The Last 10 Seconds

by Simon Kernick

  Dougie stopped and gave a frustrated shake of his head. ‘And now he’s dead, so he can’t help us.’

  ‘And so’s everyone else involved in his abduction. Except the person who set the fire back at the rendezvous. But I’ve got no idea who he is, and I’m completely out of leads.’ I was feeling the frustration now myself. ‘Someone’s set both of us up completely and neither of us has got a bloody clue who it is.’

  We stood there staring at each other for a few minutes, each of us lost in his own private thoughts, me still holding Dougie’s old army revolver, knowing that you couldn’t fake the fear he was exhibiting.

  And then we both heard it at the same time. A loud, incessant ringing. Coming from the pocket of Dougie’s jeans. He pulled out his mobile and thrust it to his ear.

  He didn’t speak. Just listened. After a few seconds he rushed into the kitchen and wrote down some instructions on an open pad on the sideboard. Then he ran back into the lounge and put the phone back in his pocket.

  ‘That was the kidnapper,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s told me where to go to collect Billy. And he’s told me to come alone.’

  Fifty-one

  The sound of the shotgun blast was deafening, and for a second Tina thought she’d been hit. She was knocked backwards, letting go of Gore’s arm in the process, and as she landed on the carpet she saw Gore fly past her and crash through the open study door. Grier, meanwhile, was leaning back against the staircase, looking dazed. Smoke billowed through the air leaving a bitter stink in its wake, and as it cleared, Tina saw Jane Gore place the barrels of the shotgun underneath her chin, her face a mask of bitter emotion.

  Tina only had time to shout her name before Jane Gore pulled the trigger for a second time, blowing the top of her own head off in a cloud of smoke and blood spray. She remained standing perfectly upright for a long moment, then crumpled to the floor like a stringless marionette.

  For several seconds, the house was silent. Neither Tina nor Grier moved, as the shock of what had just happened seeped in. Tina had been in situations where firearms had been discharged before. She’d been on the receiving end of them twice, remembered the pain all too well, but she’d never been able to get used to the speed with which they could snuff out a life.

  Finally, she clambered to her feet. Mrs Gore was beyond help. Half her head was missing. But Tina wasn’t sure of the severity of her husband’s injuries, and they badly needed him alive, so she rushed into the study, already reaching for her mobile to call an ambulance.

  But as soon as she saw him, she knew it was too late. Gore lay on his back in the middle of the floor, his eyes closed. Shotgun injuries at close range are usually far more serious than gunshot wounds as the shotgun pellets don’t have the chance to disperse, and this was no exception. There was a huge, uneven hole in his chest, exposing internal organs, including his heart, which didn’t appear to be beating.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered, frantically feeling for a pulse. She thought she found something faint, but even as she tried to measure it, it disappeared. ‘Come on, come on,’ she whispered, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all. Gore was dead, as was her chance of finally bringing Wise to justice.

  She stood up and called the ambulance, telling the operator to hurry even though she knew it was too late, before walking back into the hallway, feeling shaky on her feet.

  Grier was beside Mrs Gore. As Tina approached him, he rose, shaking his head, blood on his clean shirt, and his hands too. ‘She’s gone,’ he said, his face pale.

  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, a
nd 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.’