Absolute Zero Read online

  By eleven fifteen, Hall, wearing only a blindfold with a gag in his mouth, is tied face down on a bed. Work, DCI fucking Venn and the entire debacle of Thurston’s escape is forgotten. Hall’s treated himself to Raúl and Ricky, two of his favourites, and between the three of them they’ve made serious inroads into a baggie of top-class blow. Life, temporarily, is sweet.

  CHAPTER 15

  THURSTON COMES INTO the room carrying a short-handled metal baseball bat. He puts a finger to his lips and indicates to the two naked rent boys that they should remain where they are. He takes out Hall’s mobile and shoots a short video, making sure he includes both boys and Hall. When he’s finished he jerks a thumb at the door. Neither boy hesitates. They recognise real trouble when they see it. Gathering their clothes from an armchair, they slip noiselessly into the corridor.

  Thurston clicks the lock shut behind them, although, after the forthright conversation he’s had downstairs with Mrs Murgatroyd, the owner of number 22, he doubts anyone will be riding in to rescue DS Hall any time soon. Somehow, Mrs Murgatroyd has been left with the distinct impression that Thurston works for the O’Learys – a legendary south London outfit, the mere mention of whom causes even hardened criminals to reassess their priorities.

  He pulls off Hall’s blindfold and the cop twists his head to one side. His eyes widen as he sees Thurston.

  ‘Hi,’ says Thurston. ‘Remember me?’

  He shoots some more footage of Hall’s panicked face and pans across to the cocaine paraphernalia on the bedside table. Replacing the mobile in his pocket, he picks up the baseball bat and, without preamble, cracks it down hard across Hall’s shoulder, breaking his collar bone. Hall’s anguished cries are mostly muffled by the gag in his mouth. Thurston waits patiently for the man to regain some composure.

  ‘Just a taster, Hall,’ he says. ‘To get you focused. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them.’

  Hall responds angrily, spittle foaming round the sides of the gag.

  Thurston hits him again on the same spot and Hall sobs.

  ‘Wrong response. You need to concentrate. My offer isn’t all warm and fuzzy. There are no grey areas. You tell me what I want to know and you live. You don’t tell me and I’ll kill you right here. You can tell I mean this, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ grunts Hall. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Mrs Murgatroyd has been persuaded to give us some time,’ says Thurston. ‘So, when I take the gag out of your mouth, keep quiet.’

  Thurston removes the gag and Hall whimpers. ‘How did you find me?’ he croaks.

  ‘Your phone. And some research. It wasn’t difficult. Now, concentrate on the matter in hand. Think of your kids, Hall. Little Timmy and baby Natalie. And your wife, Sarah. You don’t want news of this filth getting out there, do you?’

  Hall shakes his head.

  ‘Who framed me?’ says Thurston.

  ‘They’ll kill me if I tell you,’ says Hall.

  ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t. Your choice. Was it Miller?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t,’ warns Thurston, and shows Hall the end of the baseball bat.

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ says Hall. ‘It was Miller.’

  ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘The girl. She knew him back in Iceland. Knew what he does. She was a loose end.’

  ‘What does he do?’ says Thurston.

  ‘Miller and the Russians run a syndicate. Both sides use a joint Miller’s got in Iceland as a … as a kind of staging post.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Pseudoephedrine,’ says Hall. ‘Big quantities. Like, industrial. Pseudoephedrine is—’

  ‘I know what it is. Why me?’

  For the first time since Thurston came into the room, Hall shows something other than pain and panic on his face. He smiles, or tries to. ‘You weren’t supposed to survive. So when you did, Miller moved quick to make sure you were the perfect patsy. Foreigner. A drifter. Who gives a shit?’

  ‘I do,’ says Thurston. He stands and replaces Hall’s gag. Hall tenses.

  Thurston produces Hall’s mobile and shows it to the cop. He types a short message containing Hall’s name and rank and the location of number 22 and puts in three numbers – Hall’s boss, Hall’s wife and the news desk of a particularly vicious tabloid – attaches the video clips of Hall and presses ‘send’.

  ‘So long,’ says Thurston and, leaving Hall thrashing impotently on the bed, steps out of the room.

  Next stop, Reykjavik.

  CHAPTER 16

  AS MICHAEL FLANAGAN, Cody Thurston has no problem getting into Iceland, although he is mildly surprised not to see any of Nate Miller’s people on the plane or at Keflavik Airport.

  Leaving Hall alive was a deliberate ploy. Thurston assumed the cop would inform Miller of the encounter. From the absence of a tail, either that hasn’t happened or Miller’s people are better at surveillance than Thurston gave them credit for.

  On the whole, he is coming to the conclusion Hall might have kept quiet, at least as far as Nate Miller is concerned. Perhaps he’s overestimated Hall’s ties to the American. It’s disappointing: flushing out surveillance was the only thing stopping Thurston killing Hall. Now it looks as if he’ll have to track Miller the hard way.

  At Keflavik Airport, Thurston picks up a specialist, winter-equipped Land Cruiser he rented online last night, using the Flanagan credit card. If the drive into Reykjavik is anything to go by he’s going to need it. The exposed highway heading west into the city runs along a peninsula bounded by the Atlantic on both sides. Today is darker and colder than a bailiff’s heart and blowing a gale.

  Or, in Icelandic terms, a stiff breeze.

  Thurston battles the ice and wind into Reykjavik, stopping at a sporting goods store on the outskirts of the city to plug some holes in his gear. It’s when he’s coming out of the store off the Reykjanesbraut road he picks up the tail: a black Mercedes four-wheel drive parked outside a closed office block on the opposite side of the car park. A thin cough of white exhaust betrays the idling engine, the car angled so Thurston’s vehicle is visible in the rear-view mirrors. It could be coincidence, but Thurston assumes that’s not the case.

  Thurston is impressed Miller’s guys have remained undetected for so long but it’s a timely reminder for him to up his game. He gets into the Land Cruiser and pulls back onto the main road, keeping the Merc in his peripheral vision.

  In the city, Thurston puts the Land Cruiser into an underground car park and heads on foot to his accommodation, an apartment near the city centre. He picks up the keys from a lockbox and lets himself into the block. It’s a bland one-bedroom flat with a small kitchenette and all the charm of a dentist’s waiting room, but Thurston doesn’t plan to stay. This apartment is window dressing.

  Locking the apartment behind him Thurston exits through a side door leading to a back alley. Dropping to one knee, he levers a wooden board out from the side of a set of small steps leading from the door. He stows his backpack in the crawl space underneath and replaces the board. He walks into the alley and takes a wide circle through the quiet white streets until he comes back to the underground car park where he left the Land Cruiser. Five minutes later he’s parked unobtrusively in a line of cars, watching the black Merc.

  CHAPTER 17

  THEY MAKE THEIR move around twelve.

  Three big guys, bulky in winter coats and boots, step out of the Merc. Their rising breath is caught in the light from a street lamp as they walk calmly towards the apartment block.

  They’re earlier than Thurston figured but he guesses, in Iceland, the hour is late enough. It won’t get much quieter if they leave it until two or three and it won’t get light until gone nine. That’s one thing about Iceland in winter: they get plenty of night to play with.

  When the men reach the apartments, Thurston loses sight of them in the shadows. He sits back and waits for them to realise he’s not inside.

  Sure enough, less than sixty se
conds after breaking in, the three men come back into the deserted street. They don’t waste any time talking – the temperature outside must be somewhere around minus twelve. Thurston, sitting in the darkened Land Crusier with the engine cold, is glad he stocked up at the sports store. Even so, it’s difficult to resist turning the ignition. The men clamber back into the Merc and there’s a pause as – Thurston guesses – they discuss what to do next. His hope is they’ll call it a day and head back to wherever Nate Miller might be.

  The Merc pulls out and takes a right. Thurston guns the car and follows.

  The Merc heads north out of Reykjavik before swinging right and taking an inland highway east. With the roads almost empty, and snow falling only lightly, Thurston’s pursuit is relatively easy. Once out of the city he keeps his headlight use to a minimum, and stays as far back as he dares. He is confident he has not been tagged but there’s no point in taking risks. They pass few cars, which makes the tail harder.

  Despite the ice and snow the road is a good one. It’s been recently cleared and the Land Cruiser feels secure on the surface. Thurston eats an energy bar and sips from a bottle of water as he drives. He has the feeling this will be a long night.

  The road curves around the top of a big lake and then meanders across a wide white plain. The snow stops and the sky clears to reveal a low moon strong enough to pick out deep shadows in the surrounding fields. A kilometre or so ahead, Thurston watches the lights of the Merc. They’ve been driving for ninety minutes when he sees the headlights pull a sharp left. From the rise and fall of the beam Thurston guesses the road they’re on now is unpaved. He pulls the darkened Land Cruiser cautiously closer and checks the GPS. As he suspects, the road is little more than a farm track. In the distance he sees lights.

  Thurston’s not a gambler, but if he was he’d bet heavy he’s found Nate Miller.

  CHAPTER 18

  MILLER’S PLACE IS smaller than Thurston envisaged: a cluster of low industrial sheds huddled around a central farmhouse about three hundred metres from the Hvítá river, about a kilometre upstream of the thundering Gullfoss Falls. When Thurston gets out of the Land Cruiser the rumble of millions of tons of water tearing through the canyons over to his right sends a low vibration through the ground under his feet. Iceland has that feeling: that the island itself is alive.

  Thurston can see why Miller’s chosen this place.

  It’s far enough from Reykjavik to be remote yet it’s on a good road which, thanks to the proximity of the popular falls, is seldom closed. Miller can be at the airport inside two hours. The geography means the farmhouse can’t be approached easily without being observed. Bigger picture: Iceland’s geographical position and low-key policing make it an ideal staging post for bringing pseudoephedrine into Europe from the US and Russia. Lastly – and this is something right at the forefront of Thurston’s mind – is the phenomenal amount of guns in the country. For all its low crime rates, Iceland has six times more weapons per head than Britain. Nate Miller is going to be armed to the teeth.

  Thurston gets back into the Land Cruiser and drives slowly back towards the car park for the falls. He puts the car hard up against a maintenance shed in a thicket of shadow. In the back of the car he strips down and hurries into a nine-millimetre-thick drysuit made of neoprene rubber. Over this he dresses in the rest of the high-grade cold-weather gear he picked up in Reykjavik.

  He locks the Land Cruiser and sets out for Nate Miller.

  CHAPTER 19

  SOFI’S VOICE COMES back to him as he moves across the moonlit snowfield towards the river. Miller is bad news.

  It reminds him to stay alert.

  At the river Thurston turns upstream, keeping as close to the surging water for as long as he can. Four hundred metres from the farm he spots a fold in the contours of the land which passes close to the farm and he uses it to conceal his approach. He hunches low, thankful the snow has, once more, begun to fall.

  He checks his watch: 3 a.m. He’s been on the move since early morning but bats the fatigue away as a distraction he can’t afford.

  The fold takes Thurston to within fifty metres of the nearest structure. There are no fences around the property, which he reads as a sign of Miller’s confidence.

  Or, perhaps, his arrogance.

  There’s no craft now in getting closer so Thurston simply walks quietly across the snow, banking on the late hour and remote location meaning most inside will be asleep.

  He reaches the corner of the steel shed without incident and hears a noise coming from inside. The dull throb of music echoes from somewhere in the farmhouse. Thurston turns the corner of the shed and finds his way to the door. Inside are four rows of large, spotless stainless-steel silos. The air reeks of chemicals.

  Thurston quickly inspects the other two sheds and finds the set-up replicated in each. He’s no expert but he assumes the silos contain part of the ingredients required for the production of pseudoephedrine. An outline of Miller’s operation is forming. Import high quantities of the ingredients for pseudoephedrine from Russia to the east and the US to the west. Mix in Iceland and pour into Europe via the UK. The sheer quantities mean it is a product best concealed in plain sight. From what he’s seen and heard, Miller will likely have a plausible cover story for his chemicals. The police would need to dig hard to prove criminality at this point in the chain.

  It doesn’t matter. Thurston has no plans to bring in the police. The information he’s collecting on Miller is judged solely on how it will help him annihilate the American.

  Closer to the main farmhouse the music is louder. Lights dance behind the curtains. A party is in progress. Thurston is about to try to find a better-placed window when a door opens and orange light spills out across the courtyard.

  Thurston slips into a patch of deep shadow and watches as the giant he last saw unconscious in the alley behind the V emerges, buttoning his jacket as he moves. The guy heads for one of the vehicles parked under a sheltering roof.

  Thurston is tempted to finish this one now. He reaches for the knife strapped to his waist, but hesitates.

  Miller is the primary target here. If he fails to disable the big man immediately this could all be over before it’s started.

  The giant drives away and Thurston turns his attention back to the farmhouse. He walks closer to the window, his boots squeaking softly on the packed snow. He finds a crack in the curtains and puts his eye to the glass.

  The farmhouse, largely traditional on the outside, has been decorated inside like Vegas. On a low white sofa which curls round a copper-hooded central fireplace, a naked Nate Miller sprawls back while two girls busy themselves on his crotch. Here and there around the open-plan room are more men with more girls. Thurston estimates the girls to be about seventeen or eighteen, and that’s if he’s being optimistic. A glass table to one side of the sofa is scattered with cigarettes, drug paraphernalia and two automatic handguns. A girl wearing only a white bra is unconscious underneath the table. To one side is a video camera on a tripod.

  An image of a younger Sofi Girsdóttir in this room springs into Thurston’s mind. He feels the cold black thing in his heart compress further until it becomes a diamond of undiluted hatred. For what he did to Barb and Sofi, Miller must be removed from the planet, it’s that simple. Cops, courts, judges won’t do it so Thurston will.

  But the guns on the table remind Thurston tonight is not the night. If this thing is going to go the way he wants, he will have to re-evaluate his strategy. It doesn’t matter how clever he is, how adept, how cunning; all it takes is one of Miller’s numbskulls to get lucky – to find a split second to aim and fire – and Thurston will find himself on the wrong end of a bullet.

  It’s of no consequence. Now Thurston has Miller’s location and – in the form of the girls – renewed fervour for the job in hand. He needs weapons. He retreats from the farmhouse and starts to retrace his steps back to the Land Cruiser.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE HVÍTÁ RIVER
glows blue-white under a scudding black sky.

  Thurston takes particular care on this section: a treacherously narrow strip of rock no more than a metre wide bending round a curve in the river about four metres above the torrent. This close to the water the noise is incredible. But there’s another sound too: the deeper primordial bass growl of the Gullfoss Falls a hundred metres ahead roaring like some caged beast.

  Gullfoss Falls lie at one of the widest points of the the Hvítá. Above it, the canyons force millions of tons of water faster and faster along the rocks until it is vomited over and down a series of huge stone steps some fifty or sixty metres wide to rejoin the river below.

  As seasoned as Thurston is, the thought of falling into the Hvítá makes him light-headed. He takes each slippery step carefully, making sure he moves slowly and deliberately.

  He rounds a bend and finds himself on a slightly wider part of the path that cuts into an overhanging ledge of rock.

  Blocking his path is Axel, Nate Miller’s giant, the man whom Thurston knocked unconscious back in Hackney. Axel is smiling. In his left hand he holds a short-handled Uzi. From his right dangles a wicked-looking axe.

  ‘Evening,’ shouts Thurston. ‘How’s it going?’

  The big guy doesn’t reply but a second voice comes from behind Thurston.

  ‘Keep talking, pussy. See how far it gets you with the Axe.’

  Thurston turns to see Nate Miller backed by three other guys. They all have guns and all look extremely comfortable about using them. Thurston curses his arrogance in underestimating Miller. Until they appeared he had no idea he was being followed.

  ‘The Axe?’ says Thurston. ‘Jeez, how long was the brainstorming session you bunch of geniuses took to come up with that one?’