was a hole in my gut and another in my chest, both of them pumping blood on to my check shirt — a gift from Gina a couple of Christmases ago. I thought of her then, and Maddie, and knew I had to survive this. For their sakes.
I staggered across the car park, clutching at my wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. But I was going too slowly to reach the street in time. Cain and Cecil would be out here any second and I’d be a sitting duck. I made a snap decision and dived into the bushes that bordered the property, wriggling as far as I could inside, wincing against the pain that was beginning to envelop me.
Just in time. Almost immediately, Cain and Cecil appeared round the side of the house, holding their guns and looking round urgently, only ten yards away.
‘He can’t be far,’ hissed Cain. ‘I hit him at least once, and you hit him too. Look, there’s blood on the gravel.’ He pointed to where I’d originally taken shelter behind the parked car, and I prayed one of my neighbours had heard the commotion and called the police. In the flat above, I could hear the old lady’s TV blaring away, drowning everything else out.
I held my breath as Cain approached the bushes, only a couple of yards away now, and bent down, pulling some of the foliage aside with the gun. I stayed absolutely still, knowing that if I made even the tiniest move he’d discover me. My lungs felt close to bursting and all the time I could feel the blood leaking out of me into the earth.
And then there was the sound of tyres on gravel and the glare of headlights as a car pulled into the car park.
I used the noise to exhale and drag in another lungful of air, peering through the gaps in the bushes as the car parked between two others. It was a BMW, and I recognized it straight away as belonging to the guy on the top floor, a brash City worker called Rupert who was a couple of years younger than me and who never bothered to say hello.
As he got out of the car, briefcase in hand, he looked accusingly towards Cecil and Cain, who’d both hidden their guns. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ he asked, staring them down. He looked confident and at ease, clearly not expecting trouble, and I wanted to shout out to him to jump back in the car and reverse out of there.
But I didn’t say a word as Cain walked towards him, bringing round the gun from behind his back. ‘No,’ he said simply, and shot Rupert twice in the chest, waiting as his victim fell against the car with a gasp and slid down it, before landing in a heap on the gravel. He then put a third bullet in his head before walking back in the direction of the bushes.
‘We need to hurry,’ he snapped at Cecil. ‘Keep looking for him.’
I held my breath again as Cain stopped less than half a yard from where I was lying and began poking inside the foliage with the gun.
He was going to see me any second.
‘Jesus, where the fuck is he?’ I heard Cecil curse from a few yards further up. ‘He’s got to be somewhere.’
At that moment, Cain’s face appeared in the bushes just above my head, and I wondered in that instant if he could smell my blood. All he had to do was look down and I was finished.
I clenched my teeth, preparing to die.
Outside on the street, a car slowed down.
And then I heard something bleep loudly, and Cain’s head disappeared.
He moved away from the bushes, pulling a mobile phone from his pocket and staring down at the screen. ‘We need to move.’ He paused, then said something that completely threw me. ‘Fox is going to be en route at any moment.’
Fox. The only surviving terrorist from the Stanhope siege. What the hell did Cain mean?
‘But we’ve got to find Jones,’ said Cecil anxiously. ‘We can’t leave him. He’s a witness.’
But Cain was having none of it. ‘Even if he’s still alive, there’s nothing he can do to us. He’s in this as much as we are. Come on.’
And with that, they turned and walked away across the gravel, quickly disappearing from view.
I was still alive. But only just.
Sixty-three
20.50
Fox sat on the bunk smoking a cigarette and listening to the faint sounds of violence drifting through the prison like music to his ears.
The cell they’d put him in didn’t have a TV so he could no longer see what was happening in the outside world, but it didn’t matter. He knew it would be bedlam out there as the government tried to show they were in control of a situation when they quite clearly weren’t. He smiled. It felt good to experience power again. He knew the police were desperate for any information he could give them — all the more so now that the name he’d given Tina Boyd had produced such dramatic results. But that was the reason he’d chosen Tina. Unlike so many coppers these days, she got things done.
Fox had always been a patient person. As a child he’d been able to sit for hours fishing with his father at the lake near their home, knowing that if he waited long enough, a trout would bite, because in the end one always did. It was a trait that had served him well during the long monotonous days he’d spent in prison.
But as he sat there now, he was finding it hard to stay calm. All his months of planning rested on what would happen in the next few hours. There was still so much that could go wrong. And in his heart, he knew that this was his one opportunity. He’d played all his cards. Now he would have to wait and see whether they trumped everyone else’s or not.
In his office, Governor Jeremy Goodman stared at the phone on his desk, listening to its high-pitched ringing. At the still very productive age of sixty-four he was actively considering retirement for the first time in his life. He’d worked in the prison system for more than thirty years, the last ten of which had been spent running Westmoor, and he prided himself on the safe, peaceful environment he’d fostered for the prisoners during that time. And now, suddenly, all his good work was being destroyed, as the prisoners repaid his work with a destructive and ultimately pointless riot, which had now spread to two of the prison’s wings.
Knowing he could avoid it no longer, he picked up the phone. The person at the other end was the Home Office minister Alan Harris, an irritating little man with a ‘hang ’em and flog ’em’ approach to criminal behaviour which was entirely unsuited to a modern, progressive society.
After a cursory attempt at pleasantries, Harris got straight down to business. ‘We’re moving Prisoner William Garrett,’ he said in a nasal voice that grated on Goodman every time he heard it.
‘On whose authority?’
‘The Prime Minister’s. The paperwork should already have arrived in your email account. An armed police escort with copies of the paperwork will be arriving at the prison in the next fifteen minutes.’
‘Are you sure about this, Minister? Prisoner Garrett is perfectly safe here. He’s in protective custody, well away from the disturbance, which we’ve contained in two wings. We also have Tornado Teams and riot police en route, the first of which should be here any minute.’
‘But you’ve also had two attempts on Garrett’s life, Governor, and the last one was less than an hour ago. I’m sorry, but whatever you may think, your facility, for all its
Goodman bristled at the way he was being spoken to by a jumped-up little twit like Harris who was obviously taking real pleasure out of the situation, even though it was clear that with three attacks in London in one day he was hardly on top of things either.
‘Prisoner Garrett will be ready,’ he said curtly, and ended the call without waiting for a reply.
‘Everything all right, sir?’ asked Officer Thomson, the most senior of the prison officers on duty, as Goodman put down the receiver. Thomson was stood to attention, with his hands behind his back, looking every inch the military man he’d once been.
Goodman sighed. ‘Prisoner Garrett is being removed. You need to go and get him ready. And make sure you
