Cover

Half Title

By the Same Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Break Point

Battle Ready

Scar Tissue

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Laura who became my wife on my 50th birthday in December 2020. Our adventure is just beginning and having you by my side is fundamental to the strength and positivity I feel each day. I love you!

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing All Or Nothing has been a labour of love. I’d like to thank everyone who has helped bring this book to life: Andrew Holmes, David Riding, Matt Phillips, Sophie Nevrkla, as well as everyone else at Bonnier Books UK. And, of course, my amazing family, especially my brilliant wife, Laura, without whom this would not have been possible. Thank you one and all.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

On the carpet lay a dead man, and who knows what had gone on inside his head, but most of it now dripped down the walls. Blood and brain matter, incongruous in the suburban front room.

Sprawled on the sofa was another man. He had fought a brave battle marked by its brutality and longevity. He wore a bloodstained T-shirt bearing the words ‘Finchley Sportsman’, and though he had lost the battle, he was not dead. Not yet.

As for the victor, he stood in the middle of the devastated lounge. At his feet was a Heckler & Koch MP7 fitted with a suppressor and a sight, still warm. In his hand was a Glock, also suppressed. He watched the unconscious figure on the sofa carefully, ready to deliver the coup de grâce should the man awake, reflecting on the fact that he had been a fine and worthy opponent. When the skills of the combatants are matched, the outcome of a battle often comes down to chance. Luck, in other words. And one of them had been lucky.

The doorbell rang, and he went to it, used the chain and opened the door a crack. Outside lay a newbuild estate of quiet. The kids at school, the adults either inside or at work.

Standing on the doorstep was the visitor, who seemed about to say something until he looked down and saw the suppressed barrel of the Glock, trained on his groin.

The gunman spoke. ‘Sasquatch?’ he said.

‘We called him Bigfoot in our house,’ came the reply.

‘Then you would be Mr McGregor?’

‘Aye, I am,’ growled the visitor in broad Glaswegian. ‘And that would make you Owen Flyte.’

‘You don’t look as if you’ve come to do the cleaning,’ said Flyte warily. His Glock was still trained on McGregor.

‘I’m what they call a right-hand man in this operation. I don’t do the fuckin’ cleaning, pal. I assess ahead of the cleaning. Now how about you lower the persuader and we continue this inside, eh?’

Flyte led McGregor through to the lounge, where a large TV was flecked with blood and the cream walls were splattered with it, too. A coffee table listed, two of its legs broken from some kind of impact. A box set of Fast & Furious movies lay on the floor, a tin of lager.

And the bodies.

‘Christ,’ grunted McGregor, employing commendable understatement as his gaze travelled the devastation. He indicated Flyte’s Glock. ‘And I guess from the lack of police sirens we can assume that your silencer works.’

‘We call it a suppressor.’

McGregor pulled a face. ‘Potato. Poh-tar-toe. If you’re trying to convince me that you’re a pro, then . . .’ he indicated the carnage around them. ‘Job fuckin’ done, pal.’ He approached the sofa and pointed to the guy in the Finchley Sportsman T-shirt. ‘This guy?’

‘Out cold.’

‘I can see that, Doctor Zhivago. This is Alex Abbott, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘It’s him. He matches the description.’

‘Well, you better finish the job.’ McGregor indicated the state of Flyte’s face. ‘Better do it quick, too. Looks like he almost killed you.’

‘Sure. He was tough.’

Flyte raised the weapon.

He pulled the trigger.

Part One

PART ONE

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

As an elite member of the special forces and then in private security, Alex Abbott had fought all over the world. He’d gone up against the IRA in Northern Ireland, against drug dealers in the Indo-Pacific, child traffickers in Thailand and the usual suspects in the Middle East. He’d fought in bomb-scarred streets, in jungles, in deserts, and on storm-lashed seas.

But right now, he was fighting at the back of The Sportsman pub in North Finchley, in that shitty bit of the pub where they kept the empty barrels and the sticky wheelie bins; where the landlord sent customers who required physical resolution to disputes that had started indoors. As a regular, Abbott had seen it a dozen times. Right, you two. Out! Now he found himself with a starring role.

And the funny thing was that he couldn’t even remember exactly how the argument had begun.

Something to do with . . .

No, it was gone.

Standing opposite him, two men brandished knives, both shouting something at him.

No. Wait.

Abbott slapped a hand over his left eye. One of the knifemen disappeared. That was better.

‘Now come on, mate,’ he heard himself say, without much conviction.

‘You ain’t the only one who’s got it bad,’ the knifeman wailed, slurring the words.

Now it came back to him. Abbott could remember being at the bar. That’s right – he and the other bloke had been swapping sob stories and talking about football. At least that’s what Abbott had thought at the time. But somehow, and for reasons that remained a mystery, the conversation had taken a nasty turn. The kind of voices-raised, kicking-back-of-stools turn that had Nigel the world-weary landlord pointing in the direction of the fire door. ‘Right, you two. Out!’

And now here they were, gone from being best new buddies to mortal enemies in the space of a heartbeat.

‘Leave it, will you?’ repeated Abbott. ‘Put down the blade. Let’s go back in, have another drink.’

But the other man was red-faced, eyes streaming, still in his angry-drunk phase, attacking not Abbott but an idea of him – Abbott as an avatar of a world that had clearly abandoned him – and he raced forward, the knife held like a bayonet.

At the last second, Abbott saw what it was. A butter knife. And whether it was that sudden revelation, the complete ineptness of the whole thing, or more likely, because he was also very drunk and had been drunk for weeks, his reaction was slow, and the knife, yes, just a bit of cutlery, but still a knife, nicked his cheek and sent him off balance.

He tried to find his centre of gravity, attempting to summon whatever vestiges of SF training were left in his drink-sodden, pain-ridden head, but found his combat instinct AWOL, staggering to one knee and finding there was no fight left in him.

Instead, what he felt was . . .

Exhaustion. A fatigue that was as much mental as it was physical. As much driven by demons within as it was by the alcohol he used to try and silence them. He looked up to see his opponent, who instead of returning to finish his job had dropped the knife, braced himself against the wall and was throwing up, a copious, lager-rich spew.

Abbott, on one knee like an ardent suitor, and knowing he deserved no better, felt the vomit rain down around him.

‘Do you know what? You’re a right couple of fackin’ twats,’ barked Nigel the landlord, glowering at them from the back door. ‘And you’re both barred.’

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Two boys playing in a field. Abbott and his brother Chris. The river, not deep, but still, they’d been warned to stay away by their worried parents.

Abbott calling for his brother. ‘Chris! Chris!’

This image intertwining with another. This one of a young man dying in a desert, Abbott kneeling over him, watching his son slip away, the light leaving his eyes.

Nathan. Son. Don’t go.

And then, like a man escaping the clutches of hellspawn, Abbott wrenched himself from the dream and into the waking world.

And decided that frankly the nightmare was preferable.

There was the distinct smell of vomit in the room. No, not just in the room, in the bed, in his hair and in his nostrils. Fragments of the evening returned to him. Being outside. A guy wielding a butter knife. A guy who seemed especially irate about something, but for the life of him, Abbott could not remember what.

The pressing on his bladder sent him downstairs, steeling himself to join the queue for the communal bathroom. Sure enough, when he got there, the door was closed and locked but at least he was next.

The door opened. The face of a little Somalian boy appeared, his eyes widening in fear at the sight of Abbott, who as he shuffled shamefully past the kid and into the bathroom caught sight of himself in the mirror and saw the left side of his face crusted with dried blood from last night’s wound. Beware men wielding butter knives, as Shakespeare never said.

He took a piss, grabbed a quick shower, and made it back to his room dripping wet but without being seen. He crawled back into bed, and although it still stank of sick, at least he was clean within his kingdom of puke, and for now that would have to do. He reached for the half-empty bottle of vodka that lay on the threadbare carpet beside his bed, thinking, This is it. This is your life now.

Time? The year of our Lord, 2004. Just a few months after . . . well . . . after.

Place? A B&B in Finchley used primarily for asylum seekers. Families who spoke in languages Abbott didn’t understand and regarded him with outright suspicion and fear.

He drank. A quick swig. One or two gallops of the Adam’s apple, needing just that one hit to straighten him out. An experienced all-day drinker, he knew better than to seek oblivion at such an early stage. The days were long, each was an endurance test for the soul. Oblivion? That would come later, ushering him into another nightmare-crowded sleep.

His room was mostly bare, just a few treasured possessions and a television that was quietly playing breakfast TV. He watched as the latest headlines scrolled across the bottom of the screen, one of which was the fact that the billionaire Sir Charles Norton had died after a short illness. A short report about Norton, detailing how he’d begun by opening a small chain of bookies in his hometown of Derby, and how his company, Norton Gaming, had grown exponentially until it was a multi-billion-pound international concern with major casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City and dozens of other smaller ones dotted around. They owned three theme parks worldwide. One in Dubai, another close to Paris, one in New York state. Again, other smaller parks dotted around, with plans to expand further into Eastern Europe.

The picture of Norton showed a guy who was older than Abbott, but still not exactly ready for retirement. ‘And now you’re dead,’ said Abbott, toasting him with the bottle. ‘All that money and you can’t cheat your fate.’

He switched off the TV, reaching instead for his iPod, inserting the earbuds and allowing the music to work its magic. LTJ Bukem, his go-to tunes for soothing himself.

Allowing, also, the booze to do its job.

As he settled back, the words of Tess came to him. ‘Alex, I think that your parents lied to you.’

He and Tess had been in the London restaurant Kettner’s at the time. A meal that he had hoped would be of great emotional significance considering that their last meeting had ended in bed. In fairness, it had indeed been of emotional significance, just not the kind he expected.

It went back to her, to Tess, he realised, as he lay, listening to Bukem and wondering how he found himself here, at this particular juncture in his life. It went back to her, but first, it went back to Chris.

Two boys playing in a field . . .

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

They were just kids at the time, living in Matlock. Chris was eleven, Abbott nine. They had been playing near the river under strict instructions never to go past what the Abbott family knew as ‘the second bridge’. Past the second bridge the water was deep and fast running. The banks on either side rose vertiginously. No place for children to be playing.

They had removed their shoes and were paddling. Chris had his plimsolls in his hand, but he’d lost his footing and one of his shoes slipped out of his grasp and went into the water. The next second they had watched helplessly as it bobbed along, caught up in the current and racing distressingly fast towards that feared ‘second bridge’.

Chris had called out. ‘Alex.’ And Abbott had gone racing along the river, aware that the water was getting deeper, coming up to his thighs. Aware, also, of being pummelled by the current. He reached the mouth of the tunnel where inside it was dark and dank and there was no sign of Chris, who must have been pulled through and out the other side.

‘Chris,’ Abbott had called at the top of his voice.

So deep was his fear of the tunnel that instead of risking it, he turned and ran to the safety of the shallow water, scrambled up the bank, and then went racing along the field.

‘Chris,’ he called some more, again in vain, unable to see Chris in the river.

But he never saw his brother again.

Abbott was later told that Chris had most likely been swept out to sea. For his family it was the beginning of a slow, unspoken slide into domestic dysfunctionality marked by his parents’ gradual withdrawal from everyday life, both coping-but-not-really-coping with the death of their eldest. They had moved from Matlock to Burton-on-Trent, hoping that a change of scene might help. Maybe it did, but if so, the effect was microscopic, a case of delaying the inevitable, which was the break-up of the Abbott marriage. As for Alex, he started life at a new school where he met the girl who was to become the love of his life: Tess – Tess Lacey to give her her full name.

Looking back, he knew it was weird that they’d ever wound up together. He and Tess were such different animals. The young Alex Abbott . . . Well, you wouldn’t exactly say that he had turned to crime, but he didn’t go the other way either. He became the kind of tearaway who was known to the police but not the magistrates, and more than once he was delivered home in a squad car, long-suffering coppers knocking on his door, delivering him back to parents who were only semi-interested in his whereabouts, being too preoccupied with arguing, drinking, grieving – skills that Abbott, in later life, would acquire in full. His time in a remand home had done a lot to repair the damage. Inside the home he was told, ‘We’ve seen your sort before, mate, and we’ll see you again,’ to which his dad had said, ‘Well, son, you prove them wrong, then.’

A rare moment of coherent parenting from his old man. And it worked. Because Abbott had proven them wrong. He had. Getting out of remand school, he pledged never to darken the police station door again, and one thing about Abbott, when he put his mind to something . . .

Tess had always stood by him. And if she was a little bit titillated by her jailbird boyfriend, and secretly loved the fact that it scandalised her parents, that didn’t matter, because she loved him properly. He knew she did.

Just not quite enough to marry him. His was a proposal borne more out of hope than expectation and, sure enough, she turned him down. Tess, after all, was bound for Oxford University. She loved Abbott. And who knows, perhaps she did see some future in the relationship beyond uni. Just that she never let on, being Tess. If the world is split into dog people and cat people – dog people needing love and affection, giving it in return, getting kicked and coming back for more; cat people, inscrutable and unreadable, much more selective with their affection – then he was a dog person, Tess was a cat person. Perhaps they were destined never to be together.

Either way, the choice was not his to make, because on one of their famous breaks, Abbott had a one-night stand with a girl called Fiona. There had been an unfortunate contraception malfunction and from that moment on, fate was in the driving seat.

He did the decent thing. He stuck by Fiona, married her, fathered Nathan and loved that boy with all his heart. But although Fiona was a good woman – as canny with money as he was crap with it, a great mother, funny, witty, great-looking, and a tiger in bed – she had one drawback. She was not Tess.

Abbott had joined the military. Being in the Marines changed him more profoundly than any other event in his life, excluding, perhaps, the birth of Nathan. The military taught him to both read and control his instincts. It instilled in him discipline and organisation.

At home, however, things were not so good. The word ‘divorce’ was mentioned. Who had said it first? He couldn’t remember. The point being that it was out there, and once it’s out there, as soon as the concept takes breath, it’s difficult to go back. Talk of separation and divorce, once taboo and either whispered or spoken of only in anger, now became commonplace, something they discussed as easily as who did the washing-up.

Until, by a slow process of osmosis, it became a reality.

There was no rancour, at first. They had agreed between themselves to keep things civil for the sake of the young Nathan. He was just ten years old when they finally went their separate ways. Abbott had been away for so long that although he absolutely doted on Nathan, he hardly knew him. But it was as though the separation wrenched something loose in Abbott, or maybe tightened it up, for suddenly he became a much more present father, taking every opportunity he could to see his son. This, though undoubtedly a good thing, came at the expense of his previous good relations with Fi, who was aghast at the change, unstinting in her contempt for Abbott’s ‘sudden change of heart’, as she put it. He, meanwhile, felt the same when Fiona had so quickly moved on to another bloke, a guy who held an administrative role attached to the British Army’s Intelligence Corps.

And in the background – something that was like a low hum in his head whatever the drama and tragedy of his life – were thoughts of Tess.

Years passed, until the advent of the internet allowed him to look her up and he’d discovered that Tess was now married with two kids and worked as a lawyer at Fitzpatrick & Sims. They’d got in touch, met up, and during the subsequent meal he’d told her the story of how Chris had died.

Why did he feel the need to reveal something that he’d kept hidden from her all those years? He wasn’t sure. Maybe because he’d wanted to explain what made him the way he was back then. Why he’d been such a mixed-up kid. After all, everything about Tess seemed so content and settled.

Later that night they ended up in bed together. To him it was seismic, but Tess had behaved like it was nothing, no more important than a goodnight kiss, and Abbott had been left feeling discarded somehow. Hating the sensation, hating how it made him feel weak, unmanly and vulnerable.

A short while afterwards, Nathan had gone missing.

And not long after that, Abbott had cradled Nathan as he lay dying in Iraq.

The next thing to happen was that Tess had got back in touch, telling him that she needed to see him right away.

Then, as now, he had been in the clutches of grief. Even so, he couldn’t help but think about their night together, hoping that her reasons for seeing him were romantic. For if anybody could save him – if anybody could stop the downward trajectory he knew his life was taking, it was Tess.

Once again, they had met in Kettner’s in London. ‘I’m so glad you got in touch,’ he’d said, ‘I was worried you might not want to. You know, after . . .’

‘After what?

She’d looked confused for a moment before it dawned on her. ‘Oh, that. Yes, of course. I think that was what they call a blast from the past.’

The joke didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her fingers were restless on a small sheaf of papers that she had placed on the table.

He swallowed. ‘Sure. But I mean, well, to me it wasn’t just a shag.’ She was looking uncomfortable so he tried thinking of something else to say, something lighter and more conversational, but all he could come out with instead was the one pathetic word ‘sorry’, leaning back in his chair, giving her space.

‘No, look, I’m sorry, Alex. It did mean something, of course it did. And maybe one day we can organise a return visit,’ but again the smile didn’t quite get there, ‘it’s just that that’s not why I’m here. Why I’m here is not about us at all. It’s about you.’

‘What about me?’

She held up a hand. Wait. ‘I know that you told me that your mum has passed away,’ she said. ‘What about your dad? Where is he right now?’

‘He’s in a home.’

Abbott thought guiltily of his father. When was the last time he’d bothered to pay the old man a visit? ‘Why? Why do you want to know?’

‘I have something I need to tell you.’

‘About my dad?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Go on.’

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