It’s bruised and cut. He was crying. Transporting a child in that state is dangerous. Our man won’t want to move him far, so I think he’s already close to the RV point, somewhere nobody else is likely to see them. The video I saw was taken in a house that faced west out to sea. The mapping I checked online showed a solitary house about a kilometre inland from the RV. So far as I can tell, there are no other dwellings for four klicks in any direction.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Eva asked in a small voice.
‘That if he wants to lure me to that beach, he’s holding Conor in that house. I’d bet anything on it. And I need to get there before they leave for the RV.’ He glanced at the Range Rover’s clock: 1820 hours. ‘I think it will take us five to six hours to get to the coast,’ he said. ‘We’ll be approaching at midnight. There’s only one road leading to the house, and it slopes down towards it in full view. If I was him, I’d be watching that road. That’s why we need the bike. The map shows a bridleway that circles the house and approaches it from behind. It’s a very long way round from where we can safely park this thing without being seen from the house – four or five miles – but the bike will cover it quickly. I can take it off road and approach from a direction he won’t be expecting, then make the final approach by foot. That way I’ll catch up with him before he has time to set up an ambush.’
Eva was quiet for a few minutes as Joe negotiated his way onto the South Circular.
‘Joe,’ she said at last, ‘remember when your dad went to prison?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Nobody talked to you about it, but behind your back they hardly talked about anything else.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘You’re in trouble. We both are. We can’t run for ever. When they catch up with you, maybe –
Joe felt his eyes flicker involuntarily to the glove compartment where his stolen weapon was stashed.
‘Mr Ashe and I have a few things to discuss,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
He looked at the Range Rover’s clock again. Less than twelve hours till the RV. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead, and drove.
EIGHTEEN
It was a largely silent journey. The Range Rover’s satnav blinked monotonously as they ate up the M4. A full moon rose. Joe wondered how much light it would give him when they reached Pembrokeshire.
Around 1930 hours the traffic on the motorway suddenly slowed down. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Joe saw a flashing blue light; seconds later there was a siren. He checked his speed – 65 mph – and pulled into the left-hand lane. Eva said nothing, but he could feel her tension. It was a relief when the car sped past. A minute later they crawled past the scene of an accident, with two ambulance crews and four police cars parked on the hard shoulder. Joe just kept a steady speed. ‘They’ve got no reason to stop us,’ he told Eva. She didn’t reply.
At 2100 hours Joe turned on the radio and tuned into the news. He was the lead item. ‘
It was Eva who turned off the radio. They continued in silence.
Joe used the last of the money he had taken from Eva’s cash box to buy petrol just beyond Reading and to pay the toll at the Severn Bridge. The further west they travelled, the more the traffic thinned out. But any speed a clear road might have offered them was cancelled out by the mist. It was barely noticeable at first, just a thin, wispy film in front of the windscreen. By 2200 hours, however, it felt as though they were surrounded, as though an army of ghosts was following them wherever they went. The mist swirled in the beam of the headlights, like a thick barrier.
A barrier between Joe and his son.
It was just gone 2300 hours when they entered Pembrokeshire. The roads became smaller. The red dot on the satnav approached the blue of the sea.
Joe looked at the time: 2330 hours. Six and a half hours till RV. Thirty metres ahead, the silhouette of an old church emerged from the mist, the clock face on its steeple glowing palely in the night like a second moon. Joe slowed down. The church was on their right. On the other side of the road was a small car park. He saw as he turned in that there were no other vehicles. It looked like the starting location for a country walk, but nobody was venturing out at this time of night and in this weather.
Nobody except Joe.
‘You got the map?’ he asked when he’d pulled over, positioned the car so that it was facing the exit again, and killed the lights.
Eva handed it over. Once he’d opened it out in front of him, it took Joe seconds to locate their position on the map with the interior light. They were two klicks, he estimated, from the house that was his destination. He studied the contour lines carefully. The road on which they were travelling was about to head uphill. Once they reached the brow, there was a direct line of sight from the house towards the road that led to it, in a westerly direction. Even if they travelled without the help of headlights, they would be completely visible to anybody watching them with the right kind of equipment: the warmth of the engine would burn brightly on any thermal- imaging equipment and NV capability would light them up like a fucking Christmas tree.
The bottom line was this: they could go no further in the Range Rover.
He turned to Eva. ‘You’ll be all right here?’ he asked.
She looked around anxiously into the blanket of dark mist. Joe switched off the interior light. ‘Keep it dark,’ he said, ‘otherwise you’ll be blind. Keep the doors locked and the keys in the ignition. If anyone approaches you, head back the way we came. Don’t worry about me.’
‘What if you don’t come back?’
‘I will come back.’
‘But what if you
Joe reached over her, opened up the glove compartment and removed the weapon. ‘I will.’
Frank’s bike was nothing special – a Yamaha TW, its tyres worn almost smooth by constant city driving – and it was certainly not designed to be driven offroad. He’d have to take it carefully to avoid a blowout, but he’d do that anyway: moving slowly, keeping the revs low in order to make as little noise as possible. Not easy, when he wanted to get to the house as fast as possible. To get to Conor. Ashe would definitely try to move him under cover of darkness. The question was, how long before the 0600 RV would he do it? Had Joe arrived in time?
He reversed the bike off its trailer, then examined the OS map again. He’d be heading north across a field for two klicks before coming to a bridleway that would take him through a forested area over the brow of the hill. From there, he hoped, he would be able to see the house – or not, according to the thickness of the fog. But he would need to follow the bridleway down the hill and three miles in a westerly direction, past the house and up to the clifftop by the coast, before heading south for a mile. The bridleway passed approximately half a mile to the west of the house – close enough for the bike’s engine to be heard if the wind was in the wrong direction. He would decide whether to cover that final stretch on the bike or by foot when he was on the ground.
Eva had moved into the driver’s seat. Her hands were resting on the steering wheel as if she was intending to drive away immediately. Joe gave her what he hoped was a reassuring nod. He heard the central locking click shut and started the Yamaha. It coughed unhealthily into life, but then he heard a sound from the Range Rover. He turned to see Eva opening the door again. ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘I hope he’s—’
‘He’s going to be fine,’ Joe replied grimly. He had to believe that, otherwise nothing else mattered. With the bike’s headlight switched off, he increased the throttle and moved away.
The field across which he needed to travel to reach the bridleway was located on the opposite side of the
