by Matt Hilton
Hendrickson was home. We’d already made sure of that on an earlier drive-by. We’d been lucky in that we’d been passing the front gate just as his limousine had been sweeping up the drive towards the house. Parking alongside the road, we’d wandered back, as if interested in the signs depicting the hall’s history, and spied Hendrickson getting out of the limo and jogging inside. In the meantime his limousine hadn’t moved again.
Harvey was driving and he sent the rental towards Hendrickson’s estate. We passed other wealthy residences, traversing streets named after English towns and hamlets. Big money area, but I’d expect to find someone like Hendrickson nowhere else. Some of the other houses had gates and walls, like they were the domains of robber barons, but none were as well protected as Hendrickson’s. On reaching the boundary wall it hadn’t shrunk from the eight feet tall it had been first time we drove by. There were ingress points dotted around the estate, but all had been locked tight apart from the front gate. It was electronically controlled and covered by CCTV cameras. Easiest way in, I decided, would be over the wall.
We did a half-circuit of the estate, turned round and headed back again, watching for anything that would indicate a surveillance point. Where the geography allowed for hidden observers we found none. There was always the possibility that remotely controlled cameras had been erected, but that also meant that the response time of those watching would be slower than if they’d been parked nearby and ready to descend on Hendrickson en masse. I had no intention of spending any unnecessary time inside, so thought I could be out again before a response team arrived. I indicated that Harvey park the rental in the mouth of a tree-lined side road.
Harvey would be my spotter, and my guardian. We clipped on the Bluetooth microphone/earpieces and switched on the mobile phones we’d purchased earlier in the day. Harvey readied the sniper rifle he’d used when covering Rink and me in our escape from Baron and his men. I had my SIG primed, but unless it was absolutely necessary I wouldn’t be using it. Like I said, calm and controlled was the order of the day; I had to get in and out again without raising too much fuss.
Making a ladder of his bent knee and cupped palms, Harvey boosted me up and on to the wall. I caught his rifle and placed it on the wall next to me, before reaching for Harvey’s arms and hauling him up and over. He landed cat-footed and I passed down the rifle. In the next instant, I was in the grounds, Harvey had set up behind the base of a tree and I was racing across the sculptured garden towards the house.
We were taking a hell of a chance, but I’d learned that sometimes the best approach was the least expected. A team of Navy Seals or SAS troopers would have approached in a totally different — read cautious — manner, but when an assault was down to only one or two men, fast and fearless was best. Unlike the charade I’d played in Little Rock, there’d be no shooting blanks into the sky this time.
The lawn was springy underfoot, and I could smell the loamy aroma of turned earth. Something else too: diesel fumes. From some distant side of the grounds came the competing put-put-put and high-pitched whine of a sit-on-and-ride mower. I’d been hoping for this, because when there were groundskeepers on site the likelihood that anyone was paying attention to any of the security measures was lessened. In keeping with the Tudor hall, the grounds had been designed to evoke a formal English garden. I utilised each tree, bush and flowered arch as I came nearer to the house. Behind me, Harvey too would be moving closer, keeping me in sight.
Besides the ‘murder’ question, there was another moral conflict to contend with here. I’d read files on Kurt Hendrickson, knew he was a piece of shit that I’d no qualms about killing, but what of others inside that house? He had no family listed, but there would be staff members innocent of his criminal dealings. Maids, cleaners, cooks, gardeners: I could come across any of them at any time, and whereas I wouldn’t pause to take out anyone with a weapon who even looked at me cockeyed, I’d have to be careful. I didn’t want to hurt any of them, but neither could I allow them to raise the alarm.
I made it to the western corner of the house. There I paused, pressing my back to the wall, hidden from the view of anyone coming out the front door by the black beams that interspersed the whitewashed panels. I freed my Ka-bar and readied myself. Then I sneaked a look through one of the windows. I could see a dining room. Chandeliers, wooden floor, large round table like something King Arthur would preside at. No Hendrickson, though. I moved on. The dining room was large enough to encompass this entire wing of the house, so I didn’t bother peering inside again. I went round the side of the building, passing a small fleet of vehicles arranged on a space laid to gravel.
At the back of the house I found that another gravel path snaked away into the gardens, while a right-angle spur led unerringly to a back porch. The sound of the lawn mower was much louder here. Crouching below the window ledges, I headed for the porch. Above the sound of the mowing machine I detected another buzz; this one made by two men engaged in chatter. Cigarette smoke puffed from the porch. Some of Hendrickson’s guards had sneaked off for a quick drag while he was engaged elsewhere in the house. At least I hoped that they were guards, considering what I planned to do.
‘I’ve lost you, Hunter.’ Harvey’s voice was a whisper through the Bluetooth set.
‘Hold your position. I’m going in.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
I continued towards the porch, taking it slowly. Another torpedo of blue smoke shot into the air, followed a moment later by the butt-end of a cigarette that arched towards the garden.
‘Better not leave that there. The boss is particular. He sees that and you’ll be wearing your balls in a sling.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ a second voice moaned. ‘It’s not like I’ve emptied a goddamn trashcan on the lawn.’
I no sooner heard the exchange than a man followed the direction of the cigarette butt. I flattened myself to the wall, watching as he retrieved the stub. He searched around for some loose earth, dug a hole with his fingertip and then inserted the tab into its grave. He scuffed earth over the evidence with the sole of his boot. There was a click and a thump as the second man made his way back inside. I glanced around: no one else in sight. I stepped out from my hiding place.
The smoker had his back to me. He was tall and square shouldered, dressed in a polyester suit and scuffed rubber-soled shoes. Didn’t look like either a maid or cook to me. He wasn’t finished concealing the cigarette. I saw him duck down and brush more dirt over the incriminating hole, probably stalling before returning to his duties. As he crouched, his jacket rode up on his hip. There was a gun clipped to his belt. That made up my mind.
As the man stood, brushing soil from his fingertips, I moved on him. I slipped my Ka-bar into my belt so both hands were free. Moving low so that he didn’t catch me in his peripheral vision, I raced towards him. I caught him just as he was turning back to the house, looped one hand under his jaw and grabbed at his opposite shoulder. My other hand I latched on to his hair, yanking him backwards as I stamped into the soft flesh at the back of his right knee. Twisting him as he fell, I jammed him face first into the lawn, stifling his shout of alarm. Then dropping to my knees, straddling his lower back, I hauled up and back and heard the resulting crack of his spine. I allowed him to flop down, inert. His nose was inches from where he’d concealed the cigarette butt in the earth, and I wondered if his final living sensation would to be to smell the tobacco he’d planted.
Rolling the man on his back, I saw his face for the first time, and was surprised to find that I knew him. He was one of the men who’d survived the breakout when I’d liberated Rink from the house in North Carolina. He’d stood alongside Baron, ineffectively aiming a gun at us as we’d taken off in the Bell UH-1N helicopter. If he was here, then it stood to reason that Baron might be here too. Better and better: the opportunity to finish two of my enemies at the same time.
Of course, the stakes had just risen tenfold. Despite downplaying Baron’s abilities earlier, I
knew he wasn’t going to be easy to kill. Indeed, he might take me out first. His presence made me wonder about Imogen. Had she made it safely to Machias as I’d hoped, and had Hartlaub and Brigham successfully picked her up? Surely Baron couldn’t have got to Maine, snatched her and then travelled back here in the time we’d been over at Rene Moulder’s place? No, I decided, it wasn’t possible. I tried to put Imogen out of my head, but it wasn’t easy. Since rescuing Rink I’d been pretty single-minded, but now that she’d intruded on my thoughts, Imogen wasn’t going away.
I gave myself a mental shake. I remembered thinking once that I couldn’t allow a pretty face to distract me from my mission. On that occasion the face had belonged to Imogen’s sister, Kate. The reminder was equally valid now. I bent and grabbed the dead man’s ankles, dragged him across the lawn and shoved him between two large bushes. Then I set to my main agenda. Kill Hendrickson and Baron. Then kill Cain. Otherwise no one I cared for was ever going to be safe.
Chapter 27
Jennifer Telfer was a pretty woman. A little thicker around the waist and thighs than Tubal Cain preferred in the female form, but she had an excuse. Bearing two kids had left its mark on her body as it did for many mothers. He watched as she walked from the black taxi to the front doors of her tenement building. She was laden down with six plastic carrier bags full of frozen food. Cheap brand name on the bags. The weight of the bags made her stoop and he could detect the strain in her face and the cords of her neck. Her hair was swept up and knotted at the back, a mother-of-pearl clip holding it in place. Beneath her lightly tanned skin he could see the fine line of her mandible, the high cheekbones, and the curves of her orbital sockets. He looked beyond the flesh, judging the bone structure, knew that her cranium would be a fine trophy.
Jennifer entered through a glass door smudged by thousands of handprints. The interior of the building was deep in shadow, but within seconds a spill of light fell across her as the doors of an elevator swept open. Jennifer stood aside, making way for an old man. They exchanged a nod and a couple of words then Jennifer stepped inside, placing the bags down gratefully. She looked out as the doors began to close. She seemed to have straightened, looking even prettier now that the effort had disappeared from her features.
From his hiding place, Cain watched as the old man came out on to the street. He didn’t even look Cain’s way, just bent at the waist and set off with a determined stride, as though conscious of stepping on cracks and inviting bad luck to fall upon him. When the old man was out of sight, Cain moved out of the alleyway and across the road. He shouldered his way through the palm-smudged glass door and into the foyer of Jennifer’s building. The gloom wasn’t so bad once he was inside, most of it down to the effect of the leaden sky on the glass doors. Opposite him the elevator doors had closed but the mechanism still groaned as it delivered its passenger to the upper floor. He made instead for a stairwell. The stairs were filthy, mud-stained and streaked with other things Cain shuddered to imagine. He went up as quickly as he could, pushed through on to a landing and saw the door to Jennifer’s flat closing. There followed a rattle of deadbolts and chains.
Cain shrugged, went back down the stairs.
The children weren’t home yet, so it was too soon at any rate. He left the building, made his way back across the road and took up position again. Then he thought, To hell with this! Jennifer wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be busy unloading her budget-priced shopping into her freezer. She’d be preparing a meal for when the children got in from school. Maybe she’d tidy up the house a little, or read a novel or watch some daytime TV. He didn’t have to stand in this crappy alley all day long.
He walked back out through the estate.
Manchester was a city with many faces. After a bomb was detonated by the IRA, it led to a revamp of the city centre, but here where the normal people lived things still looked a bit like the Bronx did in the 1970s. The only thing that shattered the time-slip illusion was the profusion of satellite TV dishes bolted to the sides of the buildings. Some of the poorer households, where he guessed it was a struggle to put food on the table, weren’t without the dishes either. That told him a lot about the people here.
Out on the main road things looked better. There were semi-detached Edwardian and Victorian-era houses with tiny gardens at the front. Parking was a problem; these roads had never been designed with such a number of vehicles in mind. It made him yearn for the wide open spaces of the roads he was familiar with back home. Most of the cars belonged to mothers waiting to go collect their brats from school. Soon enough the rush would be on. He crossed the road — jaywalking wasn’t an issue here — and approached a cafe. More accurately it was a tea shop, as the sign proclaimed. He pushed inside, a bell announcing his arrival, and caught a young woman picking off a hangnail. She perked up at sight of him, offered a gap-toothed smile.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Do you serve coffee on your menu?’
‘Yeah, of course. Come and sit down, over here by the heater. Mug of milky or water?’
Milky or water?
‘Uh, is a “milky” the same as a latte?’
‘Same thing but about two pounds cheaper,’ the woman said.
‘Sounds good to me.’ Cain walked to the table she’d indicated. Beside it was a convection heater that was welcoming after his stroll in the damp air. He held his hands over it while the woman wiped down the table. Judging by the state of the cloth, it would have been better to leave it as it was. The woman bustled off to make his drink, straightening the ties on her apron. He studied the menu that had quite obviously been designed and printed on a home computer. He was bewildered by the food on offer. What the hell was a barm cake?
He gazed around the tea shop: six tables, mismatched chairs, floral wallpaper, old black and white prints on the walls. There were no other customers so he studied the prints. The neighbourhood didn’t look that different now than it had ninety years ago: just the satellite dishes and more cars. As he looked to where the woman worked, he saw her heading over with his mug of milky coffee.
‘Have you had a chance?’
We both speak English, but it isn’t the same language at all, he thought.
At his blank look, she said, ‘The menu. Did you get a chance to read it?’
‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, tapping the menu. ‘I’ll have one of these.’
‘Sausage bap? OK, coming right up. Will there be anything else?’
Cain hadn’t realised he’d been staring at the woman’s hand. Where she’d pulled the hangnail loose, he could see a bright strip of red was showing through. He was picturing how much further he’d have to dig to find the bone. Yes, there was something else he wanted but he had to fight the urge to take it. He shook his head, lifted his milky coffee and tried not to grimace against the sickly sweet taste. As much as he’d have liked to take a bone from this woman he couldn’t afford the problems it might incur. He was here for Jennifer Telfer and must not allow his urges to control him. He concentrated on getting the coffee down.
His sausage bap arrived. Links of sausage, sliced and placed in a bun. Some sort of brown sauce had been smeared on them. It was actually delicious and he wolfed it down.
Through the windows he saw that the traffic flow had picked up. He glanced at his watch. Three thirty p.m. ‘Are the schools due to get out?’
The woman squinted at her own watch. ‘Yes.’
He approached the counter. Coming out to face him, the woman said, ‘We don’t get many Americans round here. What brings you to Longsight?’
‘The delicious sausage baps,’ he said, and smiled. He handed over a ten-pound note and got change direct from the pocket in her apron. A jar on the counter said ‘tips’. He rattled the coins into the jar. ‘Maybe they’ll bring me back another day and I can sample some other local delights.’
The woman laughed. She thought he was flirting. Let her think what she likes, Cain reflected. If she knew what he was really hinting at she would have run away screaming.
>
‘Well… if you need a guide, you know where to come.’
Cain winked at her. ‘Bet on it.’
‘I’ll hold you to that.’ The woman pulled her cloth from her apron, sashayed so that they bumped hips. Her laughter was throaty, but more from too many cigarettes than anything sexy. Cain allowed his hand to trail across her hip and down her lower back, as if guiding her around him. She never felt the swish of the box-cutter as he moved past her.
Later she’d note that one of the ties of her apron was much shorter than the other, and perhaps she’d reappraise her meeting with the handsome Yank, but for now Cain smiled as he pocketed his trophy. At the door he turned back. The woman was bending over his table, cocking her hip provocatively and peering doe-eyed over her shoulder. To Cain she resembled a five-buck whore. Jeez, he thought, all bets are off. Still, he offered a smile and a wave, and she grinned back, showing him the gaps in her teeth.
He left the tea shop, wondering if she could eat an apple through a birdcage without opening the door. He chuckled at the image, then let it go. There were more important things to consider. Along the roadside, the parking spaces had freed up and further down the street came the first drift of children in school uniforms. He wondered if he’d recognise John Telfer’s children when he saw them.
Chapter 28
‘I’m in.’
Harvey confirmed my whispered message. I stood just inside the back door of the Tudor hall, peering along a narrow vestibule. Inside, the walls were white. Ancient wood along the skirting and picture rails was as dark as ebony. The floor was wood, but a runner of carpet had been laid down the middle, deadening any footfalls. I could almost smell the history embedded in the fabric of the old building. Fleetingly I wondered if this house had known bloodshed in its time in Lancashire. Had it been used as a base during the Wars of the Roses, or witnessed conflict between Roundheads and Cavaliers? Or would this be the first time it had known violent death in its six hundred years?