The Bombmaker (44 page)

Canning smiled despite the enormity of what he was going to have to do. 'Life isn't fair,' he said. 'When you get older you'll 356 THE BOMBMAKER . . .' He left the sentence unfinished. She wasn't going to get any older. Her life was going to end here and now. In the basement.

Katie pointed at the door. 'You could lock me in and go away,' she said. 'When the police find me, I'll tell them you didn't hurt me.'

'It won't work like that,' said Canning. 'They'll keep looking for me until they find me. What we've done is so bad they'll never stop looking. If you hadn't seen my face, it wouldn't matter, but you know what I look like. And the police will make you tell them.'

'They won't. I . . .'

Canning held up his hand and she stopped talking, waiting to see what he had to say. 'Let me tell you what would happen,

Katie. They'll catch up with me eventually. Maybe in a week. A month. A year. But they'll get me eventually. They'll send policemen to talk to your mum and dad, and they'll all take you to the police station. They'll be really nice to you and tell you what a brave girl you are. They'll probably give you a Coke or a 7-Up or something, then one of them will sit down and talk to you. Probably a policewoman. Young. She'll talk to you like a big sister. She'll tell you that they've caught me but that you've got to identify me. She'll tell you not to worry, that they'll put me in prison for a long, long time, and that I'll never be able to hurt you or any other little girl again. Then the nice policewoman will take you to room and she'll show you a window.

She'll tell you that there's a line of men on the other side, that you can see them but they can't see you, and she'll tell you to look carefully at all their faces and to tell her which one I am.'

'I won't tell them,' said Katie.

'You're seven years old,' said Canning coldly. 'You won't be able to stand up to them. You'll look along the line of men and you'll see me and you'll point me out. Close your eyes, Katie.'

Katie did as she was told. 'I won't tell,' she said. 'I promise.'

She kept her eyes firmly closed and made the sign of the cross over her heart. 'Cross my heart and swear to die.'

Two green-overaUed paramedics were wheeling a trolley through a police cordon as Patsy, Martin and Denham walked up. Martin ran over to the trolley. It was Andy. She was paler than he'd ever seen her, her hair tied back in a ponytail, dark patches under her eyes. She reached out with her hand and he interlinked his fingers with hers. A large dressing had been taped to her left shoulder and there were two dressings on her arm which had been placed in an inflatable splint. Blood was seeping through the dressings and she winced in pain as she tried to sit up. 'Katie . . .' she said.

'Lie down, miss,' said one of the paramedics, a stocky thirtysomething woman with short permed hair. 'We have to get you to hospital.'

Andy gripped Martin's hand, her nails digging into his flesh.

'I'm not going anywhere until I know that Katie's safe.'

'She's losing blood,' the paramedic said to Martin.

'I'm okay,' said Andy. She gritted her teeth as a wave of pain washed over her.

'Andy, you have to go to hospital,' said Martin. 'I'll come with you.'

'But Katie . . .'

Denham appeared at Martin's shoulder. 'Our people are on their way to Katie now,' he said.

'Liam?' said Andy. Her eyelids fluttered. She was obviously close to passing out.

'Yes, Andrea. It's me. You did well. We'll take it from here.'

'I want to stay here until I know what's happened to Katie.'

Patsy took her mobile phone from her jacket and pressed it into Andy's hand. 'As soon as we know where she is, we'll call you,' she said.

Denham nodded at the paramedics and they wheeled her towards the ambulance. Martin went with them.

'Do you think she's still alive?' asked Patsy as they watched the paramedics lift Andy into the vehicle. Martin climbed in, the doors were slammed shut, and a few seconds later the ambulance drove away, sirens wailing.

'God, I hope so,' said Denham.

A uniformed policeman examined Patsy's credentials and waved her through the cordon. Denham shrugged. 'I'm with her,' he said.

'That's fine, sir,' said the constable. 'I could tell you were in the job.'

Denham smiled to himself as he followed Patsy into the lift.

Retired for ten years and he still looked like a policeman. He wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not.

They rode up to the ninth floor in silence. The doors opened and two more uniformed constables stepped aside to allow them into the office. Half a dozen Scene of Crime Officers in white overalls were moving around like silent ghosts, fingerprinting and collecting fibre samples with pieces of tape, all their evidence going into labelled plastic bags.

Two SAS troopers stood by the window, their automatic weapons clasped to their chests. One was smoking a cigarette,

the other was laughing. There was broken glass everywhere, and Patsy and Denham crunched over it as they walked to the pile of black garbage bags in the middle of the main office area. Two Metropolitan Police explosives officers were crouched over the bags, gingerly moving them apart. Both men were wearing olive overalls, and Patsy was surprised that neither of them was wearing protective armour. In Belfast, the EXPOs never went anywhere near an explosive device without full body armour and protective helmets. She realised that it was probably because the bomb was so big that if it did go off, no amount of protection would help.

'Everything okay?' she asked.

One of the EXPOs looked up and grinned at her. 'Safe as houses,' he said. He was barely out of his twenties, with a shock of red hair and acne scars across his cheeks. 'SEXPO's got the detonator. You could drop this lot out of the window and it wouldn't go off.'

'SEXPO?'

'Senior Explosives Officer.' The redhead nodded over at an older man in overalls who was standing by one of the desks.

'Our boss. Dave Hoyle.'

Patsy and Denham went over to Hoyle. He was peering at a digital display through a magnifying glass, examining the wires that protruded from the back of it. There was a tangle of wire next to the digital display and four small cylinders, the size of Parker pen refills. Patsy had seen detonators before, in Belfast.

She introduced herself and Denham, but Hoyle just grunted.

He was a big, bear-like man with thick fingers that dwarfed the delicate electronics he was examining.

'It was live?' asked Ellis.

'Oh, yes. Timer was set. Twenty minutes left on the clock before we got to it.'

'No problems?'

'Simple circuit. Nice work. A woman, they said?'

'That's right.'

'They always do neat work, women. Tidy. Precise. Just look at the soldering.'

He handed the magnifying glass to Patsy, and she used it to examine the wiring. She had no idea what she was looking at and she gave it back to Hoyle none the wiser.

'No booby traps?' asked Denham.

'No, it was a simple enough circuit,' said Hoyle. 'No photoelectrics, no tremblers, no collapsing circuits. EXPO friendly, it was.'

'What about the remote control?' asked Ellis.

'The what?' Deep frowns creased Hoyle's forehead.

'The infrared remote control. She had it rigged so that if she pressed it, it would go off.'

Hoyle's frown deepened. 'No way,' he said. 'Timer, batteries,

detonators. There was nothing else in the circuit. Pressing the remote control wouldn't have done a blind thing.'

'Are you sure?'

Hoyle looked offended. Patsy began to laugh, and Hoyle stared at her in surprise. She shook her head, still laughing. 'She was bluffing,' she said to Denham. 'She was bloody well bluffing.'

Denham's mobile phone warbled and he took it out and put it to his head. Patsy stopped laughing as Denham listened, then 360 THE BOMBMAKER frowned. 'Yes, Eamonn.' Patsy watched Denham's face, wondering if it was good news or bad.

Denham put his hand over the bottom of the phone.

'They've found Katie.' A smile spread across his face. 'She's okay. They locked her in a basement. She's scared but she's okay.'

Patsy grinned. She took a quick step forward and hugged Denham, burying her face in his chest and squeezing him so hard that he gasped.

Denham hugged her back, then pulled away. 'I have to call Andy,' he said, then he smiled. He held out the phone to Patsy.

'Why don't you do it?'

THREE MONTHS LATER The wrought-iron gates swung open and the Mercedes nudged slowly into the compound. Deng didn't recognise the man standing guard by the gate, but that wasn't significant. The firm that supplied him with bodyguards changed the personnel on a regular basis. The only constants were his driver and the man who was sitting in the front passenger seat. Like the rest of the guards assigned to protect Deng, they were armed. Ever since the debacle in London, he'd had three men in the house protecting his wife and sons, and there were always at least two others with him.

He climbed out of the Mercedes and went into his house.

The maid wasn't there to take his cashmere coat from him, so he hung it up himself and went through to the sitting room.

His two sons, the elder aged twelve, the other just eighteen months younger, were sitting together on the sofa, an expensive white leather model that Deng had had flown in from Milan. He glared at the boys. 'Didn't we tell you not to sit on the sofa in your school clothes?' he said. 'Why haven't you changed?'

The boys said nothing. The younger one was close to tears.

'What's wrong with you? And where's your mother?'

'She's with me,' said a voice behind him.

Deng froze. He turned slowly. Michael Wong was standing at the door to the kitchen, Deng's wife at his side. Her eyes looked at Deng fearfully, then over at her sons. She gave them an encouraging smile and made a small waving motion with a 363 STEPHEN LEATHER neatly manicured hand, trying to reassure them that everything was going to be all right now that their father was home. Deng took a deep breath. It wasn't going to be all right: Michael Wong had come for his revenge.

Wong pushed Deng's wife into the room and she tottered forward on her high heels, then ran to Deng and grabbed him around the waist and buried her face in his chest. Two big men in cheap suits and red-and-black-striped ties followed Wong into the sitting room. As the door swung back, Deng could see three bloodstained bodies on the kitchen floor. His bodyguards.

And against the fridge, sitting up but with her head slumped against her chest, the maid. Her throat cut wide open.

The two men who came out of the kitchen were Red Poles,

Triad heavies, but they weren't the two men who'd been in the love hotel when Wong had murdered the nightclub hostess.

These two were shorter and heavier and had the rough skin and bad haircuts of mainlanders. One of them was holding a silenced automatic. The other had a roll of insulation tape in his hand.

Deng looked at them over the head of his sobbing wife. 'I'll pay you ten times what he's paying you,' he said to them.

They laughed at him.

'Twenty times,' said Deng. 'I'll get you new identities, new passports. Hong Kong passports. I can do it. Plus twenty times what he's paying you.'

They laughed even louder, and Wong laughed along with them. The front door opened and the bodyguard who'd been in the Mercedes walked into the sitting room. The Red Pole with the silenced gun shot the bodyguard twice in the chest and he dropped to the floor without a sound. The driver never came into the house. When he wasn't working, he stayed in a small flat above the garage, too far away to hear what was going on in the main building.

The two Red Poles went over to Deng. The one with the gun pulled his wife away, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her over to Wong. The other heavy pushed Deng in the chest and he staggered backwards. The heavy seized him by the lapel and spun him down into a chair, and then quickly 364 THE BOMBMAKER wound the insulation tape around his legs and arms, tying him fast.

'I thought I'd run through the programme I've planned,' said Wong. 'Just so you know what's coming.' He ran a hand down Deng's wife's breasts and between her legs. She squirmed in his grasp but he tightened his grip around her throat. She was looking at Deng with pleading eyes, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could say, either, to her, or to Wong. There were no words with which to apologise to her for the horrors that lay ahead, nothing he could say to Wong to make him change his mind. The only option was acceptance.

'I'm going to fuck your wife,' continued Wong. 'Not because it'll give me pleasure, you understand. She has the face of a pig,

and her body's not much better. I can see why you're always screwing hookers whenever you go to Hong Kong.'

Deng's wife moaned in despair and Wong twisted her head around so that he could look into her tear-filled eyes. 'Oh, poor baby,' he said. 'Didn't you know? Didn't you guess? Young girls. Pretty girls. He takes them to a love hotel in Kowloon Kong. He's probably thinking about them on the rare occasions he screws you.' He grinned at Deng and released his grip on the woman and kicked her over to two of the Red Poles. They grabbed her, an arm each, supporting her because the strength had gone from her legs and she could barely stand. 'Then my men will fuck her. In any way they choose.' Deng's wife began to sob uncontrollably. The two boys were staring at their mother in horror.

Wong gestured at the large man standing at the door to the kitchen. He was big and broad-shouldered, with close-cut hair and a round, line-free face. He had thick lips which he kept licking with a square-shaped tongue. 'Cheung here, he likes boys. It's all I can do to keep him out of prison.'

Cheung laughed throatily.

'He really likes your sons,' said Wong. 'So he's going to play with your boys for a while. Then he's going to kill them.'

Cheung opened his jacket and pulled out a curved knife. He ran his finger along the edge of the blade, still chuckling.

Deng kept his eyes fixed on Wong, his face impassive. There was no point in showing any emotion. That was what Wong wanted. A reaction. Appeals for mercy. He wanted to see Deng on his hands and knees, begging for his life and the life of his family. Deng knew that any such appeals would be ignored, so he kept his teeth clamped together and waited for the end.