He looked around him, hoping for inspiration.
“This car park’s close to the station,” he said, “and that would be—what?—two stops from St. James’s Park Station?”
“Are you thinking New Scotland Yard?” she asked.
“We know he’s threatened to blow the place up.”
“Everyone’s on full alert. He stands no chance.”
Pikey wasn’t so sure. People like Oxford, people with no concern for life, either their own or anyone else’s, could do a lot of damage.
“We need every inch of CCTV for this area checked,” he said. “I’ll bet he’s wearing a uniform of some description—most probably a copper’s.” It would take too long though. “Is anything happening back there?”
“His photo’s been circulated, they’re getting a warrant to search his home—”
“That’s a waste of time. He shares his home with his wife and two kids. Anything incriminating will be at that place on Russell Street or in his van.”
“Forensics are at the house on Russell Street...”
As Pikey ended the call, he had an awful feeling it was going to be a case of too little, too late.
Staring at Oxford’s van wasn’t helping.
Pikey headed to the station and jumped on the first train to arrive. He’d been right, it was only two stops to St. James’s Park. He got off there and walked to New Scotland Yard.
The building looked as it always did, an unattractive heap of concrete and glass. Concrete barriers protected ground-level windows from car bombs. Yet more concrete sat around the entrance to the building. An uglier building would be difficult to find.
People walked past without sparing the office block or the armed guards a second glance. Three uniformed men stood at the visitors’ entrance. All was quiet. Normal.
Pikey didn’t feel in the least reassured.
He paced. Beneath the familiar revolving sign recognisable to most people in the world, a man was trying to take a photo of himself on his phone. He was wearing biker’s clothes—a courier’s uniform—but there was no sign of a motorcycle.
A young man approached him and offered to take his photo.
The biker removed his helmet just as Pikey spotted the large package at his feet—
Pikey hit a button on his phone and was relieved when Jo Fry answered immediately. Later, he’d wonder why he’d gone straight to her but, for now, he just issued instructions.
“I’ve got him. He’s by the sign outside the Yard. I’m going to try and keep him talking but if he recognises me, we’re stuffed.” Pikey didn’t want to think about that. “He has a parcel with him which I strongly suspect is a bomb. Get someone outside now, Jo. But softly, softly, okay? This guy’s fucking crazy...”
Pikey ended the call. Why the hell had he thought this morning’s dental appointment was so terrible? Compared to this, it had been a picnic.
He was about to walk over to the sign when he spotted a gift heading straight for him. A tall man was wearing a red velvet hat that boasted a bright peacock’s feather. A red scarf was wrapped around his neck several times and still almost touched the ground.
Pikey approached him, showed him his warrant card, and grabbed his hat and scarf. “You’ll get them back in a few minutes. Meanwhile, stay here and keep quiet.”
The chap’s eyes were wide with a mix of shock and fear. Pikey couldn’t help that. It was the closest he could get to a disguise right now.
With the hat pulled as low as possible, and the scarf looped around his neck, he thanked God for London’s many eccentrics and walked toward the revolving sign.
Oxford was taking back his phone and inspecting the photo the stranger had taken. Pikey saw the outline of a gun. Inside pocket, left-hand side. Shit.
“Well, just look at you!” Pikey put on an over-the-top, ridiculously camp voice. Eat your heart out, Quentin Crisp. “What a fabulous uniform, darling. Do you ever make deliveries to Scotland Yard?”
Oxford looked both appalled and smug. “Of course. Why else do you think I’m here?”
“But, darling, you have nothing to deliver.”
Oxford nodded in the direction of his feet. Up close, that package was bigger. About a foot square. “What do you think that is?”
“Ah!” Pikey leaned in close and gave his scarf a dramatic flick over his shoulder. “I tried to get in, but no luck. My father’s cousin knows someone who works for the Diplomatic Protection Group—that’s one of the Met’s specialist branches. They protect 10 Downing Street, foreign embassies—”
“I know who they are.”
“Well, I thought I’d be able to get an appointment through him, but no. Not so much as a sniff of the inside, darling. What about you? Do they let you go inside?”
“Yeah. Course. Not today, though. And it’s nothing special inside. Just a lot of stupid coppers.”
“Would you mind?” Pikey took his phone from his pocket. “I’d love a photo of you and that uniform. Will you humour me, darling?”
“Yeah. Then you can take one of me, right? I’ve got one, but it’s not very good. Half the sign’s missing.”
“Oh, of course. You first then. Give me your phone.”
Jesus Christ. There was no one about. Well, no one who looked armed. No one who looked like a crack marksman. No one who looked as if they knew what they were doing around bombs. Where the hell was everyone?
“Or,” Pikey said, “I can take a picture on my phone. The camera’s very good indeed. We could exchange email addresses, darling, and I—”
“No need. Just take a decent picture on my phone.”
Pikey brushed at his hat and gave his scarf another twist. It would be difficult to convince anyone looking at the two of them that Oxford was the crazy one.
No one was looking at them though. Pikey realised that there was no one in sight. Not a single tourist was waiting to record a news report from the popular spot.
He could either wait for backup or he could overpower Oxford himself and hope to God Oxford didn’t detonate that bomb. Oxford was a big, strong bloke, but Pikey reckoned he could handle him.
“What’s in the package?” he asked as he took Oxford’s phone.
“A bomb.” Oxford snorted with laughter.
“Very amusing. Really, what’s in the package? I don’t suppose you know. It could be important evidence perhaps or—”
“It’s a bomb. Hang around if you want a good picture. As soon as this parcel enters the building—boom.” Oxford leaned back slightly and frowned. “Hey, I fucking know you—”
Pikey would have introduced himself but he was pushed to the ground with such force that he had to spit out a tooth that was lost on impact.
“Nice hat and scarf, sergeant.” Oxford’s face was so close that Pikey could feel the heat of the bloke’s breath.
They struggled, and just as Pikey managed to overpower him so that it was Oxford lying helpless on his back, half a dozen arms pulled Pikey away from his prize.
Oxford was lost from his view as eight or ten officers disarmed him.
Blood dripped down Pikey’s chin as he got to his feet. Oxford was being dragged away, his arms tight behind his back, his legs cuffed at the ankles. The package sat beneath Scotland Yard’s famous revolving sign.
“Let’s get out of here before the fireworks start,” an officer suggested.
Pikey was more than happy to oblige. Bomb disposal experts could do their thing without his help.
He picked up the velvet hat and long scarf and tucked them under his arm. They’d served him well, but he’d be glad to return them to their rightful owner.
Oxford was almost out of sight now, but he was still shouting. “Give my regards to Dylan Scott!”
Chapter Fifty-One
Oxford’s house on Russell Street was teeming with officers.
“I need to get home,” Dylan said to no one in particular. One officer had given him a phone to use, but Bev wasn’t answering. Luke wasn’t answering his either.
The officer returned for his phone. “You need to get to a hospital,” he said. “A car’s on its way to your house. It’ll be there by now. Meanwhile, let’s get you out of here. Hop in.” He sniggered at his joke.
Dylan got in the patrol car and tried to get his foot comfortable. He couldn’t. “Never mind the hospital. Just get me home.”
“Are you sure? We can let your wife know that you’re in A&E.”
“I need to get home.” That was becoming his mantra. “When that bastard Oxford is in a straitjacket, then I’ll go to hospital.” And not a second before. Dylan called his home number, but there was still no answer. He called what he thought was Bev’s mobile—he wasn’t sure he remembered it as it was always keyed into his phone. There was no answer. He called his mother’s number to see if Bev was there but, damn it, she wasn’t answering either. Luke’s phone went straight to voicemail. He left messages telling his family to call him on his new number, but no one was speaking to him.
“How the hell did you find that place?” he asked the officer.
“It was Sergeant Pike,” he said. “It was his day off, but he picked up your message and checked out everyone who’d attended that police training course. It didn’t take long to find the person deemed to be mentally unstable. Oxford was discharged from the army suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. A quick visit to his wife, who confirmed he’d lost the plot lately, gave us the registration of his van. She said that he’d been seen in this area.” The officer stopped the car for a red light. “Your luck was in because the chap who lives in the adjoining house had phoned in. He’d heard noises and he said he knew there was no one in the house because the man renting it had left. He reckoned the chap was smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. He told us about the white van the chap drove and was even able to give us a partial plate. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the two things wouldn’t have been connected. Today, they did. Your luck’s in, mate.”
Dylan leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as the officer drove. He’d go home and have a stiff drink. When Oxford was caught and was secure in a cosy cell, he’d get himself and his foot to the nearest hospital.
Traffic was almost at a standstill.
“Sod this,” Dylan said. “We’ll be here all night at this rate. Give us some lights and music, will you?”
“Will do.”
When drivers heard the siren and saw the flashing blue lights, they pulled over to allow them to pass. “That’s better. Thanks.”
The journey still seemed to take forever and all the while Dylan’s foot reminded him that he needed to get to a hospital.
He called Bev again, but still there was no answer. She was probably having a bath, in which case she’d ignore the phone. Maybe she’d gone to bed—
It was becoming increasingly difficult to convince himself. She’d be worrying about him. Hell, she might even have called the police herself by now. Or maybe not. When he didn’t return from his run, she would have assumed he’d gone straight to the office. She knew he didn’t work to a timetable and was used to his coming and going at all hours. She’d nag him for not returning her calls if she’d tried to phone him, but she might not be too worried.
The officer finally turned into Dylan’s road. Dylan was vaguely aware of him missing a gear as they spotted the flashing blue lights very close to Dylan’s house. They hadn’t sent just one patrol car.
“What the—?”
Police officers were outside his house. Tape sealed off his garden.
“Fuck, no!” Dylan had the car door open before the vehicle had stopped.
Unaware of the pain in his foot, he ran as well as he could until he was stopped by a uniformed officer.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t—”
“Out of my fucking way.” His mouth was dry. His heart was racing at a dangerous pace. “This is my home!”
“Dylan Scott?”
Two pairs of arms restrained him. He heard their voices, but it sounded as if they were coming from a distance. “I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you this...arrived too late...”
“No!” He wouldn’t listen to them.
He pushed past them and into his house. The house that would never feel like home again.
Chapter Fifty-Two
“You see?” Luke said, hanging the last strand of tinsel. “It looks like Christmas now. Wait till Freya sees it. She’ll love it.”
“She’ll wreck it,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Unless Bozo gets to it first.”
Dylan still couldn’t believe they had a dog in the house. Nor could he believe the size of the creature.
They’d spotted it, half-starved, shivering and caked in mud, in the garden one late August night. Luke had thought Christmas had come early, because they’d had little option but to bring the creature into the house and feed it while Dylan called the police and local dog warden. The dog hadn’t been wearing a collar, wasn’t microchipped, and no one had reported one as lost.
“You can’t send him to the rescue kennels.” Luke had been appalled.
“We’ll keep him for a couple of days,” Dylan had said, “but you’ll have to be prepared to hand him back to his owners.”
“But he’s starving. Anyone who’s let him get in this state shouldn’t be allowed to have a dog in the first place.”
Luke had a point. The dog’s ribs were painfully prominent.
“Perhaps he wandered off and is lost. Someone, somewhere, is probably heartbroken. They’ll be hoping he returns to a cupboard full of food and a warm, comfy bed.”
“Huh.”
Bozo, as Luke nicknamed him, was allowed to stay for a couple of days. They’d taken him for a checkup, and the vet had thought he was around a year old. The vet had also decided he was a Labrador/collie crossbreed. He was mainly black, with white patches on his chest and paws, and looked nothing like either a Labrador or a collie as far as Dylan could see. Apart from being underweight, he was deemed healthy enough, so, when Dylan had handed over a fortune for vaccinations, flea medication and worming tablets, they’d brought him home. All he’d done since was eat—dog food, shoes, sweaters, mail, tennis balls—anything he could get his teeth into.
Now, it was Christmas Eve and, belatedly, they—Luke, really—had provided him with a decorated Christmas tree to eat.
Dylan wouldn’t have bothered with a tree, but that held true every Christmas. Luke had been insistent, though, so they’d gone to the local garden centre and bought a huge pine. They’d sold out of anything smaller. Once they’d dragged it into the house, Dylan had scrambled into the loft to bring down the decorations and Luke had spent the past couple of hours decorating it.
It should have looked like Christmas, but it didn’t. The tree was where it always went. Every year, Bev had insisted on moving the TV and a coffee table, and putting the tree in the corner. And there it stood now.
Cards were propped here, there and everywhere, and strung across the room on red ribbon as they always were. There were no hat-and-scarf-wearing turkeys or flatulent Santas on the cards this year. All greetings were of the sombre Thinking of You at Christmas type. Bev would have preferred farts and turkeys.
Almost obscured by the cards was a small note. For Bev’s funeral, everyone had followed Bev’s instructions and worn bright colours. They’d tried to celebrate rather than mourn a life. Children from Bev’s school had written short tributes to her, tied them to balloons and let those balloons fly high into the sky. One note had come adrift during its flight and Dylan had picked it up. It said,
Thank you for everything, Mrs. Scott. I’ll live my dream and I’ll remember you every step of the way. Love Daisy.
Dylan had been so touched that he’d kept the note. Knowing she’d made a difference to a young girl’s life would have meant the world to Bev.
Luke’s phone rang. He turned the colour of a Santa hanging on the tree, muttered something about needing to answer it, and went to his room. Bozo had been snoring in front of the fire, but he leapt up and followed.
Dylan could remember—just—the excitement of his first girlfriend. At Luke’s age, all he’d thought about was getting laid. He hadn’t got laid until he was eighteen, but he’d thought about it constantly.
The landline rang and when Dylan saw his mother was calling, he was tempted to ignore it. Deciding he had nothing better to do, he answered it.
“Good evening, mother of mine.”
“Evening, Scrooge. I’m only calling to make sure you collected the turkey.”
“I did. I’ll shove it in the oven later and set the timer.”
“Good. So what have you been doing?”
“Decorating a tree.”
“A real one?” She sounded amazed.
“Yes. There are pine needles everywhere but, as yet, Bozo hasn’t cocked his leg against it.”
“Lovely. I’ll look forward to seeing it. My place looks horrible and bare.”
“That’s the general idea, Mum.”
She’d dropped everything to move in with them and take care of them as they’d stumbled, numb with grief, from one day to the next. They couldn’t have coped without her. They couldn’t now because Dylan needed to work.
Her flat was in the process of being sold and she’d returned to it for a week to empty it.
“You wouldn’t believe how many charity bags I’ve filled,” she said.
“Oh, I would.”
“Anyway, it’s almost done. I’ll nip back one day in the holiday to finish off,” she said. “Are Luke and Freya all right?”
“Yep. Freya’s asleep and Luke’s on the phone to his girlfriend.”
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