Also By Simon Kernick

The Business of Dying

The Murder Exchange

The Crime Trade

A Good Day to Die

Relentless

Severed

Deadline

Target

The Last 10 Seconds

The Payback

Siege

Ultimatum

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Stay Alive

The Final Minute

The Witness

The Bone Field

Digital Shorts

Dead Man’s Gift

One By One

Flytrap

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Epub ISBN: 9781473535206

Version 1.0

Published by Century 2017

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Copyright © Simon Kernick, 2017

Cover © Arcangel and Colin Thomas

Simon Kernick has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain by Century in 2017

Century
The Penguin Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA

www.penguin.co.uk

Century is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781780894478

Prologue

Hugh Manning knew he was a marked man but he’d planned for this day for a long, long time. Fifteen years ago he’d thrown in his hat with the wrong people and from that point forward he’d been preparing for a way out. In the interim he’d made a serious amount of money. Millions. Most of which the taxman had never seen.

Right now, though, sitting in the cramped spare bedroom of the cottage he’d bought through an offshore company three years earlier, he would have given up every penny just to be able to sleep properly at night. For the last two weeks he and his wife had effectively been on the run. Diana had had an idea who he’d been working for but, even so, she’d still been shocked when he’d announced one morning that they had to leave their beloved Georgian townhouse in Bayswater for ever, with just enough luggage to fit in the car.

She hadn’t liked it, of course. There’d been tears, anger and recriminations. But Diana had enjoyed the money just as much as him, and anyway there was nothing she could do about it. If she’d stayed behind, they’d have come for her too.

The plan had been to take a ferry from Felixstowe to Rotterdam using the fake passports he possessed in his and Diana’s names, buy a pair of airline tickets for cash in a bucket shop, then fly from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to Panama City. Panama was a country neither of them had ever visited, or even researched online, so no one would come looking for them there. Manning had watched a programme on it once, though, and thought it looked a nice place to live. Even the healthcare system was world class. They’d rent a property and settle in one of the quiet towns on the Pacific coast, living comfortably on the $2.2 million he kept in a numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands until they died peacefully of old age many years down the line.

As plans went it was thorough and well thought-out, but then, like most good lawyers, Manning was a thorough man. Unfortunately, what looks great in theory can fall apart very quickly in practice, and when they’d arrived at Felixstowe there’d been some sort of security alert going on. Diana had panicked, convinced that the alert was about them, and had refused to travel. In truth Manning had panicked too, but he’d still blamed Diana for their hesitation, and now, instead of basking in the tropical sunshine of Central America, they were stuck out here in the featureless flatlands of rural Lincolnshire, waiting for the police to conclude that the two of them were dead or had fled the country and lift the all-ports alert Manning was sure they had put in place.

He was sitting at the window in the spare bedroom from where he had a good vantage point over the rolling, treeless fields, watching for Diana’s car. She’d left to go shopping for supplies in Horncastle – an hour’s round trip at most, but she’d been gone close to an hour and a half, and he was beginning to get anxious. Diana had never been the ideal wife and he certainly hadn’t been the ideal husband. They’d lived in a state of mutual tolerance for years, and he knew she’d had at least one affair (which was about ten fewer than him), and even now, years later, she still bitterly resented the fact he’d never given her children. But right now she was the only person he had in the world, and he needed her.

The cigarette in his hand was shaking, and he drew deeply on it, trying in vain to stay calm as he blew the smoke out of the open window. He was meant to smoke outside as Diana couldn’t stand the smell of it – something she never tired of telling him. Just as she never tired of telling him how she couldn’t understand why he’d taken up the cigarettes again at the age of thirty-nine after ten years without them – but then she hadn’t known the full extent of the depravity of the men he’d been working for, or the things he’d seen. Cigarettes had been one way of coping with the stress of his work. The other was alcohol.

He looked at his watch. 4.55 p.m. Where the hell was she? She was usually pretty efficient at the shop, being just as keen to avoid being out in public as he was. The problem was, he couldn’t even phone her. Although they both carried unregistered mobile phones, the reception at the cottage, and for at least a mile around, was non-existent, so he was just going to have to sit tight. So far the authorities hadn’t put out photos of either of them – and it was possible they wouldn’t since there was no direct evidence linking Manning (or indeed Diana) to the crimes they wanted to question him about. After all, he was just a middleman. But if they did … If they did, it was going to be almost impossible to stay hidden.

And in the end, it wasn’t the police he was scared of. It was the men he worked for. Because they could get to him anywhere, even in police custody. If he was caught, he was a dead man. There was no question of it.

In the background, Sky News was playing on a loop on the portable TV, with the same story dominating: the aftermath of the June Brexit vote, now a month old but still the subject of endlessly rehashed and increasingly redundant arguments, both for and against, as if any of it really mattered. But at least it kept the hunt for him off the headlines.

Manning stubbed the cigarette out in the mahogany ashtray he’d once used for his Cuban cigars, and as he looked back out of the window he saw the old red Mercedes C Class saloon he’d bought for cash at auction appear from behind the hedgerow and turn on to the long dirt track that led down to the cottage. He could make out Diana in the driver’s seat, nervously hunched over the wheel – she hated driving, having got used to not doing it during the years they’d lived in London – and he felt an immediate relief that she was home. They were safe for another night at least. As soon as they’d unloaded the shopping he’d open a bottle of decent red wine and pour them both a glass.

He switched off the TV and shut the window, then went downstairs to the lounge and put some Beethoven on. As the first bars of Symphony No. 9 filled the room, he walked into the hallway. Diana was fiddling with her key in the lock, probably trying to open it with all the shopping in her hands.

As he opened the door for her a single spasm of pure shock surged through his body because in that one moment he knew that it was all over, and that all he could hope for was that death would come quickly.

Diana was standing in front of him, trembling with fear. There were two men with her, both dressed from head to foot in the same plastic overalls that police officers wear when searching murder scenes, their faces partially obscured by surgical masks but still recognizable, which Manning knew was always a bad sign. The youngest was in his early twenties, a shock of blond curly hair poking out from beneath his plastic hood. He held a large black army knife tight against the skin of Diana’s throat. A grotesque, almost childlike grin spread behind the mask.

Manning had never seen him before. He would have remembered. But the young man had the look of a true sadist.

The man standing next to him was familiar. Manning remembered seeing him once before, on a dark and terrible night many years earlier that was etched on his memory for ever. The man was much older now, in his sixties, but with the same strangely blank face that was hard to describe, and an unforgettable air of malevolence. He held a pistol in his hand with a long silencer attached, which he pointed at Manning’s chest. Strangely, though, it wasn’t the pistol that terrified Manning so much as the battered-looking briefcase the man held in his other hand. Manning dreaded to think what might be inside it.

‘We’ve been looking for you, Mr Manning,’ the gunman said quietly. His voice was a low hiss, partly muffled by the mask, with the hint of an eastern European accent, and there was an almost playful quality to his words as if he was expecting to enjoy whatever was coming.

‘I’m er …’ Manning tried to speak but he couldn’t get the words out. His mouth was dry and his legs felt weak.

Diana was whimpering quietly and a tear ran down her face, but Manning couldn’t worry about her. He was too busy desperately trying to think of something to say that would stop these two men from killing them both.

The gunman nodded to the blond man, who pushed Diana into the house, still holding the knife to her throat, brushing Manning aside as he came in. The gunman came in afterwards, shutting the door behind him.

‘Do you have a desk in here anywhere?’ he asked.

Manning looked at him, not sure if he’d heard correctly, so the gunman repeated the question, except this time he pushed the barrel of the gun against Manning’s forehead.

‘Yes, yes,’ Manning answered urgently, wondering what on earth they wanted a desk for. ‘We do. It’s in the main bedroom.’

‘Take us there,’ said the gunman, motioning with the gun.

Manning stole a look at Diana but she was staring straight ahead, the blond man holding her tight to his body. He was grinning like a schoolyard bully. Manning forced himself to turn away and walk slowly up the stairs knowing that, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t be coming down again. He wanted to run, to fight back, to do something, but the gunman was following right behind him. If this was a movie, all it would take was for Manning to turn round, deliver a hard kick to his chest, and send him tumbling down the stairs, then he could make a break for it out of the spare bedroom window, across the conservatory roof, and down into the field beyond. He’d have to leave Diana behind, but he’d be willing to do that. If it meant saving himself.

The problem was, this wasn’t a movie, and Manning was no hero.

So he did as he was told, trying to stop his body from shaking, wondering what he could say that could possibly stave off the inevitable. And all the time he cursed himself for his stupidity, and for the greed that would now be the death of them both.

The bedroom was the biggest room in the house with a large double bed and a writing desk facing the window that Manning occasionally worked at. He stopped in front of it and the gunman put down his briefcase and told him to take a seat.

‘You now have two choices,’ he said as Manning sat down. ‘You can watch your wife die very slowly, then die slowly yourself …’ He paused as the blond manhandled Diana into the room, threw her roughly on the bed, and stood above her with the knife. ‘Or she and you can both die quickly and painlessly.’

‘Please don’t do this,’ said Diana, sitting up on the bed.

In one swift movement the blond man slapped her hard round the head with his free hand, knocking her sideways. The suddenness of the action made Manning jump in his seat. He hated seeing violence. His employers might have been thugs but theirs was a very different world to the one he liked to inhabit. Diana fell back on the bed, crying, and he instinctively leaned forward to comfort her.

‘Don’t move,’ snapped the gunman, and Manning immediately returned to his former position.

The gunman then addressed Diana. ‘The next time you speak, or even move, my friend here will cut you with the knife. Do you understand?’

Diana nodded fearfully.

The gunman looked satisfied. ‘Good.’

He leaned down and opened the briefcase, pulling out a notebook and pen, which he put on the desk in front of Manning. Next, he pulled out a half bottle of cheap whisky, placing it next to the notebook.

‘Do you like whisky, Mr Manning?’ he asked, taking a step back.

Manning swallowed, looking down at the floor. ‘No, not really.’

‘That’s a pity, because you’re going to have to drink the contents of that bottle in the next three minutes. If you don’t, your wife loses an eye.’

‘Look, we don’t need to—’

‘Shut up.’ The words cut through the hot, still air of the room. ‘I’m not interested in your feeble begging. You just have to do as I say. Now.’

The fear Manning felt in those moments was worse than anything he’d ever previously experienced, because he knew now that the gunman couldn’t be reasoned with. He and Diana were going to die in this room.

He stared at the whisky bottle, ignoring Diana’s anguished weeping. He couldn’t face her. Not now. Not in the knowledge that what was about to happen to her was his fault.

‘You’ve already lost thirty seconds,’ said the gunman.

Manning made his decision. He picked up the bottle, unscrewed the top, and drank deeply, ignoring the fiery hit of the alcohol. If he had to die, then at least this way he’d be pissed and not really knowing what was going on.

He took two more gulps, swallowed hard, felt his eyes watering. The end of the gun barrel was barely two feet from his face. Six months earlier he’d taken a week’s crash course in the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga, having wanted to learn how to defend himself in dangerous situations. One of the techniques he’d been taught was how to disarm a gunman. He’d been good. The instructor had called him a natural. He knew exactly how to get the gun off this man now. But what you could never replicate in the classes, however good they were, was the sheer limb-stiffening terror that came from having a firearm pointed at you for real.

Manning took another gulp of the whisky. The bottle was now half empty and he was beginning to feel lightheaded.

‘Stop,’ said the gunman. ‘Put down the bottle and write the following sentence on the notepad. “I am so sorry. I cannot go on.” Write it now.’

Manning put down the bottle, focused on the page in front of him, then picked up the pen and did as he was told. His handwriting, never the best in the world, looked terrible but he could make out the words and, in a way, they were very apt.

The gunman examined the page and made an approving noise before nudging the bottle towards Manning.

Manning closed his eyes and took another mouthful of the whisky, preparing himself for the end in the easiest way possible.

And then he heard a yell like a battle cry coming from Diana, and a commotion behind him as she tried to scramble off the bed. It seemed she wasn’t going to die quite as easily as him.

He opened his eyes and saw that the gunman had momentarily pointed his gun towards the bed.

Without even thinking about it, Manning jumped up from the desk, his mouth still full of whisky, and grabbed the man’s gun arm by the wrist, yanking it so it was pointing away from him. As the gunman swung round to face him, Manning spat the whisky straight into his eyes and shoved him backwards hard enough that he fell down on his behind, still holding on to the gun while frantically rubbing his eyes.

The blond knifeman meanwhile had grabbed Diana, pulling her backwards into his grip. She looked at Manning desperately, and he looked back at her for the briefest of moments as the knife blade punched through the pink T-shirt she was wearing – and then he was running for his life, literally jumping over the gunman, his foot making contact with his head with a satisfying whack.

Manning felt a euphoria he hadn’t felt in years as he sprinted the few yards across the landing and into the spare bedroom, slamming the door behind him. He crossed the room in a moment and yanked open the back window facing on to the garden, and scrambled out.

There was a drop of about four feet on to the conservatory roof and, as the door flew open behind him, Manning jumped down, hoping the glass would hold. It did, and he scrambled down the angled roof before rolling off the end and landing feet first on the patio, impressed by his agility.

When he’d been writing the suicide letter, Manning knew the gunman wouldn’t want to shoot him. He’d want to make his death look as natural as possible. But now, with him making a break for it, there’d be no such hesitation.

Without looking back, Manning raced across the patio to the line of mature laurel trees that marked the property’s boundary, keeping his body low.

There was a sound like a pop, followed by the ping of a bullet ricocheting off one of the flagstones a few feet away, and Manning realized with a surreal sense of surprise that he was being shot at. He angled his run, staying low, and leaped through foliage as another shot rang out. Knowing he was temporarily sheltered by the trees, he ran alongside them until they gave way to the farmer’s field at the back of the property.

Here, the wheat crop was waist high but not thick enough to hide in, so he kept running across the uneven ground, knowing that the further he got from the house the harder it would be to hit him with a bullet. One of the intruders must have travelled to the house in the back of the Mercedes, which meant they’d hijacked Diana somewhere nearby. It wouldn’t have been too hard to do in an isolated area like this, where traffic was almost non-existent at the busiest of times. But it meant they had the keys to the Mercedes as well as access to the car they’d travelled up here in. It wouldn’t take them long to cut him off.

Manning looked back over his shoulder. The house was now fifty yards away and there was no one following him, but as if on cue he heard the engine of the Merc starting up round the front of the cottage. He kept running, increasing his pace. A stone wall with a single line of barbed wire separated the field he was in from the next field along, where a bright yellow rapeseed crop grew. Beyond that was the road. He had to get there before they did, and figured he had three minutes at most as it was about a mile by car to the point where he was going to emerge.

He vaulted the wall, catching his wrist and leg on the barbed wire, ignoring the pain as it cut into him, and kept going through the rapeseed field. On the other side of the road he could see a small wood, little more than a few rows of trees but enough to give him cover.

Manning wasn’t particularly fit. He tended to use the cross-trainer and the weights in the gym but it wasn’t enough to compensate for his sedentary lifestyle, and the last time he’d had such a burning in his lungs was on day one of the Krav Maga course when he’d thrown up twice. He was panting like a dog and his hamstrings seemed to be tightening with every step as he approached the end of the second field. A large, impenetrable hawthorn hedge taller than he was stood between him and the road and he felt another spasm of fear as he realized he had no idea where the gate was. He looked round wildly and his heart sank as he saw that it was a good hundred and fifty metres away in the direction his pursuers would be coming from.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear a car. He recognized the sound of the engine.

It was them. Closing in.

Manning slowed down, suddenly crippled with indecision. There was no way he’d get to the gate before they cut him off. And yet there was no other way out. He considered turning round and running back to the house, but what if one of them had stayed behind? He had to do something. Now.

He made a snap decision, and immediately accelerated, sprinting at the hedge. As he reached it, he jumped up and grabbed at the top branches, tearing his hands on the thorns as he forced his way over it through sheer willpower, the thorns shredding his clothes. He fell down the other side, landing in the road, and looked both ways. The car wasn’t in sight and, as he got up and ran into the trees and the first sign of shelter, he felt the euphoria return.

He knew this area well enough. As the trees gave way to another field, this one sloping down towards another, smaller copse at the bottom, he saw the house up ahead of him. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there, but right now it was his only hope. He glanced back over his shoulder. He could hear the car, moving slowly and still some distance away, but the road was no longer visible, which meant they couldn’t see him.

The house, a rambling detached cottage with ivy strangling it on every side, was separated from the field by a single wooden rail fence. Manning clambered over it, slowing as he ran into the back garden. He needed to hide, and plan his next move. The garden was a mess, full of tangled bushes, and an old shed, but nothing that offered effective concealment.

He stopped and listened, realizing that he could no longer hear the car. The warren of back roads, tracks and country lanes round here was chaotic and, even though he was still less than a mile away from where he’d started, his pursuers wouldn’t necessarily be able to find him here.

He walked round the house, looking in the windows. Nothing moved inside and there was no car in the driveway at the front, so he tried the back door and smiled with relief as it opened into a kitchen and dining area that was filled with all kinds of junk and clutter. A pile of crockery was drying on the draining board and there were drops of water in the sink so whoever lived here hadn’t been gone that long.

Manning picked up a china tea cup and poured himself a drink of water, gulping it down in one go, then wiped the sweat from his forehead with a tea towel before setting it back. His breathing was slowing down, and for the first time he thought of Diana, who by now was almost certainly dead. He hoped at least they’d made it quick, and hadn’t punished her for his sins.

‘I’m sorry, Pootle,’ he whispered, using the pet name he’d had for her back in the early days of their relationship when life had been a lot easier. He was going to miss her. He really was. Because now he was truly on his own with just the money in his pocket and a mobile phone with no signal. Even his passport was back at the cottage, and for the moment at least that was where it was going to have to stay.

He continued into the hallway and saw a landline phone on a sideboard next to the front door. He could dial 999, surrender to the police and take his chances, and for a long minute he stood there looking at the phone before finally dismissing the thought. If he cooperated with the police for a lesser sentence, he probably wouldn’t even make it to trial before his employers got to him. And if he kept his mouth shut he’d carry the rap for all kinds of crimes, and probably never see the outside of a prison again. At least for the moment he was still in control of his own destiny. He had a chance of getting out of the country and making that life for himself in Panama. It wouldn’t be as much fun doing it alone but it was still considerably better than the alternatives.

His breathing was coming back to normal now and he was just contemplating his next move when there was a loud knock on the front door.

Manning froze when he saw the silhouetted head at the frosted glass of the door’s small round window.

It was the gunman.

He cursed. He’d been a fool to think they wouldn’t be right on his trail. These people were professionals. They weren’t going to let him go that easily. And he hadn’t locked the back door behind him either.

The man knocked again and Manning took a step backwards into the shadows at the bottom of the staircase – which was when he heard the sound of the back door opening.

Trying to stay as calm as possible – and Jesus, it wasn’t easy – he turned and began crawling up the stairs, making himself as small a figure as possible so the man at the front door wouldn’t pick up movement. The stairs were thickly carpeted and didn’t creak, and he was up them in a few seconds and looking around for somewhere to hide. The door in front of him led into the bathroom but there was never going to be anywhere suitable in there so he doubled back on himself and crossed the landing, darting into what looked like a junk room, before closing the door gently behind him.

He looked around. The room contained a single bed covered in boxes of junk, with more boxes littering the floor, and an old ceiling-high dressing cupboard covered in scratches. He could hear movement downstairs. They were in the house now and it wouldn’t be long before they came up. He needed to think fast.

He went over to the old-fashioned sash window and stared out. It was a long drop to the ground, further than he could jump without risking injury. But what choice did he have? The first place they’d look for him was the cupboard. Unless …

He glanced down at one of the boxes on the floor, a large, heavy-looking wooden chest, and a thought suddenly occurred to him.

Slowly he prised open the sash window until it was fully extended and the gap wide enough to climb out of, then he opened the chest. It was full of old clothes, and what looked like a whole curtain.

He was sure he could hear someone coming up the stairs now, imagined that gun with the silencer attached. And the knife … the knife with the black blade he’d last seen slicing through Diana’s T-shirt, and which he knew could eviscerate him in seconds.

Moving as quietly as he could, he emptied the chest of clothes, placing them on to a pile of books stacked up in one corner. There still wasn’t a lot of space left but, probably for the first time in his life, Manning was thankful that he was only five feet seven, because he was small enough to squeeze inside. He pulled his knees up so high it felt like they were breaking, grabbed the chain attached to the lid and brought it down – and then cursed. The lid almost shut but not quite, leaving an inch-wide gap. But there was nothing he could do about it now because almost with his next breath he heard the soft bump of footfalls outside on the landing.

He quieted his breathing, trying without success to force himself down and allow the lid to close, until he heard the sound of the door to the junk room slowly opening.

Then he stopped breathing altogether.

Through the gap he watched as a man came into the room. He could only see his legs but recognized the jeans as belonging to the blond knifeman with the malicious smile.

Manning swallowed, the terror he was experiencing so intense it was like every bone in his body had turned to ice.

The legs stopped at the window and, as the blond man crouched down to put his head out to look, Manning saw the razor-sharp tip of the knife in his gloved hand. He heard the man curse in a London accent and turn away. Next the man opened the cupboard, before going down on his hands and knees to look under the bed.

Manning could see him clearly now. He was barely three feet away. The moment he stood back up he was going to see the not-quite-closed chest right in front of him. He’d lift the lid, see Manning inside, and drive the knife into him. Again and again.

It took all his willpower not to cry out. He could hear his heart hammering in his chest and was sure that any second now the other man was going to hear it too.

The blond man rose, and Manning could see him turning towards his hiding place, imagined him spying the chest and smiling that malicious smile …

He began to shake. Please make it quick. Please make it quick.

The legs were now right in front of the box, and Manning held his breath as the man bent his knees as he reached down to open the chest.

It was all over.

One

Picture the scene. You’re at an isolated farm in the middle of the Welsh countryside. You know a young woman has been taken there by men who are going to rape and kill her. You’re certain you know who these men are. You’re also certain that they’ve killed women like this before a number of times, and yet you have no real evidence against them.

In one of the farm’s outhouses you discover huge vats of acid that will be used to dissolve her body when they’ve finished with her, just as they’ve dissolved the bodies of the others. You investigate further and discover a windowless cellar with occult signs on the walls that you’ve seen at other crime scenes associated with these men.

Like a modern-day knight in shining armour, you rescue the young woman in a blaze of glory, arrest the perpetrators, and now, thanks to your detective work and personal bravery, you have enough evidence to put them away for mass murder for the rest of their miserable lives.

End of story.

Except, of course, that wasn’t how it happened.

I found the farmhouse all right, but the men I wanted were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the place was guarded by some of their associates and in the ensuing gunfight three of them were killed, as was the young woman who’d been taken there, and the whole place was burned to the ground. I managed to get out in one piece, but it might have been easier if I hadn’t because I got no thanks for what I’d done, even though over the course of the next month the mostly dissolved remains of a further seven women were dug up in the grounds, with the strong likelihood of there being more victims whose remains had dissolved altogether, leaving no trace of their existence behind.

The place was dubbed ‘The Bone Field’ in the media, which might not have been particularly original but was certainly a fitting description. The clamour for arrests was massive, but although I might have been certain who the main perpetrators were, any physical evidence linking them to the farmhouse was destroyed when it burned down, and these were clever people with money and influence. They’d been killing for a long time and they knew how to cover their tracks.

To complicate matters further, even now, three months later, none of the people who’d died at the Bone Field had been identified, even the woman I’d tried and failed to rescue, who was an illegal immigrant I knew only as Nicole. Of the three men killed in the gunfight at the farm, two were local guys who’d clearly been paid in cash for their services, as no record of any bank payments to either of them existed, and the other was a north London thug with links to organized crime. The problem was, none of them were going to be talking any time soon.

In the end the only lead was the farm itself. It turned out the property had been bought by an offshore company based in the Cayman Islands in 1996. So, Dyfed-Powys Police, whose jurisdiction the case fell in, brought in us, the National Crime Agency, to find out who owned the shell company. But the world of offshore finance is anything but open and transparent, and of course the shell company was owned by another shell company based in the Isle of Man, which in turn was owned by another one in Liechtenstein, and so on. The trail went round the world several times because that’s how it goes when people are trying to put as much distance between themselves and their transactions as possible. If you’ve got big money, and access to good lawyers, then there are plenty of places to hide.

The good news, though, is that there are only so many layers you can put in place, and if the people hunting you are determined enough, and have enough resources – and with a high-profile case like this, where there was the potential for government embarrassment, we definitely had the resources – then eventually they’ll peel them all away until they find a real live person at the end.

And that’s what we’d finally found. A real person. A London-based lawyer who was a nominee shareholder in a Bermuda-based outfit that had made a large payment into the chain in 2015. The company had now been shut down, but that didn’t matter. There was a record of a payment and that’s all we needed to put the pressure on him.

But Hugh Manning was no fool. He’d worked out that one day either we or his employers would come for him, and when we’d knocked down the front door of his stratospherically priced Bayswater townhouse, a week ago now, he and his wife Diana had already upped sticks and gone, leaving both their cars and their passports behind. Since then they’d gone completely off grid, and the suspicion was they’d already left the country, using fake ID. There’d been a lot of debate about whether to publish Manning’s photo in the media but, because he wasn’t considered a suspect in the killings themselves and the evidence against him for even indirect involvement was limited at best (plus, of course, he was a lawyer and therefore might sue), the decision had been made up top not to, which hadn’t helped us much. But that’s the Brass for you. Their main priority is usually covering their arses.

The thing about criminals, though, is that it doesn’t matter how clever or careful they are, they will always make at least one mistake, and I can tell you from years of experience that there are no exceptions to this rule, which is why most of us stay in the job. Manning’s mistake had been a very minor one, but it was enough. A few years back he’d bought a cottage in north Lincolnshire through – you’ve guessed it – a network of offshore shell companies, and because we had no idea the property existed, we almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to find it. Unfortunately for Manning, two years ago he’d needed some emergency plumbing work done at the cottage and his wife had paid for it with one of her personal credit cards. When we’d gone back through all the statements from their various accounts, we’d found that transaction, phoned the plumbing company, and got the address.

And so here we were in the middle of the rural flatlands of the Lincolnshire Wolds, my colleague and I, looking for the cottage.

The man I was with was Dan Watts – or Dapper Dan as he was occasionally called. A short, bald and worryingly good-looking black man with the build of a welterweight boxer, which is what he’d been in his youth until he’d put an opponent in a coma from which he’d never emerged. After that, the story went that Dan had been racked with guilt, and vowed never to box again. He’d turned to the bottle first and then, when that didn’t work, to God and a career in the police force.

I’d known him since my days working organized crime more than a decade back, but we’d lost touch until three months ago when our paths crossed in the Bone Field case. Now, with me exonerated of wrongdoing and back from suspension, we were working together properly for the first time, and for that I owed Dan. I’ve never been the easiest of cops to work with, and I’ve queered my pitch with plenty of bosses, but Dan had specifically requested my presence in the NCA to assist him, and clearly he had a little bit of clout because someone had stuck their neck out and said yes.

I was driving, and I slowed the car as we passed the narrow track leading down to the cottage. We could see the front of Hugh Manning’s driveway.

There was a grimy red Mercedes C Class saloon parked out front.

‘I think that’s our car,’ said Dan, ‘but the plates are filthy, so I can’t confirm.’

Filthy, unreadable licence plates. Always a useful tool for criminals hoping to outwit the network of ANPR cameras that cover the UK’s roads.

I couldn’t see anyone in the cottage’s windows, but I sped up anyway, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. I was now sure Manning, and presumably his wife too, were in residence. You see, during the search for them we’d also gained access to Manning’s phone records, using them to trace his movements over the previous six months. He’d turned off the phone ten days ago and it hadn’t been used since, but in the weeks before that he’d visited a south London car auction house three times, so it was clear he was in the market for a vehicle, and one that wouldn’t be traced back to him. When we’d checked with the auction house, there was no record of a man with Manning’s name buying a car, but I was pretty certain he had, and thankfully, like most other places in the UK, they had CCTV cameras on site. We ran through footage from the camera at the payment booth the last time Manning had been there, and sure enough there he was, blissfully unaware that he was being filmed, filling out the paperwork and handing over the cash and his fake ID – a passport in the name of Mr Simon Hearn. A quick cross-reference of purchases made at that time had established that Mr Hearn had bought an eleven-year-old Mercedes saloon, the same model sitting outside the cottage now, for eight grand. And because of its filthy plates we hadn’t been able to track its movements.

I had to admit, as criminals went, Hugh Manning was one of the better ones I’d come across in my seventeen years in law enforcement. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be of much help to him now.

Fifty metres further along the road, and just out of sight of the cottage, was a lay-by at the entrance to a farmer’s field, partially obscured by a pile of freshly dug parsnips so big you could have run a helter skelter down it. I parked there.

I stretched as I got out of the car. It had been a three-and-a-half-hour drive up here from the NCA’s offices on the South Bank and we’d done it without stopping. We hadn’t called ahead to alert our colleagues in the Lincolnshire force either. There were two reasons for this. First off, there was no guarantee the Mannings were here, so why worry them? Secondly, if the Mannings were indeed in residence, we didn’t want them getting spooked and making a hasty exit before we arrived. I guess in the end we didn’t trust our colleagues to make an effective arrest.

‘This is a good place to stay anonymous,’ said Dan, looking round at the fields stretching off in all directions.

It was a sunny late morning and the only sounds were the cawing of crows in the trees overhead.

‘I like it here,’ I said, taking in the fresh country air, only vaguely tinged with the ripe smell of manure. ‘It’s a good escape from the city. I could retire in a place like this.’

Dan shook his head and grinned. ‘You know, for a man who’s not even forty yet, you sound very old sometimes.’

I shrugged, and we walked fast in the direction of the cottage, keeping close to the hedge that ran along one side of the road so we couldn’t be spied approaching. Neither of us was armed – it wasn’t that kind of op – and we weren’t expecting any resistance, given that Manning was a pen pusher by trade and didn’t have any history of violence. I’d seen he’d recently taken a crash course in Krav Maga though, and he was going to be pretty desperate not to fall into our hands, so I was still feeling a little pumped as we rounded the corner and walked down the track towards the front door.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Dan, who, for a Christian, had a very suspicious nature. ‘It’s already twenty-five degrees out here and all the windows are shut.’

‘Maybe they’ve gone for a walk. It is a nice day.’ I was hoping they hadn’t. I didn’t fancy a long wait. But the car was here so I was certain they weren’t far away. ‘Or maybe they’re just very security conscious.’

As I spoke, I pulled a thin pocket knife from my jeans, leaned down and, without stopping, drove the blade into the Merc’s nearside tyres, one after the other, just to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.

Dan gave me a disapproving look. He didn’t always like my methods, such as vandalizing a suspect’s car, but on this occasion he chose not to say anything.

We took up positions – him at the back, me at the front – and I knocked hard on the door. It wasn’t a big cottage so if the Mannings were at home they would have heard me. But there was no answer.

I knocked a second time, then opened the letterbox. And that was when I caught a whiff that I recognized immediately. Human death has a peculiar and unmistakable scent, best described as a combination of rancid meat and slowly rotting apples, that’s different to that of every other dead animal, except apparently pigs. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize we were too late. But I needed to make sure, so I donned a pair of plastic gloves and got to work on the single five-lever mortise lock, which wasn’t as new and state-of-the-art as I thought it would be. I’m not the best lock picker in the world but I’m competent, which was more than can be said for the lock, and I had the door open in under three minutes.

I called Dan.

‘I was looking in the back window,’ he said, coming round to the front of the house. ‘There are a lot of flies in there and not much else.’

I told him about the smell. ‘I’ve got a feeling the Mannings have had visitors before us. Do you want to call it in?’

He shook his head. ‘No. Let’s take a look inside first.’

I pushed open the door and the stench hit us both with a warm blast. Whoever was in there had been dead a while, which meant the people we were up against were operating with a lot better intelligence than we had, and that’s never a good sign.

We found her in the bedroom just by following the smell. A well-built woman in her mid-forties dressed in a pink Superdry T-shirt, cut-off denim shorts and espadrilles. She was lying sprawled out face-up on the bed, her arms out to her sides in an almost religious gesture. The body was already bloated from the gases created by the bacteria burrowing away inside her, and her face and neck had turned a discoloured green like pond slime as the body steadily putrified. I’m no pathologist but I know enough about dead bodies to work out she’d been dead at least three days. Even so, as I approached the bed, disturbing the hundreds of flies on the corpse, she was still just about recognizable as Diana Manning. There were five bloodied gashes consistent with knife wounds in the T-shirt close to her heart, and a sixth wound to her belly, but not a lot of blood, which suggested she’d died quickly. My guess was that the killer had stabbed her in the belly to weaken her then, very shortly afterwards – probably in the next few seconds, judging by the absence of blood spatters anywhere else on the bed – had sat on top of her, pinning her to the bed, and finished her off with the knife blows to the heart. All of which suggested he knew what he was doing.

‘There’s a note here,’ said Dan, who’d stopped by a desk on the other side of the room.

I turned away from Diana Manning’s body, no longer wanting to look at it. It reminded me too much of my own mortality. ‘What does it say?’

‘It’s a suicide note. It says “I am so sorry. I cannot go on.” The notebook’s brand new, looks like it’s never been used before. No tear stains, no marks, nothing on it. And he hasn’t even bothered finishing the whisky. I think if I was sitting a few feet away from my wife of fifteen years I’d just murdered, and I couldn’t go on any more, I’d drain the booze so I could forget what I’d just done, and get the strength to do what I had to do next.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, looking round. ‘And that’s the problem. Where is he?’

Manning’s body was nowhere in the house. We checked everywhere.

In truth, we should have called it in then and there. The rules are simple. If you discover a body, especially if you think foul play is involved, you leave the scene immediately so as not to contaminate it, call in the local CID, and let them set the murder inquiry in motion. But as members of the NCA we were here in an advisory capacity only, and I didn’t want to miss anything before I handed it over to the Lincolnshire force. I’ve never been very good at delegating.

‘So what do you think happened here?’ I asked Dan once we’d done a first pass of the house and were having a last look at the main bedroom.

‘It’s a set-up,’ he said. ‘A Kalaman job.’

The Kalamans. It was a name few people had heard of, yet by any measure they were London’s most successful and secretive organized crime outfit. They’d been operating for close to fifty years and had contacts everywhere, including at various levels within the police force, and both Dan and I were absolutely certain that the current head of the family, Cem Kalaman, was one of the men responsible for the murders of the girls at the farm in Wales.

‘They’ve done this sort of thing before,’ continued Dan. ‘I told you about that case a few years back when a freelance investigative journalist wrote a pretty explosive piece about Cem Kalaman. His lawyers slapped an injunction on the journalist and the newspaper that was going to print the story, and three months later the journalist was found dead in the bath with his wrists slashed. His girlfriend was there too, beaten to death with an iron. No history of violence in the relationship, none of the neighbours heard anything, and the verdict was murder/suicide. That’s what they’re trying to do here. Deflect attention.’

I nodded. ‘I’d go with that. Whoever killed Diana Manning didn’t do it in a fit of passion or anger. It was quick and professional.’ I looked round the bedroom. ‘And this place is way too tidy. There’s no sign of a struggle, and the surfaces have been freshly wiped down, unlike the rest of the house. The only problem’s the obvious one. If this was meant to look like a murder/suicide, then why the hell isn’t Manning here?’

Dan didn’t say anything. He was as puzzled as I was.

It was only when we were doing a final check of the house, just in case we’d missed something obvious, that we spotted it. Well, that’s not quite right. It was Dan who saw the dirty marks on the conservatory roof. I missed them completely. To be fair, they were only just visible – you had to look pretty closely – and Dan was staring out of the spare bedroom window at the time.

When we opened the window we could see from the concentrations of dirt that they were partial footprints – two together facing towards the house and two more about four feet apart pointed towards the edge of the roof.

I looked at Dan. ‘I can’t think what the killers would be doing running along this roof away from the house, so this must be Manning. He made a break for it.’

Dan looked surprised. ‘If that’s the case then he’s got more balls than most lawyers I’ve come across. The Kalamans don’t usually make mistakes. I wonder if he got away.’

I stared out across the empty fields. There were no buildings in sight and, aside from a road in the distance, no sign of human habitation or activity – a welcome change from what I was used to in London but a real challenge for a forty-eight-year-old office worker like Manning who was fleeing on foot from violent killers.

‘Jesus, I hope so,’ was all I said, because the alternative – that the man who was our only real lead after three months of investigation was dead – didn’t bear thinking about.

Two

The SIO from the Lincolnshire force was a very tall, studious-looking fellow, no more than thirty-five, with a marked stoop and a naturally morose face. He sighed loudly as he came over to introduce himself to Dan and me, as if our presence was an irritation, which to be fair it probably was. An hour had passed since we’d called in the locals and the day was getting hotter as it ran into the afternoon.

‘I’m DCI Gibson,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘I recognize you. You’re Ray Mason.’

I put out a hand and we shook. ‘That’s right.’

‘I thought you were suspended.’

‘I’ve been reinstated.’

‘Yes,’ he said, frowning. ‘So I see.’

I often have this effect on people, even some of my fellow police officers. Because I’ve been in the news more than once these past few years, a lot of people know who I am. At least they think they do. To them, I’m an independently wealthy cop with a shadowy past and a pretty controversial present. An air of something not being quite right has always hung over me. There have been allegations of corruption, mental health issues relating to a very public childhood trauma, even extra-judicial killings. And although no wrongdoing has ever been proven, plenty of mud seems to have stuck. And some people – and I guess I’m including DCI Gibson here – don’t like that.

He looked down at Dan, who was a good eight inches shorter than him, like a headmaster addressing a pupil. ‘And you are?’