by Seb Kirby
“That does not matter, now, Senora. What matters is why.”
“You mean why did they have to die?”
“No, I mean Matteo should not have involved the German. He is the reason for this.”
Alessa Lando had not yet made the connection with the single fact that would come to dominate the last years of her life.
“The German?”
“Heller. Wolfgang Heller. I stood by our friendship and my loyalty to your late husband, Alfieri. I agreed to Matteo’s request to help the German here in Tijuana. And now, not only have we both lost one of our most loyal men, we may have the Americans on our backs.”
“You’re losing me.”
“You do not know, Senora? You have not seen the pictures on TV?”
Alessa gasped as she realized the truth of what he was saying. “The deaths in Austin. You’re saying Heller was responsible?”
“Si, Senora. Your son has brought the possibility of a world of danger upon the heads of us all. The Americans will not rest until they find the killers. We must make sure the trail does not lead to Heller and does not lead to us.”
Alessa thanked him and closed the line.
She wasn’t as safe here in London as she’d supposed, despite the protection Dmitri Kolokov offered. She’d been unwise to trust Matteo to run the business, after all. It made her sad, this echo of her lifelong dispute with Alfieri over their son. For them both, nothing had mattered more than the preparation of Matteo for the greatness that would be certain to be his. It was a terrible thought that the wrangling between them could have been the reason Matteo inherited such bad judgment.
He should never have trusted a man like Heller.
It was going to take all her guile and strength to find a way to deal with the German and his excesses and to win for Matteo the greatness he deserved without becoming implicated herself in the terrible events she’d witnessed on the screen.
Chapter 72
The black cab made good progress in the early morning London traffic as I headed for Euston Station.
I felt a surge of optimism. In a few hours I would be with Julia.
What could spoil things now?
There was no room to be complacent. I thought back to the way I hadn’t taken enough care when we’d traveled from Weymouth to London and how Craven’s men were able to follow us. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
I asked the driver to drop me before we reached Euston. Instead, I got out in Gordon Street, close to the UCL Chemistry Building. I walked along the street in the opposite direction to the station until I reached Gordon Square Garden. If anyone was following they would be visible now in these uncrowded streets.
I turned to look and could see no one. Even so, I wasn’t going to take chances. The most important thing now was that where Julia had gone was kept secret.
How did I know she’d escaped The Allegro without being followed herself? I didn’t have to think twice. I knew Julia. Like me, she wouldn’t have allowed herself to be tailed twice.
I walked on past the elegant Georgian terraces situated around Gordon Square, past the house with the blue plaque commemorating John Maynard Keynes who once lived there, and into the garden at the center of the square. I was alone. I sat on a park bench and waited.
I was sure I hadn’t been followed. Even so, a clever operator could have guessed I was heading for the station and could be waiting there. I needed a plan to deal with this.
I walked round Gordon Square and headed for Euston Road and the station. Once inside I bought a ticket to Glasgow.
The main concourse at the station was crowded with passengers waiting for the train departures to be announced on the large overhead electronic information panels. As the details of each train were displayed there was a surge of passengers rushing to take their seats. I made sure I joined each surge even though my train hadn’t been called. Each time as I pulled back at the ticket barrier and retraced my steps, I looked for any telltale sign that I’d been followed. There was none.
When the Glasgow train was called I boarded, feeling confident I wasn’t being tailed. I found a seat and busied myself reading the newspaper I bought at the kiosk on the way to the train. It was a different paper to the one I’d seen in the hotel but the story was the same – Outrage in Austin.
As the journey unfolded my thoughts filled with disjointed images taken at random from all that had happened in the past six days. The military flight and the tour of Walls Unit, the look in Heller’s eyes as he’d readied himself to kill me at The Warren Richardson, our crashing into the scrap yard wall near the abandoned train station, the quizzical look on Hendricks’ face as I left The Allegro. Jet lag was catching up on me in ways I hadn’t expected.
When we neared Crewe, I took one final precaution. I got off, taking care to leave it as late as possible to leave the train. If anyone had managed to follow despite my earlier checks, I’d now made it difficult for them to leave the train at the same time as me. The next Glasgow train would leave Crewe in one hour. That gave me time to take a train to Chester and return to the same platform. I checked for followers on the journey out to Chester and back. No one was following, I was sure of it.
I took the next Glasgow train and traveled as far as Oxenholme. On the station I joined the stout band of walkers and holidaymakers making for the Lake District. As we waited for the Windermere train, I looked them over. I had nothing to fear.
From the window of the Windermere train I could only wonder at the intense green landscape passing before me and think of the contrast with what I’d witnessed with Miles on the escape from Austin.
I pulled out from my pocket the note that Julia had left at the hotel.
QR4
She’d found a way of telling me where she was headed in a way only I would understand, knowing, as she did, that the message could be seen by anyone at the hotel.
QR4. The way a player would have recorded the move in the old chess notation many still used to talk about the game. Queen to Rook 4.
Rook Farm, at the top of Rook Lane, high over the Ambleside Valley was one of our favorite places. We’d spent many summers in the sixteenth-century farmhouse that formed the centerpiece of a working farm surrounded by cattle and sheep in the nearby fields.
The house had been enlarged and sold separate to the working farm. The owner, Faith Webster, had experimented with running it as a holiday let in the summer and living in it herself the rest of the year. We got to know her well on our stays there. When she decided that letting the house wasn’t worthwhile and she would live there all year round, we were upset at the thought we might not be able to go there again. But she told us she would still let to special guests like us if we didn’t mind sharing. The house was big enough. So, our visits there continued, even after we entered witness protection.
I was certain it was where I would find Julia.
I decided to take the taxi from Windermere to the center of Ambleside Village and walk the rest of the way to the farmhouse. If asked, the driver would be able to say only that he’d delivered yet another tourist to this busy town center.
I’d walked up Rook Lane many times but now the steep climb was more challenging, more evidence that the trauma of the past few days was catching up with me. The moss-covered dry stone walls of the lower part of the lane gave way to a more open stretch around the disused Education College before closing in again higher up the lane as I gained altitude. My lungs were heaving as I climbed the last crest of the lane and saw the white outline of the farmhouse at the top of the rise.
The farm gate was open. There were no vehicles in the parking space alongside the farmhouse. Away and to the right, the rusting barn stood silent and unoccupied. All around the dry-stone-walled fields were silent. The farm’s sheep had retreated to the shade of a distant tree. In the back of my mind, I was beginning to think I was mistaken, and Julia wasn’t going to be here.
I walked up to the farmhouse door and pushed. It opened and I stepped
into the kitchen. A pair of walking boots near the cooker was the only sign of occupation.
Then I heard her calling from the top of the stairs.
I called back. “It’s me.” Not the most eloquent statement of my life but one that meant more than any other I had made.
She came down the stairs and straight into my arms.
We cried tears of joy and relief.
We had found each other again.
Epilogue
Eighteen Months Later
Days passed with nothing to suggest anyone knew we were here.
We were together again and that was what mattered.
Faith Webster asked few questions. We told her only enough for her to understand our need for secrecy and we knew we could depend on her to be discreet. It was Faith who arranged for Julia to attend the antenatal clinic in Ambleside where, after a nervous wait, we were told our baby was progressing well.
We’d survived these most difficult of days with no lasting effects on our child’s wellbeing.
Five days later, Simon Miles Blake was born at the Maternity Department, Helme Chase, Kendal. Not that we put the name Blake on his birth certificate.
It was Julia’s wish that his middle name should be Miles.
Yet the repercussions of what had happened couldn’t be put aside, even as we tried to convince ourselves that our lives would one day become uncomplicated again.
By then I’d begun to engage with the threats to our safety that were still out there.
How we came to terms with them is, as they say, another story.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to Faith Mortimer, Kath Middleton, Jan Warburton and Kristen Stone for help in getting this book ready for presentation and to many other friends for their kind observations and encouragement.
Next in the James Blake Thrillers:
Forgive No More
From international bestselling author Seb Kirby comes the pulse-pounding finale to the James Blake thriller series, perfect for fans of Harlan Coben, Dan Brown and Ken Follett
Find out more
First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Seb Kirby
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Seb Kirby, 2013
The moral right of Seb Kirby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636544
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co