The second gunman swiftly bundled the other guard into the back of the prison van and slammed the doors shut, automatically activating the locking system. I was now on my own. He grabbed my arm, shoved the gun against the wound on my belly, and manoeuvred me round the front of the van, with the lead gunman following close behind. I could see several people looking out of windows, and another person filming the scene, but no one seemed to be calling the cops or making any move to intervene.
I could see their car now: a white Toyota saloon parked at a right angle to the flow of traffic, blocking the road. The boot was open and they were manhandling me towards it.
It’s hard to make the decision to make a run for it when you’ve got two guns trained on you, especially when one of them’s pressed against your gut, and if I’d been living the life of a free man I don’t think I’d have done it. But as it was, I didn’t have a lot left to live for, and if I had to die, then at least it would be on my terms.
As we reached the boot and the second gunman’s grip on my arm momentarily eased, I slammed my body into his and twisted away from him, bolting up the street, almost losing my balance but somehow managing to right myself just in time, waiting for the inevitable bullet to slam into me and end it all. But in that handful of seconds I felt a real sense of elation. I was a free man.
And then my back spasmed uncontrollably, followed a split second later by every muscle in my body. My legs went from under me and I toppled over, unable to break my fall as the concrete raced upwards, slamming into the side of my face. I tried to lift my head and move my legs, but nothing seemed to work, and I lay there utterly helpless as a car wheel roared into my field of vision, stopping inches away. The gunmen were shouting at each other but I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and their voices sounded far away.
And then I was being lifted up and forced into the darkness of the car boot, and I knew then that I hadn’t been shot, but tasered, and already the effects were beginning to wear off.
The boot slammed shut and, as I regained feeling in my body, the Toyota accelerated away in a screech of tyres, making continual sharp turns and hardly braking as my abductors tried to get as far away from the crime scene as possible. I was forced to brace myself against the side to stop myself from being flung all over the place.
A few minutes later, the car screeched to a halt. I made a promise to myself that I was going to resist as I heard the gunmen come round the back, but as the boot flew open and I found myself staring at the barrel of the shotgun, I felt my will fading, and I hardly moved as the second gunman reached in with a hypodermic needle and jabbed me quickly in the arm.
I remember being taken out and led unsteadily over to a bigger car, then bundled into the back of that, thinking that, having gone to this much trouble to take me alive, whatever they had planned for me was going to be very, very bad indeed, before mercifully I lost consciousness.
3
For Alastair Sheridan, being born without a conscience had always been a boon. It had enabled him to achieve what weaker, less ruthless people had never been able to, and it had propelled him to the position he was in now: a self-made businessman with a reported net worth of £60 million (it was actually a few million less than that, but who was quibbling?), a beautiful trophy wife ten years his junior, an even more beautiful six-year-old son, and now, out of the blue, a career in politics which was threatening to go stratospheric thanks to the squabbling that was tearing his party apart. Having been parachuted into a safe government seat barely nine months earlier, things had moved rapidly and now the prize at the very top was his to win. He was good-looking and in the best shape he’d been for years, thanks to the recent diet and exercise regime that had knocked a stone off his six-foot-three frame. And most importantly of all, the public loved him. Even the very few in the party who’d got wind of some of the suspicion that surrounded him were no problem. Especially when he had someone as powerful as George Bannister in his pocket.
Sheridan and George were old friends from school, although George probably didn’t see it that way any more. In fact, Sheridan was fairly certain the other man secretly hated him, but that didn’t matter. The most important thing was that when Sheridan whistled, George came running. As he’d done so this evening, bringing his singularly unattractive second wife and their rather wimpish ten-year-old son, the atrociously named Rafferty, for an early evening barbecue at the Sheridan family home deep in the Hampshire countryside where Sheridan had grown up, and where he had his constituency.
‘So where are we at on my leadership bid, George?’ demanded Sheridan as the
