‘Okay.’
‘Have you got any idea why Alex disappeared?’
‘I haven’t managed to find that out yet, no.’
A long drawn-out pause.
‘The prints we pulled off the photograph match some pulled off the wheel of a silver Mondeo used in a hit-and-run six years ago.’ More paper being leafed through. ‘Witnesses recall seeing a white male about Alex’s age having a big fucking barney in the parking lot of a strip joint called Sinderella’s in Harrow. I quote: “At eleven twenty-two p.m. on 9 November it is alleged the suspect drove the silver Mondeo—”’
‘Wait a minute. Ninth of November?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s the day before Alex disappeared.’
‘Correct. “Suspect struck the victim — Leyton Alan Green, 54, from Fulham — as he was coming out of the bar, causing critical internal injuries. The victim died a short time later. Witnesses recall seeing a silver Mondeo with a Hertz sticker on the bumper depart the scene shortly after.” The silver Mondeo was recovered in a long-term parking lot at Dover, five months later, on 12 April.’
We both stopped to take the information in.
‘Alex killed someone?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘This Green guy — has he got a record?’
‘No. He’s clean.’
‘And the car was a rental?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What did Hertz say?’
‘Not a lot. Alex used fake ID. Registered under the name Leyton Alan Green.’
‘Cute.’
‘Yeah. You could say that.’
‘You believe it?’
‘What do you think?’
I paused and tried to take it in. Things were changing fast.
‘Can I get a copy of those files?’
He didn’t reply straight away.
Then, quietly, he said: ‘I sent them to you yesterday.’
29
It took me three hours to get home. I parked at the end of my street and sat and watched the house. A biting wind pressed at the windows. Snowflakes blew across the street. Without the engine on, and the heaters off, the car cooled down almost instantly, and slowly my body started to react: adrenalin passing out of my system, cold crawling back in. I still had no coat, no shoes, no socks. I reached down to the ignition, my hands shaking now, my teeth chattering. Every cut in my face and feet, every bruise on my body, ached. I turned the key. The heaters kicked back in, the noise of the engine with it. And, finally, as I slowly started to warm up, my body began to settle.
Leaning in against one of the heaters, I looked down the street again, towards my house. The road had always been quiet, so I was hoping anything out of place would stick out a mile. But I also knew from the night before that they weren’t just barmen and youth pastors — they were trackers and marksmen. And they were killers. They could fade in and out, and they could disappear. The advantage was still with them.
I looked at the clock. 11.27. They were probably starting to realize Zack and Jason weren’t coming back. The likelihood that they were already here, watching the house, waiting for me to arrive, was remote. However, I wasn’t about to take any chances. I needed basic provisions. I needed a shower. I needed to patch myself up. I needed shoes and extra clothes. But, most of all, I needed to be sure I was alone.
I got out of the car, locked it and crossed the road towards the house. I looked up and down the street. No one sitting in cars. No one watching the house. They’d removed everything from my pockets the previous day, including my keys, so I headed around the back of the house and took the spare key out of one of the dead hanging baskets next to the rear door.
Inside, the house was cold. I approached each room carefully, just in case, but there was no one inside and nothing had been touched. The files Cary had sent the day before were on the floor, under the letterbox, handwritten but otherwise anonymous.
I showered and briefly caught sight of myself in the mirror.
There were cuts all over my face, bruises creeping down my throat and across the muscles at the top of my chest. My body was toned, but now it was marked as well. A reminder of how badly they wanted me dead.
I dug out the warmest clothes I could lay my hands on: a pair of dark jeans; a long-sleeve thermal training top I used for jogging; a T-shirt; a black zip-up top; and a black overcoat Derryn had bought me one Christmas. I packed some extra clothes into a holdall, and grabbed an old laptop I never used from the cupboard in the second bedroom. It had been a work computer but no one had ever asked for it back. There was a spare mobile in the bedside table with some credit left on it, and my credit card. I took both, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, along with the files, a photograph of Derryn, and bandages and plasters to make running repairs to myself once I got somewhere safe. Then I locked up and left.
At the bottom of the garden, I looked back up the drive and glimpsed Liz moving around in her front room. In the windows of the house, I could see my reflection.
A man on the run.
A wound crawled out from my hairline. My face was bruised. I looked gaunt and tired. I wondered whether I’d allow myself to sleep again until this was over. It could be days, weeks, months. It could be never. Maybe the next time I closed my eyes would be with one of their bullets in my chest.
I turned and started towards Zack’s car again.
Then stopped.
There was someone leaning in against the passenger window, the hood up on his coat, cupping his hands against the glass. I backed up and crouched down behind one of the garden walls. He glanced along the street towards the house, didn’t see me, and moved around the front of the car to the driver’s side. He tried the door. When he stepped away from the car a second time, I caught a glimpse of his face and recognized him straight away: the man who had broken into my car at the cemetery; the man I’d followed outside Angel’s. He was scruffy and unkempt, and looked thinner in the daylight — and that immediately concerned me. This was the type of trap they liked to lay: making you believe they were one thing, weaker than you, and then turning everything on its head.
He looked back at the house and fixed his gaze on the front. I could see his eyes narrowing, as if he knew something was up. It was like he’d studied the street before my arrival — had seen which cars were where, and who they belonged to — and now saw a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit.
He patted the front of his jacket. Has he got a gun? I unzipped the holdall and took out the knife. It wouldn’t be much of a fight, unless he got close without seeing me. But it was better than surrendering. If there was one thing I’d learned over the past couple of days, it was that there was no point in surrendering. They’d kill you anyway, whether you gave them what they wanted or not. Fighting back didn’t give me much of a chance — but it did at least give me something.
I gripped the knife as hard as I could, adrenalin pumping my heart faster. But then the man took another look at the car, spun on his heel and headed the other way. I watched him go, reaching the end of the road. He looked back once and disappeared around the corner.
I stayed put. It was a trap. Had to be. He knew the car belonged to them, and if it was parked in my street, he knew I was home. He could have gone to make a call. He might not want to come at me alone. He could have heard by now what I’d done to the others. Either way, I had to make my move.
I got to my feet and headed across the street, flipping the locks on the car with the remote and sliding in and starting it up in one swift motion. I looked in my rear-view mirror, put my foot to the floor and drove away. When I got to the bottom of the road, I checked my mirrors again. There was no sign of him — at least for the moment.