A Good Day To Die Read online

  A Good Day

  to Die

  SIMON KERNICK

  CORGI BOOKS

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Also by Simon Kernick

  Introduction

  Before

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part Three

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Deadline

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781407084459

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  A Random House Group Company

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  A GOOD DAY TO DIE

  A CORGI BOOK: 9780552157384

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Bantam Press a division of Transworld Publishers Corgi edition published 2006

  Copyright © Simon Kernick 2005

  Simon Kernick has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  Typeset in 10.5/12.5pt Palatino by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.

  Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX.

  6 8 10 9 7 5

  For my Mum and Dad

  Simon Kernick lives near London and has two young children. His novels, The Business of Dying, The Murder Exchange, The Crime Trade, A Good Day to Die, Relentless (selected as a Richard & Judy Summer Read) and Severed are available as Corgi paperbacks, as is his new novel, Deadline.

  The research for Simon Kernick’s novels is what makes them so authentic. His extensive list of contacts in the police force has been built up over more than a decade. It includes long serving officers in Special Branch, the National Crime Squad (now SOCA), and the Anti-Terrorist Branch, all of whom have plenty of tales to tell.

  For more information on Simon Kernick and his books, see his website at www.simonkernick.com

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Also by SIMON KERNICK

  THE BUSINESS OF DYING

  Featuring DS Dennis Milne, full-time cop, part-time assassin.

  ‘Taut, gripping, disturbing – a most assured and original début’

  Daily Mail

  THE MURDER EXCHANGE

  Ex-soldier Max Iversson is hired to provide security for a meeting that goes disastrously wrong.

  ‘From hardboiled cops to ruthless women on the make, Kernick generates a potent cocktail of thrills’

  Guardian

  THE CRIME TRADE

  DI John Gallan and DS Tina Boyd uncover a murderous conspiracy that will take them to the heart of London’s most notorious criminal gang.

  ‘A taut gritty novel in which Kernick uses every trick in the book to keep the narrative breakneck’

  Time Out

  A GOOD DAY TO DIE

  Exiled cop Dennis Milne returns to London to hunt down the murderers of a close friend.

  ‘Great plots, great characters, great action’

  Lee Child

  RELENTLESS

  Tom Meron finds himself on the run, pursued by enemies he never knew he had ...

  ‘This is the sort of book that forces you to read so fast you stumble over the words. Phenomenal!’

  Evening Standard

  SEVERED

  You wake up in a strange room on a bed covered in blood. And you have no idea how you got there ...

  ‘If you like lots of non-stop action, this is for you’

  Guardian

  Introduction

  I originally wrote my first novel, The Business of Dying, as a stand-alone thriller and had no plans to bring back my main protagonist, renegade cop and moonlighting hitman, Dennis Milne. At the end of the story, however, he managed to evade justice, and escaped to the faraway shores of the Philippines – a country I plucked out of thin air as a suitably exotic bolt-hole, having no knowledge of the place at all.

  And that, I thought, was that and moved on to my next book.

  But you can’t keep a good, or perhaps I should say a bad, man down – and that was the thing: I loved Dennis as a character, and missed him. Perhaps it’s the fact that he has so many flaws – not least that, technically, he’s a murderer. Yet despite this, he still manages to remain likeable. To me, anyway. He has my sympathy because he has a strong sense of natural justice. Indeed it’s this that persuades him to be a hitman in the first place because it gives him the opportunity to punish the people he sees as the bad guys. So when his old friend and colleague, Asif Malik, is murdered back in London in an unsolved case, Dennis, now exiled in the Philippines, knows he has to return home and find out who’s behind it.

  A Good Day to Die opens in the Philippines, and to research the book I visited the country before I started writing. The trip proved to be a real eye-opener. As soon as my travelling companion and I arrived, we got an understanding of the craziness of the place. The car that was to transfer us south from Manila Airport failed to materialize, and we wer
e forced to take a bone-jarring taxi ride down to the coast with a driver who seemed to know the local area even less than we, as we tried to catch the last ferry to the island of Mindoro.

  Predictably the ferry had gone by the time we arrived, and the jetty was deserted. Just as we were contemplating a night sleeping rough, a group of men emerged from behind a disused building, two of whom were only wearing what appeared to be loincloths, like extras in a Tarzan movie. Without warning, and before the driver could escape, they jumped in the car, the biggest one plonking himself on my lap, and offered to take us to Mindoro in their luxury speedboat.

  Our taxi driver advised us not to go anywhere with these men, but they weren’t budging, and without them neither were we, so after negotiating a price of 2500 pesos (roughly thirty quid) we took them up on their offer, and they directed our driver along some deserted back-roads until we came to a mosquito-ridden swamp, in which sat one of the most dilapidated wooden boats I’ve ever seen. As the taxi driver chucked out our cases and disappeared into the distance in a cloud of dust, our new friends welcomed my mate Matt and I aboard our unluxurious transport, whereupon they then proceeded to double the price of our passage.

  After a perilous three hour boat ride across some of the deepest seas in the world, with me constantly wondering when we were going to be robbed, murdered, and our bodies dumped into the inky waters below, we got to Mindoro in the end. Having extorted five thousand pesos from us, the cheeky bastards then tried to get a tip for their troubles!

  But the journey was worth it, and I quickly fell in love with the island. With its huge forest-covered mountains, its heavily manned army roadblocks and patrolling helicopter gunships on the constant lookout for the communist rebels who still lingered only a few miles from the ramshackle tourist resorts, it represented the perfect home from home for Dennis.

  I wrote much of the first part of the book in the all too short time we spent there, before returning to London in the bleak, crowded depths of winter, just as Dennis does in this book. I was hugely re-energized, though, writing much faster than I’d ever done before, and changing much of the plot in a way I don’t usually do to accommodate my own experiences.

  Right up to the very end, I was never sure whether or not Dennis would survive his violent yet cathartic journey to the city that had once been his home, and I’m not going to tell you now either whether he does or not. You’ll just have to turn the pages to find out!

  I hope you enjoy reading A Good Day to Die as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

  Simon Kernick

  June 2008

  before

  Richard Blacklip wanted to kill someone.

  He’d been told before he left England that the man now sitting across the table from him could make the necessary arrangements. Mr Kane was, apparently, a fixer of such things, and in the sprawling, dirt-poor and life-cheap metropolis that was Manila, where almost anything could be bought and sold if the price was right, he had ready access to a constant supply of victims. It was now simply a matter of finding that price.

  A call to Kane’s mobile phone an hour earlier had set the meeting up, but now that his guest had arrived in the hotel room, Blacklip was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing. Not because he didn’t want to go through with the act itself (after all, the truth was that it wasn’t his first time), but because he was alone in a strange city thousands of miles from home, and was unsure of discussing his innermost thoughts and secrets with someone he’d only just met. Kane was supposed to be reliable, but what if he wasn’t? What if he was a conman? Or worse still, working for the police, here to entrap him? Blacklip was aware that he was being paranoid, but that didn’t mean his fears might not be justified.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Kane’s voice was calm and controlled, designed to reassure.

  It worked, too. Blacklip smiled and used a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his forehead. ‘It’s fine,’ he answered, sounding falsely jolly, even to himself. ‘It’s just this heat. I’m not used to it.’

  The room was stifling. He’d changed into lighter clothes and turned the ceiling fan up to maximum, had even pulled down the blinds to keep out the fiery sun, but nothing seemed to be doing any good. He was conscious of the wetness under his armpits, and wished now that he’d rented a room with air conditioning. But then, of course, he was saving his money for bigger things.

  Kane said something about Westerners getting used to the heat after they’d spent some time in the Philippines, but Blacklip wasn’t really listening. He was too busy studying his guest while trying to act like he wasn’t, a task he believed he performed much better than most people. He was used to discreet observation.

  Kane was younger than he’d been expecting, probably no more than forty, and dressed casually in jeans and a light sports jacket over a cotton shirt. He was a lot taller than Blacklip and of slimmer build, and his tan, coupled with his narrow, well-defined features, suggested that he was a fit man who spent plenty of time outdoors. His hair and neatly trimmed beard had been bleached by the sun and contained only the faintest hint of grey. Some people might have considered him good-looking, although his eyes were narrow and a little bit too close together.

  A bead of sweat ran down from Kane’s hairline, making swiftly for an eyebrow. He flicked it away casually. If the humidity in the room bothered him, he didn’t show it. He stopped speaking about the Filipino weather and focused his eyes on Blacklip. He looked ready to do business.

  It was now or never, the moment of truth.

  Blacklip took a deep breath, aware that he was about to take a huge risk, but equally aware of the potential reward. The pleasure he’d get from it. The hunt. The act. The kill.

  ‘You know what I want,’ he said at last. ‘Can you get it?’

  ‘You want a girl?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Kane nodded agreeably. ‘Sure, I can get you a girl.’

  Blacklip cleared his throat, felt a joyous tingling sensation going up his spine. ‘She has to be young,’ he said, savouring that last word.

  ‘Whatever you’re after, I can get it for you. For a price.’

  The tingling in Blacklip’s spine grew stronger, spreading to his groin as he pictured what he was going to do. His mouth felt dry and he licked his lips.

  Kane waited, his face registering nothing more than mild interest.

  ‘Anything? You can get me anything?’ Blacklip’s voice had dropped to a whisper, his mind now entirely focused on the task ahead. His whole world had become reduced to the few square feet of this tiny, dimly lit room, its stifling heat temporarily forgotten.

  ‘Anything.’

  The word was delivered calmly, yet decisively. Blacklip knew the fixer did indeed mean anything. Even murder.

  So, with a shy, almost childlike smile, he shared his bloody fantasy. Occasionally he stole brief glances at the man opposite him to check that what he was saying wasn’t going too far, but each time Kane smiled back, reassuring him that everything was fine, that there was nothing wrong with what he wanted.

  When he’d finished, Blacklip gave Kane the sort of look that a dog gives his master. Asking to be understood. Begging for his bone.

  ‘I see,’ said Kane, after a short pause.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘It’ll cost a lot. There’s the logistics of it, for a start. And the risk.’

  ‘I didn’t think they’d be missed in a place like this. After all, there’s plenty of them.’

  ‘True, but the authorities are cracking down. That’s not to say I can’t do it, but it will cost.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Five thousand US.’

  Blacklip felt a lurch of disappointment. ‘That’s an awful lot. I don’t think I’ve got that sort of money. I was hoping for nearer two.’

  Kane appeared to think about this for a moment, while Blacklip watched him, praying he’d take the bait.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Kane answere
d eventually. ‘But I’m going to need a deposit so that I can set things in motion. Obviously this sort of thing requires a lot of effort. Can you give me two hundred US now?’

  ‘Please tell me you’ll do it, Mr Kane,’ Richard Blacklip said quietly.

  ‘All right,’ Kane sighed, appearing to come to a decision. ‘I’ll do it for two thousand.’

  Blacklip got to his feet. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said with genuine appreciation. ‘Now let’s find this money, shall we?’

  He stepped over to the bed, pulled open his suitcase and rummaged inside.

  Then he turned round.

  And looked straight at the black pistol pointed directly at his chest.

  Fear stretched Blacklip’s pudgy features into a grotesque parody of an astonished circus clown. His legs went weak and the wallet he was holding fell uselessly to the floor. The banknotes he’d already removed fluttered down after it.

  His first thought was ‘Police.’

  But no one else was coming into the room. There was no other noise. And jutting out from the pistol’s barrel was a fat cigar-shaped silencer that couldn’t have been police issue.