was a gash where someone had skidded. He stared into the gloom, knowing this could be a trap. Whoever had come down here had the advantage of knowing the layout of the ground, and might be waiting for him to follow.
He shook his head and eased off the safety. Standing here wouldn’t accomplish anything. He started down the path.
The going was soft and the path narrow, with room for one person at a time. The smell here was heavy and sour, hemmed in by the reeds on one side and the bushes on the other. Something scurried away as Harry passed, and a splash echoed among the vegetation. He used the torch sparingly, flicking it on to gain a sense of direction, but ready to throw himself off the path.
Something glinted at ground level a few feet ahead. He estimated he could be only yards from the road, probably close to where the van had been parked. He slowed but didn’t need to use the torch to see what the shiny object was; the backlight behind the keys showed it was a mobile phone. He stepped quickly to one side of the path and bent to scoop it up.
The combination of movements probably saved his life.
He heard a violent scuff of movement from close by, followed by a sharp exhalation of breath. Something hissed past his head. He felt a flash of intense pain in his shoulder and his torch tumbled away from numbed fingers. Reacting instinctively, he threw himself sideways away from the reeds and the soggy ground underneath and brought up his gun. But the attacker was already moving away, his footsteps fading along the path.
Scrambling to his feet, Harry snatched up the mobile and used its light to find his torch, then set off in pursuit, wincing with pain from his shoulder. It didn’t take long to reach the road.
As he burst out from the path, he was just in time to hear a vehicle roaring away into the darkness and see a brief flash of brake lights as it disappeared from view in the direction of the village.
Harry muttered in disgust and looked at the mobile. He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book: the killer had dropped it to distract him and nearly caved his head in. He was willing to bet that the mobile had once belonged to the late Abuzeid Matuq.
He wondered what the killer had been trying to accomplish. Doubling back along the path to lay in wait had been a risky manoeuvre. He’d already got back to his van and was clear and ready to leave. So why do it? There was only one explanation: he was improvising on the move, looking to distract attention from himself by leaving someone else lying near the body.
Harry walked back up the path until he reached the point where he had been attacked. He cast around with the torch until he saw a gleam of metal among the reeds. It was a long mains water key with a T-piece on one end and a heavy-looking prong on the other. Just right for caving in a man’s head.
He left it and walked back to the Saab, a deep feeling of unease settling on him. What had started out as a simple job of chasing down a runaway banker had suddenly become a lot more complicated. Now there was a killer involved. And whoever he was, he was resourceful and quick on his feet.
A professional.
SIX
As he drove south through the village and out the other side, Harry rang Jennings with the news. He kept it brief. The lawyer was silent for a few moments, then said briskly, ‘There’s nothing you can do. It was probably the Libyans. There was a danger they might take direct action if they located him — especially somewhere remote like that. They probably reasoned it would look bad if someone else recovered the money for them.’
Harry felt a prickle of irritation. ‘And you didn’t think it worthwhile warning me?’ He didn’t mention that he had been armed, so therefore not exactly incapable of defending himself. Carrying a gun was no guarantee of survival, and there were some things Jennings was better off not knowing.
‘Time to move on.’ The lawyer ignored the question. ‘Someone else will come out to deal with Matuq. Report to my office tomorrow morning. Noon. I have an urgent job for you.’
‘What about Param?’ The other assignment on his list. So far, he had done no research on this runner, an investment manager from a London firm who had disappeared along with sizeable sums of money siphoned off through a batch of illicit accounts.
‘My office. In the morning.’ The connection was cut.
Harry dropped the mobile and concentrated on driving, trying to push Matuq’s murder to the back of his mind. It wasn’t easy. After a stint in the army, including Kosovo and Iraq, followed by several years in MI5 on the anti- terror and anti-narcotics teams, death was no longer a stranger to him. Even less so after a drugs operation had gone wrong and his near-fatal punishment was a posting to a security services outstation in Georgia that he wasn’t meant to survive. But each death he’d seen had carried some kind of explanation or motive, some reasoning — even if not always a rational one. The shooting of Matuq, however, seemed pointless. Random.
Yet he knew it wasn’t.
It had been too efficient. Like an execution.
‘
Suddenly he knew what had been puzzling him about Jennings’ earlier comment; what had finally jerked him back to reality.
The only thing he had sent Jennings from Blakeney was the photo of Matuq taken on his mobile. There had been no details other than his name. No location, no directions, no indication of where it was taken — not even a county. That would have followed later when asked for. Confirmation first, then specifics; it was how Jennings liked to work.
So how could the lawyer have known that the location was ‘remote’, or where to send his people to deal with the body?
SEVEN
‘This is a priority job.’ Jennings selected one of two buff folders from his desk and slid it across the glossy surface. It was noon the following day, and if the lawyer was surprised by Harry’s display of punctuality after the events of the night before, he was careful not to show it. His secretary had shown Harry in moments ago, then retreated to her small office just off the main entrance hall.
Harry picked up the folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper, a plain brown envelope and a six-by-four black and white photograph. It showed a slim, doleful-looking man with dark shadows under his eyes and closely cropped black hair dotted with flecks of grey. His cheeks were pockmarked, with what might have been a large birthmark just below his right eye. He had a neatly trimmed beard lining his chin, and his age could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. The sad expression in the man’s eyes spoke of something tragic about his past. Or, thought Harry cynically, maybe a lack of confidence in his future.
‘What’s this one done?’ he asked, putting down the photo. ‘Run off with his firm’s piggy bank?’
Jennings gave him a cool look. ‘That’s not your problem. Somebody wants him found. It’s all you need to know.’
‘It may not be an issue,’ Harry explained reasonably. ‘But it helps to know if he’s bent or not. Or has a contract on his head.’ Jennings didn’t appear to understand, so Harry explained, ‘Crooks behave in a different way to those who’ve just gone AWOL for other reasons, like stress. They might turn nasty when I show up on their
