The Last 10 Seconds (13 page)

Twenty-three

The ambulance came roaring past in a blur of blue lights followed immediately by a marked patrol car. As I pulled on my balaclava with slippery hands and we drove out on to the road behind them, I saw through the gathering darkness Tommy’s white Bedford van reverse out of a turning up ahead and block its path.

The driver hit the brakes but he was too late to prevent a collision and he lost control in a shriek of tyres before slamming into the back of the van with a loud smash, shunting it sideways but failing to knock it out of the way. Smoke rose from its ruined bonnet.

Meanwhile, the patrol car’s driver also hit the brakes, but his reactions were better and he came to a halt ten feet behind the ambulance, siren blaring. Before either he or his passenger could get out, though, we came hurtling up behind them in the people carrier.

This whole op was about speed, surprise and overwhelming force. As a cop with fifteen years on the job, I knew that if you catch people completely off guard, they tend to acquiesce immediately.

And we hit these guys hard. ‘Ramming speed!’ whooped Wolfe as we careered into the back of the patrol car, knocking it forward several feet.

For a few seconds, I was caught up in the drama of the whole thing. The adrenalin rush was incredible, the most intense I’d experienced for years, as I threw open the door and leaped out, wielding the shotgun in front of me, finger instinctively placed on the trigger.

While Wolfe rushed over to the ambulance to intimidate the crew into opening the back doors, Haddock went straight for the patrol car. For a man of his bulk, he moved extremely fast, and as the driver made the stupid mistake of opening his door, Haddock grabbed it with one hand and slammed it against his head, knocking him back inside. A second later he was looming over the front of the car like some kind of avenging demon, legs apart as he pointed his shotgun through the window at the two unarmed officers, bellowing at them not to move or he’d blow them away. Just to emphasize the point, he lowered the barrel with a sudden jerk and shot out the front nearside tyre with a deafening blast that made my heart lurch, and brought me right back to reality.

I caught a glimpse of the two cops as I passed. The driver, who was holding the injured side of his head with both hands, was unfamiliar, but I recognized his passenger: Ryan James, a cheery forty-something uniform who’d become a copper after fifteen years as a secondary school physics teacher, and who’d once lent me fifty quid when I was short before payday. I’d always liked him, and seeing his face now, pale and terrified, caught my conscience.

But this was necessary. It had to happen like this. And if he stayed stock-still, he was going to be OK.

A second blast echoed round the quiet street as Haddock blew out the other front tyre. His whole body seemed to be shaking with excitement as he moved the Remington in a tight arc, revelling in his power. ‘Get your fucking hands in the air! Both of you! I’ll fucking blow your heads off if you try anything! Understand? Under-fucking-stand?’ Then he turned my way. ‘Cover those bastards, and watch me as well,’ he snarled, before charging over to the back of the ambulance where the rear doors were already opening.

It was no easy task, keeping my eyes on two sets of people at once, but I did what I could. The good thing was, neither of the two cops I was covering looked like they were capable of trying anything, and Ryan James looked like he was going to have a heart attack as he stared at the barrel of my gun, hands thrust rigidly in the air.

I risked glancing backwards at the ambulance where Haddock had now joined Wolfe. The doors were fully open now and I saw two uniforms – a man and a woman, both young and fresh-faced – in the back, on either side of the gurney, while a female paramedic in green overalls stood over it, her hands out in front of her in a gesture of submission.

Wolfe leaped in the back and told the paramedic to unstrap her patient.

‘You can’t take him,’ I heard her say. ‘Please. He’s sick.’

‘Shut up and do what I say! Now!’

The two uniforms in the back of the ambulance remained frozen in their seats with Haddock moving his gun from one to the other, covering them and hissing murderous threats, his whole demeanour radiating the kind of controlled rage that made crossing him suicidal, and I remember praying that nobody was stupid enough to make a move.

But the female paramedic wasn’t playing the game. ‘You’re not taking him,’ she shouted, following it with another ‘please’, although she must have known that Wolfe was going to do exactly that.

With a sudden movement, he grabbed her by her hair and shoved the barrel in her face. ‘Do it!’ he screamed, dragging her back towards the gurney.

I winced at his violence, feeling my finger tighten on the trigger as I remembered what he’d done to my brother all those years ago, wishing I could do the same to him but knowing that I had to bide my time and hope that this snatch was going to be concluded fast, because with every second that passed we came closer to being rumbled by police reinforcements which right now, with Wolfe and Haddock pumped up on adrenalin and violence, would mean a bloodbath.

Finally, the paramedic got to work on one of the straps with shaking hands while Wolfe undid the other, all the while pointing his gun in her face.

And then, as Wolfe shoved her aside and tore the oxygen mask from his face, I finally saw our target for the first time. Andrew Kent, the so-called Night Creeper. The man my former colleagues were sure was responsible for the rape and murder of five young women. He was small and thin, with the grey pallor of the sick, but he was also conscious, and looked just as terrified as the people who’d been protecting him, because he must have known that whatever we had planned for him, it was not going to be nice.

He looked more like a computer geek than a killer, and even though I knew what he was supposed to have done, and that killers never look like killers – they all look just like you and me when they’re vulnerable – I still felt sick as Wolfe dragged him out of the ambulance, with the gun shoved hard into the hollow of his cheek.

Which was the moment when it all went horribly wrong.

The male cop lunged forward, jumped out of the back of the ambulance, and grabbed Wolfe’s gun hand, trying to wrestle the weapon from his control. Why he decided to do it was anyone’s guess – maybe it was the need to be hailed as a hero – but one thing that’s drummed into all police officers is never take on a gunman when you’re unarmed, because it can turn a dramatic situation into a disastrous one. As it did now.

Clearly sensing an opportunity for escape, Kent struggled free of Wolfe’s now tenuous grip and made a bolt for it.

I was barely ten feet away and moved fast to intercept him, holding my shotgun like a club. There was no way I could let a serial killer escape from custody on top of everything else I was involved in.

But for a sick man, Kent’s reactions were surprisingly quick, and he leaped at me, launching an improvised karate kick at my stomach. I tried to get out of the way but his foot caught me and I stumbled backwards, colliding with the corner of the cop car’s bonnet.

I’m no slouch myself, however, and though I was winded, I bounced back off the car and, as he scrambled past me, I slammed the stock of the shotgun into the side of his head. It was a good shot and he went sprawling on to the tarmac in a heap, a deep cut already forming along his hairline. He wasn’t moving either, and for a moment I thought I might have killed him.

It was then that I saw Wolfe break free of the cop who’d made a grab for him and shove him backwards so that, for the first time, there was distance between them. ‘No!’ I heard myself shout as Haddock swung his shotgun round from where it had been covering the female cop and pointed it directly at her foolish colleague, while Wolfe raised his own gun, holding it two-handed.

Everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion as the male cop – twenty-five at most, probably younger – raised his hands in surrender, his dreams of being a hero evaporating across his face as the fear took over.

I wanted to react. To turn my gun on Wolfe and Haddock and tell them to drop theirs because I was the police, maybe even open fire and rid the world of my brother’s killers for ever. But then Haddock calmly pulled the Remington’s trigger.

The cop was lifted off his feet by the force of the blast and he literally flew backwards through the air, hands down by his side like a toy soldier, before landing hard on his back.

‘Out of here, now!’ roared Wolfe, looking at me. ‘And grab Kent!’

Even through the intense ringing in my ears I could hear the panicked shouts coming from Ryan James and the other cop in the car behind me as they reacted to the sight of one of their own being shot in front of them. This was my worst nightmare. Getting in too deep on a job and seeing it all go pear-shaped in front of my eyes. The wounded cop was still moving, thank God, and had rolled over on to his side, but without medical help he’d be finished. And with the ambulance on the scene a wreck, and the paramedics traumatized, I wasn’t at all sure he was going to get it.

Hating myself, I ran forward and hauled the injured Kent to his feet, half strangling him as I dragged him over to the people carrier, helped by Wolfe, while Haddock kept everyone else covered.

Incredibly, only about thirty seconds had passed since the whole thing had begun and no traffic had appeared on the street. However, the first pedestrians were now appearing from up and down the street, staring at the scene unfolding in front of them from behind rows of parked cars, and making me feel strangely like an actor in a cheap, contemporary street play.

Wolfe opened the side door and I threw Kent inside, stuffing the shotgun into his spine and forcing him into the aisle between the back seats, before jumping in behind him, while Haddock leaped in the other side.

Wolfe backed up in a screech of tyres, then drove round the ambulance as Tommy reversed the Bedford van into a parked car to create a gap we could drive through. As we passed, Wolfe slowed and Tommy jumped in the open door, yanking it shut behind him.

We were on our way.

Twenty-four

For a good three seconds, Tina sat there trying to take in what she was seeing through the glare of the flashing lights and the gloom fifty yards down the street. At first she just thought there’d been a bad accident involving the ambulance carrying Kent and a van that must have reversed out of one of the side streets; but then she saw men in balaclavas wrestling another man through the side door of a black people carrier, and she realized what was happening. Kent was being sprung from his escort and, more worryingly, the people doing it were armed: she could see one holding a shotgun and, further away, a uniformed police officer, recognizable by his white shirt and black stabproof vest, was lying injured on the ground.

‘My God,’ said Grier disbelievingly. ‘Is this some kind of hijack?’

‘Call back-up,’ Tina snapped as the people carrier suddenly backed up and drove round the ambulance. She shoved the Focus into first.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you think? I’m not letting Kent get away.’

Wishing she had a better pursuit vehicle, Tina accelerated away after the people carrier, telling Grier to stick the emergency halogen light she kept in the glovebox on the dashboard so that their quarry would know the police were after them.

Another balaclava-clad figure jumped in the back of the people carrier, then it drove through the small gap between the crashed vehicles and the parked ones lining one side of the road before picking up speed as it continued down Doughty Street towards Theobalds Road.

Tina followed it through the gap, clipping a parked car in the process. She couldn’t read the people carrier’s number plate as it was driving without lights, so she slammed her foot hard on the floor in an effort to catch up.

The driver must have realized he was being followed because he speeded up as well and hurtled straight across the junction without stopping, narrowly missing a man on a bike who had to mount the pavement to avoid being hit, before doing a hard right, tyres wailing, and accelerating in the direction of Bloomsbury.

Tina knew she had to do the same. She couldn’t lose them. Not when they were carrying a cargo as valuable as Andrew Kent. Clenching her teeth and ignoring Grier’s protests, she shot across the junction, yanking the wheel and only just managing to straighten up in time to avoid hitting a taxi that was dropping someone off on the other side of the road.

Only twenty yards separated the Focus and the people carrier, and Tina felt a burst of delirious excitement that would have shocked her if she’d had time to think about it.

Her quarry overtook a bus on the wrong side of the road, squeezing between oncoming traffic, hitting speeds of fifty miles an hour and getting faster all the time, and Tina followed suit, keeping tight to him.

‘Christ, be careful!’ yelled Grier as they swerved to avoid an approaching car. ‘You’ll get us killed!’

‘Get on the phone and tell them his number plate. We’re not losing this thing!’

The people carrier weaved in the road, overtook another car, but it couldn’t shake Tina off. Now only fifteen yards separated them and she could just make out the numbers and letters on the plate.

Then, without warning, one of the balaclava-clad figures leaned halfway out of the window and pointed a shotgun at them, looking very much as if he was taking aim. Grier yelled something unintelligible and Tina instinctively slammed her foot on the brakes and spun the wheel. She just had time to duck her head before the windscreen exploded, showering her with glass. The car spun round as she lost control and left the road, the suspension jarring angrily as she mounted the pavement and smashed sideways into an empty shopfront, scattering the diners at a next-door pavement café but managing to avoid hitting any of them, before finally coming to a halt.

Tina’s breathing came in short, rapid bursts as she sat back up in the seat, letting shards of glass fall off her. The car had turned round completely now, but she could see the people carrier disappearing round the corner in her rearview mirror.

She quickly checked herself but couldn’t see any sign of injury, then looked over at Grier, fearful that he might have been hurt, which would have been her fault. But he looked OK, shaken but uninjured. She felt an immediate relief. She’d already lost two colleagues in her career. She couldn’t face losing another.

In fact he was still talking on the phone to the 999 operator, describing what had just happened, before adding that he hadn’t got a chance to take the registration number of the suspect vehicle. ‘We’re going to secure the scene now,’ he said, and rang off.

Tina sighed. ‘Are you all right?’

He glared at her, and she could see he was trying to keep calm, knowing that, whatever might be going through his head, she was still his superior – although for how much longer was anyone’s guess. Tina had always been considered something of a loose cannon, a copper who attracted trouble, even if that trouble wasn’t usually her fault. People who worked with her got killed; she’d even killed someone herself the previous year, while officially off duty, and though no blame had been attached to her for that, it was still seen by some as a blot on an already badly bloodstained copybook. Crashing a car into a shop during a high-speed chase and narrowly missing a dozen terrified pedestrians was another, especially when she’d been drinking.

Tina sighed and rubbed her eyes. There was bound to be a breath test, and she was hugely relieved that she hadn’t drunk anything in the pub earlier, and that the two hits of vodka she’d sneaked in the toilet were long enough ago now to keep her under the limit.

Even so, pretty soon her luck was going to run out.

‘I’m OK,’ Grier said quietly, his voice trembling with emotion, ‘but why did you do that, ma’am? You could have killed us both.’

Grier was one of the new breed of cops, a desk man who didn’t like taking big risks, and although he’d held himself together enough to finish the phone call to the 999 operator, Tina felt a wave of contempt for him. ‘I had to make a split-second decision,’ she answered firmly. ‘I didn’t want to lose them.’

‘Well, you did lose them, ma’am,’ he said slowly, and she noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘You did bloody lose them.’

And she had. She’d failed. She should have made sure Kent went to the hospital with an armed escort.

Not only had she misread the situation, she also knew with a terrible lurch of certainty that if she’d held back rather than sped after the carrier like a teenage boy who’d just passed his test she would have stood a better chance of following them.

She groaned. Whichever way she looked at it, the whole thing had been a set-up. And she’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker.