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  “Jen, I—”

  “No, Derek, you have to agree, otherwise I’m going to get out of here even if it means digging a tunnel to the mainland.”

  “Thanks,” said Derek softly, his voice breaking. He gulped back his emotions before continuing. “I think it’ll be a while until they let me go.”

  “I know it will, so we’ll Skype. Every day if we can. I’m worried about you, you idiot.”

  Jennifer was right in her assessment. Derek’s brush with death had unnerved him more than he thought possible and in the weeks following the incident at Oxford Circus, he hit many lows. Their daily Skype calls became a lifeline.

  Unbeknown to Derek, Jennifer also commissioned her specialist to talk to his doctor to persuade him to release Derek earlier than he would otherwise have done on the understanding he would be in the most capable of hands at the villa.

  During the first week of April, the villa was abuzz with deliveries of equipment for fitting out a room suitable for Derek’s convalescence, and in mid-April, just five weeks after the attempt on his life, Derek arrived at the villa in an ambulance, embarrassed by all the attention being heaped upon him and not even daring to think what it might be costing.

  Already mobile enough on his crutches, but with his leg still in plaster, he was soon standing by the pool looking longingly at the water.

  “Christ, Cotton, is this your idea of a joke? It’s going to be torture standing here watching while you swim up and down.”

  “All the more incentive to keep that healing process in top gear so the plaster can come off ASAP,” replied Jennifer. “Alicia has put together a special diet for you as well as a bunch of daily exercises. We’re lucky she trained as a physio before going into personal training; she’s linked up with our specialist and they reckon you’ll be charging around in no time.”

  Derek lowered himself onto a lounger. “I hope the diet includes a glass or two of the wine you keep telling me about.”

  “Not for a few weeks,” said Jennifer, her features clouding over with regret. “I’m afraid you’ll have to sit and watch Alicia and me enjoying our evening glass of prosecco while you sip your sparkling water.”

  “You’re joking, right! The doc in London said it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Jennifer pulled a face. “Our specialist is something of a traditionalist—”

  “This is Italy!” cried Derek indignantly. “Wine’s a tradition. I take it your specialist is Italian?”

  Jennifer poked her tongue out at him and laughed. “Never difficult to wind you up, Thyme, is it? Of course a glass or two of Pietro’s finest is on the menu.”

  Derek narrowed his eyes at her. “Score all your points while you can, Cotton. I won’t be on these crutches for ever.”

  Chapter Seven

  By the time she reached her Tuscan hideaway, Olivia Freneton’s self-congratulatory euphoria over a job well done in killing both Mike Hurst and Mandy Gwo was once again becoming eclipsed by anger and frustration at her failed attempt on Derek Thyme’s life. She had misjudged the density of the crowd; she should have stood closer to Thyme and pushed the truncheon harder. The presence of the huge man who saved Thyme was just bad luck, but she should at least have noticed him. It was sloppy, and she refused to accept sloppiness.

  Having reviewed the situation more objectively as her BMW soaked up the miles back to Tuscany, she was increasingly angry with herself for scuttling away like a scared cat. There was no need for her to have left England; she could have gone to ground in her caravan for two or three weeks — she had enough food — and once the initial impetus of the search for her had diminished, she could have carried on with her disposals, ticked both Hawkins and Bottomley off her list and perhaps even visited Thyme in his hospital bed. If she’d managed to complete his disposal, who knows what other opportunities may have arisen?

  It was true that all those scenarios would have incurred risk — everything she did when back in England was a risk. Just being there was a risk. But she was good enough to minimise the risks: she had all the disguises she might need sitting in the caravan’s wardrobe, she had explosive packs, a comprehensive set of tools and even weapons, should she need them. And she had pencils, paper, notebooks and newsprint with which she could brainstorm her plans, formulate scenarios, consider and resolve problems. It was what she did; it was her very being, and she had let the opportunity slip in a moment of ill-considered … What? A look of disdain flashed across her face as she sat astride the BMW outside the farmhouse, watching the electric gates close behind her. The word ‘panic’ had flitted across her mind. Had she panicked? Olivia Freneton didn’t panic, she simply chose the best path given the options of the moment. This time she had made the wrong choice. Why? There must have been something in her subconscious mind pulling her in that direction, something distracting her.

  As the gate clicked shut, sealing once again the barrier of the strong fence surrounding her property, she considered the option of turning round and going back, and quickly rejected it for two reasons. The first was the inevitable increased surveillance at the ports, mainly focussed on people leaving the UK, it was true, but greater vigilance in passport checking of those entering the country was also a danger for her.

  However, the second reason was far more serious and as she allowed herself to think of it, she realised this was what must have been niggling at her, controlling her decision-making: she was close to being broke. If she’d stayed in England much longer, she would have had to resort to petty theft for the resources to continue her killing spree. That spree would now have to go on hold while she addressed her finances.

  She had bought her ancient farmhouse, her motorcycles and the caravan in Kent while she was still a police officer, long before her posting to Nottingham and the SCF, her capital outlay including a basic restoration of the farmhouse to bring the services, utilities and comfort into the twenty-first century. It had all been part of her brilliant planning; and now her isolated bolthole had come into its own. She had even had the foresight to steal an ageing VW Golf to run around in. It was inconspicuous, unlike the large BMW motorcycle, and with its fake Dutch plates, it was effectively off the radar to the Italian authorities. If she wanted to go farther afield than the local towns, she would go by train, leaving the car with a back-street garage owner in nearby Castiglion Fiorentino she had made an agreement with — for a nominal sum, he was prepared to let her park the car in his yard for as along as she liked, months if necessary. He knew nothing about the stern Dutch woman, not even where she lived, and he cared even less. However, while the capital items were bought and paid for, day-to-day living expenses couldn’t be ignored and were proving to be a continual and irritatingly large drain on her dwindling cash reserves.

  After parking the BMW in an out-building and letting herself into the main house, Olivia threw her bag into the corner of the large kitchen, kicked off her motorcycle boots and opened one of the wall cupboards to retrieve a bottle of Scotch. She never drank during an operation: she needed a totally clear mind to guarantee all her finely tuned faculties were optimal, from her instinctive timing to her anticipation when outmanoeuvring someone in a fight, her nanosecond reflexes and her brilliant ability to adjust and adapt in any scenario. Nothing was permitted to compromise any of that in any way and so alcohol was totally off limits. But when she returned to base, returned to review her performance, to adjust, revise and improve her plans for the future, relaxing in a scalding bath with a large whisky on ice was the perfect way to unwind.

  And on this occasion perhaps more than any in the past, she needed to unwind. As she settled in her bath with her second large whisky, she consoled herself with the thought that ultimately all her targets would die. It may take some time, but they would, and at her hand. The months would go by, they would become more complacent and her task would become easier and easier. Right now, the SCF and other units would be buzzing with activity aimed at bringing her in, but the fire under that operation would so
on die down and when no leads were found, it would burn itself out within weeks.

  The whisky slowly soothed her jagged anger. Perhaps she had made the right decision after all given that her face would be everywhere. The caravan site may be a quiet, forgotten spot, the few occupied vans the refuges of forgotten losers, but even losers could read, watch TV and sometimes put two and two together. It could have been dangerous to hole up there for a protracted period.

  She stretched in the water and took another sip of the delicious blend along with a chunk of ice, rolling them both around in her mouth, luxuriating in their smooth persuasion.

  Sitting at the desk in her study the following morning, Olivia took a sheet of paper and made a list of potential sources of income. She divided the sheet into two columns headed short term and long term. Under the former she wrote: passport, ID and other document theft, theft of other saleable items, honeytraps. She tapped the paper with her pencil, uncertain whether or not to include her next idea. Burglary. There were plenty of well-appointed villas within a thirty-mile radius, many of them only occupied part-time. She wrote the word, pondering over it for several minutes before finally putting a line through it. The risk factor was too high for the potential rewards. She’d stick to what she did best.

  And what she did best was good basic thievery. She was a skilful pickpocket and harvester from unsecured handbags. For her, gathering a crop of passports and wallets at airports and railway stations was simple, sometimes yielding as much as one or two thousand euros of an unsuspecting tourist’s holiday money. Other theft took a little more cunning — a mobile phone here, a camera there — it was all small stuff, and to justify a trip to Amsterdam to where her tame receiver of stolen goods, Luuk Ackerman, sequestered himself in his damp rathole of a basement like some latter-day Fagin, she had to accumulate several thousand euros’ worth of negotiable stock. The bastard drove a hard bargain, partly because he knew this weird Englishwoman was in trouble, partly because Olivia always over-valued her wares. But normally she returned grudgingly satisfied with whatever deal they’d struck.

  Her other short-term income strategy was the honeytrap: the one-off snaring of some gullible male, usually a British or American businessman, although she had occasionally picked up other men whose English was good. She had refined her technique over the years, culminating in the series of brilliant framings of the five fools convicted of killing prostitutes while she had been a police officer in England. Well, it would have been five had it not been for the dogged persistence of Jennifer Cotton: Henry Silk would definitely have gone down had it not been for her. All the more reason why the damn girl had to die.

  The targets were everywhere, all she had to do was select them carefully, choosing the ones with plenty of cash or access to it. The rest was child’s play. She still had a good stock of roofies — the powerful sedative Rohypnol used illicitly as a date-rape drug — that she had acquired while she was still a police officer, and a set of six different disguises, enabling her to repeat the stunt over several days in different hotels in the same city. Her best haul, on a trip to Turin, had been ten thousand euros in four days, thanks largely to one idiot who kept the passwords to his ATM cards in his wallet. However, she enjoyed the feeling of power less each time, finding the process increasingly sordid and not without personal risk, even given her unarmed combat skills. She certainly didn’t want to do it forever.

  She turned to the second column. Long term. This was harder and would require patience, planning and a certain amount of luck, initially at least. She had to find the right person — a woman almost definitely — and become her friend, maybe more than a friend, and steer her in the direction of trusting her, relying on her, allowing her access to her money before she disposed of her and disappeared, ideally with enough profit not to have to repeat the process ever again.

  It was a new venture for Olivia, an exciting one guaranteed to stretch her mind and skills. She would need to be charming over a long period, never giving her target cause to question her. She would be projecting a personality so different from the Olivia Freneton the SCF team in Nottingham had known they would not believe it possible. That thought alone amused her, although in her heart she knew it would be a considerable challenge given her intolerant nature.

  Everything about the project would require money, from the places she needed to frequent to the make-up, the hotels and the afternoon teas. The occasional spree of petty theft to top up the coffers would therefore be a necessity. She had already equipped herself with several designer accessories lifted with ridiculous ease from their rightful owners to augment the wardrobe of clothes she’d accumulated over several years, timeless fashions of the sort that would appeal to the targets she had in mind.

  It would require patient observation of likely targets in and around the locations where such people moved. Plush hotels, restaurants and famous bars in the smarter cities like Rome, Florence and Milan. Sit, watch and wait. A spider in her web; observing, calculating, ready to pounce.

  Chapter Eight

  April 2015, Sardinia

  The crowd was suffocatingly dense, shoulder packed against shoulder, face against face, and yet faceless to a man. But it was never still, writhing instead in slow motion, ripples flowing through it like a snake on the move, even though there was no room to move, no place to go, no chance of separating one body from the next, no chance of moving back from the gaping hole of darkness beyond the platform edge. Yet despite the logjam of humanity, no one came close to slipping over that edge, an invisible barrier protecting them and preventing them from falling.

  And the noise! The noise was incredible. Not the crowd; the crowd was silent. It was the roar from the tunnel as if some terrifying mythical creature were about to bound from the darkness into the station, consuming everyone in its path.

  There was a cackle of laughter from behind him. Derek looked around and saw her. She was so close the sneer of satisfaction distorting her face almost enveloped him. Freneton. She was there, behind him, pushing towards him, accelerating towards him despite the crowd, her huge hands outstretched, linked together; an unstoppable battering ram.

  Suddenly there was no one around him; the crowd had disappeared, evaporated. There was just Freneton on the otherwise deserted platform as the noise from the tunnel rose to a deafening siren, the sound reverberating cruelly, painfully around the empty void. All he could see were her hands bearing down on him, getting larger and larger, closing in, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t duck out of their way, couldn’t use his own hands to deflect them, to parry them.

  They hit him full force in the chest, lifting him up, spinning him in exquisite slow motion, tumbling in a perfectly executed back somersault. Equally slowly the train burst from the darkness, expanding as it found the luxurious extra space of the station after the confining tunnel walls. There was no one to grab him, no Viking hulk with vice-like hands to grip him and tear him from the train’s path. There was just the train, a wall of metal now rocket-like as it slammed into him.

  But it didn’t obliterate him, didn’t reduce him to a pulp, didn’t separate him into a trillion molecules. Instead it shook him violently and screamed his name.

  “Derek! Derek!”

  “No!” he screeched, as his thrashing arms were gripped tightly and pulled to his side.

  “Derek! It’s OK! You’re safe! You’re safe. She can’t hurt you. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  A switch was flicked, flooding the room with light.

  “Signorina Jennifer, is everything all right? The shouting …”

  Jennifer turned from where she was holding Derek’s arms against his body while Alicia was desperately trying to stop his plastered leg from pounding against the wall. “It’s OK, Filippo, thanks. He was having a nightmare; nothing to worry about.”

  “Is there anything I can do, signorina?” The guard was concerned that this huge black man with his heavily plastered leg might run riot and smash the place up.

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sp; “We’re fine, really.” Jennifer smiled at him, hoping he’d be reassured.

  “If you say so,” said Filippo, still hesitant. He decided he would wait down the corridor, be ready, just in case.

  He left, leaving the light on.

  Jennifer turned to Derek, who was panting and sweating, the whites of his eyes beacons of fear, but he had stopped writhing. “That was some nightmare, Thyme. Where were you?”

  Derek stared at her, not sure if she was real or part of the nightmare, and if she was part of it, was she really Freneton?

  “Is his leg OK, Ali?” asked Jennifer, keeping her eyes on Derek’s.

  “No damage, but I’m worried that if this happens again and we’re not here, he could hurt himself.”

  “I’ll stay with him,” said Jennifer, “until he’s sleeping peacefully.”

  “Perhaps I should be the one,” replied Alicia. “Your chest, it’s still vulnerable. The damage isn’t completely healed. If he starts lashing out, he could hurt you.”

  Jennifer looked down at Derek’s face; he was peaceful now, almost asleep. She smiled. “I think it’ll be all right. You’re just down the corridor; leave your door ajar. If he starts again, you’ll hear me if I yell for you. Help me move him over, will you. If I’m going to keep him quiet, I might as well be comfortable.”

  With Derek moved, Jennifer lifted the sheets and settled in the bed, sitting partly up as she put an arm around him, letting his head fall onto her chest. She stroked his hair and looked up to see an amused look on Alicia’s face.

  “What?” she said, grinning back. “I don’t think he’ll trouble us further, Ali. Try to get some sleep.”