Authors: Simon Kernick
No, she told herself. She was safe. Nothing like that was ever going to happen to her again.
RIGHT FROM CHILDHOOD,
it had always been Frank Keogh’s ambition to be a police officer, and there was never any danger that he wouldn’t achieve it. He worked hard at school, did well at sport, and the stubborn, single-minded streak he possessed – the one that often drove his family and friends mad – meant that he got in at the first attempt, aged eighteen, coming second highest in his class at Hendon.
Keogh didn’t just want to be any old cop. He wanted to be a detective, and bring the really serious criminals to justice. It was no surprise to anyone that he was in plainclothes by twenty-one, and a detective sergeant by twenty-five. The bosses up top liked him. He was tough, tenacious and patient, and they were already talking about him being DCI-level by the age of thirty.
The problem for Keogh was the rulebook. He’d always had a strong sense of natural justice. He wanted to see the bad guys suffer and the good guys win, and it offended him that this often didn’t seem to happen. The good guys – the police – were stymied by an ever-increasing set of rules. The bad guys often escaped justice because their lawyers were good, and the law was on their side. This injustice drove him mad, as did the fact that, in the end, the criminals were so easy to catch. It wasn’t like in the books or the movies, as he’d imagined it to be when he’d joined up. These people were idiots. They left a trail of evidence in their wake, meaning that most of the detective work was building a case to go to court and then filling out a load of paperwork.
Disillusioned, Keogh decided on a change in direction. He’d always had a thing about guns. There was something about their sheer power that fascinated him, and there’d been more than the occasional moment when he’d fantasized about putting one against the head of some cocky low-life thug and pulling the trigger. He never would have done, of course – he had far too much to lose for that – but he decided on the next best thing, by joining the Metropolitan Police’s elite CO19 firearms unit. He figured it would give him a new challenge, and a much-needed adrenalin rush now and again. His plan was always to go back into plainclothes eventually, work himself higher up the greasy pole, then retire and write a book about his experiences, which he was positive he could turn into a real success.
It surprised no one, least of all Keogh himself, that he got into CO19 at the first attempt. He remembered thinking when he went out on that first patrol, a gun at his hip as he and his colleagues drove through the mean streets of Lewisham, that this was as good as life got. He was young; he was good-looking; he had a beautiful fiancée. The world was his to dominate.
Except it wasn’t, because fate has a way of intervening when it’s least expected, and leaving the best-laid plans in ruins. And fate really had it in for Frank Keogh.
It was three months into his time in CO19 when the Armed Response Vehicle he was travelling in received an urgent call from Dispatch about a group of youths from a well-known local street gang travelling in a stolen vehicle, one of whom was reported to have brandished a gun at passers-by. They got a dozen calls like this every day, and rarely did they come across anyone who was actually armed, but each call had to be taken on its own merits and, because they were very close by, they’d raced to where the vehicle had last been sighted, intercepting it at some traffic lights.
All three of them had been out of the ARV in seconds, pistols drawn and shouting at the men inside the vehicle to put their hands above their heads. It looked as if the three of them were complying but, as Keogh approached the car from the side, the man in the back pulled something from his pocket. It was ten o’clock at night and dark, and Keogh had no idea what it was the man had in his hand, but Keogh remembered vividly him turning round rapidly in his seat and bringing up an object that looked a lot like a gun.
Keogh had pulled the trigger then, shooting him twice through the window at a distance of no more than five feet. One of the bullets caught him in the neck, the other hit him in the eye as the pistol kicked, and it was this one that was fatal.
It turned out that twenty-year-old Derrick ‘Slugs’ Foster had been holding a mobile phone when Keogh had shot him, and that none of the three men in the car was armed, not even with a knife. As far as Keogh was concerned, none of that mattered. He’d done his job, and he’d done it properly. The guy had pulled something that could have been a gun from his pocket and he’d looked as if he was going to fire it. In those situations, you have maybe a second and a half to make the choice of whether to fire or not. Make the wrong choice and you get shot, and Keogh was not the kind of guy who got shot because he was too scared to react.
But the bosses – those men who’d been so supportive of him when he was on the way up – didn’t see it like that. Neither did the local community. The following night, the estate where the dead man had lived was the scene of the worst rioting that London had witnessed in years, and within days a ‘Justice for Derrick’ campaign had been set up by local community leaders, backed by several sympathetic human rights lawyers, calling for charges of murder to be laid against the man who’d pulled the trigger.
Keogh was suspended from firearms duty, as was routine in such incidents. Then, as the furore mounted, and further street disturbances broke out in several other London boroughs, he was suspended from duty altogether. Then came the bombshell. The establishment had decided to bend to the power of the mob and the special interest groups. He was going to be charged with manslaughter. No one was above the law, said the well-groomed ex-public schoolboy from the CPS as he’d announced the charges at a news conference that was shown as the top story on every news channel.
During the run-up to the trial, Keogh’s fiancée left him, citing the pressure of the situation. He’d really had a thing for Kirsty. She was the one. They were going to have a family and grow old together. Losing her had been like a massive and continuous kick in the balls. He couldn’t get it out of his head that she’d rejected him. But, even then, Keogh hadn’t lost his self-belief. He still had support from his colleagues past and present, and he was certain that no jury would convict a serving police officer with an unblemished record for shooting dead a low-life like Derrick Foster in a spur-of-the-moment, high-pressure incident.
Unfortunately, he was wrong. Found guilty, he was sentenced to three years in prison. And it was hard time that he did, segregated from the main prison population for his own safety, and made to spend his days with rapists, paedophiles, and all the other assorted scum of the earth. The guards warned him to be careful even there because members of Derrick Foster’s gang inside the prison had put a contract out on Keogh’s head, and within two weeks he’d been attacked by a fellow con wielding a sharpened piece of plastic. He’d been slashed twice in the face and neck, and though he’d managed to fend off his attacker until help arrived, the good looks he’d prided himself on were ruined forever by the scars left behind.
They were the worst, darkest times of Keogh’s life. Brought as low as he’d ever been, he even contemplated suicide. But then, slowly but surely, that single-minded determination that had served him so well in the past came back into play. He forced himself to adapt to prison life and bide his time until release, and all the time his bitterness grew. He’d get his own back. On the bosses who’d hung him out to dry; on the public who’d done nothing to stop him being put behind bars. On every last one of them.
He got out in two years, already forgotten by the rest of the world, but it had only been a matter of time before his bitterness found an outlet, and so began a journey that had got him here today, driving slowly past Amanda Rowan’s rented cottage in a four-by-four.
She’d noticed him looking at her, he was pretty sure of that. He cursed, but kept driving. He was used to taking risks. It was all part of the job description, and at least now he knew she was where she was supposed to be. When he’d first arrived here in the darkness of the early hours, he’d considered breaking into the house, but she’d had at least half a dozen locks on the back door, and the brand-new PVC windows were locked and secure, with no sign of keys anywhere convenient. He’d also considered knocking on the door and showing his fake police ID, but had dismissed it as too risky. Amanda Rowan was no fool. There was no guarantee she’d let him in – the scars were always a problem like that – and, if she didn’t, then it would have blown everything.
Now that he knew she was at home, all he had to do was be patient. By coming to an isolated spot like this one, she’d made it far easier for him.
When he was about two hundred yards past her cottage, and the village had given way to fields with trees beyond, he made a right turn up a narrow lane. He followed the lane as it went straight for about fifty yards, passing a couple of barns, before swinging a sharp right back in the direction of the village. He stopped the Land Rover in a spot he’d recce’d earlier, and parked up on the verge amidst a copse of trees. From this position he could see the rear of Amanda’s cottage. Its rear garden backed directly onto a fallow field, and he could see a couple of kids playing on a trampoline in the garden next door.
If Amanda Rowan came out the back way, cutting across the field, he’d see her easily. If she went out the front, the tiny, sensor-operated camera that he’d planted in the undergrowth just inside her front gate would pick up the movement and start recording. Whatever happened, as soon as she left the house, he’d know about it.
And they’d finally be able to get to work.
JESS GRAINGER HAD
never been in a canoe before, mainly because it had never crossed her mind to get in one. She wasn’t a big fan of water, unless it was steaming hot and pouring out of a showerhead. She could swim okay, but only because they’d made her learn at school – and she still wasn’t that great at it – and right now the thought of falling into a cold, grey Scottish river (which she was sure she would do by the end of the day) filled her with a mixture of dread, and resentment that she’d agreed to come along on this trip in the first place.
Uncle Tim must have read her thoughts because he clapped her hard on the back, his hand lingering for just a second too long. ‘You’re going to love it, Jessie,’ he said, giving her a big toothy smile as he took a deep breath of the fresh country air. ‘Just look at it.’ He took his hand away – thank God – and swung it round expansively as he admired the view of the gently running river, with the forest stretching up the hills that rose gently on each side of it.
‘Some of the best countryside in the world up here,’ the old guy who ran the place they were hiring the canoes from announced as he pushed one of them into the water, turning it round so that it rested in the shallows parallel to the bank. ‘And I’ve been to a hell of a lot of places, I’m telling you.’
Jess was sure he had. Thin and wizened beneath his beanie cap, with a face full of cracks and lines, the old guy looked just like an Arctic explorer. But his words didn’t make her feel any more enthusiastic as she clambered unsteadily into the front of the canoe, almost toppling out of the other side in the process, and lowered herself onto the hard wooden seat.
The old guy handed her a wooden paddle while Aunt Jean got in the back with all the grace of a rhino, landing heavily in her own seat.
‘I’ll do the steering, Jessie,’ announced Aunt Jean. ‘You just paddle. One side then the other. You’ll get used to it soon enough. It’s easy.’ Her tone wasn’t unfriendly, but it wasn’t too cheery either, and Jess could tell she didn’t really want her there, but was trying to make an effort for Casey’s sake.
Casey was Jess’s little sister and she lived with Uncle Tim and Aunt Jean up here in the middle of the Scottish wilderness, having moved up a few months ago after Dad had died. They weren’t real sisters. Jess had been fostered, then adopted, aged seven, by the couple she came to know as Mum and Dad, when they didn’t think they could have children of their own. Then, less than a year later, Casey had turned up. By rights, Jess should have been jealous, but from the start she’d adored her little sister, and felt hugely protective of her, a feeling that had grown even stronger when first Mum, then Dad, had died.
The whole reason Jess had come up here from London was to see Casey and make sure she was settling in okay. And to be fair, it seemed she was. Unlike Jess herself, Casey was really excited about this canoeing trip, and she jumped into the front of the other canoe, taking her paddle excitedly from the old guy, while Uncle Tim got in the back.
The old guy grinned at Casey, his eyes twinkling. It was, Jess thought, the same old story. Everyone fell in love with Casey. She was just that kind of girl. She was blonde, bubbly, with a sweet cherubic face, a cute button nose, and a lively personality, but also enough smarts to know how to get round people, and make them do what she wanted without them realizing they were doing it. Although more than seven years separated them, Jess had always grown up in her shadow. Sometimes it surprised her that she wasn’t more envious of Casey, but only a few times had the fact that her sister got all the attention ever irritated her, and in truth, she loved her sister just as everyone else did. And now, with Dad gone, Casey was all she had left.
‘Okay, you’ve got my phone number,’ said the old guy, standing above them. ‘The mobile reception’s patchy along the river, but you’ll be able to get it in parts. The river’s running pretty slow at the moment, so you shouldn’t run into any problems but, if you do, just give us a call. Otherwise, we’ll meet you at the bridge near Tayleigh at five o’clock. That should give you plenty of time.’
Five o’clock? That was almost four hours away and Jess felt her heart sink. There were a hundred things she’d rather be doing than this. When she’d come up, she’d envisaged taking Casey shopping in Inverness, not hauling ass down some Godforsaken river in the back of beyond.