Locksley

C Dettmann P.

Description

Paul Locksley's latest assignment was supposed to re-establish his career as a dependable spy. Not an excellent or indispensable one, but dependable. If only things had turned out that way.Locksley is the first in a series of classical spy thrillers updated for the modern era. Sent as a teacher in a girls' boarding school in a small but affluent town in the Home Counties, Paul Locksley immediately comes unstuck. The French teacher Maria Leclerc turns his head, and the two subjects of his investigation give him immediate problems. They are the gardener and the daughter of a notorious Iranian businessman, both believed by the security services to be involved in international terrorism. Can Locksley defeat his own demons and revive his career?Readers of Frederick Forsyth and John Le Carre should enjoy Locksley.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Welly The Dog Books
• Date de parution: 30 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912022205
• Langue: English

Extrait

Locksley
 
 
 
A NewSpy: Book One
 
 
by P. C. Dettmann
This is a work of fiction. Allincidents, dialogue, and all characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to anypersons living or dead is coincidental.
 
 
 
 
 
Locksley
 
Published by
Welly The Dog Books London, England
 
 
 
 
Copyright © P. C. Dettman,2017
 
P. C. Dettmann asserts themoral right to
be identified as theauthor of this work.
 
All rights reserved. Nopart of this publication
may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in anyform or by any means,
electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
 
 
 
 
 
 
For Rebecca andIsis
1
Epilepsy was the reason Locksley usuallygave for not driving. He always sat in the back as it meant moreroom for his bags, coat and anything else he may take to work. Italso made it harder for the driver to talk, and carried the extrabonus of making him easier to watch.
“ Start of another term,sir.”
“ Afraid so.”
The driver smiled into the rear-view mirrorand pulled away from Locksley’s house. They had a short drive toAbbey school where Locksley taught, but it was all narrow lanes andhilly country. It was an unusually windy, dark January morning. Asthey drove around fields ploughed ready to take the farmer’s seed,the wind buffeted the car. Locksley pulled his coat a littletighter.
A few minutes later, the taxi arrived atschool. There were several entrances, and most people includingstaff and girls used the one on the hill, the side entrance. Themain entrance was reserved for ceremonial occasions. Locksley hadbeen at Abbey for just one term, the autumn of the previous year.In that time he had strenuously tried to make no impression, be itgood or bad, on any colleague or pupil at all. Now he had surviveda whole term in that mode, he could relax his guard a little, andget down to work. He opened the car door before the taxi had fullystopped.
“ Thank you.”
“ Same time tomorrow,sir?”
“ Yes, please.”
Locksley strode through the archway thatjoined the two main Abbey buildings, and made for his classroom.His normal practice was to drop off his belongings there beforeheading to the staffroom for an early cup of tea. It was 7:15. Onlythe boarding girls and their supervisors would be on site.
He opened the door of the staffroom,unlocked at seven o’clock by Sam, the diligent caretaker who wasalso the gardener, and flicked on the light. His eyes darted aroundthe four corners of the room, the curtained window, the cupboard,and the kitchenette area where staff could make hot drinks andreheat meals in the microwave. He was alone. He opened the curtainsand made up the teapot. The next teacher would be there in half anhour or so. Locksley opened his newspaper and slumped into hisfavourite leather armchair, his tea on a side table.
Paul Locksley was a man ideally suited toteaching, and ideally suited to the pace of Abbey. He was also aman ideally suited, and highly trained in the art of espionage. Hefeared that this assignment was an attempt by Spanton, his sectionchief, to bore him into leaving the service, and he had to knowwhy.
On schedule, Maria Leclerc waltzed into thestaffroom. Locksley looked up, smiled, and looked down again.“Kettle just boiled,” he said. She was in her middle forties, andLocksley fancied her with a frenetic sincerity. Maria taught Frenchand presumably kissed French, and Locksley was determined to figureher out as quickly as possible. His first-term determination toblend into the blackboards and shadows of this old school had nowbeen replaced, in this bitterly cold January, with a determinationto ensnare Maria.
“ Good morning, Mr Ellis,”she said, using his cover name, as she travelled across the carpet.“Good Christmas?”
He nodded but did not speak, or even lookup.
“ Didn’t hear you,” shesaid.
“ I didn’t speak.”
“ Happy new yearanyway.”
She sat down in the chair next to him,slurping her hot mug. It was still profoundly dark, even with thecurtains open. The school staffroom was like the bar in a boutiquehotel from the seventeenth century. Nothing could be more erotic,even at this early hour. Locksley assumed that Maria would barelyconsider the possibility. Was he slightly too young? He would haveto try unusual methods. His mug was empty and, having progressedone of his professional objectives, he wanted to make up ground onthe others before his first class of the morning. He stood.
“ Good morning, Miss Leclerc.See you at break?”
She shrugged and smiled, and he left her toher breakfast. Locksley strode at pace along the corridor towardshis classroom. Walking was his favourite mode of transport as longas it was fast and purposeful. There was no time to waste, andwalking was the only way of getting around that put you in totalcontrol of your direction, with the added benefit of not needing toconcentrate more than about ten percent. This left ninety percentof his mind for observing.
The stated goal his section chief had forhim was to find out everything he could about terror threats in thelocal area. This was odd in itself. The town was in one of the mostaffluent areas of the country. House prices were astronomical, evenfor the most ordinary family home. And yet a diverse populationincluded a number of key suspects in recent terror plots involvingairlines and the travelling public. Abbey school was one of the topschools for girls in England. The terror suspects had all livedliterally and figuratively around the corner. Locksley had twotargets, two marks in the jargon. The gardener, Sam, and one of thegirls in his history class that started at nine o’clock.
The sun was finally showing its face throughthe leaded lights of Locksley’s classroom. He flicked the light offas he processed through the door, fired up the electronicwhiteboard and dusted the blackboard. He was young enough to becomfortable with any technology, and old enough to have fondmemories of chalk from his own schooldays. He used both. The chalkwas good for adding items raised by the class during the lesson andthe whiteboard was his script, the planned lesson. He frequentlydeviated, often wildly from plan. Living on his wits was one of hisfavourite tools. Managing a class of twenty competitive, adolescentgirls without following his notes was one of the best trainingopportunities he had ever experienced.
The lesson bell rang. The pupils werewaiting outside the classroom, and not at all quietly. Locksleyalways made sure he was on his feet at the front, as thoughteaching to an empty room, when they came in. Other teachers heknew used to sit at their desks doing marking or some other banaladministrative task when the pupils arrived. Locksley had foundthis a very poor way to begin. It made it look as though theteacher had more important things to be doing, and that the arrivalof the students was an inconvenience that had to be endured. Aschool such as the Abbey was expensive, and violently successful,and had been so for over a century, before many girls were evensent to school. The teachers were there to teach, and everythingelse was irrelevant. These were the head’s words, and Locksleyagreed. His own reasons were of course radically different. Hewanted to watch every single pupil for as long as possible,starting from the time before they knew he was watching them. Suchseconds could be the most valuable of the day.
Locksley recognised immediately that Fionawas just slightly off colour, slightly paler than she should be.Amber was talking loudly to her friends, slightly louder thannormal. She was usually one of the shy girls, although most of themwere from wealthy backgrounds and were not shy in the traditionalsense, such measures were always relative. She was perhaps lessconfident than her peers, would be a better way to describe Amber.And so Locksley progressed as the girls took their seats. Even atthe Abbey, one or two were always late, but never by much. Theschool buildings were all on a single, small site, so their excuseswere limited, and the penalties for lateness or absence did notbear thinking about.
“ Good morning everyone,”said Locksley. He still got nervous. He had only been a teacher fora term, and not a properly prepared one at that. He was not from ateaching background at all. He had studied engineering atuniversity and started his career working for an upscale managementconsultancy. It had been very small, the kind commonly referred toas boutique, though it resembled a boutique in the same way thatso-called hotels did: not at all.
“ This term we arestudying...” he paused both for effect and to see if anyoneremembered. “We will be studying post-war Britain.”
Nobody so much as muttered anything. “Right,well hopefully by Easter you’ll be able to think of somethinginteresting to say about it.”
Locksley fixed his gaze on the girl halfwaytowards the back, sitting on his far left alongside the window.Nikoo Hayek. She seemed just as always. Not too loud, or too quiet,she failed to stand out in any way at all, at least as a pupil. Itwas her Iranian father who interested Locksley. He began by talkingabout Britain immediately after the second world war, a period histeachers had known first-hand. He felt alone, but pleasantly so.There were those who believed Nikoo’s father was a terrorist.
2
After the lesson, Locksley returned to thestaffroom. He normally walked around the grounds to get some airbefore his next lesson but he wanted to see Maria first, if onlyfor a moment. On warmer days he intended to invite her to walk withhim, but it was becoming grey, windier and even colder than themorning.
He stayed long enough to drink some moretea, nod politely to Maria, and enquire about her own first periodof the year. He put on his coat and wandered out of the back door.The grounds of the school were expansive. There were hockeypitches, netball courts and all the usual facilities