by OMJ Ryan
Jennings was defiant. ‘Not until I’m in witness protection.’
Phillips exhaled loudly and folded her arms. ‘I’m curious. What exactly do you think witness protection looks like?’
Jennings drained his glass with the same dramatic flair as before and poured himself another large measure. As he placed the bottle back on the table, Phillips grabbed it and moved it out of his reach, much to his apparent chagrin.
‘Well, you put me in a remote house somewhere with armed police to protect me,’ said Jennings.
Phillips nodded. ‘I see, and what gave you that idea?’
‘I’ve seen it on the TV enough times.’
Phillips opened her mouth to respond when her phone began to ring. It was Jones, and a welcome relief from Jennings. She stepped away from the table and into the hall to take it. ‘How far away are you?’
‘Just a couple of minutes, according to the Sat Nav.’
‘Wow, that was quick.’
‘Bov’s driving, Guv.’
‘Say no more,’ chuckled Phillips.
‘So, any sign of the Triads?’
‘Not so far.’
‘And how’s Jennings?’
Phillips lowered her voice. ‘Pissed and bloody annoying. He’s acting like he’s turning States Evidence in an episode of “Law and Order”.’
‘Has he given up anything on the Triads yet?’ asked Jones.
‘No. He point blank refuses to tell me anything of value until we get him into a safe house with armed guards stationed along the perimeter,’ said Phillips sarcastically.
Jones chortled. ‘Been watching American TV, has he?’
‘Yep. He’s one of those. An armchair litigator.’
‘God. That’s all we need.’
‘And like I say, he’s pissed, so not making much sense at all.’
‘Do you think he’s telling the truth about all this, Guv?’
‘I dunno, Jonesy. He’s so drunk it’s hard to tell.’
Jones was quiet for a moment, before answering. ‘Looks like we’re here, Guv. I can see your car.’
‘Good. Tell Bov to park up on the road with a clear view of the house. I want Entwistle to stay in the vehicle and watch for anyone coming or going. You and Bov check the gardens, then come inside. I’ll let you in through the back door. I’m gonna make some coffee, see if we can’t sober up our star witness’.
‘No worries. We’ll see you in a few minutes.’
Walking back into the kitchen, she watched Jennings for a moment, hunched in the chair cradling his brandy, his eyes barely open. It took all her strength not to slap him into sobriety. She prayed he was telling the truth, otherwise she’d have some explaining to do to Superintendent Fox. Her boss would want to know why she had dragged her already overworked and expensive team a hundred miles out of Manchester in the middle of a murder investigation. Staring down at him as his head lolled forwards, she was beginning to think she had made a mistake.
A few minutes later, she heard the rattle of thin glass from the rear outside door and moved along the corridor to let Jones and Bovalino into the small porch. Both men carried heavy-duty torches in their hands, and the big Italian was forced to bend down to stop his head from cracking on the ancient door lintel.
‘They didn’t make these houses for people who were six-feet-four, did they, Bov,’ chuckled Phillips, as she gestured for them to follow her through to the kitchen. ‘Is Entwistle ok?’
‘Yep, sat on the street watching the house as you asked,’ said Jones from behind her.
‘And what about the gardens?’
‘All clear.’
By now, Jennings was asleep at the table, chin resting on his chest and breathing heavily.
‘You weren’t kidding about him being drunk, were you, Guv?’ Jones said.
Phillips shook her head and blew her lips, pointing at the brandy on the side. ‘I reckon he must have demolished half of that tonight.’
Jones moved to pick up the bottle and inspected the label. ‘Supermarket’s own brand. He’s hardly a connoisseur, then?’
‘Having seen him throwing it back like it’s water, I don’t think he’s drinking it for the taste,’ said Phillips.
‘So what’s the plan of action?’ asked Bovalino.
‘Well, first up, we need to sober him up.’
Bovalino moved to Jennings’s left shoulder, his eyes glistening in the low light. ‘You want me to chuck him in a cold shower?’
Phillips smiled at the thought for a moment, but decided to try a less drastic approach initially. ‘Let’s try coffee first, shall we?’ she said, eliciting a disappointed look from the big Italian. ‘But, if that doesn’t work, Bov, you have my full permission to dunk him in the bath!’
Bovalino grinned. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, then,’ he said, taking off his coat.
45
Patience had always been the watchword of his work. He never rushed, and always ensured he’d done a thorough recce of a kill site before he made his final move. However, tonight he cursed himself for not taking full advantage of the target being alone when he had arrived an hour earlier.
Since then, he had taken his position amongst the trees in the rear garden and watched Eric Jennings sitting in almost total darkness through the window with the aid of his night-vision goggles, which cast everything in green. He had taken his time to suss out the floorplan of the building, as well as the surrounding land. Noting that Jennings was drinking heavily had initially given him a false sense of security that this would be a simple hit. That had all changed the moment the police-woman had knocked on Jennings’s door thirty minutes earlier. His first instinct in that moment had been to take them both out. However, reinforcements had arrived just a few minutes later, and entered the house through the rear of the building. For a moment he considered aborting, but that would not be acceptable to the family. Jennings had become a liability that needed to be eradicated. The additional bodies made things problematic, but not impossible; the kill had to happen tonight. With so much at stake, there was no way Jennings could be allowed to live to share what he knew.
Reassessing the house, which now contained four targets, he made the necessary adjustments to his plan. He checked his weapons for the final time before securing them about his person, and noted the time; it was approaching 11 p.m.
Phase one of his plan involved taking out the lookout stationed in the car on the street. In his experience, attacking a man in a vehicle was not without complications – something he could live without tonight, what with four other targets to neutralise. So he decided the best option was to lure him out. Pulling a small micro-torch from his pocket, he switched it on and pointed it in the direction of the man in the car. Then, he began to tap out S-O-S in Morse code, over and over. A few seconds later, the car door opened and the driver got out.
From his position within the canopy of leaves, he watched as the bright green glare of a torch lit up the pathway to the side of the house, bobbing and weaving in the right hand of a young-looking man. He held a phone in his left hand and appeared athletically built and muscular.
For a brief moment, his pulse quickened as his adrenaline spiked and his body prepared for the fight. It was a chemical reaction he had experienced a hundred times before. His training kicked in automatically, allowing him to access well-practiced techniques to slow his racing heart in a matter of seconds. With his nervous system soon back under control, he stared out at the young man as he stepped closer to his position.
He held his hands out in front of him – the tips of his thumbs touching in readiness – as the young man came to a stop on the other side of the bushes, virtually on top of him. The torch beam arced left and right across the canopy.
He watched on; ready to pounce.
The young man was just inches from his face now and staring straight at him, blissfully unaware that his opponent lurked before him.
He would wait for the exact moment to strike. Swallowing gently, he took a d
eep breath in and let it out silently as his fingers flexed in front of him.
The young man took one last glance at the bushes before he turned back towards the house.
In that split second, he pounced, thrusting his open hands out through the leaves, clamping them around the young man’s throat, then yanking him backwards into the darkness.
46
With Jennings onto his second cup of coffee, he showed no signs of either sobering up or sharing the name of Carpenter’s or Shaw’s killer, much to Phillips’s mounting frustration. As the time passed 11.15 p.m., the headache that had been building from the base of her skull for the last hour became unbearable. She felt sure it was partly due to the stress of the stalled investigation, and partly due to her lack of sleep over the last week. After checking Jennings’s cupboards for pain killers – without luck – she took her leave and headed back to her car. As a seasoned detective who’d spent most of her life under pressure, she was no stranger to headaches. As such, she always carried a pack in the glove compartment. In truth, she was glad of the break from Jennings and his drunken rambling. She stepped out of the house and filled her lungs with the fresh country air, then made her way along the driveway lit by the full moon.
The car beeped as she released the central locking, which in turn activated the lights within the car’s interior. Her footsteps crunched on the gravel as she approached it. Dropping down into the passenger seat a moment later, she pulled open the glove box, retrieved the pack of pain killers and slipped a couple of tablets into her mouth. Washing them down with a swig of water from the half-drunk bottle in the central console, she breathed heavily through her nose as she dropped her head back onto the headrest and stared at the house through the car’s windscreen. The inside was fully lit now, with the team having conducted a full sweep of the interior on arrival. Unlike Shaw’s and Carpenter’s houses, they had found no signs of listening devices. Phillips had a gnawing feeling that, rather than being at genuine risk, Jennings was simply drunk and being dramatic. As Phillips replayed the strange events of the last few weeks in her mind, her own paranoia began to kick in. Was this whole night just an elaborate ruse? Had Jennings drawn them away from Manchester for a reason? Nothing was beyond the realms of possibility. This was, after all, an investigation like no other she had encountered.
Sliding out of the car, she stepped up and closed the door, casting her eye in the direction of the squad car. To her amazement, the car looked empty. Entwistle knew better than to leave his post.
Phillips’s pulse quickened as she moved at pace towards the car and yanked open the door in one movement. With no sign of life, she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled Entwistle’s number, but the call failed. Inspecting her phone, she realised she was struggling for signal once again, and began to move back towards the house in search of a connection. As she returned to the gravel drive, she spotted a couple of signal bars on the home screen and dialled again. This time it connected, and to her surprise, she could hear his phone ringing somewhere in the nearby garden. ‘Entwistle!’ she shouted. No response. ‘Entwistle! Where are you?’ she repeated as she ran in the direction of the phone. A second later, she found it lying on the grass next to Entwistle’s torch. There was no sign of her detective.
Every fibre in Phillips’s body told her something was seriously wrong. She charged back into the house through the front door.
At that exact moment, the entire house was plunged into darkness.
‘Entwistle’s missing!’ Phillips said as she raced into the kitchen, where she found Jones and Bovalino standing motionless in the dark. The only light flooded through the windows from the moon.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ whispered Jones.
‘He’s here! He’s come to kill me!’ Jennings wailed with the pitch and volume of a banshee.
‘Shut up, you idiot!’ growled Phillips in a low voice.
‘You have to protect me. I don’t want to die,’ Jennings continued a high volume.
Phillips grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘I’ll bloody kill you myself if you don’t fucking shut up.’
Bovalino flicked the light switch on and off on the wall next to him. ‘It’s dead, Guv.’
Jones stepped into the hallway and tried the switch out there. ‘Same here.’
Both men turned on their torches, and Jones handed his to Phillips.
Bovalino arced the beam of his torchlight to scan the room.
‘I think it’s time we got you out of harm’s way,’ said Phillips as she pulled Jennings up from his chair.
The sound of smashing glass coming from the direction of the back door stopped everyone in their tracks. Bovalino swivelled and stepped forwards to see down the small corridor that led to the back door. He shone his torch down towards the rear porch.
‘Bov. Go and check that out,’ whispered Phillips.
Bovalino didn’t respond. Instead he stood rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on the beam of light ahead of him.
‘Bov!’ said Phillips, as loud as she dared, but still he didn’t respond.
‘I’ll go,’ said Jones, and stepped past the big Italian, grabbed the torch out of his hand and disappeared down the corridor.
‘Bov. What’s going on?’ growled Phillips as he remained static.
Jones’s footsteps bounced off the walls as he edged across the ancient stone slabs of the cottage floor.
‘Bov!’ said Phillips again.
Bovalino appeared to snap back into the moment, glanced quickly at Phillips, then headed off after his partner along the narrow corridor.
Phillips turned to Jennings now. ‘Does your bathroom have a lock on the door?’
Jennings nodded frantically.
‘Where is it?’
‘Down the end of the hall,’ he said, pointing behind Phillips’s head in the direction of the bedrooms.
‘Take me to it, now.’
As Jones stepped tentatively towards the back door, he could see shards of broken glass on the ground, glistening like diamonds in the light from his torch. The door itself was ajar and, aside from the missing glass, appeared to be intact. He swallowed hard as he moved closer. A moment later, Bovalino appeared at his shoulder.
‘Is there anyone there?’ the big Italian whispered. Jones could hear the fear in his voice.
‘I dunno,’ Jones said as they edged forwards together until they reached the door.
Jones trained his torch directly onto the broken pane of glass and slowly wrapped his finger round the door handle. His heart beat like a drum as he pulled it open.
In that instant, there was a flash of light as someone rushed from the darkness towards them. Instinctively, Jones raised his arms to protect himself. Something razor-sharp sliced through his wrist, over and over again. He cried out in agony as he dropped backwards to the floor. He could feel hot blood escaping from his body. From above him came a loud, buzzing noise, and a second later, Bovalino crashed in a heap on top of him, trapping him against the cold stone slabs.
With the torch lighting their way, Phillips was following Jennings along the hallway towards the bathroom when a blood-curdling scream caused her to stop and turn back in the direction of the kitchen. Jones and Bovalino shouted, followed by the sounds of a scuffle, a heavy thud, then nothing but deathly silence. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she attempted to call 999. But, thanks to the thick walls in the belly of the house, there was little chance of a signal. ‘Damn it!’ she growled, but tried the number again, in the vain hope the call would be diverted to another network. After two failed attempts, she gave up.
She turned back to face Jennings, who stood at the bathroom door behind her. He was about to step inside when she stopped him. ‘Wait! Let me check it first,’ she said in a low whisper, then moved past him.
Arcing the torch around the small space, she noted it had a bath, a toilet and an ancient hand basin with a metal frame. Much to her relief, it was empty. She signalled for Jennings to step inside and pushed the
door closed behind them before drawing him closer. ‘Are there any other ways in or out of this place besides the main doors?’ she whispered.
Jennings’s eyes were wide with fear. He swallowed hard. ‘Just the main bedroom. A set of patio doors.’
‘Which is the main bedroom?’
Jennings pointed towards the bathroom door behind Phillips’s head. ‘It’s the room directly opposite.’
‘Ok. I want you to lock the door, lie down in the bath and keep hold of this.’ She handed him her phone. ‘Keep trying 999. If you get through, tell them you’re with the police and have a Code Zero. Get them to send armed police immediately, ok?’
Jennings nodded frantically. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Jones and Bovalino could be seriously hurt. I can’t just leave them there.’
‘What about him?’
Phillips locked eyes with Jennings eyes now. ‘Who’s out there, Eric? What am I up against?’
Jennings was visibly shaking now, his breathing shallow. ‘I only know him as Shing,’ he whispered.
‘Zhang Shing?’
‘I don’t know. I just call him Shing.’
‘Did Shing kill Vicky?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Cindy?’
Jennings nodded.
Phillips had been right about Zhang Shing all along. Now all she had to do was stay alive long enough to tell someone about him. Easier said than done right now, she thought.
She took a deep breath in as she attempted to slow her heart rate. ‘Are you ready?’
‘I think so,’ said Jennings.
Phillips placed her finger to her lips, then turned and tentatively opened the door.
Casting her flashlight down the corridor, she saw nothing and no one, so stepped out into the hallway and turned to face Jennings, her voice barely audible now. ‘Remember, lie in the bath and don’t come out. And if you get through to the police, it’s Code Zero and we need an armed response, ok?’
