Eventually, however, they appeared to take Emilia’s word for it that she’d had little choice but to react so drastically. She was unarmed and escorted to Aldeburgh under the direct supervision of experienced field operatives Gardiner and Lago.
Their arrival coincided with the town’s annual three-day carnival weekend. It attracted thousands of extra tourists which offered plenty of camouflage. Earlier, dozens of members of a samba band dressed in reds, whites and blues danced with drums hanging from their necks as they followed brightly decorated floats weaving around the town. As the music played, Emilia took a position from the top of the high street and slipped on her smart glasses, setting them to binocular mode. She then used facial-recognition software to scan the faces of the crowds lining the roads as far as the eye could see. There was no sign of Flick.
Later, the three separated to ask in shops and cafes about their mark. But all were regarded with suspicion and the fed-up town closed ranks; they gleaned nothing they didn’t already know. It was only later when Emilia viewed footage of interviews from the other two’s body cams that the young woman who ran the B&B caught her attention. She was clearly accustomed to – and annoyed by – strangers enquiring as to whereabouts of Britain’s most wanted woman. But Emilia intuitively read something else in her micro-expression – disappointment. She suspected they had been more than landlady and tenant; they had been friends. And even weeks after her sudden departure, this Grace girl was still struggling to come to terms with who Flick had really been. It was how Emilia was going to lure her out of hiding.
As the afternoon’s celebrations made way for evening, Emilia found herself standing over Grace’s trembling body, watching the helpless electrocuted woman’s arms jerk. Gradually Grace’s fingers spread out and her wrists turned as if preparing to crawl away. It was a futile gesture. The heel of Emilia’s boot crushed Grace’s fingers.
‘I don’t think so,’ Emilia said quietly. ‘This is only beginning.’
Chapter 83
FLICK, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
The smart glasses were shaking in Flick’s hands as she slipped them on. Her irises directed the zoom function to scan the property, fifty metres ahead. The curtains behind each of the three windows were closed and the lights turned off. The front door, however, was slightly ajar.
She switched to thermal-imaging mode in the hope it might pinpoint how many people were inside. But the glasses, all the motorway service station had to offer, were inexpensive. A faint yellow dot appeared upstairs in the house, suggesting someone was inside.
Flick desperately wanted to run across the road, burst through the doors of the B&B and discover exactly what Grace’s attacker had done to her. But she was certain this was a set-up designed to ensnare her. So she took shelter from the weather under the porch of an empty property instead of reacting with a knee-jerk response.
The cloak of dusk she’d arrived under had made way for nightfall, the sky illuminated by a rainbow of colours projected by the bright lights of a nearby fun fair, merry-go-round rides and stalls. She’d forgotten it was the final day of the carnival and the vast number of participants made remaining unnoticed more challenging. The rain that had soaked her that morning in Cornwall followed hercross-country but hadn’t put off hundreds of people parading along the nearby high street, carrying illuminated Chinese lanterns on sticks and making their way to the beach to end the celebrations with a firework display later that night.
Flick arched her back and pushed her fingers into her lower spine where a painless throbbing had appeared. She was unsure if it was the pregnancy or the long drive knotting her muscles. She’d had plenty of time during the seven-hour journey to Aldeburgh to decide how to respond to Grace’s plight. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to do nothing, but more importantly, she made the decision to no longer run from the person who wanted her dead. It would be an impossible feat to keep looking over her shoulder for the next four and a half years and at the same time, provide a safe, secure environment for her baby.
The enemy had succeeded in what they’d set out to do. They had lured Flick out of hiding and back into the open. But if they wanted to kill her, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
Her glasses targeted the B&B one last time before Flick removed a hunting knife from her pocket and slipped it inside the right sleeve of her coat. She practised snapping her wrists back to judge how quickly it could slip out.
She made her way towards the end of the garden and to the road outside Grace’s house. Flick ran her fingers up and down the gateposts searching for sensors that might warn Grace’s captor of her arrival, but they were clear. There were no laser alarms surrounding the length of the path either.
Arriving at the front door, she assumed it was nerves making her stomach flutter until she realised it was the baby turning inside her. She rubbed it, almost apologetically, and hoped her stress levels weren’t being felt by her child. Not for the first time that day she questioned whether she was doing the right thing. But this was unchartedterritory – there was no right or wrong, only survival of the fittest.
Flick wedged the front door open with a rock as she slowly stepped inside the entrance hall, moving towards the lounge. Her glasses revealed the room to be empty. So were the communal dining room, kitchen, utility room and bathroom. Upstairs, it was the same for each guest bedroom with the exception of the one she had once rented. As she approached it, thermal-imaging sensors made the yellow dot expand. If it was Grace, she was radiating heat and that meant she was alive.
Flick swallowed the sour taste of bile as it rose up into her throat. The cool tip of the hunting knife grazed her wrist as she turned the door handle and slowly opened it. The first thing to strike her was the intense heat. Only it wasn’t coming from a body, but judging by the circular shape of it, from an electric heater next to one. Then she spotted a figure lying on the bed.
‘Grace?’ she whispered, her voice no louder than a whisper. ‘Grace, please wake up.’ Flick drew closer and fumbled until she could place two fingers on the side of the person’s neck, searching for a pulse. She withdrew her hand when she felt something wet. She frantically located the bedside light, illuminating Grace’s body. Her throat had been slashed.
Flick cast her gaze across her friend; her skin was a greyish white; her lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling. Blood had oozed from her throat and seeped into her T-shirt and bedsheets. The heater had been used to fool the thermal-imaging camera and had already dried the blood brown. Grace’s hands and feet had been bound, but she hadn’t been gagged. Flick shuddered at what level of pain her terrified friend must have suffered in her final moments.
A tidal wave of emotions threatened to consume her. She sank to her knees, grabbing Grace’s hand as she apologised over and over again. This time, the bile rose toohigh to swallow and she only just made it to the sink to vomit.
As she palmed Grace’s eyelids shut, she spotted something poking from the corner of her mouth. She carefully parted Grace’s lips and removed a scrap of balled-up paper. As she uncurled it, she recognised it as the line drawing of Flick that Elijah had sketched the night they met.
It struck in an instant. Flick had spent so much time worrying about Grace that she hadn’t given a thought to who else the killer might use to reach her.
Elijah.
With rain lashing against her cheeks, Flick ran through the back streets and alleyways before reaching the road behind the beachfront. She kept her hood pulled over her head, to protect her from the elements and to avoid being spotted by lantern-bearing carnival-goers heading to the beach.
She couldn’t think clearly enough to prepare herself for what she might find inside Elijah’s house. And on her arrival, the privacy glass had already been on, giving nothing away about the activities inside. Unlike Grace’s B&B, she didn’t scope the building before entering. Instead, she keyed in the digits to the security code and his front door opened with a click. Then she clasped the handle of her hunting knife, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.
Flickering lights greeted her as she entered the corridor, illuminating the Perspex staircase. The bass-heavy rap music that Elijah favoured as he worked blasted throughout the house, offering her a shred of hope that the killer had not yet reached him. Slipping on her smart glasses again, Flick made her way along the corridor until she reached the unlit, open-plan kitchen and lounge. There was no sign of Elijah even with the thermal-imaging lens.
She felt another twinge in her back but didn’t have time to pay it attention. Instead, she made her way upstairs untilshe reached the closed door of his studio.Please be alive, she thought and pulled at the handle to open it.
Suddenly, a figure inside rushed towards her. Instinctively, she ducked, then swung her knife out in front of her, slicing the air with the blade. However, the figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
A disorientated Flick turned, trying to locate the person, only for another to appear on the other side of the room. They too flew towards her, then vanished as she tried to strike them. It was only when a third came at her that she saw who the enemy was – herself. They were the three-dimensional moving holograms of her, the ones Elijah had created for his exhibition. Flick scowled at the soulless, empty, ghost-like apparitions and wondered how far removed from her they actually were.
