CHAPTER 55
Eddie had thought he was tired. At midnight, he, Isobel and Pascale had retired to their rooms but now, at 1am, he couldn’t sleep. Poor sleeping had ruined his days and his nights ever since he’d flown from England.
He lay on his bed, hot and naked except for his Y fronts, with the light and air conditioning off to save electricity, staring into the darkness and feeling increasingly angry about his own comments earlier. It wasn’t that he disagreed with himself. Far from it. What he’d said about plastic bottles made perfect sense. It was the sense that, yet again, no-one seemed to care enough to do anything.
He turned to thinking about Isobel. She had said she wanted to change things at Vital Cosmetics as soon as she could wield some power and that she wanted to involve him. That was good news, he supposed, if he could find the time alongside teaching and running the mycology lab. But what was her opinion on the matter of bottled water? And on flying thousands of miles just for holidays. Changing things meant changing an entire attitude. Neither of them, Isobel or Pascale, had reacted with any real passion or deep understanding and Mark had treated his views as a joke.
Mark, though, had said he had work to do in his room which suggested he, too, might still be awake. So, Eddie pulled on his shorts, padded along to Mark’s room in his bare feet and knocked on the door.
He could hear voices so he knocked again and Mark opened it wearing ear plugs with wires hanging over his shoulder and a phone in his hand. Still talking into the phone, he beckoned Eddie to enter and take a seat. On the table was a laptop with a picture of a house and trees and a separate image of a man’s face in the bottom corner of the screen.
Mark pointed at his ear to say he couldn’t talk right now so Eddie, fascinated, dragged a chair to the laptop screen to watch. Nothing seemed to be moving except the mouth of the man. The main image showed a car parked to the side of a house, another on a gravel driveway outside a front door and a line of trees. Eddie could now see that the branches of the trees were moving in the wind so it wasn’t just a photograph. It was live. Mark pointed to the image of the man speaking in the corner of the screen. “Colin,” he said.
“Ah,” Eddie said. “He looks older than I imagined.”
Then he saw the door to the house open.
“Movement,” Mark said into his phone. “You copy?”
On the screen, Eddie saw Colin Asher nod. He. too, seemed to be watching a screen.
Inside the riverside house in Wallingford, Novak limped from the room into the hallway carrying his stick. Ritchie followed. Olga was behind Ritchie but she overtook them both, opened the front door and stepped outside. Novak and Ritchie followed. her. Olga turned again and closed the door of the house. The Mercedes was parked on the gravel with the driver’s door open. Erik got out. He stubbed a cigarette into the wet gravel with a brown shoe, opened both the front passenger door and the rear door and stood aside like a brown-uniformed chauffeur.
That’s when it started.
From behind trees and from the main gateway, armed police suddenly appeared, running. They ran to just beyond the Mercedes and then stopped, stood perfectly still and aimed Glock 17 pistols and Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns.at all sides of the Mercedes. Ritchie, Novak, Olga and Erik stood, shocked, at what had happened in just five seconds.
“Police,” came a shout from one of the officers in bullet-proof jacket, face mask and carrying a submachine gun. "Freeze. Don't move. Put your hands up."
Olga cried out, tried to run but then stopped, turned and stared. Novak dropped his stick and stared with his one good eye and with his mouth open. Erik put his hands up as if he’d been expecting this sort of thing for weeks. Ritchie half raised his arms and looked around. Police pistols and guns were being levelled at each of their heads, including his own.
Another command came from the same officer as he raised his submachine gun to his shoulder and pointed it mostly at Olga. “Away from the vehicle. Hands above your heads. Steady. Don’t move.” And then he shouted in good-enough Russian: “Vy menyA panimAyete?”
Three blue and yellow Thames Valley BMW police cars then arrived, crunching their way down the driveway with blue lights flashing. Two blocked the main gate, the third stopped right behind the Mercedes.
Ritchie watched with his hands on his head, unsure where he stood in all this sudden action, but then the doors of the third police car opened. A uniformed officer climbed out from the front passenger door and stood looking around as if checking things were under control.
He beckoned to the car and a rear door opened.
Out stepped a tall black man in a pristine city suit who walked straight up to Ritchie.
Ritchie brought his hands down, lowered his head onto his chest and spoke quietly without looking up.
“Good evening, dad. I really can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.”
Keith Nolan turned his head away from Olga, Novak and Erik. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “It will appear we’re arresting you. Follow me.”
Ritchie followed him to the BMW. “Sit in the back seat. Stay there until we’re finished here. You understand?”
Ritchie looked up. “What’s for dinner tonight, dad?”