Another small piece of Native Shore

The response over the weekend to the first excerpt of Native Shore was positive.

So here is another small piece of the novel.

As I’ve previously stated, they will be sequential and will not go beyond Chapter Two.

So, here you are:

Before they arrived, Ian Turnbull looked into the full-length mirror that was in the bedroom of his suite. His assessment was that he would definitely pass muster as an OC. Everything he was wearing had been purchased that day and selected with great care. He was wearing black brogues by Ecco. John Lewis had provided the trousers; bird’s eye wool, charcoal in colour. A white poplin shirt and a V-neck Pringle cashmere sweater in dark blue completed the ensemble. This was not the scruffy, down-at-heel chap who had tried to tidy himself up two days earlier when he had met Pritchard in the apartment at Baker Street. This was a man with purpose. A man in control. An officer.

Ian Turnbull’s strict Scottish upbringing had given him a pathological loyalty to the cause of punctuality. That was cultural. However, the work that he was involved in meant that being on time, and precisely on time, could be a matter of life and death. His three-man team was two-thirds there. One of them was late, and as he stood in the living room of the suite with two of the men on the two-seater sofa, Turnbull was quietly seething inside. Then there was a knock at the door.

He crossed the distance to the door with a military march, opened it and saw the object of his anger. Standing in the door and occupying all of the available space was a man over six foot tall, completely bald, and clinically obese.

Turnbull gestured for him to come in. He didn’t say a word as there were chambermaids working up and down the corridor. He checked that the Do Not Disturb sign was still hanging from the door handle, closed it carefully, flicked the lock and walked back into the main area of the living room.

He gestured to the large easy chair that was beside the two-seater couch and the man who was late flopped into it. He was perspiring. Turnbull returned to where he had been standing before the knock at the door. He spun round on the balls of his feet, and, with as much bearing as he could muster, locked eyes with the man who had just come into the room.

“You’re late.”

“Ah, um, I got on the wrong Tube. That’s why I was late. Um, I’m sorry, um…” stammered the man.

“Un-fucking-impressive.”

The men on the couch didn’t say a word, but it was clear that they were satisfied with what their prospective boss was saying.

There was no point in labouring the issue, thought Turnbull, so he turned to business.

“You don’t know each other, but you’ve all worked for me before. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were all perfect for the job I have in mind. And if you all perform in the way that I know you can, we will have no problems. If you agree to come into this operation, on completion you will each be paid one million pounds into a nominated offshore account. If you don’t have one of them, then I can arrange that.”

“Fuck!” said one of the men in an English accent.

Turnbull scanned the three of them, getting eye contact with all of them. His look said that he was serious. Deadly serious.

“This is an off-books operation. Fail, and no one knows you. And, for the avoidance of doubt, I’m in the same leaky boat. All I can tell you is that this is vital to the Realm, and your part in this can never be revealed. However, you will have done Her Majesty’s Government and this country a massive solid. If you’re not in, then here’s an envelope with two grand expenses and the Best of British; and leave now.”

“For that money, I’m in,” said the man nearest to Turnbull.

“OK, for that money I’m on board as well,” said the man sitting beside him.

The fat man sitting on his own directly across from Turnbull slowly looked up.

“Well, I can do a lot with a mil.”

“Is that a yes then?” asked Turnbull.

The fat man nodded. Turnbull looked back at him, indicating that he needed a firm, verbal answer.

“Yeah. Yeah. In. Totally.”

“OK, that’s that settled then. Now I can brief you.”

“This operation may take a few months, or perhaps longer. It will involve you being away from your home base and having no contact with your normal circle. You now have forty-eight hours to make appropriate arrangements.”

Turnbull knew from the update Cassidy had given him that the three of them had no outstanding issues with the police. The ex-MI5 man knew the type well and they would have minimum loose ends to tie up in their lives. Consequently, if the money was right then they would be ready for deployment without delay.

The large man on the chair lifted his head. He was clearly thinking things through. Turnbull knew that he had lived with his mother, but that she had passed away several months before.

“I’ve got two cats,” he said, more thinking aloud than directly to Turnbull.

One of the men on the couch looked at him with utter disdain.

“As I said, you’ve got forty-eight hours, and Tiddles isn’t coming along,” said Turnbull. It was an order.

“You’re all perfect for this operation. If you don’t trust my judgement in that, then leave now. I’m officer commanding this unit. Again, non-negotiable. You don’t get a vote.”

Turnbull looked round and got a nod of assent from the three men.

He looked at the three men in front of him: an ex-Squaddie, an ex-police officer and an ex-employee of GCHQ in Cheltenham. The last of the trio looked the oldest in the room, but in fact Turnbull knew he was the youngest. The ex-Squaddie in particular looked much younger than his forty-one years. The two men on the couch looked fit and combat-ready, and they would need to be. The blob in the easy chair was there because no one could manoeuvre around cyberspace like he could. Turnbull knew all about his abilities, and about his career-ending frailties. This combination of factors made him ideal for this operation.

 

Dear reader, I hope you enjoyed that small morsel from Chapter One of Native Shore.

The featured image seems apt as it is in the run-up to IndyRef2 that this novel is set.

Of course, it imagines a world where the British state would break the laws that they’ve made and then kill their own citizens.

For the day that’s in it…