Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus

by Charlie Flowers

  The growl of helicopter rotors began echoing off the buildings. The searchlight stabbed down at the far end of the park. I turned to look at him. ‘I am. What do you intend?’ He pressed his Airwave button.

  ‘Well, now that your lot have finished re-enacting the Siege of Sydney Street, we can go after this knifeman.’ He turned his face to his radio. ‘All callsigns, go, go. South to Leman Street. Are you Riz?’

  A crowd was forming, pressuring. ‘Yes, Sir, I am.’

  Chaos. ‘Can you tell your wife to stop shooting?’

  ‘I’ll try. She’s got him cornered sir.’

  ‘I know but –’

  ‘I’d love to stay and talk, but –’ I got to my feet and ran, batting through the police holding the swelling crowd back and speaking into my radio. ‘Where’s the ARV?’

  ‘What ARV over.’

  I punched the Airwave button over and over and ran, checking chamber on my P88. Noise in my earpiece. ‘Riz. This is Lennie for Riz, come back.’

  ‘Lennie this is Riz where the fuck are you?’

  ‘South side of the mosque, tell me where to go over.’

  ‘Ah, wait one. Where’s the ARV?’ I ran. Faster. Sprinting. Breaking glass in my earpiece. ‘Riz hun! Hello baby. He’s in the old LARC building, I’ve got him cornered and he’s –’

  There was another squall of sirens. ‘Heh. ARVs are here. Eyyy, chicos...’

  I could hear commands, shouting. They obviously wanted her to put down her weapon. OK, LARC. That was the back of East London Mosque. I ran. Right, left, then right, that took me to the back of LARC. The shutters were open. No-one there.

  I stopped, crouched, and checked my weapon for what might be the last time. I hit the radio. ‘Holly. You OK babe?’

  A giggle. ‘Yeh. Might have clipped him, dunno. Bit dark. Explainin’ things to CO19. There’s another cordon now. Might take a bit. Be careful hun.’

  ‘My middle name.’ I edged forward, to a dark, open shutter. In all my years in Whitechapel, I had never seen the shutters open at LARC. A dim blue light dusted from inside. My throat was dry. I blinked. OK, here we go.

  ‘Lennie. Lennie come back.’

  ‘Riz. What you got over.’

  ‘Tell all units he’s going west, that’s WEST, into the City!’ A pause.

  ‘Have that Riz.’ Crackling off air. ‘All serials follow me, he’s heading for Aldgate High Street let’s go!’ There was a whoop of a siren. ‘Heading out. Good luck Riz.’

  I backed out of the building and stood before it. The helicopter growled above me. A police community support officer, his breathing ragged, ran up to me and pointed. ‘Altab Ali Park. We saw him in the park.’

  I ran. The blue Nightsun stabbed down and veered off, heading into the City. I saw a figure, dark against black, framed on the railings at the far end and he was gone.

  I sprinted across the grass and leapt for the railings. Shit. Snagged. I tried again. And up, and over, and I dropped, into a run. My breath was ragged now. Left at Quality Dry Cleaning. A building site. A huge high-rise, cast concrete and strip lights. Scaffolding. He was in here. This was it.

  I crashed through plastic site protectors, round a truck, and into the ground floor. I skidded to a stop and breathed in gasps, trying to catch my breath, hands on knees, looking around. I gulped air.

  ‘Waddya say Jack. Would you like a shot at the title?’ I muttered to myself, and edged forwards to the open blinds. Into the gloom. I tried to catch breath, and waited. This was it. I ran forward.

  Bang! The knife came down from nowhere and I jerked my gun hand back, just too late but the blade whizzed past my skin and the man’s wrist banged hard down on mine. Nerves screamed, I dropped my pistol. It clattered but didn’t go off but it was too late to think about that as he cannoned into me.

  Down we went, rolling and flailing and tumbling. I got a headbutt that made stars comet skywards. I snorted and shook my head like a horse and punched back frantically. Missed. He was on top of me. The knife skylined and caught the light. And arced down, plunging into my chest. And the stab vest. The blade snapped in half. I remembered my training. I gripped him with my hips, bucked and he lost balance. Now! Said the voice of my instructor in my inner ear and I jerked with all my remaining strength – up – and we rolled and I was on top. Bang. My elbow caught his jaw through that scarf. Bang. I dropped bombs of fists into his ribcage. He wheezed out all the air in his lungs.

  The knife! The broken blade came slashing back at me. It tore my jacket open. I folded his arm straight, locked the elbow and cracked the knife hand against the concrete. The broken knife clattered and spun away. There was a muffled howl behind the scarf and I heard a bone crack as I wrenched at his wrist and elbow and smashed it down to the concrete. Good.

  I kicked back out at the blade and it spun across the floor. Where was my pistol? There. I scrabbled backwards and grabbed it, swept it up and covered the hooded man.

  ‘Don’t move you fucker!’

  But he stood. Slowly he raised himself up. He was tall and thin. Angular. His right arm dangled uselessly. His other hand pulled the scarf away. Then the sweatshirt hood. He looked at me.

  ‘Hello Riz’, said the Mayor.

  49.

  The last ten days unspooled, rewound, and starting running in my mind’s eye. Tall, angular. The gait.

  For fuck’s sake. I felt like collapsing to the floor. My training held me up and I kept the pistol aimed at him. He had the sense not to make any sudden moves. My mouth felt gluey. Eventually my tongue unstuck and I spoke. ‘So I suppose you’re going to tell me it was a childhood of reading the True Crime magazines you found in the garage, right?’

  He shook his head slowly, ruefully. ‘I must confess, Riz, when I saw that graffiti you sprayed, it shook me up. Rattled me. I had to hole up in my bolthole for a while.’

  He held his hands up. They were ungloved. I remembered the expensive leather gloves, on the chair. In the…

  ‘The pub.’

  ‘Yes. You and your girls missed me by five minutes there, did you know that? But by then everyone was so focused on Trevor and the sniper.’

  I dipped my head. He was right.

  For a while it seemed we were both thinking of something English and civilised to say. Well, how do you do, fancy these circumstances. Us terrorists and serial killers must stop bumping into each other –

  He broke my thoughts by speaking quite loudly.

  ‘Rizwan, have you ever seen the light change in someone’s eyes as they cross over from life to death?’

  I just looked at him. I wasn’t even going to dignify the question by answering. I suddenly realised I still had a couple of inches of blade sticking in my stab vest and I slowly picked at it and pulled it free. I put it in my jacket pocket. My mouth started moving again. ‘Right. Mister Mayor. Sit the fuck down. Slowly.’

  He folded himself back onto the floor, cradling his busted arm. He opened his mouth to speak but at that point the strips in the doorway fluttered and in came Bang-Bang, her high heels clacking and her pistol in the aim and an expression of fury on her face.

  She pointed the pistol straight at the Mayor’s forehead from a distance of six feet. The tableau froze. The mayor closed his eyes and his face became a mask. I’d seen this before. I looked from the still mask of his face to the controlled hatred of my wife’s expression. Yes. I’d definitely seen this before. When the Blackeyes had shot the prisoners at Green Lane Mosque, I’d seen the very same thing. On those who were about to die, their faces became masks of acceptance, or masks of blankness.

  But then Bang-Bang decocked her pistol, pointed it at the ceiling and then placed it in her waist holster. The Mayor opened his eyes and looked up at her. Finally she spoke. ‘Well, if it ain’t the mill owner.’

  He grinned. ‘And I would have got away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky –’

  Bang-Bang pulled her pistol back out of its waist holster with lightning speed, ran forward with three swift steps
and placed the muzzle against his forehead. He froze. His mouth froze. His hands froze.

  Bang-Bang spoke in a low, slow, deadly voice. ‘I am Holly Kirpachi of the Jamaat al-Hur al-Ayn. You killed my friend. You are going to die, and how you die will be decided by how you behave in the next few minutes. Don’t laugh with me, akhi. I’ve chopped people into pieces for less.’

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  She stepped back, and back, and back some more, till she was by my side and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Sorry I’m late hun. I had to explain myself through a firearms patrol. You OK?’ She squeezed my shoulder to let me know that she was here and firing on all cylinders.

  I smiled. ‘I’m OK.’

  Very slowly, I retrieved my BlackBerry from my combat trouser pocket and dialled the Colonel. Bang-Bang watched the Mayor the whole time, and her pistol never dropped from sighting on his face. He knew now.

  I checked the phone’s display for the green padlock icon. It was there. I was on the secure network. After three rings, the Colonel answered. ‘Riz. Good news, I’m hoping?’

  I choked back a laugh. ‘Well that depends, Boss. We’ve got him. Boss… it’s the Mayor.’

  The silence stretched. ‘Boss?’

  There was the ghost of a sigh. Or a laugh. ‘OK. Listen, Riz. Both of you. We’re going to do this the old way. The FRU way. Make this problem disappear. You follow?’

  ‘I follow.’

  I turned to Bang-Bang. ‘The Boss says make it go away.’

  She dipped a slight bow. ‘That I can help with. Give me twenty minutes, meray shohar.’ She kissed me and left.

  I turned and kept my pistol trained on the Mayor. I suddenly realised my knuckles were bleeding again. Never mind. I spoke. ‘You and me are gonna talk.’

  He leant forward, his cracked arm hanging awkwardly. I eased back. I kept my pistol pointed at him, centre mass. After a while he spoke. ‘You two killed all those people in Sussex House, didn’t you?’

  A silence.

  ‘Ah. Yes. I knew it. So you understand?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I’m not having that for one minute, They were traitors. Traitors who needed taking out.’

  He sat back and laughed. ‘Exactly. The same.’

  ‘No, it’s not the same. You’re trying to equate us taking out some fascist seditionaries with you carving up some defenceless women? No.’

  ‘Semantics, Riz. Semantics.’

  ‘They were legitimate targets and we’re at war.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘By joining the leadership of the SWP of course. Have you ever met any SWP cadres, Ajit? Mister Mayor?’

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘Then you’ll know. By joining up, they placed themselves outside humanity. Inheritors of a dogma that killed millions.’

  A silence.

  ‘Oh just listen to yourself Riz’, he laughed.

  He had a point. I was beginning to sound like a commissar myself. Ah, fuck it. I asked myself what my wife would be thinking, confronted with such a moral dilemma. Probably what flavour chewing gum to get. I turned away from the murderer.

  I checked the doors and windows and came back and hunkered down. ‘Yeah, well I’m sure we could exchange witty remarks about murder all evening, but this ends here. Maybe you’re right. I have become what I beheld.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you have.’ He looked around. He was looking where I’d just checked.

  I broke the silence again. I had to know. ‘So what were you aiming to do, outdo the Ripper tally and get a new high score for the neighbourhood?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe that as well. A community needs heroes.’

  ‘Right. What was going on at the swimming pool? The blood that started and stopped?’

  ‘Has it been driving you nuts?’

  I nodded.

  ‘A tarpaulin, Riz. I had everything wrapped up, and then right on the corner I dropped it and got blood everywhere. On my clothes, trainers… I panicked a bit. It stopped when I got to my car and threw everything in.’

  I played the scene back in my mind. So obvious in hindsight, gazing from above with an omniscient eye.

  ‘And the signature slashings?’

  ‘They worked. Put the fear into the right people and was a proper red herring, don’t you think?’

  I nodded slowly. It had done a good job. ‘I’ve got to agree. It made us think of the Jamiaatis, then al-Muj, then Trevor… nice twists. And the Curry King, and the ZHC hacker kid? Where did they come in?’

  ‘Mister Rahman Begum, the Curry King, bankrolls me. He owns me and I own him. I give him the contracts, like the Mela, and he gives me the campaign money. One hand washes the other in Bangla politics, as you know, Riz. All he had to do was find a local lad who was involved with al-Muj and who could hack. Didn’t take long. And then the databases were wiped. Meanwhile, you all saw what you wanted to see.’

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. He was right. It was just like the Rachel Nickell case. ‘And the Curry King ain’t coming back from Bangladesh, I take it.’

  ‘No. Not ever.’ He was laughing now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘“Amateur”. That rattled me, Riz. I saw that when I was driving away from the press conference and it nearly made me crash my car. I was so freaked out I went straight to the old pub to get my head together and look at my…’

  ‘Trophies?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We would have got you eventually, Ajit. By then we had your DNA from the swimming pool, and when we eventually found none of Trevor’s DNA or dabs at the pub…’

  ‘But I’m not on the database, and you would have found Trevor’s dabs and DNA, about eighteen inches away from the trophies. I’d put some of his flyers right down the back of that fridge.’

  OK. He had me.

  He continued talking. ‘Your lot would have found them on the next sweep. You know that.’

  I knew that. ‘OK. Tell me. I know you wanna.’

  He smiled. ‘A couple of months ago, I was going into Aldgate East tube station, and your man Salahuddin was right there, thrusting bunches of those flyers into the hands of anyone who would take them. So I took a handful. I placed them in my jacket pocket, and I started thinking.’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t tell me. A small, thorny black rose flowered in your mind…’

  ‘You’re simplifying it. I’d been thinking about it for years. And now I had the answer – the alibi – in my pocket. Who is the perfect patsy in the neighbourhood? Who does no-one like, and everyone hate? Who, in effect, writes his own arrest warrant?’

  He was right.

  I spoke. ‘The Juwes are not the men…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Anyway, back to me being rattled. I’m telling you, that was good, Riz. So then I drove aimlessly all day, and couldn’t think, and then had to do another… and when I got there, to the site that spoke to me, your wife, Holly, was waiting there already! How did she know where I’d go? That is some powerful witchcraft.’

  I realised he was pretty much talking to himself. ‘It’s just technology, really.’

  ‘Technology.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Want to know how many I really killed, Riz?’

  Oh, shit. ‘How many you – hang on –’

  His gaze returned to mine and held it. Level, and unafraid. ‘How many people have you killed, Rizwan?’

  ‘Plenty. Whereas you –’

  ‘Yes, but that’s what makes it what it is. Killing. With your own hands. The power, Riz, the power. And once you do it, you can never go back.’

  I shook my head in disgust. He looked beatific. ‘It started with a bite, Riz. Just a small bite, really. To see.’

  I looked away. We listened to the fading sirens and the helicopter. He spoke again. ‘Your wife.’

  My head snapped up and I met his gaze.

  ‘You and your wife are Mirpuris, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m
Bengali of course –’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And we know the Mirpuris as the Sicilians of South Asia. Clannish. Hot-blooded. Violent and feuding.’

  I dipped my head. ‘All of the above.’

  The chopper growled and ground in the distance.

  He raised his head. ‘Your wife. She has it. I saw it in her eyes. She is a natural-born killer. A rare, and special breed.’

  ‘Yeah and she’ll be back here in a minute to give you the Hannibal Lecture mate, don’t you worry.’

  He smiled. ‘Ah. Sublime. One killer to another.’

  I glared at him in disgust. ‘Whatever. You’re so fucked up. What the fuck is going on in your head man, you’re a Muslim!’

  He shook his head. ‘I left Islam for the true path some time ago.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The left-hand path. The muezzin shall be cast down from his minaret. And we shall follow the code of the Seven-Fold Sinister Way.’

  What the hell? I was just trying to process this when there was a rustling behind me, a click-clack of high heels, and Bang-Bang walked back in through the plastic strips. The Mayor’s smile grew and he leant back and stretched out his arms like Christ on the cross.

  Bang-Bang sat down cross-legged by his left-hand side, facing him. Death had arrived. ‘Hello again Mr Mayor. Do you remember what we talked about earlier?’

  He nodded. ‘I do.’

  ‘You can go quiet or noisy.’

  ‘I choose quiet.’

  Bang-Bang stared at him with black, blank, deadly eyes for a bit then nodded back. ‘OK. Quiet it is.’ She rummaged in her Claymore satchel, eventually producing an obscenely large hypodermic syringe. It was the size of something you’d test engines with. Surely she wasn’t going to…

  She tapped it and tested it in the dim light. It glowed dimly, as though it contained poison milk. I had to say something. Eventually I did.

  ‘Holly. Hang on a sec. Is that heroin?’

  She looked back at me. ‘It is, babe. Quite a lot of it.’

  ‘I thought you said –‘

  ‘I did. I hate the stuff. But this is work.’

  Finally she looked at the Mayor. ‘Recognise a killer, do you?’