The Last 10 Seconds: A Novel

by Simon Kernick

  He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t. That slippery toe-rag Kent got free. While you were locked away, and Ty was off burying the guns, I got rid of Haddock, then went down to the cellar to find out what Kent had done with that film he was meant to have taken. As soon as I showed him the hammer and knife I was going to use on him, he started blabbing. He told me he’d only kept one copy, and that was on a USB stick that was attached to a bunch of keys he’d had on him when he was nicked. Fancy that, eh? It was in some store cupboard in the cop shop and no one had spotted it.

  ‘Anyway, when I went over with a knife to finish Kent off – nice and quiet because I didn’t want anyone hearing – I got a bit of a shock. The bastard wasn’t as well taped to the chair as I’d thought. He’d managed to get an arm free, and as I bent down he lashed out and got it out of my hand. Just like that. He was so damn quick, by the time I knew what was happening he was out of the chair and on me. He would have killed me too, if it hadn’t been for you turning up.’

  ‘So I saved your neck.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said with a small smile. ‘You did.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kill these two,’ I said, motioning towards Dougie and Billy, and feeling the anger build in me.

  ‘I couldn’t risk letting either of them go. The kid had seen me, and it wouldn’t have taken the cops long to realize that the old man was the one who’d lifted the stick from the station and put stuff in Kent’s drink in the cells. He was a loose end.’

  I swallowed hard. Dougie had been a good man and he’d done a lot for me over the years. I wasn’t going to allow Tommy to get away with this.

  ‘Where is the stick?’

  ‘I destroyed it.’

  ‘And you didn’t even want to know what was on it? I don’t believe you, Tommy. I think you do.’

  ‘I’m a pro, Sean. I don’t ask questions that don’t concern me. Neither should you. That way you’ll stay alive and live to a ripe old age. Now, I’m walking out of here, and I suggest you do too.’

  He took a step forward, his bearing confident.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ I snapped, thinking of Tommy’s brutal callousness, working myself up into the kind of rage that would allow me to pull the trigger and rid the world of him.

  He dived into me fast, like a cat, knocking the revolver to one side and driving me back into the wall. The gun went off with a deafening retort, the bullet ricocheting uselessly through the room.

  I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my ribs but I kept hold of the gun and dodged the headbutt he launched as a follow-up. His forehead bounced off my shoulder and caught the edge of the brickwork with an angry crack. Seizing my chance, I delivered two short rabbit punches to his kidneys, and twisted away from him.

  He tried to hold on and we did a manic pirouette across the floor, struggling savagely with each other. As he concentrated on trying to get me to release my grip on the gun by twisting my wrist, I slipped a foot behind his and pushed with everything I had.

  He stumbled and lost his footing completely, letting go of my gun hand as he danced backwards across the floor, arms flailing in a vain effort to keep his balance. A desperate look crossed his face as I turned the gun in his direction. Behind him, I could see Dougie’s corpse, the blood pooling around his head, and Billy lying motionless in the chair, and this time I didn’t hesitate.

  Tommy’s mouth formed a screaming ‘No!’ but any sound that passed his lips was drowned out by the noise of the bullets leaving the barrel as I pulled three times in rapid succession, watching as he was propelled across the room before landing in a flurry of arms and legs on top of Dougie, and lying still.

  I stood for a good ten seconds surveying the bloody scene in front of me. Three more dead bodies to add to those from the previous night, and all for the sake of a piece of film that Andrew Kent had made. I knew now that I would never learn who’d wanted it so badly, but I was just going to have to accept that and move on. I needed to leave now. Even this early on a Saturday morning it was likely someone had heard the shots and would be calling the police.

  But as I turned and headed for the door, the sound of movement made me stop dead.

  Then a mocking voice spoke from behind me.

  ‘Bad move, Seany boy.’

  I heard a series of popping sounds above the ringing in my ears, and then suddenly the revolver fell from my hands and I was pitched forward, colliding with the wall, before crumpling uselessly to the floor, my arms and legs no longer doing what they were meant to do. My vision blurred, and almost immediately I felt myself becoming terribly cold and shaky. I could feel the blood dripping down my stomach and leg, sticking to my clothes.

  Slowly, I inclined my head and saw Tommy getting to his feet and brushing himself down, the pistol with silencer now back in his hand. The striped shirt he was wearing had big black holes in it where I’d shot him, yet he seemed to look none the worse for wear. I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

  Seeing the expression on my face, Tommy tapped his shirt. ‘Bulletproof vest, Sean. Always useful in our line. I thought you’d have known that.’

  ‘My brother . . .’

  ‘What?’

  I took a breath, forcing the words out. ‘My brother, John . . . the one shot during that robbery in Highgate High Street. 1995. The Gulf War veteran. The one Wolfe was bragging about.’

  Tommy frowned. ‘He was your brother? Are you serious?’

  ‘Wolfe said he never killed him. I asked him just before he died. You were there, Tommy. Who pulled the trigger?’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he answered, not sounding sorry at all, ‘that would have been me. He just got in the way, you know?’ He took a step forward, pointing the gun down at me. ‘Just like you.’

  That was when I slumped on to my side like a dying man, and with my last vestiges of strength grabbed the revolver from where it lay on the floor only a couple of feet away and swung it round in Tommy’s direction, my finger already tensing on the trigger, unsure how many bullets I’d used, not caring because this was my final chance to avenge the brother I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, since Tommy had ended his life on a street corner as if he was nothing, just an inconvenience, when in reality he was the most important person in my life.

  I heard the silencer’s champagne pop just before I pulled the trigger, and the room once again exploded in noise.

  Fifty-four

  ‘As far as the operator can see, the car hasn’t moved for the past twenty minutes,’ said Bolt over the hands-free as Tina drove past King’s Cross station. ‘So it’s almost certainly going to be somewhere in the rough square between Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road, York Way and Copenhagen Street.’

  ‘Thanks, Mike.’

  ‘Tell me you’re not doing this alone, Tina. Aren’t you meant to be giving a statement about what just happened at the Gore residence?’

  ‘It’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to find this car. I’m sure it belongs to the fixer.’

  ‘But you don’t know that,’ said Bolt, sounding more worried than ever. ‘It might have nothing to do with it. You could be making a terrible mistake.’

  ‘I need leads,’ she snapped back, ‘and at the moment this is the only one I’ve got.’

  ‘Tina, you’re going to be in real shit for this. They’re going to have your warrant card and everything. You can’t just go chasing round after leads when you’re a witness, and maybe even a bloody suspect, in the murder of a government minister. You can’t get so bloody obsessed.’

  Tina gritted her teeth. She knew all this. Knew that her job was on the line. Yet there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She was too close to give up now. ‘Thanks for the help, Mike,’ she said. ‘I owe you one.’ And she hung up.

  She ran a hand through her hair, trying to focus on the task at hand, knowing that when the local CID found out that she’d disappeared, they’d go spare, which was why she hadn’t brought Grier with her. After she’d organized the first uniforms on the scene and th
e ambulances, she’d told him to keep an eye on things, saying there was something she needed to do, and she’d be back shortly. Grier had demanded to know where she was going, and when no answer was forthcoming he’d asked to go with her, actually stating that he thought they were a team. But she’d got him in enough trouble already, and told him firmly, as his boss, to stay put. ‘It might be the last order I ever give you,’ she’d said. ‘So take notice of it.’

  She took the turning into York Way, then the first right into Caledonian Street, zigzagging her way through the back roads, desperately trying to hunt down a car she only had the most basic description of. She hadn’t even had time to look at a photo. It was as if she couldn’t even stop to think things through any more. She simply had to keep moving, keep chasing leads, keep running, because the moment she stopped, that would be it. She’d be suspended, then fired, and the fixer, Alpha, would continue to walk free, as would Paul Wise, the man she now realized she’d do anything to bring down.

  Mike was right. She was obsessed. Maybe even deranged. But she got results. It was she who’d come up with the lead that caught Kent; she who’d spotted the discrepancies in the Roisín O’Neill murder; she who’d found Gore. The bastards couldn’t take that away from her.

  Five minutes passed. She became frustrated. Unsure of herself and her lead, knowing that every minute she stayed away from the Gore residence was another nail in her career coffin, the realization that she was finally finished as a police officer looming larger and larger in front of her.

  She noticed that her hands were shaking, her breathing getting faster and faster, and she pulled over and got out of the car, lighting a cigarette and willing herself to calm down.

  And that was when she heard it. Coming from the building site behind her.

  The unmistakable sound of gunfire.

  Fifty-five

  There was no pain, just a thick, dull sense of shock. A numbness, from my thighs to my chest. I’d been hit twice that I could see, both times in the initial burst of fire. One round had struck me in the thigh, the second in the gut. The thigh wound was bleeding less which told me that it hadn’t severed any of the major blood vessels, and there was an exit wound just above the back of my knee. The gut wound, though, was bad, the exit wound the size of a golf ball, and spilling a lot of blood on to the dusty concrete.

  I’d managed to prop myself up against the wall and, amazingly, still had hold of the gun. Opposite me across the room, lying on his belly, was Tommy. I’d caught him in the face or head with my last shot, I wasn’t entirely sure which, whereas he’d missed me with his, so we were evens now. For a while he’d made weird rasping noises, coupled with low moans of pain, and had even tried and failed to get up, but he’d stopped moving completely now, and I could no longer hear his breathing.

  So there I was, trapped in this cavernous hellhole that would very likely become my grave. I couldn’t move properly and no one would have been able to hear my cries even if I’d had the strength to make them. There were no sirens, so it seemed no one had even heard the gunshots.

  I had a terrible thirst and I was shivering like a wet dog, but incredibly I wasn’t panicking. I was too exhausted for that, and, even after everything that had happened, I felt this weird sense of achievement. I’d gone out alone to avenge my brother’s murder, and I’d managed it. The gang responsible for leaving him dead on that street were now dead themselves, and by ridding the world of Andrew Kent I felt I’d done humanity a favour. And if it was my parting gift, then so be it.

  But as I sat there, wounded and helpless, wondering how I’d got myself into this terrible tomb-like place, I could hear death’s steady, inevitable approach and knew there was no escape. That was the hardest thing to accept, the fact that my life was finally coming to an end, and I wondered briefly in those last few seconds, as the pain and the shock squeezed at my insides, whether there was anyone left to mourn my passing. Whether I’d even be remembered in ten years’ time.

  Then I heard it. A sound directly outside the door. The scrape of a foot on the floor.

  Jesus. Was this nightmare still not over? Was there a final act to come?

  I clenched my teeth and slowly raised my gun arm, just as a dark-haired woman in casual clothes appeared in the doorway, a warrant card in one outstretched hand and what looked like a can of pepper spray in the other.

  ‘Police!’ she shouted. And then, as she took in the chaotic scene before her and her eyes alighted on me, ‘Sean?’

  ‘Hello, Tina.’

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’

  Which was the moment when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tommy lurch upwards from his position, the pistol in his hand, his face and neck a mask of blood, and start shooting, his bullets pinging angrily round the room.

  With a yelp of fear, Tina leaped out of the way, hitting the deck with a thud as she tried to belly-crawl out of the door.

  Tommy swung the gun round in my direction, while I took aim, concentrating all my efforts on keeping my gun hand steady, knowing that I had only one bullet left and this time I had to finish the bastard, and allow my brother finally to rest in peace.

  He fired first, but missed, the round chipping the wall beside my shoulder before ricocheting away in a cloud of brick dust. He fired again, but this time nothing happened. He’d run out of bullets, and I saw his eyes widen as he realized he’d failed.

  And then I pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.

  Fifty-six

  Tina leaned against the bonnet of the hire car and lit a cigarette with shaking hands as another of the ambulances drove out of the building site through the open gates with an angry wail of sirens. Squad cars and SOCO vehicles were turning up at the scene in numbers now, and a perimeter had already been set up at both ends of the street, behind which the first of the onlookers had gathered.

  She took a long drag, feeling completely detached from all the activity going on, as if none of it had anything to do with her. She’d seen three people die in front of her that morning, and had only narrowly missed being the fourth victim herself. It was the third time in her life she’d been shot at, yet she felt as if on this occasion she’d come the closest to death. She’d actually felt the warm draught of air as a bullet whistled past her ear. Six inches to one side and it would have killed her. Just like that. Alive and functioning one second, gone for ever the next.

  She couldn’t keep risking her neck like this. It had been utter madness running into an abandoned building alone and unarmed, trying to locate the source of gunshots, yet she hadn’t been able to stop herself. It was as if, deep down, she had some kind of death wish, and if it hadn’t been for Egan killing the shooter with what turned out to be his last bullet, she would surely never have made it out of there alive. She wasn’t sure how serious Egan’s injuries were, but he’d been in a bad way when the ambulance had arrived a few minutes earlier. She’d held his hand the whole time as he’d slipped in and out of consciousness, thanking him for what he’d done, but she wasn’t sure that he’d really heard her. She’d make sure she thanked him properly in person as soon as he was well enough. She also needed to find out from him what had happened in there, whether the man he’d shot had been the fixer, and what part her boss, Dougie MacLeod, had played in all this. When she’d seen MacLeod lying there dead on the floor she’d felt a pang of terrible sadness. He’d been a good man to her, but she couldn’t help wondering whether he’d been involved in this whole thing. There were still a lot of questions, but before she went looking for the answers, she had her work cut out trying to save her career.

  A car pulled up at the edge of the perimeter, and two men got out from the rear passenger seats. One of them was Dan Grier, but it took a couple of seconds to identify the shorter, older man with him as DCS Frank Mendelson, the famously pugnacious head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command, and Tina’s ultimate boss.

  Mendelson seemed to zone in on her straight away, and he marched over, his face like
thunder, with Grier slowly bringing up the rear, dragging his heels like a naughty schoolboy.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded, stopping in front of her, his eyes blazing with a barely suppressed rage.

  ‘Solving a murder,’ she told him calmly, meeting his gaze.

  ‘Well, you haven’t solved it, have you? All we appear to have is a string of dead bodies, and you nowhere to be seen whenever you’re needed. You’re a witness to the murder of a government minister, for God’s sake! You can’t just leave the crime scene.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘The Met can’t afford to have unstable mavericks on board, and that’s exactly what you are.’

  Tina felt like reminding him that was not what he’d said when she joined Dougie MacLeod’s CMIT. Then, he’d called her the type of go-getting officer the Met sorely needed. But she didn’t bother, preferring to let him talk until he wore himself out, while trying to avoid looking at Grier, who stood further back staring at the ground.

  ‘That’s why I’m suspending you until further notice,’ continued Mendelson. ‘You’re also required to go immediately to Notting Hill police station where you’re to give a statement to CID about what happened at Anthony Gore’s home. I understand you recorded his confession.’ He put undue emphasis on this last word, his tone sceptical, as if he thought there was something inherently false about it. ‘If that’s the case, I need to have the tape now.’ He put out a hand.

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said, without looking at Grier. ‘There’s no tape.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He frowned, then looked back over his shoulder. ‘DC Grier, I thought you said DI Boyd made a tape of your interview with Mr Gore?’

  ‘I said I wasn’t sure, sir,’ he answered. ‘I thought she might have done, but if she says she didn’t . . .’

  Mendelson didn’t look convinced. ‘If you’re lying to me . . .’ he growled at Tina.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I could have you searched, you know. I’d be quite within my rights under the circumstances.’