Never Coming Home (24 page)

‘No.’ Luce was walking forward. Devlin held his ground, wary. ‘But I knew how much it would upset you. And there were scores to settle, not like those between you and me, but enough.’ He shrugged. ‘All done now. But I’m disappointed.’ The full mouth pouted. ‘You were not as surprised to hear from me as I expected. Has someone been talking?’

‘Nah. I kind of deduced that you were still around. Elmore – the woman and her son in Florence. Had your stamp on them. Phillip Saint and the crash outside Atlanta? Yours, too?’

‘Of course,’ Luce acknowledged, hands spread, with obvious delight. ‘So sharp,’ he approved. ‘I have to say that
what was meant to be a small, private commission escalated spectacularly when you came on the scene. When I recognised you there, at the crash site. Well – be still, my beating heart.’ He put his hand to his chest.
As if the bastard
had
a heart.

‘After you ran the car off the road, you waited on the ridge opposite, to watch.’
Of course.
‘In case the crash didn’t do a complete job.’

Luce inclined his head. ‘Observe with field glasses. Standard procedure. Too far away to be noticed, but also too far away to intervene when you appeared. You were much too fast in calling the authorities. If it hadn’t been
you
, I would have been
so
annoyed.’ He was smiling. ‘But please, indulge my curiosity. Why did you come out of the dark for this? And why wait so long before stirring everything up? It created
so
many loose ends that had to be
 
… attended to.’

‘The crash was simply wrong time, wrong place.’ Devlin felt an icy shaft shivering through his guts. All that death, down to him?
No, Luce, playing mind games.
‘When I next came to London I contacted the mother. And found out the children had been switched.’

‘Ah!’ Luce let out a sigh. ‘The lovely Katarina and the operation of chance.’ He shook his head, marvelling. ‘Of all the people, in all the world
 
–’

‘Can it, Luce,’ Devlin cut in, hoarser than he would have liked. ‘If you’ve been alive all these years, why didn’t you come after me before this? You could have found me, if you’d wanted, staged an accident. No one would have known.’

‘But then you wouldn’t have known either, Michael. That is
so
important. I’ve always dreamed of us having this encounter, but I’d almost given up hope. The Service protects its own, you know that. I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t find you. I was – incapacitated – for quite a while after our last meeting.’ The eyes flickered. ‘And wishing to remain
dead
rather limits one’s ability to hunt someone down. So much risk of showing one’s hand and becoming the hunted. When I saw you at the crash site, I knew the gods were smiling. You were finally mine. Even then it took a while to trace you to Chicago. And of course there was the
preparation
. I have somewhere all set up. A secluded little venue, well away from prying eyes. We’re going to have such good times together, Michael, before I let you go. I thought I was going to have to lure you home on some pretext, but then you came to me.’

Luce’s voice changed abruptly, rasped. ‘You came to
me
, Michael. Remember that. As you die.’ Luce hammered the words out, taking one pace forward, then another. Devlin held on, didn’t step back. Any moment now – he could see light in Luce’s eyes, pupils that were usually flat sparked with venom.

‘I want you to feel it, every second, just like
he
did.’ The light in the eyes now was flaring, otherworldly. He might have been talking about Bobby, but Devlin knew he wasn’t.

‘That was a fucking stupid
 
…
accident
. No one imagined
 
–’

‘No!’ The voice shuddered. ‘It was you. Just as if you’d used the hammer yourself. But now you’ll
know
.’

Devlin threw himself to the side as the knife whistled through the air. He rolled and was on his feet as Luce slid the other from the sheath at his wrist. Devlin kicked the blade out of Luce’s hold and moved in.

It was close, brutal and dirty. Another knife clattered away, pushed aside inches from Devlin’s face. They jabbed and punched and kicked. Devlin’s body was soaked in sweat. Head ringing from a sideswipe that he dodged a second too late, Devlin staggered before catching his foot behind Luce’s knee and yanking hard. Luce pulled him with him as he fell, and kept pulling.

Devlin controlled panic. His assessment had been right. Luce was much slower, but he had the weight. If he got it across Devlin’s body – Devlin squirmed into an ungainly move that flung him clear, splattering him on the deck, at the expense of most of the breath in his lungs. His ear was bleeding. Luce was already scrambling to his feet. Devlin was almost too winded to roll aside as Luce’s boot stomped into the space where his abdomen had been, two seconds before. He rolled again, and again and then again, gaining precious space. Luce had stopped advancing, standing still to watch, his chest heaving. Devlin shuddered as the pale eyes raked his prone form, deciding where to strike first. His hand scrabbled, of its own volition, searching frantically around on the floor. Something to hit out with. Something to throw.
Any bloody thing.

Luce was walking forward. Devlin nearly sobbed in relief as his fingers connected with a thick cable, snaking across the floor. Desperation powered his arm as Luce set his foot on the loose end. He jerked the cable, hard. Luce went down with a thud that rocked the floor.

Devlin was on his knees and then his feet, circling. Luce wasn’t moving. There was a portion of a broken desk under his head. Had he
 
–

With a roar, Luce came up off the carpet and straight at him. Devlin jumped back, catching his foot and falling, arms flailing. He hit the ground again as Luce advanced, a piece of the desk held out like a spear. Devlin grabbed it, feeling splinters bite into his palm, and ripped it away. But Luce was too close to avoid. He grabbed, lifting Devlin bodily, to slam him down.

Kicking out at Luce’s groin, and turning in the air, Devlin miraculously got his feet under him, only to stagger as he landed. He sprawled, all his weight on his left wrist, and felt the ominous crack as the bone impacted against the floor. Pain shot up his arm. On his knees as Luce loomed over him, he grasped his useless left hand in his right and powered both up into Luce’s face, clamping his teeth down over the hot needles stabbing his forearm.

He was upright and backing off, panting, as Luce swayed, blood dripping over his mouth from a smashed nose. Devlin heard something between a groan and a whimper. He wasn’t sure who it was coming from. He was flagging, his left hand hanging powerless.

They’d edged, slowly, towards the windows. Behind the mangled glass the sun was rising. Bobby’s body swung eerily in the breeze from a partially shattered pane. Devlin feinted to one side, just missing the slick pool of blood that would have taken his foot from under him.

He had to end this. His strength was failing and his hand was useless. Which left low, animal cunning.

He backed away, nursing his arm. Luce’s head was up again, his gaze hard and focused. Devlin powered in, fingers of his right hand stiff, going for the eyes, only to be flung back. He let himself relax, collapsing slowly against the bank of windows. Cracked glass juddered. His head flopped to one side. Luce was coming for him, hands outstretched, horrible triumph on the ravaged face.

At the very last second, just as Luce reached him, Devlin bent his knees up to his chest and pitched himself sideways, with all the strength of his screaming calf muscles. Luce hit the damaged window, headfirst.

For a silent second it seemed as if nothing had happened. Then the glass shattered into fragments and Luce hurtled through it, screaming.

Devlin flopped over onto his hip to watch, stomach like ice. Luce’s body rocketed forward, in a hail of splintered glass, then described a wide, lazy arc, out over the rail line and right into the path of the approaching goods engine.

The sound of protesting metal and screaming brakes drifted skywards, curiously divorced from the scene playing out below, as the train ground ponderously to a halt.

Devlin sat up slowly. His whole body was shaking. It took three attempts, with unsteady fingers, to get the phone out of his pocket, two to tap out the number he’d never expected to use again. He hadn’t forgotten it. And it hadn’t been changed.

The call was answered on the second ring. Devlin spoke the required words. There was a pause, and another voice came on the line, controlled and unruffled, the questions brief and incisive. Devlin breathed deep, riding on that clarity and letting it focus him, stirring responses that he hadn’t called on in years.

Eyes averted from Bobby’s body, he made his report in terse sentences. Heard the almost imperceptible silence at the other end, when he came to the part about the train. There was another pause, a couple of clicks, and a new voice.

‘If there’s chaos and mayhem at this time of the morning I might have known it would be you, Michael.’

‘Sorry.’ He rubbed his ear. His hand came away with blood on it.

‘Damage?’

He flexed his hand, wincing. ‘Some.’

‘You can still move?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Then, as our American friends would say, haul your butt out of the building and into the street. Move away. Then wait. We’ll be along.’

The line went dead.

Devlin folded the phone and stuck it back into his pocket. Painfully he pulled himself to his feet, took a step towards Bobby, then shrugging, changed his mind.

He turned and walked slowly back to the stairs.

Following orders.

Chapter Thirty-Two

There was a small group of onlookers, hovering beside the outer barrier. Early morning passers-by, a couple of joggers. The police had been briefed to expect her. The metal barrier was moved aside. Kaz drove in, as she’d been told, and stopped the car. A police vehicle was parked crosswise, ahead of her, blocking most of the road. She could see another, in an identical position, further along the street. Car-top lights winked and there was an occasional garbled burst of chatter from a radio, but otherwise the scene had a strange, hushed quality about it. A uniformed officer standing beyond the stationary car beckoned her forward. She edged gingerly past its bonnet, two wheels on the pavement, a blank brick wall too close for comfort on her other side.

She stopped again, then nosed the car into a space, opposite a set of gates, as directed by the policeman. There were other vehicles within the barrier, and a few more scattered in an empty parking area, behind a wall. Through the sagging gates she could see a couple of cars and two large vans, one black, one blue. The centre of attention seemed to be a derelict building. As she watched, a group of men emerged, pushing a black-wrapped bundle on a trolley. Kaz was dimly aware of some sort of muffled mechanical noise coming intermittently from the direction of the railway line. She couldn’t hear any trains.

She got out of the car, hunching her shoulders at the early morning chill. The policeman guarding the gate stepped forward, but before he could intercept her another man had slipped past him and was walking towards her. Something in his build, and the way he moved, reminded her of Devlin.

‘Mrs Elmore?’ He stopped about a foot away from her. Kaz registered a round, unremarkable face, with ice-shard eyes. This time the shudder had nothing to do with the cold.

‘I had a phone call.’ She winced over the recollection. Phone jolting her out of sleep. Handset, clock, fumbling. Scooping her hair from off her face. Hands trembling.
Nothing good at 5:57
 
a.m.

It was a stranger, clipped, precise, who knew her name. Then
his
voice, husky strained, subdued.

‘I’m here to collect Mr Devlin,’ she said carefully.

‘Mr
 
… Devlin. Ah
 
…
 
yes.’ He looked as if he hadn’t heard
the name before. ‘If you’d like to follow me.’ There was some
nudging and pushing going on amongst the gawpers around
the barrier. A couple of mobile phones were raised, to take
pictures, before a burly policeman stepped in to block the view.

‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Elmore.’ Her escort spoke over his shoulder. ‘As I believe he explained, Mr
 
… Devlin has been slightly hurt. In the circumstances it was felt advisable to contact you to pick him up.’

Kaz chewed down the questions that were seething under her tongue. The guarded way Devlin had spoken, when they’d handed him the phone, had alerted her. She’d wondered, for a giddy second, if she was being invited to
bail
him out. But he had just asked her to come for him. No explanations, and she’d known not to ask. The first voice had told her where, and how to get there.

Whoever this guy ahead was, and he had high-end spook written all over him, he certainly wouldn’t be bothering to answer questions. It was fine to turn her out of bed, when it was barely morning, and expect her to drive immediately to an unfamiliar part of London, but God help anyone who told her why.