John Carr. James Deegan

wasn’t very clear – the best angle was a three-quarter face, shot from above – but it was a start, and it was now being flashed to every friendly security service and police force in the world, to see what came back.

      Inspector-Jefe Javier de Padilla had arranged for Carr and his son to be dropped back at the villa.

      As soon as she saw her father, Alice flew at him, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing.

      It took a while to calm her down, but eventually she settled.

      ‘What happened?’ said Carr, to Chloe.

      ‘When you and George went, we went for a swim,’ she said. ‘We’d only got in up to our waists when they started shooting. It was… There were bullets everywhere. A little boy was killed just in front of us. We just swam further out and came back in up in the town.’

      ‘It was horrible, Dad,’ said Alice, wiping away tears. ‘He was a toddler. There was so much blood. He screamed and then he went quiet. I wanted to help him, but I was too scared.’

      ‘You couldn’t have done anything, sweetheart,’ said Carr, stroking her forehead.

      As he spoke, he felt a cold rage building in his soul.

      Carr had no qualms about killing those who truly deserved it. Throughout his long career in the Regiment, he had come up against plenty of men who had deserved it, and he had killed them without emotion, and had walked away without a backward glance.

      The battlefield had allowed him that space; the civilian world, a world he was still getting used to, was different. It was a world of prevarication and second-guessing, and judgment by men who had never picked up a weapon and stood firm in their lives, and could not and did not know what it meant to look death in the eye and prevail by sheer force of will.

      He lived now by the rules of the civilian world, so he forced his rage back down into the dark depths, and hid it from his little girl.

      They talked for a while longer, but eventually the two young women started to flag as the adrenalin died away.

      He put his daughter to bed, reassured her that he wasn’t going anywhere, and then padded out onto the veranda, into the muggy Mediterranean air, and dialled a number.

      Fifteen hundred miles north, at her home in County Down, his ex-wife picked up the phone.

      ‘How are they?’ said Stella, the anxiety palpable in her voice.

      ‘Physically fine,’ said Carr. ‘Alice saw things she shouldn’t have seen, but she’s unhurt. George did well.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      Carr quickly recounted the events.

      ‘Oh my God, John,’ said Stella. ‘Oh my God.’

      ‘He grew up today, Stell,’ said Carr. ‘Never took a backward step.’

      They chatted a little more – Carr reassuring his ex-wife that he would be cutting short his holiday and flying Alice home the following day – and then ended the call.

      A few moments later, George appeared, still in his Union Jack shorts, carrying a couple of cold San Miguels.

      Three large candles were burning on a big wooden table, and the two of them sat there in silence for a while, drinking their beer in the cooling humidity, listening to the crickets and mosquitoes, and watching kamikaze moths fly into the flames.

      A big white gecko scuttled up a wall.

      Overhead, the stars drifted slowly by, oblivious to the momentous events of the day.

      In the town below, the lights of emergency vehicles lit up various streets.

      Carr sent George in for more beers, and when he came back he saluted him with a bottle.

      ‘You did well today, son,’ he said.

      George felt a warm pride suffusing his body: his old man wasn’t big on unearned praise, and he knew what he was talking about.

      ‘What now?’ he said.

      Carr took a deep swig and felt the cold lager fizzing in his throat.

      ‘We get shitfaced, I reckon,’ he said. ‘I’m taking your sister back home tomorrow. You stay out if you want. Lightning won’t strike twice.’

      ‘I didn’t mean that.’

      ‘What did you mean?’

      ‘How are we going to get our hands on the bastards who got away?’

      Carr looked out and down to the sea, a mile or so distant, and the lights of Marbella twinkling merrily and incongruously in the black water, from which death had emerged so suddenly, and into which it had retreated just as quickly.

      ‘Not our problem.’

      George finished his beer and went to fetch two more.

      ‘Maybe I’ll get a chance if I pass Selection,’ he said, when he came back.

      ‘Maybe,’ said Carr. ‘But that’s a big if.’

      George turned away, looking dejected.

      ‘Hey, son,’ said Carr, reaching over and punching him on the shoulder. ‘Nothing against you, you’re as good a candidate as any I’ve seen. But it’s tough, and shit happens. I’ve seen good guys go down with injuries, or lose it in the jungle, or on combat survival, or just purely can’t hack it. There’s no guarantees.’

      George Carr nodded.

      ‘Remember what I said when you told me you were trying for the Paras?’ said Carr.

      George looked at him, grinning slightly. ‘Not to come home if I failed, because no son of yours was failing.’

      Carr threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Go and join the Foreign Legion. But I knew you’d pass. And I know you’ve got what it takes to pass Selection, too.’

      A smile spread across George’s face.

      ‘But if you do fucking fail,’ said Carr, finishing his beer, ‘you can go and join the fucking Foreign Legion.’

37.

      LIAM HAD INPUTTED the information he’d gleaned from the surviving couple, and Justin Nicholls picked it up on MI6’s confidential feed just after midnight UK time.

      There was varying levels of background on each of the eight members of the party.

      All under thirty years of age.

      A Times journalist – Charlotte Morgan’s boyfriend, Edward Hanson.

      Two lawyers, Charlie herself and a trustafarian solicitor called Emily Souster.

      An investment banker called Nick Chandler who had travelled with Souster.

      Jeremy Percival, who was a director at Percival Wareham, the London estate agency, and his wife, Martha.

      Finally, the two lucky ones: financial adviser Thomas, and his nursery teacher girlfriend, Jemima.

      Much of the focus would be on the three women who had been taken, but there was a decent new lead – the young guy in the Manchester United shirt who had followed them from Málaga arrivals, and then been seen on the beach. Some decent CCTV imagery of him had been found, and was being distributed.

      And then there were the two who’d been shot dead; the results of DNA tests and fingerprint lifts from those bodies would be available soon.

      If any or all of the men could be identified in some way, this would be a major start in working out where they were from and, most importantly, where they had gone.

      It was early days, but they had a thread to pick at.

      On