were the norm. The nanny might drive a Ford, or the gardener, but neither was likely to park it at the side of the road. It might have belonged to a Crown Estate worker – but why would they have parked outside the gate and not driven through it?
Shepherd wondered if he was worrying about nothing. Charlie was at home, and so was her husband. He put the car in gear and accelerated away. He had travelled only a few yards when he stamped on the brake. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was wrong, that the car shouldn’t have been parked where it was. He sighed and reached for his mobile phone. It would take only a few minutes to check it out. He tapped in the number of SOCA’s intelligence unit in a nondescript office building in Pimlico, central London, not far from MI6’s more dramatic riverside headquarters.
A man answered. ‘Hello.’ It was standard procedure for SOCA operatives at all levels not to identify their location or function. If Shepherd had asked if he was talking to SOCA or to Intel, the call would have been terminated immediately.
‘PNC vehicle check, please,’ said Shepherd.
‘Name, ID number and radio call sign?’ said the voice.
Shepherd gave his full name and the two numbers.
‘Registration number?’
Shepherd read the digits off the front numberplate of the car.
There was a short pause before the man spoke again. ‘It’s a blue Ford Mondeo 2.0 LX. The registered keeper is shown as the Hertz Rental Company and they have been the keeper since the tenth of January two thousand and seven. There are no reports.’
Shepherd’s jaw tightened. A hire car was a bad sign. ‘It doesn’t by any chance say to which Hertz office the car was assigned?’
‘Just the company name, sorry.’
‘Can you do me a favour?’ asked Shepherd. ‘I’m in the field and pressed for time. Can you contact Hertz and find out which office the car was hired from, and get me the name of the customer?’
‘Not a problem,’ said the voice. ‘Is it okay to call you on this number?’
‘That would be great,’ said Shepherd.
The line went dead. Shepherd rarely used the intelligence unit but when he did he was always impressed with the can-do attitude. If he’d called the Metropolitan Police for help they would have given him half a dozen reasons why they couldn’t make the call to the car-hire company. He settled back in his seat. Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe one of the locals had put his BMW or Jaguar in for servicing and hired a car to tide him over. Maybe.
Button stared round the empty bathroom. ‘Graham, where are you?’ she called. Poppy barked from the kitchen. She went back into the bedroom. He couldn’t have gone far because his car was parked outside and he wasn’t one of life’s great walkers. The bedroom window overlooked the garden and she peered out. She didn’t expect to see him there because he wasn’t one of life’s gardeners, either.
Her jacket was on the bed where she’d thrown it and she retrieved her mobile phone from the pocket. She’d called Graham just before she’d met Patsy Ellis in the wine bar so she scrolled through her calls list and pressed her husband’s number. She put the phone to her ear as she looked round the bedroom. For a crazy moment she imagined her husband had walked out on her, but that made no sense because he would have taken the car. She opened the sliding mirrored door to the wardrobe. All his clothes were there, of course. She shut it and smiled at her reflection. Graham didn’t have time for an affair, and she doubted that any other woman would put up with the hours he worked.
The phone rang, and kept on ringing. Button frowned. That didn’t make sense because Graham never went anywhere without it. He took calls from clients at any time of day or night, no matter where he was or what he was doing, and usually he answered on the second or third ring.
She began to pace round the room. She had often joked with him that only a stroke or a heart-attack would stop him answering his phone, and now a coldness was spreading through her, tightening round her chest like a steel band. The phone stopped ringing and went to voicemail. She cut the connection, then pressed redial as she went on to the landing. As soon as she did, she heard his ringtone downstairs. The James Bond theme. He’d chosen it initially as an ironic comment on her job, but after a while he’d grown to like the tune and had steadfastly refused to change it. Every time it rang he’d look at her, smile slyly, and she would say, ‘Boys will be boys.’
Button moved along the landing, holding out her phone in front of her. If the phone was in the house, so was Graham. The band round her chest was so tight now that she could barely breathe. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
She walked slowly down the stairs. ‘Graham!’ she called, hearing the uncertainty in her voice. ‘Graham, where are you?’
Poppy barked from the kitchen.
Button reached the bottom of the stairs. The phone went to voicemail and the James Bond music stopped. She cut the connection and pressed redial again. She put her head on one side, her brow furrowed as she concentrated. The ring-tone kicked into life again. It was coming from the study. She reached for the door handle and took a deep breath as she tried to convince herself that everything was all right, that when she pushed open the door she’d see Graham at his desk, listening to Phil Collins on his Bose headphones, oblivious to his ringing phone.
Her jaw dropped when she saw him on the floor, lying on his back. His eyes were wide and staring and there was a damp patch at his groin.
‘Graham?’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Graham.’ She hurried across the carpet and knelt beside him. She put her hand to his neck and felt for a pulse, but even as she did so she knew she was wasting her time. He was dead. She sat back and looked at his chest. She opened his jacket and saw a red stain on his shirt. She began to tremble, but fought to stop her hands shaking, and undid the buttons round the glistening stain. ‘Oh, Graham, my poor darling,’ she whispered. The wound was narrow, less than an inch, a clean cut. He had been killed with a knife. A very sharp knife. A single blow to the heart. There was no sign of the murder weapon.
She stood up, her mind in a whirl. She put a hand to her forehead, trying to focus. Graham’s mobile was still ringing in his pocket and she pressed the red button on hers to end the call. She stared down at the body, suddenly aware that the only sound in the room was her breathing. She looked at her phone, wondering who to call.
The door to the study slammed and she spun round, the phone slipping from her fingers to the floor. An Arab was standing there, a smile on his face. There was no need for Button to ask who he was or what he wanted. He was holding a carving knife and he swished it from side to side as he walked across the carpet towards her.
Shepherd jumped when the phone buzzed, then pressed the green button. ‘Shepherd,’ he said.
‘It was hired from their Marble Arch location, thirty-five Edgware Road, by a Hassan Salih, using a United Arab Emirates driving licence.’
Shepherd thanked the man and ended the call. His heart pounded as his adrenal glands kicked into overdrive. An Arab renting a car and driving out to Virginia Water could mean only one thing. He climbed out of the Audi, opened the rear door on the driver’s side and groped under the seat for the UMP. He ripped off the plastic wrapping and slotted in the magazine, then slammed the door. He looked around. There was no one nearby. He hid the machine-gun under his jacket as best he could and started to run back to Charlie’s house.
The Arab bared his teeth at Button but said nothing. Button crouched, her hands up defensively. She had done some hand-to-hand combat during basic training, but her instructors had always told her that if you were unarmed and facing a combatant with a blade, the best option by far was to turn and run. But the only door was behind the Arab and she had no other escape route. ‘What do you want?’ she said, knowing the question was meaningless but wanting to say something because talking was the only thing that might slow him.
He took a step towards her and she took a step back. Her husband’s body was to her right. Between it and the window there was a desk with a computer on it. The window was double-glazed and she wasn’t sure how hard she’d have to hit it to be sure of it breaking but she was sure that the Arab wouldn’t give her a chance to find out. ‘You know the name Abdal Jabbaar bin Othman al-Ahmed? And that of his brother, Abdal Rahmaan?’
Button curled her fingertips. If he stabbed with the knife she had a chance of catching his wrist but if he slashed with it he’d cut her. Of course she knew who Abdal Jabbaar bin Othman al-Ahmed was. And his brother. And now she realised why the killer was in her house, why he’d stabbed her husband and why he was going to kill her. She’d watched in horror as Abdal Rahmaan had been burnt to death by men working for Richard Yokely. And
