The Last 10 Seconds

I put a finger to my lips and we moved as quietly as we could down the staircase. But it still creaked angrily under our combined weight, sounding like it was going to give way at any moment. The silence in the gloom was loud in my ears, and I could hear my heart beating hard as I felt the first stirrings of hope. After coming so close to death, it actually looked like I might get out of here in one piece after all. I had Lee to thank for this, which was why I was taking her with me. I was going to do her a major favour by getting Tyrone Wolfe out of her life.

The door was unlocked and the air cool as I stepped outside. Woodland surrounded us on all sides, and aside from the faint orange glow of London in the distance, there was just more silence. The night was clear and starry, and I felt the first yearning for freedom. The minibus we’d come here in was still on the driveway where Wolfe had parked it earlier, which puzzled me, because it meant that if Haddock and Tommy had left, they’d used some other form of transport.

I turned to Lee. ‘How did you get here tonight?’

‘I came on a motorbike.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Round the side of the house.’

‘Have you still got the keys?’

She nodded, feeling in her pocket. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. We’re leaving on that, then. I just need to collect something.’

I went up to the minibus window and peered inside, looking for the jiffy bag containing the thirty grand that Haddock had given me, and wasn’t surprised to see that it was gone, doubtless removed by one of them earlier.

But as I turned away, keen to get going as quickly as possible, I saw something that stopped me dead.

It was the tyres on the minibus. There were deep, uneven gashes in them.

‘What is it?’ asked Lee uncertainly.

I didn’t say anything, wondering who could have done this. And why. Then I went round the other side. It was the same.

‘Someone’s slashed the tyres.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

I looked out into the trees, scanning them for any sign of life. But there was nothing, no movement at all, and I experienced a growing dread.

I grabbed her by the hand and we hurried round the side of the building, with me leading, just in case whoever had sabotaged the minibus was waiting for us.

But they weren’t.

There was only a 125 motorbike, leaning up against the exterior wall. I looked down at the tyres and my worst fears were confirmed. They too had been slashed.

‘What’s going on here, Sean? Who’s doing this?’

‘God knows,’ I whispered, looking round in the silence, wondering if whoever had done this was watching us now.

Finally, I turned back to Lee. She suddenly looked more like a terrified girl than the confident über-bitch who’d greeted us at the door earlier. ‘This place is abandoned. How did you get the lights on earlier?’

‘Generator,’ she said, pointing to a brick outbuilding a few yards away. ‘But I shut the door when I got it working.’

The door was now wide open.

So, whoever had slashed the tyres had gone to work on the generator as well.

I approached the door slowly, hoping there might be some tools in there we could use for basic weapons, but wary too of going inside. Lee stayed a few yards back as I slowly entered the doorway and stared into the gloom. Boxes, most of them empty, were piled up untidily on both sides of the room, while the generator itself – a clapped-out old thing that had probably been put in when the place was still a farm – took up most of the opposite wall.

The place looked deserted and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to hide so I went inside, making my way slowly over to the generator itself, conscious of my own breathing. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my lighter and flicked it on, glancing round nervously.

As I’d expected, the flap to the electrics box was open and a bundle of severed wires poked out.

Trying hard to ignore the fear running up my spine, I started to turn away.

And jumped back in shock as the lighter picked up the figure in the shadows.

It was Haddock. He was standing in the corner, watching me.

Except he wasn’t moving, and the expression in his wide, staring eyes was blank and sightless.

I took a step forward, holding up the lighter. And that was when I saw the hunting knife embedded to the hilt in his chest, impaling him against the wall, and the huge bloody gash across his throat where it had been cut from ear to ear.

Clarence Haddock, the six-foot-three, nineteen-stone killer – said, I recall, by one police officer to be the most frightening man he’d ever met – had been butchered like a stuck pig.

Thirty-three