“It certainly rattled everyone, although Figgis tried to make out it was all part of the set-up,” I said. “The Major’s trying to play it cool, but he goes off at the deep end if any of the instructors disappear on their own for too long.”
“It begins to sound like the place is under threat,” Sean murmured. I could almost hear his brain beginning to turn over.
“I did wonder,” I agreed. “What if we consider the possibility that Kirk wasn’t killed by the school, but because he was here? Some kind of warning, perhaps?”
“If that’s the case why dump his body and cover up the connection? If Gilby’s being threatened by an outside source, surely having one of his men shot dead would put the authorities on his side?”
“It could also shut him down,” I pointed out. “Maybe that was the intention. Does Gilby have any opposition round here who might want him out of business? Or failing that, who’s he upset in a big way recently?”
Sean promised to try and find me some answers before we spoke again. We didn’t linger over our goodbyes. I switched off the phone when I’d finished the call, preserving the battery even though the indicator was still showing it fully charged.
I crossed the roof grateful to be getting back inside. I pulled the outer door closed behind me, and slid the bolts back into position, then I turned.
A man was looming behind me in the gloomy stairwell.
I gave a gasp of shock, took a step back, and felt my feet shifting into a stance almost of their own volition. I had to stop myself from bringing my hands up. Had to abort the blow I’d been about to launch.
There had been a time when I would have gone for a defensive block before I’d have ever thrown a punch. It was what I’d taught my self-defence students. And I’d believed it was the right way.
Painful – not to say nearly deadly – experience had taught me that a pre-emptive strike was by far the best defence. To hell with fair play. To hell with waiting for the other man to make the first move. This wasn’t sport. He wasn’t your opponent. He was your enemy.
And if there were consequences, well so be it. Consequences could only be faced if you were around afterwards to face them.
“Now just what would you be up to, Fox?” demanded the thick Belfast tones that could only be O’Neill. He spoke softly, let the accent threaten by association.
I put my hand on my chest and noticed that his eyes followed it. I made a play of trying to steady my breathing. “Christ, you frightened the life out of me!” I said. “Don’t do that.”
O’Neill moved forwards into the light and grinned. The scar pulled his face into a lopsided tilt, but he wasn’t to be deflected. “Well? What were you doing out on the roof?”
I shrugged. “Doing a recce,” I said. “Major Gilby told us that we should learn the layout of the Manor for this exercise he’s planning for us next week.”
I was suddenly thankful for such a decent excuse. It was so much more convenient to use the truth rather than have to invent a lie. “The roof’s a great vantage point, and you could get to the rooms on the second floor via the balcony, no trouble. I thought it was worth checking out.”
He eyed me shrewdly, head on one side. “You’re not just a pretty face, are you now?” he said slowly. “Up here alone are you?”
I remembered Rebanks’s sly comments about having to get past the instructors if we wanted to investigate the men’s quarters. I felt my face begin to colour. “Yes,” I said, more than a little defensive.
“Hmm, so you didn’t bother to share your thoughts about the roof with anyone else then?” He regarded me for a moment longer and it was hard to know if he was impressed or disappointed. “Not much of a team player are you, Fox?”
***
The following morning, right after the usual punishment that was phys, we had our first introduction to firearms. Sean had told me to expect a motley collection of old Bulgarian Makarov pistols, but when we trooped down to the indoor range I discovered that Gilby had updated his armoury since then. A line of very new-looking SIG Sauer 9mms were waiting for us on a bench to one side.
“Now then,” Rebanks said, “hands up anyone who has ever handled or fired a gun of any description before?”
About half the group raised their hands. This included Hofmann and Elsa, which I would have expected given their backgrounds. More of a surprise was Jan, who also put her hand up. After a moment’s hesitation, I raised mine, too. I reckoned it was easier to fake a reaction as a bumbling amateur, rather than as a complete beginner.
“OK, in that case most of you will already know that these are lethal weapons. They only have one purpose in life, and that’s death. There’s no safety catch on these babies, so stay alert. You fuck about with these, you don’t take them seriously, and you will end up killing someone,” Rebanks said with an evil grin. “Do I make myself clear? OK, let’s get on with it.”
He ran quickly through the different parts of the weapons, how to load and unload the magazine, how to tell if they were safe and clear, what to do if you had a stoppage.
“One last thing,” Rebanks said as we were each handed our own gun and a box of shells. “Quite a few people who come on these courses decide they’d like to take a couple of live rounds home with them as a souvenir.” He eyed the group. We all tried to look innocent, as though that was the last thing to cross any of our minds.
“If that thought had occurred to you, forget it!” he went on. “For those of you who’ll be going back to the UK, they take a pretty dim view of it over there now anyway and we don’t appreciate you nicking it from us, either. So, at the end of every session here you’ll be required to give what we call a range declaration, right? If you’re then found with anything on you that you shouldn’t have, you take the long walk out of here. Clear?”
We all murmured our understanding. It was the same procedure as I’d followed on every army range I’d ever been on. Except the penalty then was somewhat more severe.
Blakemore, O’Neill and Todd were acting as Rebanks’s assistants for the class. They fitted us out with ear defenders and eye shields, which were loaded into a universal plastic carry tray with a handle in the middle. It was a good way of keeping everything together and also, I acknowledged, it stopped us putting things into our pockets.
I was put into the first group to shoot. We moved through a pair of soundproof doors into the range itself, a low-roofed slot of a room with scarred walls and a huge sand berm heaped up at the far end to catch the fired rounds.
There were eight lanes marked out, with a solid counter about four feet high that ran right the way across the firing position. I picked the far left-hand lane and plonked my carry tray down on the counter top in front of it.
McKenna was in the lane next to me. After his outburst of the previous morning, he seemed quiet and withdrawn.
“OK, I won’t ask you to try and produce groupings at this stage,” Rebanks said, condescending. “Just aim for the target and that’ll be enough for me. Fire when you’re ready.”
I took my time over getting sorted, fussed over making sure my ear defenders were in the right place, aware all the time of Todd standing behind me. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but the big physical training instructor seemed to be watching me more than the others.
Once my ears were covered, the sound of my breathing became loud and rasping inside my head. I concentrated on slowing the rate for a moment or so before I picked up the SIG and slid the magazine into the grip. As Rebanks had pointed out, there was no conventional safety catch, so as soon as I pinched back the slide to chamber the first round, the weapon became active. I hadn’t fired the P226 model before, but as soon as it settled in my fist it felt right. It fitted.