He reached his front door. It seemed perfectly normal. Again, if the lock had been tampered with, he might never know. With the right tools, a professional burglar would enter and leave without any trace. Black turned the key, opened the door, waited, straining to detect the slightest sound. With held breath, he entered.
Everything was normal. Nothing had been touched. No one had been there.
He locked the door behind him and went immediately to his bedroom. He opened a wardrobe and started unloading cardboard boxes onto the bed. Stuff he’d taken from his house a lifetime ago and had never bothered unpacking. Stuff he wanted to forget, but for some reason didn’t have the courage to destroy. Books, journals, photograph albums. He flitted through pages of photographs. Pictures of his wife and daughter. Holidays, moments in time, smiles captured, mannerisms caught forever. He swallowed back a wave of sudden bitter sadness.
But Black had to go back further. He still had photos of his old life, the life in the army. He came across a folder containing loose pictures, documents, papers.
There it was – a faded photograph. On the back, scribbled in pencil, a date. 1998. He tucked it into his jeans pocket.
Black went through to the kitchen. Like every other room, it was minimalistic, clean, uncluttered. Black had never enjoyed cooking, but he refused to live on take-outs, and he knew the truth about food and health. You could be the fittest human being on the planet, but you could never outrun a bad diet. An electric juicer sat on the kitchen worktop. Twice a day, morning and evening, he used it – spinach, kale, a banana, an apple, ice, plus a half pint of orange juice. Blended. The end product was green and mildly disgusting. But it was his concession to five a day. He tried to cut out sugar, and went easy on the salt. Other than that, he didn’t give a damn what he ate. When he was on tour, deep in enemy territory, he ate stuff that would make a dog puke.
But it wasn’t the blender he chose. He opened a cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of single malt whisky – Glenfiddich – and a glass. He poured himself a generous quantity. Rough day.
He went back through to the living room. Black did not believe in clutter. He had never got round to decorating, or kitting the place out with excessive furniture. The room had a bookcase, crammed with books. A low coffee table. Black did not own a television. On a shelf was a CD player and a couple of small speakers. He pressed play. Some old Rolling Stones music. His wife loved them. He sat on a faded red cloth armchair. Other than a small couch and the coffee table, there was nothing else in the room. No paintings on the walls. No ornaments, no memorabilia, no framed pictures. His past was a time of death. He chose not to be reminded of it.
But yet it had found a way to surface. He took out the photo, gazed at it, sipping the whisky.
Three men wearing combat fatigues. Smiling. Exhausted. Taken at the top of a hill. Forty-pound Bergen rucksacks dumped at their feet. He was the man in the middle. He barely recognised the face which stared back. All SAS, serving with the 22nd Regiment. He had just been promoted to captain, as he recalled. The men on either side were both dead. Sergeant Peter Welsh, shot in the head by a sniper in Afghanistan. Sergeant William Kent, cancer of the throat. Behind them, some way off and at the top of a further incline, a large rock, about the size and approximate shape of a double-decker bus.
He thought back. This was taken in a place called Cape Wrath. The most north-westerly point in mainland Britain. Difficult to get to. Most of it owned by the Ministry of Defence. An uncompromising, brutal landscape, exposed to the elements, with severe frosts in the winter, and winds that could whip a man off his feet. Perfect for training. Perfect for SAS training.
He studied the photograph. He remembered the circuit. Running up the hill, full gear, rifle, ammunition. Touching the rock at the top, then back down. Then again, until the lungs felt they would burst, the muscles screamed in revolt. But you kept going.
To the top.
To Bastard Rock.
12
Who Dares Wins – Official Motto of the SAS
Who Cares Who Wins – Unofficial Motto
Black felt the need to move quickly. The clock was ticking. He had enemies. People – unpleasant people – were aware of his existence. They’d tried to kill him, for reasons unfathomable. Black had little doubt in his mind they would try again. Whoever wanted him dead would regard this as priority. Keep moving, thought Black. If he stayed in his flat any longer than he had to, he’d wind up dead, of that he was sure. He had to make assumptions – that they knew where he lived; that if they didn’t strike here, they would follow him, and strike elsewhere. He closed the blinds in his front bay window, glancing outside. Everything seemed normal. He would have been surprised if it were otherwise. There was little he could do. It was something he had to accept, if he wanted answers. The trick was to stay alive. Keep moving.
Cape Wrath was not the easiest place to reach. Roughly a six-hour drive from Glasgow to Durness, the closest village. From there, a passenger ferry across a stretch of water called the Kyle of Durness. Then a thirty-minute
