by Chris Simms
Igors Ikaunieks
‘Any preference?’ Jon asked, lifting a forefinger.
‘Eleven.’
The number she plays in her hockey team, Jon thought. He pressed the button and waited. No reply. ‘And your second choice?’
‘Your turn, I insist,’ Iona replied.
He tried seven. The number for openside flanker: his position from when he played rugby.
‘Hello?’ A male voice, sounding surprised.
Jon bent nearer the intercom. ‘Good morning. I’m an officer with Greater Manchester Police. Could I have a brief word?’
‘Why?’
‘We’re making enquiries in this area.’
‘Enquiries.’
‘Yes.’
‘About what?’
He gave Iona a look that caused her to smirk. ‘That’s what I’d like to have a word with you about. Sir.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes please.’
‘I don’t want a new phone.’
‘I see.’
‘I don’t want to buy anything.’
‘Well, that’s fine. I’m a policeman, not a salesman.’
‘You’re a policeman?’
‘Yes. Detective Constable Spicer. I can show you my identification.’
‘Press the door. You’ll see me on the first floor.’ The buzzer sounded.
They stepped into a dim hallway with an elaborately tiled floor. Closed doors and the smell of old food. The dark green stair carpet added to the gloom. Looking up, Jon could see a pale face looking over the banister.
‘Where is your police force badge?’ the person called down.
Jon reached for his ID as he began trudging up the stairs. This, he thought, is going to be a long morning.
They made it back out almost fifteen minutes later. There had been no response from four of the flats. The other eight had all drawn blank looks from the occupants.
On the front path, Jon raised his face to the sky and breathed deeply. ‘One down.’
A pair of uniformed officers appeared from the neighbouring house. One met Jon’s enquiring glance with a shake of the head. He sent a grim-faced smile in return. Further down the road, three officers from a separate group were gathered at the intersection with the first side street. As Jon tried to work out why they were standing about doing nothing, a fourth officer came hurrying out of the corner shop with the green awning. He began conferring excitedly with them. ‘Something’s up,’ Jon announced.
Iona turned round. One officer who, to Jon, looked nearly old enough to be a Premiership footballer, started speaking into his handset. A colleague stepped to the edge of the pavement and looked up and down the road.
Jon started in their direction. ‘Lads?’
They turned to him with a look of excitement and relief. The officer who’d been in the shop used a thumb to point back at it. ‘The owner of this place.’
Jon glanced at the awning.
Mega-Mart. Cash & Carry. Grocery. Halal Meat. Fish and Poultry.
He guessed the loose piles of fresh fruit and vegetable in crates at the front would be a damn sight cheaper than what he was used to paying in Asda. ‘What about him?’
‘He says, for all of yesterday, there was a bright red Porsche parked outside the house across the road.’
CHAPTER 31
Half an hour of driving and the silence in the car had grown oppressive. Every so often, Elissa stole a glance at him in the rear view mirror. Head bowed, arms crossed, he stared down at his feet. Several times, she was tempted to try and find out what was bothering him. But what was the point? She’d ask, OK? He’d reply Da or Net and, from that point on, further communication was impossible.
She switched the radio on but, after a matter of seconds, she could see his posture tensing. She tried changing stations, searching for something that didn’t fill the car with thudding bass or breathless vocals. The fourth station the tuner settled on was, initially, silent. She was about to press again when faint piano notes tentatively drifted from the speakers. He lifted a hand. Do nothing.
The notes began to build, forming into something delicate and beautiful.
‘You like?’ She asked. ‘Good?’
‘Good,’ he replied, closing his eyes.
Thank Christ for that, she thought, now also able to relax. As the hypnotic music played on, she surveyed the land on her side of the M56. A flame wavered like a yellow flag against the pale blue sky. She spotted a second, trapped deeper within the metallic snarl of pipes that writhed and twisted along the horizon. Stanlow Oil Refinery. In less than two hours, they should be at the property.
Then what? She still had no idea of how the plan would be carried out. She wondered how much Doku knew. Probably only fragments, as well. That’s what it was like, being a soldier – if he could be called that. You didn’t question orders, you followed them, trusting that those giving them knew what they were doing.
She so hoped they did. The information she’d given Uncle Bilal all those weeks ago was only relevant for September. And tomorrow would be the final day of the month. They were almost out of time. There wouldn’t be another chance. Not now she’d left her job, abandoned her flat, revealed herself to the authorities.
The music faded into silence. Doku took a sudden intake of breath, like he had been jerked from sleep. His eyes snapped open. ‘Phone,’ he announced, word heavily accented. He repeated it more loudly. ‘Phone.’
His voice had an emphatic tone. He looked at her eyes in the mirror and lifted his right hand to his ear. ‘Phone.’
Something was starting up on the radio that involved violins and a flute. She turned it off. ‘Phone call? You need to make a call?’ Had he remembered a contact number? What was so urgent? ‘You need to phone someone?’
He was about to speak, hand cupping the air before his mouth as if trying to pull the words out. Grunting with frustration, he scanned the road before them. After a few seconds, he directed a finger at something in front. She tried to work out where he was pointing. They were passing some kind of tanker in the slow lane. A bright yellow triangular sticker with an exclamation mark was on its rear. Did he mean that? But the vehicle fell behind them and he was still pointing. Further off, all she could see was countryside. A line of trees. A distant plane in the sky. ‘What?’
He jabbed his finger, hand now drifting across so it stayed pointing in the right direction. Something they were passing. She looked to the side window and saw a fenced-off grey pole with antennae at the top. A mobile phone mast.
‘Google,’ he said, returning his hand to his ear. ‘Phone. Google. You and me.’
She suddenly understood. Google translate. A mobile phone! ‘Yes, yes – I see. We can talk using the internet. Yes.’
His rested his hand on the back of the front passenger seat.
‘OK, we need services. A shop, to buy one.’ She thought back to the last time she’d driven out this way. It had been to visit Cheshire Oaks, a retail park with dozens of designer outlets selling off old stock. It had been with Tarek. They’d left with loads of outdoor gear from The North Face. She recalled that, adjoining it, was a normal shopping centre. It was bound to have a mobile phone store.
CHAPTER 32
Once Iona put the call in, Jon was amazed at how fast the nearest houses in the street were quietly cleared of their occupants. Next, a plainclothes officer parked an old Ford Ka outside 17a. Before he got out of the vehicle, he briefly fiddled about, as if looking for something. As he checked under an empty BurgerKing container on the dashboard, instructions were coming to him through his earpiece. The cardboard container needed to be angled slightly more anti-clockwise so the camera hidden inside it was pointing directly at the property. He did as asked, climbed out of the vehicle, locked it and sauntered off.
Back at the church car park, they now had a live feed on the target property.
Gathered outside the van were a dozen CTU officers, none of them small. With no intelligence to directl
y suggest firearms or explosives, they knew any request for bursting into the property with an armed unit would be refused. That left the Effective Unarmed Entry option. Trained to Level One in Public Order, Jon had immediately volunteered. Among the other members of the squad, Jon recognised five from the basement gym, including Hugh Lambert. To his relief, Kieran Saunders had also put his name forward; that was his raid-partner sorted.
Using a neighbouring ground-floor flat that had been cleared of the people living there as a template, a plan of 17a had been drawn up. The eight man raid team were put in pairs, and each one allocated a room. They would use flood tactics, pouring into the property at high speed, the first pair taking the first room, second pair the second room, and so on. The sight of anyone inside the flat overrode that system: the nearest officers would simply rush the person, using whatever force was needed to restrain him.
As Jon zipped up his turnout suit, what looked like a rigid grey suitcase was being taken out of the van.
‘Hey, Jon – seen one of these before?’ Kieran asked him.
‘Got no idea what it is,’ Jon replied, strapping a shin protector that incorporated a knee-pad to his leg.
‘Show him, Ian.’
‘Not much to see,’ the detective replied, holding it up. He opened the lid to reveal a piece of equipment that seemed more suited to a hospital ward. ‘Thermal imager,’ he announced. ‘I slip into the flat next door and sweep this across the adjoining walls. Anyone in the flat shows up as a big glowing blob.’
‘Even in rooms on the far side?’ Jon asked.
‘Even them,’ he confirmed. ‘Though the reading will be a lot less clear.’
‘Got all the best toys in the CTU,’ Kieran said proudly.
‘We have,’ Jon slid his hand into a forearm protector. ‘Though my guess is it will still come down to just snotting some bastard.’
‘Bloody lovely,’ Kieran grinned, lacing up a steel-toe-capped boot.
Ten minutes later, they were all kitted up. Helmets with visors and leather neckguards, full limb protection, reinforced gloves, attack vests, tasers, batons and handcuffs. Jon knew the gear added a few inches of bulk to them all; they were a fearsome sight.
Hugh Lambert squared up to his raid partner and announced in a low voice, ‘I feel epic.’
‘You, Mr Lambert,’ the other man replied, ‘are so Money Supermarket.’
Pockets of laughter around the group.
‘Any movement in the target property?’ the search co-ordinator, an inspector Jon hadn’t met before, asked.
Iona was over by the monitor showing the live feed from the camera car. ‘Nothing, Sir.’
‘OK, no sound now, lads.’ He lifted a radio and spoke more quietly. ‘Ian, have you swept it yet?’ He listened for a few seconds before replying. ‘Roger that.’ He turned to the group. ‘Listen up, a faint reading in the room across the corridor; that’s first door on the right. The one with a window out onto the street. Who’s Raid One?’
Hugh Lambert and his partner raised their hands.
‘Right. It’s your room. Could be a cat, could be someone in a sleeping bag, could be electrical equipment: just be aware. Shall we get this done?’
Their van came to halt thirty metres from 17a. Because curtains in the property were all drawn, they didn’t need a covert approach. Instead, they jogged along the pavement, the two officers at the front carrying a Double Wam. Larger than an Enforcer, the Double Wam needed two officers to swing it and delivered something closer to fifteen tons of energy to any surface it connected with.
The raid team started to line up in their pairs. Seeing the battering ram being readied, Jon stepped forward. It was the first rule of a forced entry and one pumped-up officers frequently forgot: try the door handle. Locked. ‘Worth a go,’ he whispered and stepped back alongside Kieran.
The Wam officers raised the battering ram again. They looked at each other and gave a simultaneous nod. A signal to the rest of the team. Jon’s mouth felt dry. Adrenaline had made his eyes feel too big for their sockets. Knees slightly flexed, he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, just like the rest of the group. If anyone was unfortunate enough to be in the corridor beyond the door, they were getting it. Big time.
The Double Wam was swung slowly back and then rapidly forward. The door flew in with a huge crash. ‘Breach! Stand clear!’ the Wam officers screamed, jumping out the way.
Lambert and his partner piled through the doorway. ‘Police! Stand still! Police! Stand still!’
Also roaring, the next two pairs set off directly behind, followed by Jon and Kieran. By the time they started down the corridor, Raid One were in the first room. As he rushed past, he heard Lambert shouting ‘Body, body, body!’
Raid Two barged into the second room and Jon had to slow up as Raid Three collided in the doorway to the bathroom. He squeezed round the rearmost officer and charged into the living area, yelling as loud as he could. ‘Police! Stand still!’
Armchair. A sofa. No one behind it. Coffee table. Kieran was next to him screeching the word Police like a banshee. Curtains drawn, gap at the bottom. No feet showing. TV in corner. Desk. No one beneath. The pair who’d wielded the Double Wam barrelled past them and into the kitchen, also shouting.
Now Jon could hear cries of Clear from up the corridor. He looked at Kieran and got a nod. ‘Clear!’
They both turned towards the kitchen and, a second later, got the same call from there. Containment officers at the rear of the property would be checking the yard, including any wheelie bins. It had been known.
Chest still hammering, he pushed the visor of his helmet up. Everyone else was doing the same thing. Up the corridor he could hear muffled voices. What had been the shout as they went in? Body. It had to be Kelly, he thought sadly. Wrong place, wrong time: a life could end that easily. It was Lambert who’d been yelling it.
The other officers were trooping back towards the front door, their part in the process now over. Next would be a thorough search of the place, right back to timbers and brickwork if necessary. The merest scrap of evidence could be crucial.
He couldn’t resist a quick look about. Nothing of note in the kitchen. In fact, it looked like someone had given it a thorough wipe down. Toaster in the corner, block of sharp knives next to it. Everything in its place. Turning to go, he looked into the sink.
The remains of a tear-shaped ring of ash, its narrow end merging with the plughole. A piece of paper had been set alight and dropped in, then a burst of water had spread the debris outwards, but not washed all of it away. He wondered what had been on it. Something important, that was for sure.
The rest were filing out the front door into bright sunlight. ‘Anyone recognise her?’ Jon called.
Lambert looked back. ‘Who says it’s a her?’
‘Well, is it?’
‘Yeah.’
Jon was nearly at the bedroom door. ‘And?’
‘One of your lady friends, by the look of it.’
He peered in. She was practically a silhouette in the half-light. Her posture was lifeless, yet she was oddly erect in the chair. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, he began to make out sections of pale grey covering her forearms and midriff. Tape. She’d been taped into the chair.
Now he was able to make out the blondness of her hair. She was wearing black boots that rose almost to her knees. The padded jacket was yellow. Kelly. He thought about the other girls and how they wanted to know if they should be worried. If a psycho was out there.
‘Is it her?’
He looked round to see Iona beside him. ‘Yeah, looks it. She’s been restrained by tape.’
Iona stared at the lonely figure. ‘Nasty: doing it while she couldn’t even move.’
‘Yup,’ Jon replied. ‘Wonder whether he took his time. To get some enjoyment from it.’
‘We’ll find him.’ She placed a hand on his arm. ‘We will.’
‘I bloody hope so,’ Jon replied dejectedly.
Outside, he
contemplated driving over to the street where Kelly had been touting for business. He wanted to let the others know that, although she was dead, it wasn’t a Ripper-style killing: the start of a brutal, random spree that might involve them. But he couldn’t. Not until all the formalities had taken place.
Beside them, the front door of the neighbouring ground-floor flat opened. The officer who’d been scanning through the walls with the thermal imager stepped out. The equipment was now back in its carry case. He plonked it down on the pathway and checked the door behind him. ‘Is the number of this place 17a or 18a?’
‘You were in 18a,’ Iona replied. ‘17a was the target flat.’
‘Thought so.’ He held up a magazine, sealed tight in its polybag. ‘This had been put through the letterbox – but it was meant for 17a. A Mr H Omari.’
Iona stepped closer. ‘What is it?’
‘A magazine. The postie put it through the wrong door.’
‘What kind of magazine?’
‘Speed boats. Bloody great things, by the look of it. The sort for taking out to sea.’
CHAPTER 33
The signs for Cheshire Oaks started to appear just before the stretch of M56 came to a finish. At that point, traffic could continue straight on to the A55 and into Wales – or it could branch right on to the M53 which led north, into the stubby finger of land called the Wirral. The signs for the shopping centre took Elissa right.
A few minutes later, they turned off the M53. After negotiating a confusing series of roundabouts, she saw a parking area beside the retail outlet. It was packed. Elissa had to circle about for almost five minutes before a space became free. All the while Doku’s eyes roved from side to side, taking in the ranks of gleaming vehicles on either side. She wondered what the cars were like where he came from. Probably some obscure make you couldn’t buy in Europe.
She drew to a halt and looked at the shops. The walkways teemed with people, most laden with large bags. ‘OK.’ She pointed to herself then the shops. ‘Me, go. You,’ she patted the dashboard, ‘here. OK?’
