Free The Last 10 Seconds by Simon Kernick Page A

a struggle, and I shot a couple of them.’
    ‘But not Mitchell,’ put in Tommy hurriedly. ‘He’s fine.’
    ‘Are they dead?’ demanded Wolfe, clearly working hard to keep his voice down.
    I shook my head. ‘I took one of them with leg shots. The other got hit in the gut with a ricochet, but they’ll both live.’
    ‘I don’t believe this. Mitchell’s a reliable source. Nothing like this has ever happened before.’
    ‘I don’t like being insulted, no matter who the hell it is. And being called an undercover cop is an insult in my book.’
    I became conscious of Haddock standing very close to me. ‘Why’s he accusing you of being a cop if you ain’t one?’ he said quietly, bringing his immense head close to my ear. ‘Why’d he bother saying that, uh?’
    I’d taken a big risk by admitting to them that I’d been accused by one of Mitchell’s people of being a cop, but in my experience, it’s always best to confront these sorts of issues head-on. Keeping up my aggrieved act, I turned and looked Haddock in the eye. ‘Because he made a mistake, that’s why.’
    A low growl came from deep inside him, and he began to sniff, his nose going up and down with exaggerated movements.
    ‘What’s your problem, friend? You got hay fever or something?’
    He stopped, glaring at me with slit-thin eyes. ‘You think you’re funny, boy, but you ain’t.’
    I knew then that I’d made an enemy of Clarence Haddock, but I also had no choice but to act the way I did. So much of criminal life is macho posturing, using your personality, your reputation, your size as a means of intimidating those around you. To back down in a confrontation is a sign of weakness, and if you want to be taken seriously by the big boys like Tyrone Wolfe, you just don’t do it.
    ‘He can’t be an undercover cop, Clarence,’ said Tommy. ‘He shot two blokes. Coppers don’t do that.’
    ‘It’s a good point, Clarence,’ put in Wolfe, seeming to appreciate this pretty obvious point for the first time. ‘But I’m going to need to speak to Mitchell and iron this shit out. Either of you two got a clean mobile?’
    ‘I got one,’ Haddock answered, still staring at me, although he’d moved his face back a little now so we were no longer quite so intimate. He pulled one out of one of the dozen or so pockets of his knee-length black shorts and chucked it over. ‘I got my eye on you,’ he said, pointing a stubby finger at me as Wolfe went through a door at the end of the room to make the call.
    Deciding to bin my two-a-day habit for now, I lit a much-needed cigarette.
    It wasn’t long before Wolfe was back in the room. ‘Mitchell ain’t happy, Sean,’ he told me, shaking his head.
    I was prepared for this and had already thought of my retort. ‘Neither am I, Wolfe. You think I want to have to go off shooting people? It’s risky and it’s bad for business. I’m no nutter. I’m just an ordinary bloke looking for a decent job, that’s all. Now, you send me out on a delivery to pick up your guns, and I don’t complain, I just do it. And then some toerag who needs his eyes tested, a poxy little chef who was probably stoned up to the eyeballs, reckons I’m a copper who nicked him years back, and then suddenly the guns are out and it’s looking like I’m a dead man if I don’t do something, when all I was guilty of was doing you a favour. It’s not even as if you were paying me for it, for Christ’s sake.’
    ‘All right, all right,’ said Wolfe, lifting his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘I get the picture, and I’ve sorted stuff now. Mitchell’s pissed off about his boys, but he knows you weren’t to blame.’
    ‘Are his boys OK?’
    He nodded. ‘They’re getting treatment and they won’t talk, so there’s going to be no repercussions, although I don’t think Mitchell’s going to want to deal with us again for a while.’
    His words relieved me, but I didn’t show it. ‘I’m not saying sorry. I did what I had