Her eyes were closed. Her expression neutral. She was gone forever. Just like that. The woman I’d once loved, and who’d gone out of her way to help me, dead because of her kindness.
I fell backwards onto the asphalt and sat there frozen in the rain, so that I hardly heard the sound of a second car starting, just beyond the trees from which Geeta had emerged, accompanied by the faint glow of headlights.
I jumped to my feet, but already the car was pulling away, the headlights disappearing into the night.
I was too late. This whole thing had been a trap and I’d fallen for it. They – whoever they were – had never had any intention of returning Kate to me. They’d set me up. They’d set me up from the very beginning. I’d only ever been a pawn in someone else’s game. And now here I was with the dead body of my murdered former lover, and no other suspects around.
The longer I stayed here, the more danger I was in. Not from whoever had killed Geeta, but from the law. I risked being framed for two murders. Possibly more. I had to get out.
I ran back to the car, jumped inside, flung the baton into the back seat and yanked open Geeta’s laptop.
I had one lead. It was flimsy. It might well be nothing.
But right now, it was the best I had.
I started the engine and, forcing myself to look away from Geeta’s crumpled corpse lying forlornly at the edge of the car park, pulled away in an angry screech of tyres, my hands shaking on the wheel.
54
Sir Hugh Roper
I didn’t arrive home until shortly after 9.30 that night. My chauffeur, Jonathan, can testify to that. After asking him to drive me round my old London haunts while I tried to think, I’d got him to stop on the way home at a small family-run Italian place near Hampstead Heath where I’d once been a regular. They still respected me enough to get me a private table in the back, where I’d eaten a dish of tagliolini with Taleggio and black truffle, washed down with a glass of Amarone. It was the first food I’d had all day but it did nothing to ease the intense, stomach-clenching frustration I was feeling.
Nigel Burns was the man I needed to speak to most because he was the only person who might be able to come up with a solution. I’d tried his number three times in the previous hour and was still waiting for a response. He must have looked at his phone by now, which meant he was avoiding me.
A rat deserting a sinking ship. Just like Thomson, who also seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth, which was even more unnerving since he had a quarter of a million reasons to stay on my good side.
As soon as I was through the front door, I got Jonathan to light the fire in the main study, then told him to wait in the living room on the far side of the house in case I needed him again tonight. Although at that point, even I knew that was wishful thinking.
He was barely five minutes gone, and I’d just poured myself a large malt, when I finally heard back from the elusive Thomson.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ I demanded, needing someone to take my anger out on. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.’
‘I’ve been arrested,’ he said. He sounded more worried than I’d have liked.
‘On what charge?’
‘Suspicion of affray.’
God, this was all I needed. ‘Affray? What the fuck do you mean? What have you been doing?’
‘I confronted Walters at a house in Wembley,’ he said, keeping his voice down. ‘He was there with an associate. There was a fight and I was outnumbered. Someone called the police, and I was arrested nearby.’ He paused, lowering his voice still more. ‘You’ll be pleased to know I got rid of the gun. They haven’t found it.’
It immediately occurred to me that this could be a set-up. That this call might be monitored, possibly even by that arsehole Doyle, in exchange for some sort of immunity deal. Well I wasn’t going to play along with that. ‘I don’t know about any gun,’ I told him. ‘I just want my daughter back. Have you got any further in finding out where she is?’
‘No, but I think Walters might be telling the truth. I’m certain he doesn’t know where she is. But if you can get me out of here, I’ll keep looking. I won’t say anything to the police, I promise. They haven’t got much on me. But I do need a decent lawyer. They’re holding me at Wembley.’
My feeling was that with Obote being either an informant or an undercover police officer, they had a lot more on Thomson than either he knew or was letting on. I also suspected his usefulness to me was now finished, but it was important I got one of my good lawyers down there to monitor what was being said, and if necessary give him an added incentive to keep his mouth shut. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll have my best person with you in an hour.’
I finished the call and phoned Stransky, my chief lawyer, appraising him of the situation. It might have been late on a Saturday night, but I pay him a very fat retainer, and thankfully he answered straight away and said he’d sort it. It was nice to have someone I could still rely on in these turbulent times.
Finally I sat back in my chair with a long sigh and took a generous gulp of the whisky, a rare fifty-year-old Macallan that would cost you ninety grand a bottle if you bought it today, but which I’d got for less than half that, trying to savour the taste. But it didn’t work. It might as well have been some twenty-quid stuff you got in a backstreet pub for all the pleasure it gave me.
I put down the glass and leaned forward over the desk with my head in my hands, a black gloom overwhelming me. I could have ended it all right then. I had a syringe full of pure morphine in the top right-hand drawer that I was keeping in case things became too much and I wanted to go out on my own terms. I was tempted. Very tempted. At one point I even had my hand on the drawer handle.
But then I heard the sound of tyres on gravel, and headlights lit up the room. Someone had arrived.
Intrigued, I got to my feet and went over to the window, pulling back the curtain.
And frowned when I realised who it was.
55
Kate
I was sitting there shivering under the blanket when I heard a car pulling up outside.
I took a deep breath. This was it. The moment of truth.
In the time he’d been gone, I’d been psyching myself up to fight, because that was going to be my only way out of here. But now that he was back, I felt a cold, wrenching fear.
The front door opened and I heard slow, heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. It was him. There was no doubt about it. I felt completely alone. Like I’d been alone for so much of my life. And that was all thanks to the Roper family. They’d ruined my childhood and destroyed the only chance of happiness I’d ever had when they’d murdered David and left me in a coma. And now their henchman was here to finish the job they’d started so long ago.
Unless I changed the script.
Slowly, quietly, I got to my feet. The chain, bunched up in the coat, made no sound. I gently lifted the lid from the toilet cistern, holding it in both hands like a shield. It was heavy, especially as I was low on energy, but manageable, and the fact that I was only going to have one chance at this focused my mind. I thought of Matt, pictured him smiling, and it gave me renewed strength.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. I hardly dared breathe. Waiting in the darkness, trying not to think about the possibility that in a minute’s time I could be dead.
Think positive. Think positive.
I’m going to get this bastard.
The key turned in the lock and the door slowly opened.
I tensed my whole body, standing now only a few feet from the door, terrified at the thought of failure.
And then he was there in the doorway, a silhouetted figure holding a torch in his gloved hand.
Before he had a chance to react, I launched myself at him, raising the cistern lid above my head and slamming it into his face with a howl of exertion and a strength born not only of pure desperation but of anger too, for all the injustices that had ever been done to me, and by God, the
re’d been too fucking many.
The blow landed hard, sending him sprawling backwards, yelping in pain.
I threw the lid down on his foot, eliciting another yelp as it struck home, and he fell onto his behind, clearly dazed.
I rushed past him, giving him as wide a berth as possible. As I’d suspected, my prison had been an en suite bathroom, and now I was in the adjoining bedroom, which was empty bar a blackened mirror hanging from one wall. I made for the door but barely got two paces before I felt a hand grab my leg and yank me backwards, causing me to lose my footing and fall hard onto the stone floor, jarring my knee. As I looked back, I saw my kidnapper, still prone on the floor himself, reaching for something behind his back.
I didn’t hesitate. Lashing out with my free foot, I kicked him in the face – once, twice, three times, bucking like a donkey. Blood was clearly visible behind the balaclava now. I was hurting him, and that gave me strength. His grip on my other foot loosened, and I lashed out with that one too, kicking him again and again until he was driven backwards across the floor and his grasp was weak enough that I was able to break free of it.
‘You bitch,’ he hissed, no longer making any attempt to disguise his voice. His hand came back into view, clicking open a flick knife with a wicked-looking five-inch blade, lunging at me with it.
Luckily he’d been more than a little dazed by my attack, and his reactions weren’t as fast or as accurate as they might otherwise have been, giving me a precious second to roll out of range before scrambling to my feet.
But the chain had fallen out of the coat and now dragged on the floor behind me as I went for the door. Before I could make it out, I felt it tighten as he grabbed it and started pulling me backwards. He was already up on one knee, the knife firmly clutched in his gloved hand, the chain in the other, as he prepared to get to his feet and drag me back into his grip.
Five feet separated me from the tip of the blade and certain death. But I wasn’t giving up now, and as he tugged me towards him, I darted to one side, taking the last of the chain’s slack with me, and pulled the mirror from the wall, hurling it straight at him.
With the knife in one hand and the chain in the other, there was no way for him to deflect it, so he let go of the chain and used his arm to fend off the blow. I’d thrown it so hard that the glass shattered, sending shards in every direction.
I pulled the chain back towards me, throwing it over one shoulder, and charged through the open door so fast I banged my shoulder against the opposite wall in the process. Spotting a thin, blade-sized shard of glass on the floor that had somehow managed to fly out of the room, I quickly picked it up, knowing that I needed a weapon.
‘Get back here or I’ll kill you!’ screamed the kidnapper as he clambered to his feet, real fury in his voice.
But I wasn’t stopping for anything as I took off up the corridor, guided by a single dim ceiling light that bathed everything in an eerie unnatural glow. My feet clattered on the bare concrete of the floor, the chain rattling noisily and making it difficult to run properly.
The corridor was short – no more than ten yards long – with numbered rooms on the left and right, confirming that I was being held in an abandoned hotel. As I reached the end, I stole a glance over my shoulder and saw him come stumbling out of the bedroom door, one hand clutching at his face but the knife still clearly visible in the other.
Almost immediately, he started running after me, which was when I noticed for the first time how tall and broad he was. And even injured, he was faster than me.
I had a choice. Turn left or right. I slowed a moment, looking both ways, remembering that when he’d taken me for the lie detector test we’d gone right, and that, from my bathroom cell, it had sounded like the front door to the building was on the left. So I turned left and ran through the gloom. The corridor here wasn’t lit and I was running straight into darkness, with no idea whether I was heading towards the exit or not. I let out a little slack from the chain as it was impeding my left side, but it was too much, and I stumbled, almost falling over it.
I knew then that I couldn’t outrun him. He’d catch me. I had to hide. Quickly.
A door ahead on my right was slightly ajar, and I darted inside, closing it quietly behind me, hoping it would automatically lock. It didn’t. I searched for a door chain in the darkness and couldn’t find one. I tried to stop myself from panicking, unsure whether or not he’d seen me come in.
I could hear his footsteps, running then slowing. Then stopping. I heard the door of the room next to mine open.
Slowly, very slowly, knowing he’d be coming in here next, I slipped the chain back over my shoulder and crept into the bathroom, using touch as much as sight in the near-total darkness.
The door to the next room closed.
‘I know you’re in here somewhere,’ he called from the corridor, almost directly on the other side of the wall. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I came here to let you go. If you come out, I’ll take you to your fiancé. He’s waiting for you.’
It was the first time I’d properly heard his voice. His accent was reasonably educated, and he sounded older than I expected, possibly in his fifties. Ordinary, but with a degree of confidence that suggested he’d been successful in life. But there was also an edge to it, an anger that he was trying hard to suppress, and I knew that if I went out there, he’d kill me. There was no way he was letting me go. I might not have seen his face but I knew things about him. His height, his build. And, of course, his voice. To release me now would be suicide, and this man was too professional to take unnecessary risks.
The layout inside the bathroom was similar to the one I’d been kept in, with a bathtub and shower screen, which I knew would provide no cover. I closed the door as quietly as I could and stood there in the darkness.
Which was when I heard him stop in the corridor just outside the bedroom door and slowly open it.
He was coming in here, and I was trapped.
56
Matt
I had to make a decision, and my guess was that the most likely place Kate was being held was the burnt-out hotel near Windsor. I drove like a crazy man to get there, and as soon as I saw the place, I was certain it was the one. It was by far the closest to the rendezvous point and had the necessary privacy.
The building itself was set back behind a screen of trees at the end of a short access road, with grounds large enough that there were no neighbours within a hundred and fifty metres. There was a high padlocked gate at the entrance with a Keep Out sign on it, surrounded by tall temporary fencing to keep out trespassers.
I didn’t hang about. One of the very few advantages of being a fugitive is that you get to break the law with impunity. With no one on the road behind me, I simply turned sharply and drove straight at the gates, the power of the impact smashing one of them from its hinges.
I drove rapidly down the access road, headlights on, making no effort to hide my approach, and a few seconds later the trees gave way to a car park in front of a large, bland modern building three storeys high, boarded up and partly damaged by fire. It was impossible to tell whether there was light inside because of the boards, but there was another car already in the car park – a Land Rover Discovery with dirty number plates – so someone else was obviously there. I pulled up beside it, turning the rental car around in case I had to make a quick getaway.
I was out of the car fast, baton in hand, going straight to the Land Rover and putting my hand on the bonnet. It was warm to the touch. This was the kidnapper’s car. He’d driven out of here and murdered Geeta, and now he was back. That was my theory. I had no actual rescue plan, and I was about to enter an abandoned building, having announced my presence, to confront a murderer who had the element of surprise in his favour.
But I was less scared than I’d expected. Perhaps it was because I’d been through so much. Perhaps it was anger over Geeta, who’d died simply because she’d been brave and kind enough to help me. Or simply a father’
s desperation to do whatever it took to protect his unborn child.
Anyway, I didn’t hesitate but went straight over to the glass doors that at one point would have led through to the hotel’s reception. This part of the building was the least damaged, and I peered inside into a dark foyer, still covered in cheap carpet. From somewhere upstairs a dim light glowed.
I tried the door and it opened with a gentle whine. Knowing this could be a trap, I kicked it all the way open, waited a few seconds, then stepped inside, swinging the baton, finally ready to fight.
I stopped, took a deep breath, smelling the stale smoke, my eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom. I couldn’t hear anything. Nothing at all.
There was a staircase leading up towards the dull light. If anyone was here, that was where they’d be. I still couldn’t understand why I was being set up like this. And why they couldn’t just let Kate go. Or indeed, even why they were still here. They’d got what they needed. Why not just disappear? This whole thing just didn’t feel right. Why were audiotapes of sessions Kate had had with a psychiatrist eighteen years ago so important? And to whom? That was the thought that nagged me, because if what I’d heard was true, Kate – the woman I thought I knew – had the most obvious motive for keeping them secret. Which could only mean that she’d set this whole thing up herself.
All these thoughts flooded through my mind in a matter of seconds, and then, just as I put my foot on the first step, knowing that the answer to the puzzle lay somewhere upstairs, I heard it.
A woman’s high-pitched scream.
57
Kate
The kidnapper’s torch beam was visible through the glass panel at the top of the bathroom door. He was just feet away.
As quietly as possible, I climbed into the bathtub and crouched down behind the screen so I was at least partially obscured. My heart was thumping in my chest, the fear almost making me whimper, because I didn’t think I’d have the strength to take him on again. And now he’d stopped right outside the bathroom door, and I was sure he had realised that the fact it was shut meant I had to be in there.
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 23