Shaun Hutson - Knife Edge

'Jesus Christ, what did he do?'

'Well, like our friend Neville, Baxter was an explosives expert too. The only problem was, he was selling explosives, army explosives, to the IRA and the UVF.'

'For fuck's sake.'

'There was some talk of him selling weapons too but that charge was never proved.'

'So where is he now?'

'Like I said, he's living in London. He works for a private security firm called Nemesis.'

'They obviously didn't ask for references.'

'He's been there for about eight months.'

'Addresses?' Doyle fumbled in his pocket for a piece of paper. He found an old betting slip in one back pocket of his jeans and pulled a Bic from his jacket, scribbling away as Wetherby relayed the information. 'Anything else I should know?' he said finally, shoving the worn pink slip back into his pocket.

'Just find Neville,' Wetherby said.

'Doyle!'

The counter terrorist turned as he heard his name being called.

He looked around to see Calloway hurrying up the corridor towards him.

'Got to go,' Doyle said into the phone and hung up.

Calloway looked flushed around the cheeks.

'What's going on?' Doyle asked.

'I just spoke to Mason at New Scotland Yard,' the DI told him. 'He called me on my mobile. Neville rang there five minutes ago. He says he's ringing back in a couple of minutes. He wants to talk, but he'll only talk to you.'

'What the fuck does he want to talk to me for?'

'He said something about a bomb.'

Doyle stood beside the black Granada, gently rocking from one foot to the other.

'This is bollocks,' he muttered, glancing around the hospital car park.

A red Metro had just pulled up close by and he watched as two elderly women clambered out, one of them carrying a Cellophane-wrapped bunch of flowers.

'He's not going to call back,' Doyle insisted, watching as the women linked arms and headed off towards the hospital's main entrance.

Calloway was seated behind the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the mobile phone which lay on the parcel shelf, as if by mere power of thought he could make it ring.

'Come on, come on,' Doyle muttered.

The phone rang.

Calloway snatched it up.

'It's him,' DS Mason said on the other end of the line. 'He wants to speak to Doyle.'

'Patch this through the radio too,' Calloway instructed. 'And get a fucking trace going on the call.'

'He won't be on long enough for that,' Doyle said.

'He will if you keep him talking,' Calloway snapped, handing the mobile to the counter terrorist.

The DI himself grabbed the radio and pressed 'Receive'.

Doyle looked at the phone for fleeting seconds then pressed it to his ear.

'Neville,' he said.

'Is that you, Doyle?' the voice at the other end said.

'You asked for me, didn't you? Why bother me with your bullshit?'

'Because I know you'll listen.'

'What makes you think that? What if I switched you off right now, shithead?'

Calloway waved his hand frenziedly, fearing that Doyle would carry out his threat, but the counter terrorist held the phone firmly to his ear.

'Why did you try to kill your wife and kid, Neville?' Doyle enquired.

'I didn't, you ought to know that.'

'Yeah, I know that. What do you want, a fucking medal for your handiwork? So, you can blow the roof off a house without damaging anything nearby. What do you do for an encore?'

'You'll see,' Neville said softly. 'I used ten pounds of Semtex to lift that roof, I've got plenty more.'

'How much more?'

'Enough to put a fucking crater where the centre of London used to be.'

'How much?' Doyle persisted.

'A hundred and fifty pounds of it.'

Doyle and Calloway looked at each other but if Doyle was surprised it didn't register in his expression.

'Jesus fucking Christ,' whispered the policeman, swallowing hard.

'So, what are you going to do with this explosive then, Neville?'

'I know you're tracing this call.'

'Good for you. Then you'll know that I'm going to find you.'

'You're not going to find me. Not you or any of the fucking coppers listening to this conversation.'

'Look, just tell me what the fuck you want, will you? You're starting to bore me,' Doyle said.

'I want my daughter back.'

'No chance,' Doyle said flatly.

'In fifty minutes a bomb will explode somewhere in the centre of London,' Neville informed him. 'If you don't give me my daughter back then another one will explode every hour after that. Different locations. Different lives, Doyle. You know what it's like. You've seen what bombs can do. A lot of people are going to die if I don't get my daughter back.'

'Fuck you, Neville.'

'One bomb every hour,' Neville continued. 'You'll never know where. And if you haven't seen sense by eight o'clock tonight, if I haven't got my daughter by then, if you're not sick of filling fucking body bags, then that's when the big one goes up. Eight tonight, Doyle. One hundred pounds of C4. Now get my daughter.'

The radio crackled.

'We've got the trace,' DS Mason said triumphantly.

'Where's he calling from?' Calloway asked anxiously.

'Euston station,' Mason almost shouted. 'The bastard's on Euston station.'

Doyle looked at the humming mobile phone. 'He hung up.'

Calloway glanced at his watch. 'We've got fifty minutes to find that bomb,' he said frantically. 'What the fuck do we do?'

'My guess is it's near him,' Doyle said. 'I reckon the bomb's at Euston.'

Doyle tossed the mobile towards Calloway then turned and sprinted towards his own car.

'Listen,' said Calloway into the radio. 'I want every available mobile unit in the vicinity to close in on Euston station. Also, contact BR, tell them what's going on. Get that fucking place evacuated. If the bomb goes off there…' He allowed the sentence to trail off.

The DI watched as Doyle leaped behind the wheel of the Datsun, revving the engine, reversing wildly.

He sped off, almost colliding with an ambulance.

'I want the emergency services on alert too,' Calloway continued. 'And the bomb squad. And you get to Euston as fast as you can, I'll meet you there. Doyle's already on his way.'

The DI twisted the key in the ignition and the Granada's engine roared into life.

As he guided the vehicle out of the car park he glanced at his watch. Could Neville be bluffing about the bomb?

He hoped so but he doubted it.

'Shit,' he hissed.

There wouldn't be enough time.

The bomb must be close to Neville, Doyle thought as he drove.

Chances are it was to be detonated by remote control and most electronically triggered devices only had a range of about a hundred yards. Two hundred absolute tops.

It was on that bloody station somewhere.

Doyle looked at his watch.

Forty-eight minutes.

He banged his horn, trying to force the van ahead of him to pull over.

The traffic was heavy.

Too fucking heavy.

Even if he reached Euston quickly the chances of finding Neville there were slim, the chances of finding the bomb in time even slimmer. There were a hundred different places he could have planted it.

The lights ahead of Doyle were on amber, the rest of the traffic was slowing down.

Fuck it.

He pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and the Datsun shot through on red.

The counter terrorist heard horns behind and to one side of him sounding like some organised chorus of dissent.

Forty-five minutes before detonation.

The first of many.

Neville had said one every hour until eight o'clock.

Doyle did some quick arithmetic in his head as he screamed past a cyclist.

One every hour.

Seven bombs and then the big one.