Gary ignored him, and ran into the front room, making for the open window.
Foster hauled himself up, body screaming with pain.
Gary could wait. He remembered the muffled screams earlier. He dragged his frame upstairs and into the room where he'd first encountered Chapman.
'Hello?' he said. 'Is anybody there?'
Nothing. He repeated his inquiry. This time there was a response.
'Help,' a plaintive voice said weakly.
He looked around the room. There was a cupboard.
Foster opened it. It was shallow. Empty.
'Help.' The voice was pitiful and weak.
He pushed at the back of the cupboard. It seemed to give. He pushed harder, then he kicked. It gave way.
Behind it was an extra few feet of space.
Curled up in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees, was a girl. The blonde hair was matted and tangled, but the blue eyes and face were unmistakable. They had been staring out from the newspapers every day for the past week.
'Naomi,' he said.
She stood up and launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck, convulsed with sobs.
'It's OK,' he found himself saying, as she wept hot tears on his shoulder. 'You're safe now. You're safe.'
She was shaking.
So am I, he thought.
He heard the front door give way, footsteps on the stairs. 'I'm here,' he shouted, overcome. 'I've got her. She's safe.'
Officers came rushing in from every angle. He held up his hand, making them aware they should tread carefully.
'This whole place is a crime scene,' he said.
He held Naomi for a few minutes, then led her downstairs, handing her to a WPC and asking for her father to be summoned immediately.
He took a deep breath and composed himself. Where had Gary come from? He must have been in the house before him. It was Gary he had heard moving around downstairs. He returned to the room where Naomi had been held. He peered into the cupboard and the false wall at the back of it. There was a duvet lining the floor and a pillow, but it was no more than a couple of feet deep and four feet wide. Naomi would have had no room to lie down flat, and only stale air to breathe; there would have been nothing but darkness and the fear of what might happen.
It was over. He rubbed his head, a wry smile on his face.
^'What's so funny?' a uniform asked.
'Nothing,' he replied. 'Just appreciating a bit of grim irony.
'The kid that was given up for adoption to save him from being hunted down and killed as an act of blood atonement was the one who had ended up carrying out the atonement legacy.
16
Foster was dozing on the sofa. He'd returned to his house late for a few hours' sleep and rest as they tried to tie up the loose ends surrounding Anthony Chapman. Much still needed to be explained. Too tired to make it upstairs, he propped up a couple of pillows and rested his head, fully clothed, pausing only to kick off his shoes, sinking into unconsciousness immediately.
He woke up with a start. A noise? There was a figure in the corner of his eye. Small, stocky.
'Gary?' he whispered hoarsely. 'Gary,' he added, more clearly and forcefully.
The kid stepped from the dark corner of the room into the middle where the light from the moon fought its way through a crack in the curtains.
'Nice of you to drop in again,' he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
The kid said nothing. Foster got up and turned on the light. 'Hungry?'
Gary nodded. Foster asked him to follow him into the kitchen. The digital readout on his underused cooker read '03:3 5'. He'd been asleep less than two hours. Every part of him ached, even the bits Karl Hogg hadn't smashed up.
'The takeaways are shut. I can only offer toast,' he said.
He stuck a few pieces in the toaster and filled the kettle, setting it to boil. He turned round.
Gary was staring at the floor. There was anger and concern in his eyes, the open window to a complicated young soul.
'Thanks for saving my life.'
Gary's face softened. 'Don't mention it.' He paused, uncertain. 'Am I in trouble for stabbing that feller?'
Foster tried to get angry, or at least to wear a look of anger, but failed. The kid was safe and that was a relief.
'A few people are going to want to ask you a few questions,'
he said. 'No, I don't think you'll be getting into too much trouble. But as for breaking into my house yet again . . .' He spread his arms out wide. Gary half-smiled once more.
The toast popped up. Foster buttered it and put on some jam. Gary devoured it in seconds so he made some more and made himself a cup of tea. Once the boy's hunger was sated, Foster sat opposite him across the kitchen table.
'It was a bloody stupid thing to do.'
Gary shrugged. 'Is he dead?'
'No. He'll live. We think. He lost a lot of blood.'
Gary nodded, a tinge of relief to his features.
'How did you find him?'
Gary explained. 'I'd gone to bed in the safe house.
Except it wasn't safe, was it?'
Foster felt a twinge of guilt. 'I suppose not.'
'I went to bed. They had a DS. I'm playing with it on the bed, with the TV on, but there was nothing on, just news and stuff. The woman comes in and she says, 'It's ten o'clock. Turn that off and get some.' I says OK, but I carries on playing because I'm fucked if I'm going to bed when some copper tells me. Then this car alarm goes off outside. It goes off for a bit and I hear the bloke swear.
Then, I dunno, I hear something but I don't know what.
Like a thud.'
Chapman had used a silencer, which explained the lack of a gunshot.
Gary continued, eyes saucer-wide. 'The woman screams and she goes running downstairs. I'm like, 'I gotta run.' I open the window, climb out, down the drainpipe and I'm in the garden. I just ran, out of the garden, and then I'm in these fields. Nowhere to hide, just fields.'
'So where did you go?'
'I ran to this tree. There was a car and I knew it straight away. It was the same car that man had who came round and saw my sister. A blue Mondeo, battered but still the same. The engine was still a bit warm. I just got in, thought it was the safest place. I knew he'd look for me but he wouldn't look in his own car because he's a dozy twat. I broke in and hid in the footwell in the back seat.'
Why?'
'Find out where he lived. Sure enough, he spends ten minutes huffing and puffing around the countryside before he gets in swearing his head off, effin and blindin, and I'm there sat on his back seat. Then he drives off. It was like he was never gonna stop. He did once. Don't know where. Middle of nowhere so I stayed inside. I knew we was getting back to London because of the traffic and the lights. Then he pulled up at some garage to get some
