The Last 10 Seconds by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online

periphery of the north London underworld, drinking in grimy little backstreet pubs with small-time crims and putting my name about as Sean Tatelli, an ex-con on the lookout for decent work, before I got introduced to Tommy. That was three months ago now, and we’d spent a lot of time together since. For a while that had involved nothing more than going out drinking and shooting the breeze. Like a lot of criminals, Tommy was good company, with a wealth of amusing stories to tell. Slowly, though, he’d begun to take me into his confidence, giving me bits and pieces of work to do, always suggesting that something bigger would come along, until finally, today, he’d pulled up outside the flat I used for my undercover ops and told me that he had work for me. Real work this time.
    ‘Who’s it we’re meant to be snatching?’ I asked Tommy, keen to have something to go back to Captain Bob with.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said, fixing me with deep-set eyes that always had a melancholy expression in them, even when he was telling a good story. ‘I don’t work with Wolfe as much as I used to these days. But you said he offered you a hundred grand. Well, he’s offered me one fifty, so I’m thinking him and Haddock must be making at least two apiece, maybe more, which means whoever it is we’re after’s worth a lot of money to someone. All I know is it’s one man, and his escort’s not going to be armed. That’s it. I don’t even know the location.’
    ‘Do you know how Wolfe got to hear of the job?’
    He shook his head. ‘He’s keeping everything close to his chest, and he’s even more jumpy than usual about it. That’s why he’s being all cloak and dagger with you. He doesn’t like using people from outside the crew for work, but he needed a fourth man, and seeing as you and me are mates, and you need the work . . .’
    ‘Thanks for thinking of me,’ I said, feeling an unusual twinge of guilt that I was going to betray him. Tommy Allen was a violent criminal, but I’d grown closer to him than I’d have liked. At forty-five, he was only twelve years older than me, but sometimes he acted as if I was the son he’d never had.
    The car fell silent, and he lit a cigarette.
    I looked at it longingly. I only allow myself two cigarettes per day, one after lunch, one after supper. It’s my routine, and I stick to it. But I was sorely tempted to make an exception now, knowing that I was heading out of the frying pan and possibly straight into the fire.
    I stared out of the car window, trying hard to ignore the pounding of my heart as the hotels, theatres and pavement cafés of the West End gave way to the grand Victorian buildings of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the legal quarter, and then the steel-and-glass high-rises of the City. Finally, the wealth slipped away and we were into the poorer tenements and terraced housing that was the sprawling East End. This area of London had suffered most under the bombardment of the Luftwaffe in the Second World War, and it showed in the slapdash nature of much of the architecture: Victorian tenements, 1950s terraces, 1960s tower blocks, all running into one another to the cheerful beats of Tommy’s Best of Level 42 CD.
    Tommy, I’d found out in the time I’d known him, was a big fan of 1980s music, and particularly Level 42. He’d been singing along pretty much non-stop to the tracks throughout the journey, occasionally accompanied by Tommy Junior howling from the back seat, creating an out-of-tune cacophony that would have made me gouge out my own eyes if I hadn’t been so preoccupied. Finally, as one of the band’s lesser hits, ‘Microkid’, came on, Tommy seemed to notice for the first time that I wasn’t saying much.
    He turned down the music. ‘Listen, Sean, you’re not scared, are you?’
    ‘No, I’ve just been struck dumb by the quality of your and Tommy Junior’s singing.’
    He chuckled. ‘“Lessons in Love” is Tommy Junior’s favourite. He really