HE WILL KILL YOU an absolutely gripping crime thriller with a massive twist

by Charlie Gallagher

  The waiting area was busy. It was a wide, open area with two large, supporting beams in the middle with benches wrapped round their thick base. The benches were full of people and their baggage. There was another clump of people at a coffee pod over to the right. There were vending machines against the far wall and the toilets were off to the left.

  Vince attracted attention: an out-of-breath police officer in full uniform having wrenched open the door and now scanning the room with fists clenched. Everyone suddenly looked guilty — a natural reaction. But only one man moved. From the far bench, he stood up and stepped away. He walked with his hood up, his head bent and with an obvious limp. He looked to be making for the far exit. He didn’t look back. Vince set off after him immediately. His footfalls echoed through a room that had fallen as silent as it was still.

  ‘VIKTOR!’ Vince’s voice now filled the space. ‘ARMED POLICE! ONE MORE STEP AND I OPEN FIRE!’

  The man in the hood stopped. He stayed facing away, his arms by his side.

  ‘PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR, PALMS OPEN!’ Vince was striding forward.

  The hooded man raised his hands slowly. Vince could see they were empty. He was still facing away.

  ‘TURN ROUND SLOWLY! KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS OR I WILL OPEN FIRE!’ Vince was almost upon him. The man turned slowly. His face was a sneer, his jacket hung open, Vince recognised the man he had arrested just a few days before and scanned his waistband and pockets for weapons.

  Viktor was appraising Vince, too, his eyes roving all over him. His hands dropped back to his sides. ‘You do not have gun!’

  Vince was now close enough. He threw his right fist with everything he had. It was as if he had thrown a breeze block, with all his weight and momentum behind it. He felt Viktor’s nose crack and his head whipped backwards. His body followed quickly, his legs folding beneath him. Viktor was laid out on his back, his arms flailing slowly, his face streaming blood. Vince reached down to take a firm hold of both Viktor’s hands. He dragged the cuffs from his vest and knelt over Viktor with one knee close to his hip. He paused long enough to tense his bicep in front of Vince’s blinking eyes.

  ‘Some coppers are armed. And some have guns,’ he said. ‘Oh, and you’re under arrest.’

  * * *

  From Maddie’s elevated view, the port seemed to be enjoying business as usual. The police had one of the original buildings on the site that served as their base and Maddie found herself in its loft space, which seemed to function as the break room. It had a small kitchen off to the side and the main area was hogged by a square table, where mismatched and untidy chairs had it surrounded like an unruly group of outlaws. There was a sorry-looking sofa, too, the sort that wouldn’t look out of place discarded in a front garden or hanging out of a skip. It faced a small, flat-screen television that Maddie had clicked off straight away. She’d been here almost an hour and had spent the time pacing, punctured with short periods of staring out of the window.

  The traffic was incessant. The double-glazed windows and the vastness of it all gave a sense of detachment, as if she was looking in from the outside. Some of the bigger lorries caused the building to shake as they passed, giving an inkling of the activity on the outside. The port as a whole was a diesel-stained cacophony of noise and movement. Much of the movement now involved police vehicles. She longed to be part of it.

  ‘Maddie.’

  She spun to the coarse growl of Harry Blaker.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, then turned back to the window. ‘If you came up here to rip into me or you want some sort of apology then you should wait around. The ACC’s on his way from headquarters. You could take it in turns.’

  ‘He’s not going to make it today it seems. You have a stay of execution.’

  Maddie turned back into the room. ‘So I don’t have to wait in here?’

  ‘You do. You’re released back to me and we need to talk. This is as good a place as any.’

  Maddie huffed. ‘It’s all bollocks, this.’

  ‘It’s not a bad thing you’re not seeing the ACC today. Maybe you can work on improving your attitude before you do.’

  ‘My attitude? They would have shot her dead.’ A silence hung over them for a minute or two. Maddie didn’t care; she had nothing more to say anyway. It was Harry who broke it first.

  ‘They got that car stopped — the car with Josh Haines. Only a few minutes ago. They reckon the kid had just been driving around. Seems he didn’t know what to do once he’d given us the slip. He had his fifteen-year-old girlfriend in the passenger seat the whole time. You saved their lives, Maddie.’

  ‘We know that for sure?’

  ‘There’s a device. Under the driver’s seat. It’s not confirmed as viable yet, but it will be. The MOD are doing this right so it’ll take some time. The number registered in Grace’s phone as Dad wasn’t the number for Ian Hughes like she was told. She thought she would be saving her dad’s life when she was actually going to take out those kids. But you had already worked out the lies she had been spun, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I had an idea.’

  ‘So you saved their lives.’

  ‘So would have shooting her dead.’

  ‘Then you saved Grace. The ACC’s furious. He still will be tomorrow. He’s going to tear into you, but remember what you did today. Your job. Your whole purpose for carrying that badge is to protect the innocent. Following orders is a close second.’

  Maddie turned back into the room. She hoped she was concealing her surprise at his apparent support. She moved a little closer to Harry, squatting on the edge of the table, close enough to see if he was being genuine.

  ‘You have a warped sense of innocence, Harry. She killed Craig. She told me that. I think she had been planning to for a while.’

  ‘She’ll have her defence. Certainly she has quite a story.’

  ‘She was played, Harry.’

  ‘She was. He nearly got away with it, too. We won’t struggle for evidence to link him now, but we might not have even looked.’

  ‘I do worry that Grace is a big part of the evidence. It’s not like it’s going to be difficult to discredit her, is it? Once she’s convicted of killing her partner, I mean. It won’t matter why she did it, or how. Just that she did.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Maybe she didn’t?’ he said. ‘I mean what actual evidence is there linking Grace to Craig Dolton’s death?’

  ‘Apart from what I just said? About what she told me?’

  ‘I heard her too. But, yes, apart from that.’

  Maddie couldn’t quite see where he was coming from but she played along. ‘Her phone? She made the call from her phone that set off the bomb.’

  Harry shrugged. ‘We’ll talk about it. A full debrief tomorrow. We’ll work around your meeting with the ACC. You don’t need to be telling the ACC or anyone else what she said just yet. We’ll sit down and get it clear in our minds first.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That we need to be consistent. This is a big job. We need to be sure we’re clear. I have work to do tonight. You can go home. You should get some rest. And don’t mention this conversation when you talk to the boss. I was told to send you home. He told me explicitly not to talk to you about what happened.’

  ‘I’ll try not to squeal you up!’ Maddie managed a smile. It dropped away almost instantly. ‘Oh, and, Harry!’ He had started back for the stairs but turned in the doorway. ‘I can’t make tomorrow. I’m in London. Something I can’t get out of.’

  ‘It has to be tomorrow?’ Harry’s growl was deeper. She’d come to recognise that as a warning.

  ‘Something I can’t get out of,’ she said again.

  ‘And more important than your career? Because you don’t turn up tomorrow and that’s what’s at stake.’

  ‘Maybe, yeah. I’m not due in tomorrow. My duty sheet shows a rest day. Force policy . . . nobody can demand that I come in, not to write a statement.’

  ‘You want to st
art quoting policy at the ACC while he’s still clearing up a mess he thinks you’re responsible for, you go right ahead, but I wouldn’t be.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’

  Harry took a moment. ‘I’ll tell him. That you’ll be available Monday. But I’ll go on welfare issues. You’ve had a traumatic day.’

  Maddie scowled, still confused at his level of support. ‘Okay . . . You don’t need to. I’m quite capable of calling him direct.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, if I were you. I need to call him anyway. Police discharged a firearm in a public area. They damned near shot you into the bargain. There’s a lot of writing to do.’

  ‘Why are you helping me, Harry? I know what I did.’

  ‘So do I. You did your job. You saved lives. And when you get in front of the ACC, you remember that.’

  Maddie smirked. That growl was there again, the sort he reserved for when he was upset, but now she didn’t think it was for her. She would have to add this to the long list of times when she didn’t fully understand Harry Blaker.

  ‘I am beginning to realise though, Harry . . . saving people’s lives doesn’t seem to be working out so well for me!’

  Harry smirked, too. ‘Monday morning. Be in for seven a.m.’ And then he was gone.

  Chapter 39

  Sunday

  The woman’s heels clicked and scraped on the polished floor as she approached. PC Ronnie Ward watched her all the way. She stood out: her walk had purpose; her arm was held out in front of her, a designer bag swinging from it and the rest of her following its lead. Her hips had a swing, too, like the whole world was her catwalk. She wore a pastel pink dress with cream stilettos. Her hair was tied up, the clips matching the dress and reflecting the hospital’s harsh lighting.

  Ronnie leant on a wall beside a set of double doors that led through to a segregated ward. His colleague, Jay Skinner, leant the other side. They made eye contact. There was no doubt that the woman was making for them. Ronnie pushed off and stepped forward. He made a slight move left too and shuffled the assault rifle that was angled across his chest. He hoped to be making it clear that there was to be no entry. He sighed. He had better things to be doing than guarding a door to a hospital ward. This was a favour: usually he worked in close protection and he much preferred the work. The armed response teams were stretched at the moment and they felt stitched up at having to provide officers to guard a door at King’s Hospital in central London.

  An armed guard was a requirement for assault victims where there was a genuine concern that someone might want to come back and finish the job. In this case, the job had been started by a number of men swinging baseball bats. Their victim was badly beaten, the damage mainly focused on his skull. His family were due in the next day; his condition was serious. No one was supposed to be visiting until then. Ronnie had been told of suspected links between their victim and a drug gang in the north of the country. At that point he had lost a lot of sympathy.

  He spoke first. ‘Can I help you, miss?’

  The woman stopped short. She lifted her sunglasses just enough to look at him from the top down. ‘I’m here to see my kid brother. I don’t need the police.’ Her accent had a northern drawl, the Manchester area. Their victim was from the same part of the country.

  ‘Sorry, love. Visits are in for tomorrow.’

  ‘I know . . . I had a call from my mum. The doctor’s told her that he’s serious. We’ve been told to come down as soon as we could. We’ve been told . . .’ She gripped her nose and looked like she was holding her breath, fighting back tears. She sniffed. The tears didn’t materialise and her voice came back level. ‘We’ve been told that he might not recover, that we should be prepared for that. My mum . . . she won’t deal with it well, my brother will just get angry . . .’ She lifted her sunglasses and wiped at her eyes. She seemed to get a hold of herself quickly. ‘I just want to see him. I can’t be here when they are. If I can just see him on my own . . . I just want him to know that someone’s here for him — from the family . . .’ She stopped to wipe her eyes again. Ronnie cast a look back over to his mate. Jay had picked up a clipboard. It had a handwritten record of any movements on the top. There were some details on the family underneath.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jay said. He moved to stand next to Ronnie.

  ‘Anita. Anita Yarwood.’

  ‘You got a date of birth?’

  ‘First of September 1981. Hang on . . .’ She pulled open the bag and started a rummage. She pulled out a driver’s licence. Jay took it off her and wrote something down.

  ‘It don’t matter, does it?’ Jay said. Ronnie recognised he was talking to him. He shrugged.

  ‘We were supposed to call it in.’

  ‘We will. No need to hold her up, though. If you show her the way, I’ll do it now.’

  Ronnie nodded to the woman. ‘Okay . . . I’ll need to take you through.’

  ‘Can I be alone, though? Just me and him. I just want to talk with him. She brushed away a loose strand of hair that had fallen over her face. ‘These moments . . . they’re private.’

  ‘I’m supposed to stay with you, love. We might be able to arrange a minute or two.’

  Ronnie led the way. The other side of the door was a long corridor with more doors coming off it. The second door on the right was labelled ITU. It had a buzzer on the wall. Ronnie pushed for attention. He shuffled from one foot to another. He didn’t know what to say. Mercifully a nurse was quick to answer.

  ‘Hey, a visitor for Adam Yarwood. His sister, she came down a day early.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, we’re not expecting anyone today.’ The nurse looked unsure, a little apologetic even. She glanced at Anita and then over her shoulder. ‘Hang on,’ she said. The door fell closed. Ronnie shot an awkward smile that wasn’t reciprocated. The nurse was quick to return.

  ‘I can’t give you long I’m afraid. We’re appointment only here, really.’

  Ronnie thanked her. The nurse led them through a ward of just eight beds, all of them on the right hand wall, with a long desk on the left side. Instruments bleeped next to each of the beds. They were all occupied. Two of the occupants were sitting up. Both were bare-chested, both looked pale and weak. They followed with their eyes but there was no other movement. Ronnie knew this ward: it was where treating serious illnesses and injuries often merged into managing pain and giving a peaceful end. He’d seen victims and even colleagues transferred here before. Very few of them had come back out again.

  They kept walking. They passed more beds in another ward area and came to some private rooms. Adam Yarwood was in the first. The air was cooler in his room, less stuffy. There was more bleeping. The bed was a half turn to the right. A machine on the opposite side had moving parts that seemed to rise and fall in a breathing pattern.

  ‘Fifteen minutes, okay?’ the nurse said.

  ‘S-sorry!’ Anita called after the nurse, who stopped. ‘Is there any update you can give me? I know our mum took the call but she isn’t very good . . . at all this, I mean.’

  ‘Oh . . . update.’ She glanced over towards the bed. The machine rose and fell with a hiss another time. ‘Mr Yarwood is very ill. He has a fractured skull and they found a bleed on the brain. Surgery was deemed a success as far as the doctor was able to stop the bleeding but it won’t be possible to tell what damage has been done. Maybe not for some time.’

  ‘He’s going to recover though? In time?’

  The nurse sighed. ‘You have to be prepared that he may not recover. A full recovery is the least likely outcome here. If he does wake, Mr Yarwood’s injuries are highly likely to have a lasting or permanent effect. For now, you should just be with him. Try not to worry about that, not today. Just be with him. Talk to him and tell him you’re here. He may well be able to hear you.’

  Ronnie hung his head, wishing he could disappear. He looked up to give the nurse a subtle nod as she stepped past him to walk away. It was just him now with the sister. He couldn’t think of anything to
say. He looked at her as she took off her sunglasses and hooked them by the arms onto her dress. She gazed at him and his discomfort increased. He was desperate to get out.

  ‘I can give you a few minutes, but that’s all. Rules, you see. I should stay with you all the time, really. Can I just . . .’ he gestured at her bag. She held it open and he gave it the most cursory of searches. ‘Sorry, thanks . . .’

  She didn’t reply and he stepped out of the room. He waited for the door to click shut before he exhaled.

  * * *

  Maddie kicked her shoes off first. They were digging into her heel and her toes and on both feet. The floor felt instantly cool. She looked back to the door. It was wooden with a slim, glass panel running vertically and off-centre. There was a blind rolled up. She pulled it down. She had seen the way the armed officer had acted. He was embarrassed even to be there and she was sure he wouldn’t challenge her. She waited for a couple of moments, keeping her attention on the door. As expected, there was no sign of him bundling back through to demand the blind be rolled back up. She breathed out. She was going to have to turn around now.

  She was going to have to look at Adam.

  He was lying on his back, his head propped up by a couple of pillows. The top of his head was wrapped tightly in a white bandage. She was biting hard on her bottom lip, she bit harder still when her eyes ran over the dip in his head. The dent. The part where the blunt weapon had fractured his skull, damaging what was underneath, maybe beyond repair. His lips were contorted around a rubber pipe that trailed out of his mouth. It was taped so that it stayed in place. His eyes were only partially closed. The right one hung open enough for her to see his pupil underneath. She was still a few metres away, still stood next to her empty shoes. She wanted to be closer but something was holding her back.