Except it hadn’t been, because a few weeks ago it had all gone very, very wrong. His wife was now dead. He’d almost died himself. And now it looked like his enemies might finish the job and silence him before he could talk to the police and bring them down.
DC Patrick turned to him, put a finger to her lips and crept quietly out into the hallway, gesturing for Manning to follow.
It was dark and silent out there, with just the faint glow of the landing light on the floor below coming up the stairs.
That was when Manning heard it. A scraping sound followed by a low animal moan, coming from DC Lomu’s bedroom next door. And then words that chilled his bones.
‘Help me …’
DC Patrick heard it too, and even in the gloom, Manning could see the pain on her face. He knew that she and Lomu got on well, and Lomu had told him that they’d worked together for several years.
Manning looked towards Lomu’s bedroom door, knowing they couldn’t leave him there. Lomu was whimpering now, and the sound made Manning nauseous. It was awful to think of a big strong guy like him sounding so helpless.
Manning turned towards Patrick, his expression imploring her to do something, but she shook her head emphatically, mouthing the word ‘sorry’, then steered him away.
As he looked back over his shoulder, expecting at any moment the killer to come into view at the top of the stairs, a thought nagged him. Surely the killer must have already been up here. So how had he missed him the first time? His door locked from the inside, although both DCs had keys, so it was possible that the killer had tried the door and couldn’t get in, in which case he would be waiting somewhere close by in ambush. Except there was no obvious place to hide.
So where the hell was he?
The hallway came to a dead end at what looked like a blank wall, but when Patrick moved in front of Manning and pushed her palm hard against the surface at waist height, a door in the panel slid quietly open. They’d rehearsed going out this way every day since he’d got here, and Manning recalled that each time, either DC Lomu or Patrick would reassure him that the chances of them ever having to use it were next to nothing. And Manning had almost convinced himself that they were right. Now Patrick pushed him inside, following close behind, and, as the door closed behind her, a set of overhead lights came on, revealing a curving flight of steps that wound all the way to the ground floor.
They moved downstairs quickly, coming to another door that led directly into a storage shed at the side of the house. Patrick moved in front of him and opened the door and the two of them crept inside. A single window at head height looked out over the back garden and Patrick peered through it before turning to him in the darkness.
‘It looks clear out there. Are you ready?’
‘Why’s no one coming?’ he whispered. ‘If someone’s broken in and done … done that to DC Lomu, then why aren’t the alarms going off? And where are the other guards?’
Patrick looked at him, her face silhouetted in the pale moonlight so he was unable to read her expression. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, sounding scared. ‘All I know is we’re on our own, and we’ve got to get as far away as possible.’
‘Isn’t it best just to stay put? Wait for help? You could call for help on your mobile.’ Manning felt safer inside the house than outside it.
‘It’s not working,’ she said, without checking it.
‘What do you mean it’s not working? You said we had reception.’
‘We’ve lost it. Someone’s jamming it somehow. Just like they’ve managed to disconnect the alarm.’
‘Jesus,’ hissed Manning, shaking his head. He wanted to rant and rave about the incompetence of those charged with protecting him, but it was way too late for that. Right now, all he cared about was staying alive. ‘What are we going to do about DC Lomu?’ he asked.
‘As soon as we’re away from here, I’ll call for help. But we’ve got to move, Hugh. OK?’ She grabbed him by the arm, and for the first time he could see the fear in her eyes. She was just as scared as he was.
He nodded weakly and followed her as she unbolted the shed door and stepped out into the night.
The silence was oppressive as they moved slowly through the garden, keeping tight to the fence. The lawn was perfectly manicured and bordered by flowering shrubs that provided basic cover but, even so, Manning felt terribly exposed. Someone might be watching them from the house right now, aiming a gun at him, ready to pull the trigger. He didn’t dare look back, but just kept going, each step seeming to last far too long. He vowed that if he ever got out of this then he wasn’t going to say another word to the police, whatever the consequences. They could build their case without him – even though he knew that without him, there was no case. And that was the problem. Whichever way he cared to look at it – and he’d looked at it plenty of different ways these past few days – his life was ruined.
It was when he and Liane Patrick came to the high, ivy-covered wall at the end of the garden that they both saw the black-clad figure lying on the grass next to the back gate. Manning immediately recognized the body as one of the armed officers whose job it was to secure the perimeters. The machine gun the officer usually carried was nowhere to be seen.
Patrick stopped dead and crouched down, and Manning followed suit. She held that position for what
