The Last 10 Seconds

I risked glancing backwards at the ambulance where Haddock had now joined Wolfe. The doors were fully open now and I saw two uniforms – a man and a woman, both young and fresh-faced – in the back, on either side of the gurney, while a female paramedic in green overalls stood over it, her hands out in front of her in a gesture of submission.

Wolfe leaped in the back and told the paramedic to unstrap her patient.

‘You can’t take him,’ I heard her say. ‘Please. He’s sick.’

‘Shut up and do what I say! Now!’

The two uniforms in the back of the ambulance remained frozen in their seats with Haddock moving his gun from one to the other, covering them and hissing murderous threats, his whole demeanour radiating the kind of controlled rage that made crossing him suicidal, and I remember praying that nobody was stupid enough to make a move.

But the female paramedic wasn’t playing the game. ‘You’re not taking him,’ she shouted, following it with another ‘please’, although she must have known that Wolfe was going to do exactly that.

With a sudden movement, he grabbed her by her hair and shoved the barrel in her face. ‘Do it!’ he screamed, dragging her back towards the gurney.

I winced at his violence, feeling my finger tighten on the trigger as I remembered what he’d done to my brother all those years ago, wishing I could do the same to him but knowing that I had to bide my time and hope that this snatch was going to be concluded fast, because with every second that passed we came closer to being rumbled by police reinforcements which right now, with Wolfe and Haddock pumped up on adrenalin and violence, would mean a bloodbath.

Finally, the paramedic got to work on one of the straps with shaking hands while Wolfe undid the other, all the while pointing his gun in her face.

And then, as Wolfe shoved her aside and tore the oxygen mask from his face, I finally saw our target for the first time. Andrew Kent, the so-called Night Creeper. The man my former colleagues were sure was responsible for the rape and murder of five young women. He was small and thin, with the grey pallor of the sick, but he was also conscious, and looked just as terrified as the people who’d been protecting him, because he must have known that whatever we had planned for him, it was not going to be nice.

He looked more like a computer geek than a killer, and even though I knew what he was supposed to have done, and that killers never look like killers – they all look just like you and me when they’re vulnerable – I still felt sick as Wolfe dragged him out of the ambulance, with the gun shoved hard into the hollow of his cheek.

Which was the moment when it all went horribly wrong.

The male cop lunged forward, jumped out of the back of the ambulance, and grabbed Wolfe’s gun hand, trying to wrestle the weapon from his control. Why he decided to do it was anyone’s guess – maybe it was the need to be hailed as a hero – but one thing that’s drummed into all police officers is never take on a gunman when you’re unarmed, because it can turn a dramatic situation into a disastrous one. As it did now.

Clearly sensing an opportunity for escape, Kent struggled free of Wolfe’s now tenuous grip and made a bolt for it.

I was barely ten feet away and moved fast to intercept him, holding my shotgun like a club. There was no way I could let a serial killer escape from custody on top of everything else I was involved in.

But for a sick man, Kent’s reactions were surprisingly quick, and he leaped at me, launching an improvised karate kick at my stomach. I tried to get out of the way but his foot caught me and I stumbled backwards, colliding with the corner of the cop car’s bonnet.

I’m no slouch myself, however, and though I was winded, I bounced back off the car and, as he scrambled past me, I slammed the stock of the shotgun into the side of his head. It was a good shot and he went sprawling on to the tarmac in a heap, a deep cut already forming along his hairline. He wasn’t moving either, and for a moment I thought I might have killed him.

It was then that I saw Wolfe break free of the cop who’d made a grab for him and shove him backwards so that, for the first time, there was distance between them. ‘No!’ I heard myself shout as Haddock swung his shotgun round from where it had been covering the female cop and pointed it directly at her foolish colleague, while Wolfe raised his own gun, holding it two-handed.

Everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion as the male cop – twenty-five at most, probably younger – raised his hands in surrender, his dreams of being a hero evaporating across his face as the fear took over.

I wanted to react. To turn my gun on Wolfe and Haddock and tell them to drop theirs because I was the police, maybe even open fire and rid the world of my brother’s killers for ever. But then Haddock calmly pulled the Remington’s trigger.