A Good Day To Die (35 page)

I came to the second set of doors. To my right, darkness. To my left, light. I took a step forward and looked in.

Something immediately caught my attention. A leg, partly concealed by the angle of the open door.

The sirens had been joined by a third, the whining getting louder as they entered the estate.

A trap. It could be a trap.

With a sudden lunge, I kicked the door wide open and burst into the brightly lit office, gun swinging in a wide arc.

And groaned.

Because I was too late. Had always been too late. And had walked once again into a trap that had been expertly set for me.

40

For a moment, I simply stared at the corpse, unable to move. Full of regret that yet another innocent life had been taken.

Then I shook myself out of my torpor and walked over to him.

DCI Simon Barron was slumped against the wall at a slightly crooked angle, his eyes closed, his white shirt and pale blue tie drenched in blood. I could see that he'd been stabbed a number of times in the chest and abdomen in what must have been a frenzied attack. The entry wounds were clearly visible, and the blood that had flowed freely from them had now coagulated. A pool had formed round the top of his legs and had dyed the edges of his khaki raincoat crimson. His face was white and I guessed he'd been dead a while. An hour or two, at least.

The noise of the sirens was now continuous and coming closer and closer. Through the window I
could see the blue and white flashes of light dancing across the night sky above the estate's buildings. The vehicles were on the main road but no more than a couple of hundred yards away, and as I watched the first police car turned into the cul-de-sac and approached the Tembra Software building at speed.

At that moment, I knew they were coming for me.

I turned and ran like I've never run before, charging along the corridor and across the landing, taking the steps three and even four at a time. The third floor became the second floor, the second the first, and outside I could hear the cars pulling up and the shouts of the arriving police officers as they began to secure the area. I knew they would go round the back and surround the building to make sure their fugitive didn't get out. I had to beat them to it.

I turned left on the first floor and raced down the corridor, trying to remember where I'd seen the broken window. When I got to the last door on the right, I opened it, ran inside, and saw that I'd guessed correctly. Running forward, I kicked the glass jutting up from the base of the window and knocked it flying. It shattered loudly as it hit the ground. I clambered out, cutting my leg in the process, and slid down the nearby guttering. There was a tearing sound as it came away from the wall. I was still five or six feet from the ground and had
to jump the rest of the way. I hit the concrete hard, a piece of the guttering landing on my head, then turned to run round the back of the building.

I heard someone shouting 'Stop! Armed police!' from behind me, but I kept running, across the empty car park and up to the wall at the back, taking it in one go. Rather than trying to manoeuvre myself over, I simply went head first and hoped for the best, the best being in this case a painful landing on my hands, followed by an involuntary two-second handstand and then a forward roll into a puddle, during which the .45 fell out of my waistband, though thankfully didn't discharge.

I jumped up again, retrieving and replacing the gun in the process.

I was in a large builders' yard filled with various pieces of plant, a handful of combi vans and a number of metal sea containers. Plenty of places to hide, and no sign of anyone. I was tired, but adrenalin, coupled with the knowledge that the police were right behind me, kept me moving. I could hear one of the coppers shouting that I'd gone over the wall, and he sounded close, so I started running again.

I cleared the builders' yard in the space of thirty seconds and found a hole in the fence at the other end which led onto one of the estate's roads. I went straight through it, ran a further hundred yards, turned into another road and ran down that. When I got to the end, I turned right and slowed to a walk.
There weren't many pedestrians about, but there was enough slow-moving traffic to delay any vehicle-bound pursuit.

I knew then that I should have called it a day. I could have walked away and got on the plane back to the Philippines, confident at least that the reason Malik had died was connected somehow with what had happened seven years previously, and that Pope, Blacklip, Slippery Billy and now Blondie had been punished for it. There were unanswered questions, of course, such as exactly what it was that Jason Khan had found out months after the end of Ann's sessions with Dr Cheney that had prompted him to meet Malik and for the killing spree to start, but no one could say that I hadn't done my bit for my old colleague and friend, and that I had given him some measure of justice, even if his family would never know the true story.

I should have called it a day, but of course I didn't. Somewhere out there was a man who had worn a black leather mask and tortured a young girl to death one night, and who, quite possibly, still walked free. I wanted to find him, and those still helping him.

And this time I knew where to look.

41

I waited for him in the dim, reddish light of the underground car park. I knew he'd come. His car, a Jaguar S-Type Sedan, perfect for a man of his seniority, remained parked in his spot. He was working late that night. It was half past seven and I'd been there close to half an hour, standing in the corner shadows not far from the pedestrian entrance. Men and women in business suits came through every so often, the high-pitched ding of the lift or the tattoo of footfalls in the stairwell announcing their arrival. Their numbers were getting fewer now as the evening wore on, and only a couple of dozen vehicles remained, dotted about the cavernous room.

My leg hurt where I'd cut it on the glass. Before I'd come here, I'd found a pharmacy and bought a basic first-aid kit. I'd then returned to my room in Paddington, strapped it up crudely with the bandage, and finally cleared the place of all
the essentials, before checking out. I was now beginning to get used to the dull throbbing of the wound. To be fair, I was now beginning to get used to injuries in general, having received more in the past five days than I'd had in the previous ten years. It was the price I had to pay for operating alone.

I was doing some stretching exercises to encourage the circulation and warm up a bit when the lift dinged again. A couple of seconds later, a shortish man with thick black curly hair and a moustache emerged, his footsteps echoing as he strode purposefully towards the Jaguar, a briefcase in one hand. As I watched from my vantage point ten yards away, he flicked off the car alarm remotely, then opened the car boot and chucked the briefcase in, before heading round to the driver's door.

As he got in, I drew the short-barrelled Browning pistol Tyndall had supplied me with and came out of the shadows, screwing on the silencer as I walked towards his car. The engine started with a low rumble that hinted at a lot of power.

He didn't see me until I'd pulled open the front passenger door and deposited myself in the seat next to him. A shocked expression shot across his face and he started to protest, but I wasn't having any of that. I smiled and shoved the silencer against his cheek, using enough force to push his head back against the window. He ended up in a position that looked very uncomfortable.

'My wallet's in my jacket pocket,' he spluttered. 'Take it, please.'

'No thanks, Theo,' I said. 'I've got a better idea. I'm going to ask you a question and you're going to answer it truthfully. Otherwise I'm going to shoot you in the face right now, then drop you in the back seat and let you bleed to death while I drive your nice flash car out of here.'

I waited for Theo Morris to protest, to tell me he didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but he said nothing, just whimpered slightly. His expression slackened, or maybe it was just the way the silencer was pushed against him, but I knew that he was aware that I was the man he'd either been trying to have killed or framed these past few days, and I could tell that he wasn't going to bother playing the innocent. I also had a feeling that he wanted to unburden himself. It was something in his eyes. Defeat? Guilt? Probably both. This guy was no ruthless pro. He might have been good at handing out orders from the comfort of his air-conditioned office, but he wasn't the sort to get his hands dirty. Somehow that made him worse.

'What's the question?' he asked after a long pause.

'I think you know, but I'll ask it anyway. When you sent those men to kill Les Pope on Sunday, and to kill Andrea Bloom at her home in Hackney yesterday, on whose authority were you acting?'

'Oh, God ...'

'He can't help you now, Theo. Only
you
can help you.'

'I swear I didn't know it would end like this. I didn't ask for the bloodbath last night. I just wanted Crown to shut the girl up. How was I to know he was such a bloody psychopath?'

'Crown? Was he the blond guy? The one who was sent to meet me on Saturday with the ticket back to the Philippines?' Theo tried to nod, but it was difficult in the position he was in. 'Well, Crown's dead now. And so will you be unless you answer my question.'

He paused again and I leaned forward and pushed harder on the gun. His cheek began to go red and he grunted in pain.

'My boss,' he said. 'The company's CEO, Eric Thadeus. He got me to organize it. I wouldn't have done it, but--'

'But he paid you well, no doubt.'

'I told you, I honestly didn't know that it would end up like it did. I didn't want it to get messy.'

Theo Morris was only a little guy, and slightly built, too, apart from round the belly area. But I guessed that when he was in the boardroom he was full of confidence and swagger. This was definitely a man who lived his life knowing he was one of the top guys in his closeted little world, a big fish in the corporate pond. Only now, as he sat here
helpless with me, was he discovering that true power came not from the influence you held amongst your kind, but from the barrel of the gun, and unfortunately for Theo, he was facing down the wrong end of it.

'Where's Eric Thadeus tonight?'

'I don't know.'

'Yes, you do. Don't lie. There's no point. Whatever he's promised you that you haven't already got, you're not going to get now, so don't waste your time protecting him. He's finished, and you're staying with me until I find out where he is.'

'He's at his place in Bedfordshire. He's staying there until tomorrow. After that he's flying out to another of his homes in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks.'

I kept the gun where it was for a couple of seconds, then decided he was telling the truth, and removed it from his face, positioning it instead across my lap with the silencer still pointing in his direction.

'All right, turn off the car phone.' He did as he was told. 'Now start driving. We're going to Bedfordshire.'

Theo looked at me like I was mad. 'He's got security there.'

'I'm sure he has. Start driving.'

I think he knew there was no point in arguing or begging for his life, so he put the car in reverse, pulled out of his space and settled once again
for telling me he'd never wanted it to end like this.

I told him to shut up. I really wasn't interested.

The drive was long, silent and uneventful. Theo tried only once to make conversation but barely managed a few words before I cut him off and put the radio on, turning the volume up. I didn't want to hear anything from him - not small talk, not excuses. Nothing. As far as I was concerned, he was as guilty as all of them.

I tried not to think, working hard to empty my mind of all its fears and doubts. I'd been betrayed, and betrayed badly; I was trapped in a country in which I'd been a fugitive from the law for three years. If I was captured, I'd be lucky to see the outside of a prison cell again. If I escaped, I wasn't at all sure I could go back to where I'd come from and carry on as before in business with a man I'd once trusted, but who now had questions of his own to answer. Tomboy Darke had relationships with people who'd been involved in some horrific acts, and things between us could never be the same again. But now wasn't the time to dwell on that.

The radio station we listened to as Theo drove was Magic FM, which specializes in easy listening tunes. They played 'The Boys Of Summer' by Don Henley, followed by a couple of old Elvis Presley numbers. Neither of us sang along, although Theo appeared to relax a little and his driving became
less erratic. I noticed that he was still sweating, which was understandable.

At eight o'clock, the news came on. As Magic was a London-based station, the top story was the massacre at Andrea Bloom's place the previous evening. Theo sighed loudly and tutted as the newsreader reported that two men and two women had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death at
a
house in Hackney, in what she called 'another terrifying tale from the violent city'. The identities of the victims had not yet been released and the police were keeping an open mind regarding the motive, which usually meant they didn't have
a
clue. There was no mention of Barron's death in Wembley, but no doubt this would follow soon enough.

I lit a cigarette, sat back and watched Theo as he drove us up the M1 in the direction of Bedfordshire.