Lethal Intent

Eighty-one

The helicopter flew low and fast through the night skies. It was a big ugly brute of an aircraft, built for functionality and not for comfort. McIlhenney and Mackenzie were strapped into seats at the back with four uniformed soldiers, Skinner in front with the pilot.

It was gloomy: the only illumination came from the instrumentation and from a small night-light in the cabin, but outside and to their left, they could see the lights of the Fife coastal towns, as they swept across the Forth estuary. They were flying over land once more when the radio crackled into life in Skinner's headset.

'Bob, are you receiving me?' a tinny voice asked. 'It's Adam.' The pilot handed the DCC a microphone, showing him a button and pointing to indicate that he had to press to transmit. He took it from him.

'Receiving,' he shouted.

'I've advised the Palace of the possibility of a threat and told them that a detachment is on the way to St Andrews to secure the area. What action have you taken?'

'I've contacted the local chief constable: he's mobilising what resources he can. What will the Palace do?'

'They'll make direct contact with the protection officers on the ground, advise them of the situation and tell them that you're coming. He is in the college, Bob; repeat, in St Salvator's College building, in his private suite. Do you understand?'

'Received and understood. What about the number?'

'I've had no joy with that yet.'

'Keep trying. What do you want me to do with Amanda?'

'Keep holding her. She may be part of it, she may not; we don't know how far it goes yet. But forget that: what you have to do in the next hour will need your full attention.'

'Acknowledged. I'll call you when he's secured.' He put the microphone back in its slot below the instrument panel and stared out into the night. 'How close are we?' he asked the pilot.

'See those lights up ahead, sir? That's it. We're less than five minutes away.'

'Good. When we get there I need you to put us down as close to St Salvator's College as possible. Do you know the town?'

'Yes, but it's dark, sir,' the young lieutenant shouted back. 'Without proper lighting the safest place for me to land would be on the golf course.'

'I'm bothered about someone else's safety, not ours. If it's clear of students I want you to set us down right in the middle of St Salvator's quadrangle.'

'I'll try, sir, but no promises.'

The lights of St Andrews shone ever clearer, made brighter by the blanket of snow that still lay on the ground. As the aircraft swung over the town, Skinner could make out the shape of South Street, then Market Street and, furthest away, North Street, their objective.

'I can't get into the grounds, sir,' the pilot shouted. 'There are a lot of people down there.'

'In that case, set us down in the middle of North Street, but don't cut your engine. I want you to wait, ready to lift off immediately when your next passenger gets here.' He twisted round in his seat to face McIlhenney, Mackenzie and the four infantrymen. 'It's begun on the ground,' he shouted at them. 'We won't know what the situation is until we see it, but remember this, all of you: our only objective is to make the Prince safe and get him out of there. You've all studied photographs of Naim Latifi, the Ramadani brothers and Peter Bassam: if you see any one of them, put him down unless he's clearly unarmed and offering no resistance.'

'You mean shoot them, sir?' All of Mackenzie's customary flippancy had evaporated; even in the surreal light within the cabin, it was clear that his face was ghostly white.

Skinner stared at him. 'Bandit,' he asked, 'are you up for this? You can stay in the chopper if you want, and it will never be held against you. The same goes for you, Neil. You guys have got kids, after all.'

'So have you,' said McIlhenney, tersely. 'And the young man in the college, he's someone's kid as well.'

The DCC looked out of the window to the side. The pilot had taken him at his word: he had switched on his searchlight and was setting the aircraft down in the middle of North Street, next to the university chapel with its tall illuminated tower. The wheels were barely on the ground before Skinner jumped out, the Glock big in his hand and shining silver in the night.

As the pilot had said, they were not alone. A stream of young people were pouring out of Butts Wynd into the thoroughfare. They were running for their lives, and one or two were screaming. Some were bleeding, but the DCC reasoned that if they were mobile they could be cared for later.

'With me,' he ordered, then led his small force in the direction from which the crowd had come, round the corner of the chapel and into St Salvator's quadrangle.

The scene that greeted them was one of total chaos. More students rushed past them, barely noticing their presence. A few were not running; they lay on the ground, ominously still. He looked across the snow-covered grass to the college itself. He had been there once before, when he and Sarah, as guests at a Fife police summer event in the nearby Younger Hall, had been given overnight accommodation.

The doorway that they had used on that occasion no longer existed. It had been blown apart, and only a great gaping hole remained. Another blast had hit the facade of the old building further along. 'Missiles,' Skinner shouted at McIlhenney. 'The protection-squad guys would have secured the building when they got the alert. They just blasted their way in.'

A tall young student rushed towards them, intent on escape. The DCC grabbed him, halting his flight. 'Where is the Prince's suite?' he yelled. The terrified boy gazed at him, shock in his eyes, but the policeman had no time for sympathy. 'Where?' he roared again.

'One floor up, to the left.' Skinner set him free to run into the night. He turned to his six companions. 'You four,' he said to the soldiers. 'You've got carbines, so you're best in the open, I want two of you here to take down any of the targets if they get past us and try to escape this way, and the other two in The Scores, the street behind, covering the back. Neil, Bandit, we're going in.' As two of the infantrymen raced off across the lawn, and the others took position, the three police officers ran towards the newly carved entrance.

The building was ablaze with light: it had not occurred to the attackers to try to cut the power, or they had been completely confident of the effect of their ferocious assault. The trio sprinted inside, each covering the others' backs. The flood of fleeing students had subsided, and the entrance hall was empty… of the living, at any rate. A few must have been in the hall when the missile hit, three, Skinner reckoned, although he could not be certain. The bodies of two uniformed police officers, a chief inspector and a female constable lay at the foot of the stairs. They had each been shot at least a dozen times.

'Automatic weapons,' said the DCC, 'keep yourselves close to the ground, boys, and for Christ's sake, shoot first if you have to.' He led the way up the stairs, moving fast and silently.

At his heels, McIlhenney prayed silently, and thought of Lou and the children. He was aware that Mackenzie, by his side, was trembling; but he was pressing on nonetheless, defying his fear.

They reached the top of the stairs, which opened out on to a corridor; they had turned back upon themselves, and so if the student's direction was correct, the Prince's suite would be on their right. A doorway opposite offered some shelter: Skinner tensed himself and dived towards it, trusting that he still had the speed to beat an Albanian's trigger finger and a hail of bullets.

But none came: the corridor was eerily quiet. Taking his life in his hands once more, he stepped out of the doorway, braced and ready to fire.

Outside a door at the end, two figures, another constable and a man in a suit, lay still on the floor. The DCC ran towards them, beckoning his colleagues to follow. The man in plain clothes wore a small gold badge in his lapel, the sign of a protection officer; his right hand still clutched a pistol, loosely. He had been shot several times in the chest and head, and he was beyond help. Skinner felt the gun in his hand; it was warm, as if it had been fired.

The police officer was still alive: he had wounds in his right arm, shoulder and his upper chest, but he was not bleeding profusely, and he was conscious. 'You'll make it,' said Skinner, quietly. 'What's your name?'

'PC Alan McManus.'

'I'm Bob Skinner, from Edinburgh. How many years on the job, Alan?'

'Fourteen, sir.'

'All of them quiet till tonight, I'll bet. Tell me what I need to know.'

'They took him, sir,' the wounded officer replied, weakly and painfully. 'The other protection officer's in the suite; I think he's dead.'

'He is,' McIlhenney murmured. 'Just inside the door.'

'Where did they go?'

'Down the fire escape: there's a door over there that leads to it.'

'How many?'

'Three, but one was wounded.' PC McManus groaned. 'This man here got off a shot before they opened fire.'

'Okay. You just lie quiet now.' Skinner looked at Mackenzie and took pity on him. 'Bandit, you stay here: make him comfortable and make sure that the emergency services get to him as fast as possible.' He turned to McIlhenney. 'Neil, let's get after them. From Sean's map we have to assume that they're heading for the Sea Life Centre. We've heard no shots from outside, so they must have gone before our two soldiers got into position. But if one's wounded that might slow them down.'

They found the door that led to the fire escape, as the constable had described it. The emergency exit swung on its hinges. The DCC saw, with a burst of savage satisfaction, that it was smeared with blood. They trotted down the metal staircase at double time, no longer caring about noise, then found the gate that led out into The Scores.

The roadway was deserted; skeletal trees rose around them, shifting, ghostly figures in the weak glow of the sodium lamps.

'Bob,' McIlhenney whispered, hoarsely, breaking into a run once more. 'Look.' Skinner followed him across the road; on the other side, huddled against a low stone wall, the two infantrymen lay dead, their carbines by their sides. Each had been shot in the back, at close range, and again in the neck, a coup de grace.

'How the hell did the Albanians do that?' the big chief inspector asked himself, aloud. 'Poor bastards; it looks as if they never had a chance.'

'They must have had an outside man too: there were four of them in all, remember, including Bassam. I'd been guessing that the fourth man would be on the boat, but I must have been wrong: it looks as if he was guarding the escape route. Christ, they could almost be gone by now.'

'There are bloodstains on the snow,' McIlhenney exclaimed.

'We follow them.' Taking the dead soldiers' rifles, and their night glasses, they started to run, as fast as they were able on the treacherous, slippery pavements. As they moved down The Scores the blood patches became noticeably larger, showing them the way ever more clearly. They turned off the roadway and on to a path that led across the grass, passing the Martyrs Monument on the left.

They had almost reached the Sea Life Centre, when they came upon the body, lying face down and hunched before them. Mindful of a trap, Skinner kept the rifle on the man, as McIlhenney turned him over, but there was no need: the dead eyes of Amet, the younger of the Ramadani brothers, stared up at the night sky, just as the moon appeared from behind a cloud to bathe his face in silver.

'I can see them,' McIlhenney shouted, looking through the night glasses. 'They're on the jetty, by the Centre.'

Skinner snatched up his own binoculars and focused them. He found the boat, a big fast vessel, built for sheer speed; a stocky, bald-headed man was at the wheel. 'Bassam,' he murmured, moving the glasses until he found the others, a group of three.

The figure in the middle was slimmer and much taller than the other two, well over six feet, but they held him firmly on either side, shoving him towards the boat. 'If they get him on board…' the DCC murmured. He dropped the glasses and raised the rifle, feeling a wave of exultation when he found that it, too, had night vision.

He pressed the butt to his shoulder and found the trio again; they seemed larger through the telescopic sight than in the binoculars. He drew a deep breath and held it, fixed the man on the Prince's right with the red laser dot, and squeezed the trigger, gently so that he would not jerk it. There was no recoil from the weapon, and so he saw the Albanian as he rose up on his toes and pitched forward, tumbling into the boat.

He swung the sight to the other kidnapper. Even as he did so, he saw the young Prince swing a powerful punch at him with his newly freed fist, knocking him sideways and out of the weapon's field of vision.

'Run!' he bellowed, but the command was unnecessary, for the tall young man was already sprinting up towards them. Frantically he swung the rifle, searching through the sight for the second Albanian, before he could start shooting. He heard McIlhenney, beside him, firing into the night, and then he saw the man leaping into the boat, even as its engine roared into life and it began to move away from the jetty. He gave a huge sigh of relief and let the weapon relax in his grasp.

The young man was racing up the path, and more than halfway towards them, when Skinner saw a figure step from the shadow of the Sea Life Centre building and into the moonlight. The man raised his arm, and he saw the silenced pistol, as he trained it on the fleeing Prince. In a blur of movement, he swept the carbine back up to his shoulder, sighted and fired. The figure seemed to stiffen; the gun slipped from his grasp, and he toppled backwards.

And then the young man around whom so much revolved was standing before them, tall, blond, and blessed with his mother's looks. 'I really do hope that you're the good guys,' he exclaimed, breathlessly.

'Seventh Cavalry, Edinburgh branch, at your service, sir,' Skinner replied, then turned to McIlhenney. 'Neil, take the Prince to the chopper, and have the pilot fly you back to our headquarters; not the barracks as previously discussed. Make him secure and comfortable there, then contact the assistant commissioner in the Met who's in charge of royal protection and tell him where he is. I repeat, go to Fettes, not Redford. Understood?'

'I'm with you. Who was that down there, that fourth man you just shot?'

'That's what I'm afraid to find out, but I'm going to have to. Now get out of here, fast, and up to North Street.'

As the two moved off into the night, he heard a confident young voice say, 'Neil, this way, along Murray Park. It's quicker.'

Holding his rifle in both hands, the DCC moved down the path to where the fallen man lay, with his head in the centre of a great dark circle of spreading blood. His limbs jerked uncontrollably, and he had a massive head wound, just above his right ear. And yet he was still conscious.

'Wh-when you fired, did you know it was me?' asked Adam Arrow. The words were a shivering whisper; Skinner had to kneel down to hear them. He did so steadily and with care for he was shaking himself and a great cold fist seemed to be grasping the pit of his stomach, threatening to shatter his self-control.

'I reckoned that it had to be,' he answered, 'when I saw the dead soldiers. I tried to tell myself that it was impossible, but only you knew they were coming. You killed your own men, Adam,' he said, with disgust in his voice as he stared down at him. 'You were here all along, weren't you? When I called you today, and you said you were in the field, you were here.'

'Yesss.'

'What the hell have you done?'

'F-fucked up in the end.'

'You were behind the whole thing? You and Amanda?'

'No.' The whisper seemed to grow stronger. 'Not Amanda: she knew nothing. Rudy Sewell. She reported back to him; never knew he was one of us.'

'One of us? You mean there are more?'

'A few of us; intelligence officers… patriots.'

Skinner sighed. 'How often has that been said by traitors?'

'Not traitors! I've served Queen and country all my life. Queen and country, listen. Rudy and I and the others, we believe that young man mustn't become king or he'll destroy the monarchy, like his mother tried to do.'

'You're crazy. He's his father's son as well, you know.'

'He's an idol. He'll take the throne too close to the people.' Arrow shuddered violently, and for a moment Skinner thought that he was going, but instead he seemed to recover some strength. 'The monarchy can't be u-user-friendly, Bob. It represents authority. It's the symbol that guys like me fight and die for. Make it populist and it will die; this country will be rudderless, and everything it has been will be lost. My friends and I decided that we couldn't let that happen.'

'So you set out to kidnap him?'

'No, to make it look like a kidnap. There's a vessel offshore: that's where the speedboat's headed. He'd have been killed as soon as they got him on board, and his body disposed of effectively. But it would have been blamed on the Albanians.'

'So why did you help me? Why did you give me the helicopter?'

'To make it look good,' Arrow wheezed, his voice beginning to fade once more. 'I didn't plan on getting found out… ever. None of us did. I knew you wouldn't be here on time; my backup plan if you did corner them was for him to be killed in the battle. I almost made sure of it.' He let out a macabre, choking laugh. 'I wish I'd never taught you to handle a bloody carbine,' he whispered.

'I'd have got you with the Glock,' Skinner murmured. 'Why did you choose to try it here?' he asked. 'Why St Andrews, with all these people around?'

'Logical. It was easier to attack than anywhere else, plus we could get him out by sea.'

'And the leak from NATO intelligence? That couldn't have been part of your plan.'

'That was unfortunate. Nobody would have been any the wiser but for that, until it was all over. The good thing was that the tip came to me, so we were able to manage it. We couldn't ignore it, but Rudy tried to put a lid on it, keep the search in-house. He let Amanda think they were drug-dealers and sent her chasing wild geese around the clubs in Edinburgh, but your people tripped over it' Arrow gave another violent shudder, and his face twisted with pain. 'Told him he should have kept off your patch,' he gasped. 'We still held all the cards, though, with Amanda, in all innocence, keeping us informed.'

'Why should I believe that she's not a part of it? She might be one of you; Rudy Sewell might be the innocent one.'

Arrow laughed again, another bizarre, croaking chuckle. 'No chance: she'd never have sacrificed her toy boy.'

'Sean? Him and Amanda?'

'Worst kept secret in MI5.'

The DCC felt his knees growing stiff in the cold: he pushed himself to his feet. 'So what happens now?' the gravely injured soldier whispered.

'You might live,' said Skinner. 'People have survived worse head wounds than that.'

'I know. That's why I asked.'

'I don't want to know. I can't see you standing trial, though. That would be a huge scandal; like you say, very bad for the Queen and country you thought you were protecting.' The policeman scowled, gazing into the night. 'Maybe they'll send you to Cuba, like those other poor bastards.'

'Or somewhere worse, getting names out of us, even when there are no other names to give. I don't want that: I've done it myself, so I know how it'll be.' Arrow looked up at him, into his eyes. 'But that's not what I meant. Bob, there's nobody around. If I could move I'd find my gun, and finish it. You wouldn't do me a favour, would you?'

He gazed back down at the man who had been his friend, the man he had once trusted with his own life, without a moment's doubt or hesitation. 'And why should I do that?' he asked, then turned and headed back towards the college.

'Goodbye, Bob,' the weak voice called after him.

'Oh, shit.' Skinner turned, raised the rifle and shot him dead.

He stood there for a while, not noticing the ground around him darken as the moon retreated behind the cloud cover. He was grief-stricken, not for the traitor but for times past, for unswerving loyalty turned to betrayal. Finally he shook himself into action, and walked through the crisp, icy night towards the Martyrs Monument. He heard sirens in the town, as the Fife police contingent, headed, he supposed, by Chief Constable Clarence Tallent, arrived to take control, and as the emergency services began to remove the wounded. Then, rising over all the din, came the roar of a helicopter taking off; he sighed with relief.

He stopped at the great obelisk, numb not just with cold but with everything that had happened that night, took out his cell-phone and switched it on. He found his stored numbers; selected the first on the alphabetical list, and called it. 'Aileen,' he said, when she answered. 'Where are you?'

'I'm at the flat. I've just got in from the office.'

He had lost track of time; he checked his watch and saw to his surprise that it was only seven twenty. The night seemed to have been endless. 'Is your nice new Fiat there?' he asked, making an effort to sound calm and collected.

'Yes.'

'Then, if you would, I'd like you to do something for me. I'm in St Andrews, I've got no transport, I'm freezing and I'm in a slight state of shock. I wonder if you'd come and get me, for right now there's nobody in the world I need to see as badly as I need to see you.'

'Bob, of course I'll come, but you're scaring me.'

'Don't be afraid: the panic's over. When you get here, I'll be with the chief constable, in St Salvator's College. We'll probably have TV crews here by then so comb your hair before you get out of the car. It'll look good, you being here, I promise you.'

'What's been happening?'

'A small war, but we won. It's safe; I wouldn't have you here otherwise. However, before you leave, there's something you have to do, and it's very important. You're the Justice Minister, so I guess you're able to call the Home Secretary in person, about something really urgent.'

'Yes, I suppose so, although I never have.'

'Well, I want you to do so, although by now you might find he's not surprised to hear from you. When you contact him, tell him to contact the Commissioner of the Met and have him arrest a man called Rudolph Sewell. He's an assistant director of MI5. Tell him that it's very important and that he has to do this tonight.'

'And if he asks me why?'

'You could tell him he's upset your boyfriend. If he doesn't buy that, tell him it involves a plot against the state; that should get his attention.'