They had told him where to be at the Marathon and he had obliged. They had told him to go to the therapy sessions and he had obliged. They had told him to meet them here at two o’clock and now, an hour later, he was stood, wondering just how far down the rabbit hole he was going.
Nervously he looked around; nothing but darkness and the whistling of the gentle breeze. Looking out over the city once more, he took a deep breath of the fresh air, closing his eyes, and begging himself to get some clarity.
He was a police officer.
He knew he shouldn’t be accepting money, regardless of who was paying it and who else was on the take.
He had to do the right thing.
At that moment, a wave of content washed across PC Harding as he told himself that he was going to march into the nearest police station, identify himself, and tell them everything.
How he knew when and where not to be during that fateful minute of the London Marathon.
How he knew that Jake Howell was not going to live beyond that day.
How none of it was an accident.
Suddenly, Harding heard the scuffle of footsteps behind him, and as he turned, he felt the vice-like grip of powerful hands grab him from either side. The two men, their faces covered by masks, struggled for a few moments as he tried to use his large frame to fight back. But they had him, and a swift right hook to the ribs from one of them smashed the air straight out of him. As he collapsed to his knees, he hurried his body to catch its breath, the air struggling into his lungs in short, sharp intakes.
A third set of boots appeared before him, but before he could bring his eyes up to try to identify who they belonged to, a black sack was roughly drawn over his head, the back pulled tightly to arch his head backwards. A mouth hole was cut into it, exposing his mouth, which he drew open to scream for help.
Instantly a bottle was shoved into his mouth, the burning sensation of vodka hurtling down his throat, threatening to drown him as he gasped for air. He felt the alcohol dribbling over the sides of his mouth, dousing the front of his jumper and splashing across his jeans. The dampness was soon joined by a fresh batch of urine as PC Harding realised what was happening.
The alcohol kicked in pretty quickly, a near-litre of vodka sloshing around in his body and turning his brain to mush.
The city of London suddenly turned on its side before rushing past him.
In his drunken state, PC Harding had no idea he had been thrown off the top of the car park. Nor did he feel anything, as his body collided with the pavement, shattering his spine and sending his life into eternal darkness.
CHAPTER TEN
The following morning, the Metropolitan Police was in anarchy.
Every avenue of media was reporting on the apparent suicide of the partner of PC Jake Howell, with their media officer working round the clock to douse the flames of fear. The city was watching as a terrorist attack was ripping through the heart of the very body designed to protect them.
With the threat level firmly in the red, the government was now being pressured to deliver some kind of placation, something that would remove the fear from the city of London and show the world that they were prepared to fight back.
That their city was safe.
PC Harding’s death had hit the office hard. Despite his boisterous and at times offensive behaviour, a death of a colleague always hung around the Metropolitan Police Service like an ethereal fog. Every officer wanted to fight back, offering whatever they could to the cause to find the terrorists who were now being blamed for the deaths of two of their own.
Crowded in the briefing room, DS Mayer stood at the front, thick arms crossed and a scowl on his face. The noise was a constant growl, like a disgruntled football crowd, as every officer offered their opinion on the situation and what they would want as an outcome.
They were baying for blood.
Knowing their sense of revenge was as malleable as soft putty, Mayer’s face soon relaxed into a sympathetic smile, as if he were hearing each and every one of them. He knew that with the increased focus on this case, his profile was about to shoot through the roof. Word had reached him that the PM’s office had been in contact, wanting a direct update on their investigation.
If he played this correctly, Mayer would be looking at a hell of a career ladder.
He waited for a few more moments before rallying the troops. After luring them in with his own grief, he began a series of slightly antagonistic questions, each one designed to provoke a revenge-thirsty reaction. After only five minutes, he had split the room into three new teams, each one working on a different thread, each group hoping to bring justice to a sickening threat and ensure their colleagues’ lives were not lost in vain.
As they slowly filtered out of the room, Mayer stood, hands on hips, with a sense of pride and purpose. Each officer cast a suspicious eye over DCI Adrian Pearce, who stood at the back of the room, his hands stuffed in his pockets. The seasoned detective flashed them his best grin, ignoring any hint of distrust in their whispers. As the final officer stepped back into the office, Mayer looked agitated as Pearce gently closed the door behind them, leaving just the two of them alone in the briefing room.
‘Can I help you, Pearce’?
Mayer’s words were filled with venom, a usual tone for an internal affairs officer. Also ignoring the lack of respect for rank, Pearce slowly walked towards the detective, passing the rows of empty chairs.
‘I just wanted to listen in, you know? An officer has been killed and I just need to cover the bases.’
‘Killed?’ Mayer scoffed.
‘Yeah. Why, what did you hear?’
‘Come on, Pearce. What’s really going on here? Are you under pressure to get your numbers up?’ Mayer shook his head in disgust. ‘There are terrorists out there, killing our own officers, and instead you are in here looking for the killer? You are a disgrace to the badge.’
Mayer stomped past Pearce, who reached out and grabbed his arm, stopping him in his tracks. Mayer’s eyes bulged with anger as he turned and faced Pearce, whose smile quickly evaporated.
‘Listen here, son. First off, respect your goddamn seniors.’
Mayer shuffled uncomfortably.
‘Secondly, I am doing my goddamn job. When an officer is killed, I need to make sure we look at every side of the coin.’
‘The man committed suicide,’ Mayer interjected, his face a mere inch or two from Pearce, who could smell the coffee on his breath. ‘Even you can see that.’
‘You have witnesses? People who saw PC Harding throw himself off?’
‘No, but it doesn’t take a genius to see what happened,’ Mayer protested, snatching his arm from Pearce’s grip. ‘He was cut up about Howell, knowing he should have been there. Took himself up to the top of that car park and threw himself off. Very sad.’
Pearce nodded. ‘And you have CCTV of him throwing himself off?’
‘What the hell is your problem, Pearce?’
‘Just because it seems to be clear cut doesn’t mean it is, Mayer. That’s what being a detective is. Maybe if you took your tongue out every senior officer’s arsehole and actually did some work once in a while, you’d know that too.’
‘Fuck you.’ Mayer stepped forward, his frame considerably larger than Pearce’s, as well as being a decade younger. ‘We found enough vodka in his blood to knock a horse unconscious. The guy was grieving, and we couldn’t help him. But I will, by not letting you pin this on one of the people out there who are trying to find the real bad guys. Got that?’
Mayer jabbed a firm finger into Pearce’s shoulder.
‘Absolutely.’ Pearce stepped to the side, allowing Mayer to step past. ‘However, strangely, I spoke to the onsite therapist, Mrs Devereux. Apparently, Harding was given mandated sessions to help him deal with his grief. Understandable, given what happened.’
‘Get to the point, Pearce.’
‘It’s just, I didn’t get a feel from her that Harding was in any pain at al
l. In fact, I didn’t get much on him, to be honest.’
‘Has she filed her report yet?’ Mayer asked in a frustrated tone.
‘Not yet. I’ll check in with her tomorrow. But like you said…it’s probably nothing.’
It was now Pearce’s turn to walk towards the door, gently patting Mayer on the shoulder as he did. As Pearce grabbed the door handle, Mayer spoke up.
‘How do you do it, Pearce?’
‘Do what?’ Pearce responded, peering through the gaps in the blind at the busy office.
‘Look at yourself in the mirror knowing you’re nothing more than an arsehole,’
Pearce offered him a smile as he pulled the door open. ‘It’s easy being an arsehole, son. It means you can tell when somethings full of shit or not.’
Pearce disappeared into the open office, leaving Mayer to stew in the briefing room. With Inspector Howell signed off for the next few weeks on compassionate leave, Mayer knew he had a chance to really make a name for himself. He would bring this horrible terrorist incident to a successful conclusion. As he watched Pearce walk through the office and out into the stairwell, Mayer silently promised that he would get there before Pearce did.
Sam had woken that morning with his head pounding, like someone was using his brain as a ping-pong ball. The previous night had almost been pleasurable, Theo being a link to a previous life that was once filled with happiness. As the alcohol had flowed, so had their conversation, and after they had spoken about the pain of his family’s absence, and his propensity to violently assault criminals, they had reminisced about their times on tour together.
As his head felt like it was squeezing around his brain, Sam drank two glasses of orange juice and decided to sweat away the hangover.
The following hour was spent in the spare room, his bare knuckles slamming mercilessly against the solid punch bag, the chain swinging gently with each blow. Over and over, he hammered the bag with precision, the coarse leather ripping the skin from his knuckles. Sweat rained down from every pore, causing him to remove his T-shirt after fifteen minutes. By the end of the hour, Sam stood by the window, catching his breath and willing the fresh air into his lungs. Blood dripped from his knuckles as several beads of sweat raced each other down his spine.
It wasn’t until he sat down for breakfast that he saw the headline pertaining to Harding. Quickly flicking through the news report on his phone, Sam read in disbelief as a fractured account of Harding’s suicide was written, with every report linking it back to the marathon bombing.
After he had read every major UK news report on the situation, he sat in disbelief for a few moments, trying to desperately piece together what was going on.
Just like before, something wasn’t sitting right.
Harding had never been anything other than appalling towards him, but Sam would never have wished any harm to come his way. Now the man was dead, apparently drunk and grief-stricken to the point of taking his own life.
Sam spent the rest of the afternoon and evening retracing the same thought again and again. He had spoken of his suspicions the previous night with Theo, the inaccuracies in the eyewitness reports regarding Harding’s presence on the day of the bombing.
The therapy sessions.
It just didn’t seem to make sense.
As the sun set on another cool spring evening, Sam threw on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt before sliding his arms into his black bomber jacket.
It had taken him five minutes to log into his work database and find Amy Devereux’s address. He needed to speak to her, and with his suspicions rising, he wanted to do it on neutral ground.
He set off into the night looking for answers.
As the darkness of the evening grew, Amy Devereux pulled up outside her block of flats in Richmond. Having been on hand to speak to a number of officers throughout the day, many of whom showing various stages of grief at the loss of their colleague, she was shattered. It was hardly her ideal way of spending a Sunday. Whatever happened to it being a day of rest? As she eventually found a parking spot on the road, she collected a few folders off of the passenger seat before disembarking.
She slowly walked up the street towards the large black gate that required a fob to get through. Once inside, she waited patiently for an elevator, not fancying the three flights of stairs after her long day. Her heels were causing her calves to scream in pain and she was hoping for one of Andy’s calf massages.
Andy, an accountant, would be home, and she was hoping he had dinner on the go. Her stomach rumbled just to underline the point.
As she shot up to the third floor, her mind raced through all of the meetings she had had that day, the cries of anger or the tears of sadness, all of her colleagues struggling to deal with the death of one of their own. She had her own thoughts after her meeting with Harding the previous day, but they were now clouding the notion of suicide.
He just didn’t seem that broken by it all.
The lift doors pinged open and she shook her head, furious with herself for questioning someone’s grief, and she ventured down the hallway towards the door to her flat. She and Andy had bought it two years ago, the value skyrocketing to eye-watering levels every year. Two bedrooms, overlooking Richmond Park. The only thing missing was a third member of their family, which Amy had been giving more and more thought to.
Especially after her weekly meetings with Sam Pope.
The love he had for his son was something she craved for her and Andy’s marriage.
Suddenly, a jolt of excitement travelled through her like a lightning rod and she wondered if she was too tired to start tonight. Maybe they could wolf down their dinner and get straight to burning it off?
With a coy smile, Amy opened the door to her flat and stepped into the front room. The smell of Andy’s chicken korma fluttered through the living room and she carefully placed her files and keys on the hallway table. It was only then, as she turned, that she saw her husband on his knees, masking tape clasping a cloth into his mouth and the masked man stood beside him with a pistol aimed at his head.
Before she could scream, Amy felt a gloved hand reach from behind and clamp down over her mouth as the other masked man grabbed her tightly before slamming the door shut behind her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DCI Pearce sat at his desk, the lamp spreading an orange glow across the paperwork. His screen was locked, an image of a classic car filling the page. The rest of the office was cloaked in darkness, the night sky peering in through the window like a nosy neighbour. Across the corridor, the graveyard shift were turning up in dribs and drabs, a few officers arriving together whom Pearce suspected were having an affair.
He scolded himself, constantly piecing together little snippets to come to conclusions he didn’t have evidence for. It was almost the reverse of what he had been taught as a detective, but he had something that they couldn’t teach: instinct.
It won him few friends, especially within the Met, but Pearce knew his reputation was begrudgingly respected. The man was a dog with a bone, who would dig and dig until he found what he suspected. The results had spoken for themselves, with seventeen cases all closed with guilty verdicts in the last year. Pearce sat, elbows on the desk, his forehead resting in his right hand. The sleeves of his shirt had been pulled up for hours. Small damp patches had begun to form under his arms as his body cried out for a shower and some rest.
The low hum of the floor polisher echoed down the corridor, the janitor trying his best to scrub away the boot marks on the well-worn floor.
Pearce casually tossed the folder closed and leant back in his chair, interlocking his fingers and pushing his arms up. The full stretch did him a world of good, the feeling of a muscle popping out of a knot giving him a small satisfaction.
Something just didn’t sit right.
He pushed himself out of the chair and stretched his back once more before sliding his arms into his blazer. He then placed the files into his briefcase—the session notes from A
my Devereux which he had acquired when he had gone to speak to her. He found her very engaging and incredibly professional. She gave him some of her notes on Sam Pope, but after scanning through, there wasn’t much beyond what he already knew.
Ex-military. Possibly special forces.
Ex-wife.
Missed his son.
A loner.
Whilst she failed to paint a new picture regarding Pope, he had been fascinated by her comments on Harding. That he seemed completely numb to the notion of grief and at no point did she detect even a modicum of sadness. Which, after speaking with DS Mayer, was the opposite of the tale he was being spun.
He sighed, leaning forward and clicking off the lamp.
Something didn’t sit right.
As he headed to the exit, he remembered that it was arriving home on Sunday at eleven that had eventually caused his wife to leave him. He was so tired he felt it all the way through to his bone marrow. As he crossed the tarmac to his car, Pearce hoped that a good night’s sleep would help him to steer his investigation in the right direction.
Amy’s hand trembled as she gripped the pen. Tears had stained her cheeks, leaving thin, black strips from her mascara. Sat at the table in their neatly decorated front room, she shook with fear as she felt the gun press against the back of her head.
The masked men had told her that if she made a sound, they would execute her husband in front of her and leave her to take the fall for it. She battled her panic attack and had eventually calmed to the point of being able to breathe properly again, allowing oxygen to fill into her body and let her think clearly.
She begged for his life, which only resulted in the man holding her husband at gunpoint to lash out, striking her husband on the eyebrow with the handle of his pistol. His muffled cries of pain were quickly followed by a steady flow of blood from the blow. She began to cry, telling them she would do whatever they wanted, and soon it became clear. The man who had snared her as she walked through the door demanded that she write an official report to be submitted the following morning, which recounted how PC Harding had spoken at length of his guilt regarding the death of Jake Howell and that she had genuine concerns for his well-being.
The Night Shift: A high octane thriller that will have you gripped. (Sam Pope Series Book 1) Page 8