THE FIX: SAS hero turns Manchester hitman (A Rick Fuller Thriller Book 1) (18 page)

I shone a Maglite inside but the darkness defeated the beam and I could see nothing. Then I noticed a nylon rope fixed to the side of the wall. I pulled on it. It was heavy as hell, nearly as heavy as my suitcase full of gear. This had to be Rick’s stash. Five minutes of sweating and looking for snoopers and I had the item in my hands.

It was Rick’s old Bergen from his Regiment days and I felt a pang of sorrow as I noticed the small changes he had made to the shoulder straps. I remember calling him a pussy when I’d seen the extra padding he’d added to save his blistered shoulders during selection. I re-fixed the boards on the well top and stared at the Bergen. I suppressed the urge to open it there and then and opted to strap it on and tab back to the car.

Despite the over-indulgence of the last couple of days, all the running I had done in Scotland stood me well for the task. Anyone who has tried to carry forty kilos plus weight for any distance would tell you it’s bloody hard going, and it took me twice as long to get back to the car as the outward journey.

Finally, I dropped the Bergen in the boot of the Audi and opened the top. For all intents and purposes I looked like a rambler changing my clothes or shoes.

Sitting on the top of whatever was beneath was a letter. It had my name rank and serial number hand-written on the front.

It was Rick’s handwriting and I could feel that the envelope was well filled. I’m not sure how to explain the feelings that I was experiencing as I sat in the car opening the letter. Anger and bitterness flowed through me one moment, closely followed by deepest sorrow and affection. The whole clutter of extreme emotions made my hands shake as I removed the sheaf of paper from within. The letter had been written the day before we left for Amsterdam.

I felt like I’d raised the dead.

Dear Des,

The chances are if you are reading this, I am already dead.

I decided that if the shit really hit the fan one day then I needed to sort out my affairs. 

Having so many names and passports made it difficult to walk into a solicitor’s and make a will, so this is mine.

You are my only real family and everything I have is now yours. At the end of this letter are all the details you will need to access numbered bank accounts together with the deeds to my houses and the registration documents of all my vehicles. You are now a very rich man. I know you’ll spend it wisely. You always were the sensible one.

The two memory sticks contained in this envelope contain intelligence reports I’ve assembled since leaving the Regiment. They are encrypted. The password to unlock the files is the name of the pub we got thrown out of in Carlisle that fated New Year.

If, for any reason, you need this information, use it carefully.

I know what I’ve become these last few years. The only time I’ve felt alive was when crazy jobs were offered to me. It would seem that I took one too many. I should have known better.

We used to be quite alike, you and I, Des. You with Anne, your fish, and that bloody pipe. Me, fixing up the old cottage in Hereford and looking to start a family with Cathy.

In those days all I could think of was her, and having a son. Then she was taken from me.

If it hadn’t been for you, I would have blown my brains out that weekend. It was at that point our lives changed and I went on a mad obsessive spiral while you stayed strong.

I suppose this is an apology for turning into an arsehole.

A rich arsehole nonetheless.

Treat yourself to a new fishing rod with my cash.

Rick.

PS: No fancy funerals. My boots are in the bottom of the Bergen.

Tears pricked my eyes, and I looked around the car park feeling embarrassed. I felt like a boy who had been given the cane at school and had cried when the others had stayed firm.

Then I remembered my father at James McAfee’s funeral. He knew he could have been burying his own blood that day, but he’d been strong. Death was just part of life. If you had faith, then it was a natural progression, God’s will. I pulled myself together and tried to think of Rick and Cathy united again.

I read the letter twice more and then flicked through the pages, somehow hoping that there was some kind of mistake. I popped the two memory sticks in my top pocket, memorised what I had to and burned the letter there and then. I watched the paper curl up and blacken on the floor at the side of the car. Eventually the wind took the weightless fragments and there was nothing. It felt like some kind of ceremony.

I set off driving in no particular direction, trying to get my head in gear. Until I had read the letter there was one small part of me that wasn’t completely sure Rick was dead. Now it was definite. I was even more determined to get to the bottom of the Amsterdam job, and to find Rick’s killer.

I would need a computer, and from the figures I’d seen on Rick’s paperwork, it would seem that I could now afford one.

After several detours due to my lack of concentration, I found myself back in Manchester city centre. I parked the Audi close to the Arndale, the site of one of the IRA’s biggest mainland bombs. It seemed that, financially at least, the Irish had done the people of the city a favour as new structures gleamed in the sunshine. Much of Manchester’s newfound wealth stemmed from that incident and numerous expensive penthouses and apartments lined my route.

My stomach complained and I again realised that I hadn’t eaten. I took a bite in the nearest café before shopping for a laptop computer.

I managed to find something that would suit me fine for under five hundred pounds including a small printer, all the time thinking about what might be in the Bergen and what secrets were on the sticks in my pocket.

By five p.m. I was back in my hotel room with Rick’s possessions spread on the bed and the laptop charging in the corner.

Indeed his boots were at the bottom. When I saw them I said a Hail Mary for the first time in years. It was followed by a good dose of Catholic guilt.

The Bergen had obviously been an emergency pack for him, which for some reason he’d very recently turned into his last bequest.

As a result I now had another couple of weapons, a .222 rifle and ammunition, plus a little six round pistol, and some medical supplies including morphine.

There was ten thousand pounds cash, a bag of solid gold coins and two sets of car keys, both unmarked.

Having the keys was one thing, collecting the cars was another, as I’d yet to find anything related to Rick’s lock-up.

The laptop brought me from my thoughts by announcing in a metallic voice that the battery was fully charged. I sat the machine on the dressing table and inserted the first memory stick into a USB port. I tapped in the password, ‘Roebuck’, and the encrypted files became visible. There were dozens relating to the Regiment, MI5 and 6. Most names I had no recollection of, except one, Charles Williamson. I clicked on his folder and several other files appeared. They seemed to be code names. They were tagged as you might expect military operations to be named. Desert Storm etc. I knew of Williamson, he had an infamous military background. He’d commanded troops in Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq. He was known as a real hard case.

For some reason, known only to him, Rick was convinced that Williamson had a hand in the shooting that led to Cathy’s death. It was an obsession that ultimately led to Rick’s resignation from the army. Rick’s mental state was shot in those days, and the date that the files were last modified suggested that they hailed from those dark and terrible times. I remember calling in on him in the summer of 1997. I found him in a shit tip bedsit just outside Brighton. He hadn’t washed or shaved in weeks. The room was acrid and its grime-filled carpet and walls were covered in photographs and pages of scribbled information relating to Colonel Williamson and the secret services.

He was manic.

His powerful frame was thin and hunched. A small two-ring stove remained useless in one corner. A filthy fridge contained seven full bottles of vodka. His eyes that once burned with fight and intelligence were yellow and dead. He was a tortured soul in every essence.

I’d tried long and hard to turn him around. Colonel Williamson was one of the good guys. A hard case yes, old-fashioned yes, a womanising big-drinking bully yes. But he was Queen and Country before all and would never have done a deal with the IRA.

Rick had convinced his shattered brain and body that there was a conspiracy against him. Nothing I could say would change his mind, and there was nothing he could say to change mine.

Grief did terrible things to him.

I visited him when I could.

Then, four months and seventeen days after the shooting, he disappeared.

I didn’t see or hear from him again for thirty-two months.

He shook my hand as Stephen Colletti at a charity garden party in aid of Manchester Mothers against Gun Crime. I was doing close protection for some second rate government official. I tell you, I nearly fell over.

He was fit and tanned, even fitter than I’d remembered. He wore an expensive suit, and I noticed he’d had lots of dental work. The Hollywood smile didn’t fool me though, it didn’t reach his eyes. He left a sliver of paper in my palm with his mobile number and a message.

Thought I was dead, eh
? it said.   

I scanned the rest of Williamson’s folder. One file looked out of place, but I decided old soldiers could wait, and changed sticks.

I opened a can of Guinness I’d bought at the local off-licence, lit my pipe, inserted the second stick and began to read.

As I scanned yet more of Rick’s delusional theories, the name of that strange Williamson file, wouldn’t leave me. ‘Hercules’ Pillar’.     

Lauren North's Story:

Revolution Bar Manchester
.

Jane and I sat in the ‘Rev,’ sipping the first drink of many. The third Friday of every month had religiously become the ‘girls’ night out’ for our unit. Six qualified nurses between twenty-eight and thirty-nine were scattered around the trendy vodka bar. I looked about and realised we were all lacking a little designer class for such heroin chic surroundings.

Dianne and Audrey went for the bare midriff with false tan look; Philipa went with the ‘I’m totally desperate’ ensemble of miniskirt and high boots and Carol wore the same little black dress she wore every bloody month. Jane always squeezed into something two sizes too small for her voluptuous form, which made her huge bosom look freakish, and I wore a trouser suit I bought for my sister’s thirtieth. She is now thirty-seven.

The Revolution sat on Oxford Road, just a short walk from the railway station. The tall steps and the cobbles were a bugger in stilettos, but it was a fun place to start our Monthly Mancunian Mission.

A mission of alcoholic forgetfulness with deeds best forgotten by Monday. We all got a return ticket for the train from Leeds. Most of us would make that journey. Some, usually the same ones I might add, found solace in the arms of other equally desperate thirty-somethings, dressed in equally desperate fashion faux pas.

The ‘Rev’ as the locals called it, was a newly refurbished affair. The building itself was quite old and the Victorian ceiling roses and plaster covings were still visible. A Japanese DJ played funky house and the sickeningly thin waitresses pushed drinks promotions.

When not devouring pepper vodka and cheesy nachos, our job was to run the Leeds General Infirmary HDU. The High Dependency Unit was hated by some. If patients ever regained consciousness, it was a bonus. Most didn’t, severe brain or spinal injuries saw to that.

Over half of our patients died within a week of arriving on HDU. I suppose you could call it depressing. Maybe, but I enjoyed talking to the patients and caring for them. I really believed they could hear me and that in some way I was helping them. Jane had been my closest friend throughout my nursing career. We had worked the unit together for five and a half years. The night turned into a mix of good old gossip and a mountain of vodka. It was difficult not to talk shop at the best of times but the week had seen some interesting events and Jane and I were putting the world to rights, whilst the guy from the land of the rising sun played
Café Del Mar
and Dianne and Audrey got chatted up by two guys with even stronger self-tanning moisturiser.

All the fuss was over one new patient and I knew all the staff had been whispering about him. Two days earlier, a male had been admitted to HDU in a flurry of police activity. His face was heavily bandaged, so much so, that only one eye was visible. He had undergone reconstructive surgery to his mouth and face and was being fed intravenously. Both his legs were badly scalded. He had suffered some kind of brain damage and was comatose. Hospital consultants were assessing his condition.

The thing that intrigued Jane and me was the constant police supervision he got. Okay, most of the time it was a young copper who just sat and drank tea by his bed and tried to chat me up, but with the prognosis of the patient being poor, I presumed that the cops weren’t expecting him to escape. They were expecting someone to finish the job.

Jane and I ran through all the possibilities as to the poor man’s past, whilst finishing the last glasses in a tray of shots.  

“I bet he’s a gangster,” chirped Jane as she waved over to a bright orange stick-like waitress to get two complimentary slammers.

“Bit old,” I said, “he must be in his late thirties. Most English gangsters don’t last that long.”

I could see Jane was surprised by my level of knowledge, when it came to organised crime in the north of England. “I read a lot of crime novels,” I shouted over the din. “Funny it’s not in all the papers though.”

Our waitress and free slammers arrived on cue. She placed the free shots on the table. Jane downed the first and gave me a cheeky wink.

“He may be over thirty, but what a bod, eh!” She gave me a comedy nudge in the ribs and I smiled happily.

“You have a one track mind, love.”

She pulled her top down over her ample hips and straightened her hair with a bright red fingernail.

“Well we can’t be all like you, Lauren. I suppose you want us all to act like ladies around you, do you?”

She grabbed at the empty shot glass, which for some reason had been bright blue, and inspected it. She giggled mischievously.

“They’ve started calling you Miss Iron Knickers in the canteen.”

Pulling at my arm, Jane reached in for privacy, smiling wickedly. “I mean you haven’t had a bloke in years! I’ll tell you, love, if I looked like you I would be getting a damn sight more action than you are at the moment.” 

“I’m happy,” I replied through a fixed, ‘I’m going to kill you’ smile.

“And...I don’t need a man to be happy!” I shouted just a little too loudly.

I was sure a mere child of less than twenty viewed me with pity from his leather pouffe. Jane arched her back and surveyed every single guy in the room with the expertise of a hawk.

“Well I bloody well do, and I’m hoping tonight is the night!”

Jane let out her trademark guffaw and I recalled why I loved her so much. Jane was fun, always smiling, always the same. Whenever I had needed her, she’d been there. And, my God, had I needed her the last four years. I smiled back at her and gestured to a geeky looking guy at the bar.

“He looks interested.”

Jane’s head nearly swivelled off completely. She turned to me and leaned across the table so our faces were close.

“Not much to look at, but did you see the package in the jeans!”

We both broke out into fits of laughter. The shots took hold and the tone of the conversation got lower and lower. I knew Jane better than anyone and I also knew that we would go home alone this Friday, just as we had every Friday.

Jane talked a good game but, like mine, it was a lonely one.