Severed

34

It's 10.05 p.m. and I'm in a holding cell at Paddington Green, the most secure police station in London, and probably the whole of the UK. It's where they bring terrorist suspects for questioning, safe in the knowledge that there's going to be no dramatic rescue attempt by their comrades in Al Qaeda. You don't get out of here unless they let you, and even if I had the energy, I wouldn't attempt it. I've been in close proximity to more violent death today than at any time since the killing fields of Sierra Leone, and it's going to take a Byzantine effort of persuasion to prove to the police that I'm a victim in all this as well.

I'm lying on the bunk staring at the ceiling. It's hot in here, and even though the cell itself is modern and clean, there's still an underlying smell of stale sweat. The sweater I was wearing has been taken away for tests, and I'm in a T-shirt they've given me which is wet and clammy and sticking to my back. They've also removed my belt, even the laces from my Timberlands. I'm left here feeling like the low-life criminal they think I am.

I think of the people I care about who've had their lives snuffed out so horrifically today – Leah, Snowy, Lucas… The brutal yet straightforward truth is that they died because of their relationship with me. I am the target in all this. All three of them were simply collateral damage, killed because they were in the way or, like Leah, were expendable.

But why have I been targeted? It's the one question that keeps cropping up. Slowly but surely, I'm beginning to think it must be something to do with my past, something that happened in my army days. The presence in London of Eddie Cosick, the man I used to know as Colonel Stanic, and the fact that he seems to be the man Iain Ferrie, a former colleague, was blackmailing, makes it too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. The problem is, this still doesn't help me because I didn't really know either man, and therefore have no idea why they would have chosen to involve me in their business deal.

I wonder about Alannah. She claimed to be a Serbian policewoman looking for her sister. She even showed me a photograph of her, and seemed genuinely concerned. Yet it looks certain that she betrayed me to the police, first at her house, then at Cosick's place. They can't have been responding to my 999 call. It was too fast. I know Lucas didn't call them, and I didn't. That only leaves her. She must have been there. Watching the place. Working with someone to set me up.

A thought strikes me then. There is still a main player out there, someone else involved in this. This person wanted the briefcase, and it looks like he now has it. So maybe it was him, not Cosick, who was being blackmailed. For some reason he wanted Cosick dead, but, more importantly, he wants to keep me alive. And there can only be one reason for that: so that I carry the can for everything that's happened today.

Alannah must be working for the main player. It's why she rescued me from the brothel. It's why she tried to get me to go to Cosick's place, knowing that the police would arrest me there. It's why, when I didn't bite, she called them to her house.

According to Ferrie, the person he was blackmailing hired a mysterious contract killer known as the Vampire to secure the briefcase. This Vampire must have been at the brothel today, and Marco and MAC-10 man must have delivered the briefcase to him there. He must then have discovered the tracking device, and guessed that someone had followed and was probably close by. In a remarkable show of brazenness, he'd then tracked Snowy down, and finished him off in his customary fashion.

But then, when I spoke to Alannah, she told me she'd not seen any strangers at the brothel. She might easily have been lying, but what if she wasn't?

I try to recall what both Ferrie and Lucas said about the Maxwell and Spann murders. The Vampire got past the security cameras and caught three men, including two highly trained bodyguards, completely off guard. Just like Cosick and his men were caught off guard tonight. Ferrie spoke about him with awe. A shadowy killer who leaves no trail, as if he's invisible.

But maybe everyone's looking at this the wrong way. What if the Vampire managed to get close to his victims because there was something about him that made them let their guard down, that made them think he wasn't dangerous, that made detectives scouring any CCTV footage discount him out of hand? In other words, what if he wasn't a 'he' at all? What if 'he' was a 'she'? An attractive young woman with blonde hair and golden skin, who looked the very antithesis of everyone's idea of a contract killer?

So, no, Alannah wasn't lying about not seeing the Vampire back at the brothel.

She wasn't lying because she is the Vampire.