Eeny Meeny

115

DC Bridges left Charlie where she lay and sprinted towards the building. SO19 were on their way in full SWAT gear and the paramedics were racing to the scene, but he didn’t have time to wait. Helen was in there with the killer – Suzanne, Marianne, whatever the hell she was called – and he didn’t fancy her chances of survival. This was a scheme that was always designed to end in bloodshed.

He burst through the lobby. The lifts were dead, but the door to the basement was ajar, so he ran towards it. Down the stairs and along the corridor. He wasn’t armed but what the hell. Every second was crucial now.

And there it was. The locked metal door. He hammered at it and Helen’s voice rang out clear, telling him to back off. ‘Bugger that,’ he thought, scanning around desperately for a tool of some kind.

The corridor was empty, but the last door at the end was a store cupboard, still littered with half-used bottles of bleach and disinfectant. Lying discarded on the floor, however, was a fire extinguisher. One of the old-fashioned seventies ones, heavy and thick. Bridges hauled it off the floor.

Sprinting down the corridor, he was back in front of the metal door in seconds. He paused, gritted his teeth, then launched the fire extinguisher at the lock.