"I never accused you of taking anything," Maria said. "But now I know you have."
She climbed inside the treehouse. It was dim and cramped, but she could see how a child would love it. There was a carpet and someone had hung tiny framed pictures. The windows even had sills. The door, probably something taken from a Wendy house, had a handle and a letterbox that was jammed open. Maria sat down, her head touching the roof. The stuff missing from the kitchen was here. She kissed her daughter's head, thinking how cute this was.
"Good job I came now, before you started trying to get the washing machine in here."
"Don't take the stuff back."
"I won't. I won't. Can Daddy make me an upstairs?"
"He could try. There's not much room, little miss." Maria bent forward and opened the plastic front door. She peered out. "And you're not taking the upstairs in that house one board at a time."
"Lou wants a bed inside."
"I'm sure we..." She stopped, eyes wide, as she watched a man in a suit scale the fence and drop into the back yard. Fear sent goose bumps up her spine. It was him! The killer. He was here.
Maria leaned back and grabbed Louise, throwing a hand over her mouth. The girl started to struggle, but Maria held on and whispered into her ear, telling her to be quiet, stop moving. She closed the door with her foot, hoping he wouldn't see the movement.
His form was warped as she watched through one of the upper plastic windows. Like something in a hall of mirrors, or a bad dream. He moved to the back door quickly. And she could see a gun in his hand.
He slipped inside.
***
The kitchen was large but cramped by a large table with a gingham cloth, the staple of any country cottage. The cabinets arranged on the walls were pale yellow, the hardwood floor blue and the ceiling white, reminding Einar of the outdoors: a bright sky with a sun warming the sea. Maybe that was the design, or something Einar alone felt. A fine, quaint, retro feel, marred only by a laminated sign on the wall ordering the occupants to not smoke.
There were two interior doors but he ignored the one that stood four feet high, figuring that was a pantry. The other, open, led into a small hallway. Directly ahead were the stairs, flanked by a rail with twisted metal balusters. Left, just past the bottom of the stairs, was the front door, with another door adjacent to it that he figured led to the living room. To the right the hallway ended at another door. He pushed that open first and found a downstairs toilet, then headed back. Once past the stairs, he saw that the hallway opened into a dining room with a bookcase and a large wooden table. The book case contained just a few actual books, and a great stack of leaflets and pamphlets, all probably promoting things to do around here. And an old rotary dial telephone.
The living room was empty. It had two big sofas you could get lost in and a vast fireplace.
He took the stairs. Halfway up was a landing where the stairs turned left. At the very top was the window he'd seen from across the way. He was in a corridor that four doors led off. One was open, displaying a modern bathroom in silvers and whites.
His hand was on the handle of one of the other doors when he heard the bang. Loud, and far away. A faint rending of metal and a crash of glass. Einar threw open the door, moving quickly because he thought he knew exactly what that noise was. A car crash. Not two moving cars colliding, though. Marsh was here.
***
Jimmy fought past his airbag and kicked open the door, which squealed against bent metal. He rushed over to the white Audi. The police car's front end was a mess and he knew it wouldn't drive. The Audi had suffered less, although the impact had forced its mangled boot to flip open. He looked inside and didn't see what he was looking for. A quick glance inside the rest of the car showed the item wasn't there, either. He cursed and rushed across the road, into the trees, keeping low, being quiet even though the horrendous screech of the crash would have alerted anyone within half a mile.
He had seen the Audi and not been surprised, already figuring the killer would have beaten him here. He just hoped it hadn't been by long. As he rushed through the trees, scanning left and right, he beat back the fear that he wasn't too late. The killer might already have killed Maria and Louise.
He looked across the lot, at the house. No shot at this angle, except through one little window, the one at the top of the stairs. He scanned the line of trees and saw nothing. That made him think the killer must have already gone down into the house, unless he was positioned deeper into the line of trees. Jimmy rushed along the edge of the embankment, knowing he was exposed but forced into such an action because his speed would be diminished if he ran through the trees. He soon reached the end, where lay the road that led down and around and into the lot. Nobody here, even though this was the spot where the killer should have been, if he was planning to use the sniper rifle. Only from here was there any sort of angle for firing into the house.
Jimmy checked the curving road, fearing the man might be somewhere along its length, which would put him facing the front of the house for an even better shot. But the road was empty.
Then he saw it. Discarded right there near the foot of a tree, no attempt to hide it in the undergrowth. The rifle lay obviously dropped, not hidden. That suggested a mind that was impatient. That said the killer had realised he had no shot from here and had rushed to the house with no firm plan. He had driven here expecting to have the element of surprise, not knowing that Jimmy was right behind him. But now Jimmy had the element of surprise. And a plan.
He knelt in the undergrowth and picked up the sniper rifle.
***
Einar quickly made sure the upper rooms were empty and then rushed to the bathroom and smashed the butt of his gun into the cabinet on the wall. It tore off its screws and dropped, spraying little complimentary soaps and scented items all over the floor. He snatched up a mirrored door that had broken loose.
Out in the hallway, he stood beside the window and raised the mirror, using it to peer out of the window. He turned it slowly, scanning the trees up on the embankment, until he found the corner of the plot, and then he focussed his sight, trying to see the man he assumed would be there, if he really was as good as he was seeming to be.
Einar knew he was when the window blew in and the mirror shattered in his hand. He leaned back against the wall. So Marsh had found his rifle, probably because he'd worked out the best place for a shooter to stand. This could be a problem.
He was working on that problem when the phone rang downstairs.
He bent low and rushed down the stairs, turning right, ducking under the dining table. He lay on his back on the cold stone floor and reached up for the phone. The digital display showed a number that he instantly committed to memory. He was grinning.
***
When the phone was picked up, Jimmy, like the other guy, stayed silent. One-handed, he slipped the reticule over the house, into the back yard, towards the river. When they moved over the treehouse, he froze. Through a window in the side, right where the cottage had one at the top of the stairs as if it were a copy of that building, he saw movement through the plastic. Maria and Louise for sure, hiding. Somehow they had gotten wind of the killer's approach and fled. He wished they had hopped the back fence, because now they were trapped.
"You win, I'll speak first," said a voice he remembered from the swimming pool. It had lost some of the confidence with which it had told him his life countdown had reached zero. "You're good at this game, James Marsh. Call me Einar, by the way."
Jimmy held the mobile jammed between shoulder and ear as he moved the reticule back to the cottage. "Why are you after me?"
"Of course, we're in this game for different reasons. I like the money and the prestige that comes with it. I like knowing I'm a shadowy contract killer. They make films and books about us. We strike fear into the hearts of people -"
"Why are you after me?" Jimmy cut in.
"-But you, Marsh, you're the other kind that people fear. The serial killer, w
ho preys on people because he likes it. You can't help yourself, and nobody is safe. You might hide behind a facade, dressed in your biker gear, but at the end of the day you're just a man who enjoys killing. Do you get off on knowing that books and films are made about you, too? I bet you think about the fame that'll come when you're finally caught. A sensational trial, world headlines, and to be talked about in crime shows for years to come."
Jimmy laughed. "I don't like killing people, but I think you do. Yours is the sham, not mine. You kill anyone. The only ones who should fear me are your sort, the nasty fuckers on the planet who don't deserve life. The world's a better place because of what I've done. And in a few minutes, it's going to get a little better."
Now Einar laughed, tit-for-tat. "Don't damage that weapon of mine, Marsh. The warranty ran out last month. You know I've got your wife and kid right in front of me, right?"
A moment of fright. Jimmy put the reticule at the edge of the house, in the corner where the fence met the brickwork. Right where he thought a person would appear if they stepped out the back door. In that moment of fright, he thought Einar was at that door, aiming a handgun across the yard and into the treehouse. Then he realised his error. The man was on the phone, and the phone was at the other side of the building. Lying. Some kind of test.
He faked a laugh. "You're not very smart, are you? I figured you'd find this place. I watched you arrive. I was sitting in a branch above you when you dropped your weapon. And my wife and child are about fifty miles away from here, waiting for me. I'll get back to them soon." Another forced giggle. "Now why don't you come on out? Saves me waiting all day."
Jimmy rose to his feet, slowly, careful not to make a noise in the undergrowth. He took a step, then another, raising his feet high so they didn't snag on grass. If the killer was in the dining room, he had no view of Jimmy, which gave him a chance to get close to the cottage. He had the more lethal weapon, but he wasn't sure that he could take out a running man, even at only a hundred and fifty metres with a sniper rifle, if the killer suddenly realised where Maria and Louise were. So he needed to get down there.
"I'll be out soon," the killer said. "Soon as I finish snooping through your wife's underwear."
"Don't forget my daughter's, you sick piece of shit. I'll be waiting. Soon you'll be nothing but a corpse out here, food for the foxes, minus a head. And a tiny remark in my black book of kills."
He hated conversing with the man, but needed to keep him talking. Needed to keep him in that dining room, away from the kitchen, as far from the back garden as possible.
***
Einar clenched his fist hard around the receiver. Tricked? Played like a fool? Didn't matter, so long as he was the one standing at the end of this. He listened hard to the sounds coming down the line, trying to force the voice into the background so the background came forward. He could hear the wind, but the rustle of the tree branches in that wind was lower now. He heard a car go past, but it was faint. But it wasn't enough. He needed definitive proof.
"You're no killer, Marsh," he said. "Not the real sort. You take out idiots who never suspected it coming, then ride away on your little bike. Even those guys at the service station two days ago were amateurs. You have never gone up a man who's even a fraction as skilled as me. This is what I do, have done for years. You're in a world of trouble, Marsh, and you don't even know why. Any idea why I'm after you? Have a little think?"
It worked. Marsh fell silent, and Einar concentrated hard on the sounds he could hear. Then he heard it. A car, louder and closer than the others. At first it wasn't, and then it was, and then it wasn't again, which told him that car was not on the main road. It was on the road leading off that came here. It had been behind Marsh, then alongside, and then past, which would not have happened if Marsh had been still in the trees. A car coming here could be a problem, but Einar wasn't worried about that right now. Marsh was moving, sneaking closer. He would know Einar was in the dining room and might be moving around to put the dining room window in his sights.
Einar put the receiver on the floor carefully, no sound. He put his lips close.
"Think about what you did at your supermarket sixteen days ago."
If something happened at the supermarket sixteen days ago, it had nothing to do with this, probably. Einar didn't know, or care. What mattered was that he had sent Marsh's memory back to search for a reason why he was being hunted, and that would give him time. Not much, maybe, but some. A little. And Einar was good enough to need only a little.
Quickly and quietly he crawled away from the phone. It was time to end this, finally.
***
Jimmy scoured his memory, but drew a blank. Sixteen days ago, he remembered, he had had an uneventful day at work. Office-based. Nothing that he could think would make someone want him dead. So he put his head back on the moment.
He moved left quickly as he saw the big people carrier belonging to the Carters whiz down the road. In a minute they'd be here, and that was either going to be good or bad. Either the killer would try to flee and try again another time, or he would try to harm the family so he could continue to hunt Jimmy right here, right now.
Jimmy stuck his phone in his pocket and rushed now. He kept the gun aimed at the side window in case the man calling himself Einar appeared there, but the barrel was wobbling as he ran and he knew he'd never get a good shot off. He didn't need to. He reached the wall of the house without incident and slipped along it, then along the fence, which was high enough that he didn't need to do more than slightly stoop to keep his head below the top. He reached the end, stepped into the scrubland, and moved along the back fence. It was lower and he had to duck right down. He stopped where the big tree in the garden bent its branches over the fence, then peered over.
No movement from the house. The treehouse was just two metres in front of him, and he could see through the plastic back windows. There they were, his wife and daughter, so close yet out of reach. He moved left another two feet so that he could see the back door. Open, but nobody there.
"Maria," he called out in a loud whisper. He saw her stiffen, then turn. Saw her face, bent and lengthened by the warped plastic sheet over the window. The warping effect gave her a wild grin that he knew would not be real. She saw him and her face turned to shock. Not relief, which he might have expected, or wanted. Shock. The gun in his hands.
He took one hand away to waved, beckoning her to him.
Quickly they came. Maria slipped fast out of the treehouse, landed on her feet neatly, and reached up for Louise. Jimmy heard his daughter moan, saying she wanted to climb down herself. He saw Maria grab her impatiently by the legs and pull, dragging the girl out with a yelp. She kicked, bucked in her mother's hands.
"Pass her to me," Jimmy said. He let one hand release the gun, so he could reach for his daughter. That was when he saw a flash of movement at one of the upper windows in the cottage. The hand slapped back onto the stock, the rifle moved, the barrel raising.
And there he was, at the window, throwing it open, his own gun already aimed, just waiting for the glass to clear his shot. Jimmy fired. He heard both bangs and both men fired at the same time.
He felt wood splinter right by his ear as the killer's bullet blew apart part of the fence. But he also watched as the glass in the upper window exploded, and the man behind it fell back.
And he saw blood splatter through the air.
***
Einar had rushed upstairs to try to find a spot in the front bedroom. He had stared out the window and watched the car he'd heard, a big people carrier, drive into the plot and park right outside the cottage next door. The doors opened and a million people spilled out. Then Einar was running again, knowing that Marsh would be headed round the back, away from these people. Of course, he could have run to them, seeking their help. But the man was a former Commando, and Einar didn't think he'd endanger their lives. So through the house he ran, front to back, taking a bedroom door that delivered him into a bare r
oom with a travel cot and pale wallpaper and nothing else. A hastily set-up baby's room, probably courtesy of the landlord, knowing that holidaymakers or buyers might have kids.
He rushed to the window, his eyes already looking down and left, over the fence and into the grass beside the house. That was where he expected Marsh to appear. And that was when he caught the glint of light off something. His eyes went forward, towards the back of the garden, and his hand reached for the handle. He was opening the window even before he'd seen the wife and kid, climbing out of a goddamned treehouse. So that was where they'd hidden. It made him smile.
He raised his gun, aimed into the gap. He was staring through the window at an angle when he fired.
Then his gun exploded. The glass shattered and powered all over him, knocking his back hard, flat on his back. Pain went nuclear in his face.
Einar rolled and got to his knees, slapped a hand to his face and felt the valley in there. There was a deep furrow in his cheek almost from mouth to edge of jawbone. He was debating whether a piece of glass could have created so thick and deep a wound when his eyes laid on the back wall, at the centre of a Jackson Pollock of his own blood. His gun hadn't exploded at all! He had been fucking shot! There was the hole in the wall created by the bullet.
He knew he'd been lucky. The open window had saved him. The angled glass must have deflected the bullet slightly, drawing it fractionally off a path that would have put his skull in sticky pieces all over the flowery yellow wallpaper.
Einar crawled out of the room. The blood was dripping onto his hands, onto the floor. He got to his feet once in the hallway and rushed into the neighbouring bedroom. This one was fully furnished. Laying a red trail across the pink carpet, he rushed low to the window and peeked out, just a forehead and eyes, and then he saw them.
Jimmy led the way, carrying his daughter, and carrying Einar's weapon, and paced by his trim wife. They rushed through the scrubland beyond the fence, down the embankment, towards the river. So Marsh had rushed round the back, knowing his family hid in that treehouse. He had seen Einar at the window, and Einar had been too busy concentrating on the wife and kid to have noticed Marsh lurking right there at the back fence.