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My view of the hallway widened as I moved towards the wall, but not enough for me to see anyone. I could hear my heart beating. This was a bad position to be in, and I had to force myself to resist the urge to just run out of there.

  The footfalls were getting closer, and then from the top of the stairs I heard a male voice call out, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ He was immediately answered by someone very close to the outside of the bedroom door, who called at him to get back.

  That was my cue. While the man outside the door was momentarily distracted, I jumped forward, reached my gun hand round the door frame and pulled the trigger three times, moving the arc of the gun with each shot as I tried to hit an unseen target.

  I heard a gasp of pain, and a shot rang out, ricocheting through the hallway.

  You never want to think too much on occasions like this. I knew I’d hit the other man so I jumped out into the hallway and saw him stumbling backwards towards the staircase and clutching at his arm, the gun no longer visible. Seeing me, he half leapt, half fell against the wall and landed in a heap at the top of the stairs. Somewhere out of sight, I heard the third guy – the one who’d wanted to know what was going on – racing back down the stairs to avoid being the next victim. Luckily for me, it seemed that Kalaman’s bodyguards were a long way off top quality.

  I grabbed the discarded gun of the man I’d just shot and shoved it into my waistband. I could have finished him off, but he was no threat so I left him there, walked purposefully back into the bedroom, past the badly injured madam and over to where Cem Kalaman still lay writhing on the floor.

  He looked up at me with a fearful expression in his eyes as I pointed the gun down at him, lifting up my balaclava so he, and he alone, could see my face.

  ‘Please,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve got money.’

  ‘This is for all your victims,’ I told him, leaning forward and firing a single round into his head.

  That was when I heard the sirens, far too close and fast for the cops to have just been called. This wasn’t good, because it suggested that the set-up didn’t only involve me killing the wrong man. It meant I wasn’t supposed to get out of this place either.

  I moved fast, checking the hallway to see that it was clear. The two bodyguards were still where they’d fallen. The first looked unconscious, while the second one was trying to crawl down the stairs. I was fairly certain no one else was going to want to take me on so I turned and ran back the way I’d come, locking the fire door behind me and running up onto the roof.

  I raced along the rooftops, keeping low, conscious of the flashing blue lights of the police cars reflecting off the houses as they raced into the square. It sounded like there were at least three vehicles, but it would take them a few minutes to work out what was going on and start sealing off the streets. I’d originally planned to exit through my flat well before the police arrived, but now going out of the front door there, not much over thirty metres down the street from where the police were arriving, would be way too risky. And for all I knew, whoever had called the police (and my guess was that it was Lane herself) had given them the address I was staying in as well.

  The light was on and the French windows still open onto the terrace right near the end of the building, and I ran towards them, clambering over roof terraces, hoping I couldn’t be seen from the street, not daring to look. Just like that, it began to rain. Hard. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing lights of another emergency vehicle entering the square. It couldn’t have been much more than three minutes since the first shot had been fired and yet it was as if they’d been waiting round the corner, ready to pounce.

  I reached the roof terrace of the house with the open windows and ran straight inside, descending a short flight of stairs into a large open living space. A round-faced man of about sixty in a linen dressing gown, with white hair and a large bald spot, sat on a long L-shaped sofa watching TV and stroking a very fat cat, while another equally fat cat was asleep next to him. The man stared at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and I put a finger to my lips to quieten him.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I said, approaching him with the gun lowered a little, ‘but I need your help. Who else is here?’

  He shook his head. ‘No one. I’m on my own.’

  ‘Good. Do you own a car?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What kind, and where is it?’

  ‘It’s a silver Mercedes A-Class saloon. It’s parked right outside.’

  My luck was in. ‘Get me the keys, and fast. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner I’m out of here.’

  He got to his feet, much to the annoyance of the cat on his lap, and walked down some stairs into a spacious kitchen. He took a set of car keys off a key holder on the wall and handed them to me.

  I told him to lie on his front on the floor. He started to protest and I had to tell him again that I wasn’t going to hurt him. ‘But I am going to tie your hands behind your back so you don’t raise the alarm.’

  Gingerly, he got down on his knees, but time was of the essence so I gave him a hard shove, forced him down onto his front, took a pair of the restraints that Lane had supplied from the backpack, and bound his wrists. ‘Right, stay there. Do not move for fifteen minutes. Then you can go and get help.’

  He said he understood and I left him in there, went out the front door of his flat, and hurried down the communal staircase, putting my balaclava, the pistol I’d picked up from the bodyguard, and the suppressor into the backpack, and shoving my own pistol into the back of my jeans, knowing that if it came to it, I’d put a bullet in my own head rather than go back to prison.

  But it didn’t come to that. I didn’t see anyone on the stairs, and as I came out of the front door, a good fifty metres away from where I’d pulled the trigger on Kalaman, I saw that the cluster of police cars, four in all, were parked up at the brothel entrance. A handful of people were on the street looking towards where the action was, but nobody noticed me as I walked over to where the Mercedes was parked and pressed the key fob to unlock it.

  I climbed inside, threw the backpack on the passenger seat, drove slowly out of the parking spot and, knowing that any sense of urgency would look suspicious, followed the one-way system round the other side of the square and away from the scene of the crime, even pausing to let an armed response car with lights flashing come through.

  Then I turned onto the Bayswater Road heading north and, as soon as there was a gap in the traffic behind me, I threw the burner phone Lane had given me out of the window and into Hyde Park, before accelerating away.

  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 desire to shoot any more. But I also needed answers, and pointing a gun at someone is a very effective way of getting them.

  I crept round the side of the house and peered at the driveway. There were two cars there. One was the Range Rover that had transported me to London. The other one was a large black panel van I didn’t recognize that looked like it had been reversed in. The rear doors were open and I could see something wrapped in clear plastic inside.

  As I stood there pondering my next move, I heard the front door to the house open and a big red-bearded man came into view dragging something else wrapped in clear plastic. I flinched as I realized it was the body of a woman, and even from this distance, in the glow of the porch light, I knew it was Lane. I might never have seen her face but I recognized the navy trouser suit she had on as the one I’d seen her in two days ago, and I noticed her feet were bare. The man had her by the shoulders, and I watched as he manoeuvred her towards the boot, turning round so he had his back to me as he heaved her inside with a loud grunt of exertion.

  That was when I made my move. I covered the ten yards that separated us in the space of a few seconds, moving silently, and I was almost on him when he turned round and saw me.

  I pointed the gun at his chest. ‘Hands in the air,’ I told him.

  The man smiled. He had a friendly face beneath the beard, with twinkling blue eyes, and a thick head of curly red hair. ‘You scared me, sneaking up like that,’ he said. His accent was South African. He lifted his hands above his head and I saw the telltale bulge under his jacket.

  ‘Reach down very slowly with your left hand and take out your gun, then lay it on the ground.’ I looked him in the eye as I spoke, my gun hand perfectly steady. ‘I want you to know something. I’ve killed tonight. If you try anything, you’ll be next.’

  ‘I know you have,’ he said.

  He’d stopped smiling but there was still something playful in his expression. He wasn’t scared, and that concerned me. But he did as he was told, taking out a pistol and laying it on the ground at his feet.

  ‘Step back three paces away from the gun.’

  He stepped back and I glanced in the back of the van, seeing Lane’s face for the first time beneath the clear plastic sheeting. She looked about fifty-five, with a strong, almost masculine face that was heavily splattered with blood from a large exit hole on her forehead. Her eyes were closed and her skin was a dead white. She looked grotesque wrapped up like that, with the sleeve of her jacket pulled up to reveal the silver bangle she’d been wearing only two days earlier. Beneath her was the body of a man, doubtless one of those who’d driven me to London and brought me food every day.

  It seemed like we’d all been played. But who had she been working for? Because this didn’t feel like anything the security services would have sanctioned.

  I stepped away from the van, lowering the gun so it was pointed at the red-bearded man’s knee. ‘It looks like you’ve been busy,’ I told him. ‘Now I’m going to ask you some questions. If you hesitate, or lie, I’m going to put a bullet in your left kneecap, then we’ll keep going until you give me the answers I need. First one. Who are you working for?’

  ‘He’s working for me,’ said a voice behind me – a voice I recognized from the past.

  And that was when I knew I was in real trouble.

  16

  Two years ago, I lost the only man I’ve ever called a true friend. His name was Chris Leavey and I’d met him when we served together in military intelligence. We’d reunited in the police force and had been working a case together for Counter Terrorism Command which had pitted us against probably the most cunning killer I’ve ever come across. No one knew her real name. She was simply known by her clients and by the various law enforcement agencies trying to catch her as The Wraith. During the course of that investigation, she’d been responsible for killing a total of six police officers, including three of my team, one of whom was Chris Leavey. She’d been contracted to kill me too and, although she hadn’t been successful, I’d always been haunted by the fact that she’d escaped justice from right under my nose.

  And now she was right behind me.

  Very slowly, I looked back over my shoulder and saw an attractive woman in her early forties with striking dark eyes, dressed in a figure-hugging black spandex top, jeans and running shoes, and holding a pistol very similar to mine with a suppressor attached. There was no effort at disguise b
ut then neither she nor her partner had been expecting to be disturbed.

  ‘Long time no see, Ray Mason,’ she said, her voice hard, with a trace of her native South African accent. ‘This is a very unexpected surprise. But a pleasant one. What are you doing here?’

  It struck me then that The Wraith knew nothing about the execution of Cem Kalaman or my connection to any of the people she’d just killed. ‘I had some unfinished business with the people here,’ I said, glancing over at Lane’s wrapped-up corpse. ‘I guess I’m a bit late.’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘I’m happy just to walk away though and leave you to it,’ I said, knowing I was far more useful dead than alive to whoever had hired The Wraith and her friend.

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Put the gun on the ground.’

  A small part of me thought about shooting it out with her there and then. I’d always wanted revenge on this woman for what she’d done to Chris and my other team members, but in the end, I knew my best option was to do what I could to stay alive just a little bit longer. I put down the gun as the red-bearded guy picked his up.

  ‘So what are we going to do with you, Mr Mason? That’s the question. You’re the only person who’s ever survived me being paid to kill them. It looks like that’s about to change. I don’t follow events in this country very much but I do know that some very important people want you dead.’

  ‘So why don’t we put this gentleman out of his misery?’ said Redbeard, giving me a cheery smile, as if he’d just offered to buy me a drink.

  ‘Let’s see what the client has to say,’ said The Wraith, taking a phone from her pocket and stepping away as she made a call.

  I glanced across at Redbeard. He was standing only ten feet away from me. If he was a bad shot and I bolted fast enough he might not be able to put a bullet in me before I made it round the corner and out of sight. But he’d have to be a very bad shot and I’d have to be very, very fast. I was sweating as the adrenalin pumped through me.