‘We’re assuming that he had some kind of call-back arrangement in place,’ Carpenter said. ‘Once his men had done the job, they were presumably supposed to call him. When they didn’t, he guessed that it had all gone tits up, and he just severed all possible communication links. Whoever’s orchestrating this is no fool.’
Carpenter fell silent, and resumed his careful scrutiny of the world outside the Transit.
‘How far is it to the safe house?’ Richter asked.
‘Depending on the traffic, maybe another hour or so,’ Dave said from the driver’s seat. ‘Assuming that the M25 hasn’t been turned into a parking lot again, obviously.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Up in the land of the concrete cows: Milton Keynes. Not in the town itself, but a few miles outside it. Near a place called Winslow.’
‘You know they’ve moved them?’ Carpenter asked.
‘What, the cows? No.’
‘They used to be in a field up there, but now they’ve been hauled back to a museum in the town.’
‘Is that important?’ Richter said.
Carpenter shook his head. ‘No. Completely unimportant. But I just kind of siphon up these bits of useless information, just in case they come in handy someday. You know, casual chat around the table at a dinner party, that kind of thing.’
Richter just looked at him. ‘Steve, you’re a martial arts expert, a hired killer, and you’ve got the social graces of a lowland gorilla.’
‘Why lowland?’ Carpenter asked.
‘Why not? Okay, any species of gorilla. You’re a trained assassin who happens to work for a deniable outfit that’s loosely attached to another deniable outfit that’s funded by the British government. You spend most of every day carrying a pistol, and most of the people you talk to professionally end up dead because your job is to kill them. So how many dinner parties, exactly, do you get invited to?’
Carpenter’s face cracked into a beaming smile, and he lapsed back into his fake Jamaican accent.
‘You’d be surprised, my man’ – he pronounced it ‘mon’ – ‘at my real busy social life. I get invites from all over.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Richter said, ‘but my guess is you only get invited anywhere once, because of the trail of bodies you leave behind.’
‘And that’s why you’re so real pleased I’m here in this van with you,’ Carpenter responded, his smile growing broader, and his fake accent returning. ‘Because all you frightened white guys know you is safe as long as Black Steve is around.’
Ten minutes later, Dave swung the Transit onto the clockwise section of the M25 motorway and settled down to a moderate cruise in the inside line, holding the vehicle at about fifty-five, fifteen miles an hour under the maximum speed limit. That was quite deliberately a good deal slower than most of the other vehicles on the road.
And ten minutes after that, they knew they were being followed.
Chapter 10
‘It looks like there are just two of them,’ Dave said, checking both his rear-view mirrors and the image displayed on the colour monitor set into the dashboard, which relayed the picture from the concealed high definition camera mounted directly above the doors on the back of the vehicle. A camera that also stored the previous six hours of footage on a high-capacity memory card, and was mirrored by a similar camera mounted above the front windscreen.
‘Give us a hint,’ Richter ordered. ‘What are we looking for?’
‘There’s a white BMW five series now about two hundred yards behind us. He’s been hopping between lanes every few minutes, just so we don’t get used to seeing the same vehicle in the mirror all the time, but that’s the only car in that group that’s matching speed with us. The others are either faster or slower. A couple of hundred yards behind the beamer is a dark blue Volvo estate. So it’s a long two-tail. Do you want me to lose them or leave them alone?’
Carpenter didn’t reply, just looked at Richter.
‘Don’t do anything for the moment,’ he decided. ‘I know you could get away from them, but it would be more difficult on this road. Wait until we leave the motorway and then we’ll make a decision.’
A BMW five series is a fast car, but Richter knew that its performance was nothing like enough to keep up with the Transit, due to several fundamental modifications that had been done to the vehicle after purchase.
The bulge in the cargo area floor was actually an engine cover, and beneath it was a three and a half litre turbocharged Jaguar V8 engine, the same unit that had been fitted to the XJ220 supercar.
It wasn’t the first time such a modification been done to a Transit, because Jaguar had actually bought a Transit van to act as a mobile testbed for the XJ220 engine and drivetrain, and the specialist company Simpson had approached to build this vehicle – because he’d really liked the idea of a utility vehicle that could pass unnoticed everywhere but still out-drag just about anything else on the road – had basically copied this concept. The original diesel engine and all the ancillary bits and pieces had been ditched, apart from the radiator and oil cooler, for obvious reasons, and the interior of the engine compartment strengthened with welded steel tubes, like a kind of massive internal bull bar, handy for ramming other vehicles. And there was a substantial external bull bar bolted to this internal structure. The only visible indications that it wasn’t a bog standard Transit were the high-speed tyres fitted to the wide alloy wheels all round and the unusual, but largely hidden, twin exhausts.
It offered supercar performance in an innocuous package, and was capable of reaching sixty miles an hour in just under five seconds from a standing start, and one hundred miles an hour five seconds after that. Its top speed was limited by road conditions, the lack of any aerodynamic devices for high-speed stability, and the courage and ability of the driver, but it was somewhere around one hundred and eighty miles an hour. Outdistancing both the BMW five series and the Volvo would not prove particularly difficult with Dave – a former amateur racing driver – at the wheel, but that didn’t mean it was the right thing to do.
‘For Milton Keynes I suppose you’d normally take the M1?’ Richter asked.
Dave nodded.
‘Yes. And then pick up the A5 at Harpenden and go cross-country, probably from Leighton Buzzard.’
Richter paused for a moment, mentally envisaging the route and their best option. Then he gave up the effort, took out his mobile phone and opened up the mapping application.
‘I think the only way we’re going to sort this out is to get hold of one of these men while he’s still breathing and ask him a few pertinent questions, and to do that we ideally need a quiet road somewhere. Instead of taking the M1, let’s go on the pretty route. Come off the M25 at junction 20. That’s the A41 to Aylesbury, and from there we can track pretty much due north on minor roads all the way up to Winslow. Hopefully we can find somewhere there to have a quiet chat with these guys.’
‘Or a fairly noisy one,’ Carpenter said with a grin.
‘Sometimes, noisy is better,’ Richter said, ‘but bearing in mind where we are, let’s keep it as quiet as we can.’
The loose convoy continued tracking north around the clockwise M25, Dave maintaining the same speed and giving no indications that he was aware of the pair of distant following vehicles. It was, of course, faintly possible that the drivers of the two cars on the road behind them were innocent motorists who simply weren’t in a hurry, but none of the three men in the Transit actually believed that.
Approaching junction 20, Dave indicated and began slowing down even more. He steered the Transit onto the slip road to join the A41, and both Richter and Carpenter stared out of the rear windows of the vehicle to check whether or not the cars that Dave had spotted would also make the turn. Half a minute later, they had their answer: the white BMW appeared first, and perhaps a hundred yards behind that the Volvo also appeared.
‘As far as I can see,’ Carpenter said, ‘both of them are two-up, so that’s only four bad guys to
take care of. Piece of piss.’
‘You probably know this area better than me, Dave,’ Richter said. ‘Find a quiet bit of road where we can make things happen.’
‘No problem.’
Richter dialled Simpson’s mobile number and briefly explained what was happening and what they intended to do about it.
‘Understood, Richter. I know it probably goes against the grain, but if you could restrain yourself from leaving another pile of corpses in some field I’m sure we’d all appreciate it, and I’d have a lot less explaining to do to the woodentops.’
‘No promises, but I want to talk to these guys as well, so we’ll do our best.’
A couple of miles after he’d turned off the orbital motorway, Dave steered the Transit down a slip road and under the A41 dual carriageway, heading towards Hemel Hempstead. Half a mile later, he took the second exit at a roundabout, onto a much narrower road that tracked due north.
‘According to the satnav, this road runs pretty straight for about three miles,’ Dave said, ‘and then we really get into the countryside. I’ll take one of the minor roads and find somewhere.’
‘Don’t go too far,’ Carpenter cautioned, ‘otherwise we’ll find ourselves in amongst the animals. Whipsnade Zoo,’ he added, in answer to Richter’s unspoken query. ‘It’s a few miles in front of us.’
They drove through the western outskirts of Hemel Hempstead, and when they passed Piccotts End the countryside began to change, houses giving way to fields and patches of woodland. As they drove through Great Gaddesden, Dave told them to get ready.
‘Were coming up to a minor road on the right,’ he said. ‘According to the satnav, that’s Bradden Lane. I’m going to take the turn. The lane runs straight for about three hundred yards, then there’s a sharp right-hand bend followed by a much longer straight. I’m going to flog it round the corner and get up there as quickly as possible. There’s a narrow side road or driveway or something about a quarter of a mile after the corner, and I’m going to pull off there and wait for these guys to pass.’
The road they were driving along – Dagnall Road – was fairly quiet, and when the Transit arrived at the junction there was no traffic on the opposite side of the road, so Dave floored the accelerator pedal and the white van leapt across the carriageway and straight down the minor road.
The sudden surge of acceleration threw Richter sideways in his seat, and brought a grunt of pain to his lips as the movement twisted his torso against the restraining straps of the seatbelt.
‘The beamer is maybe four hundred yards behind us now,’ Dave said, ‘so the driver will have seen us make the turn, and he’ll guess that we’ve finally spotted him.
‘Unless he just assumes that that was just a typical driving manoeuvre by White Van Man,’ Carpenter suggested. ‘You okay, Paul?’
‘Yeah. Just a twinge.’
Richter glanced forward through the windscreen of the Transit. The acceleration was breath-taking, the bend in the road approaching with what seemed to be suicidal velocity. Then it was as if a giant hand grabbed hold of the vehicle as Dave hit the brakes, the front suspension almost bottoming with the massive deceleration. It wasn’t just the engine that had been changed on the Transit. And then with a flick of the steering wheel, the back end of the Ford slid sideways in a perfectly controlled power slide as Dave straightened up the vehicle and continued to accelerate.
‘The beamer’s speeded up,’ he said, his voice perfectly calm and controlled as the speedometer of the turbocharged Ford-Jaguar hybrid touched eighty miles per hour, ‘and the Volvo had just come into sight when we made the turn. Brace yourselves,’ he added.
Again the oversized brakes hauled down the speed, Dave keeping the van absolutely straight on the road. The instant the vehicle stopped, he engaged reverse and swung the wheel hard over, backing the van into what looked like an unmade driveway on the right hand side, the entrance marked by trees and undergrowth that would serve to conceal the vehicle.
‘The problem,’ Dave said, engaging first gear in readiness to move out, ‘is that we can’t take out both of them. So do you want me to stop the beamer or the Volvo?’
‘I don’t want to be stuck in the middle between two car loads of bad guys,’ Richter said. ‘So let’s take the Volvo.’
‘Agreed,’ Carpenter said.
The white BMW swept past the end of the turning, the engine reaching what sounded like maximum revolutions as the driver changed gear. Ten seconds later, the Volvo, also accelerating hard, passed in front of them as well.
‘Go, go, go,’ Richter said urgently, but he was wasting his breath. The Transit was already moving, Dave turning the steering wheel and accelerating hard.
The van emerged onto the road a bare fifty yards behind the Volvo, and the separation between the two vehicles seemed to shrink almost instantly as the sound of the Jaguar engine rose to a scream.
The brake lights on the estate car flickered on for a couple seconds, then went out, as the driver clearly thought better of trying to stop. Moments later, the Transit was right behind him, both vehicles travelling at around sixty miles an hour, and the speed still climbing.
‘I’ll PIT him,’ Dave said. ‘Hang on.’
The Precision Immobilisation Technique is a basic but very successful way of bringing a pursuit to a successful conclusion. The method is taught to most police officers, driver bodyguards and VIP chauffeurs. Dave could do it in his sleep.
The Volvo was travelling in the left-hand lane and fairly near the crown of the road, but there was ample space on its right-hand side. Dave swung out to the right, positioned the left front wing of the Transit alongside the right rear wing of the Volvo and simply turned left. The heavy-duty bull bar on the front of the Ford smashed into the thin steel of the estate car, forcing the back of the vehicle sideways and turning it across the road.
Dave kept the power on, and kept steering to the left, continuing to push the Volvo. Then he straightened up and eased the wheel over to the right. Tyres squealing, and with the stench of burning rubber filling the air, the estate car steadily turned through one hundred and eighty degrees. Then, still travelling at about thirty miles an hour, but in reverse, the back of the vehicle lurched into the ditch at the side of the road and slammed into the trunk of a mature tree. The Transit squealed to a halt a few yards down the road.
‘Sorted,’ Dave said, leaving the engine running – just in case – and reaching back to grab one of the MP5s. ‘Over to you.’
Richter and Carpenter immediately unstrapped and stepped out of the vehicle, submachine-guns at the ready and aimed directly at the occupants of the now stationary and immobilised vehicle.
For a few seconds, nobody moved.
Then Richter lowered the muzzle of his weapon and glanced at Carpenter. A moment later he looked up the road towards the BMW, now little more than a disappearing white speck in the distance.
‘I do not fucking believe this,’ he said.
Chapter 11
Just under three hours after they’d started, the man wearing the suit finally called a halt to the interrogation. Jacko King had gone into deep shock and his body simply wasn’t responding to anything that they did to it.
By that time he was virtually unrecognisable. The first thing they’d done was use the torch to burn deep gouges in his thighs, the cellar filling with the smell of cooking meat, and only when King had passed out from the pain did the man beside the table rip off the sticking-plaster gag and wait for him to recover.
And when he had they’d started on him in earnest, pouring acid into the burns, spraying his feet with lighter fluid and setting fire to it, and then using the baton and a vice to break his bones and rupture his flesh. Only when King had screamed his lungs out did they begin asking questions. And that’s when the man in the suit started to get annoyed, because King simply refused to give him the answers that he wanted and needed.
So he told the interrogator to redouble his efforts, and the two of them began t
urning the naked body of the big man on the table into something out of a hideous nightmare.
‘Do you think he actually knew the answers?’ the interrogator asked, when he finally put the pliers and baton back on the trolley and shut down the blow torch for the last time.
The man in the suit shook his head.
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I would have expected him to tell us whatever he knew, just because of what we were doing to him, so maybe he really didn’t know the answers.’
He paused for a moment and looked at what was left of Jacko King. His torso was covered in angry red bruises from the baton they’d used to soften him up, and those were overlaid by a mass of deep burns, the skin crackled and burnt black, exposing the deeper tissue, seared red by the intense and focussed heat from the blow torch. They’d crushed his testicles with pliers, then started work on his hands and feet, ripping out the nails and crushing the end of each digit to maximise the pain. Virtually every part of his body carried deep, bleeding wounds.
‘Can you bring him round again?’ he asked.
The other man shook his head. ‘I doubt it. I’m not a doctor, but it looks to me as if he’s too far gone.’
‘Okay. Put a bullet through his head and then dump the body somewhere.’ He took a last glance at the mangled figure before him, then nodded. ‘We’re lucky he wasn’t the only possible source,’ he said. ‘We should still be able to wrap this up tonight or tomorrow.’
Then he turned and walked out of the cellar, carrying the teacup and saucer carefully in his left hand.
Chapter 12
The airbags in the Volvo had been triggered, either by the initial contact between the bull bar on the Transit and the rear of the car or, perhaps more likely, when the back of the estate car had hit the tree. Inside the vehicle, the two occupants were pushing somewhat ineffectually at the white balloons that threatened to envelop them, while at the same time clearly trying to release their seat belts.
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