Chapter Twenty Four
The door of the estate agent's office swung shut behind Savage. It was empty apart from two gloom-mongers sat behind their desks. Only one of them said anything.
'Can I help you?' the man said, pouting.
Savage walked over and sat down.
'Maybe,' he said. 'But I'm not looking to buy.'
'Sure, everyone's looking, no one's buying.' He steepled his hands beneath his chin and looked over his wire frame glasses with big eyes. 'So how can I help you?'
'Michael Fincher. The apartment in Canary Wharf, three years ago.'
'Stacy,' the man barked at the young woman on the next desk. 'Be a love and make us a cup of tea, hey?'
Stacy looked like she might tell the man to make his own tea, then thought better of it. She walked to a room at the back of the office and started clinking cups.
'And close the damned door.'
She slammed it.
'Who are you?' he said.
Savage handed him one of his investigator cards.
'These could have been knocked up at the print shop half an hour ago.'
'So they could,' Savage said.
'So fuck off then. I had enough questions about that disaster three years ago.'
'What sort of questions?'
'Never you bloody mind. Fuck off already.'
'No.'
'I'll call the police.'
'There's really no need. I'm not here to do you any harm. I imagine after the suicide people talked. Wondered things about you? Whether they could trust you? That sort of thing.'
The man said nothing. He picked up the phone with surprisingly thin hands and hesitated.
'Can't remember the number?' Savage said.
'Of course I can.'
'Nine nine nine.'
'I know,' he said and dialled the number.
'Do you remember that Michael was on the phone before he jumped?'
Savage saw that he did. The man pouted again. And said, 'Police please,' when asked the question.
'Do you remember what he said?'
The man played with his pen, fussed with the items on his desk.
'He said, “Are you listening?”'
The man gasped, Savage heard the voice on the other end ask the caller to state the emergency. Savage took the phone from the man's frozen hands.
'I'm so sorry, false alarm,' Savage said and hung up. He levelled his eyes at the thin man. 'Want to know how I know?'
The man nodded so much Savage thought his head might roll on to the desk.
'I was the man on the other end of the phone. I know all about wagging tongues. I had to leave the country.'
'I never told anyone,' he said. 'I saw him mouth the words, but never knew what he said. Not for sure. Not until you said it just then. Oh god,' he fanned himself with a property update. 'Oh god, where's that girl with the tea? Stacy?' he shouted.
'Coming!' she shouted back.
'Mind if I ask a few questions?'
'Why?'
'Just for me. I'm trying to put a few demons to bed. You know how that is, of course.'
'That I do. What's your name again?'
'John Savage.'
'I was fast tracked for management until then John. I had commissions coming out my ears. All those closet city boys just wanted to give me their money and their bodies. Then that fool had to go and jump, I mean why? His suits were beautiful.'
'His suits?' That took a moment to process. 'That's what I'm trying to work out,' Savage said. 'Why he jumped.'
'Didn't the police figure it out? He was embezzling money or something? Mind you, money or no, if I'd been stuck with that bitch I'd have jumped too.'
That stung, still, after all this time. He and Jo had never been— What? A couple? Savage fought his protective male urges.
'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why, or how was she a bitch?'
Stacy plonked a mug of tea on the desk, and took one back to her own.
'Oi, you. Where's Mr Savage's cup of tea?'
She sighed and offered Savage her own. 'No, thanks, I don't want one.'
'Are you sure? The man said. She rolled her eyes.
'Definitely. Tell me about the woman.'
'The bitch,' he said. 'Honestly. I've told you before haven't I Stacy? I drove them round all morning and all she did was tell him what to do, when to speak, what to say. I'd met him before, you see? He was a robust, handsome, and strong man. But with her. My god. He was just so weak. It was disgusting.'
The irony of the man's bitchy behaviour with Stacy wasn't lost on Savage.
'I mean,' he continued, 'effeminate I may be, I give you that, but that doesn't mean I'm a wuss. Not like he was with her.'
'What did they talk about?'
'Well, he was just desperate, a hopeless case. He'd given her the boat and the house and the car he asked her what else did she want?'
Savage's eyes widened. 'That's the bit I didn't hear. Their relationship was definitely fraught then?'
'No, it wasn't fraught. She was a bitch. I told you already. She wasn't interested in helping him when he was about to jump, she lost her temper, she was going to tell him off again.'
'What do you mean tell him off?'
'I don't know exactly. All I know is this, she almost slapped him when we first walked in. Except I was there, so she didn't. I think she would have given it to him properly second time round, but he jumped before she could.'
'Are you sure about this?'
He shrugged. 'I bet that bitch got all his money too,' he brought his tea to his lips, 'did she?'
'Now that's a good question. And you know, I don't have the answer. No reason to think why not though, she was his fiancé.'
'Makes you think doesn't it John?' He pouted his lips at the hot liquid and blew on it to cool it down.
'Yeah,' Savage said. 'It sure does.'
*
The motorways of London soon gave way to the narrow lanes of the southern English countryside. Less than an hour from London they meandered past the backs of some of the UK's roughest housing estates. Then gave up on modernity and reverted to expensive mansions in the country with immaculate tree lined drives that merely hinted at the entitlement hidden within.
The lanes reeked of high maintenance wives and large expanses of land daddy's little girl made the most of.
The sat-nav kept telling him to 'Go straight.' Escape London quickly was the hidden message in the planning of these roads.
The voices there weren't the usual English mixed bag of tongues from the old invaders and the new. The accents Savage heard when he slowed to let a line of horses cross the road were all from expensive schools. Eton and Harrow or Roedean and Cheltenham when they were children, Oxbridge when they were bigger children. A long line of women bobbed up and down in jodhpurs.
'Pippa really wasn't having it you know?'
'Well why on earth should she?' the voices drifted in through his open window.
Savage didn't know who Pippa was and didn't think he'd like her if he did.
Savage had read somewhere that in this area, so close to London and all that money, the Metropolitan Police had begun issuing hundreds of warnings a year to husbands and wives in the area. They were all on hit lists. Their other halves had put them there.
'Love is in the air,' Savage sang to himself. Gave a smile to the last horse rider in the line. Always a babe magnet, she gave him a fearsome glance.
What do you drive sugar? The smallest car in the range baby, and it's a hire car. A winning line with the jet-set.
The forest closed in giving the two lane road more of a single track feel. The trees loomed, cutting out the sunlight and adding a chill to the air.
'Destination, two hundred yards ahead,' the digital voice told him. He took his foot off the gas, looked for a sign, found none. Even though the machine informed him that they had arrived at their destination.
He slowed to a stop.
A small path led off at a diagonal from the road, Savage took it. The dirt track had turned dry in the summer heat. It led up a steep incline and then stopped abruptly at a simple gate. A thick wooden beam on a hinge across the track.
The sat-nav shouted at him to turn around and that he had gone too far. According to the GPS map there was no road there and he was hovering above a field that bore no relation to the land outside.
He turned the car around in a small well-beaten turning circle, clearly he wasn't the first to lose his way, and parked.
With the engine off the silence, well, they usually said it deafened, but what it did was freak his ears out. Used to compensating for the constant hum of London traffic, TVs, tinny pop music and occasional bursts of gunfire they hadn't heard silence like this since the desert.
He took a deep breath. With the car quiet the watching birds felt safe and began to squawk again. He checked the address on his phone. Shrover Wood Estate. There was definitely a wood. Whoever owned this estate clearly liked privacy.
He made a call. Vi picked up immediately.
'I need your help,' Savage said. 'This crackberry tracker of yours, is Sutherland on it?'
'Hold on.' He heard her fingers attack a keyboard, multitasking like only a true geek can, Savage pictured her with eighteen windows up and a bank of monitors like a command centre. 'Hold on,' she said again.
Someone whispered something to her Savage couldn't hear. 'Oh, okay,' she hit a key and, 'Bingo. He is on here. Wasn't expecting that.'
More key taps. 'I'm emailing you the access code to his co-ordinates now.'
'You're a star.'
They hung up and Savage downloaded the code. He clicked the link and waited for the GPS map to load. He took another deep breath, let the mottled sun-light caress his skin, and swore to himself that he would come here again, just for pleasure.
His eyes sprang open at the first pop of gunfire. Distant, followed by two more pops. Too far away to be the more familiar, up-close, shotgun crack. But a shotgun it was.
It sounded like it came from uphill along the path. He got out of the car, locked it, and strode in that direction. The next round of gunfire came at the same time as the map downloaded.
Over to the right somewhere.
He ploughed uphill through the deep undergrowth and into the heart of the woods.
He struggled for a few moments to clear his legs from the bramble and nettles. He didn't hold out much hope for his suit. At the top of the small hill, dark with thick pines on all sides, he found a path.
He checked the map. Turned left and followed it.
The dense wood closed in. The path grew wider and became rutted with the tread marks of land rovers.
A spill of light from above marked the squared off area for a nesting enclosure to his right.
In the distance he heard a familiar human cry. One he'd not heard since the last corporate jolly back in his old life.
'Hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi,' a woman yelled. 'Biiiird!'
Savage looked down at his suited and booted outfit and plastered on his best dopey businessman grin. Another cry started up immediately to his left. A woman with an orange flag, wax jacket and flat cap – the English country uniform – burst out from the trees.
'Hi-hi-hi—what the hell are you doing here?'
'Oh hello, I'm late for the shoot, can you tell me where the guns are?'
'They're down there,' she said pointing to her left.
Savage could now see the line of beaters and the orange flags waving behind her. 'But go the other way or you'll be in the line of fire.'
'Righto, thanks awfully,' Savage said. A parody.
The sound of 'hi' multiplied filled the air, birds flew away from the cries towards the firing line, and then the guns opened up. Savage heard a man say, 'Who's that mardy pillock?' behind him.
Savage waved to the man and left his middle finger in the air. So grown up it hurt.
He cleared the line of trees onto wide open grass lands. The guns, another name for the shooters, stood in a line looking towards the beaters.
They took pot shots at the factory-farmed pheasants as they fled the high trees.
You were supposed to be a marksman for the high birds but aiming wasn't really essential, you had to know how to manage the spread of your shot, and aim just ahead of the bird so that the hail of pellets formed a killing cloud the bird couldn't escape.
Savage stalked up the hill behind the line. He recognised more than once face. Front of the line Sutherland with two members of the board.
Savage stuffed his hands into his pockets and waited for them to finish. A shaven-haired man stood at the back, 'Fine shooting gentleman,' he said.
There was a round of murmured agreements. 'Now then, I expect you're all thirsty?'
'About time,' one of the board members said.
'This way gents,' he turned and beckoned them with his arm. 'There may even be champagne.'
A round of chuckles. Savage followed the single file of men as they walked to a lean-to shed and the smell of cooking meat. The atmosphere was boisterous under the canopy.
Savage tried to blend in and mugged like an idiot as he entered. Everyone turned to look.
'It's the suit isn't it?' he said. 'I heard this was a business event, clearly I barked up the wrong tree.'
There were a few shrugs. Sutherland scowled when he realised who it was.
'You'll scare the bloody birds away,' said a voice he recognised. It took a moment for him to place it. Then a double take.
'Chancellor,' Savage said.
'Guilty as charged.'
Sutherland opened his mouth. Savage jumped in. 'I'm impressed sir. I heard your speech yesterday. Excellent by the way. But, after the bomb, you'd think this would be the last thing you'd want to do.'
'Ah, yes. Terrible business of course. Thank you for your concern. I find the shoot very relaxing. And, of course, I'm here to talk a little business with these fine gentlemen.'
'Understood sir,' he took a leaf out of Jones's book and doffed his imaginary cap.
'Who are you anyway?' the chancellor said.
'Oh, he's John Savage,' Sutherland picked up a glass of champagne. 'An investigator from the FSA.'
'Really?' another man said. 'I've never heard of you?'
Sutherland smirked. Savage trod carefully on the broken glass.
'I'm afraid I don't know who you are either sir. Apologies.'
The frosty silence spoke volumes. 'What have I said?'
'This is Lord Lowrie,' Sutherland said. 'Chair of the FSA.'
'Sorry sir, I didn't recognise you out of your suit and in that hat. I work for Mr Norris in Operations. Unfortunately I'm so far down the ladder there's no reason you would ever have heard of me.'
The man gave a self satisfied nod. 'No harm, no foul,' he said. 'But what are you doing here?'
Savage gestured with his head. 'I have some questions for Mr Sutherland.'
'They couldn't wait?' he said.
'No.'
'Get on with it then,' he said.
'Ask away,' Sutherland said, 'Amongst friends,' a sweeping hand around the assembled men, 'I've no secrets.'
All eyes turned on Savage.
'Fair enough. Can you tell me why Maclays is researching how to find politicians and criminals with murderous grudges and crimes to hide?'
'What?'
'And how that's connected to Michael Fincher's apparent suicide.'
Sutherland looked terrified. Then confused. The proverbial cat was having a Freddy Kruger fright-fest amongst the pigeons.
'Sir, would you like me to handle it?' A chubby man stepped forward. He wore outrageous orange corduroy trousers that made Savage's eyes hurt. Only the posh and the homeless could get away with that look.
'And who are you?'
'Williams. I represent Maclays in the media.'
'Jason Williams.'
'Yes, that's right,' he said, pleased to be recognised.
'Where's Jessica Price's decapitated head?'
The sip of champagne stayed in his mouth, but he nearly choked on it. He recovered, then smiled. 'Let's talk outside shall we?'
'Wait what's this about Jess Price?' one of the other men said.
'I know you, don't I?' Savage said.
'Lots of people think they do, face in the media and all that. What's this about Jess? Lovely woman, she's interviewed me many times.’
'And you are?'
'Savage,' Lord Lowrie said, before the man could answer. 'Whoever you work for, you're severely out of line. There are appropriate channels.'
'From the TV?' Savage said to the man with no name.
'Are you being impudent?' Lord Lowrie said.
'To the nth degree sir.'
The chairman fumed.
'It's quite alright, Sir Lowrie.' Sutherland said. 'He's hungry in his work, I'll answer his questions and leave you gentlemen to your lunches.'
Sutherland grabbed Savage by the elbow and hustled him out of the lean-to. Williams followed unasked. Williams made a call.
'Who was that guy? Savage said. 'He really did look familiar.'
'The UN secretary general is who.'
Savage looked around him. 'No security?'
Williams disconnected a very short call. Sutherland gave Williams a look. 'They're on their way.'
'You really are becoming a pest Savage,' Sutherland said.
'So let's start with question one. Criminals with grudges?'
'No idea. Probably trying to weed out the bad clients? Send me a memo and I'll look into it.'
'Daniel, you shouldn't talk to him,' Williams said.
Sutherland waved him off. 'He'll have signed an NDA, there's nothing he can say or do that won't see me ruin him. Next question, about Michael,' he paused a beat to long. 'I've no idea if he was connected to this project you're referring to. Do you?'
Savage shrugged. 'You were his friend though?'
'Yes. I was. He was a good man.'
'Is that why you farmed his fiancé Jo Devlin overseas? Did you blame her?'
'Is that what she told you?' Savage did his best impression of a rock. 'He was never the right man for her.'
Savage heard footsteps behind him.
He turned to find two men in black. Private security.
'Hello lads,' Savage turned to Williams, 'Give my regards to Peter Morel when he drags you kicking and screaming into the light.'
'That muck-raking bastard.' Williams clenched his fists. 'What do you know about him?'
Savage said nothing.
Williams glared, then shook his head.
'Get rid of him,' Sutherland said. Then walked back to the smells of lunch cooking. Williams trailed behind.
Savage turned to the security men. 'I'm all yours.'
They walked to the blacked out 4x4 in silence.
One of the men was tall and quietly scary, the other, shorter than Savage, fizzed loudly with repressed anger. He saw a familiar tattoo peeking out from under the shirt on the smaller man's arm.
'Hang on a minute lads, let me just get one last whiff before we go.' He sucked air in through his nose. 'Ahhh, the smell of gunfire, nothing like it, hey?'
'C'mon,' the smaller man said, hand on shoulder, firm but not unkind.
'Not right is it lads? This dainty shit for the Ruperts,' he jerked a thumb back to the eight men with guns. 'Shooting fat captive birds is like a gentle massage with a happy ending. Not the brutal Swedish ass-rape of a real shoot.'
The smaller man grunted, but kept a firm hand on his shoulder.
'Who were you with?' Savage pointed at the man's tats.
'Four-two,' he said.
'Commandos? Top unit.'
'How about you big fella?'
'Pathfinders,' a South African accent.
'Respect.'
'You?'
'Merc. Always have been. Always will. Work with a few of your boys,' he said to the smaller man. 'Couple of regiment guys too. Been back from the pit a week.'
They both looked up at him. Mixture of fraternity and uncertainty.
'Seriously, back a week, and still my stomach's not right with all this bland food.'
The two men laughed.
'What's with the security here lads?'
'If you're really in the know, then you know we really can't say,' the big man said.
'Yeah,' Savage said. 'But you've got the UN secretary general and the chancellor here. I mean there was a bomb under the chancellor yesterday.'
'Shit detail,' the big one said.
'Likes a jog or walk in the mornings.'
'Doesn't like security to watch him.'
'No wonder I can just walk in. He's got security but doesn't use it?'
'Won't listen.'
'Thinks he's untouchable.'
Savage understood now. 'Shit detail,' he agreed. Both men nodded.
'Get in.'
They dropped him twenty feet from his car on the other side of the barrier.
'We're going to drive off now. You're not to come on this property again. Are we agreed?'
'Agreed. Stay safe lads,' he turned to his rental.
Savage heard their vehicle slow at the top of the hill and wait for him to start up. He pulled off and, in the rear view mirror, saw them peel away at the same time.
A man dressed in country uniform stepped onto the track ahead, raised his over-and-under shotgun at the car, Savage ducked.
The first shot hit the engine block, the motor died.
Savage pushed the driver door open and threw himself out as the second round shattered the windscreen of the still moving car.
Savage scrabbled to his feet. The man would have to reload.
He ran straight across the path. A second gun opened up on Savage's right, the scattered shot ripped into the car behind him.
He leapt at an angle off the path, over the water run-off, and into the trees.
A second shot ripped through the undergrowth on his right.
He recoiled when another shot hit the tree ahead of him and spat chunks of bark back at his face.
No reload required for the second shooter. Tactical pump action – rack the next cartridge using the recoil and shoot again.
Savage jumped to his left and rolled downhill. There were usually between four and eight rounds in a pump. He had to keep moving.
When another shot scored overhead, he bounced to his feet, picked up the pace and zigzagged through the pines. At the road he ran straight out, a car hit the brakes to his right, he pounded across the tarmac as the car screeched past, then he jumped over the drop on the other side.
More dark woods. Perfect killing ground.
A quick glance over his shoulder – the man with two barrels pounded up the road and the man with the pump raced down the slope.
Savage ran down to the right toward a small patch of daylight and the sound of running water. He knew he only had moments until the shooters came in after him, and didn't think they'd chance a shot with screechers-by still in the road. But you never knew.
The floor was thick with pine needles, which, mercifully, between that and the dark, kept the undergrowth under control.
A cold breeze hit his shoulder. Blood. He put his hand over it, still solid flesh, he gave the suit a visual. Pellet holes, the tail end of a killing cloud. He'd been lucky – so far.
He ran faster when he heard voices behind him. The distance he'd put between them meant the next blast was more of a half-distant crack stopped by the tree trunks behind.
Another quick glance. Both men ran, focused on catching up, avoiding the trees.
The light grew brighter at the forest's edge. The running water came from the small stream in a dell. The kind of place where little girls find fairies at the bottom of the garden.
From the other side of the stream he heard the reports from multiple shotguns.
He plunged straight into the water, knee height and slippery underfoot, and waded through as quick as he dared.
On the other side he climbed the bank anticipating the shot all the way, nothing came. At the top he looked back, a running man cleared the trees, raised his rifle and squeezed in one fluid movement.
Savage dropped to the floor, rolled over the bank and sprinted for what he now saw was the main base for the shooting range.
A squat purpose-built red-brick building nestled in amongst the trees behind a line of expensive cars, two chauffeur driven, and one mini-bus.
He could threaten one of the chauffeurs, take their car?
He saw a look of terror on one of their faces at what was coming up behind him. Savage looked over his shoulder. The two men had caught up and scaled the bank. Without trees they had a clear shot.
'Get your heads down,' he yelled, already moving. A shot destroyed the passenger window of a car next to him. He ducked into a narrow corridor of trees that led up the path toward the main building.
Run inside ask for help? Hide? What?
A group of businessmen, their rifles broken open over their arms walked out of the main door, led by an instructor. Savage pointed at the box in the man's hand, 'What kind of ammo is that?'
'Who are—'
'Sorry,' Savage hit the man with a left-handed palm-strike and grabbed the box with his right. He turned to the startled businessmen and grabbed the first shotgun he saw.
They shouted and yelled but Savage didn't hear them. When the adrenaline kicks you into fight or flight mode, your heart rate soars, your vision tunnels and locks on to any potential danger.
Any combatant will tell you, in a real bun fight you won't hear a thing, sound disappears as blood is pumped to the areas of your body that need it most. You react on instinct. You train to maximise the anti-freeze in your system.
Savage ripped open the box, tore off the plastic insert, loaded two shells and stuffed the rest in his jacket pocket. He clicked the barrel upright flicked the safety off and walked calmly to the end of the line.
Flight was done. Time to fight.
He quickly glanced round the corner of the line of trees, the man running at him raised his pump-action.
Savage fired straight-line from waist height. The spread took the man's gut away. Savage's second shot took his legs out.
Like a clean side of beef, he fell to the floor. Breathing, but only just.
Savage kicked the pump away, loaded two more rounds in the up-and-under. If one shooter came this way, the other had to be flanking him from behind.
He ran the line of trees, came out the other end by the cars, turned left and found the man creeping up on the fence in front of the businessmen.
In the movies the good guy always gives the bad guy a chance. Savage wasn't sure he was a good guy, but he knew he didn't want to shoot the businessmen.
Savage approached the crouching man from beside the trees, reduced the angle where he might hit them. The man waited in ambush.
'Excuse me, sir?' Savage said, and fired first.
Why give him half a chance?
The man squirmed on the floor, a silent scream of pain on his lips, his back and arse ripped apart by shotgun pellets on a medium choke. He'd live.
Savage wasn't sure how he felt about that.
'Normally, I wouldn't give you a choice,' he said. 'I'd just kill you. Who sent you?'
A shriek of pain. 'Fuck off.'
He held the shotgun up to the man's head. 'I won't ask again.'
Then he saw something. He patted the man's trousers.
'Seriously? A wallet? You amateur.' He opened it and took out the man's ID. 'And a south-east London address? Mr Crystal is going to be pissed.'
Savage went through the rest of the man's pockets and found a small mobile phone.
He turned and stalked off. At one of the chauffeured cars, he stopped and said, 'Look, I'm not going to kill you, or even wound you, but you saw what happened to those guys chasing me. I'm armed and I need a lift. Savvy?'
'Totally savvy mate, get in.'
'Where to?'
'You didn't say Guv'nor.'
'Oh right, where to Guv'nor?'
They drove straight to Savage's rental. He made the driver get out and wait while he stripped off its two vehicle ID numbers and the plates. He took a bottle of cognac from the car's drink cabinet, poured it over the interior, then set light to it.
They waited for the fire to take hold.
'Will it explode?' the chauffeur said.
'Maybe,' Savage said. 'Check your sat-nav for the nearest police station, then head in the opposite direction, I'll tell you where to stop.'