Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

Cray has an earpiece nestled in the shell of her ear. ‘Wait for my word.’

I can feel the tightness in my scalp . . . in my bladder. Cray is out of the car, making a scuttling dash to a low brick wall. She peers over the top.

For ten minutes nobody moves. I keep trying to fit Sienna’s recollections into the real world. She could see the canopy of a merry-go-round, yet the leisure park is a hundred yards away.

Ellis straightens and reaches into his pocket. Something’s wrong. It’s too easy.

‘It’s not the van,’ I whisper to Cray.

She looks at me.

‘It’s not in the right place. Sienna’s statement.’

‘Maybe he moved it.’

‘Or he knows you’re here.’

‘Bullshit! We were careful.’

‘Sienna didn’t see Billy that night she woke. Ellis could have a second van. He’s going to lead you to the wrong one.’

The DCI is staring at me. ‘I can’t let him get inside. What if he has a weapon? I can’t risk a siege situation.’

Ellis is only feet away from the door of the van.

‘It’s not the one.’

I can hear Cray grinding her teeth. She presses her radio. ‘Hold your positions. Nobody move.’

Ellis has reached the door. He motions to put a key in the lock and then turns, skipping across the narrow tarmac road, disappearing from view.

Safari Roy: ‘Mobile One, I’ve lost visual contact.’

‘Mobile Two, I can’t see target.’

‘Does anyone have a visual?’ asks Cray, growing agitated.

The answers come back negative. Cursing, she makes a decision. She wants the park sealed off, locked down, nobody in or out.

Running in a low crouch, I return to the car and ask Kieran to bring up the satellite image again. Studying the layout, I run my finger in a rough circle around the screen.

‘Where are you going?’ asks Kieran.

‘For a walk.’

My left leg is jerking and my arms don’t swing in unison, but it’s good to be outside, moving. Following the main road, I walk past Brean Leisure Park and then vault a low brick wall, heading in the direction of the beach. There are caravans on either side of the narrow road and more down cross-streets. Occasionally, I turn and look for the canopy of the merry-go-round.

I take out my mobile and punch Cray’s number. Almost in the same heartbeat, I see Gordon Ellis emerge from a row of trees about forty yards away. In a half-run he disappears behind a shower block and emerges again, stopping at the last caravan.

Without waiting, he unscrews the lid from the petrol can and begins dousing the walls and windows, swinging the plastic container in long arcs that send liquid as high as the roof.

‘Hello, Gordon.’

He turns, holding the petrol can at arm’s length. His other hand reaches behind his back and produces a pistol from beneath his sweatshirt. It must have been tucked into his belt, nestled against his spine.

‘I assume you’re not alone,’ he says.

‘No.’

‘So you brought the police.’

‘You did that all by yourself.’

I can see him calculating the odds, pondering an escape route. There is a movement in the scrubby hedge behind him. Safari Roy is hunkered down, talking on his radio, summoning back-up.

‘You’re different from the others,’ says Ellis.

‘What others?’

‘The police. They want to know how, but you want to know why. You’re desperate to know. You want to know if I was abused as a child; if I was buggered by some uncle or the Parish priest. Did I lose my mother? Did I wet the bed? Did she make me sleep in soiled sheets? You think there has to be cause and effect - and that’s your weakness. There’s nothing to understand. I’m a hunter. It’s how we all started. It’s how we all survived. It’s how we evolved.’

‘Some of us have evolved a bit further than others.’ I want to keep moving to stop my legs from locking up. ‘Tell me something, Gordon. Were you grooming Charlie?’

He gives me a crocodile smile. ‘What did you do to that poor girl? She’s a timid little kitten.’

‘She’s had a rough few years.’

He nods. ‘I can tell. I thought somebody had got to her first.’

That same smile again. He’s goading me.

Almost in the same breath, I hear Cray’s voice over a megaphone, demanding that he put the gun down and raise his hands above his head. Ellis swings around and hurls the petrol container in my direction, where it bounces end over end.

He turns and puts a key into the lock. Behind him I can see Safari Roy emerge from cover, running hard, his gun drawn. Cray is yelling, ‘Move! Move!’

The van door swings open and the air seems to wobble like God is shaking the camera. I see a puff of dirty smoke, grey like the sea, and then feel the pressure wave created by the bomb. Gordon Ellis is blown backwards, like the scene is playing in reverse, speeded up.

The caravan disintegrates from within - windows shooting outwards, the roof lifting off, walls splintering into a jigsaw of flying debris - a sink, a toilet, cupboard doors, plastic, stainless steel, reels, spindles - blasting across the park, tumbling to earth.

A hail of metal fragments, nails or ball bearings that must have been packed around the explosives, are sent hurtling outwards, punching holes through fibreglass and flesh.

Knocked from her feet, Ronnie Cray picks herself up. Running. Her hair wet with blood. A nail embedded in her shoulder. She yells into her radio, deafened by the blast and unable to moderate her voice. She wants paramedics.

Ellis had a darkroom. The explosion has ignited the chemicals on the inside and the petrol on the outside creating an orange ball that boils up and evaporates in a wave of smoke and debris. Scraps of photographs, torn paper, twisted negatives and scorched contact sheets are carried by the breeze, clinging to branches and shrubs, skipping across the grass.

Two caravans are burning - one on its side and the other pocked like a Swiss cheese. Roy is lying between them. Monk gets to him first. He signals to me. The front of Roy’s shirt is soaked in blood. I rip it off and see half a dozen puncture wounds. Two of the nails are still embedded in his chest.

Someone hands me a first-aid kit. I pull out bandages and dressing, instructing Monk what to do. Roy is conscious and cracking jokes to Ronnie Cray.

‘Hey, boss, I’m taking a few weeks off. I’m going to buy ten boxes of condoms and work my way through them.’

‘You’d be better off buying ten lottery tickets,’ she replies.

‘You think I’m that lucky?’

‘I think you’re that unlucky .’

Crouching next to me, she pulls the nail from her shoulder and squeezes a bandage beneath her bra strap.

‘He should be OK,’ I say, looking around for more wounded. The nearest caravan has had its side ripped away. Gordon Ellis is lying in the wreckage. One arm is reaching out for something while the other is only a spike of bone jammed into a wall.

The skin on his face has been peeled away and one eye is a bloody hole. I look at his chest, which has been crushed by the blast. He’s dying. He can go in seconds or a few hours, but he’s going.

I tell him to hold on, the paramedics are coming, a helicopter . . .

His one good eye is staring at me and words bubble in his throat. ‘You have a fatal curiosity.’

‘I’m not the one who’s dying.’

His tongue appears, licking at the blood on his lips. Can he taste death?

‘Who did this?’

He sucks in a ragged breath and coughs.

‘I wasn’t useful any more.’

He’s talking about Novak Brennan.

‘Why were you helping him?’

‘Novak collects people.’

‘He blackmails them?’

‘He’s a hard man to refuse.’