twenty-four hours, and the shock of this was tearing me up inside. I needed a holiday. A long one. Six months, a year, somewhere far away from all the violence of the city. But I’d also done what I’d set out to do all those years ago when I started out in undercover. I’d brought down Tyrone Wolfe and Clarence Haddock, and I took grim satisfaction from the knowledge that they’d paid the price for what they did all those years ago. Wolfe’s denial that it was he who murdered my brother had caught me out, since it was a reliable source who’d heard him bragging that he was the man who’d pulled the trigger. There were three armed robbers there that day, Wolfe, Haddock and Tommy. But now, at least, they were all dead, even if they had taken the true identity of the shooter to their graves, and my brother and my parents could finally rest in peace.
I’d used my own car to get to Dougie’s. As I drove past his house, I saw that there were lights on on the ground floor. I wasn’t entirely surprised. Although it was seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, I knew he was an early riser, and he was going to have his hands full with the Kent manhunt, so there wouldn’t have been a lot of time to sleep.
I found a spot fifty yards down the road, parked up, and walked back, feeling nervous about what I was going to have to do.
Taking a deep breath that made me wince, I rang his doorbell, pleased at least that I no longer looked like something out of a horror film.
There was no answer, even though his car was in the carport, so I rang again and then rapped hard on the door. It was possible he’d gone out somewhere on foot and would be back soon, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself out here. So after about a minute, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to answer, I took a quick look round to check that no one was around, then clambered over the wooden fence that separated the front of the property from the back garden.
As I walked quietly round to the conservatory, something caught my eye. A light had gone out upstairs. So someone was here.
I tried the conservatory door, and it opened. I went inside and was about to call out Dougie’s name when I experienced a sudden uneasy feeling. Maybe it was paranoia after my recent experiences, but my instincts told me to be careful. I crept through the conservatory and into the kitchen, beginning to get worryingly used to sneaking about in places where I didn’t belong, and feeling more and more like some kind of fugitive.
The kitchen led through to a narrow hallway with the stairs on the left and another room off to the right. Although it was upstairs that the light had gone off, I couldn’t hear any sound coming from up there, which was strange. Again resisting the urge to call out, and wondering what Dougie would say if he caught me sneaking round his house at six in the morning, I crept over to the other door and opened it.
The sound of the TV drifted out, and as I stepped inside, closing the door behind me, I saw that it was a Sky News report. The room was empty but it smelled of smoke, and there was an overflowing ashtray on the antique coffee table that sat between two traditional leather sofas. That was another thing that was strange. I remembered Dougie smoking when I first joined CID, but I thought he’d given up years earlier.
I walked further inside the room, my eyes focused on the huge forty-inch TV as a tired-looking reporter spoke to the camera from just outside the scene-of-crime tape in Doughty Street where we’d snatched Kent. Behind him, a few SOCO moved about in their white coveralls, and a uniformed officer stood guard. There didn’t seem to be any frenetic activity.
The reporter didn’t have much of any importance to say and was just repeating what had happened the previous night. Thankfully, the police officer who’d been shot was stable in hospital, and his injuries were not thought to be life-threatening. The big news from the reporter’s view was the identity of the kidnap victim, and the fact that he’d been charged only hours before with the Night Creeper murders. Police, he said, were keeping an open mind regarding the motive for the snatch, and although he reiterated the usual stuff about a major manhunt being under way, with a number of leads being followed up, the subtext seemed to be that no one knew who’d done it, why, or where he was now. He finished by saying that a police press conference was set for ten a.m. that morning.
The camera then returned to the studio where an immaculately dressed female newsreader moved on to the next story, which was a fire at an abandoned hotel in Hertfordshire, from which two bodies had so far been recovered. There was a quick shot of the previous night’s rendezvous, which was now little more than a heavily smouldering pile of ash and stone, with a number of fire engines in front of it. Parts of the outbuilding where I’d discovered Haddock’s body were still standing, and I could make out the generator poking above what was left of a stone exterior wall. I assumed that one of the bodies they’d recovered must be his, but I doubted there would have been much left of it. The newsreader was stating that arson was suspected, and quoted Hertfordshire’s chief fire officer as saying it was possible there were more bodies inside. So far, unsurprisingly, no connection had been made between the two stories, but sooner or later DNA or dental work would be used to ID the victims, and then they’d merge into a superstory that would catch the imagination of journalists and police alike as they, like me, hunted for answers. The difference was, at the moment I was several steps ahead of them.
I froze. The door was opening behind me. And then there was another sound that I knew well enough from my firearms training.
The metallic click of a gun being cocked.
Forty-six
It was seven a.m., and Tina felt a sudden rush of apprehension as she parked the hire car in a resident’s bay across the road from Anthony Gore’s grand four-storey Notting Hill townhouse. All the way there Grier had been asking her if she was sure she was doing the right thing, and suggesting that it would be far better to get authorization before barging in on a government minister and effectively accusing him of murder. To his credit, though, he hadn’t refused to come along. ‘If it all goes wrong, I’ll say I forced you into it,’ she’d said in an attempt to mollify him.
As they got out of the car now, Grier looked pale. ‘He’s the Minister of Home Affairs, for God’s sake, ma’am,’ he said again, with something close to fear. ‘I don’t like the idea of doing this at all.’
But it was too late for that, and once again Tina told him she knew what she was doing. ‘Just leave me to do the talking,’ she said, walking up to the front door and rapping hard on the knocker. ‘You’re just going to be back- up. Look stern.’
He said something she didn’t catch under his breath, but which she was sure wasn’t complimentary, and then she heard footsteps coming from inside.
‘Who is it?’ came a voice from behind the door that she recognized from the occasional TV programme she’d seen him on as belonging to Gore himself.
‘Police, Mr Gore,’ she answered firmly, holding up her warrant card to the spyhole in the centre of the imposing oak door. Grier did the same.
There was the sound of locks being turned on the other side, then the door opened on a thick chain and a very irritated-looking Anthony Gore looked out at them. He was wearing a grey silk dressing gown and his collar- length silver hair was a mess. Even so, he looked sleek, well fed and prosperous, as if he’d never had to struggle for anything in life, and Tina’s dislike for him immediately hardened.
‘It’s seven on a Saturday morning, this had better be bloody important,’ he said, examining the warrant cards before finally opening up to let them in.
‘It is,’ Tina answered, determined not to be intimidated, even though there was a charisma about Gore that hinted at real power. In spite of herself, she could understand why an attractive woman like Roisin, more than twenty-five years younger, could fall for him.
They followed him as he stalked down the grand hallway to a room at the end. It was a large study, tastefully furnished in mahogany and leather, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining two walls and a view out on to a walled garden. Gore took a seat behind an imposing desk so that it looked like he was in charge, and motioned for them to take seats opposite.
As she sat down, Tina stole a glance at Grier, who seemed to be wilting under Gore’s grim, lawyerly demeanour.
‘My name’s DI Tina Boyd, and this is—’
