Deadline

by Simon Kernick

  'Control to all units,' shouted Barry through the earpiece. 'Do not lose that bag! We are trying to get CCTV up and running.'

  'There he is,' spluttered Bolt, still swallowing acrid-tasting gas as he pointed.

  Turner had already spotted him and was pushing through the crowds of supporters in his direction, followed by Kris Obanje and Tina Boyd. It was Turner who was moving the fastest, as if being cooped up in Andrea's place had given him a huge new reservoir of energy, as well as a point to prove. He wasn't the biggest or strongest of guys but he ploughed through the mob, shoving people aside as he ate up the distance between himself and the holdall.

  'Mo,' yelled Bolt, 'stay with Andrea!'

  Before his colleague could reply, Bolt was past him and joining the chase, his eyes beginning to sting less as the fresher air hit them.

  It was fifteen seconds since the first explosion, and already the gas was dissipating, and its effects wearing off on those who'd been affected. Now most of the crowd were coming to a halt as their more voyeuristic tendencies took over, creating a dense wall which acted as a perfect cover for the fleeing suspect. 'Police! Out the way!' Bolt screamed as loudly as he could as he charged into them, no longer seeing the point in trying to keep a low profile. Being football fans, they weren't in a desperate hurry to be cooperative, but Bolt was a big man, and one who knew that if he lost the guy with the holdall then he'd almost certainly lose the daughter he'd never known, so today he wasn't stopping for anyone. If he'd had a gun, he would have waved it, even fired off a couple of shots in the air and risked the sack.

  Still yelling, he pushed right through them, ignoring the outraged cries and the insults, catching up with Tina and Obanje and passing them. Turner was ten yards further ahead, at a point in the street where the crowd was beginning to thin. Ten more yards separated him from the man with the holdall. Turner was running, the suspect walking quickly. In a few seconds he'd be on him, and that would be it because Bolt and the rest of them were only seconds behind.

  And then there was a blurred movement in the corner of Bolt's eye. It was so quick that it took him a second to register the man in black cap and sunglasses and brand-new Tottenham shirt as he ran headlong into Turner from the side. Bolt caught a glint of metal as the man's hand shot out once, making contact, and then he was dancing past him and running for the other side of the road, in the opposite direction to the man with the holdall. Turner stopped running and seemed to stumble, his hand reaching to where the man had hit him, and then he fell to one knee, while fans milled about him, wearing vaguely curious expressions.

  Bolt stopped when he reached him, putting a hand on his shoulder. 'Matt, you all right?'

  Through the earpiece, Barry demanded to know what was going on. It was only then that Bolt saw the growing bloodstain on his colleague's shirt.

  'Shit!'

  Turner looked up, his eyes wide and fearful, his expression almost childlike. 'I think I've been stabbed, boss,' was all he said, and then he put a hand out to steady himself and lay down on his side, almost as if he was about to go to sleep.

  'Officer down!' yelled Bolt into the mike. 'Stabbed by second suspect. We need urgent medical help immediately.'

  'What the hell happened?' yelled Barry in his ear, his tone close to full-blown panic as the full enormity of what was happening began to hit home. 'Control to all units, secure the scene. Secure the money. Armed back-up is arriving shortly.'

  Bolt knew that the important thing was to stay calm and take the lead. In the ten seconds since Turner had got hit, the man with the bag had disappeared. They had to get him. Obanje and Tina had arrived now and Bolt yelled at Obanje to keep up the chase and Tina to stay with her injured colleague.

  'What about the one who stabbed him?' she demanded.

  'He's mine,' hissed Bolt, jumping to his feet.

  The knifeman had run off down Tottenham High Road and he, too, had disappeared from view, but Bolt wasn't going to give up that easily. He didn't give a toss about the money, that was irrelevant, but this bastard, whoever he was, had seriously injured one of his men, as well as put Bolt himself through over a day's worth of personal hell. He hadn't got a good enough look at him to see whether or not it was Ridgers, but he didn't think it was. Guessing that he would keep the black cap on to avoid being ID'd by CCTV cameras, and knowing he wouldn't have got far, Bolt took off after him, ignoring the frantic chatter in the earpiece.

  He almost hit a police horse and took no notice of the shouted command of its rider as he ran down the middle of the road between the lines of stationary cars, his eyes scanning the pavements and the legions of white-shirted fans. There was no black cap anywhere to be seen. Not on either side of the road. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Except for one thing. The herd mentality remained in full flow, which meant that almost everybody had turned in the direction of the mêlée behind, and some were actually moving towards it, their movement hesitant. One man, though, stood out, simply because he was walking purposefully away from the scene, his pace far too quick. He was keeping to the inside of the pavement, trying to remain out of view as he weaved between other fans. Bolt had hardly got a look at him earlier, but he was the right height and build, and he was thirty, maybe forty yards ahead.

  It was him, Bolt was sure of it. He wiped his eyes, spat on the ground to get the taste of gas out of his mouth and kept running, going flat out in his desperation to get hold of him.

  Thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, twenty yards. His footfalls sounded artificially loud on the tarmac. Two uniformed cops in full riot gear stood in the road surveying the crowd uneasily, their batons drawn. One of them heard Bolt's rapid approach and, as if he was looking for someone to lash out at, lifted his baton menacingly and shouted at him to stop. Bolt didn't even slow down. He just pulled out his warrant card and yelled 'Police!' as loud as he could, and miraculously the cop simply got out of the way.

  Unfortunately, the suspect also turned round. The expression on his face was one of pure shock, even behind the black shades, and in that single moment Bolt knew he was looking at the right man.

  The suspect took off down the street, knocking over a middle-aged woman in his haste and stumbling before regaining his balance. Her husband shouted something and threw out a hand to grab him but he was nowhere near quick enough. This guy was speedy, and he had one hell of a lot of incentive to get away from his pursuers.

  Bolt was less fit than he should have been. These days he only got to the gym once a week at best, and he was beginning to put on a few pounds round the middle. Today, though, he was powered by pure rage, and he kept pace with his target. He screamed at him to stop, loud enough so the whole street could hear it. People turned his way, then towards the fleeing suspect, who reacted by pulling out his knife and waving it wildly in front of him. It was an effective move. The crowds parted, no one wanting to tackle a knifeman.

  Bolt sneaked a quick look over his shoulder. Two of the team, Dan Blakeley and Cliff Yakonos, were running along behind him, but were still a good twenty-five yards back, while the helicopter continued to hover impotently overhead. And Bolt was unarmed. If he caught up with the suspect, he'd be taking a huge risk. He thought about this information, accepted the risk, and kept running, ignoring the pain in his lungs and beginning to gain on his target half-yard by half-yard.

  'Suspect two running south on Tottenham High Road,' he shouted into the mike. 'He's armed and dangerous. Request immediate back-up.'

  'This is control. Back-up on way. ETA one minute.'

  Without warning, a large man in his thirties, with a kid of about ten who must have been his son, jumped at the suspect as he ran past, trying to grab him in a bear hug. It was a brave move. Brave, public-spirited and totally rash. He got a grip, knocked the suspect against the window of a charity shop, but wasn't quick enough to neutralize the knife. The suspect reacted ruthlessly and instinctively, driving it directly into the man's upper body with a single bloody lunge, his face contorted with r
age and desperation. The man went down like a falling tree, probably dead before he hit the ground. His kid cried out, 'Dad!' It was a terrified, shocked howl, a sound that would live with Bolt for a long time. It was a savage reminder that death can be so quick. One second you're a living, breathing, smiling human being out with your boy to see your team play football on a glorious evening, the next you're gone. For ever.

  'Suspect two has stabbed member of public; urgent medical assistance required,' Bolt yelled into his mike, but it wasn't urgent. The guy was dead. Like Andrea's cleaner and Jimmy Galante. Maybe even Emma. Laid low by a killer without the slightest regard for human life.

  A fury filled Bolt. It was stronger than any he'd felt in a long, long time, maybe ever, dwarfing the emotion that had soared through him as he kicked and beat Marcus Richardson, and it seemed to give him a blind, terrible energy.

  The man's intervention might have cost him his life but it also cost the suspect five or six yards. He took off again as soon as he could, waving his bloody knife as he ran past the son he'd just deprived of a father, but he now had only a handful of yards on Bolt. A junction was coming up ahead, and when he reached it he turned hard right, his body almost jack-knifing in his bid to keep momentum. Bolt kept coming, not even thinking about hesitating as he too took the corner, even though he knew the suspect could use the blind spot as an ambush point. He was moving beyond logical risk assessment and into the realms of pure revenge. He was going to beat the information he needed out of this bastard, would kill him if he had to, but there was no way he was losing him. No way at all. It was an incredibly liberating thought.

  When he rounded the bend, the suspect had gained a few yards and was racing across to the other side of the road through the blocked traffic. There were fewer people milling about on the pavements here, and no sign of any police either. But also less cover for his quarry, and Bolt knew that as long as he kept pace, feeding the suspect's position into the mike, then he wasn't going to get away.

  After thirty more yards, the suspect looked round and saw Bolt still right behind him. He turned back and kept running, but Bolt was conscious of the knife in his hand. It was a stiletto, the blade probably eight inches long, still slick with the blood of two men. All Bolt had to fight with was the standard-issue police pepper spray. That and the pure rage that was driving him on. Neither of which was any guarantee of success. He knew that if he'd had a gun on him he'd have used it without a second's hesitation to bring the bastard down. He'd have put a bullet in his leg, and beaten the whereabouts of his daughter out of him while he lay helpless. Because the fact remained – indeed, it was branded right on the front of his brain in flaming white-hot letters – that if he lost this man, Emma was as good as dead.

  The suspect turned a hard left. Bolt did the same, shouting the street name into the mike, but he wasn't looking where he was going properly and he slipped and lost his balance, jarring his knee as he hit the deck hard, and rolling on to his side. He ignored the pain, jumped up and kept running, cursing the fact that his clumsiness had lost him five yards and counting.

  The street led up to the entrance to a high-rise council estate. It was a dead end for cars. Bolt cursed. He knew that if the suspect got inside the warren of alleys that these characterless sixties estates always featured it would mean he'd almost certainly slip through the net. Jesus, where the hell was the back-up? Even the helicopter was no longer overhead; doubtless it had been sent to chase the money. It disgusted him that the recovery of the half a million pounds was more important to his bosses, and their bosses, than capturing a brutal knife-wielding killer and possibly saving the life of a fourteen-year-old girl, but then in his heart he'd always known it would be. The whole British justice system was built on the protection of property above the protection of lives, which was why armed robbers were always put away for two, three, sometimes even five times as long as child molesters.

  Bastards. In those taut, desperate seconds, Bolt was a man entirely on his own, out on a limb and having to do everything himself, knowing that failure was unthinkable.

  The armed response vehicle seemed to materialize from nowhere. In fact it had come out of a side road up ahead, just in front of the entrance to the estate. It stopped dead, blocking the way, and the three officers were out in an instant, their MP5s pointed straight at the suspect, who was twenty yards from them.

  'Armed police! Drop your weapon!'

  Bolt reached into his pocket for the pepper spray, knowing that the suspect was going to turn and run back his way, away from the guns, meaning it would be up to him to make an arrest.

  But the suspect didn't. He kept on going. Charging right at them, yelling something that sounded remarkably like a battle cry.

  'Don't shoot him!' shouted Bolt. 'Take him alive! For Christ's sake, we need him!'

  'Armed police! Drop your weapon now!'

  'Don't shoot!'

  The suspect was only ten yards away from them. Still running, he pulled back his arm and threw the knife. It hit one of the ARV officers in the arm above the elbow, slicing right through the bicep. The cop dropped his gun and grabbed uselessly at the knife's handle, which was jammed halfway into his arm, stumbling as he did so. For the suspect, it was a suicidal move. Bolt knew it, and knew too what it meant. He saw a dead girl; a funeral; a lifetime of wondering how he could have done things differently.

  The bullets sounded like firecrackers in the empty street, their noise reverberating hollowly off the high walls of the surrounding buildings. Two two-round bursts. The suspect flew backwards, arms flailing as he spun round before crashing to the ground, his sunglasses flying off and clattering across the tarmac.

  'Police!' screamed Bolt to identify himself, holding up his warrant card as he ran over to where the suspect lay. He knelt down, felt for a pulse, knew it was pointless. There was something there, but it was fading fast, and even as his fingers squeezed the wrist and he shouted at him not to die, his voice full of desperation, it disappeared altogether. He was gone. His eyes were closed, his mouth ever so slightly open, a single drop of blood forming in one corner. It wasn't Scott Ridgers, either. This guy was young – late twenties, maybe thirty – an ordinary, unblemished face, olive skin and thick black hair suggesting a background from somewhere in southern Europe. Bolt had never seen him before, knew nothing about him, would probably never know anything about him, other than the fact that his death might have ramifications for him that lasted for the rest of his days.

  And as he knelt there, staring down at the dead man, unable to understand why the ARV cops couldn't have used a non-lethal option like a taser or a baton round to bring him down, his worst fears were confirmed as Barry's frantic voice came over the earpiece.

  'Control to all units. What do you mean you've lost suspect one? Find him! I want the whole fucking area locked down! We have to get hold of that money! Over.'

  They'd failed. And God alone knew what happened now.

  Forty-two

  'Why the hell did you remove all the tracking devices, Mrs Devern?' demanded Mo Khan, barely able to contain his anger. 'You must have known it was going to help them get away.'

  Andrea, ashen-faced, shocked like all of them, glared at him. 'Because they knew about them, that's why!' she yelled, her voice close to breaking. 'They knew you were there. How the hell did that happen?'

  The question hung in the air.

  Twenty minutes had passed since the fatal shooting of suspect two. Two police helicopters continued to hover overhead, moving in lazy circles, hunting for a quarry who had long since disappeared, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake. The worst of the crowds were gone too, although there were still large groups of pedestrians hanging around to see the aftermath of the action, and because they were spilling out into the road they were causing serious traffic congestion. The operation to clear the area to allow police forensic teams and ambulances in was being further complicated by an apparently unrelated outbreak of fighting between rival fans further up on Wh
ite Hart Lane. The competing blare of sirens filled the air as Mo, Bolt and Tina stood beside one of a line of police vehicles clustered round the corner from the street where the body of suspect two still lay where it had fallen. Andrea was in the back of one of the cars, sitting with her legs out, holding a plastic bottle of water.

  The mood among everyone at the scene was one of complete shock. The operation had been a complete failure. Half a million pounds of taxpayers' money had walked away from right under their noses; worse than that, a member of the public had been killed, one of the team's own number seriously wounded, and the one suspect they had managed to apprehend had decided to go out in a blaze of glory rather than be taken alive. It couldn't really have gone any more wrong. The only positive was that, unlike the stabbed fan, Turner was still alive, although the seriousness of his condition wasn't yet known. He'd been airlifted to the Homerton Hospital in Hackney whose expertise in dealing with knife injuries, honed through years of practice, was legendary, so he was in the best possible hands. Even so, as they all knew, that might not be enough.

  Bolt felt as if he'd done ten rounds boxing a man twice his size and speed whose speciality was headshots. He couldn't seem to think straight, was finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that he and his people were being outthought and outfought by the men who'd taken Emma. He knew he couldn't give up, but standing there among the wreckage of the op, he was getting perilously close.

  'What happened, Andrea?' he asked. 'We lost communication with you after you stopped to pick up the package.'

  'I got a call on the phone that was in it. It was Emma screaming.'

  Bolt swallowed. Told himself to keep calm.

  'Just this one terrified scream. Then it cut out and he came on the line. He said that this time Emma was screaming out of fear, but the next time it would be out of pain, unless I did exactly what I was told. Those were his exact words. He told me to use that thing to start removing all the bugs and trackers' – she pointed at the bugfinding device that was now in an evidence bag in Mo's hands – 'and I tried to tell him I didn't know what he was talking about, but he told me he knew I'd gone to the police, and if I tried to deny it then he'd . . . he'd make Emma scream again.' She stared at them each in turn. 'I had no choice. Don't you see that? I had no choice. I want my daughter back.'