At least the wind was at my back. It kept my core temperature from dropping too fast and helped push me through the water. The gusts strengthened as I propelled the lump of moulded plastic further away from the shelter of the firs.
After I’d gone a mile or so I began to visualize how I would infiltrate Ravenhill. Cutting away took on a different meaning during this phase of a task. I had to ditch all the irrelevant shit and focus on my priorities. I needed to cruise into Guy Chastain’s boathouse without being seen or heard, locate where the Astra muscle was holding Ella, and take it from there.
The only light came from my right, from the headlamps of the wagons cruising along the main on the opposite side of the pond. There was a chance I’d be silhouetted against it before I reached the cover of the jetty, but I hoped anyone watching out for a threat from the water would be dazzled by the glare instead.
4
The closer I got to Ravenhill, the more I had to risk scudding further towards the middle of the lake. I was a long way from Olympic gold, but I didn’t want the sound of my paddles to carry too easily to the shore.
When I was still a couple of hundred away I brought the kayak to a standstill. Steadying it from time to time in the water, I scanned the shore. A guard made his way to the end of the jetty and back at roughly fifteen-minute intervals.
There were lights on in the main house and the upper floor of the converted stable block behind and to its left, and shadows fell across their windows. The odd torch beam bounced around in the trees. When I could no longer spot movement in the vicinity of the darkened boathouse, I brought the nose of the kayak round and paddled slowly towards the mandarin temple.
The jetty was mounted on two rows of wooden pillars driven into the lake bed. The crosspieces were horizontal rather than diagonal and about a metre above the surface of the water, so I was going to be able to slide in beneath it.
The wind was now coming in from my left, so I’d have to do my best to stop it blowing me into the superstructure. A big solid clunk would carry through the night air and catapult a reception committee in my direction at warp speed.
I reached out to fend off the second pillar with my right palm and came away with a smear of algae. The lapping of the water against the woodwork echoed across the space below the platform. I passed a slimy metal ladder with a pair of curved handrails and saw another ahead of me, leading up to the sundeck.
A coil of shock cord was secured by a Velcro strap at each end of the kayak. When I was within reach of my target, I looped the bow line around the pillar closest to the wind and let the current rotate the stern towards the one parallel to it.
The kayak would be visible to anyone who got down on his belt buckle and busy with a torch, but I figured that a mooring beneath the jetty, parallel to the shore, was as good as I was going to get.
I turned in the seat, got to my knees and manoeuvred myself as quietly as I could across the rear luggage recess. As I was fastening the second cord I heard footsteps, followed by a dull thud about eighteen inches above my head.
5
I didn’t move a muscle for five beats.
Then I loosened my jaw, opened my mouth and, as slowly as possible, lifted the ribbed hem of my bomber jacket with my left hand far enough to allow me to grip the butt of Sam’s pistol with my right.
I looked up.
A dark figure began to materialize through the half-centimetre gaps between the ribbed planks. So did the silhouette of a weapon. I eased the Browning out of my waistband and slid my index finger through the trigger guard. I raised the muzzle and applied first pressure.
I had no intention of going the whole way unless whoever was up there decided to draw down on me, but it made me feel like I wasn’t completely hopeless.
The wood creaked and the footsteps moved on. An LED torch sparked up at the far end of the jetty and swept the water beyond the temple. I stayed where I was; I needed to remain covert as long as possible.
Eventually the light flicked off and the footsteps made their way back towards me. I listened as they mounted the steps and disappeared up the pathway that ran along the side of the boathouse.
I waited for the silence to return, then thumbed on the Browning’s safety catch. I didn’t want to blow my bollocks apart as I swung out onto the steps and kitten-crawled across the sundeck.
I slithered up towards the entrance to the boathouse before rising to my feet. I opened my mouth and tuned in to my surroundings. I sensed rather than heard a low moan from somewhere nearby, but maybe it was the woodwork settling down for the night.
I worked my way softly past the windows overlooking the lake. I stopped for a moment when I reached the corner of the building and was about to move on when I became aware of a shadowy presence on the other side of the glass.
Marcia Chastain was standing there in the darkness, no more than two feet away from me. Her face was racked with pain. I couldn’t see what filled the frame that she was clutching to her chest, but I knew it had to be Guy’s citation and VC.
I waited for the alarm bells to start ringing; there was nothing else I could do.
She looked right through me.
There was no room for anyone else in her world of misery.
I hesitated for a nanosecond, then decided to go and have a little chat with her. I might have to give her a bit of a slap, but I reckoned she could provide my best – and quickest – route to some of the answers I needed.
I only managed to take one step back towards the door before everything changed.
Marcia Chastain’s mouth opened. I froze. Any second now she’d be filling her lungs.
But she didn’t yell for help. She just gave another low moan.
Then I felt a pair of electrodes cold against my neck.
The weapon I’d seen through the planking on the jetty had been a Taser. The lad holding the other end of it murmured in my ear, ‘I think she deserves a little bit of peace right now, don’t you?’
6
The colonel’s foot soldier steered me away from the boathouse entrance. I didn’t resist. The last thing I needed right now was fifty thousand volts jumping up and down on my nerve endings. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to risk staying this close to me all the way up to the house. Any second now he’d have to push me far enough in front to give himself the space to clip a cartridge onto the business end of the Taser, so he’d be able to control me from a distance. That would be my best time to fuck him up.
Triggered by a compressed gas cartridge, the twin metal barbs could be fired nearly twenty feet. They were designed to leave their housing at an eight-degree angle, each trailing a thin wire and targeting two separate muscle groups. One would make a beeline for my thigh, to stop me doing a runner.
Once embedded in my skin or clothing, the probes could be fed enough current to fuck my motor skills with every squeeze of the trigger. I’d turn into a puppet on a chain. I had to make sure that didn’t happen.
Sure enough, as soon as we cleared the corner of the building I felt his left hand press against the middle of my back and the electrodes leave my neck. I swivelled 180 degrees and grabbed his wrist before he’d lifted the hand away and pulled him with me, using his forward momentum to propel us both in the direction we’d been heading.
My arse hit the grass, then my back. I bent my knees, planted both feet in his gut, and straightened them again as I kept on going. He flew straight over my head.
I wanted to mess him up enough to be able to give him the good news with his own cattle prod, but as soon as I’d rolled to one side and sprung back to my feet, I saw that I’d rammed the top of his skull straight into the trunk of the nearest pine. He lay in a heap beneath it.
I hadn’t broken his neck, but he’d have a severely sore brain when he woke up. I gaffer-taped his wrists and ankles and stuck another strip over his mouth, then dragged him five metres into the undergrowth. Once in cover, I relieved him of his UHF radio, clipped it to my belt, lifted the right side of my balaclava and shoved in the earpiece.
I straightened the Browning in my waistband and picked up the Taser and spare cartridge. The X26 had a pistol grip and a bulbous nose, a bit like an underwater flash lamp. The Met Police used them to neutralize offenders. Theirs were Day-Glo yellow. I preferred this black version. It wasn’t designed to draw attention to itself.
As I took a step back towards the boathouse, a torch beam bounced down onto the sundeck. I stayed where I was, inside the treeline. It stopped halfway along the jetty and traced a slow arc across the water, taking in the mandarin temple and the stretch of bank to my half-right before clicking off.
A match flared and the tip of a cigarette glowed briefly before being cupped in a gloved palm. Elbows rested on the wooden rail and a plume of smoke coiled into the night air. This lad was there to stay.
I turned slowly back towards the big house. Three other beams swept through the darkness up there. One kept close to the stable block and two others patrolled the woods separating it from the road.
If Ella was at Ravenhill, the colonel wouldn’t have stuck her in a hole in the ground, but he wouldn’t have wanted her down the corridor from Mrs Chastain’s bedroom either.
I decided to check the stables first. Apart from anything else, I was familiar with the layout of the place. Unless they’d done a whole lot more than renew the wallpaper since the Sweden briefing, I reckoned I had a better than evens chance of not bumping into any brick walls, and of knowing where the Astra crew might be focusing their energies.
I heeled and toed through the dropped pine needles and bracken, keeping noise to an absolute minimum. When I was still far enough away from my target to be out of earshot, I sparked up the radio and listened in to the traffic between the other members of Chastain’s unit. Alpha was on the net, telling Bravo and Charlie to keep eyes on the roadside boundary, and wondering where Delta had disappeared to.
‘Alpha, Delta? Alpha, Delta,
check
…’
I was pretty sure that Delta wasn’t sending because some dickhead had banged him on the head, taped his lips together and nicked his UHF radio. I waited long enough to be certain before thumbing the pressel.
‘Alpha, this is Delta. Two bodies making entry on the south side of the compound …’ I’d heard only one sentence from Delta, so my impression of him probably sounded more like Jack Bauer. Whatever, the torches ahead of me stopped in their tracks.
‘Roger that, Delta. All call signs move to the south side
now
. Acknowledge …’
‘Bravo …’
‘Bravo, roger that.’
‘Charlie …’
Charlie had either switched off, or wasn’t playing.
Alpha got back on the net. ‘Charlie …’ Only one word, but you could tell he wasn’t impressed.
‘Charlie, acknowledge …’
Another couple of seconds of silence, then: ‘Charlie, roger that.’
They’d be running through the possibles. Was someone fucking them around? Was it a genuine alert? How quickly would Chastain send them their P45s if they messed up?
All three moved fast to my right, snapping off their torches as they went. I saw dark figures legging it across the driveway and back into the trees on the far side of it. If the lad on the jetty had finished smoking himself to death, maybe he’d crack on over there too.
It wouldn’t take them all night to discover that there was nothing going on at the southern boundary, but it might buy me time to poke around.
Keeping the Taser at the ready, I aimed for the far corner of the stable block.
7
There were two serious stone buildings in this part of the estate: a long, two-storey affair with bedroom suites where the hay lofts used to be, and a row of designer garages. The cobbled yard between them was accessible at each end via an archway.
The southern arch opened onto a short drive, which linked the guest wing to the big house. I approached from the north, past a random selection of outhouses and through a walled garden. When I’d last been here every spring flower and veggie had been standing to attention like they were Trooping the Colour. Now the bare earth and skeletal branches reminded me of a deserted First World War battlefield.
A cast-iron spiral staircase to my left led to the first floor. The fire door at the top was my first choice of exit, but I didn’t bother going up. It had been Harry’s favourite place for a smoke twenty years ago, and unless you’d wedged the thing open there was no easy way in.
The yard was empty, apart from a parked-up Defender. Once I’d satisfied myself that no one was inside it, I scanned the top storey. There were six suites up there. Each of them had one bedroom and one bathroom window. Light glowed through the curtains of the four windows closest to me. The other eight gave me a blank stare.
I triggered a motion sensor as I hit the cobbles and filled the space with light, but I couldn’t hang around. Thanks to my UHF radio stunt, the clock had started ticking big-time. I moved fast along the stable wall and swerved through the main entrance, pulling off my balaclava as I went and bundling it into my pocket.
A library, a conference room, a twenty-seat home cinema and a recreation room filled the ground floor. Me, Trev and Harry had spent some quality time doing Hurricane Higgins impressions around the full-size snooker table when we’d finished our homework back in ’ninety-two, but a lot of the other toys were new. I guessed that the whole complex saw a fair amount of corporate action, these days, whenever the boss didn’t fancy being tied to his desk at Astra’s London HQ.
I gave this level a rapid onceover, eavesdropping on Alpha, Bravo and Charlie as I went. They hadn’t reached the south wall yet, but were getting increasingly pissed off about Delta’s vanishing act. I cleared each room, then powered down the radio and took the stairs two at a time.
I slowed before I reached the top landing, crouched low on the deep-pile oatmeal carpet, breathed deeply, and glanced right and left. The corridor was empty. There were still six entrances leading off the far side of it, three in each direction, and the fire escape at the gable end.