‘OK,’ Mac said. ‘Only go inside the house if you’re certain they’ve left.’
‘Got that,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ll keep in touch.’
She started running up a slight hill past gated homes. Rat used his extra speed to arrive first and began scaling the gate. Lauren was tense, but couldn’t resist smiling as she punched the entry code and opened the metal door alongside it.
‘Bloody hell,’ Rat moaned, as he balanced precariously on the spikes atop the gate.
‘I’ve got a front door key too,’ Lauren grinned, ‘but you’re welcome to try battering it down.’
Rat made sure that his tracksuit bottoms weren’t snagged on the spikes before dropping on to the gravel inside. His earpiece fell out as he landed, but he reattached it and had a quick listen to the iPod-sized receiver.
‘It’s dead in there,’ he said.
‘We can’t be certain,’ Lauren warned. ‘Hassam found the relay and busted it, so we’re only getting signals from half the house.’
Lauren held a stun gun in one hand as she unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway. She looked down at the blood-spattered marble, but Rat was the first to see the cleaner’s feet, sticking out of the toilet door.
‘Jesus,’ Rat gasped. He looked away, but the image of the badly beaten woman with chunks of splintered thighbone jutting through her skin still made him retch.
Lauren felt almost as bad, but managed to stare for long enough to see her chest move. ‘She’s breathing.’
‘That’s something,’ Rat said, still too squeamish to look.
Lauren stepped reluctantly through the congealed blood and grabbed Sylvia’s wrist to take a pulse.
‘It’s so weak,’ she said urgently. ‘Call an ambulance.’
Shocked by Sylvia’s horrific injuries, the pair had neglected to make sure that the house was empty. As Rat called an ambulance, Lauren made bloody trainer prints as she checked the upstairs and the basement, before finishing off with the kitchen and the office annexe.
‘All safe,’ Lauren shouted. ‘Hassam must have called Asif and decided to bolt as soon as he found the bug. There’s no sign of any packing.’
‘Why didn’t he just get in a car and drive?’ Rat asked.
Lauren shrugged. ‘We put tracking devices in all his cars; maybe he suspected us.’
As she came back through the hi-tech kitchen, Lauren picked the rectangular relay box off the floor tiles. Hassam had tried breaking the box open with a screwdriver or knife, but the plastic hadn’t split. To her astonishment she could hear a distinct whistling sound as she moved it close to her face.
‘Bastard’s faulty,’ Lauren said furiously, as she moved back towards Rat and held it to his ear. ‘He never should have found that relay, but listen.’
Rat shook his head with disgust. ‘It might have cost a life. The ambulance is on its way; five to ten minutes.’
Lauren glanced at Sylvia, something she found easier now the shock had worn off. ‘I know first aid, but there’s not much I can do for her, and I don’t want to have to explain myself when they turn up.’
‘Who’ll let them in, though?’
Lauren thought for a second. ‘There’s bar stools in the kitchen. We’ll use one to wedge the front door and we’ll open the front gate so they can drive right up to the door.’
Lauren’s phone rang as she jogged towards the kitchen.
‘Mac,’ she said, before explaining what had happened.
‘OK, listen,’ Mac said. ‘MI5 got an emergency team to skim through the last recordings before the gunshot. It sounds like Hassam and Fahim are moving to a temporary safe-house, but we’ve no idea where that is. Asif was planning to go and collect some valuables and fake documents from a warehouse. They didn’t mention an address, but I suspect it’s a rented warehouse I saw mentioned in the Bin Hassams’ accounts.
‘I’m in my car now, but the traffic’s solid. MI5 are trying to get someone out to the warehouse, but you two are nearest. Is there a vehicle there you can use? If we lose Asif now, there’s a chance that we’ll lose the whole family.’
‘Hassam’s cars are all here,’ Lauren said, as she opened a door into the garage.
She grabbed the door handle of a Bentley Azure, but it was locked. ‘Rat, go look for car keys,’ she shouted.
‘I’ve got the address,’ Mac said. ‘Have you got a pen and paper?’
Lauren found a notepad and jotted the details while Rat searched.
‘Took you long enough,’ Lauren moaned. ‘We’ve got to get out of here before the ambulance turns up.’
‘It’s a big house,’ Rat said, as he rushed into the triple garage, jangling a starter fob for the big Bentley. ‘Lucky Hassam left it in the jacket hanging on his bedroom door.’
Lauren climbed into the sumptuous leather driving seat and pressed the engine start, followed by the button that activated the garage door and main gate, but Hassam was a big man and she had to waste valuable seconds adjusting the electric seat so that she could reach the pedals.
Rat sat in the passenger seat. He tapped the address Lauren had written down into the satellite navigation as she rolled the big car on to the gravel drive.
‘Trip programming complete,’ the synthesised voice said, as Lauren warily pulled the luxury saloon out of the front gates. ‘Distance three point two kilometres. Estimated arrival time, eight minutes.’
‘Think I can hear the ambulance,’ Rat said, as he looked down into the footwell and saw the mess their bloody trainers were making of the cream-coloured carpet.
31. FEAR
Hassam dragged Fahim out of Asif’s BMW X5 and shoved him across the street towards a Volvo coupé usually driven by his sister-in-law.
‘Call me when you leave the warehouse,’ Hassam said, looking back at his brother. ‘Is there anything I need to do at the house?’
Asif shrugged. ‘You can pray they’re not following us, that’s about all.’
Fahim didn’t dare look at his dad as his aunt’s little Volvo crawled through Saturday morning traffic. He peered aimlessly out of the window, envying the normal lives of the people around him: kids being driven to football games and adults in weekend-wear heading for Ikea or the shopping centre.
‘Is Mum dead?’ Fahim asked unexpectedly.
Hassam tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and pretended not to hear him. ‘I don’t like driving automatics,’ he said, reaching for a gear lever that wasn’t there as they pulled away at a junction, before turning right for the beginning of the M1 motorway.
Fahim had always been scared of his father, but in some ways the revelation of his betrayal was liberating: whatever he said now could hardly make things any worse.
‘If you don’t answer, I’ll take it as a yes,’ Fahim said. Then, as the car pulled off the curving slip road and accelerated to motorway speed, ‘Why did you kill her, Dad?’
Fahim turned to look at his father. His knuckles gripped the steering wheel so tight they were white and sweat streamed down his face.
‘Don’t stare at me, Fahim,’ Hassam growled. ‘I swear to god, I’ll pull this car over and blow your head off.’
‘You gave the gun back to Asif,’ Fahim said. ‘Why did you kill Mum?’
‘She left me no choice,’ Hassam said finally. ‘She took a vow to obey me. When she broke her vow she became nothing to me.’
Fahim had believed his mother was dead for days, but he’d always harboured faint hope and the confirmation hit him hard. ‘What about me?’ he asked, smudging a tear.
‘I can’t stay with you,’ Hassam said, smiling coldly. ‘Even in Abu Dhabi I’ll be a wanted man, but there are many places to hide. I’ll see that your grandfather sends you off to school. Pakistan perhaps, in the mountains. Five or six years of frost, bad food, reciting the Koran and regular beatings should scour the Western mush from your head.’
‘Are we flying?’ Fahim asked, trying his best not to sound upset.
‘You’ll know wh
at you need to know when you need to know it,’ Hassam said sternly. ‘I might not have the appetite to kill my only son, but when we get to the safe-house you’ll feel my belt like never before.’
*
‘We’ve got a trace on Asif’s cellphone,’ Mac said. He’d phoned Lauren, but Rat took the call while Lauren concentrated on the road. ‘He’s using an unregistered phone for his calls, but luckily the idiot’s left his normal phone switched on. He’s at the warehouse now, or close to it. Jake and I are in the car and on our way, but we’re way behind you.’
Rat glanced at the Bentley’s giant sat-nav screen. ‘We’re less than a kilometre away,’ he told Mac. ‘But this is the worst possible car to be driving. Everyone stares and you should see the looks we’re getting when they spot Lauren behind the wheel. And it doesn’t help that she can’t drive to save her life.’
‘Hey,’ Lauren snapped. ‘I can drive, but it’s all narrow streets and this thing’s bigger than the bloody QE2.’
‘Don’t start fighting amongst yourselves,’ Mac said firmly. ‘When you arrive, remember that Asif almost certainly has a gun.’
They were snarled up behind a bendy bus and a queue of traffic as Rat ended the call and pocketed Lauren’s phone.
‘Screw this,’ Lauren said impatiently.
She turned the steering wheel to its fullest extent and blasted the horn. The big engine roared as they swerved into the oncoming traffic. The car accelerated quickly past the jam and the traffic coming towards them had to brake sharply to avoid the imposing Bentley grille. The driver of a tiny Smart car pulling out of a turning wasn’t so lucky, and the big Bentley crunched its front end.
‘Careful,’ Rat yelled.
Lauren growled as she pulled back to the correct side of the road. ‘You moan when I’m too timid, you moan when
I’m assertive.’
‘Turn left in fifty metres,’ the sat-nav said.
With another horn blast to warn pedestrians, Lauren swung into a side road and hit the accelerator. The big saloon had soft suspension, but not soft enough to stop the front bumper scraping the ground as they hit a speed bump at fifty miles an hour.
‘Jesus,’ Rat shouted.
‘Did you hit your head?’ Lauren grinned, as she glanced at Rat. ‘Good.’
The navigation screen told Lauren that they were less than four hundred metres from their destination. Not wanting to attract undue attention, she slowed to normal driving pace before taking a final turn into a cul-de-sac.
‘You have now reached your destination.’
The wire-mesh gates in front of the dilapidated warehouse building were unlocked. Asif’s X5 was the only car in the small lot and Lauren parked the big Bentley across the gates, blocking his way out.
‘Do we wait, or try inside, or what?’ Rat asked, as he grabbed Lauren’s backpack.
Lauren thought for a second before answering. ‘Right now we’ve got the element of surprise, but the moment Asif steps out of the building and sees Hassam’s Bentley he’s gonna know something’s up. And if he’s got a gun, it’ll be too risky to chase him.’
‘Where’s your body armour?’
‘Back at the flat, there wasn’t time to put it on.’
They approached cautiously, Lauren’s stun gun at the ready as they headed towards a door with flaking paint at the rear of the warehouse. Rat crouched low, then peeked inside through a filthy window.
‘Light’s on,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a couple of bags and a backpack inside the door, but I can’t see Asif.’
Lauren had her lock gun ready, but the door came open when Rat turned the knob. It hadn’t been oiled in years and the rusty hinges squealed. They gave Asif a few seconds to respond to the noise before straddling the bags in the doorway. Rat peeked inside the smallest one, a Fila backpack containing fake passports and wads of pounds, UAE dirhams and American dollars held together with elastic bands.
As grit on the floor crunched underfoot, the sound of a toilet flushing came from the opposite side of the echoing space. Using the rushing water to camouflage their noise, Lauren and Rat hurried between two racks of metal shelving towards a washroom door with a 2004 topless calendar pinned next to it.
The pair crouched on opposite sides of the door as the toilet cistern refilled and Asif Bin Hassam’s hands splashed under a running tap. Lauren took deep breaths as she held the stun gun in her hand, her trigger finger ready to fire the electrified barbs at Asif before he could grab his pistol.
Asif had nothing to dry his hands on and he shook them vigorously as he came through the doorway. He was startled to see Rat looking up at him, but before he could react, Lauren shot him in the chest. The four electrified barbs sprung upwards and there were a dozen clicks, each one sending a fifty-thousand-volt pulse through the razor-sharp hooks.
Asif blacked out and hit the floor hard. Rat knelt across his chest and ripped the gun out of the holster under his blazer.
‘Who are you?’ Asif moaned.
‘Friends of Fahim,’ Lauren said, as she held the stun gun up so that Asif could see it. ‘If you don’t tell me where we can find him, I’m gonna zap you again.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Asif said.
Both kids backed off as Lauren gave a quick squeeze on the trigger. Asif screamed and twitched as the air filled with the smell of burned skin.
‘Tell me, now,’ Lauren demanded.
Rat pulled the cap off the pepper spray. ‘I’m gonna count to ten, then I’m gonna hold your eyeball open and spray it right in. Tell me where Fahim is, dirtbag!’
Lauren accidentally nudged the trigger, giving Asif another fifty thousand volts and almost frying Rat in the process.
‘Jesus,’ Rat screamed. ‘Careful with that thing.’
The third shock made Asif bite his tongue and blood began trickling out of his mouth.
Lauren and Rat had to sound confident, but cherubs weren’t supposed to threaten captives unless someone was in immediate danger of death, and while Fahim was in danger they had no grounds to believe that Hassam was going to kill him.
‘I’d better ring Mac and get permission,’ Rat said nervously, as he pulled out his phone. ‘We could get in deep shit if we overdo this.’
Jake took the call. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I need Mac,’ Rat shouted. ‘We’ve got Asif, but he won’t talk.’
‘Mac’s on my phone talking to the Met police. He’s trying to see if their number-plate cams have picked up any of the Bin Hassams’ cars.’
‘We need permission to extract information from Asif,’ Rat explained. ‘We’ve given him a few stun-gun blasts, but I can’t go any further unless Mac clears us.’
Jake tutted. ‘I can’t believe there were no incoming calls logged on his phone.’
Jake’s words hit Rat like a slap in the face. He looked up at Lauren. ‘His mobile,’ Rat gasped. ‘If there’s calls from whatever phone Hassam is using we can take the number and track his mobile signal.’
‘Oh crap,’ Lauren said.
Checking Asif’s mobile phone was the most obvious thing to do, but in their panic neither Rat nor Lauren had thought of it.
Jake overheard Lauren’s cursing on the other end of the phone and laughed. ‘Good job I mentioned it before you started pulling out his fingernails.’
Rat stared anxiously as Lauren pulled out Asif’s mobile. ‘Looks like a cheap pay-as-you-go,’ she said, as she flipped to the incoming calls. ‘We’re lucky the stun gun didn’t fry the circuits.’
Asif moaned and clutched his bleeding mouth as Lauren opened up the incoming-calls menu. She saw that all of Asif’s calls that morning had been to a single number and hit the green button to dial it. It rang three times before Hassam’s voice came on the line.
‘Asif, where are you? Is everything OK?’
Lauren hung up without saying a word. ‘It’s him,’ she said, looking at Rat. ‘I’ll call the number through to campus. They’ll be able to triang
ulate Hassam’s position in less than a minute.’
‘Thanks for the tip, Jake,’ Rat said, before ending the call.
‘Outwitted by the little squirt,’ Lauren sighed, as she dialled the campus control room. ‘I’ll never hear the end of this.’
32. BELT
The Volvo stopped in front of a mock-Tudor detached, with a For Sale sign planted on the front lawn and a rear garden backing on to a golf course. Hassam and Asif part-owned an estate agency, which gave them access to a number of vacant properties.
Asif’s wife Muna opened the front door as they stepped towards the house. Her seven-year-old daughter Jala was happy to see her older cousin and came running out to give him a hug.
‘Everyone inside,’ Hassam said firmly, giving his niece a pat on the back of her long dress. ‘Best to keep out of sight.’
While Fahim’s mum had adopted western dress and lifestyle after leaving the Middle East, Muna was in every way a traditional Arab wife. Fahim found his aunt a mysterious figure, because his Arabic was far from perfect and Muna’s English was even worse.
The smell of unpainted plaster clung to the air inside the newly refurbished property.
‘How’s my Asif?’ Muna asked anxiously.
‘OK, I think,’ Hassam said, as they moved up the hallway. ‘He’s fetching our documents and should be here soon.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘I had a dead call,’ Hassam said. ‘But he’s not used to that phone, so he probably just nudged the redial or something.’
Fahim hoped his father had forgotten the threatened beating and was happy to let his little cousin drag him through to the kitchen where she had a card game set out on the table. But Hassam called him back.
‘Upstairs,’ Hassam growled.
Fahim was slow turning around. Irritated, his father grabbed a handful of his tracksuit top and shoved him towards the staircase.
‘Why are you going?’ Jala asked.
‘He’s been a naughty boy,’ Hassam explained, before making Fahim walk up the stairs and into an unfurnished room.
CHERUB: The Sleepwalker Page 20