is it?”
“We do enough to put them out of action,” continued Bennett, still in diplomatic mode. “Look, sir, whatever measures we take, there’s always the chance this gets traced back to you. Imagine if it was, if you were exposed in the press, perhaps even prosecuted. If that happened and it turns out that you’re a man who put a bunch of lowlifes out of business then I dare say you could style it out and emerge looking like a bit of a folk hero.
“But arson is a different proposal altogether. You look reckless. You look dangerous and out of control. As Susie says, like a gangster.” He spread his hands, no-brainer, but like everybody else in the room he was braced for Drake’s reaction. It was clear to all of them that Drake had taken the idea of fiery vengeance to his heart.
“All right,” Drake agreed reluctantly. “No burning.”
The quick change in Drake’s thinking didn’t completely ring true with Shelley, but it was the best they were going to get. The meeting broke up and Guy and Susie left for London. With the light outside beginning to fade, Shelley picked up his holdall and took it to his room.
It was the same room he’d stayed in all those years ago, and like Susie’s perfume it had a transporting effect on him: the low eaves, having to stoop to avoid banging his head; even the bed linen looked the same.
He sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, painfully aware of how much time had passed. Remembering a little girl who stood in that very same room and, like Hermione from the Harry Potter stories she loved so much, had performed magic, showing him that his mistakes were in fact hard-won experience.
He’d thanked her by leaving.
“Is that why I’m here, Emma?” he said into an empty room. “One good turn and all that?”
And what would Lucy say if she were here, sitting beside him? She’d tell him to pick up his holdall and leave if he wanted, because nothing he could do would bring Emma back anyway. Get out, before the bad shit happens.
But he couldn’t do that. He was an old soldier. He had an undiminished sense of doing his duty.
He returned downstairs. The house he remembered from years ago always had various helpers and employees hanging around: cleaners, housekeepers, gardeners, chauffeurs. But if those people still existed in the Drake household—and Shelley assumed they did—then they’d been given temporary leave of absence. Shelley, Bennett, and Gurney were the only occupants, all a little wired with anticipation and circling each other warily.
As night drew in and the three of them began preparing for the operation—reluctantly, Shelley had bought into the whole “operation” title—they gathered once more in the kitchen, the only downstairs room that was lit, where Gurney opened a laptop to Google Earth.
“Here’s where we’re going,” he said, navigating to a location at Millharbor in Docklands, a road lined with anonymous buildings on one side, land ready for business redevelopment on the other. The buildings were squat two-story affairs, studies in anonymity, the color of soggy cardboard: storage, office units, studio space and . . .
“This one,” said Gurney. His finger moved across the screen. “We can park the van here. Be out of the van and in the building in about ten seconds.”
“And if it’s locked?” asked Shelley.
“We fully expect it to be locked, mate,” replied Gurney, “that’s why we’ve got an enforcer in the van.”
“An enforcer?”
“A sort of battering ram that the police use,” explained Bennett. “They call it the big key.”
“And once we’re inside?”
Bennett and Gurney exchanged an uncomfortable glance.
“Go on,” prompted Shelley.
“We don’t know the layout of the place,” said Bennett, “and as you know, it’s not exactly desirable to make a nighttime incursion into unmapped territory.”
“But fuck it—it’s just an office building,” sneered Gurney. He hitched up the combat trousers he wore, then he cleared his sinuses. “We don’t expect any opposition,” he added, leaving Shelley in no doubt that he considered this a terrible shame.
“Well, what do you expect?” asked Shelley.
Gurney shrugged. “Girls. Computers. Cameras. That kind of thing. Maybe a bouncer. We’ve got baseball bats in the van.”
Baseball bats. Great.
“We should be keeping a watch on this place,” said Shelley. “How do we even know they’re still using it? If we’re right and Emma killed herself in there then the most sensible thing for them to do would be to pack up before the cops show an interest.”
Bennett was nodding. “We think they’re