She paused, gritting her teeth. Then she inhaled deeply several times and lunged into the room.
It was empty.
‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘Conor…’
She limped across the room to the bed where he had been lying. The indentation of his little body was still there, and the coat that had covered him was lying over the open box in which she had found the airline meal tray. But there was no sign of Conor.
She turned.
Otherwise the room was just as she had left it: full of boxes, the books still lying on the floor. She blinked. There was something on the table that hadn’t been there before. She took a step towards it; her eyes lingered on a plain black laptop and, lying squared up on top of it, a small, leather-bound book. On the cover it said: ‘Holy Koran’.
A sound from the corner of the room sent a jolt through her veins. Instinctively she pointed her gun at the wardrobe. It was open just a fraction. Hadn’t it been open wide when she left?
She edged round the table, her weapon still primed, and, treading lightly, covered the three metres between herself and the cupboard. Taking a deep, slow breath, she eased the wardrobe door open with the gun barrel.
Pale, frightened eyes looked up at her.
Conor was crouched in one corner, his knees pulled up to his chest.
There was a mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door. Eva caught a glimpse of her face. It was corpse-white. She tried to smile at the little boy; to pretend that she was not as scared as him. She held out her free hand and took one of his. It felt surprisingly warm.
‘Let’s go, sweetheart,’ she breathed. ‘Don’t be scared… let’s go.’
Conor climbed out of the wardrobe, his little hand clutching Eva’s. The timber frame groaned, but then all was silent as he stood next to her and looked up for reassurance. Eva gave him another weak smile, then led him to the bedroom door.
She stopped and listened.
Silence.
They couldn’t walk down the stairs two abreast, because the stairlift took up too much space. Eva went first, walking down into the dim hallway, her right hand in front of her clutching the gun, her left hand behind holding Conor’s. The stairs creaked, but once they reached the bottom, everything was deathly quiet once again.
Eva bent down so that her lips were inches from Conor’s ear. ‘My car’s out the front, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It’s the black one. As soon as we’re outside, we’ll run straight for it. Do you understand?’
Conor was staring at the door.
‘Do you understand, Conor?’
He nodded.
Eva straightened up and they started to cross the hallway.
A noise behind them. Eva spun round and peered through the gloom.
Nothing.
She could feel Conor squeezing her hand a little harder as they covered the remaining three or four metres to the door.
‘Ready?’ she mouthed silently.
Conor nodded.
She opened the door.
And screamed.
He was there. Standing in the doorway, his shoulders bent, his head slightly bowed, strands of black hair straggling over his menacing eyes. Ashkani moved with sickening speed, grabbing her wrist and slamming it against the frame with such force that the gun flew from her grasp as she pushed Conor back towards the stairs.
He let go of her wrist and quickly bent down to pick up the weapon. Eva seized her chance to run. Conor was already racing back up the stairs. Eva limped after him, arriving at the bottom step just as Conor reached the top and disappeared into the bedroom again.
She didn’t have to look over her shoulder to see Ashkani coming after her. She could sense his approach and expected any moment to either hear gunfire or feel the chill of a hand on her shoulder. Pounding up the stairs, she ignored the stabs of agony that streaked through her side, and tried not to let the sound of his footsteps behind her freeze her muscles into inaction.
At the top of the stairs she glanced back. He was just five steps behind her, and he was smiling. Eva hurled herself into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. Her shaking fingers felt for the key in the lock; just as she attempted to turn it, she saw the doorknob twist. She threw herself against the thick wooden door and wrenched the key to lock it.
Conor was back on the bed, huddled up against the window. Eva limped to the nearest cardboard box and dragged it with difficulty against the door, not sure that it would make any difference.
A sudden thump felt like it went right through her. The door rattled. She froze.
Another thump. The door rattled again.
And a third.
As she ran to get another cardboard box she flinched at the sound of a fourth strike against the door. She dragged the box up against the first, then stood back.
The thumping had stopped. She felt a moment of relief that quickly morphed into more panic. She could hear footsteps descending the stairs. Staring at the door, ice in her veins, she tried to work out what exactly Ashkani was doing.
He was prepared. A safe house wasn’t safe unless, when you left it, you could easily remove all traces of your existence.
Having descended the stairs two steps at a time, he hurried through the kitchen at the rear of the house and out the back door. Mrs Jones’s garden, which faced the sea, was neglected. On occasion he had tended it as part of his strategy to keep the foolish old woman compliant, but over the months that he had used this house as a base, he’d also been careful to take advantage of the prefab concrete garage at the side. How well he knew from Mrs Jones that ‘her’ Gethin had erected this ugly thing with his bare hands, and one look inside was enough to confirm that the old woman had barely ventured into it in the years since her husband’s death. It was thick with dust and spiders’ webs; most of the floorspace was taken up by an ancient green Morris Minor with flat tyres, and along the far wall were four large, red metal cans. He seized one and shook it. It gave off the thick, greasy stench of petrol.
The cans were all full, and with some difficulty he carried two at once. He went back into the house with them, leaving one in the hallway and taking the second through to the front room where Mrs Jones’s body lay mouldering. He undid the cap and sprinkled the petrol first over her body, then over the sofa and surrounding carpet, before heading to the tall windows and dousing the base of the curtains and the carpet beneath them. Back in the hallway, he looked up: the door upstairs was still shut. Having seen the terror on that woman’s face, he knew it would remain shut. Smiling to himself, he carried the second can halfway up the stairs, opened it and allowed the petrol to gush over the threadbare carpet and trickle down into the hallway.
Having brought in the third and fourth cans, he placed them in the middle of the hallway, uncapped them both and knocked them over in the direction of the stairs. Petrol coughed out, and the floor in the hallway became a puddle. Ashkani returned to the fuel-sodden front room, taking care not to tread in the soaked areas. Mrs Jones’s electric heater sat in the fireplace. He unplugged it and carried it back into the hallway.
He looked up again. Still no sound from the bedroom. The woman and child clearly had no idea what was about to happen.
By the front door there was an old, yellowed double wall socket. Ashkani plugged in the electric heater and ensured that both bars were on. They soon turned orange. He stepped swiftly outside. It would not take more than thirty seconds, he figured, for the petrol fumes to ignite. Hurrying to the Peugeot, he climbed in and started the engine.
Ashkani was five metres from the road when the explosion happened. It was loud and brutal enough to give the car a jolt as it moved away; he looked in the mirror just in time to see a flash of orange and black from the doorway he had purposefully left open to ensure a flow of oxygen.