‘She’ll have to come with us to the airport, in case we run into trouble. We’ll need her to be able to walk. Just leave her alone.’
‘Okay. Sure, Harry. Take it easy.’
North’s voice had become steady, calm, but Kathy could see the look in his eye, which Jackson couldn’t. He slowly got to his feet, still with Jackson at his back. Harry began to lower the heavy gun, and in that moment North uncoiled like an eel, the flick-knife blade opening in his hand and slamming into Jackson’s side.
‘Too old, Harry,’ he hissed. ‘Too slow.’
Jackson staggered back against the wall, and as his knees buckled he lifted the heavy revolver and pulled the trigger. There was a loud clunk as the hammer struck. He sank onto his knees, face screwed in pain, and lifted the gun again, struggling to thumb back the hammer.
Another clunk. This time North gave a wild whoop of mocking laughter. A jet of scarlet spurted from Harry Jackson’s mouth and he began to topple forward, and as the gun hit the floor a great explosion shattered the air.
It was a moment before Kathy realised what had happened. She took in Jackson spreadeagled on the floor, face down, and North slumped back against the end of the bed, facing him. His knife had dropped to the floor, there was a puzzled look on his face, and the top of his head, above the eyebrows, was gone.
The barking dog roused her. Far away at first, she gradually allowed herself to believe that it was coming closer. Not much time had passed, she thought, for her ears were still ringing from the explosion. She tried to shout, but her throat was dry and she could barely raise a cough. Then the door opened and the German shepherd bounced in, dragging a dog-handler behind it, closely followed by Lowry and Brock.
They all stopped dead, even the dog, at the shock of the scene in the room: four corpses, blood splashed everywhere, on the walls, the floors…
Kathy realised that one of the corpses was her. She lifted a pale face and muttered hoarsely, ‘About bloody time.’
Brock stared at her. ‘Oh, Kathy,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’
23
O n the way to hospital Brock confirmed that Sharon hadn’t phoned him, and explained that Lowry had been the one to raise the alarm. He had spent Christmas Eve drinking alone, until he reached the point of deciding to beat the hell out of his old mate Harry Jackson. He had driven to Silvermeadow, arriving after the centre had closed, and gone down to the service road. The security grille was pulled down for the night, but through it he had been able to make out both Jackson’s car and Kathy’s parked near the security centre window, in which a light was showing, but no sign of any staff on duty.
‘This’ll strike you as odd, Kathy,’ Brock continued, as the ambulance swayed down the motorway, ‘but for some extraordinary reason he decided to check with Hornchurch Street, and then with me, before he did anything.’ But his sarcasm was lost on her, he realised, lying there pale and withdrawn, and he decided to save it for later.
Actually, Leon Desai had already phoned Brock before Lowry’s message came in. Kathy wasn’t answering her phone at home, and her mobile number was reporting a fault. He just wondered if Brock knew that she was all right. Kathy didn’t react to that either, so Brock said no more.
At West Essex General they gave her immediate treatment for her damaged arm and face, and decided to keep her in for observation for the night.
The following day Brock picked her up and took her to Hornchurch Street where she made a full statement to him and a senior woman police officer, and then disappeared from sight.
The Christmas Day shifts were staffed mainly by men and women who either had no family to spend this special day with, like Brock and now Lowry, or else found it so stressful that they were pleased to volunteer for work. For those involved, clearing up after Kathy’s spectacular mess was a welcome chore.
There was Verdi to be arrested, on the basis of hard evidence at last, both the collection of sickeningly graphic tapes which were discovered in Jackson’s holdall, taken from Speedy’s house, and also the forensic traces they found in the octagonal room. And then there was the question of the girls, Naomi and Lisa. The fact that their testimony was no longer required either to incriminate Verdi or explain the fate of Speedy, Wiff and Kerri Vlasich raised something of a quandary. The only concrete evidence of their illicit drug business in the food court was their own confessions, and confessions could be retracted, especially by the young and vulnerable. How much effort was worth expending to make charges stick? Naomi’s grandmother seemed to have worked this out for herself when Brock spoke to her later on Christmas Day.
‘If it weren’t for the money,’ she said cautiously, ‘we might almost be prepared to forgive our Naomi. But you can’t just turn a blind eye to nearly forty thousand quid, now can you, Chief Inspector?’
Brock agreed that that was a problem.
‘I mean, we might say that Jack had had a windfall at the dogs, and it was nothing to do with Naomi at all. We might say that, but we’d never be able to take advantage of it, not knowing what we do. But supposing…’
She paused and looked wistfully at the little portrait gallery of her drug-blighted family on the wall.
‘Yes?’ Brock asked sympathetically.
‘Well, supposing it were given away, to a good cause, something to do with drug rehabilitation or something, as a memorial to Naomi’s poor mum, who passed away on this very day two years ago.’
‘Ah. Interesting thought,’ Brock said, scratching his beard.
‘Do you think so, Mr Brock? Do you really think so?’
Brock promised to consider it. In a few years, he thought, Naomi would have Nathan Tindall’s job, or own a satellite TV company, and he had no desire to blight the future career of such a promising young capitalist.
Late on Boxing Day, Brock sat down in front of the roaring gas fire with a cold snack and a bottle of excellent red, and resisted the impulse, yet again, to phone Suzanne. Instead he picked up the little book that she had brought for him, which he had not yet opened. Emile Zola, he read, turning over the fly-leaf; Au Bonheur des Dames, or The Ladies’ Paradise, 1861.
He closed it again and took a sip of the red, the same as the one Kathy had brought. It was difficult to concentrate on anything else. If it was closure you wanted, he thought, it was closure Kathy gave you. All the villains dead or sorted. Everything resolved-except, of course, Kathy herself.
Leon Desai, whom she had refused to see during the medical procedures and debriefing on Christmas Day, had turned up in some agitation on Brock’s doorstep this morning, thinking she must be sheltering there. But after accepting a Christmas drink and some words of advice he had returned to his parents’ home none the wiser.
After he had gone, Brock had driven over to Finchley and taken the lift to the twelfth floor of the block of flats where Kathy lived. Her neighbour, Mrs P, stuck her head out of her front door when she heard the key in Kathy’s lock, and Brock had given her a bottle of gift-wrapped port which he said Kathy had asked him to give her. She would be away for a while, he had explained, if Mrs P wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on her flat.
Inside the flat he had found the credit card statement from the bank, with its accompanying letter warning that her limit had now been exceeded. He had put it into his pocket and returned to his car, where he wrote out a cheque and put it into an envelope with the payment slip and posted it on the way back.
He gave a little start as the phone at his elbow began to ring.
‘Hello, David.’
‘Suzanne! How are things?’
‘Fine. What are you eating?’
‘Duck sandwich. How’s the patient?’
‘She’s not too bad. Enjoying a bit of hero worship, I think. I’m afraid you’ve lost your status as number one cop.’
‘Kathy has several advantages over me,’ he said. ‘She’s black and blue from head to foot, and she’s not likely to run off with their gran.’