Die Alone

took the postcode of the speed camera, and that was it. The conversation was over, and I was back on my own.
Using the data on the smartphone, I pulled up Google Maps, found the speed camera and homed in on the satellite images of a largely rural area of west Essex, about thirty miles north-east of central London, with a scattering of hamlets set in farmland.
It took me a good ten minutes but eventually I found it – a white, detached house set in the middle of a plot surrounded by high hedges and backing onto woodland. It was definitely the place, on its own at the end of a track with a handful of houses and a farm in a hamlet a couple of hundred metres away. A perfect spot if you didn’t want to attract attention.
I made a note of the coordinates and shut off the phone before I ran entirely out of data, and for the first time I seriously considered doing what Tina was suggesting. I had options. I could get hold of a car, drive up to where Lane and her friends had held me, and neutralize them. Then I’d collect my passport and make a break for France, where I could cash in some of my bitcoin, set up a new bank account, and fade from view. Hell, I didn’t even have to kill Lane. I could just run.
I don’t know if it was my promise to the Brennans to bring their daughter’s killers to justice; my instinct that Alastair Sheridan not only deserved to die but had to, in order to stop him becoming the most powerful person in the country; or simply pure revenge over his part in sending me to prison and destroying my life. Whatever it was, for the moment at least it made me stay put and, as the afternoon wore into the evening, I paced the stifling confines of the apartment, working out my next move, unable to settle. Unable, it seemed, to make a decision, as day turned into night, and the air began to cool as the predicted heavy showers approached from the west.
And then at 9.30 p.m., the decision was made for me when Lane’s burner phone rang again.
It was on the side in the kitchen, and as I picked up on the fourth ring, Lane’s voice came down the line, calm but tense.
‘The target is en route. Be ready to strike in twenty minutes.’

13
Fifteen minutes later, I stood in the darkness of the apartment dressed all in black, a pack containing my belongings on my back, and the pistol with suppressor already attached pushed into the back of my waistband. My breathing was steady and I was tense but not afraid. The gun gave me confidence. I’ve used one plenty of times before, which almost certainly put me at an advantage over anyone I was going to come up against tonight. And best of all, I had surprise on my side.
My only doubt was whether I’d be able to pull the trigger when it came to it. I’ve been a soldier, and I’ve been a police officer. But I’ve never been a contract killer. I’ve killed in cold blood once before but the evidence of my victim’s crimes was all around her, and she was revelling in it as I faced her down. I’d acted in anger then, and had felt physically sick afterwards. Did I regret it? I honestly don’t know, but the act itself ripped away a part of my humanity that I would never get back.
When I confronted Alastair Sheridan, it would be different. He wouldn’t be revelling in his crimes. He would be naked, probably helpless, almost certainly begging for his life.
Could I do it?
I shut my eyes and pictured Dana Brennan. Her mum had given me a photo of her, aged eleven, posing with her pet dog, taken about a year and a half before she was abducted and murdered by Sheridan and his friend, Cem Kalaman. I no longer had that photo. It had been taken from me, along with my wallet, when I’d been arrested, but I’d stared at it long enough to have Dana’s face etched on my memory.
I had to do it for her, and for the ghosts of all the other young women he’d destroyed.
I went through the open French windows and onto the roof, shutting them behind me. A welcome breeze caught me full in the face as I stood there looking out across the lights of the city, spreading as far as the eye could see. The night was just about as dark as it ever got in London at this time of year and an angry swirl of clouds was racing overhead.
I looked round. There was no one else out on any of the other roof terraces tonight, but a few doors down I could see the lights on in one of the apartments, and the French windows were open. I walked to the edge of the roof and looked down at the square, an oasis in the heart of the city, the one-way traffic system and speed bumps discouraging any cut-through drivers – and I could see why the wealthy would enjoy living behind its grand facades, although I suspected few of them actually did, preferring to leave them empty as investment vehicles for dirty money. I guess if you were going to open a high-end brothel anywhere, here wouldn’t be a bad spot since it was unlikely there’d be many people around to complain about it.
Whoever Lane’s insider was, he or she was bang on the money because, as I stood there, two black SUVs with blacked-out windows turned into the far side of the square and drove in convoy round the central gardens, coming to a halt outside one of the neighbouring buildings. I heard rather than saw them disgorge their occupants as they