A Killing Place in the Sun by Robert F Barker

Author:Robert F Barker [Barker, Robert F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-06T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

By the time the group settled down to business, it was late into the afternoon, the still-baking sun about to disappear behind the house served by the enclosed courtyard in which they were gathered.

There were six in all. It had taken the best part of a week to bring them together. The last had arrived only that morning, on a hastily-booked KLM charter bringing tourists from Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. Though none were tied to anything that might be regarded as ‘regular employment’, their backgrounds and particular range of skills meant that most had to nonetheless engineer their release from whatever it was they were doing when news of the bombing arrived.

They should have been seven but as best they’d been able to find out the one they called ‘Blink’, a Welshman who knew more about munitions than the rest of them put together, was somewhere in West Africa. Niger someone said, working for Trollian, the global Risk Management company that nowadays seems to somehow get involved in just about any conflict around the world people could name – as well as many they could not. Word was he’d got himself mired rather more deeply than was wise in some local tribal difficulty that had been holding up the laying of an American oil company pipeline the past two years. It wasn’t that the men worried particularly whether Blink was still alive or not, death was an occupational hazard in their lines of work. But risk assessment was something they always had time for - natural enough given the part it played in keeping them alive. Anything pointing towards conditions worsening in those places they earned their living was therefore of great interest. The fact that in this case, the evidence might be the loss of one of their number - Blink - was of course a matter for regret. But it wouldn’t be the cause of any great wailing or gnashing of teeth as it might with some tight-knit groups. Not so far as most were concerned at any rate. A quiet gathering in some corner bar, followed by a boozy reminisce over the occasions that had been memorable, accompanied by solemn head-shaking and intonations of the, ‘What a shame, what a waste,’ variety, was about as much as any of them could expect from a band they nevertheless counted as their closest friends.

There was one exception however. And he was Peter Murray.

When news of what had happened reached them - wherever they happened to be - none hesitated more than a minute in making the decision to haul themselves to Cyprus at the earliest opportunity. Not only was Murray the one who had brought them together in the first place, they all, one way or another, owed him much. The unexpected news – a couple hadn’t even heard about Kathy yet - was therefore a cause for genuine concern, if not quite, perhaps, for the reasons some may imagine.

As the bluff, black Mancunian, Moss Side Billy, the last

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