Chris Ryan - Osama

The flat was tiny. There was a small kitchenette in one corner and crockery was upturned on the draining board. Clothes littered the floor. Eva’s colleague Frank – was that what she’d said he was called? – was a messy bloke. At first Joe thought that might make it more difficult to locate his bike keys, but then he saw a leather jacket slung over the side of an armchair. He rummaged in the pockets and found a Yamaha key ring with two keys attached.

He stepped into the bedroom. It was even untidier. Eva had said that this bloke was about the same size as him, so Joe quickly scouted through clothes strewn over the floor and double bed. He selected a hooded top and, after poking around in a half-open drawer, a navy-blue snood. He hadn’t been in the flat for more than ninety seconds before he was hurrying back up the steps, clutching the keys and the clothes.

Eva was sitting in the passenger seat of the Range Rover, chewing anxiously on her fingernails. ‘Was he there?’ she asked as Joe climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.

He shook his head. ‘I broke in. What is he, a boyfriend?’

‘I told you, he’s just a friend.’ Eva said quickly.

They were pulling up outside the flat where the bike was parked when she spoke again. ‘I still don’t understand why we need Frank’s bike. Can’t we just use this thing?’ She hit the dashboard of the Range Rover, frustration suddenly bursting out of her. She bit her lip and looked out of the passenger window. ‘Can’t you just let me call my colleagues? If they think Conor’s been abducted, they’ll be all over the place like a rash.’

‘No!’ Joe snapped, and instantly regretted it. Eva didn’t have to be here, he reminded himself. She was risking as much as he was. Maybe more. But time was running out. He could explain once they were on the road. He jumped out of the Range Rover, ran up to the front of the house, pulled the bike trailer to the back of the stolen vehicle and attached it to the rear. After pulling off the grey tarp, he wheeled the bike onto the trailer. Once he had secured it, he got back in the Range Rover and eased out into the road, aware of the troubled stare Eva was giving him.

‘Listen,’ he said as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘I don’t know who this Ashe guy is working for. Maybe it’s Al-Qaeda, maybe the Americans. But we do know this: he doesn’t care who he kills to get at me.’ He paused. ‘You didn’t see Caitlin’s body, Eva. You didn’t see the look in her eyes…’ He couldn’t bring himself to say it, and he found himself breathing deeply just to calm his nerves. ‘He will kill Conor if I don’t stop him,’ he continued after thirty seconds. ‘If we call the police, they’ll go in like a bull at a fucking gate and that’s what’ll happen.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I won’t risk it.’ He breathed deeply to calm down. ‘We have to think like him,’ he said. ‘Why has he chosen that precise location for the RV? I checked the satellite imagery when we were online. It’s a remote beach with a high cliff behind it. He could hide anywhere; I’ll be in plain sight. That’s good for him and bad for us. But wherever he is now – right now – he has to transport Conor to the RV. That means moving him out into the open.’ Joe felt his jaw clenching. ‘I saw Conor’s face on the video, Eva. It’s bruised and cut. He was crying. Transporting a child in that state is dangerous. Our man won’t want to move him far, so I think he’s already close to the RV point, somewhere nobody else is likely to see them. The video I saw was taken in a house that faced west out to sea. The mapping I checked online showed a solitary house about a kilometre inland from the RV. So far as I can tell, there are no other dwellings for four klicks in any direction.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Eva asked in a small voice.

‘That if he wants to lure me to that beach, he’s holding Conor in that house. I’d bet anything on it. And I need to get there before they leave for the RV.’ He glanced at the Range Rover’s clock: 1820 hours. ‘I think it will take us five to six hours to get to the coast,’ he said. ‘We’ll be approaching at midnight. There’s only one road leading to the house, and it slopes down towards it in full view. If I was him, I’d be watching that road. That’s why we need the bike. The map shows a bridleway that circles the house and approaches it from behind. It’s a very long way round from where we can safely park this thing without being seen from the house – four or five miles – but the bike will cover it quickly. I can take it off road and approach from a direction he won’t be expecting, then make the final approach by foot. That way I’ll catch up with him before he has time to set up an ambush.’

Eva was quiet for a few minutes as Joe negotiated his way onto the South Circular.

‘Joe,’ she said at last, ‘remember when your dad went to prison?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Nobody talked to you about it, but behind your back they hardly talked about anything else.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘You’re in trouble. We both are. We can’t run for ever. When they catch up with you, maybe – maybe – you can persuade them about Caitlin. Maybe you can persuade them that the guy you… the guy in prison… was self-defence. But can’t you see what it looks like? You’re leaving a trail of bodies everywhere you go.’ She gave him a piercing look. ‘You can’t kill him, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t let you.’

Joe felt his eyes flicker involuntarily to the glove compartment where his stolen weapon was stashed.

‘Mr Ashe and I have a few things to discuss,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

He looked at the Range Rover’s clock again. Less than twelve hours till the RV. He fixed his eyes on the road ahead, and drove.

It was a largely silent journey. The Range Rover’s satnav blinked monotonously as they ate up the M4. A full moon rose. Joe wondered how much light it would give him when they reached Pembrokeshire.

Around 1930 hours the traffic on the motorway suddenly slowed down. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Joe saw a flashing blue light; seconds later there was a siren. He checked his speed – 65 mph – and pulled into the left-hand lane. Eva said nothing, but he could feel her tension. It was a relief when the car sped past. A minute later they crawled past the scene of an accident, with two ambulance crews and four police cars parked on the hard shoulder. Joe just kept a steady speed. ‘They’ve got no reason to stop us,’ he told Eva. She didn’t reply.

At 2100 hours Joe turned on the radio and tuned into the news. He was the lead item. ‘ Following the escape of Sergeant Joseph Mansfield from Barfield Prison in London, the leader of the opposition has criticized the Coalition’s “laissez-faire attitude to issues of public safety”. Sergeant Mansfield, recently returned from Afghanistan, was being held in custody following the brutal murder of his partner. Police are advising that he is highly dangerous and possibly unstable, and that members of the public should not approach him under any circumstances… ’

It was Eva who turned off the radio. They continued in silence.

Joe used the last of the money he had taken from Eva’s cash box to buy petrol just beyond Reading and to pay the toll at the Severn Bridge. The further west they travelled, the more the traffic thinned out. But any speed a clear road might have offered them was cancelled out by the mist. It was barely noticeable at first, just a thin, wispy film in front of the windscreen. By 2200 hours, however, it felt as though they were surrounded, as though an army of ghosts was following them wherever they went. The mist swirled in the beam of the headlights, like a thick barrier.