The Last 10 Seconds

She took a deep breath and lit her first cigarette of the morning, wincing as the smoke tore down her throat. So Anthony Gore had definitely been Roisín O’Neill’s lover. Of course, as Mike had pointed out, that might be all he was, but Tina wasn’t so sure. She’d Googled Gore herself before phoning Beatrice Glover. A fifty-six-year-old former trial lawyer, married with two adult children, he had a reputation for being combative in the courtroom, and for getting results. He’d become an MP after the 2001 general election and had risen steadily through the government ranks, even though in 2003 he’d become embroiled in controversy when a story appeared in a Sunday tabloid accusing him of having a relationship with a prostitute. Gore had issued a spirited denial and taken legal action against the paper. The prostitute later retracted her story, claiming that all Gore had been guilty of was offering her free legal advice, which was why he was at her flat, and the paper ended up having to pay him £120,000 in libel damages. Tina noted wryly that he’d made a big point of donating £10,000 to charity but had kept the rest of the cash himself.

And that was Tina’s problem with Anthony Gore. Maybe she was reading too much between the lines, but there was something about him that left a bad taste in the mouth. In the photographs, there was an arrogance in his bearing, a vague glint of contempt in his eyes, and Tina didn’t like the way the prostitute had changed her story. The new one smacked of bullshit and suggested that she’d been persuaded to do it. Either by Gore himself, or perhaps he had some powerful friends to do it for him. There was no obvious evidence of wrongdoing in any of the basic research she’d done on Gore in the past half an hour, but that might have been because he was careful. Either way, she didn’t like him, or the fact that he’d been around Roisín in the run-up to her murder and was having an affair with her. Also, strangulation tended to point to a crime of passion. It was such a personal method of murder, the kind someone resorts to in moments of pure rage. Or desperation.

Had Roisín done something to drive Gore to kill her? And had Andrew Kent captured it on film?

But how had Gore covered it up? As far as Tina knew, he had no connection to the Night Creeper murder inquiry, and she couldn’t imagine a man like Gore – a scholarly lawyer – getting his hands dirty by smashing in his lover’s face with a hammer. Did he have friends who had such contacts? The same friends who’d persuaded the prostitute to change her story? And were they in turn capable of organizing Kent’s breakout from police custody?

It made sense, and it fitted the facts. But it was also hugely tenuous. And Tina had absolutely no evidence to prove any of it. According to the radio that morning there was no further news on Andrew Kent’s whereabouts, and she hadn’t heard anything from DCI MacLeod. She needed to phone him, so she got to her feet and dialled his number, looking at her watch. It was six thirty, and the sun was shining through the blinds, throwing thin rods of light across her old sofa. He would probably be up. It would have been difficult for him to sleep well, given what had happened the previous night.

There was no answer. She thought about calling the big boss of Homicide and Serious Crime Command, DCS Frank Mendelson. He ran all the Met’s murder investigation teams and was the man DCI MacLeod reported to. She’d only met him once, when he’d come in to discuss the case a few months earlier. A short, pugnacious and fiercely ambitious man, she remembered him as someone who liked to do things methodically, which meant he’d tell her to write up a report and then, almost certainly, given the lack of obvious evidence and the fact that Anthony Gore was so high profile, nothing would happen. So she decided against it. She also decided against calling Mike, mainly because she was sure that he would tell her to tread carefully, when she knew that treading carefully wouldn’t work. She had to shake things up, and the only way to do that was to confront Gore.

It was a high-risk strategy. In fact, it was probably madness, given the trouble it could land her in, but somehow, standing alone in her shitty little front room, the thought didn’t bother her. It actually excited her. Risking her job, risking everything, in a dramatic and probably vain effort to get some justice sent her adrenalin surging.

Ignoring the voice that told her she was being foolish, that this was definitely not the way forward, she strode into the kitchen, pulled a half-full bottle of vodka from the fridge, took a single, hard slug – relishing the burning hit – then picked up the phone and called Dan Grier.

‘Wakey wakey,’ she said when he picked up. ‘It’s time to go to work.’

Forty-five