Hard Knocks

was ex-Special Forces,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

“He was,” I agreed.

He made a small snorting sound through his nose. His gaze turned calculating and then he nodded. “It figures,” he said.

“So why did you kill him?” I pushed, ignoring the fact that it was probably unmitigatingly stupid to blow my cover like this, on Gilby’s home ground, with only Madeleine for back-up. “Did he find out what you were up to and try to stop it?”

“Stop us what?” Blakemore asked. After the initial shock of my opening gambit he’d relaxed slightly. Did that mean he was an accomplished liar, on top of his game now, or that I was so far off the right track he felt secure?

“From grabbing the kid.”

He laughed. “Oh no,” he said, “he was with us all the way. Salter wasn’t the one who threw a spanner in the works.”

I could have – should have – pursued that one in any number of directions, but I was blinkered by anger at his amused denial. “So why did you shoot him?” I demanded.

“We didn’t,” Blakemore said, still grinning at me. “What makes you think that we did?”

“Nine-mil hollowpoints fired from a machine pistol,” I said. “That’s what killed him.”

“Sorry, Fox,” he said quickly, “but we don’t use full autos – or hollowpoints for that matter.”

He reached for his helmet, but before he could put it back on I brought the round I’d shown to Madeleine out of my pocket and held it up to him.

“So what’s this?”

He stopped reaching for the helmet. Instead he took the Hydra-Shok round out of my fingers, examined it carefully. “Where did you get this?” he asked and any trace of laughter had been sucked right out of his voice, leaving a dustiness behind that was almost arid.

“I found it on the indoor range,” I said. “I picked it up the first time we shot there.”

“That’s against the rules,” he said, but he was only going through the motions of rebuke.

“It is,” I agreed. “But last time I checked, so was killing people.”

Blakemore glanced up then, pinned me with a straight look. “And you would know all about that, would you, Charlie?” he said softly.

I swallowed, pushed it aside and went on doggedly. “Why did you kill him?”

Blakemore sighed. “I didn’t,” he said. “I thought I knew who was responsible, but now I’m not so sure.” He regarded me for a few seconds, that brooding, drawn-down stare he had as though he was mentally walking through his options and not finding any of them to his liking. Eventually he held up the round. “Can I hang onto this?”

“Why?”

“I want to plant this in front of someone, like you’ve just done, and see what it shakes loose.”

I found a half-smile from somewhere. “Didn’t work too well on you,” I said.

He grinned again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “but that’s because I’ve got nothing to hide.”

He tucked the Hydra-Shok round into his jacket pocket and fired the ‘Blade up again. I caught his arm.

“What’s going on, Blakemore?”

He shook his head. “It’s too complicated to go into right now,” he said. “You’re just going to have to trust me on this.”

I hesitated again, then stepped back. He nodded, rammed his helmet on and toed the bike into gear, as though afraid I’d change my mind. It was only as he ripped out of the square that I relayed the conversation through my mind and cursed myself for all the gaps I’d left unplugged with questions.

By the time our allotted research period was up, Blakemore still hadn’t returned. I hung around by the back of the truck, hoping that he would still show, until Todd impatiently herded me in with the others.

I scanned the phys instructor’s broad face for some sign that I was walking into a trap by allowing myself to be taken from a public place to a private one without a struggle, but there was nothing to alert me there beyond his usual arrogance.

Even so, as we rumbled out of the square I was aware of a tightness in my chest, a prickling in my hands that made me clench them together in my lap hard enough to turn the skin white around the knuckles.

Had Blakemore been telling the truth? Or had he just been stalling for time, putting me off my guard? His denial when I’d first mentioned the hollowpoint had seemed genuine. But faced with the evidence, there’d been something missing. Now, in the back of that lurching truck, it took me a while to work out what it was.

Surprise.

Whatever I’d triggered in Blakemore, whatever I’d said to him that had acted as a spur, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t suspected already. Suddenly, I remembered the little drama they’d organised for us on the range with Craddock. “So that’s how you did it,” Blakemore had said. Did what? And how was it done?

Behind us I could see Todd at the wheel of the second truck, trying to steer with his elbows while he lit his cigarette. When he caught me watching him he threw me a cocky salute that only served to increase my uneasiness.

Then, without warning, our truck braked hard, swerving to the right.

The students were thrown against one another as the heavy vehicle skidded slightly. Declan’s shoulder hit mine and I grabbed on to the tailgate to stop myself pitching out over it.

My first thought was that it was another ambush. That the men in the Peugeot had brought in reinforcements and come back for a return match. I strained for the sound of gunfire, realising with a sick dread that the thin canvas tilt sides of the truck would be sliced like butter in a firefight.

Figgis managed to bring us to a jerky halt, but Todd had been following too close and not paying attention. I saw him rise in his seat as he stamped hard on the brake pedal. Smoke puffed from the offside front tyre as he locked it solid. For a moment I thought a collision was inevitable. When he finally wrestled the truck to a standstill his front bumper was less than half a metre from the tailgate. I could look straight into his startled eyes.

It was only once we’d all stopped that I heard the frantic voices. A man and a woman. It took a few seconds to tune out the panic and latch on to the vocab. I caught it in snatches. Accident. Mobile phone. Ambulance.

I pushed out of my seat and scrambled over the tailgate, just as Todd jumped down from his cab. As we ran forwards I was aware of other people following.

The couple who’d flagged Figgis down were elderly. Both were talking at once, gesturing towards the edge of the road. The woman was crying.

We’d stopped just before a sweeping left-hand bend. As corners went it was a beauty. A long continuously curving entrance and a tightening fast exit. It slanted towards the inside like a banked circuit. A corner designed for speed. And misjudgement.

To the outside, slightly past the apex, was a lay-by just about wide enough for a single vehicle to pull off the road. Indeed, it was where the old couple had stopped their Westfalia camper van. The road surface broke up there into gravel that had been scraped and scuffed towards the safety barrier in a long ominous twin gouge.

Beyond the barrier was nothing. Open space.

Because Todd stopped to find out from Figgis what was going on, I was the first to reach the barrier and lean out over it. There was a rocky drop on the other side that went down almost sheer for twenty metres before it levelled out into a stream at the bottom, and then away into the trees.

I suppose, if I’m honest, I already knew in my heart what I was going to see down there.

But it still came as one hell of a shock.

Alongside me I heard Declan whisper, “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

I don’t know just how fast Blakemore had been going when he hit the barrier, but his trajectory had taken him fifteen metres or so out from the incline. He’d landed a little way from the bike, on his back, with his torso half-submerged in the stream. From this height I could see the current creating whirlpools and eddies around this unexpected obstruction to the flow.

His body was bent and twisted, his limbs contorted inside his leathers. A good set will keep you together, but that doesn’t mean it will keep you whole. The darkened visor of his helmet stared up blankly at the sky.