‘Hold it there.’
Sam stopped, slowly closing the door as the two police officers approached. One of them he recognised as Murphy, an overweight Irish lout who knew more about racially abusing kids than he did about reading someone their rights. The other man, also in uniform, Sam had never seen before. He was tall, with the build of a fighter. His skin was a deep caramel colour and his hair was shaved to the scalp. The man extended his hand out with caution.
‘Easy does it,’ Murphy joined in, his hand nervously twitching to his hip, which was covered by his jacket.
Sam’s eyes flicked back to the other man, whose hand was creeping to the base of his back.
Both men were armed.
‘Where is she?’ the mystery man demanded, taking another step closer.
‘Who?’ Sam asked, slowly closing the door to the car. In the distance, he could hear the wail of sirens. Suddenly it was all clicking into the place. These two were here to clean up the mess.
The sirens in the distance would be there to clean up theirs.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Murphy spat, his thick Irish drawl almost as heavy as the gut that hung over his belt buckle. ‘The woman. What’s-her-face? Where is she?’
‘Oh, are you here about my call?’ Sam asked, his eyes not leaving the nameless man, who was expertly taking a few steps to his left, increasing the distance between the two officers.
‘That’s right, son.’ Murphy spoke with ill-judged confidence. He looked at the apparent hitman and smirked. ‘We’re here to help.’
‘Funny.’ Sam shrugged. ‘How come you didn’t come in a police car?’
As the two men turned to cast an eye on their vehicle, the penny dropped. Murphy cursed loudly as they turned back, the hired gun‘s arm whipping to the base of his spine, his fingers sliding around the base of the gun like a hungry snake.
A bullet cut through the cool evening air and shattered his shin.
The man went down straight away, screaming in agony, as Pope turned the gun towards Murphy, a small trail of smoke rising from the end of the silencer. Murphy, in a blind panic, struggled to unhook the gun from his waistband, wrenching at the handle and causing his rotund stomach to jiggle.
‘Leave it,’ Sam commanded, the gun pointed squarely at the police officer’s forehead.
Murphy obliged instantly, the cocky attitude replaced by paralysing fear. On the ground, the man grasped his destroyed patella in anguish, blood pumping through the shattered bone and pooling around him. He began to drag himself across the pavement in desperation, his gloved hand reaching for the Glock 19 that had fallen to the ground.
Sam marched forward before planting a skull-shaking kick to the man’s jaw.
The man rolled over motionless.
Keeping the gun pointed at the terrified officer, Sam reached down and picked up the rogue pistol, admiring the matte black finish. The gun was weighty, fully loaded with the standard 15-round cartridge. He slid the gun into band of his jeans and approached Murphy, who held up both hands in surrender.
‘Come on now,’ Murphy tried to bargain, sweat oozing down his pasty, balding skull. ‘This isn’t your fight. So why fight it?’
Sam stopped a few steps from the man, his body odour clinging onto the wind. Sam shook his head. ‘Because someone has to.’
With that, Sam lifted the gun and brought the base of the handle crashing down into Murphy’s temple. The man was unconscious before he hit the pavement, just as three police cars and a van—which Sam assumed was an armed response unit—burst around the corner, their tyres squealing as they straightened up. Sam raced to the TT once more, throwing up the door and jumping in.
Moments later the engine roared to life, the lights illuminated the street ahead, and Sam slammed his foot down, the car lunging forward into the street. He spun the wheel, leaving his own skid marks on the pavement as he shot down the street.
One of the police cars turned off to the entrance of the Community Centre to check on the two motionless bodies on the ground and to search the premises. Sam knew that Theo would have the Devereuxs far from there already.
They had been trained to always have their escape route ready, to be prepared for every outcome, and when that training helped you through a series of life-or-death situations, it becomes more than just lessons learnt.
It becomes memory.
Glaring into the wing mirror at the flashing lights chasing him, Sam realised he was ignoring his training. There was no plan. As he spun the car down another residential street, he pressed his foot down, the car roaring like a wild animal as it burst forward, topping seventy within seconds. A few pedestrians watched with excitement as he raced past, followed by two panda cars and a truck. Within minutes he turned onto the A12, the road wriggling through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park like a concrete worm. The greenery surrounded the mighty London Stadium, home of West Ham Football Club. Originally erected for the Olympics in 2012, the stadium had controversially been rented to the Premier League club much to the dismay of the UK taxpayer. Despite the calmness of the evening and no fixture, the stadium was brightly lit, commanding everyone’s attention.
Sam sped on, the car turning through the park and then hammering through Stratford. Behind him, the blue lights flicked on and off. They sped past Epping Forest, with Sam deep in the knowledge that Amy and her husband were safe and that he was now likely to be one of the most wanted men in London.
As he approached the turnoff for the M11, Sam shot through a red light, narrowly avoiding a lorry, who blasted a loud foghorn through the air with anger.
One of the police cars swerved, careening off the side of the road into the nearby shrubbery. The car and van stayed right behind, following closely as he rounded the roundabout, heading for the exit to the motorway. Taking a deep breath, Sam suddenly jerked the wheel to the left, lifted the handbrake, and allowed the car to take the corner with a loud shriek of burning rubber on pavement. Narrowly missing an oncoming Mercedes, Sam straightened up and floored the car down the descending road, shocking the passers-by as he sped onto the opposite side of the motorway.
Directly into oncoming traffic.
With the clock pushing past eleven o’clock, the Sunday night traffic was minimal, but Sam carefully manoeuvred between three oncoming cars, each one blasting their horn and watching with astonishment as he shot past at over a hundred miles an hour. He flicked his eyes to the rear-view mirror, noticing that the other police car had joined him in the pursuit but the van was no longer following.
He knew the radio waves would be going crazy and it wouldn’t be long until the motorway was closed off and he would be greeted by a barrier of flashing blue lights and loaded weapons.
As the police car struggled to keep pace with him, he dodged between two cars, missing them both by a fraction before gunning the engine once more, the impressive machine roaring proudly as it guzzled fuel. As he rounded the corner he spun the wheel again, diverting off the motorway and onto the slipway, narrowly avoiding a car that was merging on at speed. As he dashed past, he heard the screeching of tyres and the air-piercing shrill of a car horn as the police car weaved around the car, which clipped it slightly, causing it to spin out.
The police car spun frantically before colliding with the metal barrier, the sirens whimpering to silence. The officer would be okay, but would have a serious case of whiplash.
Unperturbed, Sam raced onto the roundabout, flicking the handbrake expertly once more to slide back into the right direction before bringing the car to a quick stop under a tunnel. He flicked the hazard lights on to warn any oncoming traffic before exiting the car quickly. The tunnel was half a mile long, leading back in towards London via Woodford. The shrieking call of the sirens echoed loudly throughout the dark passageway as more police cars were approaching.
With a quick pace, Sam exited the car and out the other end of the tunnel, heading towards Woodford Station.
By the time he got to the station, the night sky was silent
, the police unable to locate him and undoubtedly blocking off the tunnel and going through everything with a fine-tooth comb.
The streets had been empty the entire brisk walk to the station, with everyone tucked up in bed, ready for the start of the working week. Sam knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to what he had called his ‘normal’ life—not now that DS Mayer and whatever was going on knew about him. Whatever was happening, Sam had a feeling it was big. It sat in his well-toned gut like a heavy meal and his mind raced back to when he last had that feeling.
Project Hailstorm.
That ended with two bullet holes in his back and a golden handshake.
This time, he was going to find out what the hell was going on and keep Amy and her husband safe.
With both pistols tucked into the back of his jeans, Sam calmly paid for a train ticket and waited the few minutes for the next train back into city centre, where he knew he was now their most wanted man.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DS Mayer sat at his desk, his head resting in his hands.
It had just passed eight in the morning, and he watched from Inspectors Howell’s office window as the morning shift were arriving, full of excitement at the rumours that were inevitably fluttering around the office like pesky wasps. In Howell’s grief he had vacated the office, allowing Mayer to firmly stake his claim to power. Mayer was the one calling the shots, and had it all gone smoothly, he would have been looking at a swift climb up the ladder.
Frank ‘the Gent’ had more than his fair share of police officers bought and paid for. His High-Rises were an urban myth, an Atlantis that most cops dared not dream of wanting. A slice of the other side, a haven to go and be or do whatever you wanted. Drugs. Women. Men.
But it came at a price.
A lifetime membership to the High-Rise also included a lifetime membership in the Gent’s back pocket.
Mayer had sampled it. Once. It had been over six months before, when Mark Connor, aka Grant Mitchell, had propositioned him. They needed a potential witness to be intimidated and Mayer was only too happy to oblige.
His reward? A penthouse suite, five grams of cocaine, and three very accommodating Eastern European women.
It had been the greatest night of his life.
Now, with the Gent’s expansion project resting on Mayer’s plan, he knew he couldn’t let this draw out.
The bomb had killed Jake Howell, which was only one of the birds that the stone was intended for.
The other two were still breathing, which meant the longer that went on, the likelihood was that Mayer wouldn’t be.
Frank Jackson was a gentleman.
But he didn’t accept failure.
Harding was an unfortunate piece of collateral damage, but Mayer felt little remorse. The man was a buffoon, who Mayer knew was on the take anyway. Mayer himself had had to quash a complaint from a young couple about Harding harassing them on a stop-and-search, patting down the female in a questionable way. The Metropolitan Police was a better place without him.
The Mitchell Brothers had seen to that, sending him over the edge of the car park to a twenty-foot concrete collision that had turned his skull to paste.
That should have been it. All they needed was the report from Amy Devereux, who would have been threatened to silence. Civilians are easy to control when you shove a gun in their face.
Even more so when it was shoved in the face of a loved one.
Now the forged report was sitting in an evidence bag along with a fired weapon and several bullet casings. The well-maintained flat that Amy Devereux shared with her husband was now a crime scene, closed off to the world by a zigzag of police tape and a watchful police car. Two bodies were in the morgue—one with a shattered arm and two gunshot wounds (one which ripped through his lung), and the other with a deliberate bullet placed squarely between the eyes. Brian, aka ‘Phil Mitchell’, would be arriving at some point during the day under the guise of a temporary Archive Administrator, to keep an eye on things and, Mayer assumed, him. What should have been his grand welcoming to the High-Rise was now a complete clusterfuck.
And what angered Mayer the most as he sat in his superior’s chair, was that he knew why.
Samuel Pope.
Mayer’s knuckles whitened at the thought of the man who had ruined everything. For years he had dismissed the man as a nonentity, a former soldier who had struggled to adapt on returning home from all he knew, pushed his family away, and ended up in a job that kept him hidden from the real world.
Never late. Never spoke. Never a problem.
Sam Pope. Nobody saw him coming.
The mystery that was sweeping through the Metropolitan Police office was just who he was, with his army records pulled apart, a fine-tooth comb looking for anything and everything. But Mayer knew almost instantly when he saw the mediocre records that the British Army kept on him.
They were only half the story.
Medals. Confirmed kills. Tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It felt like breadcrumbs to Mayer. There were also years of service not accounted for.
Which told Mayer that Pope was involved in teams that are not even on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Which meant the man was a lot more dangerous than anyone suspected. Whilst every available officer was scouring every available source for information, only a few tidbits filtered through that Mayer assumed were true.
Over sixty confirmed kills.
Highly trained in covert and recon.
Expert in hand-to-hand combat.
Trained to survive.
Mayer leant forward in his chair and massaged his temples, the grey just dusting the tips of his thinning hair. He felt older than his forty-three years, and his body wasn’t the powerful fighting machine it had been in his heyday.
He needed to fix this.
He needed to find Sam Pope.
A knock on the door snapped him back to reality, his bloodshot eyes landing on the young, petite officer in the doorway. He was so tired he couldn’t even remember her name.
‘Yes?’ he demanded curtly.
‘Sir, we are all waiting for you?’ The young officer nodded to the briefing room, humming with activity like a sold-out cinema.
Mayer quickly turned his wrist over to glance at his expensive watch.
Ten past nine.
He pushed himself out of the chair, his joints creaking with fatigue as he cursed himself for wasting an entire hour worrying about how to fix a situation he was allowing to spiral out of control.
The young officer speedily walked back to briefing room, undoubtedly to find her seat missing. Mayer composed himself, straightening his tie and quickly checking his body odour.
He knew he needed some sleep and a shower.
But some things were slightly more important. With the very real threat of one of London’s most dangerous criminals losing patience with him, as well as a highly decorated war veteran seemingly intent in getting in the way, Mayer marched towards the briefing room, hoping that the full fury of the Metropolitan Police would be able to save him. As he approached the door, he stumbled back as DSI Pearce stepped round the corner, catching him off guard.
‘Jesus, Adrian.’ He scowled. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
‘Sorry about that.’ Pearce peered through the blinds at the rows of eager officers. ‘Big crowd.’
‘Well, we have something big going on. You know, real police work.’
Mayer went to step by but Pearce stepped into his path, the corners of his lips threatening to break into a smile. Mayer’s eyes bulged with fury at the intrusion.
‘That’s funny—“Real police work.” Almost insinuating that what I do isn’t similar to yours.’
‘It’s not,’ Mayer said bluntly, folding his meaty arms so the forearms squashed against each other.
‘See, I disagree. Because in that room there, you have forty or so officers chomping at the bit to find out just what the hell is going on.’ Pearce stepped close, reducing his voice to
a slight whisper. ‘So am I.’
‘Well, you’re welcome to join us,’ Mayer retorted smugly.
‘Hmm, I think I’ll give it a miss. I’m more interested in looking in the right direction.’
Mayer chuckled, stepping forward so he was a few inches from Pearce’s face. A few of the officers in the room had turned, watching the confrontation with silent excitement.
‘Listen to me, Pearce. You might have a few people higher up who think your shit don’t stink, but this is now my team. And as far as I’m concerned, I have two police officers dead within the last week, a terrorist attack, and now a an ex-soldier has attacked his therapist and taken her and her husband hostage. So you’re either here to help or you can get the fuck out of my way.’
Pearce raised an eyebrow, showing no signs of intimidation at all. Having worked in Metropolitan Police for nearly thirty years, he had come across a lot worse than Mayer. ‘You think Pope has abducted her?’
‘Absolutely.’ Mayer nodded to emphasise the point.
‘See, I saw the footage. Two masked guys break in, Amy returns home. Sam Pope then arrives. Then we receive three phone calls reporting gunshots and then we see Sam Pope helping a clearly injured Andy Devereux from the flat, followed by Amy. I actually responded to the call and we found the two masked men dead. Two hours later, Sam Pope is seen in Bethnal Green before embarking on a car chase through London before going dark.’ Pearce stepped in even closer, the bristles on his grey beard close to tickling Mayer’s own unshaven face. ‘Tell me, at what point are we actually going to investigate this properly?’
‘Fuck you,’ Mayer muttered. ‘You’re a snake, Pearce. You try to finger good, honest men who give their lives for this badge. Whilst real police officers are out on the streets, giving their lives like Howell did, you’re in here sniping at those who are trying to help this fucking country. All so you can keep your goddamn numbers up.’
The Night Shift: A high octane thriller that will have you gripped. (Sam Pope Series Book 1) Page 12
