by Tom Bale
still looked presentable.
He took a couple of steps and then a violent coughing fit had him
doubled over. He hacked until his lungs burned, but afterwards he
could breathe more easily.
As his convulsions subsided, he heard what appeared to be an echo;
then he realised it was the sound of someone else trying to clear their
lungs. Joe felt a stab of relief. There was one other survivor, at least.
It was Liam. He was lying about fifteen feet away, close to the mangled
ruin of an expensive-looking treadmill.
He was buried more deeply than Joe had been: only his head and
shoulders visible in the rubble, his hair grey with dust. There was a
plank of splintered wood lying across his back, one end poking towards
his neck. As Joe approached, he started to writhe.
'Don’t move!’
Liam ignored him: he was either scared of what Joe might do or
perhaps deafened by the blast. But he must have felt the wood jabbing
his neck, for he suddenly froze.
'Joe?’
'Keep still. You’re going to skewer yourself if you’re not careful.’
Joe knelt down and carefully lifted the timber, in the process
dislodging some of the bricks and plaster that were covering Liam’s
lower body. The Irishman shrieked.
Ah fuck, that hurts!’
'Pain’s a good sign. It means you’ve got feeling in your legs.’
'I don’t know . . .’ Liam must have flexed something, then he gasped.
'My right leg won’t move, and the left one hurts like hell.’
Joe examined him as best he could, removing some of the bricks.
'You’ve got some nasty cuts, but they’re not bleeding too heavily. There’s
no sign of any bones protruding—’
Liam made a retching sound, spat, and said, 'Thanks.’
'_so it’s looking positive,’ Joe finished, electing not to mention the
possibility of internal bleeding. 'I don’t have time to dig you out now,
and frankly I want you staying put till I can get help.’
Liam groaned. And the paramedics’ll have fucking cops at their
elbows.’
'They will, yeah.’
Joe stood, peered at the field of debris around him, then nudged
a lump of concrete aside with his foot and scooped up what he’d
spotted: Liam’s gun.
As he turned away, Liam twisted his head and shouted, Ah, show
some mercy. Don’t leave me here.’
'Be thankful you’re still alive.’
'But I’m in agony.’
'Tough.’
Joe picked his way across the gym while looking the gun over. He
unscrewed the silencer and slipped it in his pocket, then removed the
magazine and checked the barrel. The weapon didn’t seem to be
damaged or jammed, but he wanted more than a visual inspection to
rely on.
He pointed the gun at the far wall and fired once. Saw the bullet
strike within a couple of inches of the spot he was aiming for, and
decided that was good enough.
To reach the gallery, Joe climbed up on a pile of masonry and then
grabbed a section of the balustrade, testing its strength before hauling
himself up. It was a risk, but a quicker option than negotiating his
way to the main staircase.
The games room had sustained heavy damage in some places but
remarkably little in others. The pool table had overturned, while the
flimsier table-tennis table, set further back, remained upright. It looked
as though the force of the explosion had blown through the wide
doorway on the inner, north-facing wall but had left the wall itself
intact. Why?
Sketching the layout in his head gave Joe the answer. The panic
room. Its reinforced walls formed the inner core of the building, and
had acted as a barrier between the room they were in and Dreamscape.
If they’d still been in the bedroom suite, on the far side of the panic
room, they’d almost certainly be dead now.
Joe turned to his left, visualising his last glimpse of Felton, retreating
from Priya, who’d been standing with her back to the doorway, catching
the blast full on from behind. He estimated that both of them would
have ended up somewhere close to the south-facing wall.
a glass-fronted cabinet that contained a selection of pool and snooker
cues. She was lying face down, one arm thrown out at the side, her
fingers reaching toward the hole in the floor that accommodated the
fireman’s pole.
Joe crouched down for a closer look. The sight of her long, dark
hair, its lustre of life barely diminished, stirred his emotions more
powerfully than he would have cared to admit. Gently he lifted her
head an inch or two, to allow him to see her face.
What he saw made him flinch. It sparked an unwelcome memory
of the night when, as a young PC, he’d had to search a muddy field
for the decapitated head of a motorcyclist. On that occasion he’d located
it, and then embarrassed himself by vomiting. Here he quelled the
nausea by reminding himself who Priya was, and what she had done.
At least her death had been mercifully quick.
Now Joe had to prepare for the next discovery to be equally grisly.
He tried consoling himself with the thought that there might yet be
a clue to Cassie’s whereabouts in Felton’s pockets, or maybe on his
phone.
It took him less than ten seconds to make a circuit of the room.
There weren’t many places where you could conceal the body of a
fully grown man, but Joe searched them all and found no trace of
Felton.
Priya’s body was exactly where Joe thought it would be. She’d been
thrown some twenty feet across the room.
Sixty-Two
There were two windows on the south-facing wall. One had shattered;
the other hadn’t. Joe thought it unlikely that Felton could have
been hurled clean through the broken one, but he checked it carefully
all the same. There was no blood on the frame or the sill. No
body on the lawn at the side of the house. Somehow Felton had
vanished.
For a second Joe wondered if he could trust his own memory.
Maybe he’d suffered concussion, and had imagined Felton’s presence
in the first place?
No. Felton had definitely been there, just before the explosion.
Backing away from Priya, less afraid of her than of what his son was
about to do . . .
Joe turned and stared at the spot where Priya lay, as if this time he
might see Felton lying next to her. He’d expected to find both bodies
in the same part of the room. So where was he?
Reluctantly he walked back towards Priya’s corpse. This time he
noticed what he’d missed before. The fireman’s pole had a sweaty
handprint on it, about two feet off the ground. He pictured Felton
slithering through the hole, perhaps falling just as the explosion hit.
Joe peered down at the gymnasium below – and immediately spotted
drops of blood on the floor.
Tucking the gun into his waistband, Joe used the pole to get down to
the gym. He landed heavily and dropped to a crouch, half fearing
that Felton would be lying in wait for him.
>
But there was no one in the gym except Liam. He’d made a lacklustre
effort to free himself and was now lying on his side, still buried,
in a position that looked even less comfortable than before.
'Did you see Felton?’ Joe demanded.
'What? When?’
'After the explosion. I think I blacked out. I don’t know how long
for, but Felton must have come past.’
'He’s escaped? You’re joking!’
Joe’s voice hardened. 'Did you see him?’
'Of course not. I was unconscious, too.’ Liam shook his head. 'We’re
lucky he didn’t kill us on his way past.’
Joe shrugged. 'He’s got better things to do.’
He made his way through to the entrance hall and discovered that
half the main staircase had collapsed. The marble floor looked as if
an earthquake had hit it, and a couple of small fires smouldered in
one of the living rooms. Weighing it up, Joe decided that the risk
didn’t warrant the time it would take to carry Liam out of the house.
The front door had been blasted off its hinges and lay broken in a
corner of the driveway. Most of the perimeter wall had been demolished
and there were more fires taking hold in the trees across the
road. That could be serious, he knew, given the recent dry weather,
but there was nothing he could do about it.
Joe walked briskly, his muscles and joints protesting at the
hammering they’d endured. Reaching the road, he looked north, in
the direction of the bridge, nursing a desperate hope that he’d spot
Felton hobbling along just a short way ahead of him. But there was
no one to be seen.
After a few more steps Joe turned to survey the extent of the damage.
Despite having prepared himself for the sight, it still came as a shock.
Dreamscape was gone. Although he hadn’t lived to see it, Valentin’s
wish had been granted: the entire house, wiped from the face of the
earth, and in its place a burning wasteland. There wasn’t even a lot
of debris to be seen: Joe guessed that most of it had been blasted into
the sea or far across the island.
Of the houses on either side, Felton’s had fared better than Terry Fox’s,
again probably because of the panic room. There was a lot of damage
to the outside wall and the north-facing roof, but nothing that couldn’t
be rebuilt. Terry’s place, on the other hand, looked dangerously unstable,
the roof drooping like a lazy eye over a missing gable-end wall. It would
have to come down, Joe thought.
Assuming he’d set off the explosion by hand, Oliver Felton would
have been vaporised in an instant. It was unlikely that any trace of
him would ever be found. The same would be true of Angela and the
other prisoners, if they’d still been in the garage.
The thought made Joe pause and bow his head in sorrow. He tried
to envisage a scenario where Oliver, deranged and suicidal in his final
moments, had summoned the humanity to release a group of innocent
men and women.
Deep in his heart, Joe couldn’t see it.
He started along the road, heading in the only direction that made
sense: towards the bridge, and the mainland beyond. He had no plan
as such, except to keep moving. If ever he needed a lucky break, it
was now.
In a moment of despondency he remembered how Felton had
described him: Crawling over my island like vermin. The blunt truth
was that not only had Felton thoroughly outwitted them all, but the
momentum was still going his way.
Unless the man had been badly injured, which now seemed unlikely,
he felt sure that Felton’s priority would be to reach the place where
Cassie and the children were being held. They were his one trump
card, if he still imagined some kind of deal was possible; and if not,
they were inconvenient witnesses whose silence offered him a chance
of freedom.
Joe thought back over the conversation in the bedroom suite. Felton
had boasted that his hostages would never be found, but in mocking
Joe’s efforts to hide them at the B&B in Chichester he’d also said it
had taken no time to 'fetch them’.
That suggested they were still close by. Perhaps one of the villages
south of the city?
How to narrow it down: that was the problem.
Fretting, Joe kept his eyes on the road. The surface was littered
with bricks and tiles and various household items: a kettle sitting
upright by the verge; a paperback book with its pages fluttering gently
in the night air; a bathrobe curled up like a sleeping cat. Joe looked
for signs that a car had driven over the debris, and could find nothing
to suggest that one had.
Very little would have survived in Felton’s garage, and the single
vehicle parked near Dreamscape had been reduced to a twisted, smouldering wheelbase. If Felton was on foot, then Joe had a real chance
of catching him.
He increased his pace, trying to dredge up some encouragement,
a spark of hope that he could convert into energy. Felton’s taunt kept
on rolling around in his head, nagging at him for some reason he
couldn’t grasp.
Crawling over my island like vermin.
When he reached the corner his spirits lifted further as he saw that
Valentin’s property had sustained only minimal damage. By now he’d
got used to the pain in his limbs and he was able to run the rest of
the way.
He stopped at the threshold, crept inside and waited, attuning
himself to the vibrations of the house. It felt empty. He pressed the
light switch in the hall and discovered that the electricity was out. Of
course it was.
Groping through the blackness, he made it to the garage and found
the keys to Valentin’s BMW. He started it up, turned the headlights
on, then got out and tussled with the big garage doors. The frame
must have warped slightly: one of the doors jammed when it was only
half open.
Joe kicked it a few times, achieving nothing but a bruised foot,
then gave up and returned to the car. He revved the engine and drove
through the gap, ignoring the piercing metallic shriek as the nearside
bodywork scraped against the door.
North of Valentin’s the road had a lot less wreckage on it, but Joe
knew he had to be careful to avoid a puncture. He leaned close to
the steering wheel and peered at the road, lit up by the headlights
and by the distant glow of the flames. The fire was spreading fast in
the wood and might soon engulf the whole island.
'Shit,’ he said aloud, and stamped on the brakes.
Joe backed up, his head turned to the side as he tried to spot the gap
in the trees. He missed it the first time and reversed too far. He eased
forward, stopped and jumped out. Ran towards the trees, looking back
to align himself with the house and driveway. Then he plunged into
the copse, thick with grey smoke and alive with the crackle of
approaching fire.
His strongbox was just where he’d left it. A few more minutes and
it would have been a lump of melted junk.
He ran back to the car, threw the bo
x into the rear footwell, then
accelerated away, a distant part of his mind contemplating how Terror’s
Reach would look if destroyed by fire. Again he thought back to Felton,
languidly sipping champagne and declaring: 'I want you off the Reach.
This is my island now.’
The bitter irony was that Oliver might have done his dad a favour,
particularly if the fire spread as far as the old training camp. With the
buildings destroyed, it could tip the balance in favour of redeveloping
the whole site. And if Felton found a way to evade justice, he could
end up owning—
Joe’s train of thought was jolted by the sight of flashing blue lights
on the mainland, still about four or five miles away. He slowed down on
the approach to the bridge, flicked the headlights to main beam and
swore again.
The Citroen van used by Liam’s gang was still parked on the bridge,
but the plastic barriers were lying broken in the road. It might have
been the explosion, but Joe doubted it. More likely someone had
driven through them at high speed.
Felton’s men were likely to have stationed a vehicle at the bridge,
once Yuri had disposed of the original guard. All Felton would’ve had
to do was get here on foot, then drive away. Even with only a ten
minute start he could be on the A27 by now. Impossible to find.
So what am I doing? Joe asked himself.
Fooling myself. Fooling myself that I’m going to find them. Fooling
myself that I was ever a bodyguard worthy of the name.
He saw Felton raising his glass to toast his own success. Couldn’t
get that smug voice out of his head.
This is my island now.
Crawling over my island like vermin.
Both times he’d referred to Terror’s Reach as 'my island’. Why
would he say that?
Simple arrogance – or something else?
Sixty-Three
Joe gnawed at the memory, wondering if he was trying to read in it
something that wasn’t there. My island. Could be just a lazy figure
of speech, a kind of shorthand prompted by the fact that Felton had
been so firmly in control at that point.
Or … he had a legitimate reason to claim ownership.
Either way, Joe couldn’t take long to decide. The emergency
vehicles were obscured by the trees in the nature reserve, but he
could track them by the faint pulse of light in the sky. Less than
two minutes away, if they were pushing hard.