What colour there was drained from his face.
'No hesitation, Pope.'
'He was different,' he answered between pursed lips. 'He owed me money.'
'Then how did you know where to find him in Manila?'
Again he hesitated, and I was just about to give him another warning when a strange thing happened.
His face broke into a sly, confident smile, a sight made all the more odd by the blood dribbling down the side of his face. 'I don't think I'm going to tell you that,' he said, still smiling, and then there was a popping sound not unlike a champagne cork being dislodged and Pope's head snapped back against the wall, a black mark appearing in the centre of his forehead. Dark liquid splashed against the paintwork. Two more popping sounds followed in rapid succession and he slumped sidewards in his seat, blood pouring down his face. His body immediately went into wild spasms, the legs kicking out against the seat in front.
For a second I was too shocked to move as I watched him die in front of my eyes, then instinct took over and I tumbled out of my seat, rolling over so that I was crouching with my back to his corpse.
I caught sight of the assassins immediately. There were two of them, both dressed from head to toe in black, with flat caps on their heads and scarves pulled over their faces. They were standing purposefully in the aisle, no more than fifteen feet away, each armed with a silencer-equipped pistol that was pointed in my direction.
I scrambled backwards in the narrow space between the rows of seats, trying to make myself as small and as difficult a target as possible, but Pope's legs blocked my retreat. At the same time, I desperately worked to manoeuvre my .45 up into a firing position. One of the gunmen fired, a flash of
light shooting out of the silencer, but the bullet ricocheted up off a seat and pinged into the ceiling.
A second bullet hissed above my head and there was a dull thwack as it hit Pope. Then the two gunmen were making for the door.
Sitting up as fast as I could, I pulled the trigger on the .45 before realizing that I was only holding it one-handed. There was a deafening explosion as the bullet roared out and the gun bucked dramatically in my hand, the kick from the shot surging right up to my shoulder with a pain that made my arm feel like it was on fire. A huge white hole appeared in the far wall of the theatre as the bullet struck it, way above the heads of the fleeing assassins, sending bits of plaster flying off in all directions. One of the punters cried out in panic.
Ignoring the pain in my arm, I pulled myself to my feet, which was the moment I saw the shock of blond hair sticking out from under the cap of the assassin nearest the door, just before he disappeared from view.
The man who'd claimed to be Pope. Blondie. Like a bad penny, he kept coming back.
But how the hell had he known we were here?
No time to think about that. I took aim, two-handed this time, and pulled the trigger as the second gunman reached the doorway.
There was another deafening blast of noise and the gun kicked wildly, but now I was better prepared and I held it steady. I heard the second
gunman yell and stumble, his hand going up to his left shoulder. I'd hit him but not with a direct shot because he kept on moving and was gone from sight before I could fire again. But even a graze from a .45 calibre bullet would be enough to slow him down.
On the screen, the action was building to a noisy finale, but unfortunately it was being played out without the participation of the audience, who'd all sensibly hit the decks, not wanting to get involved.
Pulling the cap down over my face, I hurried along the seats to the aisle and ran in the direction they'd taken.
You have to take snap decisions in a situation like this. There's no time for thinking things through. The shooters might be waiting to ambush me in the foyer, but if I went through slowly, listening out for them, I'd risk giving them time to get away, and I couldn't have that - not now my main lead was missing most of his brains. So I yanked open the door and charged through. To my right, the proprietor with the cardie and the big glasses was sprawled back in his seat, spindly arms hanging limply by his sides, a bullet hole slap bang in the middle of his head. Aside from him, the foyer was empty.
I hit the street at a run, almost slipping on the pavement's slick surface, and spotted them straight away, running out of the passageway and into Rupert Street. They rounded the corner and
disappeared from view before I could fire and I ran after them, knowing that if they got away then that was it, I was back to square one.
As I came out the end of the passageway, I saw that the trailing gunman - the one I'd hit - was clutching his shoulder, although he still had hold of his weapon. He must have heard my pursuit because he swung round, the scarf still covering his face, and saw me stride out into the road, the .45 raised to fire.
He pulled the trigger first and I heard a loud female scream from somewhere behind me, but he was running and he was injured, and that put him at a serious disadvantage. He missed. He fired again and missed with the second bullet too, though not by so much this time.
It's strange to recount, but I had no time to feel fear as I stopped, took aim and pulled the trigger for the third time in less than a minute. In that sort of confrontation, when everything begins and ends at such speed, you've got no time for anything bar the physical actions needed to stay alive. And mine, it turned out, were more effective than his.
He was maybe two yards from the junction with Brewer Street when the bullet hit him somewhere in the upper chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him spinning out of control.
Blondie, now right at the corner, swung round and fired off four rounds in quick succession, moving his arm in a careful, controlled arc.
A window shattered behind me; someone screamed again and I threw myself to the pavement, managing to get off another shot from my hip as I did so. It was inaccurate, hopelessly so, and I could tell this because it hit a garish blue-and-pink neon sign saying
'JOE'S ADULT VIDEOS'
at least ten feet above Blondie's head. The sign exploded in a shower of sparks and the lights went out. Blondie took this as a cue to make good his escape, disappearing onto Brewer Street, where, as far as I could see, all the pedestrians were huddled in the doorways of the various establishments, taking shelter from the battle in their midst.
From somewhere in the distance came the inevitable sound of police sirens. Knowing that time was short, I got up and ran over to where the first assassin lay motionless, rifling through the pockets of his leather jacket with one hand while clutching the .45 with the other, trying to ignore the sound of my heart hammering in my chest.
Nothing. Not a thing. I stopped to look around me and saw the woman from the clip joint had come out from her kiosk and was now at the bottom of the passageway, staring over at me, eyes wide. There was a big bloke in a suit with her who looked like he might be going to do something, so keeping my face as obscured as possible beneath my cap, I pointed the .45 straight at him and the two of them jumped for cover into separate doorways.
The assassin's scarf had come loose and hung limply round his neck. His mouth was open and a thin trail of blood was leaking out the side of it. He was young - no more than late twenties, at a guess - and wearing a plain black sweater and trousers of the same colour. I patted the trouser pockets hurriedly. Keys in the left, nothing else.
Something in the right, though. It felt like a wallet. I pulled it out. It was.
Thrusting it into my pocket along with the gun, I got to my feet and began to run down Rupert Street as fast as I could, in the opposite direction to Blondie, heading for Shaftesbury Avenue and the crowded safety of Piccadilly Circus.
But if I thought that was the end of the evening's drama, I was sorely mistaken.
21
Twenty-five minutes later, I called Emma Neilson from a backstreet off the King's Road. I was exhausted. I'd run and walked a long way across the West End and by my estimations I was well over a mile from the scene of the gunfight. I wasn't taking any chances. It wasn't so much that I was worried about being caught in the net that the police would be throwing across the whole area; I was far more concerned about the prospect of CCTV cameras getting a decent shot of me and being able to pinpoint my route of escape. London's teeming with CCTV cameras and I knew the police would spend dozens of man-days going through the available film in an ever-increasing circle in order to find out where I'd gone and whether I'd used a getaway car.
Only when I was confident that I'd covered enough ground to make checking every camera a logistical impossibility for my former colleagues in
the Met did I finally stop and catch my breath. It was raining hard and I was pretty sure that the street I was on - a run-down residential area in the shadow of a Sixties council block - wasn't going to be covered by Big Brother. There wasn't a lot worth covering and there was so little street lighting that they wouldn't have been able to pick up anything of use anyway.
Emma answered on the fifth ring and I could hear the TV in the background. It sounded like the
Antiques Roadshow.
'Hello.'
'Emma, it's Mick. Mick Kane, the private detective from last night.'
'Are you all right? You sound a bit stressed.'
'I'm fine, but I've had some trouble.'
'What kind of trouble?'
'The kind that involves our Mr Pope. I need to see you urgently. Look, I wouldn't ordinarily ask, but can I come over to your place? I've got information. Stuff I think you'll want to hear.'
She was silent for what felt like a long time, although anything feels like a long time when you're standing out on a cold night street with the rain tumbling down on your head and half of central London's cops after your blood.
'I don't know you at all,' she said eventually, her tone uncertain. 'You could be anyone. This could be a trap. You said yourself that people weren't going to take kindly to the articles I've been writing. What
if you're one of them? Or you're working on their behalf?'
I could see her point. I'd have had the same suspicions in her position. Unfortunately, this wasn't much help to me now. 'I'm not, I promise you.'
'But I don't know that.'
'No, you don't, so all I'm going to say is this: Pope's dead, and someone's just tried to kill me.'
'Oh, God.'
'I think the people who killed him work for the man you suspect is involved in the murders of Malik and Khan. Is his name Tyndall?'
'I'm sorry, but this is all getting too heavy for me. I may be a journalist but I don't want to get involved in murder. I think you're going to have to call the police.'
'I can't.'
'Why not?'
'Just take my word for it, I can't. I'm sorry to have bothered you. I've got to go.'
'Wait a minute. Where are you?'
I told her the name of the street and the approximate location.
'That's only about five minutes from me.'
'By foot or by car?' I asked, hoping that didn't mean she lived round Soho.
'Car. I'm in South Kensington, near Gloucester Road Tube.' She sighed, and I knew that she was trying to come to a decision as to what to do. It
didn't take her long. 'Stay where you are and I'll be there in a few minutes. I'll be driving a navy blue Volkswagen Golf.'
'Thanks,' I said, but she'd already rung off.
I stepped back into the doorway of a dilapidated-looking stonemasons' offices, reached into my pocket and found the wallet I'd taken from the dead gunman. I didn't much want to open it, since I didn't think I'd find anything of any use. The two men who'd come into that cinema to kill Pope were professionals and weren't likely to be carrying anything that identified themselves, which would leave me at something of a dead end, as well as being wanted on suspicion of a new murder. But you've always got to try to look at the positive side of things, so I offered up a silent prayer and opened it up.
Whoever was paying him was paying him well, that was for sure. There was at least five hundred in cash, probably more; but as I suspected, not a lot else. A cheap-looking, dog-eared business card was sticking out of one of the credit-card slots and I tugged it free. Something else - another card - came out from behind it. It was impossible to read either in the dim light, so I put them in the back pocket of my jeans and kept on searching, finding nothing else bar a used dry-cleaning ticket, which I pocketed as well, along with the cash (the latter on the basis that he was no longer going to need it, and I might).
A car - a Toyota, by the look of it - turned into the street and I sank back into the shadows as it passed, the tyres slicking over the wet surface of the road. When it was gone I stepped out again and walked over to a three-quarters-f skip about twenty yards down the street, parked outside a house that looked like it was in the early stages of renovation. The skip was full of all kinds of junk, from pieces of interior wall to a rusting pushchair, and I buried the empty wallet and the black 'I love London' cap under a pile of cement chippings. These days, if you're a criminal, you really can't be too careful. I'd bought the cap earlier that day near the Embankment, paying cash to an Eastern European stall-holder who didn't even bother to catch my eye, so I didn't think it would provide any of the officers examining the CCTV footage of the shooting with much in the way of clues. But I didn't want it to still be in my possession if they released any details into the public domain, particularly if I was going to be spending any time round Emma.