‘Shit!’ Heck yelled, jumping back down, racing for the door. He skirted through the wire and descended quickly to the timber platform, but it was too late. The boat was already motoring away, a good thirty yards distant. McCulkin was hunched over the wheel, but he glanced back towards them nervously.
‘You arsehole!’ Heck shouted. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’
Lauren jumped down onto the platform alongside him. ‘He can’t seriously be leaving us here?’
‘McCulkin! You think this is going to solve anything, you little shit!’
But McCulkin was already out of earshot.
Heck dragged the blue phone from his pocket and bashed in the number of the red one. Rather to his surprise, it was answered.
‘What the goddamn hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he demanded.
‘I … look, I’m sorry,’ was all McCulkin could say. ‘I didn’t … I didn’t want this, I … I had no choice, I mean … when your family are under threat …’
The words ended mid-sentence. There was a
thump
in Heck’s ear as the phone at the other end was dropped into the bottom of the boat. He gazed out over the water. The small outboard was still close enough for him to see McCulkin stagger to its gunwale, his head shapeless and lolling, his hair a glinting crimson mass – and topple over the side.
A second of stunned silence followed.
The boat continued towards the distant shore, now under its own volition. McCulkin’s body was briefly visible, bobbing like a buoy, before it sank, leaving his cap floating on the surface alongside a blurred red stain.
‘Fuck,’ Heck said slowly. ‘Fuck …
he’s been shot
!’
Lauren’s eyes bulged in shock. ‘How was he, but who shot … I mean, out here?’
The answers to these half questions were provided in short order.
Heck had no sooner tapped 999 on the blue phone when a second shot was fired – presumably from a weapon fitted with a silencer, because they didn’t hear its report. The phone was smashed from Heck’s hand, scattering in fragments across the landing platform. He snatched his hand back; the bullet hadn’t penetrated his flesh, but had struck a stinging blow, which felt as if it had come from overhead. Disbelievingly, he peered up towards the topmost parapet of the tower.
Something gleamed up there.
It was the sun. On the barrel of a sniper rifle.
Heck ducked backward, dragging Lauren with him. A silenced slug impacted on the spot where he’d just been standing. The plank footing was punched clean through.
‘Quick!’ Heck charged back up the stairs. Lauren was only a yard behind him, but another shot ricocheted from the stair’s handrail alongside her, hammering it out of shape.
‘Who … who the hell is it?’ she stammered as they plunged back inside the tower.
‘Who the hell do you think?’
‘Deke?’
‘Murdering bastard lured us here. But what really worries me is how he got to McCulkin.’
The full import of this didn’t immediately strike Lauren. Their initial predicament was terrifying enough. Inside the base of the tower, they were sheltered from the parapet above. But of course they were stuck here. There was nowhere else to go, and it surely wouldn’t be long before the sniper descended. Gradually however, the meaning of what Heck had just said dawned on her.
‘What do you mean, “how he got to McCulkin”?’
Heck mopped sweat from his forehead. ‘I’ve been worried there might be a leak in my department. Now I
know
there is. McCulkin was our confidential informant. No one outside the National Crime Group could possibly know about his connection to me.’
‘But that’s ridiculous; why would some copper …?’
‘Because whoever he is, he must be involved with the Nice Guys.’
‘Heck, you can’t be serious.’
‘It’s the only explanation. It explains a few other things too.’ He glanced out through the entrance. McCulkin’s outboard was a distant dot headed towards the smudged, brown coastline. The bloody traces of McCulkin himself were no longer visible on the rippling waters. ‘Lauren, how good a swimmer are you?’
‘You’re suggesting we swim?’
‘Not to the shore. Round to one of the other gun-towers. It’s only about fifty yards.’
‘Swim in the Thames? What about the current?’
‘The alternative is waiting here until miladdo comes down. There’s nowhere to hide that I can see, and we’ve got no weapons. We’ll be like fish in a barrel.’
Even as Heck said this, there was a
clang
from somewhere overhead. Then another, and another – heavy feet were descending a metal staircase. Glancing up, they saw shadows of movement flickering through the gaps in the ceiling. Despite this, Lauren was still struggling with Heck’s suggestion.
‘Swim …?’
He took her hand, and met her eye to eye. ‘This guy’s coming down here to kill us, Lauren. Both of us. Even if we swim, I reckon we’ve only got two or three minutes to make it to one of the other towers before he gets us in his crosshairs.’
Slowly, unwillingly, she forced a nod. ‘Okay … okay.’
It was late afternoon, so the incoming tide helped them. Not that an exhausting effort wasn’t required. The nearest of the gun-towers, which was the west one, seemed a nightmarish distance away. Ploughing towards it fully clothed, through ice-cold water, was an ordeal neither of them was prepared for. All the same they swam, shoulders aching, wave after briny wave slapping them in the face and mouth. They constantly craned their necks to look back, to see if a tall, blond-haired figure had appeared on the landing platform behind them, but it was difficult to tell. The stone tower was receding, and the path they were following curved away from it. As the platform was on the south side of the stone tower, it would soon be only partially visible. That was the good news. If the killer didn’t spot them straight away on arriving there, he might not spot them at all. This goaded them to greater efforts, and now at last, the colossal, skeletal structure of the west tower was approaching. Again, the cries of gulls echoed down. The sun glinted red on its rust-covered sides.
‘Heck!’ Lauren tried to shout, coughing out water. ‘Heck … there’s no landing-stage. How do we get onto it?’
Heck didn’t answer, just grunted his way forward, arm over arm.
The four concrete legs of the tower projected outward and down from the huge superstructure on top. They had no visible base, and descended straight into the river. But in the very middle of them, a switchback stair hung swinging and creaking in the wind. It came almost to river-level, but whether they’d be able to reach it and climb up, Heck didn’t know. He trod water as he looked back over his shoulder. The stone tower was now forty yards behind them, and any figure on the landing platform would have to be standing at its southwest corner to see them. From this distance, Deke would be a matchstick man. But if he was equipped with a high-powered rifle – Heck thought again about the Dragunov he’d seen in the house at Kingston – he’d still be able to pick his targets off, especially if they were clambering wearily up this ladder and thus framed against the sky.
The river current seemed to be strengthening; it pushed them past the southeast leg of the west tower and in fact was pushing them towards their target. But now there was a danger it might push them too far. The foot of the hanging stair was about fifteen yards ahead. Its lowest rung, which again was green and slimy with algae, hung a couple of feet above the surface. It was going to be desperately hard just getting onto the thing, let alone climbing all the way to safety. What was worse, with the current at their back, they’d only get a couple of grabs for it, and then they’d be driven past and would be out of reach. Beyond the west tower, of course, there was nothing but the open waters of the estuary.
‘Christ, Heck,’ Lauren whimpered.
‘We’re almost there,’ he tried to reassure her.
The current was carrying them leftward of the stair bottom, and they had to swim hard against it, which sapped more of their depleted reserves. The stair was now almost directly overhead, zigzagging up to the octagonal underside of the superstructure, which seemed a dizzying distance away.
‘Heck, we’re going to die here,’ Lauren squealed.
‘No we’re not.’ He extended his arm, knowing he’d only get one shot at this. ‘If you miss getting hold of it, grab me,’ he said, hoping that she was close enough behind him.
It was a hell of a lunge. Heck managed to grab hold, but almost immediately his fingers slid on the greasy metal. The effort he exerted through that one wrist and hand, through those ten crooked fingers, was indescribable. Still he was sliding loose. But then Lauren reached out and caught it as well, and with her other hand she snatched the back of Heck’s collar and shoved him closer. Soon he was clinging on to the stair with two hands. They were both now gasping for breath, shivering violently.
‘Can … can you get up?’ Lauren asked through chattering teeth.
Heck said nothing at first, just hung on as he attempted to regather his strength. He glanced back in the direction of the stone tower. Still the tiny figure he was expecting had not appeared. But it could only be seconds before Deke realised which way they’d gone.
‘Because I think
I
can,’ she added. ‘Just hang on.’
Heck winced as she began to climb up him, digging a knee into his back, planting one hand onto his shoulder to lever herself higher.
‘Christ almighty,’ he groaned.
At last she was off him and onto the stair itself, which rattled violently – so much that at first they thought it might break loose at the top and collapse onto them.
‘Here.’ She took his wrist and pulled him up, though it was a mammoth effort for them both; their clothing was waterlogged, their limbs felt like lead.
If the fire escape on the old building in Salford had felt flimsy, this one was all that and worse. It didn’t so much shudder beneath their combined weight as swing. They clutched on to it, gazing at each other like frightened rabbits. Again Heck glanced towards the south tower. Deke still hadn’t appeared.
When they ascended, the stair was only wide enough for them to go single-file; its treads remained treacherously greasy and even though it had safety bars to either side, it continued to swing – soon they felt safer going up on their hands and knees. They’d passed the first switchback and were about twenty feet up, when an invisible object whipped past them.
Lauren, the combat veteran, noticed it first. She froze; spun around. Heck followed her example. It was Deke. His diminutive shape garbed in black but distinctive for its blond head, had finally appeared at the end of the south tower landing platform. He was in the process of taking aim at them again with his rifle.
‘Hurry!’ Heck shouted.
They scrambled up to the next switchback, regardless of the groaning, twisting metal, and, on reaching it, threw themselves flat. A slug ricocheted with a screaming whine.
The underside of the superstructure was now only thirty feet overhead. From here, they could see that it was webbed with barbed wire. Seconds ticked by, followed by minutes. There was no sound, just the wind and the gulls. Gradually, as nothing else happened, they began to feel the cold.
‘Why doesn’t he keep firing?’ Lauren whispered.
‘He could be having second thoughts about potting us on this ladder. McCulkin’s body will wash up downstream somewhere, with a head wound. If we do that as well, there’ll be a major enquiry. He won’t want that.’
‘Okay, so what do we do?’
Encouraged by his own line of thinking, Heck risked crooking his neck up to look. He could just see the south tower and the corner of its landing platform. Deke was no longer there. ‘On the other hand, he could be trying to lure us into the open again.’
‘Either way, we can’t lie here forever,’ she replied.
Heck rolled onto his back so that he could peer directly up the remaining flight of steps. Some ten feet below the superstructure it reached a horizontal catwalk suspended by steel rods and running across the underside from the northeast corner to the southwest. At either end, an additional ladder rose to join with the catwalk that ran around the exterior of the superstructure itself. It looked an easy enough ascent after what they’d already been through, if it hadn’t been for the coils of barbed wire cocooning the top three or four feet of the stair they were currently on.
‘Maybe it’d be easier just to drop over the side and let the river take us where it will,’ Lauren suggested.
‘And if the tide takes us out to sea, what do we do then?’
‘Surely we can make it to the shore?’
‘It’s several miles off, Lauren, and when we get there –
if
we get there – that shore is likely to consist of tidal mud and/or quicksand. We’ll drown.’
‘So what do we do?’
With a sudden recklessness, he stood upright and scaled the remaining steps.
‘Heck!’ Lauren hissed.
No shot was fired.
He didn’t look round, just kept going. She jumped to her feet and scrambled after him. Still nobody fired. Heck had now reached the barbed wire. Lauren joined him, throwing another nervous glance in the direction of the south tower.
‘What’s he doing?’ she wondered.
‘Well, he won’t just be letting us go. Come on.’
Progress up those last few feet was only possible with extreme caution. The wire had been woven around the metal stair in what was basically a large, single coil. It was possible to insinuate yourself carefully through it via a central passage, but time was now a factor – which was why Heck had no qualms about thrusting himself through quickly, even if it meant plucking both his clothes and his flesh.
‘Watch yourself,’ Lauren said, but he didn’t respond.
He was crawling just ahead of her, and for the third or fourth time she saw him draw blood. When they reached the top, they were able to climb onto the catwalk through a circular manhole. But Heck had to fight down a growing sense of panic.
‘Quickly,’ he urged her.
‘Okay, I’m coming …
ow, shit
!’
‘Don’t worry about that, for Christ’s sake!’