Simon Kernick - Deadline

The Flying Squad ambush ethos is surprise, aggression and overwhelming force. As their own cars roared on to the scene, forming a loose cordon around the van and the robbers' vehicles, and disgorged their screaming officers, the back of the security van flew open and more gun wielding cops leapt out. The shouts of 'Armed police, drop your weapons!' filled the air and Bolt felt an adrenalin kick like he'd never felt before as he stood, legs apart, Colt revolver held two-handed in front of him.

Which was the moment it all went wrong.

There were four robbers with guns outside the car, two more – the drivers – inside. One of them opened fire and a Flying Squad guy called Hammond, who was thirty-one and just celebrating the birth of his child, got hit in the shoulder. Passers-by dived for cover as another of the robbers raised his shotgun, but this time he never got the chance to pull the trigger. Bolt and the guy standing next to him both opened fire, hitting the robber a grand total of four times. Dean Hayes was twenty-five, only months older than Bolt, with a criminal record stretching back into his mid-teens. He died three hours later on the operating table. Only one of the bullets was fatal. It had pierced his heart. A later PCC investigation revealed that it was Bolt who'd fired it.

The cops from the back of the security van grabbed another of the robbers and slammed him to the tarmac with guns in his back, while the fourth robber got off a wild shot before taking a bullet in the shoulder that sent him sprawling. But the first robber, the one who'd shot Hammond, had managed to scramble into the back of one of the getaway cars, a powerful Sierra Cosworth, whose driver then reversed suddenly, knocking down one of the advancing cops and breaking his hipbone. It then smashed into the Flying Squad car that was blocking it in, pushing it into the central reservation and narrowly missing Bolt in the process, before accelerating through the narrow gap it had created.

Several of Bolt's team had been carrying pickaxe handles, and one of them managed to smash the driver's side window as the getaway car passed, showering the driver with glass, and another threw his into the windscreen; but, faced with no direct threat to their lives, they were unable to shoot at the occupants. Bolt remembered being cool-headed enough, even after shooting a person for the first time, to take aim at the Cosworth's tyres, but the car had taken off at such a speed that it was thirty metres away before he had a chance to fire, and with civilians everywhere he knew it would be too dangerous to pull the trigger again.

Police patrol cars from Lewisham station had descended rapidly on the scene and there was a high-speed chase which ended only minutes later when the Cosworth crashed into a parked van. The driver, a well-known face in the criminal fraternity, was captured, but the gunman was nowhere to be seen, having fled the vehicle on foot, still wearing his balaclava.

With the other five gang members accounted for, it soon became clear that none of them was the mysterious Jimmy Galante, a man who at that time had never shown up on the Flying Squad radar. An arrest warrant was hastily put together, and at four a.m. the following morning a Flying Squad team that included Bolt had raided his flat, finding him apparently asleep. Bolt had half expected to find Andrea there still, having not heard from her the previous day, but it turned out Galante was alone, and remarkably unfazed at being prematurely woken from his slumber by half a dozen men in black, all shouting and pointing guns at him.

Galante was a cocky bastard from the start. Even if he hadn't been sleeping with the woman Bolt had fallen in love with, he would have hated him anyway. It just made it worse that he was a criminal, and a good-looking one at that. But his cockiness was justified. Although he had several cuts to his head and bruised ribs, strongly suggesting that he'd been involved in the Cosworth's crash, he'd denied involvement in any robbery and produced a cast-iron alibi for his whereabouts at the time (a café in Islington where he'd apparently been seen by at least half a dozen witnesses, including the owner). Worse, there was no sign of the clothes he'd been wearing, or any firearms residue on his hands. Everyone knew that he could have removed this simply by washing them thoroughly, but there was nothing they could do about it, and because none of the surviving robbers fingered him, Galante wasn't even charged with, let alone convicted of, any offence.

Bolt burned with the intense frustration any police officer feels when a criminal he or she knows is guilty gets off through lack of evidence; the fact that he'd shot one of Bolt's colleagues made it almost unbearable. But bear it he had to, and shortly afterwards Galante disappeared off the scene, moving to Spain, away from the watchful eyes of a vengeful Flying Squad.

Bolt had never heard from Andrea again after that. He'd tried to make contact with her several times but she hadn't returned his calls, and he'd been forced to accept that their relationship was over. But for him, personally, it had been a coup. His information had led to a huge result for the Flying Squad, marred only by wounding and injury to two of their own, and the fact that he'd shot dead one of the gang only increased his kudos among his colleagues. There'd been no repercussions from the PCC – his shooting of Hayes was considered totally justified – and although he'd been asked on several occasions to name the source who'd told him about the robbery, he'd always claimed that it was an informant, and gave no further details. Because the op had been a success, no one had ever pushed him on it.

He continued to pace the room. Continued to think. Always about Andrea. How her information had foiled a major robbery and put a lot of very nasty people out of business, at least one permanently. How she seemed to have turned her life around so formidably in the years since. And how she could have made some serious enemies along the way.

He stopped pacing and put down his wine on the marble kitchen top. He had an idea, and for the first time in the last few hours he felt a twinge of hope, coupled with something approaching excitement.

Pulling the mobile from his pocket, he dialled a number he hadn't called in far too long.

Emma dug away in the gloom with the rusty nail, trying to shut the constant fear out of her mind, forcing herself to concentrate totally on what she was doing. It had been dark for over an hour now but still she kept going, even though every part of her body seemed to ache with the effort. It was a slow, painful job, but she was getting somewhere. She'd created a gap of almost a quarter of an inch between the wall and the plate on the left-hand side, enough almost to get a finger underneath, and when she tugged at the chain it definitely felt looser. If she could just keep at it, eventually it was going to come free. She was sure of it. But God, it was hard.

She heard a noise upstairs – footsteps. She froze. If they saw what she was doing, they'd punish her. The cruel one might even decide that keeping her alive was now too risky, that it was time to get rid of her altogether.

She jumped up, lifted the bed, straining with the effort, and pushed it back against the wall, trying to be as quiet as possible but unable to stop it from scraping loudly on the stone floor.

Please don't let them hear it.

Gritting her teeth, she lay back on the bed, put the nail under her pillow, and reached for the hood.

The footsteps stopped. Was one of them outside the door?

She put on the hood and closed her eyes, hardly daring to breathe, terrified that this might be it. The last few seconds of her life. Had all her efforts of the last few hours been wasted?