into the hands of the Citadel. He reached up to the back of his head and felt a lump swelling where his head had struck the wall. The hair around it was wet with blood from a deep, swollen tear on his scalp. He glanced at the blood on his fingers. It was bright red, not dark, not too sticky. It hadn’t started to coagulate. He can’t have been unconscious for too long, which was good, but he still had to move fast.
He reached the end of the tunnel and squatted low to the floor. Holding his gun out in front, low and close to his body, he glanced round the edge of the crate in a rapid darting movement,
Outside, all was quiet — no police cars, no airport security. A white van was parked by one of the neighbouring warehouses. He was pretty sure it was the same one he’d followed earlier. There had been three men inside it then. So far he’d found only one. He grabbed the edge of the door and rolled it shut, dropping a thick metal latch across to keep it shut. With his back now covered he returned to the dead man.
The bullet that killed him had entered at the intersection of a Tau drawn on his forehead in blood. There was no blood around the wound. Death must have been instant. Pity. He blew out a long stream of air to disperse the emotion tightening his throat and pricking the backs of his eyes. He needed to stay focused. Two men were still unaccounted for and cops couldn’t be far away.
Gabriel dropped down and searched the dead man, his hand hissing over the dry surface of his red windcheater, avoiding the wet pulpy sections round his neck where the blood had soaked through. At least he’d suffered before he died.
He found a set of van keys and a blank plastic rectangle the size of a credit card. He remembered the van waiting at the end of the alley by the old town wall. The driver had swiped a card then. He slipped it into his pocket with the van keys and picked up the dead man’s gun. A silencer lay nearby, next to a canvas bag. Gabriel crabbed over, picked up the tube of black metal and used it to lift the cover flap of the bag.
Inside were four full 9mm clips, two grenades and a plastic box containing preloaded hypodermic syrettes, the same type soldiers carried into combat. There were also a couple of spare ampoules of clear liquid. He glanced at the label. It was Ketamine — a heavy-duty tranquilizer usually used by vets to knock out horses. He dropped the Glock into the bag along with the silencer, swung it over his shoulder and slipped between the stacked crates heading towards the office at the back of the warehouse.
As he approached the end of the passageway he smelt the burnt-air bitterness of explosives and saw the shredded outer wall of the office. On the floor in front of it a sooty circle showed the point of the blast. There was another on the underside of the steel roof above it. The reinforced concrete of the floor had obviously reflected most of the explosion upwards, undoubtedly saving his life. He reached the end of the passageway and took a deep breath to dampen his swelling anger, then moved forward.
What was left of Oscar lay by the office door.
Gabriel had seen battlefield casualties before, flesh torn and shredded by the teeth and claws of modern weaponry — but never someone he was related to. He moved towards his grandfather, choking down his grief, trying not to look at the red mess of his body, focusing instead on the face that had somehow remained remarkably untouched. Oscar was face down, his head tilted to one side, his eyes closed as if resting. He looked almost serene. A bright splash of blood stood out against the dark mahogany of his cheek. Gabriel reached down and gently wiped it away with his thumb. The skin was still warm. He leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, then stood and looked around for something to cover him with before his emotions dragged him further down. He still hadn’t secured the area, or found Liv. He dragged a tarpaulin from one of the crates, carefully draped it over Oscar’s body, then ducked through the door and into the office.
Chapter 124
The moment Gabriel saw the open fire door at the back of the room he knew something was wrong. He raised his gun, crunched towards it and looked outside. The Inspector was lying on the ground. Liv had gone.
He stepped out, checking along the perimeter fence for the patrols then grabbed the Inspector under his shoulders, leaned back to drag him inside, and nearly dropped him again when he let out a low, ragged moan.
He hauled him inside, closed the fire door and felt for a neck pulse. He found one, and frowned at the two bullet holes in the front of his shirt. They were ragged and closely grouped. He poked his finger through one of them and touched warm metal. He dragged his finger towards the second hole, tearing the shirt material between them and revealing a black body armour vest beneath with two flattened bullets at the spot where the heart should be. The impact would have been enough to knock him out, crack the ribs maybe, but not kill him.
‘Hey,’ Gabriel said, slapping him sharply on both cheeks. ‘Come on, wake up.’
He slapped him harder until Arkadian’s head finally rolled away to one side and his eyes struggled open. He looked at Gabriel. Focused. Tried to get up.
‘Take it easy,’ Gabriel said, resting a hand on his chest where the bullets had struck. ‘You’ve been shot. If you get up you could pass out again and crack your head. I need to know what car you came in.’
‘Unmarked car,’ Arkadian rasped in a dry voice he didn’t recognize.
‘It’s gone,’ Gabriel said, reaching into his pocket and taking out his mobile phone. ‘Whoever took it is probably the same guy who shot you and left you for dead. I want you to call it in as stolen. It’ll be on the road somewhere between here and the Citadel. But advise caution. The girl’s in the car with him.’
Arkadian looked at the phone and remembered the officer he’d left sitting behind the wheel. ‘The driver?’ he said.
Gabriel looked at him, his face blank. ‘He’ll be in the car too.’ Arkadian nodded, his face darkening. He reached out with his good hand and took the phone. He started to dial the number for central dispatch but managed only the first three numbers before both men froze as something moved, outside in the warehouse.
Gabriel surged forward, moving low across the floor towards the open door, keeping below the line of the windows. The sound came again. Like electrical static, or the crinkle of heavy plastic. He realized what it was a split second before he reached the door and a terrible sound tore through the air — the banshee howl of pain and lament.
His mother was standing just outside the door, holding the tarpaulin in her hand, and staring down at what was left of her father’s body.
Chapter 125
Cornelius headed up through the rising mountains keeping a steady few points below the speed limit, wary of his broken wind-screen and the two corpses stashed in the boot. The tail end of the rush-hour traffic still leaked out of the city. Very little was heading in his direction. He made it all the way up the Southern Boulevard and on to the inner ring road before Arkadian managed to report the car he was driving as stolen. He was already easing down the slip road and headed into the Umbrasian Quarter by the time the dispatcher called it out on the radio and instigated a search. Following the daily exodus of coaches and cars after the old town closed its portcullises for the night the Quarter was practically deserted. Cornelius turned into the alley, and brought the car to a stop by the steel door. He tapped a message into his phone explaining where he was, and who was in the car with him.
Then he waited.
After a long minute a deep
