I was free. For now.
14
Alastair Sheridan sipped the glass of Rémy Martin Louis XIII cognac, the type favoured by Winston Churchill, a political hero of his, savouring the taste as he relaxed in his favourite armchair. Mozart was playing in the background – the rousing Piano Concerto No. 17 – while the study’s sash window was a few inches open to let in the comforting sound of the rain, and the cool breeze that accompanied it.
Cem Kalaman, his old friend, was now officially dead. Alastair had just received the news in a phone call from an undercover police officer called Chris Lansdowne who’d been working as Cem’s driver. Luckily for Alastair, Lansdowne was as corrupt as they came, and a payment of £100,000 into an anonymous bank account in the British Virgin Islands had immediately secured his loyalty. It had been Lansdowne who’d provided Alastair with details of Cem’s movements, and by doing so had set up his murder. The assassination itself had required a lot of planning. Money hadn’t been a problem. It never was with Alastair, who’d made tens of millions over the years. It had been the logistics. But Alastair had always been a good planner, and setting up Ray Mason to take the rap had been a stroke of genius.
What Alastair hadn’t bargained for, however, was Mason escaping the crime scene. And, according to Lansdowne, who was still at the scene himself, this was exactly what had happened. It was nearly an hour and a half since the hit and Mason was nowhere to be found.
Alastair didn’t like the idea of Mason being out there, armed and vengeful. He was one of the few people who knew about Alastair’s secret life, and who was also crazy enough to come after him. Alastair had good personal security, but he’d feel a lot safer when Mason was back where he belonged behind bars, or better still in the ground.
He took another sip of the brandy, certain that Mason wouldn’t come after him tonight. He’d be too busy trying to avoid the attention of the police. Instead, his thoughts turned to Cem. Alastair would miss his company. Theirs had been a close relationship – closer in many ways than any other relationship he’d ever had. But sometimes in business you have to be ruthless and, sadly, Cem had become a liability. As the head of a crime organization with a turnover in the hundreds of millions of pounds, he was too much of a high-profile figure to survive unscathed in the long term, and if he ever talked, he could destroy Alastair.
Alastair was sure that no one in Cem’s criminal organization would ever suspect him of having any involvement in their boss’s death; few of them even knew there was a connection between the two men. But just to be certain, the important thing now was to make sure that Ray Mason’s name was associated with Cem’s murder, so that he became the main suspect, and Alastair was just trying to work out how best to do that when the anonymous phone Lansdowne had called him on rang again.
But this time it wasn’t Lansdowne calling. It was someone else. Someone with some good news.
Alastair smiled as he listened to the person on the other end of the phone. Things, it seemed, had worked out for him once again.
15
It was 11.15 p.m. and raining steadily as I parked the Mercedes in the shade of a tree at the side of an isolated country lane that, according to Google Maps, was approximately fifty metres behind the house where I’d been staying until two nights ago. The police would find the car eventually – they might even be looking for it now if the guy I’d stolen it from had managed to raise the alarm – but I suspected I’d be long gone before they located it, and just to make things hard for them I’d stopped en route at a piece of waste ground in north London and rubbed dirt on the plates, obscuring them for the cameras.
I’d seen lights on in the house as I’d driven past, so Lane, and possibly her two colleagues, would still be there. I was taking a big risk turning up like this. Some would say that I’d have done a lot better to stay out of sight for a few days, but I needed to know why Lane had set me up.
I cut a rough path through the trees to the back of the property until I came to the familiar leylandii hedge with the wooden gate in the middle. The gate was about eight feet high and I knew from memory that it was bolted from the inside, which meant that the only way in was over it. It didn’t sound like there was anyone in the back garden so I jumped up, grabbed the top and hauled myself up, thankful that I’d spent so long in the prison gym practising my pull-ups.
The garden was empty as I slid down the other side of the gate, but all the downstairs curtains were drawn and the lights were on in the rooms. There were people here, I was sure of it.
My suspicion was confirmed a second later when I heard a car door being shut round the front of the house on the driveway. People were either arriving or leaving, and I had a feeling it was going to be leaving. I drew the pistol Lane had provided me with and screwed on the suppressor. I’d reloaded it earlier using bullets from the gun I’d liberated from Cem Kalaman’s bodyguard, and I had a full clip. I’d shot three people tonight – it was a strange and unpleasant feeling – and I had no
