by Matt Johnson
‘Look at the men in the background.’
Toni did as asked and, within a few seconds, spotted the very thing that had caused Nell to become so animated.
In the background, clear as day, was former SAS Sergeant, Bob Bridges.
‘That’s amazing,’ said Toni.
‘And it’s not the best bit.’ Nell held her hand over the open page of her report, her index finger indicating a particular section of text.
Toni pulled the file closer to get a better look and, as she did so, the true cause of her researcher’s excitement became very, very clear. The Personal File in the name of the Cristeas had been created by none other than Howard Green.
Chapter 54
Hampstead, North London
Rewinding the CCTV recording provided absolute confirmation that I was right.
On the station forecourt stood a black Mercedes, of the type that appeared so popular with the Cristeas. The registration mark was easily readable. As I read the number out loud, it dawned on me that I was off the hook. The car was the key to identifying Relia’s killers.
Josh telephoned the office to report what we had learned.
After updating Naomi, things moved very quickly. Back at the enquiry room, the office team made calls. The Mercedes was a hire car. Within just half an hour of me telling the DCI that I had recognised the escaped gunman on the CCTV, detectives from Heathrow were seizing paperwork from the hire car company.
Before the hour had elapsed, Immigration Control at Heathrow Airport had come up with a list of four male East Europeans who had arrived as a group on the Sunday morning. They were Constantin Macovei, Iulian Roman and Marius Gabor from Romania and a Serbian, Petre Gavrić.
Iulian Roman and Marius Gabor had provided the Border Agency with an address in Ealing. It matched the one given to the hire car company. Plus, the desk clerk had taken copies of the men’s passports.
At seven that evening, I was able to confirm, from a photograph, that the escaped gunman was Marius Gabor. The DCI even congratulated us. I began to feel like a proper detective and, best of all, Gabor was identified without my having to say how I knew him.
By seven-thirty, the address provided by Roman and Gabor was under surveillance by local CID. They were relieved by the Met Specialist Surveillance Team, SO11, at eight-thirty.
SO11 confirmed that the house was occupied.
SO19, firearms branch, sent their initial assessor onto the plot at ten.
By eleven o’clock, Josh and I were with DCI Bowler and six of the AMIT team, sitting in the rear of a dark-grey Luton van parked around the corner from the house.
By eleven-thirty, the SO19 arrest team were ready to go.
Chapter 55
In the rear of the SO19 Rapid Deployment Vehicle sat eight black-clad figures. One of them, much smaller than the others, was the first to emerge from the rear door of the vehicle.
Lynn Wainwright was a rarity in a male dominated world. One of only two female specialist firearms officers in the department, her job on this operation was to use a Remington semi-automatic shotgun loaded with Hatton rounds – made to destroy locks and hinges, but not harm anyone behind the door – thereby getting her team through any locked doors quickly.
A twelve-man SO19 team was to be used to secure the house quickly and ensure minimum risk to life. At the pre-deployment briefing, she and the others had learned that one of the AMIT detectives had previously seen a suspect with a semi-automatic pistol. As a result of that warning, it had been decided that SO19 would make the initial entry, secure the premises, and then hand over to the CID officers.
Surveillance officers had reported movement at the house. Lights had been turned on and off, and shadows had been seen in both upstairs and downstairs rooms. Initial estimate was that there were at least three occupants.
Two hours after arriving on the plot, the CID officer in charge had called a meeting. The firearms tactical advisor, an SO19 inspector, returned after about half an hour with the surveillance team report. They moved into attack positions fifteen minutes later.
The house was reported to now be in darkness. It was a standard 1930s three bedroom semi-detached. There was rear access via a carwidth alleyway to a separate garage at the end of the garden. A gate on the left-hand side of the front door provided access to the rear. The back garden contained a skip that was full of earth and rubble. It would provide good cover for the team at the rear.
The briefing from the inspector had detailed expected room layouts with three downstairs, including the kitchen, and four upstairs including a bathroom.
Lynn was assigned to the initial entry team. She would work closely with Brad, the shield man, and Tony, who would open the front door with the ‘big key’. Tony was a sixteen-stone weightlifting enthusiast who handled the ‘Enforcer’ battering-ram door-opener as if it were made of balsa wood.
As number three behind Brad and Tony, Lynn’s Remington would open anything the Enforcer didn’t. Her prowess with the weapon had resulted in her affectionately being known as ‘Avon calling’. The nickname was the only hint of a joke that Lynn was ever subject to; she knew she had the respect of her colleagues.
At 01:15 hrs, under cover of darkness, they took up positions as briefed.
At 01:30 hrs, the inspector radioed that all officers were in place.
At 01:32 hrs, the ‘GO’ command came over the radio network.
Chapter 56
Tony had the front door down in an instant. It was UPVC and, despite having security bolts, offered little resistance to the Enforcer.
With the Remington surplus to requirements, Lynn tucked in behind Tony’s ballistic shield as the remaining team members entered the hallway and dispersed to clear the rooms. The first four black-clad officers dived past her and Tony, moving towards the ground floor rooms. Five more then followed the two of them up the stairs to the bedrooms.
The house was secure within twenty-five seconds of the front door going in. It was also empty.
Immediately, the Inspector gave the command to check the garage and the understairs cupboard. Within a couple of minutes, Lynn heard the transmission that they had been cleared.
That left the attic.
Lynn knew the team Sergeant wouldn’t relish that prospect. Attic entry had its own particular problems. Not only would any suspect have the high ground, they would also have the opportunity to place themselves anywhere within a three hundred and sixty-degree arc of fire. The officer entering might be backlit and the suspect hidden in the darkness.
The surveillance team had confirmed multiple occupants, so unless they had made some kind of unholy foul-up, there were several people up there.
Tony was called up to remove the ceiling hatch. Manoeuvring the ram above head height wasn’t easy, but Tony was strong. One hard swing and the flimsy wooden door burst open and flew away into the dark loft space. Ron, the Sergeant, called upwards for those inside to come down. There was no response.
From her position in the hall, Lynn was vaguely aware of whispered voices at the top of the stairs. A few moments later, the Sergeant came down to speak to her.
‘Hatch is too small for us lads. With kit on, we can’t get into it quick enough. Sorry Avon, but I’m gonna have to ask you to do the entry.’
Lynn was horrified. For some, fear of the dark is culturally indoctrinated, for others, her included, it was instinctive. Darkness spelled danger.
Any lone cop, faced with unknown horrors in the dark, knows that he doesn’t have the luxury of a computer-generated restart or an extra life. So Lynn was already starting to sweat as she trudged up the stairs to the landing. She wondered how the average member of the public would feel about poking their head into a dark and dusty attic expecting to be confronted by an armed and cornered criminal. Peering into the darkness to find herself lit up by a bright-orange flash was not what she signed up for.
But, as the smallest member of the team, there was no way she could turn down the request.
> Ron handed Lynn an MP5 then outlined his plan. They would balance her on the ballistic shield, just below the hatch. Brad and Tony would stand by with a small aluminium ladder. All lights would be killed and then they would wait for a minute and listen. Ron would then throw two flash-bangs into the attic and exactly three seconds after the second grenade exploded, the two lads holding the shield would launch Lynn into the loft like a jack-in-a-box. Once inside, she should step to one side and use the Maglite on the MP5 she was now carrying to light up the east and south faces of the house.
Brad would be behind her in the loft space. Ron figured Brad would be slim enough to squeeze his upper body through the space so that he could cover the north and west aspects. It sounded a reasonable plan, if it wasn’t for the darkness.
Two minutes later, Lynn was balanced and standing on the shield, her head just below the roof-space entrance. She closed her eyes to buy a little time and allow them to get used to the darkness. A moment later, all lights were killed and they waited.
Silence. Nothing stirred.
The grenades went in. Lynn closed her eyes and pressed her hands hard against the gas mask to shield her ears and minimise the percussion effect.
In an enclosed area like a roof space, stun grenades were at their most effective. Both exploded, almost simultaneously. Lynn waited, counting the seconds.
The flash-bangs were designed to emit a blinding light and a noise so loud that it caused temporary loss of hearing. They would give the incoming firearms team a momentary advantage over any waiting suspect.
Lynn was all too aware that the grenades also came at a cost, though. The element of surprise was lost as the defenders knew you were coming and the dust cloud that was thrown up in the attic obscured any view. She braced herself for launch.
A hand tapped her left shoulder and in an instant the shield lifted and she was thrown through the hatch into the darkness.
Lynn dived right, away from the opening. Switching the Maglite torch on, she scanned her designated sides of the roof space while moving down and to the left to get clear of the opening. The dust cloud was thick and almost impenetrable. The light picked up dirt particles, swirling and choking the air. To her right, someone coughed. She swung the MP5 towards the sound.
Ron’s plan hadn’t allowed for the dust disturbance, she realised. If someone fired at the source of the beam, she would be toast. There was more coughing, then a voice, female. The accent, foreign.
‘Please … don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.’
She called out. ‘Armed police. Step forward.’
There was a movement, just discernible through the dust cloud. To her left, there was scuffling. Brad was squeezing through the loft hatch.
There were no orange flashes from the darkness, no shots, no sudden pain or explosion of movement of the kind that she had prepared herself to face. Just a woman, in underwear, coughing and choking on the dust as she struggled across the joists that made up the attic floor.
‘Hands out. Stand still,’ she shouted, her voice muffled by the mask. The half-naked woman stood.
‘Lie down, keep your hands in front of you where I can see you.’ The woman hesitated.
‘Lie down … now!’
Lynn kept the woman covered with the MP5 and Maglite beam as Brad squeezed through the hatch and then stepped forward to plasticuff her wrists behind her back. The dust was clearing. A third black-clad figure appeared from below. A voice crackled though her earpiece.
‘Trojan five. Multiple movements from adjacent house.’ The neighbours were awake.
Brad lowered the woman through the loft hatch. She was skinny and fitted through easily. There was a muffled voice from ahead of her.
The third firearms officer had found something.
Chapter 57
With the house secured, the DCI called us in to have a look around.
I was one of the last to enter. Josh volunteered to check though the downstairs rooms. The DCI winked at him as I was despatched up the stairs to take a look at what had happened in the loft area.
I was slightly surprised that the SFO team had chosen to use flashbangs. At the Iranian Embassy siege, the heat generated by the grenades had been responsible for starting the fires that gutted the building. In the cramped space of the attic, any inflammable materials might have caused severe problems. That said, any operation that ends in success without loss of life is a good one. The debrief would be the time for questions.
An eagle-eyed member of the firearms team had spotted the reason for the apparent lack of people in the house. In the attic space, behind a cardboard box that had been pulled against the wall adjoining the nextdoor property, he had spotted a hole cut into the brickwork. Enough bricks had been removed to allow the occupants of the target house to escape and then pull the box behind them to conceal their route. The first woman found hadn’t quite made it in time.
The firearms team had moved quickly to seal off both houses. With no further escape possible, they had entered the second house. In the upstairs rear bedroom they found the remaining occupants. Cowering in the dark, their faces pale and petrified, were seven more women. All were dressed as the first, in just underwear. There was no light bulb in the room and no heating in the house.
And there was no sign of the Romanian men we were looking for.
One of the women spoke enough English to explain that the room in which they were found was their living quarters. They had four single mattresses between them and no bed linen. The mattresses were old, stained and smelled of urine. They shared one toilet and a bath with a single tap that only produced cold water. All the other rooms were for entertaining clients.
According to the woman, the men who ran the brothel had fled about an hour before the raid. They had ordered the women to hide in the second house and keep quiet. If it hadn’t been for one of the women being unable to get through the hole in the brick wall due to a back injury, they might not have been discovered.
The DCI made arrangements for the women to be looked after by local uniformed officers and two detectives from the divisional domestic violence unit were called in from home. They would arrange physical examinations, taking of statements and temporary accommodation. It was going to be a long night.
A large number of passports were found in an understairs cupboard. Some of them belonged to the girls who had been living at the house, but many more bore details of other women – as likely as not those working as sex slaves in similar houses elsewhere in the capital. The girls had one thing in common that we quickly picked up on: they were all from Eastern Europe.
It looked like the houses had, at one time, been converted for student accommodation. All the ‘entertainment’ rooms had a double bed, a sink and heavy curtains. There were no carpets. The lower rooms had large rugs in front of the fireplaces, which partly covered the floorboards and offered a small amount of comfort to the occupant. In some rooms there was a single, central ceiling light, but in most the power was turned off at the mains circuit board. The men in charge of the houses even controlled the electricity supply.
One room did have working power points; it was set up with a camera tripod and lights and was cleaner than the others. Beneath the bed and in cupboards the detective allocated to search the room found sex toys, condoms, outfits and sado-masochistic equipment. It didn’t take a lot to work out what was filmed in this improvised studio.
I sent Nina a text; I knew she would want to be involved in interviewing the women. She was starting to build up a decent network of contacts and knowledgeable interpreters. It might well be that the women would know things that might help in identifying Relia’s killers. Whether they would be willing to talk was another question. As Nina had explained when I first met her, in their home countries these women were used to a police force that either turned a blind eye to the slave trade or was actively involved in it. Persuading them to trust anyone in authority was nigh-on impossible.
For me and the other members of the AM
IT team, our role at the houses ended at gone four in the morning when the forensic team arrived to undertake a more thorough search.
It was six o’clock when I finally made it home.
The house was quiet.
I crept upstairs, sneaked a peek at Becky and then undressed in the spare room. As I crawled into our bed, Jenny was breathing gently. Beneath the duvet, the bed felt warm and welcoming.
She stirred, her arms reached out for me. As we pressed together she shivered briefly. I kissed her cheek.
‘You’re cold,’ she said.
‘And knackered,’ I whispered.
‘I missed you this morning. I had something to show you.’
‘Something nice?’
‘I think so. It’s some estate agent blurb. There’s a couple of nice ones.’
‘Can I look at it in the morning?’
‘It’s already morning. I’m up soon to go and see mum, remember?’
I was vaguely aware of Jenny saying something more but it didn’t sink in. Exhaustion got the better of me. I was quickly asleep.
Chapter 58
MI5 office, New Scotland Yard
Nell was in danger of turning their research into a race. Toni smiled as she saw the focussed way her researcher applied herself to her work. They both knew there was more to find, especially now that they suspected Howard Green to be a common factor.
The coincidence had set Toni thinking. On the train journey home the previous night, and even as she had settled down to sleep, it had dominated her thoughts. The meetings, the warning not to get involved, his interest in Robert Finlay; it all added up to something. It was just a question of what.
There was one other thing that kept her awake, one factor that she hadn’t dared share with Nell. Her concern regarding the security pass and the one occasion it had been out of her control. Dave Batey had scoffed at the notion someone in MI6 may have been responsible. But now, if they found anything else to implicate Howard Green, the coincidences would be mounting up, even to the point of conspiracy.
