The house was quiet, with all the curtains drawn, and they crept quietly across the lawn until they reached the back door. Bolt listened at the glass but heard nothing beyond. He tried the door handle but it was locked. The lock was old, though, and could be picked in seconds.
He and Mo exchanged glances. It was likely Brakspear wasn't there, but it was also possible he was, and that whoever was baby-sitting him would be armed.
'Let's do it,' whispered Mo.
Bolt nodded, produced his picks, and a few seconds later they were inside an old-fashioned utility room with a washing machine and fridge freezer. Both men produced their standard-issue pepper sprays – the only weapons they had, and woefully inadequate if they encountered trouble. Holding his out in front of him, his finger on the nozzle, Bolt crept through the silent house, conscious of Mo right behind him.
The utility room gave way to a spacious kitchen with a breakfast bar in the middle that had obviously been refitted recently. Unwashed pots and pans filled the sink and there was a faint odour of fried food.
They moved into the silent gloom of the hallway. A dying moonlight filtered in through the window above the front door illuminating a framed poster-sized photograph on the opposite wall. Bolt stopped and inspected it.
The photo was a family shot of a younger Roy Brakspear standing between an attractive woman in her thirties and a cute-looking girl of about ten, which must have been Jenny. All of them were smiling at the camera, and even in the gloom Bolt could see that Brakspear looked genuinely happy. A man with his family. The photograph resonated with Bolt. It also angered him because it demonstrated so perfectly the casual evil of the men who were putting him through this. Bastards. A sudden desire for vengeance ripped through him, so intense that it made him shiver.
He turned away and padded silently across the hallway to the staircase.
That was when he caught a faint stale smell coming from upstairs. Like rancid meat.
He stopped, turned. Mo had caught it, too. He was wrinkling his nose. They both knew what it meant.
Bolt headed up the stairs and out on to the landing. The door opposite was shut, but the smell here was much stronger and hung heavy in the air. The murky silence seemed loud in Bolt's ears.
Holding the pepper spray in front of him, he slowly opened the door and stepped inside.
Roy Brakspear was lying face down on the bed, sideways on, his legs dangling off the edge. He was wearing casual middle-aged clothes – a pair of slacks and a navy sweater – tan brogues on the feet. His arms were outstretched on either side of him where he'd fallen and a small pool of blood had formed round his head. Further drops speckled the sheets where the bullet that had been callously fired into the back of his head had exited.
Mo came in and stood beside Bolt. He didn't speak.
'Poor sod was just a loose end to them,' said Bolt, looking down at the body. He thought about the smiling husband and father in the downstairs photo. Two of that family were now dead. It was possible the third member, Jenny, was too, and if she wasn't yet she would be once the mustard gas was in Hook's hands.
They searched the rest of the house, throwing all the lights on, no longer needing to keep quiet, but there was no obvious evidence pointing to either the identity or the location of the kidnappers. The place would have to be searched a lot more thoroughly but this would now be done by scene-of-crime officers.
They left the way they'd come in, and Bolt put a call in to Big Barry. 'Bad news,' he said when his boss answered, and he told him what they'd found.
'Poor bugger,' sighed Barry with only the barest modicum of sympathy. 'I've got news for you as well. There's good and there's bad.'
'What's the good?'
'Your hunch paid off. We checked Brakspear's phone records, got the number for the drivers' agency he used, and we've finally got the name of the driver picking up the load, and the registration of his lorry.'
'What's the bad?' asked Bolt, even though he could guess what it was.
'He's not answering his phone and the tracking device on the lorry isn't picking up. The bugger's disappeared into thin air.'
Forty-eight
Frank O'Toole watched from his position in the gap behind the steps leading down to the ferry's lower parking level as the man he was tracking weaved his way through the stationary vehicles until he came to the lorry. The man's name was Trevor Gould. He was in his early fifties, with a ruddy complexion suggesting high blood pressure and an immense pot belly which made him look like he'd swallowed a beach ball. He stopped by the lorry and clicked off its central locking, unaware that its plates had been changed.
Another guy in a suit, looking exhausted, made his way to his own vehicle, and from the top of the steps O'Toole could hear more voices. It was time to move.
As Gould opened the driver's door and heaved himself up on to the step, precariously balancing the half-eaten baguette he was carrying, O'Toole slipped from his hiding place and strode over to him, keeping his head down and watching the man in the suit out of the corner of his eye as he got into his own car.
Gould was so busy squeezing himself into the driver's seat that he didn't spot a thing until O'Toole was leaning into the cab and jabbing the hunting knife into his side.
'Move over,' he hissed, 'and don't look at me or make a sound. Otherwise you're dead.'
'I don't want any trouble,' said Gould, who was sensible enough to do what he was told. It was a real effort for him to clamber over the handbrake and the gearstick, and O'Toole noticed with wry amusement that he continued to clutch the greasy baguette as if it was the crown jewels.
'Where's the tracking device in this thing?' O'Toole demanded.
'Under my seat,' replied Gould, making an exaggerated effort not to look at him.
'Disconnect it.'
As Gould leaned down, O'Toole slipped a hypodermic syringe from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He removed the stopper and, as Gould sat back up again, jabbed the needle into his arm.
Unlike the man he was currently working for, Frank O'Toole didn't enjoy killing people. He'd only done it once before and that was fifteen years ago now. A tout who'd been selling information to the Brits. O'Toole and another man had kidnapped him from the street outside his home and taken him to an abandoned warehouse just outside Newry where he'd been tried by an IRA military court and found guilty of the crimes of which he was accused. There was only ever one sentence for touting: death. O'Toole had been given the task of carrying it out, something he'd done without hesitation, putting a bullet in the back of the man's head as he knelt down, blindfolded and begging for his life. O'Toole had had no sympathy for him – touts deserved what was coming to them – but he hadn't gained any satisfaction from doing it either. It was a job, nothing more. Just as it was a job now. And this time he was being paid a hundred grand for his troubles – more than he'd earned in the last ten years – which meant there was no place for weakness. Or too many questions.
Trevor Gould grimaced as the poison flooded into his system, and his eyes bulged. O'Toole slapped a hand over his mouth and pushed him back in the seat as he juddered and writhed. He could have killed him with the knife but that would have been way too messy. O'Toole wasn't squeamish, but he was going to have to drive this thing for the next hour and he didn't want it looking or smelling like a slaughterhouse.