Revenger

89

Carver ran. He raced across the great open grassland at the heart of the park, heedless of any attention he might draw or stares that he provoked. It was too late for discretion or concealment now. He had only gone a couple of hundred yards before the drawback of wearing a wetsuit became apparent. It was hot and, by definition, completely air- and watertight. Less than a minute after he had set off he was already sweating like a pig.

His lungs and legs were betraying him, too. Carver kept himself fit, but only to the standards of the prosperous civilian he’d been for the past two years. He didn’t have the muscular endurance or heart-lung capacity that he’d once taken for granted. He told himself the pain was an illusion, a mirage generated by a frightened brain to prevent the body from over-exerting itself. And he kept running.

He was two-thirds of the way across the grass when he received another text. It just said, ‘I am alone with her. Just imagine what I am doing. Gx’

He told himself that this had to be some kind of sick joke — a taunt to bring him on all the faster, to make him so mad with rage and fear that he would cease to act like a trained professional and blunder in like an amateur.

Carver kept running, darting in and out of people on the path. A couple of young guys, aged maybe seventeen or eighteen, were coming towards him in the opposite direction, kidding with each other, not paying much attention to what was around them. Carver tried to get around them, but then one of the guys moved into the space he was aiming for. They banged shoulders, and the impact sent the kid Carver had hit spinning into his friend. They shouted angrily after him and then one of them said to the other: ‘Do you know who that was?’

‘Yeah, your dad.’

‘Nah, seriously… look…’ He got out his phone and went on to Twitter, quickly finding #secondman where a dozen or more recent tweets had links to the latest police photofits.

‘’Kin’ ell, you’re right. That’s him… that’s the Second Man.’

‘Well, call the police, bro. Maybe there’s a reward, like thousands of pounds or something.’

‘Ah, that would be well mint.’

‘Well, get a picture of him, quick! Before he gets too far!’

When they called the hotline thirty seconds later, theirs was the first report of Carver’s mad dash across the park and up into St John’s Wood. But it would not be by any means the last.

Carver was shattered. His body was liquid inside its neoprene sweat box. His legs were screaming from the build-up of lactic acid, and his lungs were wheezing like broken bellows. But still he ran. And still the taunting messages from Novak continued.

‘She’s aching to see you — but where are you? Gx’

‘Having a great time — wish you were here!! Gx’

‘Would you love her — even if she was VERY ugly?? Gx’

He’d run past the Lord’s cricket ground, down smart, leafy streets that seemed untouched by the anarchy, round the corner into Abbey Road. Then, finally, he forced himself to slow. He had to get his pulse-rate down, gather his wits and prepare himself for what he had to do next. Carver assumed that Novak, or someone working with her, was watching the approaches to Peck’s flat. He had to cover the ground towards it as unobtrusively as possible, but now he had a stroke of luck. A double-decker bus was making its way down the road in a line of slow-moving traffic. Carver jogged along next to it, using it as cover, past the white, two-storey studio. As the bus passed the red-brick block of flats that stood next to the building where Alix was being held he darted unseen up to the front door and reached into his bag. He got out a thin strip of clear plastic, cut from his empty water bottle while he’d been sitting on the park bench, and slipped it between the lock and the door jamb, carefully manipulating it until the bolt slid back and the lock clicked open. Carver dashed to the lift, waited for fifteen agonizing seconds till it arrived — telling himself that it would still be quicker and less draining than taking the stairs — then pushed his way in before the doors had fully opened and hammered the palm of his hand against the button for the top floor.

In Trent Peck’s bedroom, Novak had finally fetched the sharpening steel from the kitchen and was standing by the foot of the bed, looking at the splayed cruciform of Petrova’s writhing, defenceless, cruelly exposed body. Petrova was staring at the glowing red-hot metal with the wide, frantic eyes of a trapped animal, and the silver tape around her mouth was rippling with the desperate motions of the lips beneath. It took Novak a second to realize that these were not just the muffled screams or cries for help that she had become used to over the past few minutes. No, Petrova was trying to say something specific — something of huge importance that she desperately needed Novak to hear. And when Novak listened very closely to the garbled, strangulated utterances she thought she knew what it was. But she peeled back the tape, just a little, to make absolutely sure.

Yes! Novak was right. With the very last strength in her body, Petrova was begging for mercy. But it was not for herself. What she was saying was, ‘Not the baby… please, not the baby.’

Novak closed the tape again. She thought she had been enjoying herself up to now. But this… well, it took her pleasure on to a whole new level.