Relentless

Relentless

by

Simon Kernick

Also by Simon Kernick

The Business of Dying
The Murder Exchange
The Crime Trade
A Good Day to Die

For more information on Simon Kernick and his books,
see his website at www.simonkernick.com
SIMON KERNICK

¥

LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG
TRANSWORLO PUBLISHERS
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Published 2006 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Simon Kerniek 2006

The right of Simon Kemick to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters hi this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Acatalogu

rd for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9780593054710 (cased) (from Jan 07)
ISBN 0593054717 (cased)
ISBN 9780593054703 (tpb) (from Jan 07)
ISBN 0593054709 (tpb)

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For my daughters, Amy and Rachel
Part One

SATURDAY
1

I only heard the phone because the back door was open. I was
outside breaking up a fight between my two kids over which one
of them should have the bubble-blowing machine, and it was
threatening to turn ugly. To my dying day, I will always wonder
what would have happened if the door had been shut, or the
noise of the kids had been so loud that I hadn't heard it.
It had just turned three o'clock on a cloudy Saturday afternoon
in late May, and my whole world was about to collapse.
I ran back inside the house, into the living room, where
the football was just kicking off on the TV, and picked up on
about the fourth ring, wondering whether it was that permatanned
bastard of a boss of mine, Wesley 'Call me Wes' O'Shea,
phoning to discuss a minor detail on a client proposal. He liked
to do that at weekends, usually when there was a football match
on. It gave him a perverse sense of power.
I looked at my watch. One minute past three.
'Hello?' 1 'Tom, it's me, Jack.' The voice was breathless.
fcwas momentarily confused. 'Jack who?'
'Jack ... Jack Calley.'
This was a voice from the past. My best friend when we were
at school. The best man at my wedding nine years earlier. But
also someone I hadn't spoken to in close to four years. There
was something wrong, too. He sounded in pain, struggling to get
the words out.
'Long time no speak, Jack. How are you?'
'You've got to help me.'
It sounded like he was running, or walking very quickly. There
was background noise, but I couldn't tell what it was. He was
definitely outside.
'What do you mean?'
'Help me. You've got to ...' He gasped suddenly. 'Oh Jesus,
no. They're coming.'
'Who's coming?'
'Oh Christ!'
He shouted these last words, and I had to hold the phone
away from my ear momentarily. On the TV, the crowd roared as
one of the players bore down on goal.
'Jack. What the hell's happening? Where are you?'
He was panting rapidly now, his breaths coming in tortured,
wailing gasps. I could hear the sound of him running.
'What's going on? Tell me!'
Jack cried out in abject terror, and I thought I heard the
sound of some sort of scuffle. 'Please! No!' he yelled, his voice
cracking. The scuffle continued for several seconds, and seemed
to move away from the phone. Then he was speaking again, but
no longer to me. To someone else. His voice was faint but I
could make it out easily enough.
He said six words. Six simple words that made my heart lurch
and my whole world totter.

They were the first two lines of my address.
Then Jack let out a short, desperate scream, and it sounded like he was being pulled away from the phone. There followed a
succession of gasping coughs, and instinctively even I, who'd
lived my life a long way from the indignities of death, could tell
that my old friend was dying.
And then everything fell eerily silent.
The silence might have lasted ten seconds, but was probably
nearer two, and as I stood frozen to the spot in my front room,
mouth open, too shocked to know what to say or do, I heard the
line suddenly go dead at the other end.
The first two lines of my address. The place where I lived an
ordinary suburban life with my two kids and my wife of nine
years. The place where I felt safe.
For a moment, just one moment, I thought it must have been
some sort of practical joke, a cruel ruse to get a reaction. But the
thing was, I hadn't spoken to Jack Calley in four long years, and
the last time had been a chance meeting in the street, a snatched
five-minute conversation while the kids - much younger then,
Max just a baby - shouted and fidgeted in their twin pushchair. I
hadn't had a proper chat with him - you know, the kind friends
have - in, what, five, six, maybe even seven years. We'd gone our
separate ways a long time ago.
No, this was serious. You don't put fear like that into your
voice deliberately. It's a natural thing, something that's got to Dome from within. And this mos\ definitely had. Jack had been
terrified, and with good reason. If I wasn't mistaken, and I
would swear to God that I wasn't, I'd just heard him breathe his
dying breaths. And his last words were the first two lines of my
address.
Who wanted to know where I lived? And why?

Let me tell you this: I am an ordinary man with an ordinary
desk job in a big open-plan office, leading a team of four IT
software salesmen. It's not a huge amount of fun and, as I've
already suggested, my boss, Wesley, is something of an arsehole,
but it pays the bills and allows me to own a half-reasonable
detached four-bed house in the suburbs, and at thirty-five I've
never once been in trouble with the boys in blue. My wife and I
have had our ups and downs, and the kids can play up now and
again, but in general, we're happy. Kathy works as a lecturer in
environmental politics over at the university, a job she's held for
close to ten years. She's well liked, good at what she does and,
although she probably wouldn't like me saying so, very pretty.
We're the same age, we've been together eleven years, and we
have no secrets. We've done nothing wrong; we pay our taxes
and we keep out of trouble. In short, we're just like everyone
else.
Just like you.
So why did some stranger want to know our address? Some
stranger who wanted it so badly he was prepared to kill for it?
Fear kicked in, that intense terror that starts somewhere in the groin and tears through you like an express train until it's
infected every part and is ready to develop into outright panic.
The instinctive flight mechanism. The sick feeling you get when
you're walking empty streets alone at night and you hear footsteps
coming from behind. Or when a man smashes a beer glass
on the corner of a bar and demands to know what the fuck you
think you're looking at. Real fear. I had it then.
I replaced the phone in its cradle and stood where I was for a
long moment, trying to think of a rational explanation for what
I'd just heard. Nothing presented itself, and yet at the same time
even the most paranoid explanation didn't make sense either. If

someone wanted to speak to me, then they presumably knew
who I was. In which case they could easily have found out where
I lived without asking a man who barely knew me any more.
They could have looked in the phonebook for a start. But they
hadn't.
'Daddy, Max just hit me for no reason.' It was Chloe coming
back into the house, grass stains on the knees of her jeans, her
dark-blonde hair a tousled mess. At five, she was little more
than a year older than her brother Max, yet vastly more sensible.
The problem was, he'd already overtaken her in bulk, and in the
anarchic world of young kids bulk tends to win through in
arguments. 'Can you go and tell him off?' she added, looking put
out, as innocent of danger as all children are.
Someone was coming here. Someone who'd just killed my
oldest friend.
The last I remembered, Jack Calley had been living five or six
miles away, just outside Ruislip, where London finally gives way
to the Green Belt. If he'd called me from near his home then the person he'd given my address to would be about a fifteen
minute drive away at this time of day. Maybe less if the traffic Was quiet and they were in a hurry.
: 'Daddy, what are you doing?'
'Hold on a sec, darling,' I said with a smile so false it would
'have embarrassed a politician. 'I'm just thinking.'
It was two minutes since I'd put down the phone and I could
my heart beating a rapid Attoo in my chest. Bang bang, bang bang, bang bang. If I stayed here, I was putting my family
risk. If I left, then how was I ever going to find out who was
it me, and why?
'Hey, sweetie,' I said, keenly aware of the strain in my voice, Vetoe got to go out now, round to Grandma's.'

'Why?'
I squatted down and picked her up. 'Because she wants to see
you.'
'Why?'
Sometimes it's best not to get into a dialogue with a fiveyear-old.
'Come on, darling, we've got to go,' I said, and strode
outside, carrying her in my arms.
I saw that Max had abandoned the bubble-making machine in
the middle of the lawn and was now at the bottom of the garden,
his head poking out of a makeshift, canvas-sided camp at the top
of the climbing frame. I shouted at him to come out because we
had to go. His head immediately retreated into the camp. Like a
lot of four-year-old boys, he didn't like to do what he was told.
Usually this wasn't much of a problem. I tended to ignore it and
let him do his own thing. Today it was a disaster.
Jack's words played over and over in my mind. 'Oh Jesus,
no. They're coming.' The urgency in them. The fear. They're
coming.
They're coming here.
I looked at my watch. 3.05. Four minutes since I'd picked up
the phone. Time seemed to be moving faster than it usually
does.
'Come on, Max, we've got to get moving. Now.'
I ran over to the climbing frame, still holding onto Chloe,
ignoring her complaints. She tried to struggle out of my arms,
but I didn't let go.
'But I'm playing,' he called out from within the camp.
'I don't care. We've got to go now.'

I heard a car pulling into the road out front. This was unusual.
The housing estate we live on leads nowhere and is simply a
horseshoe-shaped road with culs-de-sac sprouting off it. Drive

along it and eventually you end up right back close to where you
started. Our house was on the corner of one of the culs-de-sac,
and a car came down it once every twenty minutes at most.
The car slowed down. Stopped.
I heard a car door shut, further down in the cul-de-sac. I was
being unduly paranoid. But my heart continued to thud.
'Come on, Max. I'm serious.'
He giggled, blissfully unaware of my fear. 'Come and get me.'
I put Chloe down and reached inside the camp. Max retreated
as far as he could go, still giggling, but his expression changed
when he saw the look on my face.
'What is it, Dad? What's wrong?'
'It's all right, nothing's wrong, but we've got to go round to
Grandma's quickly.'
He nodded, looking worried, and scrambled out.
I took them both by the hand and, trying to stay as calm as
possible, led them through the house and out to the car. They
were both asking questions, but I wasn't really listening. I was
willing them to go faster. In the distance, I could hear the cars
Sliut on the main road. Above me came the steady roar of a
iffcassenger plane circling beyond the unbroken ceiling of white
Cloud. The neighbour's new dog was barking and someone was
fjfeowing their lawn. The comforting sounds of normality, but today they weren't comforting at all. It was as if I was in some §lort of terrifying parallel universe where danger loomed on all
ss, yet no-one else could see of understand it.
I strapped the kids into their car seats, then realized, as I was
it to get into the driver's seat, that I'd better take some
light gear for them, just in case they were out of the house
any length of time. I tried to think what I was going to say 10R I turned up at my mother-in-law's with them. The best