It was then that I realized she must have genuinely cared for him, although God alone knew why. ‘No, it’s Haddock, and he’s been murdered.’
‘Haddock? But he’s so big.’
‘They must have been waiting in there for him and caught him by surprise.’
I walked slowly round to the front of the main building, with Lee following. I had no idea who’d killed Haddock, but whoever it was had known what they were doing. And if they could take out an immense brute like him, they could just as easily take out Lee and me.
I thought I caught a flash of movement from somewhere inside the treeline. I squinted, watching the area like a hawk, but saw nothing more, making me wonder whether I’d imagined it. The night was dark and I was feeling hugely jumpy.
‘We need to go,’ I told Lee, ‘but we’re going to need some weapons.’
‘What about Ty?’
‘Have you got a phone? You can call him and get him to meet us somewhere.’
‘I tried. There’s still no signal.’
‘Shit.’
‘Do you think whoever killed Haddock is still here?’ Lee looked around fearfully in the darkness.
‘No, there’d be no point.’ But the truth was, I had no idea. I only knew that I didn’t want to hang around, and I wasn’t going to walk through those woods without some kind of weapon. There hadn’t been anything I could use in the outbuilding, which left only one alternative. ‘We need to go back in the house.’
‘There were knives in the kitchen,’ said Lee. ‘I saw some earlier, in one of the drawers.’
‘That’ll do,’ I said, and started walking, hoping they were still there, and wondering if I was making a very stupid decision by going back in.
But as I stepped inside the front door and back into the dusty old foyer, no one tried to attack me. Instead, the place remained as eerily silent as it had been before. I waited a couple of seconds, listening hard for any out- of-place sound, but all I could hear was Lee’s quiet breathing coming from behind me. I asked her where the kitchen was.
‘Over there,’ she whispered, pointing to a door to the right of the staircase, her actions making it quite clear that she expected me to lead the way.
I went over and gave the door a kick so that it flew back on its hinges with a loud crack that shattered the stillness of the building and made Lee jump.
‘What did you do that for?’ she hissed.
‘Because I’m not taking chances,’ I answered, walking inside and looking around.
It was a big room, with a breakfast island in the middle, more graffiti on the walls, and an odour of grease. It also looked empty.
Lee pointed to the drawer where she’d seen the knives and, moving fast, I pulled it open, rifling through the cheap cutlery until I found a blunt, rusty-looking carving knife and a small kitchen knife with a four-inch blade. I handed the smaller weapon to her and took the carving knife.
I couldn’t imagine ever stabbing someone. I’d seen enough stabbing victims in the past to make me realize what a terrible thing it was to do to a person, and I knew I wouldn’t have the mental strength to shove the blade into human flesh, even if the person was trying to kill me. Still, I was relieved to have a means of defending myself at last, even if it was just a deterrent.
‘Can we go now?’ Lee asked.
I could see the fear etched on her features in the gloom, and I nodded, starting back towards the front door.
Then I stopped. ‘Wait.’
I was looking at the door through which we’d dragged Kent earlier. Kent. In my desperation to escape I’d completely forgotten about him. Had he been freed by the mysterious client? Was he still trapped down in the basement? Was he even still alive? I had to find out. Because if he was, I had a duty to take him out of there and get him back into police custody.
I told Lee what I planned to do, and she looked at me like I was some kind of madman. ‘Don’t go down there,’ she pleaded. ‘Let’s just leave.’
I shook my head, then kicked open the door in the same way I’d done earlier. This time Lee let out a high- pitched shriek that would have woken the dead.
‘Just being cautious,’ I said, before stepping inside the empty, cavernous room and flicking on my lighter.
Shadows danced through the gloom, revealing the graffiti on the walls, but nothing else.
Then, as Lee came in behind me, I saw it.
The door to the basement was ever so slightly ajar, its bolt pulled back. Wolfe and Haddock wouldn’t have left it like that, not with their prize — the man they’d shot a police officer to get hold of — down there. And I couldn’t see how Kent would have been able to escape on his own, not when the door had been bolted from the outside.
I walked over, conscious of the sound my footfalls were making on the creaking floorboards. I stopped two feet away, listened. Hearing nothing once again, I used the carving knife to pull the door further open and stared down into the darkness, the flame from the lighter doing little to illuminate it.
‘I don’t want to go down there,’ whispered Lee.
I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘You stay here by the door. I’ll be back up in a moment.’
She asked me again not to go, and a huge part of me felt like agreeing with her. But I had to know what had happened to Kent.
The metal on the lighter cap was burning my fingers so I let the flame go out, then with the knife out in front of me I moved slowly down the stone steps, every sense attuned to my surroundings as I tried to pick out any unnatural noise within the silent blackness.
When I reached the bottom, I leaned back against the cold stone wall, tightened my grip on the knife, and flicked the lighter back on.
The basement was large and windowless, full of empty cobweb-strewn shelves. In the middle of the room on its own was a brand-new, heavy office chair with its wheels removed. It had thick rolls of duct tape wound round both arms and two of the legs. One of the rolls carried what looked in the near-darkness like a bloodstain.
But it wasn’t that which caught my attention. It was the fact that the chair was empty.
Where the hell was Andrew Kent?
Then I spotted something in the far corner beyond the chair. I slowly walked towards it, keeping the lighter raised high.
Jesus.
It was a body, lying curled up in a foetal ball, in the blue boiler suit he’d been in earlier. His face might have been caked in blood, but I recognized him straight away. It was the shock of dirty blond hair, Tommy’s pride and joy.
As I looked down at him, I saw a drop of blood run to the edge of his chin before dripping on to the stone floor, which was the moment when I realized he’d only died very recently. Probably in the last few minutes. Possibly even since we’d been back in the building.
And then I heard the noise behind me.
Thirty-five
I turned just in time to see a dark, silhouetted figure leaping at me through the darkness. I saw a glint of metal in the dim glow of the lighter flame, but then the lighter flew out of my hand, plunging the basement into near total blackness, as my attacker slammed me bodily against the far wall and twisted the wrist of my knife hand in an effort to get me to drop it.
My ribs felt like they were going to explode with the pain, but adrenalin and the survival instinct took over and I lashed out with my free hand, trying to intercept his blade. I managed to get hold of his wrist, but he was
