Lifeless - 5 (43 page)

McEvoy almost laughed. She was going to the 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 al 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 wil kil a child.'

Thorne thought that from somewhere a few streets back he could stil 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, Hol and, 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 wil 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 col ar.

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 al 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 Hol and 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 al in quickly. The main building to his right. The huge windows of the gymnasium, lined with

wal bars. Up ahead, the newer buildings - the sixth-form block, the music rooms - and beyond them the playing fields. Stil 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 kil ed.

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 kil ed Bowles because he recognised you,' Thorne said. 'It wasn't random. It wasn't a message. You needed to do it...'

Cookson casual y placed a hand on McEvoy's shoulder. 'Sil y 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 wel 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 cal ed the police? Why, when he'd recognised Cookson as Nicklin, ladn'.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 real y,' 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 wel , haven't you?

Thorne thought about lying but wasn't quick enough. Cookson leaned forward, ready to move on. 'Wel , you have somewhat gatecrashed 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...

There was nothing Thorne could do. He had to step aside to let Cookson walk away. He didn't have a shred of doubt that he would push the knife into McEvoy's spine at the slightest provocation. He turned side-on, giving Cookson the room to get past, to manoeuvre McEvoy through the gate and away. Thorne noticed that in his free hand Cookson was carrying his briefcase with him. His cover was perfect. This was territory he'd felt safe on. Just a tired teacher heading home with a friend at the end of a long day...

Cookson froze suddenly, looked right and left. Then Thorne saw what was happening. Children were moving back towards the building, some running. Teachers had appeared silently around the edge of the

playground and were gathering in those pupils stil around.

The message had got through.

Hissing instructions, beckoning, gesturing, the teachers emptied the playground in as orderly a way as they could. Fol owing the directives that they had been given - that were standard in such situations they were trying to do it without alarming anyone, least of al the kil er they'd been told might be nearby.

He was nearer than they realised and he was alarmed. Thorne could see the hesitation, the tension in Cookson's face and in the hand that squeezed the back of Sarah McEvoy's neck.

'Please,' McEvoy said. It was more of a moan than a word.

'I think we're stuck with each other,' Thorne said. 'Half the Met is waiting for you out there. Plenty of them are armed and looking for an excuse...

Cookson shook his head, and in an instant he had brought the knife round to McEvoy's throat. Smiling, he began to move backwards, towards the centre of the playground. Thorne fol owed slowly, praying that what he'd just told Cookson was, or would very soon be, true. As they neared the middle of the playground, McEvoy's eyes locked on to Thorne's. He couldn't begin to guess what they were trying to tel him.

Cookson stopped and took a deep breath. He adjusted his position, leaving the knife exactly where it was, the blade biting into McEvoy's neck, but moving round a little to stand next to her.

'You know I'l kil her, so why don't we stop pissing about. One way or another, I'm leaving here. If I'm in the back of a squad car, then she'l be leaving in a body bag.'

'Fuck you,' McEvoy said.

Cookson opened his eyes wide in mock surprise. 'It speaks,' he said. 'I was wondering where you'd got to. I reckon your blood must be about ninety-eight per cent Colombian.' He laughed, and McEvoy grunted as a line of blood an inch or so long sprang onto the flesh of her throat and began to drip.

'Sorry,' Cookson said. 'Accident...'

Thorne twitched and Cookson's look told him to keep very stil . It told him that the next time there would be a lot more blood.

'What did you do with the boy when you kil ed Carol Garner?' Thorne said. 'Did he see it happen?' Cookson narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as if confused by the question. 'Did you make her son watch while you kil ed her?' Cookson shook his head, blew out a breath through tight lips. 'Sorry, you'l have to help me. Which one was Carol Garner again?'

Thorne knew then that as things stood, none of them were likely to leave that playground alive. He was wil ing his feet to stay where they were, but he knew that at any moment he would fly at this man, that rage would simply stop him caring any more. He knew that McEvoy's throat would open and cover the two of them with blood as she dropped away while he and Andrew Cookson murdered each other with cuts and clutching hands on the cold asphalt...

Thorne became aware of a low buzzing noise. He realised that the sound was coming out of McEvoy's mouth.

'I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I'm sorry...'

'McEvoy...'

Thorne's voice just seemed to activate some switch in McEvoy's brain. Now the words gushed out of her. She shook her head violently as if trying to dislodge something, shake it out of there; her neck moving back and forth across the blade of the knife, the blood running down Cookson's fingers.

'I'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorryI'msorry...'

Thorne could have sworn that the scream that fol owed came from him, or was at the very least inside his head, but if it was, why was Cookson spinning round? Why was he looking so astonished... ?

The figure came running from around the side of the main building, shouting and waving. Thorne blinked, looked again.

The figure was waving a gun.

Martin Palmer lumbered towards them, and the things that Thorne

was seeing seemed to happen in slow motion at the same time that the thoughts in his head started coming faster than he could make sense of them.

Cookson pushing McEvoy away, dropping the knife...

McEvoy turning, running straight at Palmer...

Cookson bringing up his hands to protect his head as the first shot rang across the playground...

As Thorne went down hard, he heard the second shot, and at the edge of his vision he saw McEvoy stumble and crash heavily to the ground. An instant before he closed his eyes, he saw the look of astonishment frozen on Cookson's face, and a look there were simply no words to describe on Martin Palmer's.

It was no more than a few moments, but when Thorne opened his eyes, it seemed to have become considerably darker. There were a few spots of sleet in the air.

Thorne raised his head. Twenty-five yards away, McEvoy lay on the floor. He had no idea where she'd been hit, how badly she was hurt. He heard her moan as she tried to move the leg that was twisted awkwardly beneath her.

She was moving at least.

Thorne slowly got to his feet. His eyes, and those of Andrew Cookson, never moved from the figure of Martin Palmer. He stood no more than a few feet from them, his head bowed, the hand that held the gun twitching spastical y.

'What the fuck are you doing, Palmer?' Thorne said.

Palmer looked up. His eyes seemed huge behind his glasses. The gun was smacking against his leg. 'I'm sorry.'

Behind Palmer, McEvoy cried out. Th0rne couldn't make out whether it was pain or anger.

'Sorry?' Thorne shouted. 'Fucking sorry... ?'

'You're ful of surprises, Martin,' Cookson said. 'I tel you to shoot someone, you throw a wobbly and run to the police...'

Palmer shook his head. 'Shut up, Stuart...'

Cookson didn't even draw breath. 'Then up you pop out of the blue, and fuck me if you don't put a bul et in one of them.'

Palmer raised the gun and pointed it at Cookson's chest. 'I told you to shut up.'

'Not deliberately, of course. I think we know who the bul ets were meant for.' He nodded his head towards McEvoy. 'She was just a lucky accident.'

Thorne looked at Cookson, no more than two paces away, and promised himself that whatever else happened, he was going to hurt him.

A noise came up from Palmer's throat, a low growl which erupted out of his mouth as a roar. His knuckles were white against the grip of the gun, his finger twitching against the trigger.

He nodded once, twice. Those little nods. Urging himself to do it, tel ing himself to shoot.

Cookson looked unconcerned. 'I always had to get you riled up, didn't I?' he said. 'Do you remember? There was a smal window of opportunity if I was going to get you to do something, because you never held it together for very long. So, what's got you so excited now? Specifical y?' He asked the question casual y, as if checking some trivial fact. 'Was it Karen?'