It's 2.30 a.m. on Saturday morning. Dark clouds are scudding across the sky, and it's starting to rain – the heavy, soaking drops you get in the tropics. The initial shock I felt has already metamorphosed into different emotions. First, sadness, that someone I respected so much and for so long could hate me enough to have put me through this. And there's an acute sense of anticipation, too. At last, I think I know the identity of the man behind Leah's death, and that of so many others. He will have all the answers I'm looking for.
What happens after I've heard those answers is something I'm still trying not to think about.
Thick walls of pine trees line both sides of the road. I am in the countryside on the Hertfordshire/Essex border, very close, I'm sure, to where I woke up this morning. Beside me on the passenger seat is the road atlas I bought from the petrol station next to the pay-phone. I am only fifteen minutes away from the junction of the M11 I joined when I drove back to London sixteen hours and a lifetime back.
I slow down as a turning appears up ahead. I can see a sign on the grassy bank. It says PRIVATE ROAD – NO ACCESS, and then beneath it there's a second sign of varnished wood saying ORCHARD COTTAGE. As I take the turning, I see that it's little more than a track, leading deeper into the pines. I drive down it about twenty yards before parking the car up on the verge and killing the lights. I get out of the car, noticing that the rain's getting heavier now, and look into the darkness ahead. I can see no sign of human habitation, but I know that Orchard Cottage is down here somewhere.
I start walking down the track, keeping to the edge of the treeline, breathing in the cool, moist air, enjoying the feel of the rain on my head. I feel alive again, out here among the pines. The surroundings remind me of Bosnia and Kosovo, places where, whatever anyone says, I genuinely did experience camaraderie. I love the open air, and I realize how much I miss nature's vast, majestic expanses now that I live in the city. It's why I dread the prospect of incarceration so much. I make a vow as I walk: I am not going down for this. One way or another, this has to end tonight.
As a soldier, you have to learn to manage your fear of death. Some do it by finding God; the majority manage simply by thinking that it won't happen to them. That's not as hard as you may think on a battlefield. You factor in that a few will die, but you also play the percentage game, which means that probability-wise you'll survive. That goes out the window when you're on your own, though, and for much of today that's the way it's been. I had Lucas with me for a while, but now he's gone, and once again it's just me. Armed only with some spray and a glorified pen knife. But I do have the one commodity all soldiers need: surprise. No-one will be expecting me.
The track bends round to the right, and I can see a faint light flickering through the trees. I'm getting close. With a growing, almost tangible sense of anticipation, I pull off the track and fight my way through a thick set of brambles, moving deeper into the woodland. I walk in a steady south-westerly arc, taking my time. The pine trees seem to close in on me, their branches intertwining to plunge me into a darkness that would be absolute were it not for the light of the cottage. Around me, there is dead silence. It amplifies my own sounds as the twigs break beneath my feet. I've been trained in the art of moving silently, but it's been one hell of a long time since I practised it.
A break in the trees appears in front of me. I stop when I reach it, and look out. I'm facing an overgrown rear garden that leads up a hill into further woodland. The garden belongs to a two-storey house with latticed windows which sits in a dip down to my left. Lights illuminate both floors.
Orchard Cottage.
This is the place I want.
I remove the lid from the pepper spray in my jacket pocket and undo the strap on the sheath containing the buck knife, then move swiftly across the lawn towards the cottage. When I reach the back door I try it more out of hope than expectation, and am surprised to find it's unlocked. Very slowly, very quietly, I open it up and step inside.
I'm in a darkened hallway with a stone floor. It smells vaguely of dogs. Pairs of walking boots are lined up against one wall, and various coats hang from hooks above them. From further down the hallway I can hear the loud ticking of a grandfather clock. It's all so frighteningly normal.
I unsheathe my knife and creep further into the house, past the staircase and towards a partly open door out of which a thin shard of light is escaping. I can hear movement coming from inside. It sounds like someone's shuffling papers.
I stop by the door and wait, planning my next move. From what I can hear, the distance from the door to my target is at least six feet, probably more. He may be armed, so I'm going to have to move very fast to incapacitate him. The major's an experienced operative, one of the best. This is not going to be easy, and this time if I make a mistake, I know it'll be my last.
I reach for the handle, but as I do, I hear a chair scrape on the carpet and somebody standing up. Whoever it is is walking towards the door. I step back into the shadows, and as he emerges, I grab him from behind in a headlock, pulling him back towards me. I can feel him beginning to resist so I press the knife hard against his throat.
'Hello, sir,' I say, 'long time no speak. Please don't make any sudden moves, otherwise I'll have to kill you.'
He's no fool, and remains stock still. I can't see his face, so I don't know what his expression is. I'm hoping it's shock. But he lets slip a deep, throaty chuckle, and I know then that he's the one who's been tormenting me on the phone today; that his is the voice beneath the suppressor.
'I didn't expect you to make it here, Tyler,' says Major Ryan in his gruff, educated tones. 'But then perhaps I should have done. You've done well today. Better than I anticipated.'
I pat him down and discover a pistol in a waist holster, underneath the waterproof mac he's wearing. The mac's wet to the touch, so I know he's been outside recently.
'Why don't you tell me exactly what you were anticipating?' I suggest, removing the pistol. It's a brand-new Heckler amp; Koch. 'In fact, why don't you tell me everything?'
'I think you've been through enough to deserve an explanation,' he admits.
'I know I have,' I say, turning him round and walking him back into his study – a spacious, traditionally decorated room with mahogany furniture, and bookshelves lining the walls. I give him a shove towards the leather chair next to his huge, spotlessly clean desk, then I point the gun at him and ask the question I've been waiting to ask all day: 'Why did you do it?'
The major makes himself comfortable. I haven't seen him in years. Not since the court martial. Considering that his unblemished twenty-year career was ruined when they threw him out of the army, and he spent at least five years behind bars, he looks damn well for it. He's dressed like a country gent in a Lincoln green waterproof mac, tweed trousers and burgundy brogues. His hard, pockmarked features are heavily tanned, and he wears a confident half-smile as he meets my eye.
'You were expendable, Tyler. That's why.'
'But I never did anything to you,' I tell him.
The major's expression hardens. 'No, but you never did anything for us, either.'
'What do you mean?' I demand, although I think I already know the answer.
'We sacrificed our careers for you when you were hit by that bomb.'
'I didn't ask you to.'
'I know you didn't. But you could have shown some appreciation. We lost everything. Not you. You bounced back, Tyler. You rejoined the army. You carried on your career like nothing had happened. And did you ever think about us?'
'I did,' I protest. 'I thought about you a lot. All of you.' But I know my words sound hollow.
He shakes his head. 'I don't think so. You were always an individual, Tyler, never a true team player. Yet it was you, the least deserving, who seemed always to be the most successful. You left the army, ran a thriving business, took Harry Foxley's woman-'
'Don't be daft. She was never his woman.'
The major sighs, concedes the point. 'Do you know what annoyed me about you, Tyler? The fact that you never paid for anything. You enjoyed an easy, good life and you never paid a price for it. Until today. Now you have. It will have made you a better man.'
'And that's it… just because I didn't do things entirely your way, and I've been reasonably successful, you put me through all this?'
'Don't flatter yourself, Tyler. It wasn't revenge. We needed you today, that's all. It was just that no-one was too worried about what happened to you afterwards.'
I take a deep breath. It's difficult to believe I'm hearing this. That people I cared about have hated me for so long.
'Why don't you start from the beginning?' I ask him. 'What is the relevance of the briefcase I picked up, and what the hell does it contain?'
'The briefcase contains materials a number of people, some very high up, are extremely keen to avoid being made public, because those materials could help to convict them of some truly horrible crimes.'
I think again of the finger. 'Go on.'
'These materials were gathered by an individual who was blackmailing several men. One of those men was Eddie Cosick.'
'Don't you mean Colonel Stanic?'
A half-smile forms on Ryan's granite features. 'Yes, Colonel Stanic. I was hoping you wouldn't get to him, because I knew then that you'd make the connection.'
'So, what was Stanic to you?'
'He was a business associate of mine.'
'You don't hang around with very nice people, Major.'
He glares at me. 'Let me tell you something, Tyler. When I left prison, I had nothing. My wife had left me. I had no money, no pension. I needed to survive. I'd always had a good working relationship with Stanic, so I made contact with him again, and helped him move his operations to the UK. I had help from others as well. Men like Foxley, Maxwell and Spann. We got a good business going, and as a result I've made back some of the money that was taken from me.'
'It looks like you've done very well,' I tell him, looking round the room. Nothing in here's cheap.
'It's nothing less than I deserve,' he says firmly. 'After the way the establishment betrayed me.'
The major was always a ruthless man. I notice now an arrogance to him that I've never really seen before, or perhaps it's something I've simply forgotten over time.
'You said you knew the real identity of the blackmailer,' he says. 'What was his name?'
'Iain Ferrie,' I tell him.
The major raises his eyebrows. 'I recognize that name. He served in the regiment, didn't he?'
'That's right.'
'Ah, so that's how you knew him.' He nods slowly, pondering this information. 'What a coincidence.'
'Ferrie told me that the case contained something terrible, something I never wanted to see. So, what exactly was the kind of business you were in?'
The major's half-smile returns. 'I thought Mr Stanic and I were in the same business – smuggling contraband, drugs, weapons, occasionally people – but it turns out that our businesses were actually diverging. You see, Mr Stanic made a lot of money from prostitution in this country, which was an area of the business that we – and by "we" I mean my former army colleagues and me – weren't involved in. However, he discovered what you might term a niche in the market.'
'What do you mean?'
'Some of his customers had rather bizarre tastes. They liked to do more than simply have sex with the girls. In some cases, they liked to beat and torture them. Even in a couple of cases, kill them.'
'Jesus, you're joking.'
'You were a soldier, Tyler. You saw what people are capable of doing. Sometimes even for pleasure. No, I'm not joking.'
There doesn't seem much that I can say to that, and I tell him to continue.
'I never knew about this side of Cosick's business,' he says. 'If I had, I wouldn't have approved. But someone else did. The blackmailer. Our old colleague, Ferrie. I'm not sure how he found out about what was going on, but he did. And he gained evidence of what was happening as well, and, more importantly, who was involved. My understanding was that he was blackmailing several customers, and those customers, terrified of exposure, contacted Stanic. Stanic tried to deal with matters himself since, as you can imagine, he wasn't keen on anyone else finding out what he was up to. I believe he set up a rendezvous with Ferrie to hand over a payment in exchange for the evidence in the briefcase, and then tried to have Ferrie killed. But when that failed, and Ferrie began demanding even more money, Stanic called on my expertise.
'We knew that Ferrie wouldn't trust any of Stanic's men turning up again to make the exchange, so we needed to bring in someone new. Someone gullible enough to fall for our set-up, and who could be trusted to follow instructions without running away with the money. Who could take all the risks without ever being able to point the finger at the people who sent him. Who was resourceful, brave and able to fight his way out of any trouble. And who, of course, was utterly expendable.' He stares me right in the eye as he speaks. 'That was you, Tyler. That was you.'
I feel like I've been kicked in the face. 'And you murdered Leah? Just to make sure I did what I was told?'
'It was unfortunate,' he says sharply, 'but, we thought, necessary. She was collateral damage.'
I think of Leah, the woman who for three short weeks I'd cared so much about, then of Major Ryan's cold, pitiless description of her. Collateral damage. She was nothing to him. I wonder how he could have become so twisted in his outlook on life. I feel the rage building within me. I want to tear this bastard apart, beat his head against the wall and make him suffer just a little of what Leah and Lucas suffered, but I force myself to keep calm. When I have the answers I still need, I'll take my revenge. Because I'm going to kill him for this, even if it has to be in cold blood.
I think about asking whether my relationship with Leah was a set-up, whether she too had been working for my enemies, but this is one answer I can't bring myself to hear. Better simply to leave the memories as they are.
'So, tell me,' I say, still trying to put all the pieces together, 'if Colonel Stanic was your business partner, why did you kill him?'
'Because the two of us had very different ideas about what we wanted done with the contents of the case. He, of course, wanted them destroyed, because they incriminated him and his so-called "special" customers. But I didn't. I wanted them made public.'
'Why?' I ask, frowning.
'Why do you think? These customers are high-ranking members of the establishment. There are the names of judges in that case. Of politicians. The very people who destroyed the careers of good men, men whose boots those bastards weren't fit to lick. I fought for this country for more than twenty years, in every war they sent me to. I followed every order I was given, but the one time, the one solitary time I asked them for support, they hung my men and me out to dry to appease a bunch of bombers and thugs. And they weren't content simply to wreck our careers, they had to grind our noses in the dirt as well, trying us by media, then throwing us in prison like common criminals.' His face darkens as he speaks, the bitterness coming off him in waves. 'Some of the men never got over it. Foxley, for one. He worked with me after he came out of prison, but he never got over the betrayal. He committed suicide, you know.'
'I know.'
'Do you? I'm surprised. You never went to the funeral, or even sent a card.'
'I'm sorry about that,' I say quietly. 'I wish I had done.'
'You're a fool, Tyler,' he says almost wearily. 'You deserted your comrades, and now you're paying the price.'
'It's no reason to put me through this. You're just using it as an excuse. You would have used me anyway, if you thought it was convenient.'
He shakes his head vehemently. 'No, never. I'm always loyal to those who are loyal to me.'
And what's so tragic is that I see he really means it, too. He genuinely thinks that he's acting from some kind of moral high ground. I look at him with a mixture of anger and pity, unable to equate the commanding officer I respected so much with the deluded ruthlessness of the man sitting before me now.
'You know, Major, whatever's been done to you in the past can never begin to justify what you've done today. You're a monster.'
'I'm no monster,' he snarls, and starts to get up from the chair.
'Stay where you are or I'll take your kneecap off.'
He sits back down, his expression hard and soulless. 'You can't call me a monster. The monsters are Stanic's perverted clients, and I can use them to bring down every one of those hypocritical bastards in the liberal establishment.' He spits out these last words, and a fleck of saliva lands on his chin. 'I want to throw their whole order into chaos,' he continues, his eyes alive with a fanaticism that fascinates and terrifies me. 'Bring the government to its knees and consign every one of the cowardly incompetents who run it to the dustbin of history.'
He pauses, calming down now.
'But Stanic was only ever interested in making money. He would never have agreed to the case's contents being made public, so he had to go. My plan initially was to get the code for the case from Ferrie and then put in an anonymous call to the police, so that when you delivered it to Stanic's men, they could intercept it and I could deal with Stanic separately. End of story. However, without the code, I wasn't able to do that.'
'So, you were never going to keep your side of the bargain with me. I was going to be arrested along with Stanic's men?'
'I couldn't risk leaving you at liberty. You were always resourceful enough to have worked things out if I had. As you have done.' He looks at me with an expression of admiration. 'I'm impressed.'
'I wish I could say the same, Major. Now, tell me, where's the case?'
'It's near here,' he answers.
'Why haven't you handed it in yet?'
'Because it's been booby-trapped, and I didn't trust the police not to destroy it in a controlled explosion rather than defuse the bomb. But now it's open, I will make sure the contents are delivered to them anonymously.'
'How did you open it?'
'I know a thing or two about explosives. I defused it myself. It wasn't easy – Ferrie did a good job with it – but I'm a determined man.'
'So am I,' I say evenly, 'and I've come a long way today. I think it's time you took me to it.'
'I don't think so,' he answers, meeting my gaze.
A cold yet ferociously intense rage rises in me. 'You know, Major, I once looked up to you, but that was a long time ago. Never again. You're nothing but a cold-hearted abomination, whatever you may think, and you're responsible for the murder of the two people I really cared about. So, if you don't do exactly what I say, I'll put a bullet in both your kneecaps and walk behind you while you crawl to wherever the case is.'
'I don't think you'll shoot me,' he says, but the confidence in his voice is belied by the lines of tension appearing on his face.
I keep the gun steady. 'I'll count to five. Then I'll fire.'
His hands grip the side of the chair. 'You think you can take me?'
'I've taken everyone else today.'
The major smiles grimly, and the tension dissipates. 'That's true,' he says. 'All right then. I'll show you it.'
As he gets up, I stand to one side. 'After you,' I tell him, 'and no tricks.'
'I don't need tricks,' he answers, leaning down beside the desk.
When his hand comes back into view, it's holding the burgundy briefcase. Straight away I notice that the red light next to the locking mechanism which signalled that the bomb was armed is no longer flashing. So, he has defused it.
I feel a nerve-jangling sense of anticipation. 'Open it.'
He looks at me, and there's something mocking in his expression. 'Are you sure you want to see?'
'Yes.'
He clicks open the locks.
I can hear my heart beating.
And then he flings it open with a flourish and steps aside, and I'm standing there, staring at something that even now I find hard to comprehend.
A jigsaw of human pieces, all wrapped tightly in clingfilm, tumbles out of the case's interior. I see a whole hand; five toes still attached to a piece of the foot; I may even have caught a glimpse of a perfectly skinned human face, I am not entirely sure. I don't really want to know. There are bones, too, faded and yellowing with age: part of a femur, some ribs… And photographs, poking out from underneath. I can see only part of one. It's of a young woman, and I gasp as I recognize the face from the picture Alannah showed me, of the woman she claimed was her sister, Petra.
And as I look from it to the major I see something in his eyes, and I recognize it immediately as a bright, malevolent triumph, as if he's just proved to me that the world is a far more evil, depraved place than I ever could have imagined, and that there are indeed monsters out there even greater than him.
I don't know what to say. Feeling faint, I take a step back, my gaze dragged back to the case and its terrible contents.
And it's then that I hear a noise behind me and feel the cool touch of the razor against my neck.