Die Alone Read online

  Simon Kernick

  * * *

  Die Alone

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: A Year Later 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part Two 10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Part Three 18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  Part Four 36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Part Five 41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  Part Six 54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  Epilogue: Eight months later

  About the Author

  Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was the biggest selling thriller of 2007. His most recent crime thrillers include Siege, Ultimatum, Stay Alive and The Final Minute. He is also the author of the bestselling three-part serial thrillers Dead Man’s Gift and One By One.

  Simon talks both on and off the record to members of the Counter Terrorism Command and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, so he gets to hear first hand what actually happens in the dark and murky underbelly of UK crime.

  Also available by Simon Kernick

  The Business of Dying

  The Murder Exchange

  The Crime Trade

  A Good Day to Die

  Relentless

  Severed

  Deadline

  Target

  The Last 10 Seconds

  The Payback

  Siege

  Ultimatum

  Wrong Time, Wrong Place

  Stay Alive

  The Final Minute

  The Witness

  The Bone Field

  The Hanged Man

  Dean Man’s Gift and Other Stories

  We Can See You

  Prologue

  Hugh Manning awoke from his dream screaming into the silence.

  His eyes shot open. He couldn’t breathe, his scream suddenly a muffled whine. Panic shot through him as he realized there was a hand covering his mouth and nose. He tried to struggle in the darkness and then a face he recognized loomed into view, leaning in close to him.

  ‘Don’t speak. Don’t breathe. Stay absolutely still,’ hissed DC Liane Patrick.

  Manning knew instantly that his enemies were here for him. Deep down, he’d always known they’d come. In the end, they were simply too powerful, and had too much to lose ever to let him tell the world what he knew. What terrified him so much now, though, was the speed with which it had happened. He’d barely been in the police safehouse three days, had yet to be officially questioned by officers from the National Crime Agency, and already his cover was blown.

  ‘Get up very quietly, and do everything I say,’ continued Patrick.

  Manning nodded. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. They’d told him to wear clothes in bed, just in case he had to be moved fast. His babysitters, DC Patrick and her colleague DC Lomu, were both hard and professional, and, most importantly, armed the whole time. There were always at least two other armed officers on duty as well, one at the back of the house, one at the front, and security cameras covered every floor, as well as the perimeter. These were administered 24/7 by staff at the headquarters of the National Crime Agency, supposedly Britain’s answer to the FBI.

  And yet, it seemed that somehow the defences had been breached.

  Patrick removed her gloved hand from Manning’s mouth and stepped away to give him room to get out of the bed. He moved as silently as he could, noticing that she had her gun drawn and was looking towards the bedroom door, as if someone might come through it at any moment. But there was no noise in the house. Nothing.

  Outside, somewhere in the night, an owl hooted in the woods. Manning looked at his watch. 3.10 a.m.

  He pulled on the pair of trainers next to the bed and stood up quickly.

  Patrick put a hand on his shoulder and came in close. ‘There’s someone in the house,’ she whispered, her voice barely audible in the silence. ‘We need to get you out of here. Do everything I say, and you’ll be fine. Understood?’

  ‘Where are the others?’ Manning hissed, feeling his heart hammering in his chest.

  There was a pause. ‘I don’t know. No more speaking. Follow me.’

  Why weren’t the alarms going off? Manning wondered. And why was there no sound of sirens? Apparently, there were also sensors lining the perimeter that would pick up any sign of an intruder and automatically set off alarms in the house, as well as at NCA HQ, and Northampton police station, five miles away, where a dedicated armed response unit was on call.

  But he knew better than to ask any more questions. He trusted DC Patrick. She’d given him her full background when she’d first arrived. Five years in military intelligence, followed by ten years’ service in the police, seven of them as an armed protection officer. She had three commendations for bravery, was a champion sharp shooter, and even had a karate black belt. If anyone was going to get him out of here, it was her.

  Manning’s bedroom was at the top of the house. The window had been boarded up to prevent entry from the outside. It made the room stuffy on a warm summer night. It also meant you couldn’t go out that way. Instead, they would have to take the official escape route, which meant going outside into the hallway.

  DC Patrick crept over to the door, put her ear to it, then very slowly turned the handle, motioning for him to get behind her.

  Manning pressed himself against the wall, his heart continuing to pound as DC Patrick pulled the door open and put her head round it. It was hard to believe that once again his life was in danger. For years, he’d lived the upper-middle-class dream. A beautiful Georgian townhouse in fashionable Bayswater; long-haul holidays with first-class flights and boutique hotels; a loyal wife and plenty of girlfriends. He might have been doing work for some extremely insalubrious characters, but it had been easy enough to justify it to himself while sipping a pina colada on a beach in the Seychelles, and anyway, he’d just been providing a service, and as long as he didn’t think about it too much, everything would be all right.

  Except it hadn’t been, because a few weeks ago it had all gone very, very wrong. His wife was now dead. He’d almost died himself. And now it looked like his enemies might finish the job and silence him before he could talk to the police and bring them down.

  DC Patrick turned to him, put a finger to her lips and crept quietly out into the hallway, gesturing for Manning to follow.

  It was dark and silent out there, with just the faint glow of the landing light on the floor below coming up the stairs.

  That was when Manning heard it. A scraping sound followed by a low animal moan, coming from DC Lomu’s bedroom next door. And then words that chilled his bones.

  ‘Help me …’

  DC Pa
trick heard it too, and even in the gloom, Manning could see the pain on her face. He knew that she and Lomu got on well, and Lomu had told him that they’d worked together for several years.

  Manning looked towards Lomu’s bedroom door, knowing they couldn’t leave him there. Lomu was whimpering now, and the sound made Manning nauseous. It was awful to think of a big strong guy like him sounding so helpless.

  Manning turned towards Patrick, his expression imploring her to do something, but she shook her head emphatically, mouthing the word ‘sorry’, then steered him away.

  As he looked back over his shoulder, expecting at any moment the killer to come into view at the top of the stairs, a thought nagged him. Surely the killer must have already been up here. So how had he missed him the first time? His door locked from the inside, although both DCs had keys, so it was possible that the killer had tried the door and couldn’t get in, in which case he would be waiting somewhere close by in ambush. Except there was no obvious place to hide.

  So where the hell was he?

  The hallway came to a dead end at what looked like a blank wall, but when Patrick moved in front of Manning and pushed her palm hard against the surface at waist height, a door in the panel slid quietly open. They’d rehearsed going out this way every day since he’d got here, and Manning recalled that each time, either DC Lomu or Patrick would reassure him that the chances of them ever having to use it were next to nothing. And Manning had almost convinced himself that they were right. Now Patrick pushed him inside, following close behind, and, as the door closed behind her, a set of overhead lights came on, revealing a curving flight of steps that wound all the way to the ground floor.

  They moved downstairs quickly, coming to another door that led directly into a storage shed at the side of the house. Patrick moved in front of him and opened the door and the two of them crept inside. A single window at head height looked out over the back garden and Patrick peered through it before turning to him in the darkness.

  ‘It looks clear out there. Are you ready?’

  ‘Why’s no one coming?’ he whispered. ‘If someone’s broken in and done … done that to DC Lomu, then why aren’t the alarms going off? And where are the other guards?’

  Patrick looked at him, her face silhouetted in the pale moonlight so he was unable to read her expression. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, sounding scared. ‘All I know is we’re on our own, and we’ve got to get as far away as possible.’

  ‘Isn’t it best just to stay put? Wait for help? You could call for help on your mobile.’ Manning felt safer inside the house than outside it.

  ‘It’s not working,’ she said, without checking it.

  ‘What do you mean it’s not working? You said we had reception.’

  ‘We’ve lost it. Someone’s jamming it somehow. Just like they’ve managed to disconnect the alarm.’

  ‘Jesus,’ hissed Manning, shaking his head. He wanted to rant and rave about the incompetence of those charged with protecting him, but it was way too late for that. Right now, all he cared about was staying alive. ‘What are we going to do about DC Lomu?’ he asked.

  ‘As soon as we’re away from here, I’ll call for help. But we’ve got to move, Hugh. OK?’ She grabbed him by the arm, and for the first time he could see the fear in her eyes. She was just as scared as he was.

  He nodded weakly and followed her as she unbolted the shed door and stepped out into the night.

  The silence was oppressive as they moved slowly through the garden, keeping tight to the fence. The lawn was perfectly manicured and bordered by flowering shrubs that provided basic cover but, even so, Manning felt terribly exposed. Someone might be watching them from the house right now, aiming a gun at him, ready to pull the trigger. He didn’t dare look back, but just kept going, each step seeming to last far too long. He vowed that if he ever got out of this then he wasn’t going to say another word to the police, whatever the consequences. They could build their case without him – even though he knew that without him, there was no case. And that was the problem. Whichever way he cared to look at it – and he’d looked at it plenty of different ways these past few days – his life was ruined.

  It was when he and Liane Patrick came to the high, ivy-covered wall at the end of the garden that they both saw the black-clad figure lying on the grass next to the back gate. Manning immediately recognized the body as one of the armed officers whose job it was to secure the perimeters. The machine gun the officer usually carried was nowhere to be seen.

  Patrick stopped dead and crouched down, and Manning followed suit. She held that position for what felt like a long time, then looked round and listened.

  The silence was all-consuming.

  ‘Follow me,’ she whispered, and they hurried over to the back gate. The gate itself was made of heavy oak and could only be opened from the inside by punching a four-digit code onto a keypad. The house and garden were near enough impregnable. The wall was twelve feet high and topped with a thick thatch of tangled ivy. Anyone climbing into the garden, even if they didn’t set off the alarm, would have made a lot of noise and been spotted by the officer on the ground, the man who was now dead.

  So how did the killer get in?

  Patrick punched in the code and flung open the gate, immediately taking up a firing stance in case there was anyone on the other side.

  But there was no one. The narrow footpath that ran across the back of the property was empty. Rather than turn and head back to the main road, Patrick climbed over a stile opposite and ran through the empty paddock on the other side of the road towards a small stable building about thirty yards away. Manning ran after her, watching as she pulled out her phone and checked it, still holding her service pistol.

  ‘Have you got a signal?’ he asked, struggling to get alongside her.

  She was punching something into the phone, ignoring him. It was clear she was sending a text.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ she hissed, shoving the phone back into her pocket.

  By this time they’d passed through a gate into the deserted yard in front of the stable block.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Manning demanded, experiencing a growing sense of dread. ‘Tell me.’

  And then, in the next second, he got his answer as a masked figure stepped out from behind the stable block, only a few yards in front of them, holding a pistol with a suppressor attached.

  Manning stopped dead. Patrick still had her own gun in her hand and he expected her to fire.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she stopped too, keeping her gun lowered.

  Manning swallowed and his legs felt weak. He’d run straight into a trap. He turned to DC Patrick. ‘Why?’

  But Liane Patrick was ignoring him. ‘Is my son safe?’ she asked the gunman. ‘I need proof. Right now.’

  ‘He’s unharmed,’ said the gunman. Except it wasn’t a man. It was a woman, and she had an accent. Was it South African? ‘He’s sleeping like a baby.’

  ‘Prove it. Now. Or I’ll kill you.’ Patrick raised the gun.

  ‘Here,’ the woman said, reaching into the pocket of her jeans and pulling out a phone. ‘Call him.’

  She threw the phone to Patrick, who caught it one-handed. In that same moment, the masked woman shot her twice in the face, the bullets making a popping sound as they left the gun.

  Both the phone and Patrick’s own gun clattered onto the cobblestones. She stumbled, made a noise like a sigh, and then fell to her knees.

  The masked woman stepped forward and shot her a third time, then turned the gun on Manning. So, that was how they’d got to her, he thought. By using her son as collateral. It was typical of them. Find a weakness. Exploit it. Then clean up the mess.

  And he was the final bit of that mess. Remove him from the equation and their problems went away.

  He looked imploringly at the gunwoman. Her eyes were dark and hard behind the mask. ‘Please don’t do this,’ he said, knowing that his words wouldn’t change a thing, but know
ing too that this was his last shot of the dice. He’d been on the wrong end of a gun twice in the last ten days. On the first occasion, they’d killed his wife. But he’d escaped. That wasn’t going to happen this time. His luck had run out. He knew it.

  The sheer, wrenching terror he’d felt last time was gone. Now he was filled with a deep resignation and regret that his life had turned out this way. At least this time it would be quick. DC Patrick was already dead. Soon he would be too. And yet, in those last few seconds, time seemed to slow right down, stretching out interminably as the woman in the mask kept her gun trained on him.

  Beside him, he could see DC Patrick’s blood pooling on the cobblestones, the sight making him want to retch. He took a deep breath, and in a final act of defiance said, ‘Tell Alastair Sheridan, I hope he rots—’

  But he never finished the sentence as the woman in the mask pulled the trigger and ended another life.

  As the first sirens started somewhere on the horizon, she turned and melted away into the darkness.

  Part One

  * * *

  A Year Later

  1

  One of the saddest stories I ever heard took place on a sunny summer’s day in 1989. A thirteen-year-old girl called Dana Brennan had planned to bake cakes with her mother and younger sister, but they were short of ingredients. The family lived in a cottage in an especially pretty part of north Hampshire, less than a mile outside Frampton, one of those bucolic picture-postcard English villages with a church, a pub and, in those days, a shop. Traffic was quieter then, and when Dana offered to cycle to the shop to buy the ingredients, her mum had been happy to let her go.

  Dana cycled away and never came back. Her bike was found abandoned next to some trees at the side of the road, with the shopping bag containing the cake-making ingredients lying a few feet away. A huge police search for her was launched that same evening. But the spot where her bike had been found was on a quiet back road and, aside from the shopkeeper who’d sold her the produce, no one else had seen her on her journey. It was as if she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.