In the Still of the Night

He drew his head back to look down at her and she saw he had turned pale.

Then he began kissing her again, even more feverishly.

Sean had been taking a shower when the phone rang and hadn’t heard it, but when he was dressed again he noticed a light on his answerphone and switched on the playback.

Harriet’s voice made him stiffen.

‘God, can’t anyone do a simple job?’ he muttered, and rang her back at the studio.

‘How long ago did she leave?’ he bit out, and Harriet stammered, hearing the rage in his voice.

‘I don’t know—’

He exploded. ‘Christ, Harriet, how could you leave her alone, even for a second? I warned you!’

‘I asked her to wait for me. She knew where I was, just in my office, I had to make a couple of very important phone calls – Annie shouldn’t have left without me.’

‘Well, she hasn’t got here yet. I’ll ring her at home,’ Sean muttered, and hung up with a crash that made Harriet go deaf for a second.

She was so angry that she decided to go home herself instead of rushing over to Sean’s flat. Why should she let him bawl at her like that? Who did he think he was?

But when she was in her car she changed her mind. After all, Annie was Roger Keats’s chief target – if he was somewhere out there in the city, Annie was in danger every second of the day and night.

Sean drove to Annie’s house so fast that he was lucky not to crash into another car. It was getting dark now, traffic leaving London in the tidal wave that flowed in and out of the capital every morning and evening. Several other drivers hooted viciously as he wove in and out at high speed, but he ignored them, cutting corners, taking short cuts, his tyres screeching.

She lived in one of the inner suburbs on the north side of London, within walking distance both of Regent’s Park and the big mainline railway stations on that side of London.

The wide, tree-lined streets had been mostly built in one of the great waves of property development that came every decade or so during the nineteenth century.

You could guess by the style of housing in a road just when it had been built. Every generation spawned a new style. Annie’s house came from the Edwardian period when large families and a confident middle class demanded space, and even a smaller terrace house had a long garden in front of it, a black and white tiled pathway edged with scalloped red tiles, and a hedge to shield it from the outside world. The row of plane trees planted along the pavement gave the road a sleepy, country air, even now, when the branches were bare.

Sean parked, jumped out of his Porsche and ran to the golden oak front door. There was no answer to his ringing and knocking. He went to the front windows to peer through the blinds, but could see nothing whatever inside.

A man across the street working in his garden looked over and called to Sean, ‘If you’re the press, she’s not there. Left ten minutes ago.’

Sean hurried over there. ‘Was she alone? In a taxi, or …?’

‘Are you the police? Or the press?’

Sean eyed him narrowly. ‘What difference would it make which I was?’

‘The press pay for information – the police don’t. My name’s Phil Grover, by the way. What’s yours?’

Sean’s teeth met. He was inclined to throttle the man, who was a short, skinny, ferret-faced creature, could be in his thirties, might be younger. He was wearing jeans and a sweater, trainers – teenage gear, but he was no teenager.

‘Never mind my name, Mr Grover, I prefer to be anonymous.’ Sean pulled out a twenty-pound note and proffered it.

The other man snorted. ‘Think again, Mr Anonymous.’

Grimly Se

an found another couple of notes. He had no time to haggle over money with the bastard. Every second counted; he was terrified for Annie.

Pocketing the notes, the other told him. ‘She left with some guy, in a rather ramshackle old car; not her style at all, I’d have said. She usually comes and goes in a chauffeur-driven limousine – one brought her home this evening, black guy driving it. It’s usually him, I’ve noticed him before. But there was this other car parked in the street, I noticed that, too, because I was suspicious, after all the police activity in the street lately. I was thinking of ringing the police and getting them to come along to take a look at this guy. I mean, he might have been the guy who murdered Derek Fenn. You hear about these crazy fans, don’t you? Look at the guy who shot John Lennon. What do they call them? Stalkers? Well, he looked as if he could be one of them – there was just something about him. He just sat in his car, watching her house. Might have been a reporter, I thought, and I did wonder if I ought to go over and talk to him, but on the other hand … he made me a bit nervous, actually.’

Good for him, thought Sean, disliking Phil Grover so much he wanted to smash him in the face with a fist.

He forced himself to keep calm, though; he needed the man’s information.