Was it worth checking inside the car for jump leads? She had nothing to lose. She went back round to the driver’s door and climbed in. The door pockets contained an owner’s manual and a road map of Iceland. She pulled open the glove box.
No jump leads. But there was a phone. Wada wondered whether Ohara might have taken care to ensure he could use it wherever he went in the country. She picked it up and pressed a few buttons experimentally. The screen lit – at least it hadn’t lost all its charge – but there also were the dreaded words NO SIGNAL.
She tossed the phone back into the glove box. Then a frail hope flickered. Was there no signal because, like her phone, Ohara’s didn’t work this far into the interior? Or simply because she was inside a car inside a barn with thick stone walls?
She picked the phone up again, climbed from the car and headed out into the daylight.
She was ten metres or so from the barn when a service provider’s name popped up in place of NO SIGNAL. And she smiled for the first time in days.
She hurried over to George’s car and took her phone from where she’d left it on a shelf beneath the dashboard. She wasn’t going to call the police. There would just be too much to explain, and if they linked her to the break-in at Quartizon’s offices in Reykjavík she might simply be swapping one kind of imprisonment for another. No. She needed to get away from Stóri-Asgarbær. So, she needed someone to come and fetch her.
She called up Erla’s number on her phone, then rang it on Ohara’s, hoping Erla would answer, even though she wouldn’t recognize the number.
She didn’t. No matter. Wada started recording a message. ‘Erla, this is Wada. It’s very—’
Then Erla interrupted. ‘That’s you, Wada?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘A place called Stóri-Asgarbær. It is a farm. A long way from Reykjavík.’
‘Why are you there?’
‘There is no time to explain. Erla, I am in serious trouble. I have to get away from here. But I have no car I can use. I am stranded. Can you help me?’
‘You want me to come and get you?’
‘Yes. Yes please. As soon as you can.’
‘I’ve got no car. But … I could hire one.’
‘Do that.’
‘OK. OK, I’ll hire one and come to you. But where is …’
‘Stóri-Asgarbær.’
‘Where is that … exactly?’
‘I can give you the coordinates.’
‘The coordinates?’
‘Precise latitude and longitude.’
‘OK. I guess that would work.’
‘Hold on.’ Wada moved to the tailgate and swung it open. She slipped the Emergence document out of her bag and read off the coordinates for Stóri-Asgarbær. ‘You have that?’
Erla read them back.
‘Yes. Correct. You can find me with those?’
‘Sure. No problem.’
‘And you will leave straight away?’
‘I’ll fix up a car and set off as soon as I can. I’ll text you when I leave the city.’
‘OK. Good. I am relying on you, Erla. You understand? I have to leave here.’
‘I’m on it.’
‘Thank you.’
Nick was lingering over coffee after a late breakfast at his hotel. He’d just sent an anodyne and largely fictitious text to Kate when his phone rang. It was Erla.
‘I’ve heard from Wada.’
‘You have? Where is she?’
‘A farm several hours from here. She wants me to come and get her. She’s got no transport for some reason. She sounded … well, as though she needed to get out of there.’
‘You said you’d go?’
‘Of course. But I’ve got no car, so I’ll have to hire one.’
‘I can do that.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that. There’s a car hire place under the opera house. Can you meet me there in … twenty minutes?’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’
‘OK. Great. See you soon.’
Nick put his phone down and drained his coffee cup. So, Wada had broken cover. And the likelihood was that she still had whatever she’d taken from Quartizon’s offices, which the raid on her hotel room suggested somebody wanted back – badly.
Suddenly, the truth seemed almost close enough to touch. He pushed back his chair and stood up. It was time to go.
The morning passed with agonizing slowness for Wada. She walked as far as the gate on the track at the farm boundary and back to the house twice. Then the text she was waiting for came in. Leaving city now.
She went indoors and made some tea. She gave Caldwell a cup and dealt with his attempts to persuade her to let him go by not speaking at all. She said nothing about the empty fuel tank in George’s car or the dead battery in Ohara’s. She made no mention of the fact that she now had a functioning phone. She gave no hint rescue was on the way.
‘I don’t know what your intentions are,’ Caldwell said, ‘but I can assure you I’ll fall in with whatever you decide. I’m sure you realize I pose no threat to you. Our misunderstanding earlier – my … hesitation over releasing you – was just a … fleeting loss of nerve. There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t cooperate with each other. I think we should do exactly what you proposed: head for that hostel you spotted. You have my solemn word I won’t try to stop you doing whatever you judge best in the circumstances. It’s not for me to criticize your decisions. You’ve had a lot to contend with and you’ve coped admirably. If we can just discuss the situation rationally, then I’m confident …’
But his confidence was misplaced. They weren’t going to discuss the situation, rationally or irrationally. They weren’t going to discuss anything. Wada had heard enough from him. She collected his empty teacup, washed it and hers in the kitchen, then went back outside and checked for messages on Ohara’s phone.
There were none. That didn’t matter. Erla was on her way. There were no messages for Ohara either. She couldn’t decide whether that was good news or bad before concluding it was probably neither.
Eventually, she went back indoors and sat by the range in the kitchen, ignoring Caldwell’s calls from the bathroom until he finally gave up and fell silent.
And the silence sounded good.
Until it was broken. She couldn’t have said by what. The sound was distant and indistinct: a rumble of some kind. The view from the kitchen window hadn’t altered. Nor the one from the bedroom window on the other side of the passage. Wada walked to the front door, opened it and stepped outside. The wind stirred her hair and whispered in the eaves. There was nothing else, just the blank surrounding moorland. Nothing had changed.
She went back into the house. As she passed the bathroom, Caldwell asked her why she’d gone outside. She ignored him.
Back in the kitchen, she checked the time. Whatever the noise, it was too early to be the sound of Erla’s car approaching.
A few minutes passed. Normality resumed. The waiting began again.
Then sounds came in a rush. Running footsteps approaching the house. A loud crash from the direction of the front door. The sound of wood splintering. Wada jumped up from her chair. There were more footsteps now – inside the house.
Then she heard Caldwell’s tremulous voice.
‘My God. Who … who are you?’
‘Where is Ohara?’ The man spoke English with a Japanese accent.
‘Who?’
‘Stupid to play games with a gun pointing at you.’
‘Maybe … if it wasn’t … I could think more clearly.’ Caldwell sounded frightened. But he was doing his stubborn best to hold himself together.
‘Ohara left you like this?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘You are Martin Caldwell?’ The man’s Japanese accent was strong enough for Caldwell’s name to sound like Cordwell when he pronounced it.
‘Yes. Yes, that’s … that’s me.’
‘So, where is Ohara?’
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‘Who are you?’ Caldwell countered.
‘That does not matter.’
‘Still, I should like to know.’
‘Zayala. My name is Zayala.’
‘You … work for Ohara?’
‘Who else is here, Caldwell?’
‘No one.’
‘I know that is a lie. Where is Wada?’
Don’t tell him, Wada silently urged Caldwell, though in truth he might as well, since she was only a few rooms away with no means of escape. If she stepped into the passage, Zayala would surely see her. If she climbed out of one of the windows, he would surely hear her. And he had a gun.
How had he found them? A sickening answer came to her as she cast around the kitchen, looking for some way out. Ohara’s phone. Perhaps, as soon as she removed it from the barn and re-established a connection, Zayala was able to track it. And to arrive where the signal led him long before Erla.
‘Ohara and Wada have gone,’ Caldwell lied, none too convincingly to Wada’s ear. ‘I don’t know where.’
‘They left together?’
‘Er … yes. Together.’
The last part of the room Wada looked at was the ceiling. And there, directly above the chair she’d been sitting on, she saw a loft hatch. It was maybe the only chance she had of escaping.
She stood on the chair, moving with enormous care to avoid any scrapes or creaks, stretched her arms above her head and waited for some sound from the bathroom that would camouflage whatever noise the hatch made. There was a clank of the chain on Caldwell’s handcuffs that gave her what she needed. She pushed the hatch upwards and slid it to one side.
‘What was that?’ Zayala immediately demanded.
‘I … didn’t hear anything,’ said Caldwell.
Wada knew she had to act fast. She was surely only seconds away from detection. She jumped up, grasped the frame of the hatchway and pulled herself bodily up, her muscles straining but adrenalin driving her on.
Then she was in the loft, scrambling on to a surface of planking laid across the joists. As she replaced the hatch, she glimpsed a movement down in the kitchen: the shadow of Zayala entering the room. But the hatch had slid back into place before she saw the man himself.
Silence. Wada crouched where she was. Did Zayala know she was there? Had he seen or heard the hatch being moved? She barely breathed as she waited. Maybe, she thought, just maybe—
Then a gunshot tore a hole in the hatch and pinged against one of the rafters. Wada shrank back.
No further shots followed. A tense silence fell. Maybe Zayala was trying to judge exactly where in the loft she was. Glancing around in the thin light seeping in beneath the soffits, she saw it ran the length of the house, planked for maybe half that, with several brace-beams breaking up the space.
Wada eased herself up on to the nearest brace-beam and waited, wondering what Zayala’s next move would be. Her heart was hammering inside her chest. She was drawing fast, shallow breaths. There was sweat on her forehead, despite the chill hanging around her in the dusty air.
She could hear voices below, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. She couldn’t even distinguish between Zayala and Caldwell, although one raised and piercing note was surely Caldwell crying out – in pain, maybe, or panic.
Then the voices stopped. A minute or so passed. She heard a thump from the direction of the kitchen, followed by another. Another minute of silence. Then one brief scream – and a gunshot.
Wada didn’t doubt what had happened. Caldwell was dead, executed by Zayala, who would surely now do the same to her. She lowered herself off the brace-beam and began to move along the loft, away from the hatch. She had no clear plan of escape. Was there another hatch at the other end of the house? Was there any kind of way out? She could only hope against hope.
She heard the hatch being pushed up behind her and immediately shrank down in the shelter of the large water tank she’d just passed. The light in the loft changed as the hatch opened. She saw Zayala’s bird-like shadow cast across the underside of the roof.
‘Show yourself, Wada,’ he called, speaking in Japanese. ‘I will not kill you.’
She didn’t answer. He was obviously lying. He had no intention of letting her leave the loft, let alone the house, alive. Her shoulder bag was hanging on a chair in the kitchen. She assumed he’d already inspected it and satisfied himself that it contained the kage-boshi file and the stolen Emergence documents. With that established, there was no reason to refrain from killing her.
‘Come out now from wherever you are hiding.’ His voice was too harsh for his words to be at all persuasive. She wondered if he realized that. Perhaps he didn’t care. ‘This is your only chance.’
In Wada’s mind there was no only chance. There was in truth no chance at all. She could think of no way out of the situation she was in. She was trapped. She was helpless. Death was coming for her.
‘Stay where you are, then. And take the consequences.’
The shadow vanished. But the hatch stayed open. Then she heard a click. And a second later a bottle with a flaming cloth stuffed in its neck was tossed up into the loft, followed by two more. They smashed against the rafters and fell to the floor. The gasoline inside them burst into flame and spread in a blue-yellow tide across the planks, which crackled and smoked and began to burn.
Wada retreated along the loft as smoke billowed towards her. The speed with which the fire had caught was frightening. She was in a tinderbox of old, dry wood. The roof was covered outside in turf, and though that might burn more slowly than wood, it would surely only produce more smoke for Wada to choke in as it did so. She had to get out. But there was no way out.
Then she saw a chimney breast ahead. The mad idea entered her mind that maybe this could be her escape route. Hurrying towards it, she failed to register that she’d reached the end of the planked section of flooring. Her foot suddenly plunged into the gap between two beams and her leg disappeared through the lath and plaster ceiling of the room below.
She grasped the beams on either side of the gap to haul herself back up, but to her horror she felt her foot seized and yanked downwards. She cried out and heard Zayala grunt with the effort of pulling her down. She fell sideways into the gap and lost her hold on the beams. In an avalanche of wood and plaster, she descended through the ceiling.
Zayala let go and allowed her to crash to the floor. Her shoulder took most of the impact. She felt the fluffy surface of a rug beneath her cheek. Then he pushed her on to her back with his foot and she saw the jagged hole in the ceiling above her.
In the next instant, Zayala appeared in her field of vision. His face was bony and sheened with sweat. His eyes were narrow, his mouth a hard gash beneath a flat nose. He stepped over her, so that his feet were planted either side of her chest. In his right hand he held a gun, which he trained on her head.
‘Was it you or Caldwell who killed Ohara?’ he demanded.
He must have forced Caldwell to tell him where Ohara’s body was, though telling him hadn’t helped Caldwell in the end. Wada realized full well what that meant for her. ‘It makes … no difference,’ she gasped.
‘It was you, I think.’
‘I will not tell you … how Ohara died.’ Her refusal to answer was the only way she could defy him. And she was grimly content for those to be the last words she spoke.
TWENTY
THE FIRST SIGNS nick and erla had that something was wrong were the helicopters: one police, one fire service, buzzing low overhead and heading in the same direction as them. Erla rang the number Wada had given her but got no answer. ‘The number doesn’t even ring,’ she reported. ‘There’s nothing.’ She tried Wada’s own phone. ‘The same. Nothing. A dead line.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ said Nick. ‘Those helicopters could be going anywhere.’
‘But they’re not, are they? They’re going to Stóri-Asgarbær.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Don’t we?’<
br />
Nick could find nothing to say in reply. He just kept driving.
The smoke on the horizon, first seen several kilometres back, had already prepared them for the sight that greeted them when they arrived. That and the fire engine and the police car that had overtaken them on the road.
They’d never seen Stóri-Asgarbær intact. Now it was a smouldering ruin, fragments of gable and the stumps of chimneystacks standing like the ribs of some animal reduced to a carcass. There was a burnt-out car standing in front of the house and another in a gutted outbuilding.
They pulled up on the far side of the yard. Two firemen were hosing down the remains of the walls while a couple of boiler-suited forensics officers picked their way through the accessible areas. A policewoman noticed their presence and started walking towards them.
‘Don’t tell her why we’re here, Erla,’ cautioned Nick. ‘We can’t afford to get caught up in their investigation. Remember, I have to be back in Reykjavík by six.’
‘OK. But it doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘No.’ There was nothing else to say.
Erla got out of the car and greeted the policewoman in Icelandic. Nick watched from the driver’s seat as they talked, glancing towards the house at intervals.
Then Erla came back and the policewoman headed off to rejoin her colleagues. ‘Well?’ Nick asked apprehensively as Erla got into the car.
‘I explained we seemed to have taken the wrong road. She told me we should leave. I asked what started the fire. She didn’t say, but it was obvious from the way she spoke about it that it wasn’t an accident. And when I asked if anyone had been injured, she said …’
‘What?’
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 22