“New Boy” Dave answers his phone.
“Code One. Officer in trouble. Help!”
The courier is on the stairs, staying close to the wall to shield himself from above. When he turns onto the landing I should get a clean shot. I wait in darkness, trying to make myself small. A river leaks down my back.
Another step. His shadow appears. He's carrying a fully automatic machine pistol that sweeps from side to side. My finger pulls gently on the trigger, pushing the hammer backward and compressing a metal spring in the handle. A ratchet rotates the cylinder, putting a bullet in the breech chamber in line with the barrel.
He's fully in view—about to turn into the bedroom. I can't see his face behind the visor.
“Police! Put the gun down!”
He drops and rolls, firing blindly up the stairs. Bullets punch tattered holes in the wallpaper beside my head and shatter the banister. A splinter of wood slices into my neck.
The moment I shoot he'll see the muzzle flash and know where I am. I pull the trigger lever all the way back, releasing the hammer.
The bullet enters through his shoulder, angling down into his chest. His head hits the wall. The wide dark visor is staring at me. His finger closes on the trigger again. We fire together and he tumbles backward.
I can taste blood in my mouth where I've bitten my tongue and my lungs hurt like a bastard. Where has all the oxygen gone? I don't know how long I sit on the stairs. There are sirens and screeching tires in the street. “New Boy” Dave comes through the door so fast he almost trips over Mrs. Wilde.
Kneeling on the landing, I put the gun at my side and stare down at my chest. Dave is climbing the stairs, yelling my name. Ripping open the buttons, I press my fingers to my breastbone. A neat depression, still warm from the bullet, lies at the center of the vest.
Well I'll be damned! Ali saved my life.
Looking through the railings I see the courier's body crumpled at the foot of the stairs. Forty-three years in the police force, thirty-five of them as a detective, and I managed not to kill anyone. Another unwanted milestone reached.
36
Four hours ago a warrant was issued for Aleksei's arrest but it hasn't been served. His motor yacht left Chelsea Harbour at midnight on Saturday, only an hour after our meeting. The skipper claimed to be doing a transfer to Moody's boatyard in Hamble on the south coast but failed to arrive by midday Sunday.
Coast guards and lifeboat stations have been alerted and all vessels within a five hundred nautical mile range have been told to report any sightings. Descriptions of the vessel are also being sent to harbormasters in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Portugal and Spain.
I didn't expect Aleksei to run. A part of me still thinks he's going to waltz into a police station with a team of lawyers looking smug and ready to rumble. He knows there is nothing but circumstantial evidence. Nobody can put him at the scene of the murders. If Kirsten dies I can't even prove he paid the first ransom.
Of course, it's not my job to prove anything, as Campbell keeps telling me, as he storms around the hospital, dressed in an overcoat of angry tweed. Every time his eyes reach me he looks away. He was right and I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite all the bloody mayhem of the past few weeks, the facts have remained unchanged—Mickey died three years ago and Howard Wavell killed her.
According to the X-rays my ribs are only bruised and the cut on my neck doesn't need stitches. Kirsten is under guard upstairs. Not even the paramedics knew her name when they delivered her into intensive care.
Tomorrow morning Eddie Barrett and the Rook will argue that Howard Wavell should be released from prison. They will claim that Mickey Carlyle was taken for a ransom and killed by her abductors. The CCTV footage from Leicester Square Underground could be of anyone. The towel found at East Finchley Cemetery was planted there to frame Howard for a murder he didn't commit.
It's a version of events that is far easier to argue than the truth. The police case against Howard was always circumstantial. Evidence had to be laid out piece by piece, showing the jury how it all fitted together. Now it seems more like a house of cards.
Howard will get his retrial and our only hope of maintaining his conviction is if a jury believes Kirsten's story. Defense barristers will be queuing up to dismantle her credibility as a confessed kidnapper, extortionist and manager of an escort agency.
I was wrong about Howard, wrong about Mickey, wrong about almost everything. A child killer is going to walk free. I am responsible.
Things get messy when police shoot people. They get even messier when it's an ex-policeman. There will be an inquest and an investigation by the Police Complaints Commission. There will also be drug tests and psych reports. I don't know enough about morphine to say if the opiates are still in my system. If I test positive I'll be swimming in shit.
The man I killed hasn't been identified. He rode a stolen motorbike and carried no papers. His dental work was Eastern European and he carried a fully automatic machine pistol stolen from a Belfast police station four years ago. His only other distinguishing feature was a small silver cross around his neck inlaid with a purple gemstone, chariote, a rare silicate found only in the Bratsk region of Siberia. Perhaps Interpol will have more luck.
Visiting hours are over but the nursing sister has let me in. Although flat on her back, staring at a mirror above her head, Ali gives me a bigger smile than I deserve. She turns her head, making it only partway before the pain catches in her throat.
“I brought you chocolates,” I tell her.
“You want me to get fat.”
“You haven't been fat since you were hanging off the tit.”
It hurts when she laughs.
“How is it going?” I ask.
“OK. I managed to stand this afternoon.”
“That's a good sign. So when can we go dancing?”
“You hate dancing.”
“I'll dance with you.”
It sounds too maudlin and I wish I could take it back. Ali seems to appreciate the sentiment.
She explains that she has to wear a special cast for the next three months and then a canvas brace with shoulder bands for another three months after that.
“With any luck I'll be walking by then.”
I hate the expression “with any luck.” It's not a resounding affirmative but a fingers-crossed, if-all-goes-well sort of statement. What sort of luck has Ali had so far?
I pull a bottle of whiskey from a brown paper bag and wave it in front of her eyes. She grins. Two glasses are next, pulled from the bag like a rabbit from a hat.
I pour her a glass and add water from a tap in the sink.
“I can't really handle a glass,” she says apologetically.
Reaching into the bag again, I produce a crazy drinking straw with spirals and loops. I rest the glass on her chest and put the straw in her mouth. She takes a sip and gasps slightly. It's the first time I have ever seen her drink.
Our eyes meet in the mirror. “A Home Office lawyer came to see me today,” she says. “They're offering a compensation package and a full disability pension if I want to leave the job.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I want to stay.”
“They're worried you might sue them.”
“Why would I do that? It's nobody's fault.”
We look at each other and I feel grateful and undeserving all at once.
“I heard about Gerry Brandt.”
“Yeah.”
I watch the subtle change in her, a little shrinking created by a single affirmation. Something shifts inside me as well and I get a sense of how much pain she's endured already and the months of operations and physiotherapy still to come.