He walked. He kept alert.
It was an old Fiesta that caught his eye. A dent on one side, with rust creeping round it. A shabby, unkempt interior. Sam looked around to check that he was alone. Nothing. Nobody. He walked round to the passenger’s side where, with a sharp jerk of his elbow, he smashed the window in. The glass shattered onto the passenger seat. Leaning in, he stretched out to open the driver’s door, then walked round and climbed in.
The vehicle belonged to a woman or a short-arsed man – he had to move the seat fully back in order to sit properly. His fingers groped for the panel under the steering wheel and, with a sharp tug, he pulled it off. With both hands he felt for the wires underneath; in less than a minute he had hotwired the engine into life.
Another time check: 03.15. Assuming the car’s owner awoke no earlier than six, Sam had three hours. It was enough. In three hours’ time he would be long gone.
In three hours’ time he would be back in Hereford.
TWENTY-FIVE
Hereford, May 25. 04.55.
Max Redman awoke.
His room was dim, almost dark, with the morning light just beginning to bleach the air. As always happened, it was the confusion that hit him first. Where was he? What was this place? And then the pain. The dull, insidious ache that weakened his thin limbs and reminded him, with a shock that never grew less brutal through familiarity, that he was imprisoned – both by his illness and by the four walls that surrounded him.
He groaned, then lay there listening to his own rasping breath. It was only gradually, and with a creeping sense of unease, that he realised he wasn’t alone.
With difficulty, he moved his head to one side. A figure by the door. The old man couldn’t make out who it was. He squinted, but it was no good and he felt the anxiety of the infirm.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, his aggressive voice neutered by his weakness. ‘It’s too early for breakfast. I’m not fucking hungry.’ Deep down, though, he knew it wasn’t someone bringing him food. He struggled to stretch his thin arm out for the control that would move his hospital bed into a sitting-up position. His fingers touched it, but it slipped from his grasp. He swore and tried again. By that time, however, the figure was moving. Stepping towards him. And the closer it got, the clearer its features became.
Max Redman’s weak limbs became weaker. His breath rasped all the more. The figure stood by his bedside and looked down. Neither man said anything.
It was Max that broke the silence. ‘My God, Jacob,’ he breathed. ‘What’s happened?’
His son’s face was ravaged. There were deep, dark bags under his eyes and a frown on his forehead that reminded Max of when Jacob was a little boy and had been scolded. But his eyes themselves had the thousand-yard stare, that look of numb shock that Max knew from the battlefield.
Jacob didn’t reply. He just continued to look down on his father.
For a brief, irrational moment, Max wondered if he was being visited by a ghost; he wondered if his own eyes looked as haunted as his son’s. Max Redman was not a man who was easily scared; but he felt fear now, creeping down his spine and making his extremities tingle and burn. If this wasn’t a ghost, why would Jacob not speak?
‘What’s happened?’ he repeated. His voice sounded unsure. Max would never have been anything other than dominant in conversations with his sons, but now the tables had turned. He was frightened of Jacob. It took courage for him to stretch out his hand towards his son’s, an unprecedented gesture of timid affection. Their skin touched.
And then, slowly, like a man in church preparing to pray, Jacob lowered himself to his knees. He looked to the floor and allowed his father to place his thin hands on his head. They stayed like that, father and son, for nearly a minute. They might have stayed longer, had they not both been disturbed by the faint sound of wheels screeching in the car park outside. Jacob stood quickly. His eyes had narrowed, but his face had lost none of that troubled expression. He walked backwards until he was halfway across the room and his face was once more shrouded by the half light. Then he turned and walked to the door.
‘Your mother couldn’t live without you, Jacob,’ Max said. Jacob stopped, but didn’t turn round. His father’s difficult breathing filled the room. ‘Neither of us could live without you.’
A thousand thoughts suddenly emerged in Max’s mind, like the dead rising from their graves. A thousand emotions. A thousand apologies. But he didn’t have the energy to speak any more, even if he had had the skill to articulate them. And so they went unsaid, lost in the dark silence between the father and his son.
Max closed his eyes. He heard the door click open, then fall quietly shut. When he opened his eyes again, Jacob was gone.
It was precisely three minutes past five when Sam’s stolen Fiesta screamed into the car park of his father’s care home. There were barely any other vehicles there, just those belonging to the night staff. He stopped at an angle across two parking spaces and sprinted towards the building.
The receptionist on duty looked startled as he burst in. The man shouted something, but whatever it was didn’t register in Sam’s mind as he hurried past, along the corridors that smelled of disinfectant as he followed the familiar route to his dad’s room. As he ran, he put his hand under his hooded top and loosened the Browning that was nestled in his ops waistcoat. A strange sense of calm fell over him, an other-worldliness. He didn’t know quite what would happen when he reached the room, but with an almost emotionless detachment he knew he would be ready for it.
His father’s door. Closed, just like every other one along the corridor. He paused briefly, pulled out the Browning and, weapon at the ready, opened it slightly.
No sound. He kicked it open further and stepped inside.
His father was lying there, just where he always was. The bed was flat, the curtains closed. But Max’s eyes were wide open. Sam pointed his gun quickly to all four corners of the room. There was just the two of them, so he approached his father’s bedside.
Max’s face was grey. Tired. His eyes were red and the rough skin on his face was dabbed with moisture. Sam had never seen his father cry. Not even when Mum had died. It didn’t happen. There was no doubt about it, though. Max Redman had been crying and Sam knew why.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded.
Max stared at his younger son. He looked like he was struggling to control his emotions. ‘Why the piece?’ he asked, his eyes flickering to Sam’s gun.
Sam grabbed the control for the hospital bed. It seemed to move in slow motion, to take half a lifetime to bring Max upright. When finally his father was in a sitting position, Sam spoke again. ‘I know he’s been here, Dad. Where’s he gone? What did he say?’
Like a petulant child, Max pursed his pale lips.
‘Damn it, Dad! It’s important.’
Max’s chest rattled as he breathed. ‘Is he in trouble?’ he asked, before collapsing into a fit of coughing. As the fit subsided, he closed his eyes. ‘He looked like something had happened.’
The image of Mac’s dead body flashed across Sam’s mind, like a hot iron branding the skin of a live animal. He felt the muscles in his face tightening involuntarily, giving away his emotions. Max’s eyes narrowed. He might be old and sick, Sam thought, but he wasn’t stupid. His father looked away resolutely.
Sam took a deep breath. He couldn’t tell his father the truth. It would kill him. But he had to know what had passed between Max and Jacob. He had to know what his brother had said. ‘Listen, Dad.’ His voice low, urgent. ‘I don’t know what he told you, but yes, he’s in trouble. I can help him, Dad. I can get him to safety. But I’ve got to know where he is. If I don’t find him, someone else will.’