Price to Pay, A (28 page)

Iona shuffled closer. What was the woman doing? She wants me to get in there? Is she taking me hostage? Nina’s eyes slid to the airfield. Iona risked a quick glance, too. Not all the planes were parked up. One stood slightly apart.

Nina was gesturing once more with the gun. ‘You get in.’

Iona skirted round the vehicle, keeping as far back from it as she could. With each little step, her view into the boot increased. A trainer. Two trainers. Legs. Someone is under the blankets. Now she could see the person’s head. Iona stopped. It was Chloe Shilling. She’s got Chloe Shilling in there. Iona turned to Nina. ‘Where’s her friend, you bitch?’

‘Get in!’ Nina’s words cut the air like a car alarm.

‘There is no way—’

The gun clicked as the safety came off. Nina stepped closer. Iona’s vision was taken over by the small black circle pointing at her face.

A phone warbled. Gun still on Iona, Nina scrabbled for her handset. ‘I’m here.’ She nodded eagerly. ‘At the barrier! Can you not see me?’ She looked towards the runway. ‘I am just fifty metres away.’

Iona stole another glance at the airfield. The plane – some kind of small jet – had now moved to the end of the runway. A light at the tip of its wing winked. It was parked in a loading area. Everything suddenly clicked and Iona felt her stomach writhe, like a snake had pushed into it from her intestines.

‘Yes, she’s with me! They both are. The black girl, too. You cannot see me? Why can you not …?’ Nina’s face suddenly crumpled. Her eyes went to the plane once more. She whispered, ‘You said you would be. You said … you said … but …’ She coughed and her voice was hard once more. ‘OK, I am coming now.’ The phone was lowered. ‘Get in the car.’

As Iona moved forward, the motor controlling the barrier started again. Iona looked fearfully to her side. But the heavy metal pole was sinking down, not rising up. The rim of the metal skirt slotted into a runner in the tarmac. Nina let out an animal snarl.

Cars. Iona could now hear car engines. Two vehicles shot into view, undersides rasping as they took the speed bump at the car park entrance without slowing. Iona could see two figures in each vehicle but it wasn’t the armed response unit.

The vehicles skidded to a halt ten metres away. Front corners almost touching, they formed a V shape. Doors opened. The people slid out behind them. Iona could see each held a gun. But they weren’t wearing anything with the word police on and neither were they identifying themselves. They watched in silence.

Iona looked at Nina. Her lips were twisted tight, lower jaw moving rapidly up and down.

‘Put the weapon at your feet.’ The words had come from the one wearing a baseball cap. He had the trace of an accent. North American? Nina’s mouth was still working.

Out on the airfield a slow whine started up, rapidly gaining in strength.

‘No.’ Nina’s voice was small, desolate. ‘No.’

The two men at the outer edge of the V suddenly broke left and right. They ran at a half-crouch, weapons directed at Nina. She loosed off a shot. Neither man slowed. Hand shaking, she fired again. The other two were now out, racing straight at the Range Rover with their weapons raised. ‘Put it down! Put it down!’

Instead, Nina whirled about and ran for the barrier. From the edge of her vision, Iona could see the security guy. He was lumbering towards the main building, cheeks puffing out. The two outer men had altered direction and were now closing in. A pincer movement. Beyond them all the tone of the plane’s engines lifted. It started moving away with surprising speed.

‘Wait!’ Nina wailed, now within metres of the chest-high barrier. Her phone was flung aside as she jumped at it. Her chest connected with the upper edge and she scrabbled for a second with one arm. For a second, Iona thought she might haul herself over. But her grip slipped and she fell back.

The other two men were about to pass Iona. She stepped out into the path of the one wearing a baseball cap. The leader. ‘Who the hell are—’

He hardly checked his step. The hand holding the gun went down. The other came up. Iona just had time to see something in his grip. Olive-green, same as the Renault. Two stubby arms at the top. Almost like a catapault with no rubber band. He thrust it at her shoulder. She felt herself fly backwards into the side of the vehicle. Then she bounced off and crashed to the floor. Mini tornadoes of agony bounced up and down her limbs, crashing into each other and ricocheting off in other directions. She could feel her back arching, teeth clamped together. Breath hissed from between her molars.
I’ve been tasered
.

When she opened her eyes seconds later, she could see Nina. Her back was pressed against the barrier, gun switching from side-to-side. Her eyes were mad. A strand of hair had come loose and it swung across her face like a pendulum. All four men were closing rapidly. The threat of her weapon seemed to make no difference. They were relentless. In the background, the jet’s engines were roaring. Iona could feel tiny vibrations in the ground.

The men were within four metres of Nina when she let out another animal moan and stuck the barrel in her mouth. The weapon cracked and her blonde hair parted as the top part of her skull jumped up into the air. As she slid down the expanse of metal, the plane rose up behind it, now birdlike in size and getting smaller.

The men descended on her like hyenas. The quilted parka was yanked open and searched. The mobile phone went into the jacket of the leader. Then they were marching back, weapons vanishing from sight. They stopped at the Range Rover and pulled open the doors. She heard the sounds of them rooting about inside the vehicle. One of them spoke.

‘Female in the back. Unconscious.’

Iona could only move her eyes. She looked at her hand beside her face. Each finger was curled in, nails buried deep into the skin of her palms.

Then they were moving on. A second later, car doors shut, engines revved and they were gone.

Iona lay on the tarmac. Muscle control was returning to her fingers and toes. Her jaw loosened. Noises. The sound of her breathing, quick and shallow. People speaking from over near the main building. The cars’ engines, merging with the plane’s fading rumble. And behind that, weak but getting stronger, the sound of a siren.

I
ona let the drone of the vicar’s voice wash over her. Manchester Southern Cemetery was immense. While at school, she used to pass it all the time. With Dad as he dropped her off on the way to his job at the university. Or on a coach, taking the school’s hockey team to away matches.

Then, it was just a space running along on one side of the road; she’d barely given a thought to what lay behind the thick iron fence. Her eyes wandered across row upon row of endless graves. There were two other burials going on as far as she could see.

A production line.

The thought was unfeeling and she forced her attention back to the people around her. Martin’s mum and dad, eyes downcast, faces drained of life. The sight of them made her want to cry. About a dozen from the CTU were alongside her, Sullivan and O’Dowd included. She was the only member from Roebuck’s team. Towards the edges were a few uniforms; colleagues from Martin’s early career in the regular police. Nearest the family were a few members of the very top brass, including the ACC. A young female civilian on the far side of the grave sniffed loudly. A girlfriend, Iona guessed. A plane was banking up into the layer of blue. As it tilted, sunlight winked through its line of windows.

Iona’s mind went back to the private airfield at Woodford. The jet had logged a course for Barcelona, southern Spain. But it had never cut in from above the Atlantic. Morocco or Algeria seemed the likely destination, but no one was sure.

Whoever had organized that jet was, surely, the person behind the entire operation. He might have had his UK business ruined, but, apart from that inconvenience, he seemed to have got away completely. Iona wasn’t so sure. It was commonly acknowledged within the CTU that the team who’d tried to snatch Nina were with Mossad. The Israelis had lost four soldiers in that checkpoint explosion: the search for Nina’s controller would never end.

Although diplomacy dictated that accusations of a secret Mossad cell being in Britain were never aired in public, Iona had heard that the Israeli ambassador had been quietly called in to see the Home Secretary. But he’d known nothing of any covert operation running alongside that of the CTU. Nothing at all.

Nina’s firearm had been used to murder Martin and Liam Collins. Efforts to map her life story were quickly derailed when it turned out that Nina Dubianko had died in 1963, aged six years old. The entire identity of the woman had been artificially constructed on a copy of a dead child’s birth certificate.

Of Nina’s victims, Chloe Shilling was back in care. The Club Soda story had all been false; the establishment did employ foreign females, but mainly recruited via dance schools or modelling agencies. All workers were legitimately – and willingly – in the country. Madison Fisher was gone and Iona tried not to think about where she might be or what she was doing. Her details were with Europol and British embassies throughout the Middle East.

Khaldoon Khan’s younger sister was due to be repatriated to Britain. Her family didn’t want her back. Social services were working with Karma Nirvana, a charity that helped girls who’d escaped from forced marriage arrangements. It was hoped she could be placed with a family rather than going into care. Khaldoon Khan was due to be released from custody in Pakistan. He had stated his intention to stay in the country.

Iona glanced down at the mound of earth to her side. A small beetle had emerged from beneath a half-buried pebble. Its legs were moving with frantic speed as it scrambled for purchase on the layer of fine, dry soil. Centimetre by centimetre, it climbed higher. Iona wondered how long it could continue before tiring. The thing showed no sign of giving up and she liked it for that.

Roebuck had seen her a few days before. She’d gone to him about the message Martin had written by the Sudoku puzzle, tormented by what it meant. Was O’Dowd in on it? Were they all manipulating her? Roebuck had looked embarrassed. Yes, O’Dowd had passed the snippet to Palmer, Everington’s boss. He, in turn, had passed it on to Sullivan. Roebuck had known about it, too. They’d decided to see how she and Martin worked together; whether it was worth looking at them long term as a team.

Soon after, Martin had reported to Palmer that she was hard to work with. She had trouble, according to him, about opening up, about working as a pair. Sheepishly, Roebuck had pointed out it wasn’t the first time people in the CTU had said it. She was – undeniably – very competitive. You only had to look at her record, from school onward, to find plenty of evidence of that. Not that it was a problem, he’d added hastily. Unless it impinged on her ability to operate within a team. The Sudoku thing was a ploy thought up by them, that was all. A way for Martin to try and find some common ground, to build a connection with her. She’d remembered the words he’d written and had recoiled.

10/10! She went for it BIG TIME.

People were beginning to move. The service had ended. The questions were in her head again. Am I overly ambitious? Do I see everything as an exercise in winning? Me versus the rest of the unit? But I reported that it was Jim who’d worked out the mix-up with the carry cases. He told me to take the credit for it and I didn’t.

She was aware of how thinking about Jim made her feel. I miss him so much. I need to see him, in person. We have to have the conversation. The booze. If I can help him to stop, if he managed to properly—

‘Iona?’

She looked round. Martin’s family were getting into a black saloon parked nearby. Everyone was hanging back, waiting for them to be driven off. It was a sergeant in Sullivan’s team who’d spoken. He’d never been anything less than nice to her.

‘We’re heading to the Abercrombie on Bootle Street for a few drinks.’ He gestured at the uniformed officers. ‘Where Martin used to go before the CTU. You coming?’

She thought about the city centre pub, a regular haunt of the officers who worked in the police station next door. Jim, she knew, had a day off. He’d be at home, doing nothing. Probably as good a time as any to see him. Sit down, discuss where they both stood, see if there was any chance the two of them could give it another go. She looked at her colleagues hovering in the vicinity of the vehicle. Sullivan was among them. It would be a chance to have a quiet word. Explain how sorry she was about Martin. The doors of the saloon were being gently closed.

She looked at the sergeant. ‘Is everyone going?’

‘Yeah, for a tipple, at least. Most of us aren’t due back on duty, are we?’

No, thought Iona. We’re not. She could see Jim, sitting in his house, all alone.

‘So,’ the sergeant was walking towards the waiting group. ‘Is that a yes?’

Iona wasn’t sure.