Relentless (27 page)

41

The wait seemed interminable, the minutes dragging by in slow
motion. Kathy and I avoided looking at each other. For the most
part we stood where we were, utterly helpless, but occasionally
one»of us would pace round our end of the table a little, or sit

down in one of the chairs, always avoiding Lench's mocking
gaze.
Lench himself never spoke. He sat where he was, hardly
moving. Waiting with the confident patience of a cat stalking
prey. There was no point begging him for mercy. Both of us,
I think, knew that. Here was a man utterly at ease with his
cruelty. We were nothing to him, not even cardboard cut-outs.
Neither were our children. He would kill every one of us without
a second's thought. We weren't even worth speaking to,
except to provide him with the information he was after. I
doubt if there were many people with as cold a heart as his
walking this world, and I cursed my bad luck that our paths had
crossed.
After a while he left the room, his chair scraping loudly on the
tiled floor, and only the gunman in the Homer Simpson mask
remained. He was silent too.
I went over to the window and looked out again. The view was
green and pretty. Normally, I'd have appreciated it. Today, I
wished I was looking at something ugly, something more in tune
with my feelings. A scrapyard or a slag heap. A landfill site. I
wondered if anyone was responding to my SOS, moving in on us
right now. 'Get real,' I told myself. 'No-one's coming. You're on
your own. You've always been on your own.'
I looked at my watch yet again. Ten past nine. The forty
minutes were up. The person Lench had sent would be at King's
Cross by now, and the moment of truth with us soon. Which
probably meant death. Yet it wasn't that that occupied my
thoughts. Because something was bugging me. Something Kathy
had said that didn't ring true. I played back my conversation
with her in the car earlier. She'd admitted to me that Jack had
given her the key to the deposit box, and that it contained

something important belonging to one of his clients. She'd told
Lench this too, and where the box could be found.
No, it was something else ...
I looked down at her. She was sitting with her head slightly
bowed, eyes downcast. Both her hands were flat on the table,
palms down. One thumb moved left and right in a steady
windscreen-wiper-like movement, the only visible sign of the
tension I knew was coursing through her. She wasn't a fidgeter
like me; she tended to simmer silently and without moving. It
had always been an aspect of her character that unnerved me.
Her fingerprints had been on the knife that killed Vanessa.
But she wasn't the killer. I'd seen the killer, and Lench had not
denied that one of his people had done it. Therefore it wasn't
Kathy. But her prints were on the knife.
Then it hit me. Last night she hadn't asked me about the
injuries I'd received from the filleting knife or how I'd sustained them. Daniels hadn't said anything about them either. So she
couldn't have known that I'd been attacked by Vanessa's killer.
Yet when we were speaking this morning she mentioned the
attack, had even talked about my attacker being a 'he'.
How the hell had she known?
I racked my brains to think of when I could have let slip
something, but there'd been very little time for me to have done
so, and I was almost certain I hadn't. Which meant only one
thing.
She'd been at the library yesterday afternoon.

42

From Clerkenwell, Bolt drove up to Angel Gate and turned
left onto the Pentonville Road, heading west. The Pentonville
Road became the Euston Road, then the Marylebone Road, and
finally the A40. Usually this route was heavily congested, but before nine on a Sunday morning it was quiet, and Bolt was on
the M40 within twenty minutes.
Fifteen minutes later, having driven consistently at speeds
over a hundred miles per hour, he came off at junction 5, High
Wycombe, and took the A404 to Marlow. The phone didn't ring
during the entire journey, which he found vaguely reassuring. It
meant there were no new developments. Either Jean had gone
back to bed or Kathy Meron's mobile was still on and not
moving from its current location.
He continued to drive fast, breaking the speed limit, and it
was ten past nine, just about forty minutes after he'd set off,
when he finally turned onto the country road that ran for a little
over a mile down to Hambleden village.
It had been the summer before her death that he and Mikaela
had driven down here for the day. The weather had been mild

and sunny, and there'd been a cricket match in progress on the
green at the edge of the village. They'd eaten at the pub, sitting
outside in the beer garden, basking in the sunshine and feeling at
peace with the world. It had been such a contrast to the noise
and fury of the big city that for a moment he'd dreamed about
living out here, away from it all. Mikaela had obviously been
thinking the same thing. 'If we ever have kids, this is where I'd
like them to grow up,' she'd said, sipping from her wine and
looking out across the rolling green fields, her long blonde hair
almost white in the glare of the sun. 'We could have a bit of land
and keep chickens.'
He'd known for months by then that she'd wanted kids. It had
come up more and more in their conversations. Personally he'd
been far less sure. He loved her, there was never any doubt
about that, but children . . . They were a huge tie, and with the
job he did, he just hadn't been sure he, or they, were ready for it.
'Let's leave it a while. Give it a year or two. There's no hurry,'
he'd said, delaying things, knowing all the time that one day he
was going to have to choose between starting a family and losing
her.
He drove over the old stone bridge that led into the village
square and almost immediately spotted the maroon Hyundai.
He made a note of the plate. It was Kathy Meron's car. He
carried on driving, up past the family butcher's and the pub
on the right-hand side, to the point where the road began to
climb as it left the village. He could see from the map on the
car's satellite navigation system that this was the beginning of
Ranger's Hill, but instead of driving up it, he turned right
into the village car park, where a loose group of middle-aged
ramblers in shorts and hiking boots stood next to their cars,
chatting loudly among themselves. Bolt decided to make the rest

of the journey on foot. His approach would be less conspicuous
that way.
He stepped out of the car, put his mobile on to vibrate, and
started walking, wondering what it was he was going to find.

43

I could hear my heart beating loudly in my chest, a rapid rat-tat
rat-tat that would have had any self-respecting doctor writing
out a prescription for beta blockers. Each minute now was a
lifetime. A lifetime filled with fear, confusion and betrayal. My
children were in terrible danger. My wife had been living a lie
that seemed to grow larger and blacker with each new layer of
treachery I uncovered. How could I not have seen it? Kathy was
- or rather, she had been - a good person. A loving mother, a
friend to the people she met, someone everyone seemed to like.
More than they ever did me. But underneath it all, something had been terribly wrong. She had been at the library yesterday, I
was convinced of that now. Her prints were on the filleting knife,
and it would explain the presence of my gloves. Once again, I
looked over at her, but she didn't seem to notice my gaze and
continued to stare at her hands.
I looked at my watch. 9.20. It would all be over very soon, one
way or another. If they let my kids go, then that would be
enough for me. I know it sounds a weird thing to say, but at that
moment in time it would almost have been a relief to have the

gun put against my head and the whole thing ended. Before I
found out any more grim facts about the way my life had been
knocked totally and utterly off course. As long as I knew that my
kids were OK.
The door opened and Lench came back into the room. It was
difficult to read his expression behind the mask, but something
told me he was not pleased about something. He stopped on the
other side of the table and looked across at Kathy.
'You told me you never knew what was inside the deposit
box,' he said darkly.
'That's because I don't,' she answered, looking up. Her tone
was one of righteous indignation.
It didn't work. 'Our man's recovered the contents of the box,'
Lench said, making no effort to hide his irritation. 'It's what we
were after, but we think there may be more. And we think you
know where they might be.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'I think you're lying to me, Mrs Meron.' There was something
chilling in his voice. An undercurrent of excitement, as if he was
pleased with her defiance because it gave him an excuse to hurt
her. He moved slowly around the table in her direction.
She seemed to sense this, and when she spoke again, her
defiance was faltering. 'I'm not lying, I promise you. I was just
looking after the key for Jack Calley.'
'Listen, Kathy, if you're hiding anything, just tell him, please.'
I suddenly felt hugely protective towards her, though God knows
why. Not after everything that had happened.
Lench stopped several feet from her. 'I want to know if there
are any copies.'
'Copies of what? I don't know what you're talking about, I
promise.'

'Tell him, for God's sake. He'll get it out of you one way or
another.' I put an arm on her shoulder, gripping her tightly.
'Please.'
Lench turned my way, then looked back over his shoulder at
Homer Simpson. 'Take him outside,' he said, motioning dismissively
towards me.
Homer Simpson moved away from his position against the
wall and walked over to me. I looked imploringly at Kathy, but
once again she didn't meet my gaze. Homer grabbed me roughly
by the arm and pushed the silencer against my back, pulling me
in the direction of the door.
'Kathy, for Christ's sake, he's got our children! Just tell him
what he wants he know. What the fuck is wrong with you?'
Something was burning deep inside me. Rage. Rage aimed at
Lench, Kathy, the man in the crappy Homer Simpson mask
pushing me around. The whole fucking world. As Homer pulled
me again, I shoved him away, ignoring the fact that he had a gun
in my back.
'Don't try anything, Meron,' snapped Lench. 'Like you say,
we've got your little brats, and we'll cut them to pieces if we
have to.' Then to Homer: 'Get him out of here. If he fucks you
about, kill him. We don't need him any more, so if he wants to
commit suicide, that's up to him.'
The rage continued to simmer, and as Homer half-led, half
hauled me out of the room I aimed one more comment at Lench.
'If anything happens to my kids, they'll hunt you down to the
ends of the earth. You know that, don't you? They don't like
child killers in this country.'
But Lench simply turned his back on me as if I no longer
mattered and reached towards Kathy with an immense gloved
hand. Her dark eyes flashed with fear.

The kitchen door was opened and I was pushed out into the
hallway. 'You want to be associated with child killers, do you?' I
said over my shoulder at Homer as he manhandled me into a
sitting room which, like the kitchen, had windows facing out
over both sides of the property. Like the kitchen, too, it was
immaculately neat and tidy, with expensive leather furniture and
a plasma TV on the wall, but utterly devoid of character.
'I couldn't give a fuck,' Homer answered casually, kicking the
door shut behind him, and I could tell immediately that he
genuinely didn't. My kids were nothing to him. Nor was my pain,
or Kathy's.
It was obvious I'd always viewed the world and its people in
too much of an optimistic light. I had always believed that
people were, by and large, good at heart. But it was becoming
clearer to me by the second that there were evil bastards out
there who were devoid of any positive attributes at all, who lived
by no rules and cared nothing for their fellow human beings.
And this ignorant piece of dirt was one of them.
The rage exploded within me then and my actions became
utterly instinctive, no longer the slaves to conscious thought and
the attendant fear that always comes with thinking. As Homer
pushed me towards a low-slung black leather sofa that would
have probably cost me a month's wages, I swung round without
warning, knocked his gun to one side with a contemptuous slap
and, before he had a chance to react, smashed my forehead into
the bridge of his nose. There was a crack as it broke. It sounded
like a gunshot when you were as close as I was to it, and blood
squirted out of his nostrils. He stumbled backwards like a drunk,
eyes wide and unfocused, and banged his head against the
skirting. But he still had hold of the gun, so I grabbed his wrist
and yanked it upwards so that the silencer faced the ceiling, then

ripped the mask from his face and butted him again, three times
in rapid succession, every blow landing in roughly the spot
where I'd done the initial damage. His head was already back
against the skirting so he was unable to move, and thus took the
full force of my attack. At the same time I punched him in
the gut, then the balls. He groaned and his wrist went limp,
giving me the chance to yank the gun from his grip by the
silencer. I pointed the gun back in his direction, viewing
the unmasked features for the first time. His face was pallid and
pockmarked, belonging to an unattractive and now only semiconscious
young man in his early twenties. It was stained and
splattered with blood, and I kicked it hard as his body slipped
down the wall to the thickly carpeted floor, cracking another
bone.
The whole attack had been carried out in near silence, but I
wondered whether I'd been quiet enough. We were only a
matter of a few yards and a couple of walls from where Lench
had my wife.
I looked down at the gun in my hand. It shook just a little. I
looked down at Homer Simpson. He was out for the count.
I asked myself a simple question: what the hell do I do now?
And then I heard a shot ring out, the sound of glass smashing,
and suddenly the question was answered for me.