Natalie Bagnall would be taking her break in a few minutes.

  Ignoring Sullivan’s command to stay exactly where he was, Miller opened the back doors of the van, jumped down and charged towards the hospital. Xiu was similarly insubordinate. They ran for the back entrance which was signposted Gastroenterology, past the bewildered officers on watch and in through the double doors.

  Miller shouted into his radio as he ran. ‘We need to secure the building now. Driscoll’s inside the hospital. Everyone got that? Driscoll’s inside the hospital so just . . . close all the sodding doors.’

  Xiu was right behind him as they tore through the respiratory ward and out into the corridor, past a number of startled staff and several plain-clothes officers who were standing around panic-stricken, as though they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

  On cue, Sullivan’s voice rang out through all the radios, finally confirming the order to seal the hospital up.

  ‘Nobody in, nobody out. Repeat . . . ’

  Miller and Xiu stopped and looked around, unsure suddenly which way to go. Miller had been inside the Vic plenty of times but had always come in through the main entrance and he’d momentarily lost his bearings. He collared a passing porter and shouted, ‘Accident and Emergency.’

  ‘You’re in the wrong place.’

  ‘Which way?’ Miller stepped closer to the porter as though the accident in question might be about to happen to him. ‘Where’s A and bloody E?’

  The porter went pale, then pointed.

  Miller and Xiu could see other officers converging on the corridor as they all ran hell for leather towards Natalie Bagnall’s department.

  She usually had a crafty cigarette midway through a shift, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d needed one quite so much. It had been a pretty standard night so far, quieter than normal, in fact – a few broken bones, a handful of post-pub punch-up injuries, two serious knife wounds and a drug overdose – but the effort of trying to do her job, of staying calm while knowing she was being stalked by the man who’d killed her brother, had left Natalie feeling utterly exhausted.

  Trudging into the locker room, she was tearful and about ready to collapse.

  Her friend Emma was just on her way out and, seeing that Natalie was having a tough time, hung back for a moment to comfort her. With no idea of the real reason, she put Natalie’s distress down to the fact that she was still grieving, and stepped across to give her a hug.

  ‘Listen, Nat, nobody’s going to bat an eyelid if you want to knock off early. It’s understandable.’

  Natalie assured her friend that she was fine and they arranged to get breakfast together at the end of the shift.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Emma said. ‘I don’t want to be treating you later on.’

  Natalie leaned back against her locker and heard the door shut as Emma left. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe normally, and she’d no idea how long she’d been standing there when she heard a noise and turned to nod at the doctor who’d obviously just come in.

  She tried to place him and had just decided that she couldn’t remember seeing him before when she noticed the small, silenced gun in his hand and understood why.

  Natalie froze.

  ‘Let’s not do anything silly, OK, love?’

  The hair was a lot different and now he had glasses on, but she still recognised the man she’d seen on the front of the newspaper and in the TV reports. She didn’t take her eyes off the gun as she quietly slid her hand into the pocket of her scrubs.

  Driscoll saw her staring at the gun and held it up. ‘Yeah, dinky little thing this, isn’t it? Bought it off a mate of mine. I say mate . . . I mean he was until I shot him in the head and chopped his hands off. We had a bit of a falling out, you know?’

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Natalie asked. She was trying to keep the tremor from her voice because, silly as it was, she didn’t want to let this man see that she was afraid. She felt for the radio in her pocket and pressed what she hoped was the right button. ‘The locker room’s got a passcode.’

  ‘Oh, I just came in when that other nurse was coming out.’

  ‘Lucky,’ Natalie said. Emma had probably held the door open for him. They’d certainly have something to talk about at breakfast, she thought.

  Or they would have done . . .

  ‘I do know the passcode though. I stood behind someone when they were using it last night.’ He took a step towards her, the gun still hanging loose from his hand, then used it to point at her locker. ‘Briefcase in there then, is it?’

  Natalie nodded.

  ‘Well, we haven’t got time to mess about,’ he said. ‘So let’s have it open, shall we?’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘The locker room’s got a passcode . . . ’

  Now, thanks to Natalie’s quick-thinking in keying her radio, Miller knew exactly where she was. Where, unfortunately, she and Driscoll both were. Provided she was able to keep her finger on the button, their conversation would now be being broadcast to every radio unit.

  ‘Oh, I just came in when that other nurse was coming out.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  He and Xiu were still tearing along corridors, following signs to A&E. He shouted at a woman in scrubs as she stared at them running past. ‘Where’s the staff locker room?’

  The woman shouted back. ‘Depends which one you’re looking for.’

  Xiu looked at him.

  ‘I do know the passcode though. I stood behind someone when they were using it last night. Briefcase in there then, is it?’

  Miller stopped and ran back, the woman moving away from him as he got closer to her, until she was pressed against a wall. He knew he looked a little crazed, but he couldn’t be fagged digging out his warrant card, so was trying very hard not to sound like someone who’d absconded from the psych ward. ‘What do you mean, which one?’

  ‘There’s over five hundred medical staff working here, so there’s more than one locker room.’

  ‘Well, we haven’t got time to mess about. So, let’s have it open, shall we?’

  Suddenly there was just the hiss of static, then silence. Natalie had taken her finger off the button.

  ‘The nearest one’s right behind A&E,’ the woman said. ‘Just around that—’

  Miller and Xiu were already running.

  Driscoll moved to stand close to Natalie as she fiddled awkwardly with the padlock, her fingers sweaty and shaking.

  ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said.

  As she twisted the dials, trying to line up the correct sequence of numbers, Natalie wondered if this monstrous moron had any idea how ridiculous he sounded. Yeah, sorry if the fact that you’re already wanted for God knows how many murders and you’ve got a gun is making me a touch jumpy.

  The padlock opened and she reached for the door.

  ‘Nice and slow.’ Driscoll stepped back and raised the gun.

  ‘Just take the stupid briefcase and go,’ Natalie said.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Driscoll said.

  She reached up to the shelf where she’d placed the briefcase when she’d arrived at work. She slid it slowly out at an angle so that Driscoll could see the case coming, while the hand that was hidden by the door reached carefully for the other, somewhat smaller object she’d stashed in the locker a few hours before.

  Something Xiu had given her before she’d left for work.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to need it,’ Xiu had said. ‘I’ve got a spare, that’s all, and it never hurts to have one around.’

  ‘Finally,’ Driscoll said, when the case had emerged. ‘You wouldn’t believe the bloody trouble that thing’s caused me.’

  Natalie held the case up for him to take. She had one hand wrapped around the handle, the rage bubbling up as she offered Andy’s killer what he’d come for. As she realised that the trouble he was moaning about included him having to beat her little brother half to death before suffocating him.

  The trouble . . .

  Driscoll lowered the gun as he reached forward to take the case. He smiled, which was when Natalie shoved the briefcase hard into his chest and produced the small can of pepper spray she had taken from her locker and hidden behind it. She shouted as she let him have it full in the face; swore and kicked out as she kept on letting him have it, even when he was writhing on the floor and screaming.

  Then Natalie stepped over him and ran.

  Miller had given up being subtle or asking politely. Now he simply sprinted through the crowded A&E waiting area shouting ‘Locker room’ and following the pointed fingers of alarmed-looking members of staff. As he and Xiu burst through the doors and into the triage room, he could hear the sweary complaints of those who’d already been waiting hours and thought he was queue-jumping. He heard somebody close behind him calling for security.

  ‘You really can’t be here.’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve already called them.’

  ‘We are the chuffing police, now where’s the locker room?’

  They charged past a seemingly endless row of curtained-off cubicles, past several patients on trolleys and a few lying stretched out on benches, until they reached a dead end. There were doors to the left and right of them with corridors beyond. Signs on both that read Staff Only.

  ‘Pick one,’ Miller said.

  Xiu hesitated for just a second, then pointed, and they barrelled through a set of doors which had not even closed behind them before they ran straight into a hysterical Natalie Bagnall.

  ‘He was in there,’ she screamed. ‘He was in there . . . ’

  Miller wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. He shushed and rubbed her back as she sobbed into his shoulder, but he was staring beyond her into the corridor. Looking for Driscoll.

  They were quickly surrounded by a gaggle of other officers looking determined and chuntering into radios. Even Sullivan and Clough finally put in an appearance. Xiu stepped forward to take over comforting duties and, more importantly, to make sure Natalie wasn’t injured.

  ‘Do you need any medical treatment?’ she asked.

  Natalie managed to confirm that she was unhurt.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Xiu held the young woman’s face in her hands and smiled. ‘Because we’re definitely in the right place if you do.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Natalie was still breathing heavily. ‘I used what you gave me.’

  ‘Nice work,’ Xiu said.

  ‘What’s the passcode?’ Miller asked. ‘For the locker room.’

  Natalie spluttered out the numbers and, half a minute later, Miller watched as a firearms officer slowly pushed the door open and went inside.

  Miller waited. A tiny, vicious part of him – one that only emerged whenever someone on a property show said ‘the wow factor’, and once during a seriously competitive dance-off in Rochdale – was half hoping that he’d hear a gunshot.

  ‘Room clear,’ the officer shouted.

  Miller waited until the firearms officer had left, then stepped inside. His eyes began to sting immediately and he knew exactly what Xiu had given to Natalie Bagnall. Looking around, he couldn’t help wishing that the girl had been given something that would do rather more serious damage, or at least have debilitated her attacker for a little longer.

  The locker was still open, Miller’s replica briefcase lay empty on the floor, and Dudley Driscoll had gone.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The time he’d spent hiding out in the hospital had given Driscoll a pretty good feel for the layout of the place, but now that was just about all he had. He staggered, blinded and screaming like a stuck pig as he crashed through a set of doors that he thought might lead out to a loading bay at the back of the hospital. He quickly discovered he was wrong and went blundering helplessly onwards in the hope that he might find some other way out.

  He rubbed at his eyes which only made the pain worse, then almost immediately forgot that he’d done it and did it again.

  He ran into one dead end and then another.

  He turned around, yelling in pain and frustration.

  He had to try and find an exit fast, and while he could barely see his hand in front of his face that was looking increasingly unlikely. It wasn’t as if he could head towards somewhere a bit more crowded and ask for directions. He knew there were coppers everywhere and, if he couldn’t get out of the hospital quickly, the only option he had left was to find somewhere to lie low. At least until he could see properly.

  Christ on a bike, it felt like his eyes were actually burning.

  He charged around a corner, panting as he felt his way along the walls before tripping and tumbling down what was a mercifully short flight of stairs. He picked himself up, cursing and turned to continue down a second much longer flight, and then a third . . .

  Seemingly as far down as it was possible to go, he moved forward a little more cautiously, because wherever the hell he’d ended up, it was starting to feel a little strange. The temperature had dropped and the noises he was still making, the gasps and the moans, sounded echoey. Whatever this bit of the hospital was, he could sense it wasn’t one that anyone used much any more.

  It was some kind of storage area, he guessed, hidden away in the bowels of the place, or maybe the bit that housed the boilers and generators and what have you. There were probably all sorts of disused tunnels under places like this, for diverting waste away or maybe transporting bodies in the olden days.

  Surely he could find somewhere to hide down here.

  Driscoll was creeping forward now, goosepimply suddenly and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see a great deal, because he could make out just enough to know that it was pretty much dark as night down here anyway. It didn’t seem like there were any windows and, if there were lights, nobody had bothered turning them on.

  It felt as if the corridor widened suddenly and he realised that he’d entered a large room or vault of some sort, with boxes or maybe machines lined up against the walls and a smell that made him think of school dinners. Something rotting somewhere.

  For the first time in as long as he cared to remember, Dudley Driscoll felt afraid, but when he turned to go back the way he’d come, it was only to find himself squinting at a figure moving quickly across the room towards him. A man, or more accurately the shape of a man. Even in semi-darkness and with what minimal vision he had, Driscoll could tell what the man had in his hand, because the shape of a silenced pistol was one he’d become pretty familiar with over the years. It was . . . distinctive.

  It wasn’t like the bloke was pointing a banana at him, was it?

  His own gun had gone missing while he was playing silly buggers with Natalie Bagnall in that locker room, but even if he’d had it, he wasn’t able to see well enough for a gun to be of any use. Right then, he couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo.

  Even though he’d lost his bearings completely, there was only one thing he could do.

  He spun around and ran, but only as far as the wall he smacked into, hard enough to wind himself and break his nose at the same time. The jolt of excruciating pain made him forget momentarily about the burning in his eyes, but even that only lasted as long as it took for the man to step up behind him and press the gun against the back of Driscoll’s head.

  The barrel clunking softly against his skull.

  There wasn’t exactly a lot of time – no more than a second or two before the trigger was pulled – so he was never going to come up with anything terribly memorable, but all the same Driscoll knew, even as he said them, that these were not likely to make anyone’s list of famous last words.

  ‘Oh, boll—’

  FIFTY-NINE

  Miller had already escorted Natalie out through a fire door and watched her smoke two cigarettes in quick succession. Now, he and Xiu sat with her in the nurses’ break room, while she drank coffee from the vending machine and tried to stop shaking. They told her how brave she was, and how clever. Miller knew that they should probably be asking her questions, too, but it seemed a little too soon. There would be plenty of time later on for her to make a statement, and besides, she was the one with questions.

  ‘How did he get in? You lot were everywhere . . . all the cameras and stuff. How the hell did he get past you?’

  ‘He was here before we were,’ Miller said.

  ‘I don’t get it. How could he . . . ?’ She shook her head and gulped her coffee.

  Xiu did her best to explain. ‘We think Driscoll had been inside the hospital for a while. Hiding out, which is not that tricky given the size of this place. He might even have come in the night he was spotted by Finn’s mates nearby, but we’re fairly certain he was watching your house yesterday, so I’m betting he got here later after that day.’

  ‘He was waiting for you to come to him,’ Miller said.

  Natalie stared blankly for half a minute, then turned and began looking frantically around.

  ‘He’s still here, right?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Yeah, but he’s still here, though. Somebody was saying all the exits had been closed off, so he must still be in the hospital.’

  There were half a dozen officers – plain-clothes and uniform – in the room with them, but considering what idiots Driscoll had made of them all so far, Miller thought Natalie’s concern was understandable. ‘We’ll find him,’ he said.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘We’ll find him, Natalie.’

  There was no way that Driscoll could have left the building between the incident in the locker room and the order to seal the hospital. The man had all manner of disturbing capabilities, but seeing as the power of invisibility wasn’t one of them, Miller was almost as confident of finding him as he was trying to sound. The only fly in the ointment – and as flies went this was a sizeable and irritating one – was that Tim Sullivan was coordinating the search. Miller told himself that, though it had now been over an hour without any result, even Sullivan couldn’t botch the search of a sealed building. He tried to banish the image of the DI simply wandering the hospital corridors with his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are . . . ’