The gunshot stops him dead. Its echo dissipates quickly but the ringing left behind continues: a piercing monotone blocking out all sound, consuming the silence. The smell of gunpowder drifts across the large open room. He knows the pain of being shot: shocking, insistent heat like a flame on your skin, coupled with unbearable pressure. But that feeling doesn’t come.
Seconds later he realises: he wasn’t hit. Assumes it was a deliberate miss, a warning shot. Guesses that if he runs any further, the next one will be for real. A bullet to the leg, probably. Not a kill shot, though. Not yet. That would defeat the purpose of bringing him here. Defeat the purpose of using the most precious thing in his life to get him to this exact place, at this exact time. He thinks he knows the reason he’s here now.
Detective Inspector Zachariah Boateng can’t see the person who fired from the darkness. But he knows there’s someone in the shadows. And the ear-splitting volume of the gunshot tells him this person isn’t far away. He steadies his breathing, lets his eyes adjust. The blackness appears to part and, peering into it, he can just make out a human form. The shape, the outside of this figure, is about all that’s recognisably human; what’s inside is not. The mind, the motivation, the emotion – or lack of it – belong to some other species.
In the Met Police, they call these people meat eaters. Predators who base a life on exploiting others. They like to use violence to get what they want. Boateng isn’t one of them but, given the slightest chance, he’d kill this assailant with his bare hands. He knows who it is before the shooter steps forward and the light picks out those familiar features. And, he acknowledges with a stab of guilt, he’s brought this on himself. On his family. On his colleagues. On everyone and everything that matters.
As the figure advances, these thoughts vanish. The pistol’s muzzle is suddenly at his eye level. Then a new possibility dawns on him: maybe there is no purpose. Maybe there won’t be any explanation.
Maybe there’s just a kill shot.
The scream woke Zac Boateng from a light sleep. He stared into the gloom. The cry came once more – anguished, tormented – making him wince. It was the sound of visceral pain. And it was coming from his garden. In his state of semi-consciousness, it took a moment before he knew what was happening.
Bloody urban foxes.
Zac lay in bed, listening to the London night. A siren rose and fell somewhere in the distance. He wondered which of his colleagues were out there, what they were responding to at 1 a.m. Serious violence or simply neighbours arguing over a stereo playing too loudly? In this city, either possibility was just as likely. Next to him, his wife, Etta, was breathing with the steady rhythm of deep slumber; something which had eluded Zac for some time. He had just closed his eyes again in the hope of drifting off when he heard the noise.
A dull, heavy thud from downstairs.
He tensed, a little stab of adrenalin rippling through his belly, making his hands tingle. He glanced across at Etta. She hadn’t stirred. Again: scrape, thud. He wasn’t imagining it. Zac exhaled slowly. Think. If they were being burgled, the safest thing to do was stay up here. Let the guy get on with it, take the PlayStation, iPad and whatever else he could carry and leave. They had insurance for exactly this situation. Unless the intruder was crazy or high, he wouldn’t risk coming upstairs to look for jewellery. Best stay put.
But Zac had always had difficulty taking his own advice. And someone threatening his family, in their home, was a red line. He wasn’t having it.
He slid out of bed.
Zac reached up to the top of the wardrobe, grasped the baseball bat. He stepped onto the landing; his eleven-year-old son Kofi’s door was ajar as usual, the night light on. Zac crept down, using the edge of the stairs to avoid any creaks that might signal his approach. Sounds of human movement came from behind the closed living room door. He reached for the handle, fingers trembling slightly.
He threw the door open and charged into the light. The shriek was followed by a crack and tinkle of glass. Next to the bookshelf was a chair. On the chair stood his son, staring down at the shattered photo frame which lay on the wooden floor.
‘Kofi! Jesus.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’
Zac tossed the bat onto the sofa then walked over and hugged his boy. ‘Scared the hell out of me. What’re you doing down here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
Zac rubbed Kofi’s back. ‘Me neither.’ He looked over his son’s shoulder to the broken frame: the photograph of Zac and Etta’s daughter, Amelia, was intact beneath jagged pieces of glass.
‘I just wanted to see her picture,’ said Kofi, quietly. ‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘Hey, don’t worry about it.’
The boy sniffed. ‘I miss her.’
‘Yeah, me too, mate.’ Zac squeezed his son a little tighter.
‘Is it weird to want to talk to her, even though she’s dead?’
‘Nope. I do it sometimes.’
At length, Kofi spoke. ‘Someone killed her, didn’t they?’
His son was old enough to understand what that meant. ‘Yes.’
‘Who was it?’
‘A man.’ Zac paused, unsure what else to say. ‘But he didn’t just kill Amelia. He shot two other people that day, too. One of them was the person he was after. Your sister was just in the wrong place when he opened fire.’ His voice caught slightly and he took a breath. ‘And he hit her.’
Kofi pulled back from the hug and searched Zac’s face. ‘Did you catch him?’
‘I did.’ But Zac knew that wasn’t the whole story. He’d nearly lost his own life last summer, trying to find the person responsible after a new lead had come his way during a separate murder case. Despite his efforts to investigate – most of which were unofficial – no one had been convicted for his daughter’s killing, no evidence found for the crime. And it seemed like someone else had been involved in the shooting too, behind the scenes; invisible as a puppet master. Someone, known only as Kaiser, who was still out there.
The intelligence on Kaiser was thin, and sourced exclusively from an incarcerated murderer named Darian Wallace, who refused to cooperate any further. Not exactly reliable information. Still, the prospect of its truth niggled at Zac. And not just because the victim had been his daughter. According to Wallace, Kaiser was a police officer. One of his own.
Two a.m. This was what they meant by the dead of night. No moon and virtually no people. Just the roads of south London flashing past, the darkness punctured by street lamps and car headlights. Jermaine heard the passenger beside him flick the safety catch off the gun on his lap, then back on again. Off, on. Click, click. He glanced across. The guy’s finger was on the trigger. Jermaine tried to keep his eyes ahead, his hands on the wheel.
‘Can you put that under the seat or something?’ he said. ‘Making man nervous.’
‘Pussy.’
Jermaine was no expert on guns, but his passenger had spent the past five minutes explaining how the Heckler & Koch MP5 Kurz was the sickest weapon he’d ever held. How it could unleash its entire thirty-round magazine of ammunition in two seconds. How the short barrel meant the shots weren’t accurate, but that was the whole point. It was the reason they called the MP5 Kurz the ‘crowd pleaser’.
‘Why’d you have to bring it anyway?’ Jermaine scowled.
‘Protection.’
‘For us?’
‘For our cargo. His cargo,’ the guy corrected himself.
The cargo that was making the VW Golf which Jermaine had borrowed ride low, accelerate more slowly. Jermaine had some idea what was in the heavy bags he’d seen being loaded into the back. But he hadn’t asked too many questions. Not when he’d been given five hundred quid upfront with the promise of more on delivery. That money would pay the bills for months. ‘I thought we were supposed to keep a low profile,’ he said.
‘We are.’
‘In that case, turn the damn music down.’
The man beside him reached over and nudged the volume higher. The grime beats were making the car windows vibrate. Jermaine sucked his teeth and snatched another look sideways. Aaron Collins was someone he used to roll with a lot. But now Jermaine was at college studying business, their paths didn’t cross much. Aaron had his own business, if you could call it that. Judging by his wide eyes and faster speech, he was sampling his own product too often.
‘How much’ve you had?’
‘It’s just a little taster.’ Aaron grinned. ‘No big thing.’
‘Foolishness.’ Jermaine shook his head, kept driving. Something caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, before it disappeared as they rounded a bend. ‘Yo,’ he said. ‘Was that…?’
The road straightened out. No mistake. Cop car.
‘Oh fuck.’ Jermaine gripped the wheel tighter.
Aaron turned to check. ‘Relax, mate. Why would they be interested in us? We’re just a couple of lads out for a drive.’
‘At two o’clock in the morning.’
‘So what?’
The lights on the police car were flashing now, although they hadn’t hit the siren. Trying not to piss off the local residents.
‘Just chill and let them go past, yeah?’ Aaron slunk lower in his seat.
Jermaine could feel his heart beating faster and a twisting sensation somewhere below his stomach. The police accelerated and pulled out to overtake. Jermaine stared straight ahead, but the car didn’t appear in front. It remained alongside them. One howl of a siren got his attention. He turned to see an officer motioning to him. He hesitated, then slowed and pulled into the kerb behind the swirling police lights that bathed everything in blue.
‘What now?’ Jermaine hissed.
‘Be ready.’ Aaron’s right knee was jiggling.
Both officers exited the vehicle and began walking towards them. Aaron flicked the safety catch off the Kurz, adjusted his grip. A film of sweat had formed between Jermaine’s hands and the steering wheel. The cops were almost at their car. One raised his palm in a ‘stay there’ sign.
‘Showtime,’ whispered Aaron.
‘No way. You crazy motherfu—’ Jermaine stopped himself. Dropped the handbrake slowly. Knocked the gearstick back into first. Then stamped on the accelerator and yanked the wheel right. They shot forward, back into the road, as one officer dived aside. Then the houses were flying past, blurring left and right. Jermaine felt the engine growl, saw the needle reach fifty mph. Heard Aaron laughing.
‘Where do I go now?’ he barked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think!’
‘OK. We’re a mile from the garage. Take some side roads and we’ll get there before they catch up with us.’
‘Side roads?’
‘I’ll navigate.’ Aaron produced his phone, tapped a few times. ‘Left up here.’
Jermaine had just begun turning when an identical siren whooped and he clocked a vehicle speeding towards them from the new road: unmarked, blue lights behind the grille. He spun the car back, tyres screeching, and accelerated again as another siren came from somewhere off to the right. Checked the rear-view: the original cop car was behind them.
‘They’re everywhere!’ Jermaine gripped the wheel, pressed his foot down. ‘How did they know?’
‘Who’d you borrow this car off, again?’
‘My boy.’
‘I’m guessing your boy’s got some kind of record then. Or maybe he’s a snitch. Either way, we’re fucked.’ Aaron checked over his shoulder. ‘Come on, man, faster!’
Jermaine swerved instinctively as a 4 x 4 came at them from the right, then sped up. Now the two cars were side by side, the cops driving in the wrong lane. Shit, shit, shit. He braked hard and skidded left into a smaller road, losing the 4 x 4, which couldn’t turn quickly enough. Then they were alone.
‘Yes!’ cried Aaron, turning in his seat. ‘Now cut back this way.’ He jabbed left. ‘There.’
Jermaine followed the instruction and heard the sirens recede. He slowed to quieten the engine and cut the headlights. Reached forward and turned the music off. Blew out his cheeks, blinked. ‘Now where are we?’ The terraced houses all looked the same around here.
‘Give me a second.’ Aaron dipped his head to the phone screen.
Jermaine checked his right-hand wing mirror. The street was empty, barely lit. Curse that damned money, he didn’t want it any more. If he could—
The impact from the passenger side snapped his neck, the seat belt locking as the steering wheel turned against his grip. He tried to recover but the 4 x 4 was blocking them. He fumbled for reverse, missed, dropped the clutch again and found the gear. Turned to look over his shoulder. Then stopped as another car squealed to a halt behind them. They were trapped.
‘Armed police!’ came the shouts from all sides.
‘Get your hands up!’ bellowed one voice, as dark shapes moved behind the 4 x 4 headlights that now shone full beam into their vehicle.
Jermaine raised his hands, his breathing ragged. He looked left. Aaron was still smiling. And he was holding the Kurz in his lap.
‘Let it go, Aaron!’ Jermaine gasped. ‘Put your hands up.’
‘We have to fight.’
‘What’re you talking about? We’re surrounded. Just do what they say or they’re gonna shoot you.’
‘It’s too late.’ Aaron flicked the safety catch once more. Fully automatic.
The dark shapes in front fanned out, repeated their commands.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ spat Jermaine. ‘Put it down. Do you want to die?’
‘Remember whose stuff we’re carrying.’ Aaron swallowed, exhaled. ‘We’re already dead.’ His finger curled around the trigger.
‘No, wait!’
‘He’ll find you, J. Anywhere.’ Aaron’s body tensed.
‘Don’t!’
Aaron raised the Kurz to the windscreen. Jermaine ducked below the steering wheel as the deafening rattle was followed by hot casings spraying inside the car, pinging off the windows and dashboard. Several struck him, one scalding the back of his neck. Then a volley of shots came from outside, cracking through glass and metal, and ceased just as fast. Jermaine twisted his neck sideways and up. Aaron was slumped back in his seat, still holding the gun, mouth half open, a small black hole in his cheek. He wasn’t moving.
A high-pitched tone was ringing in Jermaine’s ears.
‘Hands in the air!’ came the shout, followed by another, more urgent. ‘Officer down!’ A radio bleeped and crackled and a voice gave a badge number and street name, demanded an ambulance.
Jermaine raised both trembling hands and slowly uncurled his body. He saw a figure and a gun muzzle through the window before his door was yanked open. A thick arm reached in and undid his seatbelt.
‘Get on the fucking ground!’
He did as he was told and lay on his stomach, arms out in front. The tarmac was rough and warm, hard against his ribs. He began to cry, like he had no control over it. As one figure squatted next to him, pulling his hands behind his back and cuffing him, another stepped around him to the rear of the car. He heard the boot pop and the whine of its door rising. Then the sound of long zips unfastening: the bags. For a few seconds, there was only silence beyond the monotone filling Jermaine’s head. Then one of the officers spoke.
‘Jackpot.’
Boateng marched down the corridor towards the interview rooms at Lewisham police station. He was clutching a manila folder containing what they knew about the shootings and arrest last night. It was pretty thin. Detective Sergeant Kat Jones strode alongside him.
‘I watched it on the news this morning,’ she said.
‘So did half of London,’ he replied. ‘You saw the crowd outside the station? They’re not happy.’ He’d been told the first protesters had arrived just after 8 a.m., brandishing placards about the police murdering civilians, demands for justice. Their numbers had swelled as the morning went on, and the TV cameras had followed.
‘Who’s the guy they arrested?’ asked Jones.
‘Jermaine…’ Boateng flipped the folder open. ‘Mensah. Nineteen years old, Brixton resident.’ He paused. ‘Do Lambeth know about this? He’s from their patch.’
‘Not yet. No one else has got his name – you know, because of the deaths. I’ll call the MIT straight after.’
‘Great.’ They stopped outside a door and Boateng gripped the handle. ‘Ready?’
She nodded.
‘OK.’ He flashed a smile. ‘Let’s see what he has to say.’
They stepped into the interview room. In front of them, a young man in a grey T-shirt sat on the other side of a plain table, beside a thin, older guy in a suit: the lawyer. Neither one looked like he’d slept last night.
Boateng started the recording and made the introductions. Noted Mensah’s flash of recognition at his Ghanaian family name. That common ground was a first step. Then he removed a photograph from the folder and rotated it on the table towards the detainee. The flash-lit image showed a VW Golf, its left-side panels caved in, the windscreen a spider’s web of fractured glass through which a corpse was just visible in the passenger seat. Boateng watched his suspect; his reaction would tell him a lot.
Mensah closed his eyes, his lower lip curling a fraction. OK, some emotion. That was another step.
‘What can you tell me about this, Jermaine?’
The young man’s head dropped. His lawyer leaned across, whispered something to him.
‘No comment,’ mumbled Mensah.
‘You were in the car when it happened, weren’t you?’
Mensah was still looking down, but he gave a single tiny nod. The guy wanted to talk, but he was scared.
Boateng leaned forward, clasped his hands together. ‘Was he your friend?’
The question made Mensah’s eyes screw shut.
‘Is that why you helped him?’
‘No comment.’ The response was barely audible.
‘Decent cash, was it?’
No reply.
‘Must’ve been,’ said Boateng. ‘To take the risk of carrying this lot.’ He produced a second image, showing the contents of the boot. Mensah raised his head and Boateng watched his eyes widen.
‘Forty Škorpion machine pistols. Czech-made. They could’ve done a lot of damage on the streets. Worth about two grand each.’
He let Mensah absorb the photograph and its implications.
‘Did you know what was in those bags?’
Mensah shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. The lawyer leaned in again, cupping his hand to Mensah’s ear. Boateng could see his resolve was weakening; the guy wasn’t a gangster. Probably just hard up and loyal to his old mates – a dangerous combination when certain people wanted jobs done. The tipping point of the interview was coming.
Boateng carefully placed a third image on the table. It showed a muscular middle-aged man supine on the road. Blood had pooled around his head and shoulders. A paramedic sat on the ground at the edge of the frame. She had evidently given up trying to resuscitate the man.
‘This is Sergeant Toby Sullivan,’ said Boateng. ‘He died at 2.15 a.m. today from a single 9 mm bullet wound to his neck.’
Mensah’s lips drew back in horror.
‘That’s murder.’ Boateng knew that proving Aaron Collins had intended to kill a police officer, rather than simply wound, would be extremely difficult. But he was banking on Mensah not knowing the distinction between murder and manslaughter. Even if his lawyer tried to explain the nuances to him, the seed of panic was already sown. ‘That makes you an accessory.’ He let the words sink in.
Mensah had started twisting his fingers, picking at his nails. He didn’t reply.
‘You’re not a killer, Jermaine. I’ve met a lot of psychopaths in this job, and that’s not you. But a jury might not see it that way. You don’t want to go to prison for fifteen years, do you?’
‘No,’ whispered Mensah. His eyes were wet.
‘I can help you,’ continued Boateng. ‘We can offer you protection. Just tell me who’s behind this.’
The lawyer shifted, murmured something else. Boateng caught the words ‘no obligation’ and ‘deal’.
Mensah shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
Boateng studied the young man as he stared down at the table. A tattoo on his forearm read ‘Effi’ in copperplate script. Effi? From Efua, most likely. A Ghanaian woman’s name. Sister? Mensah had a simple thread wristband on the other arm, the sort made by a child. Younger sister. One he cared about.
‘It’s not just you, Jermaine. You have to think about your family now. We can protect them too. Your mum.’ He paused. ‘Your sister.’
The lawyer extended a palm towards Boateng. ‘I’d like a moment in private with my client, ple—’
‘You can?’ Mensah had raised his head, his gaze unfocused.
Boateng nodded. ‘If you help us.’
‘OK.’
‘Who’s behind this, Jermaine? Who brought those guns into London?’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘Only what Aaron called him.’
‘Alright.’ Boateng glanced at Jones. ‘What did he call him?’
Mensah swallowed, blinked and met Boateng’s eyes. ‘Kaiser.’
Susanna Pym glanced at her watch. The slender hands below the word ‘Cartier’ were touching XI and II: 11.10 a.m. She was late. Her appointment had been scheduled for 11 a.m., but it had taken forever to part the sea of tourists when she arrived, and even longer for the security procedures. Her host was a stickler for punctuality in others, though she nearly always ran late. That was the case today, so Pym hoped she’d get away with it.
Only three days into her new job, Pym was still desperate to make a good impression. She disliked the idea of being desperate for anything – it was so undignified – but at this precise moment, it was true. She was desperate for approval and the opportunities it could afford her.
Pym had just been seated in a comfortable chair in a well-appointed anteroom, and was ignoring the eighteenth-century oil paintings around her in favour of an iPad. Irritatingly, they’d taken her mobile at the door and offered her a ‘secure’ tablet for web browsing. She was using it to read every news article she could find about the police officer who’d been shot dead in the early hours. Technically, he was one of her employees. Last week it would have been down to someone else to deal with the unfortunate incident. Now, it was up to her. Of course, she’d been fully briefed by the head of the Metropolitan Police, in person, first thing that morning. She was aware of information that the press had not been given. What she wanted to see was the journalistic opinion, the editorial lines, the media spin. And the pieces she’d read so far didn’t look good. As Pym heard footsteps approaching, she closed the browser window.
‘Sorry for the delay, minister,’ said a besuited middle-aged man who didn’t sound sorry at all. ‘The prime minister will see you now.’ As she stood, the man introduced himself only as Donald. He gave no further details – classic self-importance. Pym guessed he was one of the private secretaries and she would be expected to know his name, to have done her homework. She handed the iPad to a nearby flunkey, smoothed her skirt and followed him down a hallway, trying to breathe slowly. He rapped on the door and immediately admitted her. Before she had a chance to take in the room, Pym was offered a chair and found herself sitting opposite the PM. Neither woman apologised for being late. The PM didn’t need to, and Pym didn’t want to draw attention to her own tardiness.
‘How are you finding the new role, Sue?’ asked her boss.
Pym fought back the grimace; she hated being called Sue. It was Susanna. Nobody called her Sue. The PM probably thought it indicated intimacy. If anything, it demonstrated the opposite. Normally, Pym would have pulled someone up on that immediately. But this was the PM. So she let it slide.
‘Well, it’s early days, Prime Minister,’ she replied. ‘But I plan to get out from behind the desk as much as possible. Meet the troops on the ground, as it were.’
‘Quite right. Minister for Policing and the Fire Service is a challenging role. When I was Home Secretary, it was one of the trickiest portfolios in our department. I want you to know that you have my full support.’
Pym wasn’t sure what that might entail, but she offered her thanks anyway. She had begun to crave a cigarette.
‘You’ll be aware that there are certain sensitivities around our policing strategy, particularly in light of recent events.’ The PM’s tone had shifted, become more serious.
‘Naturally.’
‘A shooting on the streets of our capital in which a young man and a police officer are both killed is a recipe for significant unrest. I’ve just seen on the news that crowds are protesting outside a local police station, not far from here.’
Pym nodded.
‘We don’t want a repeat of 2011,’ continued the PM. ‘Accusations that we’ve lost control of London while I’m off in Europe trying to negotiate our—’ She paused, shook her head. ‘Never mind. Let’s just say that people are watching how we respond to this, both here and abroad. I can’t stress how important it is that we get it right.’
‘Absolutely.’ Pym interlocked her fingers; the communications guy had said that was both authoritative and calm, though she felt neither. ‘In fact, I see the current situation as an opportunity to show just how effective our police force is. Firm but fair. A British approach to law enforcement. Dialogue and communication with the public.’ Pym had borrowed the last line from Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, who had used it in their meeting two hours earlier.
The PM smiled. Pym couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or amusement.
‘Of course. You’re right, Sue,’ said the PM. ‘And if you handle this incident correctly, people will certainly take notice.’
Pym imagined they’d also take notice if things went tits up. Nevertheless, these were the words she wanted to hear: the hint of an invitation to the top table. To a position in the cabinet. To bigger and better things. Her hands were suddenly clammy.
‘Well, I’m afraid I must go; I’m. . .
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