Roy looked at his wife, and even in the ghostly green glow saw the kindness in her face. That kindness was one of the many things that he had fallen in love with. But fury about what Curtis Esmonde and Monica Stokes had planned for him and Cleo — and the rest of his family — still raged like a furnace inside him.
‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘What’s happened to him, Roy?’ she asked again, insistently, her voice trembling. ‘He’s got burn marks.’ She frowned.
‘Is he drunk, Papa?’ Bruno called out.
‘Yes, Bruno. He’s very drunk.’
Before either could ask any more questions, Roy ushered them on down, along the landing and then down again into the hall. Cleo briefly lit up the dead woman’s face with the torch beam.
‘That’s her,’ she said, moving the beam swiftly away. ‘Roy, what happened?’ she asked again.
Ignoring the question, Roy led the way into the dining room, entered the kitchen, walked through a huge cold room at the far end and saw a closed door. Opening it, warning Cleo and Bruno to stay back, he went down a steep staircase into a vast wine cellar. To his left he saw a thick oak door. He tried the handle and, sure enough, it was locked. He pulled the second large, ancient key from his pocket, inserted it and twisted. Nothing happened. He tried again. Then again.
21
Jack Alexander lay on the cold stone floor, in the darkness. The inside of his head felt like it was being burned by a blowtorch. Thinking, muzzily, about Kaitlynn. What the hell was happening to her? Was she captured, too? In terror?
Somehow, he had to get out of here and find her.
Had to.
Perhaps the two old people he’d seen moments before he’d been struck on the head might know something. He urgently needed to get the tape off their mouths and talk to them.
The one thing he held on to, keeping him sane in this nightmare, was the confidence he had in his abilities. He knew he was smart. And sure as hell — whatever vicious thugs had captured him and were holding him prisoner — he was pretty sure he was smarter than they were.
So prove it, Detective Sergeant Alexander, the voice inside his head had been saying over and over.
In his work with the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime team, he was well aware that surprise was often the key element. Surprising villains when they were least expecting it, catching them off-guard. Like dawn raids on drug dealers. Or producing digital evidence from their phones and computers that they were totally not expecting. Or finding a witness they’d not thought about. Out-thinking them was the key.
And he was going to out-think whoever that bastard was who had come in here with the torch and slugged him.
Suddenly, he heard a clank.
The sound of a key in the door lock.
Shit.
Clank.
The bastard was coming back. He tried to stand up, but with his hands still bound together he stumbled and fell flat on his face.
Clank.
It sounded like the key had turned.
The door was opening.
With every ounce of his strength, he managed to stand up, giddy with fury. He saw the chink of light and raced to the side of the door, flattening himself against the wall. Then he raised the heavy iron hoop high above his head.
Ready.
Ready for you, you bastard.
22
Signalling to Cleo and Bruno to stay back, Roy Grace pushed the massive, heavy door open, slowly, cautiously, and peered in.
What he saw was something out of a horror film. Two people, a man and a woman, their mouths covered with duct tape, bound by their wrists to iron hoops on a wall.
But, to his dismay, there was no sign of Jack.
He strode in and was about to call out that he was a police officer when he was aware, too late, of a shape hurtling down at him from his left. He felt a crashing blow. His head exploded into a shower of sparks. He stumbled forward, dizzily, a few steps, his legs cut off from his brain. Then the floor came rushing up, smashing his goggles against his face. The sparks inside his head flickered out.
23
Roy tried to open his eyes, and immediately closed them again against painfully dazzling light. He was totally confused. His brain felt like it was on a helter-skelter, swirling round and round, down and down.
Somewhere distant, he heard a man’s voice, speaking quietly in French. ‘Il se réveille!’
He opened his eyes again, just a tiny slit, blinking hard. A blurry face that he thought, for a moment, was an angel peered down at him, part anxious, part smiling.
‘Darling, thank God!’ Cleo’s voice, as if in a dream, sounding echoey. Another blurry figure next to hers, a woman dressed all in white, was now stooping over him as if she was studying an object in a museum.
His vision remained blurred. For some moments he wondered if he was dead.
He blinked, painfully. It felt as if a knife was digging into the base of his skull. Slowly, Cleo came into focus. Then the kindly face of the young woman beside her. A nurse, he realized.
As he looked around, he saw he was surrounded by medical gear. A drip line was taped to the back of his left hand and there was a plastic bracelet on his wrist instead of his watch. He tried to speak but no sound would come out.
The nurse said something in French. It sounded approving. He recognized one of the words, bien.
Cleo leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Darling, welcome back.’ She was crying. ‘God, thank God. You’re OK!’
A tear fell on his face. He reached up with his right hand to his forehead and touched what felt like a sticking plaster.
A thin man in white scrubs, with a stethoscope around his neck, suddenly appeared. For some moments he studied a bank of screens on shelves above him, displaying changing graphs and readouts, and nodded approvingly. Roy heard the words, in broken English, ‘It is good, the brainwaves are normal now, his heart rate is up, his pulse is good. Fort — strong!’
Roy tried to sit up, but the nurse immediately held him back. ‘S’il vous plaît — please — just rest.’
Again he tried to speak, but his voice came out slurred, as if he was drunk. ‘Was — was happened?’
He felt a tiny prick in his arm, then everything went dark again.
24
When Roy next opened his eyes, the light in the room had changed — it was less bright. He saw a large window over to his right, with a view out onto buildings. Dusk had fallen. He was dizzy; it felt as if an entire workshop of panel beaters was bashing away inside his skull. Someone was holding his right hand. He turned and saw Cleo sitting at his side, smiling at him.
‘Hi!’ he said.
‘My darling, my poor brave soldier. How are you feeling?’
It took him some moments to process the question. How was he feeling? Like shit. It was all starting to come back now. Curtis Esmonde. Monica Stokes. He’d gone through the kitchen, down into the cellar and unlocked the door. Then he was here.
Wherever here was.
He heard another familiar voice. ‘I’m sorry, boss. Shit, I’m so sorry.’
Unshaven, hair tangled, in jeans and a grey Pink Floyd T-shirt, Detective Sergeant Jack Alexander smiled down at him, sheepishly. He looked tired, with hollow rings around his eyes. ‘Thank God you’re OK, boss — I honestly thought I’d killed you.’
‘So it was you! You obviously didn’t hit me hard enough!’