Quintin Jardine - Lethal Intent

They found the door that led to the fire escape, as the constable had described it. The emergency exit swung on its hinges. The DCC saw, with a burst of savage satisfaction, that it was smeared with blood. They trotted down the metal staircase at double time, no longer caring about noise, then found the gate that led out into The Scores.

The roadway was deserted; skeletal trees rose around them, shifting, ghostly figures in the weak glow of the sodium lamps.

'Bob,' McIlhenney whispered, hoarsely, breaking into a run once more. 'Look.' Skinner followed him across the road; on the other side, huddled against a low stone wall, the two infantrymen lay dead, their carbines by their sides. Each had been shot in the back, at close range, and again in the neck, a coup de grace.

'How the hell did the Albanians do that?' the big chief inspector asked himself, aloud. 'Poor bastards; it looks as if they never had a chance.'

'They must have had an outside man too: there were four of them in all, remember, including Bassam. I'd been guessing that the fourth man would be on the boat, but I must have been wrong: it looks as if he was guarding the escape route. Christ, they could almost be gone by now.'

'There are bloodstains on the snow,' McIlhenney exclaimed.

'We follow them.' Taking the dead soldiers' rifles, and their night glasses, they started to run, as fast as they were able on the treacherous, slippery pavements. As they moved down The Scores the blood patches became noticeably larger, showing them the way ever more clearly. They turned off the roadway and on to a path that led across the grass, passing the Martyrs Monument on the left.

They had almost reached the Sea Life Centre, when they came upon the body, lying face down and hunched before them. Mindful of a trap, Skinner kept the rifle on the man, as McIlhenney turned him over, but there was no need: the dead eyes of Amet, the younger of the Ramadani brothers, stared up at the night sky, just as the moon appeared from behind a cloud to bathe his face in silver.

'I can see them,' McIlhenney shouted, looking through the night glasses. 'They're on the jetty, by the Centre.'

Skinner snatched up his own binoculars and focused them. He found the boat, a big fast vessel, built for sheer speed; a stocky, bald-headed man was at the wheel. 'Bassam,' he murmured, moving the glasses until he found the others, a group of three.

The figure in the middle was slimmer and much taller than the other two, well over six feet, but they held him firmly on either side, shoving him towards the boat. 'If they get him on board…' the DCC murmured. He dropped the glasses and raised the rifle, feeling a wave of exultation when he found that it, too, had night vision.

He pressed the butt to his shoulder and found the trio again; they seemed larger through the telescopic sight than in the binoculars. He drew a deep breath and held it, fixed the man on the Prince's right with the red laser dot, and squeezed the trigger, gently so that he would not jerk it. There was no recoil from the weapon, and so he saw the Albanian as he rose up on his toes and pitched forward, tumbling into the boat.

He swung the sight to the other kidnapper. Even as he did so, he saw the young Prince swing a powerful punch at him with his newly freed fist, knocking him sideways and out of the weapon's field of vision.

'Run!' he bellowed, but the command was unnecessary, for the tall young man was already sprinting up towards them. Frantically he swung the rifle, searching through the sight for the second Albanian, before he could start shooting. He heard McIlhenney, beside him, firing into the night, and then he saw the man leaping into the boat, even as its engine roared into life and it began to move away from the jetty. He gave a huge sigh of relief and let the weapon relax in his grasp.

The young man was racing up the path, and more than halfway towards them, when Skinner saw a figure step from the shadow of the Sea Life Centre building and into the moonlight. The man raised his arm, and he saw the silenced pistol, as he trained it on the fleeing Prince. In a blur of movement, he swept the carbine back up to his shoulder, sighted and fired. The figure seemed to stiffen; the gun slipped from his grasp, and he toppled backwards.

And then the young man around whom so much revolved was standing before them, tall, blond, and blessed with his mother's looks. 'I really do hope that you're the good guys,' he exclaimed, breathlessly.

'Seventh Cavalry, Edinburgh branch, at your service, sir,' Skinner replied, then turned to McIlhenney. 'Neil, take the Prince to the chopper, and have the pilot fly you back to our headquarters; not the barracks as previously discussed. Make him secure and comfortable there, then contact the assistant commissioner in the Met who's in charge of royal protection and tell him where he is. I repeat, go to Fettes, not Redford. Understood?'

'I'm with you. Who was that down there, that fourth man you just shot?'

'That's what I'm afraid to find out, but I'm going to have to. Now get out of here, fast, and up to North Street.'

As the two moved off into the night, he heard a confident young voice say, 'Neil, this way, along Murray Park. It's quicker.'

Holding his rifle in both hands, the DCC moved down the path to where the fallen man lay, with his head in the centre of a great dark circle of spreading blood. His limbs jerked uncontrollably, and he had a massive head wound, just above his right ear. And yet he was still conscious.

'Wh-when you fired, did you know it was me?' asked Adam Arrow. The words were a shivering whisper; Skinner had to kneel down to hear them. He did so steadily and with care for he was shaking himself and a great cold fist seemed to be grasping the pit of his stomach, threatening to shatter his self-control.

'I reckoned that it had to be,' he answered, 'when I saw the dead soldiers. I tried to tell myself that it was impossible, but only you knew they were coming. You killed your own men, Adam,' he said, with disgust in his voice as he stared down at him. 'You were here all along, weren't you? When I called you today, and you said you were in the field, you were here.'

'Yesss.'

'What the hell have you done?'

'F-fucked up in the end.'

'You were behind the whole thing? You and Amanda?'

'No.' The whisper seemed to grow stronger. 'Not Amanda: she knew nothing. Rudy Sewell. She reported back to him; never knew he was one of us.'

'One of us? You mean there are more?'

'A few of us; intelligence officers… patriots.'

Skinner sighed. 'How often has that been said by traitors?'

'Not traitors! I've served Queen and country all my life. Queen and country, listen. Rudy and I and the others, we believe that young man mustn't become king or he'll destroy the monarchy, like his mother tried to do.'

'You're crazy. He's his father's son as well, you know.'

'He's an idol. He'll take the throne too close to the people.' Arrow shuddered violently, and for a moment Skinner thought that he was going, but instead he seemed to recover some strength. 'The monarchy can't be u-user-friendly, Bob. It represents authority. It's the symbol that guys like me fight and die for. Make it populist and it will die; this country will be rudderless, and everything it has been will be lost. My friends and I decided that we couldn't let that happen.'

'So you set out to kidnap him?'

'No, to make it look like a kidnap. There's a vessel offshore: that's where the speedboat's headed. He'd have been killed as soon as they got him on board, and his body disposed of effectively. But it would have been blamed on the Albanians.'

'So why did you help me? Why did you give me the helicopter?'

'To make it look good,' Arrow wheezed, his voice beginning to fade once more. 'I didn't plan on getting found out… ever. None of us did. I knew you wouldn't be here on time; my backup plan if you did corner them was for him to be killed in the battle. I almost made sure of it.' He let out a macabre, choking laugh. 'I wish I'd never taught you to handle a bloody carbine,' he whispered.