The street was quite ordinary in character, part of a typical unassuming suburban neighbourhood. There were nice, quiet families living here. The fathers all had jobs. The children went to school on time, and when playing out in the evening were polite to adults and would keep the noise down if there were babies in bed. Newspapers were delivered. Milk floats made early morning rounds.
No one batted an eyelid about the people who lived on this street.
It was perhaps unusual to see nocturnal activity here. For someone to be placing bags and suitcases in the rear of a car at four o’clock in the morning was out of the ordinary, but then it was the middle of August, and people flew to Spain, Greece and the Canaries at all kinds of ungodly hours at this time of year. Even so, Mike Silver made as little noise as possible as he hobbled in and out of one particular house, ferrying various small items of luggage down the garden path and placing them in the boot of his Citroën C2. It had all been packed and ready, and waiting on the upstairs landing. Not because he’d anticipated having need of it this evening, but because it was always packed and ready.
Once it was all stowed in the boot, he made a last trip into the house, not so much to check that everything was locked up or unplugged, as a regular holidaymaker would do, but to ensure that no items of paperwork had been left behind. In truth, there was minimum chance of this. Silver kept only small items of paperwork, and none of it in his own name. But of course, he hadn’t been the only occupant of fifty-eight, Rentoul Street, and despite the discipline he’d routinely imposed on his underlings, not everyone was always as careful about cleaning their tracks as he was – though on this occasion, thankfully, they had been.
Satisfied, he pulled a clean anorak over his roll-neck sweater, and turned the lights off one by one. Soon only the hall light remained. The switch for that was next to the front door. He intended to flick it off as he stepped into the porch. But just as he was about to do this, he noticed someone approaching along the garden path. It was a youngish, blonde woman in a light coat, slacks and high-heeled boots. ‘Mr Hobbs?’ the woman enquired.
‘Hello?’ Silver replied, standing in the doorway.
‘I wonder if you can help us?’
‘I’ll try,’ Silver said, noticing that a white BMW and a battered old Chevrolet parked behind his Citroën, and that a thin, older man with a scraggy grey beard was circling around it.
‘I’m Detective Superintendent Piper,’ the young woman said, showing a police warrant card. ‘This is Detective Inspector Palliser.’
Silver smiled. ‘I see.’
‘Sorry if we’ve caught you going on holiday.’
‘I’ve got a couple of minutes. What can I do for you?’
‘How long have you lived at this address?’
‘Oh … all my life.’
Gemma pondered this, wondering why he didn’t seem to have a Coventry accent, and then spotting a reddish mark on his cheek. ‘Does anyone else live here with you?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘No, I’m resolutely single.’
Gemma glanced past him into the lighted hall, and was surprised when the man shifted sideways and drew the front door half closed, as if to prevent her seeing anything.
‘No one else has access?’ Gemma asked, distracted by the sound of Palliser’s mobile phone ringing and being immediately answered.
The man shrugged. She noticed that the hand with which he clutched the door handle had knotted until its knuckles were white. ‘Erm … friends call round from time to time.’
‘Friends?’ Gemma said.
‘Ma’am!’ Palliser shouted, hurrying up the path, his face graven in stone. She turned to face him. ‘Heck’s been shot!’
Gemma swung back round to the man, but the front door was already closing. She threw herself forward, smashing it open with her shoulder before the lock could engage. The man staggered up the hall, limping badly, but Gemma followed and brought him down with a tackle that would have made a rugby three-quarter proud.
‘You bitch!’ he bellowed. ‘You can’t do this! You’ve got nothing on me …’
‘We’ve got that to start with,’ Gemma retorted, indicating a white shirt and a blazer hanging at the foot of the stairs. Both were liberally stained with blood.
Palliser barged into the house behind her. ‘Apparently he’s alive … just.’
Gemma nodded, before twisting the man’s hands behind his back and saying: ‘Now Mr Hobbs, or whoever you really are, I’m arresting you on suspicion of attempting to murder a police officer. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you don’t mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say …’
‘You spunk-breathed whore! You’ll be next!’
‘… will be given in evidence.’ Gemma leaned next to his ear. ‘Starting with that!’