Deadly Game

by Michael Caine

Genres: Action & Adventure; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

An explosive international thriller from the Hollywood legend and British icon Sir Michael Caine.

DCI Harry Taylor has no respect for red tape or political reputations - but he's great at catching criminals.

And all his unorthodox skills will be needed as an extraordinary situation unfolds on his doorstep: a metal box of radioactive material is found at a dump in Stepney, East London, but before the police can arrive it is stolen in a violent raid.

With security agencies across the world on red alert, it's Harry and his unconventional team from the Met who must hit the streets in search of a lead. They soon have two wildly different suspects, aristocratic art dealer Julian Smythe in London and oligarch Vladimir Voldrev in Barbados. But the pressure is on. How much time does Harry have, and how many more players will join the action, before the missing uranium is lighting up the sky?

Deadly Game is a compelling, fast-paced audiobook of international intrigue and twisting suspense from a legendary actor and British icon, who now proves himself to be a first-rate thriller writer.

(P)2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: November 23, 2023

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

1

When Dave looked back and remembered seeing the box for the first time, he could have sworn it had been glowing. Well, he couldn’t be sure. He was a bit hazy about the whole thing, truth be told, what with the concussion, the general commotion that had rumbled around him for what seemed like hours, and the state of his nerves in general. But that’s what his memory told him, or started to tell him, days after it happened: a sort of low glimmering around the edges of the black metal.

Even now, in a lumpy hospital bed, waiting for the X-ray and the results of the other tests that the doctors were a bit vaguer about, he couldn’t quite piece it together. The whole thing made next to no sense, especially the speed – and the violence – with which it had all happened. One minute, he was making a phone call. The next, he was being woken up by half of uniformed London, asking him again and again if he was OK and could he tell them, just once more, please, sir, what exactly he had found and how.

Dave looked down at the frayed gown they had put him in: the usual embarrassing hospital uniform; the drab spotted pattern barely visible in the grey-white fabric. There was a cannula in the back of his hand, and a bunch of drips at the bedside: ‘Just till we’ve got you back on your feet,’ the nurse had assured him. Where were his clothes and boots? His phone? Had they told Jess, like he’d asked? She and the kids would be sick to death with worry. But every time he tried to get an answer or pull himself together, the dull haze of clinical shock reasserted itself. All he knew for certain was that somebody, somehow, was using a hammer drill inside his skull – or at least that’s what it felt like – and that, whatever he and Terry had stumbled into that morning was, somehow or other, for someone somewhere, very bad news indeed.

As Dave had told any number of coppers – uniformed at first, then in hazmat gear, and finally in suits – it had been a day like any other, until it had stopped being that in any shape or form, if they caught his meaning.

He had arrived at the hut at eight o’clock as usual, got a brew on, and waited for Terry, who always turned up at ten past eight on the dot. In his hi-vis jacket, T-shirt, paint-spattered jeans and weathered Doc Martens, Terry was the tougher looking of the two, though Dave was, they both knew, stronger. When it came to hauling a beam of timber or a loose headboard off the back of an open truck, it was always Dave who took the lead.

Most of the job was lifting and sorting. Heaving stuff from open-backed lorries and Transits into the dump and then – after a fashion – putting everything into the right pile, ready for ‘recycling’. This was what the council rules required, though Dave had never seen much evidence of the half-hearted sifting and categorising making any difference. The piles got bigger, the world turned, and nothing much changed.

The dump was five minutes’ walk from Stepney High Street and surrounded on three sides by old warehouses, two of which were being converted for office use. The other side, next to the road, was hemmed in by a twenty-foot-high chicken wire fence, with a gate big enough to allow vehicles to reverse, and a few fake CCTV cameras to put off tramps and druggies. Very occasionally, somebody made it over the top and was found sleeping their previous evening off on a decaying Chesterfield sofa under a tarpaulin. But the odds were seriously against anyone who needed that kind of accommodation that badly being able to scale the fence in the first place.

Terry had once found one of the local street girls and her john passed out on a mattress balanced on top of one of the rubbish heaps. He wasn’t sure whether to compliment them on their athleticism – even if they’d been turbocharged by ket or speed, that was a proper climb – or to read them the Riot Act (which he knew he was supposed to). Instead, he’d just told them wearily to sling their hook. As he’d said to Dave later, he’d rarely seen a hook slung faster.

More often, they found stuff that had been hurled over the top in the night. Fly-tipping. Big sacks of noxious garbage. Smaller items of furniture or household

 tat. Rotten meat, fish, fruit and veg dumped by market-stall traders or restaurant staff on their way home. On those days, you really needed your face mask. Sometimes, the morning catch was plain weird: a big box of wigs – that had been a good one – and a medical teaching skeleton, slumped by the gate when Dave arrived.

Anyway, one of them always did the rounds first thing and checked it off on the clipboard. It was part of the routine and required by council by-laws. ‘Health and safety’, like almost everything else that shaped their day. Just another box to tick before the scheduled morning deliveries from around the borough began around nine o’clock.

That morning, Dave set off on his quick tour of the site, leaving Terry engrossed by a row on talkSPORT between Laura Woods and Ally McCoist about Spurs. Stepping out of the hut, Dave was struck by what a lovely morning it was turning out to be: the sky cloudless and resolutely blue, but with a nice breeze cooling his brow as he trudged through the rubble, rust and ruin.

There was a football by the furniture pile – not for the first time, it must have been accidentally kicked into the dump by kids playing in the street the previous evening. He took a run-up, aiming for a beige leather armchair about twenty metres away, and caught the ball with just the right part of his boot. Goal! He raised a fist in celebration. A good omen for the day, surely?

Or maybe not. Over by what amounted to the site’s compost heap – a hillock of soil, decaying plants and vegetation that stunk to high heaven in the summer – was a metal box. That was definitely a fresh arrival, and an odd overnight discovery on several levels.

First, there was its size: a big suitcase, or a small packing case, depending upon your point of view. It looked like it was made of black steel, or something similar; scuffed, as if it had been on a bit of a journey. Heavy-looking, anyway. Much too heavy to have been chucked over the fence and reached this far into the site. So, Dave reasoned, it had been left where it was for a purpose. Which made no sense at all.

Second: when he took a closer look, he could see that much of the metal was covered in rows of letters, numbers, and what he could only assume were coded symbols of some kind. Not the alphabet, anyhow. Every edge was plastered with circular markings that indicated some kind of warning – toxic? Poisonous? None of it added up. They had special places for this sort of stuff, didn’t they? Like 600 feet underground.

And third: it was completely sealed. If there was an opening latch, Dave couldn’t see it. He tried flipping it over onto the other side, and was surprised by its sheer weight as it tumbled with a menacing thump to the ground. No, not the slightest indication of an opening mechanism or anything similar. Not by or inside the handles, or, as far as he could see, along the hinge. Whatever was inside – if anything was inside – was not meant to be easily accessible, to say the least. Dave ran his finger around the criss-cross of indecipherable alphanumerics. What could it possibly be? No bloody idea. None at all.

‘Tel!’

No response. His co-worker must have still been absorbed by the row on the radio.

‘Tel!’ This time, he was louder, and Terry heard him, poking his head out the door of the hut.

‘What?’ He sounded mildly exasperated, as if his morning somehow had been fatally disrupted.

‘Come and take a look at this!’ Then, more quietly. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

Terry never rushed anywhere and was certainly not going to break the habit of a lifetime early on a Thursday morning. Sauntering towards Dave, he said, ‘What you found, a winning lottery ticket?’

‘Shut it, Tel. Here, take a look at that.’ He gestured towards the big black case.

Terry surveyed it, then knelt down to get a closer look. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘What the fuck is it?’

‘That’s what I’m wondering, muppet.’

Terry tried to lift it and was barely able to shift it from its prone position. ‘Christ, it’s heavy and all, isn’t it? Something that definitely isn’t normal junk in there.’

‘Exactly,’ said Dave. ‘And how did it get there? That’s what I’d like to know.’ He rubbed his hands together nervously, out of habit. ‘It’s like it was left for someone to pick up.’ He paused again. ‘Which is pretty strange. But, anyhow, they didn’t collect it, did they?’

Terry ignored the question. ‘All these numbers and stuff. It looks … I don’t know. Official? Like government or corporate or something? Fucking weird.’ He stood up. ‘Never seen anything like it in three years here. You?’

Dave shook his head. ‘No. And I’ve done almost six. I gotta say, I don’t much like it, Tel. Let’s call it in.’ He looked at the box again. ‘I look at that thing, and my strongest feeling is, let’s make it someone else’s problem. Soon as. Sweet?’

Terry nodded. ‘Took the words right out of my mouth, David, sir.’ Then he said, ‘Got your phone? Mine’s bust.’

‘Charging on the desk,’ said Dave.

They stomped back to the hut, in lockstep, matching their shared determination to be rid of whatever that thing was as soon as humanly possible.

Inside, Dave opened a drawer and handed Terry a form. ‘Fill that in, would you? It’s standard when we involve a non-council authority.’

Tel shrugged. ‘Will do. I guess. Jesus, more effing paperwork.’

‘Hello? … Yes. Police. Thank you.’ He waited to be connected. ‘Yes, hello, police? Hello, my name’s Drayton. David Drayton. I work at Stepney dump … Yes, that’s right … Sorry? … D-R-A-Y-T-O-N … Yes, this number.’ He waited again. ‘My colleague and myself have located an item on the site that is, well, not on any inventory or accounted for by either of us. Or by the local authority

We’re a bit concerned by its presence, to be honest. No, no idea. Looks like it might be a bit … scientific, or whatever. What does it look like? Well …’

Dave did his best to describe the case, and why it struck the two of them as odd. He feared for a moment that he was getting nowhere. ‘Why am I concerned? Listen, we see all sorts here, trust me, mate. But this is not your ordinary East London silly-o’clock fly-tipping, believe me. It’s … well, it looks like it might be dangerous, I suppose … What? No, neither of us are feeling unwell. Hold on, I’ll ask my colleague. Tel?’ Terry shook his head silently. ‘No, he’s fine, too. Yep, good as gold. We just both reckon— Oh, great, so you’ll send a squad car. When might that be? Really? OK, well, the sooner the better. Thanks. Thanks very much. Bye.’

Terry looked at him inquiringly. In return, Dave could only muster a frown. ‘Didn’t sound like it was exactly high on their list. But then, I guess it wouldn’t be round here, would it? Thieving, gear … they’ve got bigger fish to fry, haven’t they? All the same. I’d like to get rid of that … thing’ – he pointed out of the grease-stained window of the hut – ‘as soon as we can. One thing I’ve learned in this job is when something is above your pay grade, you don’t want anything to do with it. And whatever is in that box, definitely passes that test.’

Terry looked over his shoulder at the dump. ‘I told you, it looks government. Medical. Probably full of some godawful new virus, you know? They’re always working on the new ones, aren’t they? In their labs? And we know all too bloody well that accidents can happen. Don’t we? You hearing me, Dave?’

Now it was Dave’s turn to play it cool. ‘Oh, what are you bangin’ on about? Viruses? Gawd, that last booster jab really has done your head in, hasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, well it’s easy to be snarky, but look at what we all went through last time. They said it come from a market, or a bat, or something, but it just happened to turn up in the city where they had all them deep-cover labs. And we know that was at the mild end, compared to some of the horrors—’

‘Oh, listen to yourself. You find a dodgy box in the middle of a dump in a Stepney and suddenly you’re seeing biological warfare breaking out? Pandemic: The Sequel. You do have a vivid imagination, Terence, my son. Let’s calm down and wait for Old Bill to come and sort it all out, shall we?’

He could see that Terry was mildly peeved by the piss-take. ‘Look, let’s have another cuppa and just wait it out, eh?’ He got up from his chair and went over to the sink to turn the kettle on. ‘Then we can go for an early liquid lunch at the Carpenters’ and celebrate our exciting morning. I’m buying.’

At this prospect, Terry cheered up. ‘Be rude not to, wouldn’t it?’

‘Exactly.’

They sat in silence as the kettle boiled, listening to the traffic outside, the noise of kids

on their way to school and the distant rumble of a sound system being tested in one of the fashionable galleries that had clustered a few blocks away.

What happened next mostly eluded Dave as he lay on his hospital bed and tried to remember. They were still gossiping, that much he recalled, and sipping their teas. And then, in his peripheral vision, something outside, a blur – fast, determined, heading towards them pitilessly. Next, the hut door smashed open and there was a flurry of violent activity.

He did remember a figure in a black balaclava hitting Terry hard on the head, interrupting the protest that was forming in his throat, and Terry slumping instantly to the ground. And just as Dave was himself saying: ‘What the fu—?’, an arm came around his neck and a ferocious blow struck his temple that was both intensely painful and completely disorienting. But before he could absorb and think about how painful and disorienting it was, much less ask whoever was doing this to stop, another haymaker hit its mark. Then everything was blackness. ...