Adam closed the front door quietly behind him and took off his coat. He had waited at the café for well over an hour for Gunner to come out, but in the end he had given up and spent the rest of the afternoon walking aimlessly around the streets north of Oxford Street, wondering what to do. Gunner’s presence in the house threatened everything, but getting rid of him wasn’t a simple matter. The sheer practicalities of killing him and disposing of his body might be overcome – he had thought about several ways he might manage it, even given the man’s strength and size. He could spike a bottle of his favourite drink, which appeared to be either whisky or Red Bull – and sometimes a mixture of both – with an elephant-sized dose of Rohypnol. When mixed with alcohol, it could paralyse even somebody with Gunner’s physique quite quickly. And there were also other drugs he had used that had a similar effect. Once Gunner was out of it, killing him would be child’s play, although he would have to think carefully about how to deal with the body. But would killing Gunner be enough? He somehow doubted it would end there. The questions kept gnawing away at him: Who else knew Gunner was there? Why was he there? Was it to do with Kit or something else?
The hall was dark and he paused just inside and listened. Was Gunner home? After a moment, he picked up the sound of the TV coming from the basement sitting room. He had been planning on watching a film. They were showing The Runaway Jury, followed by The Fifth Element on Film4. His mind was churning and he needed the distraction. Fucking Gunner. It was the only television, and more importantly the only comfortable place to sit, in the whole house. But he had no desire to be in there with him.
He decided to go and make a cup of tea. On the way downstairs, he stopped outside his bedroom and put the key in the lock. It wouldn’t turn: the door was already unlocked. He had rushed out of the house in such a hurry earlier; had he forgotten to lock it? He didn’t think so. He opened the door, went inside and scanned the room. Superficially, it looked undisturbed. The top two drawers of the small chest were exactly as he had left them, a couple of millimetres open, and the bottom drawer fully pushed in. He checked inside. Nothing seemed out of place. Using his phone torch, he knelt down and checked under the bed where he had stowed his rucksack. He could see the padlock, still intact, the numbers scrambled in the order he had left them. Then he noticed a faint line in the dust, only visible because of the angle of the light. It looked as though it might have been made when a loose strap brushed along the floor as somebody carefully lifted out the rucksack from under the bed. It hadn’t been there that morning. The rucksack contained his most important possessions: his gun, his grandfather’s hunting knife, sharp as ever, which the old man had used to scalp more than one Nazi in the war, and the rest of his basic kit – the disposable gloves, the plastic ties, the handcuffs and the Rohypnol. There was also five thousand pounds in cash, in fifty-pound notes. He undid the padlock and took out the two fat wads of money. He counted them out three times before he was satisfied that not a single note was missing. But maybe Gunner wasn’t after his money . . .
Adam sat back on his heels. Even if Gunner had somehow picked the lock, got into his room and been through his things, and also had the skill to pick the padlock too, did it matter? It was against the law to keep a gun under the bed, but that was about it. It wasn’t a hanging offence. There were no papers or other forms of ID in the rucksack. He kept what he needed on him at all times, and the rest in a lock-up elsewhere, in case he needed to leave suddenly. There was nothing in the room, or amongst his things, that could identify him. But if Gunner had gone to all that trouble to snoop, why had he made the mistake of leaving the door unlocked? Was he just careless, or was it deliberate? Did he want Adam to know that he’d been in there, that nothing was out of bounds and that he could get access whenever he liked?
Rage filled him and he dug his nails deep into his palms. Something had to be done. He would make a plan that night. In the meantime, he needed a drink; something stronger than tea. He went downstairs to the kitchen, deaf to the sound of the TV blaring from the room at the front. Ignoring the pile of dirty dishes that Gunner had left in the sink, he grabbed a glass, hand trembling, and filled it with water. He knocked it back and started looking in the drawers for the key to Kit’s small wine cellar, where he also kept some bottles of half-decent brandy. As he hunted around, he noticed a business card sitting on the counter and picked it up. His heart skipped a beat. The name Detective Sergeant Kevin Moore was printed underneath the Met Police logo. It didn’t say which section he worked for but the card was crisp and pristine. Fresh out of the wallet. He felt the blood rush to his head and stood still for a moment, trying to calm himself. It might not mean anything, he told himself. No point jumping to conclusions. He went into the sitting room, where Gunner was stretched out on the sofa in a pair of Calvin Klein briefs and socks, watching some sort of war movie.
‘What’s this?’ Adam asked, holding up the card. The sound was so loud, he had to repeat himself.
‘Copper came by today while you were out,’ Gunner shouted without looking up.
‘And?’
‘You need to call him.’
Again he felt the rush of heat to his face, sweat breaking out across his back. ‘Me? Why?’
‘Because he wants to speak to you.’
‘I don’t understand. Why does he want to speak to me?’
‘He was asking about Kit. I said you could help.’
‘Why the fuck did you say that?’
Gunner looked around and gave him a dead-eyed stare. ‘Because you’ve seen him more recently than I have,’ he bellowed. He went back to watching the screen, as a helicopter exploded in mid-air.
‘Why the hell’s he asking after Kit? What’s Kit done?’
Gunner turned to look at him again, this time giving him a curious look. ‘Kit hasn’t done anything. Apparently, Kit’s disappeared.’