The morning was cold, crisp, but the sun was out at least and gently warmed Ryker’s back as he worked away. He held the bundle of wires in his left hand, using the fingers on his right to count through them…
‘These four,’ he said, isolating the chosen ones.
‘You’re sure about this?’ Angel said from behind him. He glanced at her. The sun behind her cast a strange glow around her face, shoulders. Almost angelic…
He shook his head at his own thought.
‘Only one way to find out,’ he said.
He snipped through the wires in one go then looked over his shoulder at Angel again and both of them held their breaths as though awaiting an obvious response.
‘Is it… done?’ Angel asked, sounding dubious.
‘It’s done,’ Ryker said. He closed the metal door to the electrical box and rose back up. He looked along the street. A few cars were moving by, a few pedestrians, but no one paid him or Angel any real attention.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We don’t have long.’
Angel checked her watch as they marched back the other way, along the row of handsome, redbrick Edwardian terraces.
‘How long, exactly?’
‘Depending on traffic? Thirty minutes after she leaves the house. Which should be in… about one or two minutes. If she sticks to her usual schedule.’
Angel shook her head and Ryker wasn’t sure if it was in horror or amazement.
‘And you figured this all out… because…’
‘I told you already. Podence was already on my radar as someone who was blocking intel on the Syndicate. But I prioritized someone else over him.’
‘Fatma Yaman.’
‘Yes. Because I thought her role meant she had more direct access to intel on Karaman. Which… I guess was right. In a way.’
‘But Yaman’s now dead?’
‘She is. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Podence were behind it.’
She stopped walking and Ryker followed suit. ‘What?’
‘I think… H showed me a picture of the suspect who killed her. A CCTV image.’
Ryker knew the image. It was the one he’d helped find.
‘And?’
‘I think it was Mason Black.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘No. I never got the chance to ask. But it makes sense. That Mason was working with this Podence guy.’
‘I guess it does.’
He was angry with himself for going after Yaman to start with rather than Podence. How much of the mess could have been avoided if he’d made a different choice?
They started walking again.
‘So you’d already scoped out Podence’s home,’ Angel said. ‘Figured out the security. Watched him and his family to determine their regular schedules so you could eventually break in.’
‘Exactly.’
Angel snorted. ‘You don’t do half measures, do you? Remind me never to get on your wrong side.’
‘I’d strongly advise you to remember that,’ he said with a wink.
They were four houses away when Ryker slowed up in his step. ‘There they are,’ he said, referring to the uniformed child and smartly dressed woman who emerged from the front door. The woman ushered the kid down the steps to a waiting black car.
‘In a rush,’ Angel said.
‘Always. Normally shouting at the poor kid for not doing something or other quickly enough.’
Moments later the black car blasted past, engine revving.
‘She didn’t notice the electricity went down?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. And if she did she’d probably assume it’s a blown fuse or whatever. Would it stop you getting out the house if it happened when you were already late for the school run?’
Angel didn’t answer and looked upset by the question. Ryker realized it had probably made her think about her daughter and that other missed life. A source of undoubted mental torture for her.
‘And the alarm system?’ Angel asked.
‘It’s a hybrid system. The base unit and individual sensors are all wired and mains powered. But if the electricity cuts off—’
‘Which it has—’
‘Then battery units switch everything to a wireless mode. Which connects the base to the individual sensors through radio signals.’
‘So cutting the mains hasn’t disabled the alarm, just turned it wireless.’
‘So we can use this to block the signals,’ Ryker said, taking out the jammer. ‘Tricking the base unit into thinking everything is in good order.’
‘Something makes me think this isn’t particularly new for you.’
They reached the front steps and Ryker did one more check along the street. All clear.
‘You could say that. You ready?’
‘Yeah,’ Angel said, not hesitating before she headed up the steps, reaching into her pocket as she did so.
The tools were Ryker’s but she’d asked to do her part, and clearly it wasn’t the first time she’d picked a lock because less than thirty seconds later she turned the handle and opened the door. They paused for a second, awaiting the sound of the alarm which didn’t arrive, before she pushed the door open fully and they both stepped inside.
Ryker closed the door behind him. He checked the alarm box on the wall. It hadn’t been set anyway, Podence’s wife apparently in too much of a rush.
‘We need to be quick,’ he said, checking his watch.
‘But you want us to stick together.’
‘Sorry. But… yeah.’
‘Whatever. Lead the way.’
So Ryker did. Ground floor first. The house was spread over four floors. Each was long and narrow with rooms of a mixture of sizes coming off the landing, but all with tall ceilings and classy, no doubt expensive furniture.
Nothing of interest on the ground floor. The basement next, but that only contained a guest suite and a home gym.
Ryker heard the noise as he moved from the basement stairs into the hall.
‘Someone’s coming!’ he whispered to Angel as she came out into the hall behind him. The front door handle turned.
‘There!’
Ryker pulled her into the downstairs bathroom, through another door and into a cloakroom. He pulled the door to. There was no handle on the inside. He heard footsteps and then voices echoing from out in the hall.
‘I asked you three times already if you had everything you needed!’ Podence’s wife shouted. ‘Where is it?’
‘I don’t know!’ the kid shouted back. ‘You must have put it somewhere!’
‘I didn’t put it anywhere. Think, Ryan, think!’
‘It might be… with the coats.’
Angel shuffled on her feet as if trying to alert Ryker but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t already heard.
The door to the bathroom opened. Footsteps close by outside. He heard the breaths of Podence’s wife right on the other side of the door, could smell her floral perfume. She took hold of the handle, the door moved a couple of inches and light streamed in, right onto Angel’s wide-eyed face.
‘Mom! I got it. Come on!’
‘Jesus, Ryan!’
She stomped away and only moments later, when the front door banged closed again, did Ryker let out a long sigh. Angel burst out laughing as she pushed open the door but then abruptly stopped and turned to face Ryker.
‘What would you have done? If she’d seen us?’
‘We don’t need to worry about that now.’
And he didn’t want to think about what Angel would have done either.
‘Let’s get this finished.’
Ten minutes later they’d scoured the next two floors, but found nothing of interest, much to Ryker’s dismay. At Yaman’s home, she’d had a desktop computer. The contents of that hard drive had led him to Karaman. But it appeared Podence was more careful than his colleagues, leaving no electronic equipment lying around at all, even in his plushly finished office.
‘Wait a second,’ Angel said, feeling around inside a tallboy cabinet in the corner of that room. She pulled her head back out. ‘Come take a look.’
She looked really pleased with herself and as Ryker peered inside he saw why. But then his optimism faded as quickly as it’d arrived.
‘A safe,’ he said, looking at the metal door behind a false panel at the back of the tallboy.
‘Tell me you don’t want to get in there,’ she said.
‘We have about ten minutes left before mom returns home.’
‘You know how to crack a basic safe like this, though, don’t you?’
‘Do you?’
‘Yeah. This one…’ She looked back inside. ‘It’s a pretty simple electronic lock. I’d be inside in less than an hour.’
‘Like I said – mom will be home in a few minutes.’
‘So tie her up and go to town on this thing.’
She was deadly serious too. ‘I’m all for doing what it takes, but she’s innocent.’
‘As far as you know. Except she’s married to enemy number one. And you’ve already broken into her house.’
‘She doesn’t know that. And she won’t if we leave quietly.’
‘Fine. We could probably even just take the whole thing. A safe this size would only weigh seventy, eighty kilos.’
‘Great, let’s lug it down the street and onto the tube. We can toss it to each other like a basketball as we go.’
Angel hesitated, looked unsure. ‘You’re being sarcastic.’
‘Yeah, I’m being sarcastic. Sorry, but we leave it. This time, at least.’
He really did hate that idea, but it was the best option. He walked out of the room without waiting for a comeback and headed down the stairs to the hall. He took one last look in the kitchen. Were they really about to leave here entirely empty-handed?
He turned to head for the exit. Angel stood in the kitchen doorway, a wide grin on her face. She held up the handbag.
‘You’re kidding me?’ he said.
‘What? This is off limits too?’ She sounded really despondent about that.
‘No. I meant, she seriously left it?’
‘Must have brought it in when she returned, then left it on the sofa in the lounge when they rushed back out.’
She put her hand in, drew out the phone. ‘Yeah?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ he responded.
But then Angel’s momentary triumph dropped away again. ‘What the…’
She put the handbag on the kitchen island as she walked over to the bookshelves in the corner where an array of picture frames were on display.
Ryker went over to her side. She stared at one picture in particular. Podence, his wife, another couple who Ryker didn’t recognize. The men were dressed in black tie, the women in classy-looking ball gowns. They stood inside a huge marble-covered atrium.
‘You know them?’ Ryker asked.
‘The woman with the Podences. Not the man.’
‘And?’
‘And the last time I saw her was through the scope of a sniper rifle as I lay on a rooftop in Beirut.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘I’m not kidding you. I remember every damn detail of that day and those memories will never fade. She traveled with Karaman that day. With him and his family.’
‘But do you know who she is?’
‘Yeah. I do. Her name is Melike Arhan. She’s Ismail Karaman’s sister-in-law.’