by Tom Bale
See How They Run
The gripping thriller everyone is talking about
Tom Bale
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Letter from Tom Bale
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Also by Tom Bale
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright
For Niki, Graham, Neil, Pauline & Luke, in memory of Jackie Spencer.
One
Any noise in the night could wake him now. Eight weeks since the birth of his daughter and Harry barely remembered how it felt to sleep for seven hours straight and wake naturally, refreshed and ready for a new day. All the warnings from their friends about the misery of sleep deprivation had turned out to be spot on.
The sound had come and gone by the time he registered he was awake, eyes glued shut, heart beating fast. Not the baby, he was sure of that. It must have been something outside, perhaps in the alley along the back where urban foxes prowled.
Harry waited, trying to recreate the feeling he’d had, the sense of a dream interrupted by a … a thud, a scrape: a surreptitious noise, as though something – someone – was trying to go unheard.
Or maybe it had just been part of the dream itself. Either way, now he was awake he ought to take a look out of the window; check on Evie and see how much time there was before her next feed …
Harry knew he should do these things but he couldn’t. He was frozen in place, eyes tightly shut, not even daring to breathe.
There was an intruder in their home.
It wasn’t a rowdy neighbourhood by any means, their tidy terraced street. Although modest in size, the houses were highly valued for their proximity to the railway station, to good schools and friendly corner shops and vibrant pubs, to all the pleasures that Brighton had to offer. Not quite in the heart of the city but close to one of its main arteries, the Port Hall district between Dyke Road and Stanford Road was arty, upmarket and conservatively bohemian – so letterboxes bore stickers refusing junk mail on environmental grounds, even while the parking bays were choked with 4x4s.
A lot of young families lived here, Harry and Alice’s being one of the youngest. There weren’t too many people coming home in the early hours, although a woman over the road worked shifts at the hospital. In the city beyond there was always the drone of traffic: sirens, car horns, slamming doors and screeching tyres, and sometimes the distant, deep rumble of trains leaving Brighton station. Depending on the season, there was birdsong to a greater or lesser degree, most of it charming and rarely disruptive, the exception being the caustic screech of the seagulls – or the bloody seagulls, as they were known round here.
All these things contributed to the soundtrack of Harry’s sleeping hours; all were familiar and expected and unthreatening. What he’d just heard was of a different nature altogether.
But no one could have broken into the house without waking him, could they? Even if they had, they’d be satisfied with stealing what was on offer in the living room: the Blu-ray player and the PS4. Some cash, maybe a phone or an iPad. Harry couldn’t recall precisely what was lying around, but he was sure of one thing: thieves were opportunists. There was no way they’d risk climbing the stairs or waking the occupants of the house.
So why, then, did Harry feel there was somebody right here, in their room?
Slowly, very slowly, he let out the breath that had caught in his lungs. He opened his eyes, remembering how next door’s cat had given him a few scares in the past: that kettle drum boom when it leapt on to the dustbin; and its plaintive wail, like the cry of a tortured child. Harry willed it to make a noise now, to break the illusion of danger.
Nothing.
Because it wasn’t an illusion.
His focus switched to the space around him. Alice was sleeping heavily and so, for once, was the baby. When the time was right they planned to move Evie to the nursery next door. For now she slept in a Moses basket on a fold-out stand, positioned close enough to Alice’s side of the bed that she could reach out and soothe her back to sleep at the first hint of a restless murmur.
Evie had her own breathing pattern, a rate so rapid it brought to mind someone panting to complete a race, and a distinctive snore that managed to sound enchanting even on the nights when Harry was so tired he wanted to claw out his eyes and fill the sockets with concrete.
There was always a smell of milk in the room, Evie’s signature fragrance, but now Harry realised it was competing with something else: a sour top note of male sweat and stale clothing that had no place in here.
And other breathing. Was he imagining that?
He locked up every muscle, devoted his full attention to listening, listening …
And then the voice of a stranger spoke from the shadows.
‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’
Alice reacted with an urgent flailing of limbs. She probably thought she’d overslept and missed a feed. Harry tried to speak, wanting to find a way to keep her silent and still, because it had occurred to him that Alice’s best hope of safety – of survival – was if the intruder believed Harry was alone in the room. But the words wouldn’t come, and his rational mind knew it was a ludicrous idea. The street light filtering through the curtains was more than sufficient to see how many people were present.
&nbs
p; Three.
And that thought – the knowledge that his baby daughter was here too – made him sit up in a panic, his mind racing. The bed trembled and Alice groaned and stretched, turning towards the Moses basket.
‘Harry …’
‘Ssshh.’
He rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense of a shadow, a shape, just to the right of the door. It took a step towards the bed as Alice, twisting in his direction, said, ‘She’s sound asleep. Why—?’
‘Look.’ Harry lifted his arm to point, wondering vaguely if he was hallucinating from sleep deprivation. Oh yes, please: to hear Alice laugh and say there’s no one here but us.
But Alice didn’t laugh. She sucked in a breath as if to scream, then choked it off, probably acting on the same instinct that had driven Harry’s response: to keep Evie asleep, to protect her, no matter what else happened.
And still the figure waited at the end of the bed. It was a man, tall and broad, but there were no features apparent, nothing visible in the silhouette.
‘Get out of here.’ Harry barely recognised his own voice. He was ashamed of the tremor in it, as if such a weak command could send a burglar packing.
In response the man turned slightly, checking over his shoulder. There was another trickle of laughter. That was when Harry knew this wasn’t a burglary at all.
It was something much, much worse.
Two
In what seemed like an act of dark sorcery, the bedroom door swung open. The overhead light snapped on, a cold dose of reality on a bleak November morning. Both of them jumped at the shock, and Alice just managed to stifle a shriek.
A second man entered the room. He was shorter and thinner than the first, but otherwise looked the same. They were dressed in black overalls, along with thin leather gloves, and latex masks – a clown face on the first man, and Freddy Krueger on the second.
Their footwear was covered with plastic bags, secured around the ankles with rubber bands. When he saw that, Harry’s terror jumped to a whole new level. The fact that they’d covered not just their hands and faces but their shoes, their entire bodies wrapped up to avoid leaving traces of DNA: these men weren’t amateurs. They knew exactly what they were doing.
Maybe Alice had picked up on that; maybe she was choosing to ignore it. ‘J-jewellery box,’ she stuttered. ‘On the dressing table. T-take it, and go.’
The second man snorted, the noise muffled by the mask into a weak impression of Darth Vader. In her crib Evie gave a snuffle, and slowly the man turned his head in her direction.
Harry tensed, ready to throw himself across the bed if either of the intruders took a step towards his daughter.
The first man said, ‘Where is he?’
Silence.
Harry cleared his throat. ‘What?’
‘Renshaw. Where is he?’
Alice shook her head, perplexed. ‘Who?’
‘Renshaw. Edward Renshaw.’
The tone was impatient, but not particularly nervous. And quite well-spoken, rather than the gruff Estuary accent that Harry had instinctively expected.
He and Alice stared at the two men, then exchanged a baffled glance. It flashed through Harry’s mind that years from now this event might form the basis of a humorous anecdote. They’d make new friends on holiday, and in the course of a boozy evening Alice would say, ‘Tell them about the time those thugs invaded our house in the middle of the night, and it turned out they’d got the wrong address!’
Surfing a wave of relief, he said, ‘We don’t know anyone of that name,’ and Alice overlapped with: ‘Never heard of him.’
The first man looked at each of them in turn. His eyes were barely visible behind the mask but the intensity of his gaze was unmistakable.
‘Edward Renshaw. Early sixties, Middle Eastern. Dark skin, dark hair.’
‘And he’s a fat fucker.’ The second man’s voice was coarser than his partner’s. He held his hand up at shoulder height. ‘About this tall.’
‘He uses other names. Grainger. Miller. And he might call himself Doctor, not Mister.’
‘We don’t know him.’ Harry felt sick with the desire to be believed. ‘This is a mistake.’
‘How long’ve you lived here?’ the second man demanded.
‘Two years, next February.’ Alice sounded so confident that it gave Harry extra strength.
He added: ‘Before us, it was a woman in her eighties. She had to go into a home. Mrs …’
‘Stevens,’ Alice finished for him. ‘Beryl Stevens.’
Harry nodded vigorously. He felt sure they were coming across as honest, genuine people, doing their utmost to be co-operative in extremely stressful circumstances.
Alice was saying, ‘Beryl was a spinster. She lived alone—’
The first man cut her off: ‘You had a parcel.’
Harry felt Alice flinch at the interruption, her knee jerking against his leg. He glanced at her, worried that in desperation she’d invent a lot of nonsense to send them away. She was staring rigidly at the man in the Freddy Krueger mask, who had taken something from the pocket of his overalls.
A knife.
‘Some time this week,’ the first man said. ‘The parcel was addressed to Mr E Grainger.’
Evie was stirring, kicking at her blankets. The bright light and the noise must have woken her. In any case, she was due a feed pretty soon: according to the bedside clock, it was a little after three a.m.
‘Why would we get a parcel for this Grainger, or Renshaw?’ Harry tried to sound defiant rather than angry. ‘He doesn’t live here. We have no idea who he is.’
‘It came to this address. 34 Lavinia Street.’
Alice raised her hand, as if in a classroom. ‘You realise there’s also a Lavinia Drive in Brighton? And a Lavinia Crescent. The post can get mixed up. We’ve had junk mail for 34 Lavinia Crescent before now.’
The first man sighed, as though she and Harry were testing his patience. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how serious this is.’
His partner nodded. ‘They need a lesson.’
For a moment Harry didn’t understand: in the shock, his brain had seized up. It wasn’t until the second man took a step towards the Moses basket that he got it.
Hurting Evie: that was the lesson.
Three
‘Don’t you touch her!’ Harry yelled. He flung himself forward, colliding with Alice as she made the same attempt to protect the baby. The man jabbed the knife in her direction, warning her off.
‘Relax,’ the first man drawled. ‘He’s good with kids.’
He chuckled at his own joke, sounding absurdly relaxed. Harry looked round and saw that he now held a gun, a small black pistol.
‘Back where you were,’ he told Harry. ‘And lie still. A dead hero is no use to anyone.’
Harry had little choice but to comply, but the sense of his own impotence was like a fist clenched around his heart. Alice was ordered to lie alongside him and she obeyed, both of them shaking so hard they could feel the vibrations through the mattress. From Evie came a mewling cry of protest: I didn’t wake you. Why have you woken me?
The man with the knife grabbed her blanket and whipped it out of the crib, like a magician unveiling a glorious surprise. And now Evie lay exposed, so tiny and vulnerable in her pink floral sleepsuit that the terror Harry felt – the terror of losing her – was almost more than he could bear.
Alice reached for his hand, squeezing it as intensely as she’d done in the closing stages of a long and difficult labour. Harry felt even more useless to her now than he had then.
‘A lesson,’ the knife man said, and in one swift movement he clutched the front of Evie’s sleepsuit and hoisted her into the air, as though their precious daughter was a tatty old ragdoll, something to be tossed aside and forgotten.
Harry felt Alice slump against him. After a second or two when she must have been struck dumb with shock, Evie let out a wail that seemed to split the air like a klaxon. But despite the effect it had on
her parents, it wasn’t the first time she’d cried out in the night, and Harry knew it wouldn’t be enough to alert their neighbours to what was happening here.
The cry galvanised Alice into action. She made a lunge for her daughter, ignoring the man with the gun, but his partner dodged back and dangled Evie out of reach, her sleepsuit stretching like a bungee rope. He lifted both hands to chest height, bringing baby and blade within touching distance.
‘No sudden moves or I’ll slit her throat. Kid this size, there ain’t much blood to spare. You wanna see it draining out on your carpet?’
Alice whimpered, helplessly. Harry thought he did as well: the image too horrifying to contemplate.
‘Be a waste, though,’ the knife man went on. ‘What d’ya reckon, on the open market?’
The question was directed at the gunman, who gave a curt shake of his head. He moved to Harry’s side of the bed. Point blank range.
‘My friend here – let’s call him “Freddy” – is a psychopath. He could skin your baby like a rabbit and whistle while he did it. But he won’t need to, because you’re going to co-operate. Aren’t you?’
Harry couldn’t speak. His mind had snagged helplessly on the idea of Evie being killed or disfigured because her parents had failed to protect her. It was only when Alice let out a sob that he managed to nod. Yes, we’ll co-operate.
‘Let’s relax, shall we?’ The gunman signalled to ‘Freddy’, who dragged the Moses basket a safe distance from the bed and dropped Evie into it. Her sharp scream was followed by frantic uneven gasps, as if she had forgotten how to breathe.
‘Please,’ Alice cried. ‘She’s only eight weeks old. Let me take her.’
‘Can’t do that,’ Freddy said.
‘I’m begging you. She doesn’t deserve this.’
‘You’re right,’ the gunman said. ‘Your loyalty to Renshaw isn’t worth the life of your daughter.’
Harry opened his hands, the sort of gesture you make to appeal for reason. Deep down he knew it was futile, but it was ingrained in him to be sensible, and polite, and it was equally ingrained to hope others would treat him in the same way.
