No Time to Lose: A Matt Flynn Thriller

by Iain Cameron

  ‘We raided Richards Engineering in Shadwell on a tip-off,’ Matt said, ‘and found evidence linking you to David Burke’s kidnap.’

  ‘What sort of evidence? Not from Vince, no way. He’d say fuck all about me to you lot.’ He sat, arms crossed, a smug expression on his face.

  ‘No, Vince didn’t shop you,’ Matt continued. ‘Details were found on a phone we picked up in his office.’ Matt wouldn’t have minded dropping Vince Richards into Locke’s bad books, but Locke appeared to have every faith in him.

  The phone was interesting. It wasn’t a cheap burner bought from the O2 shop. It was a specially encrypted device used almost exclusively by criminal gangs. These things were a couple of grand a pop, and the annual contract much the same, but communication between users on the same network was encrypted and secret, or so they thought. Six months before, analysts at GCHQ managed to crack the encryption. Problem was, wary criminals like Richards and Locke would communicate in code, making it near-impossible for the security services to fathom. An instruction for someone to kill a rival, might be, take the bins out, and a payment to a drug courier, could be, buy him a pint.

  ‘What’s your interest in David Burke?’ Rosie asked. ‘Was he working for you?’

  Locke laughed, a mirthless sound from a heartless individual. ‘What the hell would I want with a spook? I’m friendly with a few coppers, to be sure, but there’s nothing I do that remotely brings me into MI5’s sphere.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Matt said, ‘I’m tempted to believe you. I can’t see you having a use for him either. So, how about this? Someone you know came and asked you to kidnap him for them.’

  ‘I expected better from you lot, but you’re like the Met, you’re fishing, dipping your rods in the water without bait and hoping for the best.’ He stood. ‘You’ve got nothing on me, so if you’ve finished with your questions, I’m collecting my wife and going home.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Matt and Rosie left Heathrow and headed for the surveillance operation in Hackney. On the way, Matt needed a pit stop, this despite him scoffing both snack bars back at the airport. They soon spotted a decent-looking café and stopped. He put this strong surge in appetite down to the long run he’d done the previous evening. Lately, he’d upped his distance from the usual 5k to 10k. It was not only improving his fitness, but it was doing a good job curing him, for the moment at least, of restless nights with crazy dreams.

  He was new to the Clapham area, and despite some internet searches and keeping his eye on the noticeboard at his gym, he still hadn’t found a running route to meet all his needs. He tended to head to Clapham Common, but the first few routes were too short and when altered, like the one the previous night when he added in a number of neighbouring streets, it felt like he was going on for miles. He’d seen his neighbour head out in her running gear. The next time he bumped into her, he would ask her where she went.

  In the café, Matt couldn’t resist the full English breakfast: sausage, bacon, black pudding, beans, hash browns, toast, and two eggs. Rosie, nursing only a black coffee, turned up her nose at all the food, as she’d had the sense to eat breakfast before heading to Heathrow. He put this down to her being a bad sleeper. At five this morning, she was no doubt sitting at her kitchen table drinking tea. For all her protestations about the size of his stomach and imminent soaring cholesterol levels, sounding a bit like Doc Webb, it didn’t stop her pinching a piece of toast and half a sausage to make up a small sandwich.

  ‘You pack away food like a teenager.’

  ‘How many teenagers do you know?’

  ‘More than you think. I used to be one myself, and a few live in my close. My neighbours talk about the amount they eat, and don’t understand how the fridge is always empty and yet they’re never out of a supermarket.’

  ‘I wasn’t so bad when I was that age, it was when I started working. In the Met, we were always out somewhere, running after suspects, skipping meals.’

  ‘Didn’t the doc set you off on a new, enlightened path? I’m sure a full English doesn’t appear on his list of approved foods.’

  Matt frowned at the thought. ‘He sent me a text this morning, reminding me about what we talked about.’

  They drove to a house in Hackney occupied by Steph Carson and the HSA surveillance team. It was a typical street for this area, a row of two- and three-bedroomed terraced houses on both sides of the road.

  They got out of the car and walked towards the house. Rosie carried a clipboard, as if conducting a survey, or on official business from the local council. Their caution was warranted as despite knowing the Turks weren’t at home, it was possible they had friends nearby looking out for them.

  Steph Carson was similar in age to Matt, with shoulder-length brown hair, verging on auburn, and a thin face and slim body. It stemmed from an eating disorder in her teenage years, and while she was clear of it now, she never seemed to eat much at work. She was terrific in a surveillance role as she had a fine eye for detail; if her targets did anything out of the ordinary, or attempted a sleight of hand to try to fool them, she would spot it.

  ‘Hi Matt. Hi Rosie.’ Steph said when they entered the house. ‘What do you think of the area? Salubrious or what?’

  ‘No better than I expected,’ Matt said. ‘I grew up around here, but I was glad to leave it behind.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were from around here, but I can understand why you left. It’s not only the quality of housing, or the lack of recreation facilities, it’s the people. I’m not saying they’re all like it, but some in the same street as an old boyfriend of mine who lived around here, were scum. They played loud music at all hours, argued with their neighbours, left junk in their gardens and the kids, despite being only five or six years-old, walked to school under their own steam and behaved as if they were feral.’

  The house was no different from others in the street, a rental first used by MI5 for their surveillance operation. It was comfortably furnished with enough IKEA-style furniture to cook hot meals and sit down.

  They took a seat in the lounge, although Matt would have preferred to walk about after the stop-start journey through heavy mid-morning traffic, but it wasn’t the most sensible thing to do in a surveillance house. It would spoil the concentration of the watchers, and maybe knock out the calibration of some of their more sensitive kit.

  The main spying area was in an upstairs bedroom. It was equipped with a camera and zoom lens, and speakers attached to a long-range microphone which could pick up conversations in a car or garden, or given the narrow street, from people inside a house standing close to a window. A special laptop featured face recognition software, essential when watching people who were relatively unknown to them. The downstairs rooms, if any genuine council official or local nosey-parker looked inside, resembled any other rental property in the street, with furniture, and food in the kitchen, but only the especially vigilant would notice there was little in the way of personal artefacts.

  ‘How are our TFF friends?’ Matt asked.

  ‘There’s four of them and to all intents and purposes,’ Steph said, ‘they behave like drug dealers. They’ve clearly got a big stash, and they head out every night to deal.’

  ‘You’ve followed them?’

  ‘A couple of times. They go around the estates standing on street corners. A few minutes later, users appear like magic.’

  ‘If we know they’re terrorists with plans to kill the Turkish President, why don’t we arrest them?’ Sam, one of the younger watchers, asked. He was down from the upstairs ‘watching’ room, filling a glass with water from the tap in the kitchen.

  ‘We don’t think this is the entire crew. Once we have some sense of who the other people are, we’ll nab them all.’

  ‘With luck,’ Steph said, ‘the people we’ve got following them now will lead us to the others.’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ Matt said. ‘Do they stick to Hackney?’

  ‘No, they split up. Two of them do Hack
ney, another goes to Tower Hamlets, and the fourth heads to Forest Gate. They’re chancers, but they’re tooled up. If they attract any heat from a rival dealer, they either pull out a gun to frighten them off, or if their challenger pulls out a shooter in return, they scarper and go somewhere else.’

  ‘It sounds a good way to get themselves killed,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Are they spending?’ Matt asked.

  ‘This is the strange thing. Most drug dealers I’ve come across, are only in it for the money, and when they get a decent pile, they buy a flash motor and maybe a penthouse apartment. They then employ a gang of runners to do the dirty work for them. The guys in the house are still wearing old clothes, drive an old van, and go to the Turkish supermarket down the road for their food. To all intents and purposes, they’re behaving like navvies on a building site, which is what they do in daylight hours.’

  ‘Not a bad cover story. Any sign of a hostage?’

  ‘Not a whiff. However, we’re all agreed, they all appeared jumpy this morning. They had none of the usual banter as they came out of the house and headed to the van. When one of them dropped the keys, they started arguing. Admittedly, it was only a small snapshot of them coming out of the house and walking to the van, but it makes me think something is going down.’

  Matt didn’t need convincing, he trusted Steph’s instinct.

  ‘Do you have any idea what, or when?’

  ‘It sounded like tonight. With the microphone upstairs, we picked up one of them telling the other off about making a mess. He was told, ‘do you want him to think we live like pigs’? The others told him to shut up, as if they knew we were listening, or it was something they didn’t want to think about. It had to be the latter, as there’s no way they’ve got us rumbled.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘No, not a chance.’

  ‘So, with something in the offing, is everyone on full surveillance duty tonight?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘You bet. No sleep until the fat lady sings, I’ve told them.’

  ‘In which case, me and Rosie will join you.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Around nine, Matt and Rosie finished their evening meal. The cupboard in the surveillance house was well stocked with food. It needed to be, with three adults in the house, and Steph or one of the others walking back from a supermarket carrying bags of shopping only reinforced the façade.

  Matt was now sitting in the upstairs bedroom with the watcher team, looking through Venetian blinds at the house where the Turks lived, despite their earlier departure to go out and sell drugs. With the lights in the surveillance room off, and the camera, binoculars, and long-range microphone poking through the gaps, the surveillance team were undetectable from the outside. Several street lights were close by, but the one nearest was at an angle to the camera, so it didn’t reflect on the lens or create any interference.

  In common with other parts of London, parking restrictions operated on the road. It was permit holders only at certain times of the day, no doubt due to the street’s proximity to the thoroughfare at nearby Chatsworth Road. The shops were closed at this hour of the evening, and despite the permit restrictions lapsing at 6:30pm, several parking places were still available, including a couple close to the target house. Matt hoped the TFF group’s anticipated visitors, if they were coming, parked in one of those as he wanted to take a good look at them.

  A couple of hours had passed, which felt as boring as watching paint dry, but Matt had been on surveillance ops before and knew to contain his impatience. It was a quiet street and, for this Wednesday night at least, the pavements weren’t busy with chatting neighbours, kids pedalling their bikes, or druggies on their way to a fix; nothing to take the edge off the tedium. There had to be something decent on television tonight.

  A few minutes later, Jamil, their resident Turkish speaker and microphone operator, broke the silence. He suddenly sat up, hands clamped over his headphones so he didn’t miss a thing, and said, ‘What’s this?’

  Matt looked out the window for what felt like the fiftieth time, scanning up and down the road through a gap in the blinds. A Nissan Primera had drawn up not far from the target house. Without much delay, a dark-skinned guy got out. He was smartly dressed in casual trousers and a long-sleeved polo shirt. His dark hair and beard looked neatly trimmed. He might have been Turkish, but he could equally have been Iraqi, Iranian, or third generation British for all Matt could tell.

  ‘He’s a bit early if he wants to meet the guys,’ Sam said. ‘They’re not usually back for a couple of hours at least.’

  Matt had been thinking the same thing, so he wasn’t convinced this was their guy.

  The newcomer reached into the boot of the car and removed a holdall. Judging by the way the straps were straining and the man’s lop-sided walk, it contained something heavy. He walked towards the target house. He glanced back at the car, key fob in hand, ostensibly to check if it was locked, but in Matt’s view, making sure no one was watching him.

  He reached the door of the target house and bent down as if to tie a shoelace. It was hard to see from their position in the surveillance room and in the dull light outside, but the guy with the binoculars confirmed that the visitor had removed a key from inside a plant pot. Using the key, he let himself into the house and closed the door.

  ‘Well, there’s a turn up for the book,’ Matt said, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘This guy turns up when the guys are out selling drugs and lets himself into the house as if he owns the place. I don’t think the bag was a change of clothes, it looked too heavy. He must have brought something for them. Have you ever seen him before?’

  ‘No,’ Steph said. She and Rosie had headed upstairs after seeing this new development.

  ‘I assume the key in the plant pot isn’t there all the time,’ Matt asked, ‘judging by the quantity of drugs they must keep in the house?’

  ‘I agree,’ Steph said. ‘A couple of them come out for a smoke most nights when they get back from selling. They often sit close to the plant pot and although we didn’t see them do it, they must have put it in then.’

  Matt looked over at Jamil and asked if he could hear anything, but he shook his head. Unless the newcomer was in the habit of talking to himself, or if he received a phone call, the only thing they would detect would be him moving about.

  A few minutes later, the guy came out of the house. He closed the door and bent down as if he’d dropped something. Through a spare set of binoculars, Matt saw him returning the key to its place in the plant pot. The man didn’t need to worry about being spotted, in the ten minutes or so he had been inside the house, the fading light of dusk had disappeared to be replaced by darkness. More importantly from their perspective, he wasn’t carrying the holdall.

  ‘I’ve run the car’s reg through the DVLA system,’ Sam said, now sitting behind a laptop, ‘and I’m just waiting for a result. I’ve also put his mug-shot through face recognition.’

  ‘Good man,’ Matt said.

  The room went quiet for a couple of minutes, everyone watching the man drive away.

  ‘The car belongs to Yusuf Batuk,’ Sam said, reading from the screen. ‘Hang on a sec while I stick his name into this…’ He paused for several seconds. ‘He’s Turkish and owns a supermarket in Stoke Newington. He’s got no connections to any terrorist groups, Turkish or otherwise.’

  ‘Great work, Sam,’ Matt said. ‘I’ve got to get in there. Find out what’s in the bag.’

  ‘He owns a supermarket, Matt,’ Steph said. ‘It might be their weekly food shop. Beats a Tesco delivery driver any day of the week.’

  ‘I hope he puts it away in the cupboards as well,’ Rosie said.

  ‘If it is groceries,’ Steph said, ‘it doesn’t explain their tense expressions and snappy attitude this morning. We imagined it was something way more serious, like their drug delivery.’

  ‘I think I’ll go over there and take a look in that bag. What time do the Turks usually return from their even
ing sorties?’ Matt asked.

  ‘They’re never back before midnight.’

  He looked at his watch: 11:15pm. ‘I should go now.’

  ‘Matt wait,’ Jamil said. ‘I’ve been replaying the audio tape. Firstly, I didn’t hear him climb the stairs. Secondly, it sounds to me as if the bag was placed in a cupboard; I can hear a creak a few minutes or so after the front door closes.’

  ‘Good work, Jamil, that’s helpful,’ Matt said as he zipped up his fleece. It wasn’t a cold night but it would serve to keep him dark and conceal the weapon in his shoulder holster. ‘See you all shortly.’

  Matt closed the door of the surveillance house like a man leaving a friend’s house and not a man embarking on a risky mission. He turned and walked briskly along the road. At the first intersection, he turned the corner, walked for a bit, before bending down and pretending to tie his shoelaces. Before standing, he ruffled his hair and unzipped his jacket.

  He headed back in the direction he had come, but crossed to the other side of the street, and this time walked more slowly. Hopefully, anyone noticing him now wouldn’t think it was the same man they had seen a few minutes before.

  His casual stroll suggested someone who didn’t care what time they reached their destination; a guy going to see a mate, or returning from a night in the pub. While walking, he was watching and listening as he passed the rows of terraced houses, mindful the Turks might have watchers in other properties. Most houses were lit with the curtains shut. A few were unlit, the early-to-bed crowd or late-night revellers, while a few had lights blazing with the curtains open wide.

  He turned into the path of the target house as if he lived there, or at least had been there before. He bent down and scratched his lower leg, a variation on the Yusuf Batuk trick. He retrieved the key and, without looking around, opened the door and walked inside. So far, so good.