Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

Which was when they saw Jane Gore standing facing them, still in her nightgown, holding a double-barrelled shotgun in her hands.

‘I’m not going to let you destroy our family,’ she said shakily, pointing it towards Tina.

Tina flinched but forced herself to remain calm. ‘Put the gun down, Mrs Gore. Please.’

She shook her head, an expression of worrying determination on her tear-stained face. ‘No.’

And then she pulled the trigger.

‘What the hell happened?’ I asked when Dougie MacLeod had finally recovered himself enough to talk.

I’d let him up, and he was standing. The tension was still coming off him in waves, but he looked calmer and his face was less puce, although a bruise was forming on his left cheek where I’d hit him.

‘I got a call last night when I was in the pub. A man with a disguised voice told me they’d got Billy, and that unless I did exactly what they said, they’d kill him. I didn’t believe him at first — I mean, Billy’s away at uni in Leeds, for Christ’s sake — but he told me to wait by the phone, and they’d send me something that proved it.’ He paused, taking a deep breath, clearly trying to steady himself. ‘Five minutes later I got a photo from an unregistered pay-as-you-go showing Billy tied to a chair and gagged. It was him, Sean. It was him. If you don’t believe me, check the PC upstairs. They’ve been sending me footage of him ever since.’

‘What do they want?’

‘They wanted Andrew Kent. I was told to put some tablets in his drink, so that he’d get sick.’

‘Where did you get the tablets from?’

‘They were in an envelope under the wheel of a car on John Street.’

So the client, or someone close to him, had been in the vicinity when I was in the pub.

‘Believe me, I didn’t want to do it. But it was him or Billy.’

This was one of the things that didn’t make sense to me. If the client had wanted Kent dead, then why not just use some strong poison and kill him outright, rather than whatever it was that Dougie had slipped into his drink, which hadn’t even made him that sick? It was yet another unanswered question.

I looked around. ‘Well, you did what you were told. So why haven’t they freed Billy?’

‘Because the kidnapper phoned back and said I’d be needed for something else, and to wait by the phone. Then at about midnight I got another call. I was told to get into the evidence room at the station and check through Kent’s possessions. Among them was a mini Swiss Army knife, only about an inch and a half long, attached to his keyring. The knife had a USB stick inside it, which the custody sergeant who booked him in must have missed. The kidnapper wanted the stick.’

‘And where’s it now?’

‘I was told to put it in an envelope and drop it in a wheelie bin on an estate in King’s Cross.’

‘Did you get a chance to take a look at what was on it first?’

He shook his head. ‘No. These people are professional criminals. They told me that if I did they’d kill Billy, and I couldn’t take the chance. I followed their instructions to the letter and came straight back here. I was told that I’d get a call as soon as the stick had been collected safely, and then I’d receive instructions about where to go to collect Billy. I dropped the bloody thing off hours ago and I still haven’t heard from them. When I heard you moving around downstairs I didn’t know what to think, so I came down here with the gun. I’ve had the thing for years, since my army days.’ He sighed. ‘What the hell am I going to do, Sean? He’s my son. Since Marion’s gone, he’s all I’ve bloody got left.’ His face cracked with the tension and he took another deep breath, trying to steady himself.

I put a tentative hand on his arm. ‘Look, you’ve done what they ordered. There’s no reason to hurt him.’

‘He might have seen their faces,’ he answered, moving away from my touch. ‘They could easily kill him. You know that as well as I do.’ He turned his back on me and started to pace the room. ‘You said you knew something about the Kent case. What is it?’

I told him exactly what had happened, starting with my infiltration of the Wolfe gang, and finishing with Dougie himself disturbing me in his lounge. ‘Kent must have been kidnapped because of whatever he had on that USB stick. But I still don’t understand why he was free when I went down the cellar to find him. He could easily have escaped.’

Dougie stopped and gave a frustrated shake of his head. ‘And now he’s dead, so he can’t help us.’

‘And so’s everyone else involved in his abduction. Except the person who set the fire back at the rendezvous. But I’ve got no idea who he is, and I’m completely out of leads.’ I was feeling the frustration now myself. ‘Someone’s set both of us up completely and neither of us has got a bloody clue who it is.’

We stood there staring at each other for a few minutes, each of us lost in his own private thoughts, me still holding Dougie’s old army revolver, knowing that you couldn’t fake the fear he was exhibiting.

And then we both heard it at the same time. A loud, incessant ringing. Coming from the pocket of Dougie’s jeans. He pulled out his mobile and thrust it to his ear.

He didn’t speak. Just listened. After a few seconds he rushed into the kitchen and wrote down some instructions on an open pad on the sideboard. Then he ran back into the lounge and put the phone back in his pocket.

‘That was the kidnapper,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s told me where to go to collect Billy. And he’s told me to come alone.’

The sound of the shotgun blast was deafening, and for a second Tina thought she’d been hit. She was knocked backwards, letting go of Gore’s arm in the process, and as she landed on the carpet she saw Gore fly past her and crash through the open study door. Grier, meanwhile, was leaning back against the staircase, looking dazed. Smoke billowed through the air leaving a bitter stink in its wake, and as it cleared, Tina saw Jane Gore place the barrels of the shotgun underneath her chin, her face a mask of bitter emotion.

Tina only had time to shout her name before Jane Gore pulled the trigger for a second time, blowing the top of her own head off in a cloud of smoke and blood spray. She remained standing perfectly upright for a long moment, then crumpled to the floor like a stringless marionette.

For several seconds, the house was silent. Neither Tina nor Grier moved, as the shock of what had just happened seeped in. Tina had been in situations where firearms had been discharged before. She’d been on the receiving end of them twice, remembered the pain all too well, but she’d never been able to get used to the speed with which they could snuff out a life.

Finally, she clambered to her feet. Mrs Gore was beyond help. Half her head was missing. But Tina wasn’t sure of the severity of her husband’s injuries, and they badly needed him alive, so she rushed into the study, already reaching for her mobile to call an ambulance.

But as soon as she saw him, she knew it was too late. Gore lay on his back in the middle of the floor, his eyes closed. Shotgun injuries at close range are usually far more serious than gunshot wounds as the shotgun pellets don’t have the chance to disperse, and this was no exception. There was a huge, uneven hole in his chest, exposing internal organs, including his heart, which didn’t appear to be beating.

‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered, frantically feeling for a pulse. She thought she found something faint, but even as she tried to measure it, it disappeared. ‘Come on, come on,’ she whispered, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all. Gore was dead, as was her chance of finally bringing Wise to justice.