by C. T. Brown
While the academic was making a second attempt to retrieve his papers Sanderson watched a dark blue Ford Focus pull up at the kerb beside him. Refocusing his binoculars on the new arrival Sanderson studied the driver, an attractive young woman. To Sanderson the woman was an enigma, given how attractive she was it was unlikely she was the academic's wife or girlfriend but, as he was also young, she couldn't be his daughter. As he had at least a dozen times since he had been surveilling them, Sanderson dismissed his musings on the relationship between the two people and got back to work. He started his jet black van’s diesel engine and, after the academic got into the car, carefully followed as the couple drove away. As he did so he called over his shoulder for the three other men in the back of the van to get ready.
Followed by the van the Focus drove through the rain-soaked, darkened streets of the West End of London, now only populated by the tourists, party-goers and less than entirely savoury characters that populate the area late on a Friday night. Sanderson kept at least two cars between himself and the academic's vehicle until they reached Oxford Circus, as they crossed onto Regent Street the two cars continued turned the other way and were replaced by a pink, stretched Humvee that he assumed was on its way to collect or drop off a hen party as no-one else hired such vehicles. All three vehicles continued in convoy to Piccadilly Circus and then down to Trafalgar Square where the Humvee turned onto Charing Cross Road as the van and the Ford Focus turned towards Westminster.
Placing other road users between them wherever possible, and dropping back to follow from a distance when he couldn't, Sanderson continued to follow the car across the Thames via Westminster Bridge, down to the Elephant and Castle and eventually onto the Walworth Road. The Focus pulled over across the road from a Turkish mini market which was the only shop in that particular parade open at this time of night. Sanderson stamped his foot down and accelerated, yelling a warning to his passengers. He swerved the van across in front of the parked car and braked hard, blocking it from moving. Without a pause Sanderson and his passengers opened the van doors and jumped out onto the street, all were dressed in black and carried guns that they aimed at the car. Half out of the front passenger door the academic stopped as soon as he saw the guns, his companion hadn't moved from the driver's seat. While they seemed surprised, neither looked as worried as Sanderson would have liked. Sanderson signalled one of his men who turned and trained his gun on the open front of the shop across the road. Apart from some staring there was no real reaction from it's patrons, it took more than an armed hold up to get a reaction in south London. If there was going to be a reaction it was far more likely to be interest in watching the show than any sort of confrontation.
"Get out of the car." Sanderson signalled with his gun toward the darkened frontage of the bank the car had pulled up beside. "Over there. Both of you. Now."
Slowly the driver's door of the Focus opened and the woman stepped out, both she and the academic then crossed the path to stand in front of the cashpoint machines set into the bank's window. Quickly Sanderson and two of his men lined up in front of them, guns levelled at their heads. It was at this point that Sanderson got his first inkling that something might be wrong. The academic looked relaxed, a faint smile on his face while his companion seemed completely uninterested in anything beyond her fingernails, not exactly normal reactions to being ambushed at gunpoint. Moving closer to the academic Sanderson tried to shake off his concerns and, in the same voice he'd used to order about new recruits before his enforced exit from the army, barked, 'You will come with us, our boss has a job for you. If you refuse the woman will be killed.'
The response this provoked from his two captives was not what Sanderson expected, the academic and the woman turned to look at each other and, after attempting to fight it for a moment, both burst out laughing. Sanderson's reaction was immediate, he moved forward until the barrel of his automatic was pressed against the academic's forehead. The laughing stopped and for a moment Sanderson relaxed. His moment of relaxation ended as the academic's shin made contact with his groin, hard. There was a sharp intake of breath and then Sanderson dropped to his knees, his eyes watering from the pain, and slowly toppled sideways clutching himself. Through a tear-blurred haze Sanderson watched the two men who had also been covering his captives drop to the ground, one with the black plastic handle of a knife projecting from his chest and the other with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Turning his gaze to the one remaining upright member of his team Sanderson was just in time to see him hit in the face by something that looked like a high-heeled shoe, the man then staggered backwards onto the road and into the path of a speeding, bright green Honda Civic that appeared to have been covered with every shiny decal available anywhere. It did not even pause as the man tumbled through the air until he hit the road surface with an unpleasantly squelchy noise.
Luckily for Sanderson the pain in his groin was beginning to subside so he reached for his gun which lay on the ground nearby, unluckily the woman saw this first and the heel of her remaining shoe created a new source of pain when it was stamped down on his hand. Before he could react to the crushed bones and punctured skin he felt her other, unshod, foot come down on the back of his head. He could feel blood running down the side of his face as his face bounced back up from the pavement but didn't have time to find out how serious his latest injury was before he found his own gun pointing directly at his face. Sirens were approaching but the gun did not waver, it was as if the woman did not care that the police would soon be on the scene. 'Now then,' she leaned forward slightly as she spoke, 'I think it might be a good idea if we had a little discussion about why you were so stupid as to try and kidnap my husband and I with only a four man team, don't you?'
Sitting in the grey interview room at a plain wooden table on a metal chair that was very securely bolted to the floor the academic reflected that the evening had turned out to be more eventful than he'd expected. Belinus Carter, for that was the name he'd been saddled with parents who had been going through a brief but unfortunate hippy phase, had expected a trip to a small south London restaurant that was a particular favourite of his and little else this evening. Instead he had almost been kidnapped when he and his wife had stopped to buy a snack along the way. Unfortunately the police had taken exception to the way he and particularly his wife had responded to this and arrested them too. He was sure it would all be sorted out soon enough, but it had certainly made the evening a bit more interesting than originally intended.
When the door opened and Detective Inspector Spencer entered the interview room the look on his face told Belinus the next part of the evening might be interesting but it was unlikely to be fun. Spencer walked around the table, and Belinus, as if checking that the man sitting there really looked like that. Belinus had no illusions that he was a handsome or impressive looking individual, in fact the most complementary descriptions of himself he'd ever heard used words like "average" or "non-descript". However, he knew this particular look - it was the one he got when someone had met his wife and was trying to work out in what possible world she could have ended up married to such a dull looking man. If he was completely honest with himself he understood this reaction but enjoyed watching other, better looking, men try to work out why they didn't stand a chance with women that attractive while this geeky, pale, unimpressive-looking academic had married one. After a lifetime of put downs from such men it gave him some satisfaction.
"So, you're Belinus Carter then?" Spencer asked as he flopped into an identical metal chair opposite Belinus. "Professor Belinus Carter of Welwyn University, head of the history department?"
"I am indeed."
"Ain't you a little young to be a professor? I thought professors were all old fogeys with comb-overs and elbow patches on their jackets. Possibly pipe smokers too."
"My career has advanced rather rapidly, I admit, but I assure you that I am fully qualified."
"So, what's a history professor doing being targeted for
kidnap by gun-toting nutjobs? What could you be involved in that people like that would be interested in?"
"Maybe they read my paper on coin-making in Roman Britain? It was fascinating, if I do say so myself, but some do consider it to be a little controversial."
"You really think sarcasm is a good idea right now? You are in a lot of trouble mate."
"No, I'm not. We both know that by now you've run my name and my wife’s name through the system and I expect you've already had the call, haven't you?" Spencer reluctantly nodded in reply, Belinus went on. "Then you have been told to let us both go and not look into this any further and you're wondering what a university professor and his wife are doing with friends in such high places, am I right?"
"That about sums it up, yeah."
"Regrettably I cannot give you any details," he said, continuing under his breath, "not that you'd believe them anyway."
D.I. Spencer continued to look at Belinus in silence for another minute or so then got up and opened the door. "Go on then, time to go. I ain't got time to get mixed up in whatever spook crap is going on here, I don't know if you're MI5 or MI6 and I don't really care."
"We aren't either actually."
Spencer snorted in derision at this.
Emily Carter's mobile phone beeped as she ended her call, she then carefully and deliberately placed the phone on the floor in front of her and stamped on it until it was almost unrecognisable as a phone, keeping a perfectly calm expression on her face at all times. Behind the desk in the reception area of the police station the middle-aged Sergeant Thomas did little more than glance in her direction briefly, after nearly thirty years working the streets of South London it took more than that to get a reaction from him.
Once she had finished destroying her phone Emily sat in the only available chair which was between those occupied by a smartly dressed man and probably the oldest woman she had ever seen. Three men sitting on the row of chairs on the opposite side of the reception area immediately dropped their heads, making it even more obvious than it had been that they were trying to stare at her without looking like they were staring at her. Surreptitiously Emily looked the men over to ensure they weren't any sort of threat and came to the conclusion that they were relatively harmless and had probably only been trying to imagine what she looked like naked. Thanks to her looks and athletic figure Emily was used to men staring - although that didn't make it any less annoying.
As she shifted in her seat Emily noticed something seemed to have snagged the skirt of her plain black suit, standing up she discovered the chewing gum someone had helpfully stuck in the middle of the seat she'd sat on. Stepping over the remains of her phone she headed for the ladies room to see what the damage was. When she opened the door the first thing that struck her was the smell. It was clearly intended to be a pleasant, flowery smell but whoever had created it for the air freshener company had failed to include any real flowers anywhere in the process of coming up with it. Apart from the smell itself an additional problem was the sheer volume of it, walking through the door it felt as if all the air in the room had been replaced with air freshener and it took Emily a few moments to get used to breathing it instead. She turned her skirt about without removing it and started to try and pick off the gum, it was clear quite quickly that there was a limit to how much she'd be able to remove.
Sighing loudly Emily reflected that the evening had gone rapidly downhill since deciding to go to dinner with her husband. Firstly they had stopped to buy a snack and been attacked by what she considered to be rather amateur kidnappers, then they'd been arrested - something which had soon been noticed by her superiors, triggering a phone call that had antagonised the police rather a lot. Once they'd allowed her out of her interview room she'd received a call from her boss who was very unhappy to be interrupted on a Friday evening by stories of attempted kidnappings in south London. The call had not gone well, hence the current state of her phone. Now she had to return to work to explain what had happened with a large patch of pink chewing gum stuck to the back of her skirt, what else could go wrong?
Before she could berate herself for tempting fate something hit her from behind and her head connected with the mirror over the sink in front of her. The glass cracked and she felt a sharp pain on her forehead, she knew it had drawn blood. Without looking she kicked out behind herself with her left foot and felt it connect with something, she then span on the spot and swung with her right hand. Her fist connected with the jaw of her attacker when she was about halfway around. The attacker was a young, blonde woman dressed in the chaviest clothing Emily had ever seen, complete with large gold hoop earrings that she was sure came direct from Argos' cheapest selection. However Emily doubted that most of the women who normally wore similar clothes could execute a perfect karate kick as this one did. Unfortunately her appreciation of the quality of the kick was somewhat diminished by it connecting painfully with her stomach.
Sergeant Thomas was starting to wonder about the length of time the young chav woman had spent in the bathroom. He hated it when that happened. From experience he knew that if he thought someone had been in there too long there was almost always something going on and he'd be the one stuck with dealing with it. Hoping he wasn't going to have to clean up after another overdose Sergeant Thomas stepped out from behind the counter, as he did so Belinus came into reception and walked up to the counter.
"Excuse me officer, but do you know where my wife is? I was told she would meet me out here."
"Sorry sir, just got to sort something out. Back in a second or two."
As Sergeant Thomas turned to walk over to the bathroom there was a loud thud as something hit the door to the ladies’ from the inside. Before either man could react the door was hit again and this time it was knocked right off its hinges. Presumably this had been caused by the blonde chav woman hurtling backwards into it as she now lay atop the broken door, struggling to get up.
"Doesn't matter officer, I think I know where she is now."
Belinus was proved right a few seconds later when his wife stepped through the doorway and bent down to punch the blonde in the face, turning to see the questioning look on the Sergeant's face she explained she was "just making sure".
DI Spencer walked into reception, took one look at the scene and started to wonder if he could get away with pretending he'd gone home five minutes ago.
