Peter James - Looking Good Dead

Crouching beside her, he kissed her and whispered, ‘I love you.’

She was staring at him, wide-eyed, near motionless with shock. He unlocked her ankle shackle, then started working on the tight knot on the cord binding her legs. His hands were shaking again; the knot was so tight, so damned tight. It wasn’t moving. He tried again. Then again. ‘Are you OK, my darling?’

She said nothing.

‘Darling?’

Nothing.

Then, in a tone that sent a shiver rippling beneath every inch of his skin, she said quietly, ‘Tom, someone’s coming into the room.’

He looked up. Straight into a torch beam coming from the doorway. Then he heard the chiding voice of the obese American. ‘You are one silly boy, Mr Bryce. Very foolish indeed.’

The beam swung away from Tom’s face, around the room. In seconds it would find the Russian on the floor. Tom, his nerves jangling, made a snap decision; he had no idea what the outcome would be, but it could not be any worse than waiting here, crouched down, for the American to come over.

He sprang up and ran at the doorway, aiming straight for the man in the puce shirt standing in it. He just ran, head down, screaming at the top of his voice, ‘YOUUUUU HIDEOUS BASSTAAAARRRRD!’

He vaguely took in that the man was trying to pull something from his pocket. Something black, metallic. A gun.

Then, running flat out, he struck the American full in the stomach with his head. It felt like hitting a massive cushion. He heard a winded gasp, felt a sharp jarring pain in his own neck, and a moment of blackness. The American tumbled backwards, and Tom fell with him, hitting the floor with his head between the man’s legs.

Then a hand grabbed his neck from behind, a hand that felt cold and hard, more like a metal pincer than human flesh. It released his neck and a split second later grabbed his hair, jerking his head painfully up, then pulling him right over onto his back, thudding the back of his head down on the floor and holding it pinioned there.

Tom looked straight up into the stubby barrel of a handgun, and the eyes of ice behind it.

The man was stocky and muscular, with gelled spikes of short, fair hair and heavily tattooed arms. He was wearing a white singlet, with a gold medallion on a chain which was almost touching Tom’s face, and he smelled of sweat. As he stared down expressionlessly, he was chewing gum, mashing it with small, intensely white incisors that reminded Tom of a piranha fish.

The American was staggering to his feet.

‘You want I kill him?’

‘No,’ the American gasped, puffing and wheezing. ‘Oh no. We’re not going to make it that easy-’

Suddenly Tom heard a commotion a short distance away. A male voice shouted, ‘POLICE! DROP YOUR GUN!’

Tom felt his hair released. He saw his assailant turn in shock, then without any hesitation raise his gun and fire several shots in rapid succession. The noise was deafening; Tom’s ears went numb for a moment and his nostrils filled with the reek of cordite. Then his assailant, and the American, vanished.

An instant later he heard a different voice, English, cry out, ‘I’ve been hit. Jesus, oh Jesus Christ, I’ve been shot!’

Grace, emerging from the large elevator, pushed past a partly open door labelled with a large yellow and black warning sign: protective clothing must be worn beyond this point. Glenn Branson, first out of the elevator, rounded a corner head of him, and Grace heard him shout, ‘POLICE! DROP YOUR GUN!’

Moments later he heard five shots in rapid succession. Then Glenn crying out.

Turning the corner he saw his colleague lying on the ground, clutch-ing his stomach, blood all over his hands, his eyes rolling. Grace shouted into his radio, ‘This is DS Grace. We have a man down! We need an ambulance! Send the firearms unit straight in. And all other units.’

He stopped, torn for an instant between staying with his colleague and wanting to catch whoever had done this. Waiting outside the building he had two vans of uniformed officers, an entry team from the Police Operations Department, a public order team armed with shields and batons, and a firearms team.

He turned to Nick Nicholl and Norman Potting, who were right behind him. ‘Norman!’ he yelled. ‘Stay with Glenn!’ Then he ran on. Ahead of him he saw a heavy metal door marked emergency exit only swinging shut. He dived through it, then leapt up a stone staircase, two steps at a time, hearing Nicholl pounding up right behind him. He rounded a corner. Then another.

Round the next he caught sight of the man in singlet and jeans with short, spiky hair who Derry Blane in the Fingerprint Department had identified as Mik Luvic. ‘POLICE. STOP!’ Grace shouted.

The man stopped, turned, pointed what looked like a gun at him. Grace, flattening himself against the wall and holding Nick Nicholl back with his arm, saw a muzzle flash, heard a zing then felt shards of cement dust strike his face. The man disappeared.

Grace waited for several seconds, then ran on up the steps, totally oblivious to danger, just angry – determined to get the bastard, to get him and tear him apart with his bare hands. He rounded another corner and stopped. No sign of Luvic. Up another flight, his heart pounding, round another corner. He paused again, inching forward cautiously. Still no sign.

They had to be near the top.

Up more steps and another corner. More steps. Another corner. Then a metal door ahead of them with a big red exit sign, swinging shut. Grace raced, panting, up to it, then turned to Nicholl. ‘Careful.’

The young DC nodded.

They heard the roar of an engine, the clack of rotors.

The helicopter he had seen on the roof, Grace realized.

He pushed the door open. A hugely fat, pigtailed man, who he recognized instantly from the photograph Derry Blane had produced as Carl Venner, was in the pilot’s seat of the black helicopter. It was a small chopper, a four-seater Robinson. Luvic was untying a mooring rope attached to one of the helicopter’s skids from a metal stanchion.

Bursting through the door, Grace yelled, ‘STOP. POLICE!’

The Albanian raised his gun. Grace dived to the ground as he saw the muzzle flash. A strong wind was blowing, worsened by the down-draught of the accelerating rotor blades. Sheltering from the wind and the Albanian’s gun behind the structure next to him, the top of the lift housing, he presumed, Grace heard a crack close to his ear.

Seven shots, he had counted. How many in the magazine?

The mooring rope came free. Luvic ran round to the other side of the helicopter. Grace turned to Nicholl and yelled, ‘Stay back!’

Then he began crawling forward on his stomach, looking around for something he could use as a weapon. A short distance to his right he clocked several bags of cement and a pile of bricks. Spiky Hair was working on the second rope. Grace got to his knees and launched himself at him.

Luvic raised his gun. Grace threw himself sideways just as he saw the muzzle flash, wishing to hell he’d had the sense to put on a flak jacket. An instant later he heard the crack of the pistol. The man pulled the trigger again.

This time nothing happened.

Grace went straight for him. The next thing he knew the Albanian’s feet were flying at him, catching him full on under his chin. Grace was catapulted onto his back on the pitch surface of the roof, winded and stunned.

He heard the engine roar rise. He rolled over, blinking, still a little dazed, saw rooftops, the single tall chimney stack of what had once been Shoreham power station in the distance. Felt the wind increasing. Luvic was on board now. The helicopter’s skids were off the roof.

In desperation he threw himself at the pile of bricks. Then he saw a length of scaffold pole lying beside them. He grabbed it and hurled it in a swirling arc, with all his strength, at the tail rotor.