Random Targets

by James Raven

  He knew the police would by now be on their way. But by the time they arrived he’d be long gone.

  CHAPTER 17

  TEMPLE AWOKE SUDDENLY, his mind dragged unwillingly from sleep by the grating shriek of his mobile phone.

  For a second he didn’t know where he was. His head felt like it was filled with concrete and his eyes took an age to focus. Then he saw Angel and he jolted upright, heart racing. She was sitting up in bed watching him. The sight of the bandages and IV lines brought the whole sorry situation flooding back.

  ‘I think you’d better answer that,’ she said.

  His brain was slow to react and he struggled to retrieve the phone from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘That you, guv?’ It was DS Vaughan. He sounded breathless.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me, Dave. What’s up?’

  ‘There’s been another shooting,’ Vaughan said. ‘This time on the M3 near Basingstoke.’

  Temple was so taken aback his breath caught in his throat.

  ‘It happened a few minutes ago,’ Vaughan said. ‘Highways Agency cameras picked up a multiple crash. Now calls are flooding in from motorists caught up in it.’

  ‘So how do they know it’s not just an accident? Who says it’s a sniper attack?’

  ‘A couple of the callers are claiming that several people were gunned down when they got out of their vehicles. There are bodies on the motorway.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Firearms units have been dispatched and every available chopper is being scrambled. It sounds really bad.’

  ‘Does Beresford know?’

  ‘He and everyone else is being contacted as we speak, including the Anti-Terrorism Command. Where are you, guv?’

  ‘I’m at the hospital with Angel.’

  ‘Then I’ll meet you at the scene. Christ knows how long it’ll take us to get there. Traffic will be backed up for miles.’

  Temple switched off his phone and stood up. His heartbeat drummed against his ribs and he felt a rush of heat in his chest.

  ‘The sniper has struck again,’ he said. ‘Only this time he’s also shot people outside their cars.’

  Angel stifled a gasp. ‘You’d better go then.’

  ‘Will you be OK? I feel I should stay here with you.’

  She forced a weak smile. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I don’t think I’ll get any rest if you sit in that chair snoring like a trooper all evening.’

  CHAPTER 18

  A GROWING NUMBER of UK hospitals have their own helipads. The one at Southampton General was built above the car park at a cost of £1.2m.

  As Temple hurried towards his Mazda, he spotted the air ambulance up there on the pad. The helicopter looked as though it was being prepared for take-off. The pilot was climbing on board and a second crew member was just passing through the gate.

  Temple had a sudden thought. He dashed over to the gate and showed his ID. He asked the crew member if they’d been called out to the M3. He said they had.

  ‘Then I’d like to hitch a ride,’ Temple said.

  Under normal circumstances they told him they’d have said no. But these weren’t normal circumstances. So the guy made a quick call to the hospital’s director of major trauma operations. He was the official who needed to authorize it, and he did after Temple spoke to him.

  Five minutes later the chopper was airborne with Temple strapped into the passenger seat.

  The M3 starts in Southampton and heads north towards London. The chopper followed the trajectory of the motorway as it rolled across the dark Hampshire countryside. A traffic jam many miles long had already built up on the northbound carriageway. Temple stared down through the window at the unbroken ribbon of headlights, a feeling of dread building up inside him. They covered the forty miles to the crash scene in just over fifteen minutes. On the approach they could see vehicles on fire and plumes of smoke rising above the motorway.

  As the chopper began its slow descent towards the carriageway, Temple was shocked by the devastation. He tried to swallow but had almost no saliva.

  Scores of vehicles had ploughed into each other. The road had been turned into a raging inferno of cars, vans and lorries. And there were distressed people everywhere.

  It was like landing in the middle of a war zone.

  It was far more horrific than the scene Temple had encountered on the M27, no doubt because he was among the first to arrive.

  There were only two police cars already there, one fire engine and a Mercedes Sprinter, its lights strobing in the gloom.

  The chopper was put down on the carriageway about forty yards back from the carnage. Temple was the first out the door on to the tarmac and he was struck by the searing heat and the foul odour of oily smoke.

  The police, fearing the sniper might still be up on the embankment, were urging people to climb over the central barrier on to the southbound carriageway, which was itself crammed with vehicles that had ground to a halt, bumpers grinding bumpers.

  Temple ran to the nearest police car and identified himself to an ashen-faced officer who was on his radio. He had to shout to make himself heard about all the commotion.

  ‘I was told people had been shot? Is that true?’

  The officer, a young man who looked to be in a state of shock, raised an arm and pointed.

  ‘Over there and over there,’ he said. ‘A male and a female. Both shot in the head. They’re the only ones we’ve come across.’

  Temple saw two bodies lying on the carriageway. They were being ignored by the paramedics and fire fighters whose first duty was to help the injured and those trapped in their vehicles.

  ‘I need a jacket,’ Temple said.

  The officer jerked his thumb towards the back of the car.

  ‘Help yourself, sir.’

  As Temple slipped on a fluorescent jacket he felt his phone vibrate against his chest. He took it out, checked the ID, and answered it.

  ‘It’s me, boss,’ he said.

  Beresford wanted to know where he was and when Temple told him the Chief Super was rendered speechless.

  ‘I was at the hospital when the call came through,’ he explained. ‘I hitched a ride with the air ambulance.’

  Temple described the scene and told Beresford about the bodies in the road.

  ‘It’s total fucking mayhem here,’ he said. ‘Quite a few of the vehicles are on fire so we might not know for ages how many drivers have been shot.’

  As he spoke more emergency vehicles began to arrive and two helicopters appeared overhead.

  ‘For your information the Chief Constable has already spoken to the Home Secretary and the head of the Anti-Terrorism Command,’ Beresford said. ‘So brace yourself for a big announcement either tonight or tomorrow. This investigation is about to go national.’

  ‘Understood,’ Temple said. ‘Keep me posted.’

  He pocketed his phone and walked over to the first of the sniper’s victims. The dead woman was wearing jeans and a dark sweater. The right side of her face had been blown away and blood and brain matter had pooled around her head.

  Temple had seen plenty of gunshot wounds in his time. He was pretty sure that it was a high velocity bullet that had killed her. The man’s body lay about fifteen feet away. He was wearing a suit and looked quite old. He’d been shot in the back of the head and there wasn’t much left of his skull.

  Temple felt physically sick at the stark injustice of it. A wave of impotent rage swept his body. It made no sense to him that these two people should be gunned down for no apparent reason. The only thing that connected them was their availability as targets. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He looked up as more fire fighters rushed past him towards the belching smoke and burning wrecks. Behind him lights were popping and sirens blaring. A police helicopter roared overhead as it shone a light on the wooded embankment.

  There was still no sign of the armed-response team. They should have been here by now. But Temple doubted t
hat the sniper was still around. Surely he would have scarpered as soon as he heard the sirens and saw the choppers approaching.

  He decided to venture up on to the embankment. That must have been where the shots had come from. It would have provided an elevated position, lots of bushes and cover of darkness. Then he noticed a footbridge spanning the carriageway about a hundred yards away. The sniper could just as easily have fired from there with a long-range rifle.

  He looked back at the destruction and let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. He saw fire fighters battling with flames and paramedics tending to the injured. And he saw police officers leading people away from the chaos. A shard of guilt twisted in his chest because he wasn’t doing anything to help them.

  He had to remind himself that he had a different, but no less important job to do.

  The embankment rose about thirty feet above the carriageway. There were clusters of thick bushes with open areas of long grass in between. The ground was soft and damp and Temple found it hard going in his slip-on shoes.

  It didn’t take him long to get to the top and thanks to a full moon he could see that there was a small area of woodland beyond the embankment. Through the trees he glimpsed flashing blue lights.

  It helped him get his bearings. The air ambulance pilot had told him that the location of the pile-up was close to the village of Popham. The busy A33 road ran parallel with the motorway at this point and only about sixty yards separated them.

  The sniper had chosen the perfect location. From where he stood Temple could see that the footbridge that crossed the motorway continued through the wooded area to the A-road. The sniper had probably parked his car or motorbike over there to ensure he had a speedy avenue of escape.

  Temple trudged towards the footbridge, poking his key-ring torch between the bushes. He stopped a couple of times to look down on the motorway and saw that from a number of positions the sniper would have had a clear view of traffic coming towards him on the northbound carriageway. He didn’t come across anything the sniper had left behind. No impressions in the grass or spent shell casings. But he wasn’t equipped to carry out a thorough search. That would be up to the SOCOs.

  He came to the iron footbridge and climbed over the railing. Then he walked out across the motorway and stared down at the scene below. There were many more emergency vehicles now and some of the fires had been brought under control. It was still chaotic, though, and Temple found it hard to believe that someone would cause so much damage and distress for no good reason.

  As he stood there, his face grew rigid and white with anger. He wished that he hadn’t given up smoking. For the first time in ages he craved a cigarette to help calm his nerves and slow his pulse. At that moment a helicopter appeared in the sky above him, its rotor blades whirring frantically. Temple turned away from the fierce beam of light that shone down on him.

  As he did so something caught his eye on the floor of the footbridge. A few words scrawled in red paint. He knew instantly that it was another message from the sniper.

  As he read it, he felt his blood slowly turn to ice.

  CHAPTER 19

  AND SO BEGAN a long and distressing night on the M3.

  Temple played his part by coordinating the efforts of his team of detectives and scene of crime officers. He also liaised with the armed response unit when they finally arrived.

  The footbridge and part of the embankment were cordoned off and the search for evidence started in earnest. Blankets were laid over the bodies on the carriageway and the paramedics and fire fighters were told to look out for casualties with gunshot wounds.

  The motorway was the scene of frenzied activity: flashing lights, radio static, prostrate forms on stretchers, shouting, crying, vomiting. Those people who hadn’t been injured were confused and distraught. Some were draped in foil blankets while they waited to be taken to hospital. Others were consoled by shell-shocked police officers.

  Fire fighters spent hours cutting drivers and passengers from wrecked vehicles. By midnight all the fires had been put out and all the vehicles involved in the collisions checked.

  The death-toll had reached seven. Matherson, the pathologist, was on hand to determine how many of the dead had been shot. It turned out that four of them had – the two who’d been standing on the carriageway and two others who’d been driving at the time of their deaths. Three more people had serious injuries, one of them a child aged eight.

  A lot of drivers had had lucky escapes. Several emerged from smashed-up cars virtually unscathed. One motorcyclist was thrown thirty feet through the air on to the hard shoulder and lived to tell the tale.

  Clearing the backed-up traffic was an enormous task in itself. It led to massive congestion on roads throughout the area. As dawn broke the M3 was still closed and littered with blackened wrecks.

  And Temple still had no idea why it had happened and how the hell they could stop it happening again.

  CHAPTER 20

  TEMPLE LEFT THE scene when there was nothing more he could do there. By that time the smoke was burning his throat and his mind was fogged by fatigue and adrenaline.

  DS Vaughan took him home in a pool car and waited while he showered and changed. Vaughan then dropped him off at the hospital so he could pick up his car.

  He popped inside to check on Angel, but she was asleep and he chose not to wake her. The nurse told him that she was comfortable and her condition was unchanged.

  The incident room was packed and noisy when he got there, and the atmosphere was charged. It was barely twenty-four hours since the last major briefing, but there had been a significant shift in mood and attitude. Everyone was aware that the second sniper attack had turned the investigation into one that would attract worldwide attention. Twelve people had now been killed – six of them shot dead by the sniper. Ten others – including Angel – were in hospital with serious injuries. This was now the biggest case any of the detectives had ever worked on.

  The challenge was immense. They had no motive: no promising leads and no clue as to the identity of the sniper, save for the fuzzy image on the security footage. And at the same time the pressure was building. The M3 attack had increased fears among drivers who travelled on motorways. One question being posed in the media was why the motorways attacked were both in Hampshire. Were they picked at random or were they part of a pattern that had yet to emerge?

  Temple spent half an hour bringing himself up to date. There were reports to read, calls to return. He also viewed the footage from the traffic cameras on the M3. Although they showed the actual pile-up the picture was poor, even with image enhancement.

  First a lorry lost control and then a car. It led to a shunt involving more than fifty vehicles. There was no lighting along that stretch of motorway so both embankments were in total darkness. The sniper wasn’t visible and there was no sign of a muzzle flash from a rifle.

  A couple of minutes after the crash two figures could be seen walking on to the carriageway after getting out of their cars. Temple’s heart gave a horrified lurch when he watched them suddenly fall to the ground having been shot.

  He viewed the tape twice more and then spread the word that the briefing was about to begin. He set up two whiteboards with photos and maps and a list of subjects to be covered.

  Chief Superintendent Beresford came down along with half the press office. As Temple got things going he wasn’t surprised to see lots of red, puffy eyes in the room. Very few of the detectives had had any sleep. They’d spent the night out on the motorway or in the office logging calls and writing up telephone interviews.

  Temple had never seen his team so tense and solemn. Fiona Marsh was gnawing at her nails like there was no tomorrow. Dave Vaughan’s forehead had deeper creases than the Grand Canyon. And Beresford was chewing frantically on nicotine gum.

  There was none of the usual banter and telling of crude jokes. No one tried to lighten the mood with an insult or gratuitous remark. They all understood that this ca
se called for the highest degree of professionalism and the utmost concentration.

  ‘So here’s what we have,’ Temple said. ‘The sniper was up on the embankment just in front of the footbridge that runs between the M3 and the A33.’ He pointed to a map that was pinned to one of the boards. ‘Last night SOCOs found four shell casings just here. For the second time the sniper didn’t bother to take them with him. Ballistics have confirmed that they match the bullets used in the previous attack.

  ‘Once again he shot two people while they were driving. The bullets went straight through the windscreens. His intention must have been to cause another multiple collision. But this time he also shot two drivers who got out of their cars. All four were struck in the head. That can’t have been by accident. This guy is a first-class marksman. And according to ballistics he’s using a top‑notch sniper rifle.’

  Temple produced a sheet of paper that had just been faxed over from the National Ballistics Intelligence Service.

  ‘The experts are a hundred per cent certain that the bullets were fired from a rifle used by the British army,’ he said. ‘It’s the L115A3, also known in the military as the “silent assassin”.’

  Most of the team had heard about the weapon which had earned a deadly reputation in Afghanistan, but they weren’t familiar with the details contained in the report.

  ‘The rifle has a folding stock so it can be carried in a backpack or rucksack,’ Temple said, reading from the document. ‘It has a telescopic sight that can magnify targets up to twenty-five times. It has a five-round magazine and a suppressor that reduces noise and muzzle flash. And it has an effective range of over a thousand yards.’

  ‘That’s an impressive piece of kit,’ DS Vaughan said.

  ‘Too bloody right it is,’ Temple said. ‘And it’s not the kind of rifle you’d expect an amateur to be using. So there’s a good chance the guy is military or ex-military.’