Crossfire

15

Bush Close in Greenham was full of those ubiquitous modern little box houses, and number sixteen, Alex Reece's home, was one at the far end of the cul-de-sac.

It was late Saturday afternoon, and I had left Julie Yorke in a state of near collapse. I had merely suggested to her that to have any contact whatsoever with Alex Reece in the next thirty-six hours, in person, by e-mail or by phone, would be reason enough for me to send the explicit photographs to her husband, in addition to posting them on my new Facebook page on the Internet.

She had begged me to delete the pictures from my camera, but as I had pointed out, it was she and Alex who had started this blackmail business, and they really couldn't now complain if they were receiving a bit of their own medicine.

I had parked Ian Norland's car out on Water Lane in Greenham and had walked around the corner into Bush Close. I was carrying a pile of free newspapers that I had picked up at a petrol station, and I walked down the road, pushing one of them through every letter box. The houses were not identical, but they were similar, and number sixteen had the same style of plastic-framed front door as all the others.

"What time does Alex get back?" I had asked Julie.

"His plane lands at Heathrow at six-twenty tomorrow evening."

"And how does he get home to Greenham?"

"I've no idea."

I lingered for a moment outside the front door of number sixteen and adjusted the pile of remaining newspapers. I glanced around, looking for suitable hiding places, but the short driveway was bordered by nothing but grass. I looked to see which of the other houses had a direct line of sight to the front door of number sixteen, set back as it was beside the single garage.

Only number fifteen, opposite, had an unobstructed view.

I walked away from number sixteen and pushed newspapers through the front doors of a few more houses, including the one opposite, before moving off down the road, back towards Ian's car. However, instead of immediately driving away, I walked through a gateway and into the adjacent field. Alex Reece's house, together with all the other even-numbered houses in Bush Close, backed onto farmland, and I spent some time carefully reconnoitering the whole area.

I looked at my watch. It was just after five-thirty, and the light was beginning to fade rapidly.

Alex Reece couldn't possibly be back here the following evening until eight o'clock at the earliest, and it would probably be nearer to nine if he had to collect luggage at the airport. And that was assuming his flight landed on time. By eight o'clock, of course, it would have been fully dark for hours.

Keeping in the shadows of some trees, I skirted around the backs of the gardens in Bush Close until I arrived at number sixteen. There were lights on in the kitchen of number fourteen next door, and I could see a man and a woman in there talking. That was good, I thought. No one can see outside at dusk when they have the lights on inside, due to the reflection in the window glass, and especially when they are busy talking. There was little or no chance that they could see me watching them.

I quickly rolled my body over the low back fence and into Alex Reece's garden. It was mostly simply laid to grass, with no tangly flower beds or thorny rosebushes to worry about.

I moved silently to the back of the garage and looked in. Even in the fast disappearing light I could see the shiny shape of a car in there. So Mr. Reece would probably arrive home by taxi, either direct from the airport or from the railway station in Newbury.

And I'd be waiting for him.

Did we win?" I asked Ian, as I walked in through his door at seven o'clock.

"Win what?" he said, without taking his eyes off the television screen.

"Oregon," I said, "in the race at Haydock."

"Trotted up," he said, still not turning around. "Won by six lengths. Reckon he'll be hard to beat in the Triumph."

"Good," I said to the back of his head. "What are you watching?"

"Just some TV talent show."

"Have you eaten?" I asked.

"Had a pizza for lunch," he said. "From the freezer. One of them you bought yesterday. But I didn't have that until after the race. I was too nervous to eat before."

"So are you hungry?"

"Not really. Not yet. Maybe I'll have Chinese later."

"Great idea," I said. "I'll buy."

He turned around and smiled, and I guessed that was what he was hoping I'd say.

"How long are you staying?" he asked, turning back to the screen.

"I'll find somewhere else if you want," I said. "You know the houseguests and the three-day-smell rule, and my time is up tonight."

"Stay as long as you like," he said. "I'm enjoying the company."

And the free food, I thought, perhaps ungraciously.

"I'll stay another day or two, if that's all right."

"As I said, stay as long as you want, if you don't mind the couch."

I didn't. It was a lot more comfortable than some of the places I'd slept, and warmer too.

"Can I borrow your car again tomorrow?" I asked.

"Sorry, mate. I need it," he said. "I'm going to Sunday lunch with my folks."

"Where do they live?"

"Near Banbury," he said.

"So what time will you be back?" I asked.

"It'll be before five," he said. "Evening stables are at five on Sundays."

"Can I borrow the car after that?"

"Sure," he said. "But it might need more petrol by then."

"OK," I said. "I'll fill it up."

I could tell he was smiling, even though he didn't turn around. Why didn't he just ask me to pay for the use of his car? I suppose it was a little game.

I could have gone to fetch my Jaguar, but it was a very distinctive car, and I wasn't particularly keen to advertise my whereabouts to anyone. Ian's little Corsa was far more anonymous. I just hoped my Jaguar was still sitting in the parking lot in Oxford, awaiting my return.

I spent Sunday morning making my plans and sorting my kit. I had been back into Kauri House on Saturday afternoon after leaving Julie Yorke, and before my excursion to Greenham.

The house had been empty, save for the dogs, who had watched me idly and unconcerned as I'd passed through the kitchen, stepping over their beds in front of the Aga. My mother and stepfather had been safely away at Haydock races, but nevertheless, I had remained in the house for only fifteen or twenty minutes, just time enough to have a quick shower and collect a few things from my room.

I did not really want my mother coming back unexpectedly and finding me there. It was not because I didn't trust her not to give away my presence, even unwittingly, it was more that I didn't want to have to explain to her what I was going to do. She probably wouldn't have approved, so it was much better that she didn't know beforehand, if ever.

Ian left for his Sunday lunch trip at eleven, promising that he would be back in time to start work at five.

After I was sure Ian wasn't going to come back, I sorted the equipment I would need for my mission. Bits of it I had owned previously, but some things I'd driven into Newbury to buy specifically the previous afternoon on my way to Greenham.

I laid out my black roll-necked pullover, a pair of old, dark navy blue jeans, some dark socks, a black knitted ski hat and some matching gloves that I'd bought from the sports shop in Market Street, where I'd also obtained a pair of all-black Converse basketball boots.

Next to the clothes I placed the rest of my kit: a small dark blue rucksack, some black heavy-duty garden ties similar to those that had been used to bind my wrists in the stables, a small red first-aid kit, three six-by-four-inch prints of the mailbox-shop photos, a certain metal ring with a piece of galvanized steel chain attached to it by a padlock, my camera and, finally, a roll of gray duct tape.

There is a saying in every organization of the world, either military or civilian, that if something doesn't move when it should, use WD-40, and if it moves when it shouldn't, use duct tape. Originally designed during the Second World War to keep gun magazines and ammunition boxes watertight in jungle conditions, duct tape has since become the must-have item for each and every mission. It was even used to fix a fender on the Apollo 17 Lunar Rover when it was broken on the moon, as well as making the circular CO2 scrubbers "fit" square holes to save the lives of the crew of the stricken Apollo 13.

I had decided against taking my sword. I would have loved to have had a weapon of some kind, if only for the shock value, but the sword was impractical and cumbersome. A regulation-issue Browning nine-millimeter sidearm would have been my weapon of choice, but I could hardly run around the English countryside brandishing an illegal firearm, even if I'd had one. In the end, I also elected not to borrow one of Ian's kitchen knives.

It was not as if I intended to kill anyone. Not yet anyway.

At ten minutes to eight I was in position alongside Alex Reece's house, on the dark side, away from the glow from the solitary streetlamp outside number twelve, two houses down.

I had already made a thorough reconnaissance of the area, including a special look at number fifteen, the house opposite, the one with a direct view of Alex Reece's front door. As far as I could tell, the house was unoccupied, but that might be temporary. Maybe the residents were just out for the afternoon.

Most of the other houses, including number fourteen next door, had people going about their usual Sunday-evening activities. I was actually amazed at how few of the residents of Bush Close pulled their curtains, especially at the back. Not that they would usually expect anyone to be lurking in a field, spying on them as they watched their televisions or read their books.

Eight o'clock came and went, and I continued to wait. A fine drizzle began to fall, but that didn't worry me. Rain was likely to keep the other residents inside. I had been unable to tell if any of them had a dog to walk.

At eight-eighteen a car pulled into Bush Close and drove down to the end. I was all ready for action with the adrenaline rushing through my system, but the car pulled into the driveway of number fifteen, opposite, and a couple and two young children climbed out. I breathed heavily, calming myself down, and put the surprise "jack" back in his box.

I stood silently in the shadows. I was pretty sure that no one would be able to see me, although I could see them clearly, the more so when the man turned on an outside light next to their front door. I was close to the wall, and I remained completely still.

It was movement more than anything that gave people away, caught in peripheral vision and attracting immediate attention. My dark clothes would blend into the blackness of the background; only my face might be visible, and that was streaked with homemade mud-based camouflage cream to break up the familiar shape.

There were no shouts of discovery, and presently, the family gathered their things from the car and went inside. The outside light went out again, plunging me back into darkness. I eased myself back and forth, relieving the tension in my muscles, and went on waiting.

Alex Reece arrived home just before nine o'clock, but he didn't come by taxi.

Isabella's dark blue Volkswagen Golf pulled into the driveway at high speed and stopped abruptly with a slight squeal of its brakes. I couldn't exactly see who was at the wheel, but from past experience of her driving on the Bracknell bypass, I was pretty sure it was Isabella herself.

I pressed myself close to the wall and peeked around the corner so I could see.

Alex Reece opened the rear door and stood up next to the car with a flight bag in his hand.

"Thanks for the lift," he called, before closing the door and removing a small suitcase from the car trunk.

He stood and waved as the Golf was backed out onto the road and then driven away again at high speed. I thought the fact that Alex had been sitting in the back of the car implied that there was at least one other person in there, in addition to Isabella. Maybe it was Jackson.

I watched as Alex fumbled in his flight bag for the key to his front door. In those few seconds, I also scanned the road and the windows of the house opposite. No one was about.

It was time for action.

In the instant after he successfully opened the front door, and before he had time to reach down for his suitcase, I struck him hard midway between his shoulder blades, forcing him through the open doorway and onto the floor in the still-dark hallway. I crashed down on top of him, his flight bag sliding across the polished wood and into the kitchen.

"Scream and I'll kill you," I said loudly into his ear.

He didn't scream, but it wasn't only because he was frightened of being killed. I had purposely chosen that type of blow because it would have driven the air from his chest, and without air, he couldn't scream. In fact, he didn't react in any way. Just as I had hoped, my blitzkrieg attack had rendered him shocked and awestruck.

I pulled both his arms around to the small of his back and used the garden ties from my pocket to secure his wrists. Next, I used another pair of the ties to bind his ankles together.

The whole process had taken no more than a few seconds.

I stood up and went outside. I picked up Alex's suitcase from the step, glanced casually all around to check that nothing had stirred, then stepped back inside again, closing the front door. Alex hadn't moved a muscle.

Albert Pierrepoint, the renowned English hangman of the nineteen-forties and -fifties, always maintained that a successful execution was one when the prisoner hardly had time to realize what was happening to him before he was dangling dead at the end of the rope. He had once famously dispatched a man named James Inglis within just seven and a half seconds of his leaving the condemned cell.

Pierrepoint would have been proud of me tonight. Alex wasn't actually dead, but he had been trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven in not much longer than Albert had taken to hang a man.

And now Mr. Reece was ready for a spot of roasting.

I have no idea what you're talking about." It was only to be expected that he would deny any knowledge of blackmail.

He was still lying on the hall floor, but I had rolled him over onto his back so he could see me. I'd patted down his pockets, removed his cell telephone and turned it off. All the while, he had stared at me with wide eyes, the whites showing all around the irises. But he had known immediately who I was, in spite of my dark clothes, hat and mud-streaked face.

"So you deny you have been blackmailing my mother?" I asked him.

"I do," he said emphatically. "I've never heard such nonsense. Now let me go or I'll call the police."

"You are in no position to call anyone," I said. "And if anyone will be calling the police, it will be me."

"Go on, then," he said. "It's not me who would be in the most trouble."

"And what is that meant to imply?"

"Work it out," he said, becoming more sure of himself.

"Are you aware of what the maximum sentence is for blackmail?" I asked.

He said nothing.

"Fourteen years."

His eyes didn't even flicker. He clearly thought he was onto a good thing. He was assuming that I would just threaten him a bit, then let him go and do nothing more.

But one should never assume anything.

I had told Ian that I would be out all night. No one was expecting me back for hours and hours. So I was in no hurry.

I left him lying on the hard hall floor and went into the kitchen to see if I could find myself a drink. Waiting all that time outside had made me thirsty.

"Let me go," he shouted from the hallway.

"No," I shouted back, putting his phone down on the worktop.

"Help," he shouted, this time much louder.

I went quickly through into the hall.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why not?" he said belligerently.

I shrugged myself free of the small rucksack on my back and removed the roll of duct tape. I held it towards him and pulled the end of the tape free. "Because I would be forced to wrap your head in this. Is that what you want?"

He didn't shout again as I went back into the kitchen and fetched a can of Heineken from his fridge. I took a drink, allowing a little of the beer to pour out of the corner of my mouth and drip onto the floor near his legs.

"Do you have any idea how long a human being can go on living without taking in any fluid?" He went on staring at me. "How long it would be before chronic dehydration causes irreversible kidney failure, and death?"

He obviously didn't like the question, but he still wasn't particularly worried.

I bent down to my rucksack and dug around for the short piece of chain attached to the ring by the padlock. I held it up for him to see, but it was clear from his lack of expression that he didn't know where it had come from, or its significance. He probably wasn't fully aware that his lack of reaction may have saved his life. Maybe I didn't now want to kill the little weasel, but that didn't mean I didn't want to use him.

"Are you a diabetic?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Lucky you."

I removed the red-colored first-aid kit from my rucksack. It was what was known in the expedition business as an "anti-AIDS kit." It was a small zipped-up pouch containing two each of sterile syringes, hypodermic needles, intravenous drip cannulas, ready-threaded suture needles and scalpels, plus three small sterile pouches of saline solution for emergency rehydration. I had bought it some years previously to take on a regimental jolly, a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was designed to allow access to sterile equipment in the event of one of the team having to have an emergency medical procedure, something that was not always readily available, especially in some of the more remote hospitals of HIV-ridden sub-Saharan Africa.

Thankfully, no one on the expedition had needed it, and the kit had returned with me to the UK intact. But now it might just prove to have been a worthwhile purchase.

I removed one of the syringes and attached it to one of the hypodermic needles. Alex watched me.

"What are you doing?" He sounded worried for the first time.

"Time for my insulin," I said. "You wouldn't want me collapsing in a diabetic coma, now, would you? Not with you in that state."

Alex watched carefully as I unpacked one of the pouches of saline solution from its sterile packaging and hung it up on the stair banister. The packaging had an official-looking label stuck on the side with "insulin" printed on it in large bold capital letters that he couldn't have failed to see. I had asked him if he was a diabetic, and he'd said no. I hoped that he wouldn't know that insulin is nearly always provided either in ready-loaded injecting devices or in little glass bottles. I had produced the official-looking insulin label that afternoon using Ian Norland's printer.

I drew a very little amount of the clear liquid into the smaller of the two syringes, pulled up the front of my black roll-necked sweater, pinched the flesh of my abdomen together and inserted the needle. I depressed the plunger and injected the fluid under my skin. I smiled down at Alex.

"How often do you have to do that?" he asked.

"Two or three times a day," I said.

"And what exactly is insulin?"

"It's a hormone," I said, "that allows the muscles to use the energy from glucose carried in the blood. In most people it is created naturally in the pancreas."

"So what happens if you don't take it?"

"The glucose level in my blood would have become so high that my organs would stop working properly, and I would eventually go into a coma, and then die."

I smiled down at him again. "We wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

He didn't answer. Perhaps me in a coma or dead was exactly what he wanted. But it wasn't going to happen. I wasn't really diabetic, but my best friend at secondary school had been, and I'd watched him inject himself with insulin hundreds of times, although he'd always used a special syringe with a finer and less painful needle. Injecting small amounts of sterile saline solution under my skin might be slightly uncomfortable, but it was harmless.

I went back into the kitchen and picked up his flight bag from where it had come to rest. It was heavy. Inside, amongst other things, were a laptop computer and a large bottle of duty-free vodka that had somehow survived the impact with the hall floor. I put the bag down on the kitchen table, removed the computer and turned it on. While it booted up I took an upright chair out into the hallway, placed it near Alex's feet and sat down.

"Now," I said, leaning forwards. "I have some questions I need you to answer."

"I'm not answering anything unless you let me go."

"Oh, I think you will," I said. "It's a long night."

I stood up and went back into the kitchen. I pulled down the blind over the window, turned on a television set and sat down at the kitchen table with Alex's computer.

"Hey," he called after about five minutes.

"Yes," I shouted back. "What do you want?"

"Are you just going to leave me here?"

"Yes," I said, turning up the volume on the television.

"How long for?" he shouted louder.

"How long do you need?"

"Need?" he shouted. "What do mean 'need'?"

"How long do you need before you will answer my questions?"

"What questions?"

I went back into the hall and sat down on the chair by his feet.

"How long have you been having an affair with Julie Yorke?" I said.

It wasn't a question he had been expecting, but he recovered quickly.

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

It seemed we hadn't come too far in the past half-hour.

"Please yourself," I said, standing up and walking back to the kitchen table, and his computer.

There was a soccer-highlights program on the television, and I turned the volume up even higher so that Alex wouldn't hear me tapping away on his laptop keyboard.

The computer automatically connected to his wireless Internet router, so I clicked on his e-mail, and opened the inbox. Careless of him, I thought, not to have it password-protected. I highlighted all his messages received during the past two weeks and forwarded them, en masse, to my own e-mail account. Next, I did the same to his sent-items folder. One never knew how useful the information might prove to be, and it was no coincidence that the first thing the police searched when arresting someone was their computer hard drive.

I glanced up at the soccer on the television and ignored the whining from the hallway.

"Let me go," Alex bleated. "My hands hurt."

I went back to studying the computer screen.

"I need to sit up," he whinged. "My back aches."

I continued to ignore him.

I opened a computer folder called Rock Accounts. There were twenty or so files in the folder, and I highlighted them all, attached them to an e-mail and again sent them to my computer.

The soccer-highlights program finished, and the evening news had started. Fortunately, there were no reports about an ongoing case of forced imprisonment in the village of Greenham.

I clicked on the search button on the computer's start menu and asked it to search itself for files containing the terms password or user name. Obligingly, it came up with eight references, so I attached those files to another e-mail, and off they went as well.

"OK, OK!" he shouted finally. "I'll answer your question."

The messages from one further e-mail folder, one simply named Gibraltar, were also dispatched through cyberspace. I then checked that everything had gone before erasing the sent records for my forwarded files so Alex would have no knowledge that I had copied them. I closed the lid of the laptop and returned it to the flight bag, which I placed back on the floor.

I then went out into the hall, sat down once again on the upright chair and leaned forwards over him menacingly.

But I didn't ask him the same question as before. Using my best voice-of-command, I asked him something completely different.

"Why did you murder Roderick Ward?"

He was shocked.

"I-I didn't," he stammered.

"So who did?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"So he was murdered?" I said.

"No," he whined. "It was an accident."

"No, it wasn't. That car crash was far too contrived. It had to be a setup."

"The car crash wasn't the accident," he said flatly. "It was the fact that he died that was the accident. I tried to warn them, but I was too late."

" ' Them'?" I asked, intrigued.

He clammed up.

I removed a folded piece of paper from my pocket and held it out to him.

He looked at it in disbelief.

I knew the words written there by heart, so often had I looked at them during the past few days. It was the handwritten note that had been addressed to Mrs. Stella Beecher at 26 Banbury Drive in Oxford, the note I had found in the pile of mail I had taken from the cardboard box that Meals-on-Wheels Mr. Horner kept by his front door. I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THIS WILL GET THERE IN TIME, BUT TELL HIM I HAVE THE STUFF HE WANTS.

"What stuff?" I demanded.

He said nothing.

"And tell who?"

Again there was no response.

"And in time for what?"

He just stared at me.

"You will have to answer my questions, or you will leave me with no alternative but…" I trailed off.

"No alternative but what?" he asked in a panic.

"To kill you," I said calmly.

I quickly grabbed his bound feet and swiftly removed his left shoe and sock. I used the duct tape to bind his left foot upright against one of the spindles on the stairway so that it was completely immobile.

"What are you doing?" he screamed.

"Preparations," I said. "I always have to make the right preparations before I kill someone."

"Help," he yelled. But I had left the television on with the volume turned up, and his shout was drowned out by some advertisement music.

However, to be sure that he wouldn't be heard, I took a piece of the duct tape and fixed it firmly over his mouth to stop him from yelling again. Instead, he began breathing heavily through his nose, hyperventilating, his nostrils alternatively flaring and contracting below a pair of big frightened eyes.

"Now then, Alex," I said, in as calm a manner as I could manage. "You seem not to fully appreciate the rather dangerous predicament in which you have found yourself." He stared at me unblinkingly. "So let me explain it to you. You have been blackmailing my mother to the tune of two thousand pounds per week for the past seven months, to say nothing about the demands on her to fix races. Some weeks you collect the money yourself from the mailbox in Cheap Street, and sometimes you get Julie Yorke to collect it for you."

I removed the three prints of the photos I had taken of Julie through the window of the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant and held them up to him. With the tape on his mouth, it was difficult to fully gauge his reaction, but he went pale and looked from the photos to my face with doleful, pleading eyes.

"And," I went on, "you are blackmailing my mother over the knowledge you have that she has not been paying the tax that she should have been. Which means you either have her tax papers in your possession or have had access to them."

I reached down into my rucksack and again brought out the red "anti-AIDS" kit. If anything, Alex went paler.

"Now, my problem is this," I said. "If I let you go, you will still have my mother's tax papers. And even if you give me back the papers, you would still have the knowledge."

I took the large syringe out of the kit, attached a new needle, and then drew up a large quantity of the saline solution from the bag that was still hanging on the stair banister, the bag with the insulin label.

"So you see," I said, "if you won't help me, then I will have no alternative but to prevent you from speaking to the tax authorities."

I held the syringe up to the light and squirted a little of the fluid out in a fine jet.

"Did you know that insulin is essential for proper body functions?" I asked. "But that too much of it causes the glucose level in the blood to drop far too low, which in turn triggers a condition called hypoglycemia? That usually results in a seizure, followed by coma and death. Do you remember the case of that nurse, Beverley Allitt, who killed those children in Grantham hospital? Dubbed the Angel of Death by the media, she murdered some of them by injecting large overdoses of insulin."

I knew because I'd looked that up on the Internet as well.

I touched his foot.

"And do you know, Alex, if you inject insulin between someone's toes it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find the puncture mark on the skin, and the insulin would be undetectable, because you create it naturally in your body? It would appear you died of a seizure followed by a heart attack."

The statement wasn't entirely accurate. The insulin used nowadays to treat diabetics is almost exclusively synthetic insulin, and it can be detected as being different from the natural human product.

But Alex wasn't to know that.

"Now, then," I said, smiling and holding up the syringe to him again. "Between which two toes would you like it?"