Cold Black. Alex Shaw

down, hurt.

      ‘Listen to me!’ Snow yelled. ‘There’s a kill team out there getting away. We need to call it in!’

      ‘Armed police! Drop your weapon and lie on the floor, facedown.’

      Snow shut his still-streaming eyes in disbelief. He slowly placed his phone on the pavement and lay down beside it. A black tactical boot kicked the phone into the gutter.

      ‘That’s HM Government property. You’ll get a bill!’

      ‘Be quiet now, please, sir.’

      Gloved hands grabbed Snow’s and pulled them behind his back.

      His hands secured, Snow was searched before being hoisted to his feet. The tight plasticuffs bit into his wrists. The two ‘beat bobbies’ were looking none too happy.

      ‘My name is Aidan Snow, I’m an SIS operative. Call Vauxhall Cross – they’ll confirm who I am.’

      ‘I’m sure we’ll do that at the station,’ the CO19 member mocked.

      ‘Come along, please, sir,’ a second added.

      ‘An SIS officer is down and the shooter is getting away. Call it in!’

      ‘Move!’ The friendly tone evaporated.

      Arriving at the secure police station, Snow was led to the front desk for processing. The duty desk officer looked up, unimpressed. The CO19 officer placed a clear plastic bag on the desk. It contained the contents of Snow’s pockets, wallet and phone.

      ‘Name?’

      ‘I’m an operative for SIS. Call them.’

      ‘Your name?’

      Snow took a deep breath; they were only doing their jobs, all of them, if badly. ‘Aidan Snow.’

      ‘Right then, Mr Snow, if you’ll just press your fingers there for me, we’ll scan your prints.’

      There was little point in resisting. Snow put his fingers on the scanner. He wasn’t a fan of anyone having his personal information, let alone his fingerprints.

      The desk officer looked at the screen and frowned. ‘OK, we’re going to put you in a holding cell until we can confirm your identity.’

      Snow shrugged. He had no idea what had been on the scanner screen or even which database had flagged up, but he knew either way he’d be in for a wait.

      ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

      ‘Sure. How do you take it, shaken not stirred?’

       Chapter 1

       Shoreham-by-Sea, UK

      A victim of the credit crunch they would call him, an unavoidable casualty of an unseen enemy: the recession. Paddy Fox swallowed his pint bitterly. He was no one’s victim. He looked at the jobs page for the third time before screwing it up in a ball. The anger he felt towards them hadn’t lessened in the six weeks since it had happened, the rage he had for his former boss. He had nothing to prove. He was James ‘Paddy’ Fox, a twenty-year veteran of the SAS and worth something. If no one saw that, then sod ’em.

      Fox’s mobile rang and he grabbed for it. ‘Yes?’ His guttural Scottish hue hadn’t been lessened by years of living in Hereford and then Sussex. There was a pause, which instantly told him it was a company trying to sell him something, before a voice reading from a script spoke.

      ‘Can I speak to Mr James Fox?’

      ‘You could.’ He cut the connection.

      Take, take, take! The world seemed to want something from him, but not him. He flattened out the paper and circled another job, the ‘Dymex’ logo blurring in front of his eyes. Tracey still worked for them, but why he had kept a corporate ballpoint pen he didn’t know. Was it his sackcloth?

      Fox downed his pint of bitter and wiped his lips on the back of his hand. Just the two for now; more later when he already knew he’d storm out of the house after arguing with Tracey. It had become an almost daily occurrence since he’d become, as he saw it, ‘redundant’. He looked across the Crown and Anchor’s dingy, deserted bar. Burt, the jowl-heavy landlord, was the only other person in the room, with the exception of ‘old Dave’, who sat in the corner like a fixture, with his paper and pint of Guinness. Fox shook his head; what a miserable pisshole of a pub. It was the only bar in Shoreham that had yet to be ‘neoned’, as he called it, to have a bit of paint slapped on, fancy lights added, and the price of the drinks doubled. As such, it was the only place where the average age of the punters was over twelve – in his mind anyway. He stood, placed his empty on the bar, and nodded at Burt as he left the pub. Outside it was rush hour, cars cutting through the narrow streets of the old town in an attempt to miss the traffic. In a way, the SAS veteran was glad he wasn’t part of the corporate world any more – the ‘rat-run rat race’. Nevertheless, he was still angry at how he had left it.

      Summoned to a glass-walled meeting room, Fox had looked across with disgust at the younger man in his designer suit and signature dark-blue shirt. The man spoke as Fox’s stare remained locked onto his eyes.

      ‘I’m sorry, Paddy, I really am, but as you were made aware at the start of the consultation process, cuts have to be made. We’ve been as fair as we can.’

      There was a pause as Leo Sawyer waited for Fox’s reply. Unable to bear the awkward silence, Fox’s line manager, Janet Cope, coughed to clear her throat.

      ‘James, we really are sorry to let you go but it’s been decided we need two sales engineers, not three.’

      Fox stared at each of ‘the suits’ in turn. ‘What about the position in Saudi?’ Fox’s voice was loud in the small, glass-walled room.

      Cope flinched and Sawyer nervously straightened his tie

      ‘You weren’t suitable for the role. Sorry,’ Sawyer replied, in what he seemed to think was a sympathetic manner. He felt Fox’s green eyes bore into him.

      ‘But I speak Arabic! Can any of the other candidates?’ Fox had started to turn a shade redder than normal.

      Cope gasped. ‘Now, James, I understand that you’re upset, but we don’t need to shout.’

      Fox cast her a contemptuous look. ‘Only my mother calls me James.’

      Cope herself turned a shade of pink and looked down.

      Sawyer pushed a sheet of paper across the table to Fox. ‘If you have a look at this you’ll see we’re paying you in full for your unused holiday time, three months’ redundancy pay – as per your contract – and an additional bonus for all your hard work over the last five years.’

      ‘Six years. I’ve been here since 2002.’ Fox picked up the sheet and scanned the thirty-eight lines.

      ‘Of course, six years. My mistake.’

      ‘Your redundancy is effective immediately, as of the end of today. That means you can start looking for work from tomorrow. We wouldn’t want to stop you from finding another job. We really are truly sorry.’ Cope smiled that ‘monkey smile’ Fox had hated ever since the day she’d become his boss six months earlier.

      Fox folded the letter, placed it in his shirt pocket, and stood. He stared again at both suits. Sawyer was about to speak but Fox held up his hand.

      ‘Thank you for your sincerity.’

      Heads turned as Fox crossed the open-plan office to his desk; some tried not to make eye contact, others tried to look sympathetic. Either way, to him they were just pathetic. His two sales colleagues, those that weren’t being pushed out, were, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be seen. He reached his desk and started to empty its drawers into his pilot case. Fox had always disliked Sawyer. Ever since the