T.J. Lebbon - The Hunt - ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD

London had been an ideal place to hide, and to drink. Every day, every night, alcohol absorbed and obsessed her, becoming her whole world. When the memories threatened to surface she drank some more to smother them, and if she ever approached sobriety, another bottle of cheap vodka swept her away again. Abandoned buildings and squats had provided places for her to sleep, and if in a drunken haze she lost her way, there were always the shadowy spaces beneath bridges or in rubbish-strewn alleyways. She was one woman in a city whose lifeblood was anonymity, and time and place lost all meaning. The moment of change when she’d found her family was a deep, wide chasm in her life. Sometimes she stood on the edge and tried to look back, but it was too far to see clearly. So she remained on the other side, wallowing in the guilt of survival and letting alcohol smother her across this new, barren land.

Seeing a member of the Trail had changed everything.

Rose had stumbled into the woman outside the Apollo Theatre one rainy, cold November evening. She’d been wandering through Soho searching for one of her familiar sleeping places, a deserted, boarded-up pub accessed through a broken back window. Many of the dispossessed knew that place. It stank of piss and booze, echoed with drug-fuelled mumblings and occasional cries of wretchedness, pleasure or pain. But that night Rose’s befuddled sense of direction had failed her, and she’d emerged into the bright lights and bustle of Shaftesbury Avenue.

The lights had been blinding. Disorientated, she’d turned to make her way back into the shadows. People had parted to let her by, protecting themselves with space and muttered words of distaste. All but this woman. Rose had walked right into her, and many times since she’d wondered whether it had been orchestrated. Had the woman recognised her in that instant and engineered their collision? Had she been looking for her?

The last time Rose had seen her, she’d been standing beside a Range Rover somewhere in London’s Docklands smiling broadly as a man told Rose to run.

As the heat of recognition grew quickly in Rose’s mind, she saw that it had already settled in the woman’s eyes. Grin , Rose thought, because that’s how she had thought of the woman since that first meeting, in nightmares and booze-fuelled fantasies of revenge. Grin, you’re Grin, and I’ll wipe that name from your face .

Grin was smartly dressed, short and thin, strong. Her auburn hair was cut in an attractive bob, her skin smooth and relatively unlined even though she was perhaps fifty years old. She looked nice , like anyone’s mother. But Rose knew her secret.

Grin had smiled and reached slowly, casually into her raincoat pocket.

Rose still had no idea how she had reacted so quickly. Her hand snapped out, fingers closing around the object in Grin’s hand, snatching, and then she ran. Losing herself in those rainswept streets had been easy, and the shouts and pursuit she’d expected never came.

The phone had worked for seven minutes before its connection was cancelled. In that time, she had hidden away and managed to scratch two numbers into her arm with a shard of broken glass.

Then she had ditched the phone in a trash-filled alley and fled. She’d somehow gathered herself, suffering a terrible couple of days of relative sobriety. She’d retrieved the necessary documentation and money she’d once hidden, at the time barely believing she would ever use it again. Italy was somewhere Adam had always wanted to visit with their kids, and it had seemed far enough away from London, remote enough, to lose herself once again.

That chance meeting in a city of millions had allowed the dormant seed of an idea to sprout. Revenge. And later, in the Italian heat, alcohol hiding her once more, she’d traced and retraced those healing scars on her forearm. Numbers that might lead to something else, like a code to discovery.

But even in Italy she had not been able to drag herself from the depths. She’d tried again and again, spending a day sobering up, but quickly following those brief moments of sick reality with long periods of even heavier drinking and deeper oblivion. She so wanted to find some way back. She dreamed of Grin’s face opening beneath her pounding fists, a heavy rock, a wielded knife. But even approaching reality allowed the true, awful memories to flood back in.

She had been unable to find the strength to handle that. Not until Holt.

The laptop chimed.

Rose poured a new mug of strong coffee and sat down at the small table. Lifting the mug to her lips, she paused and stared down at the screen.

One of the inboxes she monitored had received a new email. It was only the fifth time in three years that such a mail had been sent and received. It was still marked in bold. Unread.

‘They’ve chosen another one.’ She sat back for a moment, stunned, chilled even through the rush of warm coffee. She knew that if she opened this email and read it, and they discovered it had been seen and read, everything might fall apart. The Trail would abandon their systems and networks and build again from the ground up, and she would lose everything she’d been working on, and hoping for, since bringing herself back to the world.

But the content of this email was everything. She could open it, screen-grab it, and mark it as unread again in a matter of moments.

She did not hesitate for a second before risking it all.

Don’t call the police, or your wife and children will be executed.

Chris stood motionless for a while, leaning against the sink and staring across the kitchen at the pinboard beside the fridge. There were photos on there, tickets for a show they were going to see in a few weeks, a couple of forms to fill out for a trip Gemma was going on with Scouts. Some discount coupons for the local cinema. A few of Terri’s hair bobbles tied together.

Had the man really said that?

Chris closed his eyes and the world swam. He remembered the words coming from the man’s mouth – how they’d sounded, the shape of his lips, the dreadful meaning – yet he still doubted.

He took in a few deep breaths and smelled the coffee. His coffee, that the intruder had brewed.

He took the phone from his pocket and placed it on the worktop. As he stared at it, it rang.

Grabbing the phone, dropping it, watching it hit the floor and break, case going one way and phone the other, Chris let out a hopeless cry. He went to his knees and picked it up – still ringing, not broken – and stroked the screen to unlock.

That voice again, cool and calm and inviting no discussion. ‘Fifty minutes. Be ready.’ Chris stood again, holding the phone in both hands. Fifty minutes. Be ready . Fifty minutes until what?

The back door was closed now, but he could still see the bloody smear drying on the jamb.

Everything but his family suddenly felt so distant. His work, their friends, his hobbies, all so far away from what was happening here and now. This was so surreal that his mind had picked him up and shifted him back a pace, making acceptance of the unbelievable situation easier. He’d felt something like this before. When his father had died three years earlier, there had been none of the disbelief and hysteria he’d been prepared for all his life. A distance had fallen around him, allowing him to cope with the situation and only starting to lift as grief eroded it away. It was a defence mechanism of sorts – perhaps purely natural, or maybe engineered by modern society and family needs – and for a while he’d felt an incredible guilt. But then his mother had told him that everyone deals with bereavement and grief in a very different way, and unnecessary guilt had no place in his heart. He’d loved her more than ever for that. He still did.