Fightback

by Steve Voake

  Time I was gone, he thought.

  He had just decided to slide the shotgun through the door handles on his way out when his phone rang. As he pulled it out to answer it and saw Saskia’s name flash up on the display, the doors of the bank flew open and he was faced with three armed policemen, all aiming their guns at him.

  ‘Armed police!’ one of them shouted. ‘Drop your weapon!’

  Instead, Kier dropped the phone, lowered the barrel of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. As the phone exploded into a thousand pieces he dropped to the floor and lay still, waiting patiently for the three policemen to jump on his back with their heavy boots on and cuff him.

  Which, three seconds later, is exactly what they did.

  FOURTEEN

  When Kier arrived at the police station the two bank robbers were already there, swearing and struggling with their handcuffs, which made lifting the driver’s car keys a whole lot easier. As Kier palmed them into his pocket, he watched the arresting officer tap a code into the security lock and then he was ushered down a corridor into an interview room. The room was empty apart from a table and two plastic chairs.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said the police officer.

  Kier thought about dropping him right there and then, but in the end he decided against it. After all, the guy was only doing his job. He walked around to the far side of the table, pulled out the chair and sat down.

  ‘So, introductions. My name is Police Constable Doyle. Do you want to tell me yours?’

  ‘It’s Richard. Richard Smith.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Er, 5 Station Road.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  Kier thought about the names he had seen on the tube map.

  ‘Finchley.’

  Doyle looked at him.

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘You can check it if you like.’

  ‘Oh, I will.’

  Go on then, thought Kier. But Doyle stayed where he was and wrote Richard Smith, 5 Station Road in his notebook. Kier wondered idly if such a place existed.

  ‘So. Do you want to tell me what you were doing in the bank?’

  Kier shrugged.

  ‘I was walking past and I heard a bang, so I went in to see what was going on. You know. Just curious.’

  ‘OK. So how do you explain the fact that, when officers arrived at the scene, they found you standing in the middle of the bank holding a shotgun?’

  Kier turned his hand over and studied his fingernails.

  ‘I can understand how that must look.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. Particularly as you then went on to fire it.’

  ‘Accidentally.’

  ‘That’s not the way I heard it.’

  ‘No? How did you hear it?’

  ‘I heard you dropped your phone and fired at it deliberately.’ Doyle shook his head. ‘You realise you were seconds away from getting killed?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ said Kier, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. Chiang was right. He really did have to learn the value of silence.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re a part of this gang, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s what you meant, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on, Richard, stop playing games with me. It will be easier for everyone concerned if you just start telling the truth. What was your role in all of this? Were you the lookout?’

  ‘Like I said, I was just walking past.’

  ‘We have witnesses, you know.’

  Kier closed his eyes and revisited the moment when he had first made his move. Everyone had been face down on the carpet, except for the cashiers collecting the money out back. The guy was definitely bluffing. No one would have seen what had happened.

  ‘So go ahead and ask them. I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing.’

  ‘Then how do you explain the fact that you were holding the gun when the officers arrived?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘OK,’ said Doyle, putting his notebook aside for a moment. ‘You know what I think, Richard? I think that you’re not like those other two out there. The truth is, I can’t figure you out. You seem like a bright kid who’s somehow got mixed up in all this. But the problem is, you’re holding something back from me and I don’t know what it is. And unless you tell me, I’m not going to be able to help you.’

  Just for a moment, Kier was caught off guard by this unexpected kindness. He could tell that Doyle was being sincere, that he genuinely wanted to throw Kier some kind of lifeline. But there was no way Kier was going to take it, so he stayed silent.

  Doyle sighed.

  ‘Listen, Chief Superintendent Tyler is on his way over here and he doesn’t see things the way I do. Believe me, the only things he’s interested in are his crime figures. He’s not a man you want to mess with. So here’s the deal. Either you talk to me now and let me try to help you, or you wait until he arrives and get yourself in a whole lot more trouble. Now, which is it to be?’

  Kier thought about this and decided he had met enough policemen for one day.

  ‘I’ll talk to you,’ he said. ‘But can I tell you a secret first?’

  Doyle frowned.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Kier leaned forward, beckoning to him across the table.

  ‘I need to whisper it.’

  Still frowning, Doyle sat down and leaned across the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ Kier whispered, ‘it’s nothing personal.’

  Then, tucking his thumb carefully beneath Doyle’s neck, he tapped him on the temple just the way Chiang had shown him. As the man’s eyes flickered shut, Kier lowered Doyle’s head gently down on to the desk.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he said.

  But he knew Doyle wouldn’t be out for long.

  Two minutes was all he had.

  FIFTEEN

  Closing the door behind him, Kier walked quickly past a room where shirt-sleeved officers were busy tapping away at their keyboards or talking on the phone. When he reached the security door, he punched in the number he had memorised and heard the click of the catch opening.

  As he walked into the reception area, the desk sergeant looked up. For a brief moment, they stared at each other. Then the sergeant dropped his pen, leapt to his feet and Kier ran for the door. Outside there were four steps down to the car park, but Kier didn’t touch any of them. He hit the ground at the bottom and kept on running. He saw two uniformed officers walking towards him and for a moment he was tempted to head for the street. But he knew he wouldn’t get far without a fight and he figured there’d been enough of that for one day. Besides, Frankie had taught him that the more distance you can get at the start, the better your chance of escape. Feeling for the keys in his pocket, he guessed the driver hadn’t realised they were gone yet.

  Oh well, he thought. He soon will.

  Sprinting across the car park, he pushed the button on the key fob and heard the locks thump open.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled the sergeant from the top of the steps. ‘Stop him!’

  The two other officers looked up from their conversation and then broke into a run. Diving across the bonnet of the car, Kier rolled over and pulled open the door on the driver’s side. Throwing himself in, he flicked the door catch and the locks thumped shut just as the sergeant reached the car. Ignoring the shouts and bangs on the door, Kier fired up the motor and slammed the gearstick into reverse. Pulling the steering wheel hard around to the right, he glanced in his rear-view mirror and saw the two other officers dive clear as he screeched out of the parking space. Stamping on the brake, he shifted into first and was about to release the clutch when the sergeant stepped up to the car and swung his baton.

  The windshield shattered, crystallising into a curtain of broken glass. Punching a hole through it with his fist, Kier saw he had a clear run to the gate. As the sergeant swung his baton again, spraying the side window
all over the passenger seat, Kier let the clutch out and the car leapt forward in a squeal of smoking rubber. Swinging out into the road, he dabbed briefly at the brakes and then floored the accelerator. As he approached the end of the road, the cars in front of him slowed to a stop as the traffic lights turned red.

  Damn it.

  Blocked by the cars in front, Kier applied the brakes and glanced in the rear-view mirror to see several police officers running down the road towards him. A patrol car nosed its way out into the road with blue lights flashing and, for the first time since his arrest, Kier was worried. Until now he’d always had the advantage of surprise. But now they knew what they were dealing with, they weren’t going to mess around.

  Scanning the dashboard, Kier flicked a switch and was rewarded with the whoop-whoop of the siren, sound waves bouncing off walls and windows. As the cars in front pulled over he edged into the bus lane, slipped through a gap in the line of slow-moving traffic and accelerated past, siren wailing and blue lights flashing. He saw the other patrol car pull out behind him and knew his chances of escape were fading fast. An alert would already have gone out over the radio; police vehicles all over London would be performing U-turns, while helicopters checked their co-ordinates, all searching for a juvenile bank robber who thought he could steal a police car and get away with it.

  What a mess, thought Kier. Jackson was not going to be pleased.

  People were staring now, shoppers gazing openmouthed as Kier headed up Brompton Road with the wind in his face, peering through the smashed windscreen in search of possibilities.

  There was a small park over to his right and for a moment he considered bailing out, but there were few trees and even fewer people. The road swung around to the right and as he hit the bend he increased his speed slightly, hoping to put some distance between himself and the car behind. Up ahead he could see the green and gold canopies of Harrods department store, and beyond it a police van stopping the traffic.

  It was now or never.

  Stamping on the brakes, Kier flung the door open and ran. The pavement was crowded with shoppers and, after knocking into a newspaper seller, he veered right down Hans Road, suddenly finding himself outside the entrance of Harrods. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw police officers running around the corner and quickly slipped past the doorman into the food hall.

  It was mid-afternoon and the place was quiet, with just a few shoppers milling about beneath the chandeliers, gazing at neat piles of beautiful food that most of them probably couldn’t afford. Kier ran past the displays of exotic sweets and coloured candy sticks, skidding around a golden mountain of chocolate coins before reaching the escalator and leaping up the moving staircase three steps at a time.

  He found himself in a room full of expensive-looking luggage; to one side he saw tiny puffed-up handbags dripping with gold perched on columns like sacred objects. A few well-dressed ladies were moving slowly between them, pausing among the shrines to admire and worship. But Kier wasn’t interested in handbags. He was interested in the fact that the young woman at the glass service counter was walking away from it. He watched her make her way towards a customer on the far side of the room and waited until she had engaged her in conversation. Then he walked quickly across to where she had been standing, picked up the phone and dropped down behind the counter at the same moment that two policemen appeared at the top of the escalator.

  Huddled next to a box marked Gucci, Kier punched in 9 for an outside line and then phoned Saskia’s number.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered as he heard a woman’s voice say: ‘He was here just a few seconds ago.’

  The sound of footsteps disappeared rapidly across the shop floor and then Saskia was on the line asking, ‘Yes? Who is this?’

  ‘It’s me. Kier.’

  ‘Kier? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in Harrods.’

  ‘Harrods?’

  ‘Listen. I’m in trouble. I need help.’

  ‘OK.’ Saskia’s voice was calm and focused, but there was an edge to it. ‘What kind of help?’

  ‘The kind that will get me out of here without half the Metropolitan Police force noticing.’

  There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  ‘Saskia?’

  ‘OK. What floor are you on now?’

  ‘First.’

  ‘Right. Make your way to the ladies’ toilets and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘What? Saskia, I—’

  But the line had gone dead and Kier could hear the sound of high heels tapping their way across the floor towards him. He replaced the phone and looked up to see the shop assistant staring at him with one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ said Kier.

  Then he dropped the phone and ran.

  SIXTEEN

  He made it as far as the audio-visual department before they caught up with him. As two police officers walked towards him past walls of flat-screen TVs, a voice behind him said, ‘All right, son. Stay where you are.’

  Kier looked over his shoulder and saw that another two policemen were approaching from behind. Rubbing the floor with the sole of his foot, he came to a decision. Not perfect of course, but it would have to do.

  The men in front of him were moving cautiously, anxious not to startle him into a run, and he knew that the men behind him would be doing the same. He guessed they’d be feeling pretty confident right now. After all, there were four of them and one of him. How hard could it be?

  Kier pressed the toes of his right foot against the heel of his trainer and slipped it off. Then he did the same with the other one, bending over and hooking his fingers into the heels. He peered through his knees at the two men approaching him from behind, then stood up again.

  ‘Are you Richard Smith?’ asked the officer in front of him as he was joined by his colleague.

  Kier held the shoes up on either side of his head and waggled them back and forth.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m Mickey Mouse.’

  He waited until they were just over an arm’s length away. Then, whipping his arms down hard and fast, he released his grip and the shoes flew backwards like stones from a slingshot. Hearing the startled cries from behind him as the shoes met their targets, he saw the surprise on the faces of the two men in front of him and smiled.

  ‘Squeak, squeak,’ he said.

  Then he leapt forward, put his hands on their shoulders and swung himself between them. As his socks slid him smoothly across the polished floor, he tensed his stomach muscles, shifted his weight forward and, before the laws of physics had time to slow him down, he was up and running through the door.

  *

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the startled woman as he skidded into the ladies’ toilets. ‘I think I must have got the wrong room.’

  Noticing that the doors to the individual cubicles were open and that there was no one else in the room, he followed her out and waited until she had disappeared around the corner. Then he reentered the toilets and caught sight of himself in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said. ‘It was Saskia’s idea.’

  Making his way into one of the cubicles, he bolted the door and sat down to wait.

  After a while he heard the door squeak open, followed by the sound of two women talking.

  ‘What is it, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe a bomb scare or something.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. If it was a bomb scare, they’d have evacuated the whole store by now.’

  ‘I don’t know then. But it must be pretty serious. The place is absolutely crawling with police.’

  Kier listened as they reapplied their make-up and the more he heard, the more he realised Saskia needed to get here quickly. There was obviously no shortage of police officers doing their shopping in Harrods and they would almost certainly be watching the entrances and searching the building, floor by floor. Once they discovered he wasn�
��t out there, it wouldn’t take a genius to think of sending someone up for a quick cubicle check.

  In which case, how was Saskia being here going to help?

  Deciding he needed an alternative plan, Kier stood on the toilet seat and examined the window. It was made of a single pane of frosted glass; not too thick and, if it came to it, easy enough to break.

  Hooking his arm through the small window at the top, he swivelled his wrist and raised his arm at an angle of forty-five degrees to the glass.

  ‘Kier,’ said a voice, ‘if you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do, then … don’t.’

  Kier spun around to see Saskia resting her chin on the top of the adjacent cubicle. Her neat, shoulder-length hair was dark and shiny as blackberries and her eyes were the kind of butterscotch brown that reminded people of kittens or puppy dogs. But Kier wasn’t fooled for a minute. He could tell right away that she wasn’t in a puppy-dog kind of mood.

  ‘Saskia,’ he said, pulling his hand back through the window. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Saskia, her eyes glittering angrily. ‘Because you’re an idiot, that’s why. With less sense than you were born with.’

  ‘Nice to see you too,’ said Kier. ‘What took you so long?’

  Saskia narrowed her eyes. ‘I was twenty-eight minutes. Which, when you consider I had to stop off and buy a few things first, was pretty damn good, don’t you think?’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Things for you.’

  Saskia swung herself over the top of the cubicle, landed neatly in front of Kier and handed him a large green Harrods bag. She was wearing a dark blue, box-pleated skirt, white knee-length socks and a blue and white gingham blouse. On her feet she wore a pair of flat, sensible court shoes. She looked exactly like a schoolgirl on her lunch break.

  Kier grinned.

  ‘You look nice,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Saskia, ‘go ahead and laugh. Then take a look in the bag.’