Dead Man's Gift 03 - Today

by Simon Kernick

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Today

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  A Note from the Author

  Sneak Preview of The Final Minute

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A THRILLER IN THREE PARTS

  The FINAL installment in this direct to digital short-story. A race-against-time three-part adventure from the bestselling author of Relentless, Siege and Ultimatum, Simon Kernick.

  Ex-soldier Scope has less than 12 hours to find his kidnapped nephew and he’s only got one lead to go on.

  The clock’s ticking and, as Scope gets to work, he soon discovers he’s up against a vicious and dangerous criminal network, and he’s going to need all his determination and ingenuity just to stay alive …

  About the Author

  Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was the biggest selling thriller of 2007. His most recent crime thrillers include The Last Ten Seconds, The Payback, Siege and Ultimatum.

  Simon talks both on and off the record to members of the Met’s Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, so he gets to hear first hand what actually happens in the dark and murky underbelly of UK crime.

  To find out more about his thrillers, visit www.simonkernick.com; www.facebook.com/SimonKernick; www.twitter.com/simonkernick

  Dead Man’s Gift

  3: Today

  Simon Kernick

  Part 3: Today

  20

  As far as Tim Horton was concerned, Matt Cohen looked every inch the archetypal football agent. He had black slicked-back hair, a fake tan, an even faker sincere expression in his eyes, and an expensive suit that was either way ahead of its time or twenty years out of date, depending on how charitable you were feeling. In Tim’s Grandma’s day they would have called him a spiv and he’d have been wearing a pork-pie hat.

  Tim hardly noticed him now, even though they were barely five metres apart. The committee’s chairman, Garth Crossman, the charismatic Conservative new boy who Tim didn’t trust one iota, was opening the hearing but his words were a faraway blur.

  The whole world seemed to be moving in muffled slow motion for him now. It was like being drunk. He couldn’t think straight. His heart was battering at his chest and he was sweating profusely. He wondered if the TV was picking up on his appearance. He wondered too if Diane was watching and, if she was, what she was thinking. Was she willing him to do it? To die so that their son could live?

  ‘Tim, you look terrible,’ whispered Brenda Foxley, putting a hand on his arm. ‘I think you should say something to Garth. I’m serious.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Tim, loud enough to be picked up by the mike on the desk in front of him, and the next second he was on his feet and rushing towards the exit, tearing at his suit, knowing he had to get rid of the bomb. No longer thinking straight. No longer thinking of anything at all bar survival.

  Frank Bale cursed as Tim Horton leaped from his seat, tearing at his jacket like a cut-price Superman. He pressed the Call button on the phone in his hand and counted down the seconds as it connected to the phone attached to the bomb. The TV camera followed Horton as he rushed towards the door behind the committee table and in the opposite direction to Matt Cohen, who, like everyone else, was out of his seat, wondering what on earth was going on. Tim’s jacket was off now, and he was struggling to unbutton his shirt, while still making for the door, when a security guard appeared in shot, blocking his way, arms outstretched in a calm-down gesture.

  ‘Get hold of him,’ whispered Frank, clutching the phone to his ear, willing the guard to block Horton’s escape.

  ‘Get back! It’s a bomb!’ Tim yelled as the security guard appeared in front of him. His shirt was open now, revealing the vest beneath, and he was scrabbling at the Velcro on the pocket, trying to open it so he could chuck the bomb out of the door.

  The guard’s eyes widened and he dived out the way as Tim yanked open the Velcro, charging for the door, his mind suddenly totally clear. His fingers wrapped round the bomb and he started to pull it out, screaming at a young female researcher who was standing frozen next to the door to get out the way. Tim was running now, only a couple of metres away from the door, ripping the bomb out of its pocket.

  Which was the moment he felt it vibrate in his hand, and then the whole world seemed to erupt in a flash of intense noise and white blinding light.

  Frank saw the explosion on TV. One second, Tim was holding up the bomb like a trophy as he reached for the door handle, the next he disappeared in a fiery flash and the camera was yanked away from the scene as the cameraman hit the deck.

  A second, bigger explosion followed, and when the cameraman got back up a few seconds later the whole room seemed to be filled with smoke, and shouts of alarm and shock came from every side. And then, with exquisitely bad timing, Matt Cohen appeared in shot, looking as shocked as anybody but still unfortunately very much alive.

  As the cameras cut back to the studio, Frank cursed again and switched off the set. He was hoping the fact that Cohen was still alive wouldn’t affect his payment for the operation, although he suspected there’d be trouble as a result. Either way, he needed to think, and he couldn’t do it standing in this shitty little hospital room.

  He gave his mother another kiss on the forehead, told her he’d be back later, and went out into the corridor and some marginally fresher air.

  21

  Scope walked swiftly down the hospital corridor, wondering how long he could keep this up for. He was still waiting for T Rex to come back to him with information about who Frank Bale could be visiting in a hospital this size, with five floors and five hundred beds. And all the time he knew that he might be too late. But he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until he found Max, and that meant finding Bale.

  He approached an orderly pushing an old man in a bed towards him, and repeated what was fast becoming his standard spiel. ‘I’m looking for one of your patients, Mrs Bale, and I’m not sure what ward’s she’s staying on.’

  The orderly looked at Scope blankly, then looked beyond his shoulder and frowned.

  Scope turned round and saw two uniformed security guards approaching. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the closest one, a guy in his thirties with messy hair and too much weight round his middle. ‘Can you tell me who you’re here to see?’

  ‘A Mrs Bale,’ he answered as they stopped on either side of him. ‘I’m not sure what ward she’s on.’ He could tell immediately from their body language that they perceived him to be a potential problem. The second guard was younger and bigger, and the tension coming off him was obvious.

  ‘And are you a relative or a friend?’ asked the messy-haired one.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘And what’s her first name?’

  Scope could hear the phone ringing in his pocket. ‘Excuse me for a moment, I need to answer this.’

  It was Orla, and she sounded breathless. ‘I’ve just seen Bale. He’s heading for the emergency exit on the second floor, just beyond the Maternity Ward.’

  ‘I’ll meet you down there,’ he said, conscious of the two guards watching him like hawks. ‘Keep him in sight but don’t do any
thing.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Thanks, I’m leaving now,’ he told the guards.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said Messy Hair, putting a hand on Scope’s right arm, while his colleague did the same with his left. ‘We’ll escort you out.’

  The movement was so fast and sudden that it caught both guards completely by surprise. Ripping his left arm free, Scope struck Messy Hair in the jaw with a left jab, then swung round with his right and punched the second guard in the side of the head, knocking him off balance. Before the second guard could right himself, Scope launched a three-punch combination to his face and stomach, sending him crashing against the wall, pretty much out for the count. Several people, including the orderly, had stopped to watch but no one tried to intervene as Scope took off down the corridor, hoping Orla didn’t try anything stupid before he got there.

  The mobile phone that Frank had bought specifically for this operation was ringing. The ringtone was ‘The Funeral March’, which was Frank’s little joke, but it didn’t feel very funny now. Only two people knew that number, and one of them – Phil Vermont – was dead. Which meant this was his fellow kidnapper, Celia.

  He was currently in a busy hospital corridor so he had no desire to have a conversation with her, but she was too volatile to ignore so he stopped for a moment to get his breath and, as he pulled out the phone, took a quick look behind him to check no one was too close.

  Which was when he saw her twenty yards away, clearly following him, a phone to her ear. Vermont’s floozie, Orla, the one he’d used to entrap Tim Horton and who was meant to have been dead for the past twelve hours.

  Frank Bale was a pro. It was why he’d lasted as long as he had both as a police officer and as a hardened criminal. So he didn’t react at all when he saw her. Instead, he casually put the phone to his ear, turned back round and continued walking. ‘I’ll call you in five minutes,’ he told Celia.

  ‘You’d better fucking do,’ she snapped back. ‘I want to know what’s going on.’

  Don’t we all, thought Frank, making a left turning and heading for the emergency staircase. Keeping the phone to his ear, even though he’d ended the call, he went through the doors and descended the first flight of steps, slipping into the shadows. The stairwell was empty and he took out the pistol, keeping it down by his side.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Orla might have been a pro hooker but she was an amateur surveillance operative, and she came through the doors quickly, no longer talking on the phone, and was already halfway down the steps before she saw Frank.

  She was a looker, he had to admit. Nice firm tits; a pouty, come-to-bed face; and big blue eyes that suddenly looked very scared as she saw the gun with the suppressor attached in Frank’s hand.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he demanded. ‘Answer truthfully or I’ll shoot you in the gut.’

  She answered without hesitation and even put her hands up. ‘We put a tracking device on your car.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘The man who rescued me.’

  ‘Scope?’

  She nodded, seemingly surprised that Frank knew who he was.

  ‘Is he here?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and shot her once just above the left boob. Then, as she clattered in a heap down the remaining steps, he took a step forward and put one in the back of her head, just to make sure. It was the first time he’d killed someone at close range, and he had to admit it felt very satisfying.

  He considered staying put and waiting for Scope to turn up, which he was pretty sure wouldn’t be long, but decided against it. It was one thing killing a cheap hooker, quite another to take out an ex-soldier with a penchant for violence. Instead, he took a quick look round for any unseen cameras, didn’t spot any and, with a feeling of relief mixed with excitement, hurried down the stairs, knowing he needed to get out of here fast.

  Scope heard about the bomb as he passed a nurse’s station on the second floor. A group of staff members were clustered round a small TV on the wall, staring at the screen, where a reporter was talking from outside the Houses of Parliament as emergency vehicles clustered into shot behind him. He slowed just long enough to read the Breaking News headline along the bottom of the screen which told of an explosion in a select committee hearing.

  So Bale had detonated the bomb from inside the hospital.

  And Tim Horton must have ignored Scope’s advice and been wearing it, otherwise there’d have been no explosion. It seemed his former brother-in-law had had more guts than Scope had given him credit for.

  But with him gone, Scope had to find Max even more urgently, because the kidnappers no longer needed him, and there was no way they were letting him go.

  In the call Scope had received from Orla three minutes earlier, she’d told him that Bale was just about to go down the emergency staircase next to the entrance to the Maternity Ward. He’d told her to wait for him, but as he approached the staircase doors now, dodging past the people coming and going in both directions, he couldn’t see her. He stopped in front of the doors, and looked up and down the corridor without success. She must have followed Bale.

  Scope raced through the doors, hoping to catch Orla up before she got herself spotted, and straight away he saw her lying at the bottom of the steps, a dark pool of blood forming round her head.

  Not even thinking about what evidence he might be leaving behind, he crouched down next to her. Her eyes were closed and her face looked perfectly normal except for the jagged fifty-pence-sized exit wound on her forehead. He felt for a pulse but there was nothing. She was gone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I really am.’

  Then, knowing there was nothing he could do for her, he jumped to his feet and raced down the stairs, taking them two, three, even four at a time, until he came to the underground car park entrance.

  He saw the Jaguar immediately as he came through the doors. It was on the other side of the car park, a good fifty metres away, heading for the exit. He could just make out Bale’s fat, balding form behind the wheel and then it disappeared from view. He realized then that he hadn’t asked Orla where she’d parked the car, and he was forced to run up and down each row, losing valuable minutes, until he eventually found it.

  Scope wasn’t the sort of man to spend too much time agonizing over things that had gone wrong or mistakes he’d made. It was something he’d learned in the army. Things go wrong all the time. It was awful what had happened to Tim Horton. Arguably worse what had happened to a young woman like Orla, who’d never really had much luck, and whose life had been ended in the blink of an eye in some anonymous stairwell. But there was no time to think about any of that now. He just had to keep going.

  As soon as he was back in the car, he switched the laptop back to the Tracker screen, reversed out of the spot and took off towards the exit.

  There was no sign of Bale’s Jaguar out on the street, which didn’t surprise him. Bale had had a good two-minute start and he wasn’t going to be hanging round. But as Scope checked the Tracker screen and saw that there was no signal coming from the unit under the car, he cursed. Bale must have found it. Scope turned right, drove two hundred metres through the steady mid-morning traffic, checked the screen a final time, just to confirm his fears, and finally pulled over on double yellow lines, taking a deep breath.

  Bale was gone. He’d failed.

  22

  ‘I thought you said you were going to call me back in five minutes,’ snapped Celia, who had a harsh, shrieking voice that launched itself between glass-shattering falsetto and cigarette-drenched dog growl like a demented pinball. ‘What the fuck’s happening? And where’s Phil? I need to speak to Phil.’

  Christ, thought Frank as her dulcet tones cluster-bombed the car. Where did Vermont get these bitches from? ‘Listen,’ he said coldly. ‘Calm down and shut the fuck up. Phil’s dead. Horton sent some lunatic relative of his out to find the kid, and he killed Phil.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She w
as suddenly quiet, which as far as Frank was concerned was a blessed relief.

  ‘I just do, all right? Now if you want your money, you stay where you are and wait for me. I’m going to be with you in the next forty-five minutes.’

  ‘Why should I trust you? You might have been the one who killed Phil.’

  ‘If I was, then I wouldn’t have told you about it, would I? Look, if you don’t believe me, check the news. There’ll be a story about a man killed in a flat in Harlesden. That’s Phil.’ Frank knew he had to be careful what he said here. ‘He was there to pay someone off. Horton’s man got to him. That’s why I’m coming over now. We need to tie up the loose ends and make ourselves scarce.’

  ‘He’s not coming as well, is he? The bloke Horton sent?’

  ‘No, I’ve got rid of him.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she growled, and Frank wondered for a moment whether the cheeky bitch was talking about him. ‘I want to do Horton’s kid. Right now.’

  Christ, this one was a real charmer, thought Frank. ‘You don’t do anything in that house. It’ll leave too much evidence behind. We’ll take him somewhere nice and quiet, and you can do your stuff there. Then we’ll bury him and be gone. Understand?’

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But don’t be long. I’m getting jumpy out here.’

  ‘Where are you? It sounds like you’re outside.’

  ‘I’m just having a smoke and quick walk.’

  ‘Well, get back inside and babysit that kid, because that’s what you’re being paid for.’

  He ended the call without bothering to wait for a reply.

  Celia shoved the phone in her back pocket, took a last hard drag on the cigarette and chucked it in the bushes. She didn’t appreciate being talked to like that. Not by some arsehole she’d never met before. She didn’t trust this guy Frank either. Phil had said he was reliable, but now it seemed Phil was dead and she was on her own. But she needed the money, and for thirty grand in cash she was prepared to put up with a lot.