As we walked, and the road got so steep that it began to resemble a climb, I slipped a hand into the pocket of my still damp jacket and felt Kathy’s phone. The woods around us were silent now, the houses gone, the road gradually becoming little more than a potholed track. I looked around, trying to spot anyone monitoring our progress, but if anyone was there, they were well hidden. Kathy’s mobile was a fliptop like mine, so I flicked it open inside the pocket and, finding what I hoped was the on switch, pressed my thumb on it until it made a tiny muffled bleep.
We reached the brow of the hill, maybe four minutes after leaving the car, and the road flattened out ahead of us. There were still trees on either side but they were more spaced out now, making concealment that much more difficult. Beyond them, fields were visible as well as several farm buildings. I could still see no-one.
I felt with my finger for the number two button on the phone. Kathy had never been good at remembering numbers and her code to unlock the SIM card was a simple 2222. Four pushes on that button and the phone would start broadcasting a signal. I’d read somewhere that this was enough for a phone company to track its location, often down to within a few feet. I was taking a terrible risk, and a voice in my head told me that by switching the phone on I was sentencing my children to death. Deeper down, instinct told me that unless I made some effort at providing a clue to our whereabouts, then we – the whole family – were finished. But if I was searched, and they found the phone, then there really would be no way out. I needed to ditch it somewhere, but it was going to have to be somewhere close to our destination. The problem was that with every step I took, the prospect of my discovery became that much more real. Even now someone could be watching me through binoculars, following my every move.
I pressed the numbers and flicked the phone shut, clutching it in my palm. Then I slipped my hand from my pocket and, as I drew level with a thick puddle of mud formed in a divot at the side of the track, let it slip from my grasp. At the same time I moved closer to Kathy, putting an arm on her shoulder, and said, louder than was necessary, that everything was going to be OK. ‘Of course it’s not going to fucking be OK,’ she answered, without bothering to turn in my direction. But at least she didn’t hear the phone hit the ground.
I immediately regretted my action, but it was too late to worry about that now. The die had been cast. You make split-second decisions, and sometimes they can have life-changing results; the point is, you still have to make them. I kept walking, not breaking my stride, not giving anyone watching even the slightest hint that I might be up to something. I said nothing further to Kathy and she said nothing to me.
The woods ended and became fields, the track continuing to run through them in a straight line before disappearing as the land dipped downwards. A house stood alone, just back from the track, about a hundred yards’ distant.
‘OK, stop where you are,’ said an unfamiliar voice a few feet to my right.
I did as I was told and saw a thin man in a Homer Simpson face mask appear from behind a thick holly bush that partly obscured a timber-clad, single-storey building a few yards behind him. The man held a pistol with a long, cigar-shaped silencer that dwarfed his skinny, hairless wrist. He was dressed in jeans and a black, pulled-up hoodie with the word surf written on the chest in jaunty script. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell he was young – probably early twenties. There was something in his overall demeanour – a little gawky and skittish – that suggested he wasn’t a hundred per cent confident in what he was doing.
He waved us over with the gun, and when we reached him he pushed us behind the bush so that we were out of sight of the road.
‘Empty your pockets,’ he demanded, waving the gun around as he spoke.
We did so. There wasn’t much. I had a pen, some loose change, and my credit card wallet. Kathy didn’t have anything. She tended to keep her personal belongings in a handbag, which I guess had been left at the cottage and had subsequently been turned into charcoal.
‘Chuck it all on the floor.’
I let the stuff drop from my hands and lifted my arms away from my sides as he patted me down in an amateur fashion, before turning his attention to Kathy. She glared at him, and pushed her legs tightly together as he subjected her to a slightly more detailed search.
When he’d finished, he told me to pick my stuff back up. ‘All right, get inside,’ he said, pushing first Kathy and then me in the direction of the single-storey building. He made a point of pressing the gun hard into my back, and I assumed he was enjoying his little bit of power. It depressed me that the world seemed so full of individuals who gained enjoyment and satisfaction from inflicting pain.
The building was obviously a fairly recent and expensive barn conversion which made it look similar to a high-spec log cabin. The front windows were large and double-glazed but the curtains were drawn, making it impossible to tell who was inside. We followed a cobbled path down to the front door, and when we were two steps away it opened with a flourish. The huge balaclava-clad man who’d come into our cottage’s master bedroom the previous night holding a pump-action shotgun loomed over us, this time unarmed. The man Daniels had called Lench. He was still dressed in the same black clothes, flecked now with pale mud, and his immense bearing and long, ape-like arms, bulging with muscles like cannonballs, gave him the appearance of an executioner from a medieval history book. Behind the mask, he radiated a cold confidence that had the entirely natural effect of making other men feel weaker. I’d met the occasional man like him in the business world, although never one his size. They were invariably highly successful, and, just as invariably, psychopaths.
‘Come inside,’ he said in an ordinary, slightly feminine voice that did nothing to detract from the air of menace that surrounded him.
I was first in, and he pointed me in the direction of a large and very modern kitchen, all done out in pine, with an oak dining table in the middle that seated eight. There were pots and pans lining the walls, all in order of size and make, and everything was spotlessly clean and tidy. I went over to the far window and looked out across the field. Kathy followed me over, while Lench took a seat at the head of the table facing us. The younger man who’d searched us stood near the door, the gun held by his side, the Homer Simpson mask giving us a dozy smile.
‘You know what I want,’ said Lench, without preamble. ‘And one of you knows where it is. Our mutual friend, Jack, said that it was you, Tom, but I have a feeling he might have been protecting someone.’
He smiled behind the balaclava and looked at Kathy. She held his gaze, the fear that had been so prominent on her face earlier now giving way to a quiet rage that sat behind her eyes. Her body was tense, and I thought for a moment that she might do something stupid, like charge him. But she stayed where she was and remained silent.
‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since yesterday afternoon. When Jack knew we were about to kill him, he tried to think of a way to protect the woman he was fucking, so he told us that it was her husband who had what we were looking for. That’s how you came to be involved in everything, Tom. All very unfortunate, really.’ He leaned forward in the seat, resting his elbows on the table, and regarded us both in turn. ‘And now the moment of truth. Does a child die, or do you tell me where it is?’
I looked at Kathy, but she continued to stare at Lench.
‘You murdered Vanessa, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘Are you talking about the woman at the university? That was a case of mistaken identity, I’m afraid, and it wasn’t me. One of my colleagues was dealing with that. He ran into her while looking for you. It didn’t take us long to find out who you are and where you worked. But I’m not interested in discussing this. You know what I want. Now, are you going to tell me where it is?’
Hatred flared in Kathy’s face, and once again I got the feeling she might try to do something stupid. I moved in closer and put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Remember, Mrs Meron, your children are d
epending on you.’
She glared at him defiantly for several seconds before finally reaching down and pulling up the leg of her jeans a couple of inches. She unzipped one of her ankle boots and pulled a small gold-coloured key from inside her sock. She put it down on the table and slid it across in Lench’s direction. ‘Jack gave me this yesterday, before you killed him. It opens a safety deposit box at King’s Cross station. I don’t know what it is you want, but I’m guessing it’s there.’
‘Number three-two-eight,’ said Lench quietly as he examined the key. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a mobile. As we watched he called a number. When the person at the other end picked up, he reeled out a set of instructions, keeping his voice low and turning away so we couldn’t hear what he was saying. A few seconds later, he replaced the phone in his pocket. ‘Our man will be at that deposit box in about forty minutes. As soon as he’s verified the contents we’ll let you and your children go. But if you haven’t been entirely honest with us, on every matter’ – he seemed to look right through me as he said this – ‘then you all die.’
I thought of the phone sitting in the mud fifty yards away, and wondered whether it would save or condemn us.
40
Twenty minutes after Jean Riley had called Mike Bolt, she phoned him again. By this time he was pacing up and down in the sitting area in front of his kitchen, half-watching Sky News, desperate to be doing something. The reporters were dissecting the previous day’s big football match. As was often the case, England had lost to supposedly weaker opposition, the final score being 2–0. Bolt had missed the last goal – a goalmouth scramble after a terrible keeping error – which Sky helpfully showed for him. Schoolboy defending, said the reporter, using a well-worn phrase that Bolt had to admit was an apt description.
So far, there’d been no mention of the Jack Calley murder, or that of Kathy Meron’s colleague at the university. Clearly no-one in the media had made the connection yet between Jack and Lord Parnham-Jones, and as for the other killing, a mundane stabbing all too common in London, it would be lucky to make the local news.
Bolt picked up the mobile on the first ring.
‘They’ve got a signal on Kathy Meron’s phone,’ Jean told him. ‘A place called Hambleden, seven or eight miles off the M40 in Buckinghamshire.’
‘I know it.’ Bolt had been there once before with his ex-wife on one of the occasional day trips they used to make to places outside the city. He remembered it as a very pretty village with good walks in the surrounding countryside. ‘How close can you pinpoint it?’
‘We’ve got it down to the top of Ranger’s Hill, which runs up from the north end of the village. You’ll need to look at a map to get an exact spot. Are you going to drive over there?’
There was, of course, no way Bolt could have said no. ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to take a look. I’ll let the big boss know where I’m going, and if I get a location on Kathy Meron, I’ll call for back-up. Keep me posted of any changes.’
He knew that there was no point trying to get additional resources to help him, not with knowing only the location of Kathy Meron’s mobile. He also didn’t want to flood the area with local police, just in case the couple were in danger and their safety was compromised.
When he’d hung up, he called DCS Evans, but his line was busy so he left a detailed message before ringing Keith Lambden to let him know about this new development.
‘She drives a maroon Hyundai Coupé apparently,’ Lambden told him. ‘A witness called the incident room an hour ago to say she’d seen it parked behind some trees about twenty yards down from Calley’s house, and only just visible from the road. This was at about half past one yesterday.’
‘So, just after the neighbours saw her drive past? That’s strange. The neighbours, the Crabbes, said they’d seen the woman they identified from the photograph as Kathy Meron with Jack Calley several times before, so I’d assumed they were having an affair.’
‘I think it’s a fair assumption to make.’
‘But if that was the case, why didn’t she park on his driveway? There’s room for at least three cars on it, and Calley’s only got one. Why park your car twenty yards away, and out of sight?’
‘Maybe someone else was there.’
‘Or maybe,’ Bolt said, ‘she didn’t want to be seen.’
41
The wait seemed interminable, the minutes dragging by in slow motion. Kathy and I avoided looking at each other. For the most part we stood where we were, utterly helpless, but occasionally one of us would pace round our end of the table a little, or sit down in one of the chairs, always avoiding Lench’s mocking gaze.
Lench himself never spoke. He sat where he was, hardly moving. Waiting with the confident patience of a cat stalking prey. There was no point begging him for mercy. Both of us, I think, knew that. Here was a man utterly at ease with his cruelty. We were nothing to him, not even cardboard cut-outs. Neither were our children. He would kill every one of us without a second’s thought. We weren’t even worth speaking to, except to provide him with the information he was after. I doubt if there were many people with as cold a heart as his walking this world, and I cursed my bad luck that our paths had crossed.
After a while he left the room, his chair scraping loudly on the tiled floor, and only the gunman in the Homer Simpson mask remained. He was silent too.
I went over to the window and looked out again. The view was green and pretty. Normally, I’d have appreciated it. Today, I wished I was looking at something ugly, something more in tune with my feelings. A scrapyard or a slag heap. A landfill site. I wondered if anyone was responding to my SOS, moving in on us right now. ‘Get real,’ I told myself. ‘No-one’s coming. You’re on your own. You’ve always been on your own.’
I looked at my watch yet again. Ten past nine. The forty minutes were up. The person Lench had sent would be at King’s Cross by now, and the moment of truth with us soon. Which probably meant death. Yet it wasn’t that that occupied my thoughts. Because something was bugging me. Something Kathy had said that didn’t ring true. I played back my conversation with her in the car earlier. She’d admitted to me that Jack had given her the key to the deposit box, and that it contained something important belonging to one of his clients. She’d told Lench this too, and where the box could be found.
No, it was something else . . .
I looked down at her. She was sitting with her head slightly bowed, eyes downcast. Both her hands were flat on the table, palms down. One thumb moved left and right in a steady windscreen-wiper-like movement, the only visible sign of the tension I knew was coursing through her. She wasn’t a fidgeter like me; she tended to simmer silently and without moving. It had always been an aspect of her character that unnerved me.
Her fingerprints had been on the knife that killed Vanessa. But she wasn’t the killer. I’d seen the killer, and Lench had not denied that one of his people had done it. Therefore it wasn’t Kathy. But her prints were on the knife.
Then it hit me. Last night she hadn’t asked me about the injuries I’d received from the filleting knife or how I’d sustained them. Daniels hadn’t said anything about them either. So she couldn’t have known that I’d been attacked by Vanessa’s killer. Yet when we were speaking this morning she mentioned the attack, had even talked about my attacker being a ‘he’.
How the hell had she known?
I racked my brains to think of when I could have let slip something, but there’d been very little time for me to have done so, and I was almost certain I hadn’t. Which meant only one thing.
She’d been at the library yesterday afternoon.
42
From Clerkenwell, Bolt drove up to Angel Gate and turned left onto the Pentonville Road, heading west. The Pentonville Road became the Euston Road, then the Marylebone Road, and finally the A40. Usually this route was heavily congested, but before nine on a Sunday morning it was quiet, and Bolt was on the M40 within twenty minutes.
He continued to drive fast, breaking the speed limit, and it was ten past nine, just about forty minutes after he’d set off, when he finally turned onto the country road that ran for a little over a mile down to Hambleden village.
It had been the summer before her death that he and Mikaela had driven down here for the day. The weather had been mild and sunny, and there’d been a cricket match in progress on the green at the edge of the village. They’d eaten at the pub, sitting outside in the beer garden, basking in the sunshine and feeling at peace with the world. It had been such a contrast to the noise and fury of the big city that for a moment he’d dreamed about living out here, away from it all. Mikaela had obviously been thinking the same thing. ‘If we ever have kids, this is where I’d like them to grow up,’ she’d said, sipping from her wine and looking out across the rolling green fields, her long blonde hair almost white in the glare of the sun. ‘We could have a bit of land and keep chickens.’
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