The Last 10 Seconds: A Novel Page 25

  Tina steadied herself against the wall. ‘And so are our chances of getting Wise, because Gore is too.’

  A wave of nausea washed over her, and she staggered past Grier and the ruined body of Mrs Gore, flung the door open and gulped in the fresh early-morning air. The street was empty. There weren’t even any curtains twitching. It was as if the terrible events that had just occurred had passed everyone else by.

  The nausea subsided and Tina stood in the sunlight for a good minute, taking deep breaths. A milk float passed by, the milkman giving her an odd look, and she suddenly wished she could have a job like that, where you never had to deal with the dregs of society, and see so clearly its open, gaping wounds, or the evil that seeped through it from the top all the way down to the gutter.

  Her mobile was ringing. She pulled it from her jeans, and checked the number. Mike Bolt. She felt a sudden relief. If there was one person she could deal with speaking to now, it was him.

  ‘Are you OK, Tina?’ he asked when she answered.

  ‘No,’ she replied, her voice cracking, and she told him what had just happened.

  ‘And he’s definitely dead?’

  ‘They both are. It was a murder/suicide.’

  He exhaled, and didn’t speak for a few seconds. ‘Well, the shit’s going to hit the fan now,’ he said at last. ‘Make sure you’ve got a Federation representative present when they interview you, because this is going to be a major scandal, and they’re going to be looking for scapegoats.’

  ‘I was just doing my job, Mike,’ Tina protested, knowing how defensive she sounded, but angry that she was so close to solving a major crime, and was now going to be held responsible for the death of a killer.

  ‘I know that. You know that. But that may well not be enough. You’ve got too much of a habit of getting involved in messy cases, and that’s going to make you vulnerable to accusations that you provoked things. Maybe even more.’

  ‘I recorded our interview with Gore, so his confession’s on the record, but I’d stopped it before the shooting. Do you think it’s going to be enough to go after Wise?’

  Bolt sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I’d hide the recording somewhere safe, because a case like this, involving a high-ranking government minister, is ripe for a cover-up. No one in the corridors of power’s going to want a scandal this size out in the public domain.’

  Tina knew he was right, and that it was going to be hard for her to talk her way out of this one, even with the taped confession and Grier as a witness. ‘There are other people still involved. The fixer, Alpha, for one. If we can find him . . .’

  ‘Well, I might be able to help you there. That number plate of the car you were asking about . . .’

  ‘The one that was caught on CCTV on Kevin O’Neill’s road just before he died?’

  ‘That’s the one. It’s been picked up on the ANPR. I just got a call from Hendon. It’s currently in central London, and they’re keeping tabs on it for me.’

  ‘Can you get someone to arrest the occupants?’

  ‘On what charges? It’s hard enough getting the ANPR people to agree to follow it.’

  Tina looked at her watch. It was only half past seven, although it felt much later. ‘Can you keep me posted on where it goes?’

  ‘Sure, but there’s not going to be a lot you can do about it now, is there? The local CID are going to want to keep you at the crime scene until they get a statement.’

  ‘Let me worry about that,’ said Tina, and hung up. There was no way she was going to let the occupants of this car slip through her fingers.

  Fifty-two

  ‘I still think it’s risky you coming, Sean,’ said Dougie MacLeod as he drove down the Marylebone Road in the direction of King’s Cross, and the abandoned building just east of the station where he was supposed to pick up his son. ‘If you get spotted with me, it’ll put Billy in danger, and I can’t risk that.’

  I was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, resting the revolver I’d taken from him earlier on my lap, with the barrel pointed in his direction. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Dougie. I knew he wasn’t involved in this – at least not of his own free will – but I was worried he might do something stupid, like trying to get rid of me.

  ‘I won’t get spotted,’ I assured him. ‘All you have to do is tell me when we’re about to pass the rendezvous, I’ll get down in the seat so no one sees me, and then you can park a bit further up, out of sight. You go in alone, and I’ll provide back-up. That’s all.’

  ‘I don’t need back-up.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’ve got to ask yourself, why are they telling you to go to an abandoned building on the wrong side of King’s Cross first thing on a Saturday morning when there’s no one else around? And what did they tell you to do? Go up to the third floor as well, so you’re out of sight of anyone. Why make you do that? If they’re that serious about releasing Billy, why don’t they just untie him and let him walk out of there? It can’t be that hard.’

  ‘What are you saying, Sean? That they’re planning to kill both of us?’

  I had to be careful here. Dougie looked bad enough as it was – his face flushed, his thinning grey hair plastered to his scalp with sweat – without me planting the seed of his only son’s death. ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Because you saw the footage on my PC. Billy’s alive.’

  Which was true. At least he had been half an hour earlier when I saw the images of him strapped to a chair with a gag over his mouth, in an empty room, his eyes wide with fear and confusion, just as Andrew Kent’s had been. They could have been faked, of course, but my guess was that they hadn’t been. However, this still didn’t mean they planned to release him.

  ‘I’m going to watch you go in, make sure there’s no one following you, then if it’s safe, and there’s no one watching out the window, I’ll tail you up to the third floor, just to make sure it all goes smoothly.’

  ‘If you mess things up for me or Billy . . .’

  ‘I won’t. I know how to handle myself. And I’ve been on plenty of surveillance ops so I know how to stay anonymous.’

  He turned to me suddenly, his eyes full of anguish. ‘Why are you doing this, Sean?’

  ‘Because I want you to stay alive. And I want to find the bastard who set this whole thing up because he’s got one hell of a lot of blood on his hands. Plus he tried to kill me. That’s why.’ I also thought there was a good chance he was responsible for my brother’s death, though I didn’t say this to Dougie.

  We passed the almost deserted frontage of King’s Cross station, and Dougie took a left on to York Way, heading north in the direction of Kentish Town. About a quarter of a mile up he took a right, then an immediate left, and I noticed that his breathing was becoming hoarse.

  ‘OK, it’s up here. Get down in the seat.’

  I did as I was told, watching from my new, cramped position as we passed by a number of grimy-looking industrial units.

  ‘It’s this place,’ he hissed, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead as a half-finished shell of a building, five or six storeys high, loomed up above a high strip of chainlink fencing.

  He continued driving for another two minutes before taking another right turn, and parking on a backstreet. He took a series of deep breaths, psyching himself up for what was going to be the most difficult few minutes of his life. I knew he’d be asking himself if Billy was still alive, knowing that one way or another he was going to be getting an answer.

  ‘I need the gun, Sean,’ he said, putting out a hand.

  ‘When was the last time you fired a gun, Dougie? It’s twenty-five years since you were in the army. I’m trained, and my training’s up to date. It’ll be best if I keep it.’

  ‘No. This is my son we’re talking about. I need that gun.’ He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye. ‘You owe me, Sean. From a long time back.’

  And he was right, I did. I would have far preferred to keep it, because I knew how to use the damn
thing, but I had no choice. So I placed the gun in his outstretched hand and watched as he put it down the back of his jeans, out of sight.

  ‘Be careful,’ I told him, wondering if I was letting him walk right into a trap, and knowing that if I was, there was nothing I could do about it.

  ‘Thanks. I will.’ He took another deep breath, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I appreciate you want to help, Sean, but I don’t want to see you come in behind me. In fact, I don’t want to see you at all. At least not until afterwards.’ He opened the driver’s side door. ‘Count to a hundred before you follow me.’ And with that he was gone.

  I didn’t quite make a hundred but I gave him a good minute before getting out and starting off down the road back in the direction we’d come. The houses around me were silent, the traffic minimal, even though a watery sun was already rising well into the azure sky. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  For some people, anyway.

  The road crossed over the canal at Regent’s Wharf. Barges dotted the waterside, and I remembered vaguely walking here with a girlfriend years ago, one glorious summer’s afternoon, not long after I’d joined the police. Her name was Davina and for a few months at least we’d been serious. Then things had ground to a halt and she’d disappeared, like everyone else in my life seemed to do. I straightened my shoulders. If I got through today, I was going to sort myself out, find myself a girlfriend and settle down. Maybe even start a family. I was sick of spending my life alone.

  The rendezvous rose up on my left against the skyline, a concrete shell that dominated the deserted building site around it. A sign on the fence proudly announced Brand New Luxury Apartments for Waterside Living, coming in 2010, although I figured they were going to have to buck up their ideas to get the place ready by then.

  I forced myself to slow down. Dougie had disappeared, but I wanted to make sure that if there was someone in the building watching to see whether he’d been followed, they’d be gone now.

  The main gate to the building site was slightly open, the heavy-duty padlock on it cut. I pushed my way inside, moving slowly along the rutted track that led up to the building’s main doorway, keeping close to the abandoned machinery on either side of it as I watched for, but failed to see, any sign of movement on the upper floors.

  When I reached the doorway, I paused for a second before creeping inside, conscious that without the gun I was utterly defenceless if something did go down. Moving through the gloom, I came to a flight of concrete steps that led upstairs. I looked up and listened. Dougie could only have come in here a maximum of two minutes ago, but there were no sounds of a joyful reunion between father and son. Just an ominous silence. I thought of him somewhere in here alone, a sitting duck, and I knew I was going to have to be so careful not to mess this up. I’d made far too many mistakes in the past twenty-four hours.

  I crept up the steps to the first level. To my left, a doorway led through to a cavernous, empty room that stretched all the way to the other side of the building. Nothing moved, and the air smelled of brick dust and the beginnings of decay. This place must have been one of the many luxury urban living developments the moneymen had stopped building mid-brick when the property crash appeared out of the blue like a financial tsunami. Now, unfinished and neglected, it looked like a multi-storey car park, but without the places to hide.

  I carried on climbing, moving with exaggerated care, every sense attuned to my surroundings.

  And then, just as I reached the second level, I heard it. A small cry, followed by a shuffling movement coming from further up. That was followed by what sounded like a grunt of exertion.

  Then nothing.

  It sounded like Dougie, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I stopped, trying to quieten my breathing as it quickened in the gloom.

  Then I heard the sound of someone else moving about, their actions unhurried, which meant it couldn’t be Dougie. He’d been so stressed as to be incapable of casual movement.

  I tensed, knowing that if this was Alpha I was taking a big risk carrying on up the stairs when I was unarmed, but even so, I hesitated only a couple of seconds before continuing.

  The movement was coming from beyond the third-level doorway. It sounded as though whoever it was was trying to move something.

  I was at the top of the stairs now, only a dividing wall separating us.

  Slowly, very slowly, I peered round, and gritted my teeth when I saw Dougie’s son, Billy, tied to the same chair I’d seen in the images on Dougie’s computer. He was about fifteen feet inside the vast, empty room. His head was slumped forward, the back of it a bloody mess, and he wasn’t moving.

  Dougie, meanwhile, lay on the floor. At least I thought it was him, but from the angle I had I could only see a pair of twitching jeans-clad legs. Nor could I see any sign of his gun.

  So I’d been right. This ruthless bastard, Alpha, had never had any intention of releasing Billy, or letting Dougie leave here alive. I fought down the mixture of shock and rage that rose up inside me and remained silent and focused, angry at myself for not coming up sooner, but fully prepared now to take a bloody revenge for the murder of two innocent men, one of whom had been my friend.

  I inched round a little more and saw Dougie’s revolver lying beside his body, barely five feet away. If I could just grab hold of it . . .

  And then a man came into view, wielding a pistol with a cigar-shaped silencer attached.

  And this time I couldn’t contain my shock.

  Fifty-three

  He didn’t see me. He wasn’t even looking my way as he walked over to the chair containing Billy’s corpse and crouched down beside it to pick up an empty shell casing, his back to me.

  I had one chance, and I seized it.

  Taking two swift but near-silent steps across the floor, I scooped up Dougie’s revolver and pointed it straight at his back. ‘Drop the gun.’

  Tommy stopped, then turned slowly in my direction, and I saw that the cut on his brow that he’d had in the cellar the previous night was now bandaged.

  ‘I said drop it. Otherwise I’ll shoot you dead. Right here. Right now.’

  We stood facing each other. He held the gun down by his side, and there was an expression of vague amusement on his face. ‘Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to see you here. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I’m only going to say it one more time,’ I stated calmly. ‘Then I’m going to shoot you.’

  ‘You won’t. I could tell right from the minute I met you that you were no killer.’

  But he was wrong. I was now. I cocked the revolver and pointed it right between his eyes, holding it perfectly steady. ‘One thing you ought to know about me. I’ve been trained how to use a gun, and I’ve had a lot of practice. I shot three people yesterday. And the one I meant to kill is dead. Now, I’m going to count to three. If you’re still holding that thing then, it’ll be the last thing you ever hold. Your choice.’

  There was still a glint of amusement in his eyes, but this time he cooperated, placing his weapon carefully on the floor.

  ‘Put your hands in the air.’

  He did as he was told. ‘So, what are you going to do now? Put a bullet in my head while I stand here defenceless?’

  ‘You deserve it, Tommy.’

  ‘I’m just doing my job.’

  ‘On behalf of who exactly? Who is it who wants that USB stick Dougie MacLeod delivered? And what’s on it?’

  ‘You’re well informed, Sean. I’ll give you that. And you know how to get out of a sticky situation too. I misjudged you last night. I didn’t think you’d be capable of getting out of that burning building like that.’ He whistled with admiration. ‘I have to say, I was impressed.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for answers, Tommy,’ I said, tensing my finger on the trigger. ‘Don’t make me impatient.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m walking out of here, Sean, and I suggest you do the same. There’s nothing you can do for your friends he
re, and you’re as deep in all this shit as I am.’

  I moved the gun down so it was pointed at his knee. ‘I might find it difficult to kill you in cold blood, but I’m sure I could stretch to blowing a hole in your kneecap, especially as you’ve just murdered my old boss and his son.’

  He frowned, giving me a disbelieving look. ‘You’re a cop? No way. I had you checked out. Thoroughly.’

  ‘Not thoroughly enough.’

  ‘So why did you shoot those two gun dealers yesterday? And hold up a police van at gunpoint? What sort of cop does that?’

  It was a good question, but one I wasn’t prepared to answer. ‘I’m the one holding the gun, Tommy, so I’m the one asking the questions. Who are you working for?’

  ‘A man called Alpha. I don’t know his real name.’

  ‘I thought he was Wolfe’s client.’

  Tommy’s look was contemptuous. ‘Tyrone Wolfe liked to think he was the big leader but he never ran shit. He just thought he did. He traded on the fact that he was this big armed robber and thug, but he was no organizer. And nor was that idiot Haddock. Wolfe might have thought Alpha was his client, and I was happy to let him believe it, but it was me Alpha approached to organize the Kent snatch.’

  ‘Why was he snatched?’

  ‘Because he’d filmed something very sensitive – don’t ask me what it was, I didn’t ask – and Alpha needed to make sure all copies of the film were destroyed. He also wanted to make sure that there was no way the job could ever come back to him. That’s why he wanted Wolfe and Haddock got rid of afterwards. He thought they might blab.’

  ‘So, you killed your own friends.’

  ‘There was no love lost between us. They were always treating me like a junior, even though it was me who brought in most of the money. No, I was happy to get rid of them.’

  ‘And me as well?’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry, Sean, that was just business. I always liked you.’

  ‘But last night when I found you in the cellar, you were bleeding . . . I thought you were dead. Was that all fake as well?’