Tim Stevens - Jokerman

It was the sound of glass breaking.

‘God,’ James breathed.

By the time Tullivant reached Fulham, the tracking beacon on the screen had remained stationary for some time, in a location just off Parson’s Green. Tullivant didn’t know the area all that well, so he chose his route by instinct, taking the occasional wrong turn but generally homing in.

Because he didn’t know exactly where he was heading, he knew it was a risk to take the car right up to the location marked by the beacon, in case his arrival was easily noted. On the other hand, he wanted to be close enough to his vehicle to be able to access it quickly if necessary. He zoomed in on the display until the names of the individual streets became visible.

The beacon pulsed alongside one of the streets. It suggested that Emma, or Emma’s phone in any case, was inside a building. And probably a house, since this was a residential area. A safe house of some kind, then. One of many that the Security Service would operate throughout the city, and indeed the whole country.

Compromising, Tullivant pulled over at the side of the road under a street lamp two blocks away, and got out. He considered taking the Timberwolf in its bag, which he had stowed in its compartment under the seat, but decided against it. This was more likely to be a close-range job.

Inside his leather jacket he had a Heckler amp; Koch nine millimetre pistol with a spare magazine.

The few passersby didn’t give him a second glance. Cupping his phone in one hand to shield the blue light from the display, Tullivant headed in the direction of the beacon.

At the foot of a hill, he stopped. It was the end-of-terrace house on the left, if the GPS tracking signal was accurate. And he had no reason to believe it wasn’t.

The house appeared to be in darkness. Heavy curtains hung before all the visible windows, so it was possible there was illumination within which was being prevented from escaping.

After standing completely still for two minutes, absorbing the sights and sounds around him, Tullivant detected no tell-tale signs o an ambush, no obvious security measures.

He crept up to the front of the house, one hand inside his jacket and on the grip of the pistol.

Beside the front door, a frosted glass window gave onto a corridor. He’d been wrong; this window wasn’t curtained. And he could see no light beyond.

Tullivant drew a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves from the pocket of his leather coat and pulled them on. From another pocket he took a balaclava, and he fitted it over his head.

Holding his breath, Tullivant turned the doorknob and applied gentle pressure.

It was locked. There was no sudden blare of an alarm from within.

Tullivant put his shoulder to the window beside the door and leaned. The glass gave a little, creaking, before a splintering crack made him wince at its loudness.

He stopped, listening.

From somewhere inside, he heard raised voices. A woman’s, and overlapping with it a man’s, lower, more placating. Tullivant strained to hear, but was unable to make out what they were saying. There was a door between him and the voices; at least one.

With his leather-clad elbow he knocked out the window glass. The clattering of the shards on the hard floor inside might as well have been a hailstorm on the roof.

The voices had stopped.

Tullivant reached quickly through the smashed window, ignoring the pricks of jagged points against his rubber-clad hands. He groped for the latch of the front door, opened it and stepped inside.

He drew the Heckler amp; Koch and looked around. To his right, a closed door; ahead, a corridor from which several other exits led.

He stood very still, once more absorbing his surroundings, reaching out aurally for the slightest clue as to the whereabouts of the owners of the voices he’d heard.

Nothing.

He stepped down the corridor at a slight crouch, gun held in a two-handed grip.

The door at the far end was ajar, and Tullivant thought he could see the arm of a chair beyond. A living room. But it appeared to be in complete darkness. Beside the door, a flight of stairs led up to the next floor.

He registered the tiny creak of an unoiled hinge an instant after he’d started to turn, his reflexes kicking in and leaving his conscious self lagging. The first door on the right when he’d come in had swung open behind him. Tullivant brought the gun up just as something shot towards him, black and gleaming, and he felt agony burn its way up his right arm.

James pressed his finger hard and upright against his lips, holding the other hand up in a don’t move gesture.

Emma stared at him, her eyes wide, and nodded. He reached inside the pocket of his jacket and drew out a knife in a scabbard. She thought it looked like the kind of thing you’d go hunting with.

Holding one hand up still to make sure she kept her distance, he crept towards the stairs and began to climb them. Emma watched him go, fear rising in her and threatening to erupt into panic. Not daring to move her feet, Emma jammed a fist into her mouth.

At the top of the steps James paused, his ear to the door. The unsheathed knife in his left hand, he took hold of the doorknob with his right, hesitated a second, then twisted it and flung the door open.

Emma watched him step out, turn. She heard a rustle of movement, followed by a gritted gasp of pain.

Then fast footsteps, a thud followed by a crash as what sounded like a human body collided with a door, and the snarling sounds of fighting.

Emma released the breath she’d been suppressing, terrified by the sounds she could hear in the absence of any visual guide to put them in context. She stared about her, not knowing what she was looking for but desperate to find something that might be useful in some way. Apart from the chairs, and the bucket and mop James had used to clean the floor, there was nothing.

She couldn’t stay there, in the cellar, like some zoo animal or lab rat.

Emma started up the steps, her legs faltering like a foal’s. From above her she could hear a choked groaning, as though somebody was being throttled.

At the open door, she stopped. The sounds of struggle were coming from down the corridor, to her right.

The front door was on her left, a few feet away.

Coward , a voice told her.

But another voice, a more reasonable one, said: It’s the only way. You’d be no help to James. You’d just get yourself killed .

Terror and adrenaline reaching a peak within her — she couldn’t tell one from the other — Emma pushed through the door way and reached the front door.

From behind her a voice called, ‘ Emma. ’

She turned. It was an involuntary move, triggered by the familiarity of the voice.

At the end of the corridor, in the shadows, two shapes were locked together on the ground. She saw James’s white face turn to the side as if he were trying to look round at her. Beneath him, on the stone floor, was another man, his face obscured by a mask of some kind.

It was he who’d called her. And James had turned to see what she was doing.

The man beneath did something with his legs, a roar escaping his mouth through clenched teeth, and James was lifted up to sprawl backwards on his bottom.

Emma stood at the front door, petrified, knowing she needed to run, to get out into the street and get clear and try afterwards to make sense of it all; but she was unable to move her limbs.

The man in the mask rose to his knees and extended his arms. There was something in his hands, something that glinted in the thin light.

The explosions rocked Emma’s ears, claps of thunder that echoed through the corridor, two of them followed by a solitary third.