The Shadow Project

Chapter Forty-Four

Time seemed to pause as they stood there, frozen, eyes locked. They were just five yards away from each other, and it was the first really good view he’d had of her face. Her eyes were exactly the same blue he remembered from so long ago, but sharp now. The soft, round features of childhood were long gone, and had left behind them a certain hardness. The set of her jaw spoke of a strong will and a tough attitude. Another man would have found her attractive, her lean runner’s build, the broad shoulders and trim waist. In all the pictures Ben had of her as a child, her hair was long and thick and lustrous. Cropped the way it was now, it gave her a severe look. But somewhere behind that dangerous, edgy exterior, she was still the Ruth he’d thought about every day for twenty-three years.

For a long second he looked into her eyes. Long enough to pray for a glimmer of recognition in there. He saw none. Then that suspended moment suddenly ended; time seemed to restart. She bolted back into the house.

Ben ran after her and managed to get his foot in the door before it slammed violently shut in his face. He crashed it open, pressed through the doorway, made a lunge for her arm. She darted out of his grasp, whirled around and with a scream she aimed a vicious kick at his groin. If he hadn’t reacted in time and twisted out of the way, he’d have run straight into it and been crippled in agony.

Even in that moment, he couldn’t help but admire her feistiness. Quick as a panther, she grabbed a wooden chair by the rungs of its backrest and jabbed the legs at his face. He ducked the blow, caught one of the spars. The cold part of his mind that had been forged through hard combat and even harder training told him he could ram the chair back at his opponent and smash their teeth in, end the fight there and then. He pushed that thought away, tore the chair out of her grip and dropped it.

She ran through another doorway and into a kitchen. On a wooden surface cluttered with saucepans and jars of utensils was a block of knives. In one fast movement she drew a long carving knife out of its slot and threw it at him. He twitched out of the way, felt the wind of the blade past his cheek, heard the hollow thunk and the judder of the blade as it embedded itself point-first in the doorframe a few inches to the right of his head.

Then she was escaping through the kitchen, bursting through a bead curtain and down a narrow corridor. He sprinted after her and saw her fly into a bedroom, slipping on bare varnished floorboards as she made for a single bed in the middle of the room. She somersaulted across it, dragging half the bedclothes with her as she rolled to the floor on the other side.

No way out of the room. She’d cut off her escape route.

But when she ripped open the bedside table drawer and came up from behind the bed with a pistol in both hands, he understood why she’d made for this bedroom. Fight before flight. Definitely his sister.

The numbing crack of the shot filled the small space. He threw himself down and hit the smooth floor, sliding feet first. Crashed into the bottom edge of the bed and flipped it violently up on its side, shattering the bedstead and jamming her between the mattress and the wall. She let out a muffled cry, and the pistol went tumbling out of her hand.

Ben was up on his feet before she could do anything, and tore the bed aside. She threw a punch at him, but she was disoriented by the impact and he easily slapped it aside.

It was time to finish this.

Every so often in his life, Ben had to do things he hated doing. This was one of the worst. With the heel of his right hand he delivered a short, hard, stunning blow to the side of the neck. She went limp and crumpled, knees buckling under her. He caught her before she could fall to the floor.

‘I’m sorry, Ruth.’ He laid her down on the broken bed, checked her pulse. When he was sure he hadn’t done her any lasting harm, he picked up the fallen pistol, made it safe and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he grabbed her arms and flipped her body up over his shoulder.

He hadn’t known exactly what his plan was as he followed her home, but now he realised there was only one option open to him if he wanted to get her somewhere quiet and have it out with her. He was going to have to smuggle her back over the border into France and west to Le Val. And he needed to move fast. He was pretty certain there were more than three of the gang living here. Sooner or later, someone was going to return home, and he didn’t want to be there when they did. He might not be so lucky if four or five of them jumped him at once – especially if they were armed.

He carried his sister out to the poultry shed. Her two friends, the handsome one and the scrawny bearded one, were still out cold. He laid her very carefully down next to them and used more of the cable-ties to bind her wrists and ankles, taking care not to pull them so tight against her flesh. Then he taped her mouth and ran to fetch the car.

A body was a tight fit inside the boot of a Mini. Not the best car in the world for this purpose, he thought as he lowered her gently inside the cramped space, but he guessed that was something the designers hadn’t felt the need to consider. He did his best to position her comfortably for when she woke up, then slammed the lid.

He stared pensively at the back of the car. Sighed, bit his lip, shook his head. No, that wasn’t going to do at all. He had a long drive ahead, and it was a confined space in there with very little ventilation. He’d only just found her. The last thing he wanted was to suffocate her.

‘Fuck it,’ he said out loud. Opened up the boot, slipped the pistol out of his pocket. Thumbed off the safety, picked the best angle and emptied the rest of the magazine into the inside of the metal panel. The 9mm bullets punched neat round holes through the shiny green bodywork. Fourteen of them. When he closed the boot lid a second time, it looked like a colander – but at least she’d be able to breathe.

He walked back to the poultry shed, thinking about what he was going to do about the other two. If they’d been the kind of shaved-headed hard-nuts who normally went about wearing swastika badges, he might just have left them to rot where they lay. But these guys were different. Something else was going on.

He trotted over to the house, yanked the carving knife Ruth had thrown at him out of the doorframe, and snatched a black felt pen from the table where the phone was. He used the knife to cut the ties around the handsome one’s wrists, then reached into his bag for another tie and attached the guy’s left hand to the bearded one’s ankle. He tossed the carving knife a few yards across the garden, so that they’d see it when they came to. The good-looking one would be able to use his free hand to cut himself and his friend loose, but not before they’d had to drag themselves several very difficult yards over the ground. That should delay things a bit.

One of the principal advantages of committing crimes against criminals was that they tended not to call the police to complain about it afterwards. But in Ben’s experience you could never be too careful, and that was what the felt pen was for. He rolled the bearded guy over on his back and used it to write on his forehead.

ICH WEISS WER SIE SIND.

I know who you are, in big bold letters from temple to temple. The message ought to get them thinking. Ben smiled grimly at his handiwork, then got to his feet and ran back to the car, mapping out in his mind the best route into France without going through border checkpoints.