The Choice: An absolutely gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down

by Jake Cross

  ‘You abandoned him? Did you just run away?’

  Sure did, he told her. ‘We’re done with that. Is there any of that chicken left?’

  Earlier, while she was counting the cash again, he’d seen that lovely smile, the one that had drawn him in and made him eventually slip a ring on her finger. Now, as she lifted two handfuls of notes from the bag by her chair and shook them before his face, the expression he saw beyond money was all anger.

  ‘You fucked him over? He’ll come for you, you dickhead. I’m not losing this because of your stupidity.’

  ‘He’s gone wild. The cops will be after him. No way he can stay out of custody with how mindless he’s become. Relax.’

  He regretted that final word even as it left his lips.

  Lucinda stamped a foot, like a child. ‘Relax, you moron? You think he can’t fuck us up from jail?’

  ‘He’s a bent cop. Cops hate that more than they hate criminals. Even if he gets solitary confinement, they’ll pretend to forget to lock his door and let some animals at him. I give him a week in jail, and then he’ll be in a grave like his—’

  ‘Go pack a bag,’ she cut in. ‘We’re out of here until this mess is cleaned up.’ And she was off, past him, with a barge of her shoulder into his chest.

  He rushed up the stairs in pursuit, pleading: calm down, let’s think, where would we go, we can’t hide away. She grabbed a double handful of his clothing from the wardrobe, tugged it out hard enough to snap the plastic coat hangers. Tossed them at him. ‘That’ll do you for being stupid.’

  He tried to argue, but it did no good. A punch on his arm got him going. He crammed the clothing into a gym bag and took it outside where all was peaceful. This was daft. Mick wouldn’t try anything in such a nice area. Hell, he probably wouldn’t try anything at all. He had bigger fish to fry.

  He threw the bag into their car. Back in the house, he saw Lucinda scooping up the money. She ordered him to grab her clothing and to use the two suitcases in the spare room. All this urgency, and she wanted to pack as if for a month’s holiday? He grabbed a double handful of gear from the wardrobe. ‘That’ll do you for being a bitch.’ And he didn’t bother with a bag.

  He dumped the clothing in the back of the car in a big old mess. Then he heard an engine approaching and scanned the street. A white car with some emblem on the side was cruising down the road. Some tradesman probably. He relaxed. And remembered his bike – parked on the road, where some fool would vandalise it.

  As he was wheeling the bike onto the pavement, ready to guide it up the driveway, the van, just thirty feet away, leaped forward with a screech of tyres. Dave turned his head. The vehicle was on the pavement, and you’d need to be pretty stupid to not realise what the plan was here. And to think it didn’t involve Mick.

  The car hit the bike, forcing it into Dave, sending man and machine bouncing along the road. Dave rolled and stopped and immediately tried to rise, but he was wobbly and his left leg gave way beneath him.

  A guy rushed out of the car’s passenger side. He wore a balaclava with strands of curly hair poking out from the bottom. Dave didn’t recognise him. But just in case there had still been doubt, the knife in the guy’s hands cleared away any confusion in Dave’s mind. He was done. End of the line. Good night.

  The masked man stopped, stabbed and sprinted: two seconds, job done. The car leaped away again like a horse out of the gate, wheels splashing through the blood migrating from Dave’s body.

  The driver stuck his head out the window as the vehicle roared past him. ‘That’s for Andy Jones!’ he bellowed, louder than the car’s engine, and louder than whoever was screaming – Dave’s wife, he now knew, because there she was at the door, clutching wads of cash – loud enough for any face that had been drawn to a window.

  The realisation set in. Andy Jones. A guy Dave had put in hospital back in the day. Retaliation, the cops would say. What goes around comes around. Just another bad apple getting what he was due. And nothing to do with Mick McDevitt. Little did they know.

  His final image before he slipped into another world, or just black oblivion if all that afterlife stuff was bullshit, was of Lucinda pelting towards him, and a swirl of giant snowflakes raining around him. No, not snowflakes, not at all. Money. All that money, blowing down the street because the silly girl had dropped it. A hell to collect.

  His last thought: Good job we didn’t change it all into fives.

  Seventy-Three

  Karl

  One time, when studying electronics at university, Karl and a pal went out for a drink, got drunk, got in a fight with two other guys, and got separated. Karl called hospitals, but they all refused to say whether or not they had his pal as a patient. A safety feature, probably born after some guy who cut someone up got a helpful ‘oh yes’ from a receptionist and strolled down there with a knife to finish the job. So, he knew he was wasting his time as he called around to try to find Katie. But he did it anyway, and clocked up a big number of polite professionals refusing to give anything away.

  He had a list of police stations on Danny’s computer screen, too, but he didn’t dare risk calling those. At least hospitals didn’t trace the calls and wouldn’t come to get him with a screaming siren. Besides, he doubted Katie would be in custody. She was a victim, not a perpetrator.

  Danny had gone to do something, and when he returned it was to see Karl’s shoulders slumped. ‘Anyone she could have gone to stay with?’ he asked. ‘Mum, dad, brother?’

  As he said dad, Karl was already dialling Peter Davies. Katie’s dad was a formidable man, a theatre director and a former drill sergeant, which meant he could still roar like King Kong. Karl was not looking forward to this conversation.

  He got an answer machine. For months, Peter had had the same message on his machine: Not in right now, obviously, so either call Pinnora Playhouse or leave your name and a number and your reason for calling. But now, the recording Karl got was: Call my mobile. And only if it’s urgent. Back soon. En route to pick someone up.

  Karl had no doubt who that ‘someone’ was. He called the mobile, and Peter answered quickly.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Karl.’

  There was the honk of a car horn. Karl imagined the shock of his call almost making Peter crash his car. ‘What the hell is going on, Karl? Where are you?’

  ‘Is Katie with you?’

  ‘I just picked her up. Christ, what fun and games, right? Someone tried to kill her. There was a car crash.’

  ‘I know. I was in it. Is she okay?’

  ‘I don’t care if you’re innocent or guilty, Karl. Get yourself handed in to the police. Before more people get hurt.’

  ‘I am. Soon. But let me speak to Katie.’

  ‘You’re not speaking to her. She’s asleep in the back. And that’s good, seeing as how distraught she is. What the hell is going on, Karl? I’m hearing all this news about three dead people last night, some detective gone missing, another one who’s a criminal. No one will tell me anything, and Katie was too full of shock. What have you done, Karl?’ His tone was accusing, as if the aforementioned tales of terror were all his doing. Karl Seabury, in league with a bent detective, responsible for murder and mayhem.

  ‘I want to speak to my wife. You don’t have all the facts, Peter, and until you do, don’t make assumptions, okay? Where’s Katie?’

  ‘Katie herself said the police want you, possibly for murder. She claims you’re innocent, but a naive wife would say that, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Katie’s not naive. I’m innocent and she knows it. Put her on the damn phone, Peter.’

  A long pause as Peter considered his options. He decided on: ‘I’ll get her to call you. But when she gets up on her own. I’m not waking her. Not after this.’

  And he hung up. Karl called back, but it went to voicemail. He’d turned off the phone.

  ‘We can’t go there yet,’ Danny said, as if reading Karl’s mind. Karl looked at him in defiance. Danny r
aised surrendering arms. ‘We don’t know what that McDevitt guy is doing. If the cops have him, lord knows what he’s telling them about you. The police will be watching your wife’s dad’s house. They’re probably following him right now, knowing you’ll try to contact your wife. It’s safer if you turn up there backed up by a solicitor. You need to just be patient. We all do. We wait for Mr Gold. That’s the plan, and if we stick to it, everything will work out okay.’

  Karl’s glare challenged him. ‘My plan for tonight was to cuddle my pregnant wife in front of the TV.’

  * * *

  Liz came downstairs half an hour later, freshly dressed in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. Although her elegant dress was missing she was finally clean, damp hair in a bun on top of her head. And with red eyes, as if she’d been crying. Karl told her about his earlier chat with Katie, and the plan to hand themselves in to a police station close to her father’s house.

  Liz had a mobile phone in her hand, which she waved. ‘I just spoke to Mr Gold. Bromley is only fifteen miles from here. Twenty-five minute drive.’

  ‘We’re going there? He’s not coming here? But we’re going to Pinner, right?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course. Mr Gold will take our statements and arrange our surrender. He’ll be at home at five o’clock, after court. So, we have three and a half hours to wait.’

  ‘But we go to my wife’s dad’s house first? Before the police. I want to see her for the evening before I do it.’

  ‘Of course.’ She actually smiled. Maybe it was relief that all this would finally be over.

  ‘So that’s us sorted then,’ Danny said. ‘We’ve got a while. Grab a shower, mate. Liz, you must need some food.’

  Karl took the hint and left the room. In the preceding half hour, Danny had given him a warning: do not talk about your wife in Liz’s presence. She’d lost her husband and shouldn’t have someone else’s relationship thrust in her face. Karl understood. He understood too that Liz was important to Danny and he wanted to protect her.

  He stood under a hot shower for five minutes, needing to refresh his mind. The hot spray felt great, but everything else was wrong. It was wrong to step into another man’s bedroom, wrong to wear his clothing, and wrong to use his cutlery.

  The food was good, though. Eggs on toast. Three plates on the table, with Danny and Liz waiting for him. Karl was surprised by how fast he attacked the food, and he noticed Liz eating with the same vigour. It reminded him that, bar a slice of toast, he hadn’t eaten all day. Even longer for Liz.

  Danny used his phone while they ate, and he was the only one who spoke. Liz soaked up the information he imparted without looking away from her meal, as if none of it mattered to her. And it didn’t. Rumours of two injured police officers, a woman at the scene being questioned by police, and all of it tied to a heavy police presence at an industrial unit in Old Ford. Nothing about Liz’s husband, though: he was shielding her from that.

  ‘Nothing about McDevitt?’ Karl said.

  ‘Early doors yet,’ Danny said, putting away the phone. ‘Let’s just eat to get energy for tonight.’

  They finished the meal in silence.

  Seventy-Four

  Mick

  The Vito turned into a car park brimming with small trucks that had Gustafson Foods on their sides. Mick aimed the car towards the road and pointed a finger at a building about a hundred yards away. The curtains were drawn over the large front window and all was dark inside.

  The businesses on their side of the street were housed in long structures of glass, metal and plastic, while across the road the buildings looked as if they had been born as homes: two storeys of brick, first-floor bay windows, single wooden front doors. The car parks ran right up to the front doors and windows, as if they had once been gardens. Behind both rows of buildings was agricultural land.

  ‘What now?’ Brad asked. The answer was: we wait.

  And they did so in silence for half an hour, until Mick said: ‘You mentioned Fate the other day, right?’ He showed Brad his mobile phone and a Google Earth image of their location, which looked very green from 2,500 feet in the sky. ‘Check out this place for a showdown. London’s most rural borough, apparently. Fields, peace and quiet, no one around. Perfect. If this isn’t a sign of Fate then no such beast exists. This is meant to go our way. Just like before. This’ll go down the same way it did with Grafton.’

  ‘You mean she’ll run and be picked up on a back road and we’ll be hunting another guy all over again? Can’t wait.’

  Brad felt Mick looking at him intently. He didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked much today, actually. And it included Mick’s refusal to mention Dave. The guy had run out on them, and even Brad, not half as paranoid as Mick, had wondered if his old friend was going to do something stupid, like talk to the cops. But Mick hadn’t mentioned him, never mind tried to call, or even asked Brad if he knew what was going on. He had sent a text message to someone on the drive here, but Brad doubted it had been Dave. So, he brought it up.

  ‘Think Dave got lost?’

  ‘No, you saw as well as I did that he bottled it and ran off.’

  He sure did, but he wasn’t about to agree. He had to protect Dave, so said: ‘I thought he might have had something to do, that’s all. Thought he’d be here. He might still come.’

  ‘He won’t. I know. He’s not as loyal as these two.’

  These two? Brad repeated in his mind, and then he understood.

  Another van was cruising down the road, slowly, like something on the prowl. Brad, looking past Mick and out the passenger window, saw a handsome twenty-something guy with floppy blonde curls at the wheel, staring back. He looked like a surfer right out of a straight-to-video flick and totally fitted the ancient third generation Volkswagen Transporter.

  He didn’t know this guy. But he now knew who Mick had texted earlier.

  The driver got out and, beyond him, Brad saw a passenger, also in a boiler suit. A wide brute of a man. Compact, built for power. A guy designed for busting heads that his baby-faced partner couldn’t sweet talk.

  Floppy put his face right up to Mick’s window, but Mick didn’t even look until the guy rapped the glass. He opened his door, forcing the guy to step back, and got out.

  ‘Stay here, Brad.’

  The two men walked out of sight, behind the vans. Brad saw the brute glaring at him, like one bodyguard sizing up another. He glared right back. Neither guy backed down, and the game only ended when Mick and Floppy returned. Floppy got into his cheesy T3 with one of Mick’s bags. Mick got in and told Brad to get out.

  ‘You’re going with these guys on a job. Highly important. After this, I guarantee you’ll be free and clear.’

  ‘Who the fuck are this pair? And what job?’

  ‘You’ll know them quite well by the time you get to the job. And then you’ll know the answer to both your questions.’

  ‘I don’t work with guys I don’t know, Mick.’ He meant he didn’t trust them. But to camouflage that he added: ‘They could be fuck-ups, and I don’t like prison gruel.’

  ‘Fuck-ups they might be.’ He looked right into Brad’s eyes. ‘That’s why I need you there, Brad. Make sure it goes smoothly. Look, that young idiot is a guy I keep on the side. He was sixteen when I nabbed him for stealing computers. Let him go scot free, bit like you. Now we help each other, bit like me and you. Except maybe I’ve got something in the Loyalty Box to keep him motivated. He’s handy, but he hasn’t got your skills, and his brother there is brainless. I need you on this.’

  For six years, ever since he’d made DCI, the Loyalty Box had been Mick’s leverage against the army of criminals he had under his spell, like Król, and his weapon against those he desired to stamp down, like Ramirez. Mick had found a jacket with blood on the sleeve, right where Rocker’s leaking nose would have gushed if he’d been choked by the wearer. Brad had watched Mick pull it from the laundry basket in the bathroom, just the two of them alone. Their eyes met. In that moment,
staring at each other, they had come to a wordless understanding. Brad had said nothing as Mick held aloft the bloody jacket. Mick said nothing as he stuffed the item back into the laundry basket.

  With any other man, he would have returned alone for the jacket, to rehome it in the Loyalty Box with other evidence lifted from crime scenes, where it would await the day it was called upon to ruin someone’s life. But here, in Brad, he’d sensed such action was not needed. A new, special partnership was being born.

  Mick had handed him his card, and he hadn’t needed to voice that gesture: We help each other now. Call me if you think of anything I need to know. Then Mick had exited the bathroom and announced to his colleagues that the room was clean, nothing useful found.

  Later, Brad called and outright admitted he’d killed the guy. Many suspected that pressure from Razor’s men up in Scotland would force Grafton to hand them someone. Grafton had already severed ties and withheld payment from Brad and Dave because they’d failed to kill Randolph. Suspecting that Grafton might try to have him killed to ensure his silence, he had been watching the street below. Had seen a strange car arrive and gone down to meet it. Rocker wanted Brad to accompany him back to Scotland. Brad said no. Rocker insisted. Stalemate – what could be done? A shopkeeper returning home from work found the dead Scotsman’s body ten minutes later and hit triple nine.

  Brad trusted that Mick would not arrest him after the confession. And there was no arrest. There was only the start of a beautiful relationship between them. Brad had provided Mick with the one thing he’d desperately needed, and for that Mick felt he still needed to protect him. Still owed him.

  ‘And what’s the job?’ Brad asked.

  ‘Unconnected to this Grafton lark,’ Mick said. ‘You don’t need to know. Loose end I want tying up before I go away, that’s all. A guy needs to regret the error of his ways. Look, Brad, it’s a big ask, I know. Even for those two, which is why I just paid them twenty grand. I’ll give you twenty as well. Twenty extra big ones, and all you have to do is the same shit you’ve been doing for years. Drive half an hour, kick in a door, shout a bit, break a nose, drive away. If I’m done here, I’ll text you where to meet me for the cash.’