Doyle's eyes closed and his head rolled to one side, more blood trailing out of his mouth and dripping on to the concrete.
Bolt took a step back, then another, until he reached the car. He propped himself up against it and noticed the crowd watching – twenty, thirty strong now – for the first time.
'Someone dial nine-nine-nine,' he said with as much strength as he could muster.
Then tiredness seemed to overwhelm him and, still clutching the revolver, he slid down the car and landed in a sitting position on the tarmac.
It was over.
Fifty-eight
Tina Boyd stood in the shadows thrown by the low-rise council flats and looked through the darkness at the brand-new four-door Lexus GS parked behind the chainlink fence on the other side of the road. It had just turned twenty past ten and she'd been standing there for more than an hour already. She wondered if she was wasting her time. Probably. But Tina wasn't the sort to give up that easily. She'd give it another half an hour before calling it a day.
She stifled a yawn. It had been a manic weekend but at least events had come to a comparatively clean conclusion, which, as most police officers would tell you, is very rarely the case. Pat Phelan had at last turned up, although the manner in which he did so left something to be desired. A thorough search by Enfield SOCO of one of the farm's outbuildings revealed his dismembered remains inside a barrel of sulphuric acid, where they were dissolving steadily; they would probably have been little more than sludge had they been left for another week. His teeth had been forcibly removed, and identification had only been possible because a large 'Ban the Bomb' tattoo on what was left of his upper arm was still just about visible, and was recognized by Andrea Devern.
The other main development that day had been the uncovering of the third person involved in the kidnap, DI Jack Doyle of the Flying Squad. A woman who lived a hundred yards from the farm had heard the gunshots the previous evening and had gone outside to investigate. She'd seen an unfamiliar car parked down the lane from her house, and because of the circumstances she'd written down the registration number. A few minutes later she'd seen a man return to the car and drive away. Because there were a number of farms in the area, and the sound of shotguns being fired wasn't that unusual, the woman hadn't called the police. But when they'd turned up at her door earlier that day as part of their general enquiries, she'd told them about what had happened. The car was quickly traced to DI Doyle, and when the witness was shown his photo she was able to say that it bore a very strong resemblance to the person she'd seen. Not enough for a conviction perhaps, but ample justification for an arrest warrant to be issued, and from that moment on his fate had been sealed. However, before he could be arrested, he'd been involved in a car crash, and was now seriously ill in hospital. A gun recovered from the scene with his fingerprints on it had subsequently been confirmed as the weapon used to murder Scott Ridgers at the farm.
The reason why it was only a comparatively clean conclusion rather than an absolutely perfect result was that Matt Turner was still very ill and Mike Bolt, who more than anyone deserved credit for the op's overall success, was suspended until further notice. It didn't seem fair. And this was the main reason Tina was hanging around in the dark in a bad part of town, waiting. Because sometimes doing the job and upholding the law didn't necessarily provide the justice it was meant to. Sometimes you had to dispense that justice yourself, as an individual. Like Mike had done yesterday.
There was movement across the road. A group of men emerged from the entrance to the monolithic tower block, three of them in all, moving purposefully, their voices low. They stopped at the Lexus and got inside, pulling out seconds later.
Tina retreated further into the shadows and took out her mobile as they drove past her. It was an unregistered pay-as-you go she'd bought on Tottenham Court Road earlier that day, and as the Lexus came to the end of the road and turned left, she dialled 999, asking for police.
'Hello, can I help you?'
'I've just seen three men get into a car armed with guns.'
'Are you sure about this, madam?'
'Absolutely,' she said breathlessly. 'They walked right past me.'
She gave her location, the make and model of the car, and the direction it was travelling in, waiting patiently while the operator took all the information down.
'And can I have your name, madam?'
'I don't want to get involved, I'm too scared.'
And with that, she ended the call, switched off the phone, and walked back to her car.
When she'd phoned the number Leon Daroyce had given her an hour earlier she'd disguised her voice and said he could find Pat Phelan at a flat in Colindale, where he was holed up with a lover, hoping he'd take the bait. And now it looked like he had done. She had no idea whether Daroyce and his two associates would be armed or not, but it didn't really matter since when the police stopped the car they'd find the five grams of cocaine she'd planted in the glove compartment. It had taken all the burglary skills she'd learned at SOCA to bypass the Lexus's sophisticated alarm system, as well as one hell of a lot of nerve, but it would be worth it. Armed with the coke, the police would be able to execute a search warrant on Daroyce's premises, a place she was absolutely sure would be full of illegal contraband.
It might not be enough to put him away for years, or even months, but at least she'd done something to disrupt his business and pay him back for the ordeal he'd put her through two days earlier, and a search of the flat would probably mean freedom for the girl he'd abused as well, which had to be a good thing. He would probably work out who'd been behind it, and might even want to extract some kind of revenge when he was back on the street, but she doubted he'd risk killing a SOCA agent. Whatever he might like to claim, Daroyce was a bully, and bullies tended to be cowards when it came down to it.
She knew what her former lover, John Gallan, would have thought of her actions. He'd have disapproved, not only because what she'd done was potentially so dangerous, but also because he'd always believed in the absolute sanctity of the law he'd been paid to uphold. But as Tina and countless many others had found to their cost down the years, the law didn't always punish the bad, just like it didn't always protect the good. Sometimes you just had to bend the rules, even if that did mean planting evidence.
