I nodded.
“So leave the violence to me, okay?” He handed Bonehead a baseball cap. “Put this on. You’re going to pretend to be me.”
“Oh, great,” the driver said, accelerating down the City Road.
I turned to the front. “You don’t have to get involved, Boney,” I said. “Just take us to the place and wait outside.”
“What, and miss all the fun?” Pete said, his voice shrill. “Just because I’m gay, you think I can’t put myself about?”
Dave leaned forward. “You putting yourself about is exactly what worries me. Now, listen, here’s what we do.”
He spoke, we heard what he had to say and we agreed. Then we sorted out the equipment. By that time we were heading down Bethnal Green Road. Another few minutes and we’d be at the Devil’s lair.
Did I have it in me to save Lucy and Sara, let alone all the others? To my surprise, I found that my breathing was regular, my heart wasn’t racing and my hands were still.
I was calm and I wanted payback.
It seemed that I was even more like the Devil than I’d thought.
Karen Oaten was standing outside the Royal Brewery. Ahead of her, fire engines were pumping water onto the blaze on the top floor. All the other flats had been evacuated, none of the occupants suffering worse than shock and minor injuries. John Turner was beside her, his phone jammed between his ear and his shoulder as he scribbled notes.
“Okay,” he shouted above the noise, “get going with the list, Morry. Give some of the properties to Hardy’s lot. And make sure the bomb squad go in first every time. Out.” He put the phone in his pocket.
“I wonder how many places he’s wired to blow,” the chief inspector said, her eyes on the clouds of smoke that were ascending from the burning building.
“We haven’t found any more explosives yet,” the inspector said. “That makes thirteen that have been checked. There are another seven.”
“And more to come, I suspect.” Oaten glanced at her subordinate. “Of course, the Devil’s smart enough to have bought properties under other names. In fact, I’m wondering if the reason he kept so many in the name of Lawrence Montgomery was to tie Matt Wells and us up.”
“What do you mean?” the Welshman asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Think about it, Taff. The Devil sends us running all over the city while he’s happily installed in some secret location with the people he’s been abducting-Matt Wells’s girlfriend, his ex-wife, God knows who else. Maybe he’s even got the little girl.”
Turner was chewing his lip. “And if the Devil turns out to be Matt Wells?”
“Come on, Taff, you don’t really believe that.” Oaten could see that he still wasn’t convinced. “Didn’t you just take a statement from one of the residents identifying Wells as entering the building not long before it blew?”
The inspector raised his shoulders. “So? Maybe he had the explosives on a timer.”
“Why?”
“To destroy the evidence, of course. We aren’t going to find much up there when the fire’s eventually out, are we?”
Karen Oaten sighed. “Didn’t we just also hear from the same resident that the owner of the penthouse is a man of medium height with short fair hair. Meaning he is not Matt Wells.”
“So?” Turner said stubbornly. “That guy might be an accomplice of Wells.”
“All right, forget it,” she said, giving up. It made no difference to the investigation at this stage. Until they could locate Wells or the Devil, they were up sewage river with no form of propulsion. “Come on, where’s the next property on your list?”
“Deptford,” he said. “A lock-up garage.”
Oaten looked at him. “Really? That sounds interesting. Have you told the bomb squad?”
“They’re on their way. As you can imagine, we’re stretching them tonight.”
“It’s part of his plan, Taff,” she said, heading for the car. “I’m telling you.”
“Yes,” he said, catching her up. “But who is he if he isn’t Wells?”
The chief inspector drove away, flames dancing in the rearview mirror.
It was like a vision of hell in some medieval painting.
The Jeep slowed after we turned off the Roman Road.
“First right,” Dave said, his eyes on the map. “Okay, stop here.”
There was a Victorian school that looked to have been turned into flats. I saw a sign for Free Forests pointing round the back of the block.
“There it is,” I said. “How long do you want, Dave?”
He grinned at me. “Ten minutes, Matt. You both clear about what we’re doing?”
Pete and I nodded.
“Christ, look at him,” Bonehead said. “No wonder they call him Psycho. He’s actually enjoying this.”
“I can’t believe I’m riding in a puce vehicle.” Dave’s grin faded. “My kids are in there. No one messes with my kids.”
“Right,” I said. “The same goes for Lucy.”
“Okay, check the time. It’s 12:14 in three, two, one, zero.”
We synchronized watches.
“Just like in those war movies I used to hate when I was a young lad,” Boney said. “I always preferred musicals.”
Dave gave him a despairing look, then squeezed my arm and moved away round the corner.
“You sure you’re up for this, Pete?” I asked, checking the gear I’d filled my pockets with.
He did the same. “Of course. This is what friends are for, isn’t it?”
I hadn’t even regarded him as a close friend until the last couple of days. I still felt guilty about the prejudice he’d suffered from the Bison.
Those ten minutes were the longest I had ever lived. My mind was filled with images of the ones I loved. How would Lucy be coping with this horror? She was only eight years old, for Christ’s sake. Dave’s son, Tom, wasn’t much more. And what about Sara? She was tougher than most women I knew-she’d fought off a security guard once when she was doing an undercover story about banking fraud-but the Devil had a way of finding people’s weak spots. As for Caroline, I couldn’t bear to think what she’d have to say to me if we got out of this. If we got out of it. Bloody hell, what were we thinking of? Did we seriously imagine we could take on a genuine psychopath and his accomplices, however many they were? I felt for my phone.
“Steady,” Bonehead said, sticking out his hand. “Remember what the scumbag said. No police.”
“How did you know I was going to call them?”
“It’s logical, isn’t it?” he said with a faint smile. “Any normal person would. But we aren’t normal, are we?”
“You certainly aren’t.”
He nudged me hard in the ribs. “Don’t push your luck, Mr. Writer.”
I returned his smile, then thought about the way he’d addressed me. I didn’t remember him having referred to me by my profession often. Someone else had, though. The Devil…
“Right, this is it,” Peter Satterthwaite said, his eyes on his Rolex. “Five, four, three, two, one…go!”
He started the engine and drove slowly round the edge of the former school. There was a low wooden building about fifty yards ahead. It was surrounded by a wire fence, but the gate was open. I made out three adjoining sheds, the central one larger than the others. Stacks of cut timber were dotted about the yard. It looked like a genuine business.
“I’ll park outside,” Boney said.
“Remember what Dave told you. Turn round so that we can make a quick getaway if we have to.”
He did that. The Jeep made enough noise to alert the people inside, but I was pretty sure they were keeping a lookout anyway.
