The Last 10 Seconds (14 page)

Twenty-five

‘What did you shoot him for? You told me there was going to be no need for violence, and then your buddy here blows away a copper at point-blank range. Why?’

We were now in the second getaway vehicle, a clapped-out minibus that had been stolen the day before from an old people’s home – a typically callous move from Tyrone Wolfe. He and Haddock were again in the front, with me sitting directly behind them, my shotgun resting on the back of Andrew Kent, who was lying lengthways along the narrow aisle separating the seats, face down and not speaking, eyes tightly shut. He was clearly desperate not to see any of our faces now that we’d removed our balaclavas, since to do so would effectively sentence him to death. Blood was still dribbling out of his head where I’d hit him earlier and one side of his face was covered in a network of dark rivulets. Behind me sat Tommy, smoking a cigarette and not saying a great deal.

The people carrier had been dumped in a deserted car park behind a block of flats on the massive Barnsbury Estate in Islington, barely a mile from the snatch point, and set on fire to destroy any forensic evidence linking any of us to it. According to Wolfe, the area wasn’t covered by CCTV cameras, and no one had seen us change vehicles, so the minibus we’d been in for the last fifteen minutes as we drove north-west across London, mingling naturally with the other traffic, was clean.

During that time I’d sat in brooding silence, shocked at what had just occurred. I was also thinking furiously about what I had to do to bring this situation under control. I knew I needed to gather as much information as possible about our next movements so I could lead police reinforcements to wherever we were going. First, though, I wanted to vent my spleen at the men who’d just gunned down a fellow police officer and, for the benefit of my recording device, get them to admit what they’d done, so there’d be no way they’d see the outside of a prison cell again.

Wolfe was in the passenger seat now, Haddock doing the driving, and he swung round in the seat, the sharp, unforgiving features of his face pinched into an angry glare, the squint even more obvious than usual. ‘He got shot because he went for me, all right?’

‘But you got the guy off you,’ I snapped back. ‘At that point he wasn’t offering any resistance, so you could have just left it at that. Or if you were that worried, given him a whack with the butt of your gun. But no. Instead, this prick’ – I pointed at Haddock’s huge bulk – ‘shoots him, and now we’re going to have every copper for a hundred miles after us, not just for kidnap but murder as well. Maybe more than one, after the way you shot up the unmarked car that was following.’

‘Who are you calling a prick?’ demanded Haddock, glaring at me in the rearview mirror and slowing the van as he did so. ‘You apologize, or I’ll cut your fucking head off.’

Wolfe told him to keep driving. ‘We don’t want to attract any attention. And you,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘apologize to him. Now.’

I faced him down, no longer bothered about angering either of these two psychopaths, and finding it close to impossible to keep a lid on my emotions. More than anything right then I wanted to turn the shotgun on them, tell them who I was, and remind them of what they did to my brother. Then pull the trigger. Instead, I shook my head angrily. ‘Fuck you. Fuck you both. You’ve landed me in all kinds of shit.’

‘Come on, boys, calm down,’ said Tommy from behind me. ‘What’s done is done.’

He’d already expressed his displeasure at the fact that a cop had been shot. But typical Tommy, after what could be described as a bit of a moan, he’d accepted it as an occupational hazard, and was now clearly trying to return everything to some sort of status quo. Like most violent criminals I’ve come across over the years, he rarely wasted time worrying about the plight of his victims, particularly those who wore a uniform, and I wondered if he used the same words to summarize what had happened to my brother.
What’s done is done
. Then just carried on with a big shrug of his shoulders, unworried by the havoc he’d caused in my family.

‘Well put, Tommy,’ said Wolfe. ‘What’s done is done. And I did what I had to do. If I’d tried to give him a slap and he’d grabbed the gun again, the whole thing could have been a complete fuck-up. There were four cops there as well as paramedics. We had to send a warning. That’s all there is to it. It was either put a hole in that copper, or run the risk of getting caught and spending ten years apiece inside.’ He sighed. ‘No one wants to shoot a copper—’

‘I do,’ said Haddock. ‘I hope the bastard’s dead. And I still want an apology from this dog.’

‘Leave it, Clarence,’ said Wolfe, before turning back to me and putting on a conciliatory expression. ‘What I’m trying to say, Sean, is that I don’t like hitting cops either, it’s always way too much hassle. But the fact is we’ve done what we were paid to do, which is get hold of this little fuck.’ He motioned towards Kent, who remained stock-still with his eyes shut. Instinctively, I pushed the barrel of my shotgun against the small of his back. After every other mistake I’d made with this investigation, I wasn’t going to let a dangerous and deranged sex killer escape.

I sighed, wiping sweat from my brow with a gloved hand. The minibus had no air conditioning and the night was muggy and warm. ‘I want the rest of my money,’ I said, knowing I had enough evidence now to bag both Wolfe and Haddock, and finally avenge my brother. ‘Then I’m gone.’

‘You’ll get it when I’ve spoken to my client.’

I wondered how the client was going to take the news that his plan for revenge had led to the death of at least one innocent person. If he was that interested in obtaining real justice, he was going to be very unhappy.

‘Speak to him now,’ I said.

‘Don’t order me around, Sean. I’ll speak to him at the rendezvous.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘It’s a nice, quiet spot, a long way from any nosy neighbours. About half an hour’s drive away.’

‘Who does it belong to?’

‘What do you need to know that for?’

‘Because I want to make sure there’s no paper trail that’ll lead the police to your client, and then back to me. That’s why.’

‘There’s no paper trail attached to this place. It’s been abandoned for years.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘The client told me, all right?’ Wolfe was sounding exasperated. ‘Now stop asking me questions. You’ll get the rest of your money later, and that’ll be the end of it.’

I fell silent, knowing I was going to have to keep my wits about me for the next few hours because one thing was certain: no one in this van could be trusted. I’d had an uneasy feeling about this job from the beginning, but now, sitting here in the stifling heat, a trickle of fear ran down my spine.

It was a feeling that grew a whole lot worse when Andrew Kent opened his eyes, looked up at me – his eyes full of the same kind of fear I’d seen in the uniformed cop in the moments just before he was shot – and said something very strange indeed.

Twenty-six

‘You’re not one of them, are you?’

Kent spoke the words in a high-pitched, effeminate voice that fitted perfectly with the soft, boyish features of his face – features that I knew to my cost were dangerously deceptive. He’d almost escaped earlier, and my stomach still ached from where he’d caught me with what had been a particularly deft karate kick.

I tensed. Surely he couldn’t know my true identity. I’d never seen him in my life before tonight.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

Wolfe shot round in his seat. ‘Shut the fuck up, you little runt! No one’s interested in what you’ve got to say. Tommy, gag this bastard.’

‘I’m innocent,’ said Kent desperately, staring up at me. ‘I swear it. You know that. They’re never going to pay you.’

‘I told you, shut it or I’ll kill you myself!’ roared Wolfe, pointing his Sig down at Kent’s face.

But Kent didn’t back down, and when he spoke again there was a new defiance in his voice, and a glint in his eye. ‘But you can’t, can you? Because you need what I know. Don’t you?’

A flicker of doubt crossed Wolfe’s face, then disappeared. ‘I can still put one in your kneecap easily enough. And I’ll do it with pleasure too. Cos I’ve got no truck with filthy little sex cases. Tommy, get that gag on him.’

Tommy bit off a length of extra-thick parcel tape from a roll he had on him and grabbed Kent by the hair, lifting him off the floor.

But I used my foot to push him back down so that Tommy had to let go. ‘I want to hear what he’s got to say. I thought we were here on a vigilante job.’

‘You don’t know anything,’ said Kent to me, gabbling out the words. ‘This is nothing to do with a vigilante job. It’s much bigger. I’ve got information they need and once they’ve got it they’ll kill all of us. You too.’

‘Shut your mouth now!’ Wolfe’s words reverberated around the minibus’s interior. Ripping off his safety belt, he lurched snake-like between the front seats, grabbing Kent by the throat with one hand and shoving the barrel of the pistol right into his face. ‘One more word,’ he whispered, ‘just one more word, and we’ll have a dead nonce in here.’

As he lay there, unable to speak, the pressure of the gun contorting his features, Kent met my eyes and mouthed two words: ‘Help me.’

I suddenly felt terribly sorry for him, lying helpless on the floor of a filthy van. He might have been a murdering rapist, but there was no excuse for treating him like this. It was sadistic. If I was going to have any future outside prison walls, then I was going to have to behave like a cop and do my best to protect him. And if he had information that might have a bearing on this op and the identity of the client, I needed to hear it.

‘I want to know what he’s got to say,’ I repeated firmly.

‘Well you can’t,’ snapped Wolfe, glaring at me from barely two feet away now. ‘You’re just the hired help, remember?’

That’s when a part of me just snapped. Being spoken to like that by the man who’d murdered my brother made the red mist come hurtling down, and before I could even think about it I’d lifted my shotgun and pointed it at Wolfe, so that the end of the barrel was barely six inches from his chest. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. You’ve messed me around enough. I’m entitled to know what this piece of shit’s talking about, so do me a favour and drop your gun. Now.’

But Wolfe made no move to pull his pistol away from Kent’s face. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure, but now that I’d made the move I was going to have to see it through. ‘I don’t like the way this whole thing’s gone down,’ I said, keeping the shotgun trained on him, my finger steady on the trigger. ‘I want to know why we’ve sprung this guy, who your client is, and where exactly we’re going. And I want to know it now.’

‘Come on, boys,’ said Tommy uncertainly from behind me. ‘Let’s all calm down and do what we’re meant to do. Sean, stop pointing that thing at Ty.’

‘I’m being bullshitted, Tommy,’ I said over my shoulder, ‘and I don’t like it. I want to know what this guy’s got to say.’

‘You’d better drop it now,’ hissed Wolfe, his whole body tensing.

‘I told you we shouldn’t trust this dog,’ Haddock rumbled from the driver’s seat.

I could hear my heart thumping in my chest, and I knew I’d made a bad move, because now I’d made an enemy of both the men in the front of this vehicle, and there was going to be no coming back from that. But there was also something badly wrong here. This wasn’t a vigilante job. It never had been, which I guess I should have known all along. But what did Wolfe want with a suspected serial killer like Kent? From what little I could gather, Kent had information that made him confident Wolfe couldn’t kill him. I had no idea what it was, but if it had something to do with Wolfe’s client, I needed to hear it. I already had enough evidence on the recording device to convict Wolfe and Haddock. If I got out now with Kent, I could find out what he knew, deliver him to the authorities and take my chances with the inquiry that was sure to come later.

But first I had to get out.

I stared at Wolfe. He stared right back.

My whole world had been reduced to the interior of a tiny van that smelled of age and sweat.

‘Drop the gun,’ I repeated, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

Wolfe kept it pressed in Kent’s cheek. ‘Or what? You’ll pull the trigger? I don’t think you’ve got the balls, son. Cos I’m looking in your eyes and I can tell you won’t do it.’

I swallowed, conscious of a bead of sweat running down into the corner of my eye, forcing me to blink.

That was when I felt something cold against the back of my head. ‘I think it’d be better if you dropped yours, Sean,’ said Tommy. ‘I’m sorry, mate, but it’s better this way.’

I hadn’t expected this from Tommy, but maybe I should have done. After all, his first loyalty was always going to be the crew. Even so, I still felt a sense of relief as I lowered the shotgun, which lasted as long as it took Wolfe to jerk it from my hand, turn it round, and shove the barrel between my legs while at the same time placing the pistol right between my eyes. For the first time in my life I was on the wrong end of three different firearms.

‘Cover Kent,’ Wolfe snapped at Tommy. ‘And put that gag on him. Tie his hands behind his back too. I don’t want that bastard moving an inch.’ Then he turned to me, his face a screwed-up ball of pure hate.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t, because I knew with absolute certainty that the man holding the gun against my head was the cold-blooded murderer who’d shot my brother all those years before, and that now it was my turn. I’ve been close to getting killed before. Jesus, I’d been close enough earlier that day. But not like this. I could feel the coldness of the barrel pressing into my skin, and see the dark contempt in Wolfe’s good eye. I couldn’t even repeat the trick I’d used earlier and swat the gun away, not when there were three of them trained on me.

Wolfe clicked off the Sig’s safety catch, his lips curling upwards in a sadistic sneer, and I saw his index finger tightening on the trigger. ‘Not so nice now, is it, Seany boy? Having someone point a piece at you.’

I swallowed hard, my heart hammering in my chest, as possibly the last ten seconds of my life ebbed away, and wondered whether John had experienced the gut-wrenching terror I was feeling now as I sat there waiting to die, knowing there was nothing I could do to prevent the bullet from coming. I was helpless, and everyone in that stinking van knew it.

‘Don’t do it, Ty,’ I heard Tommy say. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, holding a small snub-nosed revolver against Kent’s neck while he put the tape over his mouth. ‘We’re all pretty emotional after what happened. Sean shouldn’t have done what he did, no question, but we’ve all done stupid things in the heat of the moment, and we don’t want any more complications right now, do we? So come on. Let’s all put the guns down, get to the rendezvous and sort it out there.’

‘What do you reckon, Clarence?’ said Wolfe, not taking his eyes off me.

‘Blow his fucking head off. He’s a liability, and we don’t need him no more.’

The minibus fell silent. It was decision time. Life or death.

Wolfe nodded slowly as if he’d come to a decision. ‘The next time you point a gun at me,’ he said, speaking slowly and carefully enunciating every word, ‘I will kill you without a second’s thought. Do you understand that?’ Pause. ‘Do you?’

‘Yeah,’ I answered, experiencing a sense of relief so powerful I almost vomited.

‘Good,’ he said, removing the gun and replacing it in his waistband before taking the shotgun out from between my legs.

Then, without warning, he slammed the butt into my face and my whole world exploded in searing pain.