Paternoster Read Free Page A

didn’t bat an eyelid, just intoned, ‘Take him down,’ with a yawn.
    Dave the Nutter’s invective echoed behind him as the prison guards yanked him down the steps to the cells.
    John Hammond was expressionless as the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. He lifted his head and his gaze scoured the packed courtroom as Nutter’s footsteps receded. Jackie cowered down in her seat. Hammond’s eyes locked on hers, and he drew his finger across his throat.
    Then they led him away and she started to breathe again.

CHAPTER
O NE
Monday, 23 February 2015
08:16 hours
    The target house was on the opposite side of the street. A red-brick semi, in a part of Cheltenham where all the roads were named after poets. Wide, tree-studded pavements surged with mothers, kids and pushchairs on the school run.
    Eden Grey lowered the car window. Chill air gusted into the car, carrying the children’s babble on its wings. She waited for a cohort to rumble past, then lifted the camera to the open window, adjusted the focus, and rattled off a series of shots. A white van was parked outside the target house, the logo of its former owner a spectre looming over its new identity: Wilde About Gardens. A website and mobile phone number were written in green swirling text underneath a drawing of a tree and flower. Eden closed in on the website and mobile number, and the shutter snapped.
    A woman came into view, herding along three children on scooters. Eden shoved her camera under a newspaper and adjusted the car’s heater until they were out of sight.
    ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘Time for work.’
    As if he’d heard her, a man came out of the target house. He was in his early fifties and had a flat bottom and saggy jeans like the back end of an elephant. A Christmas pudding bobble hat was tugged down over thick grey hair. A woman in a quilted dressing gown appeared in the doorway behind him, planted a standard eight-pound pressure kiss on his lips, then waved as he clambered into the van and drove away.
    Eden gave him a few seconds’ headstart, then slipped in the clutch and followed.
    She almost lost him at the junction. He hurtled out in front of a bus coming from the right, and a BMW from the left. The BMW driver made the international hand signal for ‘wanker’ and flashed his lights. The van tore up the road with a belch of blue smoke from the exhaust.
    Eden waited at the junction, tracking the van with her eyes, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. She’d lose him at this rate. If only one of these cars would let her out. She sighed with a pang for the glory days, hurtling round the streets with the lights flashing and the siren blaring, the comforting heft of a gun tucked in her side.
    Someone let her out and she hit the accelerator. The van had turned left into a housing estate, a maze of identical houses. Damn! She could waste the morning trawling round trying to hunt him down in there. Her heart sank at the prospect of another morning lurking outside the target’s house; all the windows in the street had Neighbourhood Watch stickers.
    Her luck was in. Rounding a corner, she caught sight of the van. Surging ahead, she followed it through the warren until it drew up outside a large detached house. She slowed and drove past, parked up at the end of the street, slung her camera round her neck, and walked back, keeping the target in view.
    Christmas pudding man had the back of the van open and was lugging out bags of compost.
    ‘Bad back, is it, sunshine?’ Eden said to herself. Ducking behind a car, she raised the camera and took thirty shots of him hauling out compost. Inching closer, she scouted round for a good viewpoint, somewhere she wouldn’t be seen. There was a house ahead, curtains and blinds closed, no cars in the driveway. A good bet the owners were out. Perfect. She clipped up the street and ducked behind the gate. From there, she had an excellent view of the van and the target.
    She kept the camera trained on