by Paul Finch
‘I’m leaving SCU,’ he said abruptly.
‘I … what?’
‘Ma’am … Gemma. If that’s what it takes, I’m leaving.’
Her mouth dropped partly open.
It was a rare occasion indeed when Gemma Piper was rendered speechless. It didn’t last, not that she recovered quickly. ‘And … where are you going?’
‘Not very far as it happens. Believe it or not, Bob Hunter’s offered me Ray Marciano’s old desk at the Flying Squad.’
‘You’re going to the Sweeney?’ Her incredulity grew steadily. ‘Isn’t that a bit low-brow?’
‘At least it’s still in London. But the main thing is I won’t be in your face all day …’
‘Hang on!’ Her cheeks now coloured. ‘You’re taking Ray Marciano’s old job?’
‘I know it’s a bit tasteless. But the truth is I was offered it before we knew Ray was up to no good …’
‘How many times have I offered you a promotion to DI?’
‘Ah … I’ve lost count.’
‘Yeah, so have I. But then Bob Hunter comes waddling along …’
‘Trust me, it’s nothing to do with Bob. He’s the dodgiest character in the job, and the first time he offered it to me, I wasn’t particularly interested. But the circs have changed. Gemma, don’t you get it? It means you won’t have my disruptive presence in the office. You won’t need to be pulling rank on me all day.’
‘I bet Bob Hunter won’t either!’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Because everyone down at the Flying Squad does exactly the same thing as you.’
‘Gemma, are you hearing me?’
‘Yes, I’m hearing you.’ She walked away a few yards, hands on hips.
Heck watched her warily. It hadn’t been an easy decision, but all things considered, it wouldn’t be a huge sacrifice. The Flying Squad had elite status; they were at the heart of London’s battle against heavy crime. There were many worse alternatives.
‘And when does this wonderful new phase of your life start?’ she asked, her back turned.
‘Well … if you want me to work some kind of notice, I will. I mean, we’re still in the middle of Sledgehammer. There are several names that haven’t yet been accounted for. If you want me to work those …’
‘I’d be some kind of boss, holding you to that, considering how much you’ve done already.’
‘Well, in that case … I want it to happen as soon as possible.’
She looked at him almost reproachfully.
‘So that I can ask you out on a date,’ he added hurriedly. ‘A proper date. You know … the flicks, a bite to eat, a couple of drinks. Afterwards, we go back to our respective digs, and you consider long and hard whether my request to see you again has got legs. To all intents and purposes, we could be strangers. We certainly won’t have any mutual stress hanging over us from our shared working day.’
Her expression remained vexed. She walked around, hands still on hips.
‘Well … at least you’ve not said “no”,’ he ventured.
She swung to face him. ‘And the price of this date is that I lose my best detective?’
‘And I lose the best boss I’ve ever worked under. Which means we should make it worth both our whiles.’
When she came at him, he barely even saw it. But the next thing Heck knew, she’d grabbed him by the tie and planted her mouth on his.
It took his breath away in all senses of the phrase. Her soft tongue, sweetened by the flavoured alcohol, entwined with his. Her left arm crooked around the back of his neck, to draw him closer, crushing him to her, melding her shapely body into his own. When Heck had recovered from the shock, he embraced her equally tightly, wrapping his arms around her back, lifting her off the ground. She arced with pleasure, her ankles locking together at the backs of her knees. For lingering, blissful seconds, they were as hungry for each other as teenagers, all those endless years of pent-up waiting, watching, wondering and aching now released, flooding through the pair of them in a torrent of passion and desire …
So absorbed were they that neither initially noticed when the fireworks started, the rattling BOOM of successive explosions, the flickering light show dancing over them and all across the pub car park.
Except … fireworks in September? Heck was the first to pull away and glance at the empty sky. And then to turn his head left and focus on the windows to the function room.
Which were filled with thunder and lightning.
Now Gemma saw too.
She broke away from him.
They stood agog – before Gemma reached for the pocket of the coat she wasn’t wearing. She turned to Heck, wild-eyed. ‘My phone’s upstairs.’
‘Mine too.’ He dashed back across the lot.
‘Mark … wait! What are you …?’
It was a valid question, and it brought him to a sliding halt before he even reached the foot of the fire-escape stair. He gazed up at it, face bathed in icy sweat.
Briefly, the shooting stopped – no doubt so that a new magazine could be fitted. In that brief, ear-pummelling silence, a dirge of moans and cries replaced the gunfire, only to be lost again as it resumed: a demonic strobe-like flashing and cacophonous roar, the latter amplified a hundred times as stray rounds punched out the windows and cascades of jangling shards fell into the car park.
For the first time in as long as he’d been a cop, Heck did not know what to do.
His limbs had locked; his spine was a strip of ice. When Gemma grabbed his shoulder, he almost jumped out of his skin.
‘This way,’ she panted. ‘This way.’
He was so numbed that he didn’t know what she meant. But then he realised that she was leading him away from the foot of the staircase, at the top of which a figure had appeared.
It was Charlie Finnegan, and he stood there swaying, his face a rictus of pain, his torso somehow misshapen, his hips misaligned. Even as they watched him, his white sports shirt turned slowly red from top to bottom. When he fell forward, it was heavily, clumsily. He turned head over heels, coming to a rest halfway down, limbs tangled with the metal rungs.
Stumbling, brain reeling, Heck continued to retreat.
More flashes filled that upper room; more thunderous, rattling gunfire; more windows erupting outward. There were no longer screams, though; nor shouts.
They were thirty yards from the fire escape, still able to see twisting crimson ribbons where blood drained from Finnegan’s shattered corpse, when Heck realised that they’d come up level with the next corner. Here, Gemma released him. She was ice-pale, that lovely mouth of hers helplessly agape as though she couldn’t draw sufficient air through it to breathe. Tears flooded her eyes as she turned and tottered along the front of the building.
‘Gemma …?’
‘Gotta … gotta put a call out,’ she stammered over her shoulder. ‘Must be a landline …’
Too numb to argue, Heck went after her.
They arrived at the pub’s main doors, through which the few customers who were downstairs had already fled and were now scattering across the front car park like frightened rabbits.
Blundering into the main bar, they were confronted by a room that was empty except for the two barmaids, who were still behind the bar, white-faced with fear and shock, one of them frozen like a waxwork, the other on the landline, engaged in what was presumably a 999 call. Gemma hurried over, shouting that she was a police officer and wrestling the phone from the startled girl’s hand. Heck turned back to the foot of the internal staircase. From this position, he could just about hear the din of the attack, though now it had reduced to the hard, flat reports of separate, individual shots. He knew what this meant. Whoever they were, they were prowling the flotsam, picking off survivors.
He’d never really understood the meaning of that term, ‘rooted to the spot’ – until now.
Abruptly, even the single shots ceased.
Whoever it was, they’d most likely use the fire escape as the quickest way to the outside and the getaway car.
Meanwhile, Gemma leaned on the bar as she tried to fully explain what was happening, tears dripping from her face.
This the best we can do? Seriously?
Heck turned again to the stairs. Slowly, woodenly, like a mannequin creaking to life, he walked towards them and began to ascend.
‘Mark!’ It was a frantic shout from behind. ‘Mark … wait!’
He ignored her, but he wasn’t being brave. He knew there was no danger upstairs. Not any more. Not that he wished to see what remained, but he had no choice. Skulking below went against his whole ethos.
When he reached the door to the function room, he halted, nostrils wrinkling at the stench of cordite, eyes straining to penetrate the pall of gun smoke hanging shroud-like over the carnage of smashed furniture and bloodied, enmeshed forms.
The worst thing perhaps was the lack of movement in there.
Not a twitch, not a shudder, not even a faint, dying whimper to disturb the rancid air.
Then he heard it, the clanging of boots descending the fire escape, and a coarse, rage-filled voice, a curse delivered in a foreign tongue. Heck didn’t understand what it said, but he knew what it meant. Charlie Finnegan’s corpse had got in the way, and no doubt now was being unceremoniously kicked aside.
With a bellow of bull-like fury, Heck charged across the room.
As he ran, he tried not to look at what he trod and slipped in, even if glimpses of certain upturned faces were unavoidable. Though shattered and streaked with gore, he recognised some of them: Andy Rawlins, Burt Cunliffe … Jack Reed, for Christ’s sake!
Again, he heard Gemma’s voice calling him.
But before he could respond, he’d reached the door at the top of the fire escape and peered down it just in time to see a dark-clad figure leaping into a rumbling white Subaru XV, which must already have someone behind the wheel – because no sooner had the assassin vanished into the front passenger seat than it tore away across the car park and out onto the street at such reckless speed that a passing Hyundai spun off the road.
Heck clattered down the stairs. As he’d suspected, the body of Charlie Finnegan had been thrown inelegantly aside. The treads below were slick with his blood, but Heck leapt over them, landing with stinging blows on the soles of both feet, but jerking himself upright and running towards his own car.
‘Heck!’ he heard Gemma cry.
In his sidelong vision, she emerged around the corner of the pub. But he didn’t stop, diving into his Megane, starting it up and swinging it round in a demented, tyre-screeching circle.
As he hurled it at the entrance to the car park, Gemma stepped into his path.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ he roared, flinging the wheel left, almost hitting the gatepost.
Before he could readjust position and take off again, Gemma yanked open his rear offside door and scrambled inside.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she yelled.
‘Spotted the bastards! White Subaru XV! Two targets minimum.’
‘So … where the hell are we going now?’
‘They’re not going to stay in that motor.’ He swerved onto the blacktop, hitting the gas for all he was worth. ‘We’ve got to tail them till they make the switch. We don’t, they get clean away.’
‘OK … OK …’ She had no objection; it made perfect sense.
‘Gemma, they …’ His voice half-broke as he struggled to stay focused. ‘They got all of them. Everyone …’
‘All of them?’ Her voice was cold, flat.
‘Never … seen anything like it. Bloody massacre.’
‘There!’ she shouted, consciously distracting herself. ‘THERE!’
Eighty-odd yards ahead, a white vehicle blazed through the Ferny Hill junction. It galvanised Heck to greater efforts. He slammed his foot to the floor, hitting sixty in a forty zone. At the next roundabout, he veered, almost spinning out of control as he followed his quarry onto Waggon Road, still clamping his foot to the floor.
‘Who’s coming?’ he shouted.
‘Everyone,’ she replied. ‘I called everyone … trouble is, as long as we keep moving, I can’t update them on where we are. You didn’t think to grab your phone …’
‘No … fuck!’ Heck cursed.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘just make sure you stay in touch with the car.’
He nodded. Now that the red mist was clearing, this was all he actually could do. He’d come across too many automatic weapons for his own liking in the previous weeks. The last time, he’d been armed with something that was no more than a pea-shooter in comparison. This time he had nothing at all.
But even staying in touch wouldn’t be easy.
The Subaru, which was clearly aware they were pursuing, hit 70mph as it tore through Hadley Wood, making crazy manoeuvres to overtake the slower-moving cars in front of it. Even cars in the opposite carriageway went careering off the blacktop, many of them suffering heavy impacts.
‘The stupidest woodentops in the job can follow this trail of madness,’ Gemma said. ‘Heck …’ Her voice quavered. ‘You don’t mean all of them? Not all of them?’
He nodded, struggling to nail his attention on the Subaru and put everything else from his mind. But he was successful at this simply because the white vehicle was proving so incredibly elusive.
On Dancers Hill Road, it accelerated to something approaching 90mph, taking corners with such rash abandon that it screeched repeatedly into the opposing lane. Thankfully, there were fewer and fewer vehicles the further it penetrated into the countryside. At last, on a road called Trotters Bottom, there was nothing coming the other way at all, which made it all the more bewildering when the Subaru suddenly cut sharp left down a much narrower road with leafy copses to either side.
‘Hang on!’ Heck shouted, swinging his Megane in pursuit.
All four tyres travelled sideways across the tarmac, surely losing centimetres of tread. Gemma, who wasn’t yet belted in, yelped as she flew from one side of the vehicle to the other.
This next route was unlit, and the trees, clustered up to either verge and standing behind six-foot-high stone-built walls, made it even darker. Heck banged his headlights up to full, but the twists and turns gave him no vantage further ahead than thirty or forty yards.
The Subaru was lost to view.
‘Shit, shit!’ he muttered. ‘Can’t see them … they haven’t turned off somewhere else?’
‘Heck, I don’t like this!’ Gemma warned. ‘This isn’t natural … there’s no escape this way.’
That made sense to Heck, but already he was screeching around the next bend onto an open stretch – and some eighty yards ahead, they regained sight of the Subaru. It had halted on the left side of the narrow road, directly behind a heavy goods vehicle, the rear ramp to which had been lowered, revealing a hollow interior.
‘Got ’em!’ Heck shouted, ramming his foot down again.
But less than a millisecond later, he spotted two dark figures, one to either side of the Subaru, both facing towards him. Another millisecond, and he sighted the weapons they were squinting along. He hit his brakes, projecting the Megane into a terrifying skid, but dazzling, strobe-like flashes already filled his windscreen, peppering it with explosive impacts, before busting the whole thing inward.
Heck swung sharp right, aiming for a wooden farm gate, which he struck at full force.
The Megane was heavy, but this was a mighty obstacle. It flew apart under the impact, but the jolt was terrific. Fleetingly, the wheels lost traction and velocity, allowing the machine gunners to rake the car down its nearside flank, juddering hammer blows hitting every part of it, before it ploughed into the wooded area, where it went through a tangle of fibrous undergrowth, a chaos of leaves and broken twigs surging through the smashed windscreen, and slammed full-on into the trunk of an elm tree.
The impact was tremendous, the sound like a bomb blast.
Heck was jarred forward into his airbag.
What seemed like an age of
vague, dim awareness followed. Every one of his senses too numbed to respond. The car was dead, and darkness engulfed him. The only sound he could hear was the tinkle of glass as it trickled from the shattered windows. But then he heard something else as well: the slamming of boots on tarmac, rapidly drawing closer.
‘Gemma,’ he murmured, nothing really making sense, though some concept of alarm was growing on him. And, in a rush, it all fell back into place. ‘Gemma, get out!’
He unclipped his belt and kicked repeatedly at his door, which had buckled in its frame. The rear-offside passenger door opened, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Gemma lurch out and throw herself flat into the undergrowth. In contrast, his own door only budged by millimetres. Horribly aware that they were a handful of yards from the road, he fought furiously with it, battering it with his shoulders, his elbows, his knees.
The footfalls came nearer.
Heck risked a glance backward.
Through an opening in the trees, he could see twenty yards’ worth of stone wall. There was no sign of anyone there yet. He swung back to the door, and with a snarl of effort which all but ruptured his throat, he flung his entire body forward, and with a CRACK! of straining metal, the door burst open. He fell through the gap, along with the champagne bottle, which had been thrown across the interior of the car during the crash.
He glanced around. Gemma was still lying low, but there was no time to speak with her.
Snatching the bottle by its neck, he scuttled around the front of his car and the massive tree trunk that had staved it in, scrambled to the wall and hunkered down in its shadow.
In no time, feet arrived on the other side.
The barrel of an automatic rifle projected over the top of the wall, directly above him. With a rattle of blistering, deafening fire, it drilled another salvo into the smashed and twisted Megane, turning its bodywork to Swiss cheese, taking out all the remaining windows, blowing the bonnet lid off, raking the interior back and forth.
It only ceased when the magazine was spent – which was when Heck made his move.
He launched himself upward, grabbing the barrel with one hand, red-hot though it was, and swinging the champagne in a massive overhead arc.