Perry worked on ground minus 1, the floor which enjoyed the benefit of a patio overlooking the Thames. At the rear of the building floor G -1 was a floor lower than street level at the front of the building. The night had been long, and Perry would be off duty soon and back to his warm bed in Camden, hopefully with a warm body beside him. His current girlfriend was a nurse, and she worked nights, too.

He sat glancing out at the patio beyond his window. He wanted a smoke, badly, and that was his secret place. When Perry had first moved to this office, he was warned, somewhat pointedly, that the outside patio had been designated as an ‘inside area’ for the purposes of the smoking ban. The duty officer was familiar with such bureaucratic doublespeak. The powers that be had even alarmed the door to prevent random access to the patio, which was used for cocktail parties in the summer. The alarm could only be disarmed by the entry of a six figure code into the keypad by the door.

As duty building security officer (level two), Perry was not entitled to the security code required to exit the fire door without setting off the alarm. That was a privilege restricted to the Section Security Manager (the SSM) and the Chief of Building Security (CoBS). Fortunately, the SSM had a memory like a sieve, and so wrote the keypad code on a piece of paper taped to the pencil drawer in his desk. Perry had memorised it long ago.

As soon as her shift ended, Suzy, the overnight relief administrator, packed her bag and said goodbye. Perry would be alone for an hour, waiting for the SSM to turn in and take Perry’s report, which would be brief and uneventful as usual, and so he keyed in 3-6-3-2-8-9 and disabled the exit door alarm.

Perry was drawing in a deep lungful of the calming smoke when he heard a noise. He looked up to see an old style computer monitor heading straight towards him. Darting back inside, he watched the monitor explode into a million pieces on the concrete patio. Still theoretically in charge of the building, he stepped outside to see which idiot had thrown the monitor out of the window. As he looked up he could see clearly that the fifth widow up was shattered. That would be one of the Directorate offices, he thought. But his thoughts were interrupted by the figure of a man flying through the air in his direction, arms and legs flailing, with his face fixed in a rictus of fear. Diving to his left, the young security guard only just managed to avoid the falling body, but he did not escape the awful squelching sound of the body hitting concrete. He looked on in horror as the body twitched for a few seconds, before finally lying still.

Following procedure, Perry called an internal number, not the police, as it was obviously way too late for an ambulance. The Chief of Building Security was at his desk and Perry explained the situation. The Chief hurried down the stairs from his office, his mind already turning to how they could keep this quiet and how they could restrict the Metropolitan Police to a minimum involvement.

***

The Director had started to come around when the old and unused computer monitor crashed through the toughened glass window at the third attempt, the first two attempts merely cracking the large pane without penetrating it.

Barry lifted the man roughly to his feet. The Director caught sight of Maureen sitting on the sofa, a frightened expression on her face.

“For God’s sake, Maureen! Call Security! He’s lost his mind!”

Barry turned the Director to face the window and the older man realised what his fate entailed.

“Sorry, sir,” Barry intoned ironically, “Maureen doesn’t take orders from you any more, if indeed she ever did.”

Barry laughed as he hauled the weakened director towards the opening. “Strange how things turn out, isn’t it, Gordo? You’re going to be flying out head first over the same windowsill where I shagged your PA last week.”

Mustering all of his remaining strength, the Director pushed himself away from the broken glass, but two severe punches to the kidneys subdued him and he folded again, only to fully recover his wits as he fell from the window and caught sight of the concrete patio, five floors below, racing towards him.

Chapter 33

Stratfield Turgis Village, Nr Basingstoke, Hampshire. Wednesday, 11 am.

It was a week since the Hokobus had met their fate and Pete Lowden still thought about them every hour of every day. In an effort to shake off his despondency, Dee had despatched him to follow up on Simon’s research into Gillian Davis’ origins.

Thus it was that on a rare foray to this unfamiliar part of the country Geordie unexpectedly came across a fellow North Easterner. He shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, his heart felt rendition of the local folk song, ‘Wherever you go you’re bound to find a Geordie’ at the Black Horse on Friday nights had become a regular performance. Now, sitting in front of a real fire in a comfortable lounge, he was helping an attractive middle aged woman recall her childhood by sharing stories about how Newcastle had changed over the years since she had left.

Geordie’s magic with middle aged women had worked again, and he had been warmly welcomed in by Angela Hult, widow of local poacher Les Vaughan. Simon had suggested that Geordie should start here, as it was rumoured that Les Vaughan had abused Gil Davis before taking his own life. Simon suspected that there was some truth in the rumour, given that his wife so despised her husband that she would not even attend his funeral.

After the reminiscences and some strong builder’s tea, the two new friends spoke quietly and intimately about her past.

Angela Hult was born on Tyneside and had entertained dreams of being a vet, but her schoolwork was not of a standard that enabled her to enrol at university. So, at the age of seventeen she started work as a veterinary assistant in Northumberland, where she worked with horses. It seemed that she had found her calling in life, because soon she was working in Bishop Auckland with a famous racehorse trainer, who marvelled at her ability to get sick and injured horses back to their best so quickly. Initially the horse racing vets dismissed her talent, suggesting that her early successes were flukes, but as she performed her miracles more consistently her reputation grew.

At nineteen she found herself living in stable lads’ accommodation near Newbury and on a drunken night out she met the handsome, but disturbed, Les Vaughan. Despite all the warnings, she married the man because she was smitten and he treated her so well. Sadly it didn’t last. He was lazy, relying entirely on her income, he was unfaithful often on their marital bed when she was working, and he was brutal.

At twenty one she had seen enough, and was planning to move back to the North East when Les beat her very badly before taking her money and going out on a drunken binge. A local man named Nick Davis, known to help battered wives, called around when he heard about her injuries. When she refused to face the disparaging looks of the doctors and nurses at Newbury General Hospital yet again, he tended her wounds. Nick was gentle and understanding; he was a little older but quite attractive. Angela fell a little bit in love with the brother of the local squire, and uncle to Gillian Davis.

When she had been administered to, and comforted by, Uncle Nick, he left to seek out Les Vaughan. He apparently found him because Angela had a call the next morning from a casualty nurse asking her to visit Les in hospital. She didn’t go. His mother went instead.

Geordie was intrigued at this glimpse into country life. This was the closest he had come to an everyday tale of country folk since his mother made him listen to the Archers’ omnibus edition on Sunday mornings as she roasted the beef when he was a child.