How messed up are you? Protecting the public should have been your first thought, would have been a few months ago. If this is about showing how good you are at your job, it's not going very well so far… She reached into her jacket pocket for her warrant card, opened her mouth to start shouting…
What if they panicked? If he was nearby, it might provoke him into something. No, she might scare him off. She needed to do what they'd agreed. Besides, if he was nearby, she was going to take the fucker before he could hurt anybody.
That was her last thought before she felt the knife in her back and heard the voice, close to her ear.
'You are alone, aren't you, Sarah?'
'Yes.'
'You're not lying. That's good. Walk with me, and please be sensible…'
She gasped as the point of the knife pressed through her jacket and shirt, and into her skin. A hand was placed in the small of her back and began to guide her forwards towards the exit. His voice. Did she recognise it? Yes, maybe, couldn't remember. Fuck it…
McEvoy almost laughed. She was going to the fucker. She knew exactly what she wanted to do, needed to do, but couldn't for the life of her remember how. She was suddenly all but asleep on her feet. Helpless. If she hadn't felt as weak as a baby already, the words whispered into her ear would have taken away any last vestige of strength in her body.
'If you scream or try to run, I will kill a child.'
Thorne thought that from somewhere a few streets back he could still hear the horns that had blared at him as he'd got out of the Mondeo and begun to run. Now they were being sounded in pure rage and frustration at the abandoned car.
Oh Christ…
He began to slow down, his hands flying to his head, legs suddenly leaden.
Fuck…
Where were they coming from? Which direction would the backup vehicles come from? Brigstocke, Holland, the Armed Response Unit?
The traffic had been impossible before. Now, thanks to him, it would be gridlocked. If the cars were coming the same way he had… Suddenly, Thorne was aware of schoolboys moving past him: in ones and twos at first and then in bigger groups. Jabbering and clowning around. Blue blazers, trimmed with claret. The ties taken off for the journey home.
He was nearly there.
He took a painful breath and picked his legs up again, drove himself forward.
We can only hope that more young women of her calibre will come forward and offer their services to the public…
The tree-lined streets around the school now thick with blue and claret, alive with shouts and taunts, and boasts. Hitting the ground. Dragging his knees up… His stomach began to burn, the judder of each step sending an agonising shockwave through his shattered nose and up into his forehead. His chest rattled and clattered. Beneath his jacket, the sweat had plastered his shirt to his back. It froze as it met the cold air blowing down his collar.
Christ they were big, some of them. A pair of lumbering teenagers, striped ties wrapped around their foreheads, blocked the pavement ahead of him. Thorne put his head down and charged at them, ignoring the shouts and jeers as he crashed through the middle and began sprinting for all he was worth up the school drive.
As he ran, as his feet smacked the ground beneath him, he remembered the car crunching slowly over the gravel. He remembered the last time he'd come up this drive. He and Holland comparing educations in the car.
Then inside the school, the first time he'd got a look at Stuart Nicklin. The face turned away.
In making the ultimate sacrifice, this brave officer has increased the determination of those she leaves behind, to continue the fight… Was he about to see that face in the flesh?
He was only a hundred yards or so away. The drive curved sharply to the left and then narrowed suddenly, a bottleneck forming at the high, narrow gate that was the main entrance to the playground. He began to slow down as he approached it.
Everything seemed normal. Kids coming out smiling. There was no noise, no abnormal noise. He slowed to a jog and then a fast walk. Getting his breath back. Everything seemed normal, but he had no idea what was waiting for him inside that gate. He was suddenly very worried – sweating every bit as much as he had been when he was running.
If the message, whatever it was, however it had been worded, had got through to the school, then surely things would not have been so normal. Wouldn't the kids be inside? Kept away from any danger, held inside the building?
Thorne put out an arm, brushed past a boy hovering at the gate and stepped through.
He stood there, his guts churning, his eyes flicking across the expanse in front of him, trying to take it all in quickly. The main building to his right. The huge windows of the gymnasium, lined with wall bars. Up ahead, the newer buildings – the sixth-form block, the music rooms – and beyond them the playing fields. Still plenty of kids about. Singing coming from somewhere. A few teachers moving around…
McEvoy…
He took a step in her direction and then stopped. Her eyes bulged, terrified, out of a bloodless face. What little breath Thorne had left was gone in a moment.
'Sarah…'
Then Thorne got his first look at the face of the man immediately behind her. The man who was guiding her gently but firmly towards him. The man who stopped and looked straight at him, scowling, as if he were no more than a hindrance.
Then Thorne knew exactly why Ken Bowles had been killed.
TWENTY-NINE
'You're out of breath,' Cookson said. 'What have you been doing?'
It was a moment of terrible clarity. The sort that only ever comes hand in hand with terror, or great pain. Thorne embraced it as he would the sting of the flame that cauterised a wound. Andrew Cookson. ..
'You killed Bowles because he recognised you,' Thorne said. 'It wasn't random. It wasn't a message. You needed to do it…'
Cookson casually placed a hand on McEvoy's shoulder. 'Silly old sod should have retired years ago. Could barely do his sums any more. Then after half an hour with you he takes one good, hard look at me without the beard and.., bang! Cobwebs well and truly blown away. Corners me in the staff room. Pointing his finger and making melodramatic speeches. I know who you are. Fucking idiot…'
Thorne pictured the chalk on Bowles's Crotch, the soil dropping down on to the lid of his coffin. Why hadn't he called the police?
Why, when he'd recognised Cookson as Nicklin, hadn't he used the card that Thorne had given him, the one that Jay had found in his jacket pocket?
The answer was a painful one to acknowledge. It wasn't heroism, it was desperation. It was Ken Bowles's last chance. A crack at balancing that chair on his chin one final time.
'Enjoyable as this is,' Cookson said, 'the situation is a little tricky, wouldn't you say? I think we need to resolve it quickly. So, any bright ideas?'
His tone was easy and faintly amused. Not hard when you were the one with a knife in a woman's back.
'Not really,' Thorne said.
'I thought not.'
There was a silence that should have been heavy with threat and danger, but with children filing past smirking, it felt no more than awkward or embarrassing. Thorne wondered what the three of them looked like. Cookson and McEvoy might have been lovers, and he the ex-boyfriend, bumped into at an inopportune moment… Cookson smiled, as if working something out that pleased him enormously.
'You've come on your own as well, haven't you?
Thorne thought about lying but wasn't quick enough. Cookson leaned forward, ready to move on. 'Well, you have somewhat gate crashed things, but we're not going to let it spoil our enjoyment, are we, Sarah?' McEvoy winced as the knife nudged through another layer of skin. Thorne was close to rushing at him, hammering fists into his face. 'So, we're just going to carry on as if we never saw you. Excuse me…