is?’
Brandon looked uncomfortable. He didn’t like surprises—‘be prepared’ was his motto. He kept his eyes on the Colonel. Reese looked at Terry. Terry glared back and shook his head as if to say don’t even think about opening your mouth.
‘We are getting sloppy. Some people are making mistakes.’ The Colonel’s eyes rolled backwards, his fingers floated above the table. ‘The time of reckoning is upon us…’
Sophia placed Princess Pony back on the table and silently mimicked the Colonel.
Laurence pushed the back door. It was stuck. There was something against it—a weight blocking it. He shoved it, a small sharp push. It moved. Four small shoves then it was open. Gun in hand, he looked out to the alleyway beyond. Nothing. Then he looked at his feet. There was the missing foot bath. He stood for a few seconds as his eyes made sense of what he saw. Jed’s head was in it, the top of his skull blown away. His eyes were shut, his mouth hung open and his balls were inside it.
Laurence tasted the bile as it surged into his mouth. Adrenalin flooded his system; his legs began to give way. He turned. The Teacher was waiting right behind him. He held the gun against Laurence’s heart, smiled and fired.
The Colonel sat upright. Sophia opened her mouth, held her breath, watched the Colonel and waited, ready to say it.
‘The time of deliverance is at hand…’ They spoke in unison.
Amy pulled the blanket up to just under her eyes and listened hard. She had come to know the sounds in the flat and what they meant. She could identify who it was by the sound of their footsteps and by the way they closed the door. There was the one who had gold teeth and stank of aftershave, who was always watching telly. His name was Sunny. He always had the volume up really loud. He was always eating and farting. The other man, Tony, had spots, and he was the one she had seen that first night. He always walked around a lot. He talked on the telephone. He watched soaps on the telly. Then there was Lenny and a woman. Amy hadn’t seen her, but she had heard her. The woman was always shouting at the men. She only stopped moaning when Lenny arrived. Then she laughed like anything. She must fancy Lenny a lot, thought Amy.
Amy lay still and listened to the woman talking. The woman was Chinese—from Hong Kong—and spoke Cantonese. But Amy never saw her. The only person Amy saw to talk to was Lenny; she saw him every day. She liked him the best, even though he had been the man to take her from the school. He had explained all that to her and said that he had no choice. That he was, in his own way, a prisoner like her, and that when her father paid up they would both be free.
At least Lenny was nicer to her now. They had stopped giving her the sleeping pills every day, and Amy only looked out of the window now, she never banged on it. She understood the rules. She was used to rules. She was also used to fitting in to a pecking order; boarding for so many years had taught her that. She was an observant child and she knew how to watch and appraise others without being seen to do so. She knew how to get on people’s good sides, even when she didn’t like them.
It was a lucky thing that Amy had her drawing pad and her Macramé in her bag. Now she had nothing to do, she would do that. She sat on the chair by the desk. First of all she would draw a picture of Lenny. She sucked the end of her pencil as she thought hard about his face. She wanted to get it right. She wanted to get it so perfect that everyone would know who it was.
Mann made his way through Heathrow, picked up his small suitcase and headed out through ‘Nothing to Declare’, where he was handed his weapons’ case, which had been carried separately, locked away in the hold, before he followed the signs for the exit.
The ragged line of people holding cards up behind the flimsy barrier looked hopefully at Mann. He had reached the end of the line when a short-haired blonde woman in her early thirties wearing dark trousers and a slim-fitting brown shirt rushed up to him, coffee cup in one hand and a sticky bun in the other.
‘Detective Inspector Mann?’
He nodded.
She introduced herself. ‘DC Rebecca Stamp, but you can call me Becky. You hungry? Need to stop for a coffee? Long flight?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. I slept well. Lead the way.’
He followed her through to the car park. He watched her as she strode along beside him. She had that athletic gait that policewomen had, as if she were marching along with a rucksack on her back. Women competing in a male-dominated world didn’t lose their femininity, it just changed—became more assertive—showed they knew what they wanted and how to get it. She was no more than five foot two and came to just under his shoulder, but she wasn’t one of those women you should offer to reach things for.
She was still holding her bun in one hand and her coffee in the other when they arrived at level three of the short-stay car park. They stopped at a black Audi A2. She put her coffee on the roof whilst she looked for her keys.
‘Shit! Sorry, my keys are somewhere. I had them in my hand a minute ago.’ She put the bun in her mouth whilst she searched.
‘Left-hand jacket pocket.’
She stopped and looked at him incredulously before aiming the rest of the bun at a bin ten feet away and scoring a direct hit.
‘Thanks.’
She unlocked the car and got in, put her coffee in the cup holder in the centre of the red leather dashboard and started the engine. She switched the Bose sound system on and drove out of the car park.
‘Thanks for picking me up,’ Mann said.
She turned to look at him. He smiled.
‘That’s okay…you’re welcome.’
‘Did you have trouble recognising me?’
She giggled—deep and throaty, dirty, almost. She had a lovely broad mouth, strong laughter lines—a healthy tom-boy beach-babe look. She looked like she would be the last girl left at the campfire, drinking beer with the boys, long after the other girls had gone to bed.
‘Six foot, Eurasian, snazzy dresser—no trouble. I did my research. I have booked you into a B&B near to where I live. I thought it would make sense for us to be close.’
‘Sounds great.’ He gave her a mischievous smile.
‘Chief Inspector Procter—he’s the man in charge of the kidnapping—wants to see you as soon as poss. I said I would fill you in on the way to the school. Then we go and meet the rest of the team. Hope that’s okay?’
‘It all sounds good. I bet the rest of the team can’t wait.’
She swung him a look to check if he was joking, saw that he was and broke into that deep, rich laugh again. Her eyebrows and her eyes were a few shades darker than her hair, he noticed, which was the colour of gold, and her eyes were fringed with long, dark lashes. It gave her a striking Northern Italian look. She wore no makeup.
‘Yeah, right! Pleased as punch. No one’s quite figured out who asked for you. We didn’t think we needed help.’
‘Don’t worry. I didn’t want to come. Offer I couldn’t refuse—that kind of thing. But it’s nice to be here.’ He looked wistfully out of the window. It was early and the air had that spring brightness, that expectancy to it that the sky was just waiting to burn off the morning haze and reveal a blue day. The roads were also just beginning to get choked with commuter traffic. ‘I haven’t been back here for a long time—too long.’ Mann stared out of the window. ‘Where are we going first?’
‘The school in Rickmansworth. In this traffic