Execution

THIRTY

Harry heard the words coming out of the phone and stared at Rik, who stopped pacing up and down at the sound of the familiar voice. He’d automatically switched it to loudspeaker mode the moment he’d answered. They could hardly believe what they’d heard.

‘This is Starbucks in Pimlico Road, London, not Grozny. .’

‘She’s in trouble,’ said Harry. ‘Where the hell is-?’

‘It’s right here!’ Rik pointed at the street sign above their heads on the restaurant’s wall. ‘We’re in Pimlico Road right now.’ He spun on his heel and looked along the street, then grabbed a waiter coming out of The Grove. ‘Where’s the Starbucks?’

‘Pardon?’ The man looked affronted.

‘The Starbucks in Pimlico Road. How far down?’

The man shrugged off Rik’s hand. ‘I don’t know — maybe two hundred yards down that way.’ He gestured with his chin. ‘On the left, with all the scaffolding.’

But he’d already lost his audience as Harry and Rik took off along the street.

Harry saw the police car in the road while they were still a hundred yards away, and heard the sharp crack of gunshots. Two men appeared from inside a doorway, and raced across the pavement towards a car at the kerb. Men in workmen’s tabards and hard hats stood around in shock, and a figure in uniform lay crumpled in the road alongside the police patrol car.

There was no sign of Clare.

Rik raced ahead, hauling out his gun and shouting at the workmen to get out of the way. They did so, diving back into the shelter of the buildings, a discarded hard hat bouncing and rolling into the gutter behind them. Someone screamed and a car horn sounded as the car the men had jumped into screeched away from the kerb, clipping another vehicle on the way and scattering broken yellow glass as it went.

Rik ran out into the centre of the street and stopped, bringing his gun to bear on the departing car. He aimed, then stopped. It was already eighty yards away and accelerating. Too far for accuracy and a scattering of innocent pedestrians had already formed a random and unwitting human shield around it. One stray shot and he’d have a disaster on his conscience.

Harry slowed to a jog and scanned the people in the area. If Clare was around, she’d either been shot and was still here or she’d already disappeared.

Sirens sounded in the distance and people gathered around the fallen policeman, who was struggling to sit up. A woman in a Starbucks T-shirt stood on the pavement, her face drained of colour and her mouth open in shock.

Harry looked inside the cafe. It was empty, one of the small tables and a couple of chairs up-ended, mugs and plates lying broken on the floor.

‘What happened?’ he asked the employee. He had to repeat the question before she answered.

‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled hurriedly, her accent Spanish or Italian. ‘Is crazy. One second, two men are sitting with a woman. Next she is rushing out and one of the men is shouting.’ She gestured at her front. ‘His clothes is wet and he is shouting but I don’t know his words. Foreign, I think, not English. Then the men walk outside after her and paff, paff — they start shooting and a policeman he is falling and. .’ She rubbed at her face as tears poured down her cheeks. ‘Why would they do this?’

‘Where did the woman go?’ Harry asked. The sirens were now very close and he guessed he had only seconds before armed response units arrived and the area was cordoned off.

She looked puzzled. ‘What?’

‘The woman — the one with the men. Where did she go?’

‘I. . I didn’t see.’

‘Did she leave the building? Did they take her with them?’

‘Yes. I. . I don’t know — maybe. No, wait. She walk out first and disappear. The men are chasing her but she is already gone, I not see where.’

Harry whistled to catch Rik’s attention, and thrust his hand in his jacket as a signal to put his gun away. If the first responders were armed, they would come out of their car zeroing in on anyone with a gun.

‘She can’t have gone far,’ he said, when Rik joined him. ‘But we can’t get caught up in this. Let’s go.’ He walked away across the street. The area here opened out into a small paved triangle with trees and flowerbeds where three streets intersected, and he was heading for the widest area, the most difficult to close off. It was also where he figured Clare would have made for, planning on putting as much distance and confusing scenery between her and the men as she could. Staying on the same street and in direct line of sight of a man with a gun would have been a death sentence.

They crossed the paved area, past a line of bikes chained to a rack; a squat public convenience block with two women frozen to the spot outside the door; then more bikes and some seats. Everything was neat and ordered, tidy and upscale; a bit like a model toy-town, Harry thought. Take out the gunfire and it would have been ideal.

They stopped on the far side, checking the two other streets. Gawpers were converging in numbers to see what all the fuss was about, but nobody was walking away. No woman with a crutch.

‘She can’t have moved that quick,’ said Rik. ‘Not in her condition.’

Harry agreed. She must have gone under cover somewhere. It’s what she would have been trained to do, to get off the radar and keep her head down until it was safe to move on. Having two gunmen on her tail would have been encouragement enough to make it quick.

He spun on his heel, and was staring up at a camera fixed to the top corner of a building when two squad cars pulled up and disgorged armed officers. They each immediately grabbed a likely looking witness and began to question them, isolating witnesses from new arrivals. Others began to seal off the area and direct traffic away.

Harry ignored them. Time was running out. If he and Rik got dragged inside the cordon, they would be caught up answering questions about why they were carrying weapons to go looking for Clare. If she got pulled in, she’d be exposed and vulnerable. They had to get her away from here.

But first they had to find her. There were alleyways and a few side entrances to the shops that she could have ducked into, but checking those out would take too long and be noticed. He studied the onlookers, most of them with their backs turned, staring at the action going on outside the Starbucks, and the people helping the wounded policeman. One of the two women outside the public convenience block had joined the crowd, but the other was still where Harry had first seen her, shifting from foot to foot.

The policeman. He’d been shot by one of the Russians. And where he had fallen was in direct line with where Harry and Rik were standing. And in line with the convenience block.

‘Come on.’ Harry walked across to the woman who was staring impatiently at the locked toilet door.

‘Problem?’ he queried.

The woman looked at him, suspecting a flanking move to get inside first. ‘She’s been in there ages,’ she muttered, nodding at the door. ‘She might be disabled and all that, but really. . you know?’ She gave a toss of her head and tutted at woman’s inhumanity to woman.

‘Disabled?’

‘Yes. On a crutch. You know, those metal things. Not that she was moving slow. It was just after all that banging and shouting.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, evidently unconcerned by the fact that a shooting had happened only yards away from where she was standing.

Harry said, ‘Excuse me — I think I know who she is.’ He turned so that he was shielding the door from the police across the road and put his head down. ‘Clare? It’s Harry. I got your message. We need to leave. Now.’

‘Hey — what are you doing?’ The woman tapped him on the shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’re looking for a young woman who walked out of a secure unit,’ Rik told her. He tapped his head. ‘She’s. . confused, you know?’ He waited until she nodded, then said, ‘We’re here to take her back, so she doesn’t come to any harm.’

Then the door clicked open and Clare Jardine stepped outside.