“After the accident, I wanted to be someone else, and different coloured wigs meant I could become lots of people depending on my mood, which was normally foul, I should add.”
“Do you ever go out bald?”
“I do, but not if I want to blend in with the background … and not if there are any horses that might be frightened. I feel most content in my red wig. Don’t ask me why.”
“Would you like me to come with you tomorrow for a bit of moral support?”
“No, thanks. I think it will go one of two ways. Either he turns up and I talk to him to find out what’s happening, or else he doesn’t turn up and I go back to the drawing board.”
“Fair enough, but the offer stands.”
Walter Flushing thought he was back in Cornwall, surfing with his friends. He had been riding a wave into Sennen Cove beach, which seemed oddly a long way off. Then, suddenly, he was underwater with a roaring and bubbling in his ears. The need to get to the surface became more pressing, and he pulled back some bedsheets. He opened his eyes to see not the sky over Cornwall but an array of medical equipment in his peripheral vision; his surfboard was no longer attached to his ankle, evidently. Thankfully, there were various tubes helping him to breathe – the currents can be dangerous off Sennen Cove, he remembered.
It took him a long time to work out that he was in a ward, but not one in Derriford Hospital on the edge of Plymouth. Why were the nurses speaking to him in French? He drifted in and out of consciousness.
Unbeknown to Walter, there had been a security scare earlier that had the armed police shouting at each other down the corridor and calling for back-up. A man had run up the corridor, opening doors and peering in maniacally. He had been calling for a stop to the invasion across the Mediterranean Sea, although whether this was about migrants, North African footballers or malarial mosquitoes was not clear. It had been a false alarm, and the man was escorted back to his ward and sedated.
Walter had called out to someone in his confused state, and a nurse had checked him immediately. She put her hand on his arm and calmed him down gently, explaining that he was in hospital. After he had drifted back to a happier place, she walked out to her office and a doctor was informed of the developments. He immediately undertook his own checks on the patient, who was still surfing in Cornwall, according to his mutterings. Once back in the ward office, the doctor phoned the prosecutor’s office.
After taking the call, Madame Bettancourt sat back and smiled; this was from relief that she might now be able to solve the case, given that the innocent Walter looked like he might pull through. She was also looking forward to him giving her first-hand testimony that would clear up what was, and still could be, a high-profile political nightmare. Privately, she was looking forward to calling Patrick Redwood and meeting up with him again.
Brendan drove past the entrance to the villa and spotted a man dressed in black standing on the roof. This in itself did not represent an impossible threat, but rather it shouted out that there were probably plenty more at ground level patrolling the grounds. The gatehouse appeared to be occupied, and there was no simple way of gaining access.
Long before the police assault on Holly Cottage, he had begun his circuitous route back to the Continent. He had flown from East Midlands Airport via Dublin on another passport, hoping that the face-recognition cameras hadn’t picked him up. The two hired heavies, who were actually Turkish, had filled him in on most of the security arrangements and were waiting for instructions. These were the two men who had been successful in transferring the poison to Johnny Musselwhite. In their new hotel base, they had been joined not only by Brendan but also by a fourth member of the team who had driven down in a Range Rover that concealed an array of additional weapons now at their disposal. They wanted to complete the task and get paid as they had done many times for different, mostly Muslim employers.
The information he and his masters wanted hadn’t been on the laptops or the wiped memory card retrieved in the two visits to the Auberge du Pont Neuf – this was a major setback. The murder of Johnny Musselwhite had removed a large part of the problem, but the project had yet to be cancelled permanently. The kidnap and threats had also failed so far. The British police had killed two of his colleagues and freed the two women, although they would never have given him the leverage that he would have acquired from having kidnapped Maria and Angelica Yelland.
Brendan needed to get inside the villa and remove the threat, such that the project would be well and truly dead.
He was sure the answer lay with the drone that one of the Turks had in pieces on the coffee table. He was doing something with a battery. The drone was state of the art. It was mostly made of see-through plastic so the ambient light passed through the main peripheral fabric, which meant it cast only a minimal shadow from the battery on the underside. With security at the villa so high, it could only be used judiciously. Multi-millionaires’ villas were regularly buzzed by the paparazzi, hoping to get a photograph that would make them rich too. Everyone would be looking out for them. It was the location of the security personnel and any cameras that interested Brendan most – he already had the layout plans for the buildings.
He was weighing up whether it was better to attack the villa or wait for the gates to open and to attack the car. The first option would be on his terms and at a time of his choosing. It would be, however, the more difficult option; the second was unattractive because someone had to lie in wait with substantial weaponry and ordinance, continuously ready to make a split-second decision to attack. The timing would not be down to Brendan.
There were other options: one forming in his mind was to fire at the villa over the walls. The Turks now had with them some shoulder-mounted rocketry that would put the fear of God into anyone in the villa, if it were fired against the large French windows overlooking the Mediterranean. Brendan could follow this up with new threats demanding that his requests be fulfilled. The other option involved the power and water supply. Undoubtedly, the villa complex had a back-up generator to provide electricity, but could he disrupt the water supply and say that it had been poisoned? After all, Johnny Musselwhite had been poisoned. This would, however, be an unfounded threat as the poisons he had at his disposal had to be applied to the skin, not watered down a million times.
His mobile rang.
A voice, speaking in Arabic, recited two coded phrases that gave him the go-ahead to attack the villa. It also specified that he was to use the rifle with telescopic sights and to take out the target on the rear terrace, firing from the adjoining villa.
Decision made.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thursday morning was fresh with an offshore breeze and a developing bank of cloud far out at sea. High up above her, there were white contrails left by planes flying north from Dakar in Senegal to Europe. Mike Kingdom wondered if one of these had been produced by the plane from the Falklands that refuelled every week at Dakar before passing over her cabin to reach RAF Brize Norton. The world is so small, she was thinking.
It was 10.30am, and she was sitting outside her hotel having a breakfast of eggs and hash browns. A brushed-steel pot had provided her with hot but bitter coffee. There weren’t many guests, and this gave her time to think and prepare. She was currently in her black wig; But this, she was thinking, may change.
Her phone buzzed.
“Can you speak?” Leonard asked when she picked up the call.
“Yes, I’m alone. I’m eating my late breakfast in the sunshine,” she replied, but she instantly regretted mentioning food.
“Boy, it’s hours since I had breakfast. I might have to get something. Lunch is a couple of hours away.”
“To what do I owe this pleasure, if that’s what it is? I told you nothing happens until 2.00pm.”
“That’s about when POTUS lands at Marrakech; he’s another person probably eating breakfast at the moment … over Greenland or somewhere.” Food was always a major distraction to him – especially if it were on someone else’s plate.
“What? Do you want me to meet him? Only, I’m busy and didn’t bring my full wardrobe.”
“I think Morocco has a king, or somebody like that, who’s going to meet him, together with all the usual flunkeys.”
“At least Randy hasn’t done anything to upset the visit, yet? Has he?” she asked.
“So far, so good, but I’ll feel a whole lot better once you’ve spoken to him.”
She drank some coffee. “Why did you call? Unless you get turned on by listening to someone eat croissants – which you probably do, come to think about it.”
“To do you a favour.” He paused for effect. “The British police went to the address on the top of your list and freed the two women. They shot a couple of kidnappers.”
“Was one of them Brendan Dowell?”
“That’s why I’m letting you know. No, it wasn’t, and the Brits can’t find him. You might like to let your other client know.”
