Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

She stood up and called the ambulance, telling the operator to hurry even though she knew it was too late, before walking back into the hallway, feeling shaky on her feet.

Grier was beside Mrs Gore. As Tina approached him, he rose, shaking his head, blood on his clean shirt, and his hands too. ‘She’s gone,’ he said, his face pale.

Tina steadied herself against the wall. ‘And so are our chances of getting Wise, because Gore is too.’

A wave of nausea washed over her, and she staggered past Grier and the ruined body of Mrs Gore, flung the door open and gulped in the fresh early-morning air. The street was empty. There weren’t even any curtains twitching. It was as if the terrible events that had just occurred had passed everyone else by.

The nausea subsided and Tina stood in the sunlight for a good minute, taking deep breaths. A milk float passed by, the milkman giving her an odd look, and she suddenly wished she could have a job like that, where you never had to deal with the dregs of society, and see so clearly its open, gaping wounds, or the evil that seeped through it from the top all the way down to the gutter.

Her mobile was ringing. She pulled it from her jeans, and checked the number. Mike Bolt. She felt a sudden relief. If there was one person she could deal with speaking to now, it was him.

‘Are you OK, Tina?’ he asked when she answered.

‘No,’ she replied, her voice cracking, and she told him what had just happened.

‘And he’s definitely dead?’

‘They both are. It was a murder/suicide.’

He exhaled, and didn’t speak for a few seconds. ‘Well, the shit’s going to hit the fan now,’ he said at last. ‘Make sure you’ve got a Federation representative present when they interview you, because this is going to be a major scandal, and they’re going to be looking for scapegoats.’

‘I was just doing my job, Mike,’ Tina protested, knowing how defensive she sounded, but angry that she was so close to solving a major crime, and was now going to be held responsible for the death of a killer.

‘I know that. You know that. But that may well not be enough. You’ve got too much of a habit of getting involved in messy cases, and that’s going to make you vulnerable to accusations that you provoked things. Maybe even more.’

‘I recorded our interview with Gore, so his confession’s on the record, but I’d stopped it before the shooting. Do you think it’s going to be enough to go after Wise?’

Bolt sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I’d hide the recording somewhere safe, because a case like this, involving a high-ranking government minister, is ripe for a cover-up. No one in the corridors of power’s going to want a scandal this size out in the public domain.’

Tina knew he was right, and that it was going to be hard for her to talk her way out of this one, even with the taped confession and Grier as a witness. ‘There are other people still involved. The fixer, Alpha, for one. If we can find him. .’

‘Well, I might be able to help you there. That number plate of the car you were asking about. .’

‘The one that was caught on CCTV on Kevin O’Neill’s road just before he died?’

‘That’s the one. It’s been picked up on the ANPR. I just got a call from Hendon. It’s currently in central London, and they’re keeping tabs on it for me.’

‘Can you get someone to arrest the occupants?’

‘On what charges? It’s hard enough getting the ANPR people to agree to follow it.’

Tina looked at her watch. It was only half past seven, although it felt much later. ‘Can you keep me posted on where it goes?’

‘Sure, but there’s not going to be a lot you can do about it now, is there? The local CID are going to want to keep you at the crime scene until they get a statement.’

‘Let me worry about that,’ said Tina, and hung up. There was no way she was going to let the occupants of this car slip through her fingers.

‘I still think it’s risky you coming, Sean,’ said Dougie MacLeod as he drove down the Marylebone Road in the direction of King’s Cross, and the abandoned building just east of the station where he was supposed to pick up his son. ‘If you get spotted with me, it’ll put Billy in danger, and I can’t risk that.’

I was sitting next to him in the passenger seat, resting the revolver I’d taken from him earlier on my lap, with the barrel pointed in his direction. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Dougie. I knew he wasn’t involved in this — at least not of his own free will — but I was worried he might do something stupid, like trying to get rid of me.

‘I won’t get spotted,’ I assured him. ‘All you have to do is tell me when we’re about to pass the rendezvous, I’ll get down in the seat so no one sees me, and then you can park a bit further up, out of sight. You go in alone, and I’ll provide back-up. That’s all.’

‘I don’t need back-up.’

‘Bullshit. You’ve got to ask yourself, why are they telling you to go to an abandoned building on the wrong side of King’s Cross first thing on a Saturday morning when there’s no one else around? And what did they tell you to do? Go up to the third floor as well, so you’re out of sight of anyone. Why make you do that? If they’re that serious about releasing Billy, why don’t they just untie him and let him walk out of there? It can’t be that hard.’

‘What are you saying, Sean? That they’re planning to kill both of us?’

I had to be careful here. Dougie looked bad enough as it was — his face flushed, his thinning grey hair plastered to his scalp with sweat — without me planting the seed of his only son’s death. ‘No, I’m not saying that.’

‘Because you saw the footage on my PC. Billy’s alive.’

Which was true. At least he had been half an hour earlier when I saw the images of him strapped to a chair with a gag over his mouth, in an empty room, his eyes wide with fear and confusion, just as Andrew Kent’s had been. They could have been faked, of course, but my guess was that they hadn’t been. However, this still didn’t mean they planned to release him.

‘I’m going to watch you go in, make sure there’s no one following you, then if it’s safe, and there’s no one watching out the window, I’ll tail you up to the third floor, just to make sure it all goes smoothly.’

‘If you mess things up for me or Billy. .’

‘I won’t. I know how to handle myself. And I’ve been on plenty of surveillance ops so I know how to stay anonymous.’

He turned to me suddenly, his eyes full of anguish. ‘Why are you doing this, Sean?’

‘Because I want you to stay alive. And I want to find the bastard who set this whole thing up because he’s got one hell of a lot of blood on his hands. Plus he tried to kill me. That’s why.’ I also thought there was a good chance he was responsible for my brother’s death, though I didn’t say this to Dougie.

We passed the almost deserted frontage of King’s Cross station, and Dougie took a left on to York Way, heading north in the direction of Kentish Town. About a quarter of a mile up he took a right, then an immediate left, and I noticed that his breathing was becoming hoarse.

‘OK, it’s up here. Get down in the seat.’

I did as I was told, watching from my new, cramped position as we passed by a number of grimy-looking industrial units.

‘It’s this place,’ he hissed, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead as a half-finished shell of a building, five or six storeys high, loomed up above a high strip of chainlink fencing.

He continued driving for another two minutes before taking another right turn, and parking on a backstreet. He took a series of deep breaths, psyching himself up for what was going to be the most difficult few minutes of his life. I knew he’d be asking himself if Billy was still alive, knowing that one way or another he was going to be getting an answer.