‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, you dumb bitch!’ shouted Bianca. It was the first time Emilia had seen her ruffled.
‘You didn’t need to kill Sinéad!’ Emilia yelled.
Bianca pinched at her nostrils to stop the flow of blood. ‘She wasn’t going to tell you a thing no matter how much you begged her. We were wasting time.’
‘Or you were scared that if she told me everything, I wouldn’t help you find the other three.’
‘Oh, I know you’ll help us find the others if you want to see your goddamn family again.’
‘How do I know they’re even mine?’ Emilia argued. ‘You could have deepfaked them.’
‘You knew they were your family the moment you saw them,’ Bianca hit back. ‘You might not remember them but something buried inside you felt the wrench. I saw it in your eyes.’
‘And to carve Sinead’s name into her forehead? Why?’
‘As a clear warning to the others that we are coming for them.’
‘But it’ll have the opposite effect. They’ll bury themselves deeper.’
‘Or by shaking the hive, we’ll see what flies out.’
‘I saw the wound in the top of her head. Your people did the same to Ted – why?’
‘You just need to do as you’re told and stop asking questions.’
‘Why do you call them Minders? What are they taking care of?’
‘Did you not just hear what I said? Stop asking questions or so help me God …’
Only when Emilia calmed did Adrian release his grip. She clambered to her feet and wiped her moistening eyes. A male voice took her by surprise.
‘Everything all right?’ a bearded man asked through the wound-down window of his truck. He stared only at her as Adrian and Bianca fell silent.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Emilia said but he didn’t seem convinced. ‘Thank you, though,’ she added before his vehicle pulled away.
She turned to Bianca. ‘I can’t do this; I can’t be responsible for anyone else’s death. I’m not a killer like you.’
‘You don’t have the first clue who you are,’ she snapped. Adrian placed his hand on her arm as if advising her to stop. She ignored him. ‘But I promise you this. The next time you get slap happy, I will shut your family down once and for all and I’ll make you watch.’
Emilia needed time on her own to process what had happened. And she planned to keep quiet with what she knew about the surviving Minders until she was sure how to use it to her advantage and not theirs.
‘Bianca,’ said Adrian suddenly, his finger held to his ear as if listening to something. Both women turned to see his irises darting in all directions as images appeared in his smart lens. ‘Based on the description Emilia gave us of the park she found herself in where the tunnel ended, field ops scoured the area and detected a handful of Victorian storm drains. Only one of them led under the streets and stopped at a specific building. We sent a team but it’s vacant.So they used cameras attached to neighbouring buildings to identify everyone who had entered and left in the last nine to twelve months, cross-referred them to their National Identity Cards and then searched for those who’d gone off-grid. There were only four who had stopped using their bank accounts, store cards, who cancelled utility bills, no longer shopped online, had not visited a doctor, dentist, stopped paying National Insurance and so on. Sinéad was one of them. We have photos of the three others.’
Damn it, thought Emilia. But at least they didn’t know where to find them. Not yet, anyway. And the sinister smirk that crept across Bianca’s bloody mouth indicated what would happen to the others when they were discovered.
Chapter 55
CHARLIE, MANCHESTER
The wind’s bitter sting felt as if it were penetrating Charlie’s skin and biting his bones. He tasted it with his tongue as it parted his chattering lips and ruffled his hair. Yet its chill wasn’t harsh enough to make him uncomfortable.
Instead, he removed his jacket, jumper, T-shirt, trainers and underwear until he was completely naked, standing on the roof of Manchester’s tallest hotel. His body shivered, but his disconnect from fear and pain remained. He had to push forward.
Charlie peered over the edge. From fifty-two storeys high, Manchester’s streets resembled a child’s play mat, painted in bright colours and littered with toy cars. Just below him, a window-cleaning gantry caught his attention. He carefully climbed inside as its metal frame swayed and clanked against the side of the building with each new gust of wind. Then he lifted himself up until he was standing on its narrow edge, one hand holding the chains that precariously moved the contraption up and down, his toes curled around the metal rim. All that separated Charlie from death was one violent blast. He closed his eyes and imagined himself falling, then taking off into the night sky and being carried away to the horizon.
Charlie had retained his room at the La Maison du Court despite moving into a flat-share; it did no harm to retain his bolthole should the need arise for somewhere to escape. It was all the more important now that someone had killed a Minder. In the office toilets that afternoon, he had opened the message sent to his phone and watched as Sinéad was butchered. However, it didn’t prompt him to question his own safety. Instead, as he replayed the footage, he became fixated by Sinéad’s stoic expression. How might he feel in the moment he knew he was going to die?
Her murder was the reason Charlie had found himself hovering outside the service lift of the hotel, waiting for a member of staff to enter before he followed them inside. Once they departed at their floor, Charlie continued until he reached the roof, tiptoeing past masts and aerial towers until he reached the edge. Alongside driverless cars, death and loneliness, heights had been the phobia that scared the old Charlie the most. Standing on a rooftop’s ledge was different to pressing his head against the window of his suit. It would be the biggest test of how much of his former self remained.
