The Last 10 Seconds: A Novel

by Simon Kernick

  She leaned back against the wall and sighed, waiting for that first hit of lightheadedness. Wondering whether to risk having another slug or call it a day and go outside for a smoke before returning to her desk smelling of mints.

  She was still considering this when the door to the Ladies opened and someone came inside. She froze like a naughty schoolkid, then relaxed as she realized that nobody could see her, so they wouldn’t have a clue what she was doing.

  ‘Ma’am?’ came a female voice, sounding uncertain and vaguely embarrassed. ‘Are you in here?’

  It was Anji Rodriguez.

  Realizing it must be urgent, Tina slipped the vodka bottle back inside her jacket and took a deep breath. ‘I’m in here,’ she called out, enunciating her words carefully to hide any sign of inebriation. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Andrew Kent. He’s asked to see you. I’ve got no idea what he wants but he says it’s urgent and he’ll only talk to you.’ Rodriguez’s tone was hostile, but then Rodriguez didn’t like her, having never made any secret of the fact that she thought Tina was too much of a celebrity for her own good.

  In preparation for his court appearance the following morning, Kent was being held in the cells of Holborn nick, after which he’d be remanded in custody in one of the capital’s maximum-security prisons. Although UK law states the police aren’t allowed to question a suspect after he’s been charged, they’re still allowed to talk to him if he requests it. Usually, it means they want to confess.

  ‘OK,’ she said, relieved that she sounded perfectly sober. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve finished.’

  As the main door closed and Rodriguez left, Tina slowly got to her feet, wondering what it was Andrew Kent had to say that was suddenly so important.

  Twelve

  Andrew Kent, all five feet seven inches of him, was sitting on his cot at the far end of the cell when Tina looked through the inspection hatch, his head in his hands, his feet dangling. It was the classic pose of an innocent man, straight out of TV central casting.

  ‘Will you be all right in there with him?’ asked the custody sergeant, an overweight Welshman with an appalling side parting, whose name she could never remember but who seemed to have a soft spot for her. ‘I know you’re a bit of an action woman, but you’ve got to be careful.’ He winked to show that he was only yanking her chain.

  ‘I’ll be fine, thanks,’ she answered, trying not to breathe on him. He’d be the sort who could smell it. And who’d report her like a shot. Soft spot or not.

  As the door clanked open and she went inside, Kent took his head out of his hands and looked up at her, brushing a thick lock of hair away from his face. His eyes were red and blotchy where he’d been crying, and he looked about seventeen. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, managing a tight, respectful smile.

  She stood in the middle of the room, feeling disgust rather than fear. ‘No problem. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m innocent, DI Boyd.’

  ‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, Mr Kent, but I’ve got to tell you, most people I arrest say that, and most of the time they’re lying. Right now it’s up to a jury of your peers to establish whether you’re telling the truth or not, but in my humble opinion, with the evidence stacked up against you, I’d have to say that you haven’t got a hope in hell of getting off. Now if you’ve got nothing else to say—’

  ‘I can prove it.’

  He delivered the words calmly, looking her right in the eye.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I remember one of the victims. Her name was Roisín O’Neill. She was really friendly to me when I was putting in the alarm system – not in a come-on kind of way,’ he added hastily, as if Tina might disapprove, ‘just nice, do you know what I mean? Interested in me as a person rather than just some workman doing a job. We chatted a fair bit while I was working and I remember her telling me that the name Roisín meant “blooming rose” in Gaelic.’

  ‘Get to the point, Mr Kent.’

  ‘Because of that, I remember her murder more than the others. I can still recall how shocked I felt when I first read about it in the papers, and saw it on the news.’ He shook his head wearily and Tina had to resist the urge to tell him to knock off the dramatics. She was getting tired of his acting, however good it was. ‘And I don’t know why I didn’t remember it before. I think perhaps it was the shock of being arrested and interrogated for something I didn’t do. But now I’ve had some time on my own to think properly, I’ve remembered something very important.’ He paused, staring at her. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long after Roisín died did you discover her body?’

  Tina was beginning to feel a little spaced out as the vodka kicked in, and it took her a couple of seconds to remember. Roisín was the fourth victim, a very attractive blonde-haired girl in her late twenties – not one of the ones, thank God, that Kent had filmed himself killing. ‘I think it was the day afterwards. The cleaner let herself into the flat and found her.’

  ‘So, you should have had a fairly precise time of death, yes?’ There was an eager, expectant look on Kent’s face.

  ‘Precise enough. Now, tell me where you’re going with this.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘At the time of Roisín’s murder, I’d had a family tragedy of my own. My father died, and I’d just come back from his funeral when I heard what happened to her. I know it was the day after I got back that they named her, and I think that was the day after her body was discovered. Which means, by my calculations, I was attending the funeral on the day she died.’

  Tina looked at Kent sharply, uneasy suddenly. ‘And?’

  ‘The funeral was in Inverness, where my father had been living for the past twenty years since he divorced my mother. I flew there and back on Easyjet. I was there for three days in all and there are at least fifty witnesses who can put me in the church at the time I’m meant to have been murdering someone six hundred miles away in London. Where I’m going with this, DI Boyd,’ he said, ‘is letting you know that I’ve got an alibi for Roisín O’Neill’s murder.’ His face broke into an expression of relief and elation. ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

  Thirteen

  The stark fact was this. I’d shot and seriously wounded two men while working on an unofficial job. It might have been self-defence but that wouldn’t save my career, or my liberty. Or my conscience, either. I’d taken the law into my own hands, ignoring the fact that I was paid to uphold it, and now matters had spiralled out of control.

  I thought through what would happen next. Usually, in in filtration jobs, the path to an arrest follows a pattern. Once I’ve gained the trust of my targets, I use my recording devices to gather evidence of the targets’ planned wrongdoing. If I can gather enough in this manner, I call in my colleagues, and while I’m safely off the scene they come in and make the arrests. If, however, more’s needed, we tend to allow them to carry out the crime they’re planning – usually with me accompanying them – and then move in and catch them red-handed on my signal. These are the best ops from my perspective because I tend to get nicked along with the bad guys, and we don’t have to use any of the taped evidence we’ve got, which means my cover doesn’t get blown.

  However, allowing the targets to carry out their crimes and taking them down mid-act can be a dangerous business, especially if there are guns involved and one of the gunmen is an undercover cop. So I knew damn well that the bosses would never sanction it with Wolfe and his crew, which meant I was going to have to wait until I knew exactly where and when the snatch was going to happen and then let Captain Bob know. It was hardly the ideal plan of action, but right then it was the best I had.

  After the meeting with Wolfe and Haddock was over, Tommy drove me home. On the way, I again tried pumping him for in formation on the job, but he wasn’t giving anything away.

  It was an unusual situation, because what intelligence there was on Tyrone Wolfe stated that he was the boss of his tight-knit
and very small crew, which effectively consisted of him, Haddock and Tommy, and that he masterminded the business himself, rather than doing work for other people, which usually tends to be a surefire way of getting caught. It meant that they had to know a lot more about this op than they were telling. I studied Tommy’s face but, like Wolfe, he was good at keeping his cards close to his chest.

  It had just turned five o’clock when we pulled up outside the post-war terrace containing the flat I’d rented in the name of Sean Tatelli. I was officially on long-term sick leave from CO10 suffering from stress, having convinced the police psychiatrist I saw once a month that I was having a nervous breakdown, which had given me the time to focus entirely on the job at hand. Surprisingly, even after everything else, it was this deceit I felt most guilty about. I didn’t like going sick, and until then my attendance record had been one of the best in the unit.

  ‘Fancy a pint tonight after I’ve taken Tommy Junior for a walk?’ asked Tommy, trying to get out of the way as the dog jumped on him at the mention of his daily exercise. ‘Not a big one, cos this job’s going to come up pretty soon. Maybe even tomorrow. Just a celebration drink to welcome you to the team.’

  Normally I’d have said yes. I never liked to miss an opportunity to get closer to a target. But I needed to think. ‘Thanks, Tom, but I’m going to turn in early.’

  ‘You’re all right, though, yeah?’ He looked genuinely concerned.

  I wondered irrationally if he could read my mind. ‘I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Cos you shot two blokes today. It’s not the kind of thing you do on an everyday basis.’

  ‘They asked for it,’ I said, with a defiance I wasn’t feeling. ‘I was just defending myself.’

  He grinned, showing teeth that could have done with some investment, and gave my shoulder a meaty squeeze – an expression of affection that he’d given me on more than one occasion. ‘You’re all right, Sean, do you know that? I trusted you from the beginning. I knew you’d work out. You’re like us. You’re a pro.’

  I thanked him once again for getting me the work, before watching him drive off with conflicting feelings. This was the man who’d driven my brother’s killers away from the scene of their brutal crime, and who’d gone on to commit numerous others. For years I’d built him up as a monster who’d not lost a moment’s sleep over what had happened to John. And maybe he hadn’t. I don’t know because I was always careful never to raise the subject with him, but in the three months I’d spent getting to know him, he become far more human in my eyes. A flawed character, certainly, an un educated thug unafraid to use violence when he considered it necessary, but a funny, generous guy as well, who was popular in the pubs we drank in, who doted on his dog, and who genuinely seemed to like me.

  Usually, I was good at compartmentalizing the different lives I led. I looked at my undercover one as a fantasy, a risky role- playing game where the people I worked with were little more than fleshed-out characters. A game which came to an end only to be replaced by a new scenario with new characters. But it was different with Tommy. A part of me hated his guts for what he’d done to me and my family, but like some deluded victim suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome, another part of me genuinely liked him. Either way, I knew that getting him arrested would give me a lot less satisfaction than I’d been expecting when I first started out on this job.

  As I turned away and walked up to my front door, Tommy’s words rang out in my ears: You’re a pro. But I wasn’t. I was an amateur who’d let his emotions get the better of him, and because of that I was about to put everything I’d ever worked for at risk.

  Fourteen

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ said DCI MacLeod as Tina sat opposite him across the desk in his office. ‘We question him on and off for the best part of twenty-four hours and then, while he’s twiddling his thumbs in his cell, he suddenly remembers that he’s got an alibi.’ His tone was more confused than angry, and he was pulling on one end of his moustache, which was a habit of his when stress was getting the better of him.

  Tina nodded. ‘He said the anxiety of the arrest made him forget about it. Also, we’re charging him with five murders so he’s not going to remember immediately that he had an alibi for one.’

  ‘You don’t believe him though, do you?’

  She threw up her hands in frustration. ‘I honestly don’t know. The fact is, he’s got what might be a cast-iron alibi for one of our five murders, and as far as I remember this particular murder had exactly the same MO as the others. So, if he didn’t do one . . .’

  ‘We don’t know he didn’t do it. He could just be messing us about.’ The way MacLeod said it suggested he was clutching at straws.

  ‘I don’t think he is, sir. He seemed adamant. I’ve had to give him permission to call his solicitor.’

  MacLeod sighed. ‘Fair enough, I suppose. You know, Tina, I’ve been doing this job for getting on for twenty-five years—’

  ‘You look too young for that, sir,’ she said, spurred on by the vodka.

  He gave her a strange look, clearly not expecting a flippant comment like this from his normally serious DI, particularly in the midst of a serious conversation, and Tina cursed herself for being stupid enough to drink on duty.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘in all my years, I can’t remember the last case I came across where the suspect’s guilt was so bloody cut and dried. He has to be guilty, Tina. He just has to be.’

  She was about to say she agreed when his phone rang. MacLeod looked at the handset, clearly pondering whether it was worth picking up or not, before deciding it was.

  He was on the line for about two minutes, during which time he hardly spoke as he listened to the person at the other end. Finally, he said that he’d get back to the caller and hung up, banging down the receiver hard enough to startle Tina.

  ‘That was Jacobs,’ he said wearily, referring to Kent’s solicitor. ‘He’s just been speaking to Kent’s mother and grandmother. According to them, the funeral did indeed take place on the day the pathologist said Roisín O’Neill died, and Kent was in attendance. Easyjet have also confirmed that he was on the flight going up to Inverness the day before the funeral and on the flight coming back to Luton two days later. Jacobs says he’s going to collect more witness statements testifying to Kent’s presence, and in the meantime he wants the charges dropped since it’s obvious he can’t have killed Ms O’Neill. Ergo, he can’t have killed any of them.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he said, raising his voice. ‘We’ve got the murder weapon by his bed, with his DNA and the DNA of at least two of his victims on it, as well as the graphic footage on his computer. I can’t very well let him go, can I? Whatever his brief might like me to do.’

  ‘No, I understand that, sir.’

  ‘Sorry, Tina, I know you do.’ He wiped a hand across his brow. ‘But this has really thrown things off kilter. Has Kent come up with alibis for any of the other murders?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Just Roisín O’Neill’s.’

  ‘So we’ve got enough evidence to hold him.’

  ‘But we’ve still got the problem of explaining his alibi to a jury. If it really does turn out that he couldn’t have killed Roisín, then our whole case is up the creek. The MO was the same for Roisín as it was for all the others, wasn’t it? I thought it was, but I didn’t join the team until after her murder.’

  MacLeod nodded slowly. ‘It was.’

  He sat back in his seat and tugged hard on the edge of his moustache, as if he was making a concerted effort to pull it off completely. He looked red-faced and unwell, the stress of the case clearly getting to him. It was known that he liked a drink, and Tina wondered if she might end up looking like him one day, burnt out by the job, an early grave beckoning.

  ‘Andrew Kent committed the murder,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t know how he’s worked this alibi, but it’s bullshit, and one way or anot
her we’ll be able to prove it. In the meantime, we’ve got more than enough evidence for the magistrates to remand him in custody tomorrow. So I think the whole team deserves a celebration drink. Including you.’ He made a valiant effort to smile. ‘Are you going to grace us with your presence tonight?’

  His tone suggested he was just ribbing her, but there was also an underlying issue wrapped up in it. Tina rarely socialized with the members of her team. These days, she preferred to finish up at work and head home to the flat where she lived alone, make a bite to eat and then get slowly and steadily pissed alone in front of the TV, unseen by her colleagues, and unbothered by the problems of the outside world. But she was also aware of her responsibilities now that she was a DI and in charge of people, and she knew she was going to have to at least show willing. ‘Sure, I’ll come along for a while.’

  ‘Good. It’ll be nice to see you let your hair down.’

  Tina doubted that. When she hit the bottle, she tended to hit it hard, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. But she didn’t say anything.

  ‘And let’s not spoil it by going on too much about Kent’s alibi in front of the others,’ he continued. ‘It’s just a last-ditch attempt by a man who’s been caught near-enough red-handed to pull the wool over our eyes.’

  She nodded. ‘OK. You’ve convinced me.’

  But the problem was, he hadn’t.

  Fifteen

  One of the nastiest people I ever had to deal with was an up-and-coming Essex-based gangster by the name of Jason Slade. Slade owned a security company that ran the door on nightclubs across Kent and Essex, and controlled all the illegal drugs being sold in them. He also ran a team of thieves who stole and re-badged luxury cars, before exporting them for sale in Russia and the Middle East, which was a hugely lucrative business, estimated at the time by the National Crime Squad to be worth several million in profits per year, making him extremely rich for a twenty-eight-year-old without a qualification to his name.