John Steel Collection - Books 4-6

Chapter 11

McCall met Steel outside the precinct. She noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual suit. Today he was in black jeans, T-shirt, a pair of Bugatti boots and a pea coat. The body of it was made of wool, but the sleeves and collar were padded leather.

“Going for the sporty look today?” she joked. Steel shook his head and smiled.

“I’ve got to go to the range, apparently I have to qualify,” he said, shrugging.

“Oh, you qualify for lots of things, Steel, believe me,” she answered with a large grin. She didn’t have to drive him, but she wanted to see what he could do. In all their time together, she had never really seen him shoot. McCall was itching to see ‘Supercop’ mess it up, or at least miss the target a few times. In fact, it so happened that McCall was the department’s ‘best shot’. Her dad had taught her to shoot when she was in her teens, and her natural aptitude had caused her to improve over the years.

They arrived at the outdoor range. It was a wooden construction, arranged into individual ‘pens’ that denoted each shooter’s firing point. Several staff were on standby to assist and to monitor the firers. Before heading to his position, Steel was briefed on the conditions of the shoot and the safety protocols. John nodded to the veteran cop and put on his ear defenders and headed for his given lane. McCall sat at the back next to the rear wall and opened the box of popcorn she had gotten from the vending machine. She was going to enjoy this.

* * *

The pair’s drive back to the precinct was silent, as was their elevator ride to the department’s floor. McCall was pale and felt ill. As the doors opened, they found Tooms and Tony ready with some toy pistols and a large target, their joke in order to shame Steel for when he failed the shooting test.

Steel marched into the captain’s office and handed him the folded target and the ‘pass confirmation’ paperwork. Tooms and Tony looked at McCall who was sitting at her desk, a strange haunted look on her face. Then they crept over to the captain’s door, just in time to see the captain unfold the target. The ‘ten ring’ in the centre was completely gone, the hole in the target being around twenty millimetres in diameter.

“Holy s**t!” yelped an excited Tooms, causing his boss, Captain Brant, to look up at him.

“Quiet!” Brant said, folding the target back up and filing the paperwork.

“So now you are qualified you can get your ass back to work, Detective,” Brant said to John Steel. “And that goes for you two jokers as well,” he yelled after Tooms and Tony, who quickly hurried back to their desks.

As Steel approached his office, he said nothing, nor did he smile. He could see that Sam McCall was pissed at him: he had beaten her previously unmatched score.

“Is there anything you’re not good at?” she yelled after him.

He stopped and gave a small uncomfortable smile.

“Yes,” he replied grimly. “Not letting the people, I care about get hurt or killed.” His face was pained. Then he disappeared into his office.

McCall sat there with her mouth open, suddenly feeling shitty. She stood up and followed him into his office, via the break room.

Steel’s office was an old storeroom he had commandeered and made his own. During a Christmas break, he had arranged for workmen to come in and turn it into something fantastic. The walls were covered with wooden panelling and burgundy velvet wallpaper. The same shade of oak that was on the wall panels was also that of the timber floorboards. Victorian furnishings filled the floor space, along with a large carved oak desk that was near the back of the room.

Two brown leather chesterfield armchairs were in front of the desk, and a red leather ship’s ‘captain’s chair’ sat proudly next to the footwell and the back of the desk. On the left-hand wall, a sixty-five-inch monitor acted as Steel’s murder ‘smartboard’.

McCall entered the room, brandishing two mugs of fresh coffee. Steel looked over at her and quickly tucked something away in a drawer.

“I thought you could use a coffee,” she said apologetically.

He smiled and took the mug from her. Funnels of fresh steam drifted up from the fresh brew. McCall sat in one of the armchairs, and the creak of heavy leather filled the room as it took her weight. The smell of the room was intoxicating old wood and leather filled the senses. McCall was sure that if he could have done, he would have had a fireplace installed as well.

McCall liked it there, for it was almost like stepping back into time. The only thing missing was the Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker cap and the briar pipe. It had a very Victorian feel to it all.

“Sorry about before,” McCall said, swinging her legs over one of the arms of the huge armchair, with her head resting of the other.

“I was … Well, I guess I was shocked, really, to be honest.” She smiled at her own confession.

Steel sat back in his chair and cradled the cup into his hands.

“I have always been good at that sort of thing.” His voice was soft, but there was a strange bitterness to it. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. I joined the tactical combat engineer Regiment when I was seventeen,” he explained, smiling as he thought back. “By the age of nineteen I was being poached by the SAS Regiment—they saw potential in me. Somehow I passed the entrance course first time—a lot of good men didn’t.” Steel’s words almost sounded regretful of his past and the friends he had lost.

“I was with them for several years until … Well, until something happened.”

Sam McCall could not see Steel’s eyes, but she knew if he could cry, he would be weeping right now.

“You mean your family?” she coaxed. “The m******e at your home?”

He looked shocked. But then smiled and nodded as if it was a relief that she knew already.

“After that, it was not safe for me to be in the SAS, so my father-in-law got me into the training for the SEAL teams. He is a senator with connections to the defence department, so all I had to do was pass.” Steel smiled again as if remembering.

“I passed the training first time. Of course, when they learned of my past employment, they couldn’t wait to give me a hard time because of it. I joined Team Five. A good unit with good men. In the first Iraq War, one of the helicopters carrying another team went down. Operations knew where they were, and they just needed a nod to get them out. We knew by dawn they would either be moved, or they would be dead before the extraction plan could be approved.”

McCall stared at him; her eyes wide, almost afraid to hear the rest. But she felt a strange compulsion to know what happened too.

“The problem was they were being held in a small town, a well-fortified town that had been there for a couple of thousand years at least. It had high walls to see off invaders. The powers-that-be could have ordered heavy armour and a couple of squads, but that meant collateral damage. The town was historic, so they had to come up with some other idea. That night I went for a walk and found myself getting captured.” Steel frowned as he remembered the details.

McCall’s eyes were still fixed on him, her hands shaking with a mixture of excitement and fear.

“They tortured me for what seemed like hours. They had their fun until the commander came. I knew he would come eventually; that was why I waited.” Steel took a sip from the coffee.

“I was hung upside down, like an animal ready for the s*******r. The commander laughed when I explained what was going to happen. About how I was going to kill them all. He seemed confused when I never mentioned killing him.” Steel took another sip from the mug, and the hot steam fogged up his sunglasses for a few seconds before clearing.

“I have no idea how many men died that day, but I do know that twelve of my brothers walked out, including fifteen others from different nations. The commander realised at that moment why he had been spared: so that he could warn others of the ‘green-eyed demon’. But rather than face the humiliation of losing all his men he shot himself.” Steel shrugged as though it was nothing.

“After that, I got picked for LOAN WOLF missions.”

Sam McCall lifted her cup with shaky hands, the dark liquid almost spilling over the sides.

“So … W-why did you leave?” she asked, her voice as unstable as the rest of her.

Steel smiled. “Something happened, and I lost a lot of friends. You could say that my past had found me. Later I was recruited by an agency to do … Well, things, shall we say.”

thingsMcCall suddenly had an uneasy feeling. She knew he had a past but not one that was as colourful as this.

“So, then you left the agency and became a cop?” McCall asked, hoping that was the end of his résumé.

“You could say that.” Steel spoke with an almost playful tone, which spooked McCall even more.

“Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is finding Amber’s killer and finding out how our John Doe fits in, or if he indeed does fit into all this.”

“Sure.” McCall nodded and sipped her coffee. “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

“We break Bob. We find out what he knows.”

McCall looked sceptical of Steel’s idea. She wanted to watch the bastard squirm, and she wanted to be the one who made him talk.