CHERUB: The Sleepwalker (25 page)

Fahim looked on as he wriggled his foot into a trainer and found his lips moving. ‘She’s telling the truth,’ he shouted.

‘Leave her alone.’

‘Shut up,’ Asif ordered. ‘Wait in my car.’

But Hassam turned suspiciously towards his son. One shoe on and one off, Fahim stared his father down.

‘What do you know?’ Hassam growled.

‘It’s nothing to do with her,’ Fahim shouted. ‘They approached me after Mum disappeared and I let them in the house to install the bugs when you were at a meeting.’

Fahim screwed up his face as his father marched forward until the muzzle of his pistol was right between his eyes.

‘Bugs,’ Hassam shouted. ‘How many?’

Fahim shrugged. ‘Loads, they’re in every room.’

Hassam cursed, then shoved Fahim against the shoe cupboard. ‘Traitor,’ he screamed. ‘Tell me everything you know or I’ll kill you right now.’

But Asif glanced at his Rolex. ‘We need to leave now,’ he said. ‘Whatever Fahim knows, you can find out when we reach the safe-house, and if there’s more than one bug, someone will be coming for sure.’

Fahim trembled as his father squeezed his arm and shoved him towards the front door.

‘My apologies,’ Hassam said, smiling at the blood-drenched, shivering cleaner. ‘I guess you were telling the truth.’

But Hassam didn’t want her crawling out on to the patio and screaming for help, so he shot her in the thigh before striding out to the car.

Lauren’s phone vibrated as she ran with a small equipment pack slung over her shoulder; Rat was faster, but he didn’t know the way. She slowed down and grabbed her mobile out of her jeans.

‘What’s up, Jake?’ she gasped.

‘Mac needs to know where you are,’ he answered. ‘We’ve just driven out of Sainsbury’s and he’s going nuts. We’ve both got voicemails from Fahim on our phones.’

‘Just spoke to him,’ Lauren said. ‘Me and Rat are running to the house. We’re about to turn into Fahim’s road.’

‘Mac’s on the blower to MI5,’ Jake explained. ‘They’re getting an emergency team to review the surveillance recordings. Hopefully they’ll have a better idea of what occurred inside the house in a few minutes’ time.’

‘Rat picked up our receiver and he’s monitoring the live signals,’ Lauren said. ‘The house is quiet. I think they left by car about five minutes ago. We’re planning to go inside and see if we can work out where they’ve gone.’

There was a pause while Jake explained this to Mac, who was finishing his call to the MI5 surveillance team.

‘Have you got weapons?’ Mac asked, as he snatched Jake’s phone.

‘Stun guns and pepper spray,’ Lauren said.

‘OK,’ Mac said. ‘Only go inside the house if you’re
certain
they’ve left.’

‘Got that,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ll keep in touch.’

She started running up a slight hill past gated homes. Rat used his extra speed to arrive first and began scaling the gate. Lauren was tense, but couldn’t resist smiling as she punched the entry code and opened the metal door alongside it.

‘Bloody hell,’ Rat moaned, as he balanced precariously on the spikes atop the gate.

‘I’ve got a front door key too,’ Lauren grinned, ‘but you’re welcome to try battering it down.’

Rat made sure that his tracksuit bottoms weren’t snagged on the spikes before dropping on to the gravel inside. His earpiece fell out as he landed, but he reattached it and had a quick listen to the iPod-sized receiver.

‘It’s dead in there,’ he said.

‘We can’t be certain,’ Lauren warned. ‘Hassam found the relay and busted it, so we’re only getting signals from half the house.’

Lauren held a stun gun in one hand as she unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway. She looked down at the blood-spattered marble, but Rat was the first to see the cleaner’s feet, sticking out of the toilet door.

‘Jesus,’ Rat gasped. He looked away, but the image of the badly beaten woman with chunks of splintered thighbone jutting through her skin still made him retch.

Lauren felt almost as bad, but managed to stare for long enough to see her chest move. ‘She’s breathing.’

‘That’s something,’ Rat said, still too squeamish to look.

Lauren stepped reluctantly through the congealed blood and grabbed Sylvia’s wrist to take a pulse.

‘It’s
so
weak,’ she said urgently. ‘Call an ambulance.’

Shocked by Sylvia’s horrific injuries, the pair had neglected to make sure that the house was empty. As Rat called an ambulance, Lauren made bloody trainer prints as she checked the upstairs and the basement, before finishing off with the kitchen and the office annexe.

‘All safe,’ Lauren shouted. ‘Hassam must have called Asif and decided to bolt as soon as he found the bug. There’s no sign of any packing.’

‘Why didn’t he just get in a car and drive?’ Rat asked.

Lauren shrugged. ‘We put tracking devices in all his cars; maybe he suspected us.’

As she came back through the hi-tech kitchen, Lauren picked the rectangular relay box off the floor tiles. Hassam had tried breaking the box open with a screwdriver or knife, but the plastic hadn’t split. To her astonishment she could hear a distinct whistling sound as she moved it close to her face.

‘Bastard’s faulty,’ Lauren said furiously, as she moved back towards Rat and held it to his ear. ‘He never should have found that relay, but listen.’

Rat shook his head with disgust. ‘It might have cost a life. The ambulance is on its way; five to ten minutes.’

Lauren glanced at Sylvia, something she found easier now the shock had worn off. ‘I know first aid, but there’s not much I can do for her, and I don’t want to have to explain myself when they turn up.’

‘Who’ll let them in, though?’

Lauren thought for a second. ‘There’s bar stools in the kitchen. We’ll use one to wedge the front door and we’ll open the front gate so they can drive right up to the door.’

Lauren’s phone rang as she jogged towards the kitchen.

‘Mac,’ she said, before explaining what had happened.

‘OK, listen,’ Mac said. ‘MI5 got an emergency team to skim through the last recordings before the gunshot. It sounds like Hassam and Fahim are moving to a temporary safe-house, but we’ve no idea where that is. Asif was planning to go and collect some valuables and fake documents from a warehouse. They didn’t mention an address, but I suspect it’s a rented warehouse I saw mentioned in the Bin Hassams’ accounts.

‘I’m in my car now, but the traffic’s solid. MI5 are trying to get someone out to the warehouse, but you two are nearest. Is there a vehicle there you can use? If we lose Asif now, there’s a chance that we’ll lose the whole family.’

‘Hassam’s cars are all here,’ Lauren said, as she opened a door into the garage.

She grabbed the door handle of a Bentley Azure, but it was locked. ‘Rat, go look for car keys,’ she shouted.

‘I’ve got the address,’ Mac said. ‘Have you got a pen and paper?’

Lauren found a notepad and jotted the details while Rat searched.

‘Took you long enough,’ Lauren moaned. ‘We’ve got to get out of here before the ambulance turns up.’

‘It’s a big house,’ Rat said, as he rushed into the triple garage, jangling a starter fob for the big Bentley. ‘Lucky Hassam left it in the jacket hanging on his bedroom door.’

Lauren climbed into the sumptuous leather driving seat and pressed the engine start, followed by the button that activated the garage door and main gate, but Hassam was a big man and she had to waste valuable seconds adjusting the electric seat so that she could reach the pedals.

Rat sat in the passenger seat. He tapped the address Lauren had written down into the satellite navigation as she rolled the big car on to the gravel drive.

‘
Trip programming complete
,’ the synthesised voice said, as Lauren warily pulled the luxury saloon out of the front gates. ‘
Distance three point two kilometres. Estimated arrival time, eight minutes
.’

‘Think I can hear the ambulance,’ Rat said, as he looked down into the footwell and saw the mess their bloody trainers were making of the cream-coloured carpet.

Hassam dragged Fahim out of Asif’s BMW X5 and shoved him across the street towards a Volvo coupé usually driven by his sister-in-law.

‘Call me when you leave the warehouse,’ Hassam said, looking back at his brother. ‘Is there anything I need to do at the house?’

Asif shrugged. ‘You can pray they’re not following us, that’s about all.’

Fahim didn’t dare look at his dad as his aunt’s little Volvo crawled through Saturday morning traffic. He peered aimlessly out of the window, envying the normal lives of the people around him: kids being driven to football games and adults in weekend-wear heading for Ikea or the shopping centre.

‘Is Mum dead?’ Fahim asked unexpectedly.

Hassam tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and pretended not to hear him. ‘I don’t like driving automatics,’ he said, reaching for a gear lever that wasn’t there as they pulled away at a junction, before turning right for the beginning of the M1 motorway.

Fahim had always been scared of his father, but in some ways the revelation of his betrayal was liberating: whatever he said now could hardly make things any worse.

‘If you don’t answer, I’ll take it as a yes,’ Fahim said. Then, as the car pulled off the curving slip road and accelerated to motorway speed, ‘Why did you kill her, Dad?’

Fahim turned to look at his father. His knuckles gripped the steering wheel so tight they were white and sweat streamed down his face.

‘Don’t stare at me, Fahim,’ Hassam growled. ‘I swear to god, I’ll pull this car over and blow your head off.’

‘You gave the gun back to Asif,’ Fahim said. ‘Why did you kill Mum?’

‘She left me no choice,’ Hassam said finally. ‘She took a vow to obey me. When she broke her vow she became nothing to me.’

Fahim had believed his mother was dead for days, but he’d always harboured faint hope and the confirmation hit him hard. ‘What about me?’ he asked, smudging a tear.

‘I can’t stay with you,’ Hassam said, smiling coldly. ‘Even in Abu Dhabi I’ll be a wanted man, but there are many places to hide. I’ll see that your grandfather sends you off to school. Pakistan perhaps, in the mountains. Five or six years of frost, bad food, reciting the Koran and regular beatings should scour the Western mush from your head.’

‘Are we flying?’ Fahim asked, trying his best not to sound upset.

‘You’ll know what you need to know when you need to know it,’ Hassam said sternly. ‘I might not have the appetite to kill my only son, but when we get to the safe-house you’ll feel my belt like never before.’

*

‘We’ve got a trace on Asif’s cellphone,’ Mac said. He’d phoned Lauren, but Rat took the call while Lauren concentrated on the road. ‘He’s using an unregistered phone for his calls, but luckily the idiot’s left his normal phone switched on. He’s at the warehouse now, or close to it. Jake and I are in the car and on our way, but we’re way behind you.’

Rat glanced at the Bentley’s giant sat-nav screen. ‘We’re less than a kilometre away,’ he told Mac. ‘But this is the worst possible car to be driving. Everyone stares and you should see the looks we’re getting when they spot Lauren behind the wheel. And it doesn’t help that she can’t drive to save her life.’

‘Hey,’ Lauren snapped. ‘I can drive, but it’s all narrow streets and this thing’s bigger than the bloody
QE2
.’

‘Don’t start fighting amongst yourselves,’ Mac said firmly. ‘When you arrive, remember that Asif almost certainly has a gun.’

They were snarled up behind a bendy bus and a queue of traffic as Rat ended the call and pocketed Lauren’s phone.

‘Screw this,’ Lauren said impatiently.

She turned the steering wheel to its fullest extent and blasted the horn. The big engine roared as they swerved into the oncoming traffic. The car accelerated quickly past the jam and the traffic coming towards them had to brake sharply to avoid the imposing Bentley grille. The driver of a tiny Smart car pulling out of a turning wasn’t so lucky, and the big Bentley crunched its front end.

‘Careful,’ Rat yelled.

Lauren growled as she pulled back to the correct side of the road. ‘You moan when I’m too timid, you moan when

I’m assertive.’

‘
Turn left in fifty metres
,’ the sat-nav said.

With another horn blast to warn pedestrians, Lauren swung into a side road and hit the accelerator. The big saloon had soft suspension, but not soft enough to stop the front bumper scraping the ground as they hit a speed bump at fifty miles an hour.

‘Jesus,’ Rat shouted.

‘Did you hit your head?’ Lauren grinned, as she glanced at Rat. ‘Good.’

The navigation screen told Lauren that they were less than four hundred metres from their destination. Not wanting to attract undue attention, she slowed to normal driving pace before taking a final turn into a cul-de-sac.

‘
You have now reached your destination
.’

The wire-mesh gates in front of the dilapidated warehouse building were unlocked. Asif’s X5 was the only car in the small lot and Lauren parked the big Bentley across the gates, blocking his way out.

‘Do we wait, or try inside, or what?’ Rat asked, as he grabbed Lauren’s backpack.

Lauren thought for a second before answering. ‘Right now we’ve got the element of surprise, but the moment Asif steps out of the building and sees Hassam’s Bentley he’s gonna know something’s up. And if he’s got a gun, it’ll be too risky to chase him.’

‘Where’s your body armour?’

‘Back at the flat, there wasn’t time to put it on.’

They approached cautiously, Lauren’s stun gun at the ready as they headed towards a door with flaking paint at the rear of the warehouse. Rat crouched low, then peeked inside through a filthy window.

‘Light’s on,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a couple of bags and a backpack inside the door, but I can’t see Asif.’

Lauren had her lock gun ready, but the door came open when Rat turned the knob. It hadn’t been oiled in years and the rusty hinges squealed. They gave Asif a few seconds to respond to the noise before straddling the bags in the doorway. Rat peeked inside the smallest one, a Fila backpack containing fake passports and wads of pounds, UAE dirhams and American dollars held together with elastic bands.