by Chris Ryan
Instantly, Zak pulled out his own phone and dialled 999. He barked their location down the phone, screaming at the operator that somebody had been shot, then turned his attention back to Michael himself. His handler was dreadfully pale, and his lips were blue. He coughed weakly, and then whispered Zak’s name, and a single word: ‘Go!’
Zak shook his head and tried to put pressure on the wound. ‘I’m staying,’ he said. ‘The ambulance will be here any second.’
Michael’s eyes fell closed, and he spoke again, obviously with great effort. ‘If the police . . . find you here . . . questioning . . . too long . . . you have to go . . . stop Ludgrove . . . stop. . . . the third . . . device . . .’
‘I’m staying with you,’ Zak insisted through gritted teeth. There was so much blood . . .
Michael opened his eyes, obviously with difficulty. ‘Order, Zak . . .’ he breathed. ‘Find Ludgrove . . . go . . . now!’
As if to underline his instruction, sirens blared in the distance. And deep down, Zak knew Michael was right. He couldn’t get taken in by the police. They’d force him to explain things that couldn’t be explained. They’d force him to waste time.
Time he didn’t have.
‘I’m going to find Raf and Gabs,’ he whispered. ‘And I’m going to stop this guy.’
But Michael had lost consciousness. Blood was pooling around his body. And the sirens were growing louder.
Zak stood up, ran to the window and exited. With his weapon stashed back in the bag, he strode away from the warehouse as calmly as he could.
He could hear the sirens arriving from the south. He walked north. Michael’s instruction was ringing in his ears.
Find Ludgrove . . . go . . . now!
15
HANGMAN
ZAK DIDN’T START running until he was out of sight of the warehouse. But then he ran like hell.
His mind was churning, and so was his stomach. ‘Find Ludgrove,’ he whispered to himself, a desperate attempt to keep his thoughts straight. ‘Find Ludgrove . . .’ But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get the image out of his mind of the blood seeping from Michael’s stomach wound. It had been a bullet from Zak’s gun that had injured him. If he died, Zak knew he would carry the guilt for ever. But there was a stronger, more urgent emotion even than that: rising panic that something bad – something really bad – had happened to Raf and Gabs. Clearly the warehouse had been a trap, designed to kill whoever went looking for Zak’s Guardian Angels. A little voice in his head told him that, given this was the case, the chances of Raf and Gabs being kept alive were tiny. Almost non-existent. But he didn’t listen to that voice. He couldn’t. He had to believe they were still alive. He had to . . .
Find Ludgrove . . .
But what was he supposed to do when he found him? How could he do this by himself? Who would he even report to?
He wiped the hot, angry tears that were collecting in his eyes with the back of his hand. Get a grip, he told himself. You can’t do anything in this state. You’re drawing attention to yourself when you need to be invisible. Lives depend on it.
He realized he’d been walking without knowing where he was headed. He found himself outside a McDonald’s on Cricklewood Broadway. It was growing dark now, but still quite warm. Zak noticed a splash of Michael’s blood on his right hand so he ducked into McDonald’s to wash it off.
The washrooms were in the basement. They looked deserted, apart from one of five cubicles – the third along – that was locked. He placed the canvas bag on the back edge of a sink, behind the taps, and started washing the blood from his hand. The water ran pink, but the stain was stubborn and he had to scratch at it with the nails of his left hand.
He heard the chain in the occupied cubicle flush and a man emerged. He was in his thirties and his thinning hair was cropped close. He stood at the sink next to Zak to wash his hands and Zak saw him glance down. The man’s eyes widened as he saw the blood. They flickered towards the canvas bag. To his horror Zak saw that the dull end of the suppressor was poking out from the corner of the bag.
The man yanked his gaze away from the gun, immediately stopped washing his hands and left the washrooms without drying them. Zak cursed under his breath. He’d seen the gun. There was no doubt that he would raise the alarm. Grabbing the canvas bag, he left the washroom and jogged up the stairs. Back in the main area of the restaurant, he took a moment to scan the room. Most of the tables were occupied – there were perhaps fifty people in here – and he quickly identified the guy from the washroom talking to a uniformed security man by one of the big flip-top bins approximately eight metres to his five o’clock. Almost as a reflex action, his eyes picked out three CCTV cameras on the ceiling. One was pointing in his direction. It had him. No doubt.
Distance to the exit: fifteen metres. It meant passing right by the security man. No point waiting. He paced quickly towards the door.
‘That’s him,’ the man hissed as he passed. Zak felt the security guy shrink away as he upped his pace.
Five metres to the door.
‘Stop that boy! He’s got a gun!’
A sudden silence in the restaurant. Zak sprinted. He hurled himself against the door, which opened outwards onto the street. Once he was outside, he sprinted again. All he could think of was getting a good distance between himself and the McDonald’s. He allowed himself one glance backwards. The security guy was outside the restaurant, looking left and right, but he clearly couldn’t see Zak amid the other pedestrians. Zak slowed down to a steady walk, so that he didn’t draw any more attention to himself. But even though he was walking calmly, his mind was in turmoil. What was he going to do? Michael had set him an impossible task. He couldn’t go to the police – they’d dismiss him as a fantasist, or worse. And right now, he couldn’t risk being stopped by anyone, not with the kind of luggage he was carrying. He was alone. Totally alone. And although London should have felt more secure to him than Mexico or Angola, it didn’t. And how had he turned into the kind of person who could terrify a whole McDonald’s? He needed to get back to the flat in Knightsbridge. There at least he felt safe. Or at least, safer.
The blue and white frontage of Cricklewood Broadway station loomed up ahead. Two armed police officers guarded its entrance. Remembering how he had been searched at Victoria, Zak immediately dismissed the idea of trying to use public transport. If anyone found the Browning, he’d be flat on the floor with his hands on his head. Instead, he walked straight past, studiously avoiding eye contact with the officers.
It was about two minutes later that he saw a black cab coming his way. He flagged it down and the driver pulled up alongside him, winding down his window as he did so. ‘Where you going, son?’
‘Knightsbridge,’ Zak replied.
‘Gotta charge you double to go into central London, what with these bomb scares and all.’
‘Fine,’ Zak said shortly. He climbed into the back of the cab.
‘Ain’t you got school tomorrow, son?’ the driver asked as he pulled out into the traffic.
‘It’s closed,’ Zak replied automatically. ‘Because of the . . . you know . . . attacks.’
The answer seemed to satisfy the cab driver.
‘Know what I think?’ the driver said, accelerating down Cricklewood Broadway. He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I think it’s that Al-Qaeda doing it. Old Bin Liner might be dead, but they still got a load of nutters want to make their mark.’
‘Yeah,’ Zak nodded absently. ‘Probably.’ But he didn’t agree. The features of Ludgrove rose in his mind. The sour-faced journalist hardly seemed like a wannabe Al-Qaeda operative. He was, however, Zak’s only lead.
The cab crawled through the traffic back into central London. The driver switched on the radio – some call-in show – and Zak zoned out as the DJ and his guests made increasingly wild speculations about the events of the past few days. He stared out of the window as they passed through Paddington. Everywhere he looked there was heightened security: ordinary
police, armed police and, as they entered further into the centre, soldiers in camouflage gear with weapons strapped across their chest. Zak found himself focusing on the faces of these men who were there to protect the capital. They looked far from sure of themselves. Hardly surprising. They were trying to stop something that hadn’t happened yet. They didn’t know what, or when. Or even if.
Looking up, he saw two aircraft circling low in the night sky. Zak couldn’t make out what they were, but he suspected they were also to do with the heightened security. A strange thought crossed his mind: in a city under attack from an unknown bomber, in the air was probably the safest place to be.
An urgent voice on the radio brought him back to the here and now. It was the DJ of the call-in show. ‘Reports are coming in of an incident in the Westminster area of London. Our understanding is that there has not been another explosion, but a police spokesman is advising the public to avoid the area at all costs.’
Zak looked out of the window again to get his bearings. They were heading down Park Lane, towards Hyde Park Corner. ‘Can you take me there?’ he asked the cabbie.
‘Where, son?’
‘Westminster.’
‘You got a bleedin’ death wish, mate? Course I ain’t takin’ you to Westminster. Didn’t you hear what they just said?’
Zak grabbed his wallet from inside his coat and pulled out a bundle of notes which he waved in the cabbie’s direction.
‘Forget it, son,’ the cabbie insisted. ‘I don’t want to be the richest man in the cemetery. I’ll take you to Knightsbridge like you asked, but that’s it.’
They had arrived at Hyde Park Corner now. Time check: 21.05. Zak made a sudden decision. ‘Let me out here,’ he said.
The cab driver looked at him like he was mad. But then he shrugged, and pulled over on the eastern edge of Hyde Park Corner. Zak pushed a handful of notes in his direction and the driver’s eyes widened slightly when he realized that his passenger had paid him far more than he was supposed to, but by that time Zak was slamming the cab door shut. He hitched the canvas bag holding his weapon up onto his right shoulder, and sprinted in the direction of Constitution Hill.
The road leading down towards Buckingham Palace was clogged with stationary traffic. Some drivers were even standing by their cars, looking up ahead to see what the holdup was. Zak hurtled past them, towards the palace that was bathed in light. He was half aware of the Union Jack flying, but the best part of his attention was on speed. When he reached the Queen Victoria Memorial, standing proud on the roundabout in front of the palace, he headed south, then turned left down Birdcage Walk.
His lungs were burning again. The hard corners of his weapon dug uncomfortably into his ribs. The closer he came to Parliament Square, the more clearly he heard a cacophony of sirens up ahead. The traffic was at a standstill here too, so much so that most drivers had switched off their engines and were looking ahead with furrowed brows. The beeping horns of the more impatient drivers joined the blare of the sirens. For Zak, it was the sound of panic, and it made fear rise in his gut.
What was going on? What was happening?
The road veered slightly to the right. Parliament Square came into view: immobile traffic, grand buildings, statues, and of course Big Ben. The clock face glowed pale yellow in the night, like a second moon. Twenty-five past nine. Zak ran towards it. As he entered Parliament Square he was able to cross the road easily because of the log-jammed traffic, and he could see that whatever was causing the holdup was centred around Westminster Bridge. There were four or five police cars there, and the bridge itself had been closed off.
Zak didn’t know what it was that made him run towards the bridge. Just a vague, uneasy sense that he needed to see what was going on here. That it was relevant, somehow, to him. As he grew closer to the bridge, though, he realized there was no hope of getting onto it. There were several policeman keeping the cordon, and they were letting nobody past. Zak peered towards the flashing lights of the police cars. They were parked halfway along the bridge, and he could just make out the shape of figures leaning over the edge to look down towards the river below.
He felt a chill. What were they looking at? What had happened?
Zak looked to his ten o’clock. A small crowd had gathered on the bank of the river and they were looking up at the bridge. He ran towards them, his sense of unease growing. For some reason he avoided looking up until he had joined the crowd.
What he saw when he finally gazed towards the bridge both sickened and astonished him.
There was a rope hanging from the railings. And, at the end of the rope, a figure.
Unbidden, the faces of Raf and Gabs rose in his mind. A cold sickness gnawed at him.
He looked around. The crowd was concentrated in a small area about twenty metres from the bridge. He could be undisturbed if he walked just a bit further along the bank. He did so, then crouched down behind a green litter bin and felt inside his bag. Blindly, he unclipped the sight from the top of his weapon before quickly zipping the bag up again. He held the sight up to his right eye, and directed it at the bridge. He squinted as the flashing blue neon of one of the police cars filled his sight, then lowered his aim in line with the hanging body.
It was a man. Zak saw that immediately because he was still wearing his suit. He directed his line of vision onto the hanged man’s face and fine-tuned the focusing. Because of the distance, his field of view was small and it was a struggle to maintain a steady enough hand to keep the man’s face in view.
It was a deeply unpleasant sight. The tongue was lolling from one side of the mouth, and the whole face was a rictus mask of terror. Zak found himself checking the hair colour. Dark. Briefly, he felt a wave of relief. If he had dark hair, this man could not be Raf.
The relief was short-lived. As Zak turned his full attention back to the man’s face, he realized he knew who it was.
He let the sight fall, blinked at the hanging silhouette, then returned the sight to his eye to make sure he wasn’t mistaken.
He wasn’t mistaken.
Sirens continued to ring in his ears. The horns continued to beep. Zak gaped open-mouthed at the bridge, trying to work out what it all meant.
Trying to work out why, and how, the corpse currently hanging from the railings of Westminster Bridge could possibly be Joshua Ludgrove, chief defence correspondent of the Daily Post, all-round bad egg and the only person Zak had in the frame for the devastating attacks on London, and the chaos that had ensued.
As Zak reeled in confusion, not far away – only a few miles – a man was busy. It was dark down here. As dark as night. Darker than night, in fact. With the total absence of light – he didn’t even illuminate his watch, so he could only guess that it was now about 9.30 p.m. – he was obliged to survey his prisoners using a pair of fourth-generation night-vision goggles. The NV goggles included an infra-red torch, which cast its light – invisible to the human eye – in a fan shape ahead of him, lighting everything up with a hazy green glow. But the prisoners, when they woke up, would not see anything. If he remained still, they would probably not even know he was there.
He sat, and watched, and waited. The only noise was the scurrying of rats, but he’d grown used to those hairy creatures with their long, greasy tails in the time he had spent here.
So much time. Such a lot of planning.
It was the woman who woke first. She had white-blonde hair which glowed pale in the NV. Her chin drooped onto her chest and her hair fell forward. As she roused herself, she lifted her head up and stared blindly into the darkness, her eyeballs glinting strangely in the infra-red beam of which she was totally unaware. She tried to stand, and it was only then she realized her hands were tied behind her back, although she had no way of knowing that they were also tied to an iron ring protruding from the clammy stone wall.
‘Raf?’ she whispered, her voice dry and hoarse. ‘Raf, are you there?’
He turned his attention to the man. He was stirring too, and at
the sound of the woman’s voice, he groaned. ‘Gabs?’ he rasped.
Good. So now he knew their names. That was a start.
‘What happened?’ Gabs asked. ‘All I remember . . . the stairs . . .’
‘We were gassed,’ said the man called Raf.
‘That’s why I feel so sick,’ Gabs muttered. ‘I think someone hit me on the head too. I can feel a welt.’
It was true. He had hit them on the head. He didn’t quite know why, because the gas had been enough to keep them unconscious for several hours. It was just a sudden moment of anger towards these two people who had obviously been close to ruining everything.
Both Raf and Gabs tried – without success – to free themselves from their ropes. He knew their struggles would be in vain, but it amused him to watch them anyway. They struggled for about thirty seconds before falling still again.
‘Who was he?’ Gabs breathed. ‘The man in the mask, I mean.’
Raf shrugged in the darkness. ‘Who knows. Ludgrove, I suppose. It was his house, and he’s our number one suspect.’ He suddenly swore under his breath and yanked at the rope again. ‘How do we get out again? Where is this place.’
‘It doesn’t smell too good,’ Gabs observed, ‘and it’s damp. How long do you think we’ve been out?’
At the word ‘Ludgrove’, he had allowed himself a cold smile. He’d worried that they’d been on to him. But just as he himself had figured, the defence correspondent would be a likely suspect if anyone figured out the crossword clues. And so it had turned out. He needn’t have been concerned that he himself could have been a suspect. And Ludgrove, easily overcome when arriving home, was no longer any problem. He smiled at the memory. Another corpse on a rope. In plain sight too. But his problem now was these two. Perhaps he ought to kill them right now. He had a gun at his side and it would be a simple task. His prisoners would be dead before they even knew what was happening.
No, he told himself. He had longed for this for too long to risk carelessness at this late stage. And he wanted the information they could give him about the final fly in his ointment . . .
