They had found the farmhouse. Stan had halted the car about a quarter-mile down the road and he and Fitch prepared to move forward together, leaving the others in Tim’s car.
‘You armed?’ Fitch asked.
‘Not so you’d notice.’
‘Right.’ Fitch left, went to his car, returned a moment later with an automatic and two spare clips.
Stan inspected it. ‘A Glock,’ he said. ‘Your boss had class.’
Fitch grunted some kind of reply and then turned his attention to Joy. ‘Stay put,’ he said. ‘Be good.’
Making the most of the cover afforded by the rain and cloud and filthy weather, they approached the house from the side. Stan recalled seeing a gate leading into the field they now crossed. It was not the ideal approach, but it was more practical than trying to force their way through the thicket of thorn hedge or trying to approach the house by road.
‘There’s a longish drive,’ he told Fitch. ‘Narrow and the hedge is high. There’s nowhere to go if we’re spotted.’ So across the field it was, with the hope that no one was standing at the gate to see them.
A dozen yards from the five-bar gate they halted, listening. The wind howled and the driving rain lashed at their faces and exposed hands, chilling them, stiffening Stan’s fingers and reminding him painfully of his advancing years. He signalled to Fitch that they would move forward. Slowly, very slowly.
Fitch dropped low and Stan eased past him, checking the gate and the yard beyond for signs of life. He saw nothing, then, from the opposite end of the gate to where he’d left Fitch positioned, he found he had a view of a lit window.
Three men and a woman, two sitting at a table, the third man leaning against a kitchen range while the woman shifted something on the stove top. He didn’t recognize any of them, but felt no surprise at that. Haines liked to keep his teams separate. Cells, he called them, like he was some big-shot spy or terrorist. As Stan watched, a fourth man came into the kitchen and picked up a tray. Stan counted three mugs as the man paused to exchange a comment with those seated at the table. He saw them laugh. So, three plus three, plus the woman. Any more?
He eased the gate open just enough to slip through, waited while Fitch did the same, closed it, hoping the small protesting squeak emitted by the hinges would be lost in the noise of the storm.
‘At least four males, one female. The kids are probably on the first floor. There’s a light, flickering, looks like a television.’
Slowly the two men moved around to the back of the house. Outbuildings defined the limit of the yard and backed on to the field. Farm equipment cluttered the concrete, creating both cover and hazard. A back door promised access into the house, but Stan was unsurprised to find it locked. Was it bolted too? Would it be a possible point of entry?
Darkened windows on the first floor at the rear. Coming round to the side, the downstairs windows were lit, were three men, watching television, drinking the cups of tea, chatting about whatever was on the box. They looked relaxed, as unconcerned as the men occupying the kitchen.
Haines might be expecting me to come here, Stan thought, but no one sees me as a viable threat. After all, they’ll assume that I’m alone. We may be able to make use of that.
‘We need a distraction,’ he said to Fitch. ‘And we need a plan.’
Fitch nodded and they turned back the way they had come, crossing the field and returning to the car.
Rina listened as they told her what their reconnaissance had established. ‘Are you sure the children are there?’
Stan shrugged. ‘This is where I left them. Haines has shipped in extra cover. What else are we to think?’
‘So, it’s time to call Mac,’ Rina said. ‘Let the police take it from here. It’s foolish not to, Stan.’
‘She’s right,’ Joy said. ‘Isn’t she, Fitch?’
The big man nodded. ‘Nothing to be gained by us storming in there if the police can do it for us,’ he said. ‘The kids are as much at risk if we go in as if the police do it. Less, probably, there’s only the two of us. No offence, Rina, but the three of you aren’t exactly trained for this, are you?’
Stan sighed, let down but having to accept that the others had a point. ‘Do it,’ he said.
Coran came down from the first floor and into the kitchen, halting the laughter and conversation.
‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘I saw him. He did a recce and then went and there’s someone with him. I couldn’t see who.’
‘You sure?’
‘Course I’m sure. I couldn’t get a clear shot from the window or I’d have finished him. Look, he’s no dumb ass, he took Duggan’s daughter right off the boat, it’s possible he’s been able to call on her dad’s network.’
He saw the men exchanging glances, felt the mood change. ‘So, I take the kids, now, before they come back mob-handed.’
Coran studied the men carefully. The three in the sitting room were just added bodies; he wasn’t bothered about them, they’d do whatever Grogan said and it was Grogan who was the focus of Coran’s attention now. He sat at the table, considering his options. Grogan knew Coran, knew he’d been Haines’s right hand for the past twelve months or so, had no reason to doubt his word, but he’d also been given a fair amount of conflicting information in the last few hours. Haines had sent extra men. Coran had then turned up unannounced, acting, he said, off Haines’s orders and then spun a yarn about Stan Holden, a man Grogan knew only by reputation, snatching some girl from right under Haines’s nose.
Now he was suggesting that he take the kids away from the safe house.
He shook his head. ‘I should ask the boss.’
‘Do it,’ Coran said. He leaned against the range, surveying the room. ‘Any more tea in that pot?’
‘Thought you didn’t want one.’
‘That was before I knew I’d be losing the option,’ Coran said with a smile. The woman, Tina, smiled back. Her eyes told him she fancied him a lot more than any of the other thugs vying for her attentions. Coran could almost smell the testosterone in the kitchen.
Grogan picked up his phone. Out of the corner of his eye, Coran could see him looking at the dialling list and considering. One of the things Haines despised, one of the things that drove him into a right royal rage, was people questioning his orders. Grogan would not want to seem to be doing that.
Tina handed over a mug of strong tea. Coran sipped. He saw Grogan make up his mind and lower the phone.
Coran reached across the counter, scooping up syringes and a small glass phial. ‘You want to give me a hand?’ he asked Tina. ‘Bit of luck they’ll be asleep and know nothing about it till they’re there.’
‘Where? Shouldn’t I come? The kids are used to me now. Poor little buggers will be scared as hell.’
Coran shook his head. ‘Can’t tell you. You know that.’ He saw the discomfort in her eyes. He had seen that same expression in Stan’s over the past days and look where that had led. She’d break, Coran knew it. Soon too. She’d been with the little girls now for over a week, long enough to get attached.
Big mistake, Coran thought. Haines should know better than to give the opportunity for relationships to be established but he’d let that extra bit of opportunistic greed get the better of him this time.
Coran set the half-empty mug down on the counter and gestured that they should get on with it. Reluctantly, she followed him up the stairs.
Minutes later the twins were stowed in the boot of Coran’s car, unconscious and, at Tina’s insistence, wrapped in the bed quilt. They were still in the nightclothes they had been wearing the night Haines’s men had taken them from their beds.
‘You sure they won’t suffocate?’ Tina fretted.
Coran sighed. ‘It’s a bloody hatchback. Look, parcel shelf, not some posh saloon with an airtight boot. They’ll be fine.’ Fine as long as Daddy cooperated.
Coran did not yet know that Goldman was out of the game and sitting in a police cell.