Hunter Killer (47 page)

He clocked them within seconds. Five cars down, right outside Number 10, there was a Renault Laguna. It was too dark to see through the front grilles and tell whether they hid a siren, but he didn’t have to. Two guys sat in the front. One of them was drinking from a paper coffee cup. The other was looking out of the passenger window towards the White Witch’s house. They had no residents’ permit. Instead, they’d propped up a blue disabled parking badge in the windscreen. But these two guys, both in their early thirties, didn’t look disabled to Danny. They looked like undercover cops. Or spooks. One or the other. They weren’t even trying to be majorly covert. Probably just there to put the shits up the White Witch every time she left the house.

Danny took all this in at a glance. He didn’t let up his pace, and he didn’t stare unnecessarily at them. He simply walked past, having marked out his most immediate threat to gaining entry to number 13. Scaling the door was out of the question. Not with them watching. And if they were any good at their job, they would be able to see him jumping the wall on either side of the garden – even if it wasn’t razor-wired.

At the far end of Princess Park Gardens he turned right, stubbing out the half-smoked cigarette with his foot. If there was a terrace backing on to it, maybe he could break through from the other side. When he turned right again, he found that there
was
a terrace, but there were no side entrances for him to enter.

He couldn’t walk back along Princess Park Gardens. Any surveillance professional worthy of the name would notice him. Danny knew
he
would, in their shoes. He considered his options. Clearly he needed a distraction of some sort. He thought through his arsenal of tricks. He could make a 999 call, phone in a fake sighting of somebody with a firearm in the area. He quickly rejected that idea. Sure, it would trigger an armed response, but not necessarily from the two surveillance guys. Perhaps he could make a different kind of call, stating that he’d just seen two guys bundle a struggling six-year-old kid into a Renault Laguna on Princess Park Gardens. It would certainly get a reaction from the police, but it would take a matter of seconds for them to realise that the surveillance guys hadn’t
really
abducted a child, and a matter of a few seconds more before they twigged that someone was playing them.

The bottom line was this: Danny couldn’t rely on the surveillance guys leaving their car. That meant that the distraction would have to come to them.

Which gave him an idea.

The alleyway behind the even-numbered side of the road stank of bins and rotten rubbish. The ground was muddy and wet from the incessant rain. As Danny paced along it, he heard the scurrying sound of rodents rushing out of his path. The alleyway turned 90 degrees. Danny kept a steady pace: if he ran, he might arouse the suspicions of anyone watching from rear windows of the row of houses. He continued to the far end. He knew he was back at the top of the street now, and recalled that the surveillance guys were parked up outside number ten. He doubled back on himself, counting off the house numbers as he passed their rear gardens – two, four, six, eight – until now he was standing outside the garden gate of number ten.

It was a rickety old gate. One solid shoulder-thump and it would probably break open. But Danny wanted to make as little noise as possible so he scrambled over it instead, cursing under his breath as a splinter of wood ripped into his palm, but ignoring it.

A narrow garden, about 50 feet long. A neat lawn. Flower borders on either side. Your typical, boring suburban garden with a wooden shed at the end. It was unlocked, so Danny stepped inside.

He could smell it at once. The thick, greasy stench of petrol. He groped around in the dark and felt the handles of a lawnmower. He collapsed them so he could more easily lift the lawnmower up. Then he felt for the twist-off cap of the petrol tank. He undid it, then lifted the whole lawnmower. His muscles strained as, within the cramped confines of the shed, he turned the lawnmower upside down. He heard the trickle of petrol pouring from the tank on to the wooden floor of the shed.

He stepped back towards the door. Backwards out into the garden. Then he took the box of matches from his pocket, lit one and threw it inside. The petrol ignited immediately, making a low popping sound as blue and yellow flames filled the shed. Danny hurried back over the garden gate into the alleyway. He followed it back up to the top of the Princess Park Gardens. He had already decided that he wouldn’t simply wait for the fire engine to come. The occupants of number 10 were probably asleep. They might not even notice that their shed was on fire. He turned right out of the alleyway, then right again on to the wider road. He only had to walk 30 metres before he came across a pay phone outside a parade of shops.

He dialled 999.

‘Which service do you require.’

‘Fire. Number ten, Princess Park Gardens, Ealing.’

He hung up.

It took five or six minutes for Danny to hear the sirens of the fire engine. By this time, he was loitering on the corner of Princess Park Gardens again, on the odd-number side this time, out of view of the two surveillance guys. Twenty seconds later he saw the fire engine approaching. It sped past the parade of shops, then turned left into Princess Park Gardens. Danny hurried down the pavement alongside it, brightly lit by the neon blue lights. But that was okay, because the vehicle blocked the line of sight between him and the surveillance guys. And he noted with satisfaction that it stopped bang outside number 10: a huge, immobile barrier between the two men in the car and the front gate of number 13.

He couldn’t hesitate. The sirens would draw attention, and he estimated he had about 20 seconds before one of the surveillance guys got out of the car to get eyes on their target again. He sprinted to the gate, jumped up and heaved himself over the top. He landed catlike on the other side just as the sirens fell silent. The neon still flashed, lighting up the front of the White Witch’s house, but here, at the foot of the high wooden fence, where the unkempt grass was higher than his knees, he was out of sight.

He caught his breath. There were voices shouting out on the street as firemen alighted from the engine. He zoned them out. All his attention now was on the house as he worked out how he was going to break in.

It was a fairly old brick building. Victorian, maybe. A bit shabby. The garden was overgrown. Three windows on the top floor. Two on the ground, one either side of the door. As he watched, a light appeared in the top-left window. Through the curtains he saw a silhouette. It stood very still for perhaps ten seconds, watching through the window, then melted away. That told him where his target’s bedroom was. He knew he wanted to break in round the back, but not until the light was out again, and the fire engine had moved on.

He didn’t move for a full 30 minutes. Not one muscle. Out on the street was all the commotion that went with extinguishing the garden fire. A second siren arrived – police, he supposed – but Danny’s only focus was on staying motionless and hidden. Moisture seeped through his clothes from the wet grass, but he’d spent longer than this hiding out in far worse conditions. The noise on the other side of the fence died away. The figure disappeared from the bedroom window and the light switched off. Danny gave it another ten minutes. Then he advanced.

He kept to the perimeter of the garden, where the fence afforded a little bit more camouflage. The high grass made a slight swishing sound underfoot, but he kept it to a minimum by careful pacing. He boxed round the side of the house, then quickly crossed the grass until he was outside the back door. It was a dump here. Old cardboard boxes, made soggy by the rain, were piled high against the back wall of the house. A foul smell filled the air from bin bags full of rotting refuse. Danny had the impression that Abu Ra’id’s missus was a prisoner in her own house. He gave the back door a cursory examination. Two mortice locks and a single pane of glass. Hard to open, and it would make an unnacceptably loud noise if he shattered the window. He looked around for the entry point he thought he’d seen on Google Maps.

He found it in seconds.

Danny didn’t imagine that the old brick coal bunker had been used for decades. It was a couple of metres wide, a couple deep and maybe a metre high. Right now it was covered with slimy, wet old bin bags, which Danny carefully removed to one side. On the top of the bunker was a rusted metal plate with an iron handle. He yanked it.

Stuck.

Danny climbed on top of the bunker and yanked it again with a bit more force. This time it worked loose, but made a harsh grating sound as it came off in Danny’s hands that sounded all the louder because he needed to be quiet, and sounds could travel a long way through a quiet house – even up to the White Witch’s bedroom, if that’s where she currently was. He crouched down and remained motionless for two minutes. Then, when he was sure he hadn’t disturbed anyone, he took his red torch and shone it down into the bunker. It was about two metres deep. He lay the grate so that it was half covering the hole, then jumped down into the bunker.

Silence.

There was no coal here. Probably hadn’t been for years. Rodent droppings all over the floor. And an opening, only a metre high and half a metre wide, into the basement of the house.

He was in.

The basement was high enough to stand in, and completely empty. A flight of wooden steps on the far side. Danny crept up them. A door at the top. He extinguished his torch and tried it.

Unlocked.

He stepped out on to the ground floor of the house, and closed the cellar door quietly behind him.

It smelled damp. Musty. Dirty. He was in a hallway. To his right, the kitchen, which looked out over the back garden. To his left, a staircase heading up to the first floor, and a door to the front room. He paused, concentrating hard on the quietness of the sleeping house as he fixed his next move in his mind. He didn’t know for sure that the White Witch was alone in the house, and although it seemed likely, he knew his interrogation of her needed to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t want anybody walking in while he got to work on her. Best place was her bedroom: a hand over the mouth while she was asleep would stop her screaming when she realised there was an intruder in her house.

A minute passed. Everything was quiet. He got ready to creep up the stairs.

But then there was a sound.

Footsteps up above. Light spilled down the stairway.

Danny quickly evaluated his options. Head back down into the cellar? No: harder then to tell when the coast was clear. Kitchen? If she came downstairs, it was most likely that’s where she’d be heading. He fixed his eyes on the other door. Decision made. He headed towards it. To his left he saw a shadow stretching down the stairs, cast by someone standing at the top. He had a horrible intuition that she’d heard him.

He silently opened the door and stepped into the room beyond.

A poky sitting room. His eyes picked out the shape of a sofa by the window. A fireplace with a large picture above the mantle. TV in one corner. A rug on the floor. The same stale smell that pervaded the whole house. He hurried over to the sofa and crouched down beside it. As long as it stayed dark, he’d be hidden. If she turned the light on, things would hot up.

Footsteps down the stairs.

The hallway light came on, spilling into the room through the few inches where the door was ajar.

From his hiding place he briefly saw a figure pass the crack in the door.

He felt his jugular pulsing. If there was going to be violence, he wanted it to be on his terms. At the moment, it wasn’t.

A clattering sound in the kitchen. She was looking for something.

Footsteps again. They stopped outside the front room. The door slowly opened.

She was standing there. A silhouette in the door frame. He could clearly see the shape of her head, the folds of her dressing gown.

If he moved, she would see him.

She made a sucking sound through her teeth. Danny’s eyes flickered round, looking for a weapon. They fell on the picture over the fireplace. The light spill from the door was shining on it now. It wasn’t a picture at all. It was an Arabic symbol.

A symbol he had seen before. Recently.

He tried to place it, but couldn’t.

Suddenly, the woman turned. It seemed she was satisfied that there was no intruder in the house. She switched the light off and clumped up the stairs.

Silence, and darkness, filled the house once more.

Danny waited a couple of minutes before moving again. He slipped out of the front room and silently climbed the stairs.

He knew which was her room, because he’d seen the light from outside. At the top of the stairs he walked along the landing until he was there. The door was slightly open. He peered in. He could see the bulk of her body beneath her blankets. Distance to the bed, five metres. If he crossed it quickly, he could have one hand over her mouth before she screamed.

He inhaled slowly.

Then he moved.

She was awake. He could tell that by the way she started before he was even halfway across the bedroom floor. But before she could make a noise, he was looming over her. Even in the darkness he could see the whites of her eyes as she stared up at him. He slammed one hand down on her mouth before she could make a noise, even though he sensed that she hadn’t been going to scream.