Hard Knocks (6 page)

He was short, almost stocky, with hair clipped razor-thin to his scalp. Not because he still hankered after his undoubted previous army career, but because he spent half his life in the shower after exercise. He had the air of someone who’s fitter on a daily basis than you’ll ever be in your life. And knows it.

“Good morning ladies,” he barked, swivelling his bull neck to survey the room’s occupants with just a little too much attention. “Outside in your running kit in fifteen minutes, if you please!”

The door slammed shut behind him and for a moment I continued to lie still, concentrating on slowing down my heart and preventing its imminent explosion. I’ve never liked loud alarm clocks and this was worse. It can’t be good for you to surface from sleep with such suddenness and ferocity. The wake-up equivalent of the bends.

“Come on then girls,” Shirley said briskly, sitting up in her bed opposite mine and reaching for her sweatshirt. “We can’t let the boys think we’re not up to the job.”

Shirley Worthington was from Solihull, the archetypal bored housewife. She was a bouncy woman who wouldn’t see forty again except in the rear-view mirror. Within five minutes of our meeting last night, she’d been handing round photographs of her grandchildren. Not exactly the kind of person I’d expected to find studying to be a bodyguard.

To my left I heard a quiet groan, and then Elsa pushed back her bedclothes and sat up wearily. The German woman looked like death, but I had a feeling I was probably seeing a fairly accurate picture of myself. Only Shirley seemed irritatingly alert.

I glanced over towards the room’s fourth occupant, who was little more than a vague outline under the blankets. Even Todd’s violent incursion hadn’t made an impact.

Elsa heaved herself out of bed and padded across the squeaky floor. “Jan,” she said loudly, shaking the lump by what appeared to be a shoulder. “It is time for you to be waking up now, please.”

Jan King made a muffled comment that probably contained at least four expletives. I’d never come across a woman with such a wide vocabulary of swear words. Or a man, for that matter. And I was used to hanging out around bikers.

Judging from her dulcet tones, Jan was from the East End of London. She was small, sallow-skinned and intense, with the stringy skinniness of a long-distance runner and very bad teeth. She didn’t look much like a bodyguard, either.

By the time the four of us had scrambled into our clothes and got down the main staircase, the men were already outside on the gravel. They stood in a huddled group, their collective breath rising like steam from winter cattle under the floodlights.

The stars were still glittering above us. By my reckoning we were still a good two and a half hours away from sunrise. Why, I wondered bitterly, couldn’t Kirk have got himself killed on a summer course?

“Ah, so good of you to join us at last, ladies,” Todd’s voice was sneering as he jogged up in a dark blue tracksuit. “Too busy putting your make-up on, were you?”

Jan’s response was short and to the point, but I don’t think the reaction she got was the one she was hoping for. If she’d thought it through that far.

“Physically impossible, I would have thought,” Todd said mildly, then his face tightened. “Get down and give me ten press-ups.”

Jan’s face mirrored her surprise. She put her hands on her hips. “Or what?” she demanded.

“Or you can pack your bag right now and bugger off back home, love,” Todd said. He gave her a nasty smile. “Better make that fifteen press-ups.”

“You can’t order me about like that,” Jan said, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice now, underlying the belligerence.

“You didn’t read the small print when you signed up for this, did you?” Todd asked. He raised his voice, speaking to the group of us. “We need hundred per cent effort from you lot. Anyone who isn’t prepared to put the graft in and you’re straight out.” He waved an arm towards the edge of the gravel, where it faded out into the gloom in the direction of the forest track we’d come in on.

He turned back to Jan. “It’s a long walk out of here, but you can use the time to reflect on what a failure you are. On how you haven’t got the guts and the dedication to make it.” He shrugged. “Makes no difference to me. So, what’s it to be – twenty press-ups, or the next flight back home?”

They continued to stare each other out for a moment longer, then Jan dropped slowly and reluctantly to the frozen gravel.

Todd watched her complete the first three, then turned away. How many press-ups she actually managed to achieve was immaterial, I realised, it was the capitulation he’d been after.

Oh God, one of those . . .

I’d come across enough of Todd’s type – the control freaks and the macho bullshitters. First in the army, and then in the brief period I’d spent working the doors in a local nightclub. I’d found out early that I didn’t like playing the game their way. Sean had warned me to keep a low profile, but if this was their attitude, it wasn’t going to be easy. Perhaps it was a good job there was someone as bolshie as Jan to do the answering back.

“OK people, listen up,” Todd shouted. “We’re going to start out nice and easy with a straightforward little jog . . .”

His idea of a little jog, we quickly discovered, involved several klicks of rough forest tracks, at a pace he must have known hardly any of us could hope to sustain. The ground was frosted hard enough to concuss your joints with every stride. If it had been wet, the mud would have been impassable.

As it was, within the first kilometre we became widely strung out. I was thankful that I’d spent most of the previous year working at the gym, and so was fit enough to keep up with the middle of the field, at least. I didn’t have to put the brakes on in order to stick to the inconspicuous position Sean had recommended.

Two of the other instructors played sheepdog. Todd showed off his superior stamina by roaming up and down the line, goading us on. Sometimes he fell back almost to the rear and sometimes he’d sprint past to harangue those at the front.

I was surprised to see Blakemore lead off at the head of the group, despite the comments of the big German the night before. Blakemore was quick enough but he moved with a slight awkwardness, compensating for his damaged knee.

Bringing up the rear was the Belfast man, whose name I’d learned was O’Neill. I remembered his unguarded gesture last night at supper and wondered how he’d come by the hurt he was so obviously trying to mask. It surprised me that these two were the ones out running with us. If the Major didn’t even allow for injury time among his instructors, how was he going to treat the rest of us?

Without breakfast, my body had just about used up its available reserves after around five klicks. My thigh muscles were blocky and buzzing and I could feel my pace weakening with every stride. The cold air was murderous as I sucked it down into my lungs, burning my chest from the inside out.

When the man in front of me started to slow, I couldn’t have been more grateful at that point. More and more of us fell back to a walk, then tottered to a stop. I bent over, hands braced on my knees, and tried to drag air into my system through tubes that suddenly seemed totally inadequate for the job.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Todd demanded as he came pounding up from giving them hell at the back. He didn’t seem to be out of breath and was barely sweating. “Have you pathetic lot given up already?”

For a moment there was a silence that was almost fearful, then someone dragged up the courage to speak. “We’re not sure of the path, sir,” he said.

“What?” Todd roared. “Who’s that? Where’s Blakemore?”

“Erm, I’m McKenna, sir,” the same man supplied. “Mr Blakemore, he, erm, just sort of dropped back.” He spoke hesitantly, in case he was blamed for the bad news. “I think his knee might have been giving him some trouble.”

Todd swore under his breath. “Come on then,” he said sharply, and led off at a furious pace. I dragged in a final lungful of stationary air and forced my quivering limbs back into a jog. It was worse starting up again than if I’d kept running.

When we got back to the Manor, Todd and O’Neill had us doing ten minutes of star jumps and sit-ups just off the gravel, on the icy grass. We were doing full army sit-ups, which I never recommended to anyone when I was working at the gym. I didn’t think it was a point worth mentioning to these two.

It was only then that Blakemore reappeared. As he came past me I noticed he was moving the same as he had been when he set out, with no apparent increase in his limp.

O’Neill must have seen that, too, because he broke off shouting vicious encouragement and grabbed Blakemore’s arm, spinning him to a standstill. “Where the fuck have you been?” he said, keeping his voice low. “Todd’s been doing his fruit.”

“Don’t panic,” Blakemore said calmly. His mouth twisted into a derisive smile. “He’s just mad ‘cos he didn’t think of it himself. “

O’Neill skimmed his eyes over the nearest of us to see if anyone was obviously listening in. I forced a bit more effort into my latest sit-up. “You know what the old man said about us sticking together,” he went on, speaking quietly through clenched teeth. “He’s going to go ballistic if he finds out you’ve been off on your own.”

“So don’t tell him,” Blakemore said, careless now.

“Yeah, and if anyone else finds out, that makes us both look bad, doesn’t it?” O’Neill muttered.

Blakemore shrugged his arm away. “Well,” he said coldly, “I’m not the one with secrets. How about you?”

After we’d showered and grabbed breakfast, they hustled us straight into the classroom. Gilby conducted the first lesson himself. He announced it, in the manner of someone expecting a round of applause, as an introduction to the art and science that was modern close protection work, and a debunking of the myths. Basically, it was an extended version of his welcome speech from the night before.

He was only mildly condescending towards the women in the industry, even admitting that they might have their areas of particular suitability. I smiled sweetly when he caught my eye, and tried not to show how much I was grinding my teeth. But, almost to my surprise, the more he spoke the more interested in the subject I became.

Annoyance and curiosity were useful emotions. They kept me awake. After the cold and the exertion of the morning, the stuffy heat of the classroom began to have its effect. Some of the students were visibly struggling not to fall asleep.

At one point McKenna nodded so hard that he nearly fell off his chair. He only got away with it by turning the movement into a violent coughing fit. He was a skinny youngster with a pale complexion that seemed to go pink at the slightest provocation. By the time he’d finished he was flushed from his prominent Adam’s apple right up into the roots of his hair.

Gilby paused and momentarily closed his eyes during McKenna’s performance. The show of mild irritation was natural enough, but that wasn’t what bothered me. It was the sudden utter immobility that came over him.

The way he did it made my skin tighten.

I’d come across men before who had that same innate stillness and it always put the fear of God into me. Gilby may have carried off a civilised gloss, but underneath was something dark, that coiled and slithered. And just for a moment his flash of temper had let it show. I’d thought him another out-of-touch officer, a borderline upper-class twit, but I’d been wrong.

I glanced sideways at the others, but the majority of them hadn’t noticed the change that had come over him. The ex-policewoman, Elsa was one of the few that had, I saw. Declan was just looking bored.

“The days of muscle-bound heavies in dark glasses are over,” Gilby continued, as though nothing had happened. “There will always be occasions when you’re called upon to provide a visible deterrent, but most of the time you’ll need to blend in with the rich, the famous, and the powerful.” He cast a critical eye over the disparate bunch of us as we wilted in our chairs. “I imagine for some of you that’s going to take quite some learning.”

He checked his watch, nodded sharply, then swept up his papers and walked out with his back ram-rod straight.

“I wonder how well your man there blends into a crowd,” Declan muttered as we gathered our notebooks. “You’d spot him for army brass even if he was wearing a dress.”

***

We went straight from there into a class for unarmed combat with Blakemore. The instructor must have been using an ice pack on his knee since the morning’s run, because when he sauntered into the room designated as the gym there was no sign of the limp.

After spending more than four years teaching self-defence classes for women, it was interesting to be on the receiving end. Blakemore was showy, I considered, but with the underlying grace that denotes an expert. The coarse construction of his face, the heavy layout of his features, could have fooled you into thinking he was little more than a thug. I hadn’t been expecting such finesse or delicacy of technique, but it would seem my first impression of him had been the right one.

Now, he demonstrated half a dozen moves for restraint and removal of someone who might be approaching your principal in a threatening manner.