Fifty-three
He didn’t see me. He wasn’t even looking my way as he walked over to the chair containing Billy’s corpse and crouched down beside it to pick up an empty shell casing, his back to me.
I had one chance, and I seized it.
Taking two swift but near-silent steps across the floor, I scooped up Dougie’s revolver and pointed it straight at his back. ‘Drop the gun.’
Tommy stopped, then turned slowly in my direction, and I saw that the cut on his brow that he’d had in the cellar the previous night was now bandaged.
‘I said drop it. Otherwise I’ll shoot you dead. Right here. Right now.’
We stood facing each other. He held the gun down by his side, and there was an expression of vague amusement on his face. ‘Well, well, well. I didn’t expect to see you here. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m only going to say it one more time,’ I stated calmly. ‘Then I’m going to shoot you.’
‘You won’t. I could tell right from the minute I met you that you were no killer.’
But he was wrong. I was now. I cocked the revolver and pointed it right between his eyes, holding it perfectly steady. ‘One thing you ought to know about me. I’ve been trained how to use a gun, and I’ve had a lot of practice. I shot three people yesterday. And the one I meant to kill is dead. Now, I’m going to count to three. If you’re still holding that thing then, it’ll be the last thing you ever hold. Your choice.’
There was still a glint of amusement in his eyes, but this time he cooperated, placing his weapon carefully on the floor.
‘Put your hands in the air.’
He did as he was told. ‘So, what are you going to do now? Put a bullet in my head while I stand here defenceless?’
‘You deserve it, Tommy.’
‘I’m just doing my job.’
‘On behalf of who exactly? Who is it who wants that USB stick Dougie MacLeod delivered? And what’s on it?’
‘You’re well informed, Sean. I’ll give you that. And you know how to get out of a sticky situation too. I misjudged you last night. I didn’t think you’d be capable of getting out of that burning building like that.’ He whistled with admiration. ‘I have to say, I was impressed.’
‘I’m still waiting for answers, Tommy,’ I said, tensing my finger on the trigger. ‘Don’t make me impatient.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m walking out of here, Sean, and I suggest you do the same. There’s nothing you can do for your friends here, and you’re as deep in all this shit as I am.’
I moved the gun down so it was pointed at his knee. ‘I might find it difficult to kill you in cold blood, but I’m sure I could stretch to blowing a hole in your kneecap, especially as you’ve just murdered my old boss and his son.’
He frowned, giving me a disbelieving look. ‘You’re a cop? No way. I had you checked out. Thoroughly.’
‘Not thoroughly enough.’
‘So why did you shoot those two gun dealers yesterday? And hold up a police van at gunpoint? What sort of cop does that?’
It was a good question, but one I wasn’t prepared to answer. ‘I’m the one holding the gun, Tommy, so I’m the one asking the questions. Who are you working for?’
‘A man called Alpha. I don’t know his real name.’
‘I thought he was Wolfe’s client.’
Tommy’s look was contemptuous. ‘Tyrone Wolfe liked to think he was the big leader but he never ran shit. He just thought he did. He traded on the fact that he was this big armed robber and thug, but he was no organizer. And nor was that idiot Haddock. Wolfe might have thought Alpha was his client, and I was happy to let him believe it, but it was me Alpha approached to organize the Kent snatch.’
‘Why was he snatched?’
‘Because he’d filmed something very sensitive – don’t ask me what it was, I didn’t ask – and Alpha needed to make sure all copies of the film were destroyed. He also wanted to make sure that there was no way the job could ever come back to him. That’s why he wanted Wolfe and Haddock got rid of afterwards. He thought they might blab.’
‘So, you killed your own friends.’
‘There was no love lost between us. They were always treating me like a junior, even though it was me who brought in most of the money. No, I was happy to get rid of them.’
‘And me as well?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry, Sean, that was just business. I always liked you.’
‘But last night when I found you in the cellar, you were bleeding . . . I thought you were dead. Was that all fake as well?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t. That slippery toe-rag Kent got free. While you were locked away, and Ty was off burying the guns, I got rid of Haddock, then went down to the cellar to find out what Kent had done with that film he was meant to have taken. As soon as I showed him the hammer and knife I was going to use on him, he started blabbing. He told me he’d only kept one copy, and that was on a USB stick that was attached to a bunch of keys he’d had on him when he was nicked. Fancy that, eh? It was in some store cupboard in the cop shop and no one had spotted it.
‘Anyway, when I went over with a knife to finish Kent off – nice and quiet because I didn’t want anyone hearing – I got a bit of a shock. The bastard wasn’t as well taped to the chair as I’d thought. He’d managed to get an arm free, and as I bent down he lashed out and got it out of my hand. Just like that. He was so damn quick, by the time I knew what was happening he was out of the chair and on me. He would have killed me too, if it hadn’t been for you turning up.’
‘So I saved your neck.’
‘Yeah,’ he said with a small smile.
‘You did.’ ‘You didn’t have to kill these two,’ I said, motioning towards Dougie and Billy, and feeling the anger build in me.
‘I couldn’t risk letting either of them go. The kid had seen me, and it wouldn’t have taken the cops long to realize that the old man was the one who’d lifted the stick from the station and put stuff in Kent’s drink in the cells. He was a loose end.’
I swallowed hard. Dougie had been a good man and he’d done a lot for me over the years. I wasn’t going to allow Tommy to get away with this.
‘Where is the stick?’
‘I destroyed it.’
‘And you didn’t even want to know what was on it? I don’t believe you, Tommy. I think you do.’
‘I’m a pro, Sean. I don’t ask questions that don’t concern me. Neither should you. That way you’ll stay alive and live to a ripe old age. Now, I’m walking out of here, and I suggest you do too.’
He took a step forward, his bearing confident.
‘Stay where you are,’ I snapped, thinking of Tommy’s brutal callousness, working myself up into the kind of rage that would allow me to pull the trigger and rid the world of him.
He dived into me fast, like a cat, knocking the revolver to one side and driving me back into the wall. The gun went off with a deafening retort, the bullet ricocheting uselessly through the room.
I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my ribs but I kept hold of the gun and dodged the headbutt he launched as a follow-up. His forehead bounced off my shoulder and caught the edge of the brickwork with an angry crack. Seizing my chance, I delivered two short rabbit punches to his kidneys, and twisted away from him.
He tried to hold on and we did a manic pirouette across the floor, struggling savagely with each other. As he concentrated on trying to get me to release my grip on the gun by twisting my wrist, I slipped a foot behind his and pushed with everything I had.
He stumbled and lost his footing completely, letting go of my gun hand as he danced backwards across the floor, arms flailing in a vain effort to keep his balance. A desperate look crossed his face as I turned the gun in his direction. Behind him, I could see Dougie’s corpse, the blood pooling around his head, and Billy lying motionless in the chair, and this time I didn’t hesitate.
Tommy’s mouth formed a screaming ‘No!’ but any sound that passed his lips was drowned out by the noise of the bullets leaving the barrel as I pulled three times in rapid succession, watching as he was propelled across the room before landing in a flurry of arms and legs on top of Dougie, and lying still.
I stood for a good ten seconds surveying the bloody scene in front of me. Three more dead bodies to add to those from the previous night, and all for the sake of a piece of film that Andrew Kent had made. I knew now that I would never learn who’d wanted it so badly, but I was just going to have to accept that and move on. I needed to leave now. Even this early on a Saturday morning it was likely someone had heard the shots and would be calling the police.
But as I turned and headed for the door, the sound of movement made me stop dead.
Then a mocking voice spoke from behind me.
‘Bad move, Seany boy.’
I heard a series of popping sounds above the ringing in my ears, and then suddenly the revolver fell from my hands and I was pitched forward, colliding with the wall, before crumpling uselessly to the floor, my arms and legs no longer doing what they were meant to do. My vision blurred, and almost immediately I felt myself becoming terribly cold and shaky. I could feel the blood dripping down my stomach and leg, sticking to my clothes.
Slowly, I inclined my head and saw Tommy getting to his feet and brushing himself down, the pistol with silencer now back in his hand. The striped shirt he was wearing had big black holes in it where I’d shot him, yet he seemed to look none the worse for wear. I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me.
Seeing the expression on my face, Tommy tapped his shirt. ‘Bulletproof vest, Sean. Always useful in our line. I thought you’d have known that.’
‘My brother . . .’
‘What?’
I took a breath, forcing the words out. ‘My brother, John . . . the one shot during that robbery in Highgate High Street. 1995. The Gulf War veteran. The one Wolfe was bragging about.’
Tommy frowned. ‘He was your brother? Are you serious?’
‘Wolfe said he never killed him. I asked him just before he died. You were there, Tommy. Who pulled the trigger?’
‘Sorry, mate,’ he answered, not sounding sorry at all, ‘that would have been me. He just got in the way, you know?’ He took a step forward, pointing the gun down at me. ‘Just like you.’
That was when I slumped on to my side like a dying man, and with my last vestiges of strength grabbed the revolver from where it lay on the floor only a couple of feet away and swung it round in Tommy’s direction, my finger already tensing on the trigger, unsure how many bullets I’d used, not caring because this was my final chance to avenge the brother I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, since Tommy had ended his life on a street corner as if he was nothing, just an inconvenience, when in reality he was the most important person in my life.
I heard the silencer’s champagne pop just before I pulled the trigger, and the room once again exploded in noise.
Fifty-four
‘As far as the operator can see, the car hasn’t moved for the past twenty minutes,’ said Bolt over the hands-free as Tina drove past King’s Cross station. ‘So it’s almost certainly going to be somewhere in the rough square between Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road, York Way and Copenhagen Street.’
‘Thanks, Mike.’
‘Tell me you’re not doing this alone, Tina. Aren’t you meant to be giving a statement about what just happened at the Gore residence?’
‘It’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to find this car. I’m sure it belongs to the fixer.’
‘But you don’t know that,’ said Bolt, sounding more worried than ever. ‘It might have nothing to do with it. You could be making a terrible mistake.’
‘I need leads,’ she snapped back, ‘and at the moment this is the only one I’ve got.’
‘Tina, you’re going to be in real shit for this. They’re going to have your warrant card and everything. You can’t just go chasing round after leads when you’re a witness, and maybe even a bloody suspect, in the murder of a government minister. You can’t get so bloody obsessed.’
Tina gritted her teeth. She knew all this. Knew that her job was on the line. Yet there was nothing she could do to stop herself. She was too close to give up now. ‘Thanks for the help, Mike,’ she said. ‘I owe you one.’ And she hung up.
She ran a hand through her hair, trying to focus on the task at hand, knowing that when the local CID found out that she’d disappeared, they’d go spare, which was why she hadn’t brought Grier with her. After she’d organized the first uniforms on the scene and the ambulances, she’d told him to keep an eye on things, saying there was something she needed to do, and she’d be back shortly. Grier had demanded to know where she was going, and when no answer was forthcoming he’d asked to go with her, actually stating that he thought they were a team. But she’d got him in enough trouble already, and told him firmly, as his boss, to stay put. ‘It might be the last order I ever give you,’ she’d said. ‘So take notice of it.’
She took the turning into York Way, then the first right into Caledonian Street, zigzagging her way through the back roads, desperately trying to hunt down a car she only had the most basic description of. She hadn’t even had time to look at a photo. It was as if she couldn’t even stop to think things through any more. She simply had to keep moving, keep chasing leads, keep running, because the moment she stopped, that would be it. She’d be suspended, then fired, and the fixer, Alpha, would continue to walk free, as would Paul Wise, the man she now realized she’d do anything to bring down.
Mike was right. She was obsessed. Maybe even deranged. But she got results. It was she who’d come up with the lead that caught Kent; she who’d spotted the discrepancies in the Roisín O’Neill murder; she who’d found Gore. The bastards couldn’t take that away from her.
Five minutes passed. She became frustrated. Unsure of herself and her lead, knowing that every minute she stayed away from the Gore residence was another nail in her career coffin, the realization that she was finally finished as a police officer looming larger and larger in front of her.
She noticed that her hands were shaking, her breathing getting faster and faster, and she pulled over and got out of the car, lighting a cigarette and willing herself to calm down.
And that was when she heard it. Coming from the building site behind her.
The unmistakable sound of gunfire.