Burning Truth: An Edge-0f-The-Seat British Crime Thriller (DCI BOYD CRIME THRILLERS Book3) (DCI BOYD CRIME SERIES)

by Alex Scarrow

  Jacobs nodded.

  Lane stepped back and gestured with the gun in the direction of the front passenger seat. After Jacobs had got in, he slammed the door shut and climbed into the rear seat.

  ‘Now, toss your phones out of the window,’ he ordered.

  Jacobs complied quickly. Boyd spread his thighs to let his work phone slide down into the gap between them. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his personal phone. ‘Lane, come on…’ he tried, in a bid to distract him.

  ‘I said, throw it out. Now!’

  Boyd opened his window and tossed it out. ‘There.’

  ‘And the other one,’ said Lane. ‘DO IT!’

  Boyd flung his work phone out of the window too.

  ‘Now… drive. I’ll give you directions.’

  They headed on down the winding country lane, past high grassy verges topped with brambles and low-hanging trees that obscured the endless hectares of farmland.

  ‘Lane,’ Boyd said as coolly as he could manage, ‘I had a text from Okeke while you were taking a piss.’

  ‘Be quiet, Boyd.’

  ‘They know you’ve abducted us,’ he continued conversationally.

  ‘I said, be quiet.’

  ‘They’ll have radioed a broad shout by now.’

  ‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, BOYD, SHUT UP!’ Lane shoved the barrel of the gun into the side of Boyd’s neck. ‘The less you say, mate, the easier this is going to be!’

  Boyd glanced sideways at him. The end of the barrel was digging into flesh beneath his ear. ‘This is just another job… right?’ rasped Boyd. ‘Is it worth it? Really?’

  ‘Left,’ Lane snapped. ‘Take the left ahead.’

  There was a small white sign pointing to Bitchet Green and beneath that a brown National Trust sign indicating Ightham Mote was a point of interest nearby.

  Boyd drove on in silence, trying to work out how this was likely to pan out and what he could do about it. It wasn’t looking good for either him or Jacobs, whichever way he looked at it. Lane had to be a freelancer. ‘Hitman’ was a word for Hollywood scriptwriters, but essentially that was what he had to be. Whether Lane was also a close protection officer for the Met – Christ, did no one think to check? – was pretty much immaterial now.

  But he was human… with very human vulnerabilities.

  ‘Okay, mate…’ Boyd tried again. ‘I’m driving. The phones are ditched. No one’s zeroing in on us yet. How about we dial this down a notch?’

  Lane shook his head. ‘Quiet!’ he said, audibly grinding his teeth. ‘Or I’ll put a fucking bullet right in the back of his head!’

  ‘Shit! No!’ screamed Jacobs, cowering down in the front seat. ‘Please!’

  ‘Lane…’ said Boyd. ‘This doesn’t have to end messily.’

  Lane looked at him. ‘It’s going to be fine if you just shut up and do as I say.’

  It’s not, though, is it?

  The only conceivable objective for this detour was to find somewhere quiet to shoot Darren Jacobs and, as necessary collateral, shoot Boyd too. That meant somewhere remote enough for Lane to properly dispose of their bodies. Sometime soon he was going to say ‘Pull over’ then ‘Get out’, then walk them into some dense woodland and without any warning or ceremony – pap, pap. Job done.

  Bill? Julia’s voice. You need to do something. And very fucking soon.

  68

  Okeke had given up texting. There were four unanswered messages stacked one above the other in the chat history. If Boyd wasn’t replying, it meant he couldn’t reply. Her frantic mind kept cycling round to the worst possible explanation and then she’d mentally scold herself for doing so.

  They were responding to a potential situation and doing everything possible. O’Neal had brought Hatcher scrambling into the Incident Room, and Hatcher and Minter were both on their phones, receiving a running commentary on the police units that were currently blue-ing and two-ing, from various directions, to the current location of Boyd’s phone.

  Warren pulled up a live screen-share, sent by Control, which had a red pin on a map for Boyd and half a dozen blue pins indicating units on their way.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Okeke whispered under her breath.

  Chief Superintendent Hatcher had somehow managed to sidle up beside her unnoticed. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she uttered.

  Okeke glanced at her and could see the colour had drained from her face. Whatever Boyd suspected about her motives during the Nix case, it was clear to Okeke that right now she was determined to get her detective back home in one piece.

  Hatcher noticed Okeke looking at her. ‘I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it.’

  She was referring to the CCTV footage O’Neal had just played back for her, showing Lane in the tobacconists. Then her voice changed. ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ she said into her phone. ‘What? You’re sure?’

  Okeke could see the blue pins edging closer to the red one, painfully slowly across the map. Out there in the Kent countryside, those patrol cars would be tear-arsing their way round blind corners and across traffic-light junctions, sirens blaring. On the screen, the pins shuffled silently.

  Hatcher ended her call and turned to Okeke. ‘They have no record of a DI Douglas Lane working as a CPO.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Didn’t anyone do any checks, ma’am?’ asked Okeke incredulously. She tried as hard as she could to keep it from sounding like a straight-out accusation.

  Hatcher shook her head again. ‘The call about Lane came in from the very top. I presumed…’

  Okeke bit her lip, very tempted to remind her that that particular word prefaced far too many a police screw-up.

  On the screen, the blue pins were converging. They were right on top of Boyd’s location now. Okeke realised she was holding her breath, her mind repeatedly doubling back to that worst possible scenario again. And this time she broke through her own mental police tape and pictured Boyd’s body sprawled in a ditch, leaking blood from a hole in the back of his head.

  Minter lowered his phone. ‘Echo Mike Nineteen’s at the location, everyone!’ He put the phone back to his ear. ‘Come on! Report for Christ’s sake. What do you see?’

  The Incident Room fell silent as everyone turned to look at Minter, focusing on the expression across his face, hoping to get the earliest hint of the incoming news.

  Minter lowered his phone and let out a deep rasping breath. The relief was plain on his face. ‘It’s only his phone. No bodies.’

  Darren Jacobs had his very own survival strategy. He was pleading with Lane for his life.

  ‘I don’t know any names! I don’t know what went on! Please! You can just let us go! PLEASE!’

  In the rear-view mirror, Boyd could see Lane’s hand on his gun, index finger flexing round the trigger, repeatedly curling round it, then off, round it and off.

  ‘If this is about money? Jesus… Fuck knows who’s paying you, but it’s not worth this!’ Jacobs whined. ‘Come on! It’s not w–’

  ‘Another fucking word and I’ll shoot you right here in the fucking car!’ Lane snapped. He had the barrel of the gun resting on the top of the seat. Jacobs stared boggle-eyed at it.

  He’s losing it. Lane’s gentle Scottish burr, his professional and calm demeanour, had been completely dispensed with along with his cover story.

  ‘C’mon, man!’ pleaded Jacobs. ‘You can turn on them. Be a witness. You can –’

  In a blur of movement, Lane aimed over the headrest and shot Jacobs point blank in the head.

  Boyd watched it happen in slow motion – then the windscreen instantly fogged with a fine spray of red and tatters of skull and brain matter. ‘FUCK!’ he screamed.

  Just like Lane, his hands made the executive decision to do something – because no other part of him was doing anything useful to save his arse. Unable to see ahead, he gripped the steering wheel tightly in both fists and jerked it hard to the right.

  The Renault Captur slew across the country lane, the front bumper ca
ught the raised grass verge on the far side, flipping it over into a frantic barrel roll.

  Blue sky and grey tarmac traded over and over, as everything loose inside the vehicle clattered from the floor to the roof to the floor and back again. Boyd caught sight of Jacobs next to him, his arms, legs and bloody head flailing lifelessly like a lurid piped-air sales mascot outside a showroom.

  Eventually they came to a stop with a jarring impact that shattered every window into a blizzard of glass crystals.

  There was a prolonged stillness as Boyd hung upside down from his seatbelt. A silence filled with nothing but the ticking sound of the engine cooling down and the tweeting of the birds outside in the trees. Boyd twisted to look behind him and saw that Lane was conscious, intact and slowly regathering his own wits. He searched around to see if the gun was loose and within reach, but he couldn’t locate it.

  Gun or no gun, he didn’t doubt for one moment that Lane could kill him with only his bare hands.

  Don’t be an arse, Bill… For God’s sake, JUST RUN!

  He reached for his belt buckle, clicked it and instantly collapsed down onto the roof of the car, his thighs smacking on the steering wheel as his weight was released.

  ‘Ahh! Shit!’

  As he began to pull himself out through the empty frame of his side window, he felt a hand grasp his ankle.

  ‘Fuck off!’ he shouted as he kicked back with his spare foot and caught Lane. He heard the man grunt with pain and felt him let go. Boyd pulled himself out onto hard-packed earth.

  Behind him, he could hear Lane, unclicking his own belt and tumbling down to the roof with the same booff of breath and yelp of pain. Boyd turned round to see if he could spot the missing gun lying on the roof, or perhaps flung out onto the road. If he could get his hands on that before Lane, the immediate crisis would be over.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  It was a woman’s voice. His head spun to see an elderly woman with walking poles standing on the grass verge on the other side of the lane. ‘I’m on the phone to the ambulance,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long.’

  ‘Police!’ Boyd gasped. ‘POLICE!’ Then: ‘Get the fuck back!’

  Lane had managed to get out and had found the gun. He was wobbling, holding it awkwardly and trying to keep his aim on Boyd. Blood was trickling down the left side of his face and into his eye.

  ‘Boyd…’ he wheezed. ‘I’m really sorry, mate.’ He pulled the trigger.

  69

  Okeke felt like a fifth wheel, like a useless gawping civilian. She and the rest of the team could do little more than watch Warren’s monitor and Minter’s facial expressions in an attempt to gauge the current situation on the ground.

  A blue pin remained overlapping the red pin of Boyd’s phone, the others were now diverging, shuffling along various faint grey hairlines on the map that indicated a network of country lanes.

  ‘They’re spreading out,’ said Minter, stating the obvious.

  The Incident Room was beginning to fill up with other CID and uniformed officers drawn by news of the unfolding drama, technically breaching all manner of department and team confidentiality tape-lines.

  Even though he’d only been with them for six months, Okeke felt she’d become close to Boyd. Outside work she’d like to say he was fast becoming a friend. She’d never admit this to him – but, more than her senior officer, he almost felt like a big brother. And here she was, doing absolutely fuck all to help him. All she could do was watch as his fate unfolded as pixels on a monitor.

  For fuck’s sake, please… please be alive, you stupid bastard.

  ‘A 999 just came in!’ said Hatcher, relaying the news from Control. She had the whole room’s full attention as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line. ‘It’s an overturned car and gun shots.’

  Okeke realised a tear was threatening to spill down her cheek. Quickly checking no one was looking her way, she swiped it away.

  Boyd was crumpled down on the grass verge next to the old woman. She was bleeding out from a wound in her lower torso… and Boyd had had no choice, none whatsoever, but to drop down beside her and compress the bloody wound.

  Lane hobbled across until he was standing over them, his shirt wet with blood from the gash on his temple. ‘This could have gone better.’

  ‘Lane, for fuck’s sake,’ Boyd snarled.

  ‘At least you won’t run now,’ he said, indicating his own ankle.

  Boyd could see that Lane’s left foot was wrongly askew.

  ‘You know it’s over, Lane. The APUs are coming.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Lane.

  ‘So fucking well put the gun down and help me!’

  ‘I can’t let you go, Boyd. You know who’s on that list.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Boyd lied. ‘I glimpsed his bloody notebook. But I didn’t get to –’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Lane said, sounding tired. ‘In or out of prison, I’m a dead man if I let you walk.’

  ‘Witness protection is still an option for you. You know enough to bring down some big people.’

  Lane smiled. ‘Which is exactly why there won’t be options for me. These big people have reach.’

  ‘Not with me, they don’t’

  Lane smiled ruefully. ‘You’re a good man, Boyd.’

  Lane’s aim was wavering. Boyd nodded at Lane’s left foot. ‘That ankle broken? You know you won’t be able to run.’ Boyd nodded at the old woman’s Nokia, lying where she’d dropped it. ‘She made the call, mate. They’ll be here any second. Put the bloody gun down and give me a hand with her. Make the right decision.’

  They could both hear the sound of several police sirens warbling in the distance.

  ‘The gun?’ Boyd said. ‘Put the bloody thing down, eh?’

  ‘I’ll do time –’

  ‘If you don’t get immunity, you’ll do easy time, Lane. Well away from the general prison population. You’ll be protected. We’ll nail the lot of them. I don’t care how many cabinet ministers are on that list –’

  ‘You’re so naive, Boyd, if you think any of those names are going to see the inside of a fucking prison,’ Lane spat.

  ‘There’s more of a chance if we’re both alive, though, right?’

  The warbling sirens were getting rapidly louder.

  ‘Put the gun down, mate. Don’t let them see you pointing it at me.’

  Lane lowered himself to the ground and set the gun down on the road beside him.

  ‘You better kick it away,’ said Boyd. ‘Don’t give the APOs an excuse.’

  Lane nodded, kicked it with his good leg, and it skittered away across the tarmac.

  The next moment the first patrol car arrived on the scene, slewing to a halt as it came round the bend, kicking up a rooster tail of burnt rubber behind it.

  Boyd raised a hand as the coppers climbed out. ‘DCI BOYD! WE HAVE ONE GUNSHOT WOUND TO A CIVILIAN OVER HERE!’ An ambulance would be on its way already, but at least the paramedics would know what they were dealing with on arrival.

  ‘Lie flat, belly down, hands where they can see,’ hissed Boyd in Lane’s direction.

  Lane nodded, lay down on the road and laced his hands over the back of his head…

  70

  Seeing Lane spread out on the ground and waiting to be arrested was the last clear, lucid recollection Boyd had. The aftermath – the other vehicles arriving, the APOs walking Lane through the stages of de-escalation, the paramedics working on the old woman, Jacobs pronounced dead at the scene – was all a blur.

  He’d been examined by the paramedics and had got away with nothing more than whiplash to his neck and seatbelt abrasions across his chest that, the medic warned him, would hurt like a second-degree burn for the next few days once the analgesics wore off.

  Boyd had then been blue-lighted to the hospital for a more thorough check, and eventually released. Okeke had taken him home, and had been the one to explain to a frantic and furious Emma that her dad had somehow managed to get
himself involved in a life-threatening situation yet again.

  He’d felt distanced from it all – like it was a boxed set of some TV drama playing out before him.

  The whole muddled post-adrenaline-rush experience, along with the tranquilisers they’d pumped into him, had left Boyd feeling exhausted and numb. He went to bed knowing that when he woke up the next day every part of him was going to hurt like a bastard.

  71

  ‘I’m sure you can understand, Tim, that we did the very best we could. But I’m afraid we’ve not managed to put it to bed.’

  George had chosen another remote country pub. This time he wasn’t sitting inside with a gin and tonic, but in his Jaguar in the gravel car park. There was no offer of a drink and no reassuring smile.

  ‘What happened, George?’ Tim asked nervously.

  ‘The less you know, the better. Suffice to say it didn’t work out the way we wanted it to.’

  Tim Portman, erstwhile Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, felt his stomach roll queasily. ‘George, tell me this isn’t… this isn’t going to actually break the surface, is it?’

  George shook his head at the stupidity of the man. ‘Of course it will. A version of it will, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, God. Please, no!’

  George shook his head. ‘We’ll probably manage to hide away the worst of it behind a clutch of expensive superinjunctions. And this is not for your benefit, Tim, you understand? You’re done.’

  Tim could feel his guts churning. ‘What’s… what’s the p-plan, George?’

  ‘You and your stupid Spartans… ’ George sighed. ‘Ridiculous bloody name.’

  ‘But that was so long ago, George. We can –’

  ‘Shut up, Tim.’

  Tim Portman’s mouth snapped shut.

  ‘It only takes one idiotic twat who believes he can do what he wants, that he’s above the law, to soil the drinking water for the rest of us,’ said George, anger reddening his jowls.