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  ‘This isn’t good for you, stuck away up here, keeping your-self to yourself. You’re turning into a recluse. You’ve got to get back out into the real world, do the things you do best.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m worried about you.’

  I knew he wasn’t just concerned about my social life: he had a job for me. I’d tried to blank the pain instead of dealing with it these last few days; trying to stand there and take it until it gave up for a moment and went away. Maybe it was working. I’d always gone that route during my time as a deniable operator, and before that when I was in the Regiment. I’d done it as far back as I could remember.

  I’d taken whatever my stepdad had dished out and not given him the satisfaction of knowing I was about to cry. I’d just stepped up to the plate, taken the punishment and dared him to have another crack. Which he always did. Me not reacting the way he wanted had pissed him off big-time: the slaps had got harder, and so had I.

  So, no way was this shit going to get to me.

  I turned back to Jules. He was dressed immaculately as usual, in a crisp white shirt and black suit, shiny shoes, perfectly knotted fancy red tie. He looked more like a Calvin Klein model than the first black section head of the Security Service, MI5.

  We’d become quite good mates, as far as the mates thing went for me. He wasn’t coming over from his Edwardian apartment in Marylebone and banging on my door for brews the whole time, but he was a regular visitor, and always called first. Maybe that was why I liked him so much. Or maybe it was because he was the only mate I had left. Everyone else seemed to have got themselves royally fucked up or dead.

  ‘Listen, mate, I keep telling you I’m not interested. Why the fuck would I want to go and work again? Take a look at all this.’ I waved a hand around the apartment, then wiped it down the side of my face as if it was about to magic the pain away. ‘Waste of a morning, mate. I’m shitting money. I don’t need any of yours.’

  He put down his mug. ‘Ah, yes – your grandmother’s inheritance . . .’

  ‘She put it away for a rainy day – bless her.’

  Pinpricks of light still swam across my retina, but I could now see well enough to get the full benefit of his ironic expression. Julian knew exactly where the cash had come from.

  I took a seat beside one of the three glass coffee-tables scattered around the massive room.

  Op Sec triggered MI5’s answer to Catch-22: they could only tell you what the job was once you’d signed up for it – but you wouldn’t want to do that until you knew what you were letting yourself in for. Not even our friendship could change that.

  It was another of the reasons I liked him. He was one of the good guys, straight down the line. Truth, integrity, defence of the realm and all that shit: he radiated it.

  I realized I was a bit jealous. I might have the penthouse, the knockout view, the Porsche downstairs, but this lad had things money can’t buy.

  Jules leant forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘They want you back, Nick.’

  ‘After all those years of getting fucked over from both sides of the river, all of a sudden your lot can’t do without me?’ I laughed, and that made my head start hurting all over again.

  Jules shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Nick?’

  I managed to dredge up a smile from somewhere. ‘Never better, mate. Never better. Although that fucking “Chinese” we had the other night has given me the odd dodgy moment.’ I pointed a finger. ‘I blame you.’

  He leant back in his chair. ‘You should be thanking me. No wheat, no dairy, no toxins – Vietnamese is probably the healthiest food you’ve eaten in your life.’

  ‘But don’t you get bored eating that Ho Chi Minh shit all the time?’

  He smiled. ‘When I do I’ll go somewhere else. You still coming on Saturday?’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  Ten minutes later he headed for the lift and I made it to the toilet just in time to bulk up another gutful of coffee-flavoured bile.

  2

  Wednesday, 10 March

  11.34 hrs

  The wind gusted down Harley Street, throwing pellets of rain against the window. The nurse had disappeared fifteen minutes earlier, after announcing that Dr Kleinmann was just checking a few things. She’d done her best to look encouraging, but it wasn’t working.

  A dark blue Bentley coupé pulled up across the road. I’d spent a great morning test-driving a green one a couple of months ago, but decided it was just too wide for my parking space. An overweight driver leapt out with a multi-coloured golfing brolly and held it over a couple of equally large Arab women as he ushered them into the clinic opposite.

  The row of gracious old houses where grand families had once played charades by the fire and drunk to the health of Queen Victoria now hosted hundreds of offices and treatment rooms, turning over cash-paying patients seven days a week.

  I was waiting in one of the drabber ones: the consultation fees hadn’t stretched to a can or two of Dulux in the last couple of decades, and they hadn’t been chucked in the direction of the central heating either.

  Apitted brass chandelier hung from a sepia moulding above my head, casting enough light over the carpet and furniture to make it painfully obvious that they could have done with a bit of a steam clean. Shabby or chic, it didn’t seem to make much difference to the bill. Whatever you were there for, you came out a few hundred quid lighter. A clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes, and the pounds.

  Fuck it, I wasn’t exactly spoilt for options. The NHS needed all sorts of details that I’d got out of the habit of providing, and BUPA weren’t much better. The Firm had never provided health insurance for people in my line of work, and without a bank account I was willing to divulge, I couldn’t set up my own. My credit history was non-existent. I’d slipped out of the frame years ago, when I’d left the army; I hadn’t paid tax since I’d picked up my discharge payslip. So I had to come to places like this, pay cash, and get on with it. I wasn’t complaining. The less anyone knew about Nick Stone, the better.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Stone.’ The accent was East Coast, but it would have been equally at home in LA or Jerusalem. Dr Max Kleinmann carried a large brown folder with my name splattered all over it, but he didn’t look happy to see me.

  His expression was as grim as the weather and made sterner still by his black-framed glasses. Was he suffering under the usual burdens of marriage, mortgages and school fees, or was he just pissed off not to be on Rodeo Drive?

  His dark, tightly curled hair was thinning on top, and a patch of stubble sprouted from above his Adam’s apple where he’d failed to zap it with his razor. The combo made him look a bit ridiculous, and that cheered me up for some reason. Perhaps it would help me take what he was about to say to me less seriously.

  ‘I just wanted to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing . . .’ He came and sat opposite me, on my side of his desk. ‘I wish I had better news for you.’

  I turned back towards the window.

  ‘You OK, Mr Stone? You still with me?’

  Of course I was. I just didn’t know what to say. I came out with the first thing that hit what was left of my mind. ‘That’s me fucked, is it?’

  He didn’t even blink. ‘This is where the hard work starts. Let me show you . . .’

  I followed him over to a light box on the wall. He hit a switch and it flickered into life. He slid the scan under the retaining clips.

  He pointed to the tiny shadow on the right side of my brain. ‘This lesion, I’m afraid, is the problem. We know it as a glioblastoma multiforme, a particularly virulent type of astrocytoma. It’s a high-grade tumour, which tends to grow quite quickly. It’s the most common type of primary malignant brain tumour in adults. I’m surprised the symptoms aren’t worse. You have headaches, nausea, drowsiness?’

  ‘Yeah, all that. Listen, Doc, I don’t need to know all the technical bollocks. Just – can you zap it?’

  ‘With treatment it can be made
bearable.’ He breathed in slowly. ‘Mr Stone, have you anyone waiting for you downstairs?’

  ‘No, there’s no one. No one to call, no one to worry about.’

  At last Kleinmann was looking a little happier. He wouldn’t have to trot out the usual bullshit, shepherding me and my loved ones through the emotional labyrinth that led from here to fuck knew where. He could just get down to business.

  He pushed his glasses further up his nose and leant forward to take a closer look at the tumour, in case it had changed into something nice like a Teletubby in the last few minutes. I found myself doing the same, examining the scan as if I knew what the fuck I was looking at.

  ‘You say it’ll keep growing?’

  It was hard to believe that something so insignificant was going to finish me off. I’d always imagined it would be something a bit bigger, something more like the diameter of an RPG, a rifle butt or at least a 7.62mm round, but this little fucker was no more than pea-sized. Checking out like this? It felt so . . . pedestrian . . .

  I tried to smile. ‘I always wondered what a death warrant looked like. Does it have a use-by date?’

  I turned away and went back to my chair. I didn’t need to see any more. Looking wasn’t going to change anything.

  Kleinmann followed me. ‘Like I said, Mr Stone, this is where the hard work starts. Chemotherapy and radiation treatment, that’s going to help, and there is—’

  ‘But will that nail it?’

  Kleinmann sat down opposite me. ‘No.’ He flicked his coat over his legs like a woman adjusting her skirt. ‘It could keep you going for six months, possibly longer. But without any treatment? Two months, maybe. We can’t stop the pressure on the brain increasing. Of course, if you need a second opinion—’

  ‘Don’t worry, Doc, no second opinions. It’s there, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘What about the treatment? Would you like to go ahead with the chemo and radiation? The pain is going to get worse. There could be weight loss, maybe incontinence, vomiting still to come. But I will give you some drugs to help you in the short term.’

  I got up and headed for the coat hooks. ‘Thanks, I’ll take whatever Smarties you’re offering. But chemo and all that gear? I don’t think so.’

  Kleinmann sprang to his feet. ‘There are far more advanced treatments available in the US – or Italy, if you want to be closer to home. I could recommend some excellent clinics . . .’

  I bet he could. With a nice little kickback if I took him up on the offer. ‘I think I’m going to handle this my own way.’

  ‘Let me give you some details of support groups, counselling—’

  ‘I don’t need any of that.’ I shrugged on my coat, then paused. ‘Out of interest, any reason I got it? Just one of those things?’

  ‘You have an unusual amount of tissue scarring. You appear to have taken a great deal of blunt trauma to the cerebral cortex over a number of years. Are you a boxer, maybe?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘When the grey matter is shaken about over a sustained period of time it can cause irreparable damage – and in extreme cases provoke conditions such as yours.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Doc.’ I gave Kleinmann a slap on the shoulder. ‘I hope your next appointment’s a nice boob job.’

  I made for the door, not knowing quite what I felt. It wasn’t fear. Fuck it, we’ve all got to die some day. It was more frustration. I didn’t want to end on a dull note. Better to burn out than fade away, I’d always thought. Better to be a tiger for a day than a sheep for a year; to die quick standing up than live for years on my knees. All the shit I’d seen on soldiers’ T-shirts the world over actually meant something today.

  ‘No, no – wait, Mr Stone. You’re going to need to control the pain as the symptoms worsen.’ He disappeared for a minute or two and came back with a large bottle of shiny red pills. ‘Take two of these every six hours.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And please, take this information.’ He waved a brown A4 folder at me, stuffed with leaflets and flyers. ‘It’s all in there – treatments, support groups, help lines. Read them, think about it.’

  I took the folder and stuffed it in the nearest wastepaper basket, then headed back towards my 911 waiting faithfully in the rain.

  3

  16.15 hrs

  The storm pounded against the triple glazing.

  For about the hundredth time in the last hour, I reached for the mobile, twisting and turning it in my hand before putting it back down again.

  What the fuck was I going to say to her?

  Did I need to say anything?

  It was only six months since I’d first held Anna in my arms. Even then I’d had the feeling I’d known her all my life. We were standing among the wreckage of an aircraft full of dead men and drug dollars I’d shot down in Russia. We’d met at an arms fair press conference in Tehran two weeks earlier. I was working undercover for Julian; she was investigating a corrupt Russian’s links with Ahmadinejad and the Iranian ayatollahs.

  She said she wouldn’t have touched me with a ten-foot pole if she could have sorted it on her own. Then she gave me the kind of smile that makes your knees go funny. I’d first set eyes on her when she was giving the Russian a hard time in front of the world’s press. She was a dead ringer for the girl from Abba with blonde hair and high cheekbones. I’d fancied her big-time. I used to sit in the NAAFI as a sixteen-year-old boy soldier with my pint of Vimto and a steak and kidney pie, waiting for Top of the Pops to hit the screen. ‘Dancing Queen’ had already been number one for about five years, and I took my seat in front of the TV every week hoping her reign would be extended.

  This amazing woman had helped me choose furniture for the flat, and in between writing investigative pieces and flying around saving the world she’d come and stay. Only a few days at a time, mind, but for me that was almost long-term. The only thing we’d fallen out over was her smoking. She wasn’t about to be sent onto the balcony to do it.

  I headed for the kitchen sink, swallowed a couple of Kleinmann’s Smarties and stuck my mouth under the designer tap. I clicked the kettle on and told myself I had to bite the bullet.

  Did I really want to do this? Did I really need to do this?

  I had to. I didn’t want her standing in the wreckage with me again. She deserved so much better.

  I twisted and turned the mobile in my hand. Why drag her down with me?

  My arse rested against the stainless-steel cooker. It would always be this shiny. I had all the toys now, but I was never going to turn into Jamie Oliver.

  Finally, I stabbed a finger at the keypad and dialled.

  ‘Jules, mate? Count me in for Saturday.’

  4

  Saturday, 13 March

  14.00 hrs

  Chelsea were at home to West Ham. Kick-off wasn’t for another hour, but I still had to park so far from the ground I might as well have walked all the way from Docklands. I still preferred it to taking the tube, especially the way I was feeling.

  I passed the Vietnamese restaurant on the corner by Fulham Broadway where Jules came to be deprived of wheat and dairy practically every night. Fuck that. I went into the station and came out again with two big frothy coffees.

  I walked the last couple of hundred metres up the Fulham Road and flashed Julian’s spare season ticket at the turnstiles. The concourse was buzzing with blue-shirted fans clutching plastic pint glasses of lager, and overseas visitors taking pictures of each other eating expensive hot-dog baguettes. I made my way through them to the Block A steps. The stadium gradually came into view as I climbed. It was huge and, apart from a few bored-looking stewards in fluorescent orange jackets, virtually empty.

  Julian was in his usual seat in row twelve, studying the programme with the kind of concentration he’d normally save for a PhD thesis.

  ‘Oi, mate . . .’

  He turned round, all smiles. I made my way along the row and handed him his coffee.

  ‘Nightmare parking, as usual. I
f you were a true friend you’d support a team closer to my home.’

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t use the tube.’

  ‘No way, mate. After a lifetime of being poor, it’s the 911 everywhere for me, including the corner shop. You posh lads think it’s good to cycle and take public transport, and I’m glad. There aren’t enough spaces as it is.’

  Jules shook his head and smiled. It was the same banter every time, but he didn’t care. On the phone, he sounded like he’d shared a school desk with David Cameron. In the flesh, his closely cropped hair, clean shave, sharp suit and glowing ebony skin made him look like he should have been out there with Drogba on the pitch, not watching from the stands.

  Posh lad or not, I enjoyed his company. I certainly wasn’t here for the football. The last time I’d gone to a game more than twice in the same year, I was a twelve-year-old bunking over the fences at Millwall. I didn’t really like it even then – I just went for a laugh, a pie and a can of Fanta. But it was no picnic at Millwall: it always ended with a brawl.

  I fished in my pocket for the season ticket.

  He shooed it away. ‘You’ll be needing it for next time.’

  This was the third time this had happened. ‘How much do these things cost?’

  ‘Enough to make my eyes water.’

  ‘Another burden on the bleeding taxpayer.’

  ‘When was the last time you paid tax?’ Julian flashed his perfect white teeth. ‘Come to that, when was the first time?’

  I gave him a 500-watt grin, even though I suddenly had a head full of pain. I palmed two Smarties and swallowed them with a gulp of Pret A Manger’s frothiest.

  We both stared out over the pitch.

  ‘I’ve been giving that job a bit of thought.’

  Julian glanced behind us. People had started to fill the nearby seats but there was nobody within earshot. His eyebrow arched towards his immaculately sculpted hairline. ‘What about Granny’s nest egg?’