An agonising wait.
Gaskell saw Hinksman’s shoulders rise and fall and rise again with his controlled breathing.
The targets spun round.
And so did Hinksman. Fast. Only a millisecond behind the targets. Still with a double-handed grip. Perfectly balanced. Wonderful pirouette. He was now facing Gaskell.
The Englishman fumbled for his gun. But stuck there in his trousers, covered by the cardigan, he had no chance. He’d hardly moved his hand before the first of Hinksman’s bullets slammed into his chest. A heart-shot: dead centre. Perfect. The second bullet entered his head a fraction later, centre forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
The-arms dealer was almost lifted off his feet with the impact. He was thrown back against the wall where he stayed briefly pinned like a butterfly, arms high and wide, and then, already dead, he slithered into an untidy, bloody heap on the floor.
His chin lolled forwards onto his chest, exposing the gaping wound at the back of his skull where the slug had made its spinning exit.
Hinksman exhaled.
He looked at the gun and smiled. ‘You’ll do nicely,’ he said. ‘I wonder what else is on offer.’
Chapter Six
McClure and Donaldson got the registered number of the hired Mondeo from the hotel video. One PNC check later they’d got the name of the hire company to go with it.
Karen Wilde looked down at the hire documents which two detectives had seized and handed over to her in sealed plastic wallets.
It was a condition of the car-hire agreement that the person hiring the vehicle be photographed as part of the documentation process. Hinksman was no exception — but he’d worn a flat cap, glasses and a false moustache and moved his head when the receptionist pressed the button on the Polaroid. Result: blurred image.
Karen inspected the passport-sized photograph pinned to the corner of the hire agreement and compared it with the still that had been lifted and enlarged from the hotel video. Despite the disguise it was obviously the same man.
She read the agreement which gave the address of the hirer as Lytham St Annes, a seaside town south of Blackpool on the Lancashire coast. It was a fairly exclusive area.
McClure and Donaldson were sitting opposite her. Neither spoke as she peered at the evidence.
Her eyes rose from the document. She nodded.
‘ Good stuff,’ she admitted.
‘ Yes, it’s a good lead at least,’ understated McClure. ‘How’s it going at the Posthouse Hotel room?’
‘ Scenes of Crime are there now. He obviously didn’t spend much time there. Seems to have dumped his things, then done a runner when you two spooked him. Left his luggage behind. There could well be prints on his things, particularly toiletries. Looks like he had a drink from a glass of water, too.’
‘ Are you going to save the luggage for forensic?’ Donaldson asked.
‘ Why should I?’
He looked at her like the rookie she was, but decided not to insult her. ‘Well, from the video it looks like he kept the bomb in the case before clamping it underneath the Daimler.’
‘ So?’
He restrained himself from an impatient sigh. ‘We now know the bomb contained Semtex; Semtex leaves traces on clothing. Could provide very good evidence.’ Don’t you know anything, he thought.
Smart-arse Yank, she thought sourly. ‘I’ll see it gets done,’ she conceded gracelessly. ‘So,’ she went on, coming back to the hire document, ‘with luck we’ll be able to lift prints off this form and get the FBI searching their records. I don’t hold out much hope though.’
‘ We’ll get something,’ Donaldson said.
Their eyes locked again. Briefly. Antagonistically.
McClure broke in. ‘I still can’t believe he had the audacity to hire a car himself — and form a company up here.’
‘ He’s made a few mistakes,’ said Karen. ‘Yet you say he’s a pro.’
‘ If he’s working for Corelli, he’s a pro. But even pros get careless,’
Donaldson pointed out. ‘He’s operating outside his normal territory. He feels safe. He doesn’t have the same sort of respect for British bobbies as he does for the FBI. He doesn’t expect to get caught. He thinks it’ll all be easy for him — and if I hadn’t been here, it would have been.’
‘ Agent Donaldson,’ said Karen, barely able to control her temper, ‘we will catch this man, with or without your help.’
‘ Maybe.’
McClure tried to defuse the tension. ‘What are we going to do about the address on that form?’ He pointed to the hire documents.
‘ I’ll send a pair of detectives round.’
‘ Is that wise?’ asked McClure.
‘ Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘He’s hardly likely to be there. The licence he’s used is probably stolen or lost and the owner of it, who happens to be this guy’ — she tapped the form — ‘probably hasn’t noticed it’s gone or hasn’t bothered to report it yet. Either way, he’ll be sitting at home without a care in the world.’
‘ I don’t think we should take that chance,’ warned McClure. ‘He’s made a few mistakes so far, so maybe he’s given us the address where he’s actually holed up. OK, I admit it’s unlikely but sending two unarmed lads round is a risk we shouldn’t take.’ He took a breath. ‘That’s my view, for what it’s worth.’
Had it come from Donaldson, she would have dismissed it out of hand, but McClure’s argument was reasonable in the circumstances.
‘ Go in with guns drawn and ready — is that what you’re saying?
‘ Don’t take a chance — that’s what I’m saying.’
As McClure and Donaldson left the office, Karen picked up the phone and dialled an internal number. It rang and was answered quickly by the Chief Constable’s secretary.
‘ I’m afraid he’s busy just now, Miss Wilde,’ the secretary said.
‘ He’s meeting a member of the police committee.’
‘ I need to speak to him urgently, Jean,’ Karen said.
‘ He’s asked not to be disturbed,’ the secretary said. She was one of the few who had hard evidence of Karen’s affair with her boss and she disapproved of it.
‘ Jean,’ Karen said slowly, as though making a point to a backward child, ‘put me through to him now or I’ll see that you end up transferred to some poxy little backwater copshop in the east of the county, typing up arrest reports for beat bobbies.’
‘ Very well. Hold the line.’
Joe Kovaks had spent the night cooped up in the back of an FBI surveillance van parked opposite a nightclub in downtown Miami. His partner for the take-out had been a fat detective with a body-odour problem and a habit of breaking wind so spectacularly that their position was often in danger of being compromised. It made it worse that his partner was a woman. Had it been a man, Kovaks could’ve said something — or shot him — but what do you say to a woman who farts and stinks? He didn’t know, so he called the job off at 4.30 a.m. They were getting nowhere.
He crept through his apartment an hour later, so as not to disturb Chrissy, his sleeping ladyfriend, and slid into bed, dropping immediately into a heavy slumber.
An hour and a half later, Donaldson called him.
‘ Look, Karl, what the fuck d’you want?’ Kovaks hissed. ‘It’s good to hear from you but I’ve been on a job all night. Only just got to sleep, I’m shattered.’
Awoken, Chrissy rolled out of bed and padded naked to the toilet.
Through his puffy eyes, Kovaks watched her.
‘ You been listening to the news?’
‘ On and off.’
‘ Hear about the M6 bombing?’
‘ Who hasn’t.’ Kovaks sat up, suddenly awake.
‘ Danny Carver took most of the blast. Or should I say, the late Danny Carver.’
‘ You’re kidding me.’
‘ Absolutely not. I think Corelli had him hit.’
‘ Jeez… we’d heard some sort of whisper, hadn’t we? Dog-feeder man, d’you think?’
‘ Can’t be sure yet. Forensics are still piecing things together. Look, pal, I need you to do some digging for me. I’m sending a fax for you to the office. Two photos of the guy we think is the hit man. One’s reasonably good, the other has him wearing some phoney disguise. And when I get ‘em — sometime today, I hope — I’ll send you a set of dabs the fingerprint boys have lifted which may be his too. Run ‘em through, will ya? See if they tie up with our fella. With me so far, buddy?’