Apart from the camera, there wasn’t much else lying around. Working rapidly, I checked the bathroom and found expensive men’s toiletries around the washbasin and a razor with tiny black hair trapped in it. If the room cleaner had come round this morning she hadn’t done a thorough job; a few long black hairs were wrapped around the bathtub drain.
In the closet about a dozen hangers held expensive casual clothes, including a black track suit and hoodie. I searched the pockets and found nothing. On the closet floor were walking shoes caked with mud and a pair of heavy boots. No suits or ties, so he was not a businessman. On the shelf above the clothes rested a large, hard-sided suitcase. I hauled it down, felt its heavy weight, and placed it on the bed.
It had the brand name ‘Pelican’ on the top and the black polypropylene construction looked solid enough to stop a bullet. On the side, between recessed handles and latches, was a four number combination lock.
Even if I’d had a high-powered electric drill, there wasn’t a chance in hell of me opening this case inside about four hours or so. I lifted it back up onto the shelf and closed the closet.
That was it. I stood in the middle of the room and silently mouthed a curse of frustration. I’d found nothing. A laptop might have been good, though it would probably have been password protected. But there wasn’t even a photograph, letter, book, receipt, nothing.
A frightening thought flashed into my head. I recalled the spy camera I’d noticed in the tree behind my house. There might be one hidden in this room, recording my movements. These things could be tiny, right? He could have put one anywhere. There was an air vent high up on the wall, a likely place to conceal a camera. I squinted my eyes and tried to see if the screws at the corners of the vent panel had been undone recently. No way of telling. I swallowed down the panic.
Then I realised it could be even worse. He might have remote viewing that he could switch on at any moment. He could be watching me right now, as he made his way back here.
I turned and almost ran for the door, barely pausing to listen for anyone outside. In the hallway I took the stairs two at a time, found my way to the back of the building and left the way I’d come.
This time I didn’t have a box to hide my face. I needn’t have worried.
The cook never even gave me a glance.
Chapter 35
On my way back to the cottage I thought over what I’d just done. It hadn’t benefited me at all and it might alert my pursuer that I knew he was there. I cursed myself for being an idiot and regretted letting my guard down. No doubt the three double whiskeys had had a lot to do with it.
Without really thinking much about it, I took a longer route back and made my way through the copse of scrawny conifers to the back of the cottage. I had forgotten about the dog and expected it to start jumping at the back door when it scented my approach, but there were no sounds of paws scratching on wood. When I got up close, I peered through the kitchen window.
The evening sun illuminated the room. The fridge door was wide open, its light on. On the floor was a pool of spilt milk, the empty carton beside it. Also on the floor was the dog, its muzzle white with milk, lying on its side as if asleep. I unlocked the door and hurried in.
The dog made no sound or movement when I went over to it. I was about to shake it angrily when it struck me that something was badly wrong here. A fly had somehow got indoors and was crawling around the dog’s eye. Crawling over the dog’s eyeball.
I shook the dog anyway and confirmed what I already suspected. It was dead. The milk carton looked chewed and slobbered over. Somehow the dog had managed to open the fridge door and had pawed the milk carton onto the floor, where the contents had spilled out and been eagerly lapped up. This was a dog that had liked milk, even poisoned milk. The same milk I had used on my bran flakes this morning. My secret stalker must have seen me bring the dog back and had known I wouldn’t be able to reset the house alarm on with a dog in the kitchen.
All at once I became aware of my vulnerable position, crouched down over the dog, with my back to the open door. I swivelled around, my hand reaching for the automatic.
The summer silence was absolute apart from the cawing of a crow nearby. I closed and locked the door, then went over and shut the fridge. There was no putting off the next bit. I had always been sure that my opponent would want to be in at the kill, to tell me exactly what he thought of me and why I deserved to die. Almost certainly, he’d poisoned other things in the fridge also. One drink to quench my thirst after the long walk home would have been enough to ensure his success. Which meant that he was hiding somewhere in the house.
I went through to the living room, using the technique you see in the movies – held the gun out in front of me in a two-handed grip, swivelled around quickly and guarded my back. Then I went upstairs and repeated the search room by room, opening all the closets and cupboards, looking under the beds and behind doors until I was absolutely sure I was alone.
My senses still alert, I went back down to the living room and looked all around. I’d let my guard down over a stupid mongrel and this house had now become my enemy. I brushed a chair seat with my hand, then wondered what I expected to find. A poisoned thumb tack? I took a deep breath and told myself not to overdo the precautions.
I sat down and mulled over what exactly had happened. The tiger had acted surprisingly speedily and had caught me off guard, despite all my routines and safeguards. He had jumped on one innocent lapse. Had he sent the dog? Don’t be ridiculous. That way of thinking was paranoia; he had merely watched it happen and taken advantage of it. My eyes roamed around the room. In an old house like this, with bookcases, shelves, cabinets, side tables everywhere, he could have hidden any amount of microphones and spy cameras. Maybe that was paranoid thinking, maybe not.
The fact that he wasn’t hiding in the house was a puzzle. Supposing I had vomited up the poison, or been able to call for help on my cell phone? My dedicated executioner would have wanted to be in at the kill, to finish me off and make certain of his success if nothing else.
He was waiting and watching close by, outside. Suddenly I was sure of it. Then why hadn’t he come in? It had to be because he was observing at the front and hadn’t seen me come through the trees and enter the house from the back. As far as he knew, I hadn’t got home yet. Eventually he would approach to peer through the windows and find out what was going on. Presumably he had lock picks or some kind of skeleton key and would enter if he thought the place was still empty.
My arm trembled uncontrollably and the gun shook in my hand. At the same time, it now seemed clear what I should do next. If I holed up in a safe, hidden spot – say, on the floor behind the couch, this side of the doorway into the kitchen – I could get a clean first shot at the brute. He would come armed and the poisoned dog would show that I’d fired in self defense.
I took position and waited, ears pricked for the slightest sound, eyes scanning the window for a fleeting shadow. Long minutes ticked by. After thirty minutes I began to have my doubts but told myself to be patient. At the hour mark I decided my plan wasn’t going to work. If he didn’t see me walk up to the front door and enter, he wouldn’t make his move. For all he knew, I might have planned to spend the entire evening in town.
There was nothing for it but to creep out again unnoticed by the back way and, assuming I could gather up the courage, return plainly and openly by the front entrance. It would be a tense walk. Still, the man was unlikely to risk jumping out of a hedge at me while he had the poisoned milk, and God knows what else, waiting for me in the fridge.
I holstered the automatic and crawled across the floor, past the dog and the rapidly souring milk, and out the back door. This time I picked my steps through the copse of trees, making as little noise and disturbance as possible, and started out across grassy, unkempt fields. It was slow going, for I had to keep myself out of sight of anyone hiding in the Long Field, which meant squeezing under barbed wire fences. After what seemed like a
ges I was able to cut down a slope, push through a thorny hedge and get onto the road. I brushed myself down, licked my scratched hands and began to casually stroll back to the house again.
By the time I got to the lane leading up to the cottage, the sun was low in the sky. The high hedges made the lane dark and foreboding. I tried to convince myself that there were no holes in my reasoning. Starting up the lane, I realised in stark horror that there was a very large hole indeed. My stalker, wondering if he had somehow missed me, might have crept up to the house and looked through the kitchen window. The dead dog and the spilt milk would have immediately told him to abort his plan. Instead, he could now be waiting for me somewhere in the lane, ready to fire on me at close range from behind either hedge.
Never before had I felt such fear, not even when I was buried in the avalanche in the mountains. A tight knot churned my stomach and made me want to vomit. I felt cold and yet rivulets of sweat were running down the back of my neck.
Defense here was so limited. I drew the pistol but knew that even if I saw him I could not shoot first. What if I killed the wrong man? What if, in the gloom, I missed? I was no marksman. I couldn’t risk anything other than an easy shot.
The light was patchy in the lane and my eyes struggled to adjust to the continually changing conditions. My ears strained for every tiny sound. Suddenly I heard a click – a gun being cocked – and dived to the ground.
Nothing happened. Seconds later, a small bird flew out of the hedge and soared up into the sky high above me. It must have snapped a twig close to its perch. I brushed gravel off my clothes and carried on.
I concentrated on the reason why I was doing this risky walk, trying to calm myself with the thought. It didn’t work. I’d been crazy to do all this second guessing of my enemy. But there was no retreating now. I had to get back to the cottage, go in by the front door, and act as if everything was normal. After giving me a little time to drink something or eat something poisoned, the hunter would enter the house, expecting to find his prey lying on the floor defenceless. I would be waiting, the hunted now the hunter, ready to do the necessary. Then I could live the rest of my life without fear; get in the air again, become a normal human being.
The lane curved to the left up to the cottage and ahead of me everything was darkness. My legs bent instinctively and it was all I could do to keep myself from breaking into a run. A cluster of thick branches drew my eye and looked for all the world like a man crouched with a pointed gun. My hand whipped up and I aimed the automatic, far too late if it had been a real killer. I released pressure on the trigger and swore at myself under my breath.
At last I reached the driveway up to the house. I hurried up, almost resigned to experiencing the fatal pain of bullets that never came. Inside the front door, I raised the automatic and searched all the rooms, leaving the kitchen to last.
The dog was gone, removed. The spilt milk had been cleaned up. I checked the fridge and saw that several items were now missing. It was almost as if it had all never happened.
I barred the front and back doors and searched every room again. He was gone and hadn’t left a trace of ever being here. I now had to decide what to do.
There was no way that I was going to stay in the house, switch on lights when it got dark, let him know exactly where I was. I would never get to sleep and I needed a break from the nervous tension of playing the goat. In an upstairs closet, I found a navy blue sleeping bag and a black woolly toque. I left by the back door, grabbing a tin of baked beans, a spoon and a can opener on my way out.
The night outside was moonless, which suited me perfectly. In the copse of trees behind the house I cleared a small hollow and lay down in it. Clutching María’s rosary in one hand and the pistol in the other, I eventually fell asleep.
Chapter 36
I dreamed of a dark figure, about ten feet tall, dragging a dead dog behind him. The dog’s blood was leaving red streaks on the grass. I crawled behind and my hands became sticky with the blood. As I wiped them, a shadow loomed over me. I looked up into the double barrel of a shotgun.
Early morning sunlight woke me. My hands were wet with dew, not blood, and the sleeping bag was sodden. I found the automatic lying inches from my right hand and slowly rose to a sitting position with my back propped against a tree. My belly was rumbling and I opened the can I’d brought. I’d eaten cold beans at camp as a child and here, in the bright chill of morning, they tasted better than nothing.
It was clear to me what must have happened the previous evening. My first arrival home had not been unobserved as I’d thought; nor had my stealthy departure. Perhaps the hunter had another of his cameras trained on my back door. But, whether he was observing through binoculars or a spy camera, he couldn’t have seen inside. For that, he had to come up to the window and look into the kitchen. Seeing the dog – why hadn’t I hidden it and cleaned up the mess! – he knew his ruse had been discovered. Assuming I’d run to safety, he cleared up the evidence and took off. The last thing he’d have expected was that I’d come back, exposed and vulnerable on the road and lane. I could probably have sauntered home in orange overalls last night, singing my head off while turning cartwheels.
Whatever . . . it was too late to do anything about any of that now. I made my way cautiously back to the house, entering again by the back door, automatic in hand, and checked the rooms once more. Still hungry, I opened a tin of salmon and swallowed it down, took a long drink of water straight from the tap, and thought about what to do next. The hunter probably took off last night but he would be back today. He had only failed to get me owing to the unforeseeable persistence of the dog, pawing at the fridge door until it had managed to claw it open. I might not be so lucky next time.
By now I felt sick in my stomach of all the second guessing. My hunter seemed like the Invisible Man, always out of sight while moving closely around me, manipulating my surroundings and setting deadly traps where I had felt safest. He was wearing me down psychologically. It had to stop. I had to see him, face to face, before I became a nervous wreck.
I went upstairs and crept up to the front window with the binoculars. If he was somewhere in the Long Field it should be possible to spot him. Hidden behind the drapes, I searched the old airfield inch by inch, taking my time and looking for a shadow moving beside a building or the gleam of a lens in the sun. There wasn’t the slightest sign of him. I gave up and scanned the fields further to my right. A lone tree, scrawny and largely dead, stuck up into the sky like a long, grey pin. A bald eagle perched at the very top on a bare branch. It was unusual to see one away from mountains at this time of year and I examined it closely through the binoculars.
It kept its head to one side, as if watching something below. I adjusted the binoculars and scanned the ground beneath the tree, making out a straight black line behind the long grass. It only took me a minute to find it on the hand-drawn survey map I’d looked at earlier. What both the bird and I were looking at was the corrugated iron roof of an old, open-sided shed. Apparently there was, or had been, a drinking trough for cows there too. Because it was in a deep hollow, with the rusted roof barely showing above ground from most vantage points, I’d missed it on my walking explorations.
But the hunter hadn’t. He must have thought it the perfect vantage point, with a commanding view of both the front and back of the house, and where he could even stand upright without being seen by me or anyone else. If he’d had a rifle and a good enough aim, he could have finished me from right there.
I continued to watch the spot and, after a while, thought I saw a movement. There was someone there all right, and it had to be him. I now had a choice to make; I could try to stalk him in his lair or continue to play the goat and confront him at a place of my choosing.
It was just possible that it was someone else at the shed and, in any case, I didn’t fancy my chances of approaching him silently from behind. I swallowed hard and made up my mind that I was sick of being stalked. Next time, he would come
to me. I checked the automatic, concealed it under my light jacket, and set out by the front door.
Assuming the tiger was watching me from the shed, I had time to go down the lane in safety before he could possibly catch me up. At the end of the lane, where I normally turned left on the road to go into town, this time I took right. According to the map, this would bring me north-west, where I would meet an intersection that eventually led all the way back to Fort Stuart, past a graveyard at the opposite end of the town.
More importantly, the stretch of road I was now on was straight as a propeller shaft. There was no way that the tiger could get to me quietly and unobserved over the fields and through the hedges, so he would have to follow me on the road. Turn around and I would see him.
By the time I neared the intersection, there were three people behind me, two walking and one on a bicycle. The walkers were too far back to make out any facial features. The cyclist was catching up fast. My hand went down to the gun at my waist as I slowed my pace and waited for the bicycle to draw level. My ears picked up the low crackle of narrow wheels traversing gravel strewn tarmac. The sound grew louder and I tensed for action. I visualised the rider drawing an automatic and putting a bullet in my head as he whizzed past, leaving me dead as he vanished within seconds. Why had I not planned for this eventuality?
A tinny, tinkling sound. The cyclist was ringing the bell on his handlebars. My God, was he taunting me like a matador taunts the bull? Then I heard a voice right behind my back.
“’Scuse me, please. Road’s a bit potholed here.”
Shadow of a Killer Page 12
