Gatecrasher (22 page)

They hit the cliff path sooner than he expected. It was not paved but a rough worn path of gravel and soil and the loose stones cut his feet but he tried not to slow down and he didn’t let Sarah’s hand go as he moved and kept her with him.

‘I can’t see a thing,
’ she hissed as they stumbled over the uneven ground but he shushed her sharply and she fell silent again. Here where bushes and trees narrowed the pathway into a corridor in places they would need to stay as silent and invisible as possible in order to drop quickly into a hiding place, unseen.

A stand of trees and thick undergrowth rose up on top of the slope in front.
Campbell
took them up over the lip of the hill and then, when he thought that they had dropped out of sight on the other side, ducked hard left into the trees. They waded through the leaves and brambles away from the path and pressed close behind the trunk of a large tree, pulling Sarah close to him.

The sound of the rain hitting the trees and the ground around them sounded like it was raining ball bearings. Sarah pulled herself closer in to
Campbell
and he felt for the first time how cold she was. He turned to her in the darkness, her hair dark and dripping, her clothes sodden and clinging to her taut shivering flesh. She looked back at him and there was fear in her eyes but there was trust too.

Campbell
could see over the lip of the hill and back the way they had come and could make out the bouncing black shape of somebody following along the path. Next to him she had begun to shiver and her teeth were chattering and her breathing becoming more audible as her body shook.

Sitting listening to her he knew that when he came past them she might give them away and he knew he had a decision to make.

Standing, he made it.

‘Stay here and be quiet,
’ he told her.

‘Daniel...’ she protested but in the darkness his eyes answered her and she crouched lower against the tree trunk.
Campbell
moved off the way they had come.

The darkness out here, away from the city and the lights of his home, was thicker, colder somehow. Blacker.

Above him he knew that the stars were bright and clear over the fat heavy cloud and he wished that he could stand staring up at them all night, just drinking in the tranquil silence. The freezing rain and harsh wind chased away such thoughts now as thunder cracked through the night again and he crouched low in the bushes watching the black shape of his pursuer dashing up the path.

Campbell
pressed himself low to the ground to stay out of sight, not willing to trust the wind and the rain and the night to hide him. He had no plan. He had no thoughts to attack this man or confront him but Sarah’s breathing and her shivering would have brought the man right to them and they could not keep running like this. Here above the beaches and coves below and the fields around them he knew that there were no other houses nearby that they could get to for help. He had seen no lights in the darkness as they had crested the hill, only more empty miles of the same dark pathway and the white sea smashing the base of the cliffs below.

He could hear the footsteps of the other man now as he came and he could see him moving up the slope toward where
Campbell
hid. Did he move now? Did he wait until he passed and then jump him? Take his chances fighting the man?

Campbell
was scared. He hadn’t been in a real fight since he was at school and the minor scuffles and scrapes that he had got into over the years had all amounted to little more than shoving and raised voices. He had played rugby for a couple of years after University which was often pretty rough though never particularly dirty or genuinely violent but he had turned an ankle badly and not finished the season or rejoined the team the following year. That was about it other than the beating he had taken from Slater and Gresham the night before, which as fights went, was pretty one sided.

The man was almost at the top of the slope now and
Campbell
could hear his breathing and as he tensed and this thoughts raced, the man slowed almost to a stop and began peering into some undergrowth to his left.
Campbell
, ahead and to the man’s right watched with interest. Had he seen them go for cover or was he just guessing? No matter, it had bought him a few moments to think.

Carefully feeling around the floor he closed his hand over a rock the size of his fist and then hurled it along the path toward the undergrowth, a few feet along from where the man was standing.

He turned to the noise and moved quickly to the spot, bending slightly to peer into it. There was a clattering sound that quickly followed as the stone dropped over the edge to the rocks below. The man stood still for a long moment. Perhaps he would think that they were making their way down to the cove.

Still he paused at the bushes, looking off into the darkness.

Come on, thought
Campbell
, take the bait.

Nothing.

Finding another stone on the ground,
Campbell
again hefted it toward the same spot. But then something awful happened.

As the stone flew up through the trees that hid him, it clattered into branches and the man turned and then began making his way quickly along the path.

Right toward
Campbell
.

In seconds the man was within feet of him, and though he had not seen him yet would spot him quickly and he knew it.

In two strides
Campbell
was on him. Stumbling slightly over the uneven ground he connected his shoulder solidly into the man’s side and took him off his feet. As they hit the ground,
Campbell
heard, rather than saw, the knife jarred loose from his attacker’s hand and clatter across the path and into the darkness. They rolled across the rough ground and as they came to a stop on the wet grass,
Campbell
brought a knee up but it failed to make a serious contact and thudded into a thigh.

The other man responded quickly and began hammering fists rapidly into his back.
Campbell
’s adrenalin was rising and the bones and muscles of his back soaked up the blows without troubling him. Struggling on the ground, both of them tried to pick themselves up and as they moved
Campbell
felt an elbow crack into his ribs and he almost yelped in pain.

This wasn’t missed and he felt a fist jab into his chest sharply again and this time he did make a noise but managed to stop himself from crying out.

Galvanised by pain and fear and surging adrenaline
Campbell
swung a fist at his attacker which landed uselessly on his shoulder, merely rocking him backward.
Campbell
had a split-second to look him over as they wrestled and tried to stand and he wondered if he knew the man, had he seen him before? How had he found them? Had he followed all the way from
London
, from his flat back in Fulham? But there was no time to think where he might have seen him before because he was coming at him again, hands clawing at his throat.

Pulling away he lost his balance and slipped on the grass over onto his back and the other man was quickly on top of him. He used his momentum to roll and dragged him over and then as the man’s weight moved right above
Campbell
he kicked out, shoving his feet hard into his assailant’s midriff and straightening both legs, sending him sliding across the wet grass and away.

Continuing the roll he was back on his feet quickly but he had taken his eyes off the other man for a moment and now couldn’t see him at all as he stood and frantically scanned all about, waiting to be rushed again.

As he stepped gingerly forward in the shadows he could see the flattened grass at his feet and then, as he searched the ground ahead of him there was suddenly a loud sound of sliding, scraping and a shifting of stones and then a brief silence.

And then he heard a short cry from below him, full of terror and desperation

And then a thick, crunching, thud that sent a feeling through
Campbell
like there was ice in his veins and he thought he was going to vomit.

Eyes wide and chest heaving he dropped to his knees and stared blankly at the cliff edge. Then he crawled to it and looked over.

Monday
.
11am
.

The cold, pale light of the day outside told of approaching winter and he could almost feel the chill as he stood in his warm, comfortable office.

On his desk lay that morning’s newspaper. The lead story was about a terrorist atrocity in a tourist resort in
Turkey
, which had been blamed on Kurdish extremists.

There was a small column about the possibility of the Government’s opponents lowering income tax as an election pledge. There was also a banner across the top about the colour photos that could be found on pages 4 and 5 from the wedding of a leading British actor.

Geoffrey Asquith’s name was nowhere to be found but he worried all the same. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow or sometime soon.

Days were passing in agonising silence with no word from anyone about who was behind the break in at Griffin Holdings or what their intentions were. Andrew Griffin had come to see him and told him all about the evidence of Horner’s activities in the early 1990’s, how the paper trail had remained hidden deep in the company’s records for long years.

Horner had admitted this to him without too much of a fight. Once it was apparent what Asquith already knew, Horner had surrendered any pretence of innocence and admitted to it all. Initially flippant and dismissive, Horner had seemed gradually to lose his nerve and the tables had turned almost completely now. More than once Asquith had angrily hung up the phone on the man, telling him not to panic, to wait and see what would happen. Until then he had other things on his mind, things that he could deal with, that were within his control.

By the end of the week Asquith would have to deliver his verdict on a proposed Dam building project in
Malaysia
. The project would be part funded by the British Department for International Development, which existed with the official mandate to help eradicate poverty and hunger in the poorer countries of the world. Most often this came in the form of aid packages and grants to the countries in question which would often go to large infrastructure  projects; gas and electricity supplies, schools and hospitals, roads and bridges.

As a matter of course however, such projects, which were often on a massive scale, requiring expertise, experience and sophistication in order to implement them, the contracts for their construction went to companies outside the recipient country. Usually, in fact, to companies within the donor country.

This was nothing new and Geoffrey Asquith knew it. He did feel more than a little guilty and hypocritical that ‘aid’ packages for these poor countries often amounted to little more than back-door investment in British industry. But he still believed that in most cases, if the execution might leave something to be desired, the end results still benefited the people they were supposed to.

If a dam helped provide electricity to the homes of many thousands of families who might otherwise be without it, what did they care whether a British company built it instead of a local one? What matter that a foreign firm was paid to construct much needed municipal facilities in a poor and run-down city?

This Malaysian project was not without its critics though. Thousands of acres of land would be flooded as a result of the dam and many thousands of local people displaced. An ancient religious site would also be lost beneath the reservoir as well as the breeding sites of rare birds that existed in only a few other places in the region now.

But the hydroelectric power plant would need to be manned and run and that would create employment. Also, with the power it provided to the local area, industry could flourish and more jobs would be created, helping improve the economy and the quality of life for tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people.

Asquith’s task was firstly to decide whether it would go ahead in the face of the opposition it had received and then to decide which of the firms that had tendered for the multi-million pound contracts would get them. The first point he knew was a formality. The opposition could not stand in the way of the project, the fate of which had long ago been decided. It was the latter job that would occupy his time now and he would need to meet with the last of various committees and interest groups and non-governmental organisations before presenting his final decision.

That his professional reputation and political future might be in jeopardy was something that he had no control over at present and this work needed to be finished either way. The livelihoods of many people depended on it, and on him.