Deadly Game

by Matt Johnson

  But now, with his report signed, the enquiry was effectively out of his hands.

  After her brief flick through the document Fellowes slipped it back into the buff folder.

  ‘I thought you’d want to read it now … just to check it over, perhaps?’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘No time. I’m hoping the Security Service contribution will simply be a rubber stamp to your conclusions.’

  He smiled, broadly. ‘Let’s hope so, Toni. This wasn’t the kind of thing that happens every week, was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t. Do you mind if I ask what your plans for Jones and Finlay are, now the Home Secretary has approved the decision not to prosecute?’

  ‘With Jones it should be fairly straightforward. He’s making a decent recovery from his injuries and he told me he wants nothing more than to get back to being a normal cop. For Finlay, things are more complicated, as you know.’

  ‘I spoke to his Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Grahamslaw, ‘not keen on having him back?’

  ‘He’s a realist. Finlay is something of a pariah, now. Too many people know both his background and about the attacks on him.’

  ‘The Met rumour mill always did work quickly.’

  ‘I spoke to Hereford as well. They’ve had calls – people checking up on him, some of them former members of the regiment who were being nosy.’

  ‘He won’t be easy to place … and he’s too young to retire.’

  ‘And his skill set isn’t what you might describe as easily transferrable.’

  Grahamslaw shrugged. ‘You sound like you’re building up to something. If it’s a position with the Security Service, I can tell you now, he won’t go for it.’

  ‘I know. He’s made that more than clear when I’ve talked it over with him. I was thinking of something closer to home.’

  ‘Here at the Yard, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. Easy commute from the safe house and somewhere we can keep an eye on him.’

  ‘But doing what? He has no detective experience and he’s not the kind of man to slip easily into some kind of administrative role.’

  Fellowes paused for a moment. ‘Is it too late in his career to be taught to do detective duty?’

  ‘Depends what you have in mind. Junior CID courses are normally for DCs … but I’m sure I could swing something, if needed.’

  ‘How about your new trafficking squad? It’s undermanned and underfunded.’

  ‘Max Youldon’s team, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right. I thought he might do well working with Nina Brasov.’

  Grahamslaw pondered the idea. ‘It might work. Brasov is damn good … Finlay would learn a lot from her. She’s been doing some undercover work lately that takes her away from the office, though.’

  ‘I could have a word at the Home Office, if that would help?’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘Your budget. A little help with the cost of running the squad.’

  ‘You’re suggesting, if I put Finlay on that squad, the Whitehall mandarins might be more sympathetic to our requests for more funding?’ The Commander laughed. ‘I’m not so green as I am cabbage-looking, you know.’

  Fellowes smiled, her expression open and betraying no guile.

  He returned her gaze, maintaining a friendly exterior, but he wasn’t fooled. It was his guess Toni Fellowes was using him to help get Finlay placed so she could concentrate on the work that would have been building up in the aftermath of 9/11.

  ‘OK, I agree,’ Grahamslaw said. He grinned, almost imperceptibly, and this time to himself. He hoped Finlay would prove agreeable to the offer. The first step would be to get him up to the Yard to talk about it. And if a little plan he had in mind proved successful, that might happen sooner rather than later.

  Chapter 3

  MI5 safe house, West London

  The transition from the disturbed world of my subconscious to self-awareness was brutal.

  As I woke, I found the bed beneath me was wet, soaked in sweat, my skin dripping. Although I was hot, I shivered, my heart pounding, my chest heaving with huge, deep breaths.

  My senses returned, and with them awareness … familiarity. I recognised where I was. Home.

  Our new home. And I was alone.

  I’d been dreaming again, one of a number of disturbing nightmares that now regularly troubled my sleep and ended with me waking, like this, gripped by panic. And although the scenes varied, they were always very similar. Sometimes I would be fighting with my fellow policemen, desperate to alert them to some form of danger. In other scenarios, the strength in my limbs would be overcome by gravity and the unnatural, weighty resistance of the air around me. Time and again, these dreams would feature people from my past – ghostly memories returning to haunt me. Most nights I would lie on a bath towel in anticipation of the moment when my dreams would wake me. It helped to absorb the sweat and saved on bed sheets.

  I lay quietly for a few moments, waiting for my body to wind down from its imaginary exercise. My eyes, accustomed to the dark, allowed me to pick out the now familiar window of our bedroom. I say ours, although it was no longer shared.

  Jenny had recently taken to sleeping in the spare room. Twice, while asleep beside her, I had struck out and hurt her. I hated sleeping alone, we both did. But, for the sake of our health and her safety, it became unavoidable.

  We were now resident in West London. Home was a big, Edwardian place in a quiet side street. It had four bedrooms – all with high ceilings and decorative plasterwork – and a wonderful modern kitchen and living room. Jenny loved it. It came fully furnished, so the bulk of our furniture had been put into storage. All there was for us to do was look after the garden and keep the place fairly tidy. As I whiled away the days thinking about what had happened and deciding on when to return to work, I found the distraction of that garden very therapeutic.

  For the first three weeks in our new home, a combined team from MI5 and Special Branch had kept guard. While it was in some ways uncomfortable – you could never relax, knowing someone was the other side of the door – it did give me an interesting insight into how the Royal Family and senior politicians must feel to have people like me shadowing their every move. The Royals seemed used to it; we found it a struggle.

  Jenny and I had been debriefed by an efficient yet considerate MI5 officer called Toni Fellowes. Toni had been appointed as our family liaison officer and had now become something of a friend. She and Jenny seemed to get on particularly well.

  As Toni and I got to know each other, we had, inevitably, compared backgrounds. She was also ex-services, having been a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, seconded to the Special Boat Squadron, before her skills with language and computers had seen her recruited by the Security Service.

  Having gained her trust, and become easier with her company, I probed Toni for information on Richard Webb, the man who had tried to kill us. Toni appreciated that, even though Monaghan was dead, I still had questions outstanding: Had Webb been acting alone or were there others? Was there a cell that might still have me as a target? And what about Monaghan, my old boss? What part had he played in the conspiracy to kill my former colleagues? Was he actually MI5?

  It was early days, though. Toni was helpful but what she could tell me was limited. She made no promises but explained that initial analysis by SO13 suggested Webb had been acting outside any terrorist command structure in order to pursue his own deadly agenda. Monaghan really had been MI5, it was just his wife’s affairs had eaten away at him to such an extent, he decided upon revenge. He had got it into his mind that his late wife had been sleeping around and, as a result, he had decided to deal with all her supposed lovers. The two men had then linked up to pursue their deadly agenda. Monaghan had needed a team to take on the attacks; Webb wanted to find me. Now, with both of them dead, Toni explained the threat to my family had almost certainly disappeared.

  I remembered her words exactly, so important were
they to me and my family. It may have been something or nothing, but Toni’s use of the word ‘almost’ troubled me greatly.

  And the dreams continued.

  Chapter 4

  I was now awake and alert. Experience had taught me a return to sleep would be impossible. I lay still and, as I often did these days, I worried about the future.

  In the period since the attacks, I’d been doing a lot of thinking: about how I could get back to work, what role I could find, that kind of thing. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

  A meeting with Bob Sinclair, my Chief Superintendent at Stoke Newington, hadn’t gone well. It might have best been described as a ‘full and frank’ discussion. He pulled no punches and, as reasonably as he could, he explained to me I had become something of a problem.

  To his mind, the best thing for me was a move away from the frontline to an office job at Scotland Yard, maybe as a staff officer to one of the senior ranks. Intelligence work was also a possibility. He did his best to put a positive spin on my predicament, explaining there were a myriad of non-operational jobs in the Met – projects and departments where you could spend a whole career moving from one role to another, never wearing a uniform or going on the streets again. He was sure I would find something to suit me.

  I saw his point: colleagues thinking of me as a bullet magnet wouldn’t exactly make me sought-after on any shifts. So, even though I didn’t like what he was saying, I understood it. A job sat behind a desk didn’t appeal to me, though. It suited some; the kind that liked to be tied to a career structure and a pension but had lost the taste for front-line policing. As one desk job came to an end, they would simply apply for another. We called such people ‘plastics’. In time, they were policemen in name only. No way was I going to become a plastic.

  Having spent the afternoon in the garden, I was still turning these questions over in my mind as I left home late that night to drive the familiar route back into the Hertfordshire countryside. It had now been some time since we had moved away from our old home and I needed to return to collect a few items I was anxious should remain secret.

  In a hide concealed within the old oak tree at the end of the garden of our cottage, lay an Armalite rifle and a Heckler & Koch MP5. Disassembled but complete, they needed to be moved somewhere more secure before somebody found them and I ended up in even more difficulty.

  In the aftermath of the firefight in which Richard Webb had tried to kill us, the Anti-Terrorist forensic people had seized my old pistol, the Beretta trophy weapon I had kept since my time in Northern Ireland. I had been sad to see it go; it was like parting with an old friend.

  A lot of the guys from Hereford had trophy weapons they were supposed to hand in to the Quartermaster but had ‘forgotten’ to do so. Small arms and ammunition, knives and other weapons would be dropped by both enemy and friendly combatants during skirmishes. It was said that, during the Gulf War, more small arms seized from enemy soldiers were secretly brought into the UK by returning soldiers than there were weapons taken into the war in the first place. Stories like that have a habit of becoming exaggerated, but I wondered if some might be true.

  I approached the cottage from the north, across the fields behind the back garden. I didn’t expect the place to still be under surveillance – human or electronic – but I wasn’t about to take any chances. To protect my clothes, I’d pulled on an old RAF boiler suit I had picked up in an army surplus store. Cheap and cheerful, it didn’t exactly flatter my figure, but it would do the job. I was planning a long crawl through the fields and hedges to reach the garden of our former home.

  Progress across the fields was slow. There was only a little light from a half-moon, and, for much of the time, I had to feel my way. I made best use of the firm areas adjacent to the hedges and the additional cover this also provided. At about four hundred yards short of my target, I started to belly crawl. Within a very short distance, I was breathing hard and my elbows were starting to bruise. I had known it wasn’t going to be easy and promised myself that soon I would start making an effort to get fit again. It was months since I had done any running and my lack of fitness made hard work of what should have been a simple job.

  I lost count of the number of times I stopped to gain my breath. Eventually, after about an hour, I reached the end of the garden and sat back against the old oak tree. Here, I was well hidden and able to rest, my heart rate dropping gradually as I recovered from the exertion. I waited for several minutes, listening and watching. All was quiet.

  Hidden by the trees surrounding me, I eased myself to my feet and quickly located the loose bark that concealed the hide. In the dark, I had to feel for what lay within. I was careful, moving very slowly, cautious for any sign things were not as I had left them many weeks previously.

  I’d wrapped the component parts in oiled paper. Five small packages contained bolt carriers, stocks, grips, magazines; and then a final box held the two firing mechanisms. There was some body armour, a veil, gas mask and fire-resistant coveralls. With everything safely stored in my bag, I was just about to replace the bark when my hand touched something unexpected.

  It was paper. An envelope.

  For a few moments, I stood immobile, my arm still inside the tree trunk, contemplating the implications of what I held in my hand. Certainly, the envelope wasn’t mine. Jenny knew about the hide but she hadn’t mentioned anything.

  At first, I thought it had to be some kind of trap, or somehow linked to the attempt to kill me. But that just didn’t make sense. It would have been much easier to set up a wire to trigger an IED the moment I removed the bark. No, it was a sealed envelope, pure and simple. Inside, there would be a message. What it said and from whom it came would have to wait until I got back to the car and had a chance to read it.

  I sat down and looked at the envelope, weighed it in my hand and sniffed it. It appeared to be white, and seemed to only contain paper, maybe one sheet. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell if there was anything written on it or even whether it was addressed to me.

  I slipped it into my thigh pocket and made sure the Velcro tab was secure. Having found the mysterious note, I didn’t plan to lose it.

  One thing was certain. The hide was compromised and whoever left the note had guessed I would be back to recover my kit. The writer wanted to make a point. And if that was the case, then I figured they wouldn’t be watching the fields looking for me. I hoped my assumption was correct as, after just fifty yards crawling away from the garden on my stomach, I tired of the effort. I stood up, picked up my things and walked quickly back towards my car. I was done with scrabbling about in the dirt.

  I checked the car and then stashed the disassembled weapons and kit safely in the boot. The envelope sat on the passenger seat, calling to me to open it.

  For several miles I kept a close eye on my rearview mirror. Finally, convinced I wasn’t being followed, I pulled over and switched on the interior light.

  The envelope had just one word on it, ‘Finlay’, handwritten, in biro. I didn’t recognise the handwriting.

  My hands were shaking as I peeled it open. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

  When you are ready, call me.

  It was signed Bill G.

  Grahamslaw.

  From the moment I had appeared on Commander Grahamslaw’s radar, he had been telling me my days as a uniformed cop were numbered. Resist it as much as I tried, I couldn’t dispute his logic.

  I took a deep breath and thought. My next step would be crucial. Telephoning Grahamslaw wouldn’t be enough. I would go to see him. But first, I had another little job to take care of.

  The next spot I would choose to hide my kit best not be known to anyone, especially not the Commander of the Met Anti-Terrorist Squad.

  I had just the place.

  Chapter 5

  Toni Fellowes hated the journey in to work.

  Every working day, she would make the ten-minute walk to North Harrow tube station to join the other commu
ters. Ignoring her fellow travellers, she would bury her head in a book to try and remove herself from the discomfort of the journey. Toni enjoyed reading, it took her to dream places away from the confines of her routine. But sometimes she wasn’t really paying attention to the words on the page; instead she was thinking, planning.

  Not that there was really much point in planning. Without exception, her ideas had been dashed on the altar of reality. Every crowded and uncomfortable tube ride seemed to serve as a reminder of her failure to convert thought into action. With Christmas not far away she knew, once again, she would most likely start a new year in the same line of work. Yet, she would still promise herself that her situation was only temporary.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the challenge of working for the Security Service; it was more a case of needing a new challenge, or a change … something to stop the routine.

  Things had been very different nine years previously – on 23rd November 1992 to be precise, the day she had first been approached to join MI5. At the time, having only just passed out from Dartmouth as a Royal Navy officer, an ability with languages had seen her assigned as a temporary Liaison Officer to the SBS, the Special Boat Service.

  At the time, the SBS had been working on an operation with the Met firearms branch to ambush a large drugs shipment that was being brought into London on a three-hundred-ton, South-American-registered supply vessel labelled ‘Foxtrot Five’. As the crew were known to be Spanish speaking, Toni had been brought on to the operation to help the SBS take control of the ship’s bridge.

  In the event, when the assault on the ship took place, the whole crew were absent ashore. They were picked up by local police and Toni’s translation skills were never utilised. But she had experienced the adrenalin rush of the assault; she had been able, albeit temporarily, to wear the kit of the ‘men in black’ and – most notably – she had succeeded in getting noticed by MI5.