by Adam Hamdy
“You bastard!” Melissa spat. “Did you kill Sylvia? Did you? Answer me.”
Mayfield smiled. “Get her out of here,” he ordered the two hard-faced men.
Melissa tried to resist as they dragged her toward the north transept. “Bailey! Help! Someone help me!”
Bailey flinched as one of the men struck Melissa, dazing her into silence. He tried to move toward her, but Mayfield pushed him back.
“I watched you, detective,” he whispered into Bailey’s ear. “I watched you interview Wallace’s neighbors. I saw you visit that pretty thing who lived above him. Some kind of dancer, wasn’t she? When you brought in the forensics team, I was worried you might find some trace of us. But you’re just like the rest of them. You saw what we wanted you to see. A lone man, a crazed serial killer working alone. No matter how exceptional, one man could not have launched such an operation by himself. But you’re beginning to realize that we are not just one. We are an army. And this war is just getting started.”
Bailey was momentarily stunned by Mayfield’s revelation. He was talking about the Pendulum murders and had just confessed to being an accomplice.
“You fuck!” Bailey yelled, snapping his skull forward to deliver a bone-crunching head-butt.
Mayfield crumbled, cradling his nose.
Bailey tried to run, but only managed two steps before the skinhead cracked him across the back of his head with the heel of his pistol.
Everything went black.
59
Bailey felt himself falling. He hit something hard, and the impact jolted him awake. His senses tumbled into overdrive. The sound of thunder pounded his ears. His tongue recoiled at the metallic taste of fresh blood. His ribs stabbed his sides with pain. A powerful smoky aroma filled his nostrils. When his eyes finally focused, he saw that he was lying on the semi-circular steps that led away from the cathedral’s north transept, overlooking Paternoster Row, the treelined pedestrian alleyway that abutted the grounds. His captors had dropped him, and when he looked up, he saw the skinhead firing his machine-pistol. Mayfield stood next to him, his broken nose covered in blood, his gun spitting fire.
Bailey followed the bullets and saw Danny, Frank, and Salamander. Danny was crouched behind the hood of a dark blue Mercedes SUV, which was parked by the high wrought-iron gates that opened on to Paternoster Row. He was shooting at the skinhead, trying to provide cover for Salamander, who was helping Melissa to her feet. The two men who had taken her were lying on the ground. One was motionless, the other had his hands pressed against a bloody wound in his side.
All around them, men, women, and children were fleeing the scene. Bailey could see suited City workers running east along Paternoster Row, and when he looked west, he saw people scattering like struck bowling pins. He sensed movement behind him, and saw the three men who’d posed as security guards drawing pistols as they stormed out of the cathedral. He knew he had to do something and tried to push himself up, but as he forced his protesting body off the ground, he caught a flash of movement and saw the huge figure of Jimmy Cullen come steaming round the eastern edge of the transept, and rush up behind the guards. The red skull on the side of his head looked fearsome as Cullen set about them with an ice ax. He swung the serrated point of the silver head up into the first man’s groin, and a spine-chilling scream burst from the guard, which had the immediate effect of terrifying the others.
Cullen moved quickly for a big man. His victim crumpled as he yanked the ice ax free. Bailey watched blood run down the metal handle as the huge man drove the vicious point into the second guard’s gut. The third man managed to get a shot off, and the bullet caught Cullen in the flank, but didn’t slow him down. He smashed the guy in the face with his wrecking-ball fist, and slung the pick into his shoulder, dragging him back for another punch, which knocked him out. The dead weight of the guard pulled the ice ax down with him, and the deeply buried point was tightly bound by sinew and bone, clasping it hard and resisting Cullen’s attempts to yank it out.
Bailey saw the skinhead turn his attention to Cullen, and moved just as the man was about to shoot, rising, clattering into the back of his legs, forcing the shot to go wild. Skinhead wheeled round, surprised to see Bailey on his feet, but he didn’t get the chance to react. His missed shot had got Cullen’s attention, and the giant charged and tackled him. The two men went tumbling down the short run of steps, struggling all the way, but when the mass of muscle stopped, it was Cullen who had the advantage, and he pressed it hard, battering the skinhead until he stopped moving.
Mayfield grabbed Bailey and pulled him into a chokehold. He tried to get his gun up to Bailey’s temple, but the detective resisted, elbowing him in the gut. The blow winded Mayfield, and his grip loosened just enough for Bailey to get away. As he moved, Bailey heard the crack of a pistol and felt a bullet whistle past him. He turned to see Mayfield stagger back, clutching at a hole in his leather jacket, just above his collar bone.
Bailey felt hands on him and saw Salamander’s face crowd his vision.
“We need to go, man,” his friend urged, pulling him toward the black metal gates.
The sound of sirens filled the night air, and Bailey saw a flash of fluorescent yellow as the first uniformed foot patrols arrived. They were keeping their distance at the edge of the courtyard, pushing back anyone foolish enough to be gawking.
“Come on!” Salamander exclaimed.
“Not without him,” Bailey replied, his mind finally kicking into gear.
He gestured toward Mayfield, who was leaning against the wall, beside the huge wooden doors of the cathedral.
“Get him,” Salamander instructed Cullen.
Mayfield tried to raise his pistol as the huge man closed, but his arm wouldn’t work, and the gun slipped from his fingers and clattered on the stone slabs. Cullen ignored the small man’s feeble resistance, pulled him into a chokehold, and dragged him toward the Mercedes.
“Pat, we’ve gotta move.”
Bailey hadn’t heard Salamander use his real name for years. He nodded and allowed his friend to help him forward.
“Thanks,” he said, as he staggered away from the cathedral.
“Save it until we’re clear,” Salamander cautioned.
Cullen forced Mayfield into the boot, and climbed in on top of him. Frank was in the driver’s seat, revving the engine. Danny sat next to him, guns at the ready, keeping a watchful eye on the hesitant police. Melissa was in the back, and looked relieved as Salamander helped Bailey slide in next to her.
“Let’s go,” he said, as he jumped in.
Frank didn’t even wait for him to close the door: the car shot back, the adjacent black railings becoming a blur as they sped along Paternoster Row.
“We’ll need to ditch this quick,” Danny observed, indicating the Mercedes.
Salamander nodded.
The SUV lurched as Frank put it into a violent, tire-screeching turn, swinging it on to New Change, the wide road that ran behind the cathedral. He flipped into “drive” and there was a moment of inertia as the engine screamed through the gears, before a violent jolt sent the car racing forward. Frank ignored the red lights, cut across the intersection and turned right on to Cheapside.
As they sped east, Bailey heard the muffled sound of Mayfield moaning, and prayed that the wounded man would stay alive long enough to give them the truth.
60
They’d escaped quickly enough to evade the police, speeding down to one of the lower levels of the underground car park on Aldersgate, where they found Frank’s Range Rover. Frank complained about bloodstains and insisted on laying a tarp on the flatbed before they transferred Mayfield from the trunk of the Mercedes. The injured man groaned and muttered incomprehensibly as they tossed his bleeding body in the back of the car. Keen to avoid drawing attention to an already overcrowded vehicle, Salamander praised Cullen’s bravery and dispatched the huge man to see Doctor Death with instructions to get his bullet wound treated. When he was done, he was to
meet them in Radley Green.
As they drove out of the car park, Salamander apologized for leaving them alone inside the cathedral, explaining that he hadn’t wanted to risk being disarmed by the security guards at the door. Bailey expressed his gratitude, a sentiment Melissa had echoed. They were just glad to be alive.
No one said much else as they made steady progress through Central London. All eyes were alert to danger, and the first ten minutes of their journey was a rollercoaster ride of tension, as half a dozen squad cars and a couple of vans passed in the opposite direction, sirens blaring, blues flashing.
The further they traveled from the cathedral, the more relaxed they became, and soon Danny was filling the car with his rapid-fire chatter, reliving the confrontation and speculating on whether the men Cullen had attacked would live or die. Even though they had saved his life, Bailey couldn’t share Danny’s pride. He was uncomfortable being on the wrong side of the law, and tried not to listen. He watched Melissa for a while, but she didn’t return his gaze and simply stared out of the window, lost in her own thoughts as Frank steered them through the suburban fringe of London. Salamander’s attention was swallowed by his phone, and his thumb jumped across the screen as he tapped out urgent messages, so Bailey mimicked Melissa and turned his eyes to the passing scenery, focusing on it in an attempt to drown out Danny’s words, Mayfield’s groans, and the pain coming from his own throbbing head.
They’d been driving for about an hour, heading northeast into Essex. Monochrome countryside flashed past, barely illuminated by a cuticle moon. They were blistering along the A414, and were about two miles out of Chelmsford when they came to a tiny roundabout. Frank slowed and turned left off the main road, following the sign for Radley Green.
Even in the darkness, Bailey could see that it wasn’t much of a village. A few disparate farms, a rural warehouse complex that was home to some small businesses, and then field after open field. They drove for a couple of miles, twisting their way along the narrow road, the wing mirrors brushing the high, unkempt hedges. He saw the silhouette of an owl swoop over the car, but said nothing to the others. Eventually, Frank turned off the road on to a dirt track, and the headlights briefly illuminated a signpost that read “Radley Hulme Farm.”
Something had been bothering Bailey since they’d turned off the main road, and as they approached the large farmhouse, he was finally able to identify the cause: Danny was silent. Bailey couldn’t see the young gangster’s face, but he could sense the nervous tension emanating from the front seat.
“Your dad knows we’re coming, right?” Frank asked.
“Course,” Danny replied, full of bluster. “I called him.”
“I just don’t want him thinkin’ we’re villains,” Frank countered.
“We are bloody villains,” Danny told him.
“The wrong kind of villains,” Frank clarified.
Bailey looked to his old friend for an explanation.
“Why don’t ya tell my man here ya surname?” Salamander suggested.
Danny glanced round at Bailey, his face weighed down by resignation.
“Kane,” he said quietly.
“Kane,” Bailey repeated. “You’re not Terry Kane’s son?”
Danny nodded. “I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Shit,” Melissa sighed.
“Exactly,” Salamander said. “Even if anyone found us, they’d think twice about coming up here.”
Terry Kane was a legendary underworld figure. He and his two brothers had run large parts of London during the eighties and nineties. He was a violent man with a savage temper, but was reputed to be the nicest of the three siblings. They’d lived large, running drugs, prostitution, extortion rackets, arms dealing—hustling anything and everything, keeping the streets in line, and crushing the competition. Their reign came to an end when the two older brothers were kidnapped and executed. Terry had retaliated with a vengeful one-man rampage. There were whispered stories of bodies fed to pigs, buried in disused coal mines, sealed in the structural supports of buildings, disintegrated in smelting plants. Bailey had heard that as few as twenty and as many as eighty men had died at Terry’s hand, but in the end the Met could only tie him to the murders of three men: low-level enforcers for the Hackney Mob, a rival gang. The evidence had been overwhelming, but somehow Terry managed to pull a masterful trick that had become part of London folklore. He managed to avoid a life sentence because, despite being in protective custody, the fourth man Terry had attacked and badly injured disappeared, simply vanished from his bed one night. The lack of eyewitness testimony had been sufficient to have the charge reduced to manslaughter, and Terry only served eight years.
“There he is,” Frank noted.
Terry Kane stood in the doorway of the farmhouse, silhouetted by warm, golden light. He stood maybe an inch or two shorter than Danny but was wider, his body almost filling the frame. Even at a distance, Bailey noted his big, brutish hands.
Frank parked next to a Bentley Arnage Concours, and they all exited. The cool air was rich with floral scents, but beneath them hung the odor of manure. Danny jogged forward, crunching over gravel, head low as though trying not to meet his father’s eye.
“All right, Dad,” he said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“All right? All right, Dad?” Terry boomed, his voice dry as desert sand. “Get over here, you bloody muppet.”
Danny slowed, hesitating as he came within his father’s reach. Bailey saw him flinch as Terry lashed out with both hands, but instead of striking his son, the old villain pulled him into a tight embrace.
“Was that you on the news?” Terry asked, oozing pride like the parent of a prodigy.
“We didn’t make the fucking news, did we?” Frank asked.
“Course you did. A shoot-out at St. Paul’s? You boys are famous,” Terry replied. “They’ve got your mug shots everywhere. Terrorists, right? Wanted in connection with an’ all that bollocks. Come on in. You can have a brew and introduce me to your mates. Katie’s just put the kettle on.”
Katie turned out to be Terry’s girlfriend, an attractive woman in her late fifties who introduced herself as Katherine, her clipped, upper-class accent making Bailey want to stand that little bit straighter. She was slim, blonde, and three or four inches taller than Terry, who mauled her with affectionate pats and embraces whenever she came within reach. She wore a pair of pegged tweed trousers and a light blue blouse and looked every bit the aristocrat that her accent suggested she was. Bailey guessed the furniture, and possibly the house, belonged to her. It was as though the contents of a stately home had been disgorged into the farmhouse, crowding every available space with antiques, paintings, elegant chairs, tables, marble clocks, grandfather clocks: the place was like a museum. Only the living room was vaguely homely. A couple of blood-red Chesterfield sofas faced each other across an open hearth, a low coffee table between them bearing the burden of a fine china tea set.
Terry sat in the middle of the sofa nearest the kitchen, an oil painting of a fox hunt hanging on the wall behind him. Danny was on his left, and Katherine on his right, leaning back against Terry’s coiled arm. Salamander sat opposite, with Bailey on his left and Melissa on his right. Frank leaned against the arm of the couch next to Bailey. The TV was on mute, and BBC News was broadcasting mobile phone footage taken outside the cathedral, which showed the gun battle. The incident had been labeled a terror attack, and all of them had been identified as suspects who were also wanted in connection with the disappearance of newspaper editor Francis Albright. Bailey had encountered a few conspiracy nuts on the job, but this was the first time he’d seen the ease with which a bold lie could be swallowed by a docile audience.
He watched the rolling news coverage, while listening to Salamander apprise Terry of the situation. He and the others chipped in when necessary, and when Bailey revealed that he was police and Melissa was a reporter, Terry had suddenly bristled and become guarded, glaring at Danny until Salam
ander had assured the old gangster that they could be trusted. When he’d heard everything they had to say, Terry turned to Danny.
“I thought you’d come to nothing, boy,” he said. “I thought your mother had ruined you while I was inside. Turned you soft. But look at you. You’ve done well.”
Terry slapped his thighs.
“Right,” he said, hauling himself to his feet. “Sounds to me like we need to talk to the toerag you’ve got in the boot. Find out where he’s stashed your boss. Get him to spill about everything else. You,” he said, pointing to Melissa, “you run a story blowing the whole thing wide open, and they ain’t got no more leverage. And you,” he thrust his thick index finger in Bailey’s direction, “you get all the info you need to build a case. Much as it sickens me, you’ll be a hero cop by the time we’re finished.”
Bailey looked at Salamander, who smiled. His old friend was as sharp as an addict’s needle. Not only had he brought them somewhere safe, he’d also introduced an unstable element, someone Mayfield didn’t know, a man who would take great pleasure in breaking him. Terry’s face said it all. He was looking forward to reliving his glory days.
“Come on then,” Terry said, striding from the room.
Bailey swallowed a couple of painkillers as Frank and Danny hauled Mayfield from the trunk of the Range Rover, and followed Terry across the farmyard toward a renovated redbrick barn. Salamander and Melissa followed, and Bailey could see reluctance writ large on the journalist’s face. He jogged to catch up with her, his head pounding with every step.
“You don’t have to, you know,” he said, gesturing toward the barn.
“He was going to kill us,” she replied. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
Terry unlocked a small door that was inset in one of two large slatted gates, and switched on the lights as he stepped inside. Frank and Danny manhandled Mayfield into the barn and the others followed.
