He looked into his locker again and saw a plastic bag, sealed at the top with Sellotape.
The counter terrorist smiled as he lifted it.
His guns felt comfortingly heavy.
CALLING CARDS
Ward sat back in his chair and stared at the screen. He re-read what was there, changed the odd word then rested his fingers on the keys once more.
He waited.
Nothing came. Nothing clicked into place. No further sparks of inspiration.
He muttered to himself and got to his feet.
He looked out of the window into the garden. The sun was shining and the sky was cloudless.
Ward looked back to the screen then got up and made his way down the stairs to the office door. He stepped out into the garden, breathing deeply.
Some ants were busying themselves around the cracks in the stonework beneath his feet. Ward watched them for a moment then walked slowly on to the lawn. It needed cutting and the grass almost reached his ankles. Daisies and buttercups sprouted abundantly and bees moved lazily from flower to flower.
Everyone was busy except him it seemed.
He could hear the sound of children’s voices away to his left. He wondered why
the little bastards weren’t at school. A little further away, a dog barked.
Ward crossed to the large, rambling hedge that formed one boundary of his garden and looked at the blackberries growing there.
There was a sticky mound of glutinous matter close to his left foot. At first he thought it was half-eaten fruit, then he knelt to inspect it more closely.
The stench made him recoil. It was excrement.
Fucking cats must have been in the garden again. He made a mental note to put some pepper down or, better still, slide three or four razor blades into the dirt around the holes in the fence where he knew they entered. Perhaps they wouldn’t feel so much like shitting in his garden with their paws cut to shreds.
Ward smiled at his ingenious sadism, then the smile faded.
He looked again at the lumps of excrement, covering his face with a handkerchief to protect his nostrils from the foul odour.
This wasn’t cat shit. It was too big. The stools too large.
Something glistened in the second pile. Ward reached for a twig to disturb the faecal mess. He prodded it carefully and managed to dig out the gleaming object.
He almost overbalanced when he saw it.
Another hallucination?
Were his eyes going?
The gleaming object he had prised from the excrement looked like a human tooth. He flicked at it with the stick but caught it too hard and the fragment flew into the hedge.
Ward cursed and tried to find it but it was useless. He got to his feet.
Perhaps he’d look again later. Perhaps he’d forget about it.
He headed back towards the office.
UPHILL STRUGGLE
The words came slowly. Almost painfully. Ward tried to force himself to concentrate but it was difficult.
He got up and looked out of the window again, gazing in the direction of the mounds of excrement he’d found earlier. Dried by the sun they had turned to dust.
Ward frowned. How was that possible? And what about the tooth?
He shook his head. It made no sense. But, then again, not much m his life did any more.
He sat down at his desk again.
LONDON:
The flat was cold. Doyle shivered as he walked in and closed the front door behind him.
How long since he’d been home? Three weeks? A month? Longer?Time didn’t seem to matter much these days.
Come to that, what did?
There were some envelopes scattered across the mat and Doyle bent stiffly and picked them up, scanning the postmarks. Most of it was junk. Loan offers.
Reader’s Digest bullshit. Credit card promises. Doyle dumped them in the nearest bin.
He wandered through to the sitting room and switched on the TV and the stereo.
Wondering why he was bothering, he looked at the answerphone. No messages.
Doyle didn’t like silence and music soon filled the flat.
There was some shit Aussie soap opera on the TV but thankfully the music drowned it out.
‘Lost in your dreams, nothing’s what it seems …’
There would be no complaints from neighbours living in the flats above and below him.They were out at work from seven until five every day and Doyle hardly saw them. He’d lived in this part of Islington for over ten years now, shared this building with half a dozen other souls and yet he was no closer to them than he had been when he’d first moved in. A nod of acknowledgement was the extent of his community spirit.
‘Searching my head, for the words that you said …’
He made his way into the kitchen and switched on the central heating, hearing the radiators bump into life. Then he spun the cold tap and let it run for a while.
His leg ached. More from hours of sitting than the wounds themselves, he told himself. First the plane then the taxi from Heathrow. He’d normally have taken the Tube but, much as he hated to admit it, his injured leg was giving him more pain than he’d anticipated. The doctor had given him some painkillers and he fumbled in his pocket for them, washing down two with a handful of cold water.
Getting old?
He drew a deep breath and filled the kettle, blowing the dust from a mug on the draining board.
Of course there was no milk in the fridge.
Shit
He’d nip out later and get some.The counter terrorist had been relieved to see his car parked outside. Delighted, too, that it still had all its windows.The odd extra scratch here and there was hardly a problem. And the likelihood of theft was small.Who, he reasoned, would want to nick a seven-year-old Astra?
As well as milk he needed food. His cupboards were never exactly well stocked but then, as Doyle reasoned, why bother when he was hardly ever at home.
Fuck it. There was a K.FC round the corner.
He left the kettle to boil and headed into the bedroom where he changed into a sweatshirt and a pair of jogging bottoms.
The bandages around his leg and side would need changing. He made a mental note to pick up some fresh ones from the chemist’s at the bottom of the street when he went out for the milk.
He knew how to re-dress the wounds. He should do after all these years. He’d had enough of them.
Doyle went back into the kitchen and poured boiling water on to the tea bag.
As he stood stirring it he wondered why Jonathan Parker wanted to see him.
What could be so fucking important that his boss had pulled him off a case like Leary’s?
Wait and see.
He fished the tea bag from the mug with a spoon, dropped it in the sink then drank.
The painkillers should start to take effect soon.
The music was still thumping away in the living room.
‘My body aches from mistakes, betrayed by lust …’
He’d finish his tea and have a sit down before he went out.
We fed to each other so much, now in nothing we trust’
There was a more important job he had to do before it got dark.
No matter what the season, Norwood cemetery always seemed cold to Doyle.
Now, as he made the long walk from his car to the grave he sought, the wind whipped across the vast necropolis, blowing his long, brown hair around his face and making him pull up the collar of his jacket.
The trek took longer than usual because he was unable to maintain his usual brisk stride. Despite the painkillers, he was slowed down by the stiffness.
Muttering under his breath, he forged on.
The drive had taken less than an hour. He’d been relieved that his car had eventually started, and that driving was less uncomfortable than he’d anticipated.
There were other people visiting the cemetery. Doyle saw two older women wandering back along one of the many gravel paths that criss-crossed the huge resting place like arteries. One of them nodded at him as he passed.