The Abrupt Physics of Dying (46 page)

Clay stood, looked at Medved, back at Crowbar. He looked down at the H&K in his hand. So many times he had been here, in this blood-soaked temple. And each time he had killed he had made the
world poorer. The SWAPO kids – for that’s what they had been, children, boys – had not deserved to die. Those soldiers in Yemen, too, Jesus Christ, what a total fucking
waste
. Medved was babbling now, waving his hands, his words roiling dyslexic through Clay’s head, indecipherable. Time slowed. The big man’s blood wicked into the carpet, spread around Clay’s boots. Clay breathed deep, raised the gun to Medved’s head.

‘What are you doing?’ blurted Medved.

‘The right thing.’

Clay pulled the trigger. Medved slumped back onto the floor, a neat round hole between his eyes, the back of his head splattered over the carpet, the side of the bed. Clay dropped the gun to the floor and stared at Crowbar.

Crowbar stepped over the bodies, picked up the handgun, and started wiping it with the bedsheet. ‘Time to go,’ he said.

Half a minute later they were walking down the alley behind the hotel. Clay’s steps were even, calm like the beating of his heart. When they got to the corner, he glanced back towards the hotel. Police sirens wailed in the distance. It had stopped raining and low clouds scuttled across a clearing sky. The air was cool and sea clean. Pedestrians streamed along the crowded pavements. Crowbar nodded to him, turned north, disappeared into the crowd. Clay turned away from the hotel and walked through the morning traffic towards Leicester Square, south to the Thames. After a while he stopped on the embankment and stood looking out at the river, the reflections of the city dancing on the metal-plate water, the traffic flowing on Southwark Bridge. For a moment, he was alone. And then he turned away and disappeared into the churning anonymity of the city.

I’ve been lucky in my life. And all of that good fortune has, in some way, contributed to this book. To my mother and father, for instilling a love of words and stories, my wife Heidi for saving me all those years ago and for her unflinching support as hours and days have slipped by, me hammering away on the keyboard or musing over a notebook while she kept everything going. To my sons Zachary and Declan who are already so much more than I’ll ever be. I would also like to acknowledge and thank all the people who have helped bring this book to being: Claire and D for reading an ancient and much-changed version of the manuscript; my dad for his helpful ideas; Eve Seymour for her fabulous reviews, support and introductions; my agent Broo Doherty for taking me on in the first place and sticking by me; Gary Pulsifer for giving me my first chance; and Karen Sullivan, my publisher, for having the guts to start her own business and publish this book. And, of course, to all of those who chose to devote a few hours of their valuable time to sit down and read this story. I hope you enjoyed it.

EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT

Claymore Straker returns in

Paul E. Hardisty’s

THE EVOLUTION OF FEAR

Published by Orenda Books in 2016

No Easy Way

Claymore Straker stood face to wind and watched the storm come in off the Irish Sea. Rain clouds scuttled overhead, low and fast, moving inland over the gorse and the stunted, wind-bent trees. The first drops touched his face, the cold fingertips of a ten-hour corpse. Two months he had been here now, anchored into the cliffside, staring out at the slate grey sea, watching the depressions deepen. Winter was coming, and he was a fugitive.

It seemed half a lifetime since he had walked into Crowbar’s flat in London, the blood still wet on his hand. After the killing they’d separated, found their way through rain-swept London streets back to the Kilburn apartment. His old platoon commander, Koevoet – ‘Crowbar’ in Afrikaans – had sent him to the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a razor, given him a change of clothes. Ten minutes later they were speeding down the A4, heading west in Crowbar’s old Ford. After eight hours on the back roads, they had arrived here, on the North coast of Cornwall, ten miles from the nearest village, the closest farmhouse six miles across the gorse.

Stay put, Koevoet had told him. There’s enough food to last a year. No electricity, no phone. Kerosene lamps, coal for the fire, gas for cooking. Keep clear of the villages and farmhouses. The smaller the place, the more they notice. I’ll be back soon to check on you. Then he’d clunked a Glock G21 onto the table, along with three spare mags, a box of .45-calibre ammunition and a silencer, and walked out into the night.

Clay Straker turned away from the storm and followed the low stone wall back towards the cottage, staring down at the bands and folds of the cliffside. The cottage was almost invisible, notched into the top of the bluff, made from the same stuff, slate and mudstone, fragments of extinctions past. At the gate, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, out across the grey solitude of the sea.

And he was back there, in that damp ballroom in London amidst the shambles of Medved’s capital raising, bankers and moneymen scurrying for the exits, the stench of bad publicity starting to rise like graveyard fog. He could hear Rania’s voice still. ‘We have done it, Clay,’ she’d said. ‘As soon as the story hits the papers, Rex Medved is finished. Leave it now, please
chéri
.’ She’d pleaded with him. Africa, she’d said. Time to start something new, together.

And he’d tried. Tried as hard as he’d ever tried at anything in his life. But the pull was too strong. A black hole of lust. He’d even been given a second chance – how often do you get one of those in the real world? He’d followed Medved out of the ballroom’s back exit, left her standing there among the financiers and speculators, chased him down the corridor to the alleyway behind the hotel. He’d had the gun out. He’d been ready. No, not ready.
Ravenous
. Ten days in the Highveldt without food, baying at the smell of blood. But by the time he’d reached the alleyway, Medved was gone, just the tail lights of his chauffer-driven Mercedes disappearing around the corner. And then that impossible second chance.

He remembered the last time he’d seen her, the next day, curled up naked on the hotel room bed. Africa, they’d decided. Together. He’d been down in the lobby booking the tickets to Cape Town when Rex Medved and his men had arrived. He’d warned Rania, made it up to the room just after she’d fled. But before he could follow, Medved’s men had surprised him. Clay could still see the boardroom arrogance in Medved’s eyes as he pointed the gun at Clay’s head – the complete absence of fear, the invulnerability of money – could hear the bastard’s voice, scorn dripping like toxic waste from each word, delivering a sermon to the lowly: know your place, be content with your pathetic jobs and mindless amusements. And, above all, leave the business of running the world to the people who know. People like
me
. Then
Medved had looked him straight in the eyes and told him exactly what he was going to do to Rania once he found her. Moments later, thanks to Koevoet, it was Clay holding the gun, Medved counting out the seconds. He didn’t have long to wait. Half a minute later Clay put a .45-calibre bullet through Rex Medved’s forehead.

And in that time suspended before his end, watching Clay’s finger squeezing down on the trigger, Clay wondered, had he known fear?

Clay shivered, pulled up his collar against the squall, walked the ten steps to the little work shed buttressed into the side of the cottage, and opened the oak-plank door. He pulled the tarpaulin away and wheeled the old Norton out onto the wet gravel. He checked the fuel, clicked the transmission into neutral, turned the ignition, flipped out the starting pedal and gave it a crank. The engine roared, spat blue smoke, cleaned up, and settled into a low growl. He gave the throttle a couple of revs, pulled on the old helmet he’d found stuffed inside a dusty box on the bottom shelf of the workbench, and mounted the bike.

Eight and a half weeks now he’d stayed put, without a word from Koevoet – his only contact with the world the little radio he’d found in the cottage. Fifty-nine days now, 1422 hours not knowing where she was, not knowing if she’d made it safely to Switzerland, if she was alive or dead, burning away the very fibre of him, the sinew. And if she was there, Allah protect her, what would she be thinking now, hearing the same stories Clay had been tracking in the news, the brutal murder of Rex Medved, celebrity mega-millionaire Russian businessman and philanthropist, the appeals from his family for information leading to the arrest of his killer, the million-pound reward announced just this morning by his sister, Regina Medved, at a press conference held in the Byzantium foyer of her Moscow penthouse apartment.

A million pounds. Enough to change a life: pay debts, buy freedom, solve problems. It changed everything, for both of them, raised risk to the sixth power.

It was time to go, time to get back to Rania, find her and disappear for good. Keep that promise he’d made to her, to himself. Maybe change the trajectory, find some of those things he’d always wanted, atone for the wrongs. So many wrongs.

Clay set off down the gravel track, the wind at his back, the rain
coming now in gusty sheets that flayed across the open bluff lands, the gorse shivering with each whip of the lash. Riding one-handed was more difficult than he had anticipated, despite hours of practice sitting on the bike in the shed. Managing the throttle and steering with his right hand was fine, but working the clutch was altogether more difficult. He found the best way was to curl his elbow under the handlebar and hook his stump up onto the lever, pulling inwards with his bicep to release the clutch while applying counter pressure with his right hand. Engaging the clutch was then a matter of easing the handle back out, keeping the front wheel straight by releasing pressure on the right. On his first change up to second, his stump slipped on the wet handle, the clutch popped and the bike stalled with a hollow double clunk.

He cinched the cuff of his jacket down over the stump for better grip, restarted the engine, tried again. He lurched along the pathway, the engine surging and lugging, learning to ride all over again. Again he stalled out, cursed, kicked the engine to life once more. Gradually he found the right balance, leaning in with his left shoulder on each change to get better purchase on the clutch lever. Soon, he was shifting smoothly, the engine repeating the scaled harmonics of engagement to redline, hum to whine, a pause for breath, the next acceleration. The track wound along the draw, the vegetation here thick, green and wet, before emerging onto the uplands between parallel hedgerows tall as a man. Three and half miles on, the track intersected a narrow single-lane road, the tarmac weathered and sunk deep into the ground, a grass-edged rut in the landscape. Clay turned west and opened the throttle, felt the bike accelerate, the dark hedgerows flying past, road spray hissing from the wheels. He passed the first farmhouse, a distant light across the fen, and joined the B road for Launceston.

Soon he was trundling along with the evening traffic, a light rain falling, the lights of the cars swimming across the wet pavement. He stopped at a newsagent, picked up a £50 phone card, paid cash. A few miles down the road he pulled into the parking lot of a Tesco supermarket on the edge of town, and levered the bike up onto its stand. The place was busy with after-work shoppers, the lot almost full. Outside the main entrance to the supermarket was a bank of public telephones. He pulled off his helmet, searching the eaves of the building. A single
CCTV camera watched the main entrance. Another was perched atop a lamppost at the far end of the lot. Clay placed the helmet on the seat, pulled up his hood, wandered to the opposite end of the car park and circled back towards the phones, avoiding the cameras.

Clay closed the phone-box door, brushed the rain from his jacket, cradled the receiver between his shoulder and ear, and composed the number. The line clicked, fuzzed, rang. Clay imagined the telephone on the little pinewood table next to the kitchen window, her walking from the lounge, looking out across the valley, the Dents du Midi towering in the distance, in cloud perhaps now, early snow falling at altitude. She was safe there, he told himself, veiled by a new name, a new identity, a place to live free from questions and intrusions. She had managed to convince him that her old employers, French intelligence, the DGSE – surely compromised by Medved through his close connections inside the French government – didn’t know about her Swiss hideaway. He hoped it was so. The ring tone pulsed for the fourth time, fifth. Clay looked down at his boots, the rain falling across the pavement, the shoppers scurrying past with fists clenched over straining plastic.

‘
Allo
?’ A woman’s voice. Not Rania.

‘Is Rania there?’

‘Who is calling, please?’ A strong French accent, an older voice.

He decided to take a chance. ‘It’s Clay,
madame
.’ He doubted that they would be monitoring her calls, that the police had made any sort of connection between them, yet.

‘
Monsieur
Clay?’ she gasped.

Clay knew the voice now. It was the old lady who’d led him to Rania after the violence in Yemen. The violence that had brought him here.
Madame Debret
.

‘She is not here, I am afraid.’

‘Where is she?’

Silence. Caution. Good.

‘Do you remember the Café Grand Quai in Geneva?’ he asked. Where they had met, where she had directed him to Rania, helped him to find her.

‘
Oui
.’

‘You held my hand. Told me about her father.’

A deep breath. “I am worried,
Monsieur
Clay. I told her that she should not leave, but she insisted.”

‘Where has she gone?’

‘
Chypre
.’

He wasn’t sure he’s heard right. ‘Cyprus?’

‘
Lefkosia
, yes. Her editor has given her this assignment. He contacted her one week ago. At first she did not want to go. But he was insisting very much, calling her many times.’

‘LeClerc?’

‘She did not say his name. Only that he was with Agence France-Presse.’ It had to be LeClerc, the man Clay had met in London, the one who’d finally published Rania’s story, the one who in doing so had helped to blow the casket lid off Medved’s corrupt and deadly oil-production activities in Yemen. Pretty quickly after, the Medveds lost all financing for their Petro-Tex venture in Yemen and were forced to sell the company at a loss.

‘When did she leave?’

‘You have just missed her. She left the day before yesterday. You might see the first story she has written in the
journaux
today.’

Damn. ‘Did she say when she’d be back?’

‘No more than a week.’

‘Forwarding address?’

‘None.’

‘Telephone number? Mobile?’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Thank you,
madame
.’ He was about to hang up when he heard her call out.

‘
Monsieur
Clay, please. Wait. She left a message for you, if you called.’ Noise down the line, scraping, a drawer being opened and closed. ‘I have it here. She wrote it for me.’

Clay waited, said nothing.

‘It says: “
Ecoutons
la confession d’un compagnon d’enfer
.”’

Clay understood only one word:
enfer
. Hell.

‘It is Rimbaud, I believe,’ she said. ‘Listen to the confession of hell’s companion.’

A tumour of ice materialised in Clay’s chest. He knew this, from the
boy poet’s
A Season in Hell
, the chapter entitled: ‘The Infernal Husband’. He curled his lip, hung up the phone, stared out into the half-light of day. She’d chosen carefully, knowing he’d read this prose-poem over and over while he was in Geneva searching for her, this lament, taken by its power:
I am lost. I am impure, a slave of the infernal husband. A widow
.

Why this? Something was wrong. Clay pulled in a half-breath, let it flow back out as vapour, looked long both ways along the store-front pavement, out into the car park, through the big front windows into the fluorescent glow of the supermarket, the patchwork of vivid primary colours, his insides roiling in a Southern Ocean gale. Near one of the checkout counters was an in-store newsagent selling copies of the major British broadsheets and tabloids. There would be CCTV coverage inside the store, and no way to avoid it. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and pulled the grey hood of his jumper over his head, tugged it out to cover his profile, shoved his forearms deep into his pockets and strode into the store.

Less than five minutes later he was back in the phone box, a copy of the
Independent
under his left arm. Thirty-first October 1994: British soldiers freed by Bosnian Serb authorities after six days in captivity, a Tory sleaze enquiry, the England football coach accused of financial wrongdoing. He scanned the back pages. On page nine: a short article on the theft of cultural and religious artefacts in Northern Cyprus since 1974 and, more notably, in the last few months. Centuries-old illuminations, mosaics and sculpture, stolen from abandoned Greek Orthodox churches in the occupied North, were making their way to private buyers in Europe and Russia. The article claimed that the ring was highly organised, well-funded, and violent. The thing seemed to straddle both sides of the border, and the recent sharp upturn in thefts coincided with a dramatic surge in unsolved murders on the island. Outraged Greek Cypriots were calling on the UN and Turkey to take action to stop the plunder. The article was syndicated by Agence France-Presse, written by Lise Moulinbeqc, Rania’s new identity, courtesy of her ex-employers the DGSE, Direction Genérale Securité Exterieure, French Intelligence.