And suddenly, Roy did remember. Those eyebrows.
‘I spent all that time in my prison cell working out my revenge, Roy. Ever tried sleeping on a prison pillow, Roy? Rock hard they are. Like sleeping on a six-inch-thick breeze block. So I didn’t sleep much, see. Just lay there every night, thinking, planning, dreaming. Dreaming of the day I would make you pay. And now, voilà! With what I’ve got in mind, you and your family are all going to wish you were dead.’
17
The man’s voice.
The woman’s face. Her eyebrows.
Snapping on his phone light again, Roy ran back towards the drawing room across the hall from the dining room. The room that was hung with photographs of past guests, including all the many famous names. And there, beneath the photographs of Peter Sellers and the footballer George Best, was one of a thuggish man in his fifties. He had almost no neck, short gelled hair and he stood with his arm around the woman with the thick eyebrows. A scrawled message beneath — ‘What a gem we’ve discovered!’ — followed by the date.
With a chill, he now knew for sure who they both were — how had he missed it earlier? Probably too struck by the other famous faces.
And he knew that distinctive voice.
He remembered all too clearly where he had last heard it. In Courtroom One of the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales — the Old Bailey.
And Cleo had been right when she said she did not believe French was the woman’s first language. It wasn’t — it was English. And she wasn’t Monique, she was Monica.
He looked at the date. They must have stayed here just four months ago.
Curtis Esmonde.
One of the nastiest villains he’d locked up in twenty years of being a copper. Esmonde’s speciality, together with his evil sidekick, Monica Stokes, had been terrorizing helpless elderly people in their homes. They would torture them to get their pin numbers and clear out their bank accounts, sometimes even cutting off fingers to get their rings. If any resisted, they would beat them unconscious.
Staring at the image, Roy remembered the case so well. And, of course, he would. It had been his detective work that had led to their arrest, and which had caught the eye of his then Chief Constable, leading to his fast-track promotion. First to Detective Inspector and soon after to Detective Chief Inspector and his move to the Major Crime Team.
He remembered taking the witness stand in the scary grandeur of the Old Bailey, as a young DS. He had told the judge that in all his six years as a police officer, Esmonde was the vilest piece of low-life he had ever met. As was his partner, Monica Stokes. They’d seen themselves as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, but in reality they were nothing more than a pair of cold-blooded scumbags.
How on earth were they here now?
How could they be here?
There was a window to his left. Snapping off the torch, he ran over to it. But as he reached it, a powerful beam shone in, dazzling him. Something hard and metallic tapped on the windowpane. He could just make out the twin muzzles of a double-barrelled shotgun. He threw himself down below the sill an instant before there was a massive explosion, followed a moment later by another, as glass showered down on him.
Jesus.
Crouching low, phone off, he ran back in the direction of the door, misjudged it and crashed painfully into the wall. Mocking laughter seemed to echo all around. He dived for the floor again as two more shots rang out and chippings of plaster fell onto him and around him.
A million questions flashed through his brain. But he had only one purpose right at this second — to somehow stay alive and get his family to safety.
Curtis Esmonde’s voice boomed out at him. ‘So nice to be here with you, Roy. Dead nice! Having a dead nice holiday, are you? Remember what you called me in court when you were giving evidence? What you told the jury? And that bitch of a judge, what was her name? You said I was vermin; you likened me to a scavenging sewer rat. Well, who’s the rat now? The rat trapped in a maze, eh? We did leave you a clue with the photograph on the wall, but you must have missed it, Roy. Tut tut, and I thought you were supposed to be such a sharp detective.’
But Roy was barely listening. An idea was forming. A desperate plan. If he could stay alive long enough.
He rolled over, feeling the edge of the door frame, and crawled on all fours through into the hall. Two more shots rang out in rapid succession. Something zinged by his right ear. Fleetingly, snapping on his torch, he saw the nearest suit of armour to his left. It had a large shield. He turned the torch off and ducked behind the armour, crouching as low as he could.
He tried to free the shield, but it felt as if it was welded to the steel hand. Still crouched, he moved across the hall, dragging the suit of armour behind him for protection. Shit, it was heavy. Another two shots. Shotgun pellets pinged off the armour and something stung his left arm, painfully. He’d been hit.
From the time it had taken Esmonde to fire again, Roy guessed — and hoped — this wasn’t a pump-action gun; that the bastard was having to break the barrel open to reload fresh cartridges. Giving him a precious few seconds.
Switching on the torch again — 5 per cent charge remaining — and breaking into a run, he dragged the suit of armour behind him to the doorway through into the windowless dining room. Leaving it there, he sprinted across the room to the far door, through which Madame had brought the food on the large silver trays. And into the kitchen again.
He shone the beam around wildly. Desperately hoping to see what he was looking for. The two objects he needed to stay alive. Suddenly he spotted the first one — a block of kitchen knives on a work surface close to the huge butler’s sink. He grabbed the largest knife, a thick, serrated one, and pulled it out. Then, turning round, he saw one of the large silver trays, laden with plates and wine glasses, sitting on a long wooden table.
He lifted the tray up, hurling the contents onto the floor with a deafening crash of breaking glass and crockery. ‘Apologies, Madame,’ he murmured. ‘Send me the bill.’ He switched his torch off, then went back to the doorway and, by memory, through the windowless dining room to the doorway to the hall.
Stopping in the entrance, he gripped the handle of the knife in his teeth and held the tray out like a shield with his left hand. With his right hand he shoved the suit of armour hard, sending it toppling over with a loud crash.
At the same moment, he switched on the beam again, shining it on his own face. Then he held up the tray and stepped back as two more shots rang out in quick succession, a volley of pellets pinging off the tray.
With the torch still on, knife gripped tightly in his teeth, he sprinted across the hall, ignoring the voice that was taunting him. He reached the bottom of the stairs and flashed the torch beam up at the huge stuffed stag on the first landing.
‘This is such fun, Roy!’ he heard. ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel! Or since you prefer rodents, it’s just like playing whack-a-mole! Or maybe it’s voles that are rodents, but hey, old pal, we’re not going to split hairs, are we, Roy?
‘And just imagine what fun I’m going to have with your beautiful wife and that very sexy nanny of yours after I’ve shot your head off. And I wonder how high that kid and that stupid little baby of yours will bounce when I chuck them out of the top of the tower. Who will bounce higher — the boy or the baby? How high? Four feet? Want to have a bet with me? Four feet, six feet or just three? Or no bounce at all, just splat! Oh, sorry, I forgot — you won’t be around to pay out.’
18