Minshaw and Regan moved carefully through the trees and along a windbreak to a point which Minshaw thought gave the best view down over the farmhouse. He pulled out an ancient pair of Leitz folding opera-glasses, unfolded them, and handed them to Regan.
Regan panned the glasses down and across the large farmhouse in the hollow below. It was a Jacobean house, with some remnants of early Tudor, typical stockbroker’s weekend retreat. At the same time it was obviously a functioning farmhouse — tractor, geese, hay silo, cattle shed, automatic cattle-feedstuff troughs, and to the right of the house a high mound of polythene bags of nitrate fertilizer covered by a tarpaulin. A couple of horses in a paddock, and a small herd of cattle eating in the fields beyond. They were clustered in a close group for protection from the wind. A weak sun wandered around above the haze of low clouds, but the day was cold and the breeze fresh and cutting.
Regan took it all in at a glance. Not the finer points of the architecture of a house in an ideal setting amidst a hollow between two hills, but the tactical situation: the dead ground, and the ground cover.
There were features about the house which were distinctly bad news. A series of Bath stone walls enclosing small sheds and the paddock ran from the back of the house out and up to the tree windbreak that circled round to where they stood. Several men would have to be deployed to the rear, maybe four. The Flying Squad had by their own insistence just a dozen or so men. For a second he wished he had the bull-necked Patchin from Bomb Squad and some of his six-foot oafs.
‘I don’t see anybody.’
‘Main room left of front door, there was a bloke. Another man opened curtains in the bedroom three windows along the first floor, right of front door.’
Regan looked, studied first all the windows of the three floors of the farmhouse. He shook his head. No one in sight.
‘There’s a side exit to the house, the other side.’
Regan swung the opera glasses to the far end of the house.
‘You won’t be able to see it.’
‘That cow byre wall runs from front to rear down that side of the house?’
Minshaw nodded.
Regan turned at the sound of footfalls. Len came up. ‘Mr. Maynon’s arrived, guv.’
‘Who with?’
‘Hille, and two sharpshooters, Derrecks and Porter.’
A moment later, Maynon, Sergeant Hille, and the two other uniformed sharpshooter sergeants carrying Remington rifles, arrived under the trees. Maynon took the opera glasses, nodded to Minshaw. ‘Long time no see, John. We’ll have a beer and nostalgia if we survive this lot.’
‘Two men in there.’ Regan addressed the sharpshooters, ‘The rear of the house looks to be the problem.’
‘Armed, guv?’ The sharpshooter introduced as Derrecks asked.
‘There are no IRA Provos who aren’t armed. Take the back. The rest of us will cover the front with small arms.’
Another two cars had arrived from London. Regan made his way back to the line of four cars, waving the plainclothes men to move the cars and conceal themselves off the road. They were DS’s and DCs of his squad and Inspector Cawder’s squad. He heard Maynon’s voice floating back, a generalization Maynon was making to Minshaw, Len and others who had moved up the hill. ‘An important thing to remember about this operation is that if it’s a cock-up it’s my balls cut off...’
Maynon now signalling one car to take the risk. Four of Cawder’s squad getting into it, the Smith and Wessons bulging the sides of their macs. The car heading off up and over the hill, into the hollow and beyond and up again over the crest of the next hill, to position itself on the west approach to the house.
A couple of traffic motorcyclists arriving up the lane, dispatched from Bath CID, to close the road. Maynon and Regan turning round at the noisy approach, both faces furious. That’s how a balls-up begins — two coppers on motorbikes whose engine noise would waken the dead, blundering into the midst of the enemy camp.
A young sergeant now arriving out of a fifth car carrying the loudhailer — a new young bloke in Cawder’s squad. Maynon signalling him and giving him the opera-glasses and pointing to the low, dressed stone wall bordering the lane in front of the house, where he should take up his position. Maynon telling him what to say in the loudspeaker.
Regan moved through the trees and found a position where he could squat down and survey the entire front facade of the house. No sign of movement in the house. Some inevitable sounds of the operation around it. The crack of a twig breaking, a disturbed crow screaming out insolence and rising up through the trees. The sixteen men and the two motorcycle policemen more visible, disposing themselves in a wide circle round the building and outhouses.
Then Regan heard the sound of the Smith and Wessons being opened, and chambers checked.
Carter arrived. He had grabbed the sixth car from New Scotland Yard. He hadn’t been ready when Regan was — he hadn’t checked out a gun from the armoury. He answered Regan’s unspoken question about why he should be last to arrive. ‘Thought I’d check on where Lieutenant Ewing went when he disappeared from the meeting. Phoned his hotel. Did you know, guv, he checked out yesterday — gave no forwarding address?’
Regan didn’t know. He started to think about Ewing and Tanya’s little bed, and other thoughts about the American lieutenant.
The young sergeant with the loud hailer was now in position behind the wall and looking up in Maynon’s direction. Maynon was standing, Smith and Wesson held low, in a clump of bushes five yards away from Regan. Maynon signalled with a wave of the gun.
The young sergeant switched on the loudhailer and the amplified voice hit the front of the farmhouse and reverberated up the hollow. ‘You people in the house. This is the police. We are armed. You will all come out with your hands high in the air. I repeat, we are armed. You have two minutes. Then we will come and take you out.’
Silence. The little background song of birds terminated, the creatures shocked into silence by the loudhailer. All eyes on the house. No movement. Regan turned to look at Minshaw, the Bath CID guy who had seen two people, wondering if Minshaw was going to announce now that he might have been mistaken. The young sergeant two hundred yards away studied his watch as if it would be his decision after two minutes to signal the armed police forward.
Maynon signed for him to repeat the message.
The loudhailer clicked on again. ‘You in there. This is the police. We’re armed. Come out with your hands high in the air, or we will use our arms. Come out now.’
Silence from the house. Not even the sound of the window that had banged in the wind twice in the last five minutes. No wind now.
Maynon’s face a mask. He must make a decision, he and he alone. Another minute passed. He signalled the loudhailer sergeant to try a third announcement.
The loudhailer sergeant, half crouched behind the wall, brought his head up slightly, wondering if Maynon was signalling him to say the message again or abandon the loudhailer approach and join the others — it certainly looked as if the house was empty.
The young sergeant raised his head slightly, up from his crouch, so it was above the wall. Maynon screamed ‘Down’ at exactly the same second that Regan shouted ‘Gun!’ But the young sergeant didn’t hear either of them. And anyhow he wouldn’t have been able to separate the two commands bawled simultaneously at him. The young sergeant was dying. He was walking up the lane towards them, the loudhailer still gripped tight in his left hand, and his eyes still open, but just about to be flooded with blood from two round holes above them which looked like a second pair of eyes.
And the expression on the young sergeant’s face was astonishment because he knew he was dead. And first he dropped the loudhailer, which rolled around crackling static, and then he fell himself. And no death throes. He fell and he was completely still.
Maynon’s head switchbacked round, from Minshaw who was nearest him to Regan who had been on his left. But Regan was already running along the tree line past Ma
ynon and towards the lane. Minshaw had seen the wisp of smoke and maybe a sight of the gun. ‘Carbine, room just above front door, slightly left,’
Maynon put up his head. One of the police marksmen was crashing through the trees. He’d seen a colleague die. The shot had come from the front of the house. He and his fellow sharpshooter had been placed in a defensive or withdrawal position at the rear — and he wasn’t having that. He disappeared again into the trees.
Maynon shouted at Minshaw. ‘Get the loudhailer.’
Minshaw, a man in his forties, was off and sprinting, using the tree-cover to get to the lane, and using the wall which lined each side of the lane to approach the dead sergeant and the loudhailer. But already he’d interpreted Maynon’s fear and knew it was too late.
The four police who had driven past the house were moving in unseen, except for the cordite contrails of their shots out of the bushes that ringed the perimeter of the farmhouse grounds.
‘Stop firing!’ Maynon shouted.
The police disobeyed. And they did it for two reasons. Because they were going to kill the copper killer inside the farm, no trials, no fifteen-year murder sentences commuted for good behaviour. They were also going to disobey because Maynon would then be able to say at the enquiry that was bound to come that they, his men, had disobeyed him. And that would help to let Maynon off the hook for the balls-up of a dead copper. And Maynon’s men liked Maynon and wanted him off the hook.
It was Regan who got to the loudhailer. ‘Stop firing! Everybody stop firing!’
A string of shots greeted his order. But they were no longer fired by police. They came from the three marksmen inside the house.
‘All police cease fire!’ Regan sitting propped up behind the wall, four police within his view, guns out, looking at him, wondering what he’d do now, or later, if they did ignore him. A colleague had been killed, revenge had to happen now, before the issues were muddied over by the bastard barristers of defence counsel, and the soft judges of lousy justice.
Maynon approached doubled up, Minshaw behind him. They joined Regan behind the wall.
‘Three. Sound like M64 carbines,’ Regan suggested.
‘Maybe more than three,’ Maynon said, studying the crumpled form of the dead young sergeant ten feet away, fighting back emotion for the moment, to keep a clear head.
‘We can get into the house, sir. The building’s large enough. Three men can’t cover four exterior walls.’
Maynon’s brows sharp knit together. He was thinking it out for himself.
Silence all around again, except for the barking of a dog a quarter of a mile away, as it responded to the noise of the shooting.
‘I think it’s three men. That house has four walls. So one wall’s uncovered. I’m going to find it,’ Regan said.
‘You stay here, ‘Maynon ordered sharply. But Regan had already started along the ditch, making up the lane to approach the west side of the house.
He stopped in his tracks. It was the sound of one single shot and a scream as a bullet hit home. But it seemed to come from inside the house. The scream climbed high and then sank suddenly, as somebody died noisily. It was the antithesis of the way the young copper had died. Regan’s eyes looked back to Maynon and the eyes of the other policemen nearest him. What the hell could it mean? Committing suicide? Or topping each other inside the house?
Above the front door, a floor to ceiling window — almost a french window, except that there was no balcony outside. The man who had just been shot crossed the room and crashed out through the glass of the long window, down in a heap on the front doorstep.
Regan was momentarily confused. All police eyes on the white curtains of the room from which the body had crashed down, as if looking for more bodies to follow. Instead a deep voice came from behind the curtains.
‘This is Lieutenant Ewing… Don’t shoot; I’m going to open the windows.’
Maynon was already on the loudhailer before Ewing had finished speaking. ‘There’s a policeman in the house. Don’t fire!’
The tall windows on the first floor opened — a gesture that seemed even more theatrical because one window had no glass. Ewing stood there — a spare, contemplative figure, apparently unconcerned about the possibility of a nervous copper loosing off a shot. He held his Navy Colt.45 in his hands.
Regan remembered the dumdum bullets, and the quality of the dying man’s scream.
‘Two other guys,’ Ewing shouted. ‘I think they’re in the room on the east side. Three rooms on that side. They’re in the middle one.’
Everybody now moving around to take covert looks at the east side of the house from behind the hedgerow bordering the lane. Next to the east wall, and about twenty feet away and parallel to it, the brick wall of an out-house — it looked like a cow-byre. There were no windows or openings in the long wall of the byre, so there was no easy way to manoeuvre into any position where a view into the centre room on the eastside could be gained.
Maynon was already issuing orders. Regan decided to opt out of whatever plan the Super had and suddenly moved off fast, in a difficult half circle round and in on the far side of the byre. Meanwhile he could hear Maynon on the loudhailer. Police were to enter from the west side of the house and proceed with care — Lieutenant Ewing to stay where he was; which could only be guessed at because he’d disappeared.
What a complete fuck up — Regan’s analysis could arrive at no other conclusion. One cop dead, one of three possible suspects dead. Any more lunacy and all that anybody would gain from the operation would be the Bath undertaker.
Regan reached the byre. For reasons that weren’t immediately apparent it was disused and cleaned out. Maybe, the farm owner was using it as a garage or storage place. He went to the windowless wall that faced the east wall of the house with the two men holed up in the middle room. He was looking for any crack in the wall or a hole between wall and roof truss where he could get a sight of the east facade. There was nothing. He studied the wall. The byre must have been built during the war when local government relaxed the restrictions on the exclusive use of heavy Bath stone for building, and allowed ordinary brick. Regan reckoned it was a single cavity brick wall. He turned round. Ewing was standing there. Ewing and he had been on the same wavelength, working out the same idea.
‘I had to kill that guy,’ Ewing offered to Regan’s unasked question. ‘He walked into me.’
‘So we have two. We have to get them alive.’
‘Okay Jack Regan, how do we bust this wall and get them?’ Ewing went over to the wall and fingered it as if he was going to find the answer in the tactile feel of it.
‘A car?’
‘The trouble with that,’ Ewing said softly, ‘is we don’t get a second chance.’ -
Regan was already striding for the door. Once outside he had to take a circuitous route to avoid Maynon. There was no time for talk. Fortunately the two men inside the farmhouse started to loose off some shots, some bouncing off the byre wall and slicing out into the road. Regan saw two coppers taking full precautions, noses stuck in the mud of the lane.
He found Len. It took him thirty seconds to explain to Len that he was about to write off the car, then three minutes to get it into position. Carter came running. Carter knew that something was up — some intuitive knowledge that an event was about to occur where those taking part might end up in the line of promotion — and when Carter smelled something like that he was a difficult person to dissuade. ‘Fuck off,’ Regan said. He had no time to explain or argue. Carter retreated. Regan piled into the car beside
Len, and the Rover dipped its rear axle and took off fast, over the crest, past Maynon and his group tucked in cautiously behind the hedgerows, then on down the lane to an open gate on the left. Len turned the car through the opening and moved it across the stubble earth to the byre. Ewing got in the back, added some precise words of instruction to Len, wound down the rear window, and took out the massive Colt. Regan opened his Smith and Wesson, checked th
e chambers and closed it.
The Flying Squad car was sitting just outside the door of the byre. The double doors of the byre were open. Regan signalled Len. Len revved the engine up to four thousand then, using clutch slip to take up the first seconds of acceleration, piloted the car, tyres skidding, into the byre, and smashed the car into the west wall.
The wall detonated into a thousand separate brick pieces and a cloud of dust as the car sliced through. Len lost the windscreen but managed to slew the car sideways and brake so that Regan and Ewing were both facing the middle room in the east wall. Ewing saw a man with a gun pointed at him and fired. The face of the man spattered into a sheet of blood and dropped from sight. Regan hurled himself from the car and ran flat out for the window that Ewing’s shot had disintegrated. He took a risk now that he didn’t want to take. But there was no time, and he must have one witness.
The Sweeney 01 Page 12
