moving beyond logical risk assessment and into the realms of pure revenge. He was going to beat the information he needed out of this bastard, would kill him if he had to, but there was no way he was losing him. No way at all. It was an incredibly liberating thought.
When he rounded the bend, the suspect had gained a few yards and was racing across to the other side of the road through the blocked traffic. There were fewer people milling about on the pavements here, and no sign of any police either. But also less cover for his quarry, and Bolt knew that as long as he kept pace, feeding the suspect's position into the mike, then he wasn't going to get away.
After thirty more yards, the suspect looked round and saw Bolt still right behind him. He turned back and kept running, but Bolt was conscious of the knife in his hand. It was a stiletto, the blade probably eight inches long, still slick with the blood of two men. All Bolt had to fight with was the standard-issue police pepper spray. That and the pure rage that was driving him on. Neither of which was any guarantee of success. He knew that if he'd had a gun on him he'd have used it without a second's hesitation to bring the bastard down. He'd have put a bullet in his leg, and beaten the whereabouts of his daughter out of him while he lay helpless. Because the fact remained – indeed, it was branded right on the front of his brain in flaming white-hot letters – that if he lost this man, Emma was as good as dead.
The suspect turned a hard left. Bolt did the same, shouting the street name into the mike, but he wasn't looking where he was going properly and he slipped and lost his balance, jarring his knee as he hit the deck hard, and rolling on to his side. He ignored the pain, jumped up and kept running, cursing the fact that his clumsiness had lost him five yards and counting.
The street led up to the entrance to a high-rise council estate. It was a dead end for cars. Bolt cursed. He knew that if the suspect got inside the warren of alleys that these characterless sixties estates always featured it would mean he'd almost certainly slip through the net. Jesus, where the hell was the back-up? Even the helicopter was no longer overhead; doubtless it had been sent to chase the money. It disgusted him that the recovery of the half a million pounds was more important to his bosses, and their bosses, than capturing a brutal knife-wielding killer and possibly saving the life of a fourteen-year-old girl, but then in his heart he'd always known it would be. The whole British justice system was built on the protection of property above the protection of lives, which was why armed robbers were always put away for two, three, sometimes even five times as long as child molesters.
Bastards. In those taut, desperate seconds, Bolt was a man entirely on his own, out on a limb and having to do everything himself, knowing that failure was unthinkable.
The armed response vehicle seemed to materialize from nowhere. In fact it had come out of a side road up ahead, just in front of the entrance to the estate. It stopped dead, blocking the way, and the three officers were out in an instant, their MP5s pointed straight at the suspect, who was twenty yards from them.
'Armed police! Drop your weapon!'
Bolt reached into his pocket for the pepper spray, knowing that the suspect was going to turn and run back his way, away from the guns, meaning it would be up to him to make an arrest.
But the suspect didn't. He kept on going. Charging right at them, yelling something that sounded remarkably like a battle cry.
'Don't shoot him!' shouted Bolt. 'Take him alive! For Christ's sake, we need him!'
'Armed police! Drop your weapon now!'
'Don't shoot!'
The suspect was only ten yards away from them. Still running, he pulled back his arm and threw the knife. It hit one of the ARV officers in the arm above the elbow, slicing right through the bicep. The cop dropped his gun and grabbed uselessly at the knife's handle, which was jammed halfway into his arm, stumbling as he did so. For the suspect, it was a suicidal move. Bolt knew it, and knew too what it meant. He saw a dead girl; a funeral; a lifetime of wondering how he could have done things differently.
The bullets sounded like firecrackers in the empty street, their noise reverberating hollowly off the high walls of the surrounding buildings. Two two-round bursts. The suspect flew backwards, arms flailing as he spun round before crashing to the ground, his sunglasses flying off and clattering across the tarmac.
'Police!' screamed Bolt to identify himself, holding up his warrant card as he ran over to where the suspect lay. He knelt down, felt for a pulse, knew it was pointless. There was something there, but it was fading fast, and even as his fingers squeezed the wrist and he shouted at him not to die, his voice full of desperation, it disappeared altogether. He was gone. His eyes were closed, his mouth ever so slightly open, a single drop of blood forming in one corner. It wasn't Scott Ridgers, either. This guy was young – late twenties, maybe thirty – an ordinary, unblemished face, olive skin and thick black hair suggesting a background from somewhere in southern Europe. Bolt had never seen him before, knew nothing about him, would probably never know anything about him, other than the fact that his death might have ramifications for him that lasted for the rest of his days.
And as he knelt there, staring down at the dead man, unable to understand why the ARV cops couldn't have used a non-lethal option like a taser or a baton round to bring him down, his worst fears were confirmed as Barry's frantic voice came over the earpiece.
'Control to all units. What do you mean you've lost suspect one? Find him! I want the whole fucking area locked down! We have to get hold of that money! Over.'
They'd failed. And God alone knew what happened now.
Forty-two
'Why the hell did you remove all the tracking devices, Mrs Devern?' demanded Mo Khan, barely able to contain his anger. 'You must have known it was going to help them get away.'
Andrea, ashen-faced, shocked like all of them, glared at him. 'Because they knew about them, that's why!' she yelled, her voice close to breaking. 'They knew you were there. How the hell did that happen?'
The question hung in the air.
Twenty minutes had passed since the fatal shooting of suspect two. Two police helicopters continued to hover overhead, moving in lazy circles, hunting for a quarry who had long since disappeared, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. The worst of the crowds were gone too, although there were still large groups of pedestrians hanging around to see the aftermath of the action, and because they were spilling out into the road they were causing
