water, a few empty barrels occupying one of the corners.
To their right, a metal ladder ascended into dimness. They gazed up, and as their eyes attuned, made out hanging chains and dangling strips of canvas. The underside of the floor above was composed mainly of riveted steel, though there were some gaps in it. Heck moved to the foot of the ladder. Twenty feet overhead, it passed through a hatch and vanished, but light was visible up there – probably daylight filtering through the grimy first-floor windows. He tested the ladder, which seemed sturdy, and began to climb it, acutely aware that the clanks of his footfalls were probably sounding all the way to the top of the tower. When he was about seven feet up, he glanced back – Lauren was standing down there alone.
‘Where’s McCulkin?’ he asked.
She looked around. ‘Don’t think he even came in.’
An engine growled to life outside.
‘Shit!’ Heck yelled, jumping back down, racing for the door. He skirted through the wire and descended quickly to the timber platform, but it was too late. The boat was already motoring away, a good thirty yards distant. McCulkin was hunched over the wheel, but he glanced back towards them nervously.
‘You arsehole!’ Heck shouted. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’
Lauren jumped down onto the platform alongside him. ‘He can’t seriously be leaving us here?’
‘McCulkin! You think this is going to solve anything, you little shit!’
But McCulkin was already out of earshot.
Heck dragged the blue phone from his pocket and bashed in the number of the red one. Rather to his surprise, it was answered.
‘What the goddamn hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he demanded.
‘I … look, I’m sorry,’ was all McCulkin could say. ‘I didn’t … I didn’t want this, I … I had no choice, I mean … when your family are under threat …’
The words ended mid-sentence. There was a thump in Heck’s ear as the phone at the other end was dropped into the bottom of the boat. He gazed out over the water. The small outboard was still close enough for him to see McCulkin stagger to its gunwale, his head shapeless and lolling, his hair a glinting crimson mass – and topple over the side.
A second of stunned silence followed.
The boat continued towards the distant shore, now under its own volition. McCulkin’s body was briefly visible, bobbing like a buoy, before it sank, leaving his cap floating on the surface alongside a blurred red stain.
‘Fuck,’ Heck said slowly. ‘Fuck … he’s been shot!’
Lauren’s eyes bulged in shock. ‘How was he, but who shot … I mean, out here?’
The answers to these half questions were provided in short order.
Heck had no sooner tapped 999 on the blue phone when a second shot was fired – presumably from a weapon fitted with a silencer, because they didn’t hear its report. The phone was smashed from Heck’s hand, scattering in fragments across the landing platform. He snatched his hand back; the bullet hadn’t penetrated his flesh, but had struck a stinging blow, which felt as if it had come from overhead. Disbelievingly, he peered up towards the topmost parapet of the tower.
Something gleamed up there.
It was the sun. On the barrel of a sniper rifle.
Heck ducked backward, dragging Lauren with him. A silenced slug impacted on the spot where he’d just been standing. The plank footing was punched clean through.
‘Quick!’ Heck charged back up the stairs. Lauren was only a yard behind him, but another shot ricocheted from the stair’s handrail alongside her, hammering it out of shape.
‘Who … who the hell is it?’ she stammered as they plunged back inside the tower.
‘Who the hell do you think?’
‘Deke?’
‘Murdering bastard lured us here. But what really worries me is how he got to McCulkin.’
The full import of this didn’t immediately strike Lauren. Their initial predicament was terrifying enough. Inside the base of the tower, they were sheltered from the parapet above. But of course they were stuck here. There was nowhere else to go, and it surely wouldn’t be long before the sniper descended. Gradually however, the meaning of what Heck had just said dawned on her.
‘What do you mean, “how he got to McCulkin”?’
Heck mopped sweat from his forehead. ‘I’ve been worried there might be a leak in my department. Now I know there is. McCulkin was our confidential informant. No one outside the National Crime Group could possibly know about his connection to me.’
‘But that’s ridiculous; why would some copper …?’
‘Because whoever he is, he must be involved with the Nice Guys.’
‘Heck, you can’t be serious.’
‘It’s the only explanation. It explains a few other things too.’ He glanced out through the entrance. McCulkin’s outboard was a distant dot headed towards the smudged, brown coastline. The bloody traces of McCulkin himself were no longer visible on the rippling waters. ‘Lauren, how good a swimmer are you?’
‘You’re suggesting we swim?’
‘Not to the shore. Round to one of the other gun-towers. It’s only about fifty yards.’
‘Swim in the Thames? What about the current?’
‘The alternative is waiting here until miladdo comes down. There’s nowhere to hide that I can see, and we’ve got no weapons. We’ll be like fish in a barrel.’
Even as Heck said this, there was a clang from somewhere overhead. Then another, and another – heavy feet were descending a metal staircase. Glancing up, they saw shadows of movement flickering through the gaps in the ceiling. Despite this, Lauren was still struggling with Heck’s suggestion.
‘Swim …?’
He took her hand, and met her eye to eye. ‘This guy’s coming down here to kill us, Lauren. Both of us. Even if we swim, I reckon we’ve only got two or three minutes to make it to one of the other towers before he gets us in his crosshairs.’
Slowly, unwillingly, she forced a nod. ‘Okay … okay.’
It was late afternoon, so the incoming tide helped them. Not that an exhausting effort wasn’t required. The nearest of the gun-towers, which was the west one, seemed a nightmarish distance away. Ploughing towards it fully clothed, through ice-cold water, was an ordeal neither of them was prepared for. All the same they swam, shoulders aching, wave after briny wave slapping them in the face and mouth. They constantly craned their necks
