Last Light (35 page)

CHAPTER 70

12.31 a.m. EST
New York, USA

The line connected. There was a solitary ring before it was answered by a male voice.

‘Cornell and Watson Financial Services, how can I help you?’

‘I want to book an appointment,’ he replied quickly.

‘I’m afraid we’re booked up for the foreseeable future, sir.’

‘How about Christmas Day?’

A pause. ‘What time sir?’

He sighed. ‘A minute past midnight.’

‘One minute.’

It was a necessary ritual. They were as much at risk of being exposed and destroyed by
them
; more so in fact, since their resources were dwarfed by those of their quarry. The agency was small, tiny in fact . . . a staff of no more than about thirty agents operating out of the rear offices of a discreet back-street firm in New York. The firm, seemingly, offered walk-in financial services, but never quite seemed to be able to fit an appointment in to anyone who might actually walk in off the street.

He heard a male voice. ‘Jesus! We thought you were dead! We’ve been trying to contact you since Tuesday!’

‘If you must know, Jim, I’ve been through a shitting war zone. My—’

‘No names remember.’

‘My fucking sat’ phone got blown to pieces on Tuesday, and I’ve been shot at God knows how many times since—’

‘We’ve had a breakthrough. A huge goddamn solid gold breakthrough.’

‘—this whole crazy thing . . . Breakthrough? What are you talking about?’

‘Our target, the one you’re with right now . . . he’s not who we want.’

‘Well I’m not with him right now, not any more. We got separated. I’m waiting for the military to find me space on a flight out of Turkey right now.’

‘It’s his
daughter
. It’s the target’s daughter.’

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘We think she could be able to identify one or more of
them
.’

He suddenly found his pulse racing. ‘You’re shitting me. What’s happened?’

‘She called him on his cell, Tuesday morning. Christ, you might have even seen him take the call.’

He tried to think back. Tuesday morning, they’d been fighting for their lives in that pink compound, all hell breaking loose. He couldn’t specifically remember Sutherland taking any calls, but then that whole day was a jumble of blurred, panic-stricken memories.

‘And listen, we think she saw
several
of
them
.’

‘Several? Several of the One Hundred and Sixty?’

‘No, better than that . . . several of the Twelve.’

‘My God!’ He looked anxiously around the communications tent. No one was close enough to hear him talking, no one was even watching. The soldiers were all too busy holding the razor-wire perimeter or hustling. He spoke more quietly all the same. ‘We have to find her.’

‘I know, we have to re-deploy very quickly.
They
may know what we know. They might even be closing in on her as we speak.’

‘We’ve got to try.’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s in England?’

‘That’s right, London.’

‘I can try and swing the next plane out of here heading that way. I’ll do it somehow. Can you get some more assets on the ground over there?’

‘It’ll be difficult under current circumstances. We might be able to fly a couple of men in to help you.’

‘Do it. Do it now.’

‘We will.’

Mike was about to hang up; the Marine colonel had said he had just a couple of minutes, no more.

‘What’s it like there?’

‘Here? New York? It’s shit. The place is falling apart, just like everywhere else. We get power for a couple of hours a day, and there are riots everywhere. Not good.’

CHAPTER 71

7.31 a.m. GMT
Guildford

Ash was awake with the first light of dawn. The thought of spending another twenty-four hours in Kate’s apartment, waiting for her to show up, was an agonising prospect. He had the patience of a saint, if he was waiting on a certainty, but this was a long shot. This woman might never return.

But she would try, wouldn’t she? It’s the homing instinct. In a time of crisis, that’s exactly where everyone tries to get - home.

And the delay could be quite legitimately rationalised. Tuesday afternoon things went pear-shaped. Kate would have decided after seeing the riots, and finding out the trains weren’t running, to camp out at work overnight. Wednesday came - she’d have been hoping the police had restored order, and perhaps a limited train service had returned. But there’d been no sign of that. There’s a canteen at work maybe? So another night camping there, basic food and drink laid on. Thursday, same thing again. Only by then the canteen would be running low on food, and everyone would be getting very anxious to return home. There’d still be no news on the radio, and no sign of police retaking the streets. Friday, it’d be obvious to her and her colleagues they couldn’t stay there forever, the rioting must have died down once everything that could be looted, had been looted.

At some point today, Ash decided, she’ll set off for home, walking with other wary pedestrians along the main arteries out of London. It’ll take her seven, eight maybe nine hours on foot? Provided nothing stops or delays her.

She’ll arrive sometime today.

That sounded very much like wishful thinking to Ash. But there was not a lot else he could consider doing. Perhaps, he could return to the Sutherlands’ house and wait there? Pointless . . . Sutherland had warned her to stay well away. There were many other names in the phone book he could try, one by one. But most of the places - he’d looked them up on a road map he had found by Kate’s telephone table - were a long way out of London.

He decided the best course of action would be to hang on until tomorrow. And then if she still hadn’t turned up, he would camp out at the Sutherland home. Sutherland’s daughter, or his wife, or even the man himself might come by, just to pick up one or two essentials . . . that ol’ homing instinct was very, very strong.

Yes, that would do then. First thing tomorrow morning, Ash decided he’d head back up.

CHAPTER 72

7.51 a.m. GMT
Shepherd’s Bush, London

‘Please don’t go outside Lee!’ Jacob whimpered, putting down his knife and fork heavily. They clattered noisily against the plate, and on to the dining-table. He hopped off his chair, scurried round the table and held on to her arm. ‘Please don’t go!’

She looked down at her little brother, his face crumpled with worry.

‘Look Jakey, it’s safe right now. They only come out at night, the Bad Boys. We’re perfectly safe in the daytime,’ she said, not entirely convinced by her own assurance.

‘But last time you went out, you were gone for ever. I thought . . . I thought you were . . . dead.’

‘I’ll be fine, Jake. I’m just going to check on our neighbours, that’s all. You can watch me out of the window of Jill’s bedroom, okay? Keep an eye on me as I do the rounds.’

Jacob stared at her silently. His face looked unhealthily pale and unnaturally older; skin rumpled with the bumps, grooves and lines of unceasing worry. She wondered if he had a suspicion of what had happened to Dan. If he’d guessed that he must be lying dead down some back-street . . .

Don’t do this Leona, think about something, anything, else.

Now really wouldn’t be a good time to fold and start sobbing, not whilst she was trying to settle down Jake’s jangling nerves.

‘I’ll be fine. Now, let’s both finish our pilchards, okay?’

She wanted to check on the DiMarcios’ house, a few doors up. The DiMarcios’ next-door neighbours had been broken into last night. Leona had heard the noises; very unsettling, chilling noises. It had all proved too much for her and she had scooped Jacob up and taken him into the back room to sleep, where the sounds of the house being ransacked were, at least, muted.

Shortly after they had finished their breakfast she stepped out of the front door, and her heart skipped a beat; she spotted gouge-marks in the green paint on the front door, around the lock. Someone had been working on it, trying to jimmy the door quietly. She wondered if it had been one or two of the gang members discreetly hoping to break into a house on their own, whilst their colleagues were busy elsewhere? Or someone else?

Either way, it suggested their turn was approaching, if not next, then soon. The thought of them, all of them, the bad boys, streaming into the house, raucous shouts, smashing, grabbing . . . and finding Jacob, and finding her . . .?

Time was running out.

She desperately wanted to locate some other people they could group together with. She’d be more than ready to share the tinned food and bottles of water they had left. It wouldn’t last them quite so long, but she would happily trade a week’s sustenance for some others that she could feel safe with; preferably adults, older adults.

Leona found herself remembering a childhood fantasy she’d once had: living in a world populated only by teenagers - the beautiful people, young, alive, energetic and fun. It was an essay she’d written at school. A world that was one long party, nobody to boss them around, no parents to tell them what time the party had to end, or to turn the music down, or how much they were allowed to drink, or getting them up early the next morning so they wouldn’t be late for school or college.

She laughed weakly. Well, that was it, she’d witnessed that little fantasy of hers being played out in the avenue over the last few nights. But it was no fantasy - it was a nightmare, and it reminded her of a book on the required reading list for her English Literature A-level.

Lord of the Flies
.

She headed down the short path, out through the gate and on to St Stephen’s Avenue. The casually discarded refuse was beginning to build up now. Not just discarded bottles and cans, but broken pieces of furniture, smashed crockery. A mattress lay in the middle of the street, stained with drink, some blood, and other things she didn’t want to think about.

It was their sex-pit.

That’s where they were doing it, with their gang girls, their Smurfettes.

The house to the right of the DiMarcios’ had been ‘done’ by the gang; that much she knew already. She’d seen them breaking into it last night. But her heart sank as she approached the DiMarcios’ home. They had been paid a visit as well. Leona had been hoping to hook up with them. She liked Mr and Mrs DiMarcio, trusted them even. Mr DiMarcio, Eduardo, was a cab-driver, a big round man originally from southern Portugal, whose laugh was loud and infectious. He was fun. But she also knew he could handle himself. Last year he’d caught a couple of lads trying to break into a car parked down this street; boys from the rough White City estate nearby who’d spotted this avenue as a soft target and started to prey on it. Mr DiMarcio had handed out a hiding to them both. She vaguely recalled the boys had tried to press assault charges, but she wasn’t sure it had got anywhere close to going to court. By contrast, Mrs DiMarcio was slim, always well-groomed and came across as very cultured, well-educated. Leona wished she’d accepted their offer to take her and Jacob away from all this on Tuesday, even though it might have meant the chance of missing Mum or Dad coming home.

The DiMarcios’ front door had been smashed open.

She knew they hadn’t been away. Leona had seen the curtain twitching on Wednesday.

She wondered whether they had managed to escape; perhaps when the house next door was being ransacked they had decided the smart thing to do was to leave their house, to creep out, hopefully to find someone further up the street who would take them in. If they’d come knocking on her door, she would have opened it to them in a heartbeat.

She looked round, diagonally across the avenue back towards Jill’s house. Upstairs she could see the little blonde tuft of Jacob’s head looking out at her. He waved. She waved back and then stepped up the DiMarcios’ path and in through the open front door.

The mess inside was horrendous. The floor was strewn with broken things; plates, dishes, expensive-looking crockery, Mrs DiMarcio’s beloved china cats. The walls were gouged, scratched and scuffed, ragged strips of their lovely expensive wallpaper had been torn away, graffiti sprayed here and there.

In their kitchen, it was obvious the room had been stripped clean of anything remotely edible or drinkable. The Bad Boys had been through it like a horde of locusts.

Leona was relieved not to have found any signs of violence done to the family, so far. She quickly checked through their lounge and dining-room which opened on to a conservatory and a small area of decking beyond that. Everything was dislodged, moved, overturned or broken.

With a growing sense of relief that they had vacated before the Bad Boys had arrived, she decided she had to at least take a quick look upstairs. She needed to know that they’d got out okay. She took the stairs quickly, not wanting to spook herself by taking one at a time and cringing with each creak.

She jogged up to the top of the stairs. Only to find Mr DiMarcio’s thick, rounded legs sticking out of the doorway to their bedroom.

‘Oh God, no,’ Leona whimpered. She took a few quick steps across the landing towards his body and saw the rest of him lying in the doorway. His head was battered and bruised. His face almost unrecognisable with swellings and bumps and abrasions. But he had probably died of blood loss from the stab wounds. There were several of them on his chest, his lower arms, his hands.

He was fighting them off with his fists.

She could imagine him doing that, throwing big hard punches at them, flailing at them furiously, shouting curses at them in Portuguese. But they’d brought him down with their knives; slashing at him, like a pack of dogs bringing down a bear.

‘Oh, Mr DiMarcio,’ she whispered.

She knew he would have only fought like that to defend his wife. With a heavy heart she could guess what she was going to find in the bedroom if she stepped over his body and looked inside. She resolved not to go in, but looking up at the wall opposite the doorway, she caught sight of Mrs DiMarcio’s bare legs in a cracked mirror on a chest of drawers. Her bare legs, scratched and bruised, and blood, dark and dried on the bed-sheet beneath.

She felt a momentary rush of nausea. It passed quickly, swept aside by an overpowering surge of rage.

‘You fucking bastards!’ she found herself hissing angrily. She knew if she had a gun in her hand now, and one of those evil little shits was cowering in front of her, she’d be able to pull the trigger.

‘You fucking bastards!’ she screamed angrily. Her voice bounced back at her off the walls, and then it was silent.

Except it wasn’t.

She heard movement. Someone was upstairs with her, and, probably startled by her cry, had been thrown off balance and kicked something by accident that rolled noisily across the parquet floor in the next room and came to a rest.

Oh shit, oh God, oh fuck.

Run? Yes.

She turned quickly, stepping across Mr DiMarcio’s feet and heading for the top of the stairs. She bounded down them, nearly losing her footing and taking a tumble. At the bottom of the stairs she chanced a look back up but saw nothing, and heard nothing either. She headed towards the open front door and out into the morning sunlight.

She sprinted across the street, weaving around the broken furniture towards Jill’s house. As she reached the gate, she chanced another look back, and saw a curtain upstairs twitch ever so slightly.

Oh my God, someone was in there with me.

She hammered on the door with the palm of her hand, and a moment later heard the bolt slide and it creaked open.

‘W-what happened Lee?’ asked Jacob.

She looked at him and realised the time had come to start levelling with her little brother.

‘We’re going to have to defend ourselves Jake.’

He said nothing.

‘Okay . . . okay,’ she gasped, her mind racing. ‘You saw that film,
Home Alone
, right?’

He nodded.

‘Well like that, booby traps and stuff, okay? Just like the film . . . just in case the Bad Boys try coming in here.’

‘They won’t, will they?’

Leona found she was too tired and too frightened to even try putting an optimistic spin on this. If they were coming tonight, Jacob needed to know.

‘Tonight they might.’

He didn’t go into hysterics as she thought he might. He simply nodded and said quietly, ‘Okay, let’s get ready for them.’