Simon Kernick - Severed

'Is it a brothel in there?' asks someone else.

'I've got to run.' I wipe my mouth. 'Is there a back way out of here?'

Someone points past a workshop towards a gate set into a whitewashed wall. 'It's open,' he says.

'Don't want to get in trouble with the wife then, eh?' shouts someone else, obviously the comedian of the bunch.

I break free of the group and run for the gate. The sirens are coming from all over the place now and great sheets of flame burst forth from the burning building like dragons' breaths. My lungs are bursting as I fling open the gate and stumble through onto the canal path. Lucas is still there on the bridge. I run towards it, ignoring the pain, and force myself up the steps.

By the time I reach the top I have virtually no strength left, but it doesn't matter because Lucas grabs me and hauls me over to the car. The passenger door's open and I clamber inside, keeping low while he slams it behind me. Then he's in the driver's seat and pulling away into traffic, heading north up the Kingsland Road.

'You stink,' he comments as we pass through the first set of lights, swerving to avoid a fire engine screaming down the other way with all horns blaring.

'Well, that isn't really any surprise, is it?' I answer eventually, when my breathing's evened out a little and I've finished coughing. 'I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but what the hell were you doing setting a fire like that?'

He turns to me with a look of mild incredulity on his face. 'What the hell are you talking about?' he says. 'I didn't set any fire. I thought that was you.'

If Lucas didn't set the fire, who the hell did? And why?

Neither question is one I'm in any position to answer as I sit back in the seat and watch the shabby, cheap shopfronts of the Kingsland Road scudding past, relieved simply to be alive. I feel a small twinge of satisfaction at having dealt with the man who murdered Leah, and maybe Snowy too. Was he the man Ferrie thought had been hired to kill him, the one he called the Vampire? If he was, then he's paid for his sins now. I think back to his grunts of pain as his mask crackled and burned, and hope that he suffered in the same way Leah must have. But the reason I'm not more satisfied is I still don't have the slightest idea why someone's gone to so much trouble to set me up, or who that person might be. And it's something that, now more than ever, I've got to find out.

'Where's the holdall?' I ask, looking down at the empty space by my feet.

'It's in the back,' Lucas replies, adding quickly when he sees me turn round to grab it, 'but it's empty.'

'Empty? What do you mean?'

'I took the liberty of getting rid of the knife in the canal while you were inside. I thought it seemed as good a place as any.'

I'm a bit concerned by this. It doesn't feel like as good a place as any to me. With at least two people dead inside the brothel, possibly more, the area's going to turn into a major crime scene, which means they may end up dredging the canal for clues as to what might have happened.

Lucas reads my thoughts. 'Don't worry, I wiped it clean. There's no way it'll ever get back to you.'

'And the DVD?'

'I've still got it.' He taps the waist pocket of his suit jacket. 'We'll destroy it when I've had a chance to watch the footage.'

I nod slowly. 'OK.'

I'm too exhausted to think straight, but even so, I can't help feeling an odd twinge of suspicion. Why the hell did he do that without talking to me first? I tell myself to stop feeling paranoid, and settle back in my seat. Lucas has just lost a good friend; he can't be in on this.

We take a roundabout route back to his offices in Commercial Street and it's just turned four o'clock when he parks up in an alley round the back. He wants me to stay in the car. 'I'm only going in to collect the file on Ferrie. It's not safe to hang about round here at the moment. Whoever killed Snowy will have got the company's address from his business cards.'

'And it's possible they could be waiting for you. It's better if I come in.'

'You look like shit,' he answers. 'You're going to stand out a mile walking round like that. Even in an area like this.'

I check myself out in the rear-view mirror and have to conclude that he's right. My head looks like it's been shoved up the exhaust pipe of a speeding lorry. Every square inch of exposed skin is smoke-blackened, and my hair, usually neat and fashionably cut, is sticking up all over the place in bizarre formations where the blood from my scalp wound's matted. There's more dried blood on my neck, and to top it off, a rust-covered puke stain covers my shirt. 'I'll be fine,' I say, removing the shirt and wiping my face with the cleanest part of it. I try to force my hair back into shape, and when that doesn't work, Lucas produces an old beanie hat from under his seat, and I put that on.

'Come on,' he says with a sigh, 'let's get going.'

We go in the back door, and although Lucas is feigning confidence, I know he's nervous. He moves carefully through the gloomy foyer and up the winding staircase to his office. I've never quite understood why he doesn't run his operation from home. He's got a nice apartment in a modern block in Islington which would impress the punters a damn sight more than a couple of rooms above a shop on a rundown street like this one. He told me once he liked to have a base near to the City because that's where all the big money is, and to be fair his office is only a few hundred yards away from the gleaming spires of Aldgate; but this is London, where a few hundred yards can sometimes feel like a thousand miles. Whatever Lucas likes to think, he's based in Whitechapel. This is Jack the Ripper country, the real East End, and most definitely not the financial district. As he's probably found out, people from the latter don't tend to venture into the former.

It's an ideal spot for an ambush as well, I think, as we reach the top of the stairs and he opens the door. It's an old building with plenty of alcoves, and, unfortunately, at the moment I'm unarmed, my gun having been taken from me back at the brothel. And without the security of the vest, which has probably been burned to a crisp by now, I feel both naked and vulnerable.

We step inside, and Lucas shuts the door behind us. As he surveys the room, he shakes his head slowly. There are two large desks with monitors and phones on them, arranged so that they are both facing the door at an angle. The right, and slightly larger of the two, belongs to Lucas. It's tidier than I was expecting, with everything arranged perfectly symmetrically. Snowy's desk is messy, with pens and bits of paper everywhere, as well as two empty mugs, one of which says World's Best Uncle.

'I can't believe he's dead,' Lucas says, walking up to his former employee's desk.

'Has he got family?' I ask, realizing that even though Snowy and I served together I never really knew that much about him.

Lucas lights a cigarette before answering. 'A brother, that's all. His mum and dad are dead. I think he's quite close – was quite close – to the brother. Poor sod didn't really have anyone else.' He picks up a photo on the desk and views it wistfully. 'He loved that cat,' he explains, showing me a picture of a very fat tabby cat with one eye shut sprawled next to an electric fire. Just looking at it makes me want to go to sleep.

'Cats are independent,' I say. 'He'll be all right.' Although I'm not sure this one will be. He looks like he enjoys the high life, and with his master gone who's going to provide that for him?

Lucas puts the picture down and goes round to his own desk. There's a red light flashing on his phone.

'Messages,' he says, pressing a button.

There are two of them. The first is from a guy called Kevin who wants to know how far Lucas has got in proving his wife's infidelities.