The Last 10 Seconds: A Novel

by Simon Kernick

  He stopped talking for a few moments, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘We’d both been drinking, and I lost my temper. I hit her back, and she threatened to have me arrested. Then she went for me again, and . . .’ He sighed, and ran a hand across his forehead. ‘We fought. It was like some kind of surreal blur, and then . . . Then the next thing I knew, she was lying on the bed, not moving.’ He raised his eyes skywards, as if seeking forgiveness. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I felt for her pulse, tried to revive her, but it was too late. She was gone.’ He looked imploringly at Tina.

  Tina didn’t believe Gore’s version of events. He might not have meant to kill Roisín but, having seen his flashes of temper and the way he’d struck his wife, she was pretty certain he’d been the aggressor. However, she knew better than to interrupt a suspect when he was in full flow. ‘What happened then?’ she asked gently.

  ‘At first I didn’t know what to do. I thought about calling the police, or an ambulance, but I panicked. Even though I hadn’t meant to hurt Roisín, I was afraid that I’d be charged with murder. I know that was wrong, but at the time I wasn’t thinking straight. I knew our affair had been kept secret, and I thought about simply leaving and hoping for the best, but I was worried I’d leave evidence behind. So I called a business contact, a man who I felt would be able to help me in my time of need.’

  Tina exchanged glances with Grier. She’d never had too many illusions about the integrity of the politicians who ran the country, and was aware that some of them were corrupt. Even so, hearing such an admission from a high-ranking minister shocked her.

  ‘And this business contact, who was he?’

  ‘His name’s Paul Wise.’

  If she’d been shocked before, she was almost speechless now. Her head swam with the news that the man who’d done so much to ruin her life had also had a hand in this. It didn’t seem possible, yet there was a grim logic to it. Wise had always been suspected of having high-level contacts within the establishment, which was one of the main reasons he’d never been brought to justice. But now there was a chance that he would be – a thought that suddenly filled Tina with a wild hope.

  ‘And what did Wise say he’d do, Mr Gore?’ asked Grier, intervening so that Tina had a chance to recover herself.

  ‘He said he’d take care of things. He told me to remain where I was and that I’d hear from someone shortly. That person would identify himself as Alpha, and he would let me know what to do.

  ‘The next half an hour was the longest and worst of my life. I had to stay in the apartment with Roisín’s body while I waited for the call, wondering if I’d be discovered. But then, finally, it came. This man, Alpha, asked me a lot of questions: the address; which rooms I’d been in; the security arrangements for the building. He was very calm and businesslike and he covered everything. He told me to leave the address with Roisín’s keys, lock the door, and put them under the front passenger side wheel of the nearest car to the front door of the building. Then I was told to leave the rest to him and just forget it ever happened.’ Gore sighed. ‘I did what I was told. I wish to God I hadn’t, but I did.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Alpha?’ asked Tina.

  He shook his head firmly. ‘No, and I didn’t want to, either. Anyway, the next thing I knew, Roisín had been added to the list of the Night Creeper’s victims.’

  Tina was suddenly aware how tense she was. She forced herself to sit back in the seat and relaxed her shoulders, resisting the urge for a cigarette. ‘You had access to the Night Creeper file in your role as Home Office minister, so you would have been able to check his MO easily enough. Are you claiming that you didn’t tell Alpha what to do to make Roisín look like one of his victims?’

  ‘I am, yes. You must believe me. I had nothing to do with any of the . . . mutilations Alpha may have carried out.’

  Tina and Grier exchanged glances once again. Grier looked sceptical. Tina felt the same. If Gore was telling the truth, it meant that Alpha must have had some kind of inside knowledge of the police investigation, which just wasn’t possible. Gore might have been trying to paint himself as as much of an innocent as he could under the circumstances, but it wasn’t a true picture. However, that was for a jury to decide.

  ‘When did you find out that you were on film?’ Tina asked him.

  ‘When I received a phone call at my constituency office two weeks later. The caller identified himself to my secretary as Mr Roisín, which is why I took the call. I knew it had to be something to do with what had happened, and I was terrified. As I’ve already told you, I thought our affair was a secret. And I had good reason to be. The caller told me that he had film footage of Roisín’s death, and if I wanted it destroyed, I would have to pay him fifty thousand pounds. He made me give him my email address, and said he would send a sample clip, which he did.’ Gore shuddered visibly. ‘It showed everything.’

  ‘Did you keep it?’ asked Grier.

  He shook his head. ‘No, of course not. I destroyed it immediately.’

  A thought occurred to Tina. ‘And the clip didn’t show Alpha performing the cover-up?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t watch it the whole way through. I couldn’t.’

  Tina thought how surprised Andrew Kent must have been when he discovered film footage of a government minister killing his own intended victim. Blackmailing him was a dangerous move, but one that would have been hard to resist.

  ‘At the time, of course, I had no idea who could have taken the footage,’ continued Gore, ‘but fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money, and I knew that if I paid it, the blackmailer would come back for more. So I called Paul Wise. I had no choice. Again he was calm. He told me to arrange the delivery of the money, and that he would use Alpha to find out who the blackmailer was, get back the money, and make sure that I wasn’t bothered again.’

  ‘By killing him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask.’

  But Tina wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘It must have occurred to you that Wise and his fixer were going to kill him.’

  ‘I was terrified. I knew it could destroy my whole life, and more importantly, the lives of my family. I was desperate to make it go away.’ He paused for a moment, shaking his head. ‘But it all went wrong. The blackmailer set up the delivery of the money in Epping Forest, and he managed to get away with it without Alpha managing to identify or catch him.

  ‘For a while, I didn’t hear from him, and I hoped and prayed that he’d let it go, but then a couple of weeks ago he made contact again, demanding another fifty thousand pounds, or he’d release the footage to the media. I was mortified. It was hard enough to come up with the first demand. Contrary to popular belief, we politicians aren’t all filthy rich. Thankfully, Mr Wise came to my aid and supplied the money. We set up a second delivery of the money, this time on Hampstead Heath. Once again the blackmailer got away with the money, but this time Alpha managed to get enough information to ID him, and find out where he lived.’

  Tina frowned. ‘What day was this delivery made?’

  ‘Monday last week.’

  Only days before the team had identified Kent and put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

  ‘But Alpha never got to him, did he?’

  ‘No. Mr Wise told me that my blackmailer was the Night Creeper, which was a shock. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought it might be some ex-boyfriend who’d been stalking Roisín. Mr Wise also told me the suspect was close to being arrested.’

  Tina heard Grier exhale as he too realized that Wise had someone within the police investigating team reporting back to him.

  ‘Why was Kent kidnapped?’ she asked Gore.

  ‘I was terrified that once in custody he would say something, and that my secret would be exposed. I know Mr Wise tried to deal with him while he was under surveillance, but that proved impossible. I last spoke to him yesterday evening, and he told me that everything was under control, that no evidence had been found linking me
to Roisín’s murder, and that he and Alpha had a contingency plan to silence Kent and recover the missing footage.’ He looked Tina in the eye. ‘That was the last I heard. I didn’t want to be responsible for another death but I felt I had no choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice, Mr Gore,’ said Grier, with un characteristic venom in his voice.

  ‘Paul Wise certainly put himself out to help you,’ Tina added, feeling nothing but contempt for the man seated opposite her, but trying not to show it.

  ‘I’ve helped him in the past.’

  ‘You know the crimes he’s been involved in?’

  ‘Allegedly.’

  This time her contempt boiled over. ‘Fuck allegedly. You know what he’s done.’

  ‘By the time I heard the rumours, it was too late. He already owned me. He owns a lot of people.’ Gore sighed and looked at them both in turn. ‘Is there anything you can do to help me?’

  Tina was amazed that after a confession like the one he’d just given, he could possibly think he was going to wriggle out of his crimes, but perhaps that was simply the hubris of the powerful. ‘The fact that you’re cooperating will count in your favour,’ she told him. ‘And if you’re prepared to testify against Paul Wise, that’ll also help. Will you do that?’

  ‘If it helps matters, then yes, of course I will,’ he answered, giving her an earnest look.

  ‘It will,’ she said.

  Tina got to her feet and read him his rights, thinking that it was a strangely liberating feeling, arresting a government minister on suspicion of murder, and that it demonstrated the fact that no one, whoever they were, was above the law.

  Including Paul Wise.

  Gore didn’t resist as Tina and Grier each took an arm and ushered him out of the study and into the hallway.

  Which was when they saw Jane Gore standing facing them, still in her nightgown, holding a double-barrelled shotgun in her hands.

  ‘I’m not going to let you destroy our family,’ she said shakily, pointing it towards Tina.

  Tina flinched but forced herself to remain calm. ‘Put the gun down, Mrs Gore. Please.’

  She shook her head, an expression of worrying determination on her tear-stained face. ‘No.’

  And then she pulled the trigger.

  Fifty

  ‘What the hell happened?’ I asked when Dougie MacLeod had finally recovered himself enough to talk.

  I’d let him up, and he was standing. The tension was still coming off him in waves, but he looked calmer and his face was less puce, although a bruise was forming on his left cheek where I’d hit him.

  ‘I got a call last night when I was in the pub. A man with a disguised voice told me they’d got Billy, and that unless I did exactly what they said, they’d kill him. I didn’t believe him at first – I mean, Billy’s away at uni in Leeds, for Christ’s sake – but he told me to wait by the phone, and they’d send me something that proved it.’ He paused, taking a deep breath, clearly trying to steady himself. ‘Five minutes later I got a photo from an unregistered pay-as-you-go showing Billy tied to a chair and gagged. It was him, Sean. It was him. If you don’t believe me, check the PC upstairs. They’ve been sending me footage of him ever since.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘They wanted Andrew Kent. I was told to put some tablets in his drink, so that he’d get sick.’

  ‘Where did you get the tablets from?’

  ‘They were in an envelope under the wheel of a car on John Street.’

  So the client, or someone close to him, had been in the vicinity when I was in the pub.

  ‘Believe me, I didn’t want to do it. But it was him or Billy.’

  This was one of the things that didn’t make sense to me. If the client had wanted Kent dead, then why not just use some strong poison and kill him outright, rather than whatever it was that Dougie had slipped into his drink, which hadn’t even made him that sick? It was yet another unanswered question.

  I looked around. ‘Well, you did what you were told. So why haven’t they freed Billy?’

  ‘Because the kidnapper phoned back and said I’d be needed for something else, and to wait by the phone. Then at about midnight I got another call. I was told to get into the evidence room at the station and check through Kent’s possessions. Among them was a mini Swiss Army knife, only about an inch and a half long, attached to his keyring. The knife had a USB stick inside it, which the custody sergeant who booked him in must have missed. The kidnapper wanted the stick.’

  ‘And where’s it now?’

  ‘I was told to put it in an envelope and drop it in a wheelie bin on an estate in King’s Cross.’

  ‘Did you get a chance to take a look at what was on it first?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. These people are professional criminals. They told me that if I did they’d kill Billy, and I couldn’t take the chance. I followed their instructions to the letter and came straight back here. I was told that I’d get a call as soon as the stick had been collected safely, and then I’d receive instructions about where to go to collect Billy. I dropped the bloody thing off hours ago and I still haven’t heard from them. When I heard you moving around downstairs I didn’t know what to think, so I came down here with the gun. I’ve had the thing for years, since my army days.’ He sighed. ‘What the hell am I going to do, Sean? He’s my son. Since Marion’s gone, he’s all I’ve bloody got left.’ His face cracked with the tension and he took another deep breath, trying to steady himself.

  I put a tentative hand on his arm. ‘Look, you’ve done what they ordered. There’s no reason to hurt him.’

  ‘He might have seen their faces,’ he answered, moving away from my touch. ‘They could easily kill him. You know that as well as I do.’ He turned his back on me and started to pace the room. ‘You said you knew something about the Kent case. What is it?’

  I told him exactly what had happened, starting with my infiltration of the Wolfe gang, and finishing with Dougie himself disturbing me in his lounge. ‘Kent must have been kidnapped because of whatever he had on that USB stick. But I still don’t understand why he was free when I went down the cellar to find him. He could easily have escaped.’

  Dougie stopped and gave a frustrated shake of his head. ‘And now he’s dead, so he can’t help us.’

  ‘And so’s everyone else involved in his abduction. Except the person who set the fire back at the rendezvous. But I’ve got no idea who he is, and I’m completely out of leads.’ I was feeling the frustration now myself. ‘Someone’s set both of us up completely and neither of us has got a bloody clue who it is.’

  We stood there staring at each other for a few minutes, each of us lost in his own private thoughts, me still holding Dougie’s old army revolver, knowing that you couldn’t fake the fear he was exhibiting.

  And then we both heard it at the same time. A loud, incessant ringing. Coming from the pocket of Dougie’s jeans. He pulled out his mobile and thrust it to his ear.

  He didn’t speak. Just listened. After a few seconds he rushed into the kitchen and wrote down some instructions on an open pad on the sideboard. Then he ran back into the lounge and put the phone back in his pocket.

  ‘That was the kidnapper,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s told me where to go to collect Billy. And he’s told me to come alone.’

  Fifty-one

  The sound of the shotgun blast was deafening, and for a second Tina thought she’d been hit. She was knocked backwards, letting go of Gore’s arm in the process, and as she landed on the carpet she saw Gore fly past her and crash through the open study door. Grier, meanwhile, was leaning back against the staircase, looking dazed. Smoke billowed through the air leaving a bitter stink in its wake, and as it cleared, Tina saw Jane Gore place the barrels of the shotgun underneath her chin, her face a mask of bitter emotion.

  Tina only had time to shout her name before Jane Gore pulled the trigger for a second time, blowing the top of her own head off in a cloud of smoke and blood spray. Sh
e remained standing perfectly upright for a long moment, then crumpled to the floor like a stringless marionette.

  For several seconds, the house was silent. Neither Tina nor Grier moved, as the shock of what had just happened seeped in. Tina had been in situations where firearms had been discharged before. She’d been on the receiving end of them twice, remembered the pain all too well, but she’d never been able to get used to the speed with which they could snuff out a life.

  Finally, she clambered to her feet. Mrs Gore was beyond help. Half her head was missing. But Tina wasn’t sure of the severity of her husband’s injuries, and they badly needed him alive, so she rushed into the study, already reaching for her mobile to call an ambulance.

  But as soon as she saw him, she knew it was too late. Gore lay on his back in the middle of the floor, his eyes closed. Shotgun injuries at close range are usually far more serious than gunshot wounds as the shotgun pellets don’t have the chance to disperse, and this was no exception. There was a huge, uneven hole in his chest, exposing internal organs, including his heart, which didn’t appear to be beating.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she whispered, frantically feeling for a pulse. She thought she found something faint, but even as she tried to measure it, it disappeared. ‘Come on, come on,’ she whispered, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all. Gore was dead, as was her chance of finally bringing Wise to justice.

  She stood up and called the ambulance, telling the operator to hurry even though she knew it was too late, before walking back into the hallway, feeling shaky on her feet.

  Grier was beside Mrs Gore. As Tina approached him, he rose, shaking his head, blood on his clean shirt, and his hands too. ‘She’s gone,’ he said, his face pale.