‘Any war. Did you kill anybody?’
‘Emma!’ chided Susie. Shelley’s eyes flicked to the rear-view to check the status of the van behind. Still there. Biding its time.
The lights changed. The Peugeot in front began to move off. Shelley lifted the clutch and inched forward. The Peugeot jerked to a halt.
He tensed. Cars to the right of them, the pavement to the left, teeming with pedestrians. His eyes returned to the rear-view but nothing was happening at the van. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the Peugeot had simply stalled. Even so …
‘I don’t like this,’ he said out loud, cutting Emma’s chatter dead, the edge in his voice letting Susie and Emma know he was serious. Emma had been told: there might be a situation, and if there was, then Shelley was in charge. Don’t question. Don’t hesitate. Just do everything he tells you. And this was one of those times.
Still no activity from the van. The guys in the Peugeot seemed even more animated than before, behaving like a couple of blokes trying to get a recalcitrant car restarted. Shelley was on a knife-edge, ready for something to happen, ready for it not to happen, hoping, praying that he’d be able to tell Susie and Emma, ‘False alarm, guys,’ and go back to bantering about what he’d done ‘in the war’.
Eyes to the van. No movement. The indistinct shape of the driver looking bored. Eyes in front, the Peugeot double act still going strong.
And then came a movement he only saw in his peripheral vision. At the same time Susie, with fear in her voice, said, ‘Shelley …’
It was the woman from the VW Passat. She’d got out of the car and now stood by the BMW. In the next instant the locks to the BMW flicked open, the door was yanked wide and she bent into the car, looking for all the world as if she was loading something into the back seat.
Except for the gun that she lodged into the back of Shelley’s neck, making him freeze.
‘Awright, hero?’ she said in a strange put-on northern accent. ‘Face front, hands through the steering wheel and flat on the dashboard.’ Her short hair was ill-fitting, probably a wig. ‘Move your hands again and the last thing you’ll see is your teeth hit the windscreen.’
In the rear-view he saw that in the other hand she held a lock remote, some kind of universal access, and with that hand she reached for Emma. ‘Get out of the car, honey,’ she ordered. At her neck was the furry nodule of a microphone. Eyes front, Shelley saw that the two blokes in the Peugeot had put on head-sets and were monitoring the situation behind. One of them turned to show him a handgun but made no move to leave the car. They wanted to do this discreetly, with the minimum of fuss.
Time stood still inside the BMW. Susie sat frozen, eyes round with fear, parental instincts kicking in, but at the same time abiding by Shelley’s instructions to let him take charge.
‘I won’t tell you again,’ said the short-haired woman. ‘Get out before I paint the car with your bodyguard.’
‘What shall I do, Shelley?’ asked Emma. The fear in her voice cut through a symphony of angry car horns from behind. The entire junction was locked, the whole street brought to a halt.
‘Just do as she says, Emma,’ replied Shelley, very aware that his words were being relayed to the car in front and wanting to put them at ease. ‘Just go with the lady. She won’t hurt you, I promise.’
‘You heard the man,’ said the woman in her awkward northern accent, like something she’d learned off Coronation Street.
Reluctantly, Emma moved across the seat towards the kidnapper, who took hold of her.
‘Be lucky, sweetheart,’ Shelley told Emma.
It was the signal they’d worked out in advance: If I say ‘Be lucky, sweetheart’, it means that the bad guy’s grabbed you and I’m ready to make my move and I want you to bite the hand he’s holding you with. And I mean bite. I don’t mean nibble, or chew. I mean bite, like you’re biting down on the biggest, toughest bit of steak you’ve ever eaten. You understand me?
Emma did as she had been told and bit down hard on the woman’s hand. The woman screamed and pulled the trigger in the same moment as Shelley twisted in his seat, praying the gun barrel wouldn’t follow.
It didn’t. The shot singed a sideburn and cost him the hearing in his right ear for a week, but it missed and struck the centre of the steering wheel. Shelley heard another explosion and felt an almighty punch to the torso as the airbag deployed.
Pinned but half twisted in his seat, he grabbed the woman’s arm and with a shout of effort snapped it across the BMW’s midsection.
Her gun dropped and she screamed like a wounded animal as she yanked herself away from Shelley and free of Emma’s teeth, rebounding off her Passat and then running towards the Peugeot with her snapped arm cradled. Shelley saw red-tipped bone poking through torn flesh. She dragged open the rear door of the Peugeot and threw herself inside.
The men in the Peugeot were half in, half out of the car. Shelley saw a sawn-off shotgun, but so did pedestrians. Someone screamed. With that the guys in the Peugeot knew the game was up, the element of surprise lost. They decided to cut their losses, clambered back into the car and sped off.
Susie didn’t make it to Waitrose that day.
CHAPTER 13
A FEW DAYS after the attempted kidnapping Shelley was in his room at the top of the house, stooping in the eaves as he packed his few belongings into an open suitcase on the bed, when there came a small knock at the door.
He stopped, a white T-shirt in his hand, held as though he were about to serve it for dinner, and squeezed his eyes shut. Thinking, Oh no, not this.
‘Come in, Emma,’ he said, and cleared his throat of a crack that had appeared in his voice.
She entered, owning the room. Its tiny dimensions seemed to suit her. She was so small, but so resilient. While Susie had yet to recover from the attack and had taken to her bed as though physically ill – not that you could blame her, mind you – Emma had relished the extra attention. She’d told her story to anyone who’d listen, even given painfully accurate demonstrations of her great and fearsome biting technique, basking in the adults’ proclamations that she was ‘so brave, such a little warrior’. Maybe that was all kids. More likely it was Emma being Emma.
She cast her eyes over his folded clothes. ‘You’re very neat,’ she said brightly as she perched on the edge of Shelley’s bed and let her plimsolls swing. ‘Don’t tell me, “old habits die hard”?’
It was one of his catchphrases. Apparently.
‘Exactly right, sweetheart,’ he said, placing the folded T-shirt into the case. ‘And from what I’ve seen of your playroom it looks like you could do with a spell in the forces yourself.’
She sniffed as though to say Not likely, and then seemed to take stock, leaving a suitably significant pause and watching him expertly fold and pack a shirt before she next spoke. ‘Daddy says you’re leaving.’
‘That’s right,’ he said without looking up from the suitcase.
‘Were you going to say goodbye?’
‘I wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye,’ he told her, which wasn’t strictly true, but wasn’t exactly a lie either. The truth was that he hadn’t decided. Neither option appealed.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ he replied, knowing exactly what she meant, of course. Just wanting to delay talking about it.
‘Why are you going?’
‘I made a mistake. The kidnappers had been scoping us out for days – they must have been. They got the better of me, Emma, and if they did it once, they can do it again. I got complacent.’ That, and the other thing I can’t tell you about.
Funny thing with Emma, he was never sure if she was being a genuinely curious kid, or was in fact a super-intelligent puppetmaster, using advanced psychological techniques to get her way. Whatever the truth – probably somewhere between the two – she was shameless when it came to being cute. She was doing it now.
‘But they didn’t get the better of you, Shelley,’ she said. ‘You won
. The bad guys went away and Mummy and me are still here. I came home to my own house with you and Mummy and Daddy and my ponies and all my teddies and my messy playroom. And all of that happened because of you, because of what you taught me and what you did. Your job was to be a bodyguard, Shelley, and you did that job.’
He’d been down, no doubt about it. He’d been way harder on himself than he needed to be. But now, even though Emma’s words came from a place of not knowing the whole truth, he felt a kind of relief, a knowledge that although he had not done his job to the best of his ability, he had not failed. And that, at the end of the day, was the most important thing.
‘That’s good of you to say, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘It means a lot to me, it really does.’
‘Good,’ she said with finality. ‘Then you’ll stay?’
‘No.’
‘But …’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t change anything,’ he told her. ‘I still have to go. I’m going to talk to my contact, Gerald, ask him to employ someone else. That’s what the post needs. A fresh pair of eyes on the job.’
‘But what if I don’t want you to go?’ she asked. Her eyes were wet with tears.
‘I’m sorry, Emma.’
She came to him, beckoned him to bend, which he did, and received a kiss on the cheek for his efforts. ‘Then thank you,’ she said, and a wave of emotion threatened to engulf him, a strange mixture of gratitude and guilt.
A couple of hours later he was gone, and the next time he saw Emma Drake was in a photograph at her funeral.
CHAPTER 14
DAYS PASSED AFTER Shelley’s stand-off with Bennett in front of the house in which he’d once been like one of the family. Shelley called the house again to be told the Drakes were unavailable. He left messages but the calls went unreturned. He called Susie’s mobile and left messages, but she didn’t answer.
He tried Gerald Mowles, the security consultant who’d hooked him up with the gig all those years ago. Gerald was warm and friendly and they chewed the fat for a while until Shelley started asking questions about the Drakes.
‘I can’t tell you anything, I’m afraid,’ he told Shelley, drawing a curtain across the conversation.
‘Why is that?’
‘Because it would be a breach of client confidentiality.’
‘So the Drakes are clients?’ Shelley said.
‘If I were to tell you that, it would be a breach of client confidentiality.’
‘So the Drakes are clients, but you didn’t refer them to me?’
‘My job is to match clients with the appropriate operator depending on the service required,’ Mowles said.
‘So whatever service Guy wants, you knew I wouldn’t touch?’
‘If I were to tell you that, it would be a breach of client confidentiality.’
And so on.
In the end Susie rang him, a hurried conversation: ‘I’m so grateful and touched by your concern, David, but you must stop calling.’
‘Concern. Exactly. You know that’s what it is, don’t you? I’m worried that you’re getting into something you’ll regret. Is it Guy, Susie? Is he driving this?’
She paused and he could sense that she wanted to tell him something, just as she had at the funeral. ‘I can’t,’ she said at last, and the phone went dead.
He tried to ring her back. There was no answer.
CHAPTER 15
‘I DON’T THINK I understand, Sergei,’ said Dmitry. Canyons formed in his brow. ‘You told me that everything was sorted. You said to me, “She’s just a junkie, Dmitry. The police will not investigate.” You told me this and I believed you.’
Dmitry glared at Sergei, who held his gaze, aware that his conduct and performance were being appraised.
‘The enquiries are not being made by the police, Dmitry. If they were, they would get nothing.’
‘Then who?’ snapped the boss. ‘Who is making these enquiries?’
‘It appears that the girl’s father is rich. Very rich. Perhaps he has bought people to make these enquiries on his behalf.’
Dmitry reached for the spectacles that hung on a cord around his neck. ‘Name? What was the girl’s name?’
‘The name she gave us was an alias …’
Dmitry shook his head in frustration. ‘What was her real name?’
The air crackled. ‘It turns out her real name was Emma Drake, and she was the daughter of a man named Guy Drake.’
Dmitry held up a finger instructing Sergei to wait, then replaced his glasses and turned his attention to the screens before him.
After some minutes of peering and tapping, Dmitry once again removed his spectacles, and sat back with a low whistle. ‘Wow. Rich guy.’
Sergei nodded. He looked at his boss, seeing gears shift.
‘This changes things,’ said Dmitry.
‘Should we close the studio, Dmitry?’ proposed Sergei.
Dmitry looked at him sharply, both knowing that ‘the studio’ was an idea beloved of Alexander in Grozny, who would not take kindly to its closure. Alexander liked things to run smoothly. As Dmitry often said, his least favourite word was ‘complication’.
‘Are you really suggesting we close the studio, Sergei?’ asked Dmitry carefully.
‘I’m saying we should take such measures into consideration, Dmitry.’
‘Could they connect it to the dead girl?’
‘If they do, nobody will talk. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘Good,’ said Dmitry, ‘then let’s keep business as usual. Perhaps this rich microchip man will realise no amount of asking questions can bring his junkie daughter back. What do you think?’
Sergei thought that a father’s grief might not recede quite so easily, but said nothing. Instead he bid Dmitry farewell, turned and left the office.
On his way out he passed the doorway to the front room, where Grandfather sat watching television. For a moment he considered simply not paying his respects. After all, if the old man’s behaviour the other day was anything to go by, then he was already touched by dementia.
Then again, it wasn’t worth the risk. What if the old bastard was to have a sudden attack of lucidity and report back to Dmitry?
‘Good day to you, Ded,’ said Sergei, hand on the door handle about to let himself out.
Grandfather remained immobile, but his eyes swivelled slowly, as though unsticking themselves from the television screen in order to regard Sergei in the doorway.
‘He squealed, you know,’ said the old man in a sandpaper voice.
Sergei had been about to open the door but he stopped, rendered statue-like by a feeling that ran through him like fingers of ice. ‘Who squealed, Ded?’
The malevolent smile returned.
‘Your brother,’ said Grandfather.
CHAPTER 16
SHELLEY STOOD INSIDE the gates of the Drake house in the cold night. He crossed the grounds at the rear of the house, careful not to activate any of the security lights. The house had a basement gym and swimming pool area, and he took a chance that a window there remained the possible entry point it had always been.
It was. He hunkered down, hearing cartilage in his knees crackle, a sound like snapping tinder in the silence of the night. Old man, he thought. Too old for all this.
Through the glass he saw the blue shimmer of the swimming pool and skeletal shapes of gym equipment in an otherwise empty room. The window was the double-glazed type with an internal sliding door. In thirty seconds’ time he was standing by the indoor pool.
Noiseless. The water still, like a mirror, glimmering at him. Almost eerie.
He left the room and climbed the stairs that led up to the ground floor. There he glanced in an open door and saw that the Drakes had redecorated one of the downstairs bathrooms. In the reception hall a grand staircase led up to the first floor. For a moment or so he stood and allowed the shadow to claim him, eyes adjusting as he reacquainted himself with the house, fixing the layout in his head.
Next he
trod the stairs to the first-floor landing and took stock. If Bennett had a man on duty then he wasn’t alerted. Nor was he making rounds of the house.
A second or so later Shelley was slipping into the master bedroom which, like the downstairs bathroom, had been given a makeover in the intervening years: the dressing table was new, the sofa, easy chairs, a huge television the size of a snooker table that looked like part of the wall. All were new.
In the bed slept Guy Drake, alone, fitfully, a prisoner of his nightmares. Shelley watched him for a moment or so until it became uncomfortable, gazing at this rich, powerful man in a state of such profound vulnerability. He cleared his throat. ‘Guy,’ he whispered, steeling himself for Drake waking up alarmed and grateful when that didn’t happen. Instead, Drake sat up slowly and blinked hard, absorbing the sight of Shelley standing in his darkened bedroom at 3 a.m. and taking it in his stride, as though compared to his fortune lately, this was the least life could throw at him.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ he asked, even more woozy than Shelley might have expected. His eyes went to the bedside table but he saw no medication. Or was it just that Guy had been duffed up by events? He looked jowlier than Shelley remembered. The whole lower half of his face seemed to wobble when he moved his head. There were dark bags beneath his eyes, the skin hanging loose, almost as though the flesh on his face had begun to melt. Was this what a nervous breakdown looked like modelled by a recently bereaved CEO?
Not for the first time, Shelley thought gratefully of the fact that he’d never had kids and never planned to. All that worry. The knowledge that life might snatch out your heart just when you were least expecting it. I’ll pass, thanks.
‘I wanted to say again how sorry I was to hear about Emma,’ he said. Here and now, as a night-time intruder, his words sounded ridiculous, but he thought they needed saying all the same.
‘Didn’t you already say that, pal?’ drawled Drake. ‘Didn’t you say that at the funeral?’
‘There’s something else.’
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