Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  Swan took Gnasher out into the front garden and when Thompson arrived he was throwing a ball for the happy-looking mutt to chase. She was surprised at how relaxed he looked, but the pimp and one-time runt had finally come to terms with what he was and what he’d been. They went inside and she started to brief him on what would happen and what they would need him to do.

  Turner drove the car across the breadth of Scotland and despite all the plans and potential problems he had running through his mind, he marvelled at the country as they made their way through the Highland landscape. He thought that when this was all over he might spend a bit of time getting to know the place and follow his passion for the outdoors and fishing. The only thing in his way was the skinny little figure of Ricky Swan.

  47

  To reach Loch Melfort all a driver had to do was navigate the crowded streets of Oban and head south into some of the loveliest parts of Argyll, with its dazzling seascapes, ancient churches, gravestones carved with the images of long-dead island warriors and enough dramatic natural beauty to keep most people happy for a lifetime. Sixteen miles south, past the tiny village of Kilmelford, there was a turn to the right and Melfort sea loch opened up in all its glory. One road in and one road out to get round it, which was perfect for the police operation. If the killers arrived and went in then they couldn’t get back out, at least not in a car, because there would be a small army of violent bastards with big fuck-off police guns waiting for them.

  The teams were briefed before they headed for Oban and Macallan would take control when she arrived. O’Connor was the senior rank, but he would give way to let her run things unless they needed his authority for more resources or a critical decision. A command vehicle was also on its way so they could operate securely a few miles inland from Loch Melfort and well out of the way of public travel routes. There was too much risk of exposure in using the Oban police offices, and it would have been impossible to conceal the movement of so many officers and vehicles.

  The CROPs men were first to go in, being well trained in camouflage and concealment. They could survive for long periods dug into hides and provided close-quarter information to the operational teams. They were hard, physically fit, and had to be, with nerves to match. They got close in to the targets they observed and acted as the operational team’s eyes till there was an arrest.

  The job Macallan had given them was a difficult one. Getting themselves into three positions to cover all sides of Swan’s place in broad daylight was risky with too little preparation and no cover of darkness to prepare their hides, but there was no time to wait.

  A heavy cloudburst came to their aid in the end, forcing the locals and tourists indoors and the three CROPs men managed to get under cover unobserved. Within an hour they called in that they were settled and had good eyes on all sides of Swan’s house.

  Over the next few hours, surveillance officers were deployed at points along the approach road both north and south of Melfort. Male and female officers booked into the few hotels in the area to act as backup if need be and in case the targets booked in anywhere themselves, and a firearms team was heading north as soon as they’d finished a full briefing in Glasgow.

  Keeping the operation secure was the biggest problem, but the weather came to the rescue again as the occasional downpours joined up to rain in that unique way of the west Highlands. The CROPs men cursed it, but gave thanks at the same time that they had the natural cover of pissing rain and low cloud that killed the light.

  Macallan was getting her bit of good luck, though she was being bounced around in the chopper and wanted to throw up with the motion. All she needed was to get on the ground and hear that Handyside’s team were on their way. That was the hard bit – the waiting; never really knowing whether the killers would actually turn up, and the gnawing worry that all these men and women had been deployed for nothing. It happened – every senior detective knew it, and sometimes the police had to wait hours, days, even weeks before the villains turned up. And when they did it was invariably all over in minutes, and even though the operation was successful, the detectives involved would feel that crash after the high – and the realisation that somewhere else another team of bad bastards were planning to do the same things all over again.

  The radio crackled into life – O’Connor was in the command vehicle, which had been set up in the grounds of an old deserted farmhouse well away from the routes used by the summer hillwalkers.

  ‘Most of the teams have been deployed, and even if we miss them on the roads, the CROP boys have clear sight of Ricky’s place. Lesley is babysitting him and she has a couple of firearms officers in there as well.’

  ‘That’s all good,’ she replied. ‘I should be with you in fifteen minutes. Are they ready to get Ricky out of there when we make the call?’

  ‘Yes, as soon as we know the targets are coming for him we pull Ricky out the back of the house. There’s good cover from trees and hills.’

  Macallan felt her stomach attempting to escape through her mouth as she signed off. She hated helicopters, having spent too much time during the Troubles being ferried by Army flyers who not only accepted scraping the hills when they were flying but thought it was a laugh.

  Turner lit up another cigarette to add to the fog that engulfed the inside of the car as they drove down the long hill that took them into Oban, where the streets were packed with soaked tourists. They drove down to a car park near the ferry terminal and got out to stretch their legs. After doing some foot anti-surveillance to make sure they hadn’t picked up the law along the way, they decided it was safe to go and grab a coffee. Turner called Handyside and told him where they were, that it was pissing down and that the place was a dump.

  ‘Okay, get some coffee in you. We might be able to get Ricky’s place from our friend Tony. He’s pushing some buttons with his contacts but he doesn’t sound like a happy bunny. I’m starting to think we might need to make him redundant.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Turner replied. ‘You know how I feel about the bastard. He’ll stab us in the back one of these days.’

  ‘Not if we do him first. Take care and let me know as soon as you find Ricky, if our friend in intelligence doesn’t come up with it first. Don’t move in before I give you the okay.’

  Turner hung up and they all squeezed into a badly ventilated café crowded with tourists waiting for the rain to clear. By the time they came back out, after being robbed for a cup of dishwater, the sun was blazing. It was a typical summer in the Highlands, all the seasons appearing in one day.

  ‘Christ, are we in the same place?’ Turner squinted into the sun and savoured the heat on his face. His mood should have lightened with the weather, but the whole job gnawed at his entrails. It was a massive risk taking Swan, and they might find out that he had nothing on them. He shook his head and headed back for the car.

  Macallan was back on the ground, her stomach settling back into place almost the minute she stepped warily out of the chopper, which took off again to get some of the specialist firearms team and medics ready to go if need be. O’Connor handed her a steaming brew as soon as she stepped into the command vehicle and she accepted it gratefully; she was still shivering after the bare-knuckle ride through the rainstorm and she could feel each sip warming her. The sun had burst through the clouds and the light sparkled off the wet hills as they began to steam under the sudden burst of warmth.

  ‘We’re almost ready. The firearms team should be on their way soon enough and we have a couple of shooters in with Ricky and Lesley,’ O’Connor told her.

  Macallan nodded and sipped more tea before calling Thompson.

  ‘It’s fine here,’ Thompson told her, ‘and for some strange reason Ricky is calm enough. Don’t know what’s happened to him, but he just wants us to do the business and get his daughter to safety.’

  ‘Okay, I want you to stay with him till we decide to do the extraction. Just one thing – let the dog run about the garden. I mentioned it to Harris
on and, who knows, he might have passed that little titbit to the boys. I’ll be here till this is resolved, so any problems just let me know right away. Get Ricky to show himself at the window every half hour. Our CROPs men would see anyone trying to get near enough for a snipe so he should be safe enough.’

  Macallan put the phone down and passed out an order that the registration number of every car that passed the first surveillance team north of Kilmelford should be called in to the command vehicle for an intel search. The road was tight and carried very little traffic so it could be done easily enough. If those cars didn’t pass the last surveillance team, at Arduaine, it had to mean they’d stopped somewhere. The cars’ occupants would mostly be locals and a few tourists, but it might give them a start if anything came up on the numbers.

  They settled down and the silence was only broken by the surveillance teams doing their communications checks and calling in the odd car number. The first of the firearms team arrived with the medics and Macallan breathed a quiet sigh of relief. They had enough people in place to tackle any unexpected developments that might crop up.

  O’Connor watched her chew the side of her finger and knew she was running and rerunning every possible scenario through her head.

  After a couple of hours the intelligence officer with Macallan gave her the list of cars that hadn’t passed the last surveillance team at the south end of the operation.

  ‘Anything stand out?’ She didn’t expect a miracle, but there was something. A few of the cars were locals and a couple of Home Counties wheels came up: posh 4x4s with nothing on the computer apart from expensive properties and double-barrelled names. Unlikely at best, but she kept them working the intelligence.

  Macallan put down the cup that had been empty for twenty minutes when the intel officer mentioned the car and van. The hired car from Perth might be nothing but the van was registered in North Shields. She felt her skin prickle – they were near; she knew it in her bones.

  ‘Anything on PNC for the van?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing that we can dig up at the moment. All we know is it’s a dodgy bit of town. Nothing else.’

  ‘Call the surveillance teams and the guys in the hotels. Have a look for the van and give them the numbers of the other cars as well. Let’s see where they are.’

  She looked across at O’Connor who was staring intently at her. ‘It’s them.’

  ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s them.’

  O’Connor stood up, called the firearms team leader and asked him for an update. The rest of his unit were just arriving and he was about to brief them on the job. They would be ready when the call was made.

  ‘If we get a chance we’ll put another couple of my guys into the house.’ The firearms team leader was experienced, calm and knew exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. If he had to pull the trigger on these bastards he wouldn’t hesitate. All he’d been told was that the men they might face wouldn’t hesitate either. That was good enough for him – and the men and women on his team.

  The atmosphere in the command vehicle was beginning to strain and Macallan stepped outside for some air and to ease the tension knotting up her muscles. She paced backwards and forwards but stayed close enough to the vehicle to hear any call from the teams.

  ‘Superintendent.’ The intel officer stuck his head out and gave her the nod. ‘The van’s in the car park of this hotel on the south side of the loch.’ He pointed it out on an electronic map of the area. ‘The hire car from Perth is there as well. The other cars have been traced to holiday lets around the loch and apparently they’re in the second week of their hols.’ The intel officer looked pleased and the mood lifted for them all.

  Macallan looked across at O’Connor and smiled. ‘Told you.’

  ‘So you did. So you did.’ He smiled back and, as he did every day now, wondered how he could have been daft enough to lose this woman.

  She called the team in the hotel. They had a perfect view of the car park and could see the van and the hired motor. They hadn’t seen the occupants arriving, but they would set up a watch on the cars for any movement and take it in turns to keep an eye on the bar in case they could get a physical description. Macallan moved another surveillance team to cover the entrance to the hotel and give the man and woman inside some backup.

  The female surveillance officer was Pam Fitzgerald and she hung around the lounge area till the receptionist headed for the ladies. It only took a moment to clock the names from the register, which meant nothing to the intel officer, but they had used Newcastle addresses that were all bogus when checked out.

  ‘They’re pros – why would they put their true identities?’ Macallan said to that and felt the knot in her stomach tighten.

  Another half hour passed and Fitzgerald was sitting in the lounge trying not to get carried away by the stunning view across the loch when three men joined up at the bar. She sipped her Coke and appeared to study her paper, and though she struggled to hear what was said, it didn’t matter – their Geordie accents carried across the bar and within two minutes she’d sent a text to the command vehicle.

  ‘They’re Geordies, the three of them. Description to follow.’

  Macallan slapped the desktop, hoping beyond hope that one of them was Handyside himself. Everyone stared at the intel officer as he took the next message. He looked up and ran off the three descriptions.

  ‘Pete Handyside isn’t with that lot. Two of them mean nothing but the third man is almost certainly Maxi Turner.’ Macallan was disappointed that there was no sign of Handyside, but she knew if they got Turner they could wrap up the boss with a bit more work. Tying Turner to Handyside shouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes.

  She turned to O’Connor and shrugged. ‘Why would the main man be there anyway? He’s the boss.’

  They were interrupted by another text from Fitzgerald. The man they thought was Turner had left the bar and gone out to the car park. The surveillance officer in the room grinned. ‘Gotcha.’ He clicked off three pictures, which were with Macallan two minutes later.

  ‘It’s him alright.’ She felt a bit more confident with a positive identification. Coincidences happened and sometimes an innocent punter wandered into an operation and looked like the real deal till he sued for wrongful arrest. A positive ID settled the nerves.

  The intel officer asked Macallan if she wanted the identification confirmed with the intelligence unit in Ponteland.

  ‘No. Absolutely no contact with them until this is over.’ The command was sharp and the intel officer knew that could only mean there was a rat operating on their side of the game. It happened and he knew not to ask again.

  Another report came in from Fitzgerald that the men had left the bar and appeared to have gone back to their rooms. Ten minutes later they came back into the lounge having all changed into warmer gear, as if they were planning to head outside. They finished their drinks, then picked up small rucksacks from the back of the van and stood around talking for a few minutes. It was obvious that Turner was in charge and giving the orders. Then Turner and one of the men left together, with the third target taking off ten minutes later, and soon they were all heading up the shore of the loch as if it was just another pleasant day out.

  ‘Okay, make sure everyone is on their toes with this so we don’t lose them, understood?’ Macallan had started to fire out orders, glad it was all moving at last. Waiting was always a pain in the arse and action was easier to deal with than worrying about what might go wrong. She put out the call that Maxi Turner would be referred to as Target 1 for the rest of the operation. The descriptions of the three men had been passed out and the picture of Turner flashed to all the units on the job.

  Turner barely spoke to the man walking beside him. They knew exactly who they were looking for and roughly the area he was in and there seemed to be no need for discussion. The third man was a quarter of a mile behind them and would keep that distance in case they needed backup. To anyone passing they wer
e just another pair of tourists sampling the spectacular scenery. Turner obviously thought they were well clear of any law, but all along the way they were under observation, and by the time they reached the left-hand turn taking them along the north shore of the loch they’d been photographed, videoed and every detail of their clothing and rucksacks was being fed into an intelligence system.

  They stopped for a moment and Macallan stiffened, wondering if they’d been spooked somehow. Then the call came that they were looking at a map and everyone in the command vehicle relaxed again. They had walked another couple of hundred yards along the shore when Turner’s phone signalled a text arriving. He looked at the screen to find it was a message from Handyside. Harrison had come up with the goods and had verified Swan’s address, which was only another couple of minutes’ walk in front of them.

  ‘Looks like he’s taking a message on his phone.’ The intel officer was looking at a screen relaying pictures from an unmanned van parked at the road end with a view along the loch shore towards Swan’s place.

  They watched the two men look up and head towards the area covered by the CROPs team.

  ‘We have them now.’ The CROP man with eyes on the road running past Swan’s cottage called it in, glad something was happening to take his mind off the fact that his camouflage outfit was soaked inside and out.

  Macallan stood up and called Thompson. ‘I want you to get Ricky to the window. They’ll pass the front door shortly. Get your head down.’

  Turner saw Gnasher running about the front garden and was sure Harrison or Handyside had mentioned some stupid breed of dog. Then he saw the main prize at the window, smoking casually as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Turner had to work hard not to react and spook the man they intended killing.

  ‘Nice one.’ He grinned, and when they were fifty yards past the house they sat by the loch side and had another cigarette. They were about twenty feet from one of the CROPs men who’d dug into a camouflaged hole in the ground. He was indistinguishable from the surrounding vegetation and about an hour earlier a clearly uncomfortable tourist had taken a detour into the bushes and pissed all over the hide. It was an occupational hazard sadly – and the least of his worries. He could hear Turner talking quietly, but it was impossible to make out the conversation. He saw him gesture back towards Swan’s place and it looked like they were happy they’d found their target. The third man joined them and Turner stood up and pointed again towards the cottage. He seemed to be giving them instructions. Then they split up again and turned back along the road.