Hunted (22 page)

If Alice De Luca hadn’t been at home, Danny would have had to break in and try to contact her. But as it turned out, she opened the door barely seconds after he had pressed the enamel bell.

Even in bare feet, she was a tall woman. Taller than Danny. Striking with it. Red hair, green eyes and something fierce about her high-cheekboned face that had always reminded him of an engraving he’d once seen of Boadicea, ancient Queen of the Britons.

Her hands were muddy – from gardening, Danny guessed. She was wearing blue dungarees and a dirty apron with the words ‘Domestic Goddess’ written on it in pink lipstick writing, along with a white cotton shirt with its sleeves rolled up, showing off her muscular arms.

She stared at Danny and Lexie like they’d just dropped out of the sky.

‘Oh Jesus, Danny,’ she finally said. ‘Please don’t say you’ve brought her here.’

‘I take it you’ve seen the TV.’

‘The TV. The radio. The internet. Come on, sweetie,’ Alice said, addressing Lexie now, ‘you’d better get yourself inside.’

Danny and Lexie hurried past Alice into the airy red-tiled hall. It was exactly as Danny remembered. The same huge oil painting
of Alice and her much older Italian husband Francisco was the first thing to confront you as you stepped inside.

‘Is Frank home?’ Danny said.

‘No. Away in Milan on business.’ Frank was an art dealer. He had galleries in England, Italy and France. Alice’s accent was Texan. Moneyed. She hadn’t lost a trace of it, even though she’d been living here for years.

Other paintings – mostly oils, a couple of watercolours, all of them originals, several worth each as much as a normal family home – drew the eye deeper into the richly furnished house.

But Alice led Danny and Lexie through the first door they came to, into a spacious sitting room furnished with a harpsichord and sofas, and lined with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes.

Peace, normality, the smell of clean carpets. The moment Alice shut the door behind them, it was like she’d locked the craziness out.

‘You must be Lexie,’ she said, reaching out to shake Danny’s daughter’s hand.

Lexie glanced at Danny, confused, clearly wondering who the hell this woman was. But she took Alice’s hand nonetheless and shook it, firmly but mutely, before glaring back at Danny.

‘I used to work with Alice,’ he said.

Which was true. Alice now worked for a London-based VIP close protection firm. She’d brought Danny in four years ago as a consultant following the attempted kidnapping of one of her more famous clients.

She’d grown her hair down past her shoulders since then and had it in a ponytail now. She was also wearing her wedding ring, something she’d always used to take off whenever she and Danny had spent time alone.

She smiled at Lexie. ‘Are you hungry?’

Lexie nodded.

‘Thirsty?’

Another nod.

Alice noticed Lexie eyeing the packet of Marlboro Lights on the card table in the corner of the room.

‘Do you smoke?’

Lexie’s brow creased in irritation as her eyes flicked from Alice to Danny and back. It was a tell Alice didn’t miss.

‘I’ll take that as a yes, sweetie. You help yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ Lexie said. ‘I will.’

‘Come on.’ Alice took Danny by the elbow and steered him towards the door. ‘You can come help me fix us something to eat.’

Danny decided he’d probably be best off dealing with the smoking issue another time. He followed Alice through to the kitchen. Even after all he’d eaten at the mall, he was already hungry again.

Shopping bags stood unpacked on the table. A computer screen glowed on the polished granite of the kitchen worktop. News footage played. Of the shooters on the balcony again. Of Danny’s face.

A heavy scent of flower blossom filled the room. An open door led out into a conservatory. Beyond that, a well-kept back lawn sloped gently down towards a low red-brick wall, over which an enormous weeping willow stood sentry. Through its gently swaying foliage, Danny glimpsed patches of blue sky and the wide grey sweep of the Thames.

‘Lexie’s beautiful,’ Alice said.

‘I know.’

‘Must have got it from her mother.’

‘Thanks.’ She’d meant it as a joke, Danny knew. But even so, it was true.

‘She’s feisty too,’ Alice said. ‘Probably got that from you.’

She poured Danny a drink of water. He drained it. Accepted another. Outside, a mournful boat horn sounded on the river. Alice stared out that way.

‘You’re a fugitive, Danny. I should call you in.’

‘You should …’

‘But of course I won’t.’

No matter how much time she spent these days working with London police, Danny knew in his heart that she remained his friend.

‘All those people who got shot. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘I figured as much.’

The way she gazed steadily into his eyes said the rest. She knew him well enough to be sure he wasn’t capable of doing what the news had said. He glanced warily back towards the front door.

‘You think someone could have followed you?’ Alice said.

‘No.’

But that didn’t mean he could hang round here for long, he knew. Every moment wasted, the hawk-faced man and his team would be getting further away. Tougher to track.

‘What are you going to do next?’ Alice said.

Danny pictured the data stick and the card back there in that flowerbed. Would the Kid have retrieved them by now? ‘I’ve got a lead,’ he said.

‘And what if it doesn’t come off?’

‘Then I’ll find another way.’ He said it stoically. ‘The people who’ve done this … I won’t let them win.’

Alice’s gaze remained steady. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Take care of Lexie. Just for a while. Until I sort this out. I can’t take her with me, Alice. I can’t have her getting dragged any deeper into this than she already is.’

‘Why me?’ Alice said. ‘Why here?’

He told her the truth. ‘Because I didn’t know where else. Because you were nearby. And because I needed to get her somewhere safe.’

In fact, he had considered taking Lexie to Anna-Maria, but had decided against it. Who knew how long the people who’d set him up had been tracking him? They could have been tipped off by Crane’s contact as to when he was entering the UK. They could have followed him from the airport. Maybe where he’d gone out for dinner. Who he’d gone out with.

Again Danny remembered the grey Range Rover that had cruised past him and Anna-Maria as he’d walked with her towards Regent’s Canal last night.

Alice, though, was a safe bet. The job he’d done for her hadn’t come through Crane, and had been completely off the books – a
favour for a mutual friend. There was no paper trail to lead anyone to her. Their brief affair had been secret, and since they’d broken it off, they’d only spoken rarely on the phone.

His heart skipped a beat. His eyes flicked back to the computer screen. He’d just heard his name. And now he saw it printed there too, under an old photo of him in Army Rangers uniform. A summary of his military record flashed up after that.

Alice picked up a remote control and zapped it at the screen. The newsreader’s voice got louder. A grey-haired guy with a Welsh accent addressed a studio camera.

‘… and further confirmation is now coming in concerning the prime suspect’s abduction of his sixteen-year-old daughter from an exclusive west London girls’ school …’

An outside TV broadcast filled the screen, showing police cars parked outside the main school gates.

He turned to Alice.

‘I need to get going,’ he said. ‘Frank’s boat … Does he still keep it here?’

Alice’s husband had used to keep a rib in a sling hanging off the back garden wall. Travelling by water was probably Danny’s safest bet now, he reckoned. A possibility the police might overlook. Plus, Battersea power station, behind which the Kid was waiting for him, was only a few miles downriver from here. He could probably be there in a less than an hour.

‘Sure,’ Alice said, ‘and the outboard’s got fuel in it too. But you’re not going anywhere yet.’ She crossed her powerful arms adamantly across her chest. ‘Not until you’re fed and watered. And showered too. You look like shit, Danny,’ she told him, taking his hands in hers and studying the cuts and bruises on them. ‘You’re only going to draw attention to yourself. You don’t smell too good either, I’m afraid.’

She was right. The stink of the sewers was still on him, in spite of his earlier efforts to wash it off in that public convenience. The chase through the school and in the car had taken its toll on his physical appearance as well. He stank of smoke, and his face and hair were filthy from where he’d crawled through those attics. A
clean-up now might save him plenty of further scrutiny down the line.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘But it’s going to have to be quick.’

He already knew where the shower was. In the six months or so their affair had lasted, he and Alice had often spent time here together while Francisco had been away.

Alice had never told her husband about them. But she’d told Danny all about Francisco’s own affairs, enough for him not to have felt guilty about what they’d been doing.

He had known it wouldn’t last anyway. Not because of him, because of her. Because he’d been an adventure to her, an enigma, and the more she’d got to know him, the less like lovers they’d become, and the more like friends.

As he stripped off now in her bedroom’s en suite and stepped into the shower cubicle, he left his open rucksack in easy reach on a chair with the cop baton handle sticking out.

He did it more out of habitual caution, than fear. Because he really didn’t think anyone could have followed him here.

He should have relaxed, then, as he switched on the shower and a jet of cool, clean water rushed down on him. But instead his mind started racing, thinking first of Lexie downstairs, then of Lexie as a child, and then of how much time he’d lost in between.

And then as the cool water continued to pummel his aching, sweating skin, he thought of another cold place, so long ago. He thought of woods, and of blood on the snow.

‘You’re wondering how I found you.’

The stranger wasn’t expecting an answer. Danny’s tongue was bleeding, still trapped by the duct tape. Sally and Jonathan were both also gagged, strapped to the two chairs facing him. Less than four feet away.

A bitter odour of urine and sweat. A clock ticked dully on the shelf above the stove, between a half-finished bottle of red wine from last night and a photo of Lexie holding Jonathan, newborn, in her arms.

Jonathan was in shock. His eyes were flickering, half closed, in REM. His chest was rising and falling in a stuttering motion. His nostrils were clogged with mucus. His breathing crackled. He needed his inhaler. Danny could see it on the table.

On his red pyjama top was a torn Super Mario sticker, which he must have got off a yoghurt he’d eaten after Danny had gone out. It was flecked now with his mother’s blood.

Sally eyes were stretched so wide it seemed like she no longer possessed eyelids at all. Sweat seeped down her brow and
tear-scorched
cheeks. She kept trying to hold Danny’s stare, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from flicking constantly sideways towards the man who had beaten her. Her face had been warped by the
duct tape stretched across it, so that it looked like she’d suffered a stroke.

Don’t look at him. Don’t let him scare you. I’ll get us out of this, I
swear.

That was what Danny was trying to tell this woman he loved. And he was trying to make this wish come true, trying not to acknowledge his own fear. He was focusing on the problem instead, on working that two-inch blade free from the waistband of his trousers.

He could almost touch the knife’s grip with his fingertips now. The kicking the stranger had given him had pushed the knife further from the slot through which Danny had initially inserted it. So that he now had to flex his back and arms almost to breaking point each time he attempted to edge its grip back towards the opening.

He had to be careful. So careful. Because each time he moved, he risked alerting the stranger. The duct tape tugged at the hairs on his arms. Fresh pain cut through him as the cut in his side opened and wept like a clam.

The stranger was a dark, hunched shape in Danny’s peripheral vision. Over to his left. He was still squatting beside the hearth, scrunching up more pieces of paper. He’d been doing this for nearly five minutes now.

Each piece of paper would be the size of a pea. Danny didn’t need to view them to know this. He’d seen others this man had made before. He already knew how his mind worked. He knew exactly what he planned to use the paper for.

‘It must seem impossible to you … for me suddenly to be here,’ the man said.

It didn’t. Danny had already worked out how. Special Agent Karl Bain. He’d brought Danny across from the Company to work alongside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, in order to help capture this man. Two months ago, after Danny and Bain had failed in their attempt to snare the killer, Bain had been found dead. An apparent suicide in a motel room, alongside the brutalized body of a male prostitute.

But Bain’s death had been faked. Danny understood that now. And this stranger had been the one who’d faked it. And before he’d jammed that pistol barrel up into the roof of Karl Bain’s mouth and pulled the trigger, he’d got Bain to tell him how he could track Danny down.

Sally’s eyes locked on Danny’s again. He’d not told her about the FBI investigation he’d been seconded to. But now she would know this was personal. That this man had come here because of Danny’s work.

I should have quit before
, Danny thought. He told his wife this with his eyes.
I shouldn’t have waited for you to beg
…

If he’d already done as she’d wanted, this lunatic wouldn’t be here doing this to them now. Instead he and his family would be eating breakfast. Danny would be sitting with his arm around Sally at the kitchen table, basking in the aroma of coffee and bacon, chairing the inevitable debate between the kids over whether to have a snowball fight or go tobogganing first.

More blood seeped from Danny’s wound as he contorted his body again. The grip of the tiny knife, he snagged it then in the opening of the waistband. He pinned it between his fingertips. He started to ease it through.

‘The answer is, I’m smarter than you,’ said the stranger.

A statement of fact. Danny refused to listen. He would not let this man’s abhorrent self-belief defeat him or undermine his own.

He concentrated on controlling his breathing instead. He continued to work the blade free.

Jonathan twitched in his chair and groaned. His head lolled forwards, before snapping upright again. There was a dreadful innocence to the action that churned Danny’s guts, as if Jonathan were in no more peril than an exhausted commuter who’d fallen asleep on a train. But then the boy’s eyes rolled back once more in delirium. His breathing crackled on.

A creak. The stranger got to his feet. As his footsteps came towards them, Sally’s fingers flexed like spiders against the wooden arms of the chair to which she’d been taped. One of her fingernails snapped.

A barking noise. Wood on wood. The stranger dragged the kitchen table over alongside Danny, his wife and his son.

The stranger was now wearing a blue gauze surgical mask. He snapped on fresh surgical gloves. He knew all about DNA. All about what forensics would try and sniff out. Just as he’d left no evidence of his presence at the motel where he’d murdered Karl Bain, so he was planning on leaving this cabin clean too.

Again Danny thought,
You must be police. Police or Bureau or Company. You’ve got to be one of the three.

The stranger swept the packet of Cheerios, Jonathan’s Spiderman bowl, his inhaler and a milk carton off the table and on to the floor, where the milk glugged noisily out.

In a neat row at the centre of the table, he then set about placing one by one a pair of shears, a Tupperware box full of tiny paper balls, a copy of Maxim, and finally a rough-edged fist-sized rock – still glistening wet from where he must have picked it up from the snow.

Paper, stone, scissors
…

That was when Danny first understood what his FBI and CIA colleagues had not. Why each of the stranger’s previous victims had been killed in the ways they had. Some stabbed in a frenzy. Some with their throats slit or entirely cut out. Others bludgeoned. Many choked.

It wasn’t because their murderer had been attempting to differentiate his crimes’ signatures in an effort to throw the police and FBI off his trail. It was because it had been part of a game.

The stranger walked round behind Jonathan and Sally so that he was facing Danny. His fish eyes glinted in the dim cabin light, as dangerous and tarnished as sharp metal shards in a stream.

He slid the glove free from his left hand, then reached out and touched Sally’s left ear. She flinched and jerked her head away. He gripped her blonde hair tight with his gloved right hand.

She froze then and let him do what he wanted. He slowly stroked the tip of his bare left forefinger around the curve of her ear, before gently massaging her ear lobe between his forefinger and thumb.

Danny stared through him. As if he were nothing. As if he were
a ghost. As if this stranger were already dead. He still had the
two-inch
knife’s grip between his forefingers. He’d now got the weapon almost entirely through the gap in his waistband.

Once he’d slit the tape binding his wrists, he’d have to wait for his chance. He’d only get one. The second the stranger turned his back, Danny would whip his arms round to the front, allowing him to slash through the tape binding his legs and his chest. He’d have to be quick. The quickest he’d ever been.

But then he’d be free. And armed. The stranger had left his pistol lying over by the fire.

And Danny would kill him long before he reached that.

The stranger pulled his glove back on, and stepped in between Danny and Sally. He turned his back on Danny for a second. But then – a sickening jolt of his heart – the tiny knife got snagged behind Danny’s back as he tried to pull it fully free.

Danny froze. The stranger was facing him again.

Eyes locked on Danny, he placed his hand gently over Sally’s right wrist. Then tore off the duct tape pinning it there.

She grimaced in pain. Her fingers flexed. A look of puzzlement crossed her face. Then hope. She thought he was going to release her.

She was wrong.

‘Paper, stone, scissors,’ the stranger said, at last turning away from Danny. He held up his clenched fist before Sally. ‘Let’s begin.’

Danny twisted the knife grip over in his fingers, and once more tried to slide it free.

As the stranger gestured up and down three times with his fist, Sally’s face crumpled in confusion. She could not believe what he wanted from her. She didn’t move her fist at all.

‘Stone,’ the stranger said. His fist had not unfurled.

He punched Sally hard in the mouth. Her cry of shock was swallowed up inside her taped-up mouth.

Danny twisted. He bucked. He tried to turn the knife.

‘Again,’ said the stranger.

Sally stared at Danny in desperate appeal. He was
hyperventilating
, edging towards panic.
Too fast
. This was all happening
too fast. He could feel the sweat trickling down his wrists on to his fingers. On to the grip of the knife.

He
had
to get free. He had to stop this animal now. He turned from Sally, twisted his torso, desperate to work any space that he could.

‘Stone,’ said the stranger a second time.

A hesitation.

Then Danny heard the judgement: ‘A draw.’

So Sally had realized what she must do. She’d started to play along.

Danny gasped as he felt the knife finally pull fully free from his waistband. For a terrible instant he felt its grip swinging slowly back and forth between his fingertips like a pendulum, as though it might drop.

Drop it now and it would fall to the floor. Drop it now and Sally would die.

‘Again,’ said the stranger.

Danny wasn’t looking at them, was still twisted round. But he could hear the dominance in the stranger’s voice. Control. That was what this was all about. Total control. Sally was not his equal. She was his plaything now. She was no more important than a plastic character on a game board.

The swing of the knife was slowing. Danny desperately willed it not to fall.

‘Scissors,’ said the stranger.

Another hesitation.

And then the result: ‘You win.’

Sally whimpered.

But Danny knew there could only be one true winner in this game. And that it would never be her.

The swing of the knife finally stopped. Danny still had it. He edged another two fingertips on to it.
Steady. For God’s sake, don’t
drop it
. He started to walk it up between his fingertips. The second he felt the end of its grip where the sharp blade began, he began to pivot it round.

‘Again,’ the stranger said.

Sally’s breath was hissing hard and fast. Danny no longer cared about the crackling of the duct tape behind his back. Every muscle in his contorted body was working to the same end now. He was burning up with sweat, choking on his own phlegm. Using all his fingers and thumbs in unison now, he turned the
downwards-pointing
blade fully out and away from him, and started to edge it up. Towards the duct tape binding his wrists.

‘Paper,’ said the stranger.

Again that hesitation. Danny still couldn’t see.

He heard a sudden frantic gasping of Sally’s breath.

Then came the verdict: ‘You lose. She loses …’ the stranger said.

Danny realized that now the stranger was talking to him

‘Turn round and watch,’ said the stranger, ‘or I’ll kill the boy first.’

First
…

Danny slowly turned to look. The stranger was staring at him. So close, Danny’s fingers froze on the knife’s grip again.

Danny looked past him. He stared desperately into Sally’s eyes instead.

I love you,
was all he thought, as he prayed for the stranger to look away so that he could work the knife again … so he could cut through that tape and—

Then he saw that the stranger already had the magazine from the table rolled up into a thin cylinder in his left hand. He didn’t take his eyes off Danny. He stepped behind Sally and gripped her head. Then he tore the duct tape from her face and forced her jaw apart, ramming the rolled-up magazine deep down inside her screaming throat in a series of violent stabbing motions.

A wave of horror rolled through Danny. Sally was choking.
That fucker
…
that fucker
…
he wouldn’t pull it out
… He threw himself forward as she started convulsing, panic tearing through him.

And in that instant, the knife slipped from his grip and fell.

The stranger already had the plastic box in his hand. He held Sally tighter, and poured its contents down the makeshift paper tunnel into her lungs. Light danced in his dead-fish eyes as he watched Danny.

A hideous gargling noise erupted from Sally’s throat.

Danny twisted, enraged, and silently screamed,
I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you
, as his fingers groped blindly for the fallen knife. The knife he could not find.

Please!
Danny was screaming through his gag.
PLEASE. NNNNUUGH
…

Then it was over. Her body went rigid. With one terrible last shudder, she slumped.

A roar of blood in Danny’s ears. Tears coursed down his face. He was swallowing down vomit, biting through his cheek. His heart clenched as violently as his fist. As if it would never open again. As if he could not breathe.

A look of absolute power, of ecstasy, settled then upon the stranger’s face. He turned to Jonathan and tore the tape from his right hand.

And then he said, ‘Next.’

NURGHHHH
…
NURGHHHHH
…

A bolt of adrenalin. Danny’s fingers raced again to find the knife. He twisted his body sideways. He twisted himself until he thought he would snap. Until …
there
…
THERE
… He felt something. The edge of the two-inch blade.