Stuart MacBride - A Dark So Deadly

Callum had a stab at that one: ‘Northeast Ecclesiastical Trust Holdings Limited.’

‘Remember when you asked if N.E.T.H. was some sort of pensions and investment pot for the clergy?’

‘But he kept Mrs Mason’s house.’

Franklin reached across the car and patted McAdams on the shoulder. ‘Change of plan, Sarge. We’re off to Blackwall Hill.’ Then she was poking at her phone, holding it to her ear as it rang. ‘Mother?... Rosalind. I think we know where Imhotep’s keeping Ashlee Gossard...’

McAdams threw the Shogun around the roundabout, siren wailing over the squealing tyres. Lights flashing, reflecting back from the wet tarmac.

Callum braced his fibreglass cast against the door, leaning into it as the car fishtailed out the other side. Holding onto his phone as tight as possible. ‘No, I don’t know what the nature of the emergency is, I—’

‘Well how can you possibly need an ambulance if you don’t know what the emergency is?’

‘All right, here: one young woman, suffering from extreme dehydration, shock, and starvation. How’s that for starters?’

The tyres screeched again.

Franklin clutched the grab handle above her door, pretty much shouting into her mobile phone as the traffic parted before them and the streets raced past. ‘NO, LEHMAN ROAD. LEMUR, ECHO, HOTEL, MIKE, ALPHA, NOVEMBER... YES. I NEED A FIREARMS TEAM THERE SOON AS YOU CAN...’

‘An ambulance should be with you in about twenty minutes.’

‘No. Not twenty minutes, now !’

‘... WELL WHAT USE IS THAT?... NO, THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. THERE’S A YOUNG GIRL’S LIFE AT STAKE — TELL THEM TO GET THEIR GUNS LOADED AND THEIR FINGERS OUT!’

‘Tell you what, I’ll get every available ambulance to open its doors and turf out whoever they’ve got in the back, shall I?’

‘Just get one there soon as you can.’

Assuming Ashlee Gossard was still alive.

He hung up. ‘Ambulance is on its way.’

‘YES... THANKS. OK... BYE.’ Franklin turned in her seat. ‘We’re not getting a firearms team for at least half an hour.’

McAdams stuck his foot down, nipping between a bus and a Transit van, coming within an inch of losing the paint off his left wing — earning himself a blare of horns from both vehicles and a lot of rude gestures too. ‘Well that’s no sodding use, is it?’

‘That’s what I told them. Apparently they’ve got to get all the way back to DHQ to get tooled-up before they head out again.’

The Shogun roared through a puddle that stretched all the way across the road, sending a wall of spray slamming into a bus shelter full of people. ‘What’s the point of having firearms teams if they don’t carry firearms on them? Might as well deploy a crack team of Morris dancers.’

Callum’s phone went off again. ‘Dotty?’

‘We’re about ten minutes away. Maybe less if this sodding school bus will get out of the bloody way!’ The sound of a blaring horn cut through the engine noise. ‘MOVE IT, PRINCESS!’

‘You got Mother with you?’

Some hissing fumbling noises, and Mother was on the line. ‘Callum? Tell Andy he’s not to wait for us, understand? You kick that door in and you save Ashlee. If there’s any flack, that’s on me. Priority one is saving that little girl’s life.’

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘For God’s sake, Dorothy, look out for that lorry! Arrrrrrgh...’ More blaring horns. ‘I’ll have to call you back, Callum. If we survive. Oh God, I can’t look...’

And they were gone.

McAdams wrenched the wheel left and they drifted sideways around the corner, under the railway bridge, and out the other side. ‘Hahahaha!’

‘Mother says we don’t wait, we go straight in.’

‘Excellent!’ McAdams grinned over his shoulder. ‘Dig into the boot, young Callum. Should be a couple of stabproofs and a bit of MOE gear back there. I might have forgotten to sign them back in after we searched Tod Monaghan’s pied-→-terre of mummified delights.’

Callum fiddled with the back of his seat until the other side folded down, letting him drag stuff out of the boot. ‘Heads up.’ He passed a stabproof vest through the gap between the front seats.

Franklin took it, pulling at the Velcro fasteners.

He did the same with his one: opening it up like a tabard before sticking it over his head and fighting the front part in under the seatbelt as McAdams slid them around another corner.

Callum tossed a pair of thick leather gloves and a couple of elbow protectors to Franklin, then reached back in for the Method Of Entry gear, AKA: one hooley bar. A cross between a crowbar, an ice axe, and a claw hammer. Long enough to be a pain in the backside to extract through the gap where the seat was folded down.

A crack went off like a gunshot and the Shogun’s passenger-side wing mirror went flying off.

‘Whoops!’ A hard right.

Franklin reached out and killed the siren. ‘Almost there.’

‘Listen up, children. A rescue plan we must have. To save young Ashlee.’ McAdams slowed to a more sedate fifty miles an hour, semidetached houses streaking past the windows. ‘Callum: you take the hooley bar and pop the front door. Rosalind: you’re on pepper spray and truncheon. We don’t have time to fanny about here, so we go in hard and fast. Anyone not Ashlee Gossard is to be considered dodgy as hell and completely arrestable. Any questions?’

Franklin pulled out her pepper spray. ‘What if he’s got a dog? Or a gun?’

‘Then we probably get bitten and shot. Try not to, though.’

‘And that’s our plan, is it? Try not to get bitten or shot?’

He jerked the wheel left, taking them uphill onto Lehman Road. ‘Do you have a better plan?’

‘Just saying.’ She put one hand over the clip of her seatbelt.

Lehman Road was a bit more exclusive than the previous streets, and a bit more rundown too. A cul-de-sac lined with big detached houses — large front gardens secured behind waist-high brick walls topped with six-foot iron railings. Weeds growing out of the cracks in the pavement. Old drooping trees, their leaves already yellowing. A couple of cars crusted with sap and dirt that looked as if they hadn’t moved in decades.

Mrs Georgina Mason must’ve been worth a fair bit before she snuffed it.

McAdams pointed. ‘Count it down.’

Franklin nodded. ‘Number six... number eight... number ten... twelve... Go!’

The Shogun put on a burst of speed, the front end swinging to the right — up across the pavement and onto the weed-strewn blockwork driveway. Screeched to a halt right in front of the house.

Bang — Franklin was out.

Callum did the same, hooley bar clutched in his good hand, and sprinted up the stairs to number fourteen’s front door. Only a few wisps of paint still clung to the wood. He swung the pointy end of the bar at the Yale lock, sank the tip in just in front of it and wrenched the whole bar forwards. A pop and crack, then the lock sprang free of the wood. He twisted the hooley bar round forty-five degrees and swung again, burying the wedge into the gap between the door and its frame. Shoved.

BOOOM...

The door flew open and Franklin rushed past, extendable baton clacking open in one hand, pepper spray in the other. Callum charged in after her.

She stuck her head in through an open door. ‘Clear!’

He did the other side — an ancient music room, coated in a thick duvet of dust, the chairs sagging and mouse-eaten. ‘Clear!’

By the time he’d got out again she was doing another room. ‘Clear!’

A wide set of stairs snaked up towards a landing, chairlift rusting away on one side.