Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

I’ll stop , she told herself. I’ll stop soon. When things have calmed down a little and I’ve got the chance to get my head together .

She took a decent-sized gulp, a double’s worth at least, flinching as it burned its way down her throat and into her bloodstream. She paused, disciplined enough to know she couldn’t overdo it and draw attention to herself, before drinking again, a bigger gulp this time, already telling herself that it was going to be the last.

She leaned back against the wall and sighed, waiting for that first hit of lightheadedness. Wondering whether to risk having another slug or call it a day and go outside for a smoke before returning to her desk smelling of mints.

She was still considering this when the door to the Ladies opened and someone came inside. She froze like a naughty schoolkid, then relaxed as she realized that nobody could see her, so they wouldn’t have a clue what she was doing.

‘Ma’am?’ came a female voice, sounding uncertain and vaguely embarrassed. ‘Are you in here?’

It was Anji Rodriguez.

Realizing it must be urgent, Tina slipped the vodka bottle back inside her jacket and took a deep breath. ‘I’m in here,’ she called out, enunciating her words carefully to hide any sign of inebriation. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Andrew Kent. He’s asked to see you. I’ve got no idea what he wants but he says it’s urgent and he’ll only talk to you.’ Rodriguez’s tone was hostile, but then Rodriguez didn’t like her, having never made any secret of the fact that she thought Tina was too much of a celebrity for her own good.

In preparation for his court appearance the following morning, Kent was being held in the cells of Holborn nick, after which he’d be remanded in custody in one of the capital’s maximum-security prisons. Although UK law states the police aren’t allowed to question a suspect after he’s been charged, they’re still allowed to talk to him if he requests it. Usually, it means they want to confess.

‘OK,’ she said, relieved that she sounded perfectly sober. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve finished.’

As the main door closed and Rodriguez left, Tina slowly got to her feet, wondering what it was Andrew Kent had to say that was suddenly so important.

Andrew Kent, all five feet seven inches of him, was sitting on his cot at the far end of the cell when Tina looked through the inspection hatch, his head in his hands, his feet dangling. It was the classic pose of an innocent man, straight out of TV central casting.

‘Will you be all right in there with him?’ asked the custody sergeant, an overweight Welshman with an appalling side parting, whose name she could never remember but who seemed to have a soft spot for her. ‘I know you’re a bit of an action woman, but you’ve got to be careful.’ He winked to show that he was only yanking her chain.

‘I’ll be fine, thanks,’ she answered, trying not to breathe on him. He’d be the sort who could smell it. And who’d report her like a shot. Soft spot or not.

As the door clanked open and she went inside, Kent took his head out of his hands and looked up at her, brushing a thick lock of hair away from his face. His eyes were red and blotchy where he’d been crying, and he looked about seventeen. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, managing a tight, respectful smile.

She stood in the middle of the room, feeling disgust rather than fear. ‘No problem. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m innocent, DI Boyd.’

‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, Mr Kent, but I’ve got to tell you, most people I arrest say that, and most of the time they’re lying. Right now it’s up to a jury of your peers to establish whether you’re telling the truth or not, but in my humble opinion, with the evidence stacked up against you, I’d have to say that you haven’t got a hope in hell of getting off. Now if you’ve got nothing else to say—’

‘I can prove it.’

He delivered the words calmly, looking her right in the eye.

‘How?’

‘I remember one of the victims. Her name was Roisín O’Neill. She was really friendly to me when I was putting in the alarm system — not in a come-on kind of way,’ he added hastily, as if Tina might disapprove, ‘just nice, do you know what I mean? Interested in me as a person rather than just some workman doing a job. We chatted a fair bit while I was working and I remember her telling me that the name Roisín meant “blooming rose” in Gaelic.’

‘Get to the point, Mr Kent.’

‘Because of that, I remember her murder more than the others. I can still recall how shocked I felt when I first read about it in the papers, and saw it on the news.’ He shook his head wearily and Tina had to resist the urge to tell him to knock off the dramatics. She was getting tired of his acting, however good it was. ‘And I don’t know why I didn’t remember it before. I think perhaps it was the shock of being arrested and interrogated for something I didn’t do. But now I’ve had some time on my own to think properly, I’ve remembered something very important.’ He paused, staring at her.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘What?’

‘How long after Roisín died did you discover her body?’

Tina was beginning to feel a little spaced out as the vodka kicked in, and it took her a couple of seconds to remember. Roisín was the fourth victim, a very attractive blonde-haired girl in her late twenties — not one of the ones, thank God, that Kent had filmed himself killing. ‘I think it was the day afterwards. The cleaner let herself into the flat and found her.’

‘So, you should have had a fairly precise time of death, yes?’ There was an eager, expectant look on Kent’s face.

‘Precise enough. Now, tell me where you’re going with this.’

He took a deep breath. ‘At the time of Roisín’s murder, I’d had a family tragedy of my own. My father died, and I’d just come back from his funeral when I heard what happened to her. I know it was the day after I got back that they named her, and I think that was the day after her body was discovered. Which means, by my calculations, I was attending the funeral on the day she died.’

Tina looked at Kent sharply, uneasy suddenly. ‘And?’

‘The funeral was in Inverness, where my father had been living for the past twenty years since he divorced my mother. I flew there and back on Easyjet. I was there for three days in all and there are at least fifty witnesses who can put me in the church at the time I’m meant to have been murdering someone six hundred miles away in London. Where I’m going with this, DI Boyd,’ he said, ‘is letting you know that I’ve got an alibi for Roisín O’Neill’s murder.’ His face broke into an expression of relief and elation. ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

The stark fact was this. I’d shot and seriously wounded two men while working on an unofficial job. It might have been self-defence but that wouldn’t save my career, or my liberty. Or my conscience, either. I’d taken the law into my own hands, ignoring the fact that I was paid to uphold it, and now matters had spiralled out of control.

I thought through what would happen next. Usually, in infiltration jobs, the path to an arrest follows a pattern. Once I’ve gained the trust of my targets, I use my recording devices to gather evidence of the targets’ planned wrongdoing. If I can gather enough in this manner, I call in my colleagues, and while I’m safely off the scene they come in and make the arrests. If, however, more’s needed, we tend to allow them to carry out the crime they’re planning — usually with me accompanying them — and then move in and catch them red-handed on my signal. These are the best ops from my perspective because I tend to get nicked along with the bad guys, and we don’t have to use any of the taped evidence we’ve got, which means my cover doesn’t get blown.