Big Ben. Jane’s Gran’s House in Aylesford. Friday, December 23rd 1622hrs
We found Jane’s car easily enough; the dark grey Aston Martin Vantage wasn’t exactly hard to spot. It was testament to the tranquil, safe setting in which her grandmother lived that Jane’s handbag, laptop, and other possessions were still in it even though the car wasn’t locked.
‘She forgot her things,’ said Basic with a grin. He probably hadn’t fully grasped that Jane had been kidnapped and was most likely in mortal danger even as we poked about her car.
I took her things, unlocking my car again to place them in the rear footwell behind my seat. There was no sign of a struggle and no sign of her keys. I got into a press up position to check under the car just in case the keys went skittering underneath or Jane, sensing her attacker, threw something under there for us to find.
There was nothing. Dusting my hands off as I got up, a glint in the moonlight drew my eye to exactly what I was looking for. Her keys had fallen and come to rest in the shadow of the tyre of the car next to hers – I’d been looking the wrong way.
I fished them out and locked her car.
There was no obvious sign of a struggle, no tell-tale scuff marks on the ground or drops of blood. We checked a wider swathe of the carpark – the only one in Aylesford – but could find no drag marks where someone might have hauled a limp form, their feet trailing behind to leave me something I could follow.
Given that Jane couldn’t weigh more than about a hundred and twenty pounds (if that), I accepted that most men could carry her a fair distance should they need to. The Sandman had incapacitated her, either with a stun gun or perhaps by use of an injection of something. Heck, the guy could have gone old school and used chloroform on a rag for all I knew. Either way, the image in my head was of Jane exiting her car and the Sandman coming from behind.
She most likely never saw him.
Finding nothing of use, I gave up and set off for the address I had for her Gran.
We had to cross a small stream to get there, passing through the rear yards of several premises. One was an accountant, another a printing firm. The carpark was dark, the lights erected to chase away the shadows spaced too sparsely to do much about the encroaching night.
I guess that’s why I didn’t see them.
As I rounded the rear wall of the accountant’s and came into an alleyway between the buildings, I bumped into a man. He must have been moving at speed because he hit me far harder than walking pace would allow.
He bounced off, falling backward and tangling his feet to sprawl on the cobbled street.
‘Hey!’ growled another voice, his friend standing just a few feet away.
It’s a truth about me that I have a naturally aggressive posture. Combined with fast reactions, and a willingness to hit first, my senses switched to fight mode the moment the first man stepped from the dark to collide with me.
It is another truth that men see my size as intimidating and often react by starting a fight to prove to themselves that I am not scary. I know, it’s completely illogical. However, it happens a lot and I felt sure these two clowns were going to get in my face until I saw what they were wearing.
Aylesford exists because monks built a monastery there many hundreds of years ago. I got to visit it once on a school trip when I was maybe seven or eight. I don’t remember much about it other than it was a gloriously hot day and Emma Rigby took off her dress so she could run around in her knickers. I think they had Thursday printed on them.
Anyway, my point is, both men were wearing monks’ robes. There is probably a name for the garment, but I had no idea what it might be.
Basic stepped out from behind the wall to join me just as the first man was rolling over to get his feet back under his body.
‘Goodness, I’m sorry,’ I apologised, reaching out to give the religious man a hand to get off the cobbles.
He slapped my hand away. Roughly and deliberately as if angry at me. It jarred against my image of how he was supposed to behave.
Taking a step back, I had to reassess what I was seeing. They were in their thirties and carried themselves like thugs. Which is to say, they both looked like they were used to throwing their weight around and probably had weapons tucked away somewhere. Their robes were black, not the usual brown I had seen elsewhere and now that I was scrutinising them, their appearance, their postures, and the way they were looking at me told me they were not part of a religious order at all.
And that made them part of a cult.
I mentally labelled the one I knocked down as Flat Top because he had a hairstyle that should have been left in the nineties. His friend I labelled Smiler because his lips were twisted into a sneer that elegantly showed off several missing or chipped teeth.
If there was any doubt left in my mind as to their intentions, Smiler killed them with his next words.
‘You need to watch where you’re going, sunshine,’ he stepped away from the wall to block my path. ‘You need to apologise to my friend.’
I punched him in the face. Three times.
The first rocked his head back and I was coming forward to deliver the next blow with my other hand so it
