The Last 10 Seconds

I forced myself to walk inside the room where Kent had assaulted her, and the first thing I noticed was that her breathing had stopped. My jaw tightened as I looked down at her torn and ruined face. Only a true savage could have inflicted those kinds of injuries on a defenceless woman, and a savage was exactly what the Night Creeper had been. Standing in that filthy room with only the smell of blood and death and grime for company, I felt no satisfaction for killing Kent. I just felt numb, and even though I knew it would be no good, I bent down and checked Lee’s wrist for a pulse, almost relieved that there was nothing there.

When I walked back out, Wolfe lifted his head up with what was clearly a huge effort and asked me if she was all right.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told him, meaning it. ‘She’s dead.’

His face contorted into a mask of complete despair, and he whispered her name again and again, as if by doing so he could somehow undo the terrible damage inflicted that night. Then his body started to shake. ‘I’m so cold,’ he said. ‘I think I’m dying.’

He was, and I didn’t have much time left to say what I needed to say. ‘Why didn’t you shoot me when you had the chance?’ I asked him.

‘Because,’ he answered, ‘I’m not like that. I can’t kill someone in cold blood. Whoever it is.’

‘But you killed my brother.’

A look of surprise flickered across his face. ‘What?’

‘Highgate High Street. Thursday the second of November 1995. A man tried to stop you robbing a security van. His name was John Egan. He had facial scarring because he’d been injured in the Gulf War. You called him a freak just before you shot him. Remember?’ I leaned in closer, staring right into his eyes. ‘He was my brother.’

‘That guy?’ He looked confused. ‘Your brother?’

‘That’s right. My brother. And I’m no lowlife thief and killer like you. I’m an undercover copper. Got that? I infiltrated your crew so I could bring you down. And now I have. You’re all finished.’

‘Oh Jesus, you don’t understand . . .’ He shook his head slowly from side to side.

I leaned in even closer, my face only inches from his. Wanting to hear his excuses. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘But I heard it from a reliable source that you were bragging about it.’

‘That’s all it was,’ he whispered. ‘Bragging.’ He made a huge effort to look me right in the eye. ‘I never killed your brother, Sean.’

And then, as I stood back up, reeling from this piece of news, I smelled it. Coming from downstairs.

Petrol.

Thirty-eight

The next second there was a loud roar, and the corridor was suddenly completely lit up. I turned round as a wave of heat rushed over me and saw flames leaping up the staircase.

Who the hell had set the fire? Everyone I’d come here with was dead. But I didn’t have time to worry about that because the first of the cloying black smoke was billowing down towards me.

‘Who killed my brother?’ I yelled down at Wolfe, grabbing him by the collar of his boiler suit, desperate to know.

But his eyes had closed and he went limp in my grasp, and even as I shook him with an angry frustration, the smoke wafted thickly about me and I started to choke.

I turned and ran for the window at the end of the corridor. It was older than the one I’d tried getting out of earlier, and though double-glazed, the glass was thin, with a crack running diagonally up one side, and its frame looked loose and unwieldy. But there was also no sign of a handle to open it.

The smoke was really getting thick now, and, though exhausted, adrenalin born of total desperation was coursing through me. I slammed into it hard. The frame rattled, but didn’t budge. I did it again. Four times in all. But nothing was happening, except that my ribs were screaming and I was having trouble breathing. Forcing myself to keep calm, I took five steps back and charged it shoulder-first. This time I heard it splinter and loosen. Coughing, and with the roar of the flames getting louder in my ears, I took another five steps back, wincing as the heat began to burn my back. Then, shutting my eyes in an effort to stop them stinging so much, I charged the window again, only this time I actually dived into it.

The whole thing, glass and frame, toppled down to the ground, and I only just stopped myself from going down with it. Desperately, I breathed in the fresher air as the smoke billowed all around me, then swung myself out of the gap I’d created so that I was hanging by my fingertips. The drop to ground level was probably ten feet but I had to get out of this place as fast as possible, so I swung out my legs, let go and landed hard, jarring my ankles and rolling across broken glass.

I was almost opposite the outbuilding where I’d discovered Haddock’s body. Ten yards beyond it was the first of the trees, and relative safety.