The Edge

by Jessie Keane

  JESSIE

  KEANE

  THE EDGE

  MACMILLAN

  To Cliff

  CONTENTS

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  139

  140

  NAMELESS

  LAWLESS

  RUTHLESS

  STAY DEAD

  DANGEROUS

  FEARLESS

  1

  1980

  It was seven in the morning, and it was freezing, a yellow-grey cast to the clouds that spoke of snow. The north wind bit like a rabid dog. The shivering staff were readying themselves to go back into the huge supermarket warehouse on the outskirts of London after their tea break. Perishing out here. But at least it was fresh air, a break from the monotony of inside.

  ‘Right, better get to it,’ sighed Jane, casting one last look around the bleak landscape of the industrial estate before crushing the stub of her fag out beneath her heel.

  It wasn’t exactly pretty by the wire fence, where they stood hunched against the searing wind, and the job was boring as fuck, stacking this, moving that, but it paid the bills. She was up to her eyeballs in debt after the usual Christmas blow-out. Buying the kids presents she could ill afford. Well, could not afford, not since their dad, the rotten bastard, had taken to the hills last June. So the job had to be done. Love it or hate it.

  She took one last wistful look at her Sun newspaper. Mrs Gandhi had won the election in India, the steel strike was ongoing, and the Ruskies were swarming all over Afghanistan, trying to wipe out Afghan army units or the mujahideen, no one seemed quite sure which. Jane folded the paper, shoved it under her arm. Same old shit. Happy New Year!

  ‘Yep, we’d better,’ said her mate Susan, and chucked the remains of her tea onto the scrubby patch of grass, moving along with everyone else toward the high warehouse wall.

  Nobody took any notice of the armoured van coming down the road beside the perimeter fence behind another, larger lorry. The payroll van came at this time every week, no big deal. But then the huge eighteen-wheeler juggernaut in front of the van carrying all their wages suddenly braked, jack-knifing to a halt in front of it.

  The payroll van screeched to a standstill.

  Everyone stopped and watched, open-mouthed, at what was happening twenty yards away from them.

  What the . . .?

  Now another van, dark green, roared up and slid, scorching rubber, close to the back of the payroll van.

  ‘Jesus, what . . .?’ The workers stood transfixed, disbelieving.

  Men were pouring out of the juggernaut and the green van.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ gasped Jane, clutching at Susan.

  The men wore body armour, balaclavas, rock-climbing helmets, heavy boots and overalls. Some were carrying shotguns and others had pistols. Two of them got out chainsaws from the rear of the green van. They shimmied under the payroll truck and the chainsaws roared into life as they cut into the truck’s hydraulic cables.

  ‘Christ, they’re gonna take the money!’ said Susan. Like iron filings to a magnet, all the workers shrank back against the wall of the building.

  ‘Look . . .’ Jane said. One of the guards inside the van was picking up his radio.

  ‘DON’T!’ said a hooded man standing in front of the van. He was holding something up in each hand; both items were green and circular.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Jane, trying to blend into the wall, make herself invisible. All her co-workers were doing the same.

  ‘Look!’ said Susan, her voice shaking.

  ‘Those are limpet mines,’ said one of the men further along the line – Tezzer, who was in the Territorials of a weekend, strictly for the piss-ups with his mates. He was white as a sheet. ‘Someone ought to do something,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yeah?’ asked one of his co-workers. ‘Well, you’d be a fucking good choice for that.’

  It was a standing joke in the warehouse – everyone sneered at Tezzer and his tough-guy act. They were all sick of hearing Tezzer brag about what a fearsome ‘soldier’ he was.

  ‘I mean . . .’ started Tezzer.

  ‘Yeah, go on, Tez,’ said a couple of the others, and soon there was a chorus of encouragement.

  Jane and Sue watched, appalled, as Tezzer took a few steps forward.

  ‘No! Don’t . . .’ said Sue faintly.

  One of the men who’d arrived in the juggernaut had spotted Tezzer. Now he was coming at a run. ‘Get back you bastard!’ he yelled.

  Tezzer froze to the spot, too scared to move back or forward. The man from the juggernaut took this as a sign of rebellion and ploughed in, clouting Tezzer in the midriff with the butt of his shotgun.

  Shrieks went up from the line of workers. Tezzer doubled over, clawing at the man with the gun, grabbing at his helmet as he went down. Tezzer’s fingers caught in the man’s balaclava, dragging it askew and then off.

  They all saw it: thin blond hair, runty, wrinkled features, a mouth twisted in a snarl, gold chains at the man’s neck.

  ‘You fucker!’ the man shouted, and clubbed Tezzer with the shotgun’s barrel
.

  ‘Oi!’ Other men were starting forward, shocked at what had happened to Tezzer. He might be a boastful little prick, but this wasn’t on.

  ‘I told you! Get the fuck back!’ roared Runty, and he let a deafening shot off into the sky. Ignoring the writhing Tezzer lying on the ground, he yanked his balaclava on and slapped the helmet on his head again.

  ‘Christ! Look!’ muttered Jane to Sue.

  The man holding the mines had pressed a button on one, arming it. Red lights started flashing. Then the other one. Now he was fixing both onto the bonnet of the payroll truck. He was staring into the cab of the vehicle with clear intent.

  Touch that radio again and you’re dead.

  The guard inside the van put the radio mike down and raised his hands in surrender.

  Traffic was building behind the scene of the robbery. Commuters were trying to get to work. One of them got out of his car and came up to see what was happening, and the watching workers let out horrified gasps as one of the raiders fired over his head. The man scuttled back to his car.

  ‘The police will come,’ said Jane, trembling. ‘Won’t they?’

  Susan wondered what the police could do about this little lot, even when they got here. And where were the building’s security guards? The warehouse had eight of them. What were they doing? Sitting by the fire in the control room, the fat bastards? They should be out here, doing some-bloody-thing. Although Christ knew what.

  ‘We ought to get back indoors,’ said Susan, but she couldn’t move after that gunshot, and nobody else was moving, either.

  The chainsaws fell silent. The two men came out from under the payroll van. One went to attack the hinges at the rear.

  Those are black hands, noted Jane. The man wasn’t wearing gloves. And there were black dreadlocks trailing down his back.

  He went over to another big lorry, parked opposite and pulled away a length of tarpaulin to reveal a massive metal spike. Then he jumped up into the cab, and reversed at full throttle. There was an almighty boom and the spike punched a hole in the armour plating of the van.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said someone in the queue.

  The man threw the truck into reverse and rammed the spike home again with another ear-splitting crash. When he did so, a grin showed up in the mouth hole of his balaclava. Jane saw gold.

  ‘RIGHT!’ shouted one of the men – and they were in, unloading the bags of cash in double-quick time and shoving it into the green van.

  Police sirens were sounding in the distance. Jane and Susan stood there, quivering, as one of the gang paused at the back of the van, looking around, looking at them.

  His shotgun swung in their direction. Was he smiling? Mocking them?

  ‘Fuck,’ whispered Jane, feeling her bowels loosen.

  ‘Tell your boss: this is a present from Thomas Knox,’ he shouted over the freezing roar of the wind. Then he turned away, jumped up into the green van.

  It was done, over.

  Three million quid had just been lifted from a warehouse that paid protection money to Kit Miller.

  2

  Usually, for most people, Friday was a good day. Herald of the weekend. But not for Detective Inspector Romilly Kane. She was on the phone to her husband Hugh. ‘I’m going to be late again,’ she was telling him. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘S’OK,’ said Hugh.

  She could picture him standing there in the shabby little kitchen of their – well, her – place near Ladbroke Grove. He’d be leaning against the counter. Dark-haired, bearded, and a passionate advocate of every left-wing cause going. He was Hugh the caring person. Everyone’s huggable friend, the social worker. They’d met through work when they’d both been on a nasty child-abuse case five years ago; a year later, they were married. She’d kept her own name. Maybe that had hurt him, who knew? And he’d moved in with her. Well – sort of.

  Ah, sore point.

  What Romilly had learned about Hugh since they’d married was that he was an expert at sitting on fences. Hedging his bets. At first he’d talked about selling his place and both of them pooling their resources, buying a new place that was wholly theirs. But that plan had been abandoned. He’d kept his tatty little bachelor flat, going back there weekly ‘to see everything was OK’, sometimes staying overnight. Once, Romilly had snapped and raised the issue and it had sparked a fierce argument. It was then that she realized he was never going to sell it. And he was never going to properly buy into their marriage. The flat was his way of keeping his options open.

  She’d given up arguing with him about it. Hugh was everyone’s friend, but it was all show. The reality was that he was too unfocused and lazy ever to commit to a meaningful relationship. It had reached the point where she was actually glad of his regular absences – and she knew that wasn’t a good sign.

  So, hands up: their marriage wasn’t going terrifically well. They’d both plodded on with it, living day to day, ignoring the awkward moody silences, the unasked questions.

  Do you still love me?

  That was one Romilly thought she already knew the answer to. And there was another one, equally important: Do I still love you?

  Truthfully? She knew the answer to that one, too.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘Ten at the earliest, I reckon.’

  ‘OK, don’t worry. No problem.’

  DCI James Barrow was coming toward Romilly’s desk and his eyes told her there was something important on his mind. A skinny six-feet-six-inches tall, he wore rimless glasses, had a long, weathered face and a shock of faded-ginger hair. He was a nice man and Romilly both liked and respected him.

  James was well-balanced, dedicated, pushing fifty, long-married and not often given to excitability.

  ‘Got to go,’ she said to her husband, and put the phone down.

  ‘Wages van robbery,’ DCI Barrow told Romilly as she started shuffling bits of paper around her desk. Much as she tried, her desk always looked like an explosion in a paper factory. He handed her another sheet of paper, with the details of the robbery on it. She scanned it briefly. ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘Three mill,’ he said.

  Romilly straightened. ‘You what?’

  ‘Better get out there,’ he said. ‘SOCOs are on it.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, standing up, hitching on her jacket, snatching up her bag. She went through to the outer office where the rest of the major crimes team were beavering away. ‘Harman!’ she bellowed to her bulky, bright-eyed and prematurely balding DS, way down the other end of the room.

  Harman looked up.

  Romilly waved the sheet of paper. ‘We’re on,’ she said, and Harman grabbed his coat.

  3

  DI Kane and DS Harman arrived at the warehouse and found a scene of chaos. SOCOs milling about in white coveralls, police tape strung up around a procession of vans, cordoning off the whole area, police cars parked up five-deep. Romilly grabbed one of the officers and asked to be filled in.

  ‘Bomb disposal are on their way,’ he said, indicating the wages truck with two mines stuck to its front. ‘Limpet mines. Not a huge blast, but enough to kill anyone at the wheel. Scary people, these. Ex-military maybe. Armed to the teeth, by all accounts.’

  ‘Anyone hurt?’

  ‘One hero who thought he’d have a go,’ said the officer. ‘Carted him off in an ambulance, but it don’t look too bad.’

  ‘Christ alive,’ said Harman, looking over at the shattered wages van. The two mines on its front were still flashing red.

  ‘Three million,’ said a SOCO, shaking his head. ‘Not a bad payoff, eh?’

  Romilly and Harman headed inside the warehouse. It was huge, stacked with shelves up to its vast ceiling. She snagged a passing blue-overalled worker. ‘Where’s the manager’s office?’ she asked.

  He pointed out a row of glass-fronted offices at the top of a set of stairs on the far side of the building. ‘It’s the first one,’ he said.

  The two detectives went up the stairs and were confron
ted with a closed door marked ‘Kevin Batley, Manager’. Harman knocked at it. It was flung open instantly.

  ‘Yes? What the fuck is it now?’ a short, balding man asked them angrily.

  ‘You’re the manager?’ asked Romilly. Over his shoulder, she could see a white-faced young woman sitting by a desk inside the office.

  ‘I am.’

  Romilly showed him her warrant card. ‘I’m DI Kane, this is DS Harman. We’d like to ask you some questions about the robbery.’

  The phone was ringing. The woman picked it up and spoke.

  ‘Is this necessary right now? I’m up to my arse in it here,’ Batley said.

  ‘Head office,’ said the woman at the desk. ‘Shall I . . .?’

  ‘Tell them Mr Batley’s busy. For the moment. And that he’ll ring them back as soon as possible,’ Romilly told her. Then she turned her attention to Kevin Batley as the woman relayed what she’d just said to head office. ‘Let’s talk.’

  ‘What, right now? You do realize there’s a fucking bomb outside my building?’

  ‘Bomb disposal are coming,’ said Romilly. ‘We need to talk now, Mr Batley.’

  ‘Christ, all right. If we bloody must. Julie!’ he bellowed at the woman as she put the phone down. ‘Give us a minute, will you?’

  Julie stood up and slid past them all, out of the office, and went off along the landing.

  ‘Right! Come in,’ he said, ushering them inside and closing the door. He went around the desk and sat down. ‘So, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell us. Anything you saw. Any detail will help.’

  ‘I didn’t see a damned thing. There’ll be CCTV, of course. Security will have seen the whole thing happening from the monitors – it was them who phoned your lot while I sat up here all unaware that I was about to be blowed to kingdom come.’

  ‘Limpet mines only cause damage in the immediate area of the blast,’ said Harman. ‘You’re safe up here.’

  ‘Was there anyone out there when it happened?’ asked Romilly.

  ‘Yes. About thirty of the workers. They’re all inside now. And fucking traumatized.’

  ‘We’ll need to speak to all of them.’

  ‘Bastards! You know what they’re saying? That it was an organized crime gang that did it. One of those gangs you people never seem to tackle.’

  ‘What?’ Romilly was frowning at him. ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘They fucking-well announced it, didn’t they,’ said Kevin. ‘One of them said this was a present from Thomas Knox. Everyone’s heard of that bent bastard.’