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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

“Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing's best-kept secret.” —
The Sunday Times

“Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —
GQ

“While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —
Daily Mail

“Armstrong's skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —
The Scotsman

“Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.” —
The Daily Telegraph
on
Agents of Darkness

“A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —
Books
on
Heat

“Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on
Jig

“A full throttle adventure thriller.” —
The Guardian
on
Mambo

“A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —
Publishers Weekly
on
Mazurka

Deadline

Campbell Armstrong

Thursday, 6.45 p.m.

I left my office thirty minutes later than usual, the tall lights in the parking-lot had been lit, although dark was more than an hour away. It had been one of those draining days, where each patient seemed more demanding than the last. As I walked towards my car, I tried to shed the assorted burdens I'd been gathering for the last seven or eight hours, but it wasn't ever easy – you couldn't just cast aside the torments and anxieties of those who entrusted their mental welfare to you.

Some people dumped work as soon as the clock struck a certain hour. I didn't. I took the office home with me. I grudged the fact, but I hadn't found a way around it. I tried to relax, sure; I'd bury myself in a book, involve myself in a movie or a ballgame on TV – Sondra enjoyed old black-and-white movies and basketball – but then my mind would drift mid-plot or halfway through the game, and I'd wonder about this patient or that, I'd weigh the merits of their medication or the course therapy was taking.

Increasingly I found myself thinking I needed a long vacation, a break from patients and their problems; the job was too demanding, and life in Los Angeles – the American capital of psychosis, where mood disorders and high-tech pharmaceutical developments were casual dinner-party topics – unreal and vaguely unpleasant.

My car was parked directly under one of the electric lights. I set my briefcase down between my feet while I searched inside my pockets for my keys. There were only a few cars in the lot; some I recognized as belonging to other tenants in the building. Beyond, on Wilshire, traffic stop-started. I found my key and fitted it into the lock.

The man appeared out of nowhere, his face muffled by a scarf and a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. He struck out at me with a chopping motion of his hand, a blow directed at my larynx. Startled, I moved a half-step away and his hand rammed the side of my neck instead of my throat, but the blow was still forceful enough to stun me a moment – I slid against the car, which prevented me from falling to the ground.

‘Gimme your car keys, your wallet, that nice watch, anything you got of value, and fast.'

I shook my head, tried to clear the cloudiness away.

‘Fast, man. Fast. Come on.'

I didn't move. Didn't acquiesce. I stared at him, tried to bring him into focus. His eyes were very close together; weirdly so.

‘Dickhead,' he said. ‘You got a hearing problem?'

He raised the same hand he'd used the first time, and I watched it come down hard in the light of the lamp. And this time I saw something metallic flash, half-silver, half-black. I turned my head at the last possible moment and heard the blade hit metal. The knife, which might have pierced my cheek, went skittering out of the guy's fist and was lost somewhere beyond the reach of the light. For no logical reason, I had the feeling he hadn't intended to plunge the blade into me with lethal intent, that his real goal was to draw blood, to scar and scare. He was a thief, not a killer.

I swung at him, jabbing him hard in his left eye. Unperturbed, seemingly beyond pain, he made no noise, didn't groan, didn't cry out; he just closed his hand into a ball and brought it down yet again. This time I had sense enough to lift my right hand and smother his fist, and for a few seconds we were linked together palm to palm, and the sharp light from the overhead bulb was blinding me.

The peak of the baseball cap shadowed his eyes, and the scarf concealed him like the bandanna of a stagecoach robber in a western. Fleecy grey lining hung from his ragged military-style khaki jacket, which smelled of gasoline and tobacco and that weary odor of the streets – a brew of concrete and dank moisture of the kind that gathers in culverts, of wet paper sacks. I knew the smell: I'd done enough work among emergency psycho cases in mental hospitals – the screamers, the paranoids, the schizophrenics, the deranged dragged in off the violent cosmos of the streets.

But there was another scent too, one I couldn't identify at that moment; an incongruous one.

He was very strong, but I sensed his grip yielding. I thought:
one moment you're doing something everyday, you're unlocking your car, getting ready to go home. Fine, banal, civilized. The next, you're fighting off an unexpected attacker.

I figured he was after drugs. He'd been watching me for a couple of days perhaps: he knew I worked in a medical office building, maybe he thought I was a walking pharmacy and carried samples in my briefcase. If I didn't have samples then I'd have money, which was the next best thing.

I was angry. The day had already pulverized me like beans in a coffee-grinder, my patients had depressed me, the drive home through the city was an unappealing prospect, and now I had some goddam thief attacking me. Something similar had happened in this same spot three months back, when Benny Shark, a pediatrician, was jumped as he strolled to his car. He'd been roughed up and his wallet snatched. He'd left LA a month later, and the last I heard he was working out of a small town in Oregon.

Enough, for Christ's sake. This city was a septic tank.

I brought up my knee hard into his groin. I felt bone sink into soft flesh. He stepped back, moaned. I pushed myself away from the car and kicked out, catching him on the knee. He retreated a couple of paces, then he reached down, rubbed his knee. ‘So you wanna fight, huh? Tough guy. Hardass. Wants to fight.'

‘I don't
want
to fight,' I said. ‘I just want to go home, for Christ's sake. I just want a life without this kind of hassle.' I wondered about his pain threshold; he was probably high on something that also anaesthetized – crack, maybe some other cocaine derivative, speed. He was blinking his left eye rapidly.

‘Don't wanna fight, fine. Then I'll just help myself to this baby,' and he looked down at my briefcase.

‘The fuck you will.' I bent to grab the handle of the case, a tactical mistake; he uppercut me, one of those sly blows you don't see coming. You know it's on the way, you just don't catch it in time. It jerked my head back and I heard a muscular
click
at the juncture of neck and shoulder. Furious, I kicked out at him as he reached down to snatch my case; I caught him directly in the ear, and he yelped. He dropped the case and I kicked him again; then I grabbed him by the collar of his coat and tossed him to the ground. I stood over him, my fists clenched.

I was breathing hard, too hard.

Unexpected exertion, sure. But it was more. It was the pulse of rage. I wanted to crack his head into the concrete. Raise it, smash it down. Raise it, smash it down. And again. Pulp it.

Dr Lomax, psychiatrist. Respected member of the LA medical profession. Be calm.

‘I'm not carrying any drugs,' I said. ‘You got that?'

He lay huddled, face concealed between cap and scarf, and he stared at me as if he were peering through a visor. ‘What makes you think I want any fucking drugs?'

‘Money, then,' I said. ‘Whatever the hell you're after.'

He shook his head. ‘You guys always think you know everything, don't you? You always think you see the whole picture in one big flash. Whoom zazooom. The truth direct from God himself.' I wasn't sure what he was talking about. There was an unpleasant, slightly spooky nasal sneer in his voice, even though the sound came to me muffled through his scarf. The rhythms of his speech were vaguely Hispanic.

‘Frankly, I just don't give a shit what you think,' I said. And I didn't. I wanted to go home and kick off my shoes. I took my cellphone from my jacket and flipped it open. ‘I'm calling the cops. They can deal with you.'

He moved slightly, grimaced with pain, propped himself up on one elbow. He glanced in the direction of the office building, where a few lights were still lit, then he looked at my car. As I spoke into the phone, I didn't take my eyes off him. He didn't want dope, so he wanted money: it was either one thing or the other, because nothing lay between the poles of narcotics and hard cash. He was a rodent, he lived in alleys and doorways and abandoned buildings; I was in no mood to feel sorry for him, and even less inclined to wonder about the reasons behind his circumstances. Booze. Drugs. A childhood of abuse. What the hell did it matter? The liberal in me, the do-gooder, the bleeding-heart, was dying little by little. Once upon a time, I couldn't pass a beggar without giving him a handout, but I was through dropping coins in the dixie-cups of panhandlers. The city had immunized me against acts of charity.