There was the motive.
Harris agreed to approach the Home Office for permission to involve the FBI, though warned the process might be lengthy, and in the meantime cautioned against Heather wading into a small, tight-knit community, and urged patience. Foster knew there was no way he could stop Heather. He kept his counsel.
When the day was over, he decided to pay a visit to Gary, still at the safe house. He wanted the kid to see a familiar face. It was past eleven at night when Foster pulled up outside a detached cottage hidden behind some trees on the outskirts of a village just off the M4, fifteen miles outside London. The lights inside the house appeared to be off. He'd expected Gary to still be up. He checked the address he'd been given; he had the right place. Maybe the boy had got bored and gone to bed.
He got out of the car, parked half on the pavement.
The area was lit by a solitary streetlight. The nearest house was 200 yards away down the road, another detached cottage.
A few cars went past, then nothing. It was quiet and isolated and secluded. Ideal.
He went towards the house, which seemed to be a simple but spacious two-up two-down. All very bucolic and homely, he thought. A million miles away from what the kid was used to. Out front was a small gravel drive where a Ford Scorpio was parked. The back and front lights were flashing intermittently. The alarm must have gone off and muted itself. The wind, probably. But why hadn't they come out and shut it off?
He found the doorbell but there was no sound when he pushed the button, so he knocked softly. No answer. This time he knocked more loudly. No answer. Odd. He thought it was the deal that at least one person stayed awake. He went to the front window, but the curtains were drawn and with the light off it was impossible to make anything out. Then he glanced at the front upstairs window.
The curtain hung open. He went back to the door and rapped hard. No response. A vague sense of disquiet settled in the back of his mind.
There was no point calling headquarters to see if the address had been switched -- or if they had holed up somewhere else for some reason -- because there would be no one there at this hour to respond. He put his hands on his hips and thought for a few seconds, then with a sigh gave up and went back to the car. He got in. Then he got out again. There was no way he could sleep until he'd discovered what was going on here.
He crunched back along the drive to the front door.
He tried the handle slowly. It turned. He pushed the door. It opened a few inches, then stopped. Something was in the way. Something heavy. He couldn't get his head through the opening to see what it was so he gave the door another heavy shunt. It inched open. He squeezed his head through. Inside, the hall was dark but he could see the obstacle.
A body. The floor beneath was sticky and coated with blood.
Without thinking Foster gave the door the biggest shove he could muster, a rasp of pain coursing down his injured collarbone. He ignored it and squeezed round the door, trying not to step on the body. It was a man. Tall, thickset, balding. There was a small gunshot entry wound to his forehead. He'd been shot as he opened the door.
Foster could still smell cordite in the air. It was recent.
Foster went down the hall, breathless, a rising sense of panic in his craw. He turned into the sitting room. It was empty. A game console lay in the middle of floor, wires like spindly, tangled limbs. He checked the kitchen. It was difficult to see so he flicked on the light. There was a breakfast bar obscuring much of his view, at the end of which he could see a pair of trainers peeking out. The blood on the floor told him the person wasn't hiding. He peered round and saw the body of a young woman lying face down on the floor. Obviously dead. He looked up.
On the wall was a panic button. Given no one else was here the killer had managed to murder her before she had a chance to press it.
He turned round and sprinted up the stairs, which creaked after every step. At the top he checked the first room, a small bathroom with a dripping tap that was empty. Beside it was an empty bedroom, a double. The bed was made with an unopened suitcase on it. The next room was single and unoccupied. There was another set of stairs leading to a converted loft. He stood still, breathing hard. From up there he could hear the low murmur of voices, some laughter. A television. He walked up slowly, hoping against hope that Gary was lying propped up, watching TV, oblivious to the carnage below.
The door was ajar. He pushed it open, revealing a small room half-covered with sloping eaves which gave it the feel of a den. There was a bed, creased and used. Empty.
To his right were a sideboard and a television; the source of the noise was a comedy sketch show. He turned it off and looked around the room, staring at the floor and the sheets on the bed. Nothing. No sign of blood. Then, like a punch to the kidneys, it hit him.
He sprinted down both flights of stairs, ignoring the cries and protests of his body and his bursting chest, past both bodies, not even giving them a second glance. The back door was unlocked. He pulled it open and ran out into the large, dark garden walled by hedgerow, where a light rain drenched his face. He went down some stone steps and headed straight for the middle of the lawn where he expected to find the body of an elevenyear-old boy. There was nothing. He bent double, chest heaving, sucking in air. He pulled himself upright. Some mistake, surely. Gary's body had to be out here, its blood seeping on to the wet ground. He went to the borders, kicked at the bushes, peered into every nook and cranny, the drizzle soaking his scalp.
He screamed out the boy's name. Then again, from the pit of his stomach.
But there was no sign of him.
Dead or alive, he was gone.
12
They left Donna and Pettibone behind in Llewellyn, hired a car and set off before the sun had risen. The air was chill and clear; Nigel wound down the window and sucked in great lungfuls until Heather, nose almost pressing against the windscreen as she got used to driving on the opposite side of the road, told him to close it before she got hypothermia.
As they left the small town behind and headed into the fladands, a watery red sun crept up from behind silhouetted mountains to reveal mile after mile of landscape unbroken by the sight of man or beast.
Three hours of seeing only the occasional car and isolated petrol station later, the road led them up a winding hill. As they descended from the summit, in the distance they could make out a small, unspectacular town, the first they had seen for more than fifty miles. Nigel checked the map; it was Liberty. It must be - there was no other town within thirty miles. He felt his stomach tighten. It wasn't every day you paid a visit to a town filled with fundamentalists who had chosen to cut themselves off from the civilized world. He didn't know what to expect and wondered whether this was such a good idea. The plan was for them to portray themselves as innocent, bewildered tourists on a road trip, perhaps seek out somewhere to stay and hope there was one person in the whole community who might be willing to speak to them without arousing suspicion.
'Is this a good idea?' he asked Heather as they made their way down the hill, shading their eyes. The sky above them was cloudless and the rising winter sun was directly in front.
Her eyes, red from tiredness and staring at a straight road, narrowed. 'It's the best one we've got. Why, are you getting cold feet?'
'No,' he lied.
We're going to go in and ask some questions as nicely as possible. Look upon it as a piece of local history. You once told me that nothing beat a field trip, getting out there and asking questions. Consider it research.' She smiled.
He felt partly reassured, but the grip of tension in his gut remained.
The town wasn't signed. It was just there, as if dropped from the sky fully formed and without warning. One minute there was open road and wilderness; the next, a few houses that became a street and then other streets. The houses were simple one-storey structures, sometimes with a car parked out front, which surprised Nigel. All of them were painted white. Everything was white - the fences, the doors.
He expected it to be rather more basic. An American flag fluttered limply from a pole outside one or two,
