Simon Kernick - Severed

Lucas coughs again. More blood runs from the corner of his mouth and drips onto the carpet. He has only minutes to live, maybe not even that. I remove my fingers from the wound and grab a pillow from the double bed. I pull off the cover and push the material into the wound, trying to block the flow of blood. It's basic, but it'll have to do. I reach into my pocket for one of the mobiles, then realize that it's not a good idea to give the police something to trace. I recall seeing a telephone handset on a table in the entrance hall near the front door, so I get to my feet, run downstairs, and race over to it, dialling 999.

When it's picked up at the other end, I shout 'Ambulance!', trying to disguise my voice, knowing that they record all incoming calls. I'm immediately reconnected, and I shout it again, giving Cosick's address and stating that a man's been severely injured. The female operator starts to ask me about the injuries, so I lay the handset down on the table, knowing I've done enough to get them to send someone here urgently.

I can hear her saying 'Hello? Hello?' repeatedly as I take another look up at the balcony where Lucas lies bleeding. I don't want to leave him, I really don't, because I know he wouldn't leave me. Whatever it cost him.

So, knowing I'm being a total fool, I run back up the stairs and across the balcony to where he lies. But as I lean down, I can see that his sapphire-blue eyes are wide open and he's no longer breathing. It's too late. My friend is dead, and I don't even have time to mourn him.

'I'm sorry, mate,' I whisper. 'I really am.'

I touch his forehead, then slowly and very carefully I close his eyes, unable to meet their still, dead gaze.

I can't believe he's gone. This morning I lost my lover. Now I've lost my best friend. I am utterly alone in the world, standing in a silent house of corpses. Yet I know that if I've got any hope of avenging them, I have to move.

I wrench myself away from Lucas and, ignoring the aching in my legs, run down the stairs a second time, then through the house and onto the patio with its empty table and half-full bottle of wine. I spot a wheelbarrow next to a flower bed a few yards further up the garden path, and I use it as a springboard to jump to the top of the wall. Hauling myself up and over, I land on the pavement and walk swiftly away, keeping in the shadows of the cypress trees, and trying to look as natural and inconspicuous as possible.

I've just left a slaughterhouse. In minutes, this place is going to be crawling with cops. They'll be hunting for witnesses, anyone who's seen anything or anyone suspicious, and I don't want them to remember me.

I steal a look behind me. The street's empty. Everything's quiet.

Too quiet. Even the sound of jazz from the park seems to have faded away.

I hear something. The scrape of a shoe on concrete. It comes from the other side of the road, and it stops as quickly as it began.

I stop too, tensing, ready to run.

There's movement coming from behind the cars opposite me, figures appearing like silent wraiths.

And then suddenly the whole street explodes into life. Car headlights come on; men in caps appear from every direction; there are shouts from a dozen different voices to my left and right, from the cars that are disgorging men in caps with big guns, even from among the cypress trees. They're all shouting the same thing: 'Armed police! Put your hands in the air!'

I count six men approaching me in a tight semi-circle, all of them in two-handed shooting poses. Two hold MP5 carbines, the others have pistols, and I know that these guys haven't just turned up. They've been here a while. They were waiting for me to come out.

As other men move in on me from either side, still barking terse orders, and cuff my hands behind my back, I think again that only two people knew I was coming here tonight. Lucas is dead. I smelled his blood. I felt the terrible knife wound he'd suffered.

Which leaves Alannah.

It's 10.05 p.m. and I'm in a holding cell at Paddington Green, the most secure police station in London, and probably the whole of the UK. It's where they bring terrorist suspects for questioning, safe in the knowledge that there's going to be no dramatic rescue attempt by their comrades in Al Qaeda. You don't get out of here unless they let you, and even if I had the energy, I wouldn't attempt it. I've been in close proximity to more violent death today than at any time since the killing fields of Sierra Leone, and it's going to take a Byzantine effort of persuasion to prove to the police that I'm a victim in all this as well.

I'm lying on the bunk staring at the ceiling. It's hot in here, and even though the cell itself is modern and clean, there's still an underlying smell of stale sweat. The sweater I was wearing has been taken away for tests, and I'm in a T-shirt they've given me which is wet and clammy and sticking to my back. They've also removed my belt, even the laces from my Timberlands. I'm left here feeling like the low-life criminal they think I am.

I think of the people I care about who've had their lives snuffed out so horrifically today – Leah, Snowy, Lucas… The brutal yet straightforward truth is that they died because of their relationship with me. I am the target in all this. All three of them were simply collateral damage, killed because they were in the way or, like Leah, were expendable.

But why have I been targeted? It's the one question that keeps cropping up. Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to think it must be something to do with my past, something that happened in my army days. The presence in London of Eddie Cosick, the man I used to know as Colonel Stanic, and the fact that he seems to be the man Iain Ferrie, a former colleague, was blackmailing, makes it too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. The problem is, this still doesn't help me because I didn't really know either man, and therefore have no idea why they would have chosen to involve me in their business deal.

I wonder about Alannah. She claimed to be a Serbian policewoman looking for her sister. She even showed me a photograph of her, and seemed genuinely concerned. Yet it looks certain that she betrayed me to the police, first at her house, then at Cosick's place. They can't have been responding to my 999 call. It was too fast. I know Lucas didn't call them, and I didn't. That only leaves her. She must have been there. Watching the place. Working with someone to set me up.

A thought strikes me then. There is still a main player out there, someone else involved in this. This person wanted the briefcase, and it looks like he now has it. So maybe it was him, not Cosick, who was being blackmailed. For some reason he wanted Cosick dead, but, more importantly, he wants to keep me alive. And there can only be one reason for that: so that I carry the can for everything that's happened today.

Alannah must be working for the main player. It's why she rescued me from the brothel. It's why she tried to get me to go to Cosick's place, knowing that the police would arrest me there. It's why, when I didn't bite, she called them to her house.

According to Ferrie, the person he was blackmailing hired a mysterious contract killer known as the Vampire to secure the briefcase. This Vampire must have been at the brothel today, and Marco and MAC-10 man must have delivered the briefcase to him there. He must then have discovered the tracking device, and guessed that someone had followed and was probably close by. In a remarkable show of brazenness, he'd then tracked Snowy down, and finished him off in his customary fashion.

But then, when I spoke to Alannah, she told me she'd not seen any strangers at the brothel. She might easily have been lying, but what if she wasn't?

I try to recall what both Ferrie and Lucas said about the Maxwell and Spann murders. The Vampire got past the security cameras and caught three men, including two highly trained bodyguards, completely off guard. Just like Cosick and his men were caught off guard tonight. Ferrie spoke about him with awe. A shadowy killer who leaves no trail, as if he's invisible.