‘I know,’ Tanner said. ‘I was there when this was being put together, and if anything kicks off I think SO19 have got it covered.’
‘Just saying.’
‘Let’s see how desperate and needy he feels when my front door opens and he’s got a Glock 19 in his face.’
A minute or so later, Thorne’s Skoda followed Tanner’s Volvo out of the car park. He drove slowly away in the opposite direction, keeping Tanner’s tail lights in the mirror until she was out of sight. He took the first turning on his left, bumped up on to the pavement and picked up the radio from the front seat.
‘All units. Tanner is on her way home…’
In Hayes, Charita Desai was on the road, as was Yvonne Kitson, driving towards a carefully selected property within ten minutes of the restaurant in Bromley.
The officers inside the wine bar and the two restaurants confirmed that no other customers had followed the couples from the premises on foot.
Thorne reminded them to stay in position and report back every few minutes.
The three mobile surveillance teams outside had nothing to report. No vehicles were following from any of the date locations.
Thorne gave them the same order.
It was possible, of course, that the killer had not tracked his victims directly from the location of their dates; that he had picked them up somewhere between restaurant and home, well aware of the routes that they would be taking.
He spoke to Desai and Kitson. Neither was aware of any vehicle that appeared to be following theirs.
‘Couldn’t say one way or the other,’ Tanner said, when he spoke to her. ‘Lots of traffic… and he’s probably good at this.’
Thorne had no doubt of that. Whatever Hendricks had to say about stupid, over-confident criminals, five dead women were ample testimony to the killer’s capabilities.
To his skill and preparation —
‘Unit three, Watford.’
‘This is Thorne. Go ahead.’
‘Individual leaving car park in red Toyota Corolla.’
‘What? Did he come from the restaurant?’ Thorne had heard nothing from the officers inside.
‘Negative. He walked in off the street… not sure where he came from, to be fair. Suspect vehicle now turning right, that’s right onto the High Street towards Exchange Road.’
The same direction as Tanner.
‘Description?’
‘White male, forties. Medium height, dark hair…’
Goode.
‘We are in silent pursuit. Repeat, in pursuit.’
Thorne threw the Skoda hard into a three-point turn, radioed Tanner as he straightened up and pushed into traffic on the main road.
‘I heard,’ Tanner said.
‘I’m not far behind you.’
‘I hope you’re wearing your seatbelt.’
Thorne talked to all units in Hayes and Bromley, ordered them not to stand down until instructed. Then he spoke to the senior firearms officer on call at the address in Watford they were all now heading for.
‘Put your team on immediate standby.’
‘Pleasure,’ the man said.
‘ETA five minutes.’
SIXTY-FOUR
The A&E department at the Whittington Hospital was as crowded and miserable as might be expected on a Saturday night. Not quite the ninth circle of hell, but in the top two or three.
‘Couldn’t have picked a worse time,’ one of the coppers had muttered on the drive over.
‘Be a bloody zoo in there,’ his mate had said.
The plods were not the friendliest of company, but still, there was nothing like having a police escort when it came to jumping a queue. A quick word with the woman on the reception desk, and there was barely time for the coppers to get coffee from the machine in the corner before Frances Coombs was called through.
‘We’ll be here,’ one of the coppers said.
A man with a wad of bandage pressed to his eye, who had been watching since they’d come in, stuck his leg out as she tried to walk past. ‘How come you get to go in before me? I’ve been here for hours.’
Frances pushed the leg aside. Said, ‘Life’s not fair, is it?’
She sat in a cubicle waiting for a doctor.
She pressed a hand to her chest and tried to take deep breaths.
She could feel it in her throat as well.
The curtains were pushed aside and a man stepped in. He asked what the trouble was, and Frances told him.
To be honest, she hadn’t felt right in herself for a while, not since that cocky pair had come bowling into the visits area at Warren Park. It had been a lot worse the last few days, though. Holed up in that crappy hotel. She’d been allowed to make one call to let Nat know she was all right, and that had been a waste of time and effort, as her daughter hadn’t seemed particularly bothered one way or another, but since then she’d just been sitting around doing nothing, picking food from a delivery menu and watching TV. Trying to sleep while her heart was going like billy-o and waking up trying to catch her breath. That daft alarm thing hanging round her neck, same as they gave coffin-dodgers in old people’s homes, like she was helpless.
Not that she wasn’t glad of it now, mind you. They’d got her in here pretty bloody quick, to be fair.
‘Does it feel as though your heart’s racing?’ the doctor asked. ‘Or does it feel like it’s skipping a beat?’
‘Both,’ Frances said.
‘And your chest feels tight?’
Frances nodded.
The doctor sat her on the bed and listened to her chest. He asked if Frances drank a lot of coffee, if she smoked, if she suffered with anaemia or diabetes, if she’d ever had thyroid problems.
‘Yeah, diabetes,’ she said. ‘Had it for years, though, and never felt anything like this.’
‘Right.’ He took her blood pressure and told her it was a little high, but nothing to worry about. ‘Well, if none of those conditions apply, the most common cause of an irregular heartbeat such as yours is usually simple stress or anxiety. Would you say you’ve been under a lot of stress recently?’
‘Definitely,’ Frances said.
‘So, what’s causing that?’
Frances remembered how she felt in that interview room when they were telling her about the refugee who’d been shot in the neck; the scary-looking sod in the bike leathers with the blacked-out visor; the voice on the other end of the phone when she’d called needing fresh supplies. She thought about those names she’d given to Thorne and Tanner.
‘Oh, just normal things, you know? Work, family…’
The doctor looked at her, nodded. ‘Well, I’ll prescribe some anti-anxiety medication, but I’m going to run some blood tests while you’re here, and we might as well do a chest X-ray to be on the safe side.’
‘Are they addictive? These tablets? You hear all sorts of stories.’
‘Well, there can be side effects, but hopefully this will all go back to normal fairly quickly.’ The doctor slung his stethoscope round his neck, like he was in an episode of Casualty. ‘The best advice I can give you is to try and deal with whatever’s making you stressed, and to take it easy. Get out in the garden and go for long walks. Have you got a dog?’
She said that she hadn’t.
‘Swimming’s good…’
Forty-five minutes later, Frances walked back towards reception with a week’s supply of Diazepam in a paper bag. What with the painkillers she was taking for her arthritis, the ones with the unpronounceable name for her acid reflux and the statins for her cholesterol, a few more pills weren’t going to make a lot of difference, whatever the side effects might be. To be honest, she already felt a lot calmer than she had when she’d come in, and, things being what they were, getting hooked on tranquillisers was the least of her worries.
SIXTY-FIVE
Thorne did his best to move through the traffic without driving too recklessly, confident that, as yet, the suspect did not know he was being followed. Five minutes from the destina
tion he still did not have the target vehicle in sight. But the high speed pursuit vehicle ahead of him did and they had already run the Corolla’s plates.
‘Car is registered to a Brian Mulhearne. 15.6.72. An address in West London.’
Not the man whose photograph was pinned up in the incident room.
Unless Aiden Goode had become someone else.
‘No criminal record. Not so much as a speeding ticket.’
He followed the one way system on to the A411 and drove south, touching fifty past the Palace Theatre, the branded façade of the Intu shopping centre. A short stretch of dual carriageway gave him an opportunity to make up some ground and he took it; accelerating hard past cars in whichever lane was easiest, flashing a van ahead of him until it grudgingly gave way. Not overly concerned that he might be the one getting a speeding ticket.
Via the radio on his passenger seat, Tanner was reporting her progress as regularly as the pursuit vehicle was describing the Corolla’s.
‘I’m turning left on to Grosvenor Road.’
Half a minute later: ‘The suspect’s vehicle is making a left on to Grosvenor Road.’
‘Right on to Stanley Road.’
The Corolla took the same turn.
There could be little doubt that the suspect was tailing Tanner’s car. Four vehicles, by now within no more than half a mile of one another and all heading for the same destination.
Tanner. The suspect. The pursuit vehicle. Thorne.
As Thorne made the same manoeuvre into a narrow street lined with terraced housing, a familiar voice crackled from the radio. DCI Russell Brigstocke, calling through from Bromley.
‘Tom? A status report would be nice.’
Thorne told him as quickly as he could then cut him off to talk to the firearms commander.
‘ETA three minutes.’
They rapidly ran through the prearranged strategy for the neutralisation and arrest of the suspect: the deployment of the vehicles, the movements of the armed officers both inside and outside the address.
‘ETA two minutes,’ said an officer in the pursuit vehicle. ‘That’s two minutes to target address.’
Everyone’s voice was suddenly cranked up a little higher; a tightness in the throat and, almost certainly, in the gut.
‘Left on to Gladstone Road,’ Tanner said.
This was the road on which the woman Tanner was pretending to be lived.
Now she was nearly home.
Thorne waited, the cars parked on either side of the road making it impossible to overtake a four by four. He leaned on the horn, willing someone, anyone to let him know that Tanner had arrived, that she was safely inside the house.
‘Nicola? You there yet?’
The next voice belonged to an officer in the pursuit vehicle, confirming that the Corolla, which had clearly made up ground on Tanner’s Volvo, had taken the same turn.
Thorne was approaching the road himself, grateful that the four by four had carried straight on.
‘I’m at the house,’ Tanner said. ‘I’m inside.’
‘Suspect vehicle is pulling over… parking a few cars down.’
‘I’m almost there,’ Thorne shouted. ‘Go, go go…’
Ahead of him, at the far end of the road, an unmarked car screamed round the corner and pulled up inches from the Toyota, at almost exactly the same time as the pursuit vehicle stopped alongside. The front door of a house opposite opened moments later and armed officers tore down the front path and along the pavement, until they were lined up on the passenger side of the vehicle.
‘Hands on the dashboard,’ one of them shouted.
By now, two more armed officers had jumped from one of the cars and had their weapons trained on the driver’s window.
‘Hands on the dashboard…’
Thorne stopped in the middle of the road, got out and waited. Now this was a firearms operation, so he hung back and watched as one of the officers from the pursuit vehicle shone a torch into the car. He looked for Tanner, but could not see her.
An officer moved cautiously forward and opened the door of the Toyota.
‘Step out nice and easy for me.’
The driver did as he was told and was instantly spun round and slammed against the car. Once he had been patted down and handcuffed, the officer stepped back and the firearms commander took his place. He removed his helmet and signalled for Thorne to come forward.
‘What’s your name?’ Thorne asked.
The man looked terrified; eyes wide, his face even paler than it would normally have been in the torchlight. He shook his head as though he’d momentarily forgotten who he was. ‘Brian Mulhearne.’ Nodding now. ‘My name’s Brian Mulhearne.’
‘Where’ve you come from tonight, Brian?’
‘I had a drink in town.’ He was breathing hard. ‘Just a quick drink, that’s all. Jesus, what’s —’
‘Where?’
‘The Black Horse. On Clarendon Road.’
‘So what was your car doing parked at an Italian restaurant?’
‘It’s free.’ He attempted a shrug. ‘I always leave it there.’
Thorne pointed towards the Volvo. ‘Why were you following that car?’
The man looked. ‘I haven’t been following any car.’
‘So, why are you here? This isn’t where you live, is it?’
‘It’s where my mother lives.’
Thorne felt as though someone had punched the breath out of him. He glanced across to see that Tanner had appeared in the doorway of the house from which the armed officers had come. ‘Your mother?’
The man pointed to the house next to the one Tanner was standing outside. At that moment, its front door opened and an old woman peered nervously around it. Her voice was high and unsteady. ‘Brian…?’
The man waved. ‘It’s fine, Mum… I’m fine. Go back inside.’
Thorne was already on the way back to his car. He got to the open door in time to hear the rather less tremulous voice of Russell Brigstocke booming from the radio inside.
‘Tom? What the hell is going on?’
SIXTY-SIX
There were even more people gathered in reception by the time Frances Coombs walked back in from the treatment area. The man with the bandage was still waiting. She smiled at him, but he just glowered then went back to his phone.
Her escorts were sitting near the doors. They stood up as she approached, making hard work of it, as though they’d been enjoying a quiet chat while she’d been wasting valuable NHS resources.
Like she was wasting valuable Met Police resources.
‘Right then,’ one of them said. ‘Back to Fawlty Towers.’
His mate fished car keys from his pocket. ‘Tell you what, I wouldn’t mind living in a hotel. All your cleaning done, bed made every day, meals on tap. Sounds like a total doss.’
‘You try staying there,’ Frances said. ‘Not allowed to talk to your family, not even allowed to tell them where you are. Just like one of your cells, only with room service.’
The copper jangled his car keys. ‘Suits me.’
His mate placed a hand on Frances’s back to guide her forward. ‘You haven’t met his missus.’
They stopped outside the sliding doors. There were a group of people smoking and chatting on a bench, the oldest of whom was attached to what looked like an oxygen tank. The copper who was driving announced that he would go and fetch the car and jogged off, leaving his colleague to lead Frances across the pedestrian concourse towards Highgate Hill.
‘How’s the palpitations?’
‘No need to pretend you give a toss,’ she said. ‘I know you think I’m putting it on, anyway.’
‘Just making conversation,’ he said. He didn’t bother making any more until they’d reached the street, when he nodded down at the paper bag she was carrying. ‘Give you some happy pills, did they?’
Frances heard it then, like an angry wasp close to her ear.
‘Could do with a few of them myself, if I’
m honest.’
She didn’t take it in, because she was already looking down the hill and watching the single headlight getting closer. The noise grew louder, angrier, and she flapped for the copper’s arm, grabbed at his sleeve.
‘What?’
The copper looked too, then, but the bike was already coming quickly; accelerating towards them with a furious whine and only slowing at the last, crucial moment, when the rider held out his arm.
‘Christ…’
The copper stepped across her and tried to turn away.
Frances staggered back and shouted again as she raised her hands, some strange part of her racing brain randomly telling her, in those final few moments, that whether or not the man on the bike was Romanian or Polish, he would surely understand what ‘no’ meant.
The paper bag of pills hit the pavement a second before the first shot.
SIXTY-SEVEN
He’d watched from outside for a while, content to enjoy a drink in the bar opposite, eyes on the restaurant car park until the eager singletons had met up and gone inside. For tonight, he’d only wanted to watch them arrive, that was all; to get a look at the man his chosen woman had been matched with, see how things were shaping up.
The fun would come later. A very different kind of fun this time.
He’d arrived first, ‘Alan’, the ‘landscape gardener’. Ten minutes early and looking every bit as surly as he did in his profile picture. Looking nervous, but determined. Looking exactly like what he was.
Back at home now, a takeaway pizza on the desk in front of him – Italian, in their honour – he smiled as he imagined how this first date had gone. He always did, telling himself each time he rang a doorbell, as he wrapped his hands around a neck and squeezed, how much misery he was ultimately saving them both – but this date was extra special.
What had they talked about?
Was there a chemistry?
Would they see each other again?
He grinned and lifted a slice of pizza from the box, tore at it hungrily and looked up at her photo, now the only picture pinned above his desk. He’d chosen the one of her standing by the boat, because he liked the way her hair had been moving in the wind. Longer then, flying behind her. She didn’t look awfully happy, though, which was a shame. Probably just one of those people who didn’t like having their photograph taken, but all the same, it wasn’t doing her any favours. He might say something to her about how she should smile more, next time he saw her. A bit pointless, he supposed, because it would also be the last time and she certainly wouldn’t be feeling much like smiling then, but he’d tell her anyway.
The Killing Habit Page 32