Simon Kernick - Deadline

'So, you're going to kill me then?'

Doyle looked pained. 'Course not, Mike. We go back way too far for that.'

'Sure we do.'

The lights went green and Bolt pulled away. He knew that Doyle couldn't afford to leave him alive, even if he was an old friend. When you were responsible for as many killings as he'd been this past week, you became hardened to it, and Jack Doyle had always been a hard man, unafraid to make tough decisions.

The mobile in Bolt's pocket rang.

'Aren't you going to answer that?'

Bolt pulled it out, but Doyle extended his free hand. 'Give me that,' he said, taking it off him. He examined the screen as it continued to ring.

'Who's Tina Boyd?'

Bolt tensed. What could she want now?

'She's a friend.'

Doyle smiled knowingly. 'Friend, or girlfriend?'

'Friend.'

The mobile stopped ringing and went to voicemail, before ringing again for a few seconds to announce a message. Doyle put it to his ear, still keeping the gun firmly on Bolt.

But as he listened to Tina's message, something happened. As Bolt watched in the rear-view mirror, Doyle's face, blotchy and lined after years of too much boozing, began to drain of colour, and his breathing rate increased.

'Shit!' he hissed, throwing the phone to the floor. It clattered under one of the seats. 'Shit, shit, shit! How the hell do they know about me?'

Somehow they were on to him. Bolt wondered whether this was a good or a bad thing. He had a grim feeling it might be the latter.

'It's over, Jack,' he said, trying hard to stay calm, looking for a chance to get out of range of that gun. 'You can give yourself up. None of what you've said in here's admissible in court. You'll get done for kidnapping, but you'll miss the murder charge.'

Behind him, Doyle fidgeted in his seat.

'It ain't going to happen, pal,' he said after a short pause. 'They know. Somehow they know I pulled the trigger on Ridgers. What am I going to do?'

'Give up.'

'Fuck you. No way. Got to think, pal. That's what I've got to do.'

He exhaled deeply, still training the gun on Bolt, his expression distracted as he desperately weighed up his options.

Bolt noticed he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

Without warning, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator and swung the wheel hard left, cutting up the car in the next lane.

'What the hell are you doing? Stop, or I'll shoot!'

Bolt's whole body stiffened, expecting a bullet any second, but he kept driving, aiming straight at a line of concrete bollards on the edge of the pavement.

'Stop, you bastard, stop!'

There was a tremendous bang as Bolt hit the nearest bollard head-on, his foot still flat on the floor, and the sound of shattering glass and crunching metal. At exactly the same time, a shot rang out in the car, louder than the initial crash and deafening Bolt as he was flung forward in his seat like a stringless puppet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Doyle smash into the front passenger seat, then fly backwards, his legs flailing wildly, before disappearing altogether.

Then the airbag shot out, driving the wind out of Bolt as it smothered him in its rubbery grip. For a few seconds he was crushed against his seat, unable to move, not even sure whether or not the bullet had hit him. Then, realizing that it hadn't, he managed to yank open the door handle and struggle free, desperate to get out.

He staggered round the front of the Mondeo, conscious that he was outside a parade of shops, some of which were open. Shocked onlookers were gathering fast, the majority of them looking at something round the back of the car.

'He's got a gun!' someone called out, and the small crowd moved backwards quickly.

Doyle was lying on the pavement about ten feet from the back of the car, propped up precariously on one elbow, the revolver hanging loosely from his hand. He must have been flung out of the back window, but somehow had managed to retain his grip on the gun, which was typical of him. He'd always been single-minded. Blood stained his shirt and sports jacket, and a huge gash had opened up one cheek like a second, bleeding mouth. He was in a bad way, but when he saw Bolt, something flashed in his eyes and he tried hard to lift the gun.

For a long moment they simply watched each other, oblivious to everyone around them, each man trying hard to come to terms with this terrible turn of events that had destroyed things between them for ever. Then Bolt began walking towards him, steady, confident strides that ate up the distance fast.

Doyle's eyes narrowed, but he was having difficulty focusing and the gun was shaking in his hand. Several people in the crowd gasped but no one made a move to intervene. It was as if they were watching the last dramatic scene in a TV cop drama.

Blood leaked out of the corner of Doyle's mouth, running down his chin. Bolt saw his finger tighten on the trigger, the end of the barrel pointed towards his belly, and he felt a lurch of adrenalin that almost lifted him off his feet. In that second, he leapt forward, stamped on the wrist of Doyle's shaking gun hand and drove it into the pavement. Doyle grunted and fell down on his back, losing his grip on the revolver.

Bolt snatched it up and pointed it, two-handed, down at Doyle's chest, holding it steady, his face as hard as stone.

'Don't do it!' someone in the crowd cried out, shrill and fearful.

But he was never going to. There was no point. Emma was safe, Jack Doyle was finished, and finally his rage was fading, to be replaced by a leaden sense of regret that an old friendship he'd once thought so strong could have ended up like this. Tattered, bleeding, and ultimately hollow.

Doyle's eyes closed and his head rolled to one side, more blood trailing out of his mouth and dripping on to the concrete.

Bolt took a step back, then another, until he reached the car. He propped himself up against it and noticed the crowd watching – twenty, thirty strong now – for the first time.

'Someone dial nine-nine-nine,' he said with as much strength as he could muster.

Then tiredness seemed to overwhelm him and, still clutching the revolver, he slid down the car and landed in a sitting position on the tarmac.

It was over.

Tina Boyd stood in the shadows thrown by the low-rise council flats and looked through the darkness at the brand-new four-door Lexus GS parked behind the chainlink fence on the other side of the road. It had just turned twenty past ten and she'd been standing there for more than an hour already. She wondered if she was wasting her time. Probably. But Tina wasn't the sort to give up that easily. She'd give it another half an hour before calling it a day.

She stifled a yawn. It had been a manic weekend but at least events had come to a comparatively clean conclusion, which, as most police officers would tell you, is very rarely the case. Pat Phelan had at last turned up, although the manner in which he did so left something to be desired. A thorough search by Enfield SOCO of one of the farm's outbuildings revealed his dismembered remains inside a barrel of sulphuric acid, where they were dissolving steadily; they would probably have been little more than sludge had they been left for another week. His teeth had been forcibly removed, and identification had only been possible because a large 'Ban the Bomb' tattoo on what was left of his upper arm was still just about visible, and was recognized by Andrea Devern.

The other main development that day had been the uncovering of the third person involved in the kidnap, DI Jack Doyle of the Flying Squad. A woman who lived a hundred yards from the farm had heard the gunshots the previous evening and had gone outside to investigate. She'd seen an unfamiliar car parked down the lane from her house, and because of the circumstances she'd written down the registration number. A few minutes later she'd seen a man return to the car and drive away. Because there were a number of farms in the area, and the sound of shotguns being fired wasn't that unusual, the woman hadn't called the police. But when they'd turned up at her door earlier that day as part of their general enquiries, she'd told them about what had happened. The car was quickly traced to DI Doyle, and when the witness was shown his photo she was able to say that it bore a very strong resemblance to the person she'd seen. Not enough for a conviction perhaps, but ample justification for an arrest warrant to be issued, and from that moment on his fate had been sealed. However, before he could be arrested, he'd been involved in a car crash, and was now seriously ill in hospital. A gun recovered from the scene with his fingerprints on it had subsequently been confirmed as the weapon used to murder Scott Ridgers at the farm.