At Clapham Common, MacNeil had taken a right turn, and Pinkie was sure he had no idea he was being followed. It was impossible at night to see a vehicle three hundred yards behind you with no lights. As long as Pinkie could see the merest hint of MacNeil’s tail lights he wouldn’t lose him. At least, not while he stuck to the main thoroughfares. The danger would be if he went off-piste and made turns that Pinkie couldn’t see. Then he would have to get closer, and that would become dangerous.
The phone lying on the passenger seat fibrillated in the hushed interior of the car. Pinkie glanced over at the display and then answered the call.
‘Hello, Mr Smith.’
‘Hello, Pinkie. Where are you now?’
‘We’re on Battersea Rise, Mr Smith. Heading towards Wandsworth Common. I think Mr MacNeil is heading for Routh Road.’
‘I’m afraid he is, Pinkie.’
‘We’re in trouble, then.’
‘In more trouble than you think. The stupid cripple asked for PCR on the bone marrow.’
‘And is that bad?’
‘It’s very bad, Pinkie. They found the virus.’
Pinkie shook his head. That stupid little shit, Ronnie Kazinski. He’d got them all into so much trouble. Pinkie almost wished he hadn’t killed him, so that he could be made to see the consequences of his actions. ‘What do you want me to do, Mr Smith?’
‘I think we need to leave Mr MacNeil for the moment, Pinkie. We are required to take other action now.’
III
Routh Road was at the end of a collection of streets they called ‘The Toast Rack’. Not unreasonably, since Baskerville Road, which backed on to Wandsworth Common, and the five streets which ran off it at right angles, made a shape not unlike a toast rack. Although it might just as easily have been called ‘The Comb’. Wandsworth Prison was a stone’s throw away, on the other side of Trinity Road.
David Lloyd George had lived here once, in Routh Road. At number three. These were substantial detached and semi-detached town houses built in red-brick on three floors, nestling darkly behind walls and railings, and screened from the street by trees and hedges in gardens which had taken more than a century to mature. The kerbs were lined with BMWs and Volvos and Mercedes.
MacNeil parked on Trinity Road and walked down to the address on the slip of paper. It stood in darkness behind a black wrought-iron railing. There were no lights in any of the houses, but this one bore an air of sad neglect. The small front garden was overgrown and uncared for. Empty bins lay spilled on their side. Curtains or blinds were drawn on most of the windows. It was in stark contrast to the manicured gardens and well-kept facades of the other properties in the street. In daylight it would have stood out like a sore thumb, a single bad tooth in a dazzling smile.
The house was detached on its left side, but brick bomb shelters built between it and its neighbour during the Second World War meant that there was no way round to the back, except through the house. MacNeil stood in a pool of yellow light beneath a lamp post and looked at it appraisingly. It did not look inhabited. The gate protested loudly in the dark as he opened it and walked the few paces to the steps which led up to the front door. He could see now that this was an original door, recently restored to its former glory. Stained glass panels all around it would splash the hall beyond in coloured light on sunny days. The house itself was not as neglected as the garden. There was no nameplate on the door. There was a bell push to the left of it, and MacNeil pressed it and held it for a long time. He heard an old-fashioned bell ring distantly from somewhere deep within the house. But it elicited no response. He rattled the flap of the brass letter box, and then crouched down to lift the lid and peer inside. Apart from the faint light that seeped through the stained glass from the street lights beyond the trees, it was almost pitch-dark and MacNeil could see very little. There was an unlived-in smell that breathed out through the letter box from the interior of the house, damp and fusty, like bad breath, confirming MacNeil’s earlier impression that the place was empty.
He went back down the steps and walked along the front of the house. The neighbours appeared to have converted their half of the bomb shelter into a walk-through shed with a blue-painted door at the front end. MacNeil reached over the fence and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. But suddenly the garden was flooded with light, a bright, blinding halogen light. MacNeil’s movement had triggered the neighbour’s security lamp. He took an involuntary step back and tripped over a shrub, landing in the long grass, exposed to the full glare of the halogen. A window on the first floor of the neighbouring house flew up, and an elderly, balding man in a pale blue nightshirt leaned out with a shotgun raised to his shoulder. He pointed it directly at MacNeil. ‘Get out of the garden!’ he shouted. ‘Go!’
MacNeil stood up, brushing the mud from his coat, and shaded his eyes against the light. ‘Or you’ll what, shoot me?’
‘I’m warning you.’
‘Do you have a licence for that thing?’
‘I’ll call the police.’
‘Too late. They’re already here.’
The man let the shotgun slip a little from his shoulder, and he peered down through the leafless branches of a mountain ash at the figure in the adjoining garden. ‘You’re a police officer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me see some identification.’
‘You’re hardly likely to be able to read it from there, sir.’
‘Climb over the fence and approach the front door. There’s a security camera there. Hold it up to the camera.’
MacNeil did as he was told, snagging his coat as he climbed over the fence. He heard it tear behind him. He approached the security camera which was set just out of reach above one of the twin columns supporting the archway above an open porch. He held his warrant card open towards the lens. The man with the gun had disappeared from the window, but now his voice came from a speaker set somewhere in the porch. ‘Okay, Inspector. Why are you creeping around my house at one o’clock in the morning?’
‘It’s the house next door I’m interested in, Mr Le Saux.’ The name was on a plate on the door.
‘It’s empty.’
‘So I gather. Who was last in it?’
He heard Le Saux’s frustration. ‘It’s a letting concern. There’ve been a succession of people over the years.’
‘But most recently?’
‘A foreign couple. Although I never saw much of her. They were only here about six months, and let the garden go to wrack and ruin. A short-term contract, he said. Setting up a new production line somewhere. But I’ve no idea what business he was in. He wasn’t very talkative.’
It felt odd conducting an interview on a doorstep with a disembodied voice. ‘When did they leave?’
‘Well, that’s the odd thing. There were comings and goings up until just a day or so ago. Although that might have been the agents. The house seems to be empty now, but I don’t know where they would have gone. Not back home, certainly, because no one can leave London right now.’
‘Where was home?’
‘I’m not sure. They might have been French. But his English was so good it was hard to tell.’
‘And the wife?’
‘Never spoke to her. She never seemed to leave the house. They had a young adopted daughter who started at the local school in September.’
MacNeil frowned. ‘How do you know she was adopted? Did they tell you that?’
‘Didn’t have to, Inspector. She was Chinese, and they weren’t. And after the child caught the flu, there was no further contact. Although neither of the parents seemed to catch it.’