Ash (20 page)

But not so much nowadays though, not when Eddy had been instructed to trail Twigg around the streets of London, or wherever a job had to be carried out. And when Twigg visited certain shops – a clock-maker’s or newsagent’s or small backstreet tobacconist (and Twigg didn’t even smoke) – he would always emerge with a package of some kind which he’d tuck into his grubby old raincoat pockets. What was
that
about?

Eddy bit into his knuckle to stifle a further sob and peered up from where he lay on the leaf-littered ground, the knees of his once-smart Hugo Boss trousers digging into the soil beneath the dead leaves, the once brilliantly shined rustic-grain calf-leather footwear now scuffed and dirty, and his tie askew and loose from his buttoned jacket.

The other day in London – the day they’d carried out the poison-umbrella stunt, in fact – Nelson had followed Twigg to a new place. Special employees were sent annually to Harley Street for a full physical check-up, the results of which were then sent to Sir Victor Haelstrom or Comraich’s senior doctor. But this time, Twigg had gone to a medical practice in a different street, though one that was probably just as expensive. This was a significant departure from the norm.

The young apprentice had strolled up to the prestigious shiny black front door and read the polished brass nameplate. Several practitioners’ names were displayed and they all had one thing in common: all were neurologists.

It didn’t take much to work out that Twigg was very sick, symptoms of his disorder already noticed by Sir Victor, who would certainly have reported it to his Inner Court superiors. Eddy supposed the idea was to let the illness develop before jumping to the wrong conclusion. After all, Twigg had been a loyal servant for many years and was, Eddy hated to admit, a superbly professional operative.

Had Eddy not been swallowing so hard, he might have been capable of raising a jubilant cheer. Now he, Eddy, the bloody
apprentice
, no less, would be able to convince Haelstrom that Twigg had finally gone loony, that he’d become a danger to the organization itself. Twigg had gone beyond psychotic: he was a menace to them all.

Had the old bald-headed coot thought no one had noticed the trembling of his once-steady and deadly hands? And this was all but confirmed by Twigg’s furtive consultation with a Wimpole Street neurologist.
Oh boy, he really had the fucker now!

He shuddered as he remembered the white staring eyes that were waiting for him as he raised his head above the window sill and the sick madness of Twigg’s horrible smile. The malevolent look that bore straight through to Eddy’s horrified soul.

He drew in great draughts of fresh air, but stopped halfway through the next breath. Something had stirred the undergrowth close by. He squinted his eyes as he looked first to the right, then to the left and then behind. Back to the front again. All perfectly still now. Twigg couldn’t have got ahead of him, surely? No, his own muscled legs would carry him faster than a man twice his age. Then again, Twigg knew these woods better than him. For all Eddy knew, he could have been running round in circles, the noise he made as he thrashed through the trees and undergrowth giving his position away; his sobs alone were loud enough to be heard from a distance. Maybe the bald-headed assassin was ahead of him, just waiting for Eddy to run straight into his deadly, if shaky, arms.

But hold up
, Eddy chided himself,
be logical
. Surely he could beat the older man in a fair fight. Then who said it would be fair? Nelson had left his weapons of choice behind – the Stasi cosh, with its flexible tip and telescopic, compressed, rubber stem and plastic grip, or the iron knuckleduster, which could be carried in the side pocket of his jacket, both priceless in close-quarters combat. All had been left in his barracks apartment when he’d gone down to London, airline security not being fond of passengers including weaponry in their hand luggage. Similarly, the neat Walther PPK pistol he favoured and which, ironically, was a firearm that Twigg had trained him to use, was locked away in a grey metal cabinet inside his wardrobe.

As he assembled all these pointless thoughts, something stirred the forest foliage again.

He became aware of his location: surrounded by trees and undergrowth, and the forest floor so shady that it could be dusk. He felt vulnerable; he felt shit-in-his-pants scared.

But it couldn’t be Twigg sneaking up on him because there wasn’t enough cover for a full-grown man. He’d startled an animal. Yep, that’s what it was: all the noise he’d made had startled some kind of animal in the woods. A small deer, maybe? There were a lot of them roaming the estate. It could be anything, the estate was stuffed with them: badgers, foxes, rabbits, mice and rats, not to mention the many species of bird life.

With a long sigh of relief, he told himself that was the answer: he’d frightened some shy creature by blundering across its path. He changed his mind when a peculiar sound came from the bushes in front of him. It was like – no, he didn’t know what it was like. A soft hissing noise at first that soon grew in pitch, only to give way to a snarling of a kind he’d never heard outside a zoo.

Then he saw a pair of yellow-and-black eyes watching him from under a fern.

‘
Shoo!
’ he hissed sharply, but not too loudly; he didn’t want Twigg to hear him.

The animal, whatever it was, refused to be bullied by Eddy’s voice. Instead, it came further forward, its eyes unblinking and revealing no fear.

The apprentice picked up a small branch and threw it in the general direction of this unknown threat.

The animal was unfazed by the light projectile that had landed inches away from its front paws and slowly, like a stalking predator, it came into the open, unveiling its true nature.

‘A cat!’ Nelson cried out. ‘A bloody mog!’ and here was he on hands and knees, terrified by a bloody cat!

But wait – this was a different kind of cat. This big bugger now thumping the ground with one paw, its haunches high, its head and shoulders low, a brittle kind of tenseness in its manner, was slowly creeping towards him. As it came into full view, striped fur bristling, its bushy tail oddly waving with short, sharp flicks, a new fear took hold of Eddy.

One of the park rangers had told him there were wildcats prowling the woods. Don’t ever think of them as pets, he was warned, because they weren’t dubbed the Tigers of the Highlands for nothing. No one, as yet, could understand why and how they had immigrated from the north to take up residence in the woods of Comraich, but the occasional sightings and the discovery of riven carcasses of smaller animals and birds gave evidence of their presence. What was not known was how many of them were presently living in the woodland.

The ranger had also told him that they were solitary animals, rarely hunting in packs. That was at least some comfort to Eddy as he remained frozen on all fours. Just back away slowly, he advised himself. Very slowly.

He shuffled backwards, horribly frightened by this huge untamed animal that snarled and hissed at him, a fine spray of spit shooting from its fanged mouth.

Solitary animals, he remembered. Well, he could deal with one, no matter how big the fucker was. One on one. He wished that he was armed with the cosh at least; he could easily have handled the beast with that. A good hard crack would have sent it staggering senseless back into the undergrowth. But Eddy found it was he who was retreating from the now
growling
cat.
Could cats even growl?
This one bloody could.

Another thought came to him as he forced himself to move cautiously away. Who would he prefer to fight: Twigg – who might be sneaking up on him at this very moment – or the wildcat, which only had claws to fight with, and teeth to bite? Yet he never underestimated the bald assassin, whose frame belied his strength. He recalled how Twigg had snapped the neck of a watchman who’d had the nerve to challenge them as they’d primed incendiary devices in a certain French armaments factory.

The big cat continued to creep towards him, its whole body lowered close to the ground in a way that a normal cat might sneak up on an unsuspecting mouse or small bird before pouncing; its powerful-looking jaws were stretched wide and emitting those peculiar hissing-snarls again, its fur erect and spiky, swelling its body to a frightening size, tail suddenly still, its shoulder muscles bunched, haunches quivering as it prepared to launch itself at its human prey.

But to Eddy’s further horror and dismay, other wildcats were emerging from the undergrowth, their movement smooth and fearless. They shouldn’t have been there, the park ranger had said they were solitary creatures that usually hunted alone. This wildcat was mob-handed with at least a dozen others behind it, all slinking around trees, moving through the ferns and bushes, in a smoothly choreographed hunt. And he was the prey! It was as though they had been told he would be here, as though they were expecting him.

The apprentice assassin felt warm liquid trickle down his thigh, soaking his already mud-soiled Hugo Boss trousers with urine he could no longer hold in.

Eddy half rose and faced the advance, his face screwed up in anguish, tears blurring his vision and running down his cheeks as he mumbled words that even he didn’t understand. Maybe words of prayer . . .

As the pack of wildcats surged forward, fangs bared, their movement was so swift that he was unprepared for the claws that rent the back of his hands now hiding his face. Then came the tearing bites and deep scratches that shredded his quality suit, reaching the flesh below and raking it with knife-like claws as he curled his body into a foetal position on the leaf-strewn ground, arms trying to protect the back of his neck and head from the tearing and slashing of vicious lacerating claws that drew blood and pulled strips of flesh from their humbled prey, hungry jaws beginning to eat the very meat of him and gulping down his spilled blood as he shrieked . . .

Those shrieks echoed through the otherwise silent woods, causing birds to take wing and smaller creatures to scurry back to their secret, safe hideaways.

Having shaved, and washed his hands and face in the tiny bathroom, Ash wandered back into the pleasingly appointed bedroom-cum-sitting room, once again finding himself looking out of the window. There were more people in the courtyard below, in groups or alone, enjoying the suddenly clement weather. As before, he directed his gaze towards the far side of the courtyard and the ruined arch from where he’d been given his first view of the castle; at present, a single uniformed guard stood beneath it, as if to dissuade any drifters from taking that route.

As he watched, Ash saw the guard turn his head to speak into his wrist radio. The investigator wondered what his message would be: all quiet on the home front? No trespassers and no escapees? Despite the grandeur and the plushness of its interior, Ash couldn’t help thinking of Comraich as a luxurious Colditz, with its extensive electrified and razor-wired fence, patrolling guards and strategically placed CCTV cameras. Sir Victor Haelstrom could almost be the Kommandant. Or . . . his thoughts lingered on this . . . or maybe the thin man with the grim face and the pot-belly, who seemed to have deliberately avoided meeting Ash this morning, was in charge.

He was being over-imaginative, not to say paranoid; although, as Kate was always telling him, he did have an instinct for certain things, certain situations, and certain people.

‘
Enough!
’ he muttered sharply. He was there to do a job and he would do it to the best of his ability.

The upkeep of Comraich Castle – and he hadn’t as yet even perused the grounds – must be astronomical, and the fee paid to his own Institute was beyond reasonable. In fact it was more than exorbitant. But then, it also bought complete secrecy. They weren’t even allowed to keep copies of the reports they submitted to the Inner Court, let alone disclose their contents to anyone. It was an unusual arrangement, all right.

Even so, Ash had decided he would keep his own handwritten notes for himself. He wondered if he and his luggage would be searched before leaving Comraich when the investigation had been completed. In the distance, in what looked like the densest part of the woodland, his attention was caught by a sudden flurry of birds that rose excitedly into the air and flew off in all directions. He wondered what had disturbed them.

Turning from the window and his private thoughts, he reached round the bathroom door and dropped the damp towel into the small sink, then quickly donned a fresh blue denim shirt and a houndstooth jacket. He imagined lunch at the castle would be a semi-formal affair.

For just one moment, he was undecided whether or not to take another slug of absinthe, but on reflection he decided against it. The pocket-sized chrome-and-leather flask didn’t hold much, although one shot was as effective as two whiskies. Saving it for the three nights of his stay was a more practical alternative.

Ash went to the door and pulled it open; its hinges made barely a squeak. As he was closing it behind him, he heard a noise further down the corridor, and when he looked he saw the psychologist, Delphine Wyatt, just closing her own door.
Synchronicity
, he thought, with a small smile.

When she glanced up and saw him, Ash was sure a look of alarm shadowed her face for an instant.

‘Mr Ash,’ she acknowledged. ‘Are you on your way to lunch too?’

As she walked towards him, her step unconsciously graceful, he saw that she’d also changed her clothes. She wore a crocheted tie-front jumper, deep aubergine with a V-neck, and a gypsy-type skirt that reached just below her knees, black tights sinking into calf-length high-heeled boots.

Once again, Ash was almost speechless at this vision coming towards him, her black hair let loose from the back so that those dark curls framed her tanned face. If she’d spoken in Portuguese then he wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Lunch?’ she prompted, confused by his hesitancy.

He briefly wondered if she knew the effect she had on him, the cause of his hesitation.