Killing State Read online

  Edward Fellowes jumped from the bridge late on Thursday night. But there were any number of bridges along the Tyne, why would a 21-year-old Geordie travel 300 miles to jump off a London bridge? North shrugged. The problem with his job was he couldn’t read about anyone dying without wondering who killed them, and whether he’d have done it better.

  He carried the cup across to his desk, and sat staring at the envelope.

  There was no name on it, but then there never was. The name that mattered was inside. Who was it this time? Would he recognise the face? He felt the familiar rush of adrenalin.

  North never liked to hurry opening his orders. There was, after all, a man’s life at stake. It merited some ritual – a degree of reflection. He sipped the scalding coffee, savoured the earthy roast, tasting the promised notes of dark chocolate. He put down the cup, then slid the butcher’s knife under the flap, opening its crimson throat in one smooth sweep. There were no ragged edges.

  The dozen 10x8s were snapped in a hotel foyer. An oversized lamp was on, so it had to be late. He lifted the first photograph. It was of a couple and he scrutinised the man. Twenties. Denim jacket. Full-blown hipster beard. His phone must have rung at some point because he took a call, turning away from the coffee table to face the camera. But instead of closing in on him, the pictures were suddenly all about the woman. Confused, North fanned them over the table looking for more close-ups of the man, but photo after photo were of the woman. She was dressed in an evening gown, and even in the black and white of the photography, it shimmered. The draped folds of its cowl neck exposing the elegant shoulders, chin resting on her fist, slim fingers covering her mouth as she listened to her companion. Her glance to one side, a slight smile. Even in two dimensions North felt the pull of her.

  North flipped the photos with the knife – reluctant suddenly to touch them. On the reverse of the best one was a label written across in cramped moss-green ink. “Honor Jones (31), Tory MP for Mile End, East London. Extreme security risk. Status:critical.

  Termination: essential. Proposed disposal: random/sexual attack in public space. Deadline: one week. Authorisation: Tarn.”

  The iPhone lay on his desk.

  North had worked for the arms-length, extra-judicial, extrag-overnmental agency known as the Board for four years. He was going to die young – the bullet guaranteed it. He told them he wanted to do something useful with the time he had left. And they took him at his word.

  He scrolled through his phone to tap the Crypt app with its skull and bones icon – a series of numbers and letters spun out through space then lined up, one banging into the next, shuffling and jumping, till the tail-end Charlie arrived and they shuddered to a stop. His private key – good for a 60 second window to break the encryption of the incoming email. He pressed his fingertips together as he swung gently on his chair, waiting for the ping of an incoming email. The digits and letters crumbled to dust in the silence. He refreshed the inbox but it stayed empty.

  In the email he expected a briefing on his target of between two and thirty pages – aliases, addresses, known associates, places frequented, crimes, convictions, employment records, recreational activities, usernames, passwords, bank accounts, more photographs and videos, private surveillance and acquired CCTV. Nowhere in the encrypted text would it repeat the instruction to kill – that only came written in moss-green ink in a tar-black envelope. Perhaps there was a change in procedures and they’d sent hard copy instead along with the commission? He turned the envelope upside down and shook it to make sure, then peered into its emptiness. Perhaps intelligence on her came in late? More likely the threat was so immediate there wasn’t time to do the background breakdown – but, he couldn’t leave it like that.

  Pulling the laptop towards him, North took a DVD from a drawer, sliding it into the slot to load the virtual machine he used for sensitive work. These days you couldn’t be too careful. When he finished the work, and closed down the laptop, everything would disappear with it. There was a micro-second pause while he wondered if the Board hacked his computer despite his best precautions. He shrugged – he didn’t have anything to hide from them. But without the email’s unique digital signature, he had no authentication of the hand-written instruction. Unless you count money.

  The manager of his account at the Austrian bank spoke English with only the barest trace of an accent. Yes, £100,000 was paid in late last night. Yes they were sure, Mr Wilde (the name he kept his account in). The normal reference code. Could they help with anything else? Unctuous. Smooth. Unless they could explain why he was paid before, rather than after the job, he didn’t need their help. He shouldn’t complain. He had his orders, and he would earn the money.

  On first sweep, Honor Jones MP appeared to be a model citizen – a law degree from Oxford, Fulbright scholar, pupillage, tenancy in a leading Chambers specializing in criminal and regulatory law, with a special interest in domestic violence and child protection. Ambitious, smart, connected and charming – no great surprise when a London Tory constituency association selected her for a safe seat. Since then – four years’ steady media-savvy work, tipped for promotion at the next reshuffle, even mentioned by futurologists as a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

  He almost missed it.

  An online interview in a newsletter for a children’s mental health charity in North London. The article introducing the charity’s new trustees. A chartered accountant, a clinical psychologist and lawyer Honor Jones. “What’s your interest in children’s mental health?” the journalist asked. “Let’s say I have a special interest in resilience. How children who’ve been the victims of domestic violence or witnessed that trauma close up are affected long-term.” “May I ask? Is that something you have personal experience of?” “Unfortunately, that would be correct.”

  She could have capitalised on it but she never mentioned it again. Not in any speech. Not in any national interview. Though there were traces of it. A radioactive legacy if you knew what to look for. He went back into her parliamentary record. A hardline speech in a Commons debate on sentencing in cases involving domestic violence. An amendment to a housing bill to make it easier for victims to retain benefit when they moved into a refuge. Written Questions on the value of psychiatric counselling for the families of murderers.

  Whatever had happened to her as a child – she’d survived. Thrived. Gone into politics, and made a difference.

  He’d gone into prison. The Army. Almost died, and killed people for a living.

  They had their “resilience” then in common aside from the fact he was going to be there at her death.

  His mind turned to his mother. His drug-addled, booze-soaked, ruinous mother. Neglect. Bruises. Willing to sell herself for a wrap of heroin or a can of strong lager – the fact North loved her, never enough. She loved him too, he supposed, as much as she was capable of loving him. Just not enough.

  Honor’s face in the photograph looked different to him now he could read the past in her. The smile still a thing of wonder. But once he looked harder, he thought he could see the hurt in her don’t-touch-me eyes. Harm that couldn’t be undone.

  He was curious.

  Not professionally.

  Personally.

  Looking in on her life from the outside, Honor was living up to her name. She was working to make the world a better place. Just like he was.

  So what turned her from a public servant into an imminent danger to the security of a nation?

  Status offered no defence, he knew that. Power. Wealth. Nothing could protect you if your name came up. He’d taken out a philanthropist-come-arms-dealer at a black-tie charity ball – a tiny injection as he shook the man’s hand, solid gold cufflinks in the shape of guns, a heart attack, “terrible” everybody said. A corrupt chief constable – driving too fast, narrow road, knew it like the back of his hand but the shame of it – no seat belt, and him “normally such a stickler”. Logically, killing an MP was not such a stretch, was not so very different. Forget the f
act she was a beautiful woman. Forget her childhood. Fix instead on her adult guilt, on the wrong she had done. But he had no idea what she’d done – why should she be terminated?

  He leaned back into the oblique angle of the chair – staring at the laptop willing it to explain something to him. He just didn’t know what.

  Occasionally on an operation in Iraq, hair would rise on the back of his neck as if the air itself carried a message, an electric charge. On those days, at those moments, he stepped more lightly on the sandy roads under his boots.

  Something was off.

  His bosses thought he could improvise – and he could. When he needed to. But North liked routine, because routine minimised the scope for errors. The messenger brought an envelope with photos and a name in green ink and an order to execute. An email spelled out the reason and the details. An unfortunate death came about – restoring a sense of how-it-should-be, of the world brought back into alignment. Only then did the noughts on his bank account ratchet up.

  He had a code. He didn’t kill women. This time, worse yet, the Board wanted it to look like a “random/sexual attack”. And that left a bad taste, because there were things you didn’t do, even for King and Country. Remorse and shame weren’t feelings he ever experienced. Not as a child and not as a soldier. Not now. Never. But he feared Honor Jones was a game changer. Honor Jones would haunt him.

  Only hunger made him realise the best of the day was gone. Sirens blared, the noise falling away as quickly as it came. His eyes snagged on the crucifix hanging on the wall before he closed them. After five years, North was used to his insomnia. Daylight torpor, night-time fading in and out of reality, and, when he did sleep for an hour or so at a time – the shuddering and falling through space into nightmares of blood and sand and fear. He let out a breath and as he did, every page he’d viewed downloaded again in his brain, one after the other. Twelve hours. Hundreds of screens. Headlines. Photographs. Hansard reports. Local press. Shaking hands. National stories. Helpful speeches. Maverick blogs. Honor’s smile. The line of her cheek. North’s brain shuddered as if caught in an earthquake. He felt it like a stroke coming on him. Once. Twice. Three times. The sensation of flat moving silver sweeping over his consciousness, his memories, coming fast like the sea over a causeway, covering everything. He fought it and he lost; his last thought was Honor, killing her, and then he slept.

  Chapter 2

  LONDON

  6.32pm. Saturday, 4th November

  Londoners passed – this way and that, the City hazy and splendid on the horizon. A cold front was moving over the country from the Arctic, a warning that winter was closing in and it would be hard.

  Nobody noticed North standing looking over Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames, thinking about where the moving water might take him.

  North never met the Board’s other operatives. He presumed like him they’d signed the Official Secrets Act, and were well rewarded for their lonely service. Occasionally, he recognised their modus operandi. One favoured intricately plotted deaths of mid-ranking types that exploded across the papers and were never resolved – attributed to professional Eastern European gunmen, overshadowed by talk of serious financial or criminal interests – the type of murder investigative journalists chased down for decades, never getting anywhere. Another preferred “assisted suicides” – all “he-seemed-so-happy” and “we-never-thought-he’d-do-such-a-thing”. They generally used North when they needed someone who could think on their feet.

  He took a breath – the air sharp and painful in his lungs. He hazarded that no one would pick up the phone so late on a Saturday night.

  “Chalfont Securities. How may I help you?” The voice was chilly, well-bred.

  “Please tell Mr Chalfont…”

  That he hadn’t received the email.

  That he needed authentication for the order to kill.

  To send it and he would kill her. Chip–chop and sharpish.

  He raised his fingers to the ridged dip where the bullet had torn through his skull.

  “I can’t make the meeting.”

  Please tell Mr Chalfont that he wouldn’t kill Honor Jones. Couldn’t.

  Because Michael North didn’t have much. But he had his code and it didn’t include killing a woman unless she was physically holding a gun and pointing it at his head. Unless Honor Jones was doing that – and she didn’t look the type – the Board would have to find somebody else.

  More than that. The touch of his scar under his fingertips. He couldn’t trust himself. What he believed he knew. Did his mind fill with other people’s thoughts and voices, or his own complex delusions? Freak or lunatic? He had no idea which he was. But he knew this. He’d done too much, killed too many, and he wanted it over. He wanted his freedom. It came to him suddenly, a neural snap, an instant of electricity re-routing his soul – like falling in love.

  The certainty shocked him. He wanted to be a good soldier, to follow orders and get the job done. Not least because doing his duty was the only peace he’d ever known. Up to this point, he read a name on a page and followed through without hesitation. The problem was this time the sight of Honor Jones’s face made him ask “Why?” And instead of anticipation as he considered the photograph of the woman who was to be his next target, all he felt was profound dismay.

  There were limits, and he’d reached them. Whatever time he had left, he wanted to live it differently. To stop the killing. To be honest. To connect. Not to be alone.

  Beneath him, a Thames barge loaded with garbage passed through the bridge on its way to the sea. It would be an old-fashioned way to die, he thought, drowning in a river. A Victorian death meant for lost women and foundlings.

  “How very…unfortunate.” A note of surprise, disapproval at the other end of the phone. As if no one ever cancelled a meeting with Mr Chalfont before. “Are you sure,” a pause, “Mr North?” How did she know his name he wondered? The number? He used a disposable pay as you go. Different every time. Voice recognition? Or was his the only job out there at the moment?

  He left the question out there. What happened when you said No to people who didn’t take No for an answer? He wasn’t at all sure, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “Mr Chalfont will be in touch.” She disconnected the line.

  Mr Chalfont didn’t exist of course. Neither did Chalfont Securities. Nor was there a frosty PA tapping at her computer with polished nails. Or maybe she at least existed – not so much a PA as an officer in an organisation whose only business was killing.

  He dropped the phone on the ground, covering it with his right shoe, feeling the mobile give under his sole. Honor Jones was safe – at least from him. He’d made his decision. The phone splintered, the display cracking into a spider’s web, the back popping to reveal the guts of a tiny sim card. He picked out the sim and dropped it over the parapet into the Thames. A fierce eddy swirled around the supports of the bridge, the water a muddy brown, the tide high and choppy. The glinting sim rested on the surface for a second, before it sank. He once read a story about a fisherman who caught a fish, and when he gutted it, he discovered the fish had eaten a gold ring. North thought about the fisherman, how if a fish ate the sim card, he’d have to find the fisherman who’d caught it and kill him. Stone cold dead.

  A yell of protest from further along the bridge brought him back to reality. A shaven-headed lad in New Army uniform staggered along the pavement – high on something cheap and potent. Behind him, an elderly vagrant, his skinny dog on a string, was limping away as fast as he could.

  Months ago, as an isolationist US under President Donald Trump slashed its defence spending on Europe, the UK government privatised the armed forces.

  Reports about the nascent National Defence Force warned thousands of experienced soldiers, sailors and airmen had quit overnight. In particular, traditionalists slammed the fact “New Army PLC” soldiers swore no oath of allegiance to King and Country. But the move was already saving the country millions in sa
laries and pensions, and recruitment – particularly straight out of prisons – was booming. No one could argue with the figures. Indeed, any opposition was branded unpatriotic as private investors brought market efficiencies to defence, re-invested savings into equipment and training, then sold back the services of the streamlined armed forces and procurement to the government. All the while making a neat profit and preserving national security in a post-NATO world. The term “nasty boys” to refer to the new recruits was unfortunate, but the New Army admitted there were still a few branding issues to work through.

  North figured he was well out of it.

  A bitter wind sliced through him like razors as he looked away, moving the pieces of the phone with his foot, letting them fall into the gutter. He started walking. He could afford to turn down this one job.

  But they would never let him quit. There were no gold watches in this business. No, if he really wanted the killing to be over, he’d have to disappear – start over some other place. Somewhere warm? Freedom. He raised his head. Pursed his lips to whistle. He liked whistling, though he couldn’t hold a tune.

  When the nasty boy smashed hard into his chest, North used his own bulk to ward him off – careful not to meet his eye. But the lad wanted more respect.

  “Mind yourself, cocksucker,” he snarled – the heady smell of lager and piss, grabbing hold of North’s arm to spin him round, spittle spraying his face. Like an old-fashioned boxer, the lad’s knuckles and the gaps between them were tattooed. Instead of LOVE and HATE though, it was with the New Army motto BRITAIN across the right fist and FOREVER on the left. “Britain Forever”. Patriotism made easy for those who didn’t have to live by it. This swaggering, vicious thug claiming to defend a country which was nothing like him.

  The Board would come for him, thought North. Not tonight. But soon. He gave a quick look-round checking the solider wasn’t a diversion, that an attack wasn’t coming hard and fast from someplace else. But the street was quiet.