Simon Kernick - The Last 10 Seconds

Slowly, I inclined my head and saw Tommy getting to his feet and brushing himself down, the pistol with silencer now back in his hand. The striped shirt he was wearing had big black holes in it where I’d shot him, yet he seemed to look none the worse for wear. I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Seeing the expression on my face, Tommy tapped his shirt. ‘Bulletproof vest, Sean. Always useful in our line. I thought you’d have known that.’

‘My brother. .’

‘What?’

I took a breath, forcing the words out. ‘My brother, John. . the one shot during that robbery in Highgate High Street. 1995. The Gulf War veteran. The one Wolfe was bragging about.’

Tommy frowned. ‘He was your brother? Are you serious?’

‘Wolfe said he never killed him. I asked him just before he died. You were there, Tommy. Who pulled the trigger?’

‘Sorry, mate,’ he answered, not sounding sorry at all, ‘that would have been me. He just got in the way, you know?’ He took a step forward, pointing the gun down at me. ‘Just like you.’

That was when I slumped on to my side like a dying man, and with my last vestiges of strength grabbed the revolver from where it lay on the floor only a couple of feet away and swung it round in Tommy’s direction, my finger already tensing on the trigger, unsure how many bullets I’d used, not caring because this was my final chance to avenge the brother I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, since Tommy had ended his life on a street corner as if he was nothing, just an inconvenience, when in reality he was the most important person in my life.

I heard the silencer’s champagne pop just before I pulled the trigger, and the room once again exploded in noise.

‘As far as the operator can see, the car hasn’t moved for the past twenty minutes,’ said Bolt over the hands-free as Tina drove past King’s Cross station. ‘So it’s almost certainly going to be somewhere in the rough square between Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road, York Way and Copenhagen Street.’

‘Thanks, Mike.’

‘Tell me you’re not doing this alone, Tina. Aren’t you meant to be giving a statement about what just happened at the Gore residence?’

‘It’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to find this car. I’m sure it belongs to the fixer.’

‘But you don’t know that,’ said Bolt, sounding more worried than ever. ‘It might have nothing to do with it. You could be making a terrible mistake.’

‘I need leads,’ she snapped back, ‘and at the moment this is the only one I’ve got.’

‘Tina, you’re going to be in real shit for this. They’re going to have your warrant card and everything. You can’t just go chasing round after leads when you’re a witness, and maybe even a bloody suspect, in the murder of a government minister. You can’t get so bloody obsessed.’

Tina gritted her teeth. She knew all this. Knew that her job was on the line. Yet there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She was too close to give up now. ‘Thanks for the help, Mike,’ she said. ‘I owe you one.’ And she hung up.

She ran a hand through her hair, trying to focus on the task at hand, knowing that when the local CID found out that she’d disappeared, they’d go spare, which was why she hadn’t brought Grier with her. After she’d organized the first uniforms on the scene and the ambulances, she’d told him to keep an eye on things, saying there was something she needed to do, and she’d be back shortly. Grier had demanded to know where she was going, and when no answer was forthcoming he’d asked to go with her, actually stating that he thought they were a team. But she’d got him in enough trouble already, and told him firmly, as his boss, to stay put. ‘It might be the last order I ever give you,’ she’d said. ‘So take notice of it.’

She took the turning into York Way, then the first right into Caledonian Street, zigzagging her way through the back roads, desperately trying to hunt down a car she only had the most basic description of. She hadn’t even had time to look at a photo. It was as if she couldn’t even stop to think things through any more. She simply had to keep moving, keep chasing leads, keep running, because the moment she stopped, that would be it. She’d be suspended, then fired, and the fixer, Alpha, would continue to walk free, as would Paul Wise, the man she now realized she’d do anything to bring down.

Mike was right. She was obsessed. Maybe even deranged. But she got results. It was she who’d come up with the lead that caught Kent; she who’d spotted the discrepancies in the Roisín O’Neill murder; she who’d found Gore. The bastards couldn’t take that away from her.

Five minutes passed. She became frustrated. Unsure of herself and her lead, knowing that every minute she stayed away from the Gore residence was another nail in her career coffin, the realization that she was finally finished as a police officer looming larger and larger in front of her.

She noticed that her hands were shaking, her breathing getting faster and faster, and she pulled over and got out of the car, lighting a cigarette and willing herself to calm down.

And that was when she heard it. Coming from the building site behind her.

The unmistakable sound of gunfire.

There was no pain, just a thick, dull sense of shock. A numbness, from my thighs to my chest. I’d been hit twice that I could see, both times in the initial burst of fire. One round had struck me in the thigh, the second in the gut. The thigh wound was bleeding less which told me that it hadn’t severed any of the major blood vessels, and there was an exit wound just above the back of my knee. The gut wound, though, was bad, the exit wound the size of a golf ball, and spilling a lot of blood on to the dusty concrete.

I’d managed to prop myself up against the wall and, amazingly, still had hold of the gun. Opposite me across the room, lying on his belly, was Tommy. I’d caught him in the face or head with my last shot, I wasn’t entirely sure which, whereas he’d missed me with his, so we were evens now. For a while he’d made weird rasping noises, coupled with low moans of pain, and had even tried and failed to get up, but he’d stopped moving completely now, and I could no longer hear his breathing.

So there I was, trapped in this cavernous hellhole that would very likely become my grave. I couldn’t move properly and no one would have been able to hear my cries even if I’d had the strength to make them. There were no sirens, so it seemed no one had even heard the gunshots.

I had a terrible thirst and I was shivering like a wet dog, but incredibly I wasn’t panicking. I was too exhausted for that, and, even after everything that had happened, I felt this weird sense of achievement. I’d gone out alone to avenge my brother’s murder, and I’d managed it. The gang responsible for leaving him dead on that street were now dead themselves, and by ridding the world of Andrew Kent I felt I’d done humanity a favour. And if it was my parting gift, then so be it.

But as I sat there, wounded and helpless, wondering how I’d got myself into this terrible tomb-like place, I could hear death’s steady, inevitable approach and knew there was no escape. That was the hardest thing to accept, the fact that my life was finally coming to an end, and I wondered briefly in those last few seconds, as the pain and the shock squeezed at my insides, whether there was anyone left to mourn my passing. Whether I’d even be remembered in ten years’ time.

Then I heard it. A sound directly outside the door. The scrape of a foot on the floor.

Jesus. Was this nightmare still not over? Was there a final act to come?