the woodland that extended to the perimeter of his land.
He heard the birds singing in the trees.
He considered running. Or should he go back into the chapel?
He looked at the dead bodies again and an overpowering nausea crashed over him. He felt dizzy. His knees grew weak.
And then he sensed a figure walking around the side of the chapel.
As Stratton turned, his eyes widened. The figure wore a heavy hood that covered his eyes and he remained absolutely silent. He just raised his right hand, which carried a pistol, its barrel lengthened by the addition of a suppressor.
Stratton shook his head just as his legs gave way. He fell to his knees and looked up as the gunman lowered his weapon to keep it aligned with his target’s skull.
‘I know you,’ Stratton said.
Silence.
Stratton bowed his head and closed his eyes. He knew what was coming.
The sound of the round that killed him was just a low thud. Like somebody rapping their knuckles sharply on a door. Stratton didn’t hear it, of course, and his body hadn’t even finished slumping to the floor before the shooter had turned and started moving round to the back of the chapel.
The birds continued to warble in the trees. Their song was only disturbed thirty seconds later when the door of the chapel creaked open again, and a middle-aged lady with neat hair and a tweed skirt screamed at the bloodshed all around her.
The gunman knew he couldn’t rely on speed. Only stealth. By the time the scream from the chapel had caused the birds to fly from the trees, he was already in the cover of the woods. And when — ten minutes later — he heard sirens in the distance, he had reached the northern perimeter of the estate. An old dry-stone wall marked the boundary here, but there was a tumbledown section a couple of metres long. Eventually he managed to climb over it and kept on walking.
A solitary figure, making his way across the countryside.
It was approaching midday when the figure arrived at the tiny railway station of Lesser Michelstone. It was not the nearest to Stratton’s residence, because he knew by now the area would be crawling with police, but at a distance of five kilometres it was the furthest he could reasonably walk. There was no ticket office here, and no other passengers waiting on the platform. A single security camera, but pointing away from the station bench where he sat, his hood still covering his head. In his right hand — the skin of which was blotched, unnaturally smooth in some places, unnaturally wrinkled in others — the hooded man held a fifty-pence piece. He flicked the coin in the air, watched it spin and caught it in a firm grip.
Flick, catch.
Flick, catch.
When the train arrived at the station three minutes later, he pocketed the coin and limped to the edge of the platform. A set of doors stopped immediately in front of him. He pressed the door-release button and awkwardly climbed inside.
There were only three people in the carriage. An old woman with blue-rinsed hair and a young couple necking three seats along. Hardly surprising, he told himself, that people were edgy about train travel just now. He took a seat at the opposite end of the carriage and stared out of the window as the train slid away.
‘Tickets, please…’
The voice of the ticket inspector as he entered the carriage snapped him out of his reverie. The gunman removed a wallet from his pocket and opened it up. It was almost empty. There was nothing in there that could identify him: no credit cards, no ID. Just some cash, the return ticket and a cutting from a newspaper. He had read it a hundred times already over the past few days, but as he waited for the ticket inspector to approach, he read it again now.
There were four photographs at the top of the article. Below the pictures was a headline: ‘scotland yard still unable to identify two of four cathedral victims’. And beneath that, an increasingly breathless, and regurgitated, account of the shootings in St Paul’s. He couldn’t help staring at the images. One of them was of good quality and showed the smiling face of a young priest; the second was of an old lady. The remaining two were less distinct, clearly stills from a CCTV image. They showed a woman in her late thirties with a hunted expression; and a young boy with tousled hair.
‘World’s gone mad, if you ask me.’
The gunman looked up and as he did so the hood fell back from over his eyes. He scrambled to cover his head again, but by then it was too late. The ticket inspector’s eyes had moved from the clipping to his face and they widened at the sight of him. At the sight of the patches of his head where the hair had burned away and the skin was scorched and withered; at his face, with its vicious scar down the side and the area of damaged flesh that stuck to his skull like cling film; at his neck, the state of which hinted that the burn marks were not limited to his head, but continued down the rest of his body.
The ticket inspector blinked, then coughed with embarrassment as he tried not to stare. ‘Ticket, please,’ he repeated.
The gunman bowed his head and wordlessly handed his ticket over. The ticket inspector clipped it, returned it to its owner and moved swiftly on to the next carriage.
