Break Point: BookShots Page 6

  It was a slow-motion chase, both men stumbling like drunken brawlers on the concourse. Foster would have reached him if the alarm hadn’t gone off, but it did. Years of training fired through his body, and his mind switched instantly to his client. Kirsten Keller. Alone and in danger.

  CHAPTER 18

  FOSTER MOVED AS quickly as his body would allow. Every step sent new explosions of pain through his arm. His GPS told him that Keller was at the other end of the park, beyond No. 1 Court, somewhere in amongst the practice courts. He saw her a minute later leaning against the ivy-clad wall, a big guy standing over her. Both of them smiling. Foster instantly slowed and relaxed. It was Tom Abbot.

  Keller’s smile faded as Foster came closer into view and she could see the pain in his eyes. His breathing was laboured. The adrenalin had begun to seep from him and exhaustion was kicking in.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Keller said. ‘Are you alright?’

  Tom Abbot could see the delicate way Foster was holding his arm.

  ‘What do you need, Chris?’

  Foster held onto Abbot’s shoulder for support and Keller stayed close as they made their way back across the concourse.

  ‘I got your call,’ Abbot said as he took the strain.

  ‘So I see,’ Foster said. ‘I appreciate it. Have you got your phone on you?’

  Abbot nodded.

  ‘Call the police,’ Foster said. ‘Ask for Cullen.’

  He was in a world of hurt as they walked across the concourse. He relayed the details of what had happened through Abbot, as Cullen listened at the other end of the line. He told her about the guy in the cap, and the knife, and the way the sly bastard liked to sneak up on people from behind. Foster knew he should have ended it there and then, outside Court 12. But he hadn’t. One miscalculation, and the guy had gone free. And there was no way to fix it, except to get it right next time.

  ‘Do you need codeine?’ Abbot asked when he came off the phone. ‘Or something stronger?’

  Foster shook his head.

  ‘Shouldn’t mix codeine with alcohol,’ he told Abbot. ‘And God knows, I need a drink.’

  CHAPTER 19

  FOSTER SLEPT FOR five straight hours that night, outside Kirsten Keller’s room at the Shangri-La, waking with the light pouring through the unshaded glass. The unbroken half of his body pulled the rest of him from the sofa, and fierce pain instantly spread across his ribs. He spent the day with a brooding sense that trouble was coming, but it never did. In the evening, he sat with Keller and watched the sun setting behind St Paul’s Cathedral, and the last of the river traffic crossing the muddy Thames, and the London Eye slowly turning like the mechanism of a giant clock. Days passed with the same aching sense of dread, but Keller’s matches came and went, and she won them all, and nobody came out of the shadows.

  Foster woke to grey skies on Thursday morning, knowing that Keller was facing Marta Basilia in the semi-finals, and sensing that if her attacker was going to strike, he would have to do it soon. Foster’s body still ached, so he found a tumbler and filled it with water, then gulped down four large codeine tablets. He woke Keller an hour later when the sky had turned to a warm summer blue. She showered and dressed and they ate breakfast in the Shangri-La, before heading across London listening to the Rolling Stones, Jagger’s mournful voice setting a tone for the journey.

  ‘What happens if I see him?’ Keller asked. ‘You know, staring out from the crowd?’

  ‘Let me know,’ Foster said simply. ‘And I’ll come and get you.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘On the court? Seriously?’

  ‘Yes, seriously,’ Foster said.

  Keller looked at him for a moment, studying his face as he watched the road ahead. He sensed her stare and glanced across at her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She sat back in her seat and smiled, and Foster drove on until they reached Wimbledon. Keller settled into her pre-match routine and Foster melted into the background, watching everything and trusting no one. He saw the crowds swell on Centre Court, slowly blooming and spreading over the green plastic seats like spores on a Petri dish. His skilled eyes swept through the mass of people, watching for anything unusual. In the end he saw nothing but thousands of excited fans gorging on strawberries and protecting themselves from the midday sun. By the time Keller reached the court, the atmosphere was electric.

  Keller lost the first set 6–0, unable to find a rhythm. Her eyes flicked constantly from Basilia to the grandstand and back again, her mind distracted by the baying crowd and its lurking danger. Foster could almost hear her nerves jangling as she sat dejectedly in an olive-green chair with her head under her towel.

  ‘How’s it looking outside?’ Foster asked, as Tom Abbot appeared by his side.

  ‘Nothing doing. It’s all quiet.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Think she can get back into it?’ Abbot said.

  ‘She will,’ Foster said. ‘She’s a fighter.’

  The second set was ferocious. Keller was lithe and fast, Basilia strong and resolute. Basilia dropped an early service game, but broke back in the ninth. They’d been playing for just over an hour when Basilia held serve to send them into a tiebreak.

  Foster washed his eyes across the vast crowd, who were all leaning forward in anticipation. Keller came out onto the court with new determination and fired five explosive shots across the net. Basilia had no answer for any of them, and the crowd cheered as Keller clawed her way back into the match. Under pressure, Basilia went for the line and missed, giving Keller a set point. The American spun her racket in her hand, staring across the court as Basilia bounced the ball, tossed it high and double-faulted. Keller held her arms to the sky and roared like a Roman gladiator slaying an opponent.

  The rest was easy. Keller dismantled the world champion blow by brutish blow. At the far end of the court, Marta Basilia looked like thunder. If Keller’s theory that Basilia had given her the black roses to get inside her head was correct, then the plan had backfired spectacularly. No matter how hard Basilia hit the ball, Keller hit harder. No matter how precise her angles were, Keller threw herself at the ball and found an even better return.

  Eventually, Keller served for the match. Her first serve was an ace, straight down the middle of the court, kicking high past Basilia and thumping against the green tarpaulin behind her. The second serve was almost as good, flying wide of Basilia’s forehand. Another ace. Basilia screamed and cursed into the afternoon air. The crowd gasped and then giggled until the umpire settled them. Thirty–love. Halfway there. Keller fired the next serve straight into the net. She stepped back and shook the nerves out of her shoulders. Foster watched the crowd. Nobody was moving. Nobody was breathing. Nobody was doing anything but watching Keller, two points away from a place in the final. She bounced the ball and instead of opting for a softer serve, she put everything into it. Basilia had stepped into the court, not expecting such a fierce delivery. The ball kicked right in front of her, flying hard into her body. She was a supreme athlete, but even she could not twist herself into a shape that would allow her to play the ball. It smashed into her ribs, making a hollow thump that the whole crowd heard. Keller held up a hand of apology and returned to the baseline.

  ‘Forty–love,’ the umpire said.

  Match point.

  Foster didn’t breathe. If Keller’s stalker had a sense of drama, which apparently he did, then this was a critical moment. A dangerous moment. To the crowd, Keller was looking invincible. To Foster, she was exposed and vulnerable. His eyes scanned the crowd and he was drawn to a movement. A baseball cap, on the far side of the crowd. Climbing the stairs towards the exit. But as quickly as Foster spotted him, he was gone. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was something. He wasn’t sure, and without being sure he couldn’t leave Keller unwatched. Where was Tom Abbot?

  Kirsten Keller went through the usual routine of bouncing the ball twice, looking once down the court and tossing the
ball high into the air. It was an exact replay of the final point at Roland Garros, where she had collapsed and forfeited the game.

  Not this time.

  She smashed the ball hard down the court. Basilia desperately got a racket to it. It looped high into the air and hung there for what seemed like an eternity. The world slowed down and the only thing that moved was Keller, powering into the court and leaping at the ball like a striking panther. She put everything into that shot: the bitterness and humiliation of the loss in Paris, the anger at the black roses, the grief of losing Maria Rosario. The crowd burst into wild, ecstatic cheers and drowned out the umpire as he said, ‘Game, set and match, Miss Keller.’

  She pumped her fists, shook hands with Marta Basilia and turned to each corner of the stadium, acknowledging the crowd with her racket held aloft. She looked to the stand and tried to pick out Foster, but he was already moving, trying to get to her. Basilia headed straight for the players’ locker room. Keller hung back, enjoying the moment. She’d undone the hoodoo of Roland Garros. Maria Rosario would have been proud.

  Keller wiped her face with her wristband as she approached the fans hanging over the green hoardings, waiting for a chance for an autograph. A forest of hands reached out as she came near. They held out oversized tennis balls and programmes to sign. She grabbed at what they gave quickly and mechanically, wanting to please as many people as she could before her muscles started to tighten. A hand thrust through the crowd, close to hers. More insistent than the others. As she reached out instinctively, she felt something drop into her outstretched palm. Her blood froze as she looked down. It was a delicate silver chain. The last time she had seen it was around Maria Rosario’s neck. She looked up in horror, trying to identify Rosario’s killer in the tangle of human flesh. But the hand slipped back into the crowd like a recoiling serpent and vanished from sight.

  Seeking out the face in the crowd, for a second she caught the briefest glance of two eyes glinting malevolently at her. They were angry and bitter; dark pools of hate and unbridled rage. She turned, panicking, searching for Foster as more fans crowded in for autographs. Her stomach twisted, not from the fear, but from the sudden and complete understanding that someone had killed Maria and that somehow it was all because of her. A guilt she couldn’t rationalise flooded through her and synapses fired in her brain, trying to comprehend what she might have done to cause this man to hate her. Who could hate her enough to kill her friend?

  She searched the faces of the crowd again, but the malevolent eyes were gone, and although she saw the back of a man break from the pressing crowd and slip through a nearby exit, it could have been anyone.

  CHAPTER 20

  FOSTER GUIDED KIRSTEN Keller quickly up the glass-and-steel stairs that led to Wimbledon’s Press Room.

  ‘You can shower back at the hotel,’ he told her. ‘Until then, we stay together.’

  They were walking shoulder-to-shoulder, Keller vibrant and alert after winning her match, Foster vigilant and attentive, as Abbot followed two steps behind.

  ‘He’s getting closer,’ Keller said. ‘So why hasn’t he attacked me?’

  ‘He’s biding his time and getting a kick out of scaring you,’ Foster said. ‘The question is: how long will he wait?’

  At the top of the stairs they reached a security door. Foster knocked firmly and a few seconds later a nervous-looking runner appeared. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, with a headset hanging around his neck. He had the air of a man who was drowning. He stared at Foster’s looming frame with a mixture of annoyance and alarm and was about to speak, when he saw Kirsten Keller next to him.

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ he said. ‘Did we book you? I don’t think we’re expecting you …’

  His voice tailed off as he started thumbing through reams of running orders on his clipboard.

  ‘She’s not scheduled,’ Foster said, ‘but I’m guessing you’d like to interview her?’

  ‘God, yes.’

  ‘I need to see your recordings of today’s match,’ Foster said. ‘Specifically the moments immediately after the match, when Kirsten was signing autographs. You give me that, and Kirsten will give you three minutes on air. Can you do it?’

  The runner stuck his headphones over his ears and spoke into the microphone. He glanced at Keller a couple of times, and after a moment he looked back at Foster and said, ‘Five minutes – and you’ve got a deal.’

  ‘Three minutes,’ Foster said. ‘And every second you negotiate is a second less on air.’

  The young runner’s eyes widened slightly and he relayed the message to his producer, as he beckoned them through the doors. The wall immediately in front of them was completely covered in flat screens showing different courts and different players, with the same verdant turf wallpapering every shot. The screens were angled inwards at the top and the bottom, giving the impression that they were inside a giant goldfish bowl. Three women were working in swivel chairs in front of a huge illuminated mixing desk. They wore the same headsets as the runner and seemed so engrossed in their pictures that they didn’t notice the invasion. The runner tapped one of them on the shoulder and she turned round and slipped one earphone off.

  ‘Hey, Bethan,’ he said, smiling nervously. ‘These guys need your help.’

  She was a thin woman with tight lips that looked as if they’d forgotten how to smile. She looked at the runner like she might rip his skin from his body.

  ‘Half of Africa needs my help, according to Save the Children, but I’m a bit fucking busy at the moment.’ Her cold eyes moved from the runner to the group of strangers in her gallery and she said, ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ Foster said. ‘Come on, Kirsten, we’ll head back to the hotel.’

  Even in the strange light, Foster could see colour draining from Bethan’s face as Keller stepped out from the shadows. Good, let her squirm. His codeine hit was wearing off and the left side of his body was beginning to throb again and he was starting to feel irritable.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Bethan muttered, mostly to herself. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Whatever pictures you’ve got, from the end of the match,’ Foster said. ‘Every camera. Every angle. I’m looking for someone in the crowd.’

  ‘And you want this when?’ Bethan said in a disbelieving tone. ‘Now?’

  Foster explained the deal, the same way he’d explained it to the runner, and Bethan rolled her eyes and started punching time-codes into her computer. The runner breathed a sigh of relief and led Keller out into the studio, with Tom Abbot following close behind.

  Soon the screens in front of Foster were alive again, and Bethan was scrolling through images until they found what he was looking for. There were two cameras that had caught the scene. The first was useless, showing nothing but a brief glimpse of the guy’s baseball cap in the middle of the scrum. The other angle was better, filmed from the far side of the court, over Keller’s shoulder. It was a wide shot, with Keller small in the middle of the screen. The excited faces of the people in the crowd were smaller still.

  ‘Can you zoom in?’ Foster asked.

  Bethan pressed buttons and the frame tightened around Keller. But the closer they got, the grainier the quality of the shot became.

  ‘Can you loop that bit?’ Foster said, as he saw the arm emerge from the crowd. ‘And slow it right down?’

  Bethan did, and the shot played through on the screens in front of them. The grainy arm punched through, and Keller’s hand came forward. And then it repeated, again and again, the arm staying grainy and the guy’s face staying blurred.

  Foster leaned forward until he was cheek-to-cheek with Bethan, his lips next to her microphone.

  ‘Time’s up,’ he said.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ Abbot asked as they all headed back down the glass-and-steel steps. Foster was quiet and brooding.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said distantly. ‘Just an arm disappearing into the crowd. Dead end.’

  ‘CCTV?’ Abbot asked. />
  ‘Cullen’s going to get hold of it, but I don’t expect they’ll find anything. There are too many people moving around the grounds, and we haven’t had a good enough visual on this guy to pick him out in such a massive crowd.’

  They walked in silence back to the Range Rover, Foster’s strong hand gentle but persistent in the small of Keller’s back. When they reached the car, there was a note waiting for them on the windscreen. It was typed on cheap white paper, folded once and tucked under the wiper blade. Foster skimmed it and then handed it to Keller while he started up the car. Soon it will all be over. You deserve what’s coming. And if you don’t know why, then you deserve it even more.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE HEAVENS OPENED as Foster drove back towards the hotel. Plump raindrops smashed onto the Range Rover’s roof like meteors, and red brake lights kaleidoscoped across the rain-drenched windscreen.

  ‘Is this normal?’ Keller asked irritably as they sat idling in the traffic.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Foster said. The black sky mirrored his mood. The strength was slowly coming back to his arm, but with it came a throbbing pain and an unwelcome sense of his own vulnerability. They were almost at Elephant and Castle when he said, ‘I can’t do this any more.’

  Keller looked at him, aghast.

  ‘The job?’

  ‘The traffic.’

  He gave her a reassuring smile, then pulled the Range Rover onto the kerb and cut the corner into a side street. It took them five minutes to find an old-fashioned London boozer and they wasted no time in getting out of the rain. The place was called the Boar’s Head, and it had an air of perpetual night-time about it. Oppressive black beams held up low-slung ceilings that were stained yellow from the smoke of a hundred thousand cigarettes, and the timber bar looked as if it had sailed rough seas for too long. The place was full of dark corners fit for pirates and smugglers and people who didn’t want to be found. People like Foster, Abbot and Keller.