Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

Lee pointed to the drawer where she’d seen the knives and, moving fast, I pulled it open, rifling through the cheap cutlery until I found a blunt, rusty-looking carving knife and a small kitchen knife with a four-inch blade. I handed the smaller weapon to her and took the carving knife.

I couldn’t imagine ever stabbing someone. I’d seen enough stabbing victims in the past to make me realize what a terrible thing it was to do to a person, and I knew I wouldn’t have the mental strength to shove the blade into human flesh, even if the person was trying to kill me. Still, I was relieved to have a means of defending myself at last, even if it was just a deterrent.

‘Can we go now?’ Lee asked.

I could see the fear etched on her features in the gloom, and I nodded, starting back towards the front door.

Then I stopped. ‘Wait.’

I was looking at the door through which we’d dragged Kent earlier. Kent. In my desperation to escape I’d completely forgotten about him. Had he been freed by the mysterious client? Was he still trapped down in the basement? Was he even still alive? I had to find out. Because if he was, I had a duty to take him out of there and get him back into police custody.

I told Lee what I planned to do, and she looked at me like I was some kind of madman. ‘Don’t go down there,’ she pleaded. ‘Let’s just leave.’

I shook my head, then kicked open the door in the same way I’d done earlier. This time Lee let out a high-pitched shriek that would have woken the dead.

‘Just being cautious,’ I said, before stepping inside the empty, cavernous room and flicking on my lighter.

Shadows danced through the gloom, revealing the graffiti on the walls, but nothing else.

Then, as Lee came in behind me, I saw it.

The door to the basement was ever so slightly ajar, its bolt pulled back. Wolfe and Haddock wouldn’t have left it like that, not with their prize — the man they’d shot a police officer to get hold of — down there. And I couldn’t see how Kent would have been able to escape on his own, not when the door had been bolted from the outside.

I walked over, conscious of the sound my footfalls were making on the creaking floorboards. I stopped two feet away, listened. Hearing nothing once again, I used the carving knife to pull the door further open and stared down into the darkness, the flame from the lighter doing little to illuminate it.

‘I don’t want to go down there,’ whispered Lee.

I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘You stay here by the door. I’ll be back up in a moment.’

She asked me again not to go, and a huge part of me felt like agreeing with her. But I had to know what had happened to Kent.

The metal on the lighter cap was burning my fingers so I let the flame go out, then with the knife out in front of me I moved slowly down the stone steps, every sense attuned to my surroundings as I tried to pick out any unnatural noise within the silent blackness.

When I reached the bottom, I leaned back against the cold stone wall, tightened my grip on the knife, and flicked the lighter back on.

The basement was large and windowless, full of empty cobweb-strewn shelves. In the middle of the room on its own was a brand-new, heavy office chair with its wheels removed. It had thick rolls of duct tape wound round both arms and two of the legs. One of the rolls carried what looked in the near-darkness like a bloodstain.

But it wasn’t that which caught my attention. It was the fact that the chair was empty.

Where the hell was Andrew Kent?

Then I spotted something in the far corner beyond the chair. I slowly walked towards it, keeping the lighter raised high.

Jesus.

It was a body, lying curled up in a foetal ball, in the blue boiler suit he’d been in earlier. His face might have been caked in blood, but I recognized him straight away. It was the shock of dirty blond hair, Tommy’s pride and joy.

As I looked down at him, I saw a drop of blood run to the edge of his chin before dripping on to the stone floor, which was the moment when I realized he’d only died very recently. Probably in the last few minutes. Possibly even since we’d been back in the building.

And then I heard the noise behind me.

I turned just in time to see a dark, silhouetted figure leaping at me through the darkness. I saw a glint of metal in the dim glow of the lighter flame, but then the lighter flew out of my hand, plunging the basement into near total blackness, as my attacker slammed me bodily against the far wall and twisted the wrist of my knife hand in an effort to get me to drop it.

My ribs felt like they were going to explode with the pain, but adrenalin and the survival instinct took over and I lashed out with my free hand, trying to intercept his blade. I managed to get hold of his wrist, but he was strong and I felt the blade nip at the skin of my belly as he tried to push it into me. At the same time he increased the pressure on my knife hand, and it took every ounce of willpower to hold on to my knife.

I was once told by a football thug and ex-boxer that in close-quarters combat, when you’re struggling hand to hand, your best weapon is your head. Remembering that now, I launched mine into the blackness, hoping to catch him with a strong enough blow to knock him off balance. Unfortunately, he’d also had the same idea, and our foreheads met somewhere in the middle with a loud, agonizing crack that shocked both of us.

For a moment, he loosened his grip on me and I managed to launch myself off the wall, pushing him backwards. But he kept his balance and remained tight to me as we wrestled frantically across the floor, with him trying to land another headbutt on me.

I dodged two of the blows but banged into the office chair, lost my footing and stumbled, only just managing to stay upright. At the same time, he drove his knife hand upwards in a sudden movement until the blade was so close to my face that I could actually see it. Using his momentum, he charged me back into a set of shelves, pushing the knife even further into my field of vision, so close to me now that the tip of the blade was barely an inch from my left eye.

I could see nothing in the gloom, bar the blade and the darkness. But I could hear his laboured breathing, smell the stale odour of his breath.

‘For Christ’s sake, help me!’ I roared, willing Lee to come down. ‘Help!’

My arm was shaking with the effort of holding his wrist and keeping the knife from plunging right through my eye and into my brain. It was a trial of strength but one I was always going to lose because my attacker had all the momentum and the physical strength, and all I had was desperation. Just the smallest slackening of my grip would mean certain death, and I couldn’t have that. Couldn’t. Not before I’d found out what was going on here.

I let out an angry howl, and with my last remaining strength I drove my knee up into my attacker’s groin, knocking him backwards. Seeing my chance, I twisted my own knife hand free and lashed out into the darkness with the blade. The only thing I stabbed was air, though, and a second later his own blade came flashing out of the darkness in a vicious, scything arc. Instinctively, I dived out of the way, lost my footing completely this time, and fell to the ground, twisting so that I landed on my back with the knife outstretched.

‘Help me!’ I screamed again, but this time my assailant didn’t continue his attack. Instead, I heard him racing up the steps.

Exhausted, I got to my feet and scrambled in the direction of the steps, starting up them myself, just as his silhouette reached the top. I was five steps behind him by the time he slammed the door shut, two steps by the time he threw the bolt across and left me once again in total blackness.