The engine roared, the Beamer responding to his every urging like a thoroughbred, racing under blues and twos with an armed unit in tow.
Slamming on the brakes with a curse, Harper slowed just enough to avoid T-boning a taxi through a red light, ducking behind it and racing on. Beside him, Hammed gripped the roof handle and his seat in grim silence between occasional directions. Harper knew what he was doing. He’d done the advance driving course, back in uniform. Years ago, maybe, but it was like riding a bike …
Leah Willoughby’s flat.
Her neighbour had caught the news on TV and couldn’t help thinking their new person of interest looked a bit like the fella that rented the ground-floor flat below Leah Willoughby’s six months ago – kept himself to himself apart from the motorbike coming and going all hours and the loud music. And apparently, there was a white van clogging up the rear car park now.
After a day of false dawns, maybe this would be the one. And poor Fran, realizing he was nearest, had done the right thing and called him – handed him a chance of victory for the greater good, doubtless through gritted teeth. The idea that Stark had been kidnapped from right outside the station was frankly ludicrous, but Harper didn’t care much either way. Serve him right if he had. Only catching Leech mattered.
He swung the car through a roundabout, trying not to grin. This was what being a copper was all about. The gunning engine and siren were his music, adrenaline and cigarettes his sustenance, and catching Leech red-handed would be his end-of-date sex.
Brian Leech’s breathing had slowly subsided until there could be no doubt it had ceased altogether.
Only then did Sinclair cease staring into his eyes. ‘Dull,’ he said, dissatisfied. ‘Not much spark there in the first place. You don’t want to dose them too much or you never see it go out. That last, pleading look.’ He sighed. ‘Still, business before pleasure. Besides …’ He stood slowly, brightening, eyeing Stark. ‘My cup runneth over.’
As Leech had slowly expired, Sinclair had calmly explained how he would arrange this tragic tableau mort for the police to find, none of which boded well for Leah.
What the police would find, and when, were very much on Stark’s mind too. His bonds and gag remained too secure for hope. Coppers lived with risk. Violence was a constant threat in uniform, in harm’s way on the streets of the living, but Stark might have expected to grow soft in the house of the dead, steering an MIT desk and staring down suspects in the safety of the interview room. Subsequent events had proved that wrong, but who would have thought, after three full tours of duty in front-line war zones, he’d face flying bullets in civvy street and then end here? But right now, his foremost questions were the whereabouts and wellbeing of Kelly, Leah’s dull whimpering, and how to get free in time to do anything about either.
Sinclair looked at Leah with a weary expression. ‘You know, since she escaped I’ve often thought about finishing what I started. That final squeeze. But now we’re here, she really just disgusts me too much.’
Taking the sports bottle, he unclipped Leah’s gag, forced the straw into her mouth and squeezed. She gagged and choked, perhaps with more fight in her than Leech, but swallowed. ‘There,’ he said, patting her on the head like a good little doggie and looking to Stark with a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Time for the real finale.’