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

“One question,” King said. “When you killed Liam Jameson, did you really enjoy it? I find that hard to believe.”

She looked him in the eyes and smiled. “I have never felt so alive.”

King nodded. He dropped down and straddled her. His knees pinning her arms to the ground. She bucked and kicked out, but he pinned her legs down with his shins, adjusted his weight. He didn’t say a word, didn’t look her in the eyes as he pinched her nose shut and held a hand over her mouth. He gave it a full minute. Sixty seconds of her wriggling, urging, grunting and trying to bite at the palm of his hand. After another thirty seconds, she had started to slow down considerably, her movements less sudden, less powerful. King looked away, kept up the pressure for close to thirty more seconds, then looked back at her. He watched her eyes closely, saw that she knew. Knew there was no way out, no other outcome to hope for. That the realisation was total. Then he said quietly, “For Liam.” Before he looked away and waited another minute for her to lay completely still.

55

One month later

Scotland

The underside of the hire car scraped and grounded on the rutted track. Awash with puddles, raised in the middle and narrow in places, it wasn’t the sort of place to drive a hire car and keep your deposit.

Mereweather saw the cottage, nestled in a dip, surrounded by windblown grass and heather. There was no way to approach the cottage other than head on. It’s openness, its utter bleakness was its security. The cottage was small. It was squat in design, hunkered down against the elements. Obstinate and stubborn against the harshness of nature for two centuries. There was no garden. Mereweather doubted whether anything other than grass and heather could grow here anyway. Other than the cottage, a single hawthorn tree was starting to blossom. A gnarled and thorny thing bent over at ninety degrees, it was the only other object to obscure the flat and desolate terrain for miles. The waters of the loch were dark, almost black and only interspersed from the grey horizon by a million white horses lapping at the sky. Fifty-feet of grey and white shingle surrounded the three sides, the expanse of water stretching out into infinity where it joined the sea.

It was nearing the end of May. It had been a warm and pleasantly bright morning in London. Mereweather wondered when the summer started this far north in Scotland. Or whether it ever did.

He could see a battered old Land Rover Defender parked in a dip twenty-metres from the cottage. Beyond which, the cottage was in near total darkness, but for a single light shining from the upstairs window within. As he neared, he could see it must have been a simply two-up-two-down affair. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live all the way out here. The loneliness would drive him mad. But then, he knew why this place had been chosen.

Mereweather parked and stepped out of the car. He noticed it groaned, the suspension having taken a hammering from the lane.

“Time for that debrief?”

Mereweather spun around. He hadn’t heard King approach, hadn’t seen where the man could possibly have been standing in an area so open and bleak.

“Alex,” he said, shocked at his sudden appearance. He looked at him, took in the dark and sallow features, the unkempt hair and the beard. He tried not to let his stare linger, but the more he tried, the more he could not seem to break away.

“Congratulations on your promotion.”

“You heard about that?”

“I still have an ear to the ground.”

“So I gather.”

“Deputy Director of Operations. The position has been vacant for a while. I’m glad they chose you, Simon. Your predecessor came up here just over a year ago,” King said. “I don’t think he cared for the place much either.”

“I can see its appeal,” Mereweather replied. “A good place to set one’s head.”

“Or spiral to despair.”

“I doubt that.”

King shrugged. “Is this about Hollandrake?”

Mereweather frowned. “No, why would it be?”

King did not reply. The man was due to be buried tomorrow, which meant that his autopsy had not flagged up anything untoward. Either Sir Hugo Hollandrake had suffered a fatal heart attack some thirty-six hours after King had visited his office, or he had taken the MI6 issue suicide pill that King had given him. So, King had laid down the choices, shown Hollandrake what awaited him, what his and his wife and daughter’s lives would be like if he didn’t take another way out. He had essentially killed the man over a cup of tea. King had thought of the similarities between the tale Caroline had been told by Ryan Beard in South Africa.

He killed a man with a cup of coffee…

If they only knew, could only guess at what King had said to that traitor, what he told him he would do, on that clear and warm day in Geneva.

The Reaper.

King had been issued with two of the pills more than twelve-years ago. He had never carried them on operations. He had felt that here was always the possibility, the slim chance of survival, even when the odds were stacked against him. At least, that was what he had told himself until a month ago. He had the remaining pill with him now. Looked at it most mornings on his bedside table.

But there was always a slim chance.

A miracle, even.

“Can we go inside and talk?”

“I don’t think so,” King said. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

Mereweather shrugged. “The police still haven’t come up with anything.”

“I know.”

“Caroline hasn’t been seen since the operation to put Amanda Cunningham under surveillance. Her last contact was the text messages she sent to