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instantly. I tried to kick out, but I didn’t have the room to do any damage. LeShawn roared, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth as he used his free hand to slam the MP5 down into the ground, twisting my arms in the process. He lunged at me, trying to take a bite out of my face, but I managed to free up a hand and smack him hard on the underside of his chin, making him bite his tongue.
    He roared with frustration and lunged at me again, which was the moment the left side of his face suddenly disappeared in a welter of red, and I was splattered in warm blood. His grip on my throat weakened as his whole body slumped. He let out a loud grunt, and I had to put up a hand to stop him falling on me.
    I kicked him off me and jumped to my feet, wiping the blood from my eyes as I made sure the holdall was still on my back.
    ‘Come on, move it!’ yelled Cecil, retreating rapidly.
    The other two members of the crew were lying on their fronts, still alive but clearly not wanting to get involved, while the wild-haired guy was back on his feet and dancing round with the knife, but still sensible enough not to get too close.
    Cecil glared at me as we ran for the car. ‘What the fuck were you doing?’
    I didn’t answer as I chucked the holdall in the back of the car while he ran round the front and jumped in the driver’s side.
    And then, just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did.
    A marked patrol car pulled into the road behind us. There were no lights or sirens, so it wasn’t responding to an emergency call. It had arrived on the scene purely by accident and was driving in our direction. I looked at them, and they looked at me, slowing up at the same time as they took in the sight of a man in a police cap with a submachine gun and a face covered in blood.
    The terrible thing was, I recognized them. PCs John Nolan and Gloria Owana. I’d met them both when we’d worked out of the same station. Even so, I didn’t know them well, and I was pretty damn sure they wouldn’t recognize me in the state I was in.
    But they still presented a threat, and it was time I showed Cecil what I could do. As their car stopped, I opened fire, swinging the gun in a steady arc as I blew out the tyres, feeling that intense satisfaction that only pulling a trigger can bring, watching as both ducked out of sight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the wild-haired guy charging me and I swung the gun round, ready to pop him if I had to, but he took a flying dive and landed face down on the pavement with an angry thud, the knife clattering on to the tarmac.
    Then, as Cecil gunned the engine, I turned and jumped in the car, and he pulled away in a screech of tyres.
    The whole thing had been a disaster. A man was dead; cops had been shot at; half the Met would probably be on our tail in the next five minutes. But in the end we still had the money.
    Although if I’d known what it was going to be used for, I’d have flung it out the window there and then.

Nine
    09.19
    ‘HAVE YOU GOT any idea why William Garrett might want to talk to you?’ asked Mike Bolt, leaning forward in his seat and fixing Tina with a cool, formal stare that belied the friendship they’d once had. They were in his office in a large Georgian townhouse just off Green Park, facing each other for the first time in almost two years.
    Tina shrugged. ‘I’ve got no idea. It’s not as if I’ve ever had any contact with him. All I am these days is lowly CID.’
    ‘Although you still manage to get yourself right in the thick of things. It’s a pity we lost that suspect.’
    ‘You’re the second person today who’s told me that, Mike. It wasn’t my fault.’
    ‘I know, but we’ve now had confirmation that the explosion earlier was a powerful rucksack bomb, delivered by the suspect you were chasing. We’ve already had a very plausible claim of responsibility from an unknown outfit calling themselves Islamic Command, and they’ve given us an ultimatum. Either the