Tartaglia tucked the torch away in his pocket and sprang upwards, grasping the large overhanging branch of the tree close to its base. He used the trunk for purchase and slowly hauled himself up into the wide crook, swinging his leg over so that he was sitting astride the branch. In the distance, he saw the bobbing lights of the torches belonging to Minderedes and two uniformed police officers coming towards him from the car park. They were in a stretch of grassland belonging to the London Wetlands nature reserve, which lay at the back of a large section of Castelnau to the east, bordered on the other side by the river. The centre had already closed for the day when they got there and it had taken a while to find somebody to open the gates for them.
The tree overlooked the back of Jane Waterman’s house and gave him a good temporary vantage point. The house stood about a hundred feet away beyond a high wall, the roof and turrets silhouetted against the night sky. The garden was impressively large, with a lawn and flowerbeds and what looked like a gazebo in one corner. A quick recce had shown that the surrounding walls were too tall to climb, so they had sent for ladders and lights. In the dark, it was unlikely that anybody looking out of a window would see him; not that anybody appeared to be home. The curtains were open, with no lights on anywhere. He might be waiting there for a while, he thought, shifting his position to make himself more comfortable.
The Polo had gone from the drive when he walked past the front of the house twenty minutes earlier, and there were no lights on at the front. Having asked permission of the neighbours on either side, Wightman, Chang and another couple of uniformed policemen were lying in wait in their front gardens, well hidden from the street and from the house where Tartaglia had last seen Dave Simpson. Simpson was linked to Richard English, Jake Finnigan and, now, via Jane Waterman’s house, to John Smart, but everything else was speculation. They intended to arrest Simpson and had a warrant to search the premises, but they also needed confirmation that Simpson and the man known as ‘Spike’ were one and the same. Hannah Bird wasn’t answering her phone, so he had eventually had to track down Sharon Fuller at home, where she had just started cooking dinner for her family, and send her off to Peckham to see Mrs Tier with a printout of the photo that Ellie Simpson had emailed him.
He had been up in the tree for a good twenty minutes when he received a text from Wightman:
Red VW Polo just pulled up on drive
Is it Simpson? Tartaglia texted back.
No. Single young female occupant. Now going inside house.
Tartaglia told him to wait and do nothing. Simpson was the priority. He had borrowed a pair of binoculars from the Wetlands office and as he scanned the rear of the house, a light came on at the back and Chantal Blomet entered the kitchen. They had been trying to track her down via the hotel where she worked, without success. At least now they would be saved further trouble. He watched as she took off her coat and scarf, hung them over a chair, then started to unpack the contents of a couple of shopping bags. Moving quickly backwards and forwards between the fridge and the cupboard, she seemed very at home. When she was finished, she switched on the kettle and sat down at the table. She took a mobile phone out of her handbag, stared at the screen for a moment, then put the phone back in her bag, made her coffee and carried it out of the kitchen. A few seconds later a series of lights came on and he watched her go upstairs to what looked like a bathroom on the first floor. She pulled down the blind.
‘Find out what’s happened to the ladders,’ he whispered to one of the uniformed officers standing below. ‘Go back to the wildlife centre and call from there. I don’t want any noise out here.’
About ten minutes later, he felt his phone vibrate again; another text:
Man on foot. Looks like Simpson. Going in through front door. What shall we do?
Wait. I’ll come round to you
He watched the windows for a moment, but no more lights came on inside and there was no sign of Simpson. He had probably gone straight upstairs to see Chantal. Tartaglia slid over onto his front and dropped down to the thick, soggy turf below.
‘Simpson’s back,’ he told Minderedes, who was standing below, stamping his feet up and down on the ground trying to keep warm. ‘You stay here and cover the back. When the ladders arrive, climb over and come in from the rear. Text me if you see anybody come out.’
Tartaglia ran back through the meadow and out of the entrance onto Castlenau. The road was still busy with traffic from the tail end of the rush hour. It all looked perfectly normal. Hopefully, Simpson hadn’t spotted anything amiss. He joined Wightman, Chang and the other two officers at the front.
‘He’s definitely inside?’ he asked.
Wightman nodded. ‘He was in the front room a minute ago.’
‘OK. Let’s go.’
They followed him into the garden of Jane Waterman’s house. Lights were blazing in the room to the right of the front door and the TV was on, but there was nobody inside. He turned to Chang.
‘Wait here in case he tries to come out the front. The rest of you come with me.’
It took a single blow from a sledgehammer to force open the front door. Wherever Simpson was, he must have heard the noise. Tartaglia paused in the hall and held up his hand, listening. He thought he heard the distant sound of running footsteps, although it was difficult to tell over the noise coming from the TV. ‘Stay here,’ he said to one of the officers, ‘and you check in there,’ he said to the other, pointing towards the kitchen. ‘Dave, you’d better go and make sure Chantal doesn’t escape. She’s upstairs – on the first floor, I think.’
He went into the large, threadbare sitting room. It was empty. There was no other door to the room and the windows were closed. He returned to the hall and tried the door opposite.
‘David Simpson,’ he called out from the bottom of the stairs. ‘This is the police. We have a warrant for your arrest. Come out now.’ He waited for a moment. Still nothing. He called out again but there was no answer and no sound of movement anywhere in the house. He went into the kitchen.
‘Nobody came this way,’ the officer said. ‘The outside doors are locked. I’ve checked them all.’
‘Did you see anyone in the garden?’
‘It’s too dark.’
‘There must be some lights for the garden somewhere.’ He hunted around but couldn’t find any switches for external lights. Hopefully the floodlights and ladders would be there soon. As he turned to go, he heard the sound of a whistle from the front: the alarm signal. He rushed outside.
‘There’s smoke coming from down there,’ Chang shouted, pointing to a ventilation grill set into the brickwork of the house, just above ground level. There must be some sort of basement or cellar, Tartaglia realised, although he’d seen no sign of a door.
‘Call for backup. We’ll also need the fire brigade and an ambulance.’
He ran back inside. He could smell burning now. ‘Fire!’ he shouted, visions of the Peckham house and the explosions springing to mind. Was it a diversion, or was Simpson trying to destroy evidence? ‘Fire!’ he shouted again. ‘Everyone out of the building.’ He heard a woman scream, followed by the thud of footsteps above, then Wightman shouted. Chantal Blomet flew down the stairs towards him, Wightman just behind. She was wearing a dressing gown and little else.
Tartaglia was blocking the bottom of the stairs and grabbed hold of her as she tried to push past him. ‘Where’s Dave Simpson?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is there anyone else in the house, apart from you and Dave?’
‘Let go. You’re hurting.’
‘I said, is there anyone—’
‘There’s no one.’
‘What about upstairs?’
‘No,’ she shouted.
‘Are you sure? Where’s Jane Waterman?’
‘Nobody’s here. Just me.’
‘Where’s the door to the cellar?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t know. Let go of me.’
He increased the pressure on her wrist until she screamed. ‘Where is it?’
‘It’s in the garage.’
‘How do I get to the garage?’
‘Over there.’ She jerked her head towards the corridor.
He pushed her forwards. ‘Show me.’
Tartaglia and Wightman followed Chantal through the kitchen into a small utility room that ran along the side of the house.
‘It’s behind there.’ She indicated a curtain at the back of the room.
‘This leads to the garage? And the door to the cellar is through there?’
‘Yes,’ she screamed.
‘Is there any other way to get in there?’
Crying, she shook her head, but he wasn’t sure if he believed her.
‘Once she’s dressed, take her outside and caution her,’ he said to Wightman. ‘A car’s on its way.’
He tried the handle, but it appeared to be locked from the inside. The smell of burning was stronger than ever and smoke was curling through the gap at the bottom of the door. He turned to one of the officers standing behind him. ‘Get the sledgehammer. Let’s try and get in around the front, through the garage.’
Outside, he heard the distant sound of sirens from the direction of Hammersmith Bridge. The garage doors opened outwards, but the wood was dry and rotten in places and it took only a single blow to break the lock. With two more attempts, they managed to smash the doors completely off their hinges. Smoke billowed out and Tartaglia stepped back. As he wondered whether Dave Simpson had some sort of escape route, he heard shouting, followed by whistles from the back. ‘Get the side gate open,’ he shouted to the officer with the battering ram. Within thirty seconds they were through into the garden. As he looked around, a floodlight came on from the top of the back wall and for a moment he could see nothing in the glare.
He heard Minderedes shout, ‘Over there, Sir. Behind that bush.’
As Tartaglia turned, the ground beneath him shuddered, the air exploded with a deafening bang and he fell hard onto the grass. For a moment, he lay there unable to move. At least he was still alive, he told himself, feeling and testing each limb in turn to make sure everything still worked. He felt bruised but there was no real pain. Gradually, head spinning, a strange ringing in his ears, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. The sirens were getting louder and he heard the screech of tyres outside in the road. He gazed up at the house. Flames were rising up through the windows on the ground floor and smoke was billowing out into the night air. He looked around the garden and saw Dave Simpson stretched out motionless on the grass amidst broken glass and debris, only a few metres away. Was he unconscious or just faking? Tartaglia staggered to his feet, heard somebody call out behind him and, as he turned towards the dazzling light, saw Minderedes and a uniformed officer running towards him from the back of the garden.