Vendetta (26 page)

Mac ran wildly, without any sense of direction. Down another passageway. Past endless rows of more lights, like in a bad dream. As he ran he noticed another route off to his left. This one seemed to run in a straight line and was unlit. In the distance, he heard the sound of running water. Occasionally there was a blur of murky yellow light shining up from the floor. A stench in the air turned his stomach. He ran down the path; the sound of water became louder before fading again. The smell became a stench, with sulphur its main fragrance. Suddenly the ground beneath him wobbled. He stepped back. Looked down. A large, square, iron grille. And underneath it was a stream of dark, running water. A sewer.

He almost gagged at the stink as he got down on his knees. Wrapped his fingers around the grille. Pulled as hard as he could.

No movement.

He ran on in the blackness, until he came to another grille. Tried to tug it free. No movement.

He did the same to the next grille.

No movement.

Beams of torchlight suddenly shone down the tunnel. Shouts. Mac jumped to his feet. Began motoring forward. Stopped dead in his tracks when more torchlight shone up ahead of him. He was caught like a rat in a trap, but he didn’t even have a rat’s sewer to escape down.

He crawled backwards, keeping low, to the grille he’d just left. Felt the hinges with his fingers. Placed the barrel of the Luger between them and began trying to shoot the hinges off in turn. In front and behind, the torches were switched off as the shots echoed. He stood up and back to the wall, firing his remaining bullets at the grille. When he put his hands out in one last desperate attempt to pull away the metal bars that were keeping him imprisoned, he found the grille had plunged into the water below. He followed it, squeezing through the space and dropping ten feet into the freezing stream.

Following the flow, he waded forwards. The smell was overwhelming as he ploughed on through the murky water, searching for the telltale signs of a manhole cover. Fifty yards on, like the trail of a descending angel, a shaft of light came into view. An iron ladder led up to the surface, and Mac used his shoulders to dislodge the cover at the top, emerging blinking into the daylight, in the middle of a road. A car was coming straight at him. He managed to duck as the driver let loose with his horn. The sound of the vehicle shooting over the opened manhole blasted overhead. Mac took a breath. Listened. No noise overhead. He shoved his head above ground level again. Empty road. Climbed out.

Mac pulled his cap low and walked to the pavement, his wet trousers flapping against his legs. Soon he disappeared into the thick stream of passers-by.

fifty-nine

7 p.m.

Phil Delaney puffed hard on a real cigarette as he looked at his computer screen for the umpteenth time, seeing if Mac had been detected through his mobile. He knew it was useless because Mac would’ve dumped the phone by now, or got rid of the SIM card. But you never knew . . . But he did know, as the info on the computer screen came up blank again. When he got his hands on him . . .

The hard knock at the door cut through his vengeful thoughts. Before he could respond, the door thrust open to reveal his PA. She closed the door with quick efficiency and said, ‘Someone’s been trying to access our security files.’

Phil straightened up as he abandoned his smoke in the ashtray beside him on the desk. ‘Where from?’

‘The Fort.’

Phil’s mind swirled. Came back with a name – Rio Wray. No, he shook her name back: even Rio understood not to go that far. She might be an eager beaver, but she wasn’t going to commit career hara-kiri. She was a by-the-book cop every step of the way. So if it wasn’t her, who else could it be?

He leaned back in his chair with the appearance of being relaxed. ‘Thank you, Shazia.’

But instead of leaving, she hesitated.

‘Is there something else?’ he asked.

She shook her shoulders back like she was about to make an important announcement to an audience. ‘Just to remind you, sir, that smoking in public buildings is strictly prohibited.’

And with that she was gone. Trust him to have a personal assistant who also doubled up as the health and safety rep of the building. He picked his cigarette back up. Pulled in some much-needed nicotine, and then took out his mobile.

‘I’ve found Mac,’ he said as soon as he connected.

‘Good.’

‘I said I’d found him, not that I’ve got him.’

Phil eased up as he continued. ‘We need to shut Mac down. Permanently. So this is what I want you to do . . .’

Rio began shouting orders as soon as she got back to the squad room.

‘Check out the CCTV.’

‘I want patrols on the roads and underground.’

‘I want that bastard found.’

The atmosphere inside the squad room was explosive and loaded with disbelief. That someone would have the brass balls to come into their law-abiding house and run rings around them, take potshots at them . . . and yeah, get away from them. It was the last one that stuck in all of their throats most of all; shit, if it got out that they couldn’t even apprehend someone inside the walls of The Fort, their reputation would take yet another nosedive in the public confidence stakes. Rio still couldn’t believe it.

Mac.

Mac, for crying out loud. But then all the pieces had been staring her straight in the eye – the baseball cap he wore to cover his head injury, the description from the cabbie, the code for the undercover cop. And his enhanced face on the security footage. But Mac a killer? That was one leap she still couldn’t make. But she had to deal with that possibility. Personal feelings didn’t have a place in this.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Martin let out close to her. She was so caught up in her manic thoughts, she hadn’t even heard him approach her. ‘We’ve got his image, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find out who he is,’ Martin carried on.

No one in this room, other than Rio herself, knew who Mac was, especially with his baseball cap hiding most of his face. Should she tell her team that they were hunting one of their own? This was a sensitive situation, and she knew that the top brass would want to spin this one. The press were bound to find out what had happened – that’s if they hadn’t already – and no doubt the PR team from the commissioner’s office would be handling that.

‘Just carry on coordinating the search for now,’ Rio finally said to Martin. ‘Leave all the ID stuff to me.’

Her mobile rang. She pulled it out.

‘DI Wray.’

The top brass were already in play. ‘Yes, sir?’ she answered her senior officer, Detective Chief Inspector Newman.

‘I need you to come upstairs.’

Rio got her story straight as she headed for the top floor. Her superior’s suite of offices was decorated with the feel and quiet of a library. DCI Newman’s PA looked grim-faced at her desk as she nodded her head towards his door. Rio took a breath. Knocked once. Opened the door. The adrenalin pumped back into her body when she saw who waited inside. Not her superior, but Phil Delaney.

sixty

‘You lying piece of filth.’

Rio’s harsh words blasted inside the room as she stared at her lover and Mac’s boss. He sat at DCI Newman’s desk, while she stood in front of it.

‘Sit down.’ The calmness of his voice was in stark contrast to the heat of her own.

But, instead of following his instruction, she leaned her palms against the desk, the veins in her forearms coming to the surface, bunching and throbbing. She thrust her head forward. ‘You’ve had me running around in crazy circles from the get-go. You knew all along that the code number for one of your people belonged to Mac. Didn’t you?’ Her voice rose. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Sit. Down.’

She stared him out, the rage inside her making her nostrils flare. Didn’t move. Her bottom lip trembled, as though the words inside her mouth would come bursting out any second. But she held them back. Hitched herself off the desk. Took the chair, but arranged her body on the edge of the seat.

‘You and I both know that Mac’s a pro. No way would he have murdered that girl in the hotel.’

‘Then why is his face plastered over the security film from the hotel’s reception? And his blood in the room? What the fuck was he doing there in the first place?’

Phil leaned slightly back in the chair. ‘You know I can’t tell you the ins and outs of an operation. It’s—’

‘Yeah, I know, confidential. But let me tell you what isn’t so top secret is Mac running around this building like some kind of Looney Tune. One of
our
people could’ve been murdered – doesn’t that bother you?’ Rio wiped her hand across her face like she still couldn’t believe what Mac had done.

Her words didn’t move him. ‘What bothers me at the moment is that you stop pursuing Mac. I’ve already had a word with your DCI and a number of other people. Leave this one alone, Rio.’

She twisted her mouth in bitterness and threw her words out with a bite that would terrify most people. ‘I’m not surprised that it doesn’t bother you that someone in this building might have been killed—’

‘I didn’t say that it didn’t . . .’

But Rio was having none of his explanation. ‘But then that’s how you’ve always run your people – that cowboy Research Unit you head up: get the job done by any means necessary. Don’t let anyone, even your fellow cop, stand in your way.’ She shook her head. ‘After Stevie died, I told Mac he shouldn’t go back to your team. That what he needed was some downtime. Time to get his life back together. Time to be a real person again, not the make-believe man he became every time you shoved him undercover.’

For the first time she saw irritation sweep across Phil’s face, an expression that wasn’t so unlike the one he made when he came inside her. ‘You don’t need to tell me how devastated he was at the death of his son . . .’

‘Then why did you make him take this job, whatever this job is? You knew he wasn’t emotionally or mentally ready. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the guy looks like utter crap.’ She took a deep breath and then let out the words that had been beating at the back of her mind since she’d seen Mac’s face become clearer and clearer on the security footage. ‘What if he went over the edge? Lost himself and killed that girl? He’s probably suffering from PTSD again.’

‘He didn’t touch her. My people are going to be taking over the whole case . . .’

‘You know that I should remain as the IO on this . . .’

‘Rio, I’m concerned for you.’ Phil’s voice softened. ‘I don’t want anything else to happen to you.’ He stretched his palm out towards her. Laid it on the desk.

She gazed at it. Then the corners of her mouth turned down like she was observing a rattlesnake. She looked back up at him in disgust. ‘Is that why you’re here, Phil? To sweeten me up?’

Abruptly she shoved out of the chair. And before Phil could say anything, she raised her skirt, displaying her knickers and stockings to him for the second time that day.

‘Rio . . .’ he growled.

But she kept her skirt up. ‘Come on,’ she taunted. ‘Is that what you were going to do? Bang me on Newman’s desk? Twist and turn my pussy so I’d do whatever you wanted?’ She let her skirt fall. ‘Well, fuck you.’

She turned towards the door and kept moving.

‘You won’t find him.’

His words stopped her. She hesitated. Then turned her head to look at him over her shoulder.

‘He’s off the street. I’ve got him in custody.’

sixty-one

Rio leaned hard against the wall of the fourth-floor stairwell. A wave of relief swept inside her. At least Mac was off the street. She didn’t know whether to believe Phil about Mac not doing the murder. Murders? Maybe he’d killed the doctor as well, let Masri treat him and then silenced him for good? How could Mac have gone from the idealist cop she’d met at Hendon, pumped high on upholding justice, to a killer of a woman and an unborn child? No, there had to be an explanation for all this fucked-up shit.

‘Boss?’

She found Detective Martin at the bottom of the stairs. He took the steps two at a time to reach her.

‘You OK?’

That almost made her smile. She was meant to be looking after him, not the other way round. She nodded.

‘Word is that you’re not heading the case any more. You’re going to let them tip you off it?’

‘First rule of a detective is to follow the rule book.’

‘But what if I told you I found out a few other things?’

She pulled herself off the wall. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I contacted my translator friend at the Russian embassy again . . .’

There was something in his voice that made Rio step forward. ‘You don’t happen to be seeing this
friend
of yours in an intimate capacity?’

Seeing the blush stain his face, Rio groaned. ‘We can’t use this information because you’re personally . . .’

Martin waved his hands and crowded in on her slightly. ‘No, let me finish, DI, and then make your decision.’ He took a hard breath. Waited. Finally she nodded. ‘When I asked my friend to translate the writing on the tattoo, what I didn’t tell you was he informed—’