Ashes to Ashes: An unputdownable thriller from the Sunday Times bestseller. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ ascending a flight of steps and dashing down a passage between faceless walls. Heck slid over the nearest bonnet and charged up the steps. He entered the passage, which was about fifty yards long; at the far end of it Sagan was rapidly reloading. Before Heck could point his pistol and shout, the bastard fired twice; ear-shattering detonations in the narrow space. This time, as Heck pitched himself down, he pegged off three quick shots of his own, which caromed along the passage, missing their target but sending him ducking out of sight.

      Heck retreated around his corner, sucking in lungfuls of chill air. He risked a second glance. The passage still looked empty, but Sagan could be lying in wait, and once Heck was halfway along he’d be a sitting duck. He ran back down the steps, along a row of caged-off shops, and around the base of a tower block. He’d expected to find open space on the other side, but instead the shell of a derelict industrial building stood there.

      Swearing, Heck panted the new directions into the radio as he set off running again. At the end of the factory wall there was a net fence and on the other side of that a deep canyon through which another railway passed. The London Overground, Heck realised, though at present it was a good twenty feet below him. He glanced right. The nearest route across it was an arched steel walkover about fifty yards off. A figure was already traipsing over this – slowly, tiredly.

      Sagan.

      The killer and torturer was an arch-pro. But he was also in early middle age. His energy reserves were finally flagging.

      Heck took a short cut along a narrow defile between the factory’s north wall and the railway fence. Initially he had to get through barbed wire, and then found himself negotiating thick, leafless scrub entwined with wastepaper and rubbish. Inevitably, cans and bottles clattered, causing such a racket that the figure on the bridge stopped and looked around – and began to run again. By the time Heck got to the bridge, there was no sign of him.

      Exhausted himself, Heck lumbered up the steel staircase and over the top. A train thundered past below, a chaos of light and sound, illuminating the footway to its far end. There was a possibility Sagan could reappear over there – while Heck was hemmed between neck-high barriers of riveted steel. But that didn’t happen. He made it to the other side, descended the stair to half way and halted, hot breath pluming from his body. Open waste-ground lay ahead, on the far side of which stood a cluster of dingy buildings: workshops, offices and garages, with an old Ford van parked at the front. Sagan was almost over there, moving at a fast but weary trudge – about sixty yards distant.

      Heck raised his pistol and took aim, but he wasn’t a good enough marksman to ensure a clean shot from this distance. Especially not at night. He continued down, and inadvertently kicked a beer bottle on the bottom step. It cartwheeled forward and smashed.

      Sagan twirled around.

      Heck scampered down the last couple of steps and veered sideways. Sagan strode back, shooting from the waist like a character out of a western, working the slide again and again, pumping fire and shot. Heck scuttled and crawled, but found no more cover than bits of rubbish and sprigs of weed.

      At which point a third party intervened.

      ‘Drop it!’ came a fierce female voice. ‘Do it now, or I’ll shoot you, you bastard … I swear!’

      Heck glanced up, to see a short, shapely figure in jeans, trainers, an anorak and a chequer-banded police cap, circling around from behind the van, her Glock trained with both hands on the back of John Sagan’s head. The gunman froze, the shotgun clasped in his right hand, his left held out to his side.

      ‘I mean it, you dickless wonder!’ the girl cop shouted in a ringing northern accent. ‘Drop that weapon now, or I’ll drop you!’

      Heck’s mouth crooked into a smile as he rose to his feet. It was Shawna McCluskey.

      Someone had heard his frantic transmissions after all. And if anyone had, he ought to have realised it would be his old mucker Shawna, who’d started off with him all those years ago in the Greater Manchester Police.

      Sagan remained rigid. From this distance, his face was unreadable. Dots of yellow street-light glinting from the lenses of his glasses gave him a non-human aura. His right hand opened and the shotgun clattered to the floor.

      ‘Keep those mitts where I can see ’em!’ Shawna shouted, approaching from behind. ‘You all right, Heck?’

      ‘Never better,’ he called, dusting himself down.

      ‘Kick the weapon back towards me,’ Shawna said, addressing Sagan again. ‘Backheel it … don’t turn around. And keep your hands spread where I can see them … in case you didn’t realise it, you lowlife shithead, you’re under arrest!’

      Sagan did exactly as she instructed, the shotgun bouncing past her and vanishing beneath the van. Now Heck could see him more clearly: his black overcoat, a black roll-neck sweater, black leather gloves, black trousers and shoes, his pale face, the thinning fair hair on top, and those gold-rimmed glasses. Yet still the killer was inscrutable, his features a waxen, sweat-soaked mask.

      ‘DC McCluskey on a lorry park off Camberwell Grove,’ Shawna said into her radio. ‘One in custody. Repeat, one in custody.’

      But only now, as she angled around her captive, did Heck spy the possible danger.

      Her Glock was trained squarely on Sagan’s body, but side-on, the target’s width had reduced and Sagan’s left hand was suddenly only inches from the muzzle of her weapon – and it was with this hand that he lunged, slapping the pistol aside, and in the same motion, spinning and slamming his other hand, now balled into a fist and yet glittering as if encased in steel – a knuckleduster, Heck realised with horror – straight into Shawna’s face.

      Her head hinged backward and she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

      ‘Shawna!’ Heck bellowed.

      But he was still forty yards away. He raised his pistol, but again had to hesitate – Sagan had dropped to a crouch alongside the policewoman’s crumpled form, merging them both into one. Heck dashed forward as the killer flipped off Shawna’s hat and smashed his reinforced fist several times more into her head and face. Then he snatched up her Glock and fired it once into her chest, before leaping to his feet and bolting towards the parked van.

      Heck slid to a halt and fired. The van’s nearside front window imploded as Sagan scarpered around it, returning fire over his shoulder, and proving uncannily accurate. Nine-millimetre shells ricocheted from the ground just in front of Heck. He fired back, but Sagan was already on the other side of the vehicle and shielded from view. A door slammed closed somewhere along the front of the building. Heck scrambled forward, but kept low. The killer was now indoors; he might have any number of concealed vantage points from which to aim.

      ‘DC McCluskey down with head injuries and a possible gunshot wound,’ Heck shouted into his radio, skidding to one knee alongside her, still scanning the grimy windows overhead.

      In the partial protection of the van, Shawna lay limp. Heck tore open her jacket and gasped with relief when he saw the slug flattened on her Kevlar vest – it hadn’t penetrated. However, her face was a mass of bloodied pulp, her splayed hair glutinous with gore. He probed for the carotid artery. Her throat was slick with blood, but at last he found a pulse.

      An engine now growled to life somewhere inside. Fresh sweat pinpricked Heck’s brow.

      As he leaped to his feet, a pair СКАЧАТЬ