The plate was empty. The powder was gone.
She ran her finger across the metal, hoping a few remaining grains might stick to her skin. She rubbed what little there was into her gums. They numbed, slightly, but it did little to take the edge off her anxiety — the fear of the inevitable crash after the highs, and the crushing realisation that she was not in her home.
Nor in anyone’s home, as far as she could tell.
Abbie looked at the four walls around her, hating the way the swirling patterns made her vision swim. She looked at the bed, and for the first time noted that it was bolted to the floor. Then she saw the lonely bucket in the corner of the small room, and the black object above her on the ceiling.
It was a camera, she realised.
Why the hell was there a camera on the ceiling?
Her heart beat faster, the pounding of blood in her temples at first obscuring the sounds from beyond the walls, but then she was sure of it. It reminded her of the mice in the family’s country manor house, scratching and scuffling out of sight — but this was too big to be any rodent.
And then Abbie heard the voices. Not words. Only voices. They were commanding. They were angry. Someone was arguing, and amongst that chaos there was the plaintive pleading of a person struck by the most terrible fear.
She stumbled to her feet, putting her ear to the cold metal wall.
‘Who’s out there?’ she shouted.
‘Abbie?’ someone sobbed. And then came a scream.
The kind of scream that marks the end of a life.
Chapter 14
With the security-cleared Major Cook acting as his chaperone, Morgan decided it was time to take a look at where the kidnapper had threatened to play his endgame.
‘Security’s impressive,’ he assessed as they cleared their second checkpoint, this one taking them from Birdcage Walk to Horse Guards Road and along the eastern edge of St James’s Park, now cloaked in darkness.
‘They’ll start ramping it up in the morning,’ Cook assured him. ‘By the time the crowds begin to turn up, there’ll be police and military all over the streets.’
‘And in the buildings,’ Morgan was certain. ‘There’ll be a few bored snipers eyeballing us right now.’
The pair walked on in silence, both searching for vulnerable points around the parade ground.
There were many.
‘What’s to stop someone coming in from the War Rooms on the southern side?’ Morgan asked. ‘The public have access to that. Could someone hide out in there?’
‘It’s closed the day of the Trooping,’ Cook explained, ‘and it was searched with dogs last night. The same will happen again this morning.’
‘What about this park? That’s a long border to cover.’
‘Foot patrols, static guards, CCTV and drones.’
‘That should do it.’
‘It should,’ Cook agreed.
The pair came to the parade ground itself. Tiers of seating and bleachers were arranged for the spectators that would flank the royal dais. On the gravel stood the small markers that signified the placement of each of the parading company’s troops.
Morgan turned to Cook, planning to ask her about the bleachers, but he held his tongue. Her eyes were on a memorial across the road that was bathed in light, the stone column lined with the figures of pensive soldiers in the uniform of the trenches.
‘The Guards Division Memorial,’ she told him, sombre.
‘Someone you knew?’ Morgan guessed.
‘John. A good friend of mine. He was killed in Babaji, Afghanistan.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he offered.
‘I know you are.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Your background is no secret, Jack. I know you get it.’
There was no reply Morgan could give. Like all veterans of combat, he did get it. ‘It’ was an unspoken shared experience, good and bad.
‘I have a question,’ she said suddenly.
Morgan wondered whether it would be one about the past or the present. He prayed it would be the latter.
‘Why are we here, Jack?’ she asked with genuine confusion.
Morgan could see there was more, and a look let her know that it was OK to say it.
‘Our job is to save Abbie, yes? If the kidnapper comes as far as the parade, then Abbie’s head’s already in a bag.’
‘Agreed,’ Morgan said simply.
‘Then why are we here?’
‘Because we’re working backward. They can’t kill her here, that’s obvious, so they have to do it somewhere else. Clearing security takes time. We’ve been held up twice for fifteen minutes, and that’s with no line and no crowds.’
‘I see where you’re going.’ Cook nodded her head.
‘Then run with it,’ Morgan challenged softly.
‘Everything about the parade’s timing is precise, and made public. Our kidnapper wanted the head rolling in front of the cameras, and there’s only one point in the parade where they can guarantee that — the march past the Queen.’
‘Right,’ he said, ‘and they’re going to need to be in position far ahead of time so that they don’t draw attention. When you have a parade full of soldiers standing frozen, any movement catches your eye. If they have the background we think they do, they’ll know that, and so they’ll be in position far enough ahead of time to avoid drawing attention. They’re going to need an escape route too. A way they can get out when everyone’s eyes are the other way.’
‘The march past is at noon,’ Cook told him from memory.
‘And the deadline for the ransom is at eleven. We figure out how long it will take to kill her and get in position here, then we have a radius for how close they must be.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘Sometimes you have to work these things from the tail end,’ said Morgan.
Cook smiled. ‘Sure.’
‘What?’
‘You know that even a small radius in central London is going to include literally thousands of properties, vehicles and boats, let alone people, don’t you?’
This time it was Morgan’s turn to grin. ‘You didn’t want to work for me because you thought it would be easy, did you?’
Chapter 15
The sentry saluted Major Jane Cook as she led Morgan clear of the security perimeter and towards Whitehall. Even at the late hour, gaggles of tourists mixed with the civil servants who emerged bleary-eyed from the magnificently appointed buildings that had once been the heart of the world’s most powerful empire.
Cook caught Morgan’s appraising eye on the many poppy wreaths and memorials that lined the route to the Ministry of Defence.
‘Miss it?’ she asked. Morgan didn’t need to be told that she was asking after his own service.
‘Every day,’ he answered honestly. ‘I loved my job, and I loved my people. I do now…’
‘But it’s different?’
‘It is different.’
‘Now you’re the general,’ Cook observed with a smile.
‘A general is nothing without his troops.’ Morgan brushed the compliment aside. ‘And I have great troops. The best.’
‘You were never tempted to re-enlist?’
He smiled. ‘Getting cold feet about leaving?’ he asked, not unkindly.
‘Of course.’ Cook shrugged. ‘It’s the only job I’ve ever known. I was sponsored through university, and at Sandhurst at twenty-one. The whole of my adult life I’ve worn the uniform, but times are changing. We can’t afford more wars, and the public wouldn’t back them even if we could.’
‘You think you’ll be bored if you stay on?’
‘I know I would be. War is a terrible thing, of course, but it’s what you train for. I had that off the bat, and I don’t want to spend the next ten years overseeing exercises on tighter and tighter budgets while the real action goes on without us.’