Simon Kernick - The Crime Trade

While she was going up, she tried control again, but although she got a signal it cut out before anyone could answer. A voice inside her head told her that she was heading into extremely dangerous territory, and that with the first ARV only a couple of minutes away there was no point in going on. She’d done her bit, even got Murk’s position down to an individual apartment, so why keep going?

‘Because,’ she told the voice, ‘this is my collar, and I do not want him getting away.’

The lift doors opened and Trevor Murk stood there facing her. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a friendly smile.

Tina managed to conceal her surprise and smile back at him. ‘Morning,’ she replied, stepping past him, and thinking immediately that his was definitely the sort of face that could charm its way through an old lady’s front door. And a young lady’s, she thought. He was definitely a looker.

As the doors shut and he disappeared, she tried control again. This time she got through, and was put straight on to Sergeant Brooking. ‘He’s leaving the building, Colin,’ she informed him. ‘Via the underground car park. Carrying a black holdall.’

‘Keep back from him, Tina, I’ve told you. Strict orders. He’s to be treated as armed and dangerous.’

‘I’ve let down his tyres so he can’t get out in his vehicle. He’ll probably come out on foot through the car park entrance. Either that or the building’s main entrance, wherever that is. Get people to both places. And for God’s sake, get them to take him alive. He’s got information we badly need.’

Brooking started to say something else but the line was bad and she wasn’t really listening.

She found the staircase and started down the steps, taking them two at a time, the adrenalin coursing inside her. Less than a minute later she was coming back down to the basement level. There was a swing-door at the bottom of the stairs that led out into the car park. She took the final three steps in one go, dropping the phone into her pocket, and went to peer through the glass to see whether Murk had discovered her handiwork on the Megane yet.

But as she did so she heard the sound of echoing shouts and the loud clatter of footsteps coming rapidly closer. Then she saw Trevor Murk’s upper body hurtling towards the door. She turned to get out of the way, but before she could he hit it head on with all his weight, knocking her flying into the stairwell.

She landed on her behind on the hard stone floor, and as she went to get to her feet Murk spotted his opportunity and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her upright while at the same time removing the gun from his holdall. He dropped the holdall on the floor and thrust the gun’s silencer against the side of Tina’s head.

‘Sorry about this, my sweet, but I need a hostage. If you don’t resist, you won’t get hurt. If you do, I’ll have to kill you. Hope you understand.’ He dragged her over to the swing-door and pushed it open with his shoulder. ‘Back off!’ he yelled, the acoustics of the car park making it sound so much louder. ‘Back off now, or she dies!’

Ahead of them, Tina could see three uniformed officers, one holding an MP5, the other two Walther PPKs, all ready to fire. Behind these three were a number of plainclothes officers and more uniforms running down the entrance ramp in their direction, about thirty yards away. She thought she saw John and Malik, but before she could tell for sure Murk yanked her head back so that her eyes were pointing towards the dank stone ceiling, while increasing the pressure of the gun against her temple. She felt herself panicking inside but used every ounce of her mental strength to focus on remaining calm.

‘Armed police, drop your weapon!’ instructed the uniform with the MP5. ‘Drop your weapon now!’

‘Trevor, we can do a deal,’ Tina whispered. ‘We know you’re the shooter in the O’Brien murders. If you turn QE against whoever hired you, the sentence’ll be a lot less.’

Mark ignored her. ‘I want twenty grand and a helicopter to take me to France!’ he demanded, somewhat optimistically.

Tina gave a derisory snort. ‘For fuck’s sake, Trevor, be serious. You’re not getting out of this one. All you can do is limit the damage by doing what they say and dropping your weapon. Otherwise you’re going to end up either dead or doing thirty years.’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ he snapped. Then, to the uniforms: ‘Get back! Get back now!’

John’s voice: ‘Come on, Trevor, drop the gun. You don’t want to do this.’

‘I said get back! Do as I say and she doesn’t get hurt. Now I told you: I want a helicopter and twenty grand-’

Tina’s left arm flew upwards and grabbed the wrist holding the gun, yanking it off to the side. For a split second Murk’s resistance disappeared, and she used that second to elbow him in the gut with her right arm and break free from his grip, letting go of the gun at the same time as she tried to run out of the way.

Murk swung round in her direction, pointing the weapon, and that was the moment the shooting started.

‘Come on, Trevor, drop the gun. You don’t want to do this.’

I was standing six, maybe seven yards away from him, off to the right of the three armed officers facing him down. Behind me stood Malik and at least a dozen other police, all temporarily helpless in the face of what was going on. I could see the look of tension on Tina’s face as she stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, her hair in the painful grip of Trevor Murk, the man we were now sure was the killer of Robbie O’Brien and Kitty MacNamara, and I wanted desperately to do something — anything — to help. My guts were churning, my legs felt numb and useless, and I knew that I was possibly seconds away from losing the woman I loved for the second time in as many years. It was worse, if you can believe it, than the time a gun had been pointed at me, because at least then my destiny had felt like it was in my own hands. Now it was in the process of being irreversibly altered by a man with a frighteningly casual attitude to murder.

‘I said get back!’ Murk screamed. ‘Do as I say and she doesn’t get hurt. Now I told you: I want a helicopter and twenty grand-’

Tina made a grab for the gun, pulling it away from her temple, and elbowed him in the gut at the same time. She then broke free of his grip on her hair and started to run. It all happened so suddenly that for a moment I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My heart was in my mouth, and I was rooted to the spot as Murk swung the gun round in her direction, more in an act of desperation than anything else. And then I heard the spit of the bullet passing through the silencer, and suddenly she was stumbling forward, falling hard on one knee, then rolling over.

All three armed uniforms opened up at the same time, hitting Murk repeatedly and sending him dancing wildly in the direction of the swing-door. Even before he hit the ground I knew we’d be getting no answers from him now. There was no way that trained firearms police shooting to kill were going to be unsuccessful from that range.

Instinctively, I ran towards Tina, shoving the uniforms aside in my urgency to get to her, to tell her she was going to be all right, and knowing too amid the adrenalin and the fear that I was finished if she was dead, that I’d never be able to come back from a blow like this. I loved her. I truly loved her. I’d never told her that before because I’d always been so careful not to scare her off, but now I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, because it was so important that she knew before it was too late.

‘Get paramedics over here now!’ I yelled, crouching down beside her and taking her hand. ‘Tina, it’s John. You’re going to be OK.’