Circle of Death - Strike Back Series 05 (2020) Page 4

  He tossed the empty bag on the floor, slammed the side door shut and locked the Transit. Hooked back around to Vecchio and the BMW, gripped the handlebars and threw his left leg over the seat. Then he braced both feet on the ground, retracted the side stand and fired up the ignition. A bunch of lights flashed up on the display, and then Tyson shifted into neutral, squeezed the clutch and brake and thumbed down the start button. The engine buzzed into life. Vecchio planted himself awkwardly on the passenger seat, gripping the handhold tightly. He tapped Tyson once on the back, indicating that he was good to go.

  A few moments later, the BMW was motoring forward. Tyson upshifted through the gears, following the directions towards the exit ramp. They emerged from the gloom of the car park into the pale grey of the afternoon and rode east for fifty metres before cutting north towards Great Portland Street. Three minutes later they were tooling down Marylebone Road and heading towards Edgware Road.

  Thirty-nine minutes after the killing, they were clear of London and motoring west on the A40.

  They were safe.

  For the time being, anyway.

  They had done everything possible to cover their tracks, Tyson reassured himself. The previous day, they had carried out a detailed recce of the car park, noted the positions of the various CCTV cameras and blocked them out with green spray paint. Even if somebody saw the van enter the parking lot, there was no way anybody would be able to identify them now. No one had seen them leave the building riding on the BMW. They had also swapped round the licence plates on the Transit, stealing a set from an almost-identical van they had spotted outside an industrial estate in Tottenham.

  There was nothing to tie either of them to the crime.

  Or their boss.

  As for the cops, they would most likely conclude that the journalist had been the unfortunate victim of a hit-and-run, along with the cyclist Ty had flattened. They might have their suspicions about Cantwell, but he would claim to have spent the afternoon in his office, going through a mountain of paperwork, unaware of the accident in the street. He would later voluntarily attend a police station near his home in Barnes, explaining that he had only heard the terrible news about Gregory after checking his phone that evening. Detectives would almost certainly focus on the animosity between Cantwell and Gregory as a possible motive. But Cantwell would argue that he bore no grudge against the man. The footage from the conference room camera would back up his statement, showing the fixer smiling and patting the journalist on the back at the end of their meeting.

  Of course, CCTV in the area would have picked up Vecchio pushing the target into the street. They had done a mobile recce of the area in the days before the killing, noting the position of the cameras. They had quickly concluded that if you were planning to kill someone in central London, there was no way to avoid being caught on camera. Instead, they had decided to take a different approach, constructing a narrative that a lazy detective might pick up on. They would see Vecchio pushing the target into the street and reason that an arrogant jogger had shoved a pedestrian aside, with fatal consequences. The driver of the Transit van, in a moment of total panic, had decided to flee the scene rather than face arrest. That’s what the footage would show. And there would be nothing to conclusively link the jogger with the driver.

  Plausible. Just about.

  Tyson smiled.

  Job done.

  They rode the BMW as far as Beaconsfield. There was a rented Volkswagen Passat waiting for them in a lay-by in a wooded area, several miles outside the town. They hit the lay-by at a little past four o’clock and switched motors, dumping the motorbike deep in the woods and dousing it in bleach. Then they changed into fresh sets of clothes and disposed of their motorcycle gear in a bin a couple of miles away.

  They had go-bags stowed in the trunk of the Passat. Everything they would need for their onward journey: passports, flight tickets, cash, pre-paid credit cards, burner mobiles.

  At 16.30 hours, they set off for Birmingham Airport. They would catch the 19.55 direct flight to Paris, spend the night at a mid-range hotel at Charles de Gaulle Airport and fly out the next morning to Atlanta. From there, they could take another flight to their final destination. Straight on to their next mission.

  Tyson smiled to himself again. Everything had gone according to plan. Well, almost everything.

  There was a small chance that the journalist would survive the accident, of course. The Internet was full of videos of people making miraculous recoveries from horrific car crashes. But at the very least, the guy would be seriously injured. He’d be in hospital for months, possibly comatose. Maybe even brain dead.

  And if the worst happened and he did wake up, by the time he was able to talk it would be too late. The operation would already be completed. The first part of it, anyway.

  If the plan worked – and there was really no reason it shouldn’t – Tyson and his brothers-in-arms were going to change the world. They would be richly rewarded for their work, but there was more to it than that, Ty knew. What they were about to do, nobody had done before. They were breaking new ground. Writing history.

  It was going to be fucking beautiful.

  TWO

  Forty-eight hours later, John Bald stared out of the window and wondered how much lower he could sink.

  He was sitting at the table in the wood-panelled kitchen, on the ground floor of the bed and breakfast he had recently taken over. The rain-spattered windows looked out over a patio at the front of the property and, beyond it, a bleak and windswept landscape. A band of thick clouds hung low in the sky, stirring the grey waters of Loch Indaal a few hundred metres to the south. In the distance a series of low hills were faintly visible through a dirty veil of mist and rain.

  Late March on the Isle of Islay, off the west coast of Scotland.

  Shitty weather.

  A business that was haemorrhaging cash.

  Ten years after leaving 22 SAS, John Bald had finally hit rock bottom.

  He gritted his teeth and looked down at the papers spread out in front of him on the kitchen table. Accounts for the business.

  The numbers were bad, Bald knew.

  Really bad.

  Two years ago, he had been living the good life. Had an apartment overlooking the Caribbean Sea. Spent his evenings on a white-sanded beach, sipping ice-cold Coronas and eyeing up the local talent. Things had been pretty fucking good.

  Now . . . this.

  There were times when the scenery on the Isle of Islay could be strikingly beautiful. Days when the sun shone crisply in the clear-blue sky and glinted off the waters of the loch, when you could see the fallow deer galloping through the fields, and for a fleeting moment, Bald could pretend that all was right with the world.

  Today was not one of those days.

  He reached for his whisky glass, raised it to his lips and took a long hit of the cheap stuff. The liquid burned as it went down his throat and spread a warm feeling through his veins, numbing the rage in his guts.

  Bald had bought the B&B after he’d been screwed over by a couple of ex-Regiment guys. Ramsey and Peake. Old-timers he had fought alongside in Afghanistan, leading assaults into the Tora Bora caves to flush out the last defiant pockets of Taliban resistance. People he had shared beers with. People he thought he could trust.

  He had been wrong.

  A year ago, they had approached Bald with a business proposition. He had been working in corporate security at the time, as a health and safety director with one of the big oil firms. He was getting good money, but the work was spirit-crushingly dull. He did a lot of travelling, attended courses, gave regular talks to a bunch of flabby-gutted executives in tailored suits. No action. No risk. Not his scene.

  Then Ramsey and Peake had showed up. Told him they had a plan to set up their own private security company. They had pitched the idea to Bald. It was going to be an elite operation, recruiting exclusively from the UK and US Special Forces families, providing security for large businesses and med
ia outlets.

  Ramsey and Peake would provide the manpower and contacts in Whitehall. They were going to make millions. But they needed funding. Start-up cash. Did Bald want in?

  He didn’t need much persuading. He had been looking for a way out of the corporate gig and now he had it.

  Big mistake.

  At first, everything had looked good. Ramsey and Peake had received some encouraging noises from their contacts. But soon the costs began to spiral. There was rent to pay on the office, staff to hire, equipment to purchase. They needed more money, Ramsey had said to him. The big contracts from Whitehall were going to come through any day now. It was just a temporary cash-flow problem.

  Bald had emptied his savings. Put every last penny he had into the business.

  Still the contracts didn’t come through. Bald started chasing his partners. Asking questions. They told him to be patient. It was just a matter of time, they said.

  A few weeks later, Ramsey and Peake stopped returning his calls.

  It turned out that their high-level contacts inside the MoD didn’t exist. They hadn’t paid any of the employees or bought any hardware. The whole thing had been a scam. They had been siphoning money out of the business and using it to fund their lifestyle. As soon as Bald got suspicious, they had upped sticks and fled the country.

  He was out of pocket by two hundred and fifty thousand. Everything he had saved up over the years. Meanwhile, his old partners were now running a new company out in the Middle East. They were doing well, apparently. Last Bald had heard, they were both multi-millionaires.

  He had been played. The sort of con trick he might have pulled on someone else, in his younger years.

  His fault. He had got slack. Ignored the warning signs, the people telling him not to trust Ramsey and Peake.

  You should have seen it coming.

  After being cleaned out by people he’d once considered his muckers, Bald had decided to get as far away from Hereford as possible. Too many snakes. Too many bad memories.

  He’d heard about an ex-Parachute Regiment lad who had been running a guest house on the Isle of Lewis. Tourism in the Hebrides was a growth industry, apparently. Australians and Americans were flocking to the islands, attracted by the famous distilleries and Instagram-worthy landscape. Bald had done some research and learned about an opportunity on the Isle of Islay. The owners of a B&B were looking to sell up in order to be closer to their grandchildren on the mainland. Bald had haggled over the price, sold his house in Hereford and moved to Islay.

  Thirty years after he’d left to join the army, he had finally returned to his native Scotland.

  The property he had acquired was situated on a barren stretch of coast, on a slight rise overlooking Loch Indaal. To the north, a belt of woodland covered a gently rising slope. A hundred metres to the south, the main road that ran from Bridgend in the east to the westernmost tip of the island at Portnahaven. Three hundred metres beyond the road, a narrow strip of shingle extended across the fringes of the loch.

  There were two properties on Bald’s land: a two-storey house and a smaller guest cottage. The structures were bisected by a gravel path that ran from the main road to a parking area at the rear. There were five rooms in total. Two large double bedrooms on the first floor of the main building, and three rooms in the cottage. The plot was enclosed by a waist-high stone wall with a timber gate at the entrance.

  It was an isolated spot. Which was part of the appeal, Bald had figured. The nearest village was two miles to the west. The administrative capital, Bowmore, was five miles away, on the southern side of the loch. It was the perfect location for rich city folk looking to get away from it all.

  But the place had needed a lot of work. More than he’d anticipated. The roof in the main house was leaking. There were damp patches on the walls, the carpets were threadbare, and the chintzy furniture needed replacing. Bald had sunk the last of his cash into an extensive renovation. He’d gutted the cottage, installed new bathrooms, paid for a modern kitchen and a landscaped patio facing out across the loch. When he ran out of funds, he had taken out a large loan to cover the work. He had paid a firm in Edinburgh to design a slick-looking website and an online reservation system. He’d even run ads on social media. Everything he needed to get his new business up and running.

  Then he had waited for the bookings to roll in.

  There had been a slow trickle of guests at first. A few American and Canadian couples staying for a night or two while they visited the distilleries, the occasional English couple. But that was it.

  Bald kept hoping that the business would pick up. He had run promotions, paid for premium listings on booking websites, slashed the room rates. Nothing seemed to work.

  The previous winter had been especially brutal. Now he was on the brink, financially. In a few months they would be approaching the start of peak season, he knew. If things didn’t improve then, he was finished.

  He took another gulp of cheap whisky. Tried to ignore the voice in his head. The one telling him that he should have seen this coming.

  You haven’t hit rock bottom yet, John Boy, the voice said. Twelve weeks from now, you could be out on your arse. No home, no money. Your next address could be Cardboard City.

  From SAS legend to penniless bum. Big fucking comedown, that.

  The kitchen door swung open, snapping Bald out of his thoughts. He looked over and saw a short figure with cropped black hair standing in the doorway. She wore a pair of skinny jeans that wrapped like cling film around her ample thighs and a plain white boyfriend shirt with the top two buttons popped.

  Magda Lewandowski, Bald’s receptionist-cum-housekeeper, chewed gum loudly as she folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘We have problem,’ she said in her thick Polish accent.

  Bald found himself casually sizing her up. He had toyed with the idea of working the old charm on Magda on more than one occasion. Christ knows, he could use a shag. On an island of three thousand people, there weren’t many good prospects, and Magda – wide-hipped, large-breasted, strawberry-lipped Magda – was more attractive than most. Her good looks were one of the reasons Bald had hired her, reasoning that he needed a friendly face to front the business. The fact that she could cook and clean and do the various admin tasks was a bonus.

  ‘You listen, boss? I said we have problem.’

  Bald shoved aside the pleasing mental image of shagging Magda and frowned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The guests. They make complaint.’ Magda rolled her eyes. ‘Again.’

  Bald clenched his jaws in frustration. The last thing he needed.

  Two days ago, a trio of Australian backpackers had arrived at the guest house. From the moment they’d arrived they had been nothing but trouble, moaning about the breakfast and the heating and everything in between.

  He gestured to the sheaf of papers on the table. ‘I’m busy. Can’t you handle it?’

  ‘Is problem with bathroom. They say sink is blocked. They say they want fixed, or money back.’ She shrugged expressively. ‘Is man problem. You need to fix.’

  ‘Fine.’ Bald sighed irritably. ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  He took a deep breath, slid out of his chair and ducked into the utility room to the side of the kitchen. Grabbed a bucket and plunger from a cupboard below the sink. Then he marched back across the kitchen into the main reception area. Magda had resumed her usual station behind the reception desk, flicking through a Polish-language gossip magazine. Bald breezed past her and made for the door.

  ‘We need to have chat,’ she called after him. ‘This job is shit money. You want me to deal with idiot guests, I need pay rise.’

  ‘Later,’ Bald growled.

  He didn’t know it, but his day was about to get a hell of a lot worse.

  A harsh wind whipped across his face as he stepped outside, stinging his ears and blasting through his silvery hair. He hung a right outside the main house and beat a path towards the guest cottage fifty metres away, the
rain-soaked ground squelching under his waterproof boots. The cottage was a quaint one-storey stone-built structure with narrow windows and a steep shingle roof. A tall hedge enclosed a small private garden set to the side of the cottage. As Bald drew nearer he could hear a boisterous din of laughter and voices coming from within.

  He marched up to the front door and rapped his knuckles twice.

  The noise instantly cut out. Bald heard the muffled padding of footsteps approaching, the clack of the latchbolt retracting. A moment later the door swung open.

  A huge shaven-headed guy in a Wallaby rugby jersey filled the doorway. He stood in front of it like a boulder blocking the entrance to a cave. The guy was maybe four inches shorter than Bald and about thirty pounds heavier, most of it evidently muscle. His legs were like a pair of columns supporting a Roman arch. His biceps were so big they could have doubled up as basketballs. He had a barrel-shaped chest and small dark eyes that were too wide apart.

  ‘Help you, mate?’ Biceps asked.

  ‘Magda tells me you fellas are having some problems with the sink,’ said Bald.

  ‘Yeah.’ Biceps scratched his balls and sniffed. ‘Too bloody right we are. Thing’s been blocked all morning. Fucking unacceptable, that. Along with everything else in this place.’

  Bald bit back on his anger. ‘Let me take a look inside, eh? See if I can sort it out.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  Biceps grunted as he turned and strutted back into the main living area. Bald followed him inside, closing the door behind him.

  A spark of anger flared up inside his chest as he glanced around the room. The Aussies had evidently trashed the place. The bin in the kitchen area was overflowing with empty beer bottles. There was a stack of dirty plates in the sink, coffee cups filled with crushed cigarette butts. On the other side of the room, Bald noticed a reddish stain on the rug in front of the fireplace. Muddy footprints were stamped across the wooden floorboards.