Then she saw the figure sitting against the trunk of the chestnut tree.
She stopped short, a cold chill down her spine.
Was it a tramp, a hobo of some sort? You rarely, if ever, saw anyone like that in this exclusive district. He was slumped and ragged, and wearing what looked like a dirty old coat, tatters of which were moving in the breeze.
But then she realised what she was actually seeing.
The ragged, bundled object ‘seated’ against the tree-trunk was nothing more than a bin-bag stuffed with rubbish and waste paper.
Again feeling ridiculous, Louise hurried on.
The car was still half-hidden in murk. Its near-side, where the driver’s door was, was up against the undergrowth, and the narrow gap this afforded was completely hidden in shadow. But now Louise just wanted to get home. She was spooking herself with all these daft, pointless worries. So she went deliberately and boldly around to the driver’s side, acutely aware of the deep undergrowth at her back as she fiddled with the key-fob. But she could no longer hear movement in it, and even if she could, so what? It was summer. Birds would be roosting in there. She was only a few hundred yards from the Packhorse Common, where wild deer had been sighted. In any case, there was no sound now.
She unlocked the car, threw her briefcase into the back and climbed in behind the wheel. A moment later, she’d gunned the engine, and was on her way out.
She left Gerrards Cross via the B416, heading south towards Slough. At Stoke Poges she turned right and continued west along narrow, unnamed lanes. It was a breezy but warm night, so she had her window partially wound down. Moths and other bugs fluttered in her headlights. The eyes of a cat sparkled as it slid across the road in front of her. At Farnham Common she swung south towards Burnham. Belts of trees growing on either side of the road hemmed her in a tunnel, their branches interlacing overhead like fingers.
Louise had relaxed again. She was only three miles from the snug comforts of home.
But with a thunderous bang, she lost control of the vehicle. It lurched violently downward and slewed across the road, the steering wheel spinning in her hands. She jammed her brakes on, skidding to a halt with a fearsome screech.
When finally at rest against the verge, she sat there, stunned. The only sound was the engine ticking as it cooled. She jumped out.
What she saw left her astounded: her front two tyres hung in shreds around their wheel-trims. It was the same with her rear tyres. They’d literally been ripped to pieces; spokes of broken ply-cord poked out from them. She walked around the vehicle in a circle, scarcely able to comprehend the misfortune of it. One blow-out would have been bad enough; she’d never changed a wheel before and thought she could probably do it, but here – in the middle of the woods, at this time of night? Not that it mattered now, because she didn’t have spares for all four of them.
She fumbled in her jacket pocket for her mobile phone. She’d have to call Alan. Okay, he was at the golf club and would probably have had too many drinks to drive, but there might be someone who could come and pick her up. If not, he’d know what to do.
Then Louise spotted something else.
The phone was now in her hand, but her finger froze on the keypad.
About forty yards behind the car, something glinted with moonlight as it lay across the road. She walked slowly towards it, but stopped when she was only halfway.
It was a ‘stinger’ – at least, that’s what she thought they were called. One of those retractable beds of nails that police use to stop getaway cars after bank robberies. Someone had deliberately left it across the road.
Louise realised that she was shaking. She backtracked towards the car. Had some hooligans done this, some idiotic bunch of kids who had no better way to waste their time? Or was it something more sinister? Not allowing herself to think about the latter option, and certainly not glancing into the unlit reaches of woodland on all sides, she scrambled back to the car and yanked open the driver’s door.
She paused briefly to consider: she couldn’t drive on her hubcaps of course. But she could lock herself in. Yes, that was what she’d do. She’d lock herself in and call for help. She climbed behind the wheel, closed the door and made to apply the locks when she sensed the presence, just to the left of her.
Slowly, she twisted around to look.
He was in the front passenger seat, having clearly climbed in while she’d been distracted by the stinger. He was of heavy build and wore dark clothing: a bulky leather jacket and underneath that a ‘hoodie’ top with the hood actually pulled back. His hair was thinning and he had a pair of huge, jug-handle ears. But he had no nose – just a gristle-filled cavity – and no eyelids, while the rest of his face was a patchwork of puffy, raddled scar tissue.
Louise tried to scream, but a thick hand in a leather glove slapped onto her mouth. A second hand, also gloved, fastened around her throat.
And began to squeeze.
It was typical Bermondsey – scrap yards, wasteland, litter, graffiti running over everything.
Heck drove through it with a jaundiced eye, thinking only that his battered old Fiat Brava matched this decayed environment perfectly. To his left somewhere lay the river, delineated by the occasional crane or wharf-tower. He passed a row of boarded-up buildings on his right. A bag-lady sat on the kerb, her knees spread indecently wide as she drank from a bottle of cheap wine. Directly ahead, derelict tower blocks – bleak edifices of stained concrete and broken glass – were framed on the slate-grey sky.
He drove on, too weary to be oppressed by such a scene.
The appointed meeting-place turned out to be a crossroads close to a low railway arch. Corrugated steel fences hemmed it in from all sides and there was a single streetlight, its bulb long smashed. On the left, a mound of flattened brick rubble provided sufficient room for parking. However, Heck cruised on past, surveying the place carefully. There was nobody there, which, checking his watch – it was now ten minutes to six – was not surprising. He was early for the rendezvous, but at this hour on a Sunday morning there was unlikely to be anyone about in this desolate neck of the woods. He passed under the arch and drove another three hundred yards until a broken fence and a patch of scorched ground afforded him a turning-space. After that, driving slowly this time, he made his way back.
At the crossroads, another vehicle was now present. A maroon Bentley had parked, and a tall, lean man was standing against it, reading the Sunday Sport. He wore a black suit and had short hair bleached a shocking blonde. When Heck saw the car and the man, he groaned with disbelief. In truth, he hadn’t expected a great deal from this meeting. The voice on his office answering-machine had been abrupt and to the point, stating simply that it had information he might find useful. It had then given a time and place, and had rung off. When Heck had traced it, the call had been made from a payphone somewhere in South London. He’d received dozens of similar things over the last few months, but on this occasion, perhaps because he was so dog-tired, he’d started thinking irrationally; he’d wondered if maybe he’d get a break simply because he was due one.
Not so apparently. It was another false dawn.
He pulled up on the opposite side of the crossroads and climbed from his Fiat. He knew that he looked like shit: he was groggy with fatigue, sallow-faced, unshaven. His jacket and tie were rumpled, his shirt stained from drips of late-night coffee.
Heck idled across the road, hands in his trouser pockets. The tall, blond man, whose name was Dale Loxton, glanced up over his newspaper. This close, his otherwise smart