'I don't know.'
'Yes, you do. Don't lie. There's no point. Whatever he's promised you that you haven't already got, you're not going to get now, so don't waste your time protecting him. He's finished, and you're staying with me until I find out where he is.'
'He's at his place in Bedfordshire. He's staying there until tomorrow. After that he's flying out to another of his homes in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks.'
I kept the gun where it was for a couple of seconds, then decided he was telling the truth, and removed it from his face, positioning it instead across my lap with the silencer still pointing in his direction.
'All right, turn off the car phone.' He did as he was told. 'Now start driving. We're going to Bedfordshire.'
Theo looked at me like I was mad. 'He's got security there.'
'I'm sure he has. Start driving.'
I think he knew there was no point in arguing or begging for his life, so he put the car in reverse, pulled out of his space and settled once again for telling me he'd never wanted it to end like this.
I told him to shut up. I really wasn't interested. The drive was long, silent and uneventful. Theo tried only once to make conversation but barely managed a few words before I cut him off and put the radio on, turning the volume up. I didn't want to hear anything from him — not small talk, not excuses. Nothing. As far as I was concerned, he was as guilty as all of them.
I tried not to think, working hard to empty my mind of all its fears and doubts. I'd been betrayed, and betrayed badly; I was trapped in a country in which I'd been a fugitive from the law for three years. If I was captured, I'd be lucky to see the outside of a prison cell again. If I escaped, I wasn't at all sure I could go back to where I'd come from and carry on as before in business with a man I'd once trusted, but who now had questions of his own to answer. Tomboy Darke had relationships with people who'd been involved in some horrific acts, and things between us could never be the same again. But now wasn't the time to dwell on that.
The radio station we listened to as Theo drove was Magic FM, which specializes in easy listening tunes. They played 'The Boys Of Summer' by Don Henley, followed by a couple of old Elvis Presley numbers. Neither of us sang along, although Theo appeared to relax a little and his driving became less erratic. I noticed that he was still sweating, which was understandable.
At eight o'clock, the news came on. As Magic was a London-based station, the top story was the massacre at Andrea Bloom's place the previous evening. Theo sighed loudly and tutted as the newsreader reported that two men and two women had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death at a house in Hackney, in what she called 'another terrifying tale from the violent city'. The identities of the victims had not yet been released and the police were keeping an open mind regarding the motive, which usually meant they didn't have a clue. There was no mention of Barron's death in Wembley, but no doubt this would follow soon enough.
I lit a cigarette, sat back and watched Theo as he drove us up the M1 in the direction of Bedfordshire. A little over an hour later, some ten minutes after we'd pulled off the motorway, we passed through a pretty village which was little more than a collection of houses and a church, and took a left-hand turn. The road started to climb up a tree-lined hill, and large detached houses appeared on both sides, all set back from the road, the majority behind imposing gates. It was a fitting spot for the wealthy to live in, allowing them to look down on the rest of the village from their superior position.
'How far?' I asked Theo.
'We're almost there.'
'Point it out to me as we pass, but keep driving.'
'There it is,' he said half a minute later as the road began to flatten out. He was pointing to a whitewashed stone wall about ten feet high coming up on our left. As we passed the wrought-iron gates, I caught a glimpse of the house itself, which stood at the end of a long drive. It was a huge, Elizabethan-style double-fronted mansion, with latticed bay windows and tar-blackened wooden beams running from roof to ground.
Several more houses followed on the left, before giving way to woodland. About a hundred yards further on, I spotted a single-lane track veering off into the trees. 'Pull down there,' I ordered Theo.
He did as he was told and his face took on a panicked look. This was the end of the line for him, the point at which he'd find out whether he was to live or die.
Twenty yards down the track I told him to pull over onto the verge.
'I'm not going to say a word about this, you know,' he told me as he brought the Jaguar to a halt. 'I don't want the police involved any more than you do.'
'What sort of security does Thadeus have at this place?'
'I've only been up here a couple of times. On those occasions, he had a night watchman, but that's it. He's also got cameras in the grounds.'
I thought that he might well have more security tonight, just to be on the safe side. Until he had confirmation that I was out of his hair.
'All right, cut the engine.'
'I thought I might be able to go. I've told you-'
I pushed the gun into his ribcage and he turned off the ignition. 'Out.' We both stepped out of the car. 'Open the boot.'
He went round and reluctantly flicked it open.
'Now get in.'
He started shaking. 'Don't kill me. Please.'
'You deserve it, Theo. You're the lowest form of scum, getting other people to do your dirty work, but I'm not going to kill you. Unless, that is, you're still standing there in five seconds.'
He stared at me imploringly, then must have decided that he had nothing to lose by begging for his life. He told me that he had a wife and kids, and could I spare him just for their sakes, because he knew he didn't honestly deserve to live, and if he could turn back the clock, then by God he'd do it like a shot. I got the feeling he'd never begged for anything before, but it was worth the effort. His wife and kids were probably as rotten as he was, but I didn't like the idea of adding yet another small tragedy to the many that had been played out during this whole bloody saga, so when he finally raised his leg up to clamber in the boot, I smacked him hard across the back of the head with the butt of the gun and bundled him, unconscious, inside.
I shut the boot, took the keys from the ignition and locked the car. Theo Morris was going to have an uncomfortable night, but, as he himself had pointed out, it was no more than he deserved.
42
I started walking back in the direction of the village. Above me the sky was an angry morass of clouds skitting west to east, obscuring the light of the three-quarter moon at regular intervals. A hard wind whipped about my shoulders, colder than the one I'd left behind in London, and I pulled up my collar in a futile effort to curb the draught that threatened to whistle right through me.
The house next door to Thadeus's place was a wide single-storey ranch-style building, complete with a huge wagon wheel attached to an artificial rock in the driveway. There were four cars parked up and plenty of lights on inside, but the owners were obviously less security-conscious than Mr Thadeus, because the main gate was open.
I stepped onto the drive and made my way over to a path at the side of the house, keeping close to the wall that linked the two properties. I could hear the clink of glasses and the high-pitched laughter of middle-aged women who'd had too much to drink. It sounded as though there was a party going on in there, and I felt vaguely jealous that they probably had nothing more to worry about than hangovers the next day.
Halfway down the path, a newish-looking garden shed backed onto the boundary wall. I climbed on top of it as quietly as possible, and peered straight into the thick foliage on Thadeus's side of the wall. Not hearing any movement on the other side, I heaved myself up and over the wall, sliding down until I hit the ground with little more than a rustle of leaves and a grunt. Recovering, I pushed my way through the bushes and slowly poked my head out the other side.
I was about twenty yards from the corner of Thadeus's house. Between me and it was a neatly trimmed lawn
