Fortieth Step

Stephen Timmins

Description

John Hannay's back. Out of hospital, married, settled. Until... the letters arrive and the threats start. Until his new wife, Robbi, is kidnapped, until he discovers the truth about the orphans in the children's home. The truth may be nearer, but John still doesn't know who it is that is playing this deadly game? Who it is that doesn't care if the country is destroyed? Who it is that wants him dead?

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Diamond Crime Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 08 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781915649126
• Langue: English

Extrait

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
Stephen Timmins has spent a significant portion of his adult life surviving in the “media” sector. Born and brought up in Surrey he now lives in a village near Bristol where he spends his time contemplating higher matters and planning trips to Lidl. He has been a fan of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay stories since childhood and often wondered what would have happened to Hannay’s descendants. This is the second book of the trilogy that tells their story.
 
 
 
 
 
Published in Great Britain in 2021
 
By
 
Diamond Crime
 
ISBN No: 978-1-915649-12-6
 
Copyright © 2021 Stephen Timmins
 
The right of Stephen Timmins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
 
All rights reserved.
 
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
 
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
 
Diamond Crime is an imprint of Diamond Books Ltd.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks to our NHS
Long may it be publicly owned and publicly run.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Book Cover Design
by
JacksonBone
www.jacksonbone.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Also by Stephen Timmins
 
 
The Fortieth Step Thrillers
 
The Legacy
The Promise
 
And coming soon to Diamond Books:
 
The Stanwood House Chronicles
 
Flora’s War
Kit’s War
Flora’s Peace
 
 
For information about authors and other books published by Diamond Crime
visit
www.diamondbooks.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


To:
Lucy, Zach and Joel
Daniel, Gabi and Alex
Martin, Daisy, Nina, Zach and Ted
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Fortieth Step
 
Volume Two
 
Revenge
 
Prologue
 
It had been a battle getting through the fog, mainly because the night was as black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat. But the more I struggled past unseen objects, the worse the pain got. Somewhere ahead, though, I was sure I could see that it was turning into mist so if I could just keep going. Then, finally, in the distance - voices just on the edge of hearing. I fought harder to reach them. They disappeared. For a moment I gave up the struggle. The pain died away leaving just the darkness and the fog. I was beginning to hate that fog. I struggled forward again, feeling my way. And then one voice was clearer. “You don't understand him. He’ll keep fighting unless we let him know he has to rest in order to heal.”
It was a woman speaking. I was sure I knew her voice.
“If I bring him round, he might not be able to bear the pain.”
That was a man’s voice. Not one I recognised.
The first voice spoke again. “He can handle pain. If there’s one thing he's known how to handle since he was eight years old, it's pain.”
The voices faded. I struggled again to hear them and now it was working. The fog was thinning. I was nearly out of it and into the white mist, but the pain in my chest was appalling. The first voice had been right though, I did know how to manage it. I knew that pain came in different layers. At the top was a thin, shrieking layer. That, I could push to one side. There was a deeper, wilder layer below it. Through that one too. And at the very bottom? Just exhaustion. I concentrated harder. I twisted and turned and burrowed and bit–by–bit, I found it: the route map from the unbearable to the manageable. And as the pain eased, the first voice was back again, insistent – faint at first then louder and clearer, the flat, fuzzy echo dying away.
“John... John... John Richard... John Richard Hannay, can you hear me?”
I did know that voice. I opened my eyes. It was white, bright white. I squinted. She moved. I saw her. She hadn’t left me. She touched my face and I managed to croak. “Robbi.”
She looked down at me and stroked my cheek. “John, listen. They’ve had you under sedation for more than a week and you’re on a really strong opioid analgesics for the pain. I know it’s very bad, but we had to bring you round so we could talk to you. The doctor says you’re healing, but you must relax. You mustn’t fight it. You need to heal. Do you understand me, John?”
I smiled properly this time and managed a slight nod.
“I understand. Robbi?”
She leaned in to hear my voice. “What?”
“What names have you thought up for the Collies?”
She smiled. I remembered that mischievous smile.
“Spit and Spot”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man’s hand reach out and twist the tap on the morphine drip.
“Idiot.” I said as I drifted back down .
“Idiot... diot... iot ...”
Down into the tumble of opiate dreams in which I could feel my grandfather reaching out a strong arm to me across the generations. Over my father cartwheeling, already dead, across the Manor lane in his burning Austin Healey. Over my mother, dead, rotting on her bedroom floor; through the kitchen in the flat where I had sat, aged eight, after I had found her body before a man and his son tortured me. The echoes of my visions faded finally from crimson to purple to black to nothing and the pain inside me slowly died.
 
 
Chapter One
 
A handful of letters had arrived in the post yesterday and I was only just getting round to opening them. Seven of the letters looked like junk mail for the same product. I binned six and kept one. I opened it. I read it. It didn’t take long. Just o ne letter, ‘E’, typed on cheap, eighty–gram paper. I went to screw it up and paused. I picked up the wastebin and lifted out the other six letters: same London post mark, same cheap envelopes. I opened another one – a single piece of eighty–gram paper with the letter ‘V’. The next was ‘R’. Eventually I had seven pieces of paper in front of me with one letter on each. ‘E V R G E N E’. I had never been much interested in solving anagrams…
Still distracted, I opened the eighth letter. This one was official – very official. I swore. I was summoned to appear as a witness before the House of Commons Treasury Committee. I was supplied with the committee’s terms of reference and an outline of the matters expected to be dealt with during my appearance. I stared at the little portcullis logo on the top corner of the page hoping vaguely that it was a hoax from one of my so–called friends. I re–read the relevant paragraphs – to précis: the committee wanted to know what the hell had gone on in the trading rooms of BTD and Medina Ventures during the Sterling crisis between 20 th and 23 rd July of this year. Why me? Why now?
Two reasons to call Major Alan Cummins of MI5: two incidents of the exact type on receipt of which I was instructed to call Major Alan Cummins of MI5. But I didn’t. If I called Major Alan Cummins of MI5 it really would start all over again and I wasn’t well enough for that, not by a long, long chalk.
I stroked the screen of the iPad intending to read up on Commons Select Committees. Already on the screen, though, was an old email , from the person I was learning to call my ‘wife’, to Staff Sergeant Paul Browby’s wife, Margaret, in her hospital bed in the specialist cancer hospital in San Francisco. I had found it in my sent-box and forwarded it to my own email account because it had made me smile.
 
Date: Fri, 29 August 15:51:13 +0100
To: [e-mail]
From: [e-mail]
Dear, dear Margaret,
I do hope you’re beginning to feel better now. Your description of how the chemotherapy left you feeling made me cringe, but the hospital has the best reputation in the world and when you’re better you can go and see the Golden Gate Bridge and send me photos of it. Talking of photos please see attached my favourites from the wedding. I’m so sorry you and Paul couldn’t be there. It was such a wonderful day.
The ceremony was in John’s v illage church and afterwards we went back to Fosse Manor where we’d had a marquee put up in the walled garden. Everybody that John knew from the village was invited and you remember Emma ‘The Boss’ Fitzgerald - the woman John worked for as a money trader in the City – well she asked after you and said to tell you that you had to get better as she wanted another of your puddings! She was looking dead gorgeous and flirting with everybody including Lord Clanroyden and Major Alan Cummins (was he Paul’s commanding officer in the SAS?) and she didn't say f**k once the whole time which John said was a world record.
But even though it's all over, Dominick Medina in some kind of secure asylum, John out of hospital, wedding and all, I still keep waking up in the middle of the night just to check John’s still breathing. I even took his pulse last night while he was asleep, but it was fine – 60 beats to the minute; you could set your watch by him. I just really pray he’s as tough as the doctor thinks he is because he has been through so much pain. Not that I need to tell you about pain...
Anyway, that’s all for now.
Lots of love and get well quickly wishes,
Robbi. xxxxxxxxxxxx
P.S.
Forgot to say that the builders have almost finished work on the lodge house now so it should be ready for you and Paul when you get back from San Francisco. I hope you don’t think we’re trying to bully you into living at Fosse, but we really do want to have you here because you love gardening and the kitchen garden needs a flame thrower and John thinks Paul would make the most brilliant gamekeeper.
Pleeeeease.
LADY RJH xxxx
 
 
T he first ray of October morning sun struck the leaded window lights. Below me on the drive outside, the woman I still occasionally thought of as Robbi Lord was now