Led by the Test Card Girl, Sam stepped through the church doors and into the aisle. Their arrival was silent – unnaturally so – and went completely unnoticed.
Gene’s heartless assertion that the hostages would have starved to death by now was not quite accurate. They were clearly malnourished, but had survived on the vicar’s meagre supplies of tea, biscuits and tap water. The wretched collection of cold, hungry and dishevelled pensioners were huddled together near the altar. With their headscarves and mittens on, and their frightened, staring eyes peeping out, they looked like refugees from a war zone. Too terrified and confused to even think about making a break for freedom, they had clustered together where they had been ordered and stayed there, waiting.
But the vicar himself was not with them. He was slumped over the Bible in his pulpit, and at first glance Sam thought he might be dead. But no – his long, slow snores could be heard echoing about the church. It was this sound that told Sam that the Test Card Girl’s strange, enveloping silence had vanished – and when he glanced down at his side, so had she. But his fingers were still cold from where her icy hand had held them.
There was no sign of the Test Card Girl, and for several moments there was no sign of Carroll either. But then Sam glimpsed movement, up in the pulpit just behind the snoring vicar. Carroll was moving about uncertainly, muttering to himself, babbling.
Sam decided that the moment had come to announce his presence.
‘We need to straighten everything out here, Michael,’ he said. At once, Carroll’s face popped up behind the still-sleeping vicar. He was unshaven and unwashed, with gaunt cheekbones and big, black bags under his eyes. It was the face of a Victorian lunatic in Bedlam.
‘They want to storm this place,’ Sam went on. ‘In five minutes, they’ll come piling through those doors. But we can sort it all before that. We can end this thing calmly, with nobody getting hurt. We can end this thing like men, you and me.’
The pensioners at the altar stirred and looked round. One of them whimpered. But they were all too worn out and frightened to utter a word.
‘You know me,’ Sam said, walking slowly down the aisle. ‘We spoke before. Let’s speak again. Nice and civilized.’
Carroll grabbed the vicar by the throat and hauled him upright, bringing the poor man to spluttering, startled wakefulness. He thrust the gun against the vicar’s head.
Sam raised his hands: ‘I’m alone and unarmed. If you want to point that thing at somebody, point it at me.’
‘I’m not leaving here,’ Carroll cried out.
‘Neither am I,’ answered Sam. ‘You and me, we’ll stay right here. But let the others go.’
‘I don’t want to be alone!’ Carroll howled suddenly. ‘He’s out there, he’s after me, and I don’t want to be alone!’
‘I know who’s after you, Michael. He’s after me too. And I’m after him. I’m going to find him, and destroy him – and you’re going to help me. Please – we need to work together. We need to help each other if we want to survive!’
But Carroll wasn’t listening. He jabbed the gun into the vicar’s ear and hissed at him: ‘Read it! Read it out!’
Looking as haggard and exhausted and unshaven as the man holding him captive – but not nearly so crazed – the vicar looked down at the open Bible on the lectern before him. He sighed. In a voice that indicated he had been made to read this passage out for Carroll over and over again since the siege began, he recited:
‘Have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. O, bring me out of my distresses.’
The vicar’s eyes flicked up towards Sam. He was waiting – hoping – praying, perhaps, that Sam would make a sudden move and save him.
‘Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.’
Sam kept edging closer to the pulpit, still holding his hands up. He was trying to read Carroll’s face for signs of sanity behind that outer mask of crazed terror. But Carroll’s eyes had the glassy, inward-looking quality of the hopelessly deranged.
‘O keep my soul and deliver me …’
The pensioners huddled at the altar were starting to take notice now. They watched Sam with the same desperation as the vicar.
‘… For I put my trust in thee.’
‘Amen to that,’ Sam said. ‘I understand what that passage means to you, Michael. You’ve come here for sanctuary. You saw how Pat Walsh died, didn’t you – you saw Clive Gould kill him – and you came here because you hoped it would be safe. Holy ground. A haven. You thought you could find your salvation.’
‘Again!’ hissed Carroll, and the vicar resignedly began to read out the psalm once more:
‘Have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted …’
This time, Sam talked over the top of him as he read. He kept his attention fixed on Carroll all the while, not looking away, not even blinking, and spoke in a calm voice:
‘I’ll be straight with you, Michael – I don’t think this place will keep you safe. Gould will come here. He’s on his way right now.’
‘Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.’
‘Your sins,’ said Sam. ‘That’s what Gould represents to you. He corrupted you, didn’t he? He turned you into a bent copper, a bought man. You fell so far that you were even prepared to cover up the murder of a fellow officer!’
‘I had no choice!’ Carroll cried. ‘If I hadn’t done it, I’d have ended up just like Cartwright!’
He violently shoved the vicar aside and waved the gun about wildly in a shaking hand.
‘I had no choice! None of us did!’
And now Sam began to suspect that it wasn’t him Carroll was addressing, but Him. Carroll’s eyes were turned upward. He stared this way and that at the ceiling, as if appealing to an invisible judge.
‘I know I did wrong, but I don’t deserve this! Not this I don’t!’
‘Michael, it’s not you Gould really wants,’ said Sam, raising his voice to be heard. ‘It’s me he’s after. Help me. We’ll work as a team and we’ll beat him. He’s still weak. He’s getting stronger, but he’s not there yet. We can smash him to pieces, I know it! We can destroy him, and then it will all be over. We’ll be safe. You will be safe!’
Carroll shook his head, his face screwed up in a childlike expression of abject misery. ‘No, no, no, he wants you but he needs US first!’
‘For what?’ Sam demanded. ‘Help me, Michael! Help me understand so I can defeat him! You and Walsh and Darby – what does Clive Gould need you all for?’
But Carroll was too far gone to pay attention. He was banging the lectern with his pistol, like a hellfire preacher in a lawless Wild West town. The vicar cowered in the pulpit. The pensioners at the altar sobbed and grizzled.
‘I plead guilty!’ he cried, his voice echoing hollowly about the church. ‘Guilty on all counts! But please – please – don’t let him take me! Not like that! Not like that!’
The doors flew open with a resounding crash, and in came Gene Hunt, his coat-tail billowing as he strode purposefully into the aisle flanked by Chris and Ray, the huge barrel of the Magnum glittering in his black gloved hand.
‘The choir boys are here!’ Hunt announced. ‘Who’s for a sing-a-long?’
Carroll grabbed hold of the vicar, clamping his arm tightly around the poor man’s neck. Crazily, recklessly, he raised the pistol and swung it about.
Chris dived behind one row of pews, Ray dived behind another – but the Guv himself stood his ground, levelling his firearm right back at Carroll.
‘Forget it, Mickey,’ the Guv intoned. ‘This siege is like my patience: well and truly over. Drop the gun then drop the padre – you’re nicked.’
Carroll fired, and at once the Magnum boomed right back. There were screams. Chunks of masonry flew from the walls.
Driven by panic, Carroll flung the vicar aside and leapt from the pulpit. He tore past Sam and raced off through a narrow wooden door. Sam bolted after him, slamming the door behind him to delay Gene and the rest of the goon squad. There was still a chance he could get through to Carroll, learn more about Gould from him; even get him onside to defeat Gould once and for all.
Sam found himself rushing blindly up a narrow spiral staircase, Carroll’s frantic footsteps echoing in the darkness ahead of him, until suddenly he burst out onto a narrow balcony high up in the spire with a view of the city all around. Carroll had run out of places to run to; there was nowhere to go but over the parapet.
Without hesitating, Sam grabbed at Carroll’s gun. To his amazement, Carroll gave it up without a struggle. The man just stood there, panting and sweating, looking utterly lost and forlorn.
‘We’re on the same side!’ Sam urged him. ‘Let’s team up! Let’s beat Gould – together!’
‘Shoot me,’ said Carroll. He placed a finger directly between his eyes. ‘Before he gets here. Quickly. Please.’
‘It was hope that brought you here, Michael! Don’t abandon that hope now! We can beat Gould! We can do it! But we have to work together!’
Carroll clambered onto the low wall surrounding the balcony, the city spread out behind him, the sky reeling vertiginously overhead. He glanced down into the churchyard far below. Sam looked too. And this time, they both saw it: hundreds of black balloons tethered to the gravestones, bobbing and whirling on their strings as if caught in a violent cross wind.
Carroll’s face contorted into a ghastly expression of abject terror. The sweat rolled down his ashen cheeks. His mouth worked silently, forming insane words he no longer had voice enough to utter. His bloodshot eyes bugged and stared, turning from Sam to the balloons in the graveyard and back again.
Slowly, Sam reached his hand towards him.
‘Stay,’ he said.
For a moment, Carroll seemed to be on the verge of breaking down in tears – but suddenly he let out a constricted, guttural cry, like a man who has just been dealt a blow to the solar plexus, and in the next moment he flung himself over the edge of the wall. He struck the side of the spire then slammed down onto the roof of the church, his broken body wedging on the ridge of the apex, his face angled upwards and twisted into a ghastly expression of agony and terror.
Moving as one, every black balloon in the churchyard suddenly broke its tether and went sailing up into the sky. And suddenly, bursting through them, sending them scattering in all directions, came a shadowy form, rushing through the air and landing silently on the roof slates of the church.
Sam felt his heart tighten in his chest. He had seen that awful shadow before, and felt the cold terror that radiated out from it.
Clive Gould leapt upon Carroll’s mangled corpse, smothering it with his ghostly arms and body. A misty light flickered between the two figures, moving up out of Carroll’s body and into Gould’s, and as it did Gould’s form seemed to solidify, to take on more weight and more reality.
Sam raised the gun, aiming straight at Gould’s head. Fire spat from the muzzle and the pistol bucked in his hand. The bullet passed straight through Gould as if he was smoke and smacked into Carroll, making the mangled corpse jump grotesquely.
The cloud of black balloons burst, all at the same time – and as they did, Gould slipped away down the sloped roof of the church and vanished from sight.
Sam stumbled back, shutting his eyes. He heard heavy pounding on the stairs, and sensed the heavy-footed, sweat-soaked arrival of Gene, panting like a bull. When he opened his eyes, the Guv was standing there, gun in hand, peering over the edge of the spire. He grimaced, then clicked on the Magnum’s safety catch.
Looking back over the wall, all Sam could see were some broken tiles, streaks of blood, and the smashed, doll-like remains of Michael Carroll down amid the gravestones. From this height, he could see the streets bordering the church, filled with patrol cars and men in uniform. They all looked like little toys arrayed in a model village. And there, just visible amid the throng that now surged towards Carroll’s body, was Annie – just as small and just as vulnerable-looking as all the rest.