Joe glanced up to the first-floor window. No light. No movement. Nothing.The paint on the back door was gleaming in the moonlight. He moved quietly to the door, then slowly reached out his free hand and grasped the handle. He twisted it gently so as not to let it squeak or scrape.
It opened. Did that mean someone was here? Probably.
Inside it was even darker than out. Having silently shut the door behind him, he waited a moment for his eyes to grow accustomed to the lack of moonlight. It took him twenty seconds to realize he was in a small utility room that led into a kitchen. There was a strange smell, and it wasn’t just the musty aroma of neglect. It was something else. A smell he recognized: sickeningly sweet. It grew stronger as he passed through the kitchen and along a narrow corridor that led to what was clearly the front hallway.
He had been expecting to see a body, so the sight of a crumpled human frame at the bottom of the steps was not a surprise. The cat was prowling around it. It miaowed, and that one sound seemed to echo around the house. Joe took a couple of steps closer. The strongest smell now was of shit: the corpse’s bowels had loosened after death.
Don’t let it be Conor, his mind was crying out. Don’t let it be Conor…
He bent down in the darkness to examine the corpse’s face.
It was an old lady. Her eyes were wide open, her expression terrified. A sticky, mucus-like substance had oozed from her nose and ears. Joe estimated that she had been dead for less than a day. Maybe she had accidentally fallen down the stairs. Or maybe – he noted that the stairlift was halfway up the staircase – she hadn’t.
He stopped stock-still and listened. But there was nothing to listen to, other than silence.
Stepping over the body, he started to climb the stairs. His eyes were firmly fixed on the door at the top and to the left. It was slightly ajar.
The cat miaowed again. Joe froze. Had something disturbed it?
No sound.
He continued to climb.
At the top of the stairs he stopped. His finger was resting lightly on the trigger of his handgun. His breathing was shallow and silent. Slowly, he extended his right foot and gently kicked the door open.
By the misty moonlight shining through the windows, Joe immediately recognized the place. The video he had seen was burned on his memory. There, against the far wall, was the bed on which Conor had been sitting. On the wall behind it, a picture, its details obscured by the darkness, but Joe knew that if he looked more closely it would show a ship in a storm. His eyes panned round the room. There was a table in the middle, piled high with books. Boxes were piled up in corners and against the walls. The room was chaotic.
And it was clear nobody was at home.
Joe stepped over to the bed. Something had caught his eye. He bent down and picked it up off the blanket: a small, grey elephant, patched up and the worse for wear.
He flung the toy down on the ground, hissing with frustration. There was nobody here. Less than six hours till the RV that was only a couple of klicks away. Was it really likely that they’d already set out?
Joe raced through the rest of the house – two more bedrooms upstairs, a large sitting room and a fourth bedroom on the ground floor. He knew it was pointless. He knew the house was deserted apart from him, an old lady’s body and a restless cat. Back in the room where Conor had been held he was almost careless enough to switch on the light. He stopped himself at the last second: if he could observe the place from afar, anybody could. And if Conor’s abductor had even an inkling that events were not unfolding as he had planned, that could only be bad for the boy. He stalked round the room, seeking anything that might help him. It was only thanks to the moonlight streaking in through the window that he saw it.
The passport was in plain view, sitting atop one of the piles of books on the round table. On the front it had the words ‘United States of America’. Joe examined the identification page. There was no mistaking the features of the man in the photograph. Joe had seen that face once before. Until now he had been unable to recall its features, but as it stared out of the passport at him, he was transported back to the visiting room at Barfield.
This was him. Mr Ashe.
But the name on the passport was Mahmood Ashkani.
Only two thoughts spun around Joe’s head. Two simple statements of fact.
First: the Middle Eastern man who had abducted his son held an American passport.
And second, if he wanted to see Conor again, the only option open to him was to turn up at the RV tomorrow at 0600 hours. At which point, Mr Ashe, or Mahmood Ashkani, or whoever the fuck he really was, would undoubtedly try to kill him.
Eva was shivering with cold.
For ten minutes after Joe had left, she’d kept one hand on the key in the ignition. Now she was hugging herself to keep warm. More than once she found herself glancing at the door, checking that the central locking was on. She didn’t know quite what she was scared of. But she was scared.
One seventeen. She was dazzled by the sight of a single headlight turning at high speed into the car park. She fumbled for the keys, one arm covering her eyes to block out the brightness, but then the light disappeared and she could just make out Joe, jumping off the bike and letting it fall to one side. A fist on the driver’s window, and he was shouting: ‘Open up!’
Eva had released the lock before she registered that Joe had returned alone. She twisted round as she heard Joe opening the rear door. His face was illuminated by the small internal light, and the look on it chilled her. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Where’s Conor? Joe, what happened?’
When he didn’t answer she opened the driver’s door and ran round to the back of the vehicle. Joe had pulled out the body armour and was examining the Kevlar helmet. She grabbed his right arm but he shrugged her off.
‘I was too late,’ he spat. ‘They’ve already left.’
‘Are you sure it was the right place?’
He nodded. ‘Conor was there.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘The only thing I can do,’ Joe said. ‘Turn up.’ He started to pull on the body armour.
Eva peered nervously at him. ‘Joe, you can’t,’ she said. ‘He’ll try to—’
‘What do you want me to do, Eva?’ he shouted. ‘He’s got my son!’
‘But—’
Joe put one hand to his forehead and paused for a moment, clearly trying to calm himself down after his outburst. Eva noticed that his hand was shaking, and she had to fight a sudden urge to put her arms round him.
‘If I lose Conor,’ Joe said, in a low voice that was on the verge of cracking, ‘I lose everything. I’ll have nothing left in the world.’
He wasn’t even looking at Eva when he said it, so he could have had no idea of the effect the blunt truth of his words had on her.
‘Wait,’ she said.
He turned towards her.
She pointed at the body armour. ‘How safe is it?’
‘Depends on the round, distance, trajectory,’ he said. ‘He’ll try to take me out from the clifftop, I reckon. It’ll protect my vital organs, keep me alive to go after them. Probably.’
Eva nodded. She remembered how, when they were younger, Joe would do anything to keep her from harm. She remembered the look on his face when he told her that Conor had been abducted.
‘Give it to me,’ she said.
NINETEEN
0330 hours.
Mahmood Ashkani, aka Mr Ashe, aka any number of other names at different times and different places around the world, would be glad to get rid of the boy. Ashkani knew that he had a gift for terror. It was not surprising the boy should be scared. He had gone to very great lengths to ensure it. But to be encumbered by someone so silently helpless was wearisome. And his frail, child’s mind was so damaged by what he had been exposed to that really he would be better off dead.