Below them ran a narrow walkway, no more than a yard wide.
Satisfied that he was out of sight of all the windows, he began to ease his way slowly down the bank. It was so steep that it was almost sheer, and he had to lean backwards to avoid slipping, and sliding noisily down to the foot. His shoes had corrugated soles, or the task would have been impossible, but finally he reached the path. He crouched there, until his breathing and his gun hand were both steady.
‘Living room first,’ he whispered into the transceiver, even though he was really talking to himself.
The window was around fifteen feet from the end wall of the house; it was set low, no more than three feet from the ground. He walked silently along, then crouched down, below the level of the ledge, until finally he held his breath and, literally, stuck his head above the parapet, as fast as he could.
A face stared back at him. Instinctively he threw himself to the side, more than half expecting a bullet to shatter the glass.
And then his brain finally registered what it was that he had seen. He stood to his full height, holding the gun in both hands, in a marksman’s grip, and stepped back in front of the window.
The face that he had seen was black and distorted. Its owner was hanging from a hook set firmly in the ceiling to support a light fitting and, on that day, much more.
‘Fuck it!’ he yelled into the transceiver. ‘He’s topped himself. Marksmen, stand down, I’m going in!’
He sprinted along to the end of the house, and through a black wooden gate, which led to the entrance porch. As Roberts had said, the cottage had only a single door. He grabbed its handle and turned it, expecting to have to shoulder his way inside, but it opened under a single firm push.
In the second after he stepped inside, Stevie Steele knew that something was wrong. His heightened senses alerted him to one tiny shred of resistance as the half-glazed door swung inwards, and then to a metallic click from above his head.
He looked up at the ceiling, and saw the black round object that was taped there.
‘Oh dear,’ he whispered.
And then he saw the blinding flash.
He never heard the noise of the explosion that followed it.
Sixty
Ray Wilding gazed up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like that,’ he said, in a tone that was little short of awestruck.
‘I don’t imagine you have,’ Becky Stallings conceded. Her face was slick with the perspiration of strenuous physical activity, and strands of her dark hair were plastered to her forehead.
From her bed, they were gazing up at a colour representation of the view across the treetops of the north embankment of the Thames, from Nelson’s Column on the right to the Palace of Westminster on the left, a shot taken from a gondola at the very top of the London Eye.
‘I’m very proud of that,’ she told him. ‘It was my own idea, from start to finish. A photographer mate of mine took the picture with one of those special lenses, then a girl I know who works in an advertising agency had it printed for me on about eight sheets, and finally I found a poster fixer-upper to paste it up there for me. It’s got to be one of the sights of the city.’
‘It beats a mirror, that’s for sure,’ the Scot admitted. ‘My ex used to go on about wanting a mirror on the ceiling. I always reckoned it was so she could do her nails at the same time.’
‘That’s the usual reason, they tell me. I did think about a flat-screen telly, until I had this idea.’
‘You’re not your run-of-the-mill detective inspector, are you, Becky?’ Wilding yawned contentedly.
‘No, I don’t suppose I am. But I’ll tell you a secret, Ray. Since the poster fixer-upper fixed it up, you’re the first bloke to have seen that.’
‘How long’s it been up there?’ he asked. ‘A week?’
‘Cheeky bastard,’ she exclaimed, the second word elongated by her slight Cockney accent. ‘Nearly a year, since you’re unchivalrous enough to force me to admit it. Shocked? Or surprised?’
‘Amazed, more like. You’re an attractive woman, working in a male environment, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t exactly hang about once you’ve made your mind up.’
‘I don’t mind at all. I’m pretty choosy about my blokes, but I’ve always believed in the unconventional approach. From fairly early on you and I both knew that this was going to happen. Much better that we got straight to it than that we edge around it all night and waste a nice meal by thinking about something else all the time we’re eating. Do you agree?’
‘With all my heart. What do we do now?’
‘We go out and have that meal, and a nice bottle of wine, then come back here and get back to the action, with the ice well and truly broken.’
‘Inspector, you are a bloody genius, if you don’t mind me saying so again.’>
‘I don’t mind that either,’ she told him cheerfully, then sat up in bed. ‘A quick shower before we go out would be in order, I reckon. It’ll save time if we have it together.’
‘In theory it will.’
‘Let’s chance it.’ She swung her feet on to the floor and jumped up, just as her phone rang. ‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘You know I can’t just let it ring, Ray, don’t you?’
‘Am I a copper or not?’
She picked it up. ‘Stallings.’
‘Inspector,’ said a thick voice, with a Scottish accent, a voice under stress, she recognised, a voice with a lot bearing down in it. ‘My name’s Tarvil Singh. I’m a DC and I need to contact my sergeant, Ray Wilding. Your office thought that he might have told you what hotel he’s booked into.’
It did not occur to her for a moment that she might prevaricate, and tell him that she would contact Wilding and have him call back. ‘He isn’t,’ she replied. ‘He’s here. Hold on.’
She offered him the instrument. ‘It’s DC Singh, Ray. Something’s wrong, I think.’
She watched him as he took the call. She watched him as the colour drained from his face. She watched him as the phone fell from his grasp, and as tears began to course down his cheeks.
She picked up the fallen receiver and replaced it, without thinking.
He looked up at her, too stunned to speak at first, his mouth hanging open slightly. When he did find words, they came out in a moan. ‘Stevie’s dead.’
She sat down hard beside him, sharing his incredulity. ‘The helicopter?’ she asked. ‘Did it . . .?’
‘No. He got there all right. And when he did, Stevie being Stevie, he led from the front and went down there to have a look. Ballester had hanged himself; Stevie saw him through a window and went charging into the house. Only the evil motherfucker had booby-trapped the front door. When he opened it, he pulled the pin of a grenade.’
Sixty-one
Bob Skinner stood in the living room of Hathaway House, staring at the dead, darkened face of Daniel Ballester. Then, with neither word nor warning, he swung upwards and punched it, as hard as he had ever hit anything or anyone in his life.
‘Hey!’ Les Cairns yelled, and lumbered forward as if to restrain him, only to stop short as Mario McGuire stepped into his path, his expression as ferocious as any he had ever seen.
‘Sorry,’ said Skinner, grimly, as the body swung round, and back again, then round once more, in semicircles. ‘Only I’m not. I wish I could have killed him myself, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Still,’ the Englishman protested, ‘this is my patch.’
‘Let’s not get territorial about this.’ The voice came from the living-room doorway. The three men turned towards it, and saw Chief Constable Sir James Proud, in full uniform.
‘I’m very much inclined to do the same as Bob,’ he said, ‘but I’ll defer to him, since he’s much better at that sort of action than I am. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to get here; I was out when Jack McGurk called to tell me
