The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

out a gun and shoot me, claiming I broke in and tried to kill you…”

“But I don’t have a gun,” Hollandrake said.

King smiled. “I know. There are metal detectors down stairs. Your CP officer filed off before he reached them. You walked straight through.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know things. I see things. I have other people seeing things for me.”

“Are you wired?”

King laughed. “No, I’m not wired. But I have a phone.”

“How did you get your gun through?”

King shrugged. “I know how to do things. I know how to appear and disappear.”

“Five-hundred thousand. Today. To make it all go away.”

King shook his head. “That’s not a bad figure,” he said. “But you sanctioned the killings. You knew Ian Snell was going to die, and you knew at least four other people would die to cover up the motive for his death. And then there’s the collateral damage. The bodyguards, the chauffeurs, the men out in the South African bush, the innocent family down in Cornwall. And then there’s the South African intelligence agent, the prisoner he was escorting with Caroline.”

“One million.”

“And my fiancé. Two attempts on her life,” King paused. He put the pistol down on the desk, took his phone out of his pocket. “Damn. I appear to have been recording this entire meeting.”

“Five,” Hollandrake said. “Five million and I keep the phone. Agree to this right now, I can get the money before the end of the day.”

“My fiancé,” King said. “The first contract killers were going to rape her and cut her throat.” He took an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the desk. “The second attempt almost had her burn alive in the wreckage of a car. The poor South African intelligence agent wasn’t so lucky. The prisoner, Vigus Badenhorst didn’t deserve to die. And certainly not like that.”

“I can get you five today. I can arrange another three by the end of the week,” Hollandrake said. “That’s eight-million for your phone and your silence. Think about it. Nobody even wins that much on the lottery anymore.”

“Who’s your contact in the South African Secret Service?”

Hollandrake shook his head. “You have to give me something back.”

“I don’t have to give you anything.”

Hollandrake held up his hands. “Look. I’ll write down his name for you. I just need your guarantee that you won’t release what evidence you have. That you won’t go after my wife. That all of this will go away.”

King picked up a pen and tossed it over to him. “Go on then,” he said. “A little test of faith.”

Hollandrake picked up a sheet from the file, folded it over and scribbled down the name. He got unsteadily out of his chair and passed it down to King. He glanced at the pistol on the desk, started to hesitate.

King smiled. “You won’t make it,” he said. He snatched the paper off him and Hollandrake flinched. King folded it and slipped it into his pocket. Hollandrake ignored the pistol and returned to his chair.

“We have a deal?”

“What?” King asked.

“You’ll help this to all go away,” Hollandrake said. He coughed, clearing his throat. “The affair, the tax, everything else…”

King shook his head. “You know that won’t happen, right?”

“What?”

“That’s not how this is going to play out,” King said. “You are the Home Secretary. You are odds-on favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Everyone knows the PM is not going to make her full term. You advocated multiple murders…”

“I have been responsible for millions going to charities and worthy causes! To people in dire need!” Hollandrake snapped. “Anarchy to Recreate Society showed people what the rich really were.”

“The rich?” King asked. “Cheats, liars, megalomaniacs. Like yourself, for instance? People who don’t pay enough tax, falsify their figures.” King picked up the envelope, turned it over. “You’re going to answer for your involvement in, or awareness of Anarchy to Recreate Society and the murders they carried out. You’re going to answer for South Africa. You are going to be investigated by HMRC as well as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Your efforts to corrupt an investigation by paying off the lead pathologist to falsify her findings in the forensic investigation of a man’s murder will be handed over to the police. And your wife will answer to her involvement in shell companies owned by both you and the late Sir Ian Snell. The Goliath ICBM contract will be quashed. Your involvement in securing a contract in which you have a conflict of interest will be laid out for debate. I imagine the government will fall like a house of cards.”

Hollandrake had turned pale. Ashen. King thought he looked about ready to have a heart attack. Which was apt. considering what King was about to do next.

King picked up the envelope and tossed it across to the Home Secretary.

“What’s this?” he asked, but his expression had not changed.

“It’s a way out.”

“What?”

“Go home. Kiss your wife, phone your daughter for a chat and pour yourself a Scotch, and then take the pill.”

Hollandrake opened the envelope, peered inside. The pill was a capsule. It was red at one end and green at the other.

“It will bring on a heart attack,” King said. “You won’t know what is happening after a few minutes. You’ll be mourned. Your obituary will be clean. You’ll be page one in the papers and opening feature on the tv news. And Mrs Hollandrake gets to keep her twin-set and pearls, ride her horses, attend the hunt ball and sip a Pimm’s at the regatta.”

48

 

He applied the tape first around her wrists, her hands in front of her. Then, he pulled her up into a sitting position, wound the tape around her elbow and worked it around her back