The Last 10 Seconds (12 page)

Twenty

Grier shook his head disbelievingly. ‘My God, two of them? No one’s even mentioned that as a possibility in the whole time I’ve been on the case.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Tina. ‘Two serial killers working together is a real rarity. I can only think of one case like that in the UK in the past thirty years.’

‘The Railway Killers, Duffy and Mulcahy,’ he said, confirming that he knew exactly who Tina was talking about. ‘Do you think there could be an innocent explanation for his presence there?’ he asked. ‘Maybe she called him back to service the alarm or something?’

Tina shook her head. ‘We’ll check with the alarm company, but as far as I’m concerned, Kent may not have been the killer, but he knows a lot more than he’s letting on.’

Tina was annoyed with herself. She’d been taken in more than once by Kent. At times, even with all the evidence against him, she’d thought it possible he’d somehow been framed. Now she knew he was nothing more than a cunning and manipulative sociopath who could potentially get himself acquitted over the Roisín O’Neill case, even though he had to have had something to do with it.

‘I’m going down to see him,’ she announced, getting to her feet.

Grier looked surprised. ‘Are you allowed to? He hasn’t actually given us permission to talk to him.’

‘He gave me permission earlier,’ she said, walking past him, unsure exactly what she was going to say when she got down there. ‘That’ll do me. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

On the way down to the cells, she thought about what they’d found out. Most murder cases are fairly straightforward and throw up obvious suspects, which is why the clearance rate’s so high. Even serial killer cases aren’t usually complicated. The killer kills until the police have gathered enough evidence to identify him. Then, bang, they make an arrest, and it’s the end of the problem.

But this case was different. It was turning into a complex puzzle with no obvious solution. Kent had installed Roisín O’Neill’s alarm system, and it was now almost certain that he had been stalking her, but he hadn’t actually killed her, even though it was highly likely he’d killed the other four women. Whoever had murdered Roisín, though, had also been able to break into her apartment on a winter’s night without tripping the alarm, and knew enough about the Night Creeper’s MO to carry out a copycat crime which, though not perfect, had thrown the investigating officers off the scent. But there was no obvious motive for Roisín’s murder. There’d been no sexual assault, and in keeping with the Creeper’s MO, no robbery either. Yet the killer had added the hammer blows because he’d wanted to make the police think it was the work of the Creeper.

But why? That was what she simply couldn’t work out.

Andrew Kent could supply the answer, she was sure of that. He hadn’t been forthcoming so far, but she was determined to at least try to get him to talk before they lost him the following day when he was remanded into the custody of the Prison Service.

The Welsh custody sergeant, the one whose name she could never remember, was still on duty when she arrived at the front desk. He was sitting down with a cup of tea and a copy of the
Daily Express
. ‘You’re working late,’ he said, looking up from the paper and giving her a smile that was only just short of lecherous.

‘The fight against crime never stops,’ she told him with mock seriousness, and they exchanged a few pleasantries before Tina told him as casually as possible that she needed a quick word with Kent.

The custody sergeant looked unsure. ‘He hasn’t asked to see you again, Tina.’

‘It’s just something to do with what he wanted to talk to me about earlier.’ She flashed her best smile. ‘Come on, it’s nothing major, and it’s off the record.’

Bloody jobsworth, she thought, as he finally got to his feet and led her slowly through to the cells.

‘How does he seem?’ she asked him. A suspect’s guilt or innocence could often be guessed at by how he or she acted in the cells. Anger tended to point to guilt, as did indifference. Resignation or tears tended to point the other way.

He gave a bored shrug. ‘He’s been fine. A lot politer than most we get. I just looked in on him a few minutes ago, and gave him a drink of water.’ He stopped at the cell door and lifted the flap. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ he bellowed, peering inside. ‘Christ, where’s he got to? Mr Kent? Visitor.’

That was when Tina heard it. A tight, rasping sound coming from inside the cell. The custody sergeant heard it too, and reached for the keys.

‘Open up quickly!’ she snapped, and as soon as he’d turned the key in the lock she pushed past him and rushed inside, reaching for the CS spray in her belt in case it was a trap.

But there was no trap. Andrew Kent was lying on his back on the floor of the cell, writhing in agony, his eyes bulging out of his head as he stared up at Tina. His face was beginning to go purple and he was clutching his throat. Beside him on the floor was an upturned plastic cup.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Tina turned to the custody sergeant, who was standing stock-still, seemingly unsure what to do. ‘Call an ambulance, quickly! Now!’

He disappeared at a run, and Tina crouched down beside Kent.

But before she could do anything, he lurched over on his side, facing away from her. His legs kicked wildly as he vomited noisily on the floor. She jumped out of the way as his whole body bucked and jerked in a violent seizure, then he swung back round, immediately unleashing another projectile of vomit that only just missed her as it splattered across the floor. Finally, he rolled back on to his back and was still. His face was still a deep red, but even so, he looked a lot better than he had only moments earlier.

‘Oh God,’ he groaned, clutching his stomach.

‘What happened?’ Tina asked him, unable to stop herself from retching at the stench and mess around her.

‘They tried to kill me,’ he whispered.

‘Who?’ she demanded.

‘Get me to a hospital.’

‘Who tried to kill you, Mr Kent?’

He screwed his face into a pained grimace. ‘Jesus, it hurts.’

‘An ambulance is on the way. You’re going to be OK. But you need to tell me what happened.’

‘The water,’ he hissed, looking up at her. ‘It was something in the water.’

The custody sergeant reappeared at the door, looking flustered. ‘The ambulance’ll be here any minute.’

She grabbed the empty plastic cup and threw it towards him. ‘Where the hell did that water come from?’

‘From the tap,’ he stammered nervously. ‘I didn’t do a thing to it, honestly.’

‘Get it in an evidence bag. It’s going to need to be analysed.’ She dismissed him with an angry wave of the hand and turned back to Kent.

‘They don’t want me to talk,’ he said, his voice an angry croak.

‘Who’s “they”?’

He swallowed hard, and grabbed her by the hand, his grip surprisingly strong. ‘Get me to a hospital and I’ll tell you everything. I swear it.
I’ll tell you everything
.’

Twenty-one

It was 8.25 p.m., and I was sitting in the back of the people carrier. We were parked up on a backstreet only a few hundred yards from the place where Wolfe and Haddock had picked me up over an hour earlier, except now I was wearing gloves and a boiler suit, and holding one of the Remington shotguns I’d got in the ill-fated gun deal earlier across my knees. The car’s engine was off, the air was muggy and warm, and there was a leaden silence in the car as we waited to go to work, and all the time I was wondering how on earth I’d managed to get myself into the current situation and, more importantly, how I was going to get out of it.

After I’d got in the car earlier, Wolfe had driven us to a lock-up just up the road in Islington where the guns were stored, along with the change of clothes. We’d changed, and then each of us loaded his own gun. I’d told Wolfe once again that I wasn’t going to pull the trigger for any reason, and once again he’d reiterated that this was a straight ‘snatch’ job and no shots would be fired. ‘But there’s no way we’re walking into a job unloaded,’ he added. ‘That’d just be stupid. Never be unprepared, Sean.’

Once we were kitted up and back in the people carrier, we’d driven round while Wolfe gave me the lowdown on the job itself.

The first surprise was that there were five of us involved. As well as the three of us and Tommy, Wolfe’s girlfriend, a Thai girl called Lee he’d been seeing for the past couple of months, and who Tommy said reminded him of a dirty-looking cage fighter, was acting as a spotter. She was currently stationed at a pavement café fifty yards from my old station, Holborn. Within an hour Andrew Kent, our target, was going to be leaving through the front gates in an ambulance with flashing lights, and as soon as he did so she would let us know using the shortwave VHF radio she was carrying.

It was about a minute’s drive tops to where we were now, and as soon as the ambulance passed, we would pull out and follow it. Tommy was parked in a Bedford van a further hundred metres up the road, also armed with a VHF radio set to the same frequency, and when we gave the signal he would pull out and block the ambulance’s path, forcing it to a halt. We’d then be out of the people carrier, in Wolfe’s words like shit off a greasy stick, with Wolfe taking the front of the ambulance and making the driver open the doors at the back. Then Haddock would pull out our quarry while I provided cover. Tommy would join us in the people carrier, and we’d be out of there in the space of thirty seconds. Any police escort would, Wolfe assured us, be unarmed, since there’d have been no time to organize an ARV to accompany the ambulance, and as such they’d be helpless when confronted with our weapons.

What frightened me was the level of information these guys had. They just knew too much, which meant that they had to be privy to some kind of inside information. I’d spent more than seven years working out of Holborn nick, and I liked to think that the coppers there were decent, honourable people, not the kind who’d sell information to a scumbag like Tyrone Wolfe, or to his client, whoever that person was. But it seemed someone had. There was no other way they could know that Kent would be travelling in an ambulance, nor the time he’d be leaving. The problem was, including civilian workers and the various uniforms, it could be any one of more than two hundred people.

I sat back in my seat, conscious that I was sweating. Knowing that if this plan backfired, and shots ended up being fired, then that would be it. My life as I knew it would be over.

But I could still get out of it, I told myself, if I could get these guys nicked. Maybe not now, but later, when we had Kent in our grasp. That way we could also get to the person behind this, the client, and bring him down with them, thereby wrapping things up perfectly. I doubted if I’d ever get my job back, but it might keep me out of prison.

‘Listen,’ I said, breaking the heavy silence in the car, ‘I know you can’t tell me who it is we’re working for, but at least give me an idea what he wants with this guy.’

Wolfe sighed loudly. It was obvious he was getting tired of my questions. ‘If I tell you, will you shut up afterwards?’

‘What you telling him for?’ grunted Haddock. ‘He don’t need to know nothing. He’s just hired help.’

‘Because I’m sick of being kept in the dark,’ I snapped.

Wolfe turned round in his seat, fixing me with his good eye. ‘I told you the bloke’s been charged with the rape and murder of five women, didn’t I? Well, the client’s a relative of one of them, and he wants justice. He doesn’t think the law’ll give it to him. That’s why we’re involved.’

‘How does he know that Kent’s going to be leaving Holborn nick in an ambulance in the next hour?’ I asked, thinking it was somewhat ironic that an arch criminal like Tyrone Wolfe was suddenly turning vigilante to make up for the inadequacies of the British legal system.

‘I didn’t ask him,’ he replied. ‘Unlike you, I know when to keep my mouth shut.’

I was pleased. Wolfe’s answer would help us identify his client, because there couldn’t be that many of the victims’ relatives with the influence needed to get information on Kent’s movements. But it also left me with another problem.

‘The client’s going to kill him, isn’t he?’

‘I thought you said you’d stop asking questions if I told you why he wanted him.’

‘But he is. There’s no other reason why he’d want him.’

Haddock shifted his huge bulk in the front seat, and the car seemed to move a little. ‘What do you care?’ he hissed, in his weirdly effeminate tones. ‘You’re getting paid, and it’s just a nonce who’s going to die.’

‘I told you both before, I don’t want to get involved in murder.’

Wolfe sighed loudly. ‘You’re not getting involved in murder, Sean. The client is. We’re just pulling the guy. Then it’s up to him what he does with him, but he assures me that once he’s finished with Kent, he’ll disappear off the face of the earth and that’ll be that. No one’ll care that much, because this is the Night Creeper we’re talking about, a piece-of-shit sex killer who murders defenceless women in their homes. And the coppers won’t be looking that hard for the people who took him. They’ll just want everyone to forget the fact that they had one of their prisoners snatched from under their noses.’

I thought Wolfe was being unduly naive, but that was his lookout. Mine was to stop his client getting his hands on Kent. He might be a piece-of-shit sex killer but it was still my job to protect him from the person or persons plotting his murder.

I was still working out how I was going to do that when Wolfe’s radio crackled into life. It was Lee, his girlfriend.

‘Cargo on move,’ she snapped in quick, accented staccato. ‘With you in one minute.’

I felt a burst of adrenalin surge through me.

It was on.

Twenty-two

Andrew Kent’s face was deathly pale beneath the oxygen mask as the paramedics rushed him out of the custody area on a stretcher, with Tina following.

She hadn’t been able to get anything further out of him about what had happened. He’d vomited twice since she’d first discovered him writhing on the cell floor, and he was clearly still very sick. The cup he’d been drinking from was already on its way to forensics for testing, although the custody sergeant remained adamant no one had interfered with the drink between him pouring it and it reaching Kent’s mouth.

It was possible that it was a suicide attempt. Although suspects are given a full body search when they’re placed in custody, Kent might still have been able to store a potentially poisonous substance in his mouth that was missed in the search. But it was unlikely, particularly given his cryptic comments about people wishing to silence him. It was also possible he was faking it. The paramedics had only given him a cursory checkover before putting him on oxygen and getting him on the stretcher, and were unsure as to what substance he might have ingested, preferring to get him to hospital for tests. But if he was faking it, he was doing a damn good job.

Either way, Tina knew that Kent was still an extremely dangerous man. She’d experienced a dangerous offender escaping from an ambulance before, so she’d arranged for two uniformed officers to travel in the back with him, and a squad car to travel behind on the route to the hospital, just in case he made a rapid recovery.

As Kent and the paramedics disappeared out of the station’s front doors, Tina pulled out her mobile and called Grier, giving him a ten-second précis of what had just happened before telling him to get straight down to the reception area. ‘We need to get to the hospital fast. I want to find out exactly what Kent has to say.’

Less than a minute later, Grier was running alongside her to the station’s car park. ‘I’ll drive,’ she told him, unlocking her battered Ford Focus and jumping in while Grier struggled to fit his gangly legs into the passenger seat. ‘Sorry about the squeeze,’ she added, pulling out of the parking spot before he was fully inside. ‘The last person I had in there was my mother, and she’s five foot two.’

‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked, finally shutting the door as the Focus turned on to the street, heading in the direction of University College Hospital. ‘He’s not going to speak to us for a while yet.’

‘Because I don’t like having him out of my sight. He said he wants to tell me something, and I want to make sure we find out what it is.’

‘Have you called MacLeod yet?’

‘No.’ She pulled out her mobile and, ignoring the fact that she was breaking the law, speed-dialled his number.

But before he had a chance to answer, she turned into Doughty Street and immediately slammed on the brakes as she was confronted by a scene of flashing lights and chaos that made her drop the phone involuntarily.