by Mark Romain
He slowly raised the barrel to his lips and blew on it, and then threw back his head and laughed. It was a loud humourless sound. Placing the gun back in its protective cloth, he set off towards the East End. He had business to attend to.
CHAPTER 11
The rear wheels spun impressively as the BMW accelerated away, leaving the air thick with the cloying smell of burning rubber.
Tyler stepped out of the shadows, followed closely by Dillon, whose face was grim as he spoke into the handset. “The subject just got into a black BMW and is heading north along Kimberley Road.” He broadcast the registration number and told the team to fan out and try to pick it up.
The Omega appeared at the top of the road, engine roaring, before he had even finished speaking. A few seconds later it screeched to a halt beside them and both men dived in. Bull was pulling away before the doors had closed, but the BMW was already out of sight, and Jack was forced to face the ugly possibility that they might have lost him. The thought left a bad taste in his mouth. Suddenly, up in the distance, he caught a brief glimpse of bright red.
Red for brake lights.
Red for danger.
A frisson of hope stirred in his chest, only to be dashed as an old red Mini pulled out of a side road straight in front of them, blocking their path and forcing Bull to brake heavily. Oblivious to the urgency of the situation, the Mini’s elderly driver seemed content to pootle along at twenty miles per hour.
“Shall I put the blues and twos on?” Bull asked.
Jack shook his head glumly. He was trying to blot out the noise that Dillon was making as he screamed non-stop abuse at the Mini’s driver, but it really wasn’t easy. “No, we can’t do anything that might tip him off that we know where he lives.”
“We’ll lose him if we don’t,” Bull warned, shouting to be heard over the cacophony that Dillon was making.
“I know,” Tyler said, miserably. “We’ll just have to try and reacquire him once we get past this old fogey.” As he spoke, the BMW’s tail lights dwindled into tiny pinpricks and then disappeared altogether. Dillon nudged Steve’s arm so hard that the car swerved. “Ram the dozy fucker out of the way,” he demanded.
“Not helping, guv,” Steve snapped, shrugging Dillon’s massive hand off his arm.
As soon as the road opened up, Steve Bull buried the accelerator pedal into the floor and the Omega powered past the Mini, but it was far too late by then; the trail had gone cold.
“Right or left?” Steve demanded as they skidded to a halt at a T-Junction a few moments later.
Jack shrugged. “No idea,” he said, feeling totally depressed.
“I’ll plot a route for the City,” Dillon said, frantically pawing through the Met issue Geographia to work out how to get to the A13 from their current location. “Chances are he’s heading into town to go pimping.”
A car behind them sounded its horn aggressively. Looking in the rearview, Bull was surprised to see it was the red Mini that had unwittingly run interference for Winston, its driver impatiently gesturing for him to move off.
“What’s that racket about?” Dillon demanded without looking up.
“Nothing,” Bull said quickly. If Dillon realised who was behind them things were likely to get ugly.
Tyler had also seen the Mini. “Just go with your instinct, Steve,” he instructed.
Bull nodded. He pulled the selector into Drive and glanced in both directions, knowing that sod’s law dictated whichever way he went was bound to be wrong.
Right or left?
“Fuck it,” he said, initiating a left turn just as the Mini honked again. This time the old codger flashed his headlights as well.
Dillon put the map down and spoke into the radio. “We’ve lost him,” he told the team, “but the chances are he’ll head back towards Tower Hamlets.” He directed the team to starburst, dispatching cars in various directions to hedge his bets. Putting the radio down, he glanced back at Tyler, lips compressed into a tight, thin line. “It’s gonna be bloody embarrassing if we lose him.”
“Hopefully, we won’t,” Tyler said, but his voice lacked conviction.
The silence was unbearable as they waited for someone to spot Winston, knowing that the odds of doing so diminished disproportionately with every passing moment. As the seconds stretched into minutes, the mood inside the car became increasingly sombre.
“It’s been too long,” Bull finally said, breaking the silence.
“Contact! Contact! Control from DC Murray, we’ve spotted the Target. We’re two behind and he’s just taken the A13 slip road at Canning Town. He’s heading along East India Dock Road towards the Blackwell Tunnel, and he’s not hanging about either.”
Bull sat up ramrod straight and began driving with renewed purpose. When he caught Tyler’s eye in the rear-view mirror, the boss winked at him. Despite the evening’s tribulations, he found himself smiling as relief flooded through him. Somehow, they were back in the game.
“I never thought the day would come when I’d be grateful to that little twat for anything,” Dillon admitted, “and if either of you ever tells that scrawny little prat what I said, I swear I will put dog excrement in your exhaust pipes.”
“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with us,” Tyler assured him.
“Guv, do you want us to try and stop him?” Murray was asking excitedly.
“No Kevin, just keep your distance and wait for everyone else to catch you up,” Dillon advised, trying to keep the dislike he felt from his voice.
One by one, the other cars called in their locations. The nearest was the one containing Charlie White and George Copeland, which had just turned onto the A13 from Prince Regent Lane and was a mile or so behind the eyeball car.
◆◆◆
When Winston drove straight past the Blackwell Tunnel Southern Approach, they became increasingly confident that he was heading towards his usual pimping ground to start his rounds.
“Passing Burdett Road on our right,” Murray said, giving the latest update.
Grier was becoming worried. “I think we’re on our own,” he said, looking out of the rear window for signs of reinforcements.
“Don’t worry, Terry,” Bartholomew reassured him. “They’ll catch us up soon.”
◆◆◆
“I still can’t see anyone yet,” Grier fretted as they left the A13, fifteen minutes later.
Murray raised the radio to his lips. “We’re turning into Whitechapel High Street,” he informed the team.
“We’re nearly with you,” Charlie White’s voice came back.
“He’s been saying that for the last ten minutes,” Grier complained.
“He’s indicating to turn right into Commercial Street,” Murray said, keeping the commentary going.
As Bartholomew followed the BMW into Commercial Street, the radio slipped off Murray’s knee and fell to the floor. He immediately started fumbling around in the footwell, cursing his driver for taking the corner too fast. Bartholomew was so distracted by the unexpected commotion that he was caught off guard when Winston abruptly jammed his brakes on and pulled over sharply, tucking into a bus stop without signalling. Bartholomew hesitated, stabbing at the brakes indecisively as he debated whether to pull in behind Winston, but then professional instinct kicked back in and he knew they would be blown if he did.
“He’s pulled into the bus stop,” Grier shouted as Murray resurfaced clutching the Cougar radio upside down. “Quick, you’ve got to tell the others.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Murray screamed, almost dropping the radio again. With a shaking hand, he pressed the transmit button. “Murray to all units, he’s stopped suddenly in Commercial Street. We’ve had to drive past or we’d have been blown.”
Bartholomew pulled over further down the road and shot Murray a look of disgust. If this went belly up because Murray had dropped the radio and not warned the others quickly enough, he and Terry would be found guilty by association.
“Don’t wo
rry, we were right behind you and we’ve got him,” Copeland’s calm voice informed them over the radio. George had pulled into the kerb a safe distance behind the BMW. “What do you want us to do, boss?” Copeland asked. “There are five of us here in two cars. Do you want us to try and take him?”
◆◆◆
“No, George. Wait till at least one more car joins you,” Dillon ordered. Although five officers should be more than enough to arrest one suspect, Winston was a huge man, and his research docket had revealed that he had warning signals on the Police National Computer for violence and carrying offensive weapons.
The Omega was now speeding through Stepney on blues and twos, trying to catch up. The remaining two cars were still a little way behind, but neither had lights or sirens fitted, so it was much harder for them to make progress.
Jack’s impatience was getting the better of him “What’s our ETA, Steve?” he shouted in order to be heard above the siren.
“We’re still a few minutes away, boss,” Bull responded, pulling onto the wrong side of the road to overtake a line of slow-moving traffic that was blocking his path.
Dillon turned around to face Tyler, concern plastered across his broad face. “You’re not thinking of telling them to move in before we get there, are you?” he asked.
“No,” Jack said, shaking his head emphatically. “I agree with you. Having read his form, I think we need to have more people there before making our move.”
Dillon seemed relieved to hear that. Facing the front again, he raised the transmitter to his lips. “What’s he doing now, George?” he asked.
“Nothing,” the Yorkshire man replied almost immediately. “He’s just sitting in his car.”
“Do you think he’s stopped to pick someone up?” Jack asked, wondering why Winston had pulled over so randomly.
Dillon shrugged. “Possibly,” he said, raising the radio to his lips again. “We’re just passing Whitechapel hospital, George,” he said into the handset. “We’ll be with you very shortly.”
◆◆◆
In Copeland’s car, neither occupant spoke. All eyes were glued on Winston, who just sat there, twenty yards ahead of them, making no effort to get out of his car. Could he have spotted them tailing him, or was he just performing anti-surveillance techniques out of habit?
In fact, Winston hadn’t spotted them. Nor was he carrying out anti-surveillance techniques. He had stopped so suddenly because he mistakenly thought he’d spotted Fat Sandra going into the Tesco store across the road. When she emerged a few minutes later, he immediately realised that the woman he was looking at was an equally fat, and equally ugly, doppelganger. Cursing her for wasting his precious time, he pulled back out into traffic, cutting up the car behind him, which braked hard and was rear-ended by a van.
With their view initially blocked by the back of the van, and their attention then drawn to the fracas developing between the car owner and van driver as they started blaming each other for the prang, neither Copeland nor White realised that Winston had pulled away.
◆◆◆
Winston quickly spotted a couple of girls plying their trade on a street corner, and another one lingering in a shop doorway. Generally, though, it looked like a very quiet night for the sex trade. “Must be a whore’s convention going on somewhere,” he mused to himself, wondering where all the regulars were. There was no sign of either Tracey or Fat Sandra outside the used car sales lot in Quaker Street. Of course, they could both be off with punters; or maybe Tracey had got herself arrested again and was banged up in a cell, clucking.
Winston checked out the surrounding roads, but they were equally deserted. Where the hell is everyone? He was on the brink of giving up when he remembered an underground car park that some of the girls used, not far from Brick Lane. He recalled Tracey telling Sandra that in bad weather she occasionally took clients there for a quick knee-trembler or a blow job in the darkness.
Winston gunned the car along Jerome Street, swung right into Calvin Street and then left into Grey Eagle Street. Within moments he spotted the place that she had been talking about and turned in, driving down the ramp at a crawl. At the bottom, he paused to take in his surroundings.
The underground car park was seven feet tall, fifty feet wide and one hundred and fifty feet long. Almost all the overhead lighting was out; the lights that did work were set to dim, making the cavernous space seem dark and foreboding. A few cars were randomly parked near the up ramp on the other side, but most of the spaces were empty. At first glance, the place appeared deserted, but Winston decided to do a slow drive through and check behind the evenly spaced lines of concrete support pillars. He wound down his front windows and nudged the car forward slowly.
He spotted a sudden movement up ahead as two figures slid behind a pillar on the other side of the car park by the exit ramp. Adrenalin kicked in and Winston floored the gas pedal, making the car rocket forward. He flipped the main beam on and the car park was bathed in harsh white light. The two figures locked in an embrace disengaged violently. The larger of the two, hitching his trousers up as he went, took off up the exit ramp like an Olympic sprinter. The smaller of the two stepped into the light, shielding her eyes with one hand and pulling her skirt down with the other.
It wasn’t Tracey.
◆◆◆
The control car was secreted in a tiny cul-de-sac behind the multi-level car park in Whites Row. It had been parked there for several minutes now, its frustrated occupants animatedly discussing what they could do to recover the situation.
When Copeland had initially announced the loss over the radio, five-minutes ago, the bad news had hit Tyler like a kick in the proverbials. Trying not to let his disappointment get the better of him, he had immediately ordered everyone to do a quick sweep of the area on the off chance that Claude Winston was still nearby. If that failed – and it had – they were all to regroup in Whites Row.
Predictably, the last car to arrive was Copeland and White’s, and as the two men got out and approached the control car on foot, it was clear that they were both acutely embarrassed. Charlie White, who had been driving, displayed all the enthusiasm of a man walking to the gallows. “It’s no’ fair, boss,” he whined as soon as Tyler opened his door to get out. “We were watching like hawks, but we didnae stand a chance of seeing him move off after that accident happened right in front of us, especially as the two wee blockheads involved got out and started punching shite out of each other.”
“It’s alright,” Jack said, cutting White’s tale of woe off before the violins and hankies came out. “We lost him ourselves earlier, but luckily Kevin’s car picked him up.”
That made Copeland and White feel marginally less like abject failures, but it did nothing to ease their guilt, and every few seconds one or the other would mutter another apology to someone in the team until Dillon became bored with it and told them to shut up and stop trying to out-apologise each other.
“Sorry,” they said in unison.
“I’m gonna punch the next fucker who says sorry,” Dillon warned, waving a ham-sized fist at them.
With everyone gathered around him, Tyler spread a map out on the bonnet of the Omega and asked Bartholomew to indicate the local hot spot for sex workers. Using a pen, he quartered the area Nick highlighted and dispatched one car to each sector with orders to patrol it for the next hour. In response to their disgruntled groans, he promised that if they hadn’t reacquired Winston by then he would accept defeat. If nothing else, he told them, they had confirmed Winston was still using the flat, and while he would have preferred to make an arrest tonight, at least he now had grounds for getting a properly resourced surveillance operation up and running.
Despite his sterling pep talk, the troops looked demoralised as they returned to their respective cars, and Jack could hardly blame them; reacquiring Winston earlier had used up a shed load of luck, and they all knew it. Surely, they couldn’t hope to be that lucky again?
Could they?
> ◆◆◆
A few streets away, Winston pulled up outside Christ Church of Spitalfields. Built by Nicholas Hawksmore in 1714, the old church was steeped in local history. Its cramped cemetery was full of decaying tombstones bearing the faded names of the French Huguenots who populated the area at the time. During daylight hours the site was popular with aspiring scholars. At night, junkies and whores held the monopoly. Perhaps Tracey was in there right now, bent over a headstone while some city gent shafted her from behind. He decided to give it a few minutes and see if she came out.
While he waited, he studied the motley collection of undesirables gathered outside the crypt, brandishing their cans of extra strong as though they were the latest fashion accessories. With his customary cynicism, Winston surmised there must be a free soup kitchen inside; there was no way this lot had gathered to pray. He snorted in disgust; these wasters really knew how to milk the system. What incentive was there for them to work while they could scavenge all the handouts they needed from the nanny State?
