Chris Ryan - Osama

And he couldn’t waste time. The mist would now be compromising the view of anyone watching from the house, so he took the opportunity to crest the hill and drop quickly to the west, keeping to the bridleway. Back on lower ground, the mist engulfed him again. He could see no landmarks, nothing with which to get his bearings. After ten minutes he estimated that he was directly north of the house, but his reckoning must have been off because two minutes later he had to brake as a sheer clifftop appeared with heart-stopping suddenness just five metres in front of him. He swung the bike round to the south and followed the bridleway along the clifftop, stopping after a couple of hundred metres to check the wind direction. It was onshore, blowing out to sea. He estimated that he could risk another 200 metres before ditching the bike and approaching on foot.

From there, it would be just half a klick cross-country to where Conor was surely being held.

He crawled along at less than 5 mph, to keep the noise of the bike’s engine as low as possible. He could hear the sea crashing to his right, and a lone gull called somewhere in the darkness overhead.

To the left of the bridleway there was half-a-metre-high bracken. Joe used it to hide the bike on its side. He ran east, away from the clifftop, along a mud path through the bracken and into an area of rough grassland. Fifty metres away, the house emerged from the mist.

No lights. Was his man sleeping? Joe doubted it.

His heart was thumping. He could hear his pulse as he advanced.

Halfway to the house there was a picket fence, but it was collapsing in places and Joe passed through a gap. He registered a tumbledown wooden shed five metres to his left, and a bleak concrete garage almost adjoining the right-hand wing of the house. Most of his attention, however, was on the two windows on the first floor. The curtains were open, but inside all was dark. Was Conor holed up in one of those rooms? Was that where his son was being held?

Joe removed the handgun from his shoulder bag. Then he approached the back door of the house, treading absolutely silently: toe first, then heel. He couldn’t afford to make a single sound. A single stumble or broken twig.

Even his breathing was, despite his exertion, noiseless.

A sudden, clattering noise in front of him. Movement.

He froze, three metres from the door, his weapon at the ready. What the hell was happening?

Then he exhaled slowly. It was a cat, bursting through a flap at the bottom of the door. Its eyes glinted in the darkness as it stared directly at him. As Joe took another step forward, the cat turned tail and headed back into the house.

Joe glanced up to the first-floor window. No light. No movement. Nothing.The paint on the back door was gleaming in the moonlight. He moved quietly to the door, then slowly reached out his free hand and grasped the handle. He twisted it gently so as not to let it squeak or scrape.

It opened. Did that mean someone was here? Probably.

Inside it was even darker than out. Having silently shut the door behind him, he waited a moment for his eyes to grow accustomed to the lack of moonlight. It took him twenty seconds to realize he was in a small utility room that led into a kitchen. There was a strange smell, and it wasn’t just the musty aroma of neglect. It was something else. A smell he recognized: sickeningly sweet. It grew stronger as he passed through the kitchen and along a narrow corridor that led to what was clearly the front hallway.

He had been expecting to see a body, so the sight of a crumpled human frame at the bottom of the steps was not a surprise. The cat was prowling around it. It miaowed, and that one sound seemed to echo around the house. Joe took a couple of steps closer. The strongest smell now was of shit: the corpse’s bowels had loosened after death.

Don’t let it be Conor, his mind was crying out. Don’t let it be Conor…

He bent down in the darkness to examine the corpse’s face.

It was an old lady. Her eyes were wide open, her expression terrified. A sticky, mucus-like substance had oozed from her nose and ears. Joe estimated that she had been dead for less than a day. Maybe she had accidentally fallen down the stairs. Or maybe – he noted that the stairlift was halfway up the staircase – she hadn’t.

He stopped stock-still and listened. But there was nothing to listen to, other than silence.

Stepping over the body, he started to climb the stairs. His eyes were firmly fixed on the door at the top and to the left. It was slightly ajar.

The cat miaowed again. Joe froze. Had something disturbed it?

No sound.

He continued to climb.

At the top of the stairs he stopped. His finger was resting lightly on the trigger of his handgun. His breathing was shallow and silent. Slowly, he extended his right foot and gently kicked the door open.

By the misty moonlight shining through the windows, Joe immediately recognized the place. The video he had seen was burned on his memory. There, against the far wall, was the bed on which Conor had been sitting. On the wall behind it, a picture, its details obscured by the darkness, but Joe knew that if he looked more closely it would show a ship in a storm. His eyes panned round the room. There was a table in the middle, piled high with books. Boxes were piled up in corners and against the walls. The room was chaotic.

And it was clear nobody was at home.

Joe stepped over to the bed. Something had caught his eye. He bent down and picked it up off the blanket: a small, grey elephant, patched up and the worse for wear.

He flung the toy down on the ground, hissing with frustration. There was nobody here. Less than six hours till the RV that was only a couple of klicks away. Was it really likely that they’d already set out?

Joe raced through the rest of the house – two more bedrooms upstairs, a large sitting room and a fourth bedroom on the ground floor. He knew it was pointless. He knew the house was deserted apart from him, an old lady’s body and a restless cat. Back in the room where Conor had been held he was almost careless enough to switch on the light. He stopped himself at the last second: if he could observe the place from afar, anybody could. And if Conor’s abductor had even an inkling that events were not unfolding as he had planned, that could only be bad for the boy. He stalked round the room, seeking anything that might help him. It was only thanks to the moonlight streaking in through the window that he saw it.

The passport was in plain view, sitting atop one of the piles of books on the round table. On the front it had the words ‘United States of America’. Joe examined the identification page. There was no mistaking the features of the man in the photograph. Joe had seen that face once before. Until now he had been unable to recall its features, but as it stared out of the passport at him, he was transported back to the visiting room at Barfield.

This was him. Mr Ashe.

But the name on the passport was Mahmood Ashkani.

Only two thoughts spun around Joe’s head. Two simple statements of fact.

First: the Middle Eastern man who had abducted his son held an American passport.

And second, if he wanted to see Conor again, the only option open to him was to turn up at the RV tomorrow at 0600 hours. At which point, Mr Ashe, or Mahmood Ashkani, or whoever the fuck he really was, would undoubtedly try to kill him.

Eva was shivering with cold.

For ten minutes after Joe had left, she’d kept one hand on the key in the ignition. Now she was hugging herself to keep warm. More than once she found herself glancing at the door, checking that the central locking was on. She didn’t know quite what she was scared of. But she was scared.