The Ice House (20 page)

33

The more she thought about it, the more she was sure Drake was right and the man she had seen was someone else entirely. Because she couldn’t see Bowman bringing Rebecca here. Anyone could get into the building – there were builders trekking in and out, all the doors jammed open. The pavement running under the scaffolding was relatively busy too – how would you get a little girl in, unnoticed? But Rebecca wasn’t little – she just thought of her like that. In reality, she looked like a teenager. She had seen teenagers walking in and out alone whilst she’d been watching the place. And she remembered Rebecca’s messages – Rebecca thought this Carl Bowman was helping her.

She got out Drake’s phone and saw that he had been trying to call her. But she didn’t need to argue with him right now, so she switched it off, started up Molina’s instead, called Rebecca’s number, heard the miserable out-of-service message for the five hundredth time. The fear started rising inside her again, the obsessive, hopeless thoughts. Rebecca might be in Spain, or here, or any other European country – or much further afield. There was no way to search effectively, no way to even start. She had heard nothing from her for over twenty-four hours. This was what it was going to be like, for the rest of her life. Never knowing, never seeing her child again.

She got her mind out of it with difficulty. The panic was misplaced, because it wasn’t like that, wasn’t quite so hopeless. She had one card in her hand – they wanted her too, they wanted to kill her. They had engaged with her once already to try to achieve that. So it could happen again.

And the culprits were known. And she had powerful men on her side. That limited things, brought the scope of it in. It wasn’t as if Rebecca could be
anywhere
. Michael Rugojev would know roughly where she was. She had to rely on that. Rugojev would put the resources into it. He would know what to do.

But if that was true, she couldn’t see Michael’s resources – unless, as Drake suggested, the man she had just seen was one of them. It was possible. But why wasn’t Michael himself here – why hadn’t he come to explain? She stood on the pavement, feeling her body heating up with agitation, trying desperately to think things through clearly. But her brain had stopped. She was too exhausted and stressed to think about anything clearly. She just had to
do
it, go up there, find out. If Rebecca and Bowman weren’t here then it was possible she could still get back to Seville in time.

She took the stairs at the side of the lifts, running up them so that when she came through the doors at the top and stepped into the seventh-floor corridor, she was out of breath. She paused to recover, taking in the layout. A long corridor that turned off at both ends. There was a plush beige carpet underfoot, to the left covered with plastic. Doors for two flats in sight. She walked to the first, right opposite the stairway. Number 73. Bowman was 75.

She went past the lifts. In the other direction there was a clatter of building works, hammers and drills, the long scrape and bang as stuff was pushed down a waste chute into a skip below. The air down there was hazy with dust. She thought the builders must actually be in the flat furthest down there, so it couldn’t be that end. She went past flat 74 and got to the corner.

There it was, down a dog-leg. Flat 75. No name on the door. She took a breath, stepped closer, heard the lift start up behind her and stepped back to watch for it, automatically. It didn’t stop at her floor though. She heard it come to a halt, heard the doors open, voices on the floor below, most probably. She got her eyes back on the flat door. What was she going to do?

She crept up to it, stood very still, holding her breath, listening. She could hear nothing. Nothing at all. She took Molina’s phone out again and called Rebecca’s number. Same message. She got up the number she had called in Spain – the one the message had come from telling her to go to Seville. She held it to her ear, listening to it ringing, hearing nothing from inside the flat. She heard the ring tone pause, then change, as if the number had automatically diverted to another number, but that just rang also. Whoever they were, they weren’t at the other side of this door.

She cut the connection but had only got as far as putting the phone back into her pocket before it started to buzz. She got it out at once, holding it to her ear without saying anything.

Silence. But someone was there. They were at the other end now, listening to her breath. She could sense it. ‘Hello?’ she said, to check. She thought she heard an intake of breath, very faint. She put her hand against the door, still listening, then felt it give immediately. It was open. Her eyes flicked down to the lock, saw marks, scrapings around the keyhole, some wood splintered away. It had been forced open. In her ear a voice said, very quietly, ‘I wish it didn’t have to be like this.’

She cut the connection quickly, suddenly very frightened. Had she recognised the voice from somewhere?

She called Rebecca’s name. Not very loud, but loud enough. If she was inside she would hear. She pressed against the door cautiously. It swung open. She swallowed, stepped forwards, pushed it right back on its hinges.

She was looking at a short corridor, pictures on the walls, doorways off only a few metres ahead. Her mind noted the details – the open doors, the complete and utter silence, the marks on the carpet. She walked slowly in, leaving the door open behind her.

There was a stale smell in the air, as if no one had been here for a few days and all the windows were closed. And something else. It made her pause before she looked around the first door but didn’t manage to prepare her, so that when she saw the room beyond the breath was sucked out of her, like someone had punched her in the chest. She had to lean against the wall to stop herself collapsing.

It was a bedroom. There was a double bed, behind it curtains pulled away from the window. Lying on the floor, in the gap between the bed and the window, was a body. Long, very blonde hair covering a face. Hands clenched tight. Blood. Blood on the walls in long streaks, blood on the bed. The smell of it in her nose. She put her hand in her mouth, bit on it, said ‘
Christ above. Christ.
’ She stepped back.

It was a dead woman. Not Rebecca. She couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see what had killed her, but the room was in total disorder, things toppled onto the floor, items smashed. There had been a struggle. The woman was in her nightclothes, she thought, in pyjamas.

She backed out of the room, almost tripping up, then stood panting, pressed against the wall outside, her brain racing, her limbs cold.

In a daze she moved quickly through the other rooms, praying Rebecca wasn’t going to be there. There was a kitchen, a lounge, another bedroom, a toilet and bathroom, all ordered and neat. Nothing had happened anywhere else, just back in the first room. There was no one else here, not Rebecca, not Bowman.

She forced herself back to it, the breath strangled in her
throat. She should go over to the body, check it, check if the woman was alive. But she couldn’t. She stood in the space outside the room, planted her feet firmly, then looked round the corner and saw the legs and arms in exactly the same frozen pose. She had the urge to run, to turn and flee.

She felt a vibration in the floor, coming up through her feet, and thought it must be the lift again. She spun and hurried out.

There was no plan now except to get out and call Drake. He had been right – she shouldn’t have done this. She came round the corner and heard a soft ringing sound as the lift reached her floor. She slowed, tried to compose her features as she moved, tried to look normal. She was about a metre from the stairwell doors, her face down, when the lift doors opened and someone stepped out.

She looked up expecting a builder, saw the feet – clean black shoes, not dirty boots – saw the hand hanging there, the gun, a blunt black extension of his fist. For an instant her mind didn’t register what it was. She looked up at him, the white face, the ordinary hair and appearance, the clean-shaven chin, the eyes on her. The guy from La Linea.

She was right by the door, her hand starting to reach out to push it open. He took a step towards her and brought the gun up. She saw his finger on the trigger, saw his other hand moving towards the gun, a long black metal tube held in his fingers.

She thought there would be a shot, she would scream, she would try to run. She thought if she moved quickly enough the bullet might miss altogether. She had to go for it. If she didn’t she was dead.

But nothing happened. No movement. Her legs were like lead, her chest so heavy she had to heave the air in. Her mind was lucid, she knew what had to be done, but her body wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do anything.

‘Move back,’ he said quietly. ‘Go back to the end of the corri­dor.’

It was fear holding her in place, fixing her in front of him. If he fired it would hit her stomach. She wanted to say ‘I saw you in Spain, I know you,’ but instead heard her voice coming out of her mouth in a weak rasp: ‘Who are you? What have you done with my daughter?’

‘Go back,’ he said again. ‘Move back now.’

Her brain took her eyes to the metal tube in his left hand. His eyes were on hers, trying to hold her gaze, but he moved his body slightly, awkwardly, trying to shield the gun from anyone who might be behind him. Something slotted into place and she recognised, from somewhere, that the metal tube was a silencer. She imagined him getting it out in the lift, wanting to screw it onto the pistol before he got anywhere near her. If he fired at her now the builders at the end would hear.
At least
the builders – the noise would be loud. Everyone in the block might hear. So he wanted her round the corner, out of sight. He wasn’t just going to let her walk through the doors and get away, but he needed time to fit the thing onto the gun. So she had time too, maybe only moments before he decided on the risk.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ she asked again. ‘Where have you taken her?’

‘I’ll only ask you once more,’ he said, but the gun was lowered now, at his side. ‘Turn around and go back.’

‘So you can kill me like that woman through there?’

His eyes changed expression, but he said nothing. He knew about the dead woman. He had been in there already. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what you do to me. I just want to know my daughter will be safe.’

‘So go back. Go back and we can talk about it.’ He had the temerity to smile slightly, as if she were utterly stupid and feck
less, as if he could fake something like that and she would go for it. ‘All I want to do is talk to you,’ he repeated.

‘I know you work for Zaikov,’ she said.

He frowned. ‘Zaikov?’

‘You’re Carl Bowman. I know who you are.’

‘I’m Philip Jones. I’m police,’ he said. He had a standard kind of London accent. He sounded convincing. But she was certain he wasn’t police. ‘I don’t know who Zaikov is,’ he said. ‘But I do know Bowman. I can help you there.’

‘Who is the dead woman?’ she asked. ‘Did you kill her?’

‘Of course not.’ He said it almost flippantly, the little smile still there. ‘I’m police. I don’t kill people. She’s Bowman’s girlfriend. Bowman killed her, we think. He’s dangerous, and he has your daughter. Go back to the flat and I’ll tell you what I know. We can pool what we know. You help us and we help you.’

He raised the gun again and she could see the thoughts moving across his face – the decision, the risk. Shoot her now and run, or delay, try to get her back there where it was safer.

‘I’ll move if you tell me where she is,’ she said. Her last ­gamble. If he refused she had to yell, run.

‘She’s safe,’ he said. ‘But she’s not here. She’s in Helsinki, with Bowman. If you help me she will be—’

Helsinki.

But there was no time to think about that, no time to work out whether it was a lie or truth. He stopped speaking because behind him a door slammed shut and a man appeared at the other end of the corridor, walking towards them. She switched her gaze over his shoulder, saw a yellow hard hat, a man with some kind of power tool held in both hands, looking straight at her.

Jones had a warning glare with his eyes. He was trying to appear relaxed, moving the gun down to the line of his leg, shifting stance so he could turn quickly. She got immediately what would happen if she shouted – he would turn and shoot the man. She waited until Jones was sideways on, his head moving to look back, then put her shoulder against the stairwell door and dived through.

34

He was coming after her. All the way down the stairs she thought she could hear him coming after her. She couldn’t look, couldn’t get her eyes up, because she was taking the steps three and four at a time, leaping down, gathering speed, getting more and more out of control. Hand on the rail to pull herself round the bend on each floor, banging into the walls, tripping, catching herself, ducking, breath and heart hammering in her ears, the pain bad in her injured knee.

She tried to count the floors but couldn’t concentrate on anything but her footing, on keeping her eyes on what was ­coming. She glimpsed a sign painted on the wall next to a door she almost went straight through – ‘3’. The third floor. By now her legs were shaking and she was in real danger of falling head first. The swollen knee wasn’t going to hold up. She made herself slow enough to keep her balance.

Then, as she plunged down the next flight, she glanced up momentarily. Saw nothing. She realised she couldn’t hear anything either – just the din she was generating, echoing through the spaces – no footfall in pursuit.

She grabbed the rail to stop herself, slammed into the wall and held her breath. Silence. He wasn’t following.

She heard the lift mechanism and let herself gulp in the air. He was using the lift. She set off again, slightly more carefully, her ears on the sound, trying to place it. The builder had been going for the lift too. Would Jones get in the same lift as him? Not with a gun. So maybe he was waiting for the other lift.

She heard it start up, an additional vibration, just as she came in sight of the ground level. She paused long enough to not be gasping for air, then walked the last few paces and pushed open the door very slowly, staring through the little pane of glass first. An empty foyer, the street outside.

She ran for it. Turned sharp left under the scaffolding, dodged some people – a woman and a child – put her head down, went full speed in a jerky limp, ignoring the pain. She had to get to the car.

She saw people staring at her then reached the turn towards Brook Green. She went straight over the road, not looking behind to see if any car was turning after her, relying on her ears. Someone braked with a screech, but she didn’t look. She dodged a bicycle, made the opposite pavement, got her head down again.

She counted the turn-offs, didn’t pause to look back once. The car was on a street three back from the main road. The turns passed her quickly. Nice little streets with trees and expensive little Victorian semis. She found the one she thought she had put the car in but couldn’t see it. She stopped and concentrated. There were rows of parked cars down both sides, all the way down the street. A drop of rain picked at her face. Wrong street, she decided. She had passed only two, turned too soon. She felt panic leaping in her gut. She would have to turn back.

She walked back to the junction, looked down towards Hammersmith Road and immediately saw him, about two ­hundred metres back on the opposite side. He had just come round the corner. Maybe he hadn’t even known where she had gone. But he knew now. She saw him pause then start to walk quicker, coming up the road towards her. She bit her lip, wanted to cry at her own stupidity, turned on her heels and limped off again. Would he try to shoot her in broad daylight, in the middle of London?

As soon as she got to the next turn she saw the car. She kept running, digging in her jeans pocket for the keycard, got it out when she was still twenty metres away, clicked it to open the doors, saw the lights flash. How long did she have?

She opened the driver’s door, threw herself in, fumbled to start the engine, looked to the end of the road. He hadn’t appeared yet. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would change his mind.

The engine wouldn’t start. She was pressing the wrong button. She made herself think it through. She was being exceptionally stupid. She had been staring at the end of the road, frantically pressing the button that operated the air conditioning. She put her thumb on the right button and the car started at once.

She slipped the stick into reverse, tried to edge back, eyes always on the end of the road. She felt it bump the car behind, gently, put the wheel on full lock, jerked into the road, almost stalling. A car pipped, but she couldn’t even see it. She kept going, straightening up. But she was on the wrong side of the road again. She veered to the left, pressed the accelerator a little. Maybe only fifteen metres to the junction. What then? Turn right, away from him, pick up speed.

Then he was there, sprinting towards her, his eyes right on her. She couldn’t believe it. The gun was in his hand, in full view. He was coming across the pavement at the end of the junction, running like he would come right out in front of her. She heard herself scream with fright, swerved slightly away from him, saw his arm come up and realised he was actually going to shoot. He was in the road now, almost blocking her. She would have to go round him, but then he would shoot as she passed, straight into the windscreen, point-blank.

She flicked the wheel towards him instinctively, a tiny movement, her foot flat on the accelerator, the car still in ­second gear, engine roaring. She saw the shock flash across his face, saw him try to stop in his tracks. The gun was pointed at the front of the car. She thought it fired, but the noise was drowned out. There was a bang as she struck his hips and legs. Then he was a blur of movement in the air, a black shape filling her view, his head arching up and over, then down with a crack, straight into the top part of the windscreen. The glass shattered, blood spattering over the cracks. He was catapulted up and over, across the roof and back. She hauled the wheel over, foot on the brake, saw a car swerving through a tiny patch of clear glass. She braked to an emergency stop, screeching to the other side of the junction, pointed back down towards Hammersmith Road. A moment later she was knocked viciously forward by a rear impact, her head smashing off the steering wheel.

She sat dazed, foot pressed against the brake, engine revving really hard. Then pressed the button and stopped it, tried to see behind in her mirrors. There was no one in the road. No one running at her. She couldn’t see anything clearly though. She started the engine again, heard someone shout something, tried to move forward and heard a violent scraping noise. She put it into neutral, opened the door and got out.

He was about six metres back, in the middle of the junction, half underneath another car, the one that had been behind her. His head and chest were out of sight, beneath it. It had clearly gone over him. He wasn’t moving. There were people running towards him, converging on the scene, cars stopped across the road she had come onto. Two people were already there beside him, crouching down, shouting. Someone else, off to the side, was pointing at something near a storm drain – the gun. The driver from the car that had rear-ended her – a man, middle-aged – was sitting at the wheel staring ahead, not looking at her, not looking at anything, running a hand over his face.

No one was looking at her. No one.

But that would change soon.

She started to walk away from it. She moved around her own car, over to the kerb. She expected shouts, people trying to stop her. Her head was throbbing badly. She put a hand up and felt a bump above her left eye, angry and sore. No blood, but her nose was trickling again. She pulled some tissue from the jacket pocket, wiped it, quickened her pace, then thought better of it. She slowed, tried to move normally. Still no one shouted. She kept going, didn’t look back. People were walking past her, looking behind, going towards it all, paying no attention to her. She went round them, got down to Hammersmith Road, waited for a space, crossed it, then started running towards the Broadway and the tube station.