But as he passed a summer house and ran through some palms into a secluded little copse with a love seat at one end, Tina caught up with him. Hearing her approach, Wise let out a desperate howl of terror, but it was too late. She leapt on his back, bringing him to the ground like a lion taking down a wildebeest.
He hit the grass hard and she flipped him over, raining punches down on his face as he begged for mercy, making no effort to resist, his eyes filling with tears.
‘I’m sorry!’ he wailed through the blood as she hit him again and again until finally her fists ached and all she could hear were his weak, tortured sobs and her laboured breathing.
She sat up straight then, keeping his arms pinned at his sides with her knees, looking down at him. His face was a bloody mess, his eyes already beginning to swell up. She knew she had to kill him. This was the moment she’d fantasized about a thousand times.
Yet something stopped her. The realization that she was a serving police officer, paid to uphold the law. That she couldn’t commit cold-blooded murder, whatever the provocation.
‘Please don’t do this,’ whispered Wise, his voice cracking. ‘I know I’ve done wrong, but even I don’t deserve this.’
She felt herself wavering. She couldn’t do it. Not with her bare hands. Not with anything.
And then she saw it. Two yards away, in the shadow of an acacia tree. A little mound of polished stones.
And then another, just the same, next to it.
‘Oh Jesus.’
This secluded copse with the love seat in one corner was a graveyard. It was the burial ground for Wise’s child victims, a place where he could sit and relive his experiences with those he’d murdered. Lene Haagen lay here. Other girls too. Tina would have ended up here if Wise had had his way.
He knew she knew. She could see it in his eyes.
‘Please . . .’ he begged.
But it was too late, because suddenly the rage came flooding back in a great avenging wave, and everything that Paul Wise had ever done – not just to her and to those close to her, but also to every poor child who would never go home because of his savage, twisted lusts – tore across her vision, and her hands clamped round his neck in a grip so tight that in that moment nothing could have broken it.
Wise kicked and bucked beneath her, but it did him no good. It was as if a madness had consumed Tina, and even as she watched his face go blue and his eyes widen as the last breaths were dragged from his body, she kept squeezing. Harder and harder, until the pain in her hands was almost unbearable. And even when he lay there unmoving, his tongue lolling obscenely from his mouth, she maintained her iron grip, repeatedly lifting his head from the ground and smacking it back down again, as if trying to expel all the evil that had festered within him.
It was only when she heard footfalls on the pool’s flagstones and turned to see one of the gunmen approaching that Tina realized she had to move. He hadn’t seen her yet, but he would in a few seconds. And suddenly she was reminded that Milne had armed the bomb and told her to run. It was possible that he was going to detonate it, in which case she had to get out. And fast.
The moment she got to her feet, the gunman saw her and raised the gun.
But Tina was faster. As he opened fire, she sprinted past the love seat and into the warm embrace of the forest, her legs going faster and faster as a strange euphoria overcame her. She’d done it. Paul Wise was dead, and she was going to make it out of here alive. She felt like laughing out loud.
She’d won.
Fifty-eight
And so now here I am, leaning back against a tree, the stars just about visible through the forest canopy. When I fell over the balustrade – five, ten, however many minutes ago – I toppled down a steep bank, rolling over and over, somehow remaining conscious and keeping hold of the case, until finally I stopped here. I’m hugging the briefcase to my chest, my thumb resting on the detonation button, and I’m amazed that I’ve lasted this long.
A steadily building coldness is enveloping me, and I can barely see. I know the gunmen who came here to buy the bomb are looking for me. I can hear them moving about in the bushes, shouting to each other in angry, panicked voices as they hunt for their prize.
They’re getting closer. I heard one a little while back fumbling about somewhere not far to my right. I kept quiet, wanting to give Tina as long as possible to get out. I hope she made it. And that she killed Wise. I have faith that she did. She was some woman. Probably the toughest I’ve ever met – and I’ve met a few in my time. It was a pleasure to know her, even if it was for barely forty-eight hours. So much has happened in that time. My life has gone from thoughts of a long and contented retirement to thoughts of my imminent death.
And yet I feel strangely peaceful.
I take a deep breath and try to readjust my position against the tree so I’m more comfortable, but in the end, I just don’t have the strength.
I’m not sure if I’ve imagined it, but I’m pretty sure I just heard the sound of a boat’s engine in the distance, and I’m thinking that this means Tina’s got out. Immediately, I feel myself relax.
And I think back over my life. My childhood; my long, infuriating, but sometimes happy career as a copper. And then the descent into corruption that led me ultimately to this place, where I will die a lonely death.
And then I push such negative thoughts from my mind, and I think of Emma. But not what might have been if we’d stayed together. Instead I go back in time. To when I was eighteen years old. And I dream.
I dream of a different life. One in which after my A levels I didn’t become a copper but went to university. I dream that I got a degree and went travelling round the world. That I met Emma as a young woman somewhere beautiful, like here in the Philippines. Or maybe Thailand, where we did genuinely spend so much time together. I dream that we travelled together. Saw magnificent sights; shared incredible experiences; stood hand in hand at the top of mountains; kayaked down mighty rivers. Together. Always together. Until finally we settled down in the beautiful verdant hills of Laos where we ran our own business. I dream that we had children – two, a boy and a girl. Jack and Rosie. The names we’d always had in mind.
I dream that I’m walking up to our house in Luang Prabang, having been away for a few days, and Emma’s on the doorstep, her auburn hair falling round her shoulders, wearing the white dress I used to love so much. And standing with her are our children, and they come running to greet me. And I dream that I take them in my arms and squeeze them tight, because they are so, so precious to me. And then, still carrying them, I walk over to Emma, and we kiss and stare into each other’s eyes. And I can see the love radiating out at me, and I know that I’m radiating it in return, because she really is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I really am the luckiest man . . .
And then a dark shadow falls across my vision, and the shadow’s holding a gun, and I press the button with the last of my strength.
And dream of nothing.
Fifty-nine
When Tina heard the blast, she was on the boat and already several hundred yards out to sea, having hotwired the engine in the absence of any keys.
As she turned towards the noise, she caught a bright flash illuminating the night sky, followed by a second loud boom as the shock waves carried across the sea towards her. A moment later, a huge fire erupted where Paul Wise’s villa had been, and thick black smoke poured upwards into the sky.
Tina’s first thought was practical. There were other people on the island, and they were going to have to be evacuated. She still had her mobile on her and she pulled it from her shorts pocket. There was a decent reception, and she racked her brains, trying to work out who to phone. Then it came to her. Scrolling down the list of her outgoing calls, she found the number for the Manila Post, and dialled it.
As soon as the call was answered at the other end, Tina explained that there’d been a bomb with a radioactive leak, gave the location, and told the person to contact Alan Ch
eesman in the Defense Attaché Office at the US Embassy and repeat what he’d just been told. Then she hung up, switched off the phone and threw it into the sea. It was a pay-as-you-go model, not registered in her name, so there’d be no way of tracing it, or the call, back to her. Tina had long ago learned to cover her tracks.
She steered the boat round the headland, careful to dodge the rocks Milne had shown her earlier, before accelerating again when she rounded the southern point of the island, wanting to put as much distance between her and the bomb site as possible. She tried not to think about the man who’d just detonated it, saving her own life as well as those of God knows how many others, because she knew that if she did, she’d break down. When it had come to it, Milne had been there for her. There were few people in her life whom Tina could say that about.
And now he was gone.
So was the euphoria at finally killing Wise. Now she just felt drained, shocked, and vaguely depressed.
Taking a deep breath and steeling herself against the emotions threatening to overwhelm her, she set a course for the bright lights of the mainland, and thought about home.
Manila
One Week Later
‘Are you ready?’ asked Mike Bolt, poking his head round the door of the interview room.
‘They’re letting me go, are they?’
‘Believe it or not, yes. And it took a hell of a lot of string pulling, I can promise you.’
Tina got to her feet, picking up the bag containing the few possessions she had left from her journey to Manila. ‘Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it.’
‘Christ, Tina,’ he said, moving aside to let her through. ‘You really are incapable of doing anything by the book, aren’t you? The way you get into these scrapes doesn’t help anyone. Least of all you.’
‘All I’ve ever wanted was justice,’ said Tina obstinately, following him down the empty corridor, unable to stomach the idea of a lecture from Mike about all her faults, even though she knew he had a pretty sizeable point.
Mike gave her a sidewards glance. ‘I’m sure that’s what Dennis Milne used to say.’
Tina sighed but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going to rise to the bait. Not after close to a week of resisting it.
After she’d fled the island that night, she’d managed to get back to the mainland and the port city of Batangas without getting intercepted by any of the police boats coming out of the city in the direction of where the bomb had exploded. She’d docked the boat on a deserted stretch of waterfront east of the city. Unable to locate the Toyota she and Milne had travelled down in, she’d managed to get a cab to take her back to Manila, and found a private hospital where they’d cleaned her up and stitched the deep scalpel cut on her cheek. Finally, she’d holed up in a small hotel where she spent the rest of the night watching live news reports covering the explosion on Verde Island.
The following morning, she’d picked up the car she’d hired two days earlier and driven it back to the airport, hoping to get a flight back to the UK. However, when she dropped it off at the Hertz office, the fact that it was peppered with bullet holes and she was still battered and bruised had, unsurprisingly, aroused the suspicions of the staff there, even though she’d come up with a story about how she’d been attacked and then shot at in an attempted robbery. She’d still been filling in a damage claims form when four uniformed police officers had entered the building, guns drawn, and arrested her on the spot.
Tina had known things were bad when they took her to the headquarters of the Philippine National Police in Quezon City, on the outskirts of Manila. For the next two days they’d questioned her day and night about her role in aiding and abetting the supposedly-still-at-large fugitive Dennis Milne. Tina was experienced enough to know they didn’t have much on her, so she denied everything, claiming she was simply on holiday. The main evidence against her, though – the belongings they’d found of hers in the hotel room where she and Milne had stayed on their last night together, and the fact that she’d jumped out of a window rather than wait to answer questions when the police had arrived to arrest him – was pretty damning.
Tina had claimed not to know Milne’s real identity, and said she’d jumped because she didn’t know the men outside the door were police. No one believed her. But the fact was, there was nothing linking her to any of the killings Milne had been suspected of committing, and because Tina stuck rigidly to her story, there was little the police could do, particularly when it became clear to them that Tina was a decorated British police officer with no criminal record, and no known prior contact with Dennis Milne.
Finally, two days later, after several visits from the British consul, during which he too had urged her to cooperate with the authorities, she’d finally seen a welcome face, in the shape of Mike Bolt. He was, he told her, there in an official Soca capacity as part of a new inter-agency anti-drugs partnership, and couldn’t promise to get her out, but would do what he could.
And now it seemed he’d been successful.
When Tina had been signed out of Filipino police custody and she and Bolt were inside his hire car and en route to the airport, he turned to her, a cold expression on his face. ‘So, what really happened, Tina?’
‘Haven’t the Filipino police briefed you?’ she asked, gently rubbing the fresh two-inch scalpel scar on her right cheek, a habit she’d developed over the past few days.
‘They have. And they don’t believe you, and neither do I. You owe me. I want the truth.’
‘Is this off the record?’
‘It depends how far you’ve gone.’
She’d gone a long way, further than she’d ever been before. But Mike was right. She owed him the truth. And, in the end, she trusted him.
So she told her story. All of it. Including how she’d killed Wise. She thought it might make her feel better to get it off her chest, but it didn’t. It made it worse.
When she’d finished, Mike took a deep breath and shook his head. ‘Jesus, Tina.’
‘You wanted the truth. There it is. What are you going to do? Turn me in?’
‘No,’ he said, just as she knew he would. ‘But I’m going to have to speak to the US Embassy about the bomb, and who was involved in the plot. And tell them that Dennis Milne’s probably somewhere among the rubble. Although I won’t involve you.’
‘Was anyone else killed?’ she asked. ‘And how bad’s the radioactive damage?’
‘It’s been contained to a small section of the island, and it’s a lot less than initially feared. They haven’t been able to recover any human remains yet, and I’m not entirely sure there’s going to be anything left to recover.’
She thought of Milne then. She wondered what he’d been thinking when he pressed the button, and how lonely he must have felt. ‘I did what I thought was right, Mike,’ she said wearily.
‘And do you think you can just go back to being a police officer upholding the law after everything that’s happened?’
‘I hope so,’ she said, but she wasn’t sure if she believed it. Or whether she wanted to or not. Her life had changed for ever these past few days and it was difficult to imagine anything ever being normal again.
‘Did you find out anything about Bertie Schagel?’ she asked after a few moments’ silence. She’d mentioned the name to Mike when he’d visited her two days earlier, as the man who’d supplied Wise with the bomb.
Mike shook his head. ‘The name doesn’t appear on any of the databases. Have you got any other information we could use to ID him?’
‘No. All I’ve got is the name.’ She felt deflated. Wise was dead, but Schagel – or whatever his name was – was still out there. It felt as if she still had unfinished business. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Do you have to?’
‘Yes. I think I do.’
‘Go on, then. I suppose in the greater scheme of things, it’s one of your lesser sins.’
Which Tina had to admit, as she lit the first cigarette she’d had in clos
e to a week, was probably true.
‘You also asked me about someone called Emma Pettit who was living in Bangkok. Who’s she in all this?’
‘She was Milne’s girlfriend for a while, and the mother of his child. He had to leave her, and he never got to see his child. It hurt him a great deal. I wanted to . . .’ She let the sentence trail off. ‘I don’t know what I wanted to do, maybe get a message to her or something. Let her know that he still cared about her and the child.’
Mike turned his head from the road ahead, and for the first time there was sympathy in his expression. ‘Emma Pettit never had her baby. She was killed in a car crash two and a half years ago near her parents’ house in Worcestershire. She was eight months pregnant.’
The words hit Tina hard, and for a few seconds she couldn’t speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mike. ‘At least he’ll never know.’
‘No,’ she said quietly, fighting back the tears. ‘I guess not.’
She was reminded of a saying her mother always used: what goes around comes around. Milne had set himself on his path to destruction as soon as he carried out his first killing. There’d never really been any way back for him, and he’d died as he’d lived, and in reality as he’d deserved. That didn’t mean the world was fair of course. Sometimes bad things happened to good people. Like Emma Pettit and her unborn baby. But there was also justice. Those who sin always end up paying. Like Wise. Like Heed. Like Tomboy Darke. And like Dennis Milne.
And Tina had sinned as well. She’d taken the law into her own hands and killed in cold blood.
One day, it would be her turn to pay.
The Payback Page 28