The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1) Read online

  The Third Rule

  By

  Andrew Barrett

  Copyright © Andrew Barrett.

  The author(s) assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author(s) of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  British Library C.I.P.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  January

  May

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Chapter Fifty Six

  Epilogue

  Thanks

  About the author

  For all police officers and staff throughout the country who do a sterling job under very great pressure; who are rarely thanked and often chastened, but who constantly watch our backs and can be counted on to protect us all with professionalism, integrity and compassion.

  January

  Looking back on this evening, Eddie Collins would realise that the next few minutes were the last normal minutes of his life. It was to be one of those times that conspire to change everything for the worse.

  At nearly ten-thirty on the evening of Thursday January 15th, Eddie was driving home after a late shift. Icy gusts whipped overhead telephone wires and hurled sleet against the smeared windscreen. Despite the weather, he was in a good mood, looking forward to getting outside a glass of wine and curling up next to Jilly.

  At the end of Bridge Street, he turned left towards the dual carriageway that would take him to his motorway junction. He checked the dashboard clock and expected to be home in twenty minutes.

  But Eddie was wrong.

  As he picked up speed, the houses on the left became a dark grey blur, and he was about to relax and fill car with some Pink Floyd when, as he leaned toward the radio controls, something caught his eye. In the orange hue of a street lamp, he glimpsed a woman running along the snowy footpath in front of the terraces. Following her, sprinting, was a man dressed in black with a woolly hat pulled down over his ears. One glance later, before the scene was behind him, showed Eddie that the woman was screaming.

  His heart raced, he forgot about the music and tried to see them in his rear view mirror. They were just grey shadows among grey shadows, turning streetlight-orange every fifty yards or so.

  As the road opened out into a dual carriageway, there was a gap in the central reservation. He indicated, turned and drove back the way he’d come, hands clamped tightly around the steering wheel. The sleet came heavier and the sky darkened further. There was no other traffic in sight; the road was all his.

  There they were up ahead to his right. A man chasing down a screaming woman. Eddie couldn’t take his eyes away from her and the terror on her face. Her hair flowed behind her, yet there were wet curls of it flattened against her forehead as though frozen there. In her right hand she held a bag, and Eddie knew that’s what the man wanted.

  He slowed and turned in the road.

  She glanced over her shoulder and screamed as the pursuer pounced on her.

  Now from behind her, Eddie saw them land in a heap on the freezing, wet footpath, and imagined her face grazing along the tarmac with the weight of a robber on top. For a moment, they were a tangle of arms and legs, but from the tangle, Eddie saw the handbag, and the robber ripped it free.

  He slammed on the brakes only yards away and her crumpled shape turned white in the headlamps; sleet darted towards her. Eddie leapt from the car, not bothering to shut the door – he could hear the audible alarm sounding, door ajar, it said, door ajar – and ran towards the woman. She lay in a heap on the wet pavement, her clothes soaked, her skin pale and wrinkled like that of a corpse pulled out of a lake.

  She turned over, and the light caught the shine in her eyes and the wet snotty face, it caught the string of saliva whipping from her mouth.

  Thoughts crashed through Eddie’s mind: he was going to be late home if he didn’t hurry, and Jilly would be wondering what’d kept him. And then he wondered about his car, door open, engine running, and an awkward conversation with the insurance company coming his way. How could you be so stupid Eddie, Jilly would shout, and he could say nothing in his defence because it was stupid. How many people these days would stop to interfere with a street robbery? Approximately nought out of a hundred.

  A million things passed along the emergency routes in Eddie’s mind as he bent to help the poor woman, but only one caught his attention, get her in the damned car, and get her out of here.

  But that wouldn’t be an end to it.

  Eddie hauled the woman upright, guided her back to the car and into the front seat. He climbed in, closed his own door, noticed how wet the seat was, and then set off after the madman.

  He drove quickly, heading straight for the small black shape of the running man. The woman cried. He could see the grazes along her right cheek, and the blisters of blood that popped onto her raw skin and dribbled down her cheek. Her hair hung limply in black strands down towards her shoulder. Steam rose from her wrinkled fingers.

  In between shivering sobs, she said something; might have been thank you kind sir; or, why didn’t you get here earlier, asshole; or it might have been, shouldn’t you call the police? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he was gaining rapidly on the man in black.

  Eddie stamped on the brake, told the injured woman to stay there – a
ctually shouted it at her – and then leapt from the car again. His feet patted through the glossy wetness on the pavement, ran through the orange streetlight, mottled with falling sleet, chasing down the man who had chased down the frightened woman. His trousers were shiny and wet, and the wind ripped into his legs as though he were wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. His hair was a mass of freezing water that drained the heat from his head and dripped inside his collar. His ears ached, his cheeks were numb, and the cold air rasping into his lungs felt like he was smoking an industrial blowtorch.

  He shouted to the figure, but the figure kept running. Eddie was gaining when the man ran down the shallow grass embankment that was covered in patches of snow, and then slipped on his arse, sliding fifteen feet or so towards a low wooden fence that gave out onto some industrial units under construction. He kept hold of the bag, though.

  Eddie’s feet now patted through freezing grass and slipped on the mud at the top of the embankment. Still there were no other cars around. No one to help.

  The man turned, knowing he was trapped. He looked around, head flicking from side to side, and saw that he had two options: hop over the fence and become stuck in a building site quagmire, or run along the fence-line until he came to the motorway. Not such a bright idea. The police would pick him up in no time.

  Eddie saw the realisation in the robber’s fast blinking eyes as he closed the distance down still further. And though his heart raced from exertion, it raced too because of the thrill – thrill? – of a chase that ended perfectly. He only hoped the robber cooperated. “Hand it back, arsehole!”

  The man stood his ground.

  Eddie edged his way down the slippery embankment. He jumped as an air horn from a truck on the motorway ripped into his concentration. He refocused on the man; a skinny rake of a kid who was probably only twenty years old.

  Eddie felt uneasy. The kid should be shouting his submission by now, he should be scampering back up the embankment to try and formulate some kind of deal; ‘Hey, mister, give the lady her bag back, and we’ll call it quits, okay?’ Or, ‘I’ll leave the bag here and walk slowly away, you don’t follow, and then everyone’s happy.’ It didn’t happen.

  There was fear in the kid’s eyes. But Eddie had made another miscalculation. It wasn’t fear; it was laughter.

  The skinny rake of a kid was laughing at him.

  Why would he laugh, he was cornered? He would only laugh, he thought, if he had the upper hand. Why does he think he has the upper hand?

  And then Eddie’s world was ripped apart.

  May

  Of the whole affair, the London Tribune said,

  If proof were needed that the Offensive Weapons Amendment Act 2007 was little more than a toothless tiger, the events of Friday morning in Victoria Subway thundered it home with irreverent bluntness.

  At first people thought it was a terrorist attack. Bystanders were shot down in a hail of fire not from some inhuman terrorist, but from one of their own. Terence Bowman was a stockbroker of repute...

  …and he was a man going places. At least he was, until the doctors had told him he would be wasting his deposit if he booked a winter holiday this year.

  Just enough time had elapsed for him to accept that he was going to die, when a stranger approached him. That stranger was a big man with broad muscular shoulders, a man who didn’t really have a neck to speak of, just a head and then a body. The stranger had a proposition for him.

  Terence took eight days to agree to that proposition.

  And this was the result. Friday morning, rush hour in the capital, standing room only in the claustrophobic station where the bustle of people and the smell of the masses was overwhelming. Terence Bowman was still a man going places, though today he would be going to hell, the direct route.

  He stood on the platform awaiting the 07:32, palms sticky, forehead a clammy mess, and a mild tremor radiating through his body from the heart outwards. Terence filled his lungs with the sour air.

  Inside his holdall, in the place usually reserved for his sandwich box, was a killing machine: Heckler und Koch MP5K semi-automatic pistol.

  It was time to make things right – for his remaining family, and, said the stranger, for the country.

  Before he knew it, his hand curled around the cold steel of the MP5, and because of the next four minutes, Terence Bowman’s name would become infamous as the event that felled a government.

  He could hear the approach of the train.

  Out into the stinking air came the weapon. He fought for space, nudging the shuffling crowd, and brought the business end into the open, clicked off the safety, and slid the lever to ‘F’, meaning auto. Terence dropped the holdall and pulled the trigger. He held it tightly and turned around quickly, almost majestically as though in a waltz.

  The world grew calm. He squinted as flecks of warm flesh spattered his face. The screams of those fleeing were the accompaniment to the music of the MP5 and the waltz grew quicker.

  Terence harvested them with the neatness of an arcing scythe, their fall like a shockwave emanating from a powerful centre. The noise was enormous; pandemonium reigned as those a little further away, unaware of the tumult, were showered in a red mist.

  The last of the rounds left the muzzle. Shell cases tinkled onto the floor. The gun was hot, a ripple of heat wafted into the silence. Terence swallowed, and stepped off the platform into the path of the 07:32.

  …police are baffled by the killings. 23 people died in the massacre. It brings the total of gun-deaths in the UK to 228 this year, eighteen percent up on last year.

  It is time for Labour to move over and give the Opposition Leader, Sterling Young, and his Shadow Justice Minister, Roger King the chance they have so vehemently sought. Gun crime is the most feared crime in Great Britain, and it will take a new administration with radical policies to tackle it.

  The Yorkshire Echo

  Great British Independence Party Victorious.

  The new PM Sterling Young says his first job will be to extricate UK from Europe.

  In a wave of euphoria usually reserved for rock and film stars, the new Prime Minister, Sterling Young, was driven through London yesterday and took up residency in Downing Street.

  A spokesperson for the party said, ‘Sterling’s first job is to extricate UK from the claws of European servitude. This country has long needed to be its own master again, and G-BIP has set in place already the necessary elements to bring about that new freedom.’

  He went on to say, ‘And then the real work can begin: that of fighting crime. And who better to lead that fight than the new Justice Minister, Sir George Deacon.’

  By Michael Lyndon

  “If you want to kill serious crime, you have to kill serious criminals.”

  Sir George Deacon

  The Yorkshire Echo

  BRUSSELS HATES HIM, BUT THE AMERICANS LOVE GEORGE DEACON

  Americans today proclaimed their affection for the new English Justice Minister, George Deacon. In a poll conducted by Mori in New York and Washington, 68% of those asked to name a British Minister, other than Prime Minister Sterling Young, said George Deacon. When asked why they recalled his name, they said it was because of the radical way he seems to be overhauling the British Judiciary.

  American law supremo, Rick J Casey said at a press conference in LA last week that the British way of caring for its crime victims was an object lesson to all civilized countries, and expressed no concerns regarding Human Rights of the criminals. “Everyone has the right to be a criminal,” he said, “but don’t expect anything other than basic rights if you choose that path, because everyone else has the right to be protected from you.

  “What is so impressive about his stance is that the law, while remaining essentially unbiased, has removed many of the favoritisms offered to criminals and has lessened the amount of easy ways out granted to them. He has done all this while enhancing the services offered to victims. Those services include repayment schemes by offender
s into local fund pools where recompense is made to the victim by the perp.”

  The new laws are being studied very carefully over that side of the pond and it has been rumored that George Deacon will be invited to the Supreme Court in Washington DC to explain the rationale behind The Rules; though there is no suggestion any of his famous reforms will be taken up there.

  Meanwhile in Europe, Brussels is fuming over George Deacon’s presumption to flout European law so blatantly. An EU Commission representative yesterday reflected how sad it was that Great Britain, once a nation of such high standing in the community, has decided to turn its back on modern methods of penal reform, and return to medieval ways in its determination to achieve the impossible.

  George Deacon remained silent on both counts, but Sterling Young has come out firmly in defense of his Justice Minister. “George Deacon has done a first class job; this legislation was a difficult thing to push through, but I’m convinced The Rules will work well once they become established, and I think the great British public will applaud his efforts and welcome the day when murderers and rapists, even when burglars, will think twice before committing crime. How can this be wrong?”

  By Michael Lyndon

  Friday 29th May

  Chapter One

  — One —

  Lids flickered.

  Like a submarine ejecting ballast, he bobbed to the surface and managed to roll his eyelids all the way open.

  Eddie looked down past the vomit on his shirt and noted the dark patch in his groin. “Bollocks.” His voice croaked and his mouth felt as used and dirty as a welcome mat in a syph clinic.

  The sun shone through the curtains – not much grander than old sacking sheets – and made him squint. It warmed his damp skin, warmed the vomit and amplified its stench. He groaned at the lingering pain behind his eyes.