Hunted (11 page)

Pulse racing, body temperature rocketing, Danny ran straight across South Carriage Drive. He didn’t look back as he raced on into the city. From right up close behind him came a yelp of skidding tyres – those three cop cars kerb-mounting,
handbrake-turning
, almost on top of him now.

He jinked right, heart pounding, sliding between a row of parked cars. He used them as a shield, kept them between himself and the street.

The first cop car catapulted past him less than a second after. Unmarked. Black. It angled in hard right and slewed to a juddering stop halfway across the pavement. Five metres ahead.

Danny didn’t slow. No point ducking into the chained courtyard of the building to his right. Too easy to get trapped. But he couldn’t turn back either. Not with those other two cop cars no doubt already sealing off the road behind.

It was the driver’s door of the black pursuit car in front of Danny that opened first. A man in his early forties with a hard, lined face and a short grey-black beard started to get out, pulling a pistol as he did.

Danny didn’t mess about. While the plainclothes cop was still only halfway out of the vehicle, he dropped his right shoulder and hit the door as hard as he could.

The metal slammed against the cop’s legs. The man cried out and crumpled to the ground as Danny let his momentum carry him onwards, spinning him across the car’s front bumper, forcing him to throw his hands up just to stop himself from smashing his face against a blackened brick wall.

He turned, expecting the other cop riding shotgun to be coming for him. But all he saw was a blurred face staring out at him through the windscreen, alongside the manically strobing blue light on the dash.

Danny lurched panting away from there and out on to a wide gridlocked street, his right knee jarring with every step, the heel of his left hand bleeding from where he’d battered himself against the wall.

Fifty metres to his left, a crowd of people clung like a swarm of agitated bees to the outside of Knights bridge tube station. Meaning, Danny reckoned, that the London Under ground system must have already been shut down.

The secondary roadblock he’d predicted was there also, closing off the entire street. Traffic stretched back past him for as far as the eye could see.

And gridlock was good. For Danny, at least. Because no way could those police cars pursue him through this. Meaning the odds against him had temporarily been evened. If the police were going to catch him at all, they were now going to have to do it on foot.

He half ran, half stumbled diagonally across the street, away from the roadblock, heading west, zigzagging between jammed cars.

No one paid him any attention. They were all watching the police up at the roadblock. They’d realized something big was going down. Some kind of an attack. They’d probably heard details of the gunmen opening up on those other civilians on the radio by now. One guy was up on the bonnet of his truck, using his cell phone to film it all.

Danny kept his head dipped low beneath the line of vehicle roofs as he put more distance between himself and the police. He unrolled his balaclava another inch, so it was right down on his
brow. Sweat trickled from it like a sponge. He reduced his speed to a steady jog. He tried to keep on visualizing himself as just another urban wannabe athlete out getting fit.

Something in his peripheral vision made him look right. Across the street were two armed soldiers. Household Cavalry, Danny saw from the uniforms. On sentry duty outside Hyde Park Barracks.

But they weren’t interested in him either. The same as everyone else, they were wondering what the hell was happening to the east.

Danny glanced back over his shoulder. Didn’t like what he saw. The police manning the roadblock were beginning to turn. Word of his arrival in this sector must have spread. In his direction.

Walk. Don’t run
, he reminded himself.

He spotted the junction with Trevor Street at last. Only then – when he had to, or else he’d pass it by – did he leave the cover of the stationary line of traffic and step up on to the pavement.

Don’t look back.

It felt like crossing a spotlit stage. He remembered the last time he’d had to do that, in a nativity play when he’d been seven. His brow bled sweat. Each second stretched as his mind raced. He imagined the eyes of the police boring deep into his back. He waited for their shouts to start up, for the rumble of their boots to turn into a stampede. For the chase to be on again.

But he reached the entrance to Trevor Street hearing nothing more threatening than the frantic beat of his own drumming heart.

‘OK, I’ve got a visual on you now,’ the Kid’s voice whispered in his ear.

Danny glanced up at a CCTV camera bolted to a set of traffic lights on a pedestrian crossing ten metres further up the road. A part of the Trafficmaster system the Kid was already jacked into, no doubt.

‘I can’t believe you’ve still got that tracksuit on, man …’

‘Yeah, funny that, Kid,’ Danny said. ‘But there weren’t exactly many clothes concessions down in that sewer of yours.’

As he turned into Trevor Street, the noise of the idling traffic behind him immediately dropped away. The small square was residential. Only parked cars. No cops.

‘The only fashion I give a toss about right now,’ said the Kid with a snort, ‘is what’s on your face. These images I’m getting of you now. The police can and will access these systems too. And once they start scanning back through the hard-drive records, tracking your movements street by street from where you came out of that fountain right up to here, any half-decent shots of your face they get, they’re gonna set VIIDO on straight away …’

VIIDO. The catchy little acronym the British police had dreamt up for the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office at New Scotland Yard. Whose tech-heavy task it was to identify and help capture any suspects caught on CCTV.

‘And the first thing they’ll do is run that photo of you through all the major digital image databases they’re linked up to, including those in the States …’

‘Meaning sooner or later they’ll match my face up to my name.’
And my address and my whole damned history.

‘Correct. So make sure you keep those shades and that hat on,’ said the Kid.

Danny stepped up into a jog, having finally now got his breath fully back. He saw that nearly all of the Regency houses he was passing had CCTV cameras either high up on their façades or glaring out from their doorways. Bringing another UK tech stat rising up through his mind.

About how – in spite of recent pledges by the government to curb the epidemic – there were an estimated four point two million CCTV cameras in Britain. Half a million in London alone. Also meaning that your average Londoner, wandering around London on an average day, was likely to be filmed by more than three hundred and fifty cameras on thirty-five separate surveillance systems.

Leaving Danny’s current chances of getting his portrait repeatedly snapped higher than anywhere else in the world.

Danny cut through the deserted service alley linking Montpelier Mews to Montpelier Street.

He could hear a chopper hovering somewhere nearby. He stuck close to the residential buildings he passed, and used trees for cover where possible.

The noise of gridlocked traffic began building up again now. A tuneless chorus of blaring horns. The same as Knightsbridge, Brompton Road was jammed both ways.

The clatter of a road drill made him flinch as he stepped out on to the pavement. Sounded like small-arms fire. So much so that for a second he wondered if someone was shooting at him.

His stomach twisted with grim apprehension as he waited for a bullet to hit. Nothing came. He forced himself to stay calm and stay right where he was. He crouched down on the hot pavement and made a show of tying his trainers’ laces, while really checking left and right.

Another roadblock to the east. Out side what looked like Harrods department store. More cops. Riot vans too. But no one was looking his way. They were all focused to the north, to where the pursuit cars had nearly run him down.

He turned south-west down Brompton Road instead and lengthened his stride, kicking off again into his jogging routine.
But the more designer clothes boutiques he lumbered past, the more frequently he caught sight of his ragged reflection in their gleaming windows, and the more he felt his confidence draining away.

No matter,
he told himself.
You’re going to make it. You’re nearly there
…

Less than two hundred metres away was the turn for Egerton Terrace. Another fifty metres past that and Danny would have the Kid’s Ford Transit clearly in his sights.

The thought of the cold water that would be waiting for him there left him light-headed for a second. He felt his legs nearly slip away.

Keep moving
…
Not long
…

‘We’re going to lose contact for a second,’ said the Kid.

‘Why?’

‘Cop chatter says they’re about to jam the commercial phone networks. To isolate you fully, in case you’re not operating alone. They reckon you and the others are being micromanaged remotely, the same as went down in Mumbai. I’m switching us to an
emergency
services network. But don’t worry, I’ll keep us encrypted. They won’t even know that we’re there.’

A crackle. A hiss. Four seconds later and the Kid came back.

‘Word’s also just out on who the target was,’ he said.

‘Shoot.’

‘Nice choice of words …’

Danny was too busy focusing on not falling over from exhaustion to raise a smile.

‘Madina Tskhovrebova,’ said the Kid.

The name meant nothing to Danny.

‘A Nobel Prize-winning journalist,’ the Kid said. ‘Due to ask the UN Security Council later today for their support in passing further resolutions demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from her homeland of South Ossetia.’

Which of course was why she’d been in a Georgian diplomatic limousine, Danny realized. Because in truth she’d have been addressing the UN on their behalf. Because if Russian troops ever
did pull out of South Ossetia, then Georgia would once more be able to claim the potentially lucrative territory as its own.

‘And she’s dead?’ Danny said.

‘Cops got her into the building opposite the Ritz. But she bled out once she was there.’

The woman who’d been screaming in the street. The only one of those prone civilians who’d been moving. The one whose legs had been blown away. So she’d been the target. And the shooters had let her live. The hawk-faced man had let her suffer a while longer, knowing she’d soon die anyway.

Something else for that TV camera crew to record. Something for news feeds across the globe to play over and over again. A world-famous pro-Georgian South Ossetian writer. An
international
martyr now.

‘People are already starting to point the finger at the Russians,’ the Kid said.

But to Danny, something about that didn’t feel right.

He said, ‘If they’d just wanted to shut this woman up, they could have done it a lot more covertly. Jesus, even another Litvinenko incident couldn’t have brought the many worse publicity than this.’

Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, who’d claimed political asylum in the UK to avoid prosecution in Russia, but who’d then been poisoned with
polonium-210
and had died of acute radiation syndrome in London in 2006.

‘Maybe,’ said the Kid. ‘But there’s still plenty of hardcore factions in the Russian government who’d be more than happy if this led to a war.’

Danny could now clearly see the turning for Egerton Terrace up ahead. Fifty metres and closing.

A crashing sound on the other end of the line stopped him dead in his tracks.

‘Jesus,’ hissed the Kid.

‘What?’

Some cop’s just pulled up on a road bike at the end of the street I’m in … and …’ – a note of panic rang out down the line – ‘and, oh shit, Danny, he’s walking my way …’

Scuffling. A muffled curse.

Silence.

Danny fought a sudden urge to spew. How the hell could a cop have got on to the Kid? And what would happen if the Kid was challenged? There was no way he’d just give himself up.

But then he heard the Kid sigh.

‘It’s OK. He’s gone.’ There was relief and surprise in his voice. ‘Never even reached the van. Just turned and ran back to his bike. Set off faster than Steve fucking McQueen in
The Great Escape.
Like he really had somewhere to go.’

It didn’t take Danny long to figure out where. Less than three seconds later, a cop bike burst out snarling on to Brompton Road, and reared up on to the pavement.

Its rider fixed his eyes dead on Danny, then sent the bike racing his way.

Danny broke left. Across Brompton Road. Into Beauchamp Place. Every muscle in his body was burning, like he was about to burst into flames.

Pedestrians scattered in front of him like leaves before an oncoming storm. They weren’t running from him. They were scared of what was chasing him down.

Sirens. Right behind.

Danny cut into the stationary traffic, using it again as a shield. Beauchamp Place terminated in a crossroads. He shot out on to Walton Street and lurched round to the right, gasping, clutching at his cramping chest.

Rounding a corner, he scrambled over a tall flint wall. Into a graveyard. A dark stone spire pointed like a witch’s finger at the sky. Slipping on ivy and mulch, he staggered between graves and mausoleums to the opposite side of the church.

‘How the hell did they pick up my trail?’ he said, wheezing, chest rattling

‘Someone must have seen you. That footage of you on the balcony … it’s all over the news feeds now. For all I know the cops are already tracking you live on CCTV. I said it was just a matter of time.’

Meaning I’m screwed
…

‘They’re reinforcing from the west,’ the Kid continued. ‘Establishing a line of roadblocks. They must think you’re planning on heading that way.’

‘In which case, I’ll go east.’

Back into the fire
…
what they’ll never expect
…

‘Good thinking. I’ll guide you to Pavilion Road. Then take you south. Down past Sloane Street. Get yourself a change of clothes, and you might just drop off their radar for good.’

Danny threw himself over the wall. He landed hard on the pavement. It felt like someone had just struck his knee with a hammer. How much more could he take?

‘Cross over into Hans Place,’ said the Kid. ‘It’s diagonally opposite you now.’

Danny ran on into the leafy urban square. Tall, good-looking white houses. Bright floral window boxes.

A school playground up ahead to his right. The sound of kids playing, running. He remembered his own son’s laughter. He pictured Jonathan’s face. The gaps in his teeth. The way he’d sometimes giggle until he ended up gasping for air.

‘There’s an alleyway running down the back of a long square building to your right,’ said the Kid, severing Danny’s memory.

Danny heard the whoop of a siren behind him. He ignored what the Kid had just said. Instead he ran on.

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘It’s a school.’ He was thinking of the cops coming gunning for him. Who knew what weapons they were packing? Or how well or badly they’d been trained?

‘Fucking turn back now, Danny, or you’re going to get caught.’

A squeal of accelerating tyres. As Danny veered right at the end of the square, he glanced back and saw a riot van rushing up to his rear. Then – worse – a cop bike screeched up to block the road in front of him too.

He ran left. His only option now.

A cliff of ornate sandstone studded with windows reared up at the end of the street a hundred metres ahead. It had to be the back of Harrods, he figured, the taste of blood now rising in his mouth.

More gridlock. Engines revving. Horns blasting. Sirens wailing all around.

A thunder of rotors. Danny saw a helicopter directly above. An insignia was daubed across its fuselage. Sky News.

‘I got a TV chopper locked on me,’ he said, cutting right now into Basil Street, across the back of Harrods, past hotels and antiques shops.

A blur of motion in the window of a Sony store to his right. Twenty different images of himself stared back at him. All of him running. All filmed from up above.

‘Kid,’ he said. ‘They’re transmitting me
live
.’

Which meant half the country would be watching him now.

Manic bursts of sirens. Two, three – no, four, he counted – cop bikes slammed to a halt at the end of the street. Glancing back, Danny saw that another two had already circumvented the gridlocked traffic and performed the exact same manoeuvre behind him.

He ran for the entrance to Harrods – the biggest and most densely populated building nearby, and therefore his best chance of evasion.

‘Oh, Jesus, Danny. You—’

Those were the last words Danny heard the Kid say.

Because right then he hit something. Hard. A man. The collision sent Danny spinning sideways, tumbling, sprawling.

His Bluetooth earpiece flew from him and smashed into pieces on the ground. He grabbed at them, stuffed them into his pocket. He couldn’t leave them. They were covered with his prints and DNA.

Civilians were running from him like ripples from a rock that had just been hurled into a pool. He touched his face. Felt his shades were still in place. The same went for the rolled-up balaclava on his head, thank God.

They still haven’t seen your face.

The thought gave him hope, sent him running again. Because there was no way the camera crew in that chopper would be able to get a decent shot of him from up there.

Just get under cover. Get off the street. Give these police the slip now and there’s still a chance they might never track you down.

He staggered up on to the opposite pavement and careered through a bunch of empty metal bins.

Then
smack
. Another collision. This time with a young man in a blue pinstripe suit who’d been making a phone call. Danny kept his feet as the other man crumpled. But he still couldn’t stop himself from crashing hard against the building wall.

As he tried running on, he felt himself jerked backwards. His rucksack gave an almighty rip. A drainpipe bracket had snagged it good. He twisted and spun out of its straps, plucking it from the air before it hit the ground.

But even as he turned back to run towards the entrance to Harrods, he saw something flutter free from the rip in the rucksack’s side.

A faded square of card. It twisted over in the breeze as it tumbled to the ground.

It was the photograph of Lexie laughing on that playground swing. As he lunged for it, her eyes seemed to bore right into his, as if she were suddenly here by his side.

He would not quit or let her down.

His sunglasses had fallen. He snatched them up too with the photo and slotted them back on his face. Then he locked his eyes on the Harrods doors and ran.