by Nick Oldham
‘Are you actually guilty or not?’ ventured another one.
‘Please, please,’ his solicitor intervened placatingly. ‘Can we have some decorum here?’
Cameras flashed. Sweetman and Ginny posed. Even more flashes.
In the background the armed cops who had been providing protection for the proceedings were being withdrawn from their positions.
Grant shushed everyone. ‘I have a short, prepared statement to make and there will be nothing more said today from Mr Sweetman . . . if you please, gentlemen, ladies.’ The solicitor, revelling in the attention, surveyed the assembled media until some sort of quiet came about. Then he started to read from a sheet of paper. ‘I have always maintained my innocence in this matter and also that I was unfairly charged with the offence of a murder I did not commit. May I just say that my condolences go out to the family of Jackson Hazell.’ Grant paused for effect. ‘The police have shown that they are out to get me at whatever cost and I have now shown that their procedures are flawed and very suspect. All I can say is that justice has been done and my absolute faith in the legal system of this fine country remains unshakeable. I will be consulting my legal advisor about how to progress this matter further and, rest assured, it will be progressed.’ Grant folded up the hastily prepared statement with finality. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you would be so kind. Mr Sweetman has been in custody for almost nine months now. He wishes to bring some normality back to his life by returning home to his loved ones and friends so that he can pick up the threads of his shattered life, so cruelly overturned by the vindictiveness of certain police officers.’
Sweetman and his lady friend moved forwards. The journalists and photographers surged towards them, more flash-lights popping, more questions being barked. One newspaperman pushed to the front of the throng and stuck a mike under Sweetman’s nose. It was the same one who had posed the question about Sweetman’s guilt.
‘Mr Sweetman, is it true that the question of your guilt still remains?’ he probed. ‘The police procedure may well be flawed here, but that doesn’t actually mean you are not guilty, does it?’
Sweetman caught the man’s eye and stopped abruptly, dragging his girlfriend to a ragged halt. ‘You saying I’m guilty? I was fitted up.’
‘I’m saying the question of your guilt still remains.’
Sweetman’s solicitor laid a restraining hand on his client’s bicep.
‘My client is not guilty . . . that is our final word on the subject . . . Come on, let us through.’
Sweetman allowed himself to be urged through the melee, though he kept staring angrily at the journalist who had been so unwise as to ask him that question.
A large stretch limousine was waiting in the car park, hastily rented for the occasion. Sweetman and Ginny dropped into the back seats, whilst Grant jumped into the front passenger seat. The driver, one of Sweetman’s men, accelerated away.
Sweetman leaned back, closing the partition, exhaling an extended sigh as the overlong car whisked him through the streets of Lancaster. ‘Now,’ he said, draping an arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders, ‘there’s a few people I’ll be wanting to slap.’
Detective Superintendent Carl Easton and the DS who had been sat with him at court, a guy called Hamlet, were sitting low in their car, watching the exit and flashy drive-off of Sweetman from the Crown Court.
‘The implications are worrying,’ Easton said. ‘I thought we had him stitched . . . Fuck!’
‘Yeah,’ Hamlet said quietly.
‘There’ll be an investigation, probably some other force.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Yeah.’
‘We need to think about how we’re going to sort him out, we need to find out who let the defence know about these alleged other suspects. That’s an internal thing, got to be.’ Easton was counting out the things that needed doing on his fingers, but stopped when Hamlet sniggered. ‘What’s so funny?’ Easton was not laughing. He was enraged.
‘Just thinking about “other suspects”,’ he said.
‘What other suspects?’
‘Exactly,’ Hamlet said firmly. ‘What other suspects?’
Easton sighed a long and very exaggerated sigh, then glowered sideways at Hamlet. ‘There were no other suspects.’
‘I know that, you know that, but nobody else knows it.’
Easton huffed through his nostrils. ‘We should’ve taken the time to cover that one,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s bloody obvious that Sweetman got people to call in about the other suspects. I mean, we knew that at the time, but we should’ve gone through the process of eliminating them properly, blowing them out of the water. But we got complacent and thought we could bury it, but I should’ve known the defence would uncover the phone calls. I shouldn’t be surprised.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, the thing is, we know exactly who was guilty of the murder, don’t we?’
Hamlet shrunk back into his seat. ‘Yes we do,’ he muttered uncomfortably.
‘And it wasn’t our friend Mr Sweetman, was it, even though we did our best to prove it was.’
The articulated lorry thundered down the M62 motorway towards Leeds, Whitlock at the wheel. He was trying to put as much distance between himself and the Port of Hull as possible. Something told him that if he stopped or slowed down, the authorities would catch him up.
What he did not know was that it would have been much better for him to have been caught by the authorities.
The M62 was horrendously busy on the stretch between the east coast and Leeds, and no doubt would be all the way from Leeds to Manchester. It was one of the most congested and turgid motorways in the country and Karl Donaldson held out no hope for a speedy journey, even in the 4x4 Jeep he was driving. He went as fast as possible from tailback to tailback, happy to be passing the slow-moving heavies in the first lane. At least it would be comfortable and the musical accompaniment was first rate – a selection which included the country of Dwight Yoakam, the edge of the Stones and the melody of McFly, who were his eldest daughter’s favourite of the moment.
Donaldson had thought about travelling back to London that same day, but decided against it. Instead he was going to nip across the breadth of the country (although he soon realized that no one ‘nipped’ anywhere by way of the M62) to see an old friend on spec. He phoned his wife, Karen, and told her he would be home the following day. The tone of his voice made her say, ‘It didn’t go well, did it?’
‘You know me so well.’
‘So you’re hoping for a shoulder to cry on and a beer to alleviate the symptoms,’ she laughed.
‘You know me so well.’
Donaldson’s mind strayed briefly to the woman detective back in Hull, as he drove. Hm . . . he had taken her up on her offer of coffee, knowing full well where it could have led, or at least where she wanted it to lead, but he’d done a runner even before the cappuccino, much to her dismay. Since taking his marriage vows he had remained faithful to Karen and had no plans to ever stray from that worthy path.
The lengthy roadworks on the motorway between Leeds and Manchester slowed traffic down even more, with three lanes being filtered into one for a four-mile stretch near to Rochdale. Huge, creeping and often stationary queues were formed in both directions.
Whitlock needed a stress break. He was still tense and his middle-aged heart was smashing hard against his chest wall, even now, two hours west of Hull. If it continued he thought he would explode internally and it would be a gory mess.
He tried to purge his mind of the poor souls in the container. He hoped they were OK and was desperate to release them out into the world. His instructions had been to drive to a business address in Rossendale where he would be met by an ‘agent’ who would take control of the illegals.
That moment could not come too soon . . . but . . . he still needed a break. Ten minutes just to cool down, to chill. He had travelled far enough now, he guessed.
Normally Whitlock, a driver pr
oud of his road skills, spent a lot of his driving time using his mirrors. It was imperative that a lorry driver be totally aware of everything going on around, but on this particular journey, he had hardly looked in them, his mind so preoccupied with his predicament.
That was why he did not clock the black Citroën van which had been sitting behind him for most of his journey along the M62.
The frustration of the stop-start, but mainly stop, journey made Karl Donaldson switch off his CD player and fume. He was getting annoyed now, an annoyance on top of what he was feeling with regards to the cock-up at Hull, and was beginning to think that maybe he should have gone due south – and home. If the M1 had been clear, he could have almost been there by now.
Instead he was sitting in virtually motionless traffic somewhere on the bleak moors above Rochdale. One of the signposts he saw pointed to Saddleworth Moors and he realized he was quite near the spot where in the 1960s Myra Hindley and her murderous lover Ian Brady buried the bodies of the children they had abused and killed, crimes so appalling they were internationally known. Donaldson looked at the bare, brown moorland and shivered at the thought that there were still bodies out there unrecovered. ‘Bastards!’ he said under his breath.
He shrugged and brought himself back to the present.
Suddenly his whole body tensed.
The traffic had started to move again where the roadworks came to an end, fanning out across three lanes. But it was the van in front of him which held his attention rigidly. It was a black Citroën van, similar to a Ford Transit. From his elevated viewpoint in the Jeep he had a good position from which to look inside the van through the windows in the rear doors.
There was a driver and a passenger and a couple of huddled shapes in the back, four guys in total.
Not that that in itself was significant. It could have been a group of men on their way back from, or going to, some labouring job or other.
What grabbed his attention was what he thought he had seen.
He could not be 100 per cent, but his gut instinct told him he was right. One of the men in the back had passed something to the man in the front passenger seat. Donaldson had excellent vision which had not diminished with age. If anything it was even better and he was pretty sure that what had been passed forwards was a sawn-off shotgun.
OK, it was just a glimpse. An impression more than anything. But everything that the American knew, all his points of reference, told him he was correct.
The Citroën accelerated lumpily away from the roadworks ahead of him.
Donaldson hung back slightly, curious, alert, as the van drew alongside a heavy goods vehicle also speeding up after the roadworks. There was a container on the back of the HGV and as Donaldson saw it and his brain dealt with this information, he emitted a groan.
He had seen the heavy before. He had watched it rolling off the ferry at Hull, one vehicle ahead of the one his uninspired team had pulled over.
The Citroën drew parallel with the lorry and Donaldson made out the passenger ‘me-mawing’ to the driver of the HGV.
Donaldson dropped back. The passenger’s left arm was out of the window, gesticulating to the driver.
Then both arms came out, holding the shotgun briefly, then it was gone.
The passenger continued to gesticulate, pointing and, Donaldson assumed, shouting. He was telling the driver to pull off the motorway at the next service area, which was fast approaching.
Donaldson had stumbled on a robbery about to take place, he believed.
Suddenly he felt naked. He had no gun because he wasn’t allowed to carry one as a matter of course in the UK, and just occasionally he would have liked to have touched the coldness of a weapon for reassurance. Like now.
Instead he reached for the next best thing . . . his mobile phone. Dialled treble-nine.
The three hundred metre marker for the exit on to Birch Services came into view. The HVG signalled the intention to pull off. The Citroën dropped in behind into the heavy’s slipstream. Donaldson eased even further back off the gas. A man’s face pressed up to one of the windows in the back of the Citroën and glared through the glass. Donaldson rammed his foot down on the gas pedal and surged out into the middle lane of the motorway, accelerating past the Citroën, pretending to pay it no heed. He sped past the HGV too, and with little room to manoeuvre, he managed to tuck the Jeep in front and swerve on to the exit lane leading up to the service area, angling across the chevrons in the road and churning up dirt as he did. He hoped that the occupants of the Citroën were taking no notice of him.
He drove far too quickly up the lane, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the phone to his ear, steering the big 4x4 recklessly into the designated area for car parking, close to the entrance to the shops and cafés. He veered into a tight parking spot and sank down into his seat, craning round to watch the HGV enter the service area and drive toward the appropriate parking area. The Citroën was behind it.
No one had yet answered his treble-nine.
Donaldson cursed, ended the call, redialled, all the while his eyes fixed on the progress of the two vehicles which were stopping on the far side of the service area, as far away as possible from prying eyes.
‘Can you give me your name and telephone number, please?’ the operator said when, at last, the call was answered. Despite wanting to yell at the individual, Donaldson kept his calm and gave the required details, then asked to be connected to the police. The connection was answered immediately. Quickly and succinctly Donaldson relayed his position and what he thought might be happening, always watching the HGV and the Citroën.
The HGV had looped around the far perimeter of the lorry park and pulled up at such an angle that the container on the back obscured a decent view of the front cab. The Citroën looped around, too, almost out of sight on the other side of the HGV. Donaldson saw four men leap out.
Sometimes, Karl Donaldson hated himself.
In his bones he knew exactly what was going down here. A robbery. An armed one at that. The knowledge and experience of his time as a first-class FBI field agent screamed at him. But what was worse, what really annoyed him, was that he was powerless . . . powerless, that is, to stop himself getting out of his car and making his way across and intervening. Even though he knew it was the most stupid, foolhardy thing he could do. He should stop right where he was, stay safe, and wait for the police to arrive. Be Mr Sensible.
Naah . . . not his style.
He jumped out of the Jeep, fighting the urge all the time, but letting his will-power collapse under the desire for action.
He dropped low between a line of parked cars and began a bent, loping jog towards the situation. There was a wide area of no-man’s-land between the car park and the point where the HGV had stopped. He wanted to get into a position from where he could approach unseen from a blind spot. When he reached it, he ran hard and low across the tarmac, feeling as exposed as a soldier storming a machine-gun emplacement. It was at least one hundred metres before he slammed up against the rear nearside corner of the container, where once again his foolishness overwhelmed him. It would have been an easy option, maybe the right option, to run back to the Jeep and keep his head down.
Naah . . . especially as he had seen a police Range Rover tearing up from the motorway, blue lights flashing, tyres squealing. He held himself back from leaping up and down and waving like a windmill. Instead he tried to attract the attention of the cops with urgent, but more restrained, hand signals.
The Range Rover raced towards him, full blast, no subtlety whatsoever, which in the circumstances was probably OK.
Donaldson pointed in the direction it should go.
They went that way, screeched round the side of the HGV and skidded to a dramatic halt. The whole car rocked dangerously on its soft suspension and the two uniformed officers leapt out at a run. Donaldson twisted around the back corner of the lorry and wished immediately that things had not happened so fast.
Four men in clown masks
surrounded the lorry driver, who stood on the tarmac, his hands held high, terror stuck on his face. In the hands of one of the masked men were three heavy, well-packed holdalls. The three others brandished guns of different varieties. One sawn-off shotgun, one pistol, and one H&K MP5 machine pistol. They were seriously well armed.
All five men in this tableau turned in the direction of the police car and its occupants.
‘Get down on the fucking ground, you black twats!’ screamed the robber holding the shotgun. He waved it at them, his stance dangerous, menacing, the gun ready to be discharged. From that distance it would not take any aiming.
‘Now come on,’ one of the officers started reasonably.
‘I am not fucking about here . . . you get down on the ground or I’ll blow your cuntin’ head off . . .’ As he shouted this, his eyes – visible through slits in his black mask – caught the figure of Donaldson, who had seen what was going on but had been unable to melt himself away quickly enough. ‘Shit!’ the felon groaned. ‘Get that fucker, too!’ he bawled at one of his mates.
The one with the MP5 ran to Donaldson and snarled, ‘Get over there, shit face.’
Only in his mind did Donaldson hesitate. He did as requested, allowing himself to be manhandled. He could feel the tension in these guys. They were on the edge. The adrenaline rush, probably enhanced by speed, meant they were dangerous and unpredictable, very likely to shoot.
He was pushed next to the driver, the two cops roughly ushered likewise, so now four men faced four.
‘Now – all down! Face down on the floor! Do it! Do it!’ screamed the first robber.
Donaldson and the three others sank to their knees.
‘All the fucking way!’
Donaldson eased himself on to the cold hard ground, his cheek against the tarmac. Suddenly the shotgun was rammed hard into the side of his face, jarring his jaw. ‘Get yer fuckin’ face down.’
The inside of his cheek split on his teeth. He tasted blood immediately on his tongue. He complied, resting his forehead on the ground.
‘None of you fucking move,’ they were ordered.
