PANIC BUTTON a gripping crime thriller full of twists Page 3
Two bullets, one a split second after the other, smashed through the outstretched palms and penetrated the high-visibility vest and hardened leather chest plate like they weren’t there. The bullets exited through Freddie’s upper back, where one stopped deep in a tree and the other spun off into the woods behind. Freddie had been standing astride his bike, and now the BMW fell, taking him with it.
He felt no pain, nor could he move any part of his body. His breathing was becoming harsher, and every breath felt like it was crushing his heart. The man stood over Freddie and then dropped to one knee, placing the pistol on the ground. Freddie was aware of a hand fidgeting around his collar where his microphone was clipped. Then he saw a gloved finger find the red emergency button that was prominent on his handlebars and connected to the police radio. He pushed it firmly.
Less than two miles away and at nearly 100 mph, Jack Leslie’s helmet emitted two loud beeps and he felt a vibration against his right ear and cheek. He eased up on the throttle and the bike slowed. Jack dipped his head as he tried to make out the transmission but all he, and the rest of the traffic team could hear, were the last breaths of their friend and colleague.
CHAPTER 4
‘So what do you know, Ian?’
Detective Sergeant Ian Cutter had made a promise to his wife and family that he would give up smoking, but it was not going well. He had finally agreed a cut-off date, which had fallen two days before being put in charge of a major incident that was still unfolding. His mood when he came in to work his late shift had not been good. It was to become considerably blacker.
‘What do I know?’ Cutter repeated back at Detective Chief Inspector Ross Price, his boss and the man responsible for landing him with the investigation. ‘What do I know?’ he said again, his voice rising. ‘We have a nutter with a gun, who hates the police and anyone associated with them. We have three officers dead, three scenes manned by armed officers and we have a state of emergency. Does that sound about right?’
The inspector shook his head and puffed out his cheeks. ‘You seem to have the crux of it. I’ve just come from a meeting where a call was made to ground all operational officers. That is uniform or otherwise, so we have an investigation that we can’t actually start investigating yet. We’re losing witnesses and opportunities with every passing minute.’
‘So much for the golden hour principle.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this, Ian. This meeting, it was senior officers, they’re scared right now and no one knows the next step.’
DS Cutter was still standing in Price’s office. He hadn’t felt like sitting. On his walk through the station he’d noted that none of the police officers who now flooded the station were seated either. They seemed to be walking the corridors in a daze, still wearing their full kit. Cutter knew that coppers developed strong bonds quickly, heightened by a “them and us” attitude. He’d seen this throughout his thirty years of service. The three victims were well known and well liked. The station was a very strange and very tense place to be and everyone was waiting for some sort of direction from the office where Cutter was now standing.
Both men were silent, not knowing what to say next. Cutter and DCI Price had worked together for two years, and although Cutter was fifteen years older, he had come to like and respect his boss.
‘Right, let’s go back over exactly what we have.’ Price leaned on the back of his chair and motioned for Cutter to sit down. ‘And we’ll take them one at a time.’
Cutter reached for an A4 notebook that had been new this morning and was almost half full already. ‘First victim was a response officer, PC Matthew Riley. We know that he was sent to an abandoned 999 call at the top of Canterbury Road. We now know that the property is empty and the owners are abroad. We’ve run them through the box and they’ve got no police record between them at all. The husband was a victim of a crime once, that’s it.’
‘A victim of what?’ Price said.
‘Criminal Damage. Some kids ran over his car in the early hours in 2006 — minimal damage, no offender, it was written off.’
‘Associates?’
‘Nothing on our systems. There’s no intelligence about them at all. From what we can tell from the neighbours they’re a decent couple, both retired, who now travel regularly. We have located a son who lives in the town and we’re planning on speaking to him today. Beyond that we will be waiting for the couple to return.’
‘There’s nothing there, is there?’ Price seemed to be thinking out loud.
‘No. The shooting happened in an alley that runs down the side of the house. I’m pretty sure that the offender chose it because it suited his needs. It was secluded, but still central and nothing at all to do with the occupants of the address.’
‘His needs?’
Cutter nodded. ‘We can be pretty sure of that. Statistically it’s most likely, also the voice from the very first call is masculine.’
‘We have a voice?’
‘A distorted one. Only subtly, and not enough to raise the call-taker’s suspicion, but enough to make it difficult to identify or match up. We’re still working on that though.’
The DCI exhaled loudly and rubbed at his mouth. ‘You said he was looking for somewhere central? You think the location is relevant?’
‘This guy’s shot and killed three police officers in broad daylight. The locations were chosen in order to make the maximum impact. The first two especially — both were outside, both in busy areas and the choice of a school really gets the locals worried. The third one could have been an opportunist attack, the MO differed a little.’
‘Differed how?’ asked Price.
‘Sergeant Lee was shot and then his button was pushed, probably by the offender, to allow us to hear him die.’ Price’s jaw tensed and Cutter continued. ‘The previous two victims had been forced to read out a prepared script. The shooter left both pieces of paper lying with the victims. It is possible that he hadn’t planned the third and just took his opportunity.’
Price stood up. He paced over to a map of Langthorne and surrounding areas, with coloured lines and shading marking out different territories. ‘Where are the locations in relation to each other? Are we sure the timings make sense and have we any theories about how he’s travelling?’
Cutter followed his boss over to the map and pointed at Canterbury Road, which was on the north side of the town. ‘Riley was here just before three this afternoon.’ Cutter’s hand moved further up the map, over a large roundabout at the very top of the town, and continued up to the village of Hawkinge. This place had undergone recent and massive expansion via new-build housing and was now almost a town. It was perhaps a five-minute drive from Canterbury Road in heavy traffic. St Winifred’s School was on the southwest side of the village and was almost brand new, the map showed nothing more than a large green field. ‘Jan was here. The school kicked out at three fifteen and she pressed her button at three twenty-three.’ Cutter’s hand swept across the map, resting at the north side of Hythe. This was a seaside town that lay west of Langthorne and was linked to it by a stretch of exclusive properties, bars and restaurants that either directly fronted the sea or were secreted in the steep, hilly landscape, affording their owners privacy and an enviable view across the channel. Cutter was pointing at the rural area, twenty minutes from the centre of Langthorne, where the houses were mainly farms or guesthouses and the scenery was woods and rolling fields. ‘And here, just after four, was where Sergeant Lee was attacked,’ he continued.
‘So it’s all possible within the timeline.’ Price turned away from the map and looked out of his window, down onto a yard full of immobile police vehicles.
‘It works, yes. The first and second attacks are tight at that time of day. You could do the journey but it must have taken time to do some preparation, to pick his spot. Certainly it wouldn’t be a problem if there were multiple offenders.’
Price spun round to face Cutter. ‘You think that’s possible?’
Price turned back to the window, his words directed out to the silent yard. ‘A group. You think we should be considering a terrorist group?’
‘We just don't know,’ Cutter said. It was not a day for comforting platitudes.
‘You need to get in with your team. How many have you got?’
‘I have seven detectives and as many uniform officers as I could ever need. There are people coming in on their days off to help out. Everyone wants this bastard caught, and right now we’re just sitting them down in rooms around Langthorne House.’
‘Best place for them right now. Until we can get a hold of this threat I can’t have anyone out, uniform or not’
‘You’re right,’ Cutter agreed. Sensing that the meeting had come to a natural conclusion he said, ‘I’ll keep you informed, sir. We’ve set up in the canteen, fifth floor, it’s the only room with enough space. We’ve set an area aside for you with a terminal and a few bits so you can be in among it. There’ll be a lot of work being done — and there’s the bonus of the coffee machine.’
Price was still peering out of the window but turned on his heels as Cutter made to leave, unsure if his boss had heard him.
‘Ian,’ he said, and the sergeant stopped. ‘I need to be calling the chief constable, the chief superintendent and all sorts of spaghetti right away and I need to be pretty straight about the situation we find ourselves in. So that I haven’t misunderstood — this isn’t over, is it? I mean, based on what we know.’
Cutter bit his bottom lip. ‘At this stage, we have to assume that it’s just beginning.’
* * *
Cutter waited for the door to close behind him before exhaling loudly. The sun had fallen low in the sky. He checked his watch — 8.20 p.m. His shift was due to finish at ten but he had already phoned his wife to tell her he would be home much later. She was accustomed to such calls and didn’t even ask why. The life of a major crime sergeant rarely fitted into a neat shift pattern.
Cutter stepped into the clunking lift and his finger hovered over the number 5. While he hesitated, a woman entered, smiled at Cutter and began to peel yellow rubber gloves from her hands.
‘Where to, love?’ Cutter said.
‘Ground, please. Time for cigarette.’ Cutter thought her accent might be Polish. She gave another smile.
Cutter narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t have a spare, do you? Only I’ve given up.’
‘You give up?’ she said.
‘If my wife asks I have.’
The woman took a second, then grinned at him. ‘Naughty man!’ Long blonde hair fell over her attractive face as she reached into her pocket for her cigarette packet. She tugged the box open and held it out to Cutter.
Cutter pressed the button for the ground floor. ‘Thank you. Today I really need one.’
‘You have bad day?’
‘You could say that, yeah. The whole force has had a shocker.’
‘I hear bad things. People hurt.’
‘Badly hurt.’
‘Why?’ Jana looked genuinely upset.
‘That question is the reason I need this cigarette. They’ve put me in charge of finding out.’
She dropped her gloves into a bucket at her feet, lifted her hands to her hair and began to tie it up. Her bust strained against her polo shirt, which had “Jana” stitched on one side of her chest and “Prestige Cleaning Services” on the other. Cutter kept his eyes focused on the mirrored wall. On the ground floor, Jana lifted her bucket out of the lift and set it down. ‘I come back, you need lighter too?’
Cutter tapped the pocket where he usually kept his much-loved Zippo, and of course his wife had removed it. ‘I guess I do.’
‘You follow me.’ Jana walked towards the side exit of the building and Cutter followed, now able to admire her from behind much less surreptitiously.
CHAPTER 5
It was close to 3 a.m. and Langthorne seemed to be covered by a muggy blanket as it slept. Finally Cutter was able to step out of the station and leave for home. It had been hard to resist the temptation to simply kick off his shoes and lie down on the couch in the canteen.
Cutter stopped at his car and watched brake lights flicker in the distance. The last of his team of detectives was slipping away for the few hours’ sleep they would get before returning to pick up where they had left off.
And where had they left off? Cutter sighed and expelled smoke from another scrounged cigarette. He went back over what they had done since the shootings occurred. Not much. In his career, he’d run nine murder investigations and basically they all followed the same pattern: the killer would do the deed, then try to get as far away from the victim and the scene of the crime as possible. It was then the turn of the police to conduct a slow, methodical and painstaking investigation, whereby the offender could be identified with evidence that would be compelling enough for a conviction in a court of law. He’d had his successes, probably more than most, but this case was very different. This killer was not covering his tracks or running away from the murder scenes. Instead, he seemed intent on creating more.
The night was still. Cutter leaned on the nearly new BMW 5 Series that he’d bought recently when his pension had paid him his lump sum. He had his hands in his pockets, the cigarette still between his lips. When he’d purchased the car, he had sworn to anyone who would listen that he’d “had enough.” Now that he had served his time, he would not be returning to Lennokshire Police. The thought of actual retirement, however, had caused him to panic. His return to his vacated role as Major Crime Detective Sergeant had been so speedy that he had been able to smile knowingly at the cleaner who walked past him, carrying the wrapper from his “Happy Retirement” cake the day after his party on the top floor of Langhorne House. Perhaps it was the cake that prompted him, but Cutter had taken a moment to look in the large, stained mirror of the toilet in the police station bar. He’d run the words back through his mind, allowing himself for the first time to explore their meaning. “Happy retirement,” he’d said out loud to his reflection, “what does it mean?” Cutter had known the answer all along, and, waving away another celebratory whiskey, had marched straight to DCI Price. The conversation had lasted sixty seconds. Price knew better than to ask Cutter if he was sure, and instead nodded his approval, broke into a smile and offered his hand.
That conversation had taken place just seven weeks ago. Cutter had never looked back, never wished that he had stepped away from it all and taken his retirement, never lost the confidence that he could deal with whatever might come through the door. Until now.
Cutter discarded the cigarette, found a packet of mints and slid into the driver’s seat of the BMW. It rumbled into life with the push of a button. It was the 3.0 litre petrol model, a car he had admired from a distance for most of his adult life, and it had not disappointed. The menu screen in the centre console beamed a welcome, and the chair that had moved back to allow the driver a more comfortable entry now eased forward to Cutter’s pre-programmed position. The headlights switched themselves on without the nuisance of having to press a button, illuminating the car park.
Cutter didn’t see the figure standing still and silent, directly in the path of the headlights. He selected drive and the car moved forward. Then his tired eyes picked out the shape of a man. Cutter’s face flickered in confusion and his right foot found the brake. The car immediately expressed its concern for the environment by moving the gear to neutral and killing the engine, and the 3 a.m. silence returned to Langthorne. The figure didn’t move. He was tall and slim, in dark clothing, his head covered by a hood. His hands were behind his back.
Cutter swore and reached down to switch his lights to full beam. He fumbled for a few seconds, and then looked up as the lights illuminated the figure in front of him. Cutter saw that the figure was wearing a full-face balaclava. H
e was awfully close now, close enough for Cutter to see the eyes squinting against the bright headlights. Cutter watched, immobile, as the man brought his hand from behind him and raised a pistol that gleamed in the headlights.
* * **
The man fired four silenced rounds in quick succession. Cutter had no time to form words, no time to try and save himself. The windscreen offered little resistance and three of the bullets found Cutter’s chest, with the fourth embedding itself in the leather of the driver’s seat. The man tugged the door open and held the weapon at head height, but there was no need. His victim lay still. His right arm had fallen from the steering wheel and hung out of the car.
The man tucked his weapon into his waistband. He pulled a police issue radio from a small, black rucksack that he carried. Somewhere in the town a bored and heavily armed night-duty constable started a transmission about sheep being loose on a main road. An emergency button activation cut him off.
After the ten seconds of silence was complete, the control centre staff looked at each other in confusion. How was it that the urgent assistance call had been totally silent, and had originated from Langthorne House police station itself? It would be a further four minutes before the source of the activation was discovered — time enough for the figure responsible to disappear among the darkened side streets that surrounded the station.
CHAPTER 6
DCI Price swept through the fifth floor of Langthorne House. His ashen face was mirrored by those of just about everyone he came into contact with. They silently stepped out of his way as he headed towards the incident room, recently set up in a canteen. A chair had been set aside for him, and a steaming cup of coffee stood on a dining table used for meetings. A number of people were sitting around it.
‘Ross, welcome. Sorry about the wake-up call.’ Price looked at the slim, immaculately dressed woman who was standing at the head of the table and who had used his first name.