Peter James - Perfect People

Headlights loomed in his mirror. He stiffened. Then moments later a car roared past.

Forty-five minutes. That was all. Just forty-five minutes to get through.

He drove on for a couple of miles until he reached the outskirts of a village he had never been to before. A signpost said ALFRISTON.

Braking sharply, he turned the car round, then drove slowly back, retracing his steps, and pulled into the unlit entrance to a farm, switched the engine and the lights off and sat, very still, trying to calm himself down and to think clearly.

The fancy car with the lovers, which had come into the lot behind the schoolhouse, was a test. God had tested Job and was now testing him. Or warning him. If it was still there when he drove back, it would be a sign to abort tonight; but if it was gone, it would be God giving him the all-clear.

At eleven forty-five he drove back into the village of Caibourne and turned into the schoolhouse parking lot.

The lovers had gone.

And the rain was easing off. Still falling, but lighter now, although the wind was getting stronger. Good. He pulled his thin leather gloves on, climbed out of the car, locked the doors, and took the air rifle from the boot. He made his way across the lot, past the school, checked very carefully that the coast was clear, then ran across the road and onto the muddy bridleway that would take him straight across a field of corn stubble, and up to the field of pasture grass that adjoined the Infidels’ garden.

He held the torch, but only switched it on for an instant every few paces. The track was uneven, chewed up by horses’ hooves. Several times he slipped, almost losing his footing, and twice he cursed as his anorak snagged on the brambles.

Although he was still extremely fit, the steep climb, nerves and the cold air were taking their toll. He was breathing heavily, perspiring inside his warm clothing and under his heavy load. But there was a deep glow in his heart.

And now, finally, he could see the Infidels’ house! A looming shadow two hundred yards in front of him. There was just one light on, the master bedroom. And then, joy! Even as he was watching, it was extinguished.

Darkness!

Now the adrenaline was pumping and he could scarcely contain his excitement.

Something darted above him, a bat, or maybe an owl. He listened for a moment to the howl of the wind through the grass and the trees and the bushes, listened to a hinge shrieking as an unlatched farm gate swung open, shut, open, shut, and the steady banging of an unsecured door. So many noises to mask his own!

Looking up at the bitumen-black sky, he thought to himself, yes, this night has been ordained! Leaning against the gridded metal stock fencing, he raised his night-vision binoculars. Fixed them on the master bedroom window. Adjusted the focus until it was pin-sharp. Remembered his briefing, the words of the Master.

Watch the condensation. When the outside temperature is colder than inside there will be condensation on the windows. When the heating goes off the condensation will slowly cease. When the condensation has gone it is safe to assume the occupants are asleep.

The master bedroom windows of the Infidels were misted with condensation. But even as he watched, he could see it beginning to fade.

*

It was dark in their bedroom. Their parents no longer left the Bob the Builder night light on. That wasn’t important. One sense always compensated for another. In darkness, smell kicked in stronger. So did touch. So did hearing.

They smelled him now. They heard him.

Soon they would touch him.

In their little side-by-side beds, in the darkness of the room in the house where they lived for now, but for not much longer, in a voice too high-pitched to be detected by the human ear, Luke called out to his sister. Just one word, spoken with the fourth letter, ‘d’, missing, backwards.

‘Yaer?’

A split second later, in a voice equally inaudible to the normal human ear, Phoebe responded.

‘Yaer.’

They observed him from a comfortable distance, the figure in the dark baseball cap, anorak and boots. At the moment he was staring at the house through his binoculars, his rifle leaning against the fence. They were too far away to tell whether it was just an airgun or a hunting rifle.

The gap between them was two hundred yards, a distance they had maintained since they had watched him emerge from the parking lot behind the schoolhouse, cross over the road and head off up the footpath. He had never once turned round.

Like him, they also had night-vision aids, but they were better equipped. Both of them wore goggles, and carried binoculars as well. With these goggles it was like walking in green daylight. They watched, for a brief moment, an owl swoop into a field and then rise with a wriggling mouse dangling from its beak.

Shielded by a hedgerow, just in case he should turn round, they continued to observe him as he lowered his binoculars then, a couple of minutes later, raised them to his eyes again. They wondered what he was waiting for and communicated this via an exchange of puzzled glances. Neither of them spoke; he was downwind of them. Despite the covering noises of the raging gale, the faintest whisper was too dangerous to risk.

*

The condensation had almost gone! The Disciple felt calmer now; his heart was no longer crashing around out of control inside his chest, but was beating at a steady, strong level, circulating the adrenaline that was keeping him alert and sharp, pumping around those endorphins that were making him feel good now. He checked his watch.

12.22

Time!

For a glorious few moments, clambering over the fence into the field that bordered the Infidels’ property, he felt invincible. Then, crouching low to minimize the chance of being seen from the house, and treading carefully, wary of damaging an ankle in a rabbit hole, he made his way as swiftly as he dared across the boggy, rain-sodden field.

Now his heart was really pounding again as he reached the boundary fencing, which was as close as he dared go for the moment. The house, just fifty feet away, loomed high and shadowy above him. All the lights were off and the windows closed. Good. He stared at the Infidels’ cars on the gravel drive. Just the Saab and the Subaru. No overnight visitors. Good. Then he fixed his gaze up at the wall where he had seen the sensor when he had paid his visit.

He knelt, took the air rifle and, cushioning it on his hand, rested it on a wooden fence post. He pulled off the night-sight covers, crammed them into his anorak, then squinted through it. It took him only a moment to pick up the sensor for the intruder lights, a tiny, convex strip of glass or Perspex set in white plastic, about ten feet above the ground, and directly beneath one of the battery of floodlights it would trigger.

But his damned hands were shaking; they had never shaken before like this. Taking a deep breath, trying to calm down, he lined the cross hairs up, but the instant he did, they had moved off the target. He shifted his position a fraction, making an even better wedge against the post, and aimed again. Better. Steadier, but nowhere near as steady as when he had been practising, nor anything like as steady as at the previous house in Iowa, where he had done exactly this same thing.

Curling his finger over the trigger, he took up the slack, allowed the cross hairs to move off the target, then slowly, concentrating desperately to try to stop the gun jigging from his damned nerves, jigging from the ferociously gusting wind, he brought the cross hairs dead centre over the target and increased his pressure on the trigger.

There was a sharp phuttt! as the gas cylinder expelled the first of the ten pellets in the magazine and almost simultaneously a hideously loud thwakkk! as the pellet embedded itself in the stained wooden cladding of the barn wall, several inches to the left of the sensor.