Simon Kernick - Deadline

'Don't shoot him!' shouted Bolt. 'Take him alive! For Christ's sake, we need him!'

'Armed police! Drop your weapon now!'

'Don't shoot!'

The suspect was only ten yards away from them. Still running, he pulled back his arm and threw the knife. It hit one of the ARV officers in the arm above the elbow, slicing right through the bicep. The cop dropped his gun and grabbed uselessly at the knife's handle, which was jammed halfway into his arm, stumbling as he did so. For the suspect, it was a suicidal move. Bolt knew it, and knew too what it meant. He saw a dead girl; a funeral; a lifetime of wondering how he could have done things differently.

The bullets sounded like firecrackers in the empty street, their noise reverberating hollowly off the high walls of the surrounding buildings. Two two-round bursts. The suspect flew backwards, arms flailing as he spun round before crashing to the ground, his sunglasses flying off and clattering across the tarmac.

'Police!' screamed Bolt to identify himself, holding up his warrant card as he ran over to where the suspect lay. He knelt down, felt for a pulse, knew it was pointless. There was something there, but it was fading fast, and even as his fingers squeezed the wrist and he shouted at him not to die, his voice full of desperation, it disappeared altogether. He was gone. His eyes were closed, his mouth ever so slightly open, a single drop of blood forming in one corner. It wasn't Scott Ridgers, either. This guy was young – late twenties, maybe thirty – an ordinary, unblemished face, olive skin and thick black hair suggesting a background from somewhere in southern Europe. Bolt had never seen him before, knew nothing about him, would probably never know anything about him, other than the fact that his death might have ramifications for him that lasted for the rest of his days.

And as he knelt there, staring down at the dead man, unable to understand why the ARV cops couldn't have used a non-lethal option like a taser or a baton round to bring him down, his worst fears were confirmed as Barry's frantic voice came over the earpiece.

'Control to all units. What do you mean you've lost suspect one? Find him! I want the whole fucking area locked down! We have to get hold of that money! Over.'

They'd failed. And God alone knew what happened now.

'Why the hell did you remove all the tracking devices, Mrs Devern?' demanded Mo Khan, barely able to contain his anger. 'You must have known it was going to help them get away.'

Andrea, ashen-faced, shocked like all of them, glared at him. 'Because they knew about them, that's why!' she yelled, her voice close to breaking. 'They knew you were there. How the hell did that happen?'

The question hung in the air.

Twenty minutes had passed since the fatal shooting of suspect two. Two police helicopters continued to hover overhead, moving in lazy circles, hunting for a quarry who had long since disappeared, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. The worst of the crowds were gone too, although there were still large groups of pedestrians hanging around to see the aftermath of the action, and because they were spilling out into the road they were causing serious traffic congestion. The operation to clear the area to allow police forensic teams and ambulances in was being further complicated by an apparently unrelated outbreak of fighting between rival fans further up on White Hart Lane. The competing blare of sirens filled the air as Mo, Bolt and Tina stood beside one of a line of police vehicles clustered round the corner from the street where the body of suspect two still lay where it had fallen. Andrea was in the back of one of the cars, sitting with her legs out, holding a plastic bottle of water.

The mood among everyone at the scene was one of complete shock. The operation had been a complete failure. Half a million pounds of taxpayers' money had walked away from right under their noses; worse than that, a member of the public had been killed, one of the team's own number seriously wounded, and the one suspect they had managed to apprehend had decided to go out in a blaze of glory rather than be taken alive. It couldn't really have gone any more wrong. The only positive was that, unlike the stabbed fan, Turner was still alive, although the seriousness of his condition wasn't yet known. He'd been airlifted to the Homerton Hospital in Hackney whose expertise in dealing with knife injuries, honed through years of practice, was legendary, so he was in the best possible hands. Even so, as they all knew, that might not be enough.

Bolt felt as if he'd done ten rounds boxing a man twice his size and speed whose speciality was headshots. He couldn't seem to think straight, was finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that he and his people were being outthought and outfought by the men who'd taken Emma. He knew he couldn't give up, but standing there among the wreckage of the op, he was getting perilously close.

'What happened, Andrea?' he asked. 'We lost communication with you after you stopped to pick up the package.'

'I got a call on the phone that was in it. It was Emma screaming.'

Bolt swallowed. Told himself to keep calm.

'Just this one terrified scream. Then it cut out and he came on the line. He said that this time Emma was screaming out of fear, but the next time it would be out of pain, unless I did exactly what I was told. Those were his exact words. He told me to use that thing to start removing all the bugs and trackers' – she pointed at the bugfinding device that was now in an evidence bag in Mo's hands – 'and I tried to tell him I didn't know what he was talking about, but he told me he knew I'd gone to the police, and if I tried to deny it then he'd… he'd make Emma scream again.' She stared at them each in turn. 'I had no choice. Don't you see that? I had no choice. I want my daughter back.'

'Well, you went about it the wrong way,' said Tina, her tone exasperated.

'What do you know? Have you got children?'

'No, but-'

'But nothing. You have no idea what you're talking about.'

Tina opened her mouth to reply but Bolt stepped in. This was getting them nowhere.

'OK, Andrea, so you followed their instructions.

You removed the tracking devices and threw them out of the car. But not the two that were attached to the money.'

'No, they told me to leave them in the car when I got out.'

It was a logical move from the kidnappers' point of view, lulling the team into a false sense of security by letting them think they'd still be able to follow the ransom. It also showed that at least one of those involved had fairly expert knowledge of tracking devices.

'What was the last instruction you received?'

'To get out of the car and start walking up the road. I was told I'd be met by someone. I started walking and the next thing I knew there were these loud bangs, everyone was running, there was that gas… I remember shutting my eyes, getting knocked about by all these people running, and then someone punched me in the side of the head and grabbed the bag.' She touched the left side of her face where she'd been struck. The area was red and beginning to swell.

'And did you get a look at your attacker at all, Mrs Devern?' asked Mo.

'No, I didn't see anything. It all happened so fast.'

She took a gulp from the water and hunted round for her cigarettes, but couldn't find them.

'Has anyone got a smoke?'

Tina reached into her jeans, pulled out a battered pack of Silk Cut and a cheap lighter, and lit two cigarettes, one for Andrea and one for her. Andrea gave her a curt nod of acknowledgement.

'So, the person on the phone made you remove all these devices,' said Tina, a hint of scepticism in her voice, 'which you did…'

'That's right.'