Chet Freeman looked down to see the prosthetic limb strapped to the stump of his right leg. It always hurt – especially when he put pressure on it, which he did every time he stood up. The remnants of his shattered knee bone were forever breaking down; his skin was often bleeding and sore. When people saw an amputee, they only ever saw the prosthetic limb, never the damaged flesh that sat in it. The limb itself was hi-tech and well cushioned, but the flesh was human and it ached 24/7.
Yet in a weird way his prosthesis reminded him how lucky he was. For Chet, life was divided into ‘before Serbia’ and ‘after Serbia’. When things started to get him down, he just reminded himself that the ‘after Serbia’ bit could easily never have happened.
He had no memory of the blast. No memory of the evacuation or amputation. One minute he was in a room with Luke, a kid’s cot and a hobby horse; the next he was back in the UK at Selly Oak Hospital, his home for a year. He lost count of the times the doctors sliced wafers of skin from his back to graft over his wounds, all the while telling him that by rights he should be dead. Then he’d been moved into rehab at Headley Court.
At Headley they taught him to walk again – a long, slow process. Nothing like a stint in that place to make you count your blessings, though. Chet’s amputation was below the knee. That at least gave him the movement of the knee joint. In rehab he met several double above-the-knee amputees, and even one basket case – a quadruple amputee whose life seemed to Chet to be barely worth living, though the guy seemed remarkably positive given his circumstances.
The Regiment had offered Chet a desk job back in Hereford, but he wasn’t the desk-job type and quit the military. His pay-off had been just enough to buy this tiny flat, and there was a small army pension; but it was barely enough to live on, and anyway he needed something to get him out of bed in the morning. To sit and brood would have been the death of him.
By the time he was dressed, Chet just looked like a regular guy. Some of the amputees he knew didn’t mind their prosthetic limbs being on show. Not him. He liked to cover up his leg – not out of shame, but because he didn’t want people treating him differently. His trousers successfully hid the limb. A specially made shoe hid the foot. There were the scars on his face, sure, but that was no different to any of the ex-army winos who staggered up and down Seven Sisters Road. At least he looked better than them. Just.
He limped into the kitchen just as the phone rang. Chet let the answering machine on the work surface click in. ‘
This is me. Leave a message.
’
‘Chet, mate, it’s Doug . . .’ Doug Hodgson, a leg amputee like himself thanks to an anti-personnel landmine in Kosovo. They’d gone through rehab together. He was a good lad, but his prosthesis wasn’t his only war wound. The poor guy was riddled with PTSD. He hid it well, but Chet knew it filled his nights with dreams and woke him early every morning. Hence the six a.m. call. ‘Happy birthday, yeah? So if you haven’t got plans to get your chin buttered tonight, how about meeting up for a few jars? Call me, right?’
Chet frowned. Doug had this image of Chet as a ladies’ man, but with one leg and a scarred face he was hardly catch of the day. A glance at the state of the kitchen showed that the place lacked a woman’s touch: peeling yellow wallpaper, a filthy hob, the only decoration a Blutacked poster of the London skyline that had come with the flat but Chet had never bothered to change.
The remnants of last night’s booze were still visible in the kitchen: half a bottle of Bell’s, a couple of empty tins of Asda’s strongest lager. The first thing the occupational therapists had told him at Headley Court had been to lay off the sauce, but they weren’t the ones who had to put up with the discomfort, or the embarrassment, or the frustration. Still, he didn’t like to be reminded the morning after of how much he’d knocked back, so he pressed the empty cans into the already overflowing bin and stowed the whisky bottle in a cupboard, before taking a loaf of bread from its packet and hacking off a hunk with the only sharp knife in the kitchen. As he ate the dry bread, he picked up a piece of paper from the side, stained with a ring from the bottom of a coffee mug.
It was a letter, written on expensive vellum paper and emblazoned with an elaborate letterhead: an ornate G, printed in gold foil, with the words ‘The Grosvenor Group’ in copperplate underneath it. They sent Chet one of these notes every time he did a bit of work for them, short and businesslike, the wording always the same:
Dear Mr Freeman
Please take this letter as confirmation that we will expect you at 7.30 a.m. at 132 Whitehall on 7 January 2003. As usual, the details of this engagement are subject to the non-disclosure agreement in force between ourselves.
Chet looked at the clock on the greasy oven. 06.28. Time to get going. Today might be his birthday, but a job was a job, and he needed it. He grabbed his rucksack full of gear and left the house.
It felt bitterly cold as he stepped outside. His old black Mondeo – automatic transmission so he could drive it with one foot – was parked outside, a dent in one side, three key scrapes along the other. Back in the Hereford days he’d gone everywhere on a Yamaha R1. Those days were gone and so was the motorbike.
Leaves swirled in the wind, but the sky was crisp and blue. He could have driven, or waited for a bus to take him to the tube station, but Chet was stubborn. His leg hurt as he walked as briskly as he could along the road, but he was damned if he was going to live his life any differently because of that. At Headley Court they’d suggested he got himself a wheelchair for occasional use. He would rather die.
Jobs for amputees that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk were hard to come by. The usual bodyguarding gigs that most Regiment personnel fell into on leaving the army weren’t open to Chet, but he still had certain skills that people and organisations were willing to pay for. The Grosvenor Group was one of them. They were a big American firm manned by brash men in expensive suits. They clearly made a great deal of money in ways Chet didn’t really understand, and with money came paranoia. Almost weekly the company called Chet in to sweep offices where they were holding meetings. Different locations every time, but always the same request: check for bugs, check for surveillance. What the hell went on in these meetings, Chet had no idea.
The tube was busy and sweaty. Chet was glad to emerge at Piccadilly Circus, just another face in the crowd as he made his way down to Whitehall, stopping about thirty metres before he reached the familiar MoD offices.
Number 132 was a tall building with wide stone steps and a tinted-glass revolving door. Inside was all marble and mirrors. Chet entered and headed straight for the security desk in the middle of the cavernous atrium. A friendly-looking, Brylcreemed man, in his sixties and wearing a grey suit, smiled up at him.
‘Good morning, sir. Can I help?’
Chet nodded. ‘I’m expected.’
‘Your name, please, sir?’
‘Chet Freeman.’
The man consulted his computer. ‘Sixth floor, sir. I will need to check your bag before you go up.’
Chet shook his head and a brief look of alarm crossed the man’s face. ‘It’s security regulations, sir. I’m sure you’ll . . .’
‘Call up,’ Chet interrupted him. ‘They’ll clear it with you.’ He turned and wandered away from the desk.
A minute later the security guard gestured him back. ‘Please go up, sir. Everything’s fine. You’ll just need to sign in.’
Chet nodded again, waited while the security guard issued him with a plastic ID card to clip on his shirt, then headed for the lift.
He got out at the sixth floor to see a wide, open-planned office on his left, all carpet tiles, pot plants and water coolers. There were perhaps twenty people working there, mostly female. The air was filled with the sound of phones ringing softly; each call was answered immediately.
The person who emerged from the huddle of desks to greet him was male, early twenties, with dishevelled hair. He looked at Chet like he was looking at dog shit. ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked, his voice dripping with public school.
‘Where are the rooms, pal?’ Chet asked curtly.
‘Up here, on the right. They’ve set two aside for us, next to each other. We’ll choose which one to use at the last min . . .’
‘Thanks. I know the drill. So who is it today?’ The kid shrugged just as they stopped beside a grey door.
‘This it?’ asked Chet.
The kid nodded.
‘Why don’t you run along then?’ Chet winked at him. ‘You must be very busy.’
The kid got the message and left him to it.
Chet entered the room. It was entirely unremarkable. A beech-coloured meeting table with twenty or so chairs around it took up most of the space. There was a whiteboard at one end with an overhead projector, and three large tinted windows looking out over Whitehall and from which, if you looked up, you could just see the roofs of the buildings opposite.
He got to work. From his rucksack he pulled a set of screwdrivers, a torch, two bulky Nokia mobile phones and a radio-frequency bug detector. He started with the plug sockets – unscrewing each one, directing the torch into the cavity and searching for bugs or any sign of tampering – before climbing awkwardly on to the board table and investigating the light fittings.
Once he was satisfied that the sockets and lights were clean, he started calibrating the RF detector. He laid it on the table and turned the dial fully on. The detector started beeping rapidly, so Chet gradually turned the dial down until it stopped. He picked up one of the mobiles and used it to call the other. The radio signal from the phones caused the detector to start beeping again.
Holding the phones, he stepped back three metres, towards the windows. The rate of the detector’s beeping decreased, but not by enough. He adjusted the dial, then stepped back again. This time the beeping was right. He disconnected the phones and the detector went silent. Now he could start to sweep.
He ran the detector along the blinds above the windows and carefully checked the OHP. He swept under the table and chairs and examined each of the carpet tiles for signs of tampering, before carefully sweeping all the walls and the ceiling. It took half an hour before he was satisfied that everything was clear, at which point he packed up his gear, left the room and, now that he’d swept it, tacked a red cordon over the door so nobody could enter. Then he moved to the adjoining office – which was identical in every way – and started to repeat the operation.
Chet was just unscrewing the first socket when the door opened. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman. A couple of years younger than Chet, which would put her in her early thirties. And cute. Definitely cute. She was carrying a small vacuum cleaner and wore a blue and white checked uniform that identified her as one of the office’s cleaning ladies, but a lot easier on the eye than most. She had long red hair, pale, clear skin, green eyes. Her nose turned up attractively at the end and there was a tiny silver stud through the left nostril.
She looked surprised to see him. ‘Oh . . . Excuse me . . . I thought . . .’
Chet stood up and gave her one of his rare smiles. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said, then noticed a flicker of annoyance on her face. He took a couple of steps towards her and read the name on her plastic name tag. Suze McArthur. ‘Sorry,
Suze
. No cleaning in here today.’ He caught the faintest whiff of a perfume he recognised from an ex-girlfriend, but that had been a long time ago.
Suze looked flustered. ‘I’ll go next door . . .’
‘’Fraid not. Out of bounds.’
‘But I have to clean . . .’
‘Looks like you might have the morning off.’ Chet hesitated. ‘Tell you what – I’ll be free in a couple of hours. I’ll buy you coffee . . .’
The girl backed away. She scurried back up the corridor, taking her vacuum cleaner with her and casting just a single glance over her shoulder as she went. She almost appeared frightened.
Jesus, Chet thought. I didn’t think I looked
that
bad.
He went back to sweeping the room. Twenty minutes later he was done. After cordoning off the room, just as he had the first, he stood watch in the corridor outside.
He’d only been standing there a few minutes when he heard a commotion by the lift, which he could just see from his position. A group of five people had arrived. Three of them were muscle – he could tell just by the way they held themselves. The fourth man was entirely bald, his face and scalp tanned and shiny, his suit a bright blue that suggested he was foreign – French or Italian, perhaps. As he drew nearer, Chet could see that he held across his chest a leather wallet file with the ornate G emblem of the Grosvenor Group. He was speaking loudly, with an American accent, to the fifth man.
And Chet recognised
him
.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ he muttered to himself.
The Prime Minister wore a well-cut suit and his trademark red tie was impeccably tied. Alistair Stratton almost had the bearing of a film star, out of place in this workaday office environment, and was listening attentively to the bald man as they walked, his brow creased in earnest concentration. Stratton glanced at Chet as he approached, and clocked his scarred face, before quickly recovering and turning his attention back to the bald man. There was something about being in his presence that impressed Chet, despite himself.