Whisper For The Reaper, Jack Gatland [good books for high schoolers txt] 📗

Anjli looked down at her watch. ‘It’s half-past eleven,’ she replied. ‘I think we have a little time for a look around, yeah?’

Climbing out of the Mini, Billy and Anjli carefully stalked back to Karl Schnitter’s garage. They could see a faint light emanating from inside, but the view wasn’t that good from where they stood.

‘We need to get closer,’ Billy whispered. ‘I told you that this sort of thing was why I didn’t want to be a copper, right?’

‘Shut up,’ Anjli mocked as she crept towards the side window of the garage. ‘You live for this shit.’

Now at the door, Billy carefully tried the handle. To no surprise at all, the door was locked. He turned to tell Anjli this, only to find that she was no longer outside the garage, having slid down the alley to the side, most likely intending to find a way in from the back of the building.

Which of course meant that Billy could either join her, or stay here and act as a distraction, as bait. He weighed up both options and was about to move towards the alley where the faintest of clicks paused him, stopping the breath in his chest.

The front door was opening.

Ilse looked back to Jess as she moved to the front door. Through the glass, she could see the faint image of a man on the other side, lit from behind.

‘You make any sound, you die,’ she hissed. Jess struggled at the other cable tie as she sat there, worried that this could be her dad, about to walk into a trap. She needed to free herself quicker, but the blade was blunt now and the plastic was denser than she’d hoped as, picking up a vicious-looking wrench, Ilse slowly turned the lock in the door, clicking it open as slowly she turned the handle, raising the wrench to strike…

Billy stepped back from the garage door as it opened, the back lit figure of a woman appearing in the doorway, some kind of weapon in her hand.

‘I’m unarmed!’ he exclaimed in fear as Anjli, a length of pipe in her grasp, emerged from the garage.

‘Good job I’m not,’ she laughed. ‘Christ, Billy, you weren’t joking. You really are terrible at this.’

‘I’m guessing that there’s nobody here?’ Billy asked, leaning past Anjli to look into the garage.

‘I don’t think anyone’s been in here since we were,’ Anjli replied. ‘There’s still forensics tape everywhere.’

Billy sighed. ‘Well, that’s the last place empty,’ he moaned. ‘What the hell do we do now?’

Ilse stepped back from the door as Karl Schnitter entered, quickly closing the door behind him.

‘I thought you were the police,’ she said. Karl smiled.

‘They’re too busy looking for any place I owned in Hurley,’ he replied. ‘Standard practice. Start where you know and work outwards. By the time they think of coming here, we will be long gone.’

‘Is it done?’ Ilse placed the wrench back onto the table as Karl nodded.

‘I spoke to some old friends,’ he replied. ‘They will ensure we are well looked after. We will stay long enough to fix up some new identities and then we will be extracted.’

Ilse smiled. ‘Will we be father and daughter?’

‘Of course,’ Karl replied. ‘You might not be a Müller again, but I have lived with that for decades. A name is just a name.’ He placed a rucksack on the counter as he watched out through the window on the door. ‘There is a ferry leaving Tilbury at first light. It will take a couple of hours to drive there, and we will have to hide while it goes to Le Havre, but once it departs there, we will be free until we reach America.’

Ilse looked at Jess, now watching them. ‘Should you have said that in front of the girl?’ she asked. Karl shrugged.

‘Who will she tell?’ he replied, opening up his rucksack and pulling out a medical bag. ‘Nobody listens to the dead. Once her father has taken his life, we will arrange it to look like he killed his daughter first.’

Jess didn’t move, staring in horror at the two Germans.

‘Do not worry, little one,’ Karl smiled. ‘It will be quick.’

Billy was about to start the car when his phone went. Looking at the screen, he frowned.

‘We need to hold for a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an automation that’s ended.’

‘And that means what exactly?’ Anjli asked. ‘Or is it some kind of tech thing that I’m too stupid to understand?’

Billy grinned. ‘I need to remote access the computer at the Library,’ he said, holding his phone sideways and using it as a small tablet. ‘I need to see what—‘ he stopped.

‘Oh.’

‘Oh what?’

‘I’d left the hard drive attached, to see if there was anything on it that could be retrieved,’ Billy explained. ‘There’s one file. It was corrupted somehow, so the wiping must have kept it in some kind of stasis, not allowing it to be fully deleted, while not showing it.’

He turned the screen of his phone to Anjli. On it was a scan of an order note.

‘I can’t read it,’ she complained. ‘Go on.’

‘Patrick Walsh must have gotten hold of a scan of a hire contract a couple of months back,’ Billy was using his fingers to zoom in on it. ‘Ilse must have heard about this, and that’s why she had the iMac hard drive wiped. But it wasn’t a document, it was a corrupted image.’

‘An image of what?’ Anjli was getting exasperated now.

‘When Ilse Müller was here last time, she rented a workshop off the Thames, about half-a-mile west of Hurley, off Frogmill Lane.’

He looked to his partner.

‘Nobody knows about it,’ he said. ‘Nobody would think to search there.’

In the Library, Monroe stared in horror at the laptop as it burst into life.

‘I told you,’ he muttered. ‘The bloody things are sentient.’

‘It’s a remote login,’ Bullman said as she watched the screen. ‘Likely Fitzwarren. He’s found a receipt on Patrick Walsh’s drive,