by Mark McKay
You’d need a car to live out here, he thought. The curtains on the ground floor were only partially drawn, so he could see that the front room was empty. Given the absence of a vehicle, he was pretty sure there was nobody home, but he rang the doorbell anyway. There was no response. He moved around to the back of the house and peered in through the kitchen window. He tried the back door, and when it didn’t yield he used a nearby brick to smash one of the glass panels and then he was able to reach in and open it.
There was nothing extraordinary about the kitchen. There were unwashed dishes in the sink, otherwise the room looked clean and tidy. He had a quick look in the other downstairs rooms and got the impression someone had been here, recently. There was a half drunk bottle of wine on the living room table and an open book on the sofa. An ashtray held the remains of a recently smoked joint, the sickly sweet smell still noticeable. The bedroom upstairs had plenty of men’s clothes in the wardrobe and the bed was unmade. So where was Martin Thurlow?
He went back to the kitchen and helped himself to some water from a cold bottle in the fridge. Then he sat at the kitchen table, contemplating the glass strewn across the floor inside the door. Perhaps he should tidy that up. There was a cork board on the wall just to one side of the fridge, with some post-it notes pinned to it. Reminders, to get more milk and do something about the brake lights. So Martin did have a car. Then it hit him. The cork board and the fridge were positioned relative to each other in just the same way as those in the photo. Lauren would have been sitting right opposite him when it was taken. He sat very still, comparing his memory of the photo with the scene in front of him. No, he wasn’t imagining it. She’d been here.
He should get a forensics team out, there would be something left behind marking her presence and that of those who’d kept her here. He called Bishopsgate and arranged it. While he was on, he asked if any calls had come in on the missing person’s number. There’d been no response, so far. Then he called the St Albans station and told them where he was and asked them to send someone to wait for the forensics team.
‘Any update on Martin Thurlow?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, yet. We were coming out there to check on him again, this morning. You’ve saved us the trip.’
‘What car is he driving? Do you have that information?’
There was a short pause while the constable he was talking to checked his screen. ‘Yes, here it is. It’s not a car, it’s a motorcycle. A Harley Davidson. No sign of that yet, either.’
There was a pen and notepad on the kitchen worktop, so he took down the registration number. Maybe somewhere in this house there was a clue as to where they’d moved Lauren. He decided to take a closer look at the place, even though his rummaging around might hamper the forensic examination. If there was something to find, he had to find it now. He’d start upstairs, in Thurlow’s bedroom.
There was a laptop on the desk in the bedroom. He turned it on, but as expected, it was password protected. He looked through drawers and jacket pockets and under the bed even, but there was nothing to suggest where Thurlow was, or had recently been. He repeated the procedure throughout the house until he got back to the kitchen, where he went through all the cupboards. Then he went outside, but even the rubbish bins were empty. He wasn’t getting far. The laptop was his only hope, so he decided to call Jamie.
‘Sorry to disturb your weekend,’ he said, when Jamie answered.
‘Don’t be stupid, Nick. Anything I can do?’ Jamie would no doubt be aware by now of what had happened to Lauren.
‘Can I bring a laptop over? I need you to hack into it.’
‘Yes, where are you now?’
Nick told him. Jamie lived in North London, in Finchley. It was just over half an hour away.
‘Someone’s coming from the St Albans station,’ said Nick. ‘They should be here soon, then I’ll be on my way to you.’
It was still early morning when he arrived at Jamie’s place. His girlfriend, Fiona, answered the door.
‘Nick, you look tired. Come in.’
It looked like they hadn’t been up long, he’d interrupted Fiona’s efforts to tidy up. There were empty wine bottles and glasses still dotted around the lounge.
‘Had some people over last night,’ she said. ‘I’m doing breakfast, want some?’
He was going to refuse and then realised it was stupid not to eat something. ‘Yes, that’d be great.’
Fiona was a tall skinny brunette, a primary school teacher. He’d only met her once or twice. She poured him a glass of orange juice and then Jamie appeared.
‘Where is it then?’
Nick handed him the laptop and Jamie took it over to the dining room table. He plugged it in and then put a CD in the drive, before switching it on.
‘We can bypass the boot sequence with this,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll be straight in. What am I looking for?’
‘Anything that might tell us where this guy is, now.’
Fiona had done bacon and eggs with lots of toast, for both of them. Jamie waved his plate away, muttering something about warming it up later. Nick took a tentative first bite and realised he was as hungry as hell. In a few minutes he’d finished the lot.
‘Eat mine as well,’ said Jamie.
The trick with the CD worked. Jamie grunted with satisfaction and started looking through the files on the now accessible hard drive.
‘He’s got trading software installed on this,’ he told Nick.
‘Makes sense, if he was the person placing the trades that day. Anything else?’
‘Wait, I’m checking his search history.’
Nick decided to shut up and let Jamie get on with it. He began pacing the lounge, only stopping to accept a cup of coffee from Fiona.
‘There’s more if you want it,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
Ten minutes later, Jamie called him over. ‘Check this out. I looked up his search history for the last seven days. On Friday, he searched for directions to a postcode in Hastings. Worth investigating?’
Jamie had re-run the query, and looking over his shoulder, Nick could see the route traced out on the screen. Hastings was a seaside resort town on the south coast.
‘On Friday,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Yes, that could fit. What’s the journey time?’
It was just over two hours. Had Lauren been moved to Hastings? If so, she’d hardly have ridden pillion on the Harley, so at least one other person would be needed to drive her. And maybe one more to make sure she stayed quiet on the way.
Jamie must have been reading his mind. ‘Even if he went there, it may be nothing to do with Lauren,’ he said.
‘Only one way to find out, then. I’ll have to go there myself.’
He was heading south now, so the flat in Chislehurst was a minor detour. Perhaps another manila envelope had been delivered in his absence, but when he arrived there was nothing on the doormat. He went upstairs, just to see if by some miracle Lauren had returned. He knew that couldn’t possibly be the case, but some irresistible urge pulled him inside, anyway. He imagined her looking up with a frown from the sofa and asking him where on earth he’d been all this time. But the sofa was lifeless. The whole place felt that way now, her absence had sucked the vitality out of it. He sighed and sat down for a while. Lack of sleep wasn’t helping him, it seemed his sense of reality was getting a little blurred. Why couldn’t that bastard Le Roux simply be swapped? Why was it taking so bloody long to get any useful information out of him? Halloran hadn’t been in touch again. The truth was that from a political perspective, Le Roux kept in custody weighed against saving Lauren’s life, was no contest. For people like Halloran, she would simply be another unfortunate victim of the war on terror.
There was another reason for coming home, for a moment it eluded him. Then he got up and walked into the second bedroom. He thought about both of them then, Lauren and his unborn son, or daughter. Then he opened the wardrobe and took out the long canvas shoulder bag from insi
de. He slung the strap over his shoulder, feeling the weight of the weapon inside pressing into his side. Then he just stood very still, feeling the place. There was something gnawing at him, he didn’t know what. He looked through every room before leaving, as though by looking he could bring it to mind. When he shut the door on his way out he thought he was none the wiser and then he realised he had rediscovered a sense of purpose that had been lacking until this moment. He placed the bag on the back seat of the Golf, before taking the driver’s seat and starting it up. Next stop, Hastings.
The clouds grew thicker and darker as he got closer to the coast. As he came off the motorway and into the town they opened in a torrential downpour, so he pulled over to consult the directions Jamie had printed out. He was about five minutes away from where he needed to be and it would be useful if the rain stopped soon, so he could at least see the street signs. The sudden rush of water was overflowing the gutters and streaming down the road. The wind had picked up too. He saw people running for cover with umbrellas blown inside out, or even snapped at the handle. Then half a minute later it stopped, the clouds were moving away and autumnal sunshine had returned, accompanied by a brilliantly coloured rainbow.
The road he wanted turned out to be about half a mile from the sea front. The houses were grand old Victorian structures, many of which had been divided into flats. A lot of those flats would be holiday lets and right now it was the off season, so they’d be empty. The postcode he had didn’t give him a house number, just a number range in a specific area, so it could be one of several addresses. It wouldn’t take long to check them all.
This was probably a wild goose chase he thought, as he parked the car and stepped out. The unmistakable smell of the sea assailed his nostrils and he could hear gulls in the distance. There weren’t many other parked cars to be seen and for a Saturday mid-afternoon the place seemed unnaturally quiet. There was almost a sense of hibernation about it.
He wasn’t quite sure how to go about this. He could knock on doors and see who answered, and pretend to be what? A Jehovah’s Witness? Or he could wait for the Harley to appear, odds on that happening were slim to non-existent. He could at least take an initial look around and see if anything looked out of place. But he needed to do it without attracting undue attention to himself.
He wandered past the houses in question on one side of the street, trying to look casual. Impossible to know if anyone was in, for most of them. Several were built on three levels, so the ground floor was the only really observable part. He heard a woman shout something at a child, otherwise nothing. He crossed the road and walked the other way. He noticed that there was a side street, more an alley really. It led to a park directly behind the houses. There weren’t many people in the park, the rain had seen to that, but if you walked along the perimeter path you got a good look at the houses from the rear. The hedges behind the iron railings made it difficult to see anything at ground level though, unless you were ten feet tall.
There was a children’s playground not far off. It had swings and a metal climbing frame and was devoid of children. He walked across to the climbing frame and clambered up a ladder, perching self-consciously at the top. No one over ten should be doing this, he thought, but as he could now see over those hedges he didn’t really care too much. He looked along the newly revealed gardens and got a glimpse of someone in a kitchen, draining a pan into the sink. A bit further on, two boys kicked a football round the lawn. He brought his gaze back in the other direction and then he saw it. A motorcycle, parked right outside someone’s kitchen door. It looked like a Harley, it was certainly big enough. There was no way to see the registration number from here. He looked at the rest of the property, it was on three storeys and was probably divided into several apartments. There were no signs of life evident from here, no one observing him from behind a bedroom curtain, no shadows moving past a bathroom window. He made a mental note of the location and climbed down.
He went back to the car first, to collect the shoulder bag. When he got to the house it looked quiet from the front, too. There was a tall wooden fence down one side and enough space between that and the house to drive a bike in. Moving quickly and quietly, he made his way through the gap and into the garden.
It was Thurlow’s Harley. The back door was locked, but the kitchen window was partially open. There were two plastic garden chairs by the door, so he took one and positioned it below the window and then just listened for a while. A faint sound of music reached him from a few doors away, but there was no activity here. Standing on the chair, he was able to prise open the window and wriggle through on to a kitchen worktop. He kept going until his body cleared it and dipped towards the floor. He was in a semi-handstand by the time his legs made it all the way through, but he’d got in without making any noise. He took his weight fully on his hands and brought his legs off the worktop, landing soundlessly as he cartwheeled to one side.
The kitchen was spotless and smelled of disinfectant. A wall had been knocked through to extend it into a dining area at the front of the house. He moved out of the kitchen and into a hallway. Two doors led into rooms on the other side. He stood and listened at one of them and then carefully pushed it open. It was a living room, dominated by a huge Victorian fireplace on the wall directly opposite. The rest of the furnishings were old style too; red velvet upholstered high backed easy chairs facing the fireplace and a green button-back sofa by the front window. The velvet curtains were closed at the front and the room would have been totally blacked out had there not been a small side window, adjacent the fireplace. A ray of late afternoon sunlight was streaming in, motes of dust dancing through it.
It was only after he’d taken a few steps in that he realised the room was occupied. Someone was sitting in one of the red velvet chairs, impossible to see until you were practically right next to him. Whoever it was stayed very still at Nick’s approach. Unnaturally so. The man in the chair was leaning back, his head tilted forward. He’d been shot in the back of the neck. Nick was no expert, but by the look of him it had happened hours, not days ago. He was wearing motorcycle leathers, so he assumed it must be Thurlow. That could be verified later, the man wasn’t going anywhere.
Time to check the rest of the house. He went back out and down the hallway, to the second door. It was locked. The key wasn’t far away, he found it on the hall table. He listened at the door again before using it and then he was inside. This room was a bedroom and it was dark in here too, more heavy curtains banishing the sunlight. He opened them slightly and took a quick look at the back garden, to make sure he was still alone. Then he turned.
She was lying on her back on the double bed, fully clothed. One arm was thrown back, clutching the iron bedstead in what was almost a casual gesture. Then he saw she’d been cuffed to it. Her face was very pale and in death she looked quite beautiful to him, reminiscent of the unselfconscious beauty he saw that day in the dojo, when she didn’t know he was watching. It must have been a painless death if she looks like that, he thought. When he saw the collection of syringes on the bedside table, he knew they’d overdosed her. Had they made a mistake, or had they never intended to let her leave?
He knelt by the bed and put one hand gently against her cheek, there was still a trace of warmth. The other hand he put on her swollen belly in a second gesture of farewell, to a child neither of them would ever know. Then the pain of it ripped him apart.
Chapter 20
He sensed them before he heard them. He was lying on the bed next to Lauren, stroking her hair and staring at the ceiling. He had no idea how long he’d been here, it could have been minutes or hours, the passing of time had lost all significance. Then his body stiffened and in that moment he knew someone was about to come through the front door. Suddenly, every sense was amplified. His body moved ahead of his mind and when he heard the key turn in the lock he was already up and waiting by the bedroom door.
He heard two men talking in low voices, then one set of footsteps came d
own the hallway and stopped outside the door. If whoever it was expected to find the key to the bedroom where he’d left it, then he gave no indication of any concern he might have at not seeing it there. He came straight into the room with no hesitation whatsoever.
He was reaching for the light switch when Nick stepped out of the shadows. The eyes widened in shock, but before the man could react Nick had driven an open palm directly under his chin, snapping his head back. The neck went with an audible crack and the man slumped to the floor, in a lifeless heap.
Nick stepped over the body, drawn sword in his left hand. He had it raised above his head when the second man came out of the living room, holding a gun. Before the man could turn into the hall, Nick brought the sword down in a flashing arc, severing the gun hand at the wrist. The hand’s owner stared in disbelief as he watched his useless limb tumble to the floor, the fingers still wrapped tightly around the gun’s handle. Then he clutched at the stump of his arm and roared in pain as he turned to face his tormentor.
He was a big man, with a thick neck. There wasn’t much room in the hall to swing a sword, so Nick improvised a diagonal overhead sweep, which he straightened out into a horizontal slicing stroke at the last moment. When it connected with the man’s neck, the sword went through the flesh and bone almost as if it wasn’t there. His roar of pain became a gurgle and his head hit the floor, closely followed by the rest of him. Nick stepped back as the arterial blood spray spattered the walls. He looked at the carnage in front of him and felt absolutely nothing.
He walked calmly into the kitchen and cleaned the blade with a tea towel. He laid the sword carefully on the worktop while he splashed some water on his face and wondered how he might explain the situation when the local police turned up, as they eventually would. It was only now that he thought to look at his watch. It was almost midnight. He felt a vague surge of wonder at just how much time had passed. In a minute it would be Sunday, the last day of the kidnappers’ deadline. There was a voice in the back of his head telling him he’d just cold-bloodedly killed two people, but if it was trying to tell him he should feel some remorse about that fact, then it had already lost the argument. He was too numb to feel anything.