Relentless (4 page)

I heard myself cry out in fear, but at the same time I had
enough instinct for survival to grab the nearest chair and charge
into him, forcing its legs into his face and upper body as I tried
to get him off balance. He stumbled backwards, Lifting his arms
defensively, and this gave me time to move into a more open
space. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an open door marked
. toilets. A potential escape route, but there was no time to give
it much thought as I pressed my advantage, advancing fast and
thrusting the chair at him once again. But this time he was ready.
He jumped nimbly to one side and grabbed one of the legs,

twisting it away from me.
£ We wrestled with the chair for several more seconds, but I was
»w more exposed and he suddenly lashed out with the knife,
: catching the exposed flesh of my arm below the elbow. I felt
i sharp burning sensation but no pain. My adrenalin was pumpigtjoo
hard for that. I gritted my teeth, saw the thin gash he'd

made through the material of my shirt bubble up with blood,
and then I was having to dodge him as the knife skimmed
through the air again. It caught me in the middle of my cheek as
I twisted my face away. Another burning sensation, and I could
feel a drop of blood running down onto my neck.
The reality of what was happening now hit me. I was fighting
for my life. This man was trying to kill me, and all the time the
room was deathly silent.
He tried to get his leg round the back of mine so he could trip
me up, then yanked at the chair again and drove the knife at my
midriff. This time as I twisted away, banging hard against the
nearest bookshelf, I let the chair go, giving it as much of a shove
as I could manage under the circumstances. I don't think he was
expecting that because he stumbled backwards and almost lost
his footing.
That was my chance. I turned and ran like I've never run
before, aiming straight at the door marked toilets, knowing that
if I fucked this up, I was dead. I have a morbid fear of being
stabbed to death. Of being opened up by a hot blade and
watching my blood and my life ebb away, unable to do anything
about it. It's been with me ever since a guy we went to school
with was fatally knifed in a local nightclub a decade ago. Two
thrusts, both straight to the heart. The doormen threw him out,
not realizing what had happened, and he died on the pavement
outside. This was the fate that awaited me. A lonely, terrifying,
messy death.
As I moved through the open door, I slammed it shut behind
me. My mind registered two more doors: one to the left, one
opposite. I took the one opposite. The men's. Behind me, the
main door flew open again. He was still on my tail.
I charged into the men's, saw a row of stalls directly in front of

me, swung right, slipping on the tiled floor but somehow keeping
my balance, and kept going round the corner where there were a
number of individual urinals arranged against the wall in a rough
semicircle. Directly above one was a narrow window, maybe
eighteen inches high and three feet across. There was an ancient
latch at the bottom of it, the paint almost entirely peeled off. I
ran forward and jumped up onto the urinal, flicking the latch off
its guard in one movement, and using both palms to knock open
the window. Then I was scrambling through, head-first, my legs
flailing. As my upper body lurched out into the open air, I could
see a flat roof six or seven feet below me where the building had
been given a single-storey extension. Safety. I was halfway out,
arms outstretched, already prepared for impact, when I heard
the scuff of his boots from inside and felt him grab my leg and
pull up the material of my jeans in an effort to expose my calf.
As the blade touched my flesh but before he could make an
incision, I lashed out with the other leg and could tell by the
impact that I'd caught him in the face. For the first time I heard
; him cry out, and I kicked again, like a donkey, then put the flats
I of both hands against the outside wall and launched myself
jjbrward into thin air, as if making a championship dive.
The roof shot up to meet me and I hit it in an unsteady
Handstand, pain shooting up my wrists. My legs hovered preriously
in the air then made a rapid descent, and I ended up
lersaulting over, the roof's material digging into my scalp,
didn't even strike me to look back, to check whether my
lant was coming or not. I half-crawled, half-ran, over to the
of the building and, using my hands as a pivot, swung
slf over and slid down the wall, jumping the last couple of
et to the ground. ¦ I %ras in a small paved area enclosed by a brick wall some ten

feet high. In front of the wall were two lines of car-sized green
wheelie bins, the majority of them overflowing with rubbish.
There was a strong smell of refuse. Beyond the wall, I could hear the sound of a car coming past. Freedom.
I stood where I was for several seconds, panting heavily, then
heard movement on the roof above me. It was like being trapped
in a nightmare. The bastard was still coming.
Summoning up my remaining strength, I ran between the lines
of wheelie bins and tried to haul myself up on one that had been
positioned adjacent to the wall. I failed with my first attempt.
I'm no longer as fit as I used to be. My gym membership lapsed
three years ago, and now the occasional game of tennis in the
summer is my only real exercise. Bizarrely, as I went to try it a
second time, I made a vow to renew the gym membership if ever
my life returned to normal.
This time, with a grunt of exertion, I managed it, flopping
onto the bin's plastic top on my belly before struggling to my
feet, pulling myself up the last couple of feet to the top of
the wall and scrambling over, unable to see my pursuer in the
half-second timeframe I had before the view behind me disappeared.
I
hit the pavement feet-first and saw that I was in an unfamiliar
residential street of terraced housing. A car came past
but the driver didn't seem to notice me. I'd lost my bearings,
having never exited the university this way before. All I knew
was that I was a long way from my car.
Panting loudly, I ran across the road and headed back in the
direction of where I thought the car park was situated. I must
have looked a sight. I could feel the blood from the wound on
my face now running down onto the collar of my shirt, staining
it. The arm wound, meanwhile, was bleeding even more heavily.

It burned, as if someone was inserting white hot needles into the
skin, and I looked at it for a moment as I half-staggered, half-ran
down the street, my mouth open, sucking in air. For the first
time, I felt sick. What was happening to me? What had I done to
deserve this?
An attractive woman of about thirty in a long gypsy skirt and
halter top stepped out of her house, took one look at me and
immediately rushed back in again, shutting the door behind her.
This was London. The place where it's always best to mind your
own business and step away from trouble. A friend of Kathy's
had been mugged once, about five years ago, outside Oval
tube station at four o'clock hi the afternoon. She'd tried to
hold onto her handbag and her two attackers had kicked her
to the ground and spent several long minutes wrestling it from

her while raining down resistance-sapping blows. During
that time she estimated that some fifty people walked past.
Most had hurried away. A couple slowed down to get a better
look. No-one had intervened. Kathy had sworn that had she been one of those passing she would have done something. 'I
wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I hadn't,' she'd
told me. 'If you turn your back, it's the same as admitting that
Pyou've been defeated, and I could never do that.' This was
Itopical of Kathy. She was a woman with principles, a woman
;mho cared. But where was she now? And, more importantly, had
fit been her blood on the carpet back in the library with that
madman?
I had to locate her. Get to her soon.
i: Still running, I rummaged in my pocket for the phone. Please
ver this time. Please.
Another car came past. This time the driver slowed, and as ou%eyes met, his widened dramatically. I kept going, ignoring

the pain in my lungs. Behind me I heard the car stopping, and
him getting out.
'Mate!' he shouted. 'Mate! Are you all right?'
I didn't want to speak to him. I didn't want to speak to anyone
other than my wife. I had to get to her. I tugged out the phone,
but heard the man's footsteps coming behind me.
No, not again. Was he one of them? The bastards seemed to
be everywhere. In my home - my fucking home. At my wife's
work.
I accelerated, and as I came to a crossroads I stumbled into
the road, the phone in my hand, ignoring the shouts of the man
behind me. I heard the roar of a car to my right. A blast of a
horn, and then an angry screech of tyres. Out of the corner of
my eye I saw a huge white shape bearing down on me and I
knew I was going to get run over. I could just make out the blue lights on its roof and then it hit me with a bang that was all but
drowned out by the sound of the skid. I tumbled over the
bonnet, bounced off it once, then seemed to slide off the other
side, falling onto the road in a fetal roll a few feet from the front
passenger door.
The door opened and I came face to face with a pair of
well-polished black police-issue boots. 'Hello hello hello,' I said,
and then, for some wholly inexplicable reason, I started laughing,
the movement making my body sear with a dozen different
pains.
For the moment, I could stop running, and I felt a surge of
relief that lasted as long as it took for the police officer to bend
down, pull my arms painfully round behind my back, and tell me
I was under arrest on suspicion of murder.

DI Mike Bolt's team of National Crime Squad detectives
operated out of the middle third of a nondescript 1970s two
storey greybrick building with a corrugated-iron roof that made
a terrible racket whenever it rained heavily. It was situated on a
bland, sprawling industrial estate just off the A4 in Hayes, and
a couple of miles east of Heathrow airport. The sign in the
window said whitehouse design consultancy, and neither of
the companies on either side of them - a printer's and a recruitment
agency - had any idea that the men and women coming out
of the front door were plainclothes police officers. They kept I themselves to themselves and retained a low profile, which was
, tiie way to operate when you were involved in the murky world
[«f organized crime.
Today, however, the only occupant of Whitehouse Design
sultancy was Bolt himself, and the crime he was working on
nothing to do with the organized variety, at least on the
ace of it. It also might not have been an actual crime. At that
lent in time, it was difficult to tell.
'JJhe case was the apparent suicide of a senior member of the

judiciary. Because of the victim's high profile, and the fact that
his suicide note had been typed and unsigned, a decision had
been taken at the highest level to launch a thorough investigation
into the circumstances surrounding his death. And because
Bolt's team had just come off a very successful case in which
they'd broken up a major money-laundering ring, they'd been
chosen to carry it out.
So, rather than enjoying the fishing trip with a couple of
old Flying Squad buddies that had been planned for months,
Bolt was instead spending his Saturday afternoon sitting in his
drab open-plan office, with a view that took in a power tool
wholesaler's and a vegetable oil importer's warehouse, poring
over the initial autopsy report which had been faxed through an
hour earlier. There was a lot of crap about body temperatures,
chemicals and stomach contents, but the gist of the report was
that the victim had died between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. two nights
earlier, the cause of death an overdose of dilantin, a type of
sleeping pill. Further tests were needed to confirm how the drug
had been administered, but mild bruising on the underside of the
victim's left arm suggested that he had probably injected it.
Bolt sighed and sat back in his chair. None of this told
him much. His first instinct when the team had been assigned
the case the previous morning, after the victim's maid had
discovered the body, was that it had indeed been a suicide. The
reasons for this were as follows. One, there were no signs of
forced entry into the Mayfair townhouse where the body had
been found, and it was a secure building, with strong locks
on the front door, no rear access unless you traipsed through
someone else's house first, and a sophisticated alarm system
with panic buttons in every room. Two, there were no signs of a
struggle. The victim was lying on his side in bed with the covers

off, clad in fashionable silk pyjamas and a towelling robe, his
features peaceful. It was a perfectly natural position to die in. As
well as this, everything in the room looked untouched. There
were no overturned lamps or drawers pulled out, nothing that
would invite suspicion.
What was bugging the people on high, though, was the suicide
note. The fact that it was typed rather than handwritten was
one bone of contention. Apparently, the victim was particularly
proud of what one fellow judge had described as, quote, 'the
curved, flourishing style of his handwriting'. Another of the
victim's former colleagues had suggested that the letter, at only
two lines long, was too short. The dead man was a methodical
thinker, which probably had something to do with his legal
background. He liked to seek out and provide explanations for
events, and would, they argued, have wanted to give the public
something a bit more substantial than the fact that he couldn't
take the pain of living. Finally, the letter was unsigned, which
had led to some questioning its veracity.

None of this swayed Mike Bolt. A lot of suicide notes were
priiort. Some were only one line long. Sometimes they weren't
I signed either. The thing was, people didn't tend to be thinking
jptraight when they chose to put an end to their own lives.
But a job was a job, and to this end Bolt had set the team to
pieork interviewing friends, family and colleagues of the victim,
build up a picture of his private life. The victim had been
Bvorced for more than twenty years, was childless, and his wife ' lived in the Cayman Islands. At some point someone would
ive to talk to her. Not surprisingly, there was no shortage of
iteers among the nine people he had working under him to
ce on that particular job, but, should it be needed, he'd be the
i%jetting off over there for a couple of days. He might even try