Laverack had expressed great enthusiasm for the project and wanted to see some sample material as soon as possible, asking for it to be emailed to him. But Abbott was far too cautious to risk exposing his precious manuscript to the transparency of online communications. Paranoid about security, he’d disabled his home internet connection so that there was no chance of anyone hacking into his computer. He’d also purchased an anonymous mobile phone for all communications with the agency. After meticulously checking and re-checking the sample of his manuscript he’d dropped the material onto an encrypted flash drive, which was duly sent off to London by special delivery. Abbott gave Laverack the secret passcode over the phone, with his permission for the agent to share it with his business partner, Roland Seaward.
Satisfied that he’d covered his tracks, all Abbott had had to do then was wait for the agency to secure him a massive publishing deal, while he cracked on with the rest of the book. If they thought the sample was sensational, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
At this moment, Abbott was recalling a particularly macabre incident that had occurred at a Satanic worship ceremony some years back, in which he remembered gleefully participating along with two very prominent members of government and a top police chief. The anecdote would have readers throwing up over themselves; in fact it was so irresistibly vile that he had decided to devote an entire chapter to it. What fun he was having!
Sitting there tapping away at the laptop, engrossed in his work and pausing only for the occasional sip of coffee, he suddenly thought he’d heard a strange noise coming from downstairs. He stopped typing and listened. Yes, there it was again. Like something moving about.
Abbott thought that perhaps another one of those jackdaws had come down the dining room chimney and was flapping around the room. Those pestilential creatures were the bane of his life, always nesting in every nook and cranny. They had no right to live, like some people he could mention. He closed his laptop, got up from the desk and went out of the study to stand listening at the top of the stairs. He glanced at his watch. 11.44 a.m. He’d been writing away for over two hours. How time flew when you were enjoying yourself.
Now he could hear nothing. Had he imagined it? Still worth checking. The last thing he needed was bird shit splattered all over the furniture. He padded down the stairs to the hallway, and turned towards the dining room door. ‘I’ll pull your fucking wings off if I catch you, you little bastard,’ he warned.
And then something hit him so hard across the back of the head that his vision exploded in a white flash and he felt himself plunging forwards into a bottomless abyss.
After that, Anthony Abbott knew nothing more, and never would.
Chapter 31
Ben and Wolf crept inside the house. The side entrance led through to a boot room with a Belfast sink unit, wicker hampers on shelves and various country attire hanging from wall hooks. As Wolf had predicted, there was no sign of any doggy paraphernalia like leads or bedding. Ben was just as glad that they wouldn’t have to deal with Fido.
Knowing the layout of the place, Wolf led the way from the boot room through a scullery and into a handsome country kitchen, which reminded Ben of the one at Le Val with its slate flagstone floor, range cooker and a broad oak table. He noticed the well-stocked wine rack and the bottles of good whisky on the side. Anthony Abbott seemed to have pretty good taste, for a lunatic cult member. From the kitchen doorway they could see into an entrance hall. The house was quiet and felt very still, the only sounds the faint strains of the classical music wafting down from upstairs and the sonorous ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway.
Ben was expecting to find the house’s occupant upstairs in his study, where the music was coming from. But as they stepped from the kitchen into the hallway, they found him sprawled face-down on the floor. A pool of blood had spread over the parquet, gleaming in the light from the front door’s leaded window panes.
Ben went over to the body, knowing even before he got there that they wouldn’t be getting much out of Anthony Abbott any time soon. Someone had caved the back of his head in with a heavy blunt instrument like a bat or metal pipe. And as Ben turned him over, he saw that the attacker hadn’t stopped there. Judging by the mangled mess of Abbott’s face, he’d been on the receiving end of at least five or six brutal blows. His nose was shattered, his left eye was completely ruptured and his jawbone was hanging by little more than a flap of skin. The assault had been swift and savage.
‘He’s fucked,’ Wolf said.
Crouched by the body, Ben pressed two fingers to Abbott’s neck. He wasn’t searching for a pulse. The skin was still warm to the touch. Abbott had been dead for no more than just a few minutes. Ben checked the time. 12.06 p.m. If he and Wolf had arrived a few minutes earlier on the scene, they might have been able to get Abbott away to safety before the assassin struck. Not because Ben had any sympathy for the dead man, but because everything had depended on finding him alive and capable of giving up what he knew. That chance was gone now.
Ben got to his feet and signalled to Wolf that they should search room to room in case whoever had killed Abbott might still be lurking in the house.
Wolf took the upstairs while Ben moved quickly through the downstairs living room, dining room and bathroom. As he’d expected, he found nothing. The only trace of anything odd he came across was the home internet hub in the living room, which had been purposely disconnected. It appeared that Abbott had done that himself. Ben wondered why.
Wolf came back downstairs a moment later and reported, ‘Upper floor is clear.’
‘Same down here. Place is empty.’
‘No sign of anything being touched,’ Wolf said. ‘Either there’s been a change of plan, or—’
Ben knew what he was going to say. ‘Or the clean-up team are already on their way here to turn the place over.’
‘There’s going to be several of them,’ Wolf said. ‘Just so you know. These boys like to work fast and they don’t screw around. And I wouldn’t count on them not being armed, in case anyone walks in on them.’
The timing was critical. The last thing Ben could afford to let happen was a confrontation with the enemy. He and Wolf needed to get out of here right now, before they turned up. But then he remembered something Wolf had said last night.
‘Once the job’s done they bring in a clean-up team to take care of the rest. Whether it’s to leave false trails for the cops, or search for whatever it was that got the target into trouble to begin with. Money, hot information, data files, incriminating evidence, you name it.’
Ben asked, ‘You think they’re coming here to find something?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, that wasn’t my remit.’
‘But if Abbott was one of them, there could be something to link him with their cult. Which would then still be right here somewhere in this house, waiting to be discovered.’
‘Possible. But we don’t have a lot of time to start hunting for it.’
‘What’s in the study?’ Ben asked. Wolf had just been there while checking the upstairs.
‘Usual things. Desk. Chair. Bookcase. Filing cabinet. Computer. He’s got a dinky little coffee maker. Not a lot else.’
‘Let’s go.’
They raced up the stairs. There was a window on the left side of the stairway, with a view of the garden and part of the driveway including the front gates. If anyone was coming, they weren’t here yet. At the head of the stairs was a galleried landing that bent around to the right. Abbott’s study was the first door, nearest the stairs. Wolf led the way inside the room.
Ben glanced around him and saw all the things Wolf had described. Bookcases covered two walls of the fine room, lined with titles on politics, history, law and economics. The music was playing from an expensive CD unit among the shelves, next to a compact filter coffee machine that gave off a nice aroma of Colombian dark roast. Ben knew his coffees. The glass carafe on the hotplate was half full and still warm to the touch. Ben turn
ed off the music so he could concentrate on his thoughts. The leather-topped antique desk was positioned in front of the open window, with a view of the open countryside. Sitting in the middle of the desk was a shiny black Dell laptop with the lid closed and a blinking light showing that it was on mains power and in sleep mode. There was no other computer.
The desktop was tidy and organised, with a banker’s lamp on the left and an old-fashioned dial telephone on the right. The only other item on the desk was a chintzy coffee cup on a saucer, quarter full. Abbott had taken his black, no sugar, the way Ben liked it too. Ben dipped a finger in the cup. The coffee was still warm, like the contents of the carafe. It looked as though Abbott had been up here, in the middle of working on the laptop, when something had impelled him to go downstairs. Maybe he’d heard a noise, Ben wondered. If it had been him or Wolf, Abbott wouldn’t have heard a thing.
Ben flipped open the laptop lid, and after a couple of moments the machine flashed into life. The screen was bright but blank except for a small box that gave the name of the text document Abbott had been working on, with a prompt asking for a password to reopen the encrypted file. If Ben’s old forger and all-around computer whizz pal Thierry Chevrolet had been here, he’d have been able to crack the document open in the blink of an eye. But all Ben could do was stare at the name of the file. It was called THE PANDEMONIUM CLUB.
Wolf peered over Ben’s shoulder at the screen. ‘The pandemonium club,’ he read out loud. ‘What the hell’s that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Strange name.’
Ben had to agree. But he didn’t have time to stand around ruminating over the whats and whys. The computer was useless to them, so he started ripping open the desk drawers one by one and rummaging through their contents. If he’d been hoping to find a hidden stash of photos of Anthony Abbott in his sacrificial ceremonial garb or an address book filled with the personal contact details of all his fellow nutcases, he’d have been disappointed. The first eight out of nine drawers contained nothing more interesting than household bills, receipts, insurance and vehicle documents and other irrelevant clutter.
Ben had just finished hunting through the eighth drawer when a thrumming, pulsing, vibrating sound suddenly came from the ninth and last. It was a mobile phone ringing from inside. Ben tried the drawer, but it was locked. He asked Wolf, ‘You got that knife?’
Wolf passed it to him. Ben jammed the tip of the blade into the crack between the drawer and the desk, and levered it upwards. It was a hefty piece of furniture and made of solid stuff, the wood old and seasoned. By the time the lock gave with a splintering crackle, the phone had stopped ringing inside.
Ben yanked the drawer open. All it contained was a mobile phone, a cheap and plain-looking Nokia of the bought-for-cash, no-names-no-questions variety that was so familiar to Ben. It was a strange item to find in the possession of a respectable politician. He picked it up and turned it on. Whoever had just tried calling Abbott had left a voicemail. Ben put it on speaker, so Wolf could hear too, and played the message.
‘Hello, this is Andrew Laverack of the Seaward & Laverack Literary Agency in London, calling with regard to your manuscript, “The Pandemonium Club”. I’m sorry to say I have, ah, bad news. After much consultation with my colleagues here, it was felt that your manuscript isn’t a good fit for us, after all. Despite the book’s obvious commercial potential, I’m afraid that due to the extreme nature of the subject matter and the risk of legal issues arising from its content, particularly in light of some of the allegations made, we have opted to decline.’
Laverack paused a beat, sounding as if he wanted to say more but was uncertain. He went on: ‘I know you must be disappointed, as am I. If it’s any consolation, this was not a unanimous decision. In fact the reason I’m calling like this is to say that, for my own part, I still believe that this book could be dynamite. But sadly my senior partner could not be persuaded to share my point of view and was ultimately unprepared to take the risk. However I’m sure that another literary agency might feel differently, and I wish you all the best of luck with the project.’
Laverack signed off and the message ended.
Ben now understood what the name of the document referred to. Abbott had been writing a book. One that was evidently so hotly controversial that the boss of Laverack’s agency was afraid to touch it. Laverack himself had sounded bitterly disappointed, even resentful, going out on a limb like that to make his personal feelings known. It seemed as though the agents must have argued long and hard over the matter.
Ben had no idea how the book business worked, but he guessed that a successful publication could make a lot of money for anyone with a finger in the pie, including the agents whose job it was to broker deals with publishers. For an agency to turn down what could turn out to be a fat commission, they must have got seriously cold feet. Which meant that what Abbott had been proposing to them must be pretty damned explosive.
Now Ben could guess why Abbott might have disconnected his home internet hub, making it all but impossible for anyone to hack into his computer. The same reasoning presumably accounted for the burner phone. The politician had been doing all he could to cover his tracks.
His precautions hadn’t done him much good, in the end.
‘Well, well,’ Wolf said, pulling a disgusted face. ‘So that’s what our boy’s been up to. Must’ve got bored with slaughtering innocent women, and decided to do a kiss-and-tell.’
‘Allegations made,’ Ben said. ‘But against whom?’
‘If we could get into that document,’ Wolf said, pointing at the Dell, ‘then maybe we’d find out.’
‘And my guess is that maybe that’s what someone else wants to find out, too.’
Ben turned off Abbott’s phone and pocketed it. He closed the laptop lid, disconnected the mains wire from the socket under the desk, scooped up the slimline machine and wrapped the cable around it. He tucked the computer under his arm and was just about to say to Wolf, ‘Okay, let’s beat it out of here’ when through the open study window they heard the sound of a vehicle outside. The grumble of a powerful engine. The crunch of fat tyres on gravel. Ben peered cautiously through the leaded glass.
It wasn’t a UPS delivery. A shiny black Audi was pulling to a halt in Abbott’s driveway. The sun was glaring on the windscreen and the side windows were tinted dark, making it hard to see inside. Three doors swung open. Three men stepped out, and started striding towards the house. They were all tough, fit-looking individuals in their thirties. Short hair, jeans, serious faces, a brisk and aggressive attitude in their step. One of them was taller and bulkier than the others, carrying a large, bulging zipper bag. Another clutched a heavy sledgehammer. All three wore gloves.
The clean-up team were here, brazenly walking right up to Abbott’s front door. Ben and Wolf had been too slow getting out of the house, and now they were trapped inside.
Chapter 32
Wolf said, ‘Told ya. Now what?’
Ben replied, ‘They mustn’t find us here.’
‘Then I suggest we get out of sight, pronto.’
Ben stepped out of the study onto the upstairs landing and peered down the stairway. The angle wouldn’t let him see the front door, but Abbott’s body and most of the entrance hall were visible. To the shattering crash of the sledgehammer, the front door burst inwards. Voices as the entry team stepped inside the doorway. They walked by the corpse as though it was just part of the furniture. The guy who’d breached the door left his sledge by the entrance. The big guy with the kit bag set it down, unzipped it and started unloading its contents. A pair of long, thick steel wrecking bars, which he lifted out one at a time and handed to his colleagues. A short, black autoloader shotgun with a stockless pistol grip, which he slung around his neck before picking up a wrecking bar for himself. Tools of the trade. The perfect equipment for smashing up someone’s house and blowing out the brains of any unfortunate caller who might happen to pass by. There was little in the
way of conversation as the crew got ready to set about their business.
Ben retreated back along the landing, expecting at least one of the men to head upstairs. They’d have been provided with the same plans of the house as Wolf had, and Abbott’s study would be their first port of call. He signalled to Wolf, communicating Enemy approaching. Wolf nodded and motioned down the passage from the study door, indicating This way. At the same moment Ben heard the creak of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Just one man; the other two had already started their banging and crashing down below: glass shattering, furniture being toppled over. Ben and Wolf slipped quickly away before they could be spotted, Wolf leading the way, Ben bringing up the rear with his pistol drawn and the laptop under his arm.
The landing led into a passageway with several burnished wood doors along its length, gilt-framed paintings hanging between them. Wolf ignored the first door, on the left. Ben guessed it was probably a bathroom, with nowhere to hide. Wolf led the way to the next door on the right, and they hurried inside and closed the door behind them without a sound just as the man reached the top of the stairs.
They were inside a bedroom with a fine antique bed, plush carpet and another picturesque view of the West Sussex countryside through a French window leading out to a balcony with mature ivy growing all around it. The sloping gable roof of an orangery was visible below. Ben moved close to the door and pressed his ear to the wood. Down the passage he could hear the man entering the study. He pictured the guy looking around him for the evidence the crew had come to retrieve. Getting his bearings. Gravitating straight towards the desk. Noticing the empty space where the laptop had been.
Sure enough, moments later Ben heard a muffled yell through the door. ‘Oy! Ken! Get your arse up here now!’
The crashing and banging down below paused, and then there were more running footsteps on the stairs. Wolf came to join Ben to listen at the door. Another muffled voice on the landing – Ken’s, Ben presumed – said, ‘What’s up, Frank?’
The Demon Club Page 17