The Last 10 Seconds

The people carrier weaved in the road, overtook another car, but it couldn’t shake Tina off. Now only fifteen yards separated them and she could just make out the numbers and letters on the plate.

Then, without warning, one of the balaclava-clad figures leaned halfway out of the window and pointed a shotgun at them, looking very much as if he was taking aim. Grier yelled something unintelligible and Tina instinctively slammed her foot on the brakes and spun the wheel. She just had time to duck her head before the windscreen exploded, showering her with glass. The car spun round as she lost control and left the road, the suspension jarring angrily as she mounted the pavement and smashed sideways into an empty shopfront, scattering the diners at a next-door pavement café but managing to avoid hitting any of them, before finally coming to a halt.

Tina’s breathing came in short, rapid bursts as she sat back up in the seat, letting shards of glass fall off her. The car had turned round completely now, but she could see the people carrier disappearing round the corner in her rearview mirror.

She quickly checked herself but couldn’t see any sign of injury, then looked over at Grier, fearful that he might have been hurt, which would have been her fault. But he looked OK, shaken but uninjured. She felt an immediate relief. She’d already lost two colleagues in her career. She couldn’t face losing another.

In fact he was still talking on the phone to the 999 operator, describing what had just happened, before adding that he hadn’t got a chance to take the registration number of the suspect vehicle. ‘We’re going to secure the scene now,’ he said, and rang off.

Tina sighed. ‘Are you all right?’

He glared at her, and she could see he was trying to keep calm, knowing that, whatever might be going through his head, she was still his superior – although for how much longer was anyone’s guess. Tina had always been considered something of a loose cannon, a copper who attracted trouble, even if that trouble wasn’t usually her fault. People who worked with her got killed; she’d even killed someone herself the previous year, while officially off duty, and though no blame had been attached to her for that, it was still seen by some as a blot on an already badly bloodstained copybook. Crashing a car into a shop during a high-speed chase and narrowly missing a dozen terrified pedestrians was another, especially when she’d been drinking.

Tina sighed and rubbed her eyes. There was bound to be a breath test, and she was hugely relieved that she hadn’t drunk anything in the pub earlier, and that the two hits of vodka she’d sneaked in the toilet were long enough ago now to keep her under the limit.

Even so, pretty soon her luck was going to run out.

‘I’m OK,’ Grier said quietly, his voice trembling with emotion, ‘but why did you do that, ma’am? You could have killed us both.’

Grier was one of the new breed of cops, a desk man who didn’t like taking big risks, and although he’d held himself together enough to finish the phone call to the 999 operator, Tina felt a wave of contempt for him. ‘I had to make a split-second decision,’ she answered firmly. ‘I didn’t want to lose them.’

‘Well, you did lose them, ma’am,’ he said slowly, and she noticed that his hands were shaking. ‘You did bloody lose them.’

And she had. She’d failed. She should have made sure Kent went to the hospital with an armed escort.

Not only had she misread the situation, she also knew with a terrible lurch of certainty that if she’d held back rather than sped after the carrier like a teenage boy who’d just passed his test she would have stood a better chance of following them.

She groaned. Whichever way she looked at it, the whole thing had been a set-up. And she’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Twenty-five

‘What did you shoot him for? You told me there was going to be no need for violence, and then your buddy here blows away a copper at point-blank range. Why?’

We were now in the second getaway vehicle, a clapped-out minibus that had been stolen the day before from an old people’s home – a typically callous move from Tyrone Wolfe. He and Haddock were again in the front, with me sitting directly behind them, my shotgun resting on the back of Andrew Kent, who was lying lengthways along the narrow aisle separating the seats, face down and not speaking, eyes tightly shut. He was clearly desperate not to see any of our faces now that we’d removed our balaclavas, since to do so would effectively sentence him to death. Blood was still dribbling out of his head where I’d hit him earlier and one side of his face was covered in a network of dark rivulets. Behind me sat Tommy, smoking a cigarette and not saying a great deal.