Renegades

  RENEGADES

  The bullet from the MP5 hit the camera dead centre, blasting through the lens, piercing the single eye, blowing the camera apart before it thundered into Newton’s temple, shattering the frontal bone. The photographer felt a second of agonizing pain, as if he’d been hit with a burning hammer, then the bullet tore through his skull, erupting from the back, carrying a confetti of brain and pulverized bone with it. The impact lifted him off his feet and he crashed to the ground, his hands still gripping what remained of the camera. Pieces of it had been driven back into his head by the passage of the bullet. Blood spread rapidly from what was left of his shattered cranium, his body quivering madly as the muscles finally gave up their hold on life.

  Also by Shaun Hutson:

  ASSASSIN

  BODY COUNT

  BREEDING GROUND

  CAPTIVES

  COMPULSION

  DEADHEAD

  DEATH DAY

  DYING WORDS

  EPITAPH

  EREBUS

  EXIT WOUNDS

  HEATHEN

  HELL TO PAY

  HYBRID

  KNIFE EDGE

  LAST RITES

  LUCY'S CHILD

  NECESSARY EVIL

  NEMESIS

  PURITY

  RELICS

  SHADOWS

  SLUGS

  SPAWN

  STOLEN ANGELS

  THE SKULL

  TWISTED SOULS

  UNMARKED GRAVES

  VICTIMS

  WARHOL'S PROPHECY

  WHITE GHOST

  Hammer Novelizations

  TWINS OF EVIL

  X THE UNKNOWN

  THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN

  CAFFEINE NIGHTS PUBLISHING

  SHAUN HUTSON

  Renegades

  Fiction to die for...

  Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2013

  Copyright © Shaun Hutson 1991, 2013

  Shaun Hutson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in Great Britain in 1991

  by Sphere Books Ltd

  CONDITIONS OF SALE

  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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

  This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental

  Published in Great Britain by Caffeine Nights Publishing

  www.caffeine-nights.com

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-907565-53-3

  Cover design by

  Mark (Wills) Williams

  Everything else by

  Default, Luck and Accident

  RENEGADES

  Introduction by Shaun Hutson

  Written in 1989 originally, RENEGADES is probably the novel I still get most feedback from readers about even to this day. This is doubtless due to the fact that it introduced the character of Sean Doyle. Doyle was something unusual in my work in as much as he's survived through four books! Around the time I was looking for ideas for a new book I was lucky enough to see an adaptation on TV of an M.R. James story called “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.” This featured a mystery surrounding a stained glass window and I became obsessed with the bloody things and with doing a novel with one as its central idea. At the same time, “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland were still continuing and I was reading lots about terrorism and stuff like that so the two ideas crossed over and RENEGADES was born.

  People have automatically assumed that Doyle is based on me (the fact he listened to rock music, supported Liverpool, wore jeans, cowboy boots and a leather jacket and had long hair all of which I did at the time time probably helped!) He was probably based on me, all central characters have bits of me in them to varying degrees. I think any writer would tell you that. It's almost unavoidable that some of yourself seeps into your creations.

  A little side note that you may find interesting is that the original title of this novel was to be BASTARDS. That is how it was originally submitted to the publishers who instantly said that they couldn't or wouldn't publish with that title. Maybe it was because I told them the sequel would be called FUCKING BASTARDS!

  Personally I see RENEGADES as epitomising my style probably more than any other novel. It moves at an incredible pace, it's got strong Gothic elements but is set firmly in the present day with, hopefully, believable characters and possibly my best ever ending. Those of you who've read it will know what I mean and those discovering it and the charming character who is Sean Doyle will soon find out what I mean. To be honest, I was convinced that Doyle was dead at the end of the book but I had so many letters from readers asking when he was coming back that, having looked at the end of the book, I realized there was a possibility for a sequel and Doyle subsequently re-appeared in WHITE GHOST, KNIFE EDGE and HYBRID. I have a plot which involves him appearing once more, hopefully one day that book will materialise and if it's called BASTARDS then even better.

  Enjoy RENEGADES, it means a lot to me and I hope it will to you too.

  Shaun Hutson 2013

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank, my agent Brie Burkeman, my publisher, Graeme Sayer and anyone else who has supported me. You know who you are if you have.

  Others worthy of mention are, as ever, Cineworld Milton Keynes and everyone who works there.

  I'd also like to thank an old friend of mine, Mr Gary Farrow (despite his taste in football teams) who I was lucky enough to find again after a few years. We're not old mate, we're just well preserved! Or fossilised in my case!

  But most of all I'd like to thank all the fans of mine (and of Sean Doyle) who've stuck with me all these years.

  Shaun Hutson 2013

  For my daughter, Kelly.

  ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger.’

  –Nietzsche

  Prologue

  It was the darkness of the blind.

  A blackness so impenetrable, so palpable he felt as if he was floating on it. Surrounded by it. As if the tenebrous gloom were infiltrating every pore of his body, shutting out the light as surely as if his eyes had been removed.

  But amidst that darkness there was pleasure.

  Pleasure he had felt before and knew he would feel again. Sometimes so exquisite it was almost unbearable.

  The inability to see heightened the sensations he felt.

  His sense of smell was sharpened.

  The odour was strong in his nostrils, pungent, sweet, occasionally somewhat rancid.

  A powerful coppery odour which he knew well and which he welcomed.

  His ears seemed more sensitive than usual, too, his hearing attuned more intensely to the sounds that filtered through the blackness.

  It was like some kind of chorus.

  His own sighs and grunts of pleasure mingled with the other noises.

  The more strident cries.

  Cries of pain.

  He smiled in the gloom, running his own fingers over his features, pushing one index finger into his mouth and tracing the outline of his lower lip.

  He tasted the blood
on it and licked it off.

  His body felt as if it were on fire, despite the coldness inside the building, and he grinned as he thought about the luminosity which his body might be giving off as that warmth seemed to intensify.

  But there was no glow.

  Only that blackness which he loved so dearly.

  Almost as dearly as the objects that surrounded him.

  He ran his hands over them with greedy relish.

  He was close to ecstasy.

  His own breathing was low and guttural, rasping deep in his throat as he continued to run his fingers over the thing beside him.

  Then finally he lifted it. Smoothly, effortlessly.

  The smell seemed to grow stronger as he brought the object close to his face.

  It was invisible in the darkness but he ran his right index finger across it, feeling every fold and crease.

  Every unblemished inch.

  It felt like velvet.

  He smiled broadly, knowing that this pleasure could continue for hours yet.

  They would not come for him until morning and by that time he would be satiated. Glutted on pleasure.

  Until the next time.

  He shuddered with anticipation and brought the object closer to his face, feeling something run slowly down his right arm.

  Fluid which dripped from his elbow onto his naked thigh.

  He opened his mouth slightly, preparing himself, his tongue, flicking across his own lips before snaking out to weave tight patterns over the other object.

  He tasted. He smelled. He felt. He heard.

  The low cries.

  The dripping of fluid.

  His tongue touched lips.

  And those other lips were warm.

  Despite the fact that the head had been severed over an hour ago.

  PART ONE

  ‘No life that breathes with human breath, Has ever truly longed for death.’

  – Alfred Lord Tennyson.

  ‘For a price I’d do about anything, except pull the trigger. For that I’d need a pretty good cause.’

  – Queensryche.

  One

  STORMONT, NORTHERN IRELAND:

  They would kill him.

  Chris Newton had no doubt about it.

  He was a dead man.

  If he fucked up on this assignment then they would kill him. He shoved a fresh roll of film into the back of the Nikon which hung around his neck, checked and re-checked the other two cameras which he carried then peered through the one with the telephoto lens that was perched on the tripod before him. He adjusted the lens, trying to bring the Parliament building into sharper focus, aware that he’d already performed this task a dozen times in the last fifteen minutes.

  His hands were shaking, and not just from the chill wind which swept across the great lawns fronting the building. He was nervous. No, that was an under-statement. He was scared shitless.

  Had he taken all the lens caps off? Were all his exposures set right? Was the shutter speed correct?

  Check.

  Check.

  He felt like a bloody astronaut running through the final details of take-off prior to bring fired into space. And again the thought crossed his mind that, if he didn’t get the pictures he’d been sent here to obtain, space probably offered his only safe haven.

  The editors of The Mail had seen fit to give him this assignment on the strength of the work he’d been doing on the paper for the last seven months. He’d covered everything for them from football matches to society parties and they had been impressed. Impressed enough to send him here.

  The men around him were probably just as nervous as he was, Newton tried to tell himself. Most of them were smoking; one was sipping from a hip flask. Newton could have done with sharing the liquor. Anything to calm his nerves.

  The assembled politicians were expected out onto the lawn within the next fifteen minutes.

  He checked his watch.

  Close by a film crew were setting up, the reporter tapping the end of his microphone, complaining that it didn’t work. The cameraman was swinging his hand-held camera back and forth as if it were some kind of weapon, sweeping it across the ranks of newsmen and women, pausing occasionally to wipe the odd spot of rain from the lens.

  The sky was overcast, threatening a downpour. It had been raining on and off since Newton arrived in Northern Ireland two days ago. In fact, Belfast reminded him of Manchester with its almost constant rainfall, the main difference being that British soldiers didn’t patrol the streets of Manchester.

  Not yet, anyway, he mused.

  There were soldiers ahead of him, mingling with the scores of Ulster Constabulary men, the mosaic of uniforms incongruous against the regal background of Stormont itself.

  ‘You ready?’

  The voice startled him and he glanced round to see Julie Webb looking at him.

  She had flown out with him, reminding him all the time (as if he needed it) of the importance of getting good pictures.

  The Stormont Summit was the most important meeting of its kind in the history of the Six Counties: a final opportunity to end the bloodshed which had torn the country apart for over four hundred years. At this very moment inside the building there were members of the British Cabinet, the Irish Government, Ulster Unionists. Even representatives of Sinn Fein, for Christ’s sake.

  A meeting of ideologies which, a year before, would have been unthinkable.

  But it was happening right now and Chris Newton had been sent here to record it on film.

  And if he fucked up his editors would kill him.

  It was as simple as that.

  Julie stamped her feet trying to restore circulation, her boots crunching gravel.

  ‘They’re coming out soon,’ she told him, sipping from a plastic mug she’d taken from a thermos flask. The flask itself she held to her chest as if it were a new-born child. She poured herself another cup of the steaming coffee and offered some to Newton.

  He declined, shaking his head, blowing on his hands instead, trying to induce some warmth and also to stop himself trembling.

  A few feet away he heard the quick-fire rattle of several shots from a Pentax.

  To his left a reporter from one of the major news shows on television was recording his location and time indent. That done, he turned towards the Parliament building and muttered something under his breath before looking at his watch again.

  The troops and security men watched the swarms of newsmen intently. Security at the gathering was even more stringent than usual, the presence of the security forces more in evidence than Newton could ever remember. As well as troops and R.U.C., it was rumoured there were a number of S.A.S. men present, invisible amongst the crowd. Newton glanced to his right and left, wondering if the very men he stood beside were in fact S.A.S. men in disguise.

  His own press card had been double-checked, the guards at the press entrance apparently unconvinced that the likeness on his card matched his actual identity. Newton had thought for one awful moment that he was going to be refused entry but the guards had finally relented and allowed him to pass.

  He continued rubbing his hands together, looking around.

  The media interest in the summit was, naturally, immense. Newton wondered if there were any reporters left in Fleet Street. Everyone, it seemed, was gathered here; they wanted to be part of the momentous event, irrespective of whether it was part of their job or not. There were foreign film crews from as far afield as Japan, though what they made of it all Newton couldn’t imagine. Probably spies from Nikon wanting to see how sales were doing, he mused, checking his own equipment again.

  Larger spots of rain began to fall sporadically and a number of the assembled throng glanced upwards towards the swollen clouds and passed less than flattering comments about the weather in the province.

  Newton pulled a baseball cap from the pocket of his coat and jammed it on. He bent forward to peer through the mounted camera once more, annoyed when someone bumped into
it.

  ‘Careful,’ he said irritably, glaring at the offender.

  The man met his gaze with unblinking eyes, almost challengingly. He was stocky and in need of a shave. He stood looking at Newton for long seconds before passing off into the crowd.

  ‘Prat,’ the photographer muttered, making sure the other man was out of earshot. He re-adjusted the camera, peering through the telescopic lens as a sniper might study his prey.

  He was one of the first to see the main door of the building open.

  ‘Jesus,’ he muttered, noticing the armed security men who emerged ahead of the first of the politicians.

  And then the whole cold, wet and irritable throng of media saw what they had come to see. The weather and the conditions were momentarily forgotten.

  More politicians emerged, some joking about the weather, others wondering whether or not it might be more prudent to remain inside the building until the rain had stopped.

  The air was filled with the quick-fire rattle of a hundred cameras firing off an almost synchronized volley. Reporters tried to move forward but were held back by the line of security men and now the waiting media saw that the politicians were coming towards them anyway, sticking to the pathways wherever possible.

  Newton, snapping away as if his life depended upon it, caught sight of the Irish Prime Minister walking alongside two Unionist MPs. Behind them the British Foreign Secretary strode between two security guards, chatting animatedly with a member of Sinn Fein. Newton shook-his head in wonderment.