good would come of that.
Come back to London and work for me. Hone couldn’t walk in a straight line. As for Derkind, North was tech-savvy enough, but he was a soldier, not a scientist. And he had better things to do – like drink. The corridor was dark but noisy with the laboured conversation of early-morning TV, crying babies and raised voices. Turning the key, he leant his shoulder against the peeling door and pushed. It jammed. It always jammed on the way in, catching on the turned-up patch of grey linoleum. He should tell the landlord, but somehow he didn’t think the landlord would care. Every Tuesday, a man in a vest knocked on his door and North gave him 150 euros. Neithe r party spoke. And he liked the fact the door jammed – it gave him time to brace himself against the misery that leached from the damp, tobacco-coloured walls inside.
It was the definition of a cockroach-infested dump. He held his breath as he crossed the threshold. Something dead mouldered under the floorboards – he suspected a rat and he hated rats. If he shut the door, he kept out the worst of it. The worst – but not all of it.
North headed for the window, unlocked it, and hauled it open. The air rising from the alley was warm and steamy from the early shift in the laundrette below, and he breathed it in, enjoying the sudden smell of soap. He leant on the windowsill with his palms spread. He was on the fourth floor – there should be a fire escape. The fact there wasn’t was one of the reasons he’d taken the room. He had plenty of money – millions. But this was everything he deserved. In the event of a fire he would die, and that was a good thing. He could die quicker if he leant a little too far. Out into the air that smelled of clean sheets. He lifted a hand, straightening a finger to pop a rising iridescent bubble, but let it go on its way; leant a little further as he stared at the concrete beneath. Into the void and the end of things. Felt his balance shift, rock, catch, and he pulled himself back – away from temptation.
The bottle then. Because there were any number of ways to fall to your death.
He reached for the whisky standing on the table by the wall. The tin screw-cap sliding round and round on the thread of the bottleneck, before he finally managed to free it and fill the glass.
The whisky was at his lips before he noticed the postcard. He leant over. It was of the Tyne Bridge.
North put down the glass.
Tenants had mail slots downstairs – he glimpsed his neighbours sometimes sighing over bills. North never bothered checking his slot, because no one knew he was here. This door had no letterbox and it was locked. He was sure of it. To open it, he’d turned the key. Put his weight against it.
Moreover, the window was locked. And anyway, there was no way up or down. But somehow, someone had let themselves into his apartment to deliver a postcard.