completely smashed she still knew some nifty combat moves. But he kept squeezing Lauren’s hand because otherwise she’d ignore him.
‘You’re being an idiot,’ he barked. ‘Do you want me to leave you here? Because I will.’
As Dante said this, a big four-wheel-drive Toyota whizzed past, blowing Lauren’s hair about.
‘If you don’t let go of me,’ Lauren began angrily, but then her expression changed. ‘You know, your eyes are dead sexy when you’re angry.’
Before Dante knew it she’d grabbed him around the neck and started kissing him. Lauren was fit and he instinctively opened his mouth wide and pulled her in, but after a couple of seconds he saw sense and pushed her back.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘We’ve both had a few drinks and imagine if someone drives by. We’re supposed to be brother and sister.’
Lauren started to walk under her own steam. She was a bit wobbly, but Dante kept close and made sure that she didn’t fall or wander out into the traffic.
She turned back with a serious expression and a wagging finger. ‘I think you’re one of the nice guys, Dante,’ she slurred. ‘Most boys would have taken advantage. If you’d been like my brother you’d have my top off by now.’
‘Watch the cars,’ Dante warned, as a Ford skimmed by and blasted its horn.
Dante nudged Lauren back to the side of the road, but at least she was moving quickly and it was much easier going without her arm draped around his back.
The last third of the walk was on a much quieter road with a proper paved sidewalk. It curved up a gentle slope through the estate of luxury homes where they lived. Dante was relieved to be out of the traffic, but now he worried that Chloe would drive past or that Lauren would make a noise and disturb the neighbours.
What he didn’t expect was to see her start clambering through the hedge at the bottom of their road.
‘Where are you going?’ Dante asked.
‘I’m absolutely busting,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ll be two seconds.’
Dante tutted. ‘We’re three hundred metres from home. You don’t need to go in a hedge.’
But Lauren was full of drunken determination and ploughed through the branches. As she stood up on the other side Dante heard her trainer skid, followed by a yelp and a kind of zipping sound.
‘Lauren, are you OK?’ Dante shouted, following her through the hedge.
Dante realised that Lauren had tripped over a knee-high railing. She’d then slid two metres down a forty-five-degree concrete embankment and landed in a drainage channel designed to stop the water that ran off the hill from flooding the road.
‘Are you OK?’ Dante asked anxiously. He cleared the railing and stepped gingerly down the concrete slope. At least the bottom of the channel was dry after all the recent hot weather.
It was almost dark, but the moonlight caught a pained expression on Lauren’s face. ‘I landed really hard on my hand,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done but it hurts like shit.’
*
McEwen parked five hundred metres back and watched through binoculars as Paul Woodhead reversed the white van into a dilapidated farm building a kilometre from his Dartmouth home. After padlocking the doors, Woodhead donned a crash helmet and leather jacket before getting on a small Yamaha trail bike and heading back out to the road.
‘What do you think?’ Neil asked over the police radio from inside the surveillance van.
‘I’ll stay here and see what we’ve got,’ McEwen said. ‘You follow Woodhead’s bike. He’s almost certainly heading for home, but let’s be sure.’
‘Copied and understood,’ Neil said.
McEwen grabbed a torch, a video camera and a lock gun from the glove box before stepping out of the BMW and heading towards the barn. He approached slowly and used the binoculars to check the building from all sides, making sure there was no sign of an alarm or surveillance cameras. When he got up close he flicked on the torch and shone it over the dirt outside the shed to see if there were any trip wires or motion sensors.
It all seemed reassuringly low tech. So was the two-lever padlock, which McEwen popped with a filed-down key and a sharp slam from behind. The wooden door was noisy and he jolted as his radio made a bleep.
‘He’s home,’ Neil said. ‘Watched him strip off through the bedroom window and head for the bathroom.’
‘Might as well come back here then,’ McEwen said. ‘I’m already inside.’
‘See you there,’ Neil said.
McEwen kept an eye out for security devices as