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smooth arc across the clear blue skies. Matt started walking the five hundred yards from the apartment block to the bar. He was carrying a small case with the few items of clothing he planned to take to London.
She'll be back, he told himself. We've argued before, split up before, and patched things up before. She flares up like a sergeant major, but it blows over soon enough. With any luck, the Firm will have a nice simple job, and we'll be back together in a couple of weeks.
Give her a few days and she'll cool off.
'Seen Gill?' he said to Janey as he stepped into the bar.
The manageress was a woman in her early forties, with streaked blonde hair, and a winning smile. Janey had run one of the best pubs in Chingford before splitting up with her husband, and moving out to the sun. There was very little she didn't know about running a bar. Matt relied on her completely.
'No. Trouble?'
Matt shook his head. 'Just wondering where she's got to.'
'Sorry. Someone was calling for you, though,' continued Janey, closing up the ledger where she had been recording last night's takings. 'Some lady who said she was calling on behalf of Sandy Blackman. Said it was urgent.'
Sandy? Matt turned the thought over in his mind.
In the Parachute Regiment, Sandy's husband, Ken Blackman, had been his closest friend. Matt had served alongside him for five years, before he'd left to join the SAS. Ken had done a couple more years in the forces before handing in his uniform. Then he'd gone back to Derby where he was born, married his girlfriend Sandy and settled down. He'd been working as a truck driver, mostly hauling stuff up and down the Ml for Tesco. A couple of times he'd done long cross-Continent trips out to Spain, and about nine months ago he'd spent a night at the Last Trumpet. It had been a great session. About ten beers each, finished off with a bottle of port and a rough North African cigar. For a while they'd both been back in a windy, desolate barracks in Aldershot, wondering what they'd signed up for.
Whatever happens to you in life, nothing compares to the frozen, hungry, exhausted misery of your first few weeks in the army. The bonds you make in those few weeks are among the strongest of your life.
Last time he'd seen Sandy had been three years ago. At the christening of their first daughter, Jade. She'd be up and walking around by now, and so would the next one, Callum.
Why wouldn't Ken be calling himself?
He punched the numbers into the phone, looking out to sea as he waited for it to be answered. A man picked up the phone. A man he didn't recognise.
'Tell Sandy it's Matt on the phone,' he said. 'Matt Browning.'
'Haven't you heard what happened?'
Matt hesitated. He knew those words, he'd heard them often enough in the army.
'Look it up on the Derby Evening Telegraph website,' the man said.
The phone went dead. Matt checked his watch. Half an hour until he needed to be at the airport. He walked to the back office and fired up his computer. It took a few seconds on Google to find the site for the local paper. He clicked on the link, and watched as the front page of last night's paper downloaded itself. A one per cent hike in council tax, that was the day's news in Derby. That and the threat of some more redundancies at Rolls-Royce.
Maybe it was a few days ago? A crash, a fight? What could Ken possibly do to get himself in the paper?
He flicked back a couple of days. The announcement of a new ring road, some revelations about the business associates of the deputy council leader. No. Then, from three days ago, a picture flashed up at him. Ken. At its side, the headline was spelt out in 64-point black type: DERBY MAN IN HORROR KILLING SPREE.
Matt's finger stabbed on to the mouse, scrolling down the page to read the story.
Truck driver Ken Blackman, of Pride Park, Derby, went berserk today in a doctors' surgery, killing two people, injuring two others, then attempting to kill himself.
In a horrific shooting incident, Blackman shot Dorothy