Elizabeth George - With No One As Witness

He trudged across the carpark to the Bentley. There he looked up. Not at her but at a spot in the carpark out of her range of vision. It was as if someone had called his name. And then a figure quickly emerged from the darkness and things happened very swiftly after that.

Barbara saw that the figure wore all black. He moved over to Lynley. There was something in his hand. Lynley looked round. Then he turned in a flash back to his car. But he got no farther. For the figure reached him and pressed the object that he carried into Lynley’s side. Not even a second passed before Barbara’s superintendent was on the ground and the hand that held the object pressed to him again. His body jerked and the figure in black looked up. Even from a distance, Barbara saw she was gazing on Robbie Kilfoyle.

It had all taken three seconds, perhaps less. Kilfoyle grabbed Lynley by his armpits and dragged him quickly to what Barbara should have bloody well seen , she thought, if she hadn’t been so focussed on Lynley. A van was parked deeply in the shadows, its sliding door open. In another second, he’d got Lynley inside.

Barbara said, “Bloody sodding hell ,” weaponless and for a moment utterly directionless. She looked to the Mini for something she could use…She reached for her mobile to phone for help. She punched in the first nine as, across the carpark, the van roared to life.

She dived for her car. She threw her bag and her mobile inside, phone call incomplete. She would punch in the last two nines in a moment, but in the meantime she had to get going, had to get on his tail, had to follow and shout the direction she was traveling into the mobile so that an armed unit could be sent on its way because the van, the bloody van, was moving, it was coming across the carpark now. It was red, as they’d suspected, and on its side were the faded letters they’d seen in the film.

Barbara shoved her key into the ignition and turned it. The engine ground. It did not engage. Across from her, the van was rumbling towards the exit. Its lights swept her way. She ducked because he had to think he had an all clear so he’d keep his pace slow, steady, and unsuspecting. She could follow then and ring for the men with the nice big guns to take down this useless piece of human excrement before he did something to someone who meant everything to her to someone who was her friend her mentor and who at this moment would not fight back would not care to fight back and would think Do with me as you will and she could not let that happen to Lynley.

The car did not start. It would not start. Barbara heard herself shriek. She leaped out. She slammed the door behind her. She dashed across the carpark. She thought how he’d been heading to the Bentley, had been near to the Bentley, so there was a chance…

And he’d dropped the keys as he’d fallen. He’d dropped the keys. She grabbed them up with a sob of gratitude that she forced herself to quell and then she was in the Bentley. Her hands were shaking. It took a century to get the key into the ignition but then the car was starting and she was trying to get the damn seat into a place where she could reach the accelerator and the brake because his legs were long because he was nearly a foot taller than she. She jerked the car into gear and reversed it and prayed that the killer was being careful careful careful because the last thing he would want was to attract attention to his driving.

He’d turned left. She did the same. She revved the engine of the huge car, and it leapt ahead like a well-trained thoroughbred and she swore as she gained control over it control over her reactions control over her exhaustion which was no longer exhaustion at all but raging adrenaline and the need to stop this bugger in his tracks arrange a little surprise for the bastard bring out a hundred cops if necessary and all of them armed so that they could storm his bloody little mobile killing site and he couldn’t hurt Lynley while the van was in motion so she knew she was all right until it stopped. But she needed to let the cops know where she was heading, so the moment she finally caught sight of Kilfoyle’s van crossing Westminster Bridge, she reached for the mobile. And realised it was back in the Mini along with her bag, left where she’d thrown them when she’d leapt into her car, her call to 999 incomplete.

She shouted, “Shit! Shit !,” and knew that, barring a miracle, she was on her own. You and me, babe . Lynley’s life in the balance because that was it, wasn’t it, this was going to be the pièce de résistance, you bloody sod, this was going to put your miserable name in lights-you would kill the cop who was looking for you and you would do to him what you’d done to the others and as he was he could not fight back and as he’d been in the carpark he wouldn’t care about fighting to save himself and you know that, don’t you, just as you knew where to find him, you sod, because you’d read the papers and you’d watched the telly and now you were going to have real fun.

She didn’t know where they were. The bugger was good when it came to rat runs but he’d be good, wouldn’t he, because he bicycled and he knew the streets he knew the byways he knew the whole flaming town.

They were heading northeast. That was all she could tell. She stayed behind as far as she dared without losing him altogether. She drove without headlights, which he could not do if he wanted to look normal casual just going from point A to point B in all innocence at whatever time it was, which felt like two in the morning or later. She couldn’t risk stopping at a phone box or grabbing up a pedestrian-had there even been one-and demanding the use of his mobile. All she could do was remain in pursuit and think feverishly of what she could do when she got to wherever the hell they were going which she knew would be the spot where he’d killed the others. And then transported their bodies so where do you plan to place Lynley’s, you piece of filth? But that would not happen even if the superintendent welcomed it in his present state because she would not allow it because although that bugger had the weapons she had surprise and she bloody well intended to use it. Only what was it that was the surprise other than her presence which was going to mean sweet FA to this bastard with his stun gun his knives his duct tape his restraints his bloody sodding oils and his marks on the forehead.

Wheel brace in the boot of the Bentley. That was what it boiled down to and what the hell was she supposed to do with that? Don’t you fucking touch him or I’ll swing this thing at your miserable head while I’m dodging your stun gun and you’re leaping upon me with your carving knife? How was that going to work?

Up ahead, he turned once more and it looked like a final time. They’d been driving and driving, at least twenty minutes and possibly longer. Just before the turn, they’d crossed over a river which damn well wasn’t the Thames way up here when way up here was far north and east of where they’d begun. Then they’d passed an outdoor storage facility at the northeast edge of the river and she’d thought, He’s got a bloody lockup where he does the job, just like we’d thought at some point along the route that’s brought us to this miserable moment. But he passed the storage facility with its neat row of lockups lined up along the river and instead he pulled into a carpark just beyond. It was large, vast when she compared it to where he’d been parked at St. Thomas’ Hospital. Above it was a sign that finally told her where they were, Lea Valley Ice Centre. Essex Wharf. They were at the River Lea.

The ice centre was an indoor skating rink looking like an antique Quonset hut. It sat some fifty yards off the road, and Kilfoyle drove to the left of it where the carpark made a dogleg that possessed two distinct advantages for a killer: It was overgrown with evergreen shrubbery and the streetlamp above it was broken. When the van was parked there, it was completely in shadow. No one driving by would see it from the street.