No Time to Lose: A Matt Flynn Thriller

by Iain Cameron

  ‘Some people like original features.’

  ‘This house has plenty of them, for sure, but there’s original features, and there’s dilapidated in need of urgent updating or demolition. This one is definitely more in the latter category than the former.’

  ‘Is this where you saw the kit?’

  They were now in the living room, a small room dominated by a big fireplace, with small leaded windows at each end, leaving it dull and uninviting. However, with a big fire roaring in the grate, it would be an easy room to heat. Rosie indicated a tall cupboard in the corner.

  ‘Yep. That’s it,’ Matt said.

  ‘Let’s have a rummage.’

  ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day.’

  Rosie gave him one of her looks.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Matt said, ‘I seem to be treading on Joseph’s toes here.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. He’s much too young for me, and anyway, everybody knows he’s a bit of a player.’

  ‘I can’t deny he plays the field, but the age difference isn’t much.’

  ‘Don’t think flattery will get you out of a hole. C’mon, let’s drop this conversation and get on with the job in hand.’

  The bookcase looked home-made. It wasn’t badly put together or made from shoddy materials, it felt like solid wood and not chipboard, but plain in style and had been over-painted many times. Through long-term use and perhaps being moved more than once, the base and edges were scuffed and chipped.

  Matt hunkered down and hauled out everything from the lowest section. He had to be careful as many of the parts were obviously used for making bombs. It wasn’t such a leap of imagination to think they might find remnants of explosive material in there and some older types might prove unstable.

  He took a good look through the various bits of kit. The bookcase seemed to be, as he first suspected, a repository for damaged or surplus parts, set aside to be repaired or cannibalised later. For the most part, he hadn’t a clue what many of them would be used for, and without some electronic testing gear couldn’t be sure if any of them still worked. However, nothing looked beyond repair.

  ‘Those bastards must have been planning more than the assassination of the Turkish President,’ Rosie said. ‘There’s enough equipment here to make the timers for a dozen bombs. All they needed to do was add a bit of C-4.’

  Rosie had a better idea than Matt as to which pieces of kit would prove useful to bombers. Her experience was in the anti-terrorist field, his, as a murder detective.

  ‘And C-4 is something they have access to,’ she said, ‘if the holdall Batuk left in the Hackney house is anything to go by.’

  ‘Yeah, it raises two big questions Batuk needs to answer when we get an opportunity to interview him. Where did he get it from and what was he going to use it for?’

  ‘We seem to be doing a lot of that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Interviewing people from their hospital beds.’

  He laughed. ‘Maybe I need to stop shooting people.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  She was stretching. Her hands were fumbling around in the top shelf, reaching for something.

  ‘Is there a height issue here?’

  ‘I beg your pardon. I’ll have you know, I’m the same size as Jo–I’m taller than my sister.’

  ‘What are you trying to reach?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s something solid tucked away at the back, and I can’t seem to grasp it. With Batuk being so tall, placing something at the back of the top shelf is out of most people’s line of vision. Ergo, it’s a good place to hide an item of some importance that you don’t want anyone else to see.’

  ‘It’s probably a pile of his old porn mags, or his personal dope stash.’

  ‘Trust you to come up with something so base. I imagine people don’t buy that sort of thing nowadays, do they? I mean, they can find tons more, sometimes by accident, on the web for free.’

  ‘Since when did you become the doyen of all things porn?’

  ‘You raised it.’

  Rosie moved to one side, allowing Matt to reach inside. It was clear Batuk was taller than him, a touch under six foot, or he had used steps, as even though Matt had a better grip of the object than Rosie, he couldn’t see what it was. With fingertips, he located the edge of something metallic and teased it towards him. It moved slowly and felt heavy, either because it was inherently so, or something big was sitting on top. In which case, he needed to be careful not to tip the whole lot on his head when he finally removed it from the shelf.

  Matt smiled when, a few moments later, he saw what he was pulling. At the bottom of the little pile there was a laptop, and lying on top, a selection of loose dumbbell weights there to knock out or maim an unsuspecting thief. Matt moved his hand underneath the laptop as it emerged and eased it out slowly, trying to keep it level.

  ‘The crafty sod,’ Matt said, when he lowered all the pieces to the floor. ‘This lot could do the unwary a fair bit of damage.’

  ‘Which suggests it might contain something interesting.’

  ‘Indeed. Did you find his little black book of passwords?’

  ‘No, but I’ll have a look. If not, I’m sure Amos will enjoy cracking it open with that amazing software he uses.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  FORTY-THREE

  Following their visit to Yusuf Batuk’s farmhouse in Waltham Abbey, Matt and Rosie returned to London. The phones discovered in a box in the tall bookcase were down with the research team who would soon unlock their secrets.

  He and Rosie had missed lunch with their trip to the farmhouse, so they had decamped to the staff restaurant. Matt, as always, was hungry, so he was happy to eat whatever hot food remained. This included the cottage pie and a mountain of green vegetables, while Rosie stuck with the green theme and selected a Caesar salad.

  ‘What’s this,’ Matt said, looking at her plate, ‘got a date? The rabbits we had when we were kids were better fed.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am going out for dinner tonight, so I don’t want to eat too much at lunch.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to affect me,’ he said, forking a large mouthful.

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Rosie,’ he said, putting down his cutlery, a difficult decision in the circumstances, and looking at her. ‘I’m asking you as a friend. If you went out on a date and something happened to you, I would never forgive myself for not knowing who you were with or where you were going.’

  ‘Very touching, I’m sure.’

  ‘If that doesn’t convince you, I’m also enquiring as a work colleague. I wouldn’t put it past a few of the criminals who you’ve helped nab to access Bumble or Tinder, or whatever dating site you use, to try to lure you into a trap.’

  ‘Now you’re starting to sound like my sister, and just as patronising.’

  Matt resumed eating; he’d made his point. He liked the food here, it was better than what he could cook at home and a step-up from the prepared meals-for-one available in most supermarkets.

  ‘I’m going out with a guy called Tom Stevens,’ Rosie said about half a minute later. ‘He’s the brother of Lidia, the woman across the road. For the record, I like him.’

  ‘The woman across from your house? Erm, I think I remember her. Isn’t she the small woman with short, blonde hair and married to the big bloke with all the tats down one arm?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her. Tom is taking me to the Miller and Carter restaurant in Harlow.’

  He smiled. ‘I quite like their restaurants; I’m partial to a decent piece of rump or sirloin. You, on the other hand, would gag if you found something like that on your plate.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I was a bit worried about going there when he first suggested it,
but I looked them up on the web. Yes, they are primarily a steakhouse, but they also have fish and Caesar salad on the menu.’

  Matt laughed. ‘Not two rounds of rabbit food in one day? You won’t be walking to work, you’ll be hopping.’

  ‘I might have the salad, but then again, it might leave the wrong impression. He’ll either dump me for being a vegan tub-thumper, or feel embarrassed for taking a non-meat eater to a steakhouse.’

  A few minutes later, Matt had finished and was toying with the idea of having something for dessert. In this regard, the staff restaurant menu read like the one in his old school: jam sponge with custard, bread and butter pudding, apple crumble. He would usually go up to take a look, but more often than not would come back with an apple or orange. He liked starters and main meals, but wasn’t so fussed on puddings. He would see if there was an orange or a banana.

  Before heading back to the counter, he spotted Joseph approaching. ‘Hi guys,’ he said.

  ‘Hi Joseph,’ Rosie said. ‘Are you joining us for a late lunch?’

  ‘No, I’ve already eaten. I’m here as an errand boy. I’m to summon the pair of you to a meeting with Gill.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  It wasn’t a smart idea to keep Gill waiting. Matt had done so once before, as yet again he had missed lunch while out on an operation and was starving. He’d reckoned he had time to finish his meal, but before doing so, Gill had appeared at the door and started bawling like a parade ground sergeant major, ordering him to come to his office immediately.

  They deposited their trays of detritus on the moving conveyor belt and headed downstairs.

  Once inside and the door closed, Gill clasped his hands together and faced Matt and Rosie. This time Kingsley Walsh was nowhere to be seen.

  Gill wore his serious expression. The one Matt imagined he would have used back in the day when his men were heading out on a dangerous mission, perhaps never to return.

  ‘Matt, I have some bad news for you. I know you wouldn’t want me to soft-soap you in any way, so I’ll tell you straight. The lady you’ve been seeing, Suzy Needham, has been kidnapped.’

  ‘What? When did this happen? How?’

  ‘All we know at the moment is that she attended a yoga class near Liverpool Street Station. Walking back home from Hackney Central Station, she was bundled into a van.’

  Matt’s head went into a spin. They had destroyed the TFF and captured the two punks holding Jonty Fleming. If they were all washed-up, how did someone manage to kidnap Suzy?

  ‘How can this be? We’ve stopped the TFF.’

  ‘Matt, this isn’t the work of the TFF. It’s part of the same pattern: first the murder of David Burke, then the kidnapping of Jonty Fleming, now Suzy’s abduction. All people close to you. It’s unfinished business as far as this person is concerned.’

  ‘You think Simon Wood’s behind Suzy’s disappearance?’

  ‘I guarantee it.’

  ‘We need to get her back.’

  ‘I know, and it’s why I want us to go after Simon Wood with everything we’ve got.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  The continuous droning of the plane engine was a soporific sound to Matt. It put him into a deep sleep, despite the racket made by various young kids a few rows in front, still wearing the latest noise-cancelling headphones. While everyone else was engrossed in a movie of their choice, Matt caught up with some shut eye, but was awakened when the plane hit some turbulence.

  Through bleary eyes he looked at the plane’s progress on the map on the screen in front of him. They were still two-and-a-half-hours away from landing in Antigua. Matt and Rosie’s journey to this idyllic island in the Caribbean wasn’t Gill’s idea of R&R, a place for Matt to convalesce following the kidnap of his girlfriend, or to give Rosie a well-earned break. Instead, it was to take them to the hiding place of Simon Wood.

  Despite his exile, Wood was still one of the largest drug dealers in the south of England, and the most-wanted. A year or so back, Matt’s former partner, Emma Davis, working for the Met’s drug squad, had intercepted a yacht from the Caribbean carrying thirty kilos of cocaine. Simon Wood was on board. It was a slam-dunk conviction for the ex-public schoolboy turned drug chemist, but before his appearance in a court of law, he’d escaped.

  How Wood and the TFF had gotten into bed together wasn’t clear, but this didn’t concern Matt too much, but what was evident, Wood had hired them to kidnap and kill anyone close to Matt, and make him suffer before finally killing him. Their partnership hadn’t survived long enough to carry out the abduction of Suzy, as the TFF were no longer an effective fighting force in the UK. The two punks they’d captured at the warehouse where Jonty was being held, members of Wood’s drug network, were evidence of this ‘changeover’.

  The phones and laptop found at Batuk’s farmhouse didn’t tell them anything they didn’t know. It confirmed the relationship between Wood and the TFF, and if Matt took the time and looked at the voluminous amount of information more closely, he was sure it would reveal how the two of them first got together. The laptop also revealed the TFF’s plans to kill the Turkish President, but with most, if not all of their operatives now in jail, and their explosives and guns in a secure police store, no way was this going to happen.

  Despite the man himself being on the run, and several of his lieutenants dead or in jail, Wood’s operations in the UK rolled on without pause, still pumping millions into various offshore bank accounts for the benefit of the organisation’s leader. This gave him a limitless supply of money to pay whatever villains he could engage to eke out the final denouement, Matt’s death. By attacking Wood in his hiding place, a large villa overlooking steep cliffs in Antigua, they would not only stop the man from harming any more of Matt’s friends, but Matt would also find out where he was keeping Suzy Needham.

  The pain of her kidnap aggravated him like the constant itch of a plastered leg. David and Jonty were involved in the security business, and the chances of them being injured, shot, abducted, or killed were much higher than those for the general population; they both knew the risks. Suzy, on the other hand, was an innocent, only taken because of her involvement with Matt. He chastised himself for not spotting their watchers. He was careful whenever he left the office and his house, but less so when going out with her.

  In order for them to track her, it would require the deployment of a sophisticated surveillance operation: numerous followers, switching cars, someone outside her apartment building. It was a 24/7 activity, something Matt believed was beyond Wood, even if he still lived in the UK. Not because he wasn’t a smart guy, he’d gone to private school and gained a BSc degree in Chemistry from Imperial College in London, but he doubted the people in his organisation were up to the task.

  The only way to short-cut this process was for them to have the services of an informant. This resonated with an earlier scrap of unconnected data bouncing around in his head. How did his kidnappers know where David Burke lived or where Jonty worked? David was a secretive guy, and only a handful of people knew his whereabouts at any one time. Jonty’s details were equally difficult to come by.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Rosie said beside him as she removed her headphones. They were manufactured by some Chinese company whose name she couldn’t pronounce, and bought for a fraction of the price of the latest ones being worn by the kids in front. According to her, they blanked out the ambient noise of a plane so effectively, it was often a shock when she removed them.

  ‘I needed that. I haven’t been sleeping well these last few days.’

  ‘I’ll bet. You haven’t missed much, except a drunk guy weaving his way to the toilet, and then the drinks trolley. A little later they handed out ice creams.’

  ‘No problem. I rarely drink alcohol on a flight, and I’m not partial to ice-cream.’

  ‘You learn something new every day.’

  ‘What are you watching?’

  ‘Ach, nothing much. A trashy rom-com. Just s
omething to take my mind off the job to come.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Matt said, as he was looking forward to it. ‘Does it worry you?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well,’ she said in hushed tones, leaning closer, ‘I’ve been thinking, his villa might be guarded by half a dozen highly-trained goons armed with the latest US-made kit.’

  ‘It’s possible. We should have a better idea once we’ve met the local boys. The officer I spoke to said he would send someone over to the villa to give it the once-over.’

  ‘It still doesn’t fill me with confidence, because one of the other things I’m worried about is the quality of the local boys. When we go out with an ART team in the UK, we know they’ll kick in doors and face down scumbags with guns. We don’t know if these guys have had much experience of that sort of operation.’

  ‘I suspect they haven’t, but I know they’ve faced plenty of people with guns. There are loads of gunrunners moving between the islands. Think how close the Caribbean is to gun-paranoia central, the United States.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

  ‘Here’s another thing to think about: Wood’s been on the run for what, twelve months?’

  She nodded.

  ‘There’s no way he can return to the UK, or travel to the States or Europe or anywhere else. He’s got an Antiguan passport, and he may have a few others for all we know, but he’s limited in his room for manoeuvre. As soon as he enters passport control in most civilised countries, it will set alarm bells buzzing. Especially now that Amos put his latest alias up on the system.’

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘If this was you in this situation, would you employ half a dozen goons for six months, a year, maybe two? You’d not only need to equip them, you’d need to feed them and give them a place to live as well. It’s a big commitment.’

  ‘It is, but he can afford it, and he’s got a lot to lose if he gets it wrong.’

  ‘I grant you he’s certainly got the money to do what he wants, but I think if he has any form of security, it will only be a couple of guys that he trusts. With him being the possessor of a local passport in a false name, and living in the middle of nowhere, he no doubt feels pretty safe. His enemies from the drug world, and the authorities who are seeking him, don’t know where he is. We only found out through dogged research work, something way beyond the reach of most of them.’