Who Dares Wins (42 page)

The vehicle belonged to a woman or a short-arsed man – he had to move the seat fully back in order to sit properly. His fingers groped for the panel under the steering wheel and, with a sharp tug, he pulled it off. With both hands he felt for the wires underneath; in less than a minute he had hotwired the engine into life.

Another time check: 03.15. Assuming the car’s owner awoke no earlier than six, Sam had three hours. It was enough. In three hours’ time he would be long gone.

In three hours’ time he would be back in Hereford.

Hereford, May 25. 04.55.

Max Redman awoke.

His room was dim, almost dark, with the morning light just beginning to bleach the air. As always happened, it was the confusion that hit him first. Where was he? What
was
this place? And then the pain. The dull, insidious ache that weakened his thin limbs and reminded him, with a shock that never grew less brutal through familiarity, that he was imprisoned – both by his illness and by the four walls that surrounded him.

He groaned, then lay there listening to his own rasping breath. It was only gradually, and with a creeping sense of unease, that he realised he wasn’t alone.

With difficulty, he moved his head to one side. A figure by the door. The old man couldn’t make out who it was. He squinted, but it was no good and he felt the anxiety of the infirm.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked, his aggressive voice neutered by his weakness. ‘It’s too early for breakfast. I’m not fucking hungry.’ Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t someone bringing him food. He struggled to stretch his thin arm out for the control that would move his hospital bed into a sitting-up position. His fingers touched it, but it slipped from his grasp. He swore and tried again. By that time, however, the figure was moving. Stepping towards him. And the closer it got, the clearer its features became.

Max Redman’s weak limbs became weaker. His breath rasped all the more. The figure stood by his bedside and looked down. Neither man said anything.

It was Max that broke the silence. ‘My God, Jacob,’ he breathed. ‘What’s happened?’

His son’s face was ravaged. There were deep, dark bags under his eyes and a frown on his forehead that reminded Max of when Jacob was a little boy and had been scolded. But his eyes themselves had the thousand-yard stare, that look of numb shock that Max knew from the battlefield.

Jacob didn’t reply. He just continued to look down on his father.

For a brief, irrational moment, Max wondered if he was being visited by a ghost; he wondered if his own eyes looked as haunted as his son’s. Max Redman was not a man who was easily scared; but he felt fear now, creeping down his spine and making his extremities tingle and burn. If this wasn’t a ghost, why would Jacob not speak?

‘What’s happened?’ he repeated. His voice sounded unsure. Max would never have been anything other than dominant in conversations with his sons, but now the tables had turned. He was frightened of Jacob. It took courage for him to stretch out his hand towards his son’s, an unprecedented gesture of timid affection. Their skin touched.

And then, slowly, like a man in church preparing to pray, Jacob lowered himself to his knees. He looked to the floor and allowed his father to place his thin hands on his head. They stayed like that, father and son, for nearly a minute. They might have stayed longer, had they not both been disturbed by the faint sound of wheels screeching in the car park outside. Jacob stood quickly. His eyes had narrowed, but his face had lost none of that troubled expression. He walked backwards until he was halfway across the room and his face was once more shrouded by the half light. Then he turned and walked to the door.

‘Your mother couldn’t live without you, Jacob,’ Max said. Jacob stopped, but didn’t turn round. His father’s difficult breathing filled the room. ‘Neither of us could live without you.’

A thousand thoughts suddenly emerged in Max’s mind, like the dead rising from their graves. A thousand emotions. A thousand apologies. But he didn’t have the energy to speak any more, even if he had had the skill to articulate them. And so they went unsaid, lost in the dark silence between the father and his son.

Max closed his eyes. He heard the door click open, then fall quietly shut. When he opened his eyes again, Jacob was gone.

*

It was precisely three minutes past five when Sam’s stolen Fiesta screamed into the car park of his father’s care home. There were barely any other vehicles there, just those belonging to the night staff. He stopped at an angle across two parking spaces and sprinted towards the building.

The receptionist on duty looked startled as he burst in. The man shouted something, but whatever it was didn’t register in Sam’s mind as he hurried past, along the corridors that smelled of disinfectant as he followed the familiar route to his dad’s room. As he ran, he put his hand under his hooded top and loosened the Browning that was nestled in his ops waistcoat. A strange sense of calm fell over him, an other-worldliness. He didn’t know quite what would happen when he reached the room, but with an almost emotionless detachment he knew he would be ready for it.

His father’s door. Closed, just like every other one along the corridor. He paused briefly, pulled out the Browning and, weapon at the ready, opened it slightly.

No sound. He kicked it open further and stepped inside.

His father was lying there, just where he always was. The bed was flat, the curtains closed. But Max’s eyes were wide open. Sam pointed his gun quickly to all four corners of the room. There was just the two of them, so he approached his father’s bedside.

Max’s face was grey. Tired. His eyes were red and the rough skin on his face was dabbed with moisture. Sam had never seen his father cry. Not even when Mum had died. It didn’t happen. There was no doubt about it, though. Max Redman had been crying and Sam knew why.

‘Where is he?’ he demanded.

Max stared at his younger son. He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions. ‘Why the piece?’ he asked, his eyes flickering to Sam’s gun.

Sam grabbed the control for the hospital bed. It seemed to move in slow motion, to take half a lifetime to bring Max upright. When finally his father was in a sitting position, Sam spoke again. ‘I know he’s been here, Dad. Where’s he gone? What did he say?’

Like a petulant child, Max pursed his pale lips.

‘Damn it, Dad! It’s important.’

Max’s chest rattled as he breathed. ‘Is he in trouble?’ he asked, before collapsing into a fit of coughing. As the fit subsided, he closed his eyes. ‘He looked like something had happened.’

The image of Mac’s dead body flashed across Sam’s mind, like a hot iron branding the skin of a live animal. He felt the muscles in his face tightening involuntarily, giving away his emotions. Max’s eyes narrowed. He might be old and sick, Sam thought, but he wasn’t stupid. His father looked away resolutely.

Sam took a deep breath. He couldn’t tell his father the truth. It would kill him. But he had to know what had passed between Max and Jacob. He had to know what his brother had said. ‘Listen, Dad.’ His voice low, urgent. ‘I don’t know what he told you, but yes, he’s in trouble. I can help him, Dad. I can get him to safety. But I’ve got to know where he is. If I don’t find him, someone else will.’

A noise outside the door. Commotion.

Max’s face hardened. He refused to talk. It was all Sam could do to stop himself grabbing his father’s nightclothes in his fist through frustration. ‘For God’s sake, Dad! For once in your life don’t be so fucking stubborn. Jacob’s not the golden boy you think he is.’

‘Stay out of it, Sam,’ Max replied, wheezing as he spoke. ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ More coughing. ‘All right, so Jacob came to see me. What’s wrong with a son wanting to visit his parents?’

As Max said those words, two things happened. In a sudden flash of insight, Sam knew where Jacob would have gone. And just as that thought hit him, the door burst open. ‘That’s him!’ a breathless voice said. Sam spun round. In the corridor he saw the receptionist he had so abruptly ignored on his way in; and in front of him, entering the room, was a security guard – broad shouldered, grim-faced and rushing towards him.

Sam acted on auto-pilot. A violent kick in the groin and the security guard doubled over. Seconds later, Sam had one of his arms crooked around the man’s neck and his Browning pressed up against his head. Sam pulled him into the corridor.

‘Get in the room!’ he shouted at the receptionist. ‘
Get in the fucking room or I’ll kill him!
’ The frightened receptionist did as he was told. As Sam stepped backwards he heard his dad shouting weakly. ‘
Stop him. He won’t do anything.
’ But the receptionist was too terrified.

‘Don’t make a fucking mistake,’ Sam told his hostage, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’ He hustled him along the corridor and down the stairs. They echoed noisily, but it was early and nobody else was awake. The guard was crying with fear. am just ignored it. They hurried through the reception area. By now the receptionist could have called the police. Sam didn’t have any time to lose.

Outside the building, he dragged the guard halfway to the car, then stopped. ‘Get on the ground,’ he instructed. The guard, frozen with fear, did nothing. ‘
Get on the fucking ground!
’ He pushed him down and the guard hugged the tarmac. ‘Move an inch and I’ll fucking kill you,’ Sam told him, before sprinting to the car. He was sweating profusely despite the early-morning chill, as the car coughed into life. Speeding from the car park, he looked in the mirror; the guard was still prostrate on the ground.

All notions of care and secrecy had evaporated from Sam’s mind. He drove furiously, screeching round corners and ignoring red lights. The few cars that were on the road at this early hour swerved away from him; horns blasted then faded away. Sam ignored them all. He knew the road he had to take, even though he hadn’t driven it for four years.

The graveyard was surrounded by black iron railings topped with spikes. Sam’s Fiesta came to a halt just outside the entrance, two wheels up on the kerb. He grabbed the gun that had been sitting on the passenger seat, jumped out and sprinted in among the graves. It was a large cemetery; as Sam ran among the stones, images of the last time he was here flashed in his mind like punches. The coffin being lowered into the ground; a small group of people standing around, barely protected from the biting cold; Sam himself standing next to his father; and the absence of one person keenly felt by everyone there.

Jacob was there, just as Sam knew he would be. He stood on the unkempt grass in front of the simple tombstone, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed, his back towards his brother. Sam halted some thirty metres away. He caught his breath and extended his gun hand. And then he walked forward.

He didn’t expect Jacob not to hear him; he just wanted to be prepared when his brother turned round. Sam was barely ten metres away when he did.

Sam stopped. Jacob also held a gun. Both brothers faced each other and Sam couldn’t take his eyes from Jacob’s face. He looked like he was wearing a mask – a mask of anxiety and hate. He didn’t appear at all surprised to see Sam.

‘Long way from Kazakhstan, Sam,’ he drawled.

An unnatural silence surrounded them.

‘Is that what you said to Mac?’ Sam asked. ‘Before you killed him.’

Jacob’s face wrenched itself into an agonised expression. His hand, Sam noticed, started to shake. ‘Mac got in the way,’ he said. ‘It was his own fault.’ Sam didn’t reply, so Jacob repeated his words, as though trying to persuade himself that it was true. ‘It was his own fault.’

‘You know that’s not true, Jacob.’

Now it was the older brother’s turn to be silent.

‘Mac was helping me. Helping
you
, actually. Trying to stop the Firm from sticking a bullet in you.’

‘I didn’t need your help.’

‘Clearly not.’

They stood.

‘You should have been here four years ago, J.,’ Sam said. ‘When we buried Mum. You should have been here.’

Those dark eyes bored into him. ‘She wouldn’t have missed me. Not her, or the old man.’

‘You’re wrong.’

Jacob snorted with contempt.

‘Jesus, J. What the hell’s happened to you?’

‘You should put the gun down, Sam. You’re not going to shoot me.’

Sam looked meaningfully at Jacob’s own weapon. His brother shrugged, then stowed it inside his jacket. Sam lowered his gun arm, but he kept the weapon in his hand. ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me that I’ve got it all wrong, J. That you didn’t kill Mac. That your red-light runners . . .’

Jacob interrupted him sharply. ‘How did you know about them?’ Then, almost as soon as the words left his mouth, he nodded in understanding. ‘Dolohov,’ he said.

‘We had a little chat.’

‘Good for you. I’m going to leave now, Sam. Why don’t you go back to the old man’s bedside. Talk about what great soldiers you both are.’

Sam’s eyes narrowed. ‘You honestly reckon
that’s
what he thinks?’

Jacob didn’t reply.

‘Since you went dark, he’s talked about no one but you. I mean it, J. I can’t spend five minutes in his fucking presence without hearing how much better you are than me. Or
were
. He thought you were dead, J., because you never came to see him.’ Sam looked over at the grave. ‘Mum too. If you hadn’t left, she wouldn’t have given up.’

Jacob’s lips had thinned. ‘Shut up,’ he said quietly.

‘No, Jacob. You don’t know what I’ve been through to catch up with you.’ He found himself breathing deeply, trying to keep his anger under control. ‘Mac had two children, you know. Cute kids. I don’t suppose you thought about that when you plugged him.’

‘It was his own fault,’ Jacob half-shouted, repeating his mantra.