‘Two!’
Fox was staring right at her now, a maniacal energy in his eyes.
She knew he was going to pull the trigger.
‘One!’
And then the shot rang out, echoing through the cold night air.
Seventy-nine
21.39
For a few seconds, Tina didn’t even breathe. Then, slowly, she exhaled and lowered the gun as the armed officers raced over to her. She made no move to resist as the Glock was carefully removed from her fingers. Instead she stared down at the man she’d just shot.
Fox lay on his back, convulsing and gasping for air, his hands down by his side, his eyes wide with shock. His gun had dropped from his hand and was now out of reach — not that he was in any position to use it. She’d shot him once, in the chest, and already his movements were beginning to slow as his heart stopped working.
A group of officers approached him carefully, pointing their MP5s down at his torso, but none made any move to help him. Only when his eyes closed and he stopped moving altogether did someone shout for medical help, but by that point Tina was already walking away from the scene, almost in a daze, her heart hammering in her chest, as she tried to come to terms with what had happened.
One of the officers walked with her. Putting an arm round her shoulders, he asked if she was OK. She wasn’t. She was shell-shocked. She’d seen too much in one day — more than her mind could quite take in. But she shrugged off his arm and told him she was OK, and he didn’t try to stop her, even though she was going to have to make a statement.
More people were coming up the incline now, a long, straggling line of police officers, the majority of them armed, and ambulance crew. They were hurrying, some glancing across as they passed, but no one saying anything. Whether they knew who she was or not, it seemed as though they all wanted to give her a wide berth. Blue lights flashed through the trees in a wide and ever-growing arc as the emergency services continued to arrive in large numbers — but too late, as so often, to prevent the bloodbath.
Tina sighed. She’d been played. They all had. She’d fallen for Fox’s lies. She’d believed that he was genuinely going to cooperate. So, it seemed, had a lot of other people, including members of the government, who’d authorized his move to a safehouse. No one had believed that the individuals they were dealing with would have dared launch such an audacious rescue attempt. But perhaps they should have done. Audacious attacks seemed to be these people’s forte. Jesus, they’d even attacked the Shard.
But ultimately they’d failed. London had been shaken, but it was still there, just as it had been when the attacks had started this morning; and the perpetrators hadn’t been able to achieve their goal of making it look like the work of homegrown Islamic extremists, further diminishing the effect of their bombs.
Fox, too, had got the fate he deserved. Tina found it hard to believe that she’d been the one who’d killed him. She’d killed before, more than once. Two of those killings had been legal and were out in the public domain. One wasn’t, and never would be. But the shock of ending a life always hit her like a hard, physical blow, especially when it was done at close quarters. She wasn’t a soldier. She hadn’t been trained to kill. She was just a copper, for Christ’s sake, although after tonight, she wasn’t sure for how much longer.
Still, she was too tired to worry about that now. Reaching into her jacket with shaking hands, she pulled out a cigarette and lit it, savouring the hit as the smoke flew down her throat and into her lungs.
Before she called it a day, though, she needed to do one more thing.
Eighty
21.50
After he’d broken the boy’s neck, Voorhess allowed himself a well-deserved sigh of relief.
Given the numbers of police who’d been trying to catch him, he’d been extremely lucky to have made it this far, but Voorhess was a firm believer in the maxim that ultimately you made your own luck. He’d remained calm when others would have panicked, had adapted his plan to suit the rapidly changing circumstances, and even though he’d been betrayed, he’d outrun his pursuers and beaten their roadblocks.
On the seat next to him, the boy sat facing Voorhess, his neck tilted at an awkward angle. Voorhess pulled the boy’s baseball cap down over his face so that he didn’t have to look at him. The boy had told him that he was eighteen, and Voorhess felt a pique of sadness that he’d had to kill him. At least it had been quick. As the boy had pulled into the parking space, Voorhess had reached over, slipped an arm round his neck, like they were old rugby buddies, and done it one swift movement, so that the boy hadn’t had to suffer. Eighteen was a very young age to die, just when you were on the cusp of adulthood, with a whole bright world of adventure about to open up. But it didn’t look as if this boy — with his bad skin, his poor looks and his terrible taste in music — appreciated life in the way he should have done, and as a result, in Voorhess’s mind, his death was less tragic than it might otherwise have been.
He got out of the car, closing the door gently behind him, and stretched. It had been an uncomfortable as well as nerve-racking journey here, and his back was aching. Rolling his shoulders, and keeping his head down, he looked around. He was on the fourth floor of the short-stay car park at Heathrow’s Terminal 4, parked in a dark corner, and at this time of night it was mostly empty. Surprisingly, he could still hear the sounds of the occasional plane taking off and coming in to land, which meant that despite his missile attack, flights were still going in and out of Heathrow.
A lift bleeped, and Voorhess stepped into the shadows as a couple walked out pushing a luggage trolley. He waited until they’d got in their car and pulled away before transferring the boy from the driver’s seat to the car’s boot, so that he was hidden from view, only just managing to squeeze him in.
Then, grabbing the bag that contained his few possessions, he flung it over his shoulder and walked away from the car, feeling a sense of satisfaction at a job well done, and already dreaming of sunshine and money.
Eighty-one
23.00
Mike Bolt was lying in the hospital bed with his eyes closed, a bandage round his head, when Tina walked in. She’d had to beg the officers from CTC to let her come here before they took her away to Paddington Green Station for questioning about her part in what had happened that night. So far, she wasn’t under arrest, even though she’d shot dead two men using a police-issue gun she wasn’t authorized to use. But she guessed this was only because so far no one had figured out exactly what to arrest her for, given the unprecedented nature of the night’s events. As soon as they did, she’d be facing charges of some sort.
The doctor had told her that the results of the CT scan they’d given Mike when he’d arrived at the hospital had shown no major head trauma and that it looked like the concussion he was suffering from was mild. Now he just needed to rest.
Tina approached the bed. Looking at him lying there, she felt a sudden urge to cry that she only just managed to suppress. She’d promised the doctor she wouldn’t wake him, but as she stopped by the bed, taking a deep breath to push down her emotions, his eyes opened, taking a couple of seconds to focus on her.
‘You’re OK?’ he whispered.
She put a hand on his. ‘I’m fine. Everything’s all right now.’
‘I heard shots over the phone. What happened?’ His voice was weak and he sounded exhausted.