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  ‘Bob’s having fun at least,’ she said.

  I adjusted the focus as I panned upstairs, a naked woman was bouncing on the bed, Bob’s lank hair flailing, balding head flashing in the dim bedside lamp. I took the binoculars away and looked at Lennon. She was leaning on the doorframe looking through the scope, adjusting the magnification with minute clicks. Her hair glowed in the faint light off the snow-covered meadow.

  ‘It’s the girl from the bar again,’ said Lennon. ‘What are these actually for?’

  I looked down, she was holding a bulging prescription box in her hand. I snatched it, threw it back in the glovebox, then put the binoculars back to my eyes.

  I panned across the wide picture windows of the open-plan living area to where several other Band Aid members were visible. ‘Another one just entered the kitchen. And Boy George… yep, he’s in his favourite chair. He’s gonna have to get up again soon, the fire needs another log.’

  ‘Sting is on the prowl upstairs,’ said Lennon. ‘You know the pills are just a crutch.’

  ‘What did I tell you, Boy George is off to get more logs.’

  ‘They only work if you get help, real help – I mean from a professional. They’re not a substitute for dealing with your problems. Do you remember Martijn?’

  ‘The Dutch butcher? He died a while ago.’

  ‘He wouldn’t get help, just kept taking more and more pills.’

  I lowered the binoculars, gave her a grin. ‘As I recall it was a bullet that disagreed with him, not a pill.’ I focused on the upstairs windows again.

  ‘They took off so much of his edge he was rounded. How long before you’re too dosed up to dodge the bullets?’

  ‘Can we keep on the job? No sign of Simon yet,’ I said. ‘Two more goons on the landing.’

  ‘Take some responsibility.’ Lennon sighed, putting her hand on my knee but taking it away after a few moments when she could see the topic was closed. ‘Anyway, I have told you, Simon Le Bon was not in Band Aid.’

  I put the binoculars down. ‘Look, I don’t know how it went down in Germany but in my neck of the woods Band Aid’s a national institution.’ I lifted the binoculars again.

  ‘You are thinking of Paul Young.’

  ‘It’s our karaoke song all year round, why would I get Paul Young mixed up with Duran fucking Duran?’ I panned across the house, Bono puffed smoke up into the freezing night air.

  ‘Simon was not in Band Aid,’ she muttered again, scope pressed into her eye. ‘We should redesignate him George Michael.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Simon Le Bon sings the verse after George Michael.’

  ‘There are more guards tonight.’

  ‘You sure? Maybe we missed some before.’

  ‘There were more in town with him too.’ She took the scope from her eye. ‘I wasn’t sure at first, but they’ve upped their security.’

  In my binoculars Bono flicked his cig off the decking and clapped his enormous hands together. ‘And?’

  ‘This is getting too much. We need a bigger team.’

  I put the binoculars down and gave her a look. ‘These guys are hooligans, we can do this job in our sleep.’

  ‘Not if they know we’re coming,’ she muttered.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  It was her turn to give me daggers. ‘You know exactly what it means. We have a rat.’

  I chuckled and put the binoculars back to my face. ‘You’re getting paranoid in your old age. We’ll do one more recce tomorrow night. All being well, we go the night after.’

  I wasn’t looking at the cabin any more, truth was I’d put the binoculars up to hide my face. Because she’d just said aloud what I already knew.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tiburon

  Like the distant explosions of a war zone at night, crashes echoed through the empty cargo hold every time we slammed through a wave to begin our descent into a trough. A boom as we hit the bottom, tilting, the ship straining and creaking and holding its breath to see if it would rise up again or remain submerged, before climbing up the rollercoaster ride to do it all again.

  In the lull between waves, I could hear King shuffling in the bed on the other side of the room, tossing and turning more than the ship. I looked over at him, could just make out his bulk on the bed in the dim lava glow of the emergency lights creeping under the door. I looked at the luminous hands of my watch. Six a.m.

  ‘How the hell do the crew sleep?’ mumbled King.

  ‘Remember Spitsbergen?’ I said.

  King chuckled. ‘I don’t think that was as bad, was it?’

  ‘Take off the rosy glasses, it was much worse.’

  ‘Why put up with it, what happened to getting out? Last time we spoke you had a plan.’

  ‘I’ve got a debt to work off first.’

  ‘All these lucrative contracts you pull, how the hell did you end up in debt?’

  ‘A debt isn’t always money. Don’t ask.’

  ‘Not sure I want to be working for these employers. Is it really the government?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘It’s bad juju, man.’

  ‘You always think that.’

  ‘I had bad vibes in Zurmat, remember?’

  Of course I remembered Afghanistan, only too well. Supposedly an easy job but King had refused to travel with my brother and me that day, and only I’d returned.

  King turned over again. ‘You’ve changed, and not for the better. I’m talking to the outer shell. Where’s the man?’

  ‘You do this for long enough, you harden. You know that.’

  ‘The harder something is, the easier it cracks.’

  ‘What fortune cookie did you pull that shit from?’

  He sighed. ‘Why now, John? Why me, after everything?’

  ‘I told you, I need someone I can trust.’

  ‘And you knew I wouldn’t refuse. You’re a dick, you know that?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  He breathed deeply. ‘You know how hard it is for me. I see you, I see him.’

  ‘That’s why it had to be you.’

  ‘If this is about your stupid crusade for justice…’

  ‘Easy for you to let it go,’ I snapped. I’d put a little too much into it, I knew it was far from easy for him.

  ‘Don’t you dare, we both loved him.’ He sat up in bed, shaking his head. ‘Jesus, man, your brother died in a war, I’m sorry for it, Christ you know I am, but that’s the job.’

  ‘He didn’t die, there was nothing passive about it, he was fucking murdered.’

  ‘And lugging a suitcase of survivor guilt around with you does fuck-all. Why do it to yourself? And why drag me into it?’

  I took a deep breath. Time to fill him in. ‘They’re here, okay? The person responsible for the bomb.’

  It took him a long minute to answer, when he did his voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘You tracked them down? After all this time?’

  ‘I got a break last month.’

  ‘That’s who you’ve kidnapped?’ He swung his legs off the bed and pointed at the floor, voice rising again. ‘That guy…’

  ‘There’s more to this. I need you to be cool, I’ve got a plan.’

  Movement skittered in my peripheral vision, the dim light in the room flickered. I held my breath. It was still pitch black and raging a storm outside, spray crashed against the porthole. A shadow moved in the red glow, shoes outside the door.

  I slid out of bed silently and crouched, retrieving my pistol from under my pillow.

  ‘What is it?’ asked King.

  I held a finger to my lips and motioned with the gun towards the door.

  In a second King was out of bed and alongside me, Glock in hand. I held my own pistol down low, reached a shaking hand to the handle, and threw open the door.

  The passageway was empty.

  I looked down the length of it but no sign of anyone. King joined me in the doorway.

  ‘What was it?’ he whis
pered.

  ‘You didn’t see it? Someone was outside the door.’

  He took off down the passageway in his bare feet. I watched him disappear round the corner at the end. A few seconds later he came padding back, Glock held low by his side.

  He shook his head. ‘No one there.’

  I switched the lights on, rubbed a hand across my face. ‘I swear, there was someone there.’ I saw the way King was looking at me and wondered if I’d imagined it. ‘I need a brew.’

  King slid out his trainers from under the bed, pulled on his jeans. ‘I need a coffee, shall we shake something up?’

  ‘I need to stay here to watch him,’ I pointed down at the smuggler’s hatch, unlocking my phone and automatically swiping onto the fitness tracker.

  I froze, staring at the screen. ‘Get Doc, now.’

  The heartbeat monitor synced to the smartwatch on our passenger’s wrist had flatlined. I clicked to refresh the data, the Bluetooth signal was weak but after the icon on screen had spun a few times it re-synced. The line was still flat.

  I looked up to see King staring at me intently. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Just get him, now! Miller, too.’

  He nodded, running from the room.

  ‘King,’ I hissed after him, he skidded and looked back in. ‘Don’t tell them anything. And tell no one else.’

  He nodded again and left.

  I closed the door, flipped up the bed, and rolled back the carpet. The hatch was still securely bolted shut. I slid it back, lifting it, looking down into the dingy space. The bulky orange ski jacket was just visible, huddled in the dim light falling through the opening. I reached in, flicked the lights on and realised at some point during the night our companion had fallen over. The chair was on its back with him still cable-tied to it, sliding around with each wave. I breathed – the watch had malfunctioned, that’s all, maybe he’d fallen on his wrist and broken it. He hadn’t actually flatlined. I climbed down the ladder, hoping that was it.

  I crouched, pushed my fingers up under the bag and worked them into the bulky collar, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I tugged at the bag but the string had caught on his jacket, I hooked my fingers under and pulled, tearing the material from his head. My stomach dropped.

  The man’s face was contorted in a snarl of pain or fury, maybe both. It wouldn’t change now, as he was certainly dead.

  Nausea crawled up my throat despite the seasickness tablet, I stood and grabbed the ladder to steady myself. Unexpectedly coming face to face with a corpse is never fun, but rolling around in a storm in the stinking hold of a decaying ghost ship the effect was magnified. Waves echoed through the hull, I took a few moments to breathe deeply while the chair scraped around on the metal floor behind me.

  I turned and looked again at the body. Looked like he’d been dead a while, the bruises on his cheeks that would never fully form looked angrier against his clammy white skin. No obvious cause of death but it hadn’t been pleasant. His hands were puffy and bloodied where the cable ties had cut into his wrists as he’d strained. Heart attack, most likely, but I decided to hold off guessing until Doc arrived. He’d been right, of course – tying someone up in ski gear for hours in a car boot and then a heaving ship’s hold must have been too much for him. That plus the cocktail of drugs swilling round his system. Obviously I’d expected an attempt on his life, hence the security and secrecy, but I hadn’t considered it’d be me that’d kill him.

  I climbed back up into the cabin, kicked the en-suite door open, and ran the tap to get it good and cold. The water sloshed side to side in the grubby sink, I splashed a few handfuls across my face and stared into the mirror. More wrinkles, more scars, more greys, stress was an understatement. Well if things go to plan this’ll be the last job I pull for Holderness and his cloak and bloody dagger department.

  I went back into the cabin, opened my rucksack, took out fresh jeans and a T-shirt, rooting around in the bottom for a pair of dry Adidas.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor, I threw the clothes on, slipping my feet into the trainers as someone hammered on the door. I opened it to find Doc in his dressing gown carrying his bag, followed by Miller in his usual attire carrying a mug of what looked like coffee but left the aroma of rum in its wake.

  ‘I wish to God I didn’t need the money, Blofeld,’ he said, taking a gulp. ‘Because I’m this close to pitching you and your buddies over the side.’

  ‘Wait there. Doc, come with me.’

  ‘I swear, Tyler…’ growled Miller, cradling his mug and leaning on the doorframe.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ said Doc, pushing me aside and climbing down into the hatch. He reached back up for his bag.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ I said.

  He tutted and gave me a raised eyebrow. ‘Did I not impress upon you that the current conditions were not conducive to keeping a man tied to a chair with a bag upon his head, not least without sustenance?’ He grabbed the bag anyway and climbed down.

  ‘I know you’re not a pathologist,’ I said, looking at the top of his head shining in the lights, ‘but I want a best guess at how he died.’

  Doc placed the bag on the deck, stared at the body, then looked up at me. ‘Have you moved him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Checked him over in any way? This is how you found him?’

  ‘All I did was check for a pulse.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Tired of waiting, Miller had stepped into the cabin.

  ‘Keep him out of here, please, Mr Tyler,’ said Doc, waving his hand.

  I stood to intercept Miller as he tried to get to the hatch. He growled, shrinking back to stop his Barbadian coffee from spilling across the wall.

  I pushed him back out of the room and held an arm across the doorway. ‘My charter, my cabin, for the time being anyway.’

  ‘So why did you want me here?’

  ‘You need to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Murder,’ Doc’s voice drifted up from below.

  I turned back to the room, dropping my arm to let Miller pass. He knelt by the hatch and put his mug on the floor, I joined him and crouched to watch Doc pointing excitedly at the body.

  ‘As you say Mr Tyler, I am no pathologist,’ he continued, eyes shining, ‘but I can tell you that a blade through the heart in such a manner as this is very likely to cause immediate cessation of life, and is seldom self-inflicted.’ He hitched his dressing gown and moved out of the way so we could see. ‘Particularly when the deceased is tightly bound to a chair.’

  Doc had rolled him over and unzipped the bulky ski jacket so I could see the T-shirt underneath, stained red around the handle of a knife protruding at an angle from his chest.

  ‘Again, I would like to stress my lack of qualifications in this area, but if I may posit a theory, I would suggest at some point in the last couple of hours your companion was attacked thus.’ Doc stood and brought his arm up in an arc. ‘The blade has penetrated between the sixth and seventh ribs in an upward motion which is consistent with being seated in front of his attacker.’

  He carried on this extremely good impersonation of a Home Office pathologist, but there were three questions occupying my mind as I sat back against the wall. The first was fairly mundane, and the same question Miller and Doc would presumably also be asking themselves, which related to the identity of the murderer among us – unless they really did believe the ghost ship nonsense. The second was whether they realised the matt black steel handle of the knife sticking out of his chest belonged to Nic, that young radio operator, and if they did, whether they’d mention it. But the third question was something probably only I was thinking about for now, so I decided that was the most important question. That of how, on board a corkscrewing boat in the middle of the sea, someone had got past me, into a sealed room, to kill my prize.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Château des Aigles

  Six days previously

  The last rays of la
te-afternoon sun and the frenetic opening chords of the Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ cut through a haze of weed smoke. Photos were spread across the polished oak floorboards, Sharpie circles drawn around the bodyguards on some of them, notations and statistics scrawled under ugly, purposeful faces. Other photos showed the target chalet, annotated with distances, angles, windows and blind spots. A printout of the site from Google Earth was scribbled on with more notes, a map spread next to it was marked with different-coloured arrows. In the middle of the floor Lennon had laid out a large-scale drawing of the chalet, noting every window, every door, interior rooms and dimensions, furniture, even the Christmas tree at the end of the lounge.

  I put my mug of tea down, plucked the joint from Ringo’s mouth, and stubbed it out in an ashtray.

  He scowled. ‘We can still walk this job with both eyes shut.’ He looked at Lennon. ‘Or at least one eye shut.’

  She gave Ringo a tight-lipped smile over her mug.

  ‘Don’t get complacent,’ I said. We’d discussed the implications of the increased security, but the other two hadn’t yet brought up the elephant in the chalet; the fact that more protection suggested the mark knew we were coming. ‘Let’s go over it again.’

  Ringo rolled his eyes. ‘Some easy off-piste, I take the shallow route from the north-west and hold at the corner here.’ He pointed at the chalet photos and looked at McCartney.

  ‘I drop in from the ravine further east,’ McCartney said, running a finger across the map, ‘and come in on the blind spot by the garage.’

  I looked at him. ‘You’re sure on the jump?’

  He nodded. ‘No problem.’

  ‘You don’t look sure,’ said Ringo.

  ‘He’s the best snowboarder I know,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not saying a lot if most of your friends are Iraqis.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ McCartney asked.

  ‘I mean, Iraq’s hardly famed for its winter Olympics team.’

  ‘Concentrate on your own task,’ Lennon spat. She gave him a hard stare until he looked away, then jabbed a finger at the map. ‘I bring the Porsche halfway up the road to this layby and await the signal.’