35

‘Wake up,’ the voice shouted.

The blow knocked Alex’s head sideways, jolting him out of his stupor. He tried to call out but something was crammed tight in his mouth. Next thing he knew, he was sitting upright in a chair, hands pinned together behind his back, ankles clamped together. He felt someone’s breath on his face. He stayed still. He was blindfolded, that much he could tell. Even though his eyes were squeezed shut, he was aware of a light beyond, a source of heat shining at him.

‘If you’re ready to listen, nod your head.’ It was a man’s voice, deep and authoritative.

He was wondering whether to respond, when he heard a dis tant banging followed by shouting somewhere nearby. A minute later he heard voices, more clearly now, a man’s and a woman’s, coming from directly above him. The footsteps beside him moved away. He felt a draught as though a door had been opened. Through the thick fog in his mind, he struggled to make out what the voices were saying. His mind drifted back to the lake and to the girl. It was because of her, because of what someone had done to her that he was going to die.

He knew now that he wasn’t to blame. He hadn’t killed her. Somehow that part was finally clear. She was already dead when he found her in the water. Then he thought about the others, Joe, Paul, Danny and Tim. Had he missed something?

Had one of them played a part in her death? As though on the outside looking in, he again pictured the five of them by the lake arguing about what to do, about going to fetch her clothes from the boathouse. How had the discussion gone? He saw Joe sitting on the ground beside him, his face in his hands, wanting none of it; and Danny, standing close by and staring vacantly out across the lake as though on another planet, not saying a word. He saw himself, passively watching as Tim and Paul battled it out, with Joe lobbing in the occasional weary comment about calling the police. Where exactly had everyone been the night before? What had they been doing? And who was it who first had the idea of going to the boathouse to look for her things? It now seemed such an odd thing to suggest.

He felt as though he was grasping at something just out of reach – something that had been there all along. Then the answer came to him: there was one person who should have been there but was absent. At first it didn’t seem important, then he realised it was. As he sat in darkness thinking it all through, running through the implications of what was now clear, he heard more footsteps overhead and shouting, this time the woman’s voice, then the man’s again. He had no idea who they were but somehow he had to get help. He felt weak and numb. Using all the strength he could muster, he started to rock the chair backwards and forwards. He heard it creak, felt it give, then with a thud he fell sideways onto the floor, his shoulder taking his full weight. The lamp, or whatever it was that had been shining in his face, smashed to the floor beside him. He felt a sudden movement of air in the room. As the footsteps rushed towards him, he clenched in anticipation. A hand came down over his face, squeezing his mouth and nose until he thought he would suffocate. Something cold and hard was pressed against his temple.

*

‘Who’s down there?’ Tartaglia whispered, his face against hers.

With a squeal, she shook her head. Her eyes were wild and he saw tears.

‘Let’s go and find out, shall we?’

She shook her head even more violently, but he held her tight and marched her to the door. He kicked it open. The stairwell was dark and narrow. Leaning back against the wall for support, he held her tightly against him and started sideways down the stairs. She was still struggling, lashing out with her feet and trying to bite him. He knocked her head hard against the banisters. She gave a muffled moan and stopped fighting for a moment. At the bottom was a door. It was slightly ajar, with a faint red light coming through the gap.

‘What’s in there?’ he hissed into her ear, a few steps from the bottom. ‘Who’s there? Is it Henderson?’

She started to struggle again, trying to wrench herself free. Tired of her, curious to know what was in the room, he lifted her up and threw her towards the door. As she fell into the room, a single shot rang out. He dropped to the floor and flattened himself against the wall. He heard the sound of a door slamming somewhere in the room and a heavy bolt being drawn. Then there was silence.

He waited for a few moments, wondering what to do. He could see Anna lying on the ground just inside the room. She didn’t appear to be moving. Slowly, keeping as close to the wall as he could, he peered into the room. Henderson, or whoever it was, had gone. Anna was on the floor, face down. He knelt beside her and turned her over, feeling her pulse. She was alive, although she appeared to be unconscious. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t bleeding anywhere and he assumed she had been knocked out by her fall. She looked so small, so fragile, and for a moment his thoughts drifted back to the few hours they’d spent together. But such thoughts were pointless. The hideousness of what she had done was all that counted. He heard a noise from the far corner of the room, half sigh, half moan. He looked up, and in the strange red light saw a man, stripped to the waist, lying on his side on the floor, tied to a chair. He was groaning and straining against his ties as though in pain. Tartaglia took his keys out of his pocket and shone the little key ring torch at the man’s face. He was blindfolded and gagged and his face was covered in blood, but Tartaglia recognised the deep, unmistakable copper of Alex Fleming’s hair.

‘It’s Mark Tartaglia, Alex. The other man’s gone. Stay still and I’ll try and sort you out.’

Fleming stopped wriggling and after a couple of attempts, Tartaglia managed to heave him into an upright position. He undid the blindfold and the gag and Fleming gave a sigh of relief.

‘Are you OK?’ Tartaglia asked.

Coughing and clearing his throat, Fleming nodded.

Tartaglia took out a small pocket knife and sawed at the cable ties holding Fleming’s hands and feet until he was free. Fleming tried to stand up, but his legs wouldn’t hold him and he slid to the ground where he sat huddled against the wall.

‘Stay there,’ Tartaglia said. ‘I’m just going upstairs to call for help.’

Fleming gave him a lop-sided smile. ‘I’m not moving.’

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘A glass of water. And a fag, if you have one.’

Two hours later, Tartaglia stood outside the shop with Steele. She had just been dropped off and was walking up and down distractedly, talking on her phone. Fleming had been taken off to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital up the road, to be patched up. Anna, too, had been taken to hospital, suffering from concussion. She had regained consciousness but was being kept in overnight for observation, under guard. The entire shop, which apparently had been leased by Colin Henderson, was now sealed off and being treated as a crime scene, with Tracy Jamieson and her team busy inside. The bullet that Henderson had fired into the air as he made his escape, as well as its casing, had been recovered and sent off to the lab for analysis, but nobody doubted that it had come from the same gun that killed Logan, Khan and Black. As for Henderson, there was no trace of him anywhere.

Steele finished her call and tucked her phone away in her bag. ‘That was Colonel Wykeham, Henderson’s former commanding officer,’ she said. ‘He’s just given me some very useful background on Henderson. He wasn’t just in the army. He was in the SAS and he served both in Northern Ireland and briefly out in Iraq during the first Gulf War. From what Wykeham said, he wasn’t a leading light.’

Tartaglia looked at her quizzically. ‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s bizarre, given everything he seems to have done, but the picture that comes across is one of failure, particularly in his eyes, which is what’s important. Apparently, ever since he joined the army straight out of school, his goal was to get into the SAS, but it wasn’t an easy ride for him once he was in. Wykeham described him as a loner, an outsider . . .’

‘I thought they’re all like that.’

‘I suppose it’s a matter of degree. He said Henderson wasn’t an aggressive, natural leader. Both his colleagues and his super iors saw him as not tough enough, and it didn’t help that he came from the Light Infantry when most of them were paras. I don’t understand the culture, but it sounds as though he was treated as a second-class citizen and bullied. There’s also a history of Henderson having been bullied and abused both at home and at school. What is important is that he saw himself as a failure.’

‘But he made it into the SAS. That’s more than most men would ever be capable of.’

She nodded. ‘He failed against a very high benchmark, but the point is it really got to him. It seems to have coloured everything he did, including what he’s doing now.’

‘But I thought you said he was out in Northern Ireland during the troubles. You don’t survive that unless you’re pretty tough.’

‘Apparently he was in a passive surveillance role, never front line. He didn’t shine in the first Gulf War, either. When he went back to Northern Ireland, he hooked up with a twenty-year-old Irish girl and his marriage fell apart. After that, when he came back to the UK, he worked as a staff instructor until he retired. Since then he’s been out in Africa and the Middle East, employed by a security company. He’s had a string of girlfriends over the years, he drinks a lot and he’s suffered from depression. His whole life has been blighted by the fact that in his eyes he’s never, until now, had a chance to prove himself. Wykeham said that he’s never killed anybody before and that the challenge would be for him to keep his head. Wykeham said he’d expect him to screw up sooner or later.’

‘Well, he hasn’t so far. Until now. How the hell are we going to catch him?’

‘We’re watching the ports and airports, but from what Wykeham says, he will have worked out his escape route well in advance and he may be long gone. With his surveillance background, he knows how to blend in and with his contacts overseas, he may easily be travelling on a false passport.’

‘How do they think he’s going to react now? Will he try and come after Fleming or Wade?’

‘They think not. Wykeham’s view is that now his cover’s blown, he’ll see it all as too risky and he’ll abort the mission.’

‘Abort the mission? That sounds very cold-blooded. Are you sure?’ He couldn’t hide his scepticism. Henderson was a man, not a robot and, more than anything, he was a father – a father bent on finding out the truth and exacting revenge. Surely emotion would still be the driving factor.

‘That’s what Wykeham says and he was adamant about it. In Colin Henderson’s eyes, the operation he’s been running has gone pear-shaped and his training and everything he’s learnt over the years will tell him to get out.’