Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

‘I need the gun, Sean,’ he said, putting out a hand.

‘When was the last time you fired a gun, Dougie? It’s twenty-five years since you were in the army. I’m trained, and my training’s up to date. It’ll be best if I keep it.’

‘No. This is my son we’re talking about. I need that gun.’ He leaned forward and looked me right in the eye. ‘You owe me, Sean. From a long time back.’

And he was right, I did. I would have far preferred to keep it, because I knew how to use the damn thing, but I had no choice. So I placed the gun in his outstretched hand and watched as he put it down the back of his jeans, out of sight.

‘Be careful,’ I told him, wondering if I was letting him walk right into a trap, and knowing that if I was, there was nothing I could do about it.

‘Thanks. I will.’ He took another deep breath, and ran a hand through his hair. ‘I appreciate you want to help, Sean, but I don’t want to see you come in behind me. In fact, I don’t want to see you at all. At least not until afterwards.’ He opened the driver’s side door. ‘Count to a hundred before you follow me.’ And with that he was gone.

I didn’t quite make a hundred but I gave him a good minute before getting out and starting off down the road back in the direction we’d come. The houses around me were silent, the traffic minimal, even though a watery sun was already rising well into the azure sky. It was going to be a beautiful day.

For some people, anyway.

The road crossed over the canal at Regent’s Wharf. Barges dotted the waterside, and I remembered vaguely walking here with a girlfriend years ago, one glorious summer’s afternoon, not long after I’d joined the police. Her name was Davina and for a few months at least we’d been serious. Then things had ground to a halt and she’d disappeared, like everyone else in my life seemed to do. I straightened my shoulders. If I got through today, I was going to sort myself out, find myself a girlfriend and settle down. Maybe even start a family. I was sick of spending my life alone.

The rendezvous rose up on my left against the skyline, a concrete shell that dominated the deserted building site around it. A sign on the fence proudly announced Brand New Luxury Apartments for Waterside Living, coming in 2010, although I figured they were going to have to buck up their ideas to get the place ready by then.

I forced myself to slow down. Dougie had disappeared, but I wanted to make sure that if there was someone in the building watching to see whether he’d been followed, they’d be gone now.

The main gate to the building site was slightly open, the heavy-duty padlock on it cut. I pushed my way inside, moving slowly along the rutted track that led up to the building’s main doorway, keeping close to the abandoned machinery on either side of it as I watched for, but failed to see, any sign of movement on the upper floors.

When I reached the doorway, I paused for a second before creeping inside, conscious that without the gun I was utterly defenceless if something did go down. Moving through the gloom, I came to a flight of concrete steps that led upstairs. I looked up and listened. Dougie could only have come in here a maximum of two minutes ago, but there were no sounds of a joyful reunion between father and son. Just an ominous silence. I thought of him somewhere in here alone, a sitting duck, and I knew I was going to have to be so careful not to mess this up. I’d made far too many mistakes in the past twenty-four hours.

I crept up the steps to the first level. To my left, a doorway led through to a cavernous, empty room that stretched all the way to the other side of the building. Nothing moved, and the air smelled of brick dust and the beginnings of decay. This place must have been one of the many luxury urban living developments the moneymen had stopped building mid-brick when the property crash appeared out of the blue like a financial tsunami. Now, unfinished and neglected, it looked like a multi-storey car park, but without the places to hide.

I carried on climbing, moving with exaggerated care, every sense attuned to my surroundings.

And then, just as I reached the second level, I heard it. A small cry, followed by a shuffling movement coming from further up. That was followed by what sounded like a grunt of exertion.

Then nothing.

It sounded like Dougie, but I couldn’t be sure.

I stopped, trying to quieten my breathing as it quickened in the gloom.

Then I heard the sound of someone else moving about, their actions unhurried, which meant it couldn’t be Dougie. He’d been so stressed as to be incapable of casual movement.

I tensed, knowing that if this was Alpha I was taking a big risk carrying on up the stairs when I was unarmed, but even so, I hesitated only a couple of seconds before continuing.

The movement was coming from beyond the third-level doorway. It sounded as though whoever it was was trying to move something.

I was at the top of the stairs now, only a dividing wall separating us.

Slowly, very slowly, I peered round, and gritted my teeth when I saw Dougie’s son, Billy, tied to the same chair I’d seen in the images on Dougie’s computer. He was about fifteen feet inside the vast, empty room. His head was slumped forward, the back of it a bloody mess, and he wasn’t moving.

Dougie, meanwhile, lay on the floor. At least I thought it was him, but from the angle I had I could only see a pair of twitching jeans-clad legs. Nor could I see any sign of his gun.

So I’d been right. This ruthless bastard, Alpha, had never had any intention of releasing Billy, or letting Dougie leave here alive. I fought down the mixture of shock and rage that rose up inside me and remained silent and focused, angry at myself for not coming up sooner, but fully prepared now to take a bloody revenge for the murder of two innocent men, one of whom had been my friend.

I inched round a little more and saw Dougie’s revolver lying beside his body, barely five feet away. If I could just grab hold of it. .

And then a man came into view, wielding a pistol with a cigar-shaped silencer attached.

And this time I couldn’t contain my shock.

He didn’t see me. He wasn’t even looking my way as he walked over to the chair containing Billy’s corpse and crouched down beside it to pick up an empty shell casing, his back to me.

I had one chance, and I seized it.

Taking two swift but near-silent steps across the floor, I scooped up Dougie’s revolver and pointed it straight at his back. ‘Drop the gun.’

Tommy stopped, then turned slowly in my direction, and I saw that the cut on his brow that he’d had in the cellar the previous night was now bandaged.

‘I said drop it. Otherwise I’ll shoot you dead. Right here. Right now.’

We stood facing each other. He held the gun down by his side, and there was an expression of vague amusement on his face. ‘Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to see you here. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m only going to say it one more time,’ I stated calmly. ‘Then I’m going to shoot you.’

‘You won’t. I could tell right from the minute I met you that you were no killer.’

But he was wrong. I was now. I cocked the revolver and pointed it right between his eyes, holding it perfectly steady. ‘One thing you ought to know about me. I’ve been trained how to use a gun, and I’ve had a lot of practice. I shot three people yesterday. And the one I meant to kill is dead. Now, I’m going to count to three. If you’re still holding that thing then, it’ll be the last thing you ever hold. Your choice.’

There was still a glint of amusement in his eyes, but this time he cooperated, placing his weapon carefully on the floor.