A Child's Game

Book 0: Karen Sharpe

by John Connor

Genres: General Fiction; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Suspense

Synopsis

In the early hours of the morning in a luxury Leeds penthouse, a terrified victim is doused with petrol, set alight, and thrown out of a ninth-floor window. The victim is a wealthy property developer - but his lover and her daughter have both gone missing. Meanwhile, security services are looking for DC Karen Sharpe who walked out eighteen months ago. But they are not the only ones desperate to find her. She is being pursued by some of the most dangerous people she has ever encountered - and to them, human life means nothing at all . . .

Release date: April 21, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 400

Sample

Stijn could feel the man shivering. After they had poured the petrol over him the look in his eyes had changed. He had known then that there was no point in trying to shout or struggle. Shouting just meant the gag would be tightened until he choked, and Stijn doubted he had strength left to struggle. Akhtar, the kaffir he had been told to use as local help – the man now cursing and swearing from the far corner of the apartment – had beaten the man so badly he might die anyway. Akhtar had used a broken chair leg, lashing out at the man’s head and face before Stijn could get it off him.

Stijn had asked him if he could handle violence before they set off. Akhtar had smirked, as if insulted by the question. That was three or four hours before they got here. But within seconds of it starting, Stijn had known he had made a mistake.

He doubted Akhtar had hit anyone in his life. His movements were too full of fright – thrashing around without aiming, anxious to get it over with. Stijn had told him not to cause injuries that would bleed. Yet he had picked up the chair leg and struck the man’s head, retching as he did it.

There was a lot of blood coming from a gash at the crest of the man’s skull. Some of it was running over Stijn’s hand, irritating him. The man was going into shock; his breathing was rapid and shallow, his pulse slowing. Shock alone would kill him, if they left him to it. But that wasn’t what he had been told to do.

So now everything reeked of petrol fumes and he would have to discard all his clothing, scrub down and bathe to eliminate the odour and the evidence. It was a typical kaffir thing, he thought, to want the man burned. In this case there was good reason, but he had heard they went for it anyway, regardless of reasons. In Pakistan the favoured form of political violence was pulling people off trains and setting fire to them. He didn’t like burning people. The odours were unpleasant. But in South Africa he had smelled worse things in common jails.

As a child he had watched roebuck in the veldt, caught in metal snares, struggling for hours on end, dislocating their bones, tearing apart sinew and muscle as they tried to escape. But when the time came to take them out and kill them they would just lie there, a helplessness in their eyes, completely calm; partly because they were exhausted, partly because they were just animals. Because they had no real conception of death they could reach a point where there was no longer any fear, just the waiting. That was where this man was now. Waiting.

He had been an animal when they had first bound him – something mad, without any capacity for reason or ability to control his fear. It had sickened Stijn to witness the loss of dignity – the pleading and begging, the whimpering as they struck him, calling out someone’s name. Susie – maybe she was his wife, or his mother. He had read that dying people shouted for their mothers, though he had never seen it before and couldn’t imagine doing it himself. But he had hardly known his own mother.

The petrol fumes had put things in perspective. Now the man was just shivering; he knew what was going to happen. To fight was pointless – Stijn had his hand on the back of his neck, a hand so large he could practically close it around the throat. The man had been overpowered even before Akhtar had botched it with the chair leg. Stijn looked down at him. He was small, perhaps half his size and weight, with the same soft, helpless eyes he had seen on the roebuck.

It made Stijn uneasy. Perhaps he should say something to the man – to help him out. But that was impossible. The man was alone now; no one could help him. Besides, it might start him struggling again. Sympathy weakened people. The man stank – of sweat, fear, piss, of blood and desperation, of petrol. He needed putting out of his misery.

‘You should have paid your debts,’ Stijn said to him, regretting it immediately. The bastard probably couldn’t even hear him. He was slumped on a high-backed chair, legs bound tightly at the ankles, hands tied behind his back. The gag was a dishcloth of some sort. Where it was pulled into his mouth there was blood bubbling over it, a bright frothy blood that must have been coming from his lungs. Akhtar had stamped on his chest with both feet, long after he had been capable of doing anything to protect himself.

Stijn looked over to Akhtar, angry with him. He was at the sink, panicking, trying to stop his hand from bleeding. Somehow or other he had cut himself as he struck the man. It would need stitches. Stijn had already told him that, expecting him to just wrap a rag around it and leave it at that. But Akhtar was running water on it, looking for medicines or bandages in the cabinet above the kitchen sinks. He had already pulled the bathroom apart to no avail.

Stijn checked his watch. It was 3.57 a.m.

‘We have to go,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve messed around for long enough.’

Akhtar looked over to him, fear in his eyes. ‘I am leaving my blood all over this place—’

‘It’s too late to worry about that. We will burn it as we leave. Write the note, like I told you to.’

‘Burn the place? But what about him?’ Akhtar pointed at the man.

‘Write the note,’ Stijn said. He had told Akhtar the bare minimum, but the kaffir was afraid of him. He would do as he was told.

When the note was in the metal safe in the bedroom closet Stijn told Akhtar to watch the man. Then he walked through the main room of the apartment and opened the sliding doors leading to the narrow balcony. He stood for a moment in the freezing night air, looking out at the city. Intermittent traffic noises mingled with the sounds of drunken youths.

It was a penthouse apartment and they were nine floors up. Below him the place called Leeds lay in an asymmetrical pattern of light. To the north low wedges of darkness cut into it. He guessed they were hills, but the night was too black to be sure. The sky was thick with low cloud, obscuring the moon. The building he was in was one of the highest in the city centre.

He walked to the parapet – about two feet wide – and looked over the edge, feeling the tingling in the backs of his knees which had once signalled a fear of heights. The drop was straight into a narrow alleyway, filled with garbage containers. Not high enough to guarantee death, as he knew from the mistakes of others. People had lived and spoken of it after dropping from almost double this height.

There was a short ladder fixed to the wall beside the sliding doors, leading up onto the flat roof. He climbed it and looked over the top, just to make sure no one was there. Then he went back in.

‘Take one,’ he said to Akhtar, pointing at the three plastic petrol containers standing by the door. ‘You do the office downstairs. I’ll do up here. Douse the desks and paperwork. Don’t bother with the walls. Lead a line up the back stairwell into the bedroom through there.’

‘Is it safe to do this?’ Akhtar’s voice was high-pitched. Stijn knew he wanted to ask about the man again, but didn’t dare.

‘Don’t light it yet. Just spread it. And be quick – the fumes are noxious.’

He watched until he had disappeared through a doorway leading to a short stairwell, then checked the man. His eyes were closed now, the breathing irregular. He left him, unscrewed a cap from a container and began to lay thick lines of petrol from all the combustible objects in the room back towards the doorway. The floor was expensive parquet and the liquid spread quickly across the varnished surface.

The flat was in a development which Stijn guessed would count for prestigious in this part of the world. In the heart of the city centre, the single tower overlooked a relatively new shopping complex with a glass atrium, through which he could see crowds of young people still busy with alcohol, even at this early hour. The top floors of the block were office space for the financial and legal sectors in the city. He knew because he had checked the place carefully. The flat they were in was connected to one such office on the floor below, but was the only residential letting in the building. It would have come at a price.

Yet there were few items of furniture for Stijn to set alight: an austere leather sofa; a wide-screen TV; the chair he had sat the man on, another he had broken during the struggle, a couple of tables, a wooden double bed in the bedroom – without sheets or quilt – a set of wardrobes containing only the (empty) safe and some old newspapers; on the walls there was just one picture – ironically, a view of Cape Town and Table Mountain at dawn; in the bathroom no toilet roll, soap or toothpaste. There weren’t even pot plants or bookshelves.

He finished before Akhtar and took hold of the man by the legs, pulling him off the chair and onto the floor. The back of the head banged sharply off the ground. Stijn dragged him by the feet to the sliding doors, then bent down and took out his clasp knife. He pressed the point gently against the man’s throat, getting no response at all. Quickly he cut the plastic ties binding the hands and feet, then sawed through the gag and pulled it from the mouth. He carefully pocketed all three items. The man began to gasp a little, but his eyes were closed now. Stijn took hold of his feet again and dragged him onto the balcony.

The outside air already felt fresh by contrast. As a precaution against the fumes Stijn pulled the sliding door shut behind them. Then he hoisted the man by the shoulders until he was leaning forwards, over the parapet, bent at the waist. He thought he could hear him saying something, but the mouth was too damaged for it to make sense. His arms dangled over the side.

Stijn stepped back, took out his Zippo and lit it. Without pausing he held it to the jacket the man had on, waiting a second for it to catch. It ignited with a percussive rush, like a gas ring lit after being left on, the blue flames flashing momentarily into his face before blazing yellow and orange, so hot Stijn felt his eyebrows singe. He stepped back and watched, fascinated.

The flames spread quickly. They had caught the layers of clothing beneath the jacket and were wriggling through the man’s hair before he began to react. As he tried to move Stijn quickly picked up his legs and heaved him forwards. The torso caught on the parapet and Stijn saw the head twist towards him, eyes open. The expression was one of confusion, not pain. Stijn could see him trying to focus even as the flames raced around his head. He opened his mouth, gasping at the air like a goldfish. The flames had caught in his trousers now – within seconds he would be completely engulfed. His arms came to life, flailing at the air around his head. Stijn stepped back and kicked him. The body jerked backwards, tilting over the edge. The hands were still slapping at his burning hair as he went over. There was no attempt to stop the fall, no noise, no screaming. Just one moment he was there, the next he was gone. Where he had been leaning against the parapet he left a small cloud of acrid smoke and a whiff of burned skin.

Stijn didn’t look over the side to check. Ducking quickly back through the doors he ran into Akhtar coming in the other direction, terror on his face. He was shouting at him: ‘What have you done? ’

Stijn walked past him towards the door. ‘You started this,’ he said. ‘These are your consequences.’

Akhtar looked paralysed, torn between wanting to go out onto the balcony to verify what he had seen and the urge to run from
Stijn.

‘We have to get out of here fast,’ Stijn said. He checked that the door back down to the office was pulled open, checked the line of petrol that Akhtar had trailed through it. It would be better to set the fire on both floors, but he had no time now. He opened the main door to the room – the one leading to the fire exit and lifts – then took out the Zippo again. In the room the petrol fumes were suffocating. He stepped out into the hallway and called back to Akhtar.

‘It’s going to get uncomfortable in here. You coming?’

When Akhtar was past him he slid the burning lighter across the floor.

The alarm clock beside her bed said 4.35 a.m. It took Liz Hodges a few moments to work out why she was looking at it. The knocking sound she could hear wasn’t in her dream. Someone was at her front door.

She pulled on a dressing gown and walked to the bedroom window. She lived in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Gargrave, just west of Skipton. Gargrave itself had less than two thousand inhabitants and there were only five other houses on her street. It was hard for people to make a mistake about what house they were looking for. She felt nervous as she peered carefully around the side of the heavy felt curtains she had brought with her from London three years ago.

There were two cars parked up on her driveway. One of them wasn’t hers. From her position she couldn’t see below the porchto her front door, so had no idea who was standing there – or how many there were. But the car pulled up behind her own – blocking it in – contained two rear-seat passengers. They looked male, though the nearest streetlamp was two houses away. She reached for her phone and listened again to the knocking. A gentle, polite tap, nothing urgent or alarming about it. Except the time. She watched lights go on and curtains twitch in the houses of the Armstrongs, directly opposite, and the Byfields, next door but one. She felt slightly reassured.

She had suffered no problems since she had moved to Yorkshire, but she had left a lot of problems behind. It was always possible that one of them would catch up with her one day. The phone was a cordless model with a memory. She skipped down through the numbers until she had the emergency number they had given her when she had first arrived. Below her, on her front path, she saw a male step out of the darknessof her porch and look up to her windows. She kept still.

He appeared to be looking directly at her, though she doubted he could see anything other than a dark gap between the curtain and the wall. Liz thought he looked very definitely official. She exhaled a little. He was wearing a smart trench coat, the collar not turned up and, beneath that, a suit and tie. His shoes looked polished. His face was young, hard.

Suddenly the phone in her hand began to ring. She started slightly, then looked down for the number. It was withheld. She stepped back into the shadows and answered it.

‘Miss Hodges?’ A quiet male voice.

‘Yes. Who is that?’

‘Francis Doyle. Do you remember me?’

She tried to think. The name rang bells. She stepped up to the window and peered out again. The first man had been joinedby a second. He had his back to her and was speaking into a mobile phone.

‘I don’t think I do,’ she said.

‘I brought you up here. Three years ago.’

She recalled now. She smiled slightly, relieved. Of all the people whose hands she had been passed through he had been the most sympathetic. She had needed sympathy.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’m standing outside your house. Are you in?’

She had a moment of relief, quickly replaced by confusion. What were they doing here?

‘I’ll let you in,’ she said.

Doyle had aged. She watched him scrutinizing her from the doorstep. His stockier colleague hung back in the shadows.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘We’re looking for Karen Sharpe.’

She frowned. ‘At this time of night?’

‘Yes. Is she with you?’

‘No. Why would she be?’

‘You’re a friend of hers.’

‘I was. I haven’t seen her for over a year. Why are you—’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’

She let him walk past her and waited for the other to follow.

‘He will stay there,’ Doyle said. ‘Just shut the door on him. It’s OK.’

She led him through to her sitting room. He looked around, listening, as if he might find Sharpe behind one of the sofas.

‘When did you last see her?’ he asked.

‘I don’t recall. Has something happened to her?’

He turned to face her. ‘I hope not. But she may be in danger. Can I look upstairs?’

She felt herself becoming annoyed. ‘Why? Don’t you believe me?’

He held his hands up, shrugging. ‘I just have to do my job. You know how it is.’

‘Well, maybe I should see some ID,’ she said. ‘It’s very late.’

He smiled at her, reaching into his jacket pocket. ‘But you know me. You know who I am.’

‘I know who you said you were three years ago. I don’t know who you are now. I don’t even know who you work for.’

He held a strip of plastic in front of her face. ‘I still work for the police. For Witness Protection.’

She looked at the ID. It was an ordinary Metropolitan Police warrant card. She nodded. ‘OK. Look upstairs. If you have to.’

It didn’t take him long. She sat down on the sofa and waited. She had been about to offer him a tea before he had asked to search the place. She heard him opening cupboards and doors, pulling down the ladder to the loft and climbing up.

‘It’s a nice place you have here,’ he said, when he returned. He brushed dust off his coat – a cheap-looking anorak, not like the more expensive thing the man outside was wearing. ‘Is everything OK with you?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. ‘Is Karen a witness, then? A witness you’ve lost?’

‘Not a witness, no.’ He dug around in his wallet and produced a business card. She took it and read ‘Sergeant Francis Doyle: Diplomatic Protection Service’. She didn’t think it worth querying the two different IDs. She had learnt that three years ago. He was never going to say who he really worked for.

‘If you hear from her, give me a call.’

‘I already have your number.’

‘You have Sutherland’s number. Call the one I’ve given you. It’s quicker.’

‘So she is lost?’

‘Lost?’ He frowned, as if he didn’t understand the word. ‘We need to find her quickly. That’s all.’

‘I thought she was with you lot. I thought that’s why she disappeared.’

‘Did she disappear?’

She scowled and stood up. ‘You know she did. You should have been watching her. She has a child with her. She’s your responsibility.’

He looked uncomfortable for a moment. ‘I’m just doing what I’m told to do,’ he said. ‘If she contacts you, call me. Even if she asks you not to. She probably doesn’t realize how much danger she’s in.’

From the front door she watched the car pull off the driveway and turn around. She waved at Fred Armstrong – still at his upstairs window, watching out for her – letting him know everything was all right, then she went back in to think about it.

DC Karen Sharpe had been her local police contact when she had first arrived here. Karen wasn’t from North Yorkshire Police, who covered Gargrave, but from the larger West Yorkshire force, just to the south. North Yorkshire police had been told nothing about Liz.

Karen had befriended her, looked after her. Not as part of her job, but because someone had asked her to, someone from a world she had once been part of. Someone Francis Doyle would know. Karen had understood what Liz had been through because she had endured a similar situation herself. By happy coincidence her daughter, Mairead, had also been in Liz’s class at the local school. Or maybe not such a coincidence, since the people Doyle worked for had virtually set up the teaching job in the first place. In those days Karen had lived only five minutes’ drive from Gargrave. Through that and other things Liz had got to know Karen well, but not as well as she had thought.

She walked up the stairs to the room she used as a study and sifted through an envelope full of photos. She was wide awake now. She found one of Karen, Mairead, Pete Bains and herself, and checked the date on the back: January 1998. Time had passed quicker than she thought. It was in fact nearly two years since she had last seen Karen Sharpe. Just over twenty-one months since Karen had so suddenly left them. She looked at the image of them all smiling, together.

Karen was bending over slightly, face in profile, saying something to Mairead. She looked worn, but still happy. A tall figure with too-thin limbs and shoulder-length dark hair, almost as tall as Liz herself. She had a pair of jeans on, so her legs were covered, but Liz could remember clearly the still healing gunshot wound to her right thigh. The photo had been taken six months after the shooting, but the injury had still given her trouble. Pete had one arm over Karen’s shoulder, the other holding Mairead’s hand. Liz was standing a little to the side. She had placed the camera on a rock and taken the picture on a timer.

She selected Pete Bains’s mobile number and called it. He answered almost at once.

‘Pete?’

‘Liz. What’s wrong?’

She paused. Things had moved on a little since January 1998. Something was developing between Pete and herself, something intimate and relatively new. She wasn’t clear what it should be called, wasn’t comfortable with the idea that they were ‘together’, but there was definitely something starting. She had met him through Karen though, and neither of them could forget that. Around the same time the photo had been taken Karen had sold her house and moved into Pete’s place in Bradford. When Karen had walked out on them Liz had lost a friend, but Pete had lost much more than that. Even if he were over Karen, Mairead had been like a daughter to him. Liz had to be sensitive.

‘Have you had a visit?’ she asked.

‘A visit?’ Bains sounded confused.

She remembered the time. ‘Sorry. It’s early. Were you asleep?’

‘No. I’m at the Bridewell, still on duty. I’ve been trying to get away all night. A visit from who?’

‘Witness Protection. They just left me. They were asking for Karen.’

‘Witness Protection?’

‘That’s what they said. But they’re never who they say they are.’ She listened to the silence on the other end. ‘They thought I might be hiding her.’ Still silence. What would she feel if Karen were with him, if he were to tell her that? ‘So I thought maybe—’

‘I haven’t seen her,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘Have you?’

Despite herself, for a moment she felt relieved. ‘No. I’m calling to warn you. They will come to you next, I think.’

‘Then I’ll tell them the truth. She walked out twenty-one months ago and I’ve heard nothing from her since. You know that.’

Liz paused, thinking about it. He thought she had called to accuse him. Maybe she had. ‘I’m worried about her,’ she said finally.

‘They say she’s in danger—’

‘She made choices, Liz. She took her daughter with her. She’s not our problem.’

‘I know, but—’

‘No buts about it. She made a choice. We can’t help. We’ve moved on.’

They both listened to their thoughts for a while. She heard someone calling for Bains.

‘I have to go, Liz,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a death in. Someone jumped from a fire in a nine-storey block in the city centre

They say he was burning as he fell. I’ll try to ring you later.’

She nodded silently, trying to ignore the chewed-up morsel of his working world he had innocently dropped into her mind.

‘OK?’

‘OK,’ she said.

‘Remember: she’s not our problem.’

Anna Hart dreamed she was floating. She had this kind of dream often. Tonight she was submerged beneath a deep stretch of profound blue ocean. She had no difficulty breathing. She was on her back, skimming through the water, moving without effort, weightless. She wore no clothes, but the water was warm, moving gently around her skin, supporting her. She could hear whale noises in the distance and far, far above her she could see waves rippling the surface. As she turned to slide upwards the water was fractured by bright shafts of sunlight, slanting down towards her. She felt ecstatic.

Something kept pulling at her though – a voice, a noise. Still half asleep, she turned away from it and pulled the quilt above her ears. Too late – she had registered the sound: a telephone was ringing and someone was shaking her shoulders. She opened her eyes. Her eleven-year-old daughter was standing by the side of the bed, holding the phone. She groaned.

Rachel’s brow was creased with worry. ‘That was the alarm call. It’s five o’clock.’

‘Alarm call? For what?’

Then she remembered. She sat up. They were in a hotel just west of Leeds/Bradford airport. They had arrived the night before
in order to make an early start. She had booked an alarm call for 5 a.m. and the taxi would be here in half an hour.

She pushed herself to the side of the bed, waiting for the sleep to clear from her eyes. Rachel had that intense look that schedules of any sort provoked in her.

‘It’s all right,’ Anna said. ‘I’m awake. Stop worrying.’ Her daughter was already dressed. ‘Did you wash?’

‘I showered.’

‘And I didn’t hear?’ Anna rubbed her hands through her own cropped blonde hair. She felt she needed another four hours. ‘I don’t know whether I can be bothered—’

‘Mum! We have to get going now!’

Anna stood up. ‘I’m joking, Rachel. Why do you get so panicky?’

‘I’m not panicky. I’m excited. I don’t want to miss the plane—’

‘It’s a charter plane. It can’t leave without us.’

‘Not that one. The one at the other end.’

The other end. The references to their unknown destination had long ago become tiresome. Her daughter had been obsessed with this trip ever since Nick had announced it two weeks ago. Anna herself had shared the excitement originally – at least in some small way (Rachel had been so keen it was difficult not to get excited) – and she could understand why Nick would want to increase Rachel’s interest by keeping their final destination secret, but she had long ago ceased to understand why he couldn’t tell her. She was thirty-nine years old.

As a surprise gift he had specially chartered a Lear jet to fly them direct to Paris, from where they were to board a scheduled flight to a destination he would not disclose, to see in the ‘New Millennium’. Anna guessed they would be flying east to get closer to time zones where the Millennium would first arrive, but it was difficult, from what he had given them of the itinerary, to work out where. They had to leave early in order to fly a long distance, she supposed, but it couldn’t be too far, otherwise they would miss midnight altogether. Not to the South Sea Islands, for instance.

She wouldn’t have chosen this trip for herself. Not at her age, perhaps not even when she had been younger. Nick knew that, of course. He was ten years older than her and it wasn’t something he would have chosen either. There was something excessive yet cheap about it – flying thousands of miles just to see in a New Year. Last year they had opted to join a small group of friends at Tiny Chadwick’s place in Argyle; a low-key and relaxing affair. But this was a case of putting Rachel first and both Anna and Nick having to make the best of it. The destination would at least be comfortable and tasteful. She consoled herself with the knowledge that other parents had to endure trips to places like Disneyland. At least that sort of thing had never interested Rachel.