Terror's Reach

by Tom Bale

  of the single passenger in the back. His impression was of a large,

  bulky figure, a man in his late fifties or early sixties. Completely bald,

  with strong, square features and a brooding gaze.

  Their eyes met for only a fraction of a second, but Joe felt a jolt

  of recognition. His reaction was mirrored in the other man’s face, and

  then the Cadillac swept past.

  Joe drove onto the bridge, trying to place where he might have

  seen him before. He glanced to his left, intending to ask if Cassie

  had got a clear look at him, and saw there was a vehicle tucked in

  front of the ferry shed. A plain white Citroen van, no livery. The

  driver’s window was open, a man’s arm protruding from it, holding

  a cigarette.

  Must be here to do maintenance work, Joe thought, although twenty

  past four on a Friday seemed an odd time for it.

  But it was the identity of the Cadillac’s passenger that was uppermost

  in his mind. He waited until they were across the bridge, then

  looked at Cassie again.

  'I take it that was your husband’s visitor?’

  'I suppose so.’

  'Do you know who he is?’

  'Not a clue.’

  Joe smiled. He couldn’t tell if she was resentful of him, or of Valentin,

  or just that the line of enquiry bored her.

  'What about that enormous boat sitting off the island?’

  'Oh, I heard them talking about that. Valentin chartered it. He was

  moaning because the minimum term is a week and he only needs it

  for today.’

  'What’s wrong with his own yacht?’

  'Not impressive enough.’

  'For this meeting?’

  She nodded. 'He’s thinking of replacing his one with something

  bigger. I saw him looking at brochures the other day.’

  Joe pondered for a moment, then risked another impertinent

  question. 'That’s a brave move in the current climate, isn’t it?’

  'It’s crazy, if you ask me. But it’s up to Valentin. He knows whether

  or not he can afford it.’

  The van driver watched the Shogun until it was out of sight. He took

  a final drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt towards the water. It

  fell short, landing on the wet mud at the foot of the slipway. He turned

  to his colleague, who was hunched over, writing on a notepad balanced

  on his knee.

  'Got that?’ the driver said.

  'Incoming, a Cadillac limo, two male occupants. Outgoing,

  Mitsubishi Shogun. One male, one female, two kiddies.’

  'That was the Russki’s lot.’

  'Ukrainian,’ the passenger corrected. 'Nasenko’s from the Ukraine.’

  The driver shrugged. You’re confusing me with someone who gives

  a fuck.’

  Eleven

  Priya wanted to leave the estate agent’s body where it was, but Liam

  vetoed the suggestion.

  'Someone else might turn up. We can’t open the front door while

  he’s lying there.’

  Reluctantly she agreed, and helped him unload some of the lighter

  equipment from the van: the kitbags containing their clothes, masks

  and gloves. For wrapping up valuables they’d brought rolls of bubble

  wrap, heavy-duty garbage bags and packing tape, plus paper towels

  and bleach to erase any trace of their presence.

  Not that he’d envisaged a job on this scale, Liam thought.

  Donning latex gloves, they placed the body on a bed of garbage

  bags, then wrapped it and bound it with tape. Liam scouted the downstairs

  rooms and found an office that would suffice for temporary

  storage.

  Mopping up the congealed blood was a much tougher proposition.

  Priya had found a bucket in the garage, which she filled with hot

  water and bleach. Taking a stack of paper towels each, they knelt on

  opposite sides of the slick and set to work.

  Within seconds they were both gagging. The rich metallic odour

  of the blood was bad enough. Mixed with the acrid tang of bleach

  and the thick stench of bodily waste, it was almost overpowering. Liam

  fetched a couple of ski masks and handed one to Priya.

  'Try this,’ he said. 'It might help.’

  Priya nodded. Her posture was unnaturally straight as she tried to

  keep her head as far as possible from the mess on the floor. She worked

  with slow, thrifty movements, often with her eyes averted. Not shirking

  from the task, as he first assumed; but definitely unhappy about something.

  Liam

  endured the mask for less than five minutes, then pulled it

  off and hurled it over his shoulder. Too hot.

  Shortly afterwards Priya did the same. For the first time today there

  was a sheen of sweat on her face. A few strands of hair had escaped

  her ponytail and glued themselves to her cheek. Glaring at the floor,

  she began to scrub harder, grunting angrily, and that was when Liam

  understood.

  It wasn’t distaste at the idea of cleaning up blood, but at the idea

  of cleaning.

  'Lousy job, eh?’ he said.

  Priya rinsed her paper towels in the bucket. She didn’t speak until

  Liam had turned away.

  'My mother was always cleaning. She probably still is. On her knees,

  scrubbing floors. Demeaning herself in the service of others. I swore

  I’d never do that.’

  The bitterness in her voice cut short Liam’s intended quip.

  Presumably her mother had never had to mop up the blood of a man

  she’d just killed?

  Then, as he pictured the scene again, he realised what had been

  bothering him. The blood spatter across her jeans was too low. It

  meant the estate agent must have been on the floor when Priya slashed

  his throat.

  That called into question how much resistance the man had put

  up. Or even whether he had resisted at all.

  Once on the mainland, Joe followed the road north through several

  miles of wetlands. To his left he could make out the reed beds and

  the glitter of water beyond. To his right was a bumpy landscape of

  bracken and gorse and ancient coppice woods. There were several

  parking areas with picnic tables, nature trails and bird-watching hides,

  but hardly anyone was around today. Too hot, maybe.

  Sofia quickly fell asleep, while Jaden occupied himself by playing

  on his Nintendo DS. The baby tended to sleep more soundly with

  background music, so Cassie had chosen the Mamma Mia! soundtrack.

  It was a running joke that the songs had been imprinted in

  Sofia’s DNA, given how often her mother watched the movie. Joe had

  once found her smiling through tears as she gazed at the giant plasma

  screen in the living room.

  'Can you imagine being as happy as that?’ she’d said, almost to

  herself.

  Joe had watched the dancing, joyful women for a moment. Rather

  than imagine, he believed he knew exactly how it felt to be that

  happy, though increasingly he feared his recollection was becoming

  contaminated by nostalgia. Nostalgia and raw longing.

  But he hadn’t told Cassie that. He’d said: 'It’s just a movie. A feelgood

  movie.’

  'Even so, there must be people somewhere who have everything

  they could possibly want.�
�

  'I guess there are,’ he’d agreed. 'But I bet most of them don’t know

  it until it’s too late.’

  Cassie had nodded sadly. 'That’s what I thought.’

  Now, as she and Jaden quietly sang along to Our Last Summer, Joe

  reached the A27 and joined the eastbound dual carriageway. It was

  four-thirty. Even with a clear run it would take a minor miracle to

  reach the centre of Brighton within an hour.

  He considered Cassie’s allegation that Valentin wanted her out of

  the way, and he went on puzzling over the identity of the bald American

  in the Cadillac. That Valentin would go to the expense of chartering

  a yacht suggested it was an important meeting. It was unusual enough

  for Valentin to conduct business on the Reach, so he must—

  His train of thought juddered to a halt. The bald American. How

  did Joe know he was American . . . ?

  The obvious explanation was that Joe had been present at some

  prior meeting between Valentin and the other man. If so, he couldn’t

  recall the occasion. And yet he retained a persuasive image of the

  man speaking. He could recreate the dry Southern drawl in his head,

  and a particular phrase that had made him smile: Got ourselves another

  clusterfuck . . .

  He felt certain the memory was genuine, and that it predated his

  period of employment with Valentin. That meant the American was

  probably someone from his old life. The life he had fled.

  It took the best part of twenty minutes to clean up the blood thoroughly

  enough to leave no obvious trace. In places the bleach had

  lifted the protective coating from the hardwood floor, leaving odd

  patches where the wood was noticeably lighter. Liam wasn’t unduly

  worried. In the long run it shouldn’t matter too much.

  While Priya went upstairs to shower and change, Liam took his

  netbook from the kitbag and carried it through to the kitchen. He

  powered it up, found himself a glass and drank a pint of water before

  sitting down at the island breakfast bar.

  The tiny laptop contained the fruits of their extensive research,

  including floor plans for all the homes on the island and detailed profiles

  of the residents. Studying these documents had become almost a ritual

  to Liam, but now the reassurance they offered had been compromised.

  If they hadn’t picked up on the estate agent using Dreamscape as a

  love nest, was it possible that other important details had been missed?

  Liam instantly stamped on that question. There was no room for

  doubt at this stage of the operation.

  He ran through the targets again. Five homes, hugging the coast

  on the south-western corner of the island. The house at the most

  southerly point, furthest from the mainland, was a chalet bungalow

  belonging to Donald and Angela Weaver.

  Donald was a retired civil servant, while Angela had been a university

  lecturer and now did some kind of voluntary work. Their only

  son, Joe, had died in a car accident in 2007, aged twenty-eight. The

  Weavers weren’t particularly high-net-worth individuals: it was their

  location that made them important. They were too close to the action

  to be left alone.

  The house next to the Weavers belonged to Robert Felton, the real

  financial heavyweight on Terror’s Reach. After a period in the army

  that included a secondment to the Ministry of Defence, Robert had

  joined his father’s munitions company in the mid-1990s, bringing to

  it the vigour and ruthlessness of youth, not to mention any number

  of important connections. Within a few years profits had risen tenfold,

  and the Feltons sold their controlling interest to an American conglomerate – just as concerns were being raised about their deals to supply

  landmines, grenades and assault rifles to various dubious regimes in

  Africa and the Middle East.

  While Felton senior retired to play golf and count his money,

  Robert concentrated on other areas of the business, most notably

  winning a string of lucrative contracts for security and reconstruction

  in post-invasion Iraq. He invested some of the proceeds in an

  underperforming chain of sports shops and again worked his magic,

  selling it on to a private-equity company for three times what he’d

  paid.

  With a personal fortune rumoured at well over a billion pounds,

  Felton had designed and overseen the construction of the house at

  Terror’s Reach, a monstrous Gothic pile with eight bedrooms, a squash

  court and – crucially – a walk-in safe.

  A long-time widower, Felton had acquired the image of an

  unabashed thrill-seeker and playboy of the old school. This weekend

  he was at his apartment in Monaco, where he could best indulge his

  passion for girls and gambling, safe from the disapproving scrutiny of

  his two children. Although they were in their early twenties, neither

  Rachel nor Oliver Felton had yet shown much desire to make their

  own way in the world. Rachel was currently taking a photography

  course in New York, while Oliver was spending the weekend with

  friends of his father in Oxfordshire.

  The third house was Dreamscape, the base for their operation, also

  owned and designed by Robert Felton. Built on a scale that dwarfed

  every other property on the island, its completion had coincided with

  the first signs of a downturn in the property market. For a time it had

  been rented by an ageing rock star, seeking refuge while he recovered

  from an addiction to prescription painkillers. Since his departure the

  house had remained furnished but unoccupied, while Felton sought

  a buyer to take it off his hands.

  Next to Dreamscape was a more conventional faux-Georgian

  mansion, owned by a high-profile Premiership striker whose ex-model

  wife, Trina, had boosted their fortunes by putting her name to a range

  of swimwear, a fitness regime and three volumes of autobiography.

  With the footballer on loan to an Italian club, the whole family had

  decamped to Rome, leaving Trina’s father, a retired builder named

  Terry Fox, to house-sit in their absence.

  The last of the five homes belonged to Valentin Nasenko. Another

  modernist design, it had been the most original and imposing construction

  on the island until Dreamscape had trumped it. To Liam it looked

  like an electric sandwich-toaster, its open jaws facing the sea. While

  nowhere near the top tier of oligarchs, Valentin was nonetheless said

  to be worth several hundred million.

  Officially the robbery was expected to net around three million

  pounds. That was what the knuckle draggers had been told. The true

  figure was likely to be a lot higher – how much higher, Liam tried

  not to speculate, but he reckoned his share alone should see him

  through to old age in comfort.

  All in all, it marked a spectacular journey for a working-class kid

  from Donegal. In his teens Liam had been excluded from school and

  was continually in trouble with the police for vandalism and minor

  thefts. He’d fled to England at the age of fifteen, stayed for a couple

  of years with an aunt and uncle in Southport, then straightened h
imself

  out and sweet-talked himself onto a college course.

  At nineteen he moved to London and got a lowly administrative job

  with the investment arm of a large merchant bank. He soon discovered

  he had a gift more precious than any number of letters after his name.

  He had charm. He could make people like him. He could take them

  where they didn’t really want to go, whether it was a business deal or

  a side bet or a fast and brutal fuck at the end of a boozy night.

  Some of it was down to good old Irish blarney, of course, but Liam

  was careful not to overdo that aspect. Just as vital was his instinct for

  assessing merit and good judgement in others. Soon he was moving

  up the hierarchy, generating lots of profit but seeing too much of it

  go to other people. He decided to alter the equation in his own favour

  and – perhaps inevitably – he over-reached, falling into a trap laid for

  him by the firm’s compliance officers.

  He was offered a choice: hand back what you’ve stolen and leave

  quietly, or take your chances with the police. Sensing that his bosses

  were keen to avoid bad publicity, let alone the regulatory attention

  that would accompany any criminal investigation, Liam managed to

  negotiate a partial repayment.

  Even so, he was virtually broke when he walked out. And with

  recession looming, his chances of further employment in the financial

  services industry were non-existent. He had to sell his Audi A5

  and his apartment in Canary Wharf, and ditch his high-maintenance

  girlfriend.

  He was renting a one-bedroom flat in Forest Gate when he received

  a mysterious approach on behalf of a trusted former client, sounding

  him out about a new and very challenging role. A role, he was promised,

  that would utilise all his considerable talents.

  Twelve

  The traffic slowed to a crawl as they reached the outskirts of

  Chichester. The A27 snaked around the southern perimeter, crossing

  a series of busy feeder roads running in and out of the city. After clearing

  the intersection with the A286, which led to a pair of coastal villages

  known as the Witterings, the Shogun came to a complete stop.

  There was a footbridge just ahead: a little gang of schoolgirls using

  it to cross the road. They were maybe thirteen, fourteen years old, on

  the impatient cusp of adulthood. You could see that from the jewellery