I moved forward and stood at the pantry door for a full two minutes. I still couldn't hear anything. That wasn't good news. Either Dave had been taken away, or he was the bait in a trap. I stopped myself from thinking about the other possibilities.
"Okay," I said to Andy.
He heaved himself up with ease and was soon standing beside me.
"There's no noise," I whispered.
He nodded, and then took the silenced Glock from his belt. I followed suit.
"Go for it," Andy said, his eyes narrowed.
I opened the door slowly-it was always deliberately left an inch ajar by Dave and his family so we could get in without making undue noise. I looked around. There was no one in the kitchen. Holding the automatic in two hands, I walked very slowly down the carpeted hall. On my left was the dining room. Looking cautiously around the door frame, I quickly established that no one was inside. On my right was the sitting room. The door was a couple of inches open. Through the gap I could see no occupants, but most of the room was out of sight.
My heart began to pound and I took several deep breaths again. I turned to Andy. He pointed to his chest, meaning did I want him to go first? I shook my head. That was my job. I was the one who'd brought Dave into danger and I owed it to him to get him out of trouble now. I steeled myself and pushed the door hard and swung around it into the room, Glock raised.
I felt my mouth open as I took in the scene. I sank to my knees, unable to speak or scream and blinded by tears. Six The Soul Collector took off all her clothes-what an inspiration the disguise had been-and stood naked in the cheap hotel room. There was a mirror near the bathroom door and she studied herself in it. Some mornings she still didn't recognize what she saw, but this wasn't one of them. She glanced at the watch she had removed from her coat pocket. It was coming up to eleven o'clock. Matt and his idiot friends would be at the house in Dulwich. She wondered how he would take the work of art she had left him. Badly, she was sure of that. He had always been weak, for all his claims to understand the criminal mind. That book-he would regret what he'd written about her brother and her, as would all the people he loved. Not that the ex-SAS man had shown her the pain he was undoubtedly feeling. Eventually, after he'd finally agreed to make the call to alert Matt and even managed not to sound like a man in terrible agony, she put an end to it. She admired him for that, if nothing else.
Eyes still fixed on her perfect body, the unsupported breasts firm and the lines of her face even more striking than they had been, she took off the black leather outer gloves and put them in an opaque rubbish bag. Her hands were still covered with latex, the pale gray flecked with blood that hadn't washed away in the target's sink. She stripped them off and put them in a different bag. Then she stepped gracefully onto the uneven bathroom tiles and into the battered shower cabinet. The hot water cleansed her, but the cold she stood under for much longer was what she really enjoyed. It made her skin tingle and her nipples harden. She always felt like this after "a mission"-that was what the men who'd trained her had called killings. She knew they used the euphemism to distance themselves from what they did to their fellow human beings. She had no such scruples. She killed because she was good at it and because it brought her closer to her dead brother-the brother who had also been her lover. She put her fingers between her legs, then took them away. There would be time for that later. Now she wanted to glory in what she had achieved, doused in the cold that was her natural medium.
She was thinking about other SAS men. The ex-soldier she'd just worked on had known the three who'd dispatched her brother. Two years ago, she had stopped as she was fleeing from the wood yard in East London, long enough to hear one of them ask her victim of today what he was doing there. That had been all she'd needed. Matt Wells hadn't said much about the three killers in his book, but he mentioned they had Special Forces experience and that they had pursued the White Devil because he'd killed a former comrade: Jimmy Tanner. She had heard that name before-Tanner was the drunk who'd trained her brother how to kill along with numerous other skills. He had also been one of the White Devil's earlier victims. She had salted away those pieces of information, but after she'd moved her brother's deposits into new accounts, finished her training and dispatched her early targets in Latin America and the U.S., she was ready to act.
The woman had slipped into Britain by ferry from Belgium a month ago. She had a new look, identity and passport, but she'd waited for a busy and rainy day to ensure she didn't stick out from the crowd. Although every immigration officer in the country would have a photo and description of Sara Robbins in their laptops, she hadn't been recognized under her new name and guise. That gave her confidence for the murders ahead; no point in wasting time calling them missions.
She'd passed a hundred pounds to a publican in Brighton and was given contact numbers. A homely woman with two squealing kids had provided her with a driving license that would stand computer scrutiny. A man with rat's-tail hair had sold her a brand-new Heckler and Koch U.S.P., a silencer and a hundred 9 mm cartridges; he even threw in a Spyderco C36 military knife with a black blade for free. Then she'd paid cash for a common-as-dirt white van she'd seen in a dealer's yard in Southampton. Her adoptive father had been a farmer and he had taught her about the workings of cars and tractors-she could tell in five minutes that the van was adequate. She'd taped over the rear windows and put a mattress and sleeping bag in the back with her bike, a red metallic XL650V Transalp.
Dave Cummings had been easy. She'd been sure Matt and his friends would have alarms on their houses. They would also have set up alert codes to be used if any of them were under threat. From the van, she had studied the movements of the burly demolition expert and his family. She'd considered murdering them all and leaving pieces of the children about the house, but decided against that- not from any qualms of conscience, but because she didn't want to risk the neighbors hearing the screams. Instead, when the wife and kids left, she'd struck.
All she needed to do now was snare the three men who had executed her brother. Her plan was already under way.
I felt Andy's hand on my shoulder.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," he said, then his grip tightened. "I'm going to check the rest of the house. The bastard who did this might still be here."
I knew he was right. I wanted to go with him-maybe, when we came back, the atrocity wouldn't be here any longer, maybe I'd imagined it, I'd always had a vivid imagination..
I dug my fingernails into my palms and forced myself to look up. Dave was wearing only jeans and shoes. They were soaked in blood, as was the sofa he lay sprawled across. His arms were outstretched and his legs wide apart. Something terrible had happened to his legs. There were bullet wounds across both thighs and in the kneecaps. But worst of all was his head. It had been broken open, his features unrecognizable beneath a carpet of blood and soft tissue. Dave was no longer there. What he had been-his spirit, his bighearted soul-had disappeared. I fell forward like a worshipper before the shrine of some ancient, blood-addicted god, my chest racked by sobs and my face soaked with tears.
"Matt?" I heard Pete say, in my earpiece. "Are you in? There's someone moving around on the first floor."