Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

I heard the bolt being pulled across, and stepped back as the door opened.

Lee stood in the doorway, only just visible in the gloom. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, then, as she stepped forward to get a better look at me, she gasped as her question was answered. ‘You are hurt badly.’ She touched my face in a strangely erotic gesture, running her fingers along the bruising.

‘I’m OK,’ I said, removing the hand and stepping out into the darkened hallway. ‘But what’s going on?’

‘I don’t know. Ty had to go off and bury the guns somewhere.’

‘Do you know where?’ I asked, thinking once again about gathering evidence.

She shook her head. ‘No, but he promised he wouldn’t be long. He told Clarence to look after me, but Clarence. . him and me, we’re not friends. He goes off to another room, leaves me in kitchen, and then, ten minutes ago, boom, all the lights go out. Now I can’t find Clarence anywhere. I call out his name, he doesn’t answer.’

‘What about Tommy? Where’s he?’

‘The other one? He was around earlier but I haven’t seen him for long time now.’

‘And has the client turned up?’

‘No. No one’s come here.’

I frowned. Had Haddock and Tommy abandoned the place while Wolfe was gone? From the silence in the house, I had to assume they had, but I couldn’t understand why, particularly if the client hadn’t arrived.

‘How long’s Wolfe been gone?’

‘Half an hour. Maybe longer.’

‘Was he on foot?’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

So he was burying the guns somewhere near the building, which meant it probably wouldn’t be long until he got back.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Sean.’

‘I’m Lee.’ She moved closer to me. ‘I’m scared, Sean.’

‘We need to get out of here.’

I moved past her in the direction of the stairs, listening for the sound of anyone else, but not hearing anything.

‘What about Ty?’ she asked, following.

‘You can do a lot better than Ty, Lee.’

‘He says he’ll kill me if I leave him.’

I put a finger to my lips and we moved as quietly as we could down the staircase. But it still creaked angrily under our combined weight, sounding like it was going to give way at any moment. The silence in the gloom was loud in my ears, and I could hear my heart beating hard as I felt the first stirrings of hope. After coming so close to death, it actually looked like I might get out of here in one piece after all. I had Lee to thank for this, which was why I was taking her with me. I was going to do her a major favour by getting Tyrone Wolfe out of her life.

The door was unlocked and the air cool as I stepped outside. Woodland surrounded us on all sides, and aside from the faint orange glow of London in the distance, there was just more silence. The night was clear and starry, and I felt the first yearning for freedom. The minibus we’d come here in was still on the driveway where Wolfe had parked it earlier, which puzzled me, because it meant that if Haddock and Tommy had left, they’d used some other form of transport.

I turned to Lee. ‘How did you get here tonight?’

‘I came on a motorbike.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Round the side of the house.’

‘Have you still got the keys?’

She nodded, feeling in her pocket. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. We’re leaving on that, then. I just need to collect something.’

I went up to the minibus window and peered inside, looking for the jiffy bag containing the thirty grand that Haddock had given me, and wasn’t surprised to see that it was gone, doubtless removed by one of them earlier.

But as I turned away, keen to get going as quickly as possible, I saw something that stopped me dead.

It was the tyres on the minibus. There were deep, uneven gashes in them.

‘What is it?’ asked Lee uncertainly.

I didn’t say anything, wondering who could have done this. And why. Then I went round the other side. It was the same.

‘Someone’s slashed the tyres.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

I looked out into the trees, scanning them for any sign of life. But there was nothing, no movement at all, and I experienced a growing dread.

I grabbed her by the hand and we hurried round the side of the building, with me leading, just in case whoever had sabotaged the minibus was waiting for us.

But they weren’t.

There was only a 125 motorbike, leaning up against the exterior wall. I looked down at the tyres and my worst fears were confirmed. They too had been slashed.

‘What’s going on here, Sean? Who’s doing this?’

‘God knows,’ I whispered, looking round in the silence, wondering if whoever had done this was watching us now.

Finally, I turned back to Lee. She suddenly looked more like a terrified girl than the confident über-bitch who’d greeted us at the door earlier. ‘This place is abandoned. How did you get the lights on earlier?’

‘Generator,’ she said, pointing to a brick outbuilding a few yards away. ‘But I shut the door when I got it working.’

The door was now wide open.

So, whoever had slashed the tyres had gone to work on the generator as well.

I approached the door slowly, hoping there might be some tools in there we could use for basic weapons, but wary too of going inside. Lee stayed a few yards back as I slowly entered the doorway and stared into the gloom. Boxes, most of them empty, were piled up untidily on both sides of the room, while the generator itself — a clapped-out old thing that had probably been put in when the place was still a farm — took up most of the opposite wall.

The place looked deserted and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide so I went inside, making my way slowly over to the generator itself, conscious of my own breathing. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my lighter and flicked it on, glancing round nervously.

As I’d expected, the flap to the electrics box was open and a bundle of severed wires poked out.

Trying hard to ignore the fear running up my spine, I started to turn away.

And jumped back in shock as the lighter picked up the figure in the shadows.

It was Haddock. He was standing in the corner, watching me.

Except he wasn’t moving, and the expression in his wide, staring eyes was blank and sightless.

I took a step forward, holding up the lighter. And that was when I saw the hunting knife embedded to the hilt in his chest, impaling him against the wall, and the huge bloody gash across his throat where it had been cut from ear to ear.

Clarence Haddock, the six-foot-three, nineteen-stone killer — said, I recall, by one police officer to be the most frightening man he’d ever met — had been butchered like a stuck pig.

It had just turned one a.m. when Tina finally walked in her front door, physically exhausted but mentally wide awake. The first thing she did was open a bottle of Rioja, pour a third of it into a giant tumbler, and take a long, deep gulp, savouring the strong, rich taste. Keeping the glass tight to her lips, she took several more, feeling herself relaxing, then refilled the glass and carried it with her into the apartment’s shoebox-sized lounge, collapsing into the sofa and lighting a cigarette.

During the drive back home, she’d called the local GP who had certified Kevin O’Neill dead. He hadn’t been best pleased to hear from her, since the call had got him out of bed, but Tina was used to receiving less-than-warm welcomes and she’d brushed aside his complaints by telling him foul play was suspected, which had quickly galvanized him into action. He’d been able to say with some certainty that O’Neill had died between six p.m. and midnight the previous night.