‘Who are the runners?’ Lee asked.
‘The Barros,’ Hearst replied. ‘And if I were a suspicious type, I might suspect that they planned it this way.’ Lee’s own suspicions again turned to Jack. His gut instinct simply would not let go of the idea that Jack was on the wrong side, or maybe just playing both sides.
Hearst could practically read Lee’s mind. ‘I check out the pedigree of everyone I let into my station, DI Lee. Including you and DI Mason. Jack Warr is from good stock. But you know how these London boys are: they don’t know the meaning of the word diplomacy. Come on, I need a senior officer to get the ball rolling with these interviews.’
Ridley’s rolling update to Jack took a serious turn for the worst. ‘Hang on, Jack, something’s coming through.’ Jack waited, his heartbeat quickening. ‘Jesus Christ. Jack, you there? Just got a report of a hijacked bike. The rider’s dead.’ Jack had never heard Ridley sound so despondent.
Jack let out a breath. ‘That’s Alberto. It has to be.’
‘It’s a sky-blue Ducati Panigale,’ Ridley continued in a subdued tone. ‘We’re looking out for it now.’
‘He’s heading for De Voe,’ Jack said. ‘He knows De Voe’s betrayed him, because I told him.’
‘What about Betina?’ Ridley asked.
‘No, she’s smarter than that. She’ll be... she told me when I was at the shop, sir! She said she’s heading for Argentina. If that was the truth, then she’s going to Heathrow! Sir, you stop Betina; I’ll get Alberto.’
On the ground, Ridley now started making his way towards Betina, whilst Bjarne was trying to gain permission to land at the London Helipad in Battersea.
Then another message on the radio: ‘Ducati abandoned near Ealing Broadway Underground station. I repeat, Ducati abandoned near Ealing Broadway.’ Where was the nearest area car? Jack wondered frantically. Was anyone on the ground in Ealing? He knew that as soon as Alberto went underground, they could lose him — CCTV or not.
Jack turned to Bjarne, desperate to get his hands on the man who had tried to kill him. ‘Our target’s going to jump on the District Line and head straight for Chelsea.
Bjarne frowned. ‘Battersea Helipad is the best I can do, mate. That’ll put you a fifteen-minute run away from Battersea Bridge.’
Jack’s heart sank. Of course! He was in a bloody helicopter flying over a metropolis; Bjarne couldn’t just land the helicopter in the middle of a busy street. Jack called Ridley and asked for a car, any car, to meet him at the helipad. He was still closer than any of Ridley’s team, who were now all heading out of London towards Heathrow. Ridley dispatched the nearest patrol car to Battersea, just as Bjarne received his permission to land.
Alberto Barro sat on a District Line train, flirting with the stunning Eastern European woman sitting opposite him as she peered over her mobile phone. He slid his feet forwards across the aisle until his toes met hers, then his eyes moved slowly upwards towards her tantalisingly short skirt. Her strikingly long legs were smooth, slender and perfectly tanned.
Jack leapt from the helicopter, shouting his thanks to Bjarne as he hit the ground. Bjarne grinned, saluted and shouted back, ‘Go get your man!’ This had definitely been the most exciting day of his civilian life, he thought, as Jack jumped into an unmarked police car that, with blue lights flashing, instantly sped away.
The traffic was light until they got to the south side of Battersea Bridge. Here, they met gridlock. The driver gave two bursts on his siren, but nothing moved. For Jack, however, the noise of the siren seemed to go straight through his skull and agonisingly into his brain. Jack speculated that he’d probably burst an eardrum. He reached back and felt the bandage on his head. It moved so freely that he guessed it wasn’t actually doing anything useful anymore. He pulled the last remaining sticky part away from his split scalp and threw it onto the dashboard. The driver stared at it in silent disgust.
‘Sorry.’ Jack dropped it into the footwell as the radio burst into life with a stream of updates...
‘White Mercedes taking the Heathrow turnoff. Still following. Heading for Terminal 5. That’s the terminal for Argentina. Airport security is aware and will help with a stop... Approaching Terminal 5. The barrier is down. I can see four, correction, five airport security... Mercedes is doing a left, left, left, in an attempt to double back... Yeah, she seems to be trying to make her way back onto the road. Can a couple of vehicles hang back, to stop her, please?’
More radios crackled into life and joined in the commentary as cars got into position to block Betina’s escape.
‘Stop, stop, stop... Driver running! Driver running! Pursuing on foot.’
Then there was an excruciatingly long pause. Jack opened the passenger door of the unmarked police car and stepped up onto the door frame, trying to assess exactly how far away they were from the Chelsea Emporium. In the distance, almost on the other side of the bridge, a black cab driver stood in the middle of the road arguing with two Community Support officers. They looked to have detained a drunk passenger who Jack guessed was probably refusing to pay. Jack stepped down into the road and listened to the radio. Come on! Come on!
‘Driver in custody.’
Jack slammed the door shut behind him and ran across the bridge towards Chelsea.
Dishevelled, mud-spattered and bloody, Jack got his fair share of strange looks as he sprinted along the footpath. People glanced behind him, expecting to see the police hot on his heels. As his lungs burned, he thought, If someone rugby-tackles me to the ground now, I’m never getting up!
De Voe sat behind his half-desk flicking through a car magazine. He seemed particularly interested in the Bentley Continental GT Convertible. In front of him was a small, open black rucksack, with a blue cotton money bag inside it stuffed with bundles of £50 notes.
When the office door opened, De Voe glanced up and the colour immediately drained from his face. Alberto said nothing, waiting for De Voe to regain his composure. ‘Is Betina safe?’ De Voe finally asked.
Alberto shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
He pointed to the money. ‘Was that for her? Is that how much I’m worth? Here’s what I do know, Michael. I know that you lined up a series of robberies to occupy the police whilst Betina did the real job. I don’t know what that was, but I’m guessing it was big enough to be worth the risk of betraying me. Did you actually tip the police off or did you simply assume that they’d be on to us by now?’ Alberto watched De Voe’s face grow pale. ‘Not that it matters now. What matters is that at some point I became expendable.’ He shook his head. ‘And after all I’ve done for you, Michael.’
‘After all you’ve...’ De Voe got to his feet, though he was careful to keep the desk in between them. ‘You beat a boy to within an inch of his life!’
‘If he was a boy, he was a fucking big one,’ Alberto smirked. ‘With great taste in pizza, though.’ He smiled to himself. ‘What was I saying? Oh, yes... are you shagging my sister? Is that how you convinced her to leave me behind? By the way, if she does manage to escape the police, she will never, ever escape me. And nor will you.’
De Voe’s jaw clenched and his nostrils flared as his breathing quickened. He made a split-second judgement that Alberto wasn’t armed and moved towards the door. Alberto instantly lashed out, punching De Voe in the neck.
The speed of it shocked De Voe, but the lightness of the blow confused him — until he felt the wetness on his chest and saw the blood soaking the front of his shirt. Then he saw the small buckle knife, usually secreted in Alberto’s belt, now clenched in his fist so that the blade protruded between his fingers.