by Kate London
Shakiel stood calmly in front of the stone-topped custody desk, waiting for his solicitor to arrive and saying nothing. If he recognized Kieran or remembered ever before having stood next to him at the same desk, he betrayed no sign of it.
Kieran went through the grounds for arrest, and the female custody sergeant with a flash of red in her hair – who had allowed that? – followed the order of service and authorized detention. Perhaps she too felt the specialness of this last pass through the real business of the place before it became designer flats.
In this nineteenth-century listed building, once a police station …
Kieran, feeling magnanimous and sentimental, turned to Shakiel. ‘You want a coffee? I’ll send out for you.’
But the custody sergeant, cradling the phone in her shoulder, interrupted. ‘Excuse me, guv, sorry. You Kieran Shaw?’
Kieran took the phone and listened. Shakiel’s eyes were on him, and although he heard the voice on the other end of the line, he wasn’t sure it was all going in.
The officer watching the live feed from the surveillance cameras was telling him the worst possible news. Kieran barely remembered the man’s name – George, he thought. An affable chap, inexperienced: everyone liked him. He’d been tasked to this role as mere contingency, and it was almost funny to picture big posh George sitting alone in Perseus’s warehouse offices watching with disbelief the unscheduled action unfolding in the flat.
‘They’re both there?’ Kieran asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You can see them?’
‘Yes. Steve’s in the car seat. Ryan’s at the table. They’re smoking.’
‘He doesn’t know Steve’s a cop?’
‘Don’t think so. Thinks he’s an informant.’
‘The gun, can you tell if it’s real or imitation?’
‘Looks real, but I don’t know. It’s a handgun. A revolver, I think.’
‘What does Ryan say his intentions are?’
‘Says he’s waiting for someone.’
Kieran felt like his mind was filling with blankness. He looked at Shakiel. ‘You’ve given Ryan a gun?’
He’d meant it to be a question – a real question that needed answering – but it came out as the baffled accusation it also was. Shakiel might have been looking at something very distant, a mile behind Kieran perhaps; not at Kieran himself anyway.
Kieran felt giddy; he wasn’t who he thought he was. He had let his attention slip. He’d put Steve at risk.
He said, ‘For fuck’s sake. Just tell me if it’s real. You don’t want Ryan to be killed for an imitation.’
Shakiel could have been made of stone.
Kieran said, ‘Big man, aren’t you?’ and immediately felt how irrelevant that was now. He felt sick with the consequences of his decision to let Steve go back to the flat. Shakiel had fixed him briefly with a look of pure contempt and involuntarily Kieran thought of how they had all laughed about little Ryan and given him his nickname.
I shouldn’t really say this …
Shakiel had turned away. Kieran should further arrest him for supplying Ryan with a firearm, but he didn’t have time. He didn’t have a car. The AFOs who had brought him to Atcham had already left. A uniformed officer had emerged from the line of cells and was crossing towards the airlock. He called out to him.
‘You one of the drivers of the vehicles in the yard?’
51
Lee and Sarah, looking for the silver Audi, were working a grid of early-Victorian streets – wide square fronts, roses climbing over the doors. Sarah’s eyes were heavy. It was hard to concentrate. The noise of her ringing phone at first made no sense to her. She opened her eyes and remembered where she was.
‘I haven’t been watching, Lee. I fell asleep.’
‘It’s OK. I noticed. I’ve been doing both sides.’
She glanced at her screen. Tommy. She swiped. ‘Yes?’
‘I think I’ve identified Ryan’s phone. If I’m right, then he’s just been called from a phone box on Whixall Common.’
‘Hang on.’ Sarah held the phone against her chest. ‘Lee. Task some officers to search Whixall Common for the Audi.’ Back to Tommy. ‘Anything else?’
‘I’ve got a cell site for his phone too – Farrens Lane. Do you know it?’
It took a moment for Sarah to place it. Then she remembered. A Chinese health shop and a bell by a narrow front door.
52
Kieran had convinced the driver of the marked car in Atcham Green’s yard to take him to Farrens Lane. They were speeding on blue lights. Baillie had been informed and was coordinating the response. For the moment Kieran had nothing to do but stare out of the window.
Some people stay with you.
There’d been a governor he’d worked for back in the day at Atcham Green. Known by his initials. MC. Their contact with each other had been brief, but MC had left his mark. They’d worked a train crash together. Overturned carriages. People thrown onto the sidings. Phones ringing unanswered. Nobody said much about it at the time, but a couple of weeks later the team had found itself celebrating the kind of Christmas do that becomes legendary. Exuberant dancing. Two officers fighting. Two getting off with each other on the dance floor. Other guests complaining about the bad behaviour and being told to piss off. Kieran himself had got blind drunk. Drunk like he’d never been before or since.
He hadn’t even wanted to look for the words that might voice what had happened to him in that train carriage. Too many people needing his help and he for a moment frozen, struggling to choose who to ignore. But the thing that had really rattled him had been the mother. Standing in her torn clothing shouting at her dead son.
‘What have you done to yourself? What have you done to yourself?’
He just couldn’t get it out of his mind.
So he drank and then he drank some more. He went outside and threw up and went back in and was inviting everyone to another round when he’d felt the guv’nor’s arm round his shoulders.
‘Time for the cab home.’ And then, as Kieran shook MC’s arm off and offered his wallet to the barman, ‘That’s an order in case you’re wondering.’
Next set of shifts the guv’nor had called him into his office and pulled the door shut.
‘Lost your virginity, did you?’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m guessing it’s the train crash? You’re not yourself since.’
A pause. Then, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t blame yourself. Happens to all of us at least once.’
For a moment Kieran had found that he had to press his lips together very hard to make sure he didn’t embarrass himself. Then he cleared his throat and said, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘My advice? Situations like that, all you can do is keep making decisions. Make one decision, then the next. Everything plays out in the end. Everything comes to a stop.’
Good advice, and after a while he’d stopped hearing that mother’s cries too. He’d learnt the lesson and it had served him well. That’s what he was doing right now: making decisions. He wouldn’t let his mind go near the cluster fuck of what was occurring.
His phone was ringing. It was Sarah Collins.
‘I’m not free to speak.’
‘I’ve got a cell site on Ryan.’
‘I know where he is. He’s with Steve at the UC flat in Farrens Lane. I’ve got to go.’
‘Wait. Do you know about Ryan’s sister?’
*
There was a good version and Kieran held onto that. Sarah would find Tia, quickly and alive. And with that Kieran would be able to persuade Ryan to surrender. Blocking out any thought of those street boys with their acid and their knives and their shitty guns, Kieran was making decisions. The negotiator was on his way. The rest of the support was organizing.
They were already at the big old fake Elizabethan pub on the right. The driver, Justin, only looked about twelve, but fair play to him, he was driving like Lewis Hamilton. Kieran couldn’t help smiling at hi
s enthusiasm. He said, ‘When we get closer, you’ll have to calm it down a bit. Don’t want to draw attention.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Justin nipped past a lorry and squeezed through a gap at the lights. He was so young he thought he was immortal.
Kieran’s screen showed numerous missed calls from Lizzie. Now he saw there was a text too.
Call me. It’s about Ryan. URGENT.
He called her. Turned out she already knew some of it. She’d spotted Ryan on the CCTV, and she and Angel were also on their way to the flat. She always was a good cop.
They had turned into the neighbourhood and Justin had changed his driving style. This was the appointment car now making its frustrated way to yet another attempted burglary. He was a good lad, Kieran thought. He’d write him up for this when it was all over. He dropped Kieran in the Lidl car park and left to wait a couple of streets away for further instructions. No one wanted a build-up of marked cars that might alert Ryan or King to police activity.
Angel and Lizzie were waiting in an unmarked car. Angel in the front, Lizzie in the back. Kieran got into the passenger seat. Lizzie had actually gone shopping, he saw at a glance. She must have been bloody quick. It amazed him. There was a plastic bag beside her and a couple of children’s yoghurts with elephants on the lids had spilled out. He thought of Connor and, stupidly, had an impulse to hug her. But it was just a moment, quickly swept downstream. He was already briefing them – that Sarah and he thought it was King, the murderer of Spencer and now the kidnapper of Tia, who Ryan was expecting. And that Ryan had a firearm.
The plan was to keep a lid on it, he said, until they’d got everything under control. No sign of police activity until everything was in place. Then the street would be cordoned off discreetly. Tia would be found. That was when the negotiator would open the dialogue. Until then, they’d have to improvise.
‘We need to get to the flat in case King turns up.’
There was a dislocation between what he felt and how he spoke. He was noticing Angel’s pale blue zipped bomber jacket and his boot brogues. And he was thinking about the silver barrel of that short revolver that had been sent to his mobile as a screen grab and wondering whether it was real. What bothered him about that was: who would go to the trouble to mock up such a shit gun?
Angel and Lizzie didn’t interrupt. They were the other part of the police decision thing. He made the decisions; they acted on them. They followed orders and hoped for the best. Humans had been doing this for ever. He imagined them wrapped in animal skins sitting round a prehistoric campfire agreeing to attack the enemy with clubs.
Low-key, that was it, he said. No sign of the response until they’d got overwhelming control. He had a key to the flat but they wouldn’t be using it. Angel was going to position himself browsing in a vintage record shop two doors down. ‘Because you’ll fit right in wearing those shoes.’
Angel raised his eyebrows and his mouth twitched. Offended. Momentarily Kieran regretted the joke, but then even the knowledge of it had been carried away in the slipstream of decisions. He and Lizzie, he continued, were going to sit in the café opposite the flat just in case King turned up before they were ready. If he did, they’d nick him discreetly. King mustn’t be allowed into the flat.
He paused and looked at them.
‘You both got gas and an asp?’
They nodded, and nobody said what they thought: that it wasn’t anywhere near enough for a kid with a gun or someone known to have murdered with a knife.
Kieran continued.
Perseus was going to update the WhatsApp group with what was happening in the flat. He produced some estate agent’s A4 handouts.
‘Grabbed these on the way in, Lizzie. We’re a couple of yuppies looking to invest.’
Angel, taking his revenge for Kieran’s earlier remark, said, ‘Yes, perfect cover.’
And that was it. Angel took the route that fed him out of the car park at the other end. Kieran and Lizzie walked briskly towards the café, past the recycling bins on the left and down the dirty little alleyway.
Lizzie said, ‘Nothing to worry about—’
He felt a flash of irritation. Lizzie could always provide something to worry about. Even now. He interrupted. ‘What?’
‘Connor’s in hospital.’
His steps faltered. ‘In hospital?’
‘It’s just his eye. Honestly, nothing serious. A mosquito bite. It’s swelled up. Wouldn’t have mentioned it, but I need you to release me as soon as you can.’
It was as if another reality dawned. In this existence there were still childcare issues. Kieran noticed the street suddenly. The pairs of shoes hanging over the telephone wires that criss-crossed overhead. The chill in the air. And he thought of Connor, alone in hospital.
‘Who’s with him?’
‘My mum’s on the way.’
‘But who’s with him now?’
‘One of the nursery nurses, Talulah. She told me on the drive over here …’
Lizzie was still talking, but he couldn’t really hear her.
Instead he was seeing those shoes and imagining in an instant the local kids swinging their arms and throwing them overhead. What a roar of triumph it must be when one caught. What celebrations, what boasting. And he thought of little Connor on his own in that hospital bed. Would the nursery nurse have thought to take something for him to play with? He had a compulsion to leave at once. Lizzie’s voice was rattling away, but it was only background noise.
‘ … I couldn’t get anyone else at short notice …’
He could hear her distress, her anxiety. But only a street away was Steve Bradshaw, trapped in a room with a kid and a firearm. Kieran couldn’t think of Connor or Lizzie or of children throwing shoes or anything that made him feel vincible.
‘My mum’s train gets in—’
He interrupted again.
‘It doesn’t matter. I need you here. As soon as the cordon’s up and running, take a job car to the hospital.’
They turned up the street and saw a light on in the flat. The seats at the café window were free and they sat there looking up at it. Kieran passed Lizzie one of the property specs and said, ‘Keep an eye on the WhatsApp.’
The café owner – a large woman with false eyelashes and a pen stashed in the deep dark crease between her doughy breasts – came to take their order. She put her hand on her hip and looked at Kieran with a come-and-get-me stare. The Cleopatra of the greasy spoon.
‘What can I get you, darling?’
‘Couple of coffees.’
On another day they would have enjoyed her, but today she was nothing to them. As soon as she moved away, their eyes returned to the WhatsApp updates from the Perseus offices.
Getting edgy.
Kieran said, ‘Give me your phone.’
Lizzie slid it across the table. Kieran watched the WhatsApps and used his own phone to call Baillie.
‘How much longer?’
‘Ten minutes, max.’
Pressure cooker, Kieran thought. Every second Ryan waited, he was getting more worked up. He looked down at the screen.
Jack Reacher would know what to do, he thought absurdly and with irritation. He’d have a plan that didn’t involve an asp and a puff of gas in a can.
53
Lee drove. Speed cameras flashed. Sarah hadn’t waited for an ANPR hit on the hired Audi. If Ryan was expecting Kingfisher in Farrens Lane, then that was where they were going. The seat belt tightened and she clutched the front of her seat. Lee had pulled out into oncoming traffic, blaring his horn and flashing his lights and making it abundantly clear that he wasn’t giving way to anyone. Cars swerved to the side. Lee accelerated, but a bicycle bobbed out, oblivious to his progress. The brakes bit hard and the cyclist put both feet on the ground and lifted a flustered hand to his red lattice helmet. As they accelerated again and overtook, he turned and looked into Sarah’s window: an unremarkable young man in shorts and T-shirt, his face carrying only the va
guest intimation of the impact he had so narrowly missed.
Dual carriageways. Roundabouts. Multiple flows and box junctions. Red routes and bicycle lanes. And then, like heart disease, the history of the city squeezed the pressured flow into congested Victorian streets. The traffic jammed and their progress faltered, slowed by the need to pass through narrow gaps and to watch carefully for pedestrians. Still the siren blared and the car edged forward. Small corner shops next to global coffee chains. Phone shops – so many. And young people, everywhere. Bags over their shoulders. Walking together. Waiting at bus stops. Their heads turning to watch the flashing blue lights. London: younger than the rest of Britain. London rejuvenating as it always had, as if there was nothing whatsoever to worry about.
And somewhere on these commonplace streets a girl no one had heard of imprisoned in the boot of a car.
A phone call: the ANPR had pinged on the Audi. Sarah told Lee.
‘King’s ahead of us.
‘How far ahead?
‘About five minutes. Kill your lights and siren when we get close.’
Lee laughed. ‘We’ll blend right in.’
There was the huge mock-Tudor pub that offered everything its customers could possibly want – pub food and Sky Sports and the smell of beer – and then they were turning and threading towards Farrens Lane.
54
Ryan said, ‘I don’t want to kill you.’
Well not yet anyway. Later, well, he didn’t know about that.
Steve was sitting in the old car seat, like he’d been told. He was smoking a second roll-up. He looked smaller now, less the wise old man who’d made him sandwiches and knew the score. More like the cheating snake he really was.
Ryan moved over to the window and looked at the street. Still no Kingfisher.