Stay Alive (26 page)

Sayenko ignored him as he ran over and grabbed the gun. Then, keeping the phone to his ear with his shoulder, he turned and took aim at the fleeing figure, using both hands to steady the gun. She was wearing a dark jacket and she’d already covered a decent amount of ground, but Sayenko was an excellent shot. Squinting a little, he looked down the barrel, moving it ever so slightly until the middle of her back was in his sights.

Then he fired a single shot, the suppressor masking most of the noise, and the brat fell.

‘Bang,’ he said down the phone, and turned away, fumbling in his pocket for another cigarette. ‘Now we’ve got one less witness to worry about.’

Scope saw it all happen from barely twenty yards away. The whole thing had taken a matter of seconds. As the tall, thin guy had been talking on the phone, he’d been creeping nearer, yard by yard, taking advantage of the fact that he was distracted. But then the girl had made a sudden break for it and the guy had shot her, just like that.

Scope had thought about charging the gunman when the guy had had his back to him, but he’d left it just a second too long. And now the little girl was dead and the gunman was saying down the phone that they – whoever
they
were – had one less witness to worry about. There was a triumphant tone in his voice that set Scope’s teeth on edge.

For a moment, he was too numb to move. It was hard to believe he’d just witnessed the murder of a child. The shock was physical in its intensity. It made his legs weak and his heart surge as his system filled with adrenalin. Then, as the gunman replaced the phone in his jacket and lit a cigarette, the anger came. It wasn’t the hot, passionate anger of someone who loses all sense of reason; it was far colder and harder than that. It was anger that cut through steel, anger that was utterly focused in its intensity. It was the anger of killers, and it was what Scope had felt when the twenty-year-old dealer who’d got his Mary Ann hooked on smack had been on his knees begging for his life. All humanity had left him then. He’d put five bullets in a guy barely out of his teens and, even as he’d left him lying there, bleeding out his last breaths, that cold anger had still pulsed through him.

Taking a deep breath, Scope began to creep closer to his quarry, conscious of the silence in the air.

The gunman took a deep drag on his cigarette and started walking in the direction of the track, the pistol dangling idly by his side.

Ten yards separated them, but for Scope it was at least five yards too far. The gunman was a good shot and cool under pressure. If he ran at him, he’d be cut down before he got there – there was no question of it. And if he moved any faster than he was going now he risked being heard, and already the gunman was increasing the distance between them.

Scope controlled the anger. He’d get this bastard, and he’d make him pay for killing that little girl if it was the last thing he ever did, but right now it was going to have to wait.

But then the gunman took another drag on the cigarette, and was suddenly hit by a coughing fit. He bent over double, trying to bring it under control and, as he did so, Scope took his chance and sprinted at his back, hoping he couldn’t be heard above the noise.

The gunman spat on the ground and, as he stood back up again, he must have heard Scope’s rapidly approaching footsteps, because he swung round fast, a surprised look on his face, and instinctively raised the gun.

Barely two yards away, Scope dived straight into him, knocking his gun to one side, and sending the two of them crashing to the ground. The gun went off with a loud pop and the gunman gasped as he landed on his back with Scope’s weight on top of him, and broke into a second coughing fit. Making full use of his advantage, Scope punched him twice in the face, grabbing his gun arm by the wrist at the same time and giving it a twist. The gun went off again as the gunman fought to hang onto it. Even in his current state, he was putting up surprisingly strong resistance, but then Scope sat up on top of him, and used his free hand to rain blows down on his face with every ounce of strength he could muster, driven on by the thought that the bastard had just murdered a child, and the adrenalin that seemed to course through every sinew and muscle of his body.

The gunman grunted as his nose broke and blood splattered his face, and his body seemed to go slack. His grip on the gun loosened and Scope paused just long enough to pluck it from his hand, then leapt to his feet, panting from the exertion of the violence. Below him the gunman rolled from side to side on the ground, seemingly dazed by Scope’s onslaught, his face already beginning to darken and swell.

Scope pointed the gun down at his chest. ‘Who are you?’ he hissed in the darkness. ‘And what do you want here? Tell me now or I’ll kill you.’

The gunman finished coughing, rolled to one side, and spat blood and phlegm into the dirt. ‘Fuck you,’ he grunted.

Scope stiffened, the cold anger he was feeling enveloping every other thought. ‘No,’ he said, pulling the trigger. ‘Fuck
you
.’ He shot him once in the belly, feeling too much pleasure at the spasm of pain that passed across the gunman’s features, then once in the chest, finally finishing him off with a third bullet just beneath his left eye.

Afterwards, he stood rigid for several seconds staring down at the man he’d just killed, waiting for the anger to subside. He knew he was going to have to check the little girl to see if she was still alive, even though he felt sure she wouldn’t be. There was no way she’d have got more than a few yards into the undergrowth, and the gunman had seemed confident that he’d finished her off with the shot, but he was going to have to look, however hard it might be.

A vision of that little boy back in Afghanistan staring up at him with the gaping hole in his throat tore across his mind, and he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Which was when he heard it. The faint crunch of leaves underfoot.

His eyes flew open and he saw two shadowy figures a few yards apart, approaching him quietly through the trees, some fifteen yards distant. There was no question they’d seen him. Not only that, it looked like they’d identified him as an enemy. They were both holding rifles and, even as he watched, the closest of the two put his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

Scope leapt for cover as the first of the shots rang out, scrambling behind a tree. A chunk of bark flew off as a round struck the trunk, only a few inches from his outstretched leg, and he rolled over on the ground so he was temporarily out of sight and, knowing he only had a few seconds to put some distance between himself and the two gunmen, he leapt to his feet and took off into the foliage, keeping low.

No more shots rang out and, as he ran, keeping to a straight line and using the thick undergrowth as cover, knowing he was going fast enough to outrun them, a sudden thought struck him.

He’d just run past the exact spot where Casey must have been shot. He remembered it well enough, even though he hadn’t actually seen her fall.

But there was no body there now.

‘
JESUS CHRIST, WHAT
the hell’s going on?’ said MacLean, looking over towards Sayenko’s corpse from his position behind a beech tree about ten yards away.

Keogh was standing behind a second tree nearby. His ears buzzed from the gunshots and his shoulder ached from the recoil of the rifle as he looked beyond the corpse to where the man who’d just killed Sayenko had disappeared. He’d almost had the slippery sod as well. One more second and he’d have got him in his sights and blown a nice big hole in his heart, but then that big oaf MacLean had made a noise and that had been it. The target had bolted, moving far too fast and purposefully for an amateur.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, trying to keep his voice quiet, even though the buzzing in his ears made it hard to hear himself. ‘Maybe he’s something to do with Amanda Rowan. A bodyguard, someone like that.’

‘If he was her bodyguard, where was he when we tried to snatch her?’ grunted MacLean dismissively.

It was a good point, but Keogh was completely at a loss as to any other explanation. He wasn’t a cop: MacLean was right about that. So who the hell was he?

Keogh motioned to MacLean and together they slowly approached Sayenko’s corpse, crouching low in case the stranger was waiting to ambush them.

‘Cover me,’ whispered Keogh, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and quickly searching the corpse as MacLean stood above him, looking round carefully. There were bullet holes in Sayenko’s belly, heart and head, and it was obvious that they’d been delivered by someone who knew how to use a gun. Even at a range of just a few feet, if you’re not good with firearms, you won’t make as precise hits as Sayenko’s killer had.

Keogh took out Sayenko’s sat phone and a spare magazine he had for his pistol, then got slowly to his feet. For the first time on this op – in fact, for the first time in a long time – he felt truly nervous.

‘So, what are we going to do about this fellah?’ asked MacLean.

Keogh sighed as they stepped back into the cover of the trees. ‘I don’t see how he’s going to raise the alarm. Not after he’s just committed cold-blooded murder. Our best bet’s to keep to the original plan, pick up Amanda Rowan, give the bitch a well-deserved kicking, then get the hell out of here with her.’ He took one more look into the gloom, wondering if the stranger had rescued the little girl (and, in a small way, hoping he had), then turned away, knowing that they were fast running out of options.

BOLT OPENED THE
window of the hire car they’d picked up at Aberdeen Airport and breathed in the fresh clean air as he and Mo drove along the A95, a thick wall of pine forest on one side of them, and a long sweeping loch with bleak, tree-dotted mountains rising up into a pale blue sky on the other.

It was rugged, dramatic scenery, and a far cry from the city where Bolt spent so much of his time. This was only his second visit to Scotland – the first had been a two-week family holiday to the Western Isles when he was a boy, and it had rained pretty much the whole time – but, looking at it now in all its silent, natural beauty, with virtually no other traffic on the road, he promised himself he’d come back at some point and do some fishing – even if it was on his own, now that his old fishing buddy Sam Verran had got himself a girlfriend.

‘This is where all those hikers got killed last year, isn’t it?’ said Mo, doing a great job of breaking the mood.

Bolt remembered the case well enough. Two young couples had come up from London for a weekend of hiking, and had been reported missing a few days later. All four bodies had been found in the house they’d rented for the weekend. Three had suffered stab wounds while the fourth – a teacher called Ashleigh Murray – had been found hanging in the living room. The local CID had concluded that the deaths had been a case of murder suicide, with Ashleigh Murray as the perpetrator, but the case had been racked by controversy ever since, with Murray’s family pushing hard for a full review by a separate police force.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I always thought there was something weird about that case. A woman primary school teacher, well liked by her colleagues, and with no history of mental illness, who reportedly has a great relationship with her husband, goes mad with a knife and kills him and two other people, then kills herself. I don’t buy it. I never did.’

‘Me neither,’ said Mo. ‘You know why? They never explained the injuries to the lower leg of the female murder victim. Remember? She had deep cuts consistent with being caught in an illegal hunting trap, as well as the stab wounds, but there was no sign of a hunting trap anywhere round that house.’

‘You know a lot about the case.’

‘I just remember, it all seemed wrong. Do you know what else?’

‘Go on. Surprise me.’

‘The cottage where the bodies were found was less than two miles from Vladimir Hanzha’s country estate.’

Bolt
was
surprised at that. ‘Really?’

‘Really. Do you reckon that’s a coincidence?’

Bolt frowned. ‘God knows. The thing is, there are too many coincidences around this whole case.’

‘Exactly, but I’ve got a strong feeling that our Vlad’s not going to shed much light on things.’

‘I think you’re right, but at least we’ve got a good excuse for going to see him. Any grieving parent would want to know that their child’s killer’s been found, even if he is dead.’ So far, the Disciple inquiry team hadn’t announced the discovery of Leonard Hope’s body. They’d been told from above to keep it quiet for at least another twenty-four hours. Bolt wasn’t quite sure why, but he guessed the Brass were still trying to come up with a way to announce it that didn’t make the Met look like a bunch of incompetents for losing him in the first place. Either way, it had meant that the press conference that Bolt had chaired that morning had just turned into another bout of hostile questions about the hunt for Leonard Hope that he’d been unable to answer properly, but at least it meant he and Mo could get Vladimir Hanzha’s reaction to the news of the demise of the man who’d killed his daughter first-hand.

‘He doesn’t know we’re coming, does he?’ said Mo, as Bolt slowed the car to turn up the well-kept private road that led to the estate.

‘No, and if he’s not in, we’ll wait. We know he’s up here somewhere.’

As it happened their luck was in. When they arrived at the ornate wrought-iron gates and introduced themselves through the intercom, they had a wait of less than a minute before the gates opened automatically and they were allowed to drive inside. A plainclothes security guard who looked Russian checked their warrant cards, then directed them down the left-hand fork of the road that led them a further two hundred yards through carefully manicured gardens, before they came to an impressive-looking, three-storey Georgian country house, the size of a small hotel, with turrets at either end and an imposing clock tower in the middle.

‘How the other half lives, eh?’ said Mo as they parked the car at one end of the driveway next to a brand-new crimson Ferrari and got out.