Peter Guttridge - City of Dreadful Night

Several people groaned when Foster mentioned Milldean. It was one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Brighton, ruled for generations by half a dozen crime families. The closely packed housing estate was a virtual no-go area for the police.

‘We’re going in mob-handed, I hope, sir,’ Finch said. He was a burly man with a shaved head and a little indent in his ear where once he used to wear a ring.

‘On the contrary, John. We don’t want a pitched battle or a riot. We want it to be fast. We’ll set the roadblocks, isolate the house, get the marksmen in position. Then we’ll flood into the premises, close him down, get him out of there and off the estate. It’s a classic Bermuda.’

Bermuda as in Bermuda Triangle. That was the name the force used for its standard armed building-entry technique because it was a triangulated operation. Front, back, marksmen outside at elevated points. Not that Gilchrist was superstitious, but she’d always wondered if the name could also mean that the target might disappear without trace.

‘Lean and mean,’ Finch said.

It was Finch’s first operation with the tactical firearms unit. Gilchrist assumed his bravado was a mask for his nerves. He couldn’t really be like that – could he? If he was, she couldn’t understand how he had got on the team. Sure, armed response units comprised people like him who were fit and had quick reflexes. But these people were also calm, focused and thoughtful. Well, that was the theory. How somebody as gung-ho as Finch had got through the psychological testing, Gilchrist couldn’t imagine.

‘This is a one-night-only offer, ladies and gentlemen,’ Foster said. ‘We miss him tonight and he’s gone. Any questions?’

Geoff ‘Harry’ Potter, one of the more phlegmatic of the team, raised a hand.

‘If he’s being sheltered by one of the families, he’s unlikely to be alone.’

‘The intelligence we have indicates there’s no link with any of the families. I’m confident it’s one hundred per cent accurate. We’ve had the house under surveillance for the past two hours.’

Gilchrist shifted in her crouch to ease her legs. She’d been in the back garden about three minutes but it seemed ten times longer. She strained at the static in her ears, willing Charlie Foster’s voice to come through.

She was vaguely aware of muffled music from the pub on the corner. It became louder when the pub doors opened and a raucous din spilled out.

‘We’re going on a count of three,’ Foster said quietly, his voice unexpectedly intimate inside her ear.

A car horn blared.

‘Damn!’ The voice in her ear was strained. ‘All units: go!’

As Gilchrist hurled herself towards the rear of the house, the two officers stationed against the back wall swung the ram and hit the door just above the lock. The door flew open, splinters flying. The two men took up positions either side of the door.

Lights came on in the house. Her three colleagues with Heckler amp; Koch machine pistols went into the kitchen first. She scanned left to right as she came through the door. Unwashed crockery piled in the sink. Harsh fluorescent lighting set crookedly in the ceiling.

The passage was ahead, a turn, then the staircase. She was aware of the unit that had come through the front door pounding up the stairs.

Her unit fanned into the dining room. Prints of seaside landscapes in cheap frames on the walls.

They looked behind the door, under the table. Nobody.

Down the hall to the living room. Widescreen TV and DVD player in the corner. Magazines and redtop newspapers strewn on the sofa. Toffee wrappers and cigarette stubs overflowing an ashtray.

They looked behind the sofa and the single armchair. Nobody.

From upstairs she heard shouted commands. Then, the sharp crack of a gunshot. And another. Her three colleagues looked at each other. Ignored her. Jostled into the hall. Started up the stairs. More shots, too close together to say how many.

When Gilchrist moved to follow, the last one on the stairs waved her back. She remained in the living-room doorway, tilting her head to try to see up to the first floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a door under the staircase open.

None of them had spotted it when they’d come down the corridor. It opened towards her, obscuring her view of who was on the other side of it. She heard the sound of someone hoofing it towards the kitchen.

Gilchrist took two steps and barged the cupboard door closed. A skinny guy in white T-shirt, jeans and trainers headed through the kitchen to the open doorway. He was holding something away from his body in his left hand.

The thought that there was only supposed to be one person in the house flitted through her brain. Was this skinny man Grimes? If so, then what was the shooting upstairs about?

She aimed at the man’s back.

‘Halt, armed police officer!’ she called, relieved that her voice was steady and clear. ‘Drop your weapon and halt!’

The man kept moving. Adrenaline surged in her. She knew she couldn’t – wouldn’t – shoot him. If she did, she’d kill him. She’d been trained to take no chances, trained to aim for the biggest target with the most body mass. Don’t try tricky leg, head or arm shots.

She’d been trained like that but even so she aimed at his left leg just above the knee. She aimed but she didn’t fire. The man went through the doorway into the garden.

And almost immediately re-entered the kitchen, flung backwards, arms wide. He landed with a heavy thud flat on his back, blood spreading across his chest. As he hit the floor, whatever was in his left hand skidded away into the corner of the room.

Fuck. Gilchrist edged cautiously towards the prone man, nervous of presenting a target to the trigger-happy police marksman outside.

The man wasn’t moving. Blood spread across the kitchen floor. Gilchrist swallowed. There was little doubt the man had died a split-second before he’d come flying back through the door.

She frowned when she realized she had stepped in his blood. Frowned again when she couldn’t immediately see what had fallen from his hand anywhere on the floor.

Whatever it was, it could have slithered under one of the cupboards that lined the walls to her left. She was trying to puzzle out how to check without contaminating the crime scene or getting herself shot when she heard heavy boots clumping down the stairs.

Then, in her ear, intimate again despite its agitation, Foster’s voice.

‘Stand down. Everybody stand down.’

Finch and two officers Gilchrist didn’t recognize filled the passage. Finch was white-faced, his eyes panicked. The three men crowded into the kitchen. Finch looked at the body at Gilchrist’s feet.

‘Shit, Gilchrist – you do that?’

His voice trembled. One of the men with him pushed forward. Gestured to her.

‘You’re needed upstairs. We’ll take care of this.’

Gilchrist bridled at his tone.

‘And you are?’

The man was about six inches taller than her and broad enough to fill up most of the kitchen doorway. He smiled, revealing two missing front teeth. It made him look like a big kid.

‘Just a messenger. You’re needed upstairs.’

He stepped to one side, extending his hand in an invitation for her to go past. Finch was still gawping at the body on the floor. The second man was smirking at Gilchrist.

She pushed past them and headed for the first floor. There was a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Harry Potter was standing against the wall looking blankly along the landing.

Gilchrist edged past him. A second door was open to her right. A bathroom. The toilet faced the door. A man was sitting on it, hunched forward, his head over his bony knees, his trousers and a widening pool of blood eddying around his ankles.