Keep Calm (28 page)

It was eleven a.m. that first morning there at the mill house when Sky News reported that the prime minister had survived the attack. He was in a hospital just on the other side of the Thames from Number 10, and Adam and Richard watched the news together as both the young king and Georgia Turnbull, the chancellor of the exchequer, visited the hospital. Kate and Adam each let loose a silent sigh. At least what they would be discussing, when they could finally speak about their situation, wouldn't be a murder. There was something to be grateful for in that.

The first two afternoons and evenings were uneventful. Kate took the kids on several hikes through the long golden fields on the other side of the tiny tributary. Most of the days Adam watched the news, all day, his head lost in his hands. Richard did light work out on the mill, work meant to kill the hours, to keep him out of the house so he wouldn't have to spend too much time talking to Adam. They had a few dinners together, Trudy and Billy watched movies on the television, and Adam took a series of long walks alone.

There was a numbness to the air—a quiet, gentle, floating sadness. The kids weren't sure what to say or how much to press. Maybe if they all said nothing, it would be as if nothing had happened. It seemed to be the most comfortable position for everyone trapped at the old mill house to take. So on that last night, the house sat still and quiet until finally, sometime around three a.m., the wind changed. There were visitors.

A car had pulled up a short way down the darkened road. Two men had crept up to the house in the pitch-black country air and scooted over the courtyard wall. Richard heard them first—sensed them. He got up and quickly dressed. Adam woke just seconds later. He turned to Kate, surprised to see her awake. They said nothing. Both listened quietly as Richard clomped down the steep wooden stairway, putting on his boots as he went. They heard him open the front door, heard him talking to two men out in the courtyard.

Adam went downstairs barefoot, still in pajamas, over to the front hall closet, and took out Richard's father's shotgun and the box of shells. He grabbed another pair of Richard's work boots and slipped his bare feet into them. He pulled out an old brown workman's jacket and shoved the box of shells into the pocket. Kate was at the top of the steps. She looked down to him.

“Stay in here. Please? Don't go out there. Stay with us.” He looked up to his wife, her hands tightly throttling the banister railing. He didn't respond. He wasn't sure what his answer was, so he didn't give her one. He went over to the window, looked carefully through the sheer curtains, stood at the edge, and watched Richard out in the courtyard. He was talking politely to someone outside of Adam's field of vision. He didn't seem to be too concerned. He was giving out directions—guidance back to Royal Tunbridge Wells.

Adam watched. Kate wanted to know what was happening. He signaled for her to be quiet. He looked back: two men came into view, pretending to listen to Richard's navigation tips to the village. It was Harris and Peet. In what seemed like a jump cut, everything about the air outside changed. The redhead, now very close to Richard in the center of the courtyard, stopped pretending to listen and took out a handgun with a silencer on it and fired twice into the center of Richard's head, killing him instantly. His legs buckled under him like a cheap parlor trick. He collapsed in a broken heap on the cobbled brick surface.

Adam turned around, whispered loudly to Kate, “Go upstairs. Get into bed with the kids. Lock the door!”

“What's happened? What was that? Was it a gun? It was quiet. Was it a gun?”

“Now. Go. Do it.”

“Where are you going? You can't go out there.”

“If I don't go out there, they're coming in here. It's one or the other. Move it!”

She turned and ran to where the kids were sleeping. Adam raced through the kitchen, took a back door to the side yard, and crept as silently as possible through the dewy shrubbery to the front of the house. He saw Harris and Peet going through Richard's pants. They found his wallet. Harris showed it to Peet. They were in the right place. Harris dropped Richard's wallet as they both stepped over his blood-soaked body, each with a pistol loaded and ready, closing in on the front door.

Adam marched toward them. He fired the shotgun just as they sensed him coming. Peet went down. Adam stood his ground and fired again. Harris fired back at Adam and missed by inches. He grabbed Peet and ran in retreat as Adam reloaded, guiding his partner back toward the street. The two of them barreled over the moss-covered wall. Peet had been hit in the shoulder. He was oozing blood like an old-time schoolhouse drinking fountain. Harris helped him under the cover and confusion of darkness, pulled his shirt off, ripped it in half, and tied off his shoulder to close the wound. Peet was hurting bad, but at least he was alive.

Adam fired again, wanting to change that equation. He scurried around the wall, ran through the gate, pumped in another load, and waited at the ready for a stage direction to bubble up from the quiet. He finally saw the shadows of the two men running. He followed after them firing again and again.

He waited now for a reaction. The night went silent once more, just as quick as it had flared into terror; the world was now mute, muffled, and dark. Every moment was its own eternity. Harris and Peet were out there somewhere. He wasn't going anywhere. He wanted to fight in the open air, away from his family. He reloaded and tried to discern shapes or movement in the pitch-black country stillness. Tried his best to calm his labored breathing.

A car door opened a short click up the road. An interior light went on then went off. He sprinted toward it, not wanting to take the chance that they were after more weapons, or calling for help. He raced as fast as he could in Richard's untied boots, reached them as the car started. It was another one of Heaton's endless supply of black Mercedes.

He fired into the car. He shattered the back windshield and shot out the back latch of the trunk, which popped itself wide open. He busted a taillight. He fired his last blast just above the roof of the car, aimed high on purpose; he didn't want to thwart their escape—that wasn't the goal. The aim was to send them packing. There was no upside to having them stick around to stand their ground. He knew well the dark mettle of these men. He'd watched them murder Richard Lyle in cold blood. The best thing for everyone was for them to hustle away into the night and lick their wounds. He knew they'd be back once they could regroup, that was a given; the point was to get them to scuttle off for now.

The car squealed onto the road, kicked up dirt and gravel, and raced away. Adam quickly reloaded and flared off another shot in case they had the idea of turning back and barreling into him. He watched as they picked up speed; he focused on the red and broken white of their taillights for a quarter mile. They'd return—no question. With any luck Adam and his family would be long gone.

*   *   *

HE RACED BACK
to the house. Richard's body lay stone cold in a puppet's clump, his eyes staring up toward the moon as Adam passed him, gazing eerily toward forever. He went into the house. Rummaged through the front hall closet in a blaze of desperation. Found Richard's father's pistol. Made sure it was loaded. Bolted up the steps.

He quietly announced himself, carefully opened the door to the room. The kids were up, concerned, wanted to know what the shots were.

“Firecrackers. Some older kids were out playing pranks. It's fine, kids. Go back to sleep.” They didn't believe him—they both protested—but he didn't have time to respond. He signaled Kate out to the hall. She was scared out of her wits. The firecracker story wasn't going to fly with her, either. She hugged him tight and whispered, so as not to startle the kids any more than they'd been startled.

“Oh my Lord, Adam, what's happened. Are you okay?”

“I'm okay. Yes.”

“Where's Richard? Is he okay?” He wiped her wet cheeks. He took a beat to find the courage to answer with the truth.

“No. No, he's not okay. He's dead. I'm sorry.”

“He's dead? How could that be? What are you saying?”

“Two men came. I shot one of them. They ran. Drove away. They're gone.”

“They've killed Richard? No, no … who were they?”

“Heaton. They're with Heaton. They work for him.” She pulled back. That made no sense to her, no more sense than Richard being dead and gone could possibly make.

“Kate, we have to leave. I want to hide the rental car. We'll take Richard's aunt's car, the one in the garage, but we have to be quick.” He pulled the pistol out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She took the weapon in a daze, not sure what it was until she felt its weight.

“You stay in the room. If anyone comes in that door but me, you point this straight at him and fire. Keep firing.”

“Wait … what? Don't leave.”

“I'll be back. Five minutes. No more. Be ready. We'll take the kids and go.”

He sprinted through the dark up the road again, then crossed the field to the west and through to the back trail where he had abandoned the rental car in the scrub. He drove it back to the mill house and pulled into the motor court, right up to Richard's body. He lifted the corpse and put it in the back of the Ford wagon. He found a tarp in the garage and covered the corpse. He picked up Richard's wallet from the ground and exchanged it with his own. He wasn't going to get very far being Adam Tatum in the days ahead. He thought he'd at least let Richard sub for him when the car was found and maybe throw whoever came looking off the trail for a beat. Lord knows, given the condition of Richard's face, no one was going to be recognizing him for a long time.

It was cold, calculated thinking, but he had no choice. Every move from here on in would be forged by a burning desire to keep himself and his family alive. He drove the rental car back into the brush and hustled up the road to the house. He pulled the old Volvo from the garage, went into the kitchen, got as many of the supplies as he could carry, and threw them into the back of the car.

Kate brought the kids down; they were groggy and scared. Both of them wanted to know where they were going.

“We're taking a ride. I'll tell you where when we get in the car.” Trudy stopped him and spoke to him with a maturity he hadn't heard before.

“Daddy, are you going to be okay?”

“I am, yes. Thank you.”

“I love you and know that you're innocent. Billy does, too. He's just sad, that's all. But I really know it. I know you'd never do something like that. You know I do, right?”

“I do, sweetheart. Thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me.”

They led the kids out to the Volvo. Adam had parked right over the large and gory pool of blood so Kate wouldn't see it. She whispered to him and wanted to know where Richard's body was. He shook his head; he didn't want to discuss it.

They pulled out of the cobbled drive, went in the direction opposite the one in which Harris and Peet had fled.

After a few minutes and a long round of groggy questions, Billy finally fell back asleep. Adam picked up speed. They sailed up and down lonely wooded roads for forty frigid minutes. It was quiet enough now for Kate to think about the reality of Richard Lyle being dead, of all the memories, all the joy, all the pain, all the idiosyncrasies that made up the man she'd known. He was gone now and why? Because he had helped her.

She wished for a quick second she had let him take her in the bathroom the night before. She made another wish—that those images wouldn't be the ones that she came back to for the rest of her life: the foggy way his eyes met hers in the damp bathroom mirror; the hungry, longing look on his face. She let it go unformed; she didn't have the energy to allow it to percolate. The idea of Richard dead was a darker, more encompassing pain than any specific notion would hold. He was over. There was no room for “if I had'' and “I wish I hadn't.” Richard Lyle's larger-than-life story was finished now, closed out, because of her.

“Where will we go, Adam?”

I don't know. I don't know
, he thought to himself.
It's a goddamn island
.

He didn't answer, just kept driving.

They drove a bit longer, until he finally pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. He took a deep, troubled breath and turned to face his frightened wife. He wanted to soothe her, but no words sprang to mind. He had no idea what to do or where to go next, no sense of whom to turn to, only whom to turn from, which was everyone. Her lips quivered in a way that told him that she needed to hear a reassuring word, so he did something that he had resolutely promised never to do again: he lied to his wife.

“Give me a beat, Kate. I know exactly what we need to do.”

 

ON THE HUNT
■
6

Steel and a contingent of officers took the mill house early in the morning. It was eight days now since the bombing and she was more than bothered. Her face bore a full-time fretful glaze. She had let whoever was behind him, whoever was chasing him, put too much time in between herself and Adam Tatum.

Adam and his family were an essential piece of the puzzle. They would know the who and the why, the truth of how he came to be involved in a bombing of Number 10. She had seen the evidence taken from his home computer firsthand now: the website comments he had made, the sick photos in his hard drive of Roland Lassiter. She didn't believe they were real. Everyone else did—all the forensic gods and goddesses at Scotland Yard and on the home secretary's team. They swore to a person that it was all verifiably Tatum. Steel didn't buy it.

As the uniformed officers tackled the historic-looking stone walls of the driveway's courtyard, she leaned against the squad car that had brought her. She knew there would be no one inside, knew the house would be empty. There would be no one present to flash the warrant to. The Tatums, if they were alive, would be long gone, she was sure of it.