by Iain Cameron
All active HSA agents were required to have their shooting ability tested on a monthly basis, office-bound staff like Siki and Amos taking a quarterly test. It often felt like overkill while working on a case, but unlike police officers, who drew their weapons in planned operations with the aid of a pre-prepared Risk Assessment, HSA’s aim was to try and catch villains at an earlier stage of their conspiracies. This often called for a more ad-hoc approach to shooting, and the training they received reflected this.
‘Let’s take a look at what you’ve managed to uncover so far,’ Rosie said.
Siki wiped crumbs from his mouth and reached for a folder. He extracted several pieces of paper and handed copies to Matt and Rosie.
‘This is a report by the PSNI on this IRM outfit. The report is thin, as IRM aren’t on any current watch lists, but it includes known members and what they think the organisation’s about.’
Matt’s parents and forefathers were Irish. His father had sold the family farm in Galway, frustrated at low beef and milk prices, and moved to England for a better life. Part of his plan, which Matt and his mother hadn’t been aware of, involved divorcing Matt’s mother and abandoning them both. Without the support of her relatives and the man she still loved, his mother had taken up drinking with the vigour of an American alcoholic at the end of Prohibition.
Despite having spent the majority of his life in and around London and, at times, sounding like he’d been born there, Matt still considered himself Irish and continued to take an interest in Irish affairs. In front of him, he had information not available to journalists about the make-up of IRM and what the intelligence branch believed their aims to be.
‘It’s strange,’ Rosie said after a few minutes, ‘most of these groups are happy to yap to reporters and set up their own websites, but this lot have said nowt.’
‘I wonder why?’ Matt said. ‘What other stuff do you have, Siki?’
‘Blow your socks off with this.’
The heading was ‘CIA Confidential To Be Read by Addressee Only’. With such a provocative banner, Matt devoured every word. A few paragraphs in, he could see what Siki meant.
‘Christ,’ Matt said, ‘there’s enough kit in here to start a civil war.’
‘This was a consignment to only one anti-Assad group,’ Siki said, ‘and it wasn’t the first they’d received; there must be dozens of other groups just like them. The Americans are throwing billions at this.’
‘We’re also to blame,’ Matt said. ‘It’s the new way of fighting wars. When we discover they’re unwinnable, we throw money at the locals, our supposed allies, and let them fight it out on our behalf. A proxy war they call it. It costs about the same in monetary terms as it used to, but no one has to see the body bags being unloaded from planes, or hear the critical bleating of journalists, the very ones who were gung-ho about taking military action in the first place.’
‘Are you a born cynic, or is it the result of working here?’ Rosie asked.
‘I did a lot of thinking all the time I was laid up.’
‘I’m glad you were doing something useful.’
‘There you go, on my case again.’
She stood. ‘I think I’d better go up to the counter and buy the coffees before I put my foot in it again.’
Chapter 5
The first stage of their strategy to find the missing arms consignment was to talk to Counter Terrorism Command, a branch of the Metropolitan Police, and find out what they were doing. A meeting had been scheduled for a few days’ time, and Matt took the hiatus as an opportunity to drive to Epping Forest.
On Emma’s last case as a drugs detective, she’d led the raid on a warehouse at Grays, Essex, which the team believed was owned by Simon Wood’s drug organisation and used to make Spice. With hindsight, it looked as though the raid had been a set-up as the drugs team had uncovered nothing incriminating and didn’t catch any of the players. Matt had been to Grays and couldn’t see anything untoward either, but it had raised a number of unanswered questions. If it had indeed been a set-up, who’d organised it, and for what purpose?
The crime scene at Epping Forest, where her body had been dumped, at the time marked out with police tape and the imprint of many boots, had long since been returned to its original use and been trampled on by numerous walkers and ramblers.
Leaving the North Circular, Matt joined the Woodford Road; the number of houses decreased and the quantity of trees on either side of the road did the opposite. About a mile after the Robin Hood restaurant, he turned into a lay-by. It was large and paved and no doubt a favourite stopping-off point for tired motorhome drivers and dog walkers, but on this overcast Tuesday afternoon only one other vehicle was parked.
He pulled out a piece of paper containing directions on how to find the dump site. He’d been there before, but it had been a bit more noticeable then and he hadn’t been thinking straight to notice his surroundings too much. He set off into the woods, his light jacket, handwritten map, and trainers marking him out for scorn by more serious ramblers should he meet any.
He’d come here not to crack a case unsolved by dozens of detectives better placed than him to spot a lead, but looking for some form of closure. The funeral had helped, as had a visit to the Grays warehouse, the place where she was last seen alive, and even without knowing the name of the killer, he hoped today would allow him to move on. His behaviour these last few weeks had proved that he hadn’t, and he was still wallowing in grief. He needed to change, get his old mojo back, and stop allowing his maudlin moods to force him into a dark pit.
He soon found the site, no more than twenty metres from the road. He knelt. He didn’t say a prayer, he wasn’t religious, but on closing his eyes an involuntary montage of their time together: holidays, leisurely weekends, walks, parties and drunken barbecues, flitted through his mind like an old home movie.
Tears didn’t flow, he didn’t expect them to at this place, a simple clearing among a dense forest. It contained nothing of her and nothing for him to remember her by. In any case, he’d shed enough tears since first hearing of her murder. He didn’t have any more to give.
He stood and tried to banish personal thoughts and think like a murder detective. Why here? Why did her killers dump her body here? Despite hours of searching through CCTV pictures, the investigation team could find no record of her final movements; from the time she got into her car at the Grays warehouse, to this place, over thirty miles away. She’d been found by a walker, naked with two bullet wounds, one in her chest and the other in her head.
Emma’s car had been fitted with a satnav system and if the car had been found, the police could have analysed the device’s memory to reveal the journey the vehicle had made from Grays to Epping. Most criminals didn’t realise how much information could be recovered in this way, but if a criminal outfit took the risk of killing a serving police officer, they had to be more savvy than average.
Forensics revealed little, beyond the bullets having been fired from close range from a 9mm handgun, a common enough weapon type. The bullet striations, the tell-tale markings it received as it spun down the barrel, unique as any fingerprint, had been circulated to other police forces. If the gun had been used in other crimes, they would know about it, but when he’d last checked, nothing had been flagged.
If little could be gleaned from the crime scene, the only other place to look for clues was the Grays warehouse. He knew the lights of the warehouse had been extinguished almost as soon as the police team entered the building. This, they realised afterwards, was a ruse to allow the gang inside to escape.
The warehouse was indeed chock-full of drug paraphernalia as the drug detectives expected, but not anything belonging to Simon Wood as they expected, but another gang. In retrospect, they believed the gear had been stolen for this purpose, but for what end? With the answers to those questions still unresolved, the drug team had made the best of a bad lot. Chastened at losing an officer, only AWOL at that stage, they’d declared a su
ccessful operation and the removal of a large quantity of Spice making equipment from the streets.
Matt knew that Emma’s partner in the drug team, Detective Sergeant Jack Harris, ‘Jacko’, had gone missing at the start of the lights-out incident. This wasn’t unusual during a big raid, as it was difficult to keep tabs on everyone; once the danger had passed, officers often disappeared, to smoke, take a piss in nearby bushes, or to enjoy a slug from a secreted vodka bottle. This little sliver of intel about Harris had been ignored by investigators and didn’t appear in official reports.
Matt walked back to the car, deep in thought, his default position ever since being discharged from hospital. He opened the door, climbed inside and drove away without a second look. He’d been to Epping Forest several times before, he and Emma had often come here to walk, but he doubted he would ever come back.
He didn’t feel like going into the office and instead headed for home. His time would be better served reading over the research papers on the Irish gunrunners, prior to the meeting with the anti-terrorist guys. Every minute spent doing something other than looking for Emma’s killers felt like a minute wasted, but he knew that tuning his brain into something else for a while might throw up a different perspective.
He was a mile or so from Hamilton Road and looking forward to a cup of coffee and some food, as he hadn’t eaten much that morning, when his phone rang.
‘Matt, it’s me,’ Rosie said. ‘How are you?’
‘Good.’
‘On your way back from Epping Forest?’
‘How do you know? Are you tracking my movements?’
‘No, I’m not tracking your car or anybody else’s. You told me, or had you forgotten?’
Had he? He needed to snap out of this fug that seemed to be enveloping him, shutting him inside his head like a hermit on a deserted island.
‘Yeah, I am,’ he said.
‘How was it? I assume no big breakthrough?’
‘I didn’t go there with that in mind. It was just something I had to do.’
‘I understand. I just called to tell you some other news.’
‘Someone’s found the Irish arms consignment and we can all go on holiday?’
‘I wish. Simon Wood escaped from a prison van this morning.’
The name rang a bell in Matt’s head immediately. Wood was one of the largest drug dealers in the South East. Unlike many in his line of business, rough-boys from sink estates or serious criminals from Eastern Europe, he was well-educated, some might say cultured. Before his arrest by Devon & Cornwall Police, using intel generated from Emma’s team, he’d lived in a large house in Dulwich with a former Victoria’s Secret model.
‘What happened?’ Matt asked.
Rosie told him and after she finished, he paused for a couple of seconds to try and take it all in. ‘They shot both men in the security van?’ he said. ‘Why the hell did they do that?’
‘I assume because the security guys could identify them.’
‘They could have worn balaclavas or masks.’
‘The van was found in a road near Clapham Common. No way could the perps wear disguises in Central London without every driver phoning in or taking pictures.’
Wood’s Houdini act didn’t please Matt one bit. Not only did it put a notorious drug dealer back into circulation, but he was high on a list of people Matt wanted to talk to. He wouldn’t expect a big-time criminal to cough up the name of the person who’d killed her, he could read faces well enough. Wood might let something slip, or perhaps it would be obvious he was lying about something which might reassure Matt that he was on the right path. If he could only find his way to the path in the first place.
‘Are you heading into the office?’
‘Nope. I’m working from home this afternoon.’
‘Matt, I don’t need to tell you there’s a clock ticking. If any of these armaments are found in this country or Ireland, we’ll get our arses well and truly kicked. If they’re used to kill security personnel, or, God forbid, let loose on passers-by, we can both kiss goodbye to regular employment.’
‘Take it easy, Rosie. I’m just working from home, that’s all.’
‘I hope it’s nothing else. I need you back physically and mentally fit.’
‘I am, don’t worry. See you tomorrow.’
‘See you…no wait, hang on a sec. There’s one more thing I meant to tell you about the Simon Wood escape.’
‘Yeah, what is it?’
‘The detective who called him in for questioning from Wandsworth Prison. It was a DS by the name of Will Bennett.’
‘Will Bennett? The name doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘This one might ring the bells above St Paul’s. Would you like to know the name of the guy who authorised it?’
Chapter 6
Rosie caught the train with seconds to spare. In the office, she was sure her colleagues viewed her as well-organised and competent, but in her personal life it sometimes felt like chaos. She was often late for trains, she didn’t go shopping until the cupboards were almost bare, and more than once had limped into a petrol station with her car having only a cup of fuel remaining in the tank.
She took the train into London at least twice a week and drove on other days. This was in part for her own satisfaction, as she hated routine, but also to thwart the attentions of potential kidnappers or assassins, a very real danger in their profession. Three months before, she had been kidnapped in the car park of her local supermarket, and it had taken an HSA assault team and the death of one of the kidnappers to free her.
She and Matt had just attended a meeting at the offices of the Metropolitan Police CTC, Counter Terrorism Command. Matt, a student of the Troubles, the quasi-civil war that ravaged Northern Ireland from the 1960s to the 1980s, had filled Rosie’s head with a large portion of the political and military background. To her surprise, officers of the CTC had trouble understanding the gravity of the situation. To be fair, most of them were under forty and had been brought up on a diet of Middle East terrorists, suicide vests, and mass casualties. They found it hard to visualise assault rifles on the streets of a British city, RPGs being fired at armoured vehicles from a barn at the side of the road, and police stations crouching behind elaborate bomb-proof barriers.
Few had studied the Troubles as Matt had done, and the Met officers spent a large part of the meeting listening to his briefing. This had the advantage of lifting the kudos of HSA several notches, and the resistance Rosie had been expecting when they moved on to a discussion about cooperation and sharing expertise that lay more in their realm: forensics, suspects, and informants, didn’t materialise.
The CTC had done some of the leg work as they’d contacted Border Force and told them what to look out for. However, this would probably have the same success rate as catching water with a sieve. With free movement across the twenty-seven countries of the EC, many big companies, such as car makers in Germany and international logistics businesses in the UK, had arrangements with Border Force. Their vehicles would often spend no more than five seconds crossing the border, the time for an electronic system to read the vehicle’s registration number and a barrier to lift. With over fifty thousand road haulage movements per week through Dover alone, they had little chance of finding the guns.
Rosie was more hopeful about obtaining better information from someone on the ground, the likes of informants and sympathisers. Problem was, many of the informants used by the CTC boys were based within Muslim communities. Back in the day, UK and Irish Special Branch operated a network of spies and snitches both in the UK and Ireland, and rumour had it they had infiltrated the upper echelons of the IRA and leading protestant paramilitary groups. With the introduction of the Good Friday Agreement and paramilitaries ceasing their operations, the spy networks were abandoned How they could do with such an elaborate information gathering system now.
What they did have in their favour was the CTC and HSA employed people with excellent undercover skills. If
promises made in the meeting were realised, they both would soon be deploying several of their operatives this week.
Rosie opened the double-doors and walked across Level 2 of the car park at Harlow Station towards her car, eyes casting left and right, trying to spot anything suspicious. When she reached her car, she stopped and looked around while fumbling for her keys. She pulled them out and dropped them on the floor. She bent down and, after putting her hand over her keys, scoured the base of the car and the nearside wheel arches. She was looking for tracking devices or bombs, those fitted with tremblers or mercury switches, designed to explode when the engine started or the car began to move.
If fellow travelling companions thought her over-zealous, or even scatty, although none of her colleagues would think so, she couldn’t care less. With Irish terrorists now in the frame, it became imperative. Numerous part- and full-time policemen and Army reservists had been blown up in this manner during the Troubles and a little bit of caution and under-car inspection could have prevented some of the casualties.
There was nothing to indicate the group buying the arms in Syria were cast in the same mould, or had the same level of reach and expertise as the terrorists of the past. However, Rosie wasn’t waiting for the funeral of one of her fellow HSA agents to reinforce the message. She had already told everyone she worked with to be more vigilant.
She headed home and arrived back in the Church Langley district of Harlow without incident. After driving her car into the garage, she opened the front door and walked into the house. In the kitchen, she could see it was just as she’d left it, no surprise there. Her partner was a pilot at Stansted Airport, and earlier in the week he had flown a plane-load of holidaymakers to Florida. Today, Andrew was no doubt relaxing beside an azure-blue pool with a Pina Colada in his hand; the lucky swine.
She didn’t feel like eating yet and instead kicked off her shoes, poured herself a glass of Chardonnay, and spread the information from the folders she was carrying inside her attaché case across the kitchen table. The CIA were convinced the consignment of guns had been transported to Turkey about six weeks ago, but couldn’t add more as they’d lost track of it. To try and join the dots, analysts at CTC had been looking at routes favoured by Turkish hauliers and the ports they used to bring goods over to the UK.
