Evolution of Fear Read Online Free Page A

away. The rain had relented and the cloud cover thinned. Moonlight sent shadows twitching across the landscape. He knelt once more beside the dead man and went through his pockets, extracting a wallet, three extra magazines for the MP5, a set of keys with a BMW ring, and a mobile phone, its standby light blinking red. Clay flipped open the phone and thumbed the scroll button. Nothing. The phone was password protected. He pulled out the SIM card and threw the phone over the cliff.
    Back inside the cottage, he lit a lamp and inspected his arm. The knife, still lying on the floor, had sliced through the sleeve of his leather jacket and into his deltoid. He walked to the bathroom and opened the big cupboard. Crowbar’s idea of a medical kit resembled a military field hospital. There were giving sets, IV kits, every size and shape of bandage and compress, sutures, tape, morphine, coagulants, antibiotics by the carton, splints and slings. Clay took off the jacket, winced as he pulled the grey hooded sweatshirt over his head and pulled off his shirt. It was a clean slice across the arm, about three inches long, at least a couple of centimetres deep. Not too bad. He’d been lucky.
    He stood and watched the blood ooze from the wound. As he’d lunged for Clay, the Boer had slipped on the wet floor and missed his target. Those new city shoes he’d been wearing, the shiny wet leather soles, had probably saved Clay’s life.
    Which shoes you put on in the morning.
    The side of the helicopter you got out of.
    Where you decided to step. Here, or here.
    These were the things that determined if you lived or died, whether you ended up in a coma for the rest of your life, lost your legs just above the knees, went home in one piece, physically at least. The brute physics of it – in retrospect always so pure and clear, something you could calculate, but in the causation so utterly unpredictable and, in the end, so spectacularly unfair. And for so long it had been for him the ultimate argument against the existence of God, and since he’d met Rania the ultimate argument for Him. For without His arbitrage, what possible explanation? What meaning?
    One thing was certain. Allah, if he was out there, had a warped conception of justice, but a hell of a sense of humour.
    Clay washed and dried the wound, snapped open a vial of disinfectant and doused the upper part of his arm, letting the sting nudge away this pointless philosophy. Soon he had the wound passably sutured and bandaged. He was getting good at working one-handed, much better than the bumbling frustration of the first weeks. He grabbed a box of painkillers, extra sutures, gauze and compresses, more disinfectant, a box of morphine, two clean towels and a box of surgical gloves, carried them into the kitchen and put them on the table.
    Time was running. Clay threaded on a clean shirt, a dry hoodie, and hunched into the wet leather jacket. He opened up his bag, stuffed in the extra medical supplies. Then he grabbed the MP5 from the table, cleared the chamber, pulled out the magazine, and slid weapon and ammunition in with the supplies. From the drawer under the sink he fished out a box of .45 shells for the Glock and dropped them in with the other stuff. He walked to the fireplace, opened the flue, reached up and worked loose the blackened brick just above the baffle, pulled out a metal tin and extracted a fold of cash, sterling and euros, and two passports: Marcus Edward, Canadian, from Vancouver; and David Jackson, a Brit born in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Both documents contained the same photographof Clay, taken two and half months ago, the day after the killings in London, the eyes narrow, the mouth drawn, the hair chopped back. He looked like someone else, someone older. Clay stashed the money and passports in the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He glanced at his watch. Just gone seven. Maybe ten and a half hours of good darkness left. He pulled a rain poncho from a hook near the