Instinct (28 page)

Driver ran, zigzagging across the close-cropped field, towards the utter darkness at the far side. Henry knew if Driver made it ahead of him, there was a good chance he would disappear into the night.

He couldn't have that. He upped his speed, focused and gained on Driver, who was only a few feet ahead when Henry – digging out something from his old rugby days – hurled himself at the fleeing man. For a brief moment – in mid air – he thought he'd misjudged distance and speed, but his outstretched right hand latched on to Driver's belt, his fingers tightened into a fist and Henry hauled the man down to his knees. Keeping up the momentum, Henry scrambled on to him, flattening him face down and kneeling hard between his shoulder blades.

Rik arrived, still unsure of what was happening. Gasping, Henry held out his hand and wriggled his fingers. ‘Cuffs,' he said.

Henry and Rik dragged Driver back across the field. He struggled ineffectively between the two detectives, who then pulled him over the fence and forced him into the back of the CID car. They then returned to Driver's vehicle, the hatchback of which was still raised.

The girl inside was gagged and bound, feet and ankles taped together, duct tape across her eyes and mouth. Even so, Henry recognized her as the girl they had seen earlier, walking quickly, and alone, through the streets.

‘I want you to be honest with me,' Karl Donaldson said.

‘All right – I do not appreciate you calling me at this time of day.'

‘Don't worry, I won't keep you long.'

‘How the hell did you get my number anyway?'

‘You gave it to me once – when we were friends, remember?'

‘Only vaguely,' Martin Beckham said with annoyance. Donaldson had woken the man up with the late night call, but at that moment he didn't give a damn.

Donaldson was still at his desk in his office. He had the phone on speaker and was leaning back in his big comfortable leather chair, hands clasped behind his head, ankles crossed on the edge of the desk.

‘What is it you want?'

‘One question. An important one.'

Beckham sounded resigned. ‘What?'

‘The flat the two lads were in. You and your team stripped it bare for forensic reasons.'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you find down the drains?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, when your expert team went through the place, what did you find down the drains?'

Beckham paused, his weary brain clicking over. ‘Tell me what you're getting at?'

‘What did you find down the drains?' Donaldson repeated slowly. ‘That's what I'm getting at.'

‘Nothing.'

‘Is that nothing as in we looked, but didn't find anything? Or, nothing as in we actually didn't look at all?'

‘We didn't look,' Beckham admitted.

Donaldson dropped his feet on to the floor and tipped forwards to tap the disconnect button.

Flynn trailed the man down stinking, poorly lit alleyways, virtually devoid of people, other than the dark mounds that were the sleeping forms of beggars under cardboard and sacking. He managed to keep close tabs on him using distance, shadows and the very obvious fact that the man wasn't expecting to be followed, a factor that counted for a lot. He was on home turf and it was pretty much a fact of life that when people were comfortable in their surroundings, being followed was one of the last things they ever considered. This principle applied as much to Mafia bosses as it did to hired killers.

The man kept going, taking Flynn further into the city. The problem for Flynn was that while the strip he had started out on was comfortable, with white faces in the crowds, these streets were not. Even darkness and a good tan could not disguise Flynn's skin colour and ethnic background. White European through and through, he looked out of place in the backstreets of Banjul, especially late at night.

Then the man turned into a building and was gone from sight.

Flynn came to a halt, sank into shadow, considered his position, then stood in a dark recess on the opposite side of the street.

It was a fairly typical style of building for Banjul. White, square, shutters on the windows, just one level to it, a flat-roofed bungalow. Flynn could not work out if it was a home or a place of work. Its whole appearance was alien to him.

The door the man had entered looked flimsy, easily kick-downable. Light showed from the angled gaps in the Venetian-style shutters at the windows.

Then Flynn noticed the car parked a little further down the street. The big, old, black Mercedes. Its sight jolted him. The car that the injured man had been helped into from Boone's boat, the one that Boone's killers had later turned up in.

Flynn crossed the street quickly and flattened himself against the wall next to the door. The Glock was now in his right hand, held at his thigh, and he wished he'd had the foresight to bring along the shotgun that Michelle had almost killed him with. It would have been effective in a tight space. He reached for the handle and turned it slowly. Locked. He emitted an exasperated gasp of frustration, then stood directly in front of the door, turned the handle with his left hand and leaned his weight on it with his left shoulder.

As he guessed, it was flimsy. He felt very confident he could open it easily, but it would make a horrible noise as he forced it down.

He hated the lack of planning and wondered if it would be better to back off now. Recce the place in daylight, work out the logistics and practicalities. See who came and went. How many people would be inside, what the inner geography was like  . . . all the sensible things.

Unfortunately he did not get the chance to withdraw. That decision was taken out of his hands because as he stood there dithering, his mind whirring and tumbling as to the best approach, the door opened and he was instantly face to face with the man he had followed from the club, who was putting something into the inside pocket of his jacket, looking as though he was on the way out again.

In those circumstances the outcome of such a surprise encounter was usually determined by the one who reacted first. The one who was ready.

The man's face dropped and a frown knitted his thick eyebrows together – and he hesitated, not immediately computing anything, not recognizing Flynn, not even beginning to understand why a white man was outside his door. By that time it was far too late for him.

Flynn, by contrast, reacted instantly.

He was bigger, stronger and much fitter than the guy, who himself wasn't small and unfit by any means.

Flynn's left hand shot out, grabbed the man's shirt at his chest and in the same movement brought up the Glock and rammed the muzzle of the bulbous silencer into the soft under part of the man's wide chin.

He did not waste time with words.

He went for action, brutal force, speed.

He forced the man back into the premises, knocking him off balance, running him backwards on his heels.

Behind the door was a hallway of sorts. Three doors off. Using what little intelligence he had gathered from his short external inspection of the front of the building, Flynn thought the door to the left could be a living room of some sort. The one directly ahead was a kitchen – Flynn had glimpsed a sink beyond the open door – and the one on the right could be a bedroom. The one that concerned him in these opening seconds was the one to his left, because that was the one which was lit up.

Flynn powered the man backwards, then jerked him to the left and ran him into this room, which had no door to it.

With a massive heave, Flynn pistoned out his left arm and let go of the man's shirt. He staggered, tripped and landed on his backside.

Flynn took in the rest of the scenario. To his left a man lounged on a huge, dirty beanbag. This man had a bandage around his left bicep, his arm in a sling. This was the one Boone had managed to shoot on the quayside.

Next to him, on the remnants of a battered armchair, was another man, a cup of something in his hand, which he spilled as Flynn came in through the door. This was the second, uninjured gun man.

On the right, sitting primly on a dining chair, was the smartly besuited Aleef.

The man in the armchair threw his cup aside and started to rise – his right hand picking up the revolver that was lying on the chair arm.

The Glock came around. Flynn fired twice at the man's body mass. Two shots, quick succession, double-taps. They struck him perfectly, less than an inch apart, entering his heart, left and right ventricle, shredding the organ, the power of the impact smacking him back in the chair.

The beanbag man scrambled across the floor towards the AK47 propped up against the wall by an electric radiator. Flynn swivelled less than forty-five degrees, fired again. The man was side-on to him, his body mass a smaller target, so Flynn shot him in the side of the head, a temple shot, again a double-tap that entered the left side and exited at a downward angle, making a hole about as big as a drinks coaster. He jerked sideways, dead.

Flynn came around. The man he had forced into the room was lying on his side, his legs drawn up to his chest in a tight foetal position, cowering and whimpering.

Aleef, on the dining chair, had not moved. Flynn jerked the Glock at him, causing him to wince, dread on his face as he braced himself for the inevitable death that was coming. But Flynn swung the gun back around to the man on the floor and aimed.

‘No, no,' he pleaded, his hands palm out.

Flynn shot him twice.

Then he turned to Aleef. ‘Are you armed?' Aleef shook his head. ‘Get up.'

He stood, legs wobbling, and looked at Flynn, but then his eye line flickered slightly over Flynn's shoulder. He tried to disguise this, but Flynn saw it, recognized it for what it was, dropped a shoulder, spun round and was faced with the horrific sight of another man coming for him with a double-handed hold on a panga, the broad-bladed, deadly African machete. It was a weapon originally designed for use in sugar fields or for clearing jungles. More recently it had become a lethal weapon, responsible for thousands of horrific deaths and punishment amputations on the continent.

What made it even worse was the appearance of the man who was brandishing the weapon. His face was horribly disfigured, burned and melted, and Flynn knew this was the man who had been caught up in the explosion caused by Boone's bullet exploding a fuel barrel that the man had been seeking cover behind. He had been blown into the creek where Flynn assumed he had perished. Clearly he had survived, obviously to be deformed for the rest of his life.

The panga was held high and was slicing down at Flynn. Had it caught him before he'd turned, his head would have been sliced cleanly open.

But Flynn had caught Aleef's look, turned, leapt backwards as the panga came down and just missed him, leaving the burned man wide open for a millisecond, an opportunity that Flynn did not miss.

He shot him in the chest. The shot was hurried, and Flynn shot slightly high, the bullet breaking the man's collar bone and spinning him away like a top. The second shot was even higher and removed most of the left side of his face.

Flynn stood there for a moment, controlling his breathing, then he looked at Aleef, who emitted a little squeak.

Flynn stepped over the dead men at his feet and gestured for Aleef to go ahead of him out of the door. Flynn came up behind him, slammed him up against the wall and frisked him quickly, expertly, getting close to the man, inhaling the cheap aftershave of which he stank.

‘You're a very bad man,' Flynn breathed into Aleef's ear.

‘I'm just a businessman. Who are you, what is this?'

‘Who else is here?' Flynn demanded, ignoring Aleef.

‘No one.'

Flynn jammed the barrel of the Glock hard into Aleef's spine at the small of his back. ‘Truth?'

‘Honestly.'

Flynn gripped Aleef's jacket collar and steered him out of the room into the hallway. He checked the room to the left, found a basic kitchen and a bathroom/toilet beyond. Then he manhandled Aleef into the next room, directly opposite the living room.

It was empty.

Flynn switched on the light with the butt of the Glock, a low wattage bulb dangling from a frayed length of wire in the middle of the ceiling.

A thin single size mattress was on the floor in one corner of the room with a grimy, bloodstained sheet covering it. Flynn glanced around quickly and saw a small pile of bloody bandages and dressings discarded in another corner, flies buzzing around them. In another corner was clothing, a rolled up shirt and trousers and a pair of sandals. Next to the mattress was a plastic tray containing some crockery and cutlery, and next to that was a metal frame on wheels that held up an empty saline drip bag. Two other empty drip bags were in a bin, together with syringes and their packages. There was also a hessian prayer mat on the floor.

Flynn computed all this, putting together everything he knew and had witnessed, everything he'd read.

‘Where is he?' Flynn asked Aleef.

‘Who?' Aleef responded innocently.

Flynn buried the muzzle of the Glock into Aleef's spine.

‘You know who.'

‘I  . . . don't know  . . . I don't know what you're talking about  . . . look, please allow me to go  . . . I don't know what this is about. I haven't done anything.'

Flynn backed off a step then brutally side-footed the back of Aleef's right knee, causing the leg to fold and the man to drop on to his knees with a cry. Flynn pressed the gun into the back of Aleef's head.

‘I said where is he?'

‘Gone  . . . he's gone.'

‘Gone where?'

‘I don't know, sir, I don't know,' Aleef wailed.

Flynn forced him down to the floor, so the side of his head was crushed against the rough surface of the prayer mat.

‘Where is he?' Flynn asked again, his instinct telling him that this mission of revenge for the death of a friend might have become something much more serious on a much larger scale.