Persons of Interest

by Peter Grainger

  ‘They’re picking up speed now, Smith. On the dualled bit of the A47, passing the Legham turn-off as I speak.’

  ‘Sod it. Are they checking you out?’

  ‘Could be. I’ve told Mike to stay back further, we’re only just keeping them in sight.’

  Couldn’t argue, that was exactly what he would have done himself, hoping for the best. Murray was listening to someone on his own phone, the contact with control, and then he said to Smith, ‘Uniform are inside number fifteen – it’s empty.’

  Good, they’re not dead there, and bad, they still hadn’t found them.

  He said to Murray, ‘Tell them to treat it as a crime scene now they’ve established that. Hands off everything.’

  Had someone, the someone in control, already given that order? What was he doing running this business from a speeding, second-hand Peugeot on a Sunday afternoon? Was he running it? Were there people back in Lake Central listening to all this and saying to each other, or at least thinking to themselves, who the hell does he think he is? Were they humouring him?

  ‘Smith, we might have lost them.’

  Recrimination is pointless at these moments – adjust the position, keeping your focus on the main objective.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We’ve hit the Lakenham straight after the long bend where they were out of sight, we can see a mile or more ahead, traffic’s light and now there’s no sign of them.’

  ‘OK. We’re coming up to the Wingfield turn off on that bend, that’s the only one they could have taken, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. We’re taking the Wingfield turn as well. Tell Mike to drive like hell now. If you don’t get them back before the Pulham roundabout, come off left. That’s about another four miles. We’ll regroup after that.’

  Smith swung the car left onto the slip road and they climbed the embankment. Once over it and down the other side, they had entered another world. The acres of chrome yellow oilseed rape, and the subtly different greens of wheat and barley were bisected only by the B road that they had just taken, winding its way in long, open bends towards the village of Wingfield some six miles further on. The landscape was not flat like the fenlands to the south and west of Kings Lake; instead, it was gently undulating, and here and there a distant farmhouse stood on slightly higher ground, with its barns and asbestos sheds, not beautiful countryside, not the Cotswolds or the Downs, but attractive enough in its own modest, functional way.

  Straight tracks led off to farms or to the cottages and bungalows that had been built for the workers on these farms, built in the days before tractors had computers and satellite navigation. A farm that once required ten or dozen men now needed just one, and maybe not even that – it was more cost effective to hire in a contractor three or four times a year than to pay a man a wage and let his wife and children live in a tied property. Most of the cottages and bungalows had been sold off as private residences, then, and now Smith and Murray had to look at them as they drove along the road and wonder whether the blue Lexus would have been parked in their sight or behind where they could not see it unless they drove out to each building to look. The Albanians might have driven on to Wingfield or beyond, there was no way of knowing, but here, in these empty spaces where a property might have no neighbours, no-one overlooking what one was doing, one might hide a couple of hostages easily enough. And they were already twelve miles or more from Kings Lake – how much further would they have needed to go to feel safe? It would make no sense to keep their prisoners an hour away, would it? Smith reasoned it that way but knew that they were rolling dice now. He could see no haystacks, not these days, but they were looking for a needle, nonetheless.

  Smith had slowed the car to twenty miles an hour. Murray was looking to the left, saying nothing because there was nothing to be said, and the phone in his right hand was still connected to Wilson and Dunn but silent. Then Murray’s own phone rang and he answered it, never taking his eyes from the slowly passing landscape.

  ‘DI Reeve, wants to know why she can’t get hold of you.’

  ‘Gordon Bennett! Explain it, John. Ask her what she wants.’

  Something that she didn’t want to say to anyone else, presumably, didn’t want to say aloud, most likely querying what they were doing for some reason or other; she had been more edgy than usual ever since RSCU had arrived on the scene. It might even be RSCU in the background, saying to her that they did not want these people spooked without good reason. But he did not need reminding of the consequences of all this if it went wrong, and it could go wrong in so many ways.

  ‘She says the Tactical Aid Unit is ready to leave. Do we want to deploy it, and if so, where?’

  Ten scary men and a couple of even more scary women in black uniforms and seriously armed, sitting grim-faced in two blacked-out vehicles outside Lake Central. Based on what he had – which was ninety eight per cent guesswork – could he really send them out into the Norfolk countryside on a Sunday afternoon? They could have a pleasant ride round, frighten a few old ladies and stop for cream teas at that little place in Wingfield ... And then there was the helicopter – was it in the air already? Every time it was launched, an accountant somewhere in Norwich had a heart attack. Suddenly the whole thing looked horribly out of proportion.

  ‘DC?’

  ‘Yes, tell her that we’ll-’

  ‘No. Keep driving but look to the left.’

  There was another straight, single-track road leading off to a building, a pair of cottages, and behind them several ancient-looking sheds and a solitary conifer tree. In front and to the left, a field of oilseed rape in full bloom and to the right one of barley. On the right-hand side of the track, a thin hedge of hawthorn that had somehow escaped the attentions of agronomists was also in flower. Between the back of the cottages and the sheds was a small wedge of blue.

  Smith slowed the car just a little and squinted. It was a vehicle and it was the right shade of blue – but was it a Lexus? If it was, the chances of there being two such out here was remote enough for him to call in the RAF, never mind the police helicopter, but based on the glimpse that they were getting, the glimpse that was now disappearing as they passed the end of the hedge?

  He pulled the car half onto the verge, left the engine running and looked at John Murray.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I think it’s them, but I don’t know why. We haven’t seen enough to be certain.’

  Smith’s own thoughts exactly.

  Murray said, ‘There’s a lot riding on this, isn’t there? I know we haven’t been told it all but it’s obvious.’

  ‘Yes, quite a lot, and that’s before you include my glittering career.’

  ‘Alright, I’ll go and have a look. I can get along this side of the hedge far enough to see the car. That’s all we need.’

  He had his hand on the door, ready to go, waiting for Smith to say the word. If it had been anyone else, even though he was going to agree, Smith would have said the usual things, but it was Murray and so he just nodded and took the phones. As soon as the door closed, Smith spoke to Reeve, telling her that they might have found the vehicle, that she should hold the Tactical Unit at Lake for two more minutes. Wilson must have been listening to this – it was his voice that Smith heard next.

  ‘Smith, I got that. We’re at Pulham. Mike reckons there’s a back road that misses out Wingfield. We’ll head towards you now, it can’t be more than four or five minutes the way he drives this thing.’

  Support of some sort would be welcome, even Wilson’s scowling face.

  ‘Alright, but you’ll see me on the verge. For God’s sake don’t go past in case they recognize your car from Harper Gardens.’

  He turned off the engine and breathed properly for a few moments. It had been a while. When was the last time? Standing between Captain Jonathan Hamilton and Petar and Hanna Subic, with Waters bleeding in the corner; feeling most alive in those moments when you might soon be dead. Some men become a
ddicted to it, of course, and it was a known phenomenon in the Army. Sometimes those men are taken out of service for their own good, and sometimes they are not, for the good of the rest of us.

  Murray was coming back along the hedgerow, moving quickly and quietly, so Smith knew then that it was the Lexus. He got out and walked round the car to meet him, speaking to Reeve as he did so.

  ‘Ma’am? We’ve found the car. I’m going to give you a precise location.’

  He did so in words, and then Murray held out his hand for the phone. He opened it up, pressed the screen three or four times and read out the GPS coordinates. Smith’s face said, yes, very good, and Murray answered that both lots of information would be useful.

  In the quiet of the waiting, they could hear a skylark singing somewhere over the fields of barley. He thought about the bird’s view of all this as it hung as if suspended above them – the toy car parked behind the cottages in the run-down yard, the two men like dots waiting in the lane, and further away the traffic on the busy road, the people’s lives speeding by, unaware of the human drama that was about to unfold. Then he thought about the fields, how the fields of barley would become fields of gold in another two or three months, and that reminded him of the song – it was another one that an audience of ten or twenty might enjoy in the backroom of The Bell every other Saturday evening.

  A car was approaching from the north – they listened and heard the gears change. Someone was driving quickly. It was the direction that Wilson and Dunn should arrive from but they would not know for certain until it rounded the final bend which was less than fifty yards away beyond the roadside hedge. A third party might drive by – or they might slow down, ready to make the turn onto the track to the cottages. Smith’s car would be seen, and so they could not allow anyone to take that route; they would have to be stopped, but any Sunday afternoon visitors here might well be armed and inclined to argue the point. Smith checked that the phone line was still open and told Alison Reeve what was happening. With any luck, he would be able to give a registration plate before the first volley of shots was fired.

  Murray’s thoughts were following his own – he moved to stand on the road itself, and then, as the silver Mazda 6 MPS appeared he relaxed visibly and nodded to Smith. Wilson was opening the passenger door before the car had come properly to a halt in front of the Peugeot.

  Wilson said, ‘What have we got?’ and Smith told him. There was no other way out of the place where they had found the car, and meanwhile Mike Dunn had it all on satellite view on his phone, confirming what Smith had just said. They debated briefly whether to put one of the cars across the end of the lane, the obvious candidate being Smith’s rather than Dunn’s shiny one, but it would then be visible from the cottages, and that would be a bad move as support was still several minutes away. When that conversation ended, when they had all agreed simply to wait, it was quiet again, for ten, twenty seconds, and that was why they all heard the sound - the sound of a car door slamming. It could only have come from the cottages beyond the hedgerow.

  Smith said, ‘Take another look,’ and Murray was gone again over the shallow, dry ditch and along the hawthorn hedge. Speculation was pointless, and after exchanging brief looks, they continued waiting in silence for Murray’s return. He took a little longer this time, long enough for Smith to review the troops again. Murray – no question; Smith had gone uninvited with him into too many houses to have any doubts. Wilson – Smith had less direct experience with him but trusted what he had been told by others who had; Wilson did not hold back in these situations. Mike Dunn – newer and younger, an unknown quantity, but he had driven here very quickly and looked more excited than afraid. Himself? You’re getting too old for this lark he said to the man in the mirror occasionally, but here and now he didn’t feel it, and he wasn’t going to lean down and look into a wing mirror to check.

  Murray was back, jumping over the ditch and landing his eighteen stones lightly beside them.

  ‘The boot and rear doors are open, didn’t see anyone but I could hear voices. I reckon they’re making a move.’

  Smith looked at his watch. It was a Rolex, a second-hand Date 15200, given to him by Sheila on his fortieth birthday so that he had one less excuse to be late home from work. It was never wrong, and it told him that no back-up would be arriving for at least ten more minutes.

  He said, ‘As I see it, we have two choices. We back off, take the cars around the bend, hope they don’t head in that direction and if they go, we try to follow them – bearing in mind that they might have the two kids in the back of the car. We’d have to be so careful we might lose them again. And if things then turned out really badly, we might wish we’d gone for option two. We all know what that is, I assume.’

  It was important that they all took a moment, even though they might not have many of them. The line to DI Reeve and whoever else was standing there with her was still open but he had deliberately held the phone down and away from his face; there was no way of knowing how much she had heard of that but this decision, in his view, had to be taken by the people on the ground – asking someone in an office fourteen miles away to take it was tantamount to an act of cowardice. All that mattered was the lives of Tina Fellowes and Cameron Routh. If they were here and could be saved, going in now was justified. If they were not, confronting the two Albanians and whoever else might be in the cottages would be putting their own lives at risk to no effect other than potentially wrecking a multi-million pound investigation.

  Wilson said, ‘Smith – do you know anything about these two characters other than what we were all told in the RSCU meeting?’

  It was astute question, and Smith knew what lay behind it.

  ‘No, I don’t – knives but not guns is all any of us have been told.’

  He looked around at them then and said, ‘Normally I’d say, anyone who doesn’t fancy it doesn’t have to go but we can’t do this with fewer than four.’

  Wilson said, ‘Two in the front and two in the back?’

  ‘Yes. I’m guessing it’s a two up, two down place and that’s how we’d have to go as well – whoever gets to the stairs first goes up them.’

  Another few seconds of silence but the skylark had stopped singing. Somehow the decision had been made; all he had to do was to say whatever else seemed sensible under the circumstances.

  ‘If they’re outside, we give them the warning but we keep moving forward. If they’re inside, John and I will take the front, you two the back. None of this shouting out to make us sound bigger and more numerous than we are, not on this occasion – all we’ve got is surprise. Get in and all over it as quickly as possible, put everyone you meet on the floor, one way or another, and I’ll answer any questions about that afterwards.’

  Nothing was said in response to any of that. Smith looked at his watch once more, and wondered what would have transpired before he did so again. Then he said to Murray, ‘You and this hedge are now intimately acquainted – lead on.’

  You notice everything – even that you notice everything. The soil under their feet was dry and crumbly, and he remembered then that there had been no rain for weeks. The hawthorn blossom was thick and creamy, weighing down the branches, and its scent was almost overpowering and yet not quite sweet. A small bird flew out as they neared the gap at the cottages, bounding into the air over the barley field and giving an insistent alarm call. He had no idea what it was but Jo could have told him – and he still had not returned her text message.

  They covered the fifteen yards to the house at a run that was simultaneously slow and breathless. Time is distorted. Seconds are stretched and minutes pass in an instant. The front door was unlocked, a narrow hallway, the kitchen in a lean-to at the back, two doors off to the left. Smith went forward, pointing to the first door so that Murray would know to go through it, and making for the second himself. As he reached it, he was coming level with the bottom of the stairs that Wilson and Dunn were already climbing. Their eyes met momenta
rily, his and Wilson’s, and he thought, my God, he’s enjoying this too, and I never knew.

  The room that he entered must have been partitioned into two smaller ones at some point in the cottage’s history, and the woman was either locking or unlocking the door that separated the two halves of it. When she heard him come in, she turned, surprised, and then she twisted the key again, took it out of the lock and put it into the pocket of her jeans. She didn’t look particularly afraid or particularly English – he guessed that her nationality would not be very different from those of the two men who must be upstairs.

  Smith moved towards her.

  ‘This is all over now. Give me the key, please.’

  He stopped a few feet short, not knowing what else she had tucked away in her pockets, and she eyed him, still defiant, but he could hear noises now behind the second door, a scraping and muffled voices. He sensed Murray come in behind him and saw some sort of recognition in her eyes, recognition that it was indeed all over.

  She took out the key and held it towards him, a heavy iron thing, the sort that unlocks small doors in old churches, and he took it from her. He pointed to the sofa and she went and sat on it, a sullen expression on her face as if they had somehow not played fair. He held the key at arm’s length as he pushed it into the lock and turned it; yes, he thought there were people in here and he had not heard a savage dog yet but he had once spent two years in a city where opening doors occasionally led to explosions. With any luck, approaching it this way might only lead to the loss of a hand... Before he finished turning it, there were shouts upstairs and the sound of a fist or a boot on a door several times.

  Smith turned to Murray and said, ‘I’ve got this. I think you’re needed upstairs.’

  Murray nodded but went towards the woman first. She flinched away from him but with a single movement he had turned her around, bringing her knees to the floor and her arms around her back. She was cuffed in seconds. His glance said, you can’t be too careful, and then he was gone, his feet heavy on the stairs, taking them three at a time.