It was just weird.
John Dixon scanned the street.
No way would Joe Stark abandon his post. No matter what was going on with Kelly. Not without a word. Anyone who didn’t know him would call that slim justification for pinging a phone location, but none who did.
Stark’s phone was on and, according to triangulation, right here outside the station. The desk sergeant said Stark had left through the front lobby and not returned.
The streetlights glinted off the smooth repair patches where bullets had torn into the road surface. Sometimes he stopped and stared at where the blood had been, or up the looming clocktower where Stark had almost died. But there was no blood now, and no Stark.
A car passed and, feeling self-conscious, he pulled out his phone and tried again.
It was only as the car’s lights passed that he saw it … A faint blue light in the bushes of Burney Gardens opposite. He hung up and it stopped, dialled again and …
Jogging across, he found the phone vibrating beneath a bush.
Stark’s.
John looked around, confused, and now doubly worried.
Minutes later he was logging into the Station CCTV suite with clumsy haste. The system was sluggish as he fumbled his way to what he needed. There were three cameras out front; one beneath the entrance canopy just above head height, and two higher covering the street each way.
Stark had left just before eleven … There … At 22:49 the camera showed him leaving the station entrance, leaning on his cane. He looked about and limped across the road behind a van. Then nothing. A minute later the van’s lights came on and it pulled away.
Stark was nowhere to be seen.
John played it again.
None of the cameras offered a view through the van, but he had a horrible feeling.
‘John,’ barked Groombridge, startling him as he entered at speed with three people in tow. Sergeant Ptolemy, who’d been kind during John’s rookie years, and his constant companion, Constable Peters, who John found intimidatingly female. Plus a pretty blonde in civvies that it took him a moment to recognize as Constable Pensol, the rookie that had caught a bullet in the shootings … much shorter hair, leaner and seeming older, as if the bullet had bled the softness from her youth.
‘Guv … What –’
‘Never mind that,’ said Groombridge.
‘But Guv –’
Groombridge ignored him, turning to Pensol. ‘Right, show me what you’ve got.’
‘Guv, seriously –’ John tried again, but Groombridge held up a hand to silence him.
The girl sat at the machine next to John’s, typed in her details, then plugged in a memory stick and called up a video file. ‘This is from a house opposite. I didn’t have my warrant card with me but her downstairs neighbour helped me sweet-talk the owner, after we scared the life out of each other.’ The file was decent quality colour. It angled down over the owner’s front door but just caught the footpath across the road between parked vehicles. ‘There …’ she pointed as legs passed and walked up a path, followed by another. ‘I was looking for a mugging, but then …’ One pair of legs backed out, dragging something out of sight behind a white van.
‘Where is this?’ asked John.
Something in his tone must have penetrated their attention.
‘Blackheath,’ said Pensol, looking at him for the first time, ‘Stark’s ex –’
‘Kelly,’ John finished the sentence before she could, a different kind of dread overcoming his usual hesitancy in the face of beauty. ‘There’s something you all should see.’
‘Why?’
Leech tilted his head. ‘Why what?’
‘Why any of this?’ asked Stark.
Leech’s eyes narrowed, guessing he was just playing for time. ‘Because I don’t like it when people think they’re better than me.’
‘Yeah, you must get tired of that,’ Stark replied levelly. The little hostage-negotiation training he’d received in Hendon Police Training Centre differed somewhat from army counter-interrogation techniques, but both highlighted the need to stay calm and non-confrontational, to keep your wits about you. Not easy when his wits were screaming to know where Kelly was and how he’d dragged her farther into his dark world than even he had ever feared possible.
Anger flared in Leech’s face, then he slowly shook his head and smiled. ‘You think I don’t know what you’re doing?’
‘One of us doesn’t. You’re out of your depth.’
‘Really?’ Leech indicated the room, and those who were tied up while he had a gun. ‘I get her,’ he pointed the gun at Leah, who whimpered faintly. ‘I make you watch, before I kill you too. Then I put the gun in Julian’s mouth and pin the whole thing on him, again.’
‘Just like you tried with Richard Hardacre. That took us two hours to figure out.’ Never mind the fact they’d mistakenly chased Sinclair for two years.
‘I’m losing patience,’ hissed Leech. ‘One of you three dies now. Decide or I’ll decide for you.’ The look in his eyes seemed deadly serious.
Logic dictated Stark choose Leah. The best chance of any of them surviving this was Stark himself, but should the opportunity come Julian was in better shape to assist than Leah, and it might indeed be merciful to end her suffering quickly now. But this wasn’t a numbers game. Stark’s chances of getting free remained low. He was in no doubt Leech meant to kill them all, at whatever speed. And the Glock wasn’t fitted with a suppressor. If the cavalry were their best hope, perhaps a gunshot might escape this dungeon to speed their arrival. ‘Me,’ he said quietly. ‘Shoot me.’
Leech watched him, like a playground bully after the first punch works too well. ‘Say please.’
‘Just do it,’ said Stark, training abandoned. ‘I’m sick of your face. No wonder you don’t like women saying no. Have any ever said yes?’
Leech’s anger rose again. Clenching his jaw, he stepped to Stark, raised the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
The dull click was deafening.
The only other sound in the deadened room was Leah’s stifled keening.
Stark opened his eyes to see Leech grinning.
No round. The magazine was empty.
Stark let out the breath he’d held, thinking it his last.
‘See,’ said a voice behind Leech. ‘I told you he’d choose himself.’