At the entrance of Tottenham Court Road station, Bel was greeted with glaring sunlight. Normally ascending from the underground into bright sunshine was one of her favourite things, but today she squinted at the glare, pulled the sunglasses down from her head, and burst into a steady run down Oxford Street. If her calculations were correct and her pace remained constant, she would reach her destination, and hopefully Esther, within four minutes.
People stared at her. Who wouldn’t? Her only saving grace was that no one was chasing her. She muttered “sorry” as she knocked into dawdling tourists and window-shoppers. Oxford Street was notoriously busy. As one of London’s premier shopping locations, it was rarely quiet. The masses of people were so dense on the footpath, it was easy enough to lose a friend just walking out of a shop together. While a busy street had its advantages, she was forced to alternate between the gutter and the footpath to maintain a steady pace. Taxis and buses beeped her but she carried on relentlessly.
A rickshaw with loud dance music pulled alongside her. “Hop in, baby. You’re sure in a hurry.”
The words were laced with an Eastern European accent that didn’t seem to fit. On any other day, Bel would have smiled at his attempt to be a suave Jamaican; however, this lean, pale, bearded man was far from Jamaican. He was a godsend. She jumped in.
“Oxford Circus, please,” said Bel.
Obviously sensing the urgency of the situation, the man nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.” The muscles in his legs tightened as he rose from his seat and began pedalling, forcing the contraption to gain momentum.
Bel scrummaged in her jean pockets for money. She pulled out a five-pound and a ten-pound note. The earlier conversation with Esther came flooding back. She pushed the five back into her jeans, then pulled out her phone. It had beeped the moment it came back into range, but it was just a text message from Charlie urging her to return to HQ. She dialled voice mail and found three voice messages.
“Hey, can you turn that down, please.” She raised her voice over the throbbing dance beat, and the driver immediately flicked a switch on his makeshift dashboard that held a sat nav and an iPhone.
She could at least hear herself think now.
The first message was from Charlie. “Bel. You’re making a career-destroying mistake. Call me and we can sort this out.”
The second message was from Esther. Her heart faltered. She held her breath in anticipation.
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
That was it. I’ll be waiting for you.
Bel was so elated to hear from Esther she nearly didn’t bother to listen to the third message. The tone of Charlie’s voice immediately demanded her attention. “It’s a setup.” Charlie was speaking in a panicked whisper. “You won’t have long—” After a few moments when it sounded like the phone was being covered somehow, the call ended.
Although it was difficult to hear details with all the activity on Oxford Street, Bel was almost certain Charlie had cut the call short because someone was listening, or perhaps she’d been interrupted. Either way, it was a warning, and the tone in Charlie’s voice from one message to the other was so dramatically different that it demanded serious consideration.
Bel reviewed the information. It was sketchy at best. Esther was probably waiting for her at Oxford Circus station, and something about the current situation was a setup. Charlie was warning Bel, so the setup had something to do with her. Or more likely, Esther. But whose side was Esther on? Esther was being hunted, she was a suspected suicide bomber, and she was Esme Gaffney. Who was setting up whom, and what could Bel do to protect herself?
She began with the obvious: remove the clothing Abby would have reported she was wearing. She jerked her gun from her holster, untucked her T-shirt, and pushed the gun down the front of her jeans, pulling her T-shirt over the top. She loosened her belt. It was uncomfortable as hell, and she adjusted the weapon as a man would his appendage in uncomfortable underpants. She removed her new hat, jacket, and the gun holster, stuffing them down the side of the seat. It briefly occurred to her that work would be pissed off that she needed a new holster until she remembered she’d probably need a new career. The thought saddened her, but right now, it was the least of her worries.
As the rickshaw pulled up onto the curb at one of the entrances of Oxford Circus station, she decided to trust no one. Not Charlie, and until she knew more, not even Esther, but especially not Conrad Rush. Bel was on her own.
The driver was clearly surprised to have a ten-pound note thrust in his hand, but he smiled his thanks. Beyond that, Bel had no idea what he did; she was already down the stairs inside the station.
She tried to think what Rush would do, knowing Abby had spotted her at Tottenham Court Road station. How far would he be expecting her to travel beyond there? Would his calculated guess presume she was close to Esther? It was useless trying to second-guess someone trying to second-guess you. She gave up and focused on expecting every outcome. Every bad outcome. She wanted to be prepared for the worst.
Oxford Circus station was under the intersection of Oxford and Regent Streets. Three lines intersected at Oxford Circus: Bakerloo, Central, and Victoria lines. Oxford Circus had six platforms; it was the busiest train station in the whole of the United Kingdom.
If Esther had stayed where she was when Bel spotted her on the cameras at Control, she’d know exactly where to find her, but a woman wearing a bulky black jacket in the middle of summer, sitting stationary while trains came and went, would draw attention to herself. So, even though Bel would commence her search where she’d first spotted Esther, she didn’t for one moment expect to find her there.
Bel descended the escalators to platform three, the southbound Bakerloo line. She walked the entire length of the platform, relieved not to find Esther. She performed the same sweep of the northbound Bakerloo line on platform four with the same result.
The Victoria line was the latest addition to services at Oxford Circus, being added in 1969. The northbound and southbound lines ran from platforms not adjacent to each other; they were separated by the two Bakerloo lines. The northbound Victoria line was the closest, so she rushed there next.
It was nearing the end of the three-hour peak period on the underground from six to nine a.m., and the seconds were ticking for Esther. She scanned constantly for any signs of other Hotstream agents. In the back of her mind she knew at least one must be there, but with so many stations and walkways and ticket offices, Control must have known they were looking for another needle in a haystack. Bel prayed that just for a few minutes longer she remained undetected. She was close. She could sense it.
It was a mind fuck, trying to remain undetected while simultaneously trying to determine if she had been detected, if she was being followed, and if someone was scanning the faces of everybody they encountered, trying to find her. She forced herself to look at the people surrounding her while at the same time hoping no one was looking her way.
A train was arriving on the southbound Victoria-line platform when she turned right into a crowd of people edging forward. Everyone stood staring expectantly as the train slowed, eyes forward attempting to locate the carriage with the most available seats. Some people shuffled right, some left, but one set of eyes wasn’t looking forward, was oblivious to the incoming train, and harboured pure fear.
Esther’s eyes were fixed on Bel. She was barely twenty metres away.
Bel was so relieved, she held her breath and stumbled into a suited lady when she finally exhaled. “I’m so sorry.” The woman didn’t acknowledge her, just pushed forward to board the train.
When Bel looked up, Esther was gone.
Bel pushed through the crowd, but now the platform was full of people who had just disembarked the train. She couldn’t win with these crowds. She jumped up and down trying to spot Esther, but gave up when she realised she might draw unnecessary attention to herself. She spied a set of seats. On the London underground, seats, usually in sets of fours, were sparsely scattered along the back wall of most tunnels. It was a risk, riskier than bobbing up and down in a mass of people, but the reward was probably greater. She could stand well above everybody on the platform and spot Esther immediately.
Oh, fuck it! She pushed her way to the rear of the platform, stepped up, and scanned the area where Esther had been. She was almost upon that spot now, but there was no Esther. She glanced back to where she had come from, on the off chance they had unknowingly passed each other. Nope. No Esther. Finally, before stepping down she looked to the far end of the platform. The train began to move, and as the final carriage disappeared into the black tunnel, so did Esther.
“Esther, no!”
Bel leapt from the seat and barged her way to the far end of the platform. “Esther!”
What the hell was Esther doing? She had to get to her before she killed herself or blew up the damn tunnel.
The commotion behind her gained momentum, and she turned to see a Metropolitan Transport employee and a couple of eager members of the public rushing in her direction. It was now or never.
Bel leapt onto the train tracks. Wafts of black sooty dust rose as she disturbed the sediment with every step. She quickly found her stride and chased Esther, calling her name. A residual glow from the platform provided enough light for her to proceed at speed. A quick glance around her and she knew she’d have to maintain a decent pace because there was certainly nowhere to hide in the tunnel yet. Most tunnels had alcoves and doors leading to staircases and passages only accessible on foot, but if another train came now, she’d have nowhere to go but to lie down in the suicide pit. She would fit in the pit, she knew that based on the dimensions she’d studied during training, but the thought of a train hurtling over the top of her wasn’t an attractive prospect.
“Esther,” she called. “Wait, please, just wait.” She couldn’t see Esther, but she knew she could be heard. She also knew the Hotstream team would be on its way. If there had been an agent at Oxford Circus, it would only be a matter of minutes before Control would have the train on that line stalled while the agent accessed the tunnel. Bel was now a terrorist suspect, along with Esther, and she would not be afforded special treatment.
Something caught her eye on the left hand side of the tunnel. Esther’s bag. It sat atop a large metal hatch. She pulled on the hatch. It was unlocked. Of course it was unlocked. Bel had to think and it had to be quickly.
She grabbed the bag, opened the hatch, and disappeared. Bel found herself in a small tunnel. She quickly flashed her torch in the immediate vicinity. She couldn’t see Esther. A quick look around and she knew she was in the disused Royal Mail tunnel, out of service since 2003. How did Esther know how to access the tunnel? She paused, crouching low, and gathered her thoughts.
For the imminent future, by slipping under the Hotstream radar, Bel had limited herself to two options. Option one was to find out Conrad was wrong and this was all one big mistake. In Bel’s experience, mistakes rarely end up in a disused tunnel under London, so she wasn’t holding out much hope. The second option was causing her the most distress. If her worst fears were correct, in the Royal Mail tunnel now were one bomber and one armed Hotstream officer.
Bel drew her gun, flashed her torch left, then right, and chose to go right because the tunnel followed a path away from Oxford Circus station. More access doors or hatches were likely inside the station, increasing the chance of interception by her team. She lowered her torch to illuminate the immediate space in front of her and set off at a steady pace.
The only sound she heard was the crunching of heavy blue metal stones under her feet. She shined the torch on her watch. It had been over four minutes since she’d followed the train on the northbound Victoria line into the tunnel, and she’d not heard or felt a train since. It was too long. She had seen that the next train had been due three minutes ago. Service on the line was surely suspended. It was likely the platform had been evacuated, and it was possible the whole station was in the process of evacuation.
Bel had studied cross-section diagrams and maps of the entire underground system. She forced her brain to recall a three-dimensional diagram of Oxford Circus. In the picture in her mind, she removed all commuters and tried to think where the Hotstream officers would come from and where they would go. Given that it was now almost five minutes since she had disappeared into blackness chasing Esther, she placed at least two officers in the tunnel and another five arriving at the scene. It was only a matter of time before either someone saw the hatch or Control directed an officer to it.
Bel longed to breathe fresh air. Her heart was racing, and she deeply inhaled the stale, dusty air in the oppressive tunnel. She’d never been claustrophobic, even after the time she was accidentally locked in the cupboard under the stairs as a small child, but the Royal Mail tunnel was barely over two meters in diameter, and the thought of sharing the space with Esther and a wad of explosives left her on the verge of panic. She concentrated on the rhythm of her steps and attempted to focus in preparation for what might transpire next.
“Bel, stop there.” Esther’s voice echoed through the tunnel.
Bel thought she would be relieved when she caught up with Esther, but her voice was different. Esther sounded empty. Bel stalled and immediately shone her torch in the direction of the voice. The powerful light beam illuminated Esther no more than thirty metres away. Bel trained her Glock onto Esther before switching off the light. Charlie’s warning reverberated in her mind. She let her finger rest heavily on the trigger. At this distance, in such a small tunnel, Bel was sure she wouldn’t survive the blast if Esther detonated. Her only solace was that no one else would get hurt. If Esther detonated, the whole purpose of killing scores of people in a suicide bomb attack was a failure.
Just the two of them would perish.
“What’s going on, Esther?”
“Don’t shoot me.”
Bel felt nauseous at hearing Esther, the woman she loved, asking her not to shoot her. The enormity of the situation finally hit her. How had they arrived here? The facts were simple. Right now, Bel was the only one that might shoot her. She kept her gun and torch aloft and ready.
“Whatever’s going on, Esther, we can talk about it.”
“This isn’t the afternoon shift at the O2 Arena, Bel. Who are you?”
“I lied to you. I’m sorry.”
“Are you a cop?”
The charade was over. “I work for MI5. I’m in anti-terrorism.”
“This morning, I had no idea,” said Esther. “But you did, didn’t you? You knew who I was.”
“This morning I fucked up my job and stumbled upon you. When I saw you I wanted to warn you there was danger on the underground. I wanted you to make me feel better about my shitty job, but then you disappeared.”
“What did you fuck up?”
“I wrongly suspected a mother with a child of being a suicide bomber. I’d been ordered back to base when I ran into you.”
“You were searching for a bomber?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Bel didn’t understand the question. This wasn’t the conversation she imagined having with Esther. Had Charlie been lying? Who was setting up whom? “How do we search for a bomber?”
“No, how did you know there was a bomber?”
“We had intelligence. We had a description.”
“Of me?”
“Yes. And then you disappeared.”
“You need to listen to me carefully, Bel. Please keep an open mind.”
Bel held her breath. “Whatever you’ve done, we can walk away from it. Together. I promise,” said Bel.
“You don’t understand. I don’t have the power to make that decision.”
“Yes, you do.” Bel wanted to run to Esther and hold her, assure her that whoever was putting her up to this could be caught, would be stopped. Bel refused to consider that Esther was working alone. She took one step toward her but didn’t advance further. She closed her eyes in the oppressive darkness and regrouped her thoughts.
“To my knowledge, I have approximately fifteen kilograms of explosive in a jacket around my torso. There’s other stuff in with them too, I can tell that. Pieces of metal or nails maybe.”
To your knowledge? There were others. She knew Esther didn’t have it in her to make a bomb jacket. It was a slight relief to realise for certain she wasn’t working alone. Bel instantly hated the asshole who’d brainwashed Esther and talked her into this. How had he, or they, convinced Esther to hate so much that she wanted to kill for them and kill herself in the process?
“Please, just while we’re down here, just while it’s you and me, please put the detonator down. Maybe just rest it gently on the ground while we talk.”
A wry laugh came from Esther. “I don’t have the detonator.”
“What?” Bel couldn’t believe Esther was stupid enough to leave the detonation to someone else.
“I’m not a suicide bomber. I’ve been set up. Do you know a police officer called Conrad Rush?”
“Rush?” How the hell did Esther know who Conrad Rush was? “Rush isn’t a police officer, Esther. He’s the head of the London and Underground Anti-Terrorist Response Unit.”
“It’s all the same. You’re all the same.”
“How do you know Rush?”
“I realise all this might be difficult to comprehend, but the name I was born with wasn’t Esther Banks.”
“I know who you are. You’re Esmeralda Gaffney.”
“So you’ll know enough to understand the implications when I tell you Conrad Rush’s father killed my dad.”
It was all happening too fast for Bel. She shook her head, trying to jiggle the information into some sense of order. “MI5 pokes around in your past and in your life. How could it go unnoticed that Rush’s father was a convicted criminal?”
“His father’s name is Alan McGory. He was a creep of a man, by all accounts, and was never named on his birth certificate. I imagine his mother lived in fear of him, but when he was charged with murder, she fled to Scotland. I suppose she saw a chance to escape and begin a new life. Conrad resents his mother for not standing by his father.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Bel.
“He told me when he was strapping explosives to my body and setting the detonator.”
“Fucking hell.” Bel lowered her gun and switched on her torch. Esther shielded the bright light from her eyes. “Sorry.” She directed the light at the side of the tunnel, and it remained strong enough to see Esther. She walked toward her.
“No. Don’t come any closer. I honestly don’t know if this will go off or not.”
Bel instinctively stepped back after the warning, but everything in her wanted to go to Esther. “So, Alan McGory was IRA?”
“Yes. My father’s investigation put Alan McGory in prison for life. According to Conrad Rush, he died there.”
It all made sense now. Rush had said Esther was working alone. Bel now knew the tip-off for the undercover officers came from him. He knew Esther wouldn’t have been back at her place when they were looking for her. “I’m glad you listened to my message. I’m glad you stayed put until I found you.”
“What?”
“I left a voice message for you. I found you on the CCTV footage at Control. I came here to find you as soon as I saw you. I left you a message.”
Esther lowered her head and her voice failed. “I meant in heaven. I thought you were on your way to work. By the time you listened to the message, I thought I’d be dead. I wanted you to know I was waiting for you.”
Oh hell.
“I was supposed to be on the Hammersmith line, and my target was the son of one of the officers who investigated my father’s death and who helped put McGory in prison.”
It didn’t make sense. The Hotstream team was trained to shoot a suspected bomber. The way Rush had run the investigation and hunted Esther down, she’d likely have been shot before she had a chance to find the target. Then it dawned on her.
“You didn’t do as you were told, did you?”
“No. He said he had you and would kill you if I didn’t do what I was supposed to. But then I saw you at the station and knew he didn’t have you. I knew you had no idea what was going on. I went aboveground to get here.”
“He lost you. That’s why he had to tell us you were the bomber. All morning he sent us on a wild-goose chase as a decoy, but then he lost you and needed to find you. He needed us to find you.” The pieces were beginning to fit.
“Why here? And I saw you fifteen minutes ago, sitting in the same spot on the platform.”
“I made my way here after I left you. I knew about the Royal Mail tunnel from a school project. God knows how I remembered it. I was moving between here and the southbound line, trying to remember where I should jump on the line and trying to calculate a safe distance before the next train came. I can’t hurt anybody down here, and I don’t know if he can get a signal to blow this thing up. He said it’s booby-trapped. If I try to take it off, it’ll explode.”
“Can you remember what he did when he put it on you?” Bel’s brain switched into Hotstream mode.
“It’s like a vest with a zip. He said my body heat was keeping it from exploding. As soon as I take it off and the temperature drops, it’ll go off.”
Bel ran through the scenario in her head. She hadn’t heard of a device set to explode after a drop in body temperature. She seriously wondered if it were a load of shite.
“He switched a button and a red light came on,” said Esther. “He showed me an old Nokia mobile phone, said it was more stable than the new ones. He said he would set it off with that phone.” Esther began to cry. “He said he had you and would kill you if I didn’t do what I was told.”
“We’ll work something out, I promise.” Bel began to pace. Three steps forward, three steps back.
“He said I was already dead. He said the only person I could save was you.”
Bel stopped. “But you had to kill dozens of innocent people to do that.”
“Then I saw you and I knew it was a lie.”
Bel made a decision. “I want you to listen to me carefully. I need you to take off both jackets simultaneously. Unzip them both and take them off together.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“The bomb vest is zipped at the back.”
Of course it is.
Bel advanced down the tunnel.
“Don’t, Bel. Stay back. It’s not safe.”
“I have an idea. We have to work a way out of this.” Bel continued to walk at a brisk pace. She bounced a light beam off the wall and onto Esther’s face. “Trust me, okay?”
When she stood before Esther, she gently touched her face. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, you too.” Esther was crying.
A loud clanking noise stopped them both dead.
“We don’t have much time.” Bel recognised the sound of the hatch opening and closing. She turned her head, and even at the distance she estimated they were from the hatch, she could see faint beams of light back down the tunnel. “Take your coat off and put it on backward.” Esther did as she was told. The bomb vest underneath was grey and stitched neatly. It was a professional job. “I’m going to unzip the vest, and on the count of three, we’re going to push both jackets off you, trying to keep as much heat in as possible.”
“And then what?”
Bel shrugged. “And then we run for our lives.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Got a better one?”
“No, but aren’t you a bomb expert? Can’t you disarm it or something?”
“Honey, I shoot people with bombs. I usually don’t get close enough to have a fiddle with it.” Bel glanced down the tunnel. The light beams were becoming larger.
Esther put her jacket on backward. “Incidentally, how many people have you shot?”
Bel took up position behind her, ready to unzip the vest. “None.”
Esther turned and kissed her. “I love you.”
Bel smiled. “Tell me again when we’re out of this mess, and I promise I’ll say it back.”
“What if…”
“We will. I promise.” She switched her torch on. “Now, on my count. One, two, three.”
In a remarkably smooth motion, Bel unzipped the vest and pushed both jackets from Esther’s shoulders.
“Run!”
Bel was sure she’d grabbed Esther and turned to run before the jacket and vest hit the ground. The gravel beneath their feet crunched as they ran for their lives.
Bel braced herself for the explosion. Esther was bracing herself too, if the bone-crushing hold she had of Bel’s hand was anything to go by.
The air was thick with dust, but she pushed her lungs to inhale deeply, forcing oxygen to the spent muscles in her legs. She could hear Esther’s laboured breathing, and it was only when she began to gasp and stumble that Bel realised the jacket hadn’t exploded.
Bel stopped running. “We’re far enough. It didn’t blow.”
Esther doubled over puffing, unable to offer more than a grunt.
“He lied. He fucking put you through hell, and he fucking lied about it.”
“Us.” Esther flung her arms above her head, expanding her chest to suck in valuable air. “He put us through hell.”
“Oh, you think that’s hell?” A familiar voice echoed through the tunnel from in front of them.
Bel drew her gun. She knew the Hotstream team was behind her, so Rush must have entered the tunnel through a different hatch. It stood to reason that he was trying to tidy up his mess before the others found them.
Esther gasped.
When Bel trained the beam of light on Conrad Rush, it wasn’t to see who it was, but to blind him with the strong light. When she caught a glimpse of his gun, pointing right at them, instinct took over.
Bel deliberately lowered her gun an inch or two and discharged her firearm. She shot Conrad in the thigh.
“You fucking shot me, you bitch.” He hit the ground after the bullet—shot from a range of approximately fifteen metres—propelled him backward.
Bel’s heart pounded, and she was convinced it would thump right out of her chest. Her aim was perfect. She was briefly surprised by her hidden talents, but then Conrad Rush had pissed her off today. The sensation of a firearm in her hand, freshly smoking from the bullet, was exhilarating. In reality, she knew her Glock wasn’t smoking, those theatrics were for the television, but the smell of a bullet exiting a gun she’d successfully discharged, landing Rush flat on his arse, was a job well done in her book.
“And I’ll shoot you again if you even think about using that.” She aimed her torch and her gun toward Rush’s right hand and his own service weapon, just centimetres from his fingers.
His fingers twitched.
“Go ahead. Really, sir, I enjoyed the first one so much, I’d welcome another excuse to have a second go,” said Bel.
“Okay, okay.” He moved his hand to press on his wound.
Bel walked toward him.
“Christ, I can’t believe you shot me.” He winced. A bullet through your thigh would be agony.
Bel picked up his weapon and tucked it in the back of her jeans. She went and stood by Esther. “It’s not the fucking movies, Rush. What were you expecting, a witty dialogue of banter before we both drew our weapons, mine on you, yours on Esther? Or were we going to walk back ten paces and have a good old-fashioned shootout?”
He groaned.
“Nope, not the way I roll. I’m into time management. By shooting you now, I’ve saved us all a rather uncomfortable few minutes.”
“Don’t ever write a book, Reilly. It’ll have a shit ending.”
“How about I write the ending?” Esther’s voice was cold.
From the corner of her eye, Bel could see Esther was pointing something at Rush. She immediately felt the back of her jeans. Esther had Rush’s gun.
“Esther, put the gun down.”
Esther wasn’t listening. “How about I do to you what your father did to my father?”
“Your father cried like a girl, cried for his dear old mammy. My father put him out of his miserable existence.”
“Your father put him down like a dog.” Esther was crying. “I was there, remember? I saw it all. Your father was an evil man, and I can see the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“My father had a vision for Ireland. You wouldn’t know a damn thing about that. You have no pride, no sense of place, no sense of patriotism. It’s people like you who let the English divide Ireland, and it’s idiots like your father who should have shut their mouth and let the real men fight.”
Esther laughed. “Like you fought the gallant fight this morning? You strapped a fucking bomb to a woman, to me, you asshole, and you were going to watch me blow up myself and innocent others. You know nothing about real men. You’re a castrated version of your father. You’re impotent because you lack courage. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you.”
“I can think of one,” said Bel.
“Stay out of this, Bel. This is between me and the gutless prick who tried to kill me today.”
Bel touched Esther’s shoulder. “And if you shoot him, you’ll be no better than he is.”
Esther began to shake.
“Please, Esther.”
Bel turned as the cavalry finally arrived. She stood between them and Esther. After all, it was her they were hunting. “I’m Officer Belinda Reilly with the Hotstream team. I have this situation under control.”
“Officer Reilly, you have no authority here. You are an enemy of the state. Please put your weapon down.”
Bel recognised the voice as Jason’s from Liverpool. She knew he would shoot her if he had to, if he’d been ordered to do so.
“I can’t do that, Jason.” Bel worked to keep her voice even. “The vest of explosives you’re hopefully dealing with back there was placed on a woman called Esther Banks this morning.”
“Officer Reilly, stand down immediately.”
“The man who made Esther wear that vest is right here. It’s Conrad Rush.”
“What?” Nothing could disguise the surprise in Jason’s voice.
“He’s been shot. He’s alive, but his leg is pretty bad.” She remembered the message Charlie left her. “Where’s Charlie, Jason? You need to talk to her. She can explain.” Bel hoped she was right. She hoped Charlie had worked it out.
“Charlie’s on her way to Guys and St Thomas, Reilly. She was mugged just outside base.”
Bel detected that Jason’s explanation lacked conviction. She pounced on the opportunity. “I’m standing here with Esther Banks, who was born as Esmeralda Gaffney. Her father was killed by Alan McGory in Dublin. Alan McGory’s son is Conrad Rush, but he’s not listed on the birth certificate, so it’ll take longer for you to check that out than he’s got to live.”
Bel knew by Jason’s hesitation that she had him thinking.
Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the tunnel. The noise was deafening, and the blast propelled them against the grimy walls. Bel’s ears rang, and a plume of dust engulfed them.
“Jason!” Bel stumbled to her feet. She checked Esther first, who was dusting herself off but seemed otherwise okay. “Jason!”
She could hear panicked voices, and in the commotion she heard the Hotstream officers call each of their names. The dust was thick and suffocating.
“We’re all right back here,” called Jason. His coughing and spluttering echoed toward her.
Bel turned to see Esther standing over Conrad. “We need to get out of here, Esther. The tunnel may not be stable.”
Esther wasn’t listening to her. When Bel arrived, the gun Esther was holding was pointing directly at Conrad’s head. “Come on, Esther. It’s over.”
“I watched your father beat my dad, I watched him rape him with a gun, and I watched him fire a bullet into both his knees so he didn’t stand a chance of escape.”
Esther bent down and rested the gun on Rush’s knee. “This one’s for my dad.” She pulled the trigger, and the recoil of firing the gun sent her backward.
Rush screamed in agony.
Bel couldn’t believe what was happening. Before she had a chance to intervene, Esther advanced again, this time with the gun against the other kneecap. “And this one’s for me.” She pulled the trigger.