The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

Flaherty froze in a moment of panic, two men dead beside him, the shouts of the soldiers below as they fanned out from the APC, a searchlight sweeping the hillside. He looked up instinctively towards the woods and saw, for a second, a face caught in the searchlight glare. Then he took off, running hard in the direction he knew O’Neil had left the car.

The young captain shone his flashlight on the faces of the two bodies. The first was unrecognizable, but he held the beam on the second. His sergeant arrived breathless at his side.

‘Jesus! McAlliskey!’

‘Somebody just saved our lives, Sergeant.’

The sergeant spat. ‘A lot of lives. And a lot of bloody trouble.’

*

Elliot walked briskly up the ramp towards the Shuttle desk and presented his ticket. He had already passed through the stringent security at this airport on the hill, above the besieged city of Belfast. No problems. He wore a neatly pressed grey suit, white shirt and dark tie. With his slim black attaché case, a raincoat over his arm, he looked like any businessman on a return flight to London. He was thirty-nine but appeared older, his face unusually tanned for the time of year. The girl who handed him his boarding card assumed he was recently returned from a winter sunshine holiday. But Africa had been no holiday. Her eyes were drawn to the scar on his cheek, which stood out white against his tan, and she noticed that his left ear lobe was missing. He returned her stare, and her eyes flickered away self-consciously. He took a seat in the departure lounge.

He would collect the second half of his fee in London. This had been a departure for him. A one-off. Although, he considered, it wasn’t really so different from what he had been doing for the last twenty years. Just better paid. And he needed the money. He hadn’t been told who his paymasters were, but had a shrewd idea. The English establishment embraced hypocrisy with a greater ease than it did democracy.

He had not been told to take out O’Neil. Only McAlliskey. But he had judged it dangerous not to take O’Neil at the same time. He had no idea why he had left the boy, nor would he ever know just how great a mistake that had been.

He had not seen the two men standing idly by a newsstand in the terminal building. One of them, little more than a boy, pale and drawn and still shaking from the horror of the night before, had nodded in his direction.

‘That’s him.’

The other had glanced at the boy appraisingly. ‘You sure, kid?’

‘Sure, I’m sure.’ The boy had watched Elliot with hate in his heart. It was a face he would never forget.

CHAPTER THREE

I

London, December 1978

It was raining. Cold. The clutch of black umbrellas around the grave shone wet, dripping on the feet of the mourners. One of them – death was his business – held an umbrella over the vicar as he read from his prayer book. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes . . . meaningless words reeled off for countless dead. The vicar hurried through it. He was cold, and the umbrella was dripping on the back of his neck. He hadn’t known the woman. Another faceless soul dispatched for judgement. He wondered, wearily, what had happened to the faith he had known in his youth. Perhaps, like listening to the same piece of music over and over, faith, like the melody, palled. He glanced at the daughter and felt a stab of guilt as she stooped to throw a handful of wet soil over the coffin. The young man beside her offered his handkerchief. She waved it away.

She too felt guilty, and was glad of the black veil that hid her face. No one could see that there were no tears. Her eyes were so dry they burned. She looked around the sad little gathering: a woman who’d worked with her mother, a couple of neighbours, the vicar, the professional mourner – and David. And David was only there because of her. These were all the friends her mother had to show for thirty-seven years. A strange, shy, introverted woman, her mother had not made friends easily. Lisa reconsidered. No, her mother had not made friends at all. Perhaps if Lisa’s father had lived . . . But her mother had never even spoken of him. A young soldier killed in Aden in the Sixties. Lisa had only been fifteen months old. She had no memory of him at all. Not even second-hand. Her mother had locked away all the photographs. ‘No point in living in the past,’ she’d said. And Lisa had never thought to question it.

Thirty-seven! To Lisa’s eighteen years it seemed old. But she supposed it was quite young really. Too young to die. Cancer of the breast. Her mother had been aware of the lump for over a year and been too frightened to see a doctor. It was Lisa, finally, who had made her go. But too late. I didn’t love her, Lisa thought. I can’t even cry. She knew she was depressed only for herself, for her future – alone.

David took her arm to lead her away from the graveside. David. Yes, she had forgotten about him. He wanted to marry her, he said. But she was too young and he was too keen. And, anyway, there had to be more to life, hadn’t there? Yet still she felt safe with him, like now, as he put a comforting arm around her shoulder. She glanced back as the gravediggers moved in to shovel earth carelessly over the coffin, burying her mother, her past.

‘Come on, love.’ David urged her gently away. She turned back towards the future with a heart like lead, and saw a man standing under the trees at the far side of the churchyard. A tall man in a dark coat, hands pushed deep into his pockets. He had no umbrella, no hat,