The chairman stood up, walked to the window and stood with his back to Harper, looking out over the lake. Finally he took a deep breath and turned to face him. ‘I’ll have to clear this with my board members, of course, but I think in these special circumstances, without in any way admitting liability on our part, or setting a precedent for any similar incidents in the future, I will be able to persuade them that it would be appropriate for the company to make an ex gratia payment to Mr Davies’s widow along the lines you have suggested.’
Harper gave a broad smile. ‘There you go. Thank you and trust me, you’ll sleep a lot sounder tonight as a result of that decision.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’ll say goodbye then and I hope - as I’m quite sure you do too - that it won’t be necessary for us to meet again. If we do, I can’t imagine that it will be as friendly a meeting and it will probably take place in much less salubrious surroundings.’
After a brief hesitation as he took that in, the chairman shook Harper’s hand and managed to force a smile. ‘As you say. Well, goodbye Mr Harper. I can’t say it’s been entirely a pleasure, but it has certainly been an education.’
‘You and me both,’ said Harper.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider” Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as TheTimes, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. The Bookseller magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world.
Born in Manchester, he began writing full-time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series, Two of his novels, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV and The Chinaman is now a major motion picture starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan.
To find out more, you can visit his website or find him on Facebook.
SLOW BURN
The fight against terrorism never ends, and Dan “Spider” Shepherd is on the front line of Britain’s defence against the extremists.
When an ISIS bombmaker arrives at Heathrow Aiport asking for asylum in exchange for revealing details of his paymasters, Shepherd is given the case. The bombmaker specialises in drone strikes, and homegrown jihadists that he has trained are already back in the UK, planning their attacks. But before he’ll agree to talk, the terrorist insists that his wife and son are rescued from a refugee camp in Turkey. Shepherd is tasked with bringing the family back to London, but he soon discovers that dark forces are out to stop him. And if he fails, hundreds will die
Hodder and Stoughton have published seventeen books featuring Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd written by Sunday Times bestselling author Stephen Leather. The eighteenth, Slow Burn, will be published in July 2020.
You can preorder Slow Burn now on Amazon
Also by Stephen Leather
Pay Off
The Fireman
Hungry Ghost
The Chinaman
The Vets
The Long Shot
The Birthday Girl
The Double Tap
The Solitary Man
The Tunnel Rats
The Bombmaker
The Stretch
Tango One
The Eyewitness
Penalties
Takedown
The Shout
The Bag Carrier
Plausible Deniability
Last Man Standing
Rogue Warrior
Spider Shepherd thrillers:
Hard Landing
Soft Target
Cold Kill
Hot Blood
Dead Men
Live Fire
Rough Justice
Fair Game
False Friends
True Colours
White Lies
Black Ops
Dark Forces
Light Touch
Tall Order
Short Range
Spider Shepherd: SAS thrillers :
The Sandpit
Moving Targets
Jack Nightingale supernatural thrillers:
Nightfall
Midnight
Nightmare
Nightshade
Lastnight
San Francisco Night
New York Night
Tennessee Night