The journey from Prague to Ryker’s native England took just over a day. Air travel would have seen the journey over in a few hours, but Ryker was always reluctant to travel by such a security-restricted method if he could avoid it. So it was trains and buses for him, at least until he reached the British Isles, at which point he organized a car from a local rental shop near the Eurostar terminal in Ashford. He spent the night in a basic guesthouse midway across England, and the following morning had only a two-hour drive to the southwestern county of Gloucestershire to complete his journey.
In the early throes of winter, the days here were short, nighttime arriving a little after 4 p.m., and following several hours of surveillance, Ryker called it a day.
He made his next trip to Upper Slaughter – a tiny village in the Cotswolds – the next day, just as darkness was on the horizon. The village was nestled across the slow-moving River Eye and comprised a collection of handsome limestone homes. Some were small and modest, others large and elaborate, and most dated back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Ryker had heard of the village before, and its neighbor Lower Slaughter, though had never been to either before this trip. He wondered how the villages had got their names, the imagery conjured in his mind was bloody and violent. The names seemed apt given why he was here now.
He kept his head down as he walked along the twisting streets. There weren’t many people about. Not on a cold afternoon at this time of the year. Ryker imagined in the summer that the stone houses, with their decorative mullion windows and projecting gables, and all surrounded by the greenery of the British countryside, would be glorious. On a day like this, the whole scene was bleak.
Ryker turned a corner. The river tinkled a few feet to his side. He crossed over a stone bridge, edging toward the last properties in the village. He headed on past a row of terraces to a stone wall that at just under six feet gave little clue as to what lay beyond. At least until he came to the wide wrought-iron entrance gates to the property. A police car remained stationed on the outside. A solitary policeman in a thick hi-vis jacket stood arms folded at the closed gates. Ryker nodded at the lawman who responded in customary fashion.
He kept on walking.
In the brief glimpse beyond the gates, he’d also spotted another marked car further up the driveway by the house, probably another police officer there. Not a problem. Just the two police squad cars. When he’d been here yesterday it’d been a hubbub of activity with vans and cars and a mini army of people jostling about, many of them in their white forensic suits.
The wall veered left, away from the pavement, and Ryker veered with it, heading onto a dirt footpath that was frozen solid. The wall continued on for fifty yards before it veered left again. The footpath didn’t. Ryker went with the wall and headed on through the tall grass of the field that stretched into the distance. He moved another ten yards before stopping to quickly look around. No one in sight. He couldn’t even see a single building from this spot. He scaled the wall and jumped down into the back garden of Hawthorn Cottage.
Although the plot of land encircled by the stone wall was a good size, perhaps half an acre, the home in the middle was quaint rather than extravagant – a three-bedroomed house, Ryker had found from his search on the internet, where he’d identified the property’s selling particulars from when it was last sold eight years previously.
There was no view from this angle of the front gates, or of either of the police cars or the sentries. Still, Ryker moved cautiously up to the back door of the house.
He had the tools in his pocket to pick the locks, but he could see through the small square panes in the door that there was a deadbolt both at the top and bottom. He wasn’t getting in through there unless he broke the glass to reach in.
He looked across the back wall of the house. The windows were original. Metal-framed, with lead running across the glass to add strength to the brittle single-paned glazing. It would take little effort to smash through, though doing so wasn’t ideal given the closeness of the police.
He wouldn’t need to do that anyway. The aging frames were badly warped. The window closest to Ryker had a near quarter-inch gap between window and frame at the bottom-left corner, and he could see through the glass that it was only held shut by an equally aging clasp.
With a gloved hand, he took the screwdriver from his pocket, stuck the end into the gap. Took a breath. Then yanked across.
Snap.
Ryker held his breath for a few more seconds. Silence.
He pulled the window open fully then slithered inside. He landed on a stone floor. Through a combination of the disappearing daylight outside and the property’s small windows, the room was poorly lit, and he remained on the spot for a few beats to let his eyes adjust. Some sort of sitting room. Decked out exactly how Ryker envisaged an English country cottage would be. Big, old fireplace with a wood basket next to it, worn sofas, a few knickknacks. A small TV in the corner was the one modern convenience, but it wasn’t the dominant fixture like in the vast majority of twenty-first-century living spaces.
The more he saw, the more the questions and doubts tumbled in his mind as to how Pavel Grichenko – a man Ryker had long thought dead – had come to be here. Had come to be the person who called this home. A far cry from someone who ten years ago had been a multi-billionaire oligarch.
Ryker spotted a cluster of photo frames on a dresser in the corner. He moved over and glanced across the pictures without picking them up. His heart beat a little faster in his chest with each picture he took in. There’d still been plenty of doubt in Ryker’s mind as to whether Grichenko had been here at all. Whether the whole story in the press was a hoax or just an incredible tale of mistaken identity.
Not now.
In the pictures, Grichenko was a little older, a little thinner than the last time Ryker had seen him in Doha, but the main facial features – his pinched eyes, his prominent nose – were absolute giveaways. Grichenko had lived here all right.
What was very different in the pictures, though, was the woman Grichenko was with. When Ryker had ‘known’ Grichenko, he’d been married to a former Russian opera singer – rich and famous in her own right in her home country. They’d had two children together. She and the young kids hadn’t been in Qatar that fateful night, when, as far as Ryker was concerned, his team had completed their mission and eliminated Grichenko.
The official story in the aftermath was that he was missing, but Ryker had always seen that as Kremlin spin. His own crew had confirmed that Grichenko was dead, and plenty of checks had been carried out since on his widow and children, who continued to live alone in Russia.
Yet it appeared now that Grichenko had very definitely survived that night in Doha, and had found a new life, and a new wife in England.
The press reports Ryker had seen stated the woman had been found dead with him, in this very house. Most likely collateral damage, whoever she was, and however she’d come to meet a man who, as far as the rest of the world knew, had been missing since an assassination attempt a decade previously.
Ryker carried on through the house, those thoughts still whirring in his mind. The press reports, although naming Grichenko, had been sketchy on details of the crime here, and there was no sign downstairs of where the bodies had been found. No evidence that this was a crime scene at all, really.
He headed upstairs. Found the master bedroom.
So this was the room.
The bedsheets remained ruffled. Clothes were on the floor. Forensic markers were placed all around the room. This space had been searched, tested, recorded. For what? There was no obvious sign of a crime here. No blood. No signs of a struggle. Yet the press had been very clear that this was a murder investigation. Husband and wife found dead, together, in their home.
So what had led the police to so quickly conclude this was murder?
Tabloid speculation suggested poisoning, though Ryker believed that was most likely a leap based on past form for Russians dying in suspicious circumstances on UK soil. The authorities wouldn’t have been able to conclude toxicology tests so quickly after the event. Unless the police weren’t being forthcoming on certain aspects. Could the murder have happened earlier than was being reported?
Ryker did know, for absolutely sure, that if there was any doubt as to whether Grichenko had been killed using a radioactive poison, like some of his countrymen before him, then this crime scene would have been a different beast altogether. Likely the whole village would have been on lockdown.
So what was the story?
Ryker continued to survey the room. Continued to think. He was in the en suite bathroom, looking over the pill bottles in the mirrored cabinet above the sink, when he heard tires crunching across the gravel drive outside.
He closed the cabinet and listened. A car engine shut down. A door opened. Then another. Both were closed, then he heard softer footsteps across the gravel.
Ryker slunk out of the en suite and to the bedroom window. He carefully peeked down below. A man and a woman. No uniforms. No forensics gear. These were plain-old detectives. The two arrivals moved out of view below Ryker and started a brief conversation with the policeman on guard by the front door.
A few moments later and the wooden floor beneath Ryker’s feet shuddered as the front door was opened and then closed with a thunk.
He stepped back from the window. Crept across the wood to the open bedroom door. The two detectives were in conversation below, though they were too far away, and their voices too low for him to make out any of the words.
He was about to step out onto the landing when he heard footsteps on the stairs.
Ryker slid back inside the bedroom and edged behind the door.
Just one set of footsteps coming up. Getting closer by the second. Ryker’s hands hung by his sides, at the ready. He really didn’t want a confrontation, and certainly had no interest in hurting these two… but if he was left with no choice he’d have to do something.
A creak on the floorboards at the head of the stairs. Soft footsteps on the thick landing carpet. Another creak. Right outside the door now. He could hear short, shallow breaths on the other side of the wood. Ryker breathed too, as silently as he could, as his brain rumbled with how he’d tackle the detective if they stepped over the threshold and spotted him.
Non-lethal. Subdue them and run.
What were they doing? Just standing there, staring inside?
Ryker clenched his fists.
Did they know he was there?
‘Adam, get here, now!’
The female detective. Downstairs. So it was the man who’d been standing there.
Footsteps heading away now. Ryker slowly exhaled. He waited a few more seconds. Unclenched his fists, then ever so carefully crept out onto the landing. He peered over the banister. Could hear the heightened conversation below. He knew exactly what they were talking about. They’d spotted the broken window.
Time to go.
But then, as he glanced back into the bedroom, a silvery object caught Ryker’s eye. Coming from the wardrobe across the other side of the room. The left-hand door was slightly ajar. The metallic object just visible beyond. Ryker strode over. Pulled the door further open. A safe. Built into the wall behind a cut-out in the back of the wardrobe. The safe door was open.
Nothing left inside.
Ryker didn’t dwell. He straightened up, spun around, and legged it out of the room. A creak here. A creak there. Too late to care about that now as he could already hear the female detective shouting to the two uniforms outside. Soon there would be four police officers inside, searching, and perhaps more on the way.
He didn’t move toward the stairs, though. Instead, he headed to the door for the bedroom in the opposite corner. He hadn’t yet had a chance to look in there, and as he pushed open the door he saw it was a spare room with nothing but a single bed and small wardrobe. And a window, which Ryker knew from the orientation looked out to the side of the house. Probably as good as he could hope for right now.
Ryker unclasped the lock, swung the window open, and quickly peered down below. No one there, though alert voices traveled upward to him. Ryker didn’t hesitate a second longer. He grabbed the window ledge and climbed out, then eased his body down so it was dangling. He let go and dropped to the ground with a soft thud.
No time to take stock, he turned and sprinted for the wall.
‘Hey, you! Stop! Police!’
Ryker didn’t stop. He drove forward. Practically ran up the wall, flung himself over, spinning around to land on his feet on the other side. He turned left, heading in the opposite direction from which he’d arrived, and into a wood. He ran on, snaking between the trunks, until he reached the tree line at the far edge, and then looked back. There was no one in sight behind him.
Content that he was on his own, Ryker slowed to a brisk walk when his feet hit tarmac. No one around here, though the not-too-distant sounds of sirens drifted over the rooftops.
Ryker found his car, sank down into the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine and pulled out into the road. No one on his tail. A few turns later and he was on the A429. About as busy a road as there was in this rural area. Traffic moved freely. Ryker was soon hitting sixty. He spotted flashing blue lights approaching on the opposite side of the road, but moments later the police car whizzed past. He watched it disappear in his rearview mirror.
A close call, and far from ideal, but for now he was in the clear and left with plenty to think about from his visit to Grichenko’s murder scene.
One thing was for sure: He still didn’t know anywhere near enough about what had happened there.
Those two detectives, on the other hand?
That was his mind made up. The police were Ryker’s next focus. First up was finding out who they were, and then he’d do whatever he could to figure out exactly what they knew.