He yanks her upright, onto her feet. Drags her to the door, jerks it open one-handed, wedges it with his foot, scoops her into his arms. Her head lolls back.
In the alleyway two men turn and straightaway back off, wide eyed. He runs past them, into the street. Blood’s started to surge through the fabric of her top. It didn’t go that deep, it’s superficial—but she’s bleeding far too much.
He reaches the main road.
There’s a snatch coming toward him. He runs straight at it, shouting.
DAY 24: FRIDAY
KARLA
I’m jumping from camera to camera, street to street, at random now. If I see two figures together I pause, but it’s never them. I pause, too, for anyone who might be Johanssen, even though he shouldn’t be on the streets alone; she should be with him. We need to time this to the minute. Where is he now?
Craigie says, “What’s happening, Karla?”
He’s watching, too, and he’s as much in the dark as I am.
“Do you have a fix on them?” he asks.
“Not yet.” I make it sound calm. As if he’s fussing, unnecessarily. It doesn’t feel like that.
I’m cursing myself: I’m an idiot, this needed three pairs of eyes, or four, I should have had Sean on it, I should have had Finn.
Now Johanssen has slipped through the net of surveillance cameras and vanished.
As he always planned to, of course: he won’t do it anywhere the cameras can watch.
Command posts, then. He’ll take her to a command post, won’t he? I split the screen—six tiles, then nine—and begin to fill them with images of armored doors and razor wire and aerials.
Suddenly Craigie says, “I’ve got them.”
“Reference?”
I’m still stabbing at keys, trying to get on the right camera, when Craigie says, “She’s bleeding—Karla, why is she bleeding?”
All the things we talked about. How long it will take them to ID her. Where she’ll be taken, and by what route, and whether there’ll be a police escort. But not this.
She shouldn’t be bleeding.
She’s in the armored ambulance now. Craigie’s eavesdropping on their comms, but when I ask, “How bad? Life threatening?” he just says, “Don’t know yet.”
If this is bad, we may have to abort. Let them take her to a hospital—shit shit shit, not that, we can’t deal with that. They’ll ID her in hours. The news will break—for all Ellis’s efforts it will break. Fielding will discover where she is. He’ll send someone else to do the job, someone we can’t identify. Can I tip Ellis off about the hit? Surely he can get protection for her, saturate the place with uniforms—
In the background, that insidious whisper: They’re intelligence. They brought Johanssen in because she was in the Program, but any minute now she’ll be out. They killed Graves, and Hamilton, without any help from Fielding. If she’s in hospital, she’s already dead.
“We lift her anyway.”
“What?”
“We lift her anyway. Warn the team she’s hurt. And get that doctor standing by—have they ID’d her yet?”
A silence from Craigie; in the background a chatter of other voices, distorted by scramblers, broken up and fired through the phone system and reassembled in his other ear: the ambulance service, Program security, police, everyone.
“They’ve worked out she’s not an inmate. That’s all.”
“What else?”
More chatter.
“The armored ambulance has reached the Emergency Medical Center … Okay.” A pause. “They’re going to transfer her. Civilian ambulance.”
“Projected route?”
“Coming up.”
“Police escort?” Please no.
“Yes.” Shit shit shit again. “Karla—?” A warning note in his voice. He knows: we cannot risk a battle with police.
“How many cars? Monitor it. And pin down that route.”
Another pause from Craigie, then: “Volunteer. They think she’s got to be a volunteer, and the system’s screwed up.”
But they’re not taking chances, are they? “Route?”
“On it now.”
Seconds later it fires up onto my screen: a pulsing red line, bright and arterial, tracking through a map. All guesswork, mind.
“They’re moving out now. Just one police car. Blue light.”
“She’s a volunteer, she doesn’t need an escort.” I’m saying it as if they can hear me, as if I can will them to believe it. Then: “We need that car called off. Give them something more important to do. A report of gunfire off the projected route.”
“Gunfire?” Craigie sounds alarmed.
“Yes, gunfire, suspected casualties—fuck, Craigie, just make something up.”
I don’t get to watch it happen. The CCTV cameras have gone down; we saw to that ourselves. I only get to listen and imagine.
The maneuver rehearsed last night with dummy vehicles, over and over again, in an old aircraft hangar in Oxfordshire. The ambulance, stripped now of its escort, slows for a tight corner and meets an unmarked van head-on, on the wrong side of the road. The ambulance brakes sharply, tries to drive round—another van draws up tight beside it, a third vehicle behind. It’s boxed. The ambulance driver reaches for her radio. No one stops her. Help won’t arrive in time.
Two masked men have already opened the ambulance’s side door. They go in. One plants a meaty hand on the paramedic’s chest and says, “We’re not going to hurt her, mate.” The voice is Robbie’s. The other cuts the stretcher straps, pulls off the oxygen mask—
And then they’re out, the woman limp between them, the dressing on her belly stained with blood. They put her in the back of one van, jump in with her, and all three vehicles pull away in different directions.
In my ear Craigie makes a tight exhalation. Shock, relief, elation? I don’t know. He says, “All right, everyone’s clear,” and he says it in a voice I’ve never heard from him before, the voice of a younger, braver man. I wonder if he’s shaking.
“It worked, Karla,” he says, “it worked.”
It did. We got her out. Already the vehicles are vanishing off the streets into workshops and garages, the crews dispersing; Catherine’s in the back of a big Mercedes with tinted windows, heading for a discreet house in a North London suburb, while a small quiet man tends to her wounds.
She’s hurt, but she will live. And we will talk.
I sit back in my chair and then reach for my computer mouse and close down the map: its insistent red trace vanishes. And there, behind it, is the Program surveillance feed. The street is empty. Johanssen’s gone.
I start to click through options. Street after street, view after view. He’ll have called Whitman, arranged to be lifted. Maybe he’s already heading for a gate.
Still no sign.
But everything is fine, isn’t it? The job’s done, she’s safe, he’s coming out—
I don’t know where the fear comes from, but suddenly I’m scared.
I click from camera to camera, looking for his face, his walk—not him, not him, not him. Where is he? Perhaps there’s trouble, and he’s gone to ground. I pick up the phone, dial Whitman.
“Has he called you?”
Whitman says, “No.”
A heartbeat frisson—kill it. “Okay, don’t wait, just get him lifted.”
A pause, then, “We got a problem, Laura?”
I don’t know.
I end the call. Go back to the surveillance feeds. A man walking purposefully, with a bag of tools. Two men and a woman passing along a street—the woman’s laughing. A snatch patrolling. A blond man pausing in the neck of an alley, and looking down it, smiling—
A momentary, spinning sense of vertigo, as if the ground’s suddenly dropped away from beneath my feet and I’m falling already. The man is Brice.
He nods as if satisfied and moves down the alleyway, out of view.
I pull up the Program map. Click through its levels until I reach the street p
lan with its scattering of icons. Yellow squares are cameras. There’s the alley: no yellow square, no camera.
I’m blind.
Back to the phone call, all of three days ago. The man screaming. They made her watch. Brice. Please, no.
And then I see Johanssen.
He’s moving at a fast walk, his head going left-right-left, as if he knows he’s being pursued and they’re all around him. Any minute they’ll come into view—
He’s heading for the alley.
I need to think clearly. I need a plan. But all I can think is No. No.
DAY 24: FRIDAY
JOHANSSEN
First he only hears them. Running feet, somewhere close by and moving parallel to him. How many? Three men? More?
Then up ahead, too, their path converging with his. He ducks down a side street, but now they’re on the other side of him as well, closing in on him, closing off his options.
He needs to go to ground, let them wash past him—
Behind him, someone shouts.
An alley opens up to his left. He turns into it. And there’s Brice just fifteen feet away—head thrown back, feet planted, his hair a pale halo. “I told you you were making mistakes,” he says, and he’s smiling.
Johanssen pulls up, and as he does so they step into place behind him. If he turns he’ll see them closing in: a man to his left, two more to his right, someone else—
The first blow is to his head, the second to his guts. He doubles. He’d fall, but the men hold him up. Another blow and his mouth fills: warm salt-and-iron. A fourth, and this time the men on either side let go.
He hits the ground, rolls, tries to curl into himself, but they’re on him, pulling him open, pinning him there, and Brice is looking down on him.
He says pleasantly, “You know what they say? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Do you believe that?” and suddenly Johanssen notices his hands: the pale synthetic film of the surgical gloves is slippery with blood.
Later—how much later? He’s not sure—
They have strung him upright, from the hooks in the ceiling of this room: strung him up high, on tiptoe, then put ropes on his ankles and tied the ropes to rings in the walls, pulling them tight, spread-eagling him so he can’t even stand: his whole weight rips through his arms and shoulders, burning the muscle, twisting the joints, the ropes cutting into his wrists. But when Brice speaks it’s as if they’re alone, just chatting. Not here, under the lights with people watching. He sees men he recognizes from the gate, the clinic … Drill’s there, too, at the edge of the group, detached curiosity on his face.
And Charlie Ross. What’s left of him. He’s dead, but it didn’t come quick enough. One eye socket’s empty; one hand has stumps for fingers. The mouth’s fallen open, and the lips are drawn back, the gums raw and bloody: the last of the teeth have been ripped out. Pain’s distorted the features into caricature. Still Johanssen knows him.
“What I don’t get,” Brice says, “is why you let him live. Why you didn’t just kill him when you had a chance. Compassion, Simon?—I can call you Simon now, can’t I? And that crap story about him thinking you were someone else, some dead guy who used to work for him … Did you think that would fool us? Soon as he gave us the name, I knew. Though it took a bit longer to get him to confirm it. Two fingers before he really started to talk. But he told me everything, you know. Eventually.
“Well, Simon Johanssen, the fourth man from the farmhouse … Here you are, after all this time, right under Mr. Quillan’s nose. You even got him to protect you. Bet that felt good, didn’t it? It’s not going to feel so good soon. Never mind, eh?” Brice looks into Johanssen’s face, and he smiles, a sick parody of sympathy. “You’re scared, aren’t you? It’s in your eyes. Well, not much longer to wait now,” he says.
He moves: a slow circuit, out of sight, then back, to stop in front of Johanssen again. His thumb strokes the blade in his hand.
He says, “I’ve had a while to think about how this might go. Anticipation’s a pleasure in itself, isn’t it.” He tilts his head to one side. “No?”
He says, “I’ve made all sorts of plans for you. But you know what? You’ve given me cause to rethink. Oh, it’s all going to happen: your fingers, castration, your eyes … Always save the eyes till last, if you can. But given who you are, given what you did, we’ll make it like Terry Cunliffe all those years ago.” He smiles again. “We’ll start with your skin.”
He steps behind Johanssen, close. “Feel this?” he whispers. A cold point of pain at the back of his neck. “This is the knife I’ll use to take your skin off.”
Brice jerks the blade—it slices through the collar of Johanssen’s jacket—and then he draws it down in a long clean rip. The second cut slices through his shirt. The dressing’s still on his back. Brice tears it off. He makes a little soft hah when he sees the wound. “She stitched it,” he says. “Sweet.” The tip of the blade touches the wound, bites—hot, white. Johanssen jerks, and pain rips through the tendons in his shoulders. “Shhhhhh,” Brice whispers. “Shhhh now.”
Four feet away Drill is watching. His face seems to float in the gloom, intent and curious.
“So tell us. Tell us what you did to Terry Cunliffe, eight years ago. Was it like this?”
The blade’s singing against the wound. Johanssen bites down on the pain.
“Did Terry Cunliffe scream?” Brice says softly. Johanssen can feel the man’s breath on his back. “I bet he did. I bet he screamed like an animal. Do you remember that? That sound, that’s going to be the sound you make.”
The blade probes again. Johanssen chokes.
Brice says, “It’s like peeling an orange: the trick is to remove as much skin as possible in one piece. I shall start—here—”
The pain goes deeper. Goes white again. And there’s Brice against him, pressing close: his shallow breathing, his sweat, his excitement. He says, “Open your eyes, Simon—open your eyes. Go on. Look who’s come to watch.”
He opens his eyes.
There’s Quillan, leaning on his cane, his stare hard and cold. The man with the boxer’s face stands just beyond his shoulder. On the other side is Riley.
Quillan says, “Simon Johanssen, why did you come here? You knew this would happen.” Then to someone else, “Cut him down—oh, come now, Mr. Brice, don’t pull that face. It’s hardly a fair fight.”
Drill steps forward, with a knife. The ankle ropes first—as his weight shifts the pain burns up into his shoulders as if someone’s poured petrol on him and lit it. The other ropes are tied off on a cleat in the wall. Drill loosens them—Johanssen whimpers as the joints realign—then just lets go, and he falls and lies there. The pain keeps catching in his throat; he has to swallow it down in gulps.
Quillan shuffles toward him—tiny, careful steps. He says, “Oh, I’ve heard all about you, Mr. Johanssen. No, not from him”—a glance at Ross’s corpse—“I’m afraid I wasn’t there for that. But Sully and the other two—remember them?” Then he says, “You tried to save Terry Cunliffe. You see, I made them talk, those three, and they went to great lengths to blame each other, but the one thing they agreed on was that you tried to save him. But you failed. You made a fuss; you didn’t make a difference. Terry died. So: is that why you’re here, under some fake ID? To atone for that?” Quillan pauses. “You’re not saying much.”
He’s on his knees now. He sucks in air. “Cate—”
“Evacuated with stab wounds. She did it in front of you, did she? Don’t flatter yourself: you weren’t the cause. From the moment she arrived here, she wanted to die.” Quillan tilts his head. “Enough talking. It’s time to get this done. Stand up—I said stand up.”
He rises in slow, painful stages. Finally stands, swaying on his feet. Quillan beats one hand against his thigh, slap slap slap, a mockery of applause. “Oh, well done. You know where we are now, don’t you, Mr. Johanssen?” He smiles that stretched smile of his, gone in an instant: “Right back where we started—you remem
ber? In the yard, all that showing off. Well, time to do it again.” Then aside, “Someone give him a blade.”
It’s Riley who presses the knife into his hand. He pats Johanssen’s arm, but his eyes are sliding away already. Brice is standing on the other side of the room, turning his own blade over in his hand. Blood already on it. Then he smiles.
Quillan says, “Go on then. Impress me.”
Across the room, Brice begins to circle.
Johanssen grips the blade, but the grip’s weak, his fingers numb and stiff.
He cannot do this now—he cannot do it. He has to, but he can’t; he’s got nothing left.
There is no choice.
First breath. It catches in his ribs. Second. He tries to work his shoulders, balance the knife, get his feet moving. Go on the third—
For a tiny moment he thinks of Karla—of her hand in his, of all the things he hasn’t said to her—but it’s still good, to think of her now, because he knows what comes will drive everything else out of his head, even her. Then Brice lunges.
Johanssen sidesteps, tries to fall back—too slow—the blade nicks his forearm, hot, stinging. He stumbles. Brice spins. Takes another step, sideways, the knife weaving in his hand, that smile. He’s not even trying yet.
Beyond him, Quillan: hawkish, watchful, just like before—
Johanssen tightens his grip on the knife, but the blood’s surging from the cut in his arm: his fingers are slippery with it.
Brice lunges again.
Johanssen parries, high—for a fraction of a second, connects, before Brice throws himself backward out of reach, but the contact is enough. The blade pops out of Johanssen’s grip, goes skittering across the room. His fist closes on air.
Brice is breathing hard. Knife in his right hand, his left pressed against the side of his neck. When he pulls his fingers away, there’s blood on them.
He says, “I’m going to strip your skin,” but this time it sounds different, and he’s no longer smiling.
Brice lunges a third time.
The Distance: A Thriller Page 37