The Alex King Series A BATEMAN (summer reading list txt) 📖

She had taken a life. She had killed The Beast and she was not sorry.

She would do it again.

Ramsay had ordered her room service, told her he would meet later to discuss their next move. It was a decent hotel, and she had relaxed on the king-sized bed and eaten the club sandwich and fries, drank the gin and tonic and ordered more of the same. She hadn’t realised how famished she had been, nor how the comforts of a decent hotel and a nerve-steadying drink could relax her so.

She had met Marnie briefly, and decided she liked her. The woman had no agenda. She had bought Caroline a selection of clothes and underwear, and she had bought well. No under sizing, nor over sizing – simply the right size and suitable for the occasion. It could have been so easy to buy too small and feign surprise that they would not fit or buy too large and look as if she had sized-her up wrong. Caroline had experience of such women all her life, and it was a refreshing change, especially as Marnie was at least a size larger than Caroline. Her taste in clothes suited Caroline, and she imagined that given the opportunity, or completely different circumstances, they could become firm friends.

Caroline looked up as she heard the knock on the door. Sharp and business-like. For a fleeting moment, she had jumped at the shock, unnerved. She imagined she would react that way for some time. She walked over, stood to one side.

“Yes?”

“It’s Neil, let me in.”

Caroline could hear a tone in his voice but was unsure how to read it through the door. She flicked off the security chain and opened the door. His face showed concern, but she imagined he would think he hid it well.

She walked back a few steps. Ramsay looked at her, nodded approvingly.

“You look better.”

“Thanks,” Caroline replied indignantly.

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything,” he said.

“Forget it,” she said coolly. “What’s up?”

“There was a triangulation on Rashid’s phone,” he paused. “Further down the coast. It’s a monied place, not so much a poor man’s Monaco, as a place where the rich and criminally wanted choose to hang out. Much like the Costa Del Sol in the eighties and nineties. Only Russia’s rich and criminally wanted. Georgia affords them both a police force and regional governments who are susceptible to bribes and turn a blind eye to criminal activity.”

“And you think Rashid is there with Alex?” She sat down on the bed and crossed her legs. Marnie had picked out a tastefully cut silk blouse and Caroline had paired it with dark, tight jeans and a cream lamb’s wool cardigan. The jeans were tucked into tan leather knee-length boots.

Ramsay glanced at the boots as Caroline crossed her legs. “Crikey, that’s the budget gone this month!”

“I do hope so,” she replied sardonically. “Marnie did well.”

“I’ll have to have a word.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” she said. “And I think I’m due a pay rise.”

Ramsay nodded. “I suspect it will be on the cards.”

Caroline nodded. She knew they’d reassess her status – just as long as she promised not to talk to legal or sell her story someday. Standard. They had made her sign all sorts of papers when her fiancé Peter Redwood had died in a terrorist explosion. She hadn’t been thinking straight, both relieved she had lived, and crippled with grief at the same time. The legal department at MI5 knew how to pick their moments.

“Marnie is running software on Rashid’s phone,” Ramsay paused. “The moment the man switches it on, we’ll know where he is to within two square metres.”

“You’ve tried messaging him, or ringing?”

“Of course. But you know how it is. If you leave a couple of messages, then leaving more won’t make them ring you sooner.”

“Enough of your love life,” she grinned.

Ramsay smiled. He could see that she was slowly returning to her normal self. He guessed it would take time, but she would get there.

“What did you find at the farm?” she asked.

Ramsay shook his head. “It was cleaned out. The place was a shell.”

“I killed a man,” she said. “He died in a derelict barn.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

“You found nothing else?”

“Nothing.”

“What about the police? Forensics?”

“Rank amateurs. They will have corrupted more than they’ll ever find.”

“So that’s it? Nothing else to go on?”

Ramsay shrugged. “I think it may come down to King. He must have had a breakthrough, for the way Rashid ditched us and disappeared. He must be close.”

Caroline said, “I certainly hope so.”

63

 

Rashid pulled his car over in a layby behind a selection of parked heavy plant vehicles and took out his phone. He switched it on and waited for it to run through its start-up sequence. He could see that he had two text messages and two missed calls. He didn’t need to look at the call list to know who it would be. He put the phone on the passenger seat, leaned back in his seat and stared at the headlining as he sighed. He was nowhere. He hadn’t helped King – certain the man was on a suicide mission, that he wanted no part of – and he was no longer aiding in the search for Caroline or Helena Milankovitch.

He had helped King twice in the past, hadn’t really been able to reason why, other than he knew King was a man who bent the rules, acted spontaneously and had completed the gruelling SAS selection course many times. For Rashid, the selection process had been the toughest experience he had ever known, but for King, it had been MI6’s idea of maintaining fitness. King had not only completed the course, but he had been dropped into it many times for