Ronan counted out the gates, stopping outside the ninth one down. It was painted the same bright green of the door on Acorn Road. He tried the latch. It was locked. The top of the gate was lined with four-inch-long metal spikes meant to stop the city’s starlings from nesting, but had the added bonus of perforating would-be burglars. The back patio was walled off, the top of the wall cemented with broken glass. Not that that was a problem. Ronan pulled off his leather jacket and laid it over the shards of glass before he boosted himself up over the wall. He came down on the other side lightly and reclaimed his jacket.
It was like he had climbed the wall back into his Derry childhood. The outdoor toilet was there, and beside it the coal shed, though in this case neither had been used for years. The toilet was filled with the odds and ends of abandoned DIY projects of several tenants. There were two doors, one facing him, that obviously led up a steep back staircase, and one set into the side, which opened into the estate agent’s office downstairs.
He tried Fisher’s backdoor, not expecting it to be unlocked.
It was.
That immediately set his heart to thumping. Even in the better neighborhoods of the city the door should have been bolted at the very least. He eased it open just wide enough for him to slip through, willing it not to groan as he did so. The place smelled musty, as though it had been a while since anyone had opened a window. That answered at least one question Ronan had been wondering about. He climbed the back stairs slowly, one step at a time, letting his weight settle before he moved up to the next, until he was in the small galley kitchen. The unwashed plates of Sebastian Fisher’s last meal were still stacked up on the draining board. There were four dinner plates and they had begun to mildew. How long would it take for mildew to claim the sauce on an unwashed plate? A week? No more than ten days, for sure. It gave him a timeframe at least. Fisher had been here a week ago, and he hadn’t been alon.
Ronan stood absolutely still, and listened to the sounds of the apartment.
For a moment there was nothing to hear, then the soft groan of a floorboard in one of the other rooms confirmed he wasn’t alone.
He had two choices: go back the way he had come, find somewhere to hide and wait for the burglar to make his getaway, then follow him; or try and sneak up behind the intruder, take him down and find out just what the hell was going on. It wasn’t much of a choice.
Ronan moved silently to the door and listened. He had the layout in his head. The galley kitchen opened into the living room. In the standard Tyneside layout the living room would have three doors: one to the second bedroom, one to the hall and the master bedroom, box room and bathroom, and the one he was coming in through.
He opened the door.
The room was spartanly furnished and looked like any of the many that cluttered up the daytime television rosters with their bland interior decorating tips. Sebastian Fisher hadn’t stamped his personality on the room-unless his personality was cookie-cutter design and IKEA furniture. The one concession to quality was the Onkyo receiver and Jammo speakers beside the tower of CDs. The sound system was probably worth the same as everything else in the room combined. Curiously, there was no television.
The four unwashed plates suggested Fisher didn’t live alone, so the second bedroom was probably just that. He moved cautiously toward the door and listened before easing it open. Bunk beds and cluttered toys explained two of the four plates. There were posters on the wall of soccer players Ronan didn’t recognize side by side with costumed superheroes and all of the other obsessions of young boys: dinosaurs, space ships and the death masks of Egyptian pharaohs. The beds were unmade, action figures scattered across the floor. The kids had left in a rush.
Ronan felt his skin prickle, a sixth sense flaring, and turned straight into a clubbing right fist. The hammer blow took him in the temple and shook the world around him. He staggered back a step and felt his legs go out from beneath him. Instinctively, he reached out, trying to catch himself before he fell. He caught at his attacker’s coat and earned himself a second straight-arm punch. This one hit low, slamming into the side of his neck and choking him. Frost fell to his knees even as his attacker drove a final merciless knee up into his face to batter the last shreds of fight out of him.
He was only down for a few seconds, but it was enough for the intruder to flee. Ronan heard the back door slam and tried to stand. He needed the doorframe to stay on his feet while the apartment swam around him. He felt the warm trickle of blood down the side of his face and saw where it stained the shoulder of his leathers. He shook his head, slapped his face to sting life back into his senses, and took off after the man who had cold-cocked him.
Ronan took the narrow stairs three at a time and threw the back door open in time to see the intruder going over the wall. He reasoned the next move out in the two seconds it took him to cover the distance from the door to the gate. There were two bolts-one top, one bottom-and a latch on the gate, which would take no more than ten seconds to slip. Going over the glass-topped wall would take no more than three seconds but would almost certainly tear his hands up. In those seven seconds the intruder would have to be an Olympic sprinter to hit the end of the alley and disappear out of sight before Ronan could see which way he had gone.
Ronan slammed back the bolts and threw the gate open.
The alley was empty.
“Bollocks,” he cursed, looking left and right frantically. He reached for his cell phone to call it in to Nonesuch, slipping the Bluetooth earpiece into his ear. Lethe could hit the Eye in the Sky and track the bastard over every inch of the city if he had to. That was the joy of technology. He hit the speed dial on the earpiece and slipped the phone itself back into his pocket.
“Go for Lethe,” the voice in his ear said. The kid liked to play at soldier.
“Jude, it’s Frost. There was someone inside Fisher’s place. I’m in pursuit on foot. I could really do with some eyes here, so do whatever it is you do.” “Understood, boss. I’ll have visuals in a few seconds.”
Ronan braced his hands on his knees, using those few seconds to catch his breath.
“Come on, come on,” Lethe muttered.
Ronan was breathing hard. He looked up at the sky, as though looking for the satellite looking for him.
“It’s like looking for a mouse in a bloody great maze. Maybe a bit of cheese would help. You couldn’t have picked a busier time could you?”
Ronan looked anxiously one way down the street, then the other.
Finally Lethe half-shouted, “Yes! I see you. Okay, so what am I looking for?”
There was no way the man could have made it to either end of the alley, which meant he had to have gone over another wall and was hiding in one of the many back enclosures.
“Anyone else out here?”
Before Lethe could answer Ronan heard the sound of breaking glass. The walls were too high for him to see which house it was, but they couldn’t hide him from Lethe’s godlike perspective. “Five doors down. Your side of the street. He’s going in through one of the downstairs windows.”
It made sense. It was exactly what Ronan would have done if the roles had been reversed. The shops were empty-less chance of coming head to head with an angry homeowner with a baseball bat-and there was a 50-50 chance the shop was on a silent alarm, meaning he could try and exit with the semblance of normality, making it look like there was nothing more natural than him coming out of the closed shop.
And if he couldn’t open the door on the other side, couldn’t do it the low-key way, a chair out through the window, onto the Monster and away before anyone could stop him.
A moment later the screech of a burglar alarm kicked in and he knew exactly which house the man was in. He ran toward the sound of the siren. There was blood on the glass where the man had gone over the wall. He didn’t have a lot of choice except to follow. He boosted himself up. The shards of glass shredded his hands as his weight came down on them. Ignoring the pain, Ronan Frost heaved himself over the wall and dropped down onto the other side. The place was cluttered with empty cartons stamped with names that meant nothing to him. He tried to visualize the business side of Acorn Road and realized it was the hairdressers sandwiched between the antique store and the last of the estate agents.