King held up a hand. “Exactly! That’s what people must remember,” he said. “Each assassination has had its innocent casualties.”
“Collateral damage.”
“I hate that term.”
“Just countering your argument.”
“This isn’t a debating class,” he said.
“You can’t dissect an argument without both sides.”
“You learn that in debating class?”
“Of course.”
“Oxford?” he ventured.
“Yes.”
“Figures…”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing, sorry.”
“Why, were you at Cambridge?”
King scoffed. “No,” he said. “I never went to university.”
“Figures…”
King shrugged. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “But people are skimming over these innocent deaths in awe of what is happening. They are voyeurs, eager to see what happens to the people they blame for world poverty. For class separation. Billions of pounds have been given to various charities, causes and trusts in such a brief period. And the trouble with social media is that claims are made daily, on all sort of matters and people believe it all to be true. Most of it is a load of rubbish. The hype of what has been done is far outweighing the true count. Billionaires can easily falsify their donation claims, there isn’t the infrastructure to check. A good publicist on the case and some guy gets put down the list, another poor sod takes his place. Already the system, the ultimate penalty these people have declared, is being circumvented.”
“Sure,” Amanda agreed. “But they still have their list and they still intend to make good on their threats.”
“No doubt,” said King.
“So why you?” Amanda asked. They were alone now, the light fading outside. The curtains were drawn open and someone had turned on a light and it made the late afternoon look darker than it really was. “Your skillset. Why are you deemed necessary for this investigation?”
King nodded towards the house across the valley. “That was a highly skilled shot. I’ve made a few in my time. For another department.”
“Special forces?”
“Of sorts.”
“But you aren’t a detective,” she stated. “Surely there needs to be a team of investigators on this.”
“There are,” King replied, looking back at her. “But I’m good at finding people. I just need a trail, that’s all. I’ve found everybody I’ve ever looked for.”
12
The cottage was dark. It would be. He hadn’t been back here since Christmas. As usual, the garden was unkempt, and the grass had shot up in the spring sunshine and rain. In the duchy of Cornwall, this seemed to come in equal measures.
King swung the Ford Mondeo into the gravelled parking bay and switched off the engine. He looked at the cottage with the same feeling of comfortable familiarity and gut-wrenching trepidation as always. He had been happy here. But he had been heartbroken and miserable here too. A misery indescribable to those who hadn’t experienced it themselves. An agonising, open, continuously raw wound which he sometimes thought would never heal. Dark years. And then, like a sudden change of wind, he had recently and unexpectedly been happy once more. As happy as he had ever been, and with that came an underlying feeling of guilt.
His wife had died in this cottage. She had taken an overdose and left him a note. It was her way to end it quickly. Not for only for her, but for him. Ovarian cancer, but with further complications. She was a driven, young and attractive woman. Too busy and too immortal for regular screening or check-ups. And when it had been caught too late, what was left of her life was going to be hers. Catheters, bleeding, baldness and bouts of incapacity through a cocktail of drugs just to draw out a few extra months was not on her agenda. King had gone to the shops. Jane had ended it after writing a letter for him to move on. He never thought he would be able to, but he had. It had been five years later, and only when he had found the woman he was with now. Caroline Darby was a fellow MI5 agent and they had met on an operation he had been drafted in on. That had been over a year ago. They had come to the cottage a few times since, and each time, they wished they could stay forever. It always felt like it wouldn’t be long before they did, but once back in London and given another assignment, those cottage dreams fizzled and disappeared for a while longer.
King got out of the hire car and took his leather travel bag off the rear seat. He was only planning to be here for one night, so was travelling light. There was a plastic grocery bag as well. There was a good deli in a nearby village and he had caught it just before closing. He hadn’t felt like going out to eat. He approached the cottage, but the motion light didn’t come on. He always left it switched off when he returned to London, as he felt it would only indicate that nobody was home. In truth, you had to want to find this place to see it. Shrouded by trees, a hundred metres from the road and looking out over a distant tidal creek across farmland, it was as secluded as you could get in Cornwall. He liked it that way.
The door opened with the usual creek and resistance. This was Cornwall, so the weather was damp for almost half of the year and damper for the rest. He didn’t plane the door because for the eight weeks it dried in the summer, the gap would be large enough to post letters through. Or parcels. He hit the lights, flicked on the combi-boiler in the cupboard under the stairs and dropped the overnight bag onto the slate floor in the hallway. The place smelled damp and dormant, but the heating would soon take that away.
